What to run when you are done with D&D?

[DarkCrisis]

These don't seem like dungeon fantasy games.

Shadowrun totally can be, instead of a deep dark dungeon it's a Megacorp office building. Go in, get the pay data, and get out. Typically guns and spells blazing.

Vampire could be but then you are really narrowing the focus of the game.

 

[Sir Brennen]

I own most of the original products for TFT/In the labyrinth. Good game system. Dark City games used a version of the same system for their stuff, too.

Havent gotten my hands on the new edition, though.

I went all in on the Kickstarter for the nostalgia factor, though I still have the original Melee/Wizard Micro-games from my high school days. Not a lot of changes in the new edition (called the Legacy Edition), and there's been a ton of support for it.

 

[Cadence]

Shadowrun totally can be, instead of a deep dark dungeon it's a Megacorp office building. Go in, get the pay data, and get out. Typically guns and spells blazing.

Vampire could be but then you are really narrowing the focus of the game.

In both cases I'd be tempted to just run the system with a different theme. Tech+Magic on a dungeon crawl or humans going hunting vampires that live in a dungeon.

 

[DarkCrisis]

In both cases I'd be tempted to just run the system with a different theme. Tech+Magic on a dungeon crawl or humans going hunting vampires that live in a dungeon.

Shadowrun also has deep dark dungeons filled with dire beasts and dragon hordes.

 

[S'mon]

EDIT because it seems to be getting lost: I am talking about wanting to do the whole dungeon fantasy thing, but not with any version of D&D.

More specifically, what do you run when you are done with D&D specifically, but still want something "D&D like" -- dungeons, monsters, traps, treasure, etc...?

I ran Mini Six for a year (2020) in the Primeval Thule setting - 2215 AR Primeval Thule with Mini Six RPG

Edit: Ran old D&D adventures - Palace of the Silver Princess, Halls of Tizun Thane, The Licheway. Worked great and gave me a fresh perspective on 'dungeon fantasy'.

 

[Greg K]

Unfortunately, I can't offer much help. Maybe, Earthdawn 1e?
For the most part, D&D is my compromise game. However, I am bordering on dropping it.

The games that are interesting me at the moment are:

• For multiple genres: Savage Worlds, Cortex Plus (various games), Tinyd6 (various games)
• animation specific rpgs: Cartoon Action Hour, Meddling Kids
• fantasy specific rpgs: Barbarians of Lemuria, BASH: Fantasy, Fantasy Hero, MERP, Earthdawn, Warhammer Fantasy 1e, and, maybe, Conan (Modiphius)
• scifi specific rpgs:Atomic Highway, EarthAD.2, Retrostar, and, maybe, Star Trek (Modiphius)
• supers specific rpgs: Icons: Assembled, BASH: UE
• swashbuckling/flintlock fantasy specific rpgs: Honor + Intrigue

 

[hawkeyefan]

I ran OD&D last night and it was fun but I can tell my player group is irked by the lack of crunchy player bits, so I don't think any old version or OSR game is going to be a solution.

I’ll echo Torchbearer. I haven’t yet played it, but may be starting as a player in a campaign soon, so I’ve been looking through the recent 2E material that released. It is definitely evoking the exploration/delve vibe.

Since you mentioned player crunch, I’ll also recommend Heart: The City Beneath. I’ve read this and ran my first session Friday. It’s got a lot of player options in the form of class abilities. And although the “dungeon” is very different from a simple underground lair, it leans very much into delving and examining the kinds of people who would do this for a living.

 

[Staffan]

Unfortunately, I can't offer much help. Maybe, Earthdawn 1e?

God damn it, why didn't I think of that? Earthdawn very much hits the same buttons as D&D, though in a somewhat different order.

The game has classes (disciplines), levels (circles), different types of magic, characters getting seriously more powerful as they get experience, and amazing loot. The setting is sort of post-post-apocalyptic, much like many D&D settings (there has been an apocalypse, but it was a while ago and things are rebuilding). Basically, when the magic level in the world gets too high really nasty things start showing up, so lots of people hid in underground complexes for a few generations to wait it out, and about a hundred years ago things started getting more or less safe again. But a lot of those underground complexes failed, and have turned into death traps filled with amazing loot.

The class/level/powers system works in reverse to D&D. In D&D, you get XP, which makes you level up, which makes you more powerful. In Earthdawn, you use XP to improve your abilities and when you have improved them enough you can level up which unlocks new abilities.

There are 4-5 different editions of Earthdawn, depending on how you count (basically, there are two different second editions). There's more support material for the older editions, but I think the 4th (most recent) is probably the strongest mechanically.

Oh, and the original version was designed by one of the best game designers I know, Greg Gorden, who designed the James Bond RPG, DC Heroes, TORG, and co-designed WEG's D6 version of Star Wars.

 

[Jack Daniel]

When I became sick of D&D circa most of 2013, I tried a number of systems for dungeon fantasy: FATE didn't work at all; Savage Worlds and Victoriana fared no better. Risus held up for two or three sessions at most, while Barbarians of Lemuria could sustain a campaign that lasted maybe triple that.

WEG d6 Fantasy (borrowing as needed from Mini Six and other compatible games) worked pretty well, and to this day, the d6 System is one of the few games I'll gladly run other than OD&D or AD&D.

Incidentally, the main piece of baggage that had me abandoning D&D at the time was the quadratic magic-user. What drew me back into the D&D fold was the more linear magic system from Beyond the Wall (and now Through Sunken Lands). Brilliant piece of game-design, that (even if I've mostly learned to stop worrying and love spell levels again).

 

[MGibster]

My most successful fantasy campaign in the last decade was run using Savage Worlds. It scratched that fantasy itch just fine while managing not to be D&D.