Playing TTRPGs other than Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition has been on my to-do list for a while, but it was an aspirational goal rather than something I worked on or expected to achieve.
That changed in March this year when a fellow DM on the Sly Flourish Discord server did something about it and set up a community of interested DMs who would run and play in games every month that were not D&D 5e.
It has been a fantastic success and this year, depending how you count it (heavy homebrew and new editions add complications), I have played between 16 and 18 games that weren't D&D 5e. Mostly one-shots though a few have been multi-session and one has spun out into a full campaign.
This is what I have learned
The hobby is bigger and healthier than I ever imagined
I thought I knew about a lot of alternatives to D&D; I could have listed maybe 10 other systems without a lot of effort and several more with some hard thinking.
I have played 18 systems this year and barely scratched the surface, there are fantasy adventure games, sci-fi games and horror games that make up the most popular games but there are games about pure storytelling, games about social situations, games about selling cookies, games based on every previous edition of D&D, games about anything you can dream of.
There will always be a YouTube doom prophet to tell you the hobby is doomed because of the actions of a few big companies, or people who want to play "wrong”, but it is in an incredibly good place. Whether you are one of the tofu eating Wokerati or a QAnon truther there is someone out there making games you will love.
People matter more than systems
While playing all these games I have met great people. I am quite sure some of the groups I have played with could have had a fun game if we had just sat down with a d6 and decided to tell a story. I have played other games in systems I've had fun with before and they have been agonizing because of some of the players involved.
More than the individual people though, except for the occasional one that just rubs you the wrong way, having a group with a common goal of what they want to get out of the game is key. I have no judgement for how people want to play, if you want to play an optimised character in a tactical wargame that is just as valid as someone who wants to be an actor in a play directed by the dice but one optimiser in a group of actors or one actor in a group of optimisers can spoil the game for all of them.
The annoying "5e Sucks" folk have a point
They aren’t entirely right D&D 5e has a lot to recommend it, particularly the depth of character creation rules that mean you can have hours of fun without a party or a DM just playing with the character builder and the huge amount of both first and third party supplements and adventures available for it mean you will never run out of things to play. But there are things it doesn't do well, you can always homebrew a fix, but sometimes it is just better to play something that works for what you want to play, which leads into my last point.
Every game is great
Most published games you are likely to play are good games. They might not be the best at everything but between playing eighteen different games and reading the rules of probably twice as many more I haven't seen any with no merit at all. They all do something interesting, or fun, or have a new spin on an old idea. I have seen games whose layout turns my stomach, games where the concept just is not for me, and games made by people with views or attitudes I don't like. I have not seen anything that I thought I couldn't have fun playing at least once.
Conclusion
I encourage everyone to get out there and play new games, you don’t have to abandon what you love but you might come back with a new perspective and if you don’t you will have fun anyway.
You may be stuck in a 5e bubble where you think you won't be able to find players, but the internet is a big place filled with gamers of all kinds, you can find people there to play lots of games. Check out Reddit, Discord, and other social media, look for cons and local game clubs, you won't be the only one looking to try new games.
Maybe you worry your 5e group won't want to learn new rules. Believe me whatever game you pick up is highly unlikely to be more complicated than 5e, 3 huge core books are not a usual format. Next time you are between campaigns, or your DM can't run your regular game grab something rules light with pre-generated characters and offer to run it!
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