this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025
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[–] Zannsolo@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Dungeon crawl classic, start with 3-5 level 0 chars each and hope the best rolled character survives the initial onslaught. Using magic is dangerous, a miscast spell could leave you disfigured or worse. Thick boy rule book.

[–] DerArzt@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

It's also fun that critical success and critical fail has the player (or enemy) rolling for a random result from a table.

It was also pretty funny when one of my players cast color spray from the back line, but they cast it to well, so it actually did damage and almost killed a player

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[–] enerhpozyks@eldritch.cafe 3 points 1 day ago

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 !)

[–] ObsidianZed@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I was introduced to flyweight RPGs a few years back and I absolutely love what they can do in the hands of a creative group.

Roll for Shoes is about as minimal as it gets. You will need one D6, and something to track player inventory. The game world is best started by the GM in the abstract, letting the players fill in the world's details through creative use of questions that prompt die rolls. This is fantastic for players that want to stretch their improv skills.

Lasers & Feelings has a tad more structure. Everyone has exactly one stat that sits on a spectrum of "lasers" to "feelings". The difficulty of challenges in the game sit on the same spectrum. Depending on the nature of the challenge and what the player's stat is, a single D6 roll decides the outcome. Everything else is role-playing in what is encouraged to be a Trek-like setting.

In my experience, Roll for Shoes usually turns into a cartoon-esque "let's see what else is in my backpack" affair, that usually ends with everything on fire (because of course it does). Lasers & Feelings typically devolves into Lower Decks. All of these are positives in my book - I'd play again in a heartbeat.

[–] Samskara@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

You might also like TWERP.

[–] 5too@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

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...

[–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Thank you for sparing me the rant I was inhaling to deliver.

The system is so good. You wanna run a political intrigue campaign? Great! Not only are there dozens of skills to navigate the nuances of that style, but there are multiple supplemental guides if you want to get real nitty gritty. You wanna run a hyper-tactical combat heavy campaign? Great! The combat can be extremely rich, with an entire book dedicated to Martial Arts.

You can run any setting you can think of: sci-fi, fantasy, modern, historical, cinematic, realistic. The mechanics are there. But the base system is so simple and modular, you can run it off an index card. I almost think of it less as an RPG than an RPG engine. You really can adapt it to any kind of game concept.

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[–] blanket@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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 in a system 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.

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[–] Semester3383@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I'm a fan of old-school Shadowrun (2nd ed.); it didn't matter how bad-ass your character was, you could get killed by a lucky shot from a punk with a zipgun. It kept the grime of Cyperpunk, and added fantastical elements to it. IMO, it required more role-playing than is strictly necessary in a lot of D&D games, because going in guns blazing all the time was almost certain to lead to death; properly played (IMO), the GM should be brutal in how they handle stupid players.

The downside was so many six sided dice.

[–] Ziggurat@jlai.lu 3 points 1 day ago

The downside was so many six sided dice.

While indeed it can get pretty extreme, it's also so fun to roll handful of dices. This is one of the reason I find dice-pool fun (and not just better statistically speaking)

[–] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

It's sister setting, Earthdawn, also had a lot going for it on top of the typical D&D formula. Weaving, instead of casting magic, was a much more involved process for the player/character which did a lot to ground such awesome power. At the same time, fighters of all stripes were also more or less magic users, which unified the whole rule system in a nice way. The setting itself was a fantasy post-apocalypse, troubled by evil horrors that dominated the landscape in the centuries before. In fact, much of the lore was intertwined with how people survived those times.

And like Shadowrun, there were lots of dice thanks to the "step table" system. It could be a huge PITA to sum all the rolls on high steps, but then when else do you get to roll entire fists full of dice all at once?

[–] Semester3383@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I never had a chance to try Earthdawn, but it looked like a lot of fun.

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[–] Morgoth_Bauglir@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] Dunstabzugshaubitze@feddit.org 22 points 2 days ago (2 children)

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?

[–] AlexanderTheDead@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] kichae@wanderingadventure.party 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] Archpawn@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Mutants and Masterminds is kind of interesting. I like how it's designed so character creation is entirely point buy. There's no classes. No spells. You pay for skills and abilities directly. There's basic powers, and modifiers you can use to make them more interesting. It's also geared towards balance as opposed to simulation, which means you can make whatever type of character you want instead of having to stick with what's optimal.

Unfortunately, it's not well-done. For example, they frequently forget the game uses a log scale and cut numbers in half. Someone with a Dodge rank of -2 who is Vulnerable has their active defenses halved, which brings their Dodge rank up to -1. Equipment is 3 to 4 times cheaper than Devices, with the only differences being flavor (Equipment is something a normal person can get) and a different method of calculating Toughness that very often makes Equipment stronger. I ended up making a list of house rules trying to fix all of them (and admittedly including a few alternate rules that aren't clearly better or worse) that's so long that it would probably be easier to make a new RPG.

I don't suppose I can get any advice on something I would like? My requirements are:

  1. A point buy system that lets you make any character you want.
  2. Costs are based on making characters balanced, and not how literally expensive a piece of equipment would be and that sort of thing.
  3. Must be balanced as far as reasonably possible without massive flaws like M&M.
  4. I'd really like having a wide variety of characters you can make and things you can do. Make it so you can just play a Swarm, or a character of any size class, or anything else you can think of.
[–] RebekahWSD@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

The only way I managed to make a character for M&M was with a generator we found and downloaded. Mostly because my character was a bit...complicated, but it still made it go from an extremely long ordeal to a merely mildly long ordeal! I liked the setting though.

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[–] Wilco@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago (8 children)

No no no ... 5e 2024 sucks.

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[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 11 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] Alwaysnownevernotme@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago

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.

[–] kichae@wanderingadventure.party 14 points 2 days ago (8 children)

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.

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