If you want more crunch for your dollar, Pathfinder 1e is pretty great IMHO. I played it for many years and, TBH, kind of miss the wealth of options and character complexity. I’d be happy to switch back; my DM however is not quite so game. There’s Pathfinder 2e as well, which is also considerably crunchier than 5e. I haven’t played it though—we switched to 5e from PF1e—so I can’t say whether it is great or not.
Want the system heavy, high fantasy enjoyment you get from DnD? Pathfinder is based on 3e more than 5e, but that has advantages too. What you lose in having to learn a slightly more complex systems (lots of different things to roll for, for example), you make up in by being a hyper-specialized badass who can do crazy shit.
Want an RP heavy, improv focused game? FATE system games excel at this, and shout out to Blades in the Dark (set in a semi-steampunk setting with ghosts, giant monsters, and focused on heists and crime) or Monster of the Week (Very much Scooby Doo if the monsters were real). This is an EXTREMELY flexible series of systems using in the moment narrative decisions and a lot of D6s to build a collaborate story.
Want cerebral, nail biting suspense and focus on how characters break down in stressful situations, with systems that enforce it? Call of Cthulhu is for you! While this is famous for it's tie in to Lovecraftian concepts, the real meat of the story comes from how the characters try and often fail to comprehend and rise above the horrors. Also really lends itself to great, complex puzzles.
Other shoutouts:
Deadlands - set with the Weird Wild West, has some of the most interesting class builds (shout out to basically playing poker with the Devil, and CR did a great version using just this class for everyone at the table that was So good.)
Glitterhearts - Play as Magical Girls (or other Magical Genders, at your discretion)
There are others that I'm blanking on the names of but this is a place to start.
I can give a list of a few popular rules-lite titles:
Old School Essentials by Necrotic Gnome. A dungeon crawler retroclone based on the older Basic Expert D&D line. It's mechanics are disconnected and easy to retool and hack as a DM might need. The system focuses on exploration of wilderness and dungeon environments while encouraging character growth through events played and magic items acquired. It has a backlog of decades of compatible adventures and a modern layout that makes for an easy to read and run system.
Troika by Melsonian Arts Council* (or) **. A wacky game where players roll 2d6 to randomly determine a character premise, often resulting in options like the "befouler of ponds" or the "Member of Miss Kingsey's Dining Club". A simple and chaotic combat system that embraces abrupt and swing-y changes in circumstance. Troika tells the story of Weird Fantasy characters journeying across the spheres of creation and strongly captures the feeling one gets looking at Tony Diterlizzi's Planescape art.
.Dungeon by Batts** A game about you and your friends' last days on a dying fantasy MMO. The game is split between two worlds, your life in the real world and your time in the game. No health, you can always respawn, instead damage is dealt to your Connection. When the group's connection hits zero, they no longer play the game and move on with their lives. Character abilities interact with the game, hacking into it or creating art from their experiences in it to gain a bonus to a roll. Plug any dungeon into the MMO, run any story within the MMO, just know that your time together is limited and precious.
Tunnel Goons and the system neutral dungeons found in Haunted Almanac created by Nate Treme. Simple gaming with a focus on giving you a resolution mechanic and encouraging you to just play a story out together. "Do not fear, explore".
Mothership by Tuesday Knight Games. Scifi horror roleplaying in a corporate future inspired by Doom, Alien, and Event Horizon. You play a blue collar worker at the edge of space, something is crawling through the vents, and people are disappearing.
Bastards. by Micah Anderson. Scrappy and simple fantasy roleplaying, flexible but with enough material and mechanics to hack into any sort of genre or story you might want. A 'roll-for-words' magic system and 42 two sentence character classes with abstract and inspiring flavor.
Mausritter by Losing Games*. Mouse Guard, Secret of NIMH, The Secret World of Arietty. A game about small mice in a mundane fantasy world. Frog knights and cats-as-dragons, a scrapbook character sheet, and adventures inside of burning trees and old grandfather clocks.
Liminal Horror by Goblin Archives**. Modern horror roleplaying, three stats and a stress and fear mechanic. Chaotic and harmful magics and unknowable terrors lurk in the margins of everyday life. Inspired by the stories of Hellboy, Magnus Archives, and Hellblazer.
* An asterisk at the end of a listing means that if you supported the Racial Diversity bundle on Itch.io in 2020, you already have a PDF of this game available for download!
** Two asterisks at the end of a listing means that if you supported the Bundle for Ukraine on Itch.io in 2022, you already have a PDF of this game available for download!
Dungeon World has a very similar setting/feeling as D&D. The base game has most of the same classes, but there's also a good amount of user-created content if you're looking for something specific. It's based on the Apocalypse World system, which uses D6es and a bit of a simpler rules system that primarily pushes outcomes towards partial successes. The GM basically never rolls, but can introduce complications on failed player rolls (or lighter complications on partial successes). It also has an interesting set of rules/advice for GMs to manage a campaign world to make it feel like things are always moving, whether the players directly influence it or not.
As a bonus, the system itself is really open for hacking/homebrewing if you can't find the perfect monster/spell/whatever in the rules. Also, there are a ton of other games that use the same system (Powered by the Apocalypse) that are geared towards different types of play experiences, so once you learn one game, it's really easy to learn any of them.
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I'll second Blades in the Dark and Fate as other games I've played that have really interesting mechanics. Blades actually has one of my favorite game systems, but it's very focused around being a crew of criminals in a large city. Fate seems more open, but I've only played it in a one-shot, and it was fantastic for an RP-heavy experience.
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Free League is great .... they have it all, horror, fantasy, sci-fi .....I am really into Alien right now ... 6 sides system a lot of fun to play
https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/
Old Geek in Bucks County
Cypher System - very rules light, fits well with groups who like to role-play (in fact CR would work really well in it).
If you want more crunch for your dollar, Pathfinder 1e is pretty great IMHO. I played it for many years and, TBH, kind of miss the wealth of options and character complexity. I’d be happy to switch back; my DM however is not quite so game. There’s Pathfinder 2e as well, which is also considerably crunchier than 5e. I haven’t played it though—we switched to 5e from PF1e—so I can’t say whether it is great or not.
Depends on what you're looking for!
Want the system heavy, high fantasy enjoyment you get from DnD? Pathfinder is based on 3e more than 5e, but that has advantages too. What you lose in having to learn a slightly more complex systems (lots of different things to roll for, for example), you make up in by being a hyper-specialized badass who can do crazy shit.
Want an RP heavy, improv focused game? FATE system games excel at this, and shout out to Blades in the Dark (set in a semi-steampunk setting with ghosts, giant monsters, and focused on heists and crime) or Monster of the Week (Very much Scooby Doo if the monsters were real). This is an EXTREMELY flexible series of systems using in the moment narrative decisions and a lot of D6s to build a collaborate story.
Want cerebral, nail biting suspense and focus on how characters break down in stressful situations, with systems that enforce it? Call of Cthulhu is for you! While this is famous for it's tie in to Lovecraftian concepts, the real meat of the story comes from how the characters try and often fail to comprehend and rise above the horrors. Also really lends itself to great, complex puzzles.
Other shoutouts:
Deadlands - set with the Weird Wild West, has some of the most interesting class builds (shout out to basically playing poker with the Devil, and CR did a great version using just this class for everyone at the table that was So good.)
Glitterhearts - Play as Magical Girls (or other Magical Genders, at your discretion)
There are others that I'm blanking on the names of but this is a place to start.
Old School Essentials by Necrotic Gnome. A dungeon crawler retroclone based on the older Basic Expert D&D line. It's mechanics are disconnected and easy to retool and hack as a DM might need. The system focuses on exploration of wilderness and dungeon environments while encouraging character growth through events played and magic items acquired. It has a backlog of decades of compatible adventures and a modern layout that makes for an easy to read and run system.
Troika by Melsonian Arts Council* (or) **. A wacky game where players roll 2d6 to randomly determine a character premise, often resulting in options like the "befouler of ponds" or the "Member of Miss Kingsey's Dining Club". A simple and chaotic combat system that embraces abrupt and swing-y changes in circumstance. Troika tells the story of Weird Fantasy characters journeying across the spheres of creation and strongly captures the feeling one gets looking at Tony Diterlizzi's Planescape art.
.Dungeon by Batts** A game about you and your friends' last days on a dying fantasy MMO. The game is split between two worlds, your life in the real world and your time in the game. No health, you can always respawn, instead damage is dealt to your Connection. When the group's connection hits zero, they no longer play the game and move on with their lives. Character abilities interact with the game, hacking into it or creating art from their experiences in it to gain a bonus to a roll. Plug any dungeon into the MMO, run any story within the MMO, just know that your time together is limited and precious.
Tunnel Goons and the system neutral dungeons found in Haunted Almanac created by Nate Treme. Simple gaming with a focus on giving you a resolution mechanic and encouraging you to just play a story out together. "Do not fear, explore".
Mothership by Tuesday Knight Games. Scifi horror roleplaying in a corporate future inspired by Doom, Alien, and Event Horizon. You play a blue collar worker at the edge of space, something is crawling through the vents, and people are disappearing.
Bastards. by Micah Anderson. Scrappy and simple fantasy roleplaying, flexible but with enough material and mechanics to hack into any sort of genre or story you might want. A 'roll-for-words' magic system and 42 two sentence character classes with abstract and inspiring flavor.
Mausritter by Losing Games*. Mouse Guard, Secret of NIMH, The Secret World of Arietty. A game about small mice in a mundane fantasy world. Frog knights and cats-as-dragons, a scrapbook character sheet, and adventures inside of burning trees and old grandfather clocks.
Liminal Horror by Goblin Archives**. Modern horror roleplaying, three stats and a stress and fear mechanic. Chaotic and harmful magics and unknowable terrors lurk in the margins of everyday life. Inspired by the stories of Hellboy, Magnus Archives, and Hellblazer.
* An asterisk at the end of a listing means that if you supported the Racial Diversity bundle on Itch.io in 2020, you already have a PDF of this game available for download!
** Two asterisks at the end of a listing means that if you supported the Bundle for Ukraine on Itch.io in 2022, you already have a PDF of this game available for download!
Dungeon World has a very similar setting/feeling as D&D. The base game has most of the same classes, but there's also a good amount of user-created content if you're looking for something specific. It's based on the Apocalypse World system, which uses D6es and a bit of a simpler rules system that primarily pushes outcomes towards partial successes. The GM basically never rolls, but can introduce complications on failed player rolls (or lighter complications on partial successes). It also has an interesting set of rules/advice for GMs to manage a campaign world to make it feel like things are always moving, whether the players directly influence it or not.
As a bonus, the system itself is really open for hacking/homebrewing if you can't find the perfect monster/spell/whatever in the rules. Also, there are a ton of other games that use the same system (Powered by the Apocalypse) that are geared towards different types of play experiences, so once you learn one game, it's really easy to learn any of them.
----
I'll second Blades in the Dark and Fate as other games I've played that have really interesting mechanics. Blades actually has one of my favorite game systems, but it's very focused around being a crew of criminals in a large city. Fate seems more open, but I've only played it in a one-shot, and it was fantastic for an RP-heavy experience.