A friend and I came into some store credit on DriveThruRGP, which we wonder how to spend best now.

We do play/love Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu and generally gravitate towards genres like Sci-Fi, Supernatural/Horror, Weird West, Cyberpunk (but don't fancy Shadowrun). Mechanics-wise, the BRP ruleset of Cthulhu we enjoy, as it's quite non-intrusive; we like to focus on storytelling/roleplaying, and are not interested in heavy number crunching or enormous dice pools that need to be raked across the table.

I'm already loosely looking at , [url=http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/80658/CthulhuTech-Core-Book]CthulhuTech and The Void which caught my eye just because of the themes they carry.

But these are just some pointers, really. Please feel free to suggest anything you are excited about/you'd recommend getting. Thanks for any input!

Hmm the Bundle of Holding has Lords of Gossamer & Shadow in it which is sort of based on the Amber Diceless RPG. That shouldn't have too many dice rolls in it.
I think the FATE system might also have something for you and the core books are free/pay-what-you-want if I remember correctly (the Lite version has even more simplified rules I think).
The Gumshoe system might be interesting if you like Cthulhu since it's basically meant for investigative stories and there's Trail of Cthulhu that uses that system. As well as some more sci-fi settings.
But I've never played any of those, so I'm basing it on what I (think I) know about them.
Personally I quite like the randomness of dice rolling.
Perhaps even Exalted? I remember there being rules in there that complement storytelling in and outside of combat.

Thanks a lot for your thoughts! +1

Lords of Gossamer & Shadow
I'd love to see how this works in practice, the bidding auction for attributes sounds a bit whacky and I really wonder if situations where the GM alone decides the success or failure of an outcome would gel with most players? Interesting for its completely diceless mechanic though.

FATE
Ah, Achtung! Cthulhu uses it, which sports some fantastic artwork. Sounds worth checking out.

Gumshoe/Trail of Cthulhu
Finding clues versus interpreting them and spending points on an investigative ability... Hm, scenes could benefit from that, dramatically, I guess. Botched Spot Hidden rolls in Call of Cthulhu can lead to interesting outcomes too on the other hand :P

Exalted
I remember a bucket of dice being required in a Werewolf game we once played, and Exalted seems to use the same mechanic. No surprise there I figure, it's also a White Wolf title.

And: dice are alright, I own too many of them actually - I just like it when dealing with them won't take you out of the scene you are roleplaying.

Btw, I intended to make this thread a question topic, but forgot to mark it as such /: Too bad you can't go back and retroedit that thing. But I'll nevertheless +rep all suggestions.

WOD: World of Darkness. Pretty much the best one around. Even though as of late, it has fallen. A bit.

HOL. If you can find it and manage to play a game of it, it should be memorable.

Heague of Legends?

Did you enjoy Shadowrun? I dig the Cyberpunk part, but for me the genre doesn't mesh with trolls, goblins and dragons. Star Frontiers seems to use a percentile system and that sounds promising. Car Wars, wow! I found this page about it and that looks great fun!

I love Shadowrun, even though I wasn't too charmed some of the additions of the later editions.
But the gritty cyberpunk/fantasy mashup works great IMO, especially back in the day when they also published Earthdawn.

EDIT: nvm I can't seem to post right tonight, urgh. The setting is deliciously dark, I really like it. But the dice army you gotta manage... Human Occupied Landfill? Hahaha, brilliant! I gotta find this.

When I go to conventions, it's always clear that Shadowrun has a huge following. Perhaps I just don't know enough of the real story behind the SR universe. Could be.

Well a RPG either grips you or it doesn't, I can see SR being a bit too.. blendy and perhaps not having enough of a separate identity for some and it is/was pretty dice heavy.
Back in the day I had to decide between CP2020 and SR and I fell in love with SR and not so much CP2020.
Through the Bundle of Holding I've got tons of RPGs I'll never play, but sounded interesting.
But the whole sine wave thing of magic in SR was kind of neat I thought, that it would go dormant and resurface again every couple of centuries. And the magic system was pretty neat too for someone who'd only played AD&D before that.

That in itself carries some atmospheric depth, I can see it.

Just thought of another possibility, again I've never tried it but it claims to be fairly easy on the dice rolling.
And the PDFs are free (creative something license): Eclipse Phase.
Sort of a weird sci-fi setting-y game.