Second chances are such a precious thing, aren’t they? After all, no matter how hard we apply ourselves to a first attempt, mistakes are kind of a given, and whilst they can initially feel frustrating to look back at, those mistakes and missteps are actually one of the greatest gifts provided by that awkward first attempt. Picking an example out of the air; one might have thought that being a human spellcaster was interesting, but it lacks pathos. You know what might be better? Inhabiting the role of that spellcaster’s once-homunculus, having recently overthrown the yoke of their despotic master to now live a fully-realized life. Again, just picking concepts at random here, really. The important thing to remember is that your second go at something will always be better, so long as you’ve learned to apply the lessons learned from the first.
Speaking of which…
Hello and welcome back to the tenth entry in a series of articles we’re calling “TTRPG Essentials”, each of which focuses on welcoming you into the robust hobby of tabletop roleplaying games. If you want to read the articles that preceded this one, you can find them here.
Our previous articles have focused on a multitude of topics; from introducing you into this wonderful TTRPG hobby space, to building a table of players, to various tips and tricks to ease your experience as both player and DM, the manifold forms of roleplay available to you and your table, the strengths of various length of an organized TTRPG experience, and the level and degree of care that can be necessary to communicate with your table at the end of your first campaign. Today, we’re going to talk about what comes NEXT.
More specifically, this article will discuss applying the lessons you and your table learned over the course of your first campaign and point you in the direction of new systems and supplementary materials that will ensure that your second campaign will be a far more refined and deeply curated experience.
Other Systems Aren’t Scary
It might surprise you to learn this, but it turns out that learning your second system is easier, especially if you apply everything you learned from your first. No TTRPG truly stands alone, in the sense that the language, terminology, base mechanical understandings, etc, of one system can almost always translate into another.
This isn’t even getting into the fact that many different systems are built upon similar frameworks, whether that be OSR, Apocalypse World, Forged in the Dark, etc.
Essentially (Okay yes we’re having too much fun with this word today), what this means is that no matter how specific or niche you might think a new system is, it will be designed for you to play it with relative ease.
We’ve spent some time in previous articles highlighting the material accessibility of Dungeons and Dragons, but let’s be honest about something: the mechanics of D&D are overtly complex in truly unnecessary ways. Few systems require use of a digital app, lush boxed sets, etc to make themselves appear approachable or mechanically palatable.
In short, if you started with D&D, everything else is going to be easier to learn, in some way or another.
Okay, Get to It Already
Right. So for the rest of this article, we’re going to focus on highlighting potential new games for your second system. As always, the systems highlighted are by no means an exhaustive list. In fact, if you finish this article and can think of another you would love to suggest, please don’t hesitate to place it within the comments! This list is less a comprehensive review, and more of a machinegun preview of possible worlds for your table to explore.
Exploration
Whether your table wants an expansive open world to influence or wild options to interact with the material and narrative of your campaign, these games have you covered.
Mausritter by Losing Games
Mausritter is one of the best Mouse-based sandbox-TTRPGs on the market, and the sheer breadth of fan-created supplements speaks to that. With easy character creation, an engaging and curiously modular card-based inventory system, and a world that feels at once familiar and blessedly refreshing, Mausritter deserves a look-in for any table that’s hungry for an expansive new world and perspective to explore. Grab it here.
Footfall by Rotten Shotgun Games
Don’t let the fact that Footfall is printed on paper confuse you, this TTRPG is an immersive sim in the vein of Dishonored and Deus Ex. A self described stealth-action RPG, Footfall flourishes by first giving you a florid look into a grimy, horrible industrial world, and then provides you with an expansive suite of mechanics to influence it. It even has a physics system! Grab the Ashcan here.
Interpersonal Relationships
So your players want to get down and dirty with the internal struggles of their characters, and find both the mechanics and the story there?
Harvest by Luke Jordan
What does paradise look like? Perhaps it is an idyllic British island, hidden from the tireless and hungry jaws of industrialism. Ah, but what does such safety demand? What is it that those who call it home might be willing to sacrifice, so that they might live yet one more season in paradise? HARVEST by Luke Jordan is a game about exploring these questions through inhabiting the roles of those that call paradise home, and whose own curiosity and existence will set them against each other, their community, and the desperate methods by which paradise survives. To quote the game page itself “One of you must die. And another must wield the knife. The only question is – who?“. Grab it here.
Last Train to Bremen by Caro Asercion
Previously mentioned *here*; in this GM-less game, four players inhabit the roles of four doomed musicians trying to welch on a deal they made with the devil. This game presents itself as a one-act play; wherein players are expected to “don the roles of playwright, director, performer, and audience member alike”, and as result offers a gameplay experience like nothing else in the TTRPG hobby. Grab it here or support the physical version here.
Investigation
Maybe what your table really wants is to get lost into the nitty gritty of the investigation of why and how shit got weird, and then, maybe, taking something down much bigger than you.
Clerk & Dagger by Dice Kapital
Hey, have you ever wondered about the fantasy equivalent of the IRS? Have you ever wondered what it might be like to investigate Dr. Acula for medical malpractice, or perhaps shut down the mechanical Gnome Landlord that’s financially abusing its tenants? What about robbing your GM above the table to give yourself an edge inside the game? A game that’s equal parts Terry Pratchett & Felix Colgrave, Clerk & Dagger is a deeply weird and exceptionally immersive dungeon-based investigation TTRPG. Check it out here.
Cain by Tom Bloom
In the world of Cain, humanity is a vast open wound, bleeding their pain, their joy, their sorrow, and their dreams into the psychic mélange that makes up the background radiation of our reality. Sometimes though, that wound is too deep, and the background becomes so dense that it becomes something physical. To the titular organization from which this TTRPG gets its name, these beings are known only as SINS; and for the safety of mankind they must be exorcized from our reality. Your players will inhabit the roles of those dedicated to this practice. Exorcists; psychic agents whose own personal damage is at least currently manageable, sent to investigate and discover the source of the SIN. Designed and written by Tom Bloom (Kill Six Billion Demons), this game is part X-Files, part Chainsaw Man, and all about playing emotionally messy psychics trying to hold themselves together long enough to discover the traumatic event from which a psychic threat emerged. Grab it here.
Visceral
Maybe above all, your table wants an experience that grounds them in every possible moment, dragging them through the viscera of the story and ensuring that their characters come out the other end changed.
HYPERMALL: UNLIMITED VIOLENCE by Rat Bastard Games
The rich and famous own you. They warp the world endlessly, they buy and sell history, memory, life, and death and you can’t do jack-shit about it. Well, you couldn’t until SLAUGHTR: The Assassination App put them in the crosshairs, and gave gig-workers the chance to make a difference. A mission-based corpo murder TTRPG about assassinating the rich and famous, HYPERMALL: UNLIMITED VIOLENCE is a game that’s about getting up to your forearms in gonzo violence and reveling in how it mutates you because otherwise how are you gonna make rent!? This is a TTRPG that truly engages in and evolves the cyberpunk ideal of high tech, low life, and presenting a view into a world that’s somehow worse than the current one. Grab it here.
Caligaes’ XENO Invasion by Rafael Araujo
You were born with purpose, glorious and terrible. Your body is bladed, your limbs segmented, and your teeth so terribly sharp. Those that stand between you and your purpose are so much more fragile, though they play at the opposite with crude tools and weapons. You will teach them how fragile their nature, and how foolish it was to obstruct so exquisite a predator as you. A reverse-horror TTRPG, XENO Invasion is a game focused upon providing your table the opportunity to revel in the delights of playing something gribbly and terrible, and deeply inhuman. Check it out here.
Modular Action
You know what kicks ass? The experience of kicking ass in a system that wants to give you every tool and mechanic required to do so with style and easily understood but difficult to master tactical gameplay.
Celestial Bodies by Charlotte Laskowski & Binary Star Games
Everything exists as the larger sum of smaller parts. Cells and Organs, Individuals & Society, Consequences and decisions. Why would a mech and their pilot be any different, asks Celestial Bodies by Charlotte Laskowski & Binary Star Games. In this GM-less TTRPG for 1-6 players, players occupy the roles of both Lamplighters (mech pilots & their vehicles), and the Sparks of conflict that find them. Where Celestial Bodies innovates is through The Grid; a physical representation of your character’s vehicle and the many subsystems that ensure its operation. An elevated version of Mausritter’s inventory system, The Grid is a method of ensuring that every hit matters in combat, as subsystems are disabled or destroyed upon impact, forcing players to reckon with the themes of sacrifice throughout both gameplay and narrative. Check it out here.
DAWN: The RPG by Joel Happyhil
You’re special. Not just because of the fighting spirit that lives within you, but in how it flows out of you and into the world. Conflict and struggle define you, and no matter where you go, your deeds will be written upon those who you meet on the battlefield. In DAWN: The RPG, you inhabit the role of a protagonist that wouldn’t be out of place in your favorite battle manga ala Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, YuYu Hakusho, Bleach, or Demon Slayer. This a game whose mechanical complexity is rooted within giving your table the tools they need to feel like mythical heroes of combat, while also providing the means to explore the stories around those fights and conflicts. Check it out here, and/or grab the quickstart here.
One-Page TTRPGs
Your table just learned the mechanics of a TTRPG system that was entirely new to them, and you’re not entirely certain you want to do that entire process all over again so soon. Good news! Thanks to the independent game designers in the TTRPG space, there exists another option. TTRPGs whose rules may live on one page of A4 or A5 paper, but whose gameplay possibilities might expand beyond a single session of play and into a short campaign.
YOU ARE TELEPATHS ESCAPING FROM TOWN by Luciano Dalbert
Your existence is illegal. You saw it on the news yesterday. You sat in a group chat that night, talking with others like you. Planning your escape, so that you might find somewhere that doesn’t fear or hate you. YOU ARE TELEPATHS ESCAPING FROM TOWN is a narrative TTRPG where players will oppose the narrative described to them using the very telepathic powers that have made it essential for them to escape it. A game that’s mechanically simple, but whose narrative depth will ensure your players are constantly on their backfoot, even as they struggle desperately to keep moving forward. Grab it here.
Supplementary Reading
Perhaps you’re not looking for a new system, but you’d like to instead expand your understanding of the breadth and possibilities inherent in this wonderful hobby?
You Will Die In This Place by Elizabeth Little
What does it feel like to inhabit an unfinished world; seeing the fingerprints of an absent creator upon the ruins of what might have been, and knowing that you’ll never understand it without first understanding yourself? *A nihilistic survival-horror tabletop dungeon crawl RPG about exile, decay, and the inevitable failure of the self*, You Will Die In This Place is one of those books that you can’t engage with without being willing to put a piece of yourself into it. Even the act of reading the book itself is part of the game, of the grand metanarrative, and that alone should invite curiosity. This is a game that works to engage and immerse you within it at every level, and if you’re seeking a deeply visceral experience for your entire table, this is your game. More importantly, even if your table or you decide not to play this game, reading and discussing it can do genuine wonders for cracking apart the concepts and inspirations that underpin this wonderful hobby of ours, as well as those parts of ourselves we choose to explore through the act of roleplaying. Grab the development preview here or support the full version here.
Final Thoughts
No matter what the tastes of your table may have refined themselves into, there is a TTRPG guaranteed to provide just as much, if not more fun than your first. This fact alone means that it behooves your table to explore the veritable cornucopia of games available to them, and to discuss what they find that excites them. What’s even more, is that your second system and second campaign is guaranteed to teach your table just as much as the first, and the same can be said of the third and onwards. All that’s needed, is to keep communicating with each other.
As weird as it might be to read; this wraps up our very last TTRPG Essentials article. This is because, we’ll be moving on to TTRPG Advanced articles; which will each be written with the intent of providing deeper dives into some of the topics explored in the Essentials articles, examinations of more niche corners of the hobby, interviews with game designers, and much more. As always, if there’s something you’d like to see us cover in further depth, pleaase don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments.
UP NEXT: TTRPG Advanced!
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