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If people are still going to pay money for D&D then they truly do not care about the hobby. I must admit before the OGL fiasco I didn't see much of the allure o

If people are still going to pay money for D&D then they truly do not care about the hobby. I must admit before the OGL fiasco I didn't see much of the allure of other systems, but that really pushed me away and the world of TTRPGs is so much brighter and better than crappy D&D. I still play in one D&D campaign, but it was started before the fiasco, but I have already decided that at least I won't be running another D&D game.

concordDance 3y ago
What system would you recommend?
- ZiiS 3y ago
  Pathfinder is DnD but better; most others focus on different settings so it depends on your interests I have always liked Cyberpunk 2020.
  - nextlevelwizard 3y ago
    In my experience (which is limited to Pathfinder 2e without any extensions) Pathfinder is by far inferior to D&D 5e. The classes _are_ more interesting, but you pretty much have to maximise your character's potential if you want to keep the game going or you just have to be willing to re-roll often and let characters die and just abandon quests. i.e. it is not good for heroic fantasy. Then again Pathfinder isn't gritty enough for me to be interesting as "bunch of peasants who try to be adventurers" either.
    - ZiiS 3y ago
      Yes; rulesets and even settings are not the most important thing and are highly subjective. It is hard to make recommendations. I would expect a GM to scale difficulty to prevent characters dying too much (at least if they don't want to) with any system. But I can see that Pathfinder dose incentivize min-maxing long lived characters which will not be everyone's cup of tea. Similarly the combat system is fairly terrible in Cyberpunk 2020 but never stopped me enjoying it.
freilanzer 3y ago
As someone thinking about getting into Pen and Paper games, I'm surprised to read all this. What are the alternatives?
- Filligree 3y ago
  There’s hundreds, possibly thousands. Don’t Close Your Eyes and Glitch/Nobilis are three of my favourites.
  - ishanmahapatra 3y ago
    Man, I _really_ want to play a Nobilis/Chuubo’s/Glitch game. But I can’t seem to wrap my head around the system(s), and it’s incredibly hard to find an AP that will help me understand how they work. How would you teach a newbie the game(s)?
    - Filligree 3y ago
      Asking the wrong person, unfortunately; I’ve never played it. I write fanfiction of it. :D
    - victory2099 3y ago
      There's an AP of Chuubo's over on the Oneshot Podcast network! I think they're on episode 8 or so?
- dannersy 3y ago
  It would be hard to mention them all. I'd find a local shop or a TTRPG Discord if you don't have a local spot available. To give you a small sample, some older non-dnd classics are Pathfinder and Call of Cthulhu, but there are even some really awesome niche systems that you should consider like Symbaroum. It depends what you and your eventual group want to play.
- sidlls 3y ago
  Call of Cthulhu, Pathfinder, Harnmaster (my personal favorite--too bad it had such a shitty IP fight/divergence), Warhammer, Amber, Cyberpunk, and hundreds/thousands more. People in this space are incredibly creative.
harimau777 3y ago
The biggest thing that I've seen D&D offer is support for campaign play. Systems like Blades in the Dark, Heart, and Mork Borg are great, but they are built around the assumption that characters are replaced (or in the case of Mork Borg, the world ends) regularly. A lot of other systems also tend to abstract away treasure in a way that I think is less satisfying for some players. Personally, I'd love to see more systems that are less "wargaming" oriented than D&D but with a focus on long term play and, where possible, player growth.
- webmaven 3y ago
  > Personally, I'd love to see more systems that are less "wargaming" oriented than D&D but with a focus on long term play and, where possible, player growth. Did you actually mean player growth? I'm familiar with Player Character growth, but fostering the growth of the player (at least beyond simply a growing familiarity with the rules) is a new idea for me, although I'm not sure why the notion of helping players become more skillful at role-playing (if that was what you meant) was surprising to me.
  - melkor73 3y ago
    It was part and parcel of early D&D. In the OD&D and 1E days, the tournaments and tournament modules were all about finding and testing the best players, not the best player characters/builds. The tournament modules purported to do that in a systematic way, usually judging skill by how far you got in the scenario before dying. Gygax would often pontificate about player skill being the key to success in his tougher scenarios.

concordDance 3y ago

What system would you recommend?

ZiiS 3y ago
Pathfinder is DnD but better; most others focus on different settings so it depends on your interests I have always liked Cyberpunk 2020.
- nextlevelwizard 3y ago
  In my experience (which is limited to Pathfinder 2e without any extensions) Pathfinder is by far inferior to D&D 5e. The classes _are_ more interesting, but you pretty much have to maximise your character's potential if you want to keep the game going or you just have to be willing to re-roll often and let characters die and just abandon quests. i.e. it is not good for heroic fantasy. Then again Pathfinder isn't gritty enough for me to be interesting as "bunch of peasants who try to be adventurers" either.
  - ZiiS 3y ago
    Yes; rulesets and even settings are not the most important thing and are highly subjective. It is hard to make recommendations. I would expect a GM to scale difficulty to prevent characters dying too much (at least if they don't want to) with any system. But I can see that Pathfinder dose incentivize min-maxing long lived characters which will not be everyone's cup of tea. Similarly the combat system is fairly terrible in Cyberpunk 2020 but never stopped me enjoying it.

freilanzer 3y ago

As someone thinking about getting into Pen and Paper games, I'm surprised to read all this. What are the alternatives?

Filligree 3y ago
There’s hundreds, possibly thousands. Don’t Close Your Eyes and Glitch/Nobilis are three of my favourites.
- ishanmahapatra 3y ago
  Man, I _really_ want to play a Nobilis/Chuubo’s/Glitch game. But I can’t seem to wrap my head around the system(s), and it’s incredibly hard to find an AP that will help me understand how they work. How would you teach a newbie the game(s)?
  - Filligree 3y ago
    Asking the wrong person, unfortunately; I’ve never played it. I write fanfiction of it. :D
  - victory2099 3y ago
    There's an AP of Chuubo's over on the Oneshot Podcast network! I think they're on episode 8 or so?
dannersy 3y ago
It would be hard to mention them all. I'd find a local shop or a TTRPG Discord if you don't have a local spot available. To give you a small sample, some older non-dnd classics are Pathfinder and Call of Cthulhu, but there are even some really awesome niche systems that you should consider like Symbaroum. It depends what you and your eventual group want to play.
sidlls 3y ago
Call of Cthulhu, Pathfinder, Harnmaster (my personal favorite--too bad it had such a shitty IP fight/divergence), Warhammer, Amber, Cyberpunk, and hundreds/thousands more. People in this space are incredibly creative.

harimau777 3y ago

The biggest thing that I've seen D&D offer is support for campaign play. Systems like Blades in the Dark, Heart, and Mork Borg are great, but they are built around the assumption that characters are replaced (or in the case of Mork Borg, the world ends) regularly. A lot of other systems also tend to abstract away treasure in a way that I think is less satisfying for some players. Personally, I'd love to see more systems that are less "wargaming" oriented than D&D but with a focus on long term play and, where possible, player growth.

webmaven 3y ago
> Personally, I'd love to see more systems that are less "wargaming" oriented than D&D but with a focus on long term play and, where possible, player growth. Did you actually mean player growth? I'm familiar with Player Character growth, but fostering the growth of the player (at least beyond simply a growing familiarity with the rules) is a new idea for me, although I'm not sure why the notion of helping players become more skillful at role-playing (if that was what you meant) was surprising to me.
- melkor73 3y ago
  It was part and parcel of early D&D. In the OD&D and 1E days, the tournaments and tournament modules were all about finding and testing the best players, not the best player characters/builds. The tournament modules purported to do that in a systematic way, usually judging skill by how far you got in the scenario before dying. Gygax would often pontificate about player skill being the key to success in his tougher scenarios.