Learning different RPG systems is the most useful thing a DM or player can do to up their game. Doing so teaches you all sorts of ways to approach narration, mood, play, resolutions, and any number of other skills that could be useful in a game.
Last week I tweeted a question the question below.
What system besides #DnD do you recommend people learn to open their mind to the possibilities of #TTRPGs?
— Optional Rule (@optionalrule) January 15, 2021
In the end, I had over 80 replies and quoted retweets, which is fairly large for me. Unsurprisingly, I found the recommendations to be solid and thoughtful. To start, many of the systems would be ones I would have recommended myself. In addition, there’s a healthy list of games that are new to me. After looking them up, I felt like I discovered some great new sources to expand my own thinking. Therefore, I decided to aggregate the replies as best I could and show the results here.
The answers people provided alone said a lot about how they think about games. For instance, people mentioned Powered by the Apocalypse most of the time, but also named either Apocalypse World or Dungeon World individually. Many people mentioned Fate but few named a specific Fate based system.
What an amazing set of answers, everything on this list can teach you something new to add to your gaming experience. Some systems do a lot to teach about pacing, mood, and mystery. While other games have interesting takes on mechanics it can’t help but make you think differently about resolving checks.
I’ll leave this list here on hopes you pick up a suggestion you haven’t tried before.
Recommendations
| Game | Mentions |
|---|---|
| Call of Cthulhu | 12 |
| Fate | 9 |
| Apocalypse World | 8 |
| Fiasco | 7 |
| Blades in the Dark | 6 |
| Burning Wheel | 6 |
| Dungeon World | 6 |
| Dread | 5 |
| Genesys | 5 |
| Savage Worlds | 5 |
| Shadowrun | 5 |
| Star Wars D6 | 5 |
| Traveller | 5 |
| Champions | 4 |
| Cypher System | 4 |
| Fantasy Age | 4 |
| Ironsworn | 4 |
| Monster of the Week | 4 |
| Vampire the Masquerade | 3 |
| Gumshoe System | 2 |
| GURPS | 2 |
| Marvel Comics | 2 |
| Pathfinder | 2 |
| Runequest | 2 |
| Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay | 2 |
| 10 Candles | 1 |
| Aces & Eights | 1 |
| All Flesh Must Be Eaten | 1 |
| Changeling | 1 |
| Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine | 1 |
| Cortex RPG | 1 |
| Cyberpunk Red | 1 |
| Dungeon Crawl Classics | 1 |
| Dusk City Outlaws | 1 |
| Feng Shui | 1 |
| For the Queen | 1 |
| Forbidden Lands | 1 |
| Honey Heist | 1 |
| Icons | 1 |
| Into the Odd | 1 |
| Lancer RPG | 1 |
| Lasers & Feelings | 1 |
| Micro Chapbook RPG | 1 |
| Microscope | 1 |
| Middle Earth Roleplaying | 1 |
| Mutant Crawl Classics | 1 |
| Mutants & Masterminds | 1 |
| One Roll Engine | 1 |
| Open Legend | 1 |
| Over the Edge | 1 |
| Pendragon | 1 |
| Primetime Adventures | 1 |
| Quest | 1 |
| Spawn of Fashan | 1 |
| Starfinder | 1 |
| Stars Without Number | 1 |
| Tales from the Loop | 1 |
| Trophy Gold | 1 |
| Twilight 2000 | 1 |
| Unknown Armies | 1 |
| Zweihandler | 1 |