Some really interesting ideas here, downloaded!

Man, we ended up setting up a wiki for all the ones from my last campaign… it’s down at the moment, but here are a few I have saved on my phone:

“My companions and I are professional adventurers”

“Some of us more professional than others…”

“For no sexy reason, what does the pope look like?”

“Also, I’m not doing terrible! But I definitely just got stabbed.”

Bard: “No, this is wholesome [Bard] moment! Anyway, how much money do you have?”

Sorcerer: “[Ranger], we are about to do some wacky-ass magic”

Ranger: “In that case, I would like to watch it from over there.”

Sorcerer: “I will not be doing it. I will be joining you.”

GM: “Divine and wild magic start pouring into and it’s like… Have you ever licked a battery?”

GM: “Divine, chaos, and dragon magic flows through you—”

Bard: “And bardic from the inspiration!”

Ranger: “Oh I can add some ranger nature!”

Sorcerer: “And I have one that can help! I cast minor illusion to make a “do not disturb” sign.”

“If I take one more step, it’ll be the furthest I’ve ever been from home…”

“You didn’t even have to step.”

“If I take one more interdimensional vortex…”

“Your left or my left? You’re an orb.”

“I am.”

“Float like a flowerpot, sting like a school bus.”

That is exactly what I ended up doing! It was a blast, definitely would also recommend

Outer Wilds

If you’re a naturally curious person, the odds are you will probably enjoy Outer Wilds. No other game I’ve played has ever had quite the same blend of mystery, conquering the unknown, and semi-realistic space exploration.

Could someone make another game like it? Not impossible, I suppose, but I think you would be hard pressed.

Should you keep playing the original? You really can’t, one time through is all you get. Once you have discovered all the secrets and uncovered the mysteries, that is your journey through it. Still fun to visit every once in a while, though

The Chaos

Ahhh, loads of them!

D&D adjacent stuff like Pathfinder 2e.

PBTA and kin like Dungeon World, Monster of the Week, Ironsworn. Blades in the Dark.

Delta Green.

I have a whole folder of freeform, GMless stuff like Microscope, Kingdom, Follow, Archipelago, Dawn of Worlds, Dialect, Intrepid, The Quiet Year.

Gonzo one shot stuff like Paranoia, The Sorcerer Supreme, Ten Candles, peace was never an option (think untitled goose game: the rpg).

I recently had a test run or two of Fate Condensed and got completely hooked.

Most of those I’d be content to run or play, but the game I really want to GM myself is a campaign I’ve been dreaming up for about year now that I call the “sedition sandbox”. The scope is focussed to a single city, the capital of a hostile foreign empire. The PCs are an elite team of saboteurs and infiltrators, sent by a nation desperate to turn the tides of a losing war. Their only objective is to bring down the empire from within. Intrigue, plots, rebellions, sabotage, faction politics, assassinations, propaganda, blackmail, anything the players can think of to achieve that goal is fair game. How far will they go to stop the greater evil?

I think it would be a blast (naturally, I guess), and one or two players in my local network have expressed a little interest, but I’ve yet to rally the kind of commitment I think I’d need to really get off the ground. And the inexorable march of time makes it less likely with every passing day, as my friends either move away or are subjected to all life’s little tyrannies of responsibility ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Seconded! OP, in a similar vein as the world building games you already mentioned, you might find Intrepid interesting. I could see it being used to do world building + history of some of the major players and nations therein.

I could also imagine the relationship map it uses being hacked a bit to allow for some Disco Elysium style personality skills / thought cabinet shenanigans if you were interested in leaning into that in particular.

Maybe FATE would be worth checking out?

Things I think it might hit for you:

• Characters are good at what they’re good at. You define the core concepts of your character and use them to get bonuses. Your character is a Highly Trained Ninja? Then yeah, you’ll be getting bonuses to all your sneaking, hiding, acrobatics, flashy martial arts, etc. Plus, the way the maths work, the dice have a bell curve centred at +0 (extremes of +4/-4) so the +4 in your character’s best skill is constantly having a huge impact on outcomes. Contrast that with your +7 in D&D which is still missing 25% of the time

• Fairly simple rules. The core is, describe what you’re trying to do, and then use one of four basic actions to model it if a roll seems appropriate: Attack, Defend, Overcome (beat a DC) or Create an Advantage (alter circumstances/environment/characters to tip the odds in your favour). However, there’s a little more for combat and also a meta currency to manage, which I’ll talk about below

• Very quick to get off the ground. Character creation can take only minutes if you want. No mucking about with long lists of feats and spells and class builds and whatnot. You’re actively encouraged to leave spots blank and fill them in during play when an idea strikes you, great for new and unsure players

• Completely setting agnostic, it’s flexible enough to do almost anything

Things I think it might miss for you:

• FATE’s approach is much closer to a story game, especially compared to something like D&D which leans towards the simulation side of the spectrum. Its meta currency, Fate points, aims to emulate the feel of an action movie or TV show. Spend points to do awesome things, get them back for accepting challenges, complications, and setbacks in your character’s arc. That latter point especially often means the table needs to have a “writer’s room” mentality, which isn’t a good fit for all players.

• FATE doesn’t really try to do certain things that D&D does, like strict resource management, accumulation of powerful loot, big powerful character level ups, or dungeon crawling. It can be done, and guides are out there to help you do so, but you will be bolting a lot of extras onto the system, so watch out if those are what you enjoy

• Which brings me to the last point, FATE is a system that really wants you to hack it and make it your own. It’s very resilient to this sort of thing compared to something like D&D where getting some maths wrong can make things unfun in innumerable ways, but it does take effort and thought regardless, which may not be to everyone’s taste. For example, you won’t really find a “bestiary” of monsters to throw at players, you’ll be making them up yourself, maybe entirely on the fly.

The rules are all freely available online or in pay-what-you-want PDFs. There are three current editions:

• FATE Core, all the rules of the game plus lots of extras, examples, optional systems, things like that

• FATE Condensed, all the rules same as Core, but with most of the extras cut out and overall streamlined down to 60 pages from 300 or so

• FATE Accelerated, uses the same basic ideas for its rules, but simplifies things down to the barest of minimums, e.g. dropping the skill list for 6 basic “approaches”, simplifying the damage system.

Here’s a link to FATE Condensed, as I personally found it easiest to start with: https://fate-srd.com/fate-condensed

One disclaimer: I haven’t actually played it myself yet, but I have been prepping a one shot I’ll be taking my D&D 5e group through this weekend to see if it’s going to be a good fit for us, so I have been doing a lot of research!