I came here to say this and I’m glad someone got here first

My character has an 18 strength.
DM) ok, roll dice to force the gate open.

My character has an 18 charisma.
DM) ok, it only works if you personally also have an 18 charisma and can act it out.

My players and I all love to roleplay so we’re fine with this sort of thing. That said; generally I encourage a little roleplay up front, then we see the roll. Then depending on whoever thinks of the funniest outcome first, the player either adds something to reflect the roll’s outcome, or I find some reason why whatever they said up front did/didn’t work. Either way, it’s great fun for all of us!

On the rare occasion I run for a different/new table though? Nope, not unless I see the players showing initiative by roleplaying without my prompting, I’ll assume we’re here to play it straight.

It also bothers me when someone’s character has like 7 charisma, but the player still acts like the sales guy he is in real life.

I was playing a max charisma warlock and the wizard with his whole 13 charisma kept trying to lead all the conversations. Irritating.

Personally, I think D&D’s social skills are so bad they should just rip charisma out of the game. I’d rather they no-ass it than half-ass it.

Maybe people should just stop playing D&D. It’s a game mired in ancient game design and forced through a cheese grater of updates over the years to try and make it OK.

Also it’s owned by Hasbro.

There are dozens of better role playing games. Some identical to D&D with better rules, others excellent with imaginative worlds that aren’t just rehashes of lord of the rings and Arthurian legends.

Yeah, but have you tried to convince people of anything? They don’t care. They just want to do the thing with their friends. Any sort of “here’s a better game” is going to smash into “did i make a bad choice? i spent all this time and money on D&D and they’re saying it’s bad? now i feel bad. this other person is making me feel bad. they’re wrong and stupid”

Some people might on their own decide to try other games. A lot of them are just going to enjoy hanging out with their friends. (Have you talked to casual D&D players? The kind that don’t post on obscure websites. Their house rules are bizarre)

I would love for D&D to be a niche game that focused on retro dungeon crawling instead of the most popular RPG. I don’t think it’s going to happen.

Some identical to D&D with better rules

That is not the definition of identical

What the player says determines what the character says - but the dice determine how they say it.

It’s just like everything else, the player chooses what to attack, but the dice say how it goes.

Naturally, the player’s choice of words could give them a boost or hinder them. Also, I wouldn’t let the player just “roll to seduce.” You gotta rp a little if you want a rp reward.

My first thought

That was really good. Rich Purnell / Lando Calrissian taking notes was gold.

Intelligence is also an issue.

A friend of mine who is IRL quite smart and loves riddles was playing a really dumb dwarf. He had serious issues sticking to his character and halfway though the campaign he abandoned trying to play dumb alltogether.

But it can also go the other way round.

Facts and sometimes I’ll give them advantage or disadvantage based on the lead up and the back ground I have established for the character.

No lead up, the barmaid’s been through some shit recently? disadvantage my friend.

Chatting before hand, the party are frequent flyers to the bar, the barmaid is single, AND the barmaid is looking for a relationship? Advantage bud, you earned it.

I’m the same way, I play a really dumb barbarian (before the dm changed the house rules, I’ve just kept the original stats) an am also in charge of our Ledger… So I try to pretend that I’m making mistakes but the spreadsheet says otherwise… Oops

Based on context I assume they mean in regard to setting and broad strokes mechanics

I would love a few recommendations, if you don’t mind. I played mostly Warhammer 2nd edition but can’t seem to get around to the latest 4th edition. It feels convoluted and not “balanced”, if that makes sense. Every few sessions I keep thinking there has to be a better and/or less complicated system out there.

I mostly want the rules to get out of the way of the story we are playing, but still want some depth, differentiation and player choices. And I need a decent magic system, which seems to be the hardest to get right.

Any ideas ?

If you want DND with working rules, Pathfinder 2e is what people recommend. Not first edition. I’m not a huge fan since it’s still basically DND.

If you want a lightweight system that’s mostly about narrative, I’m a fan of Fate. But Fate is absolutely not a crunchy system, and it’s largely up to the group to agree on what makes sense. Like, if you want character differentiation you can lean on “aspects as permission” and it’s right there. (That is, stuff that’s true about your character permits you to try stuff. The barbarian can’t even try to decipher the runes, because nothing about his character implies he could do that. You can’t just blindly roll something. The wizard can try, because of course wizards know runes)

The core rules are free, but you can find books with more specifics. I think there’s a Dresden files book people like? They don’t provide a complex magic system in the core books, but it has some ideas and the toolkit book has more.

I also liked the chronicles of darkness games, but they’re generally all modern day occult. You can take the core rules and move them to fantasy, if you wanted. It’s pretty light and I like it more than DND in all the ways I care about.

if you insist

Hey

Ah, Reddit.

Daggerheart.

Man I’ve so many times been required to say word for word what my character says in my charisma rolls, but because I suck at improv it’s been bad. I’ve gotten nat 20s this way but my DM is like “well what you said is cringy so it wouldn’t fly”. Literally every DM I have ever had ignored the dice roll and only cared about the improv