Alternative TRPGs

A lot of people on Veeky Forums tell you not to play D&D, but then don't offer any alternatives.
What are these alternatives that accomplish the same thing, but better? And how are they better?
Just for some background, I'm new to TRPGs, and the only system I've learned so far is Basic Fantasy RPG. I've been on Veeky Forums for a while however (and Veeky Forums in general for much, much longer), mostly because I paint models just for fun and browse /wip/ and /awg/.

I don't think there;s a game that does D&D better than D&D, except sometimes a different version of D&D.

But when people make threads saying "don't you hate it in D&D when...?" they can usually be pointed to another game that will do the kind of game they want D&D to be.

Yeah I'm just wondering if there's some unsung hero of the genre that people that are "in the know" play. I don't want to play GURPS (it seems way too crunchy) and I'm not interested in PF (it's essentially just D&D). I don't know. I see a lot of people shitting on D20 systems in general, but I don't know any popular alternatives outside of FF's Star Wars stuff and a couple D6 systems that nobody plays.

There are plenty of other systems to choose from. WHFRP2E is pretty good. The new GURPS Dungeon Fantasy set is actually pretty polished. Song of Swords can offer some nitty gritty combat. Torchbearer takes a different direction for dungeon crawling, while being reminiscent of retroclones.

D&D is the baseline that you'll never have trouble finding a game for.

If I wanted a fantasy adventure game I'd probably use Reign for a story-driven game that could go into warfare or politics and Strike! if I wanted tabletop combat to be the focus, but those are both relatively obscure and if you wanted to try them you'd need to sell it to your friends and run it yourself.

>A lot of people on Veeky Forums tell you not to play D&D

You mean a few very bitter people. You really shouldn't pay attention to them, as they are just the sort of contrarians that appear on Veeky Forums and indulge in the freedom to hate as much and as mindlessly as they want.

D&D is great for fantasy games.

I agree with this user. D&D does it's kind of TTRPG well. A very dungeon crawl, combat heavy TTRPG.

The closest thing to a "better D&D" that I both own and have played would be Dungeon World. It gets a lot of shit talk on Veeky Forums and I agreed until recently. I think of it as a more streamlined D&D experience.

There's also 13th Age, created by a few key figures who made D&D 3.5 and 4th editions. That system flows very well to me, probably a bit better than DW. I have not played it though.

For aspects that other systems focus on, it pretty much boils down to what you want more of. Want mechanics to social "combat"? A Song of Ice & Fire RPG has that covered well with the right amount of crunch. Want a more character backstory driven experience? I hear Burning Wheel does that very well. Want a more realistic combat experience in a low fantasy setting? Apparently Song of Swords does that well, albeit having more crunch to go with the added complexity. Do you want a comfy/cute slice of life RPG where the hardship of travel is focused on? Ryuutama has that.

It all boils down to "what do I want to focus on in this campaign?" and find a system that does that.

Right now I'm running a Song of Ice & Fire campaign with two players, who expressly want zero combat. They want to focus on the social combat and politics, rather than how big your d6 pool is when attacking. (Which funny enough, this system also allows players to do anime levels of stupid damage. The system can be easily exploited to those who want to break it, so beware of players who min-max.)

>A lot of people on Veeky Forums tell you not to play D&D
Pretty untrue, if you take everything every user says as gospel then you'll end up thinking there are no good TTRPGs. Especially if you enter non-D&D generals.

>What are these alternatives that accomplish the same thing, but better?
There's this game called Dungeons & Dragons, 1st & 2nd edition are good for dungeon crawls, 3.PF is if you want an extremely complicated and complex ruleset that can be tweaked like crazy, and 5e is a simplified ruleset that takes a lot of the good mechanics from 3.5e and 4e with some ideas from 2e and kinda mixes them together (I recommend starting with 5e desu).

There's also universal systems like Savage Worlds which is good for what it does, there's Dungeon Crawl Classics for a very old school D&D game, and a couple other games the Anons in this thread have already posted.

t. the guy who drilled a hole in the bottom of the boat so that we could go back to playing D&D

13th Age is pretty good. It's eminently more comprehensible and thought out than D&D but it doesn't try to come up with a different game entirely like DW does.

As a general rule, I'd recommend against being attached to specific systems. At least, if you want to avoid the fate of D&Dfaglords. World of Darkness is a pretty bad system, but it's easy to learn and has decent levels of support, you may as well play it for the sake of how different it is from the other stuff you've played, if you can borrow the books from someone. GUMSHOE, L5R, Dark Heresy and friends, Maid, they're all games that are relatively easy to learn, do "the thing they do" a hell of a lot better than D&D can. But they sure as hell aren't perfect general systems, and it's tremendously unlikely anything ever will be.

But once you have a good idea of what is possible, you can just make your own system if you're unhappy with what's out there. That matches up with exactly what will and will not be in the campaign.

Don't worry, there isn't some special "advanced level" game you're missing out on (aside from True AD&D®). Just a variety of games for different tastes.

Basic Fantasy RPG is a great place to start. It's got some modern ideas that most players prefer, and remains light and simple, with a bit of old school charm.

>I want gritty crunchy dungeon crawl with resource management but i don't like grid combat
Torchbearer
>I want to describe cool shit my character do and don't want to ready any rules, just tell me what to roll, nerd
Dungeon world
>Also, i want it to be about that specific thing
Other pbta fantasy hack
>Well, maybe i'll read some rules after all
Savage worlds
>Weeaboo travelan gaems
Ryuutama
>I want low fantasy character drama, with optional 26 action type combat.
Burning wheel
>Make me level 30
Exalted
>14/88
Das Schwarze Auge
>I want to play flamboyant paladin of gendercrossing love, and i want it to have mechanical weight
FATE
>Arthurian knights!
Pendragon

You forgot
>I want a system that accurately reflects crucial parts of the real world like my anal circumference and accidentally raping people
FATAL

>accidentally raping people
Wait what, i don't remember that part. How does it work?

Umm exalted (specially 3e ) is imo much better for a fantasy setting I am much more comfortable with character creation qnd variety also monsters are harder to build but ussualy more interesting.

Classic Fantasy is a supplement to Mythras. It literally does D&D better than D&D.

This.

Just gonna go ahead and say that while I agree in principle, Shadow of the Demon Lord is a better 5e than 5e.

DtD.
It's like D&D, but more fun.

Sometimes, when you initiate a grapple, your roll can make you start uncontrollably raping. Just "Whoops, I meant to just hold your arms down, but then my penis accidentally slipped in you and ripped your orifices apart, I hate it when that happens, haha"
I'm sure it comes up more, but I remember this one.

Play Runequest

>A lot of people on Veeky Forums tell you not to play D&D, but then don't offer any alternatives.
That's because their angry retards mad about the fact nobody likes their shitty pet system. DnD is great, if you're new get DnD 5E.

Then, if you want a more detailed rule system, get into 3.5 and Pathfinder or GURPS.
If you want to branch into different genres, try Star Wars SAGA, World of Darkness or Shadowrun.
If you want something with less rules and more narrative, try FATE:Accelerated (or FATE Core, it's the same but with worse layout).

>That's because their angry retards mad about the fact nobody likes their shitty pet system.

My shitty pet system is actually 4e. Check mate, atheists!

>My shitty pet system is actually 4e
just, why?

Because It's fun

It does what I want it to do, and (mostly) doesn't do what I don't want it to do.

Why on earth would you ever recommend 3.pf

Because it's a great system. Crunching a character by combining half a dozen different things and seeing it come together into a working character is fun, you have variant-rules for almost everything, it's easy to mod, combat is interesting if you're mechanically interested and having mechanical variation that supports lore variation is a great thing to have.

>come together into a working character is fun
you see, this is the part that doesn't happen. the majority of combinations are nonfunctonal. The game seems to be designed against even trying such multiclassing.

Try Donjon.

It's pretty streamlined and rules-light, with a heavy emphasis on player storytelling. It's my preferred GURPS alternative, and as a bonus, it works for any setting.

When you have a decent group and get going, it's like a great jam session, with everyone just playing off each other (for better or worse) and simply having a great time.

I had the exact opposite problem IRL. My friends don't want to learn another system and insist that we run D&D for literally any game we want to play. So if we want to play a sci-fi game, we have to homebrew 3.5 instead of just playing Traveler. Ditto for Wild West, instead of playing Deadlands we just homebrewed shittily balanced revolvers into D&D.

>the majority of combinations are nonfunctonal
even a minority of all possible combinations for 3.5 is still a metric fuckton, and there's pretty much nothing that can't be made at least functional in tier 3.

While this is true, I'd rather play a game that has balance that isn't so all over the place it had to invent tiers for its classes/characters.

Less effort on my/the player's end to get into actually playing the game is always good.

>Less effort on my/the player's end to get into actually playing the game is always good.
That's like saying Soccer is a better Sport than Hockey because it needs less equipment and has less rules. Neither High complexity nor Low complexity are inherently better.

Soccer is a more ACCESSIBLE sport. Complexity-wise they are about on par.

Accessibility is overall a good thing. If you could somehow make hokey more accessible without compromise, you should.

>Accessibility is overall a good thing. If you could somehow make hokey more accessible without compromise, you should.
Accessibility always comes with compromise beyond superficial stuff like good layout and formatting though. You simply can't build a 4E character with the same mechanical depth as in 3.5, which is why I prefer the latter.

Have you given it a fair shot?

If not, do you want to? I'm a bit rusty at building characters in 4e, but, aside from some things 4e just doesn't do (i.e. summon hordes of minions), or some T1 god-builds, I think it can swing a pretty good % of 3.x concepts (and has a few concepts of his own that 3.x has problems with, making it sort of a wash).

...

Complexity and depth are two different things. Go for instance has a massive mount of depth despite being a game with almost no skill required.

If they insist on 3.butthurt though, push them towards Fantasy Craft. It has much better crunch than 3e but adds more complexity