people mistake the scripted entertainment they see with Critical Role for what 5e actually plays like
plus the coinciding rise of live play streams that seem to be entirely stocked with insufferable theater kids
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You presume wrong. DnD 5e I think is explicitly marketed as a version of DnD that is streamlined to get players into roleplaying ASAP!
Though I can see how some of the mechanical reduction between 3.5/4 and 5 could lead to immediate gameplay, that has never been my experience with 5e, and streamlined is nevertheless how WoC talks about 5e, and it’s also a commonly repeated thing by people who buy WoC products exclusively.
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I mean yeah it is pretty streamlined for a chunky tactical combat system and it leaves gaps where roleplaying can go but that’s all it does: leave gaps. I guess I’m just arguing against phantoms now though.
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Damn if only there were a dnd 5e live play product that wasn’t stocked by insufferable theater kids…
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some would say that the roleplay is the god of the gaps
(I do think leaving gaps in the rules from which improvisation and judgment can arise is essential to RPGs, but they have to be gaps that have mechanics pointing at them and 5e just doesn’t do that)
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dnd5e is the cheesecake factory of ttrpgs. you can find something you and your players will be fine with, but you’ll have to actively shape it into something you like.
i like stuff like dungeonworld because the ‘moves’ are a literal connection between the premade design and the action at the table. there’s a clear distinction of what the game is so that the role playing can happen around it.
if you are still shopping around for what to find-on-the-internet here are a bunch of other alternatives. not listed in this video but something i can’t stop thinking about is Mork Borg. it’s pretty much dnd without most of the rules bloat and the generic fantasy
related:
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I’m not too invested in the anti-5e backlash either. There’s certainly value in letting neophytes know that other games exist, and there’s plenty to criticize about WotC as a corporate entity, but this guy says with a straight face that 3.5e does combat better - that is a rose colored glasses motherfucker right there.
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Yeah, I gotta be honest. 3.5 was some good times. It seemed more ‘coherent’ than 2e when it came out, but honestly I have a hard time getting past the whole flowchart advancement where your character has a in ideal final form, but to reach that you’ve got to plan in advance every step of how the character will develop at level up like you are picking out your college classes and an extra semester is explicitly NEVER going to be an option. It makes the most meaningful decisions you are going to make over the course of the game the ones that you make all alone when you are not playing with other people and that’s not cool to me.
edit: and of course things like how Attacks of Opportunity work meaning that retreat is essentially NEVER an option either is pretty bad.
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I swear I didn’t have any spots for anything on my official 5th edition character sheet that didn’t relate to combat or survival. I miss all of 2nd edition’s proficiencies for cheese making and dancing and whatnot.
Free form stuff is cool but having some rough backbone of rules for non combat actions encourages doing just that. Otherwise when a new player is trying to figure out what they can do it’s either an observation check to search for treasure (which is the opposite end of rules abstraction taking over for what could be a fun dm/player interaction) or move ahead til there’s something to fight.
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played through another gamebook, this time it was once upon a time in arabia (also known as twist of fate).
it starts with the caliph’s evil vizier stealing all your stuff and having a crony kill you, after you overhear his plans in an orchard. of course, the corny fails, and you escape, plotting to come back and reveal the vizier’s plans to the caliph, once you’ve accrued the wealth and status necessary to gain an audience.
for me, this included travelling to india where i scammed a merchant, being rescued from a shipwreck from a mysterious but benevolent wizard, being falsely arrested as a jewel thief then escaping from prison, and eventually stealing a roc’s diamond egg and becoming incredibly rich from doing so.
there’s a few interesting things in this one, mechanically. there’s four character classes to choose from, wach with different skills and starting items. the skills act as keywords, sometimes offering more choices at the end of an entry. or allowing you to take less damage from certain events. also interesting is how the game handles combat: there’s no combat system at all, and instead, you’re expected to judge, based on your skills and equipment, whether you should stay to fight an opponent, run away, hide, sneak attack, etc. you make your choice of what to do, and success depends on whether it was the best choice in accordance with your character’s capabilities.
i played as a thief, which meant often running away and hiding in battle. This did allow me to trap a large demon in a small space where it couldn’t move, allowing me to beat it to death, though. and in another case, i could hide from a group of cultists who wanted to sacrifice me, and steal some stuff from them.
i liked this one a lot! there’s a few in this series (critical if), but unfortunately, they’re all differently-themed, and this is the only arabian nights-inspired one
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has anyone here played 2400?
paizo have announced the creation of the open rpg creative license, in league with a bunch of other publishers. it’s intended to be an actual open source dungeons and dragons replacement, in light of wizards of the coast threatening various user-unfriendly changes to their open gaming license
https://web.archive.org/web/20230112231807/https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6si7v
it’s an archive link because paizo’s site is getting more traffic than it can handle since the announcement was made
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God I really don’t want wizards of the coast fucking up to give paizo’s terrible game design another ten years of dominance just by knowing how to market at the exact right second -_-
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Kobold press did something similar a few days ago
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paizo’s never going to be dominant again. The much larger ttrpg audience today is not exactly drawn to paizo’s number crunching. Can you imagine a theater kid planning out their prestige class picks 15 levels in advance?
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do pbta games have much popularity in that audience?
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PBTA isn’t actually a system IMO? It gets treated that way by a lot of game designers but it’s really a lot of games that mostly just take 2d6+stat with classes and maybe the move framework.
I kinda don’t think any indie games are going to rise to the definitive top because they didn’t when this happened the other times wizards pissed off it’s third party support. But I do think it might make an environment where they might get a little bit more of a foothold. When wizards stumbles it does raise the visibility of them though, so I do think some actually left good games might get a boost and that’s good itself.
yeah, pbta and forged in the dark (the generic term for blades in the dark spinoffs) are pretty popular with the theater kid contingent (and rightfully so, at least. As much as I dunk on the theater, my game tastes aren’t far off from theirs, it’s the narcissism of small differences)
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Lmao what an incredible self own
They pissed off all their fans, lost a huge amount of recurring revenue, emboldened their competitors, and don’t even make the changes that get them the money they thought they deserved
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hi i got interested in ttrpgs because i enjoyed disco elysium so much. unfortunately i think 90% of fantasy settings are a snoozefest, never been interested in D&D for that reason. i don’t need a setting that’s exactly like elysium, but i was trying to dip my toe in the water of researching what games / rulesets are out there that come with an interesting world to explore and that’s not just the usual orcs-elves-etc.
what ttrpgs do you all enjoy? things that aren’t just one-shots probably? i’m pretty much blank slate
also i guess i just need a primer on like, what’s the meaning of tabletop RPG gaming, what’s the thing that you all enjoy about it
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