I still play in one D&D campaign, but it was started before the fiasco, but I have already decided that at least I won't be running another D&D game.
Personally, I'd love to see more systems that are less "wargaming" oriented than D&D but with a focus on long term play and, where possible, player growth.
Did you actually mean player growth? I'm familiar with Player Character growth, but fostering the growth of the player (at least beyond simply a growing familiarity with the rules) is a new idea for me, although I'm not sure why the notion of helping players become more skillful at role-playing (if that was what you meant) was surprising to me.
How would you teach a newbie the game(s)?
To give you a small sample, some older non-dnd classics are Pathfinder and Call of Cthulhu, but there are even some really awesome niche systems that you should consider like Symbaroum. It depends what you and your eventual group want to play.
If you want to stay close to the D&D experience, the big alternative is Pathfinder of course. Pathfinder 1 was basically an expanded/fixed version of D&D 3.5, but Pathfinder 2 is really its own thing and possibly a better direction than D&D5 is. But more importantly, Pathfinder is legendary for its massive thematic campaigns. (There are some duds, and none are perfect, but many are quite good and there are a lot of them to choose from.)
Another option is 13th Age, by Jonathan Tweet, one of the main developers of D&D 3.x, and according to some people, it's the system that D&D should always have strived to be. (I don't know it myself, though.)
Then there are tons of retro-clones trying to bring back the experience of older D&D editions, including:
* Dungeon Crawl Classics
* OSRIC
* Labirynth Lord
* Swords & Wizardry
* Old School Essentials
* Whitehack
And many, many others.
Some modern narrative-style systems:
Dungeon World uses the Apocalypse World system to simulate the D&D experience.
Apocalypse World itself is a post-apocalyptic Mad Max style game, with a very different, light-weight, narrative-focused system that's great at simulating different genres. There are spin-offs for almost every property imaginable, including Cthulhu, Star Wars, Cyberpunk and many others. The game itself is not generic, but specifically tailored for a specific feel, but the same approach can be used to create games tailored to different genres.
Blades in the Dark is a bit like that too, in that it's been modded for all sorts of different genres. It is however specifically tailored for heists. The original is a kind of pseudo-Victorian fantasy.
More traditional RPGs:
Shadowrun is cyberpunk + fantasy. Near future, dragons rule the boardrooms, corporate mages defend their employer's interests. And for plausibly deniable direct action, they hire teams of mercenary criminals (the players) who basically do heists. Violent, rich background, complex system, poorly edited rulebooks.
Cyberpunk 2020 and Cyberpunk Red: the system the Cyberpunk 2077 CRPG is based on.
GURPS is a system that's able to handle any genre (or so it claims, at least). Very generic, and if you want to mix cyborgs, wizards and superheroes, in space, this system can do it.
Savage Worlds: also generic, but lighter than GURPS and optimised for mass combat. You can have massive battles in this system while still remaining playable. But it's mostly used for pulpy action.
Star Wars. Of course there are several Star Wars RPGs, but the best ones are the original WEG d6 Star Wars (which created much of the expanded universe lore of Star Wars; Lucas Arts loremaster Pablo Hidalgo got his start there) and FFG Star Wars (Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion and Force and Destiny, uses weird custom dice, but great system).
Traveller -- the original SciFi RPG. Must be up to about a dozen different editions by now. 11,000 worlds, millennia of history, aliens, spaceships, but often ends up focused on trade. In the original edition (and several others) you could die during character generation.
There's hundreds more. I'm not going to list them all; this is just a random sample.
All in all I feel like D&D has too many rules (but crucially not enough to not leave details up to interpretation) and too many artificial limits on the characters one can play. The good thing about D&D is that many people are familiar with it, but again in various degrees, which will often (at least in my tables) leave into unexpected outcomes when either the GM or the player is not familiar with all of the nuances of the system. Ranging from simple stuff like using wrong skills for actions (using perception to find a hidden door instead of investigation) or having/expecting spells to penetrate walls when a foot of stone i.e. any stone wall will block most magical effects.
Aye, that was my feel, and why I gravitated to other systems. GURPS for example lets you do basically anything (albeit by making it complex as hell), and things like FATE, or Powered By the Apocalypse games, just abstract or simplify it.
Cy_Borg is also a Mork Borg cyberpunk spinoff which was kinda cool. Didn't get around to playing it but enjoyed the book. Like MB it went hard on the style.
As always, getting a good GM and a well-composed group is very important for how your experience will be.
- Blades in the Dark: Players are members of a thieves guild. Focus on pulling off heists, creative ways of solving problems, and providing a spectrum of outcomes (e.g. "success but with consequences" or "failure but without consequences" instead of a binary pass and fail).
- Heart: Sort of a psychedelic cosmic horror take on underground adventuring. Has an interesting level up system where at the end of each session you tell the DM something you want to have the chance to accomplish in the next session in order to gain a level. Character classes are crazy (e.g. one revolves around sharing a connection with a hive mind of transcendent bees). Each class's tenth level ability is incredibly overpowered but renders the character unplayable (often dead but sometimes it's something like ascending to a higher plane of consciousness by becoming one with the previously mentioned bee hive mind). For example, there's a class that revolves around communing with a demonic subway system. Their tenth level ability summons a subway car to bust through a wall and destroy everything in the area including the player.
- Electric Bastionland: Set in nearly infinite city of Bastion "the one city that matters" in a society that's similar to a late Victorian era take on sci-fi. This one's difficult to describe because it's more about the vibe than the rules. The players are attempting to pay off their debt to a kafkaesque bureaucracy. The layout of the city changes daily. The Underground can be used to travel anywhere quickly, but it is controlled by sentient Machines that require the players to complete "tests" in order to pass. Sentient muppets are a canonical player race. The best comparison that I can give is if you've played Fallen London or Sunless Seas/Skies.
Ugh, I play games to get away from sprint planning...
Forbidden Lands: This is a whole old-school D&D exploration-based game. It's a big, huge setting with a lot of content to explore. Characters are simple to make, the rules are light, and it's easy to run with many groups or players dropping in-and-out without ruining the continuity of any stories.
Microlite20/Microlite70: These are super-small, cut-down, and free revisions of the old-school D&D style games. The rules fit in a couple of pages. It's all compatible with the enormous library of OSR content out there. And it's straight-forward to hack into your own setting, add your own house rules, etc.
Torchbearer: If you like the idea of down-on-their-luck mercenaries out on the edges of civilization robbing ancient tombs and hunting down relics for rich patrons in order to make a buck and scrape by; this game is great. It has the classic D&D feel of regular people picking up a sword and heading into the wilderness with plenty of story-telling hooks. Gameplay is much more structured than in Microlite* games but it's also very easy to prep for as a DM.
Burning Wheel This is the grand-pappy of Torchbearer (and other games made by the same publisher like Mouse Guard). It's a crunchier system than most as it has rule systems for debates, all kinds of combat, etc. However this game is more of a world-building toolkit kind of RPG where you are encouraged to build your game world and story at the table and pick which parts of the rules will be relevant to your game. Want a game with high political intrigue in a low-tech society with no magic but faith? You can use the rules for debating (called, Duel of Wits), skip on all the magic and creatures and limit characters to humans and faith-based paths. Want a high-magic setting with monsters lurking around every corner? You can build that too.
It's a bonus that the books are handsome and well made.
Root/Ironsworn/Powered by the Apocalypse: These are all games that use the same basic mechanics. More narrative-driven and light on the rules/mechanics. Generally pretty cheap to acquire and teach.
Wraith: The Oblivion 20th: My favourite World of Darkness setting. Very much not D&D... but still a TTRPG. I tend to play Vampire more because it's more popular. However this one is an overlooked gem of a game and setting. It's all about playing as ghosts and the afterlife. However what sets it apart from the rest of the World of Darkness setting is that it's possible to transcend from the world and have a good ending. This system, I find, is pretty rules-light and easy to get into... although it's the content of the game that's overwhelming! There are a lot of options for building characters and it will take a long time before you get a grips on all the different options. However stories here tend to be dark, dramatic, sometimes hilarious... it's worth making sure you're playing with the right group that can handle the subject matter and support one another playing through it.
Hmm, according to wikipedia Hackmaster 5 was rewritten and is a "serious" game - which sounds like much less fun, even if it is more playable!
RuneQuest is another classic.
The classes _are_ more interesting, but you pretty much have to maximise your character's potential if you want to keep the game going or you just have to be willing to re-roll often and let characters die and just abandon quests. i.e. it is not good for heroic fantasy.
Then again Pathfinder isn't gritty enough for me to be interesting as "bunch of peasants who try to be adventurers" either.