Bushido was set in a low fantasy version of Japan. That focus on a specific setting distinguished it from D&D which only had mish-mash settings that combined anything and everything. Tight settings are a feature of all the games I have enjoyed ever since.

Star Wars D6 was my first. It would be several years later before my parents realized that d&d would not convert me to satanism.

Traveller, now called Classic Traveller. In three little black books were the tools to create settings for players to adventure in that were formatted to be used over a wide spectrum. You didn't have to wait for new monsters or magic items or setting from a published source, you could do it yourself. It gave me a lot of freedom to create, and I did.

(Plus, since my mom was one of the Satanic Panicked, my 13 year old self could open up the LBBs to the equations and tell her that it was helping me with my algebra and she would get off my back.)

Robotech is what saved me from abandoning RPGs entirely after my experience with an abusive DM. The break from the attempted forced religious BS and no longer dying like punks (Robotech PC mecha were significantly stronger than the enemy units, which relied on numbers) was the perfect antidote to that DM's toxicity.

After that I expanded into Heroes Unlimited, Rifts and Palladium Fantasy (still on 1E at the time). The fact that these systems allowed much easier emulation of the sort of heroes I read about in novels and comics than D&D had ever managed for me kept me from looking back at D&D until the major revisions of 3e.

WEG Star Wars was another favorite of mine, but the Battletech setting is the one I keep coming back to for running/playing RPGs (using various systems; their own RPG rules are almost always substandard).

I also gained a fondness for Mage the Ascension after a campaign I played in for one semester, then ran one of my own for three more. I continued it after college as an ongoing setting with each generation of PCs graduating to NPC status and further shaping the setting until I barely needed to devise plots anymore. I just needed to know what the current PCs were trying to accomplish and which prior PCs would be interested in supporting or opposing those (some groups gravitated to Technocracy, others wanted to be fierce independents, one ended up entirely Order of Hermes... so there were many diverse NPCs with competing interests that evolved naturally over the decades of ongoing campaigns as people came and went from the table and players decided their past character's stories had reached natural endings.

And... since many say its not D&D... 4E was basically everything I had wanted D&D to be when I first started playing it back with the Red Box in '84. It has its flaws that my own system endeavors to correct, but circa 2008 it was perfection for me.

GURPS.

Felt like I could play anything with it - horror, westerns, fantasy, sci-fi, etc. And I did. Awesome game.

Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on February 08, 2022, 12:45:12 PM
Traveller: Skills instead of classes, 2d6 task resolution, and risking death during character creation to get a better start were all major departures from what I'd been used to.

Took the words out of my mouth

Tunnels and Trolls fifth edition.  Well written and it gets so much right even though it gets so much wrong: Armour as DR, Hit Points equal Constitution, scalable spells, a core task resolution system, capable spell casters at first level, magic staffs, monster as characters table, weapon descriptions, and so well written and engaging, nicely laid out and illustrated.  Of course there's stuff that doesn't work, invulnerable fighters, Conan the librarian, massively unbalanced stat multipliers, solitaire adventures that make Monty Python look like Scrooge McDuck.  Good times...good times...

My first RPG was Fighting Fantasy, but my main alternative to AD&D was WEG D6 Star Wars 1e, and 1e PARANOIA to a degree too. Both very different. Also GM'd Call of Cthulu a lot when I was 13!

The ones that impacted me mostly were Stormbringer and Call of Cthulhu when the boxed editions came out in 1981 as 'licensed' properties.  The system was so different but it was the literary licenses that got me interested both to play and to run.

I had played Metamorphosis Alpha and Traveller before then (78-79). My group though wasn't interested in MA and the GM for Traveller didn't really know what he was doing, so that ended I believe on our second session with a near TPK.

Probably too many to mention, to be honest.

I stopped playing D&D when I bought WFRP 1e. I found the mechanics more interesting, and character generation a lot more fun with the flavourful careers. Plus the dark low fantasy vibe and lore really suited me better. It was only the OSR that got me back interested in D&D-related stuff.

From there it went onto a whole slew of games like: CoC, Stormbringer, Traveler, Twilight 2000, Dragon Warriors, etc.

Greetings!

Rolemaster, by Iron Crown Enterprises.

Then, I was exposed to Talislanta, by Bard Games, and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1E, by Games Workshop. Then, a little bit of Gurps.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

For me, it has to be In the Shadow of the Demon Lord. Once I started playing that, I never went back to Dungeons and Dragons again, although I do keep the DMG around for the worldbuilding/history/geography charts. From there, I went on to OSR games without the Dungeons and Dragons baggage, and still looking through anything Sword & Sorcery-y that comes up on the market. It's a favorite genre of mine.

Adventurer Conqueror King System worked pretty well, but I really wanted something that was a bit more streamlined. So, now I'm looking for other rulesets that are similar but swifter.

I have Only played D&D.  All the flavors of D&D, are D&D to me.  I definitely like some, better than others.

For me it was MERP.  Started with it because of a love of Tolkien.  Played a bit through the 80s then it became our game of choice in the mid-90s when I was in grad school as there was another big fan of Tolkien I played with.  Love the critical tables, though it made for lots of party deaths.  I had forgotten how complicated character creation was until I made a few PCs for it last fall, hoping to entice my group into playing it.  They ended up not wanting to do it, so we'll be using White Box to play The One Ring rpg scenarios if I ever get my stuff from Free League.

MERP has lots of tables, but in fact the system itself isn't that complicated and I kind of like the way they (and Rolemaster) do their magic with grouped lists and spell points.

RuneQuest (1E) was a breath of fresh air. A system that modelled "realism" was the break from D&D that I needed.
It was also where I learned that D&D was King and if you were not playing it, you would struggle to get players.