What is your favourite non-D&D adjacent fantasy RPG?

[Golden age Superhero]

Dragon Warriors, the New Conan the Hyborian Age, Barbarians of Lemuria.

 

[MacDhomnuill]

Dragonbane and Mausritter take up a lot of space in my brain but lately I want to play some scifi which has always been my main genre. Traveller (classic w/slight tweaks) or WEG Starwars are also systems I love and can be easily adapted to fantasy.

 

[jian]

Tiny Taverns and Tiny Dungeons. Tiny d6 is a compact and surprisingly flexible and tactical system, and Tiny Taverns does cosy fantasy beautifully.

 

[Autumnal]

Tiny Taverns is a marvel of flexibility. You can take it anywhere from super cozy to super intense and dramatic.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I keep meaning to check out the current TFT but just haven’t gotten around to it.

Ditto!

 

[Shawnster_P]

I recently stumbled on mythcraft. I haven't actually played it, but I really like what I see. They have a free wili with all the rules online.

There are no real classes. Instead, everything is built on talents (feats). There are LOTS of extensive talent trees, but anyone can take anything so long as they have taken the prerequisite talent first. It's really well done.

It has a lot in common with pf2, but does it differently. There are action points, but you can hold AP between rounds to save up for a big cost action. The monster stat blocks are easy to read and actually have all the info right in front of you. The few low lvl monsters I looked at do interesting thing, so it's not the usual "just use a bear" meatbag situation.

Anyway, idk if it is my favorite, but it is right now. It has been a while since ANY fantasy rpg caught my attention.

 

[Reynard]

Tiny Taverns is a marvel of flexibility. You can take it anywhere from super cozy to super intense and dramatic.

I will have to give that a look.

 

[GraveDev]

A bit of a self-indulgent answer, but me and my players have really been enjoying a d20 fantasy game my wife and I have created over the years called Grit. It is a 200+ page, poorly-structured pile of rules, but it plays really smoothly and has worked well for us as a D&D replacement.

What we like about it is mostly:

• Outrageous character build variety. There are no restrictions on what armour and weapons characters can use, or how a character's attributes (ability modifiers) and skill or profession prowess (proficiency) need to be allotted—players can just customize their character as they see fit, combining any ancestry (race) with any class and equipment. That being said, certain classes and ancestries gain more benefits by leaning into certain playstyles, and that's where soft restrictions come in. You can play a heavily armoured arcanist (wizard) wielding a greatsword, but you would like get more out of that playstyle by being a warrior (fighter) instead. Still, anything goes and everything works!
• Smooth check resolution. The game uses a "d20, roll high" system, but there are no modifiers—what the dice say is what the result is. Instead, attributes and prowess grants advantages on the rolls. Debuffs and negative attributes grant disadvantages. We have found it to be a lot simpler and quicker than the math involved in D&D, even though "d20 + number" is not very complex.
• Attrition. You do not heal to full during rests, and recovering from rough encounters takes time and effort. Encourages players to play smart, but PCs are still fairly tough, so they can still take risks and make heroic moves when appropriate.
• Less number bloat scaling. PCs scale mostly by getting new tools in their toolbox through class abilities, talents (spells) and techniques (martial maneuvers). They still gain some HP and have the opportunity to upgrade attributes and whatnot upon leveling up, but that form of scaling is fairly minimal compared to D&D. This makes low-level challenges and enemies still relevant later on, which is something we like. For a more heroic game, minion rules are in place so that PCs can mow down low-level mooks.
• Mundane supplies matter. The game uses a simple bulk-based inventory system, and mundane supplies are really good and useful. You do not need supplies, but they grant you various bonuses that are really helpful when out in the wilderness. Gives us a Darkest Dungeon feel where you fill up your inventory with useful supplies, and then later on have to make tough choices regarding what to keep and what to leave behind.
• 3 AP turns and useful actions. The game uses 3 Action Point turns like PF2e, and has a wide variety of useful actions to prevent attack spam. So far, most turns in play typically involve a player using 1-2 AP to attack in various ways, and then the remaining AP to use defensive or utility actions. We find it makes combat a lot more interesting when just attacking 3 times is not always the best move.

There's more we like, such as the downtime activities and professions, but this post is already too long, so the rest can wait.

 

[nyvinter]

Previously I mentioned Legend in the Mist but one favourite game? Nah.

I'm going to go against a lot of people and say Spire: the City Must Fall and not Heart, even though you want to use Heart's stress roll.

But anyway. You play as revolutionary drow and the classes range from batman with imprisoned gods in their gear to the idol who repel wounds by beauty to a knight who'd rather do pub crawls to an inksmith that wields occult metamagic.

Anytime you do something risky you roll a d10 dice pool and pick the highest. It's a little like the PbtA in failure/success at a cost/success. Except that the consequence is stress and the fallout of it only comes at you as a dice knife in the back when you fail a stress roll.

In Heart, fallout happens when the stress roll is below your stress level and it's a minor fallout if it's 1-6 and major 7-12. Critical can happen by upgrading a major. (This is why it's better than Spire as written where all three levels are in the roll.)

Advances are gained by changing the city. You are revolutionaries fighting the oppression by Aelfirs after all. A low advance is something very local, like a street. A medium can be a district to a floor, and a high is big lasting change to the city, The big advances can be considered game-breaking by some people — like the lexicutioners can remove a word of their choice from the GM's gamebook. For the knights the high ones are quests that almost all grant immortality.

The setting is amazing, the classes unique and evocative, the dice system just works thematically.

I also really love Swords Of the Serpentine which is a sword and sorcery gumshoe game.

 

[Parmandur]

The Cosmere RPG is pretty great, I wouldn't call it any more D&D adjacent than Dragonbane is. They have a Solo play rulebook coming out next year, too.