Bonus points for any non-D&D or D&D derivative systems.
My first RPG was Palladium Fantasy way back when my grognard uncle invited me to his groups table. I still don’t really grok it, but it was pretty formative of my ideas of what an RPG could be. The lack of balance and extreme existential threats as part of ordinary encounters included.
Needless to say, I haven’t found a group for this system in a looong while, eheh.
F.A.T.A.L.World of darkness (Vampire: the masquerade/Werewolf: the apocalypse). I’ve never played it, but a friend of mine was really enthusiastic about it and from what she told me it’s really fun.
I love Old WoD games. Vampire less so, but Werewolf, Mage, and Demon: the Fallen are among favorites ever.
I am from that player generation who played the WOD games in the early 00’s. Like nobody around was playing D&D, it was VtM, Dark-age, Werewolf, Eastern-Vampires, Mage, hunter and so on.
These games are greats, the system has a good balance between light and crunchy, the setting is amazing with a shit ton of secret, and the idea of playing power struggles as the apocalypse comes was pretty cool.
That said, these games also have their own issue. A big one is their tendency to behave like D&D with tons of sourcebook. Moreover each sourcebook/game are written by different people leading to contradiction in the lore, not a big deal except when everyone pretends to be an expert on the lore. Another big one is that you sell a game where you play monsters struggling to keep their humanity and political power game, and you end up having a system about killing and fiighting I believe the 5th edition solved some of these problems. A last one is that it’s really hard to get player to cooperate, not necessarily a big deal if everyone is aware of it, but there is the point where No, I don’t see why I’d play that quest, especially with these people comes to the table.
But still a very great set of games