Games you like but no one else plays?

Through the years I have encountered more systems than you can shake a stick at. And like everyone else, I would find some I thought to be real gems that no one else ever touched. So, I became curious.

What are your favorite table top roleplaying games that no one else ever seems to play? To take it further, what is it about the games in question that you like so much?

Great question.

1. Role Master and Space Master. These games have a reputation for being way too crunchy. However, once you have your character made, they're really easy to run and play. They're also extremely flexible.

2. Feng Shui. I was introduced to this in the late 90s and have brought it to multiple subsequent gaming troupes with excellent reception. The high octane adventures are simple to play yet produce the over the top styles popularized by action movies. I have no idea why this game isn't more highly utilized, but I suspect that the time-traveling, Chi-War they added to give the game, to paraphrase, "a reason for sorcerers to have kung fu battles with cyborgs" simply fails to win hearts.

3. Usagi Yojimbo. The best samurai game I've played, it is faithful to the deadly nature of combat, and reproduces the romantic-yet-oppressive atmosphere of the popularization of that era of Japanese history. It isn't taken seriously I suspect because the titular character is literally a bunny; anthropomorphized animals seem contrary to the subject matter.

I loved RM and SM. Ran a 3 year once a week (normally 4 hour sessions) campaign using RM. Great system, I was one of the playtesters for the HARP system.

I somehow always manage to play the systems I want, even if it takes some time. From the RPG club I started at the organism I frequent/work at, to the various games I started here.

One day Undiscovered... one day...

Feng Shui! I've run that game exactly one time, back in the mid-90s, and it remains one of the most memorable and fun sessions I've ever been part of. Loved it, and so did everyone who played. The system is a little heavy for me these days, though, and I haven't gone to the trouble of picking up the 2nd edition...

Other favorites of mine that no one plays: Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles, a whole bunch of Simon Washbourne's Beyond Belief Games stuff: Return of the Woodland Warriors, Supers!, Barbarians of Lemuria. There's a lot of other stuff I'd like to get to play, but I know people are playing it out there somewhere.

One issue is getting uncommon rulesets into player hands. Out of curiosity, I went over to the Iron Crown site to see how Role Master was doing. The product page was a scrambled mess and I couldn't locate introductory .pdfs needed to help introduce new players to it online. This left me doubting their future. Sad.

However, I noted several OSR systems were offering their entire player books for free rather than just introductory material. For example, the current edition of the Castles & Crusades PHB from Troll Lord Games is being offered for free right now in .pdf (normally $20) through their website store.

In France, Barbarians of Lemuria has a good reputation. A supplement was the like the 15th best selling item on the biggest webselling platform.

Iron Kingdoms and Mythender. IK is a little too wargame-y for my tastes in person, since miniatures and battle maps/terrain are required, as are rulers for measuring distance and heights for cover. But it would be amazing for VTTs since computers are perfect at handling complex combat mechanics and minis/terrain/maps/etc. since I don't have to cart all that around. I am hoping one day someone makes a VTT module for that game.

Mythender is my favorite convention one-shot system as it's so over the top, can be learned in 10 minutes, and everyone gets to be a badass.

I see Barbarians of Lemuria mentioned fairly often online. I've never looked into it myself but I wouldn't count it as 'no one else plays' :p

Not exactly in the spirit of the question, but here's a game I'm curious about but I've not seen people play.

I'm a fan of reading hard sci-fi, so I have to confess to being curious about the Expanse RPG. I play only D&D 5e now, but maybe one day I could be tempted to look at this.

I'd love to try it. I read the books and playing in that setting would be pretty cool. I've played some other AGE system game before but don't remember much about the system, though.

I've been part of two or three brief exposures to Expanse RPG, including one I ran, and all of them died in infancy for unusual reasons. Left me wanting more, too.

Feel pretty lucky that I've had a very flexible and open IRL group (not to mention PbP ;D) over the past 11 years that is not only willing, but enjoys, trying new and random systems.

I've never sought to play anything too obscure or niche, but some systems that I feel like you see a lot of ppl site as unicorns that they never get to play (Burning Wheel) or fringe systems that never got much community-wide traction (like the End of the World series), I've gotten to play. Even if not as much as I might like...

That sounds ominous 😆

Didn't Privateer Press recently announce they'd be making a D&d 5e compatible version of Iron Kingdoms?

Yeah, there's a 5e version of IK in the works. Their in-house version didn't do so hot, and the PF version that was the original was okay-ish, supposedly.

BESM (Big Eyes Small Mouth) is one I haven't seen around here. BESM 3e was my jam for a very long time, and my longest running PbP game was run using it. But I can only assume that most people have found more particular systems to use, rather than a generic system.

I also haven't seen Rhapsody of Blood, but given it's very combat and exploration driven PbtA, and how everyone seems to believe that combat kills pbp games (psst, it doesn't), it's not terribly surprising. Which is a shame, because it's a cool mix of Castlevania and Bloodborne, and handles megadungeon exploration in a very interesting, narrative way that doesn't involve maps (unless you insist on it - they have optional rules for that now, apparently).

They did, but sadly I don't like 5e and don't have any interest in that version. The custom system they made is really good, outside of the tactical wargame aspect. If they had just revised that one aspect it would be amazing.

I think BoL was a lot more popular in the UK and Europe than it ever was in the US; I know the game isn't unknown here, but I've never, ever seen anyone running it other than me, live or PbP. It's a shame, because it's a gem.

Speaking of games I like that I do not see here is Battletech.

Or Star Fleet Battles.