Alternatives to Dungeons & Dragons (2024) now that they are going all-in on gacha:
Dungeons & Dragons 5e (previous) + any number of compatible indie produced modules (Obvious Mimic Press is the one I've played)
Pathfinder 2e (basically the same game, tons of adventure available)
DC20 (if you like rules improvements; not a lot of modules available yet)
Shadowdark (if you want to party like it's 1979)
Obviously Daggerheart if you're a Critical Role fan; the setting is familiar and rules easy and you can play a mushroom (or their version of tiefling, dragonborn, etc)
Literally any older version of Dungeons & Dragons that still has playable adventures out there.
Have you REALLY played all the existing DnD campaigns and modules yet? Until you have, you don't need to buy new ones.
Roll20.net has automatic DnD character sheets so you can cancel that DnDBeyond subscription if you use it just for that. It has also recently bought up Demiplane, another similar platform, which is prettier and has many of the games mentioned here.
If you want to get more adventurous with rules and setting but still like fantasy combat and skill lists, there's Runequest (bronze age fantasy for you ancient Mesopotamia nerds), which I have been reading recently.
Other genres:
Pathfinder is working on an update on Starfinder, so you can play DnD-like rules for a space adventure.
Teatime Adventures is aD20 rules game for a cozy rural furry stories about pies and being kind to each other.
Call of Cthulhu for horror (check out Chaosium Inc's Youtube channel for actual plays, love those guys) and Pulp Cthulhu for extra cheese on top; there's even Regency Cthulhu if you want to try balancing a monster hunt with a husband hunt.
This is a deep cut but A Ghastly Affair is a game set in the long 1700s and the character classes are stereotypes of gothic romance fiction, and I know I have followers who are into that shit, available on DriveThruRPG (I can't find their original website anymore so get it while you can).
I have to mention Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades, a wuxia roleplaying game from Osprey Publishing, considering @minutia-r and I have written 480K of adventuring for it.
Also I must mention Vampire: The Masquerade, which is the game that got me to take on gamemastering for the first time. The Storyteller System they use is still my favourite TTRPG system. Very gritty modern supernatural setting, and the Core Rulebook even has a caveat saying "yeah there's problematic stuff, because problematic stuff is part of the real world, fuck the Nazis though" (paraphrased). Caveat, the Core Rulebook is kind of unintuitive.
All of the above are games that have rules with skill lists and kind of the same logical approach to playing as DnD (broadly speaking).
I would not go directly from DnD to Powered by the Apocalypse games like Candela Obscura, Girl by Moonlight, or Blades in the Dark, because their logic is very different and they are less about rules and more about genre; or rather, the rules define things that the above games leave to role-playing, and very little for anything else.
For example, in Candela Obscura you would do the same roll for punching a person and breaking through a door, and in Girl by Moonlight you have to roll to confess your true feelings. Girl by Moonlight is absolutely perfect for playing a magical girl TV show though. That's what it's for.
