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The Games Every ttRPG Designer Should Play At Least ONCE (Patreon)

Published:
2026-07-22 22:07:03
Edited:
2026-07-23 19:13:21
Imported:
2026-11
Tags:

Content

I think there are games every ttRPG game designer should play at least a FEW times, for a broad sense of what already exists.
These are first thoughts, off the top of my head, in NO particular order:

1. Hero or Gurps or Mutants & Masterminds
2. 5th ed D&D, or 5.5, or Tales of the Valiant, or compatible
3. 1st or 2nd ed AD&D, or a related OSR
4. 4th ed D&D or 13th Age
5. Call of Cthulhu. Any BRP will do in a pinch, but CoC is really the one you should be sure to play a few times.
6. Car Wars (any)
7. FATE or Fudge
8. Cypher (any)
9. Cyberpunk (I recommend Red, but at least ONE of them)
10. Shadow of the Demon Lord
11. Smallville RPG (yes THAT one, specifically)
12. At least ONE game using the "Roll & Keep" system, designed by Dave Williams and John Wick. I recommend 7th Sea.
13. D&D 3rd or 3,5 ed, or Pathfinder 1st ed or Starfinder 1st ed.
14. Pathfinder or Starfinder 2nd ed.
15. Dread or 10 Candles
16. Amber Diceless or Lords of Gossamer and Shadow
17. Castle Falkenstein (original rules) or Deadlands (original rules)
18. World of Warcraft (yes, the mmorpg)
19. Any LARP. TWO Larps is best, one focused on social interactions and investigation, one on combat with foam weapons, but doing ONE is crucial.
20. Blades in the Dark
21. Any AGE game. I'm partial to Fantasy AGE 2e.
22. Apocalypse World or Monster of the Week.
23. Shadowrun (any edition)
24. Any Palladium game. If RIFTS, ALSO play the Savage World RIFTS. In fact, it's a GREAT idea to play Palladium Rifts, Savage Worlds RIFTS, Pazio Pathfinder, and then Savage Worlds Pathfinder. You can learn a LOT about game design that way.
25. Mork Borg or a good compatible.
26. Fiasco
27. Burning Wheel
28. Dungeon or Hero Quest or Descent
29. Gamma World or Darwin's World
30. Baldur's Gate 3.
Edited to add:
31. Bluebeard’s Bride (suggested by Shay Snow)

Comments

George I

Minds Eye Theater is a good LARP system that is often overlooked for its simplicity, but that simplicity allows the story to shine. Star Wars RPG, in its many forms, including Scum & Villainy Legend of the Five Rings. I tend to play games for their setting more than the rules system though

Barrett Bishop

What are your thoughts on the WEG D6 System, e.g. Ghostbusters, Star Wars (WEG version), etc.?

Ingolf Schaefer

That list is very sad. Almost completely ignoring non US rpgs (with the exception of Mörk Borg).

Silver Griffon

I have heard of most of these & agree with a lot of them. What is interesting about # 11 Smallville game?

David Chart

How do I disagree with thee? Let me count(down) the ways… 6. I haven't played all of these! Waaaah! Owen doesn't think I'm a proper ttRPG designer! Waaaah! Muuuummyyyy, Owen was mean to me! Waaaah! 5. I have disagreements of detail. The World of Darkness should be on there, as should WFRP, for example. 4. This is very focused on the D&D-derived space. If you are not working there, you should know at least one game in that tradition, but it doesn't matter whether it is OD&D or PF2e. Either of those will tell you what you need to know. Conversely, I think you are missing oracle/journaling games, and procedurally-generated GM-less games. I also think you should add Pendragon, as a generational game where you are not allowed to have any major impact on the setting, and Ars Magica, as the game I wrote — er, no, as a generational game where you are expected to transform the setting. 3. This is too focused on mechanics, and setting is just as important. I would say, in no particular order, that people should be familiar with Hârn, Faerûn or Golarion, Charted Space, Glorantha, The Sixth World, the World of Darkness, at least one Middle Earth game (you can learn important, but very different, lessons from MERP and The One Ring), and at least on Star Wars game. There are doubtless more. 2. Playing a single session of a game will not tell you much more than reading the rules — less in some ways, more in others. Playing a campaign of a game will give you a better handle on how it works than just reading the rules, but nobody has time to play adequate campaigns of everything on the list. That goes triple for the worlds, because they generally need more time than mechanics. A ttRPG designer should certainly play ttRPGs, but that is best focused on the game they are designing for. For a lot of others, familiarity is going to be limited to reading — and that is fine. 1. The only reason anyone designs ttRPGs is that they love ttRPGs. There is no money in it. If you like a particular ttRPG and want to make money, you livestream playing it, you don't write for it. Thus, anyone who is even thinking about designing ttRPGs is going to be reading and playing them. Over time, they are going to read and play more of them, but when they are just starting out at 16 they might well only have played D&D. And that is fine. Their first designs are unlikely to be ground-breaking, but they might be, precisely because their thinking has not been shaped by the fifty years of design legacy we now have. So, this should be a list of games that might be particularly interesting, with the reason why for each one, so that new designers can look at things that pique their interest or speak to what they are working on. This can work in either direction — I strongly dislike journaling and procedural games, and thinking about the reasons why made it a lot clearer to me what I like about ttRPGs, and that is influencing my design work.

Chris Mortika

Any straight-up Western. (Boot Hill, GURPS Old West, Western Hero, etc) No horror, no magic, no super-healing. Just a Western. Because it's probably the deadliest setting for combat, where combat is central to the genre.

Zachary Darneille

24 confuses me. Palladium rifts, savage worlds rifts, pathfinder by Paizo and Swade rifts maybe? Just confused on the context

Silver Griffon

Palladium is one of the early spin-offs of D&D and is famous for having interesting ideas and interesting mechanics. But, also for having a lot of problems, though it still has a lot of fans. Rifts itself is a great example of a way to do a EVERYTHING setting & also a good example of how a mechanically unbalanced game can still be fun. A baby dragon & a vagabond are on vastly different power level in all sorts of ways, but can be in the same party reasonably (assuming a good GM). Savage World Rifts is a great example of how a modern system can use the good ideas & give it better mechanics.

Owen K.C. Stephens

Firstly, since the US invented the ttRPG, it seems fair to focus on them. Secondly, I am a US game designer, with a primarily US audience. Thirdly, various editions of D&D, and things similar to D&D, are extremely popular in many non-US countries. Fourthly, there are very few non-US ttRPGs with English editions that offer up anything so different I feel a ttRPG designer HAS to be exposed to them. If you cover BRP, you don't need Aquelarre. Warhammer can sub in for a few of these, but if you cover all of these you don't need Warhammer. Same with The Dark Eye or Sword World. Fifth, if someone has access to Nordic LARPS I recommend them, but most of my readers don't. And, of course, as I noted this was an off-the-top of my head list, which got a conversation started. That's anything but sad, and something I don't see many other people doing atm.

Weston Clowney

Re: #15, 13 Candles appears to be a game on Steam; did you mean 10 Candles? I hadn't heard of 10 Candles before, but it sounds really neat from what I'm reading. And yeah, I see why you'd group it with Dread (also an awesome game, which I have played before).

Weston Clowney

I'm pretty sure it was meant to be Rifts, Savage Rifts, Pathfinder, Savage Pathfinder.