Tabletop role-playing games have reached an all-time high in popularity. Turns out, there’s a certain appeal about rounding up a group of friends together to go through an adventure while chucking dice in the process. For over half a century, the juggernaut of the genre has been none other than Dungeons & Dragons, designed by Gary Gygax and made super-popular through Critical Role, Stranger Things, multiple feature films, and countless other media. While the latest iteration of the fantastic game might be the best it’s been in years, you’re missing out if you haven’t stopped to consider its alternatives. Whether you’re looking for a lighter rules systems, different settings, or an entirely different concept, there has never been a better time to explore other RPG systems. Here’s a quick rundown of a few of the best out there.
Mork Borg
Have you ever felt that D&D was getting a bit too cozy? Maybe the sometimes-crunchy rules for combat drag down the flow of the game. Maybe you just want to roll up a complete scumbag of a character and D&D’s ruleset don’t really facilitate that. Well, Mork Borg just might be for you! A rules-lite system that owes more to the Old School Renaissance (OSR) movement of RPG design that aims to recreate rules similar to the original editions of D&D, Mork Borg puts a unique spin on setting and atmosphere. Inspired by the extreme tone of Doom Metal album covers and music, the game has players roll up a scumbag of a character with little hope of surviving in a doomed plane. I’d highly recommend it to fans of the dark fantasy genre, Darkest Dungeon, and other grim games. However, if fantasy’s not your bag, give its spin-off Cy_Borg a try, as it amps up the violence and chaos of a game like Cyberpunk 2077 to 11.
AMC’s The Walking Dead: The Role-Playing Game
Okay, hear me out. I know the years haven’t been kind to The Walking Dead television series or its ungodly amount of spin-offs, but I found myself thoroughly impressed with this rule system. Rather than try to adapt stories of the show, this game puts players into the world of it and tasks them with survival. The game also uses a unique dice system that makes success rolls harder to obtain the more risks you take, and features a great mechanic for tracking how big and dangerous the walker horde is. If you’re a fan of zombie games, The Last of Us, or games where you’re forced to make hard decisions, this game just might surprise you, too.
Dread
What if you don’t want to use dice at all? What if your success was based on your physical dexterity and you were able to pull off impossible tasks because you were sure you could pull it off… or watch it all come crashing down. That’s the concept behind Dread, a game that ditches dice chucking entirely and has players use a tower of Jenga blocks for success checks. Designed for bleak horror settings, Dread uses its tower to great effect, adding a physical skill-based element to role-playing that can’t quite be recreated with math modifiers. The fact the game also allows for horror storytelling in any setting means you’re surely able to find a variant to you and your playgroup’s liking. This is a fun one to play around Halloween and at parties.
The One Ring (and, to an extent, The Lord of the Rings 5E)
Let’s be frank: J.R.R. Tolkien crafted quite possibly the greatest fantasy setting ever when he created Middle-earth for his novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. They’re timeless, they have amazing films, and they’re pop-culture mainstays. So they’re primed for a TTRPG, and thankfully, an amazing one exists. The One Ring is a role-playing take on Tolkien’s universe that stays true to the lore and world that he created. This means that unlike D&D, there’s no “superpowered” player characters or copious uses of magic, but instead very thoughtful and almost cozy atmospheric storytelling that is sure to please any fan of Middle-earth. Hell, one of the starter sets even has players take on the role of Hobbits in The Shire doing the tasks that are associated with the halfling creatures. For those who truly don’t want to ditch the D&D 5E system, there’s also a conversion of The One Ring into the rules system that’s titled Lord of the Rings 5E, which is a fantastic supplement (and the one that hits my table the most).
Final Fantasy XIV TTRPG
Who would’ve thought that a tabletop RPG based on one of the coolest MMORPGs to ever exist would be so good? Go figure. What makes the tabletop adaptation of Final Fantasy XIV stand out though is its fantastic adaptation of XIV’s iconic job system, which cranks up role-playing classes to the max. Dungeon exploring while using the various jobs from Final Fantasy are sure to please any gamer and mix things up a lot from your usual fare of fighters, wizards, rogues, etc. Players who tried D&D will also be able to jump in pretty easily as the game uses a standard d20 system.