I thought it might be nice to set up a thread in which we can recommend game systems to one another. What do you like? Why? Give us a quick blurb about a game you like and why you think others might like it. Maybe call out if you think it would be good for absolute beginners or folks new to the OSR/NSR. Oh and the genre too. If this gains some steam, I’ll pin it to the sidebar for easy access.
This is all going to be more NSR
Cairn seems like an obvious one. It’s classic fantasy that will be pretty familiar to people, it has a good number of adventures as well as adventures for other systems that have been converted, and also all the rules are totally free.
Mausritter (modern, but nice) and liminal horror (modern, but horror) are also good. These are all Into the Odd games, there are a lot of hacks of this system for different settings and I feel like you can’t really go wrong there.
I’ll also recommend Fallen, especially for solo games. It’s more like gothic fantasy. It has some really good random tables. I use the oracle deck for other games all the time.
I recently played a small campaing with Cairn and I enjoyed what these systems with a few abilities achieve. Barrow Delver is a nice set of solo rules for it.
Mausritter is a great intro to the “OSR spirit”: due to the player being a mouse, you won’t be a hero for long if you run straight to every dangerous situation. Einzelmaus exists to play it solo.