Bought new d&d books (3) was really pissed.
I’m partial to 1st edition Earthdawn myself 
but it’s been out of print for 15 years.
Best is a matter of preference. I’ve been out of the loop for a while myself, but my brother has been keeping tabs on the latest D&D, 5th edition. Most developments there seem to be in restoring some balance between classes and hobbling twinkies/midgets/min-maxers a bit by removing a bunch of broken feats. Some of the material is available for free, and some of it is available in print. I’m not really clear on what the differences are, unless is just a matter of having a nice hardcover manual to club your players with.
He’s also been gushing about one called Pathfinder, based on D&D 3.5 with some tweaks I believe.
Maybe I can persuade him to log in here and drone on about it for himself.
Kind of depends on your goal. DnD5 in my experience gives you the atomic turkey shoot experience. Without flooding the PCs it’s very hard to challenge them.
Shadowrun’s recent editions seem to have somewhat lost their way.
New World of Darkness has become rather thematically incoherent, in my view - more or less the same as Shadowrun.
New Traveller seems to be strong, if you like your high tech shiny future.
GURPS is always a contender, if that works for you.
For fantasy, Pathfinder isn’t bad at all but the best I’ve found is Hackmaster 5.
But it really depends on what you want. If you want to gut wave after wave of mooks without undue effort or risk, DnD5 is readily available.
I’m partial to 1st edition Earthdawn myself
but it’s been out of print for 15 years.
I actually have a hardback copy of the first edition rulebook! 
Really only by chance – it came out around the time when I was really into PnP RPGs and bought all sorts of junk that was related. This fell in the same time frame when Magic came out, and when there was Dragon Dice!
Anyway, my favorite RPG system is Paranoia, but that’s pretty niche and probably out of print now, too. Been many years since I played it.
Anybody remember Carwars? that was just awesome!!
Carwars was fucking awesome! Like madmax but soooooo modern.
Still a 3.5 junkie here.
I actually have a hardback copy of the first edition rulebook!
adnd? I actually have every ad&d hardbound from 1 and 2 (not 1st print mostly) including the 1st ed. cthulhu mm. now, that’s fucked up! most of them were given to me by my 1/2 bro and cuz. i was a weird kid hoarder though… i am prolly still a weird hoarder but i keep it all organized not like on that tv show…
Anyone ever play any Palladium RPGs?
Loooved those back in the day. Beyond the Supernatural, TMNT, and especially RIFTS. good stuff.
Haven’t played in years though, probably still super fun.