i play a lot of ttrpgs, and have for well over a decade at this point (i started with pathfinder 1e & dnd 3.5), so here is a wildly incomplete list of Good And Interesting/Unique TTRPGs that i recommend checking out if they sound cool to you!
Darker / More Serious ttrpgs:
Dread is a one-shot only horror system where character creation is "answer these extremely loaded and leading questions" and the entire resolution mechanic is "pull some number of blocks from a shared jenga tower, if the tower falls, your character dies". I can wholeheartedly recommend the prewritten one-shot Beneath A Metal Sky, which is a sci-fi horror scenario involving an abandoned ship floating in space. it is by far my favorite halloween one-shot to run.
Mothership is a rules-light sci-fi horror game with lots of anti-corp philosophy baked right in to it. You can teach the whole game in about 15 minutes and the Warden's Manual (gm guide) is genuinely one of the best things that has ever been written about How To Gm -- i genuinely recommend giving it a read if you run ANY ttrpgs. this is the system of my current campaign, and its been a complete blast!
Heart: The City Beneath is not a game i have personally played, but i have read it, and i have also played its sister game, Spire: The City Must Fall (more on that later). Heart is a horror game about going to parts of reality you should never go to in search of things you should never have, while the strange hole in reality you've entered into keeps presenting you with worse and more fucked up versions of the thing you want until you take it. and then you die.
Spire: The City Must Fall is a deeply political game of clandestine resistance in an apartheid state, and your characters will not win. The resistance will not succeed. You will begin the game with friends, community, money, and safety, and you will end the game dead, alone, and destitute. It's the best TTRPG i've ever played, but its also Complete Hell to GM and absolutely full of potentially-triggering content, so tread cautiously. It also has the best and funniest class feats i have ever seen in a ttrpg, and i honestly think the rulebook is worth a look just for those.
Mausritter is an OSR game -- rules-light and quite deadly -- where every player is a mouse in a sword-and-board fantasy world. Not a mouse-person, to be clear: an actual mouse. You are small, and vulnerable, and very brave, and the world is huge, and unforgiving, and full of danger. it's really, really fun, and the art is incredibly charming.
Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast is a gm-less, fixed-cast ttrpg about the various shenanigans that occur at the aforementioned magical Bed and Breakfast, which is owned by a witch named Yazeba. The moment to moment gameplay varies based on the scenario, but it is very improv-heavy, and between sessions it has upkeep that is most similar to that of a legacy board game.
Wanderhome is a pastoral, collaborative ttrpg where every player is an anthropomorphic animal wandering from town to town. it can be played with or without a gm, and has mechanics for the weather and seasons. I've not played it myself, but if what you're after is a chill game about helping people and finding yourself, this is probably a game for you to check out.
Honey Heist is a deeply silly PWYW one-shot game where the players are trying to pull off a daring, complicated heist -- and also they are all Actual Bears. Shenanigans ensue.
Goblin With A Fat Ass is a PWYW one-shot game where you are a group of goblins who are trying to steal from the richest guy in town, but your Fat Goblin Asses keep causing problems. It's deeply, deeply silly, and while i have never personally played it, i really want to some day.
Misc / other / only kind of ttrpgs:
Microscope is a collective history building game. You and some friends decide on a world, a starting era, and an ending era, and then players take turns adding events to the timeline. person-level events gets roleplayed by the players, but broader scope events are just described by the person adding them. its unlike any other game i have played, and it's really, really good.
i'm sorry did you say street magic is like Microscope, but on the scale of a city rather than a world. i've heard very good things, though i haven't yet managed to play it myself.
Thousand Year Old Vampire is a solo journaling game about being a vampire. but it's actually mostly about losing your memory, your concept of self, and your humanity. I highly recommend it, especially if you like creative writing exercises.
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turnnoffyourmind
romaincrisis
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