What Game Did You Leave D&D For?

[Doc_Klueless]

I never seem to leave D&D. Oh, I dabble. I have trysts with other systems where we meet for a couple of weeks, sometimes months. But then I wander back to old faithful: D&D.

Since 1981, the closest I've come to leaving D&D was when I was stationed at DLI and played Palladium Fantasy RPG 1e for the year or so I was there learning Russian for the Army and a couple of years of GURPS.

Currently it's usually D&D with some Savage Worlds (Fantasy Grounds support is just so phenomenal). I'm hoping that it's gonna be D&D with some The Expanse RPG.

There are games I like better such as FFG Star Wars/Genesys, Savage Worlds (as mentioned), etc. But most times better is a chimera because it's not the game system that really toots my horn but the social/group interactions of RPGs. If that makes sense.

 

[aramis erak]

first time - Star Frontiers, then on to Classic Traveller

second time - FASA STRPG.

Third time: T20 Traveller's Handbook (D20 Traveller) in playtest

Fourth time WFRP 2E playtest. Got kicked out by BI; I had the audacity to complain about rules issues. Not Green Ronin's fault.

Fifth time - Dark Heresy

6th time - Star Wars
7th - Star Trek Adventures playtest
then L5R playtest.

E2A: I go back to D&D not because I want to, but because my players ask me to, or a store bribes me to.

 

[Zhaleskra]

I didn't "leave" D&D so much as find and learn games that did what I wanted in a more elegant or even simpler way. Having said that, I do feel that sometimes an RPG can be too simple. That is, I don't find "complex rules" = "hard game", nor do I necessarily find that "rules lite" = "simple game". The very things that got me interested in RPGs in the first place either no longer matter to me, or I still want them, but I've changed how I want them.

I'm very much into different dice types, and now I prefer to only switch out dice types occasionally. As someone who started with AD&D2E, I got tired of having too many subsystems, especially when the subsystems don't use the same mechanic as the rest of the game. I effectively abandoned D&D when 4th edition came out, and I'm not going to trot out one of the old tired reasons. It just wasn't "my D&D" anymore.

Over the decades, I have played many RPGs, and I like to stick with ones where I can keep the basic rules in my head, regardless of the overall complexity of the system. I've also grown tired of "the only reason humans are special is their flexibility" which usually doesn't show up mechanically, or "humans are the dominant species even though any one of the other species could have, and would have, wiped them out". So in "rubber ears aliens" RPGs, I need playing humans to be made interesting or why bother playing one? I'm already human in real life.

Of course, as a teenager and college student, I suffered from "shiny new toy syndrome" and I'm paying for it now, by having a lot of RPG books and box sets that do nothing but collect dust. I know I can make money selling some of them, but the rest I'll have to donate. I'm cutting down, and I plan on sticking with HARP, Sentinels Comics RPG, World Tree, and maybe In Nomine. I will play Pathfinder to scratch the D&D itch, and ultimately I think I'm just burned out on changes I don't agree with.

 

[Legatus Legionis]

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[John Out West]

I had to make my own. I wanted Low-HP, firearms, more chaotic magic, a more interesting leveling system, a larger inclusion of social abilities, a dissolution of feats into skills, A leveling system that focused on width (Difference & Utility) rather than height (Power), shorter combat sequences, less accounting, more up-front about enemy power-levels, and there's probably more i'm forgetting about.

I can't play anything else anymore, although the game is literally tailored to me so that shouldn't be a surprise. Each time i think about going back, I'm reminded of everything i left behind.

 

[Siltoneous]

I too left 5E for some time. The reasons are hard to explain, but I found myself being constantly annoyed by both the system. So I reached back into my past, and have been running a new Rolemaster (Unifited/United/beta) game. Oh it's still beta, but the powers-that-be are seriously suggesting it has an excellent chance to be released this year.

No lie: it's a heavy lift, especially with so many resources (like an official character generator) not available yet, and the rules still being tweaked and debated in the forums. All that aside, my group of 5E players are enjoying the heck out of it. Granted their eyes were swirling in their heads the first two sessions (character generation and system familiarity), but after several sessions, they've gotten a real taste for it. The look of mixed horror and sheer excitement during the first combat (opponents fumbling, weapons breaking and a hilarious unarmed critical to an opponents groin) was pure gold. The campaign ends next month, so we'll see if they want to continue, but it's been a welcome respite from 5E that's for sure.

 

[CrimsonCarcharodon]

Lately, the big game that's been pulling my attention from D&D 5E is Fate Core. I have so many different games of Fate I want to either run or play. Sadly, I'm at my limit for GMing, especially play-by-post, and some of the settings I want to play are rather odd, so it's hard to find a GM.

 

[gamerprinter]

Hopscotch? Not that I ever played that, but since I started playing D&D in 1977, there was no such thing as a roleplaying game prior to D&D, so I didn't actually leave another game to play D&D, I played D&D when it was the only RPG in existence...

 

[MNblockhead]

Hopscotch? Not that I ever played that, but since I started playing D&D in 1977, there was no such thing as a roleplaying game prior to D&D, so I didn't actually leave another game to play D&D, I played D&D when it was the only RPG in existence...

:-\

I think you misread the question.

But I do love the image of a gamer getting up from the table saying "enough of this! Let's go outside and play hopscotch!"

 

[gamerprinter]

I take that back, I did misread the question.

I left D&D when 3.5 was no longer supported by WotC. I had been looking at Pathfinder since the Beta release. At about that time, I wanted to develop and publish a Japanese Horror setting for D&D, but when WotC announced it was no longer supporting the game, and would release 4.0 in the following year, I realized that publishing a setting for D&D 3.5 was a bad idea, so opted to develop for the new game coming out at the time which was Pathfinder RPG. I ended up publishing my Kaidan setting of Japanese Horror as an imprint under Rite Publishing - 15 books in all, with the last one's published in the summer of 2017, which were the Players Guide and Gamemaster's Guide to Kaidan. Recently I've been supporting Starfinder, though now that Paizo is looking at 2.0 of PF, I'm far less interested in that, and will continue to support PF 1.0, perhaps with a new setting, which had been shelved over the past year with all the work I was doing for Starfinder. Now that PF 1.0 won't be supported, at least not with APs, I have trepidations on what to do next - though I'm certain now that I will publish it under PF 1.0 rules.