A map of RPGs for D&D players who are lost

I ran D&D 5e for a year, for 30+ people, and kept hitting the same wall: every class has plenty of abilities, but most turns have one right answer, so fights feel shallow and the threat of one means little. So I went looking for a system with more depth. Every forum, friend and chatbot I asked gave me a different answer, and every answer sounded right.

That's the real problem. RPGs have no BoardGameGeek: RPGGeek has fewer than a thousand ratings for even the biggest games, and every rulebook's pitch is written to sound like exactly what you want. So I stopped collecting picks and worked out how to test games myself. Since then I've also built the Sora Kalden RPG Index, which rates the 100 most-discussed games from what people who actually played them wrote.

This is the map that came out of it, for anyone as lost as I was. It assumes you know D&D. 110 games sit in 16 design families, grouped by what D&D isn't giving you. In each family the first game is the one to read in full, with a free way in where one exists; skim the rest. You can also walk it as a map and mark the game that worked for you, so the roads other players took show up as worn trails.

How to test a game

Read one game per family, not per recommendation. Families differ in what they make you decide; games within a family mostly differ in setting and polish.
Trust months, not pitches. Before you invest, find a campaign report that ran for months, or an actual-play series of 30+ episodes, that names the game's weaknesses. Ratings only break ties.
Run the same test on every game. Take three things a clever party tries in Lost Mine of Phandelver: bribe the townmaster, take over the Redbrands instead of killing them, burn out the goblin hideout rather than fight fair. For each, check whether the rules give the cost, the risk and the lasting effect, or leave it all to the GM. Then play three rounds of a fight from the game's own starter adventure, alone, with pregenerated characters. After each turn, ask whether at least two options were reasonable and whether the wrong one would have cost you later.
One-shot the best two or three with your group, each with its own starter adventure, unconverted.

Fights worth planning for

Combat where every turn is a real decision and a wrong one costs you later. D&D asks for your best attack; these ask for the right move, against this enemy, on this ground.

Tactical combat

Fights built as puzzles on a grid: tight math, positioning, teamwork and enemies with distinct jobs. The closest thing to what 5e combat promises, done properly. Heroic rather than lethal.

Read: Pathfinder 2e. The deepest mainstream d20 tactics. Three actions a turn, four degrees of success and tight math, so every +1, flank and condition matters. Start with Little Trouble in Big Absalom, then the Abomination Vaults megadungeon. Free way in: full rules on Archives of Nethys; Little Trouble in Big Absalom.
Draw Steel. MCDM's heroic tactics game (2025). Attacks never miss, heroes build a resource every round, the Director spends Malice to escalate, and negotiation has real rules. Free way in: The Delian Tomb.
Lancer. Mech tactics with deep build customisation and set-piece fights, and lighter narrative play for the pilots between missions. Free way in: free player rules.
ICON. From Lancer's designers: Lancer-grade grid combat in a fantasy world, alternating with a lighter narrative mode between fights.
D&D 4e. The most tactical D&D: clear party roles, powers that push, pull and control, and encounters built as set pieces. Still the benchmark for D&D-shaped tactics.
13th Age. A lighter d20 game from 3e and 4e designers: an escalation die that grows each round so fights end fast, and Icons that tie every hero to the world's powers.
Gubat Banwa. Tactics-video-game combat (think Final Fantasy Tactics) with three actions a turn, heavy use of terrain and teamwork combos, in a world drawn from the precolonial Philippines. Plays solo too.
Fabula Ultima. A Japanese console RPG at the table: dramatic boss fights, villains with their own resources, and fast character building from mixed classes.
Daggerheart. Critical Role's game (2025). No initiative: every roll generates Hope for the players or Fear for the GM, who spends it to act. Fluid rather than deep.
Cosmere RPG. Brandon Sanderson's worlds, Stormlight first. A d20 plus a plot die that adds complications and opportunities to big rolls.
Shadow of the Weird Wizard. Robert Schwalb's fast d20 fantasy: boons and banes replace stacks of modifiers, and three tiers of paths combine into wide builds.
Strike!. 4e distilled onto a single d6: roles, forced movement and objective-driven fights, in a slim book.
Nimble. 5e-compatible and much faster: attacks land unless you roll a 1, and damage does the work. The easiest first step off 5e.

Lethal, simulated combat

Every exchange is a real duel, with hit locations, armour that matters and wounds that last. Fights are dangerous enough that you avoid them until you've stacked the odds, which is where the planning comes from.

Read: Mythras. The cleanest modern d100 combat: win an exchange and pick a special effect (disarm, trip, bleed, impale), with hit locations and action points. Start with the free Shrine of the Traitor Gods, then the Monster Island sandbox. Free way in: Mythras Imperative and Shrine of the Traitor Gods.
RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. Mythras's ancestor in its mythic home setting: d100 combat plus runes and passions that bind each character to cults, clans and gods.
HârnMaster. Grounded medieval simulation on the island of Hârn: injuries that fester, feudal society in detail, a world documented village by village.
The Riddle of Steel. Combat pools modelled on real swordsmanship, fed by your passions: fight for what you believe in and you fight better. Out of print, with a cult following.
Song of Swords. The Riddle of Steel's successor, with even more granular historical fencing. For the truly crunch-hungry.
Rolemaster Unified. The famous critical tables, updated in 2022: open-ended percentile rolls and vivid, lasting injuries. Heavy, but no two fights play alike.
Against the Dark Master. A modern take on Middle-earth Role Playing, Rolemaster's Tolkien cousin: heroes against a rising dark lord, critical tables included.
The Broken Empires. A new d100 'sim-lite' game with no classes or levels. Combat, intrigue, travel and magic share one success system, tied together by fatigue. The core book is still on pre-order, so no long campaigns are reported yet.

Card-driven play

Cards replace or join the dice, so your hand is a resource and luck becomes a decision about when to spend it. The closest an RPG gets to a deckbuilder.

Read: His Majesty the Worm. A Torchbearer-style megadungeon game where an ordinary tarot deck resolves everything, including combat played from your hand. Meals, light and the bonds of your party back in town all matter. Free way in: four sample chapters from the designer.
Phoenix: Dawn Command. Keith Baker's heroes who die and return stronger. Your deck of cards is both your abilities and your health. Needs its own cards; out of print.
Torg Eternity. Invading realities with their own laws of physics. A shared drama deck sets initiative, twists and which actions pay off each round.
Deadlands: The Weird West. Horror western on Savage Worlds. Poker cards set initiative, and hucksters bargain with spirits by drawing poker hands.

Board-game campaigns

Not RPGs: the rules run the monsters and the world, so difficulty is authored and fair and nobody has to be the GM. They hold depth an RPG leaves to judgement; the story is thinner.

Read: Kingdom Death: Monster. A brutal campaign of monster hunts and a settlement that grows over generations, crafting gear from what you kill. Deep build and positioning decisions, rated 8.5 by about 11,000 players on BoardGameGeek. Expensive, and no rules are free, so try the official digital version, Kingdom Death: Simulator, before buying the box.
Arkham Horror: The Card Game. Cooperative deckbuilding campaigns where trauma and choices carry between scenarios, and a bag of chaos tokens makes every test a gamble you plan around.
Aeon Trespass: Odyssey. Kingdom Death's scale with a huge branching story: pilot titans against Greek-myth primordials.
Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood. Cooperative story chapters and tactical boss fights with card-drawn damage. Closer to an RPG in story than Kingdom Death.
Frosthaven. Gloomhaven's sequel: hand-management tactics where your cards are also your stamina, plus an outpost to build between scenarios.
Sleeping Gods. Explore a lost archipelago through a storybook atlas, managing a ship and its crew. Light combat, a big sense of discovery.
Tainted Grail. A dying Arthurian land where food, energy and a shrinking circle of safe ground force hard route choices. Card-based combat and diplomacy.
ISS Vanguard. Run a starship's exploration corps: plan landings, send small squads down, and live with who didn't come back.
Middara. An anime-flavoured dungeon crawl with a massive storybook campaign and deep character builds.

Every torch counts

Survival and exploration. Light, food, time and gear run out, so planning the expedition is the game and a fight is usually a sign the plan failed.

Attrition and procedure

The dungeon wears you down. Hunger, light, fatigue and fear tick every turn and every roll spends something, so you survive by planning the trip rather than by your character sheet.

Read: Torchbearer 2e. The purest attrition game. Every few actions a condition lands (hungry, exhausted, afraid), light and packs are tracked slot by slot, and even town costs you. Built on Burning Wheel's engine. Start with Dread Crypt of Skogenby, then the Middarmark setting. Free way in: introductory chapter.
Mouse Guard 2e. Torchbearer's gentler sibling: mouse patrols against weather and wild animals, a GM's turn that deals out trouble and a players' turn to recover.
Five Torches Deep. 5e stripped to an old-school core: supplies, slot inventory and lethal fights, easy to learn for a 5e table.

Old-school expeditions

D&D's own roots, played the way they were meant to be: players win by thinking, not by their abilities. Light rules, strict procedures for time, light, encounters and hirelings, and a world that doesn't scale to you.

Read: Dolmenwood. The most complete old-school package: a fairy-tale forest on 1980s Basic D&D rules, with procedures for travel, camping and foraging, a campaign book of factions and settlements, and a monster book. Start with Pipes on Droomen Knoll. One group's 73-session campaign is written up in detail. Free way in: Welcome to Dolmenwood (setting preview); OSE Basic Rules, the same rules family.
Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy. 1981 Basic/Expert D&D restated with perfect clarity, plus AD&D's classes. The reference rules most old-school adventures are written for.
Worlds Without Number. Old-school danger with modern class design and the best sandbox tools anywhere: factions, regions and societies that move between sessions. The free edition has the full rules. Free way in: free edition.
Shadowdark. 5e's ease with old-school danger. Torches burn for one real-world hour, so the clock on the wall is the clock in the dungeon.
Knave 2e. Classless and fast: you are what you carry, inventory slots are your build, and spellbooks are loot.
Cairn 2e. Into the Odd's rules in a folk-horror forest: no classes, no attack rolls, and fatigue that fills your inventory.
Into the Odd. Three stats, attacks always hit, and damage past a thin buffer goes straight to Strength, so fights end in seconds and you learn to avoid them. Industrial weird fantasy.
Electric Bastionland. Into the Odd's bigger sibling: a hundred failed careers, a shared debt, and a strange city to survive in.
Mythic Bastionland. Knights on quests through a realm where each Myth is a slow, looming threat to track down (2025).
Errant. Old-school rules with a written procedure for everything: delving, travel, chases, downtime.
Dungeon Crawl Classics. Start with a handful of peasants each and see who survives the first adventure. Weird dice, and spell tables where magic can go gloriously wrong.
Black Sword Hack. Elric-style sword and sorcery on a fast chassis: demons, chaos and escalating doom.
Vagabond. New d20 game pairing old-school danger with modern builds: 18 classes, player-facing rolls, and monsters with ordered tactics so it can run solo.
Basic Fantasy RPG. A free, community-built old-school rulebook with a big library of free adventures.
OSRIC. First-edition AD&D rebuilt as open rules; the base many AD&D-style adventures assume.
Swords & Wizardry. The 1974 original D&D, cleaned up: one saving throw and very little else.
Hyperborea. Weird-fiction sword and sorcery on AD&D-style rules, steeped in Howard, Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.
Pair with The Halls of Arden Vul: a thousand-page megadungeon of warring factions; several groups report months of play. AD&D stats, heavy lookup.
Pair with Barrowmaze: a marsh of crypts fought over by rival necromancers.
Pair with Stonehell: a sprawling former prison, built for long campaigns.
Pair with Castle Xyntillan: a haunted funhouse castle where clever play beats every room.
Pair with Hot Springs Island: a dense jungle island to explore, with factions fighting over it.
Pair with Anomalous Subsurface Environment: gonzo science-fantasy megadungeon.
Pair with Deep Carbon Observatory: a flooded valley and a descent into dread.
Pair with Tomb of the Serpent Kings: a free dungeon built to teach old-school play.
Pair with Winter's Daughter: a small fairy-tale tomb in Dolmenwood; a perfect first session.

Wilderness journeys

The journey is the adventure. Food, water, weather and getting lost are rules rather than flavour, and the land is dangerous before any monster shows up.

Read: Forbidden Lands. Survival across a cursed land reopened after centuries. Each day of travel assigns roles, food and arrows run on dwindling resource dice, and you can build a stronghold. Free 152-page quickstart; then the Raven's Purge campaign. Free way in: Quickstart.
The One Ring 2e. Middle-earth where the journey is the main event: travel roles, fatigue and a Shadow that slowly corrupts. Ruins of the Lost Realm is an open region to roam.
Mutant: Year Zero. Mutants rebuilding a settlement after the fall, with the settlement's projects as the long game. The origin of Free League's dice system.
Twilight 2000 4e. Soldiers stranded in Poland after a nuclear war: fuel, ammunition, food, radiation and a long walk home.
Dragonbane. Light, quick and friendly, boxed with maps and tokens. The easiest game on this map to teach.

People and power

Consequences through people: beliefs that drive characters, crews on the rise, courts and dynasties, and land to rule. What the table decides changes who holds power, and it stays changed.

Beliefs and drama

Characters are defined by what they believe, and the rules reward you for fighting for it or breaking it. Skills grow by use, and arguments are fought with real mechanics.

Read: Burning Wheel Gold Revised. The heaviest drama engine: write Beliefs, get rewarded for pursuing them even at your own cost, win arguments with Duel of Wits and script fights blow by blow. Steep to learn, famous once it clicks. Start with the free intro rules and scenario. Free way in: Hub and Spokes intro rules; Twilight in the Duchy Verdorben.
Burning Empires. Burning Wheel as planetary war: players and GM race through the three phases of an alien infiltration, each scene a move in a strategic contest.
Pair with The Burning Wheel Codex: companion book of advice and variant rules from years of play.

Crews, heists and factions

You play a crew climbing a city's underworld. Plans happen in flashbacks, clocks track every danger, and each job shifts your standing with a dozen factions. Much of the depth lives between jobs.

Read: Blades in the Dark. The modern classic: skip the planning, start the heist, and reveal your preparation through flashbacks. Stress, heat and faction clocks carry every job into the next. The official rules are free online. Free way in: official rules.
Band of Blades. A legion retreating from an undead army: missions, a commander's hard choices and a company that bleeds.
Scum and Villainy. Blades in the Dark in space: a ship of smugglers and bounty hunters.
Heart: The City Beneath. A living dungeon under a city that changes those who delve it. Stress hits your blood, mind, fortune or supplies, and fallout transforms characters.
Spire. Dark elves in a towering city fighting a secret revolution; every victory costs something permanent.
Wicked Ones. You are the monsters: build a dungeon, raid the surface, hold off the adventurers.

Courts and dynasties

Power passes through generations and reputations. Your character's traits and passions pull them toward glory or ruin, and passing time becomes part of the game.

Read: Pendragon 6e. Knights of Arthur's Britain whose virtues, vices and passions are rolled and shift with every choice. Each winter a year passes: knights marry, age and die, and heirs take over. The Great Pendragon Campaign spans over eighty years. Free way in: quick-start, The Adventure of the Sword Tournament.
A Song of Ice and Fire RPG. The group builds and runs a noble house together, with intrigue and warfare rules.
Legend of the Five Rings 5e. Samurai drama where honour, glory and strife turn every public act into a social battle.
Vampire: The Masquerade 5e. Politics among immortals, with hunger dice that can betray you at the worst moment.
Houses of the Blooded. John Wick's 'anti-D&D' about scheming nobles: succeed and you narrate the outcome, and seasons of domain management and romance drive play.

Domains and economy

Adventuring as the first stage of power: treasure buys followers, strongholds and land, and the rules model the economy underneath. The depth builds across the campaign.

Read: ACKS II. Old-school D&D with a working economy: hirelings, mercenaries, trade, spell research and domains all have real numbers, so a party can grow from treasure hunters into rulers. Free way in: first-edition open rules, hosted by a fan.
Birthright. AD&D 2e setting (1995) where the heroes are blooded heirs ruling domains, and domain turns run beside adventures.
Reign. Greg Stolze's game where companies, guilds and nations are characters with their own stats and actions.
Ars Magica 5e. Wizards and companions sharing a covenant over decades: seasons of lab work, shared characters, and the politics of a magical order.
Pair with Kingmaker: Pathfinder 2e's kingdom-building campaign.
Pair with Stars Without Number's faction turns: the free toolkit many GMs use to run factions and domains in any game.

Grit and dread

Worlds bigger and meaner than you. You get by through wits, avoidance and endurance, never by levelling past the threat.

Grim fantasy

Low fantasy where the world is dirty, dangerous and indifferent. You start as rat-catchers and mercenaries, wounds and corruption stay with you, and power always costs something.

Read: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e. The grim original: d100 careers from rat-catcher to witch hunter, critical wounds, creeping corruption, and The Enemy Within, one of the great campaigns. A backward-compatible fifth edition came out as a PDF in September 2026, hardcover in spring 2027. Free way in: free adventures and starter characters.
Zweihänder. Warhammer's second edition rebuilt as a standalone grim and perilous d100 game; huge and brutal.
Symbaroum. A dark Scandinavian forest that corrupts anyone who takes from it. Strong world, lighter rules.
Mörk Borg. A doom-metal art book with rules. The world ends on a die roll, and any session might be the last.
Shadow of the Demon Lord. Apocalyptic fantasy where madness and corruption come with power. Quick to play; adventures fit one session.
Degenesis. Post-apocalyptic Europe and Africa ruled by feuding cults; celebrated for its world and art.
Dark Souls: The Roleplaying Game. 5e rules with Souls themes. Reviewers found the challenge its name promises isn't there.

Investigation horror

You're ordinary and the threat is not. Clues, sanity and dread are the game; winning means understanding enough to stop it, often at a cost you keep.

Read: Call of Cthulhu 7e. The standard for investigation horror: d100 skills, sanity that erodes for good, and pushed rolls that trade safety for success. Start with The Haunting, then Masks of Nyarlathotep, a globe-spanning epic. Free way in: quick-start with The Haunting.
Delta Green. Modern agents hiding cosmic horror from the public at the cost of their own lives. Its Impossible Landscapes is among the most praised campaigns ever written.
Arkham Horror RPG. The board games' Arkham as a full roleplaying game with its own dice-pool rules. Start with the core rulebook rather than the starter set.
Trail of Cthulhu. Core clues are never withheld; you spend points for extra insight, so play is about what you do with the evidence.
Vaesen. Nordic folklore mysteries in the 1800s, with a headquarters to rebuild between cases.
Mothership. Sci-fi horror with stress, panic and a lethal pace. Gradient Descent, its android-haunted megadungeon, is widely praised.
Alien RPG. Stress dice make you better and more likely to panic. Tense one-shots or long campaigns.
Kult: Divinity Lost. Gnostic horror: reality is a prison, and characters are broken people starting to see the bars.
Dread. A block tower instead of dice: pull a block to succeed, knock the tower over and your character is gone.

Something else entirely

Different genres and different ways to run a table: trading among the stars, fiction-first play where the story drives the rules, and toolkits for any world.

Sci-fi sandboxes

Space as a sandbox: trade routes, debts, a ship to keep flying and factions to play against each other. The campaign is whatever the crew decides to chase.

Read: Traveller (Mongoose 2e). The original sci-fi sandbox: careers rolled before play, trade and a mortgage on your starship, and a galaxy that doesn't care. Pirates of Drinax is a campaign about building a pirate kingdom. Free way in: Starter Pack.
Stars Without Number. Kevin Crawford's sandbox game with faction turns and generators for whole sectors; the core rules are free.
Coriolis: The Great Dark. Expeditions into alien ruins from a refugee city built on an asteroid: pulp archaeology in space (2025).
Shadowrun. Cyberpunk with magic: jobs for megacorporations, deep crunch, and a lot of rules.
Cyberpunk RED. Night City after the war: lethal gunfights, and lifepaths that give every character a past.
Eclipse Phase 2e. Transhuman horror: minds swap bodies, death is a setback, and the existential threats are real.

Fiction-first

The story drives the rules: you describe what you do, the move it triggers decides what happens, and the GM's hard choices are built in. Light mechanics; the depth is in the consequences of every roll.

Read: Stonetop. A village surviving on the edge of a hostile wild, across seasons. You play its protectors, improve the village between adventures and watch threats grow. Finished in 2026.
Apocalypse World. Where this style began: moves, a GM with principles, and a wasteland always about to break.
Dungeon World. D&D's classes rebuilt as fiction-first moves. Many people's first step into this style.
Ironsworn and Starforged. Built to play solo or co-op: swear vows, track progress, and oracle tables stand in for a GM. Ironsworn is free.

Generic toolkits

One system for any setting. Useful once you know the world you want and need rules that fit it.

Read: Savage Worlds Adventure Edition. Fast, pulpy and generic: exploding dice, bennies to reroll, and playing cards for initiative. The free Test Drive includes the adventure Blood on the Range. Free way in: Test Drive.
GURPS 4e. The most complete generic system: point-buy everything, simulation by default. GURPS Lite is free.
Genesys. Narrative dice that show success and side effects at once; settings include Terrinoth, the world of Runebound and Descent.
Basic Roleplaying. Chaosium's d100 engine behind Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest, as a universal toolkit.
Cypher System. Players make every roll, and the GM offers experience in exchange for complications.
Fate Core. Aspects describe anything, and fate points let you invoke them. Very flexible, very light.
Cortex Prime. A modular dice-step system you assemble for your own game.
Hero System. Point-buy superheroes and anything else, with extreme granularity.

Where this came from

I built this from the 28 replies to my question on r/rpg, the recommendations that contradicted each other, campaign reports that ran for months where I could find them, and each publisher's own free material, checked September 2026. The descriptions say what each game is known for. I haven't played most of them yet, which is the point of the list. Tell me what I got wrong or left out.