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 really like this. I come at this from a more NSR than OSR perspective, but I feel like I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the difficulties of parleying and fighting should be matched - the situation is what it is. And even if not fighting is always the better choice, the players won’t know that and won’t always make the best choices.

I generally play these types of games with combat being what happens when things go wrong. Unless one side has a very clear advantage, combat is high risk for everyone involved and usually it’s better for everyone to avoid it. Combat happens, not because either the player characters or the NPCs would choose it as their first choice, but because you play games about situations in which everything is likely to go wrong.

I want to play Wanderhome, but one issue with it is I want someone who really understands how that style of play works to play it with me. I’m very intrigued by the game but can’t quite wrap my head around how it actually goes at the table.

Next on my to play list is Reach of the Roach God but the issue there is scheduling: I have an existing weekly campaign and struggle to find time for a second campaign-length module.

I also want to play Gubat Banwa, I might try the solo rules, but I also have a massive backlog of solo games I want to try.