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
For me it’s the 3 actions per turn. So much nicer to still have a turn even after I rolled an attack 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(And pf2 is basically a more advanced take on what 5e was doing so…)
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.
Did you just, use bash variable syntax in a normal sentence?
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.
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.
I love Pathfinder 2E! I’m a pretty new player, but it’s captured my heart. The three-action economy is great and offers so much freedom. The characters are INSANELY customizable, and I love how multiclassing works. And to top it all off, everything you need to play is free! Only the lore and campaigns have to be purchased. Plus, iirc, Paizo has vowed never to use generative AI in their works!
I literally can’t believe it took us 50 years of ttrgs existing in basically their modern form for us to find the 3 action system. Its so intuitive and liberating compared to every other game system I’ve experienced.
Out of curiosity, what is the 3 action system?
I know FATE has 4 actions (overcome, attack, defend, create an advantage) so did PF merge attack and defend? Or is it a different choice?
You have three actions that you can spend freely on attacking, moving around, etc. If you want to attack more than once, you get a penalty on the roll. Some things and spells cost two actions.
At least fading suns had something similar in the 90’s with one action for free, 2actions with a - 4 and 3 actions a - 6(if my memory is right). The interesting part is that dodging would count as an action and you had to declare your intention at the start of the round.
Other guy gave an okey explanation, but to try my hand at explaining:
On a typical round of combat, you get three actions. You can spend them in a variety of ways. An attack is one action, movement (“stride” action) is one action, most offensive spells are 2 actions, etc.
A lot of classes get ways to “discount” actions. For example an early feat fighters and barbarians can take is “Sudden Charge” which let’s them stride twice and attack an adjacent creature and costs 2 actions.
The whole thing lends so much freedom and takes a lot of burden off the DM for needing to homebrew / make up things on the fly. The whole system is very crunchy though (very detailed and particular on its rules) and so doesn’t fit everyone’s vibes.
Pathfinder - for people that think D&D doesn’t have enough rules!
If anything, I feel like Pf2e is more streamlined than DnD5e overall. At the very least, everything is in just one book.
The way critical success/fail works is better, too. Rolling a nat 20 doesn’t automatically make an unskilled character super good at something, and rolling a nat 1 doesn’t make a super skilled character fumble it completely.
Well there are no crits on checks in 5e, so a nat 20 +0 is no different from a nat 6 +14. And someone with a +14 can’t fail a check with a DC of 15 or lower.
Having Degrees of Success built into the system in PF2 is really neat though. And seems like something DnD could easily incorporate if Wizards had any vision.
d&d 5e is a fine system, it’s just more than i want to gm and more than my friends want to learn. so simpler systems like shadowdark or black hack are really great for us, but if your group knows d&d 5e and has fun playing it, than why the hell not just play 5e?
I play 5e, but:
I feel that the reason people are hating on 5e is not because the system is bad, it is almost exclusively because Wizards and Hasbro tried to fuck everyone over.
There might be certain systems that some people subjectively prefer because they do certain things in a way they prefer, but that literally doesn’t matter, that is subjective. DnD5e is practically a house name at this point. It is popular and well regarded, especially by new players. Anyone who wants to make the claim that the system is bad will have bang their subjective arguments against the steel wall that is its popularity.
So that is to say… the reason to not play 5e is because it’s important to punish WotC and Hasbro, and it’s important to support rising publishers.
alexanderthedead@lemmy.world said in A lesson so many need to learn: > Anyone who wants to make the claim that the system is bad will have bang their subjective arguments against the steel wall that is its popularity.
Yes, but this is a thing that people want to do. They want to try and dent that popularity, and they want to shift some of it towards their own preferences. It doesn’t matter that it’s a subjective opinion on what is better or what is bad, it doesn’t feel subjective to the person interjecting.
They believe their preferred game is better, they probably have had this discussion numerous times with people who have ignored them or chewed them out for trying to evangelize, and they are infinitely frustrated that others won’t see the light.
People who leave popular things behind for niche things often just have this habit of having to bury the thing they left behind. It can’t be good. The new thing is better, but the new thing is better both because it is better, and also because the old thing was just objectively bad.
People do this with a lot of things. TV shows, ice cream flavours, toys they used to play with as kids. There’s a sense of shame attached to having liked the old thing, not just a sense of joy of having found the new one. It’s one of the reasons the people they evangelize to get so defensive: They can sense that they are being judged.
Your formatting broke btw
Aye. NodeBB and Lemmy have a couple of rough edges here and there.
My current DM despises 5e
I think it’s because 3.5 offers such a ludicrous bag of dickfuckery for the GM to employ at their leisure it’s literally like hanging out with someone who insists on cleaning their guns with company over.
I just want to play cyberpunk red again.
GURPS is my go-to system. It’s incredibly flexible, both in what it allows you to do as a player, and what kind of game you can run as a GM.
It’s an older system, and by default is rather simulationist - it grew out of the same tabletop wargaming that D&D did, and tends to take a more realistic approach to what players can do than more narrative systems. I like some of the more narrative systems as well - Starforged is my other go-to system - but the characters always feel a little more loosely defined to me. GURPS is perfectly happy saying “okay, you can fly, you can turn invisible, and you can’t be killed” - but if you want to make your character more nuanced, it’s not only possible, but encouraged!
On the other hand, if you just want to throw something together and go, you can do that too! One of my players has a character sheet that consists of their racial abilities, 5 or 6 regular skills, and a high level “Security!” wildcard skill. And 3 guns. They’re a nightmare in combat, because “Security!” is their all-in-one skill with pistols and melee combat, along with anything else a person with a security background would be expected to know - it’s been rolled against to evaluate patrol schedules, reading a foe’s body language, and shadowing a mark, among other things. That character plays alongside someone with three different templates (classes), a mount, a bevy of different equipment options, and something like 55 different skills - because that player -wanted- that kind of detail. And they’re both very effective in their domains, and play off of each other well.
That’s the thing that really sticks out to me about GURPS - it’s very playable with a very minimal ruleset (GURPS Ultra-Lite is free, and 2 pages - http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/ultra-lite/), and can seamlessly expand when you want more detail. And not only are there a lot of options for that detail, they also show their work - so if you’re still missing something, you can generally still come up with reasonable rules. It just gets a reputation for being super complicated because the people who discover it tend to get excited and throw everything in…
People are very bad at explaining what they like about things, because usually they like things in contrast to things they don’t like. And people who do identify what they like positively often just get told that their input isn’t welcome, either.
The problem isn’t whether someone is focusing on negative aspects of what you’re playing or the positive aspects of what they are, it’s that discussions about minority systems are often just puked up onto people who weren’t asking. The conversation is often:
“Hey, how can I do [thing] in [game I’m playing]?”
“[Game you’re playing] sucks at [thing]/isn’t designed for [thing]. You should play [something else].”
“But I like [game I’m playing], and don’t want to convert to a whole new system.”
This means not only is the asker’s question being totally ignored, but they’re being hit with – sometimes even bombarded by – value judgements they weren’t interested in.
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 off 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”. It 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.
Oh I can do both. Though it’s not necessarily that I think 5e sucks, (maybe 5.5e does though I don’t know it well), but rather that Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro sucks and I refuse to continue to support them.
Although I do have to thank them since I very likely would not have explored other systems so vigorously had they not so visibly shown how greedy they’ve become.
Without saying anything negative about D&D 5e, let me tell you about two of my personal favorites:
The Dark Eye
Under the name “Das Schwarze Auge”, this is one of the most popular systems in Germany and has existed since the mid 80s and the latest edition has been available in English for about a decade now. There are dozens of source books and hundreds of official campaigns and standalone adventures, all set in the same world and a single ongoing canon (apart from a few early works that have been retconned). There are decades of detailed in-world history that you can use as a background for your own campaign if you want or selectively ignore if you want to focus on your own interpretation of what the world should look like.
Mechanics-wise it’s a lot less board-game-like than some 70s/80s/90s systems while not going the full “storytelling first” route that many more moderns systems seem to prefer. On top of the eight basic attributes, characters can select from a pool of skills and feats that cover everything from combat to magic to social interaction to crafts and hobbies. The system focuses a lot less on combat than other high fantasy systems and it’s absolutely viable to have a group of purely social-focused characters that never get into a single fight but still get to use a lot of the system’s mechanics.
Overall it’s relatively complex if you want to use absolutely every rule but at the same time very versatile and can be customized to your playstyle.
Opus Anima / Opus Anima Investigation
Sadly out of print and never officially translated to English so I’ll focus on the one thing that works without the official setting: it’s one of the simplest systems I’ve ever seen. It uses a pool of D2s (odd/even on D6, coins, red/black cards, whatever you have on hand) where the number of dice is determined by a basic attribute and a skill that can be combined however the situation requires. Dexterity + mechanics to build something, perception + mechanics to recognize a mechanism, knowledge + mechanics to understand the underlying principles or remember who invented something. To avoid experienced characters failing an easy check out of pure bad luck, everything over 10 dice is not rolled but gives half a success (rounded up) automatically. That’s it. That’s the whole system.
For anyone (thinking about) playing The Dark Eye:
Check out the character manager/creator Optolith, it’s wonderful!
Oh yeah, big shoutout to @elyukai@mastodon.social and the whole team for creating the best ttrpg software I‘ve ever used.
I absolutely love The Dark Eye in every aspect except for its combat! About half of my campaigns are run in that system and I absolutely love the amount of customization it allows for your characters.
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.
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.
Basic Role-Playing (BRP), which is the system Call of Cthulhu is based on, is a great alternative to D&D as a roleplaying system. It is much easier to learn and understand, everything is based on percentages, and the system can be as mechanically crunchy or open as the DM prefers.
I just started DMing an Ironsworn campaign for my wife. I like that it’s fiction-forward rather than mechanics-forward, and being able to run a campaign built around having only 1 player makes scheduling so simple, reliable, and just an all around good experience.
And a great developer, with an active and very friendly community.
Ironsworn was my first exposure to a fiction-first game! I didn’t really gel with the setting, but still really like the mechanics. Ended up backing Starforged (and later Sundered Isles), that seems like a much better fit for me!
Ours as well! It’s taking some getting used to, but we’re having a blast! I’ve been considering running my own solo campaign with star forged, hopefully I can get that started soon
