Alternatives to Dungeons and Dragons

[brassherald]

I'm not sure if you're aware, but Wizards of the Coast, publisher of D&D's current edition, 5e have had a pretty bad time recently.

They sent pinkertons to a person's house because they sent a magic card too early. Pinkertons are not known for restraint and you read that right, this was a mistake by Wizards which they corrected by sending essentially bounty hunters to a person's house. Add to that the whole issue of their OGL debacle and several things that were racist dog whistles being "accidentally" published and well, I have had a few people tell me they played D&D because of me and I wanted to have a thread for alternatives that do not support a company like this.

Anyway for a first post, let me talk about Cities of Mist. It's not a one to one of D&D but, if like me, you love the noir genre, it's great. All about investigation and finding mysteries as avatars of certain mythical beings trying to find the balance between your regular every day existence and the mystical being inside of you. I have run this a few times for friends and everyone playing really enjoyed it. Plus, I love a good noir story and this gives an excuse to read more noir books and watch more noir films as "research". Win win win, as Michael Scott would say.

Feel free to chime in with alternatives you all might like I'm certainly going to take my time getting through the ones I've researched.

[brassherald]

Going to be recommending a game that is heavily based on Fifth Edition but is in a great universe and just a Google search away for anyone.

SW5e is a heavily modified 5e system set in the Star Wars Universe. Two things here that really help it in my eyes are 1) it's Star Wars that I can get my group of friends to play and 2) there are so many choices for subclasses and they never seem to stop, unlike D&D which hit about 5-7 on most classes and then decided it was enough. The game is basically the same as 5e but with Jedi, smugglers, bounty hunters, sith, etc. Again, the rules are totally free online and it looks like the new owners of the system also wrote another space universe I love, Mass Effect 5e. I cannot comment on that as I have not played or read any of it.