Why do you play games other than D&D?

[The Umber Knight]

The main reason I play non-D&D TTRPGs is because of WotC. The products they produce are conflict-ridden and honestly subpar compared to the 3rd-Party Stuff I have bought. I am largely unimpressed with 2024 D&D, so for the sake of my wallet, I have been migrating to Tales of the Valiant. Better quality and compatible with all the stuff I already have because it's essentially a variant on 2014 D&D.

However, I have been favoring other systems. I really want to get my group to try out Shadowdark, and I have been playing a lot of Horde Wars on Discord. I also actually favor Sci-Fi games, so if given the chance to run/play Cyberpunk: Red or Shadowrun (5E), I'm going to take that. I've been looking at Runners in the Shadows (derivative of Blades in the Dark) since a lot of my group is turned off by crunchy rule sets.

 

[Scott Christian]

We played The Witcher, Fallout, and Daggerheart the past few years. Each was short lived. Then we moved to our new D&D campaign. The fact that our group likes D&D, I believe, has nothing to do with market dominance. It has to do with it being a system for everyone. Our table is diverse, and so is D&D.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I've found I can get "this is new and cool" from campaigns with different settings using a familiar game system. I've done this with BRP and GURPS, but not with Hero System, which I've found is always trying to do superheroes. This may be the result of the GMs I've played it with.

For what its worth (and I acknowledge your caveat at the end there), while I think Hero does only work for some kinds of tone, the Fringeworthy and fantasy games I ran with it didn't feel superhero-ish.