this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Because to some people, liking a thing that they do not like is the equivalent of slapping them in the face.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

I don't hate 5e, in fact I'd join in as a player very happily, but I wouldn't run it. 5e is geared towards a very specific kind of campaign that I'm not very interested in running.

I'm more of a social campaign with big action sequences kind of DM and Savage Worlds does that perfectly. It is:

  • Classless
  • 3 actions per turn, going over 1 heightens the chance you'll fail on all actions. Players tend to spend less time thinking.
  • Step die instead of d20, easy math.
  • Extremely easy to make homebrew for.
  • Generic, which means it can do any genre (I've done dark fantasy western and high fantasy medieval, next up I'll do dark fantasy cyberpunk hopefully).

I tried to turn 5e into something that fit a cyberpunk setting for about 3 months, before just buying SWADE and being able to run every genre I could imagine from the go.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

I'm not seeing any mention of it, but I think a lot of people might be interested in Break! - it's specifically aiming to make a game that has the vibes of an "adventure of the week" system, where you learn of an ancient ruin, gear up, venture through the wilderness, explore a crumbling tomb for loot, then get back in time for dinner and an ale. - Basically I'm saying that the game is specifically designed to try and tell the kind of stories that DnD is designed for.

Where break differs from DnD is in it's approach to mechanics. Downtime, journeying, exploring an adventure site, and fighting are all their own small, light subsystems of rules, so there's clear guidelines for how to run each of them, and they're largely aimed at highlighting the cruical and interesting moments for each of those activities, while quickly glossing past the faff and monotony of what lies between.

I've lost track of the number of DnD campaigns I've played where the DM didn't really have a clear framework for what to do on a long journey, and resorted to just tossing a couple of random encounter fights in because it "felt necessary", but they never felt like they advanced the story or contributed anything interesting to the game.

It's also a game you can recruit random NPCs and the like to join you and follow you around, and when they run out of HP you check to see if you remembered to give them a name. The world knows that characters who have their own names are important to the story, and characters who are just "that random bandit mook who surrendered and we brought them along" are not. If the character doesn't have a name when they hit 0hp, they die on the spot.

Oh, and fights take 10 minutes, rather than 2 hours - so you can have one in the middle of a session without it becoming the whole session. Yum.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I personally prefer Warhammer Fantasy (either 2e or 4e), I think it contrasts to DnD like Dark Souls to Diablo. Armor is damage reduction instead of damage avoidance, everyone has access to a number of combat maneuvers, magic is limited and dangerous, every combat is dangerous and healing is limited.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 22 hours ago

I played that a few times. I love the early game lethality and gritty realism. I've heard Mörk Borg (sp?) is carrying that torch nowadays, have been meaning to try it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

Stop replacing TTRPG by DnD and I would be fine 😜

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I actually like D&D and much prefer it to every other family of games I've tried (WoD, GURPS, PbtA, etc). What i dont like is the current iteration of D&D, which is why my recommendations are:

Swords & Wizardry Complete: it's OD&D with some of the rough edges sanded off and all the optional material added. Tons of classes, lots of tools for procedural world building, and very easily hackable. It's simpler to teach to a new player, and its more flexible than 5e for experienced players. The tick-tock of the dungeon turn structure makes it easier to keep pace as a GM, and when in doubt, rolling x-in-6 always holds up. If you want a classic dungeon crawler, this is it.

Whitehack: Still D&D but more narrative. Skills are replaced with groups that can give advantages to tasks directly influenced by membership in that group. Magic is super flexible and everyone has access to some form of it, but the "magic user" class gets to just make up their own spells and pay some HP depending on effect size. Great rules for base building, good GM advice for making adventures that aren't dungeon or wilderness crawls (but are structured like those things). The core mechanic minimizes table math so even your players who struggle with addition can play fast. Less deadly than actual old D&D but keeping the same vibe. It's my favorite for those who prefer narrative to mechanics. In a lot of ways, it's D&D rewritten for the way a lot of people actuslly play 5e.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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 :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

If they play a system, they probably like that system and find its shortcomings acceptable. You can't convince someone that a system isn't enjoyable when they have first-hand evidence to the contrary.

Asking people to stop being comfortable doing something they like, so that they can be uncomfortable doing something you like, isn't a good value proposition.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

If they play a system, they probably like that system

I don't think you've ever actually gamed before.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 hours ago

It's not about identity as much as it's a very poor way to try to convince someone.

Don't base your line of argument on a statement you know the other person will likely disagree with.

For example "You should play Pathfinder because DnD sucks", holds no weight to people who don't think that DnD sucks. In fact if they happen to like DnD, it undermines your argument, because if you disagree about DnD, aren't you also likely to disagree about Pathfinder?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

D&D isn’t just a game anymore, it’s an identity signifier

Which is part of the problem. Like talking to someone who only drinks Coca-Cola about trying a new bag of tea you brought over.

attacking their identity

If you've wedded yourself so deeply to the brand that you feel attacked whenever someone levels a critique, you're probably not mature enough to be at my table.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Ok, but these discussions aren't happening at you're table. "Well, fuck them then" isn't exactly helpful.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

“Well, fuck them then”

Isn't what I said. But if that's what you've heard, you're illustrating my point.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

try to talk them out of the idea of “Leveling” they get scared and run back to the system they’re familiar with.

I still think about the time in college I tried to get a D&D friend to consider Mage. I was telling him about how you can just do magic, and the real limitation is paradox and hubris. Like, it's often not about 'can you?' but rather "should you?"

He couldn't get over "you can just cast whatever you want? Fireballs every turn?"

"Yes, but that's probably going to make a lot of paradox, and probably isn't the best way to solve your problem"

"Sounds broken," he said, and lost interest.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

The main problem with magic in Mage is that you need a LOT of rule knowledge to even know what the fuck you can cast, especially if you mix different spheres. Your friend might've dodged a bullet, but for the wrong reason 😆

[–] [email protected] 2 points 22 hours ago

I think Mage: The Awakening 2nd edition was a cleaner version of the game, but yeah no version is something you can just phone in.

I ran a game of it a year or so back, and one player just refused to read the book in any detail. She was always frustrated by not knowing what she could do, or how to do it effectively.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

👅 Thank goodness for D&D, a game where character optimization and mechanical balance has never been an issue.

The thing about Mage is that you probably can engineer a way to fling fireballs every round if you're reasonably clever. It's a modern setting, hand grenades and incendiary bombs and flame throwers exist, and shoving a rag (covered in arcana) into a beer bottle would probably be enough to cause any witnesses to accept what they were seeing at face value.

But the game isn't D&D. Who do you think you're throwing that fireball at? As often as not, the primary antagonists are The Cops, the Corporate Executives, the Pharmaceutical Industry, and Silicon Valley. You can't beat a Pentex sponsored Facebook smear campaign or an FBI/Palantir partnered surveillance state by spamming it with Fire damage.

sigh

Easy enough to hash out between folks who have seriously played the game. Much harder to explain this to someone who only ever knows how to roll for initiative.

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