A lesson so many need to learn
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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.
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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.
Like, there are ways to reditect people, but just ignoring their question to jump straight to their underlying problem when they don’t acknowledge that solution doesn’t open them up to listening. It shuts them down, it makes them defensive, and it ultimatelt makes them hostile to your suggestions.
That’s not “on them”, because that’s a “you’re kind of shit at communicating” problem.
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.
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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.
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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.
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I’m just straight up tired of this shit on a massive level. It’s pure arrogance and I’m over seeing it.
I don’t find it funny. I find it monumentally irritating to have someone pretend their opinion is fact. I’m just done with it.
Hey, sorry that didn’t hit right.
Since the post was in a meme community, I didn’t take the post as a serious complaint. Memes bring out jokes, that’s part of the point of them. I intended it as a form of commiseration with a bit of tongue in cheek playfulness. If I’d known you were making a real complaint rather than playing with a trope for laughs, I would have made a totally different comment.
So, here’s what I would have said if I had known you were experiencing distress over the issue.
I get it. Back when 3.x was a thing, the old ad&d diehards made the same kind of statements. Now, 5e devotees make the same kind of statements about 3.x, and even ad&d, as well as the ongoing new version coming out. It’s a fairly universal thing.
When it’s said in a lighthearted, unserious way, it can even help bridge players and DMs that are more entrenched with one version or another because it acknowledges that there’s not always compatibility between versions, making play groups harder to arrange since very few people really enjoy learning a new system to play what is (at its core) the same game.
Me and my kid make the same joke to each other, both of us aware that we have played both systems and have a different preference. Me and the DM of my kid’s group talk shit about our preferred versions too. And we piss and moan about the difficulties of running games with players that are most familiar with one edition and having trouble adapting years of play experience in one to a different one.
Like, I’ve got over a grand in 3.x books. At least that, maybe more, I lost track. So I’m not going to pony up a dime to get the equivalent library in 5e, or any future editions. But I’ve had players from 5e, and ad&d in my games (though I haven’t DMed in years at this point). There’s always a learning curve to a different edition. It places an artificial barrier of entry to the underlying game. So most people will commit to one version and stick with it.
When they do try others, what they see is changes that are a pain in the ass for fairly minor benefits, along with one or two great ideas. Us 3.x folks look at bounded accuracy, or advantage/disadvantage and drool a little, but there’s no way we’d switch just for that when the rest of the edition is just different, not better. 5e folks look at the 3.x prestige classes and how easy they are to home brew and really make a unique character but look at all the imbalances in the base classes and nope the fuck out
And don’t even ask about how newer players stare blankly at you while you try to explain thac0. Or how a black hole of despair forms and sucks your brain in trying to explain a truly awkward and counterintuitive system like thac0 in the first place.
There’s no such thing as a perfect system. They’re all approximations of fantasy settings (I’m talking about standard d&d here, but there’s no perfect system in other types of games either), and approximations simply can’t fit every situation every time.
So, when some asshole is being serious about “your edition sucks, play a better one”, fuck them. It’s bullshit, and if they don’t know it, they’re going to be a shitty player or DM anyway. They’re not worth the time and effort. But the rest of us kinda have the shorthand of the trope as a way to say “the problem exists, but we can’t fix it”. You either put the effort in to learn the details of each edition, or you stick to the one you like best and deal with having more trouble finding stable groups.
No bullshit Stamets, my entire goal was to join in on what I thought was your joke along that same line. I thought you were poking fun at the trope of it, and that’s what I was doing. The little winky face
didn’t do enough to convey that, or maybe your stress over the subject meant nothing would have conveyed the intent of shared recognition of how silly it all is to edition snob. But it definitely failed to convey the intent, no matter why it failed.Sorry about that. They can’t all be winners ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but I swear it was meant to be something we’d both have a chuckle over.
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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.
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No no no … 5e 2024 sucks.
4e already sucked. 3 Series were the last good ones.
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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.
You might also like TWERP.
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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.
I used to play Cyberpunk with GURPS rules. It was great.
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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.
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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.
Thank you for writing about Das Schwarze Auge. It’s such a great game and world.
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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?
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Yes, that’s called roleplaying. And there’s nothing, not a single line in any book that supports any of this! Just imagine if DnD combat only consisted of one melee attack skill and one ranged attack skill. You could still roleplay that your ranged attack is a fireball, but it would still get boring real fast!
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.
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Hey, sorry that didn’t hit right.
Since the post was in a meme community, I didn’t take the post as a serious complaint. Memes bring out jokes, that’s part of the point of them. I intended it as a form of commiseration with a bit of tongue in cheek playfulness. If I’d known you were making a real complaint rather than playing with a trope for laughs, I would have made a totally different comment.
So, here’s what I would have said if I had known you were experiencing distress over the issue.
I get it. Back when 3.x was a thing, the old ad&d diehards made the same kind of statements. Now, 5e devotees make the same kind of statements about 3.x, and even ad&d, as well as the ongoing new version coming out. It’s a fairly universal thing.
When it’s said in a lighthearted, unserious way, it can even help bridge players and DMs that are more entrenched with one version or another because it acknowledges that there’s not always compatibility between versions, making play groups harder to arrange since very few people really enjoy learning a new system to play what is (at its core) the same game.
Me and my kid make the same joke to each other, both of us aware that we have played both systems and have a different preference. Me and the DM of my kid’s group talk shit about our preferred versions too. And we piss and moan about the difficulties of running games with players that are most familiar with one edition and having trouble adapting years of play experience in one to a different one.
Like, I’ve got over a grand in 3.x books. At least that, maybe more, I lost track. So I’m not going to pony up a dime to get the equivalent library in 5e, or any future editions. But I’ve had players from 5e, and ad&d in my games (though I haven’t DMed in years at this point). There’s always a learning curve to a different edition. It places an artificial barrier of entry to the underlying game. So most people will commit to one version and stick with it.
When they do try others, what they see is changes that are a pain in the ass for fairly minor benefits, along with one or two great ideas. Us 3.x folks look at bounded accuracy, or advantage/disadvantage and drool a little, but there’s no way we’d switch just for that when the rest of the edition is just different, not better. 5e folks look at the 3.x prestige classes and how easy they are to home brew and really make a unique character but look at all the imbalances in the base classes and nope the fuck out
And don’t even ask about how newer players stare blankly at you while you try to explain thac0. Or how a black hole of despair forms and sucks your brain in trying to explain a truly awkward and counterintuitive system like thac0 in the first place.
There’s no such thing as a perfect system. They’re all approximations of fantasy settings (I’m talking about standard d&d here, but there’s no perfect system in other types of games either), and approximations simply can’t fit every situation every time.
So, when some asshole is being serious about “your edition sucks, play a better one”, fuck them. It’s bullshit, and if they don’t know it, they’re going to be a shitty player or DM anyway. They’re not worth the time and effort. But the rest of us kinda have the shorthand of the trope as a way to say “the problem exists, but we can’t fix it”. You either put the effort in to learn the details of each edition, or you stick to the one you like best and deal with having more trouble finding stable groups.
No bullshit Stamets, my entire goal was to join in on what I thought was your joke along that same line. I thought you were poking fun at the trope of it, and that’s what I was doing. The little winky face
didn’t do enough to convey that, or maybe your stress over the subject meant nothing would have conveyed the intent of shared recognition of how silly it all is to edition snob. But it definitely failed to convey the intent, no matter why it failed.Sorry about that. They can’t all be winners ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but I swear it was meant to be something we’d both have a chuckle over.
And I’m sorry that I wasn’t clear. At first I missed the emoticon before catching it after. I should have been more clear my frustration was at the concept you were also poking fun at, not at you yourself. I was just waking up and the frustration I have for that line of thinking took full force there, the jokey lines in my head just didn’t materialize.
I’m just supremely tired of seeing the people who actually do it, full throated. Doesn’t even matter if it’s dnd, just stuff in general. Like it seems to be harder and harder to find a conversation about the alternative of something that isn’t just “This sucks so mine is better.”
Sorry. I need to actually wake up before getting on lemmy, not looking at it from the toilet first thing. That’s on me
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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?
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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?
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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:
- A point buy system that lets you make any character you want.
- Costs are based on making characters balanced, and not how literally expensive a piece of equipment would be and that sort of thing.
- Must be balanced as far as reasonably possible without massive flaws like M&M.
- 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.
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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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
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But they definitely can do the thing, because it’s a game of make-believe. Again, this is not hammering in a screw, it’s mental systems for deciding how imaginary doings transpire.
I literally just explained a thing you cannot do. You cannot play Dragon Age in D&D. It either won’t be Dragon Age, or it won’t be D&D. This game of make-believe is still a game with rules and limits, and it can’t do everything.
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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.
