Whenever you're roleplaying, you're going to find yourself in a situation where you have what's referred to as a setting, and what's referred to as a system.

You are probably familiar with the concept of a setting from a literature class; the setting is the world in which the game takes place.

The system, on the other hand, is the set of rules used for playing the game.
If you've found yourself in a weird place where you're joining a group that's looking for a new system, or you're going to be making your own group with other fresh recruits, you're going to need to find a system to play with.

Getting a Game

The largest site for purchasing roleplaying games (at least in the US market) is DriveThruRPG (affiliate link), and you can get a .pdf file of almost any major game there.

There are a few exceptions: Dungeons and Dragons, for instance, is only available in print or through a special website, and some publishers use their own sites predominantly. DriveThruRPG doesn't always have the best rates for finding games.

You can also find many games' rules available for free online, because tabletop games have a surprising prevalence of free licenses. Sometimes this is limited to a subset of the game's content; D&D, Eclipse Phase, West End Games' D6 system, Fate, Fudge, Pathfinder, Open Legend, and really more games than I can shake a stick at are all available for free, and many of them are terrific.

Despite what you may think if you looked at my bookshelf, I typically prefer digital titles; they're less prone to getting lost or damaged over the course of use, since I can save them to my computer and access them at any time. However, game shops that cater to roleplayers and used bookstores are great places to find games, especially obscure or out of print ones (never order an expensive game online without checking local stores), and Amazon has a great selection of roleplaying games.

Local Favorites

The first thing to consider when you're choosing a system is whether or not you'll be able to find players. The great thing about a system like D&D is that it has a lot of content available, including free stuff to help you get started, and you can find all sorts of actual play examples can help familiarize you with the system.

This can vary somewhat depending on where you live, both regionally and internationally. Other big-name games include World of Darkness (the overarching product line of games like Vampire: The Masquerade), Call of Cthulhu, Warhammer (which has both wargames and roleplaying games), Shadowrun, The Dark Eye ("Das Schwarze Auge"), and a handful of others.

These games are all good (and relatively easy to find groups for), though some have features and styles that recommend them to certain groups. For instance, World of Darkness doesn't do well at telling cheerful stories, but it is a very well-executed system for telling stories. I personally think D&D is a little rules-heavy, but it's also really easy to get into in some ways

Licensed Titles

If you're a video gamer, you might be surprised to hear that as a general rule, licensed tabletop roleplaying games are quite good. Since roleplaying is heavily based on telling stories, they tend not to run into the issues that licensed video games, with a more fixed plot-line and more budget demands, get destroyed by.

Many licensed roleplaying games are, like licensed video games, existing systems with a fresh coat of paint and some altered game mechanics. This is not necessarily bad. The big licenses, like Star Wars and Star Trek, go to highly capable companies, and if you're an avid fan of them and you can round up a couple other avid fans, you're probably not going to be disappointed.

A caveat here is that the modern industry tends to be a lot better than the old days. If you're an avid retrogamer, most of these older games are not bad so much as they are unconventional. Sort of like how an old video game will generally have awkward control schemes, these games exist in a sort of vacuum; they're typically made with love and have some cool elements to them, but they can be very different from more modern games and may be much more of a cash-grab like you'd expect from some licensed video games.

The only issue with licensed games can be getting your hands on them, as they may not be available in all markets. Fortunately, sites like Amazon often have these games readily available, and in-print copies can usually be found at local stores if the game is popular enough.

My Recommendations

I was a game reviewer for many years, so I've played or reviewed more than a hundred games by this point, and I have a few that I always suggest when people ask me for games to get into. Many of them are even free (or have a generous quick-start). I'll put each of these under a "genre" heading.

Understand that these are my favorite games that I think newbies could enjoy. I'll include caveats for when you really need to like a particular genre, and my main criteria is telling good stories without too much rules overhead.

I'm not including experimental things, or things I don't have first-hand experience with. Some of these games are more difficult than others, and I certainly encourage you to search around for alternatives.

D6

I'm going to start off my list with West End Games' venerable D6 system. At first glance to a newcomer, the reasoning behind this may not seem obvious, but there are two things that I want to stress about this system.

• It is incredibly beginner-friendly, without sacrificing anything you really need.
• It was used for a licensed Star Wars title.

In case you missed it, this system was used for a licensed Star Wars game back in the day. A licensed Star Wars game that was so good that people still play it despite two different subsequent licensed games, both of which are on the good to exceptional scale of quality.

The main reason I recommend D6, however, is that it has a short adventure that you can play through in the start to each of its core books (D6 Adventure, D6 Fantasy, and D6 Space). This can get you acquainted with the rules and figure out if it's for you.

The only concern I have with D6 is its magic system, which is probably one of the more obtuse I've ever encountered. Still, the core rules are fast, fun, and make for good characters, and it can easily be worked into any setting you desire.

You can find all the non-licensed D6 games for free in PDF format, since they were released under an open license.

Open Legend

I'm not including any of my games on this list, but I am including one that I was involved with as a playtester and very minor content creator (I think I have like three sentences in the finished book).

All of Open Legend's rules can be found on its site, and it's relatively simple as far as character creation and play go. It's a relative newcomer, but part of what makes it exciting as a beginner's game is that it's incredibly flexible.

The rules as written can be used to run any setting, so long as it's got enough action; it doesn't do realistic games, but it'll do sci-fi or fantasy straight out of the box, and it's got a very polished, internally consistent ruleset.

I particularly like Open Legend as an alternative to D&D because it encourages a lot of very innovative lateral thinking and its mechanics are designed about doing stuff very quickly to get back to storytelling, though that's not necessarily its only concern.

One thing to note if you go for Open Legend is that it does have a couple draw-backs; you can get very samey characters if you're not careful, and it's very reference heavy, which is fine because it's freely available (and you can always copy down the most important information), but not necessarily ideal for speed.

13th Age

If you've noticed a trend, it's that most of these games are free. 13th Age is halfway there. You can get it on DriveThruRPG, though you can also find it online in what is known as a SRD: System Reference Document.

An SRD is a complete set of rules that's intended for people to use to make additional content for a game. You can use it to play for free (and this is not usually discouraged), but the core rulebook is going to contain all the setting and a lot more user-friendly things.

13th Age is heavier than the other games I've mentioned, and it plays a lot like D&D. However, there are two things you get in 13th Age that you don't get in D&D.

First, it's got more storytelling elements. The latest version of D&D, Fifth Edition, has more movement in this direction than any of the other ones, but 13th Age did it first and did it better, in my opinion.

Second, it's fast to play. I can fall asleep during rounds of D&D combat, and I'm a borderline insomniac. If you do go the 13th Age route, I suggest buying the book (in print or otherwise), and using the SRD for reference. There are a lot of cool things in the setting, and the fact that it ties everything together through Icons and character schticks is perfect.

I've played more "d20" (D&D-like) systems than I can shake a stick at–perhaps more than 20–but 13th Age remains by far my favorite.

Runners Up

I've chosen three games that are generally a little more on the difficult side here (I'm a game designer, I can't help it), but I want to talk about a few other games that I'm not quite as qualified to talk about.

Fate is an excellent game, if done right. I recommend the Accelerated Edition, which you can get from Evil Hat Games, but it's another free game so that's a plus. It's definitely a little lighter in terms of density and rules complexity, so if the other games I've recommended seem intolerably complex, FAE or Fate are good options.

Dungeon World is also available freely and is quite a good system, though I don't have as much familiarity with its core system as I do with derivatives and relatives, like Rowan, Rook, and Decard's Spire (affiliate link), which is delightfully weird and tremendously punk-awesome. The only caveat is that Spire has some really deep subject matter, while Dungeon World is more light fare. If you're interested in Dungeon World, there's a free guide and reference materials, too!

The most recent Star Wars licensed games (they're all similar, but there are a few product lines with different thematic focuses) are also very storytelling focused, and I recommend them to people looking for a good system.

There's also Basic Fantasy, which I've heard good things about as a sort of lighter D&D-style game, but never really got into.

I've heard Fiasco talked about over and over, especially as a newbie-friendly game. I've even watched a couple Actual Play sessions and found it interesting/amusing as appropriate, but I've never played it.

GURPS Lite is something that I'd recommend for newbies, but only the Lite edition. GURPS is notoriously complicated (and it is, sometimes), but the Lite edition does a good job at choosing just the rules you need to play, and it can tell really good stories.

Savage Worlds is well-made, has a streamlined ruleset, and lives up to its "Fast! Furious! Fun!" byline. You can easily find content made to adapt it to a variety of genres and settings, too.

Parting Words

The number one indicator of whether or not you'll enjoy a roleplaying game is how much you and your group are willing to invest and relax. It's a collaboration, not a competition, and the rules exist to make things easier. Most modern games recognize that, and while some older games don't have a whole lot of overt concessions to that they're operating on the same basic principles.

Whichever system you choose, don't feel obligated to stick to it, but also give it a good, earnest try. There are few objectively bad roleplaying games, and you practically have to be looking for them.

And, in case anyone's interested, I started roleplaying with Shadowrun (affiliate link to the quick-start rules of the edition I first played) back before the new video games for it came out, based on my love for the old Genesis game of the same franchise. It was a heck of an investment of time and effort, but still one of the best times I ever had.