With so many options out there, choosing which tabletop RPG to play can be overwhelming. Sticking with the most popular western roleplaying game - Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition - can be tempting, as it’s often the most straightforward option: tons of playable content, lots of resources and plenty of willing players. However, Dungeons and Dragons might not be the best option for the kind of roleplaying experience you’re looking for, or fit into your specific circumstances. 

Whichever TTRPG you decide to play will depend on a variety of factors - what level of roleplaying experience do you or your fellow players have? How mechanically complicated do you want the game to be? How long do you plan to play for? Is there a particular theme or setting you want to create stories in? Different tabletop RPGs will fulfill different aspects of these requirements, it’s up to you to decide what the most important ones are. 

Three examples of tabletop RPGs that provide three very different experiences

Epic fantasy TTRPG for emotional campaigns - Daggerheart

Daggerheart is a recently released fantasy rpg from Darrington Press, a publisher that’s directly connected to the immensely popular actual play series, Critical Role. Daggerheart is the ideal alternative to Dungeons & Dragons, if you wanted to still experience an epic fantasy roleplaying game, but with a game system that focuses even more on storytelling and character interaction. 

This TTRPG supports grand narratives filled with wonder and imagination like D&D, but employs a gameplay mechanic that’s entirely unique to Daggerheart: Hope and Fear. Whenever players perform actions that the game master requires dice rolls, they roll two dice: one representing Hope and another Fear. The outcomes of these rolls will then be affected by whichever die rolled the higher number, as well as whether it was successful - with Hope empowering players and Fear giving GMs options for generating more drama. 

The Hope and Fear mechanic, alongside its bright fantasy setting and long-form structure, make Daggerheart the ideal tabletop roleplaying game for narratives spanning multiple campaigns, characters and worlds. 

Short-form horror tabletop RPG for tense oneshots - Mothership

Mothership is an indie sci fi horror tabletop RPG from Tuesday Knight Games. Mothership enables the game master and their players to recreate scenarios straight out of classic horror science fiction such as Alien, The Thing and Event Horizon. Of course, there is already an officially licensed TTRPG based on Alien - which is very good - but Mothership offers a far more straightforward gameplay experience and allows for a wider variety of narratives.

Stress and Panic are Mothership’s central gameplay mechanics, both of which make it such an ideal tabletop RPG for telling tense horror stories. Whenever characters witness or experience anything stress-inducing (from a difficult maneuvering of a space craft to an encounter with a terrifying extraterrestrial creature), they gain an amount of stress. The more stress a character has, the more likely they are to fall into a panic. Being in a panic can cause characters to do all manner of unwise things: like fleeing from their allies or collapsing. This means that the threats don’t only come from outside, but also from within, with the characters’ various mental states slowly deteriorating as things inevitably get more stressful. 

Though Mothership does support ongoing campaigns, its intense nature and bleak vibes means that it’s probably better suited to short-form play: like single storylines or even oneshots, depending on your tolerance. It’s an rpg system that’s designed to push player characters into difficult situations, sparking that flight or fight sequence that powers the best kinds of horror narratives. 

Exploration game for weird episodic storylines - Troika!

Troika! is a science fiction/fantasy TTRPG by Melsonian Arts Council that’s entirely revolved around exploration. The game world of Troika! is a strange one, filled with a myriad of worlds to visit and people to meet. There’s not a lot of official lore available, with some of it being found in the entries on items and locations in the core rulebook. Instead, the players and game master are encouraged to create their own fiction about the worlds they’re exploring, thereby collaborating on worldbuilding together. 

In line with Troika!’s commitment to exploration, character creation is very unconventional, with options to choose from a large collection of strange classes and backgrounds. Though there is combat in Troika!, it’s far from the focus of the gameplay ruleset. Rather, players are meant to interact with the world in a less confrontational way - experiencing all the wonders and dangers it has to offer. The simplicity of Troika!’s gameplay makes it a great option to introduce to new players, alongside how suited it is to episodic storytelling thanks to its ‘hopping between dimensions’ structure. 

If you’re interested in experiencing roleplaying in a less structured fashion - like an episodic tour around the weirdest, wildest places of your imagination - then Troika! might be the one for your gaming group.

Other TTRPG suggestions

• Call of Cthulhu: investigate cosmic horrors in the 1920s
• Pathfinder: Second Edition: fantasy roleplaying game inspired by DnD 3E
• Blades in the Dark: steampunk RPG about pulling off heists
• Vampire: The Masquerade: gothic horror in the modern day
• Cyberpunk Red: carry out dangerous jobs in a dark future
• Fiasco: a collaborative storytelling game about domestic drama