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by sleepybrett
701 days ago
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Because a lot of these d&d alternatives are fairly cheap I think it's worth your time just to buy a few here and there and give them a read (dungeon world, index card rpg, blades in the dark, vaesen, torchbearer, forbidden lands, not d&d adjacent but I'll just also mention mothership, I'm not going to really mention pathfinder here because it's very much still a fork of d&d though their action system I think beats the 5e action system). It kinda opens your mind to what is great about d&d (for me their well defined settings and a lot of expansiveness of their class subclass system.. that and a ton of nostalgia, I played my first game of redbox in the 80s) and where it lacks. It's kind of the middle of the road game, it does a lot of stuff reasonably well but some of these other games specialize the gameplay in some very interesting ways. Often as a group you probably aren't going to change systems but, and especially if you are your groups gamemaster, a lot of these little rpgs probably have very poachable rules or systems that could help your game run smoother, faster or push your game in new directions. Pretty soon you'll end up with a shelf (or directory of pdfs) of d&d adjacent books. RPG sourcebooks for games you may never play, but all of those books are farmable for a d&d campaign. If you are your tables 5e DM, I will take some time out to promote the best 3rd party monster manual i've come accross 'Flee Mortals!'. It introduces a alternative system for monsters (mostly bosses) in combat called 'action oriented monsters', there are some videos on youtube if you search. Great book, fun systems. |
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I have purchased almost every printed GURPS 4e book and a fair number of 3e books for exactly this reason. None of my players have ever been interested in the system (I like it a lot, but won't force it because I'd rather play a game I enjoy but isn't in my top 3 systems than lose a group forcing a game I really like but they hate). However, the books are so well written and provide a wealth of references and ideas that when running other games I've borrowed liberally from them. I think I referenced some of them more than my CoC books when running a CoC campaign a few years back. And a lot of my OSR books are basically the same. I only ever run DCC or C&C these days in the D&D-adjacent space but keep getting other books and modules for other D&D-ish systems since they can be ported to those systems so easily.