What Game Did You Leave D&D For?

[Tony Vargas]

I've 'left' D&D and come back a few times over the years:

c1984 for Champions! (and Hero System in general - just a great system)

… to be fair, I stopped playing, but kept running for years, until …

c1993 for Storyteller (the oWoD was a compelling setting, no matter how bad the system was)

… returned with the release of 3.0 …

2008 for 4e (OK, technically it was D&D - technically)

… ran for the 'Next' playtest and 5e AL for a while …

2018 for real life. Maybe I'll let myself be coaxed back to 13A or 4e or Storyteller or maybe even to try Gumshoe or PbtA, but right now, I just don't miss gaming that much.

Maybe when D&D has its 50th anniversary, I'll be up for another nostalgia trip with it.

 

[rounser]

Talisman using the Reaper and Dungeon expansions has pretty much replaced D&D and any other RPG for me. You get a semblance of an entire campaign in one evening, and the deck of Adventure cards does a better job than any non-computer DM I've met.

Note that it's easy to overcook Talisman. Most of the expansions such as City, Highland and Blood Moon wreck the game, so pay particular attention to what you do with it. It just needs a little seasoning, not the whole enchilada.

 

[Nytmare]

I played AD&D all through the 80s and early 90s, played in different games (mostly AD&D, Rifts, and WOD) every night of the week all through college, and ran a long 3.5 campaign through the 90s and early 00s.

When 4th ed came out we jumped in with both feet, and I ran a 4th ed campaign for maybe 2-3 years before burning out.

I invested heavily in 5th Edition, and although I've run a handful of one shot games, my life, and more importantly the lives of the people I play with, no longer easily lend themselves to regular campaign play. We're all in our 40s now and the other commitments just keep piling up on us.

Nowadays, when we do get around to playing an RPG, we do a lot more one shot and serialized play. The Quiet Year is probably what comes to the table the most, followed by Blades in the Dark. I'd say that Durance, Fiasco, and Torchbearer are the only other RPGs I have that have been played more than once in the last 5 years.

 

[Moon_Goddess]

I played AD&D all through the 80s and early 90s, played in different games (mostly AD&D, Rifts, and WOD) every night of the week all through college, and ran a long 3.5 campaign through the 90s and early 00s.

When 4th ed came out we jumped in with both feet, and I ran a 4th ed campaign for maybe 2-3 years before burning out.

I invested heavily in 5th Edition, and although I've run a handful of one shot games, my life, and more importantly the lives of the people I play with, no longer easily lend themselves to regular campaign play. We're all in our 40s now and the other commitments just keep piling up on us.

Nowadays, when we do get around to playing an RPG, we do a lot more one shot and serialized play. The Quiet Year is probably what comes to the table the most, followed by Blades in the Dark. I'd say that Durance, Fiasco, and Torchbearer are the only other RPGs I have that have been played more than once in the last 5 years.

Just cuz I myself often make that mistake of hope long ago things were, I thought I'd mention that 3.0 came out in 2000 and 3.5 in 2003

 

[Nytmare]

Just cuz I myself often make that mistake of hope long ago things were, I thought I'd mention that 3.0 came out in 2000 and 3.5 in 2003

My brain continuously merges 1999 to about 2010 into some nebulous "the 90s" time period. I don't even do any drugs to blame that on.

 

[Eric V]

Once our Al-Qadim 5e game wraps up, we won't be playing 5e again...our group just finds the game too "samey." We might give Adventures in Middle Earth a try, though...Tolkien, after all.

If not, it'll be 13th Age.

 

[ParanoydStyle]

EDIT: Man, I'm loving all the love I'm seeing for HERO System around here!

I'm an odd duck: D&D was actually the LAST major RPG that I played. I had played maybe entire campaigns of Shadowrun, Vampire: The Masquerade, and Call of Cthulhu before I ever cracked open a Players' Handbook.

I never really left D&D. As a matter of fact, I would very frequently "leave" Games I Had Literally Written And Designed From The Ground Up Myself to play D&D instead. I don't think D&D was ever my wife, and I think she'll always be my mistress. (This is an analogy.)

 

[NeuroZombie]

I switched to Savage Worlds because of the Savage Rifts kickstarter and now i'm writing both a fantasy and a sci-fi setting to SW in my spare time for my next campaigns. I'll get SWADE before my next campaign, but for now I'm happy with the Explorers edition. FYI, i'm old so I've been playing D&D in all its incarnations since the red box as well as dozens of other games, so this is not unusual for me to switch systems.

 

[dco]

In our case we didn't play D&D and now we play it because people have less time and there are a lot of adventures for D&D, that's the best thing of the system.

 

[Arnwolf666]

I am running a very good RC/BECMI game that deals a lot with the spheres and immortals. Using a lot of rules from the companion and master set. Not really using any of the immortals rules RAW. Love ya mentzer, but not your immortal rules.