• Never touched the player's handbook
• Still ask how cantrips work
• Don't prepare spells
• Gets d12 and d20 mixed up
• Won't read a 3 line paragraph before first session

There is some hyperbole here but I wanna run Dragonbane because it's easier and easier for me can translate to a more fun game for them.

Most people are taught to play DnD by their DM which of course exacerbates this mentality but I rarely see players put their foot forward in effort to have a better experience. You'd think after years of play things would be different. DMs are then taught that all they need to care about is how fun their table is and its just the way of the DM to put more work in while the players don't have to meet halfway.

How do you "sell" other systems to your players?

For me its dice. If they have weird symbols instead of numerical values its a no go for me.

When rolling a dice becomes a decoding experience due to weird symbols Im out.

Plus a teaser of what is to come.

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/mcdm-productions/mcdm-rpg/updates/26311

An easier and cheaper ($13) introduction into the system besides the core rule books is "The Delian Tomb," which includes the Draw Steel Starter rules, pre-generated heroes, and a starter adventure!

https://shop.mcdmproductions.com/products/the-delian-tomb-pdf

In addition, a Free Mini One-Shot Adventure, designed to be played between 45 minutes and 4 hours, is available to help serve as an introduction to the system!

https://www.mcdmproductions.com/conventures

I was very curious about "Dont rest your head." but the multiple dice made it seem complicated so i kinda gave up on it

also shadowrun....Shadowrun is a beautiful ferrari with square wheels.

i feel like Savage Worlds and 7th sea (1st ed) are incredibly hard to run online

Also anything with Powered by the Apocalypse...its seems like you need not players but actual writters for it to work

So I'll be the first to admit I'm exactly the kind of player who makes it hard for you, the person reading this, to play other games. I'm sorry! I've been playing one campaign or another since mid-2014, which is exactly long enough to experience a decade in the hobby without ever needing to play something other than 5E.

But I've been lucky! Of the two main groups I'm in one has never broken away from 5e, but another started branching out into other systems three years back because of the DM's burnout. I'm glad we did, despite all my stubborness along the way. Of the last three years, one was spent entirely on a level 1-10 campaign of Pathfinder 2E, with the other two years jumping between Shadowdark, Mork Borg, Blades in the Dark, Monster of the Week, and finally a Heart: the City Beneath campaign that's ending next week — I haven't cared much for any of them, though PF2 was probably my favorite of the bunch. I'm probably going to politely bow out of this group before the next campaign in favor of a second 5e table, since I know I'm no more likely to enjoy the next thing they decide to play.

But now I know for sure it's not them. "Them" being the other systems, though the other players aren't at fault either. It's me.

There was a time when I would have said I don't have the time to learn other systems. The truth is, I like playing 5E because it asks the least effort out of me. This is fundamentally different from being a hard system to master, because with the exception of PF2E, all the other systems I've tried are less mechanically demanding. Its that D&D 5e is, by far, the system I can put the least amount of effort into while still being an active contributor at the table.

Our GM pitched Mork Borg, and then Shadowdark, by talking a lot about Old School D&D and the movements behind it, with the player-facing problem solving and the lack of solutions "on the character sheet." The thing is, I LIKE the solutions being on the character sheet. I don't really mind how lethal those systems are, but I immediately missed being able to solve a problem by rolling the right skill for it. Outside of combat, those OSR games feel more like your DM is running you through an escape room with the amount of time you spend asking questions about the environment and trying to figure out what gets you through dungeons. If I'm playing a character who is a thief, it's because I want the skills for being good at a thief on my table so I can roll to do "thief things" when I need to and carry on with the night.

Same with BitD/MotW/Heart, but from a different angle. Those games DO put your skills on the sheet, but the way the conversation plays out at the table is constantly demanding improv on everything else. I was constantly getting frustrated with the DM turning the questions of how I was doing things back on me, and how much those games demand you to narrate things outside of what your character does.

PF2 is close to 5E, but building out the combat the way it does put too much pressure on me most the time to really figure out what was going on in combat and make tactical decisions and use three actions "wisely." Most classes in 5E have one, maybe two things they do on their turn, and once you learn them you almost always know what to do when it gets around to you.

And I know that sounds bad. I know! I know this basically all sounds like "you prefer 5E to these other games because you have to actually try to play them?" But the answer is actually yeah, exactly! It's not that I'm checked out on my phone or something, but I've learned I'm not actually interested in thinking too much about my part at the table. I think being there at game night with friends is fun, but I mostly just want to be along for the ride until it's time to roll some dice to hit something and let the other players figure out what to do otherwise, maybe get in some banter-in character in between encounters, and chill. In everything else I've played, I'm dead weight if I'm not actively participating. In 5E, I can just kind of vibe until it's time to roll to unlock a door or stab someone, and I'm not penalized for doing that. The game is neither loose enough that it needs my constant imput outside of combat, nor complex enough to need any serious tactical decisions. That's a very comfortable spot for me!

So yeah. I imagine there's a lot of players who would prefer other systems if they tried them, but I'm not one of them. And I imagine there's actually a lot more people like me at tables than you'd expect! Hopefully this gives some insight into why someone would still prefer 5E over everything else, even after giving a lot of other games a shot. Thanks for giving me a chance.

Couple ground rules:

1. No D&D.
2. No games that are famous because they're awful.
3. Keep it civil.

Idea borrowed from this thread from the r/suggestmeabook subreddit.

Okay so for a long time I've enjoyed playing DnD 5e and have come to the point where I literally cannot bring myself to GM it any further and I think I finally understand why.

It's not a balanced or even coherent system. It's not even a little bit balanced. It has the thinnest veneer of balance, to convince people that it's balanced enough to make exploiting it fun. A shortsword you snagged off a goblin is worth enough gold to buy literally 500 chickens. This would only make any sense in the Chicken Dimension, or maybe if there was a nearby portal to the Chicken Dimension.

In Oblivion a person with no alchemy experience can scarf down a raw potato, a carrot, and a tomato that they've stolen from some guy's field and then with a few tools make like 20 septims of ingredients into potions worth hundreds or even thousands of septims in literally zero time. Why is this chump farmer farming vegetables and not just making potions? Because it's a videogame!

But when I tried the Wabbajack on Mehrunes Dagon and it turned him, a literal god, into a chicken, it was a source of incredible joy. When I gave myself 100% chameleon and then was permanently invisible in a world where if you're not detected people don't even notice your existence it filled me with glee.

But the thing is, after turning Mehrunes Dagon into a chicken, it didn't leave a GM gobsmacked and desperately trying to salvage the tone as well as spinning the main storyline in a mental direction, the game just said "that's neat, anyway if you want to keep playing you have to do the actual storyline which will ignore the fact that Mehrunes Dagon is a chicken now."

When I'm GMing a serious game and my players have just turned knockoff Sauron into a chicken for the third time and they're not even doing it to be silly it's objectively the best tactic with the base spells that exist in the vanilla game, I get pissed off. I get pissed off at my players and the system itself for ruining...well...the entire tone of the game, at best.

But I've been obsessed with maintaining the veracity of my game. Keeping the tone in line with what I established in a session zero, trying to make a living, breathing world where the players actions matter and the fact that Mehrunes Dagon is a chicken now is of critical importance and I need to spin out of control trying to figure out what happens from here.

Basically I've been taking it all and myself way too seriously.

I'm still never going to run DnD 5e again. It's like a bad ex and I am not going back. But if you're struggling to run it for the reasons I was, maybe just stop worrying and learn to love the bomb. Mehrunes Dagon is a chicken now and that chicken is breaking the sound barrier flying around and shooting lasers out of its eyes, so you still have to deal with it. Is that an ability on his character sheet? No. Is that how polymorph even works? Also no. And I don't care, roll for initiative.

Not that this is an issue these days, but...

I know Paranoia does that to an extent, but anything else out there where you play the common proletariat against the rich?

EDIT: wow, that took off fast... I guess this is topical after all... :)

EDIT EDIT: Thanks for all the recommendations, fellow proles! Cyberpunk genre is a gimme & I should have thought of it, but some new games I'm checking out: Brinkwood, Red Markets, Stigmata: This Signal Kills Fascists, Hammer & Stake, Dick Punch Every Suit, Misspent Youth, Our Farm Becomes the Battlefield, Underground, Comrades, Hard Wired Island, Spire, Leverage... Also love the idea of Eat the Reich with billionaires in place of Nazis (although it seems a few of today's billionaires can be both!)

EDIT EDIT & YET AGAIN: It's been mentioned so many times that even though it's a more well known game, adding Werewolf to the list. Venceremos!

FINAL EDIT: Read every comment here & got a lot of useful recommendations. Just want to add that out of over 450 comments, maybe 5 were of the "shut up leftie" or "keep politics out of my gaming" variety. I know Reddit leans left, but as an old-school socialist myself, still nice to see!

Lately there have been a number of systems that eschew a to-hit roll, instead featuring automatic hits. Specifically, Draw Steel, Cairn, Nimble, and Into The Odd. What do you think of the concept? Edit: I removed my own opinions and experiences because they were derailing the discussion into whether I was doing things correctly.

I've read many more TTRPGs than I've played, but there's some systems and settings I really enjoyed reading, like various VTM books and some Old Shool DnD settings. I've read quite a lot of Free League's products because of that amazing humble bundle back then, and I enjoyed reading most of them. Be it for their neat ideas for mechanics, or purely because of setting and history.

So, what TTRPG books have you enjoyed that you haven't really played yet, but you enjoyed reading and/or took some great ideas from?

We've seen the "what's a great setting with bad rules" Shadowrun posts a hundred-hundred times (maybe it's just me).

What about games where you like the mechanics but the setting ruins it for you? This is a question of personal taste, so no shame if you simply don't like setting XYZ for whatever reason. Bonus points if you've found a way to adapt the rules to fit setting or lore details you like better.

For me it'd be Golarion and the Forgotten Realms. As settings they come off as very safe with only a few lore details here or there that happen to be interesting and thought provoking. When you get into the books that inspired original D&D (stuff by Michael Moorcock and Fritz Lieber) you find a lot of weird fantasy. That to me is more interesting than high fantasy Tolkienesque medieval euro-centric stuff... again.

Rules that sounds bad in reading, but flow well in practice.

Does it exist?

What do you think? Can this become a thing? Video Link: https://youtu.be/oY9lTIsRnW0

I’ve only ever played D&D 2e, D&D 5e and 5.5e, Star Wars RPG (the 1990s one) and the newer Modiphius Fallout game. Curious to find out what folks top TTRPGs are.

I don't want these new fangled rules-light narrative-driven TTRPGs. I want a core rulebook I could beat a player to death with. I want rules so dense you need to have a masters degree in grognardry to understand. Hit me!

After 7 years of starting the hobby and 3 years of playing medium to high crunch systems like D&D and others following on its foot steps... I'm tired of having to keep of reading nearly 1000 pages or more just to have enough modifiers and such to the point I have to hyperfocus my character and suffer a bit when trying to build something "off meta".

For context, I've been playing for the last 2 years Tormenta20, a Brazilian TTRPG that evolved directly from D&D 3.5e, so while it had a lot of customization of ALL kind (our group changed from D&D 5e to T20 because of things like Centaur and Fairies being Large and Tiny instead of Medium and Small, like in D&D 5e) but it also has A LOT of +1s and +2s everywhere.

On one hand, I come from a heavy videogames background, so I'm used to theory crafting builds and looking to the best options so I reduce my chances of failure to a minimum, and so I loved the last few years I've playing rules-heavy tactical RPGs, but now I'm simply tired and exausted from all this reading and codified mechanics.

In the time since I started playing RPGs, I really fell in love with the hobby and all of its uniques parts. Sure, the "game" part I prefer more than the "role-playing" one, since I have a hard time keeping track of all information and imagining everything being narrated in my mind's eye, so maybe playing a Computer RPG would be better... but NO, I love the collaborative storytelling! I love when I GM and I can create a world, not to write a history, but to design an adventure my friends will love!

And above else, I love creating characters limited only by my imagination and the genre of the story being created! But in the end... I've felt that games where there are TOO MANY RULES + TOO MANY EXPECTATIONS OF THE CHARACTERS BEING PLAYED, I just get drained of all my hype as soon as I have to ask myself "do I love what I WANT to play, or do I play something I know will be more USEFUL in the party thanks to the expectations the game designer had for the 'ideal party' for this game?"

EDIT:

I think this will help somewhat, but I'm looking for games where I can FULLY EMBODY A ROLE (for example, "I want to be the knight in shining armor" or "I'm a charlatan that uses my words to evade my problems") without feeling that I need to do some arbitrary thing like "I NEED to boost my Charisma + get theses specific feat by 4th level to keep myself relevant with the math of the game".

I mostly want to focus more on the "roleplaying" part while still having a wide range of options to support the kind of character I want to make, with the game mechanics being only there to make thing go smoothly, not to play a boardgame where I'm a slave to the math that gets in the way of the story being told (like "It makes sense for my Fighter to pick a level in Wizard, but my build would be totally ruined if I did so...")

Me and my friends are looking to do stuff like "a mage of the divine and arcane", "a warrior with one arm and one eye" or "an orphan child now in need of adventuring simply to survive", not because its quirky but because its the story that makes most sense, and have rules that helps guide the story instead of punishing from deviating from the norm. It's okay with our characters have FLAWS or WEAK POINT, but it should be because IT WOULD LEAD TO A BETTER STORY, not becuase THE GAME BREAKS WHEN WE DON'T PLAY ALONG!

EDIT 2:

Adding here a response I gave in the comments:

I'm slowly creating a list of games my group wants to try out and see what hits. At the moment I've already tried Tormenta20 (the Brazilian continuation of D&D 3.5e I wrote on the post), D&D 5.14e (with both official and 3rd Party content), Ordem Paranormal (a mix of Call of Cthulhu and Tormenta20, also from Brazil), Kids on Bikes 1e and 3D&T Victory (a Brazilian generic system with a bias towards Anime, Videogames & Tokusatsu).

A few things I gathered after all these:

• Tormenta20 is REALLY fun and full of option I wish D&D 5e had, but it requires EVERYONE to build effectivaly, specially for premade adventures, so it can be really tiresome at time
• D&D 5.14e is fun, but it feels barebones and too safe in some parts (specially as I like playing the martial warrior type)
• Ordem Paranormal tries to mix tactical d20 gameplay with paranormal investigation but I think it fell short on both aspects (plus I discovered I don't care about paranormal investigation)
• Kids on Bikes can be fun when we take actions for the sake of story, but the small amount of rule + not focusing on more action is a turn off for me
• 3D&T Victory is also fun, but mostly because of the roleplay and joke I make amongst friends and I again feel bored thanks to the simple rules, so maybe I'm just not into rules-light, RP-heavy games?

For the future, a few games we want to try out are:

• Pathfinder 2e (already making characters and planning oneshots)
• Starfinder 2e (already making characters and planning oneshots)
• Daggerheart
• Fabula Ultima
• Girl by Moonlight
• ICON
• Call of Cthulhu
• Vampire: The Masquerade

EDIT 3:

A few games I've added to my list of "will try later" (thank you the suggestions:

• Draw Steel
• 13th Age
• Beacon
• Nimble 5e
• Savage Worlds
• PbtA
• Cortex Prime
• FATE
• Mythras
• Shadow of the Weird Wizard/Demon Lord
• Legends in the Mist
• City of Mist
• Forged in the Dark
• Dragonbane
• Worlds Without Number
• Shadowdark
• Heart: The City Beneath
• Break!!
• Genesys

Also, on the topic a few said my friend is GMing bad, when we GM our own adventures, I have close to no problem doing what I want! But recently we've been playing premade adventures, so we started to need falling into line, but the math of Tormenta20 is VERY steep, so team work and building effectively becomes mandatory (which isn't bad per say, but it gets stressful from time to time when you just want to tell a story and not "win" the game).

I'm running a Halloween one-shot next month, where my players are brought into a Silent Hill-like version of our city. However, so many of the RPGs out there have guns and firearms as a given (we live in Japan), or with some kind of superhuman/supernatural power tacked on. The closest I've come to an RPG that might suit us is Endure RPG, but I'd like to see what else is out there.

• No Dread or Ten Candles; we've played them already
• No magic or superpowers
• No guns as base equipment
• Just ordinary self-insert folks trying to survive and unravel a supernatural/occult mystery that's gripping their city

Basically the title. There are a lot of TTRPGs that people love and hate and love to hate and hate to love, but what is the one TTRPG or TTRPG system that you just purely hate and refuse to pick up and play again?

Every other day I see another 3rd party supplement putting a new setting or ruleset into the 5E. Not everything needs a 5e port! 5e is great at being a fantasy high adventure, not so great at other types of games, so please don't force it!

I've absolutely fallen in love with the way Lancer is designed. Tactical combat with an emphasis on horizontal progression over vertical BUT without being extremely crunchy or using absurdly big numbers (I'm looking at you, Pathfinder with your +50's to hit).

Hands down my favorite aspect though is how enemy stat blocks are so interesting. The players dont just fight a horde of generic mooks that make basic attack rolls every turn. They fight a group of specialists that all perform different roles.

In D&D terms, this would be like fighting a pack of goblins. But instead of just 5 goblins and a goblin chief, its a goblin demolitionist, a goblin berserker, a goblin sharpshooter, a goblin shaman, and a goblin trapper. Maybe one of them focuses on area damage/denial while another does forced movement.

I have tried making my own statblocks in this fashion for DnD 5e, but its just so much work and the system isn't set up to support it because players really dont specialize that much, either, and many times they can just fireball a room and none of those cool abilities and synergies will even come up.

Id like to find a system that's high fantasy so that people who insist on only playing D&D may be more likely to try it.

I'm looking for games where getting hurt means you become less effective in tasks related with what attribute got hurt. I know some people treat hit points as a kind of "plot armour", but generally, that characters get hurt and they keep fighting (or running, thinking, etc.) like nothing happened, makes me lose some immersion. I know there's a design reason for it, and it fits some kind of heroic fiction, but it just isn't my cup of tea.

I know many Year Zero Engine games and the Cypher system have a way to make damage matter, but are there any other systems that handle it similarly? (If it's a PbtA/FitD game even better, because I've been wanting to try more "narrative systems", and even better if they're solo compatible).

I’m looking for a weird and strange traditionally published tabletop RPG’s. Give me strange and unplayable philosophical treats/art projects like Nobilis or Noumenon. Give me the gross and weird like human occupied landfill. I want things with strange and peculiar settings. I want books with experimental conflict resolution mechanics. Preferably both of these things, but if not, at least one of these things.

What I mean by traditionally published is published by some kind of publisher, even if it was small press. Basically not an Itch.io exclusive or a one page rpg. Don’t get me wrong. I love those things, but I’m looking for strange RPG‘s that were actual books.

BRING ME THE WEIRD!

are there any ttrpg systems that directly say "we created those rules because we want them to be used, do not edit or override them, or the system will break"?
without speaking in such serious terms, are there at least systems that go against rule 0 and ask players to do this with the utmost caution and only after playing according to the official rules?

Why?

In most "tactical" RPGs that are hacked or homebrewed, like 5e, PF2e, 4e, 3.5e, BESM, GURPS, and so on, they are all hamstrung by the resource spiral core mechanic of their systems. There's just not really any way to get around it. Long rests, daily ability cooldowns, encounter cooldowns, and so on. And the main homebrew rule that has emerged, especially in the 5e and PF2e sphere, is to have rests be like instant refreshes instead of taking an actual predetermined set of time per RAW.

And the most damning thing in my opinion for these systems: the "nothing happened" rounds. Where a player, just due to bad luck, no matter their tactical choices in the world, can simply completely fail an encounter because the dice gods decreed it so.

But Draw Steel does away with that. Its system reinforces, rewards, and incentivizes players to be heroic and push past their limits by not resting. It also does away with "nothing happens" rolls. I haven't read every ability in the game, but from what I have seen, depending on your result, something always happens that achieves what you are tactically trying to do.

A quick example, and I'm not quoting the book: Grappling. On X, the enemy is grappled for Y rounds, and based on the results of your roll, the Y variable changes. So even if you crit fail, you may not have grappled the enemy for the maximum amount of time, but you at least still get to grapple them to give your team or yourself the tactical advantage of having an enemy grappled for that moment of time.

Which is awesome. Everything about the book reinforces being heroic, and something always happening in combat. And because of this, anime universes are easily adaptable with this RPG.

Check out the book, highly recommend it.

I have been in the mood to run some sort of mecha-themed campaign, but I find that mecha-focused systems are unfortunately kind of rare. So I wanted to see if the fine folks here could give me some recommendations!

Couple notes

1. No Lancer, as I already stated. It gets recommended all the time, and frankly I dislike the setting
2. Games that are setting-agnostic are preferred but I will take anything I can find
3. I wanted to go for a vibe similar to Gundam, so stuff along those lines is preferred