Dungeons and Dragons has been around for 50 years and has gained a lot of attention over the past few decades. With the tabletop game being one of the targets of the Satanic Panic in the 1980s to it winning an award for Best Roleplaying Rules by Origin Rules, D&D has been both hated and welcomed by the masses. With the D&D movie that recently came out and the 50-year celebration, a lot of pop culture has adopted this once nerdy and hidden secret. There are podcasts, YouTube channels and streaming services dedicated to the game, but there are more tabletop role-playing games just D&D.
D&D is often seen as a gateway to the many other TTRPGs. Do you like heist scenes in D&D? Play Blades in the Dark. This game has your friends and you in a steampunk fantasy world in which you are trying to escape poverty through wits and thievery.
Want to play a horror game that isn’t connected to Lovecraft? Play Delta Green, inspired by the cult-classic X-Files, and investigate strange and usual happenings going on around the world.
Do you want to play D&D but in space? Play Starfinder. This game spun out of D&D Third Addition and has similar skills but has more sci-fi events and space combat on spaceships. However, this is not my favorite.
An underground but growing in popularity TTRPG is the World of Darkness game Vampire: The Masquerade. The World of Darkness has several TTRPGs surrounding different monsters that people can play such as werewolves, demons, changelings or even monster hunters, but the most popular is the Vampire-based game. In this game, people roleplay as a vampire from one of the many different vampire clans with different goals or objectives that can be explored through the game. This game is heavy on roleplaying and can be blended with the other World of Darkness games.
All this to say, there is more to the TTRPG world than D&D. If you and your friends don’t like D&D or want to try something new, giving these games a try is a great way to start.
