I don’t hate 5e, in fact I’d join in as a player very happily, but I wouldn’t run it. 5e is geared towards a very specific kind of campaign that I’m not very interested in running.
I’m more of a social campaign with big action sequences kind of DM and Savage Worlds does that perfectly. It is:
- Classless
- 3 actions per turn, going over 1 heightens the chance you’ll fail on all actions. Players tend to spend less time thinking.
- Step die instead of d20, easy math.
- Extremely easy to make homebrew for.
- Generic, which means it can do any genre (I’ve done dark fantasy western and high fantasy medieval, next up I’ll do dark fantasy cyberpunk hopefully).
I tried to turn 5e into something that fit a cyberpunk setting for about 3 months, before just buying SWADE and being able to run every genre I could imagine from the go.
I’ll add that every games does not suit to everyone. So, games that might please D&D players that I like (and that nobody already talked about in this thread):
- Cryptomancer: It’s D&D for nerds, with a simpler system (or a sort of inverted Shadowrun). Like, imagine D&D but magic works like infosec. Yeap, that’s it.
- Monster of the Week: A PbtA game to emulate supernatural horror TV shows and it’s really easy to make it work in a fantasy setting. It might feel more like a Witcher game than a D&D game, tho (you investigate after a supernatural monster, track them to get them down). In any case, the PbtA family is rich and if players are curious of other systems, it’s probably one of the easiest PbtA to try when you come from D&D : it’s really easy to setup (30min to make a party at the beginning of the session, session 0 included), it’s one-shot oriented and it has (I think) the more D&D-esques combat mechanics if all PbtAs.
- Outgunned: It’s a very cool game with gambling mechanics which want to emulate action movies. It’s easy to do Heroic Fantasy with it as “classes” are just “roles” and “tropes” and there is already some actions flicks (flavor-oriented optional rules) to play wuxia, swashbuckling and sword & sorcery. Also, it has the best mechanics for chases I ever seen and you may want to borrow that in you D&D sessions. Even for one session, it’s worth playing (and there is two free kickstart sets with rules, premade characters and a scenario to try it !)
The dungeon master can do whatever the fuck they feel like. It’s their game. These systems are suggestions, inspiration, not law. I don’t get why people get so hung up on the particular rules of some edition
in general, i agree. it’s just a game and more often than not the system encourages you to tweak it to fit your group. however, i feel like there are times when people fight against the system by trying to hack it apart and rebuild it in their image. while i don’t directly discourage this, sometimes this is done at a detriment and without consideration for balance or fun. if you like the changes you’ve made to your favorite system, and it works well at the table, then keep doing that. but if you’re looking for ways to trim the fat, or like the ideas but not the mechanics, then there are so many more options to choose from than monolithic popular game.
i think it’s okay to point out to people that there are systems that already exist that solves their specific problems. that’s more than likely why they exist in the first place. and this goes especially for those who are new to ttrpgs in general, as there are lots of fantastic options for introducing people to the scene. i readily encourage people to try new things and experience how different systems make changes to the formula to fit their purpose.
speaking purely as a gm, and this is my personal preference, i don’t want to fight a system to make it do what i want. if it doesn’t, and that’s a detriment to my personal playstyle, then it’s likely not the system for me. i’m not married to any one set of rules, nor do i want more work to make any one system solve all my problems. if someone else wants to do that, finds enjoyment in that, and does it well, then more power to them.
the games i like allow the players to have collaboration in storytelling and worldbuilding as part of the game mechanics (e.g. fabula points in Fabula Ultima)
I’m partial to Fate.
It’s very open. You don’t have to worry about looking up the right class or feats. You just describe what you want to play, and if the group thinks it’s cool and a good fit for the story, you’re basically done.
Now, the downside is this requires a lot more creativity up front. A blank page can be intimidating.
I like that players have more control over the outcome. You can usually get what you want, even if you roll poorly, but it’s more of a question of what you’re willing to pay for it.
Every roll will be one of
- succeed with style
- succeed
- a lesser version of what you want
- succeed at a minor cost
- succeed at a major cost
- (if you roll badly and don’t want to pay any costs) fail, don’t get what you want
It’s a lot more narrative power than some games give you. I don’t like being completely submissive to the DM, so I enjoy even as a player being able to pitch “ok I’m trying to hack open this terminal… how about as a minor cost I set off an alarm?” or “I’m trying to steal his keys and flubbed the roll… How about as a major cost I create a distraction, get the keys, but drop my backpack by accident. Now I’m disarmed, have no tools, and they can probably trace me with that stuff later. But I got the keys!”.
It’s more collaborative, like a writer’s room, so if someone proposes a dud solution the group can work on it.
The math probability also feels nice. You tend to roll your average, so there’s less swinginess like you’ll get in systems rolling one die.
There are systems like Blades in the Dark that bypass all the planning phases and just let players jump into the interesting parts of the story. Better yet, it has mechanics to support this kind of play.
“Simulation” type RPGs can be done on computers these days with much more detailed and satisfying tactical combat, but narrative-focused games that play more like an episodic show is where the really interesting TTRPG stuff is happening in my opinion.
I was recently introduced to Death in Space.
Things that I like about it:
- it’s a simple system
- it’s got cool lore (the universe is dying, aberrations are infiltrating the local solar system, all ships and technology is scavenged)
- it’s got some overlapping mechanics with 5e, which makes introducing it simple (advantage, d20 checks, etc)
- it’s got some nice rules for ship combat, space walks, etc
- combat turns are basically just go next if you have something, then the enemies do their thing, and players coordinate on whatever works best for them
My fiancé was running it, but lost the time to continue running it. I might take over with my own group soon.
When it come to more traditional RPGs, I really like Pathfinder 2E for the following reasons:
- It scales very well from level 1-20. The math just works
- Encounter design and balancing is easy for the busy GM
- All of the classes are good, there aren’t any trap classes
- Teamwork is highly encouraged through class and ability design
- Degrees of success/failure
- Easy, free access to the rules
- The ORC license
- https://pathbuilder2e.com/
- Pathfinder Society Organized play is very well done and well supported by Paizo
- Women wear reasonable armor
- The rune system for magic weapons/armor
- And so many more
Plus, I don’t know any other system that lets me pull my intestines out of my abdomen and use them like a lasso to climb a cliff when I forgot my rope at home.
The biggest “con” to PF2 is that it is decidedly not 5e, and people expecting it to work like 5e will have a bad time. AC generally hangs within 1 or 2 points for the entire party at a specific level, same for enemies. It is rarely a good idea to just walk up to the enemy and face tank them. Moving around is big for survivability. Synergy with other party members can be huge too. Sometimes that thing you can do doesn’t sound like a big buff or debuff, but if several party members are doing complementary buffs/debuffs it can turn the tide.
Plus, I don’t know any other system that lets me pull my intestines out of my abdomen and use them like a lasso to climb a cliff when I forgot my rope at home.
Nitpick: more narrative systems like Fate let you do this, but then you typically don’t get a lot of crunch. Plus it can vary if your group isn’t on the same wavelength about what’s cool and appropriate for the story.
The synergy part is so huge. PF2 is very strongly based around making your party as awesome as possible instead of just making your character individually powerful, which I think trips up a lot of people coming from other systems or video games.
OMG yes. I was trying to figure out how to say that but couldn’t put it into words, but you perfectly put together what I was thinking.
It definitely trips up people who usually just look at RPGBot to build their characters out from levels 1 - 20 before the first session. That’s how I made my build choices, and it was a pretty significant stumbling block for me when I made the switch.
The blue options aren’t always the best options, because the best options depend on what everyone else is doing.
I looked into playing briefly but it seemed more complicated and confusing than 5e which my players can already barely handle.
I think that the perceived complexity, particularly for people coming from 5e comes down to two issues.
There’s A Rule For That 5E leaves a lot of things to GM fiat, while in Pathfinder there is probably a specific rule. Now, the rule is going to be the same systemic rule that is used everywhere else and probably be the way you’d want to resolve it anyway, but there mere existence of the rule makes it seem like there is a lot of complexity.
Close, But Not Quite Because 5e and PF2 have a lot in common, players with a lot of 5e experience will assume that something works the same way as in 5e when it doesn’t. This can lead to gameplay feeling like walking in a field of rakes. I ran into this with a new player who had listened to a lot of 5e podcasts and picked up some 5e rules that they tried to use, like attacks of opportunity.
FWIW, I’ve been running a game with a group of new players, most of whom have never played an RPG before and they seem to be handling it fairly well. Well, once I talked with the person who listened to all of the 5e podcasts.
Exactly this.
The game’s rules are, mostly, simple, intuitive, consistent, and predictable. In fact, the rules very often seem to follow from the fiction presented at the table! Sometimes, they do it too well, even – I’ve seen people complain about Trip being Athletics vs Reflex rather than Acrobatics or Fortitude, but as someone who’s taken judo and karate lessons, Athletics vs Reflex is 100% right.
The rules follow the fiction at the table, and that means 9 times out of 10, if you know the fiction being presented, you can just ask for the roll that makes sense to you. No need to look anything up.
The game is also moderately systematized, and functional. That is, a lot of what 5e DMs would just treat as “roll skill against DC” is formalized into an “Action” with a concrete name. These actions act like mathematical or programming functions, in that they can take parameters. So, it’s not “Trip”, it’s “Trip (Athletics)”. If your character comes out of left field and does something acrobatic, or even magical, that I think would cause a creature to stumble and fall, then I will leverage “Trip (Acrobatics)” or “Trip (Arcana)”, which now makes it an Acrobatics or Arcana roll vs Reflex. This means “Trip (x)” is actually “Roll x vs Reflex. On a success, the target falls prone, on a… etc.”
Super flexible, and super intuitive. But formalized, and only presented with the default option, so it looks both complicated and rigid.
I started running the game for 8 year olds, though, and they picked it up very quickly. I do my best to run sessions totally in-fiction, but that honestly gets broken every other turn or so.
I’d argue it’s not more complex, just different. Once you play 3 action combat you’ll never want to go back.
People get intimidated by the depth of PF2e, but just remember that DnD5e/N is also a fairly complex system where you only reference specific rules when you need to, same as PF2e. The advantage is that PF2e is (in my opinion) more cohesive and better covers edge cases.
The downside of PF2 is if you try to engage with the core of the online community with this “rules for if I want/need them” attitude, someone will come out of the shadows to shank you.
There’s a rabid “by the rules, and all the rules” cohort within the community, and they are pretty effective at chasing new players away.
I’d argue DnD is no different and we only see it less because half the DnD player base is busy home brewing Pathfinder content into 5e
Fair. I definitely haven’t engaged with the 5e community to the same extent I have with the PF2 one. I never became a special interest to me the way Pathfinder has.
I haven’t seen a lot of that, but what I have seen comes down to organized play vs home games. The online community has a very strong organized play culture, which requires closely adhering to RAW and fairly strict guidelines for play in order to keep the ability to jump and character into any table of a random session. I’ve found that being clear about if this is a Society game or a home game helps to avoid those misunderstandings.
I’ve always felt the community was extremely kind and welcoming, personally. The publisher even goes out of their way to support and represent LGBTQ+ in their official worldbuilding.
There’s always going to be elitists in every hobby of course, they do exist in PF2e as well. But it’s not the majority by any stretch.
I don’t know. My experience with the community has been a lot of people yelling “You’re playing my fantasy XCOM board game wrong. You should probably play a rules-light game,” and no one stepping up to challenge them.
Hmmm, I’m very sorry to hear that, honestly. I’d say the average PF2e player takes it a bit more seriously than the average DnD5e/N player, but not a whole lot.
Perhaps it’s the part of the community you engaged with? Obviously every forum/chat server is going to have it’s own flavor. The older communities that started with PF1e and still focus there are going to be more elitist in general just because of how PF1e came to be and it’s target audience. But PF2e is much more widely targeted.
Discord isn’t free, private, or open source, but it does host several great PF2e communities I participate in if you’d like a recommendation. But if you are just sharing your personal experience and aren’t looking for a “solution”, that’s totally valid and I completely respect that.
Any play podcast recs? Maybe listening to a few games will give me a better sense than just reading.
Hells Rebels on the Find the Path Presents feed. Hands down.
If you like a little more silly/lewd Glass Cannon campaign 2 is a lot of fun.
Mortals & Portals is very good. They made the decision to use PF2e like 2 weeks before they started recording, and learned the game on the fly. Sometimes they trip over the rules, but they also illustrate how to fail forward in that regard.
They also run it as a Theatre of the Mind game, which a lot of people will try to convince you isn’t really feasible. They fease it just fine, so I like it as an example.
Narrative Declaration also has several campaigns on YouTube. Rotgrind and Rotgoons are campaigns set in a gritty homebrew world. They had an aborted Abomination Vaults campaign that started off with the game’s beginner box. They’re currently running Rusthenge, which is a different beginner’s adventure. They also have a series of “teaching Pathfinder 2e to VTubers” campaigns, which… They’re good, but they’re just the beginner’s box over and over again, with different cartoon variety streamers. They use Foundry, and play gridded combat.
- Encounter design and balancing is easy for the busy GM
- Teamwork is highly encouraged through class and ability design
ngl, you’re selling it.
Anything that improves combat is a win in my book. I’ve switched to Cyberpunk RED, and I’m discovering that good combat is hard to make in either system, but encouraging teamwork is a nice way to take a little load off the GM.
If you’re looking to run a cyberpunk setting with Pathfinder, I’d recommend checking out Starfinder 2e. It’s currently wrapping up playtesting, and will be out in late July. It uses the core PF2 rules and is fully compatible with them, but a new set of classes, ancestorys and equipment for a science fantasy setting. If I ever run Shadowrun again I’ll probably use Starfinder as the rules.
Neat! Thanks for mentioning that.
The bestiary is also really good (and free!). There are thousands of enemies, most of which have solid gimmicks that tell you straight from the stat block how you can best run the creature. And the they’re balanced to the same levels as players, so encounter power budgets are very intuitive.
The game gets a bit of a bad rap for having “nitpicky” rules, but people often seem to fail to recognize that the rules are spelling out how people already usually resolve things, rather than introducing something novel. It’s written in a very systematized way, and people aren’t used to reading about their intuitive experiences in systematized language.
The game’s broader community’s obsession with rules orthodoxy doesn’t help…
thousands of enemies, most of which have solid gimmicks that tell you straight from the stat block how you can best run the creature
That’s exactly what I want. I spent so much time looking at https://www.themonstersknow.com/ when DMing 5e. I like encounter design, but I feel like I had to work hard to make it passable, rather than work hard to make it excellent.
It’s with noting that the adventure paths and Paizo one-shots are also all very well-written (from the perspective of a novice GM). I’ve sat down with a group of 11yo kids after giving the adventure a 15-minute glance and been able to run a pretty decent session with next to no prep time.
I’ve also found that it’s really easy to convert D&D 3.x and PF1 modules to the system. Not so easy that thought and care doesn’t need to be put into it, but most creatures are based off of the 3e monsters, and there’s a similar philosophy of DC adjustments. So, you get both Paizo’s catalogue of well designed adventure books, as well as a massive back catalogue of classic favourites that you can dig out for a relatively modest effort.
That sounds great!
I ended up using a remix of the 5e Waterdeep: Dragonheist module because it really didn’t work for me. It would be a nice change to use a well-written module.
I’ve Cyberpunk RED’s Tales of the RED to be hit or miss. Some adventures are great, but many are meh.
For me it’s the 3 actions per turn. So much nicer to still have a turn even after I rolled an attacked and missed.
How did I forget to put that on my list? I love not worrying about action types and if I can do this action as this other kind of action. I just have to count to three.
Oh! Dread is fantastic at the thing it is good at, which is horror one-shot sessions. The rules are incredibly lightweight, which makes it nice for people who have never played and RPG before or people who just want to jump into a story. By using a real, physical Jenga tower as the mechanic everyone can see the tension building up as the story goes on and the crash always provides a good jump scare. Then there is a tension break as the tower is rebuilt but goes up again as the initial pulls for missing party members happen. I also love the 20 questions style character creation, which lets people put as much or as little work into it as they want, doesn’t get bogged down in mechanics which break immersion, and lets the GM really surprise them with difficult dilemmas.
dread is awesome, sacrificing oneself by causing an explosion to collapse a mine shaft full of giant spiders and toppling that tower is one of the coolest things i’ve seen on a table.
Okay but as long as we are complaining about shit we see on RPG forums
“I wish I could do
$thingin DnD”“
$otherSystemhas a very cool subsystem for$thing”“Omg how dare you”
Had this conversation enough times to make it a pet peeve of mine
Anyway the only thing about 5e that does suck is Wizards of the Coast. Otherwise it’s fine. It’s just fine. You can have fun with it.
I’m more of a Pathfinder 2e guy tho.
Anyway the only thing about 5e that does suck is Wizards of the Coast.
The race/class system, the leveling mechanics, the Vancian Magic mechanics, and the general need to get into conflicts in order to progress the story / advance your characters has been a thorn in the side of the entire d20 universe from day one.
5e stripped out a lot of the math (which is good for bringing in new players but bad because actually having lots of gritty math in a game can be part of the fun of designing and playing) and smoothed the edges off 3.5e. But 4e also did this arguably too aggressively, giving us a game that was so bland and so generic that people flocked to alternatives for a good five years.
WotC is a mixed bag of old school TTRPG nerds and corporate suits that have somehow managed to keep the game cheap and fun while heavily investing in promotion. As enshittification goes, it could have been a lot worse. They’re a meaningful improvement over TSR, which is a low fucking bar. Lots to dislike, but nothing I can point to that I wouldn’t find in another system easily enough.
I’m more of a Pathfinder 2e guy tho.
IMHO, the math on PF2e is bad. They stripped out a lot of the more interesting abilities and features of 1e to make the game simpler. But, as a result, writing encounters is a balancing act between “trivially easy” and “functionally impossible”. Like, why even use the d20 if you’re going to build a game this way? Just make it an entirely points-based resource management game, with High Fantasy color.
I’d rather run up against the Big Red Dragon and have my DM say “You swing with all your might, but the beast barely notices” than to get handed a d20 while the DM laughs up his sleeve.
Those are all just
Like
Your opinion
Man
(Whereas wotc being a terrible company that mistreats its players is straight up fact)
I would say that the main thing that “sucks” about DnD is that DnD has often been portrayed as appealing to the kind of nerdy rules-lawyers that like to argue “hey, the rules say (x) so I can do (ridiculous thing)” and end up in a big argument with their DM about what the rules do and do not say. A lot of my groups have been like this, and it’s okay for a game to cater towards that specific playstyle.
I’m not trying to make a value judgement whether this is a good or a bad way to play a game. It’s also just one of many ways to play the game. You can (and given the stuff I talk about below, perhaps you should!) play it differently, but regardless it is quite a common table-style that the various holders of the DnD IP have encouraged throughout its history.
What is a problem is that this kind of playstyle can often be quite acrimonious, especially when combined with adversarial DM styles, and arguments can get rather heated and angry. I’ve heard many a tale of a group that split up over a rules argument that left everyone at the table too angry and frustrated to stick together as a group.
DnD 4e made huge strides to mitigating these problems by having a whole lot of very tightly defined keywords and language which could almost always be resolved into a solid, consistent, official ruling. You had to do a lot of work to learn exactly how the language was being used, but it was possible to get a table of six rules lawyers to sit down and develop a shared understanding of what the rules meant - and know there was a right answer to any specific question.
DnD 5e has taken huge strides to re-introducing the uncertainty in the system, by very loosely defining how things work, or not providing official answers at all, preferring to go with a “the DM will make a ruling” approach. This can be a nightmare for groups that like to have a defined, correct, answer to things.
Now of course, many alternate systems take this stance as a given “The rules are a set of loose guidelines, the GM will run the game and just make up a lot of the rules on the spot.” - and this has a lot of advantages. It makes it easier to write systems because you don’t have to be completely rigorous, and it leaves the GM with the freedom to run the game they want, and it encourages players to not get hung up on the details - all healthy…
But DnD is in the unique position of already having proven with 4e that it can nail down a rigorous set of principles and a style guide that leaves ambiguity behind, courting a whole section of RPG players who desire that, and then retreating from that position with a new, fuzzier, system document.
Why is this a “problem” for DnD specifically? Well… I find it’s extremely common on internet forums like this one for a person to say “I was in a game and (x) happened” and then immediately three different arguments spawn, running in separate directions, all founded on the premise that the poster is playing the game wrong or doesn’t understand the rules. It’s exhausting.
DnD has often been portrayed as appealing to the kind of nerdy rules-lawyers that like to argue
Not a totally unfair critique, but also not unique to D&D.
I’d say the bigger issue tends to be around certain players feeling creative or desperate and trying to lean into the plot/setting with less respect for the rules. So, for instance, “If I can’t move the big rock with a Strength check alone, can I get some ropes and set up a pulley system?” <throws a bunch of math at the table> “See? This should give me a 3x multiplier to my Strength, so I should be able to move it easily?” And the DM just looks at that, shakes his head, and replies “All that’ll do is give you Advantage (and if you move the rock you’ll derail my plot)”.
But more broadly, I’d say the problem with D&D is that it’s inevitably the same Medieval High Fantasy setting in one way or another. The format of the game is geared towards the classic Journey to Mordor, with challenges and story beats and pacing to match. It doesn’t play well with modern settings, because modern and futuristic technology tends to trivialize magic (especially under the Vancian system). It doesn’t play well with the Horror genre, because the game rewards “winning” rather than “survival”. It doesn’t play well with PC antagonists/betrayers as the class system puts you at a huge disadvantage when you’re not working as a team, so heel-turns and dramatic reveals can leave players with a sour taste in their mouths in a way a game more explicitly geared towards Finding The Traitor does not.
But DnD is in the unique position of already having proven with 4e that it can nail down a rigorous set of principles and a style guide that leaves ambiguity behind, courting a whole section of RPG players who desire that, and then retreating from that position with a new, fuzzier, system document.
As I understood it, 4e was an attempt to bridge the gap between the strategic tabletop genre and the D&D style of play. It was a kind-of Return To Chainmail, with this whole vision of the game really going back to these very grandious geographical set-pieces and large army combats, with the heroes playing as champions of great armies rather than rag-tag murder hobos. Very much inspired by Warhammer and Warcraft.
5e was more of a back-to-basics dungeon crawling game, keeping the streamlining of 4e but reintroducing a lot of the customization and flavor of 3e/2e/1e.
But they were still ultimately board games in practice. Positioning your models to flank or ambush or avoid a fireball remained a pivotal part of the game. Hell, the very act of flinging a fireball or swinging a sword to resolve a conflict was a fundamental cornerstone of the game.
Compare that to a game of Vampire or Call of Cthulhu, where a lot of the story is about investigating a conspiracy and surviving when you are surrounded by people who want to kill (and very likely eat) you, who you cannot trivially club to death in response. That’s the real bridge that you have to get people over. This idea that you’re not going into the spooky old house to simply loot it and bludgeon to death everything you find inside. The idea that you’re not playing in a world where Good Guys and Bad Guys are these equal-but-opposite forces clashing together along a territorial border. The idea that magic isn’t natural and meddling with these kinds of arcane forces comes at a terrible price.
Nevermind how the character sheets are all topsy turvy and new players - especially players coming from D&D - simply do not know how to build/play a character that isn’t geared to punch every problem directly in the face.
Why is this a “problem” for DnD specifically?
It’s a problem with any game that abstracts away reality in favor of dice and event tables, but still expects the players to Theater of the Mind their way through the abstractions.
This is all fine. I’m not arguing that this is a problem for ONLY DnD… It’s just that was the subject at hand, and it’s a problem with DnD.
I’d say the bigger issue tends to be around certain players feeling creative or desperate and trying to lean into the plot/setting with less respect for the rules.
This is an interesting point, but I would not say that the problem is with “certain players.”
DnD is heavily marketed and promoted as THE ttrpg. The default. The one for everyone. WotC talk about the game as being designed for an extremely broad pool of players, of many different styles. Players who want a more narrative experience, with less of a focus on rules are also a the target market for the system. If WotC say the game is for them, and the game doesn’t handle what they want from it, then the problem is either with the game design, or with the game’s promotion, marketing and reputation.
It’s interesting that my post was largely about how DnD 5e fails to cater towards people who want a strict set of rules for simulations, and your argument is about how DnD fails to cater towards people who want a loose set of rules that can be bent. I’m a firm believer that when you try to please everyone, you please nobody, and this is DnD’s biggest weakness as a system: If you have a strongly cohesive group of players who want a specific style, DnD will do an okay job at it, but there will always be a better system out there. It’s the ready meal you put in the microwave because it’s easy, not the specific gourmet restaurant that does that one dish you love perfectly.
DnD’s not really trying to cater towards any specific niche though - the design wants to appeal to the widest audience possible. By trying to cater to every style, it means you can pull together a group of players with a range of preferences, and put them in the same game. That’s a big part of why it’s got so much ubiquity after all. The logistics of setting up a group to play are rough for a lot of people, and just being able to put a game together is easier when your system promises fun to a wider range of players.
5e needs a better way to balance encounters than Challenge Rating. It also has important rules for players in the DM book. Both of which are problems you can work around.
Yeah, it’s basically fine. It got a lot of new people interested in RPGs (and Critical Role certainly helped, too). If they’re all now looking for other systems to play, that’s fine, too.
Hexxen is pretty amazing. The rules are extremely simple, but maintain enough complexity to still be fun and it knows what it wants to be and focuses on its core goals. Investigation is fun and engaging, combat is fast and dangerous, but not necessarily deadly and there are numerous interesting character classes that you can combine to build exactly the witch hunter you want.
Other than that, I’m working on my own system with a combat experience similar to DnD, but the social complexity and character customisability of The Dark Eye.
No no no … 5e 2024 sucks.
No, 5e sucks. And it’s most obvious when you play on level 1. DnD is a superhero sim with paper cutouts for humans. When you leave put the super powers, then the characters can’t really do anything. Like… at all.
Combat is DnD’s only fleshed out system. Everything else is just “roll a D20” and sometimes add your proficiency modifier depending almost entirely on your class. Give me 20 different bards and I bet 18 of them will have a 90% overlap in the proficiencies they choose.
During combat, the wizard throws fireballs, the cleric casts spiritual weapon and the barbarian rages. During investigations the wizard rolls an investigation check, the cleric rolls an investigation check and the barbarian does nothing because they dumped wisdom.
That’s why DnD sucks!
Dunno. In my 5e game the Sentinel, Guardian, and Consular get force powers.
In another 5e game the group piloted techs and fought giant monsters (Pacific Rim).
In a few months we will be running Return of the Living Dead 5e.
You just sound burnt out on the fantasy trope, not 5e.
So, what you’re telling me is 5e works well for combat. Which is exactly what I wrote.
But combat isn’t the only aspect of a tabletop roleplaying game. Far from it. Sure, if all you want to do is play out your superhero fantasy of killing ever bigger foes, then DnD works well enough I guess. But for me, that gets boring real fast. I want drama, mystery, social encounters, wilderness survival, interesting travelling etc. DnD does none of this.
A combat system is all that a TTRPG really is. There may be rules for travel, crafting, and skill checks … but the games only real purpose is to set guidelines.
All of the things you have mentioned are campaign issues, not system issues. Mystery, social encounters, interesting traveling… that is ALL the responsibility of the person running the game. No one should need a random set of tables to roll on to tell them that “Colonel Mustard killed someone in the library with a candlestick”.
Lol, what? 😂😂😂😂😂😂
You’ve either never left the DnD bubble, or you’re just blatantly ignorant towards 90% of what tabletop roleplaying games are! Seriously, that’s the shittiest shittake I’ve ever heard when it comes to TTRPGs. I seriously hope you’re joking, but I’m afraid you’re not.
At least a third of the TTRPG systems I play don’t even have combat rules because it’s just so irrelevant in these systems. And then there’s the vast majority of systems like Vampires: The Masquerade, Call of Cuthulu, fate, etc. where conbat exists, but is almost completely irrelevant. I’ve played in several groups that go multiple sessions without a single combat encounter and it never felt lile combat was important or missing.
TLDR: Lol 😂😂😂😂😂😂
Some people will argue on the internet about anything.
Player 1 posts “this system sucks, it’s nothing but combat, there are no travel events or mysteries”
Player 2 responds “That’s not the system’s issue, it is the Gamemaster’s. A system does not create a murder mystery storyline, the gamemaster does. The system is just a ruleset”
Player 1 basically responds “I play sessions all the time with no conbat, a third of the ttrpg systems I play dont even have conbat … here I will name three systems that I dont think conbat is important in: one has a massively detailed conbat system with limitless power combinations where vampires literally fight werewolves, fae, and wizards, one has a conbat system so brutal that it can drive players insane, and one has an amazingly cinematic conbat system. lol u dumb and only know D&D, the GM can’'t control the narrative … it’s the system that has to do it.”
Player 2 Responds “Sure man, whatever”
Everything you just said is opinion and subjective.
The only thing that sucks here is you for believing that your opinion is a universal truth and the arrogance of believing that everyone else is wrong.
Reddit awaits your return.
The only thing subjective here is the very first sentence. Everything else is either fact and enforced by the way DnD is designed or an example to illustrate said fact.
What exactly is subjective about the fact that DnD doesn’t have any depth or variety when it comes to anything besides combat?
Oh, and before you answer. Homebrew and cinematic encounters are not part of DnD as a system and using them in your argument will only strengthen my point.
During investigations the wizard rolls an investigation check, the cleric rolls an investigation check and the barbarian does nothing because they dumped wisdom
You might be playing it wrong.
During investigations Wizard checks the books in the library, references his own notes, chats up local researcher community. Creates and sends Arcane Eye, spreads his familiars, tries Clairvoyance.
Cleric visits a local church, talks to the priests and churchgoers, prays to the Divine, maybe convinces the town to join her in the crusade against the target and lits the town on fire, while villages attack the nobleman mansion looking for the culprit and plunder.
Barbarian goes to the local tavern to drink with the local guards. Helps local elder find his kitten. Maybe talks to a local hunter and they bond over a bear hunt they just finished, maybe about the beauty of wilderness… One things leads to another, a secret touch, a hidden look, a moment of courage, a stolen kiss… What I was talking about?
Yes, that’s called roleplaying. And there’s nothing, not a single line in any book that supports any of this!
Everything about this scenario works pretty much exactly the same if the Barbarian goes to the library and references his notes, the wizard visits the local church and convinces the town to to join their crusade and the cleric goes to the tavern, sves the kitten, drinks with the guards, etc. Every character does everything exactly the same.
Let me give you a counter example in a system that actually does this well. In The Dark Eye, the wizard goes to the local library because they have several talents and skills that help them find and organize information in books, the cleric talks to the local clergy who respect him du to his “social standing” value and “clergical vow” skill. The barbarian actually put some points into “carousing” which makes them a solid drinker and their “local contact” skill may give them a pointer towards the old lady with the cat problem.
I see what you’re saying, but… To me that’s okay? I don’t need to follow the book for all that shiet? You don’t need to overspecialize on your character sheet.
In DnD/Pathfinder you grab the Lore/Knowledge/etc skill for a wide range of actions. The nobility will respect your cleric because it’s a cleric, has a symbol of the order, ecclesiastic rank from the roleplaying, but if she can’t persuade for shiet, she’ll loose that initial respect quickly.
Have you ever played Shadowrun? I think I left that system the moment my DM decided to reference table for jumping out of a riding car by / brand / speed / manoeuvre / skill level to determine my damage.
The Dark Eye is that German thingy, right? I never liked it as a system, it felt constraining. On the other hand, my favourite system is Fudge, so we might just like different things.
Agreed, Shadowrun overdoes it with its thousands of rules and The Dark Eye also has its problems. Especially when it comes to combat. But DnD is on the other side of that spectrum. It’s just severely lacking any kind of character depth.
That’s why I’m working on my own system trying to balance the complex, but meaningful character creatuon choices of system like Shadowrun and The Dark Eye with the combat of DnD.
And yes, it seems like we do have different preferences here. The only thing I always wonder is: Why do people who obviously prefer a rules light set of rules play something as rigid and overcomplicated as DnD. Wouldn’t you find far more enjoyment in systems lile fate or savage worlds?
Why do people who obviously prefer a rules light set of rules play something as rigid and overcomplicated as DnD.
Because the entry barrier is low, a lot of groups playing DnD/Pathfinder, tons of content, it’s mainstream, celebrities play it so the rules are shallowly known to a lot of people.
At least that’s my take.
Wouldn’t you find far more enjoyment in systems lile fate or savage worlds?
Fate is Fudge, and as I mentioned I prefer it over DnD
5e is fantastic. It presents the standard combat-centric D&D rules, and provides a lot of freedom for players and DMs to fill in whatever rules they find most enjoyable.
Levels 1-3 are designed for the express purpose of onboarding new players, so complaining that it doesn’t fully represent D&D, is pretty silly - it’s supposed to be simplified.
I will agree with the facts behind your comments on the skill system, if not the exaggerations. I would prefer a looser system, akin to those from Fate, Cypher or Daggerheart, to allow for more creative freedom.
D&D doesn’t suck - it’s a combat centric system, as it always has been.
4e already sucked. 3 Series were the last good ones.
All you’ve done is permanently write off any opinion you have on a replacement. It’s insanely arrogant to push your own opinion as fact but even more so when the thing you’re shitting on is something people actively enjoy and then expecting anyone will pay attention to a thing you say.
Yes! Thank you!
One Roll Engine is my obsessive small-time RPG system. I’ve always loved systems where you get to roll a heap of d10s, but more importantly it has a highly expressive and generalizable core mechanic that allows everyone to roll at once without taking turns, and attacks resolve in a dynamic fashion so that initiative order, damage, hit location, and contested rolls all happen in one roll. It’s great for gritty, fast-paced, lethal combats where you can give players a lot of freedom to get creative and stay engaged. It has great rules for easily killed mooks as well, so you can quite easily have huge numbers of enemies and allies all in one battle, and it takes far less time to resolve each turn - and a far greater proportion of that time is people talking about what they’re going to do. Reign uses ORE, and that includes rules for running companies (gangs, businesses, armies, entire countries even). I’ve used ORE variants to run occult horror, mecha, low-magic fantasy, slice of life, robot sci-fi, and more over the years. It’s a great system and I can teach 85% of what you need to play in just a few minutes.
Nope. You play what you want. I, however, will not play any game from a company that demonstrably dislikes its customers. So far, wizards of the Coast and games workshop are on my list. In the electronic space, EA, Microsoft, and Sony.
No D20 games is the rule I have lived by for decades now.
I’m of a similar, if slightly more relaxed opinion. I’m old enough to have played AD&D from the art-spined books (published before the yellow spines) and was a vocal supporter of TSR. I actually like the 3.5 ruleset, and I’m happy to play any of the indie projects based on the 3.5 SRD; SG-1 was a particular favorite of mine. Just don’t ask me to support WotC today either directly or indirectly, especially after this last attempt at a power grab.
It’s hard to extoll the virtues of my chosen system (Pathfinder2e) without comparing it to the issues of where I find 5e lacking.
That said, what I love about 2e is the great encounter balance, almost every single “build” for a class is viable, and when you say “I’m playing a rogue” there are like 4 major types of rogues that all feel like they play differently instead of just some tacked on homebrew class. Adding free archetype rules (supported by the system creators themselves in their books) adds even more customizability.
One of my favorite things is that PF2e makes it feel like it makes encounter design fun again; martials actually have more options than just walk up and attack repeatedly, spacing matters, defenses matter. Most classes have some sort of gimmick that makes them play differently. Been working with my girlfriend to make a swashbuckler for the game I am DMing, and the panache/bravado/finisher mechanics really excite us from a roleplay and gameplay standpoint.
The three action system is way more flexible than the action/bonus action system. You can spend all 3 actions on a huge spell and burn your entire turn. You can move away from enemies to force them to burn an action or flank them to gain bonuses to attack for yourself and allies. You can apply debuffs using your main stats with actions like Demoralize, and still attack or move on your turn.
You constantly gain feats, and they are what defines your character so much. No longer do you get a “choice” of an ASI or feat. You get ones every level. There are ancestry tests from your race, class feats, skill feats, archetype feats. They don’t just make you stronger, they instead give you more possible actions, give you unique traits, like being able to fight while climbing or use deception to detect when someone is lying instead of perception.
Also, you can find every rule for free online @ Archives of Nethys. No more being gated by purchases outside of adventure paths.
I could keep going, and I really want to extoll how awesome Golarion is, and the pantheon of gods, and everything. But I will stop here. Would happily answer anyone’s questions about the system, I love it. It gave me true passion for tabletop RPGs while DnD5e made me feel really mildly about it.
Runequest
No character classes: everyone can fight, everyone gets magic, everyone worships a god (with a few exceptions), and your character gets better at stuff they do or stuff they get training in. The closest there is to a character class is the choice of god your character worships (which dictates which Rune spells your character might have) but there is plenty of leeway to play very different worshippers of the same god.
No levels: your character gets better at stuff they do or stuff they get training in. As they progress in their god’s cult they also get access to more Rune spells.
Intuitive percentile ‘roll under’ system: an absolute newbie who’s never played any RPG before can look at their character sheet and understand how good their character is at their skills: “I only have 15% in Sneak, but a 90% Sword skill - reckon I’m going in swinging!'”
Hit locations: fights are very deadly and wounds matter, “Oh dear, my left leg’s come off!”
Passions and Runes: these help guide characterisation,and can also boost relevant skill rolls in a role-playing driven way, e.g invoking your Love Family passion to try and augment your shield skill while defending your mother from a marauding broo.
Meaningful religions: your character’s choice of deity and cult provides direction, flavour, and appropriate magic. Especially cool when characters get beefy enough to start engaging in heroquesting - part ceremonial ritual, part literal recreation of some story from the god time.
No alignment: your character’s behaviour can be modified by their passions, eg “Love family” or “Hate trolls”, and possibly by the requirements of whatever god you worship, but otherwise is yours to play as you see fit in the moment without wondering if you’re being sufficiently chaotic neutral.
Characters are embedded in their family, their culture, and the cult of the god they worship: the game encourages connections to home, kith, kin, and cult making them more meaningful in game and, in the process, giving additional background elements to take the edge of murder hoboism (though if that’s what the group really wants then that’s a path they can go down (see MGF, next)).
YGMV & MGF: Greg Stafford, who created Glorantha, the world in which Runequest is set, was fond of two sayings. The first is “Your Glorantha May Vary”. If is a fundamental expectation, upheld by Chaosium, that while they publish the ‘canonical’ version of Glorantha any and every GM has the right to mess with it for the games they run. Find the existence of feathered humanoids with the heads, bills, and webbed feet of ducks to be too ridiculous for your game table? Then excise them from the game with Greg’s blessing! The second is the only rule that trumps YGMV, and that is that the GM should always strive for “Maximum Game Fun”.
While we’re on the subject of Glorantha, the world of Glorantha! It’s large and complex and very well developed in some areas (notably Dragon Pass and Prax) but with plenty of space for a GM to insert their own creations. It is, without doubt, one of the contenders for best RPG setting of all time.
To continue on the subject of Glorantha, there is insanely deep and satisfying lore if you want to go full nerdgasm on it. But you can play and enjoy the game with a sliver-thin veneer of knowledge: “I’m playing a warrior who worships Humakt, the uncompromising god of honour and Death.” The RQ starter set contains everything you need to get a real taste for the game (ie minimal lore) and is great value for money since it’s what Chaosium hope will draw people in.
Ducks: ducks are cool and not to be under-estimated.
Ducks: ducks are cool and not to be under-estimated.
I just finished playing through a short Runequest campaign, and it’s certainly an interesting system and setting. It’s extremely “oldschool” in feel (probably stemming from the fact that it’s been around for forever.)
The big struggle with Runequest and Glorantha is that there’s just so MUCH of it, and a lot of the setting is rather dry. It’s a little like reading a history book, except you have to learn what everything means, because it’s a self-contained setting. I feel it appeals quite strongly to people who want a lot of “lore” and history in their game, and who want to really get into the weeds of what a political marrage between these two clan leaders means for future trade agreements and military alliances. People who like their fantasy stories to have an index in the back of character names with a pronunciation guide, and their family trees and stuff.
Like… the first hour of character creation was rolling through d20 tables that randomized the eventual fates of each PC’s grandparents through various wars and major historical events, so we could determine stuff like “is your family famous?” and “how much do you hate wolf pirates?”
Anyway, here’s my girl Tikaret, she’s a priestess of Issaries, and she discovered one of his lost aspects on a heroquest once.
