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.
let me tell you about daggerheart!
having combed through a good portion of ttrpgs that have come out over the last 20 years, and having played a version of d&d since the 90s, i’ve found a system that does a lot of what i’ve been after and i’m hoping that it’s popularity continues to grow.
things i like:
- new player friendly (either new to ttrpgs or new to this system particularly)
- heroic curve for player actions (2d12 > 1d20)
- narrative driven, but still tied to mechanics (in combat action doesn’t grind to a halt, which allows for a flow that i more appreciate.)
- degrees of success and failure (allowing for more gradient resolution to checks, which then allows for more opportunity for tension)
- hope & fear as mechanics (hope being used by players to boost what they do and fear being used by the gm to facilitate opposition. i like that there’s a tangible correlation between failure and the walls closing in.)
- the structure of monster and environment stat blocks (these work really well for me and it makes it easy to frame something with the mechanics with little effort).
- the emphasis on collaborative storytelling. (this is something i think either a lot of ttrpgs just don’t do, do a bad job at getting across, or gms/dms don’t take into account. i like being a fan of my players. i do not like the ‘me vs them’ mentality of running a game. this is the player’s story, i’m just furnishing it with extra layers and adding complications when things don’t go their way.)
if you like a heroic, narrative-driven fantasy system that makes combat less of a wargame, but doesn’t pull it’s punches, then i think this one is a good shout. i feel like it has enough rules to give players direction and enforce narrative choices, but removes some of the things i feel make other systems feel tedious or unrealistic.
other systems that i’ve eyed but haven’t had a chance to play yet:
- delta green (high on my list. horror/conspiracy setting that put regular folks up against lovecraftian horrors. not to solve or understand it, but to end it. it’s like call of cthulhu but you hate your job and you want to go home.)
- lancer (epic mecha building fantasy. make a big beautiful bot from a ridiculously large number of options over time and fight. super duper crunchy)
- the wildsea (post apocalyptic fantasy of sailing on the treetops of an overgrown world and dealing with what’s left behind after nature takes back the planet)
- mothership (aliens the ttrpg. shit goes down on spaceships. you will probably die in a spectacular way. it will be fun.)
most of these recommendations have come from quinns quest on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/@Quinns_Quest) and having followed quinns from board gaming to video gaming to ttrpgs, I feel like he does a great job of highlighting a lot of overlooked gems in this space. if not just to check out the possibilities that are afforded to you when you step outside the box of what has become popular, but to experience games that people put a lot of love into and it definitely shows in their work.
as a last point, i think it’s okay to be critical of things, even things that we enjoy. often times the things we like the most are the things we’re most critical of. i personally have watched d&d grow from ad&d to where it is now, and still play it. mostly because it’s popular and the people i play games with know it well. they’re the same people i’ve been making great strides with in terms of introducing new systems and showcasing all the neat stuff people have made. i’m not a fan of d&d anymore. mostly because i’ve grown tired of it, but also because of all the baggage that it has (wotc and hasbro being the biggest two). but i am a fan of tabletop gaming and getting together with friends to have fun. i think that’s the primary goal, so whatever you use to facilitate that is fine. just don’t close the door on criticism because you don’t want to hear anything negative about what makes you happy. open the door to new things.
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 think part of the problem is that 5e is so pervasive and baked into the “people who play TTRPGs” population that you need to sell them on why 5e isn’t good before you can get them to consider why your alternative is good.
Frankly, I’m a White Wolf die-hard. I love Exalted. I love Werewolf. I love Mage. I tolerate Vampire. But as soon as I show someone a set of d10s and try to talk them out of the idea of “Leveling” they get scared and run back to the system they’re familiar with. I also have a special place in my heart for Rollmaster/Hackmaster/Palladium and the endless reams of % charts for every conceivable thing. And then there’s Mechwarrior… who doesn’t love DMing a game where each model on the board has to track it’s heat exhaust per round? But by god! The setting is so fucking cool! (Yes, I know about Lancer).
I will freely admit that these systems aren’t necessarily “better” than 5e (or the d20 super-system generally speaking). But they all have their own charms. The trick is that selling some fresh new face on that glorious story climax in which three different Traditions of Magi harmonize their foci and thereby metaphorically harmonize fundamental concepts of society is hard to do on its face. By contrast, complaining about the generic grind of a dice-rolling dungeon crawl is pretty straightforward and easy.
If you lead with “Thing you like is actually bad”, their immediate response will be to disagree with you and start defending the thing they like. And if you want someone to listen to your arguments, rather than just try to poke holes in them, you must avoid putting them on the defensive.
To get through to people, find common ground and build off that. “If you like FEATURE in GAME, you’ll probably love SIMILAR FEATURE in OTHER GAME because…” is something that’s actually going to get someone interested, rather than start a pointless argument :)
If you lead with “Thing you like is actually bad”
Why would you assume the critiques are of things they like? 5e has plenty of widely recognized flaws.
To get through to people, find common ground and build off that.
Often, simply catering to people’s priors means never leaving their comfort zone.
Sute, but the thing they like is “D&D”, and D&D isn’t just a game anymore, it’s an identity signifier. Pointing people to other games before establishing yourself as firmly not attacking their identity is going to trigger a fight.
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.
This is called the X/Y problem. You ask “how do I use X to do Y”, and the answer is you don’t. You don’t even want to. You want to do Y, and just assumed that X is how you’d do it. So the answer might actually be “don’t use X.”
To some people, they see your question as “How can I do [thing] in [game that does not do thing]?” Since they see it as an inherently flawed question, they try to fix your root issue and explain how to do [thing]. It’s not the answer you wanted, but it might be the one you need.
I will admit, some people just like to shit on [game you’re playing], and will take every opportunity to hype up [game they’re playing]. But just as often, I see people defending [game they’re playing] just because they’re already playing it. And there is no harm in playing multiple games.
I have a game on my shelf built for pure fight scenes that can’t do downtime (Panic at the Dojo), and a game built for wholesome slice-of-life that doesn’t let you do combat (Golden Sky Stories). They simply cannot do what the other does, and I wouldn’t like either of them as much if they did.
The thing is, this applies much less firmly to an imagination game where you can easily bolt on a sub-system to do that one thing you wanted to do differently than, say, if someone wants to beat in a screw with a hammer.
And yes, maybe there are people who want to gut their whole game and rebuild it from scratch for some reason, just because they really love sailing on their ship of Thesus, and would be better served by trying a new system. But if they don’t want to do that, someone trying to redirect the conversation in that direction are going to be viewed as hostile and smug, not helpful.
I have seen people try to add systems to D&D to let them play Dragon Age within the system. I have then turned my head to the left and looked at the Dragon Age RPG on my shelf. If you want to play Dragon Age as a TTRPG, I’ll tell you the easiest way to do that. No gutting, no retrofitting, no ship of Theseus…
If you see that as hostile, that’s on you.
It’s not on them, though. They didn’t ask if there was a Dragon Age RPG, they asked if they could play Dragon Age in D&D.
Those are different questions.
And here’s the thing. You can’t really tell them “no”, because they know it’s an imagination game where the rules are whatever the table decides upon. They’re not asking if, they are asking how.
See, that’s the point of the XY problem. They asked the wrong question.
Playing Dragon Age in D&D simply would not work. Even after a significant amount of effort, you’d either end up with something entirely unlike Dragon Age or something that barely resembles D&D. So I have to tell them “no” or I’m lying. And if someone stops listening and considers me hostile because I’m not willing to lie to them, then it’s absolutely on them.
They didn’t ask the wrong question, though. You’re seeing a solution they do not want and do not care about then blaming them for not listening to the unsolicited advice.
The problem isn’t on their end.
No, they definitely asked the wrong question. If they ask “how can I do [thing]”, it assumes it’s possible to do [thing]. But if they can’t do [thing], the question is invalid, and there is no correct answer.
Honestly, the way you put it, it’s like they don’t actually want to fix the problem. They just want their solution to be right. Anyone who doesn’t tell them what they want to hear is the REAL problem, even if what they want to hear is a lie.
Do you want me to lie?
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.
