I just started a game of Thirsty Sword Lesbians for a bunch of 13-16 year olds.
… Wait, officer, just let me explain…
I’m being a little lazy - I made this about 18 months ago after a conversation in one shop. A couple of days ago in a different shop the “alternative” mentioned was Dungeon Crawl Classics. As far as I’m concerned, D&D with the serial numbers filed off is still D&D.
I mean DCC & 5e are very different.
D&D with the serial numbers filed off is still D&D.
I’m getting tired of eating Mac and Cheese all the time “have you tried Caccio e Pepe?”
It’s still pasta and cheese.
If someone asked me for something other than dnd to play, I’d imagine they’re looking to get out of the tolkein flavored medieval fantasy genre into something different and recommend something like World of Darkness, modern supernatural urban fantasy for political intrigue and melodramatics, or Blades in the Dark, victorian industrial fantasy heists. Not “grittier Tolkien flavored medieval fantasy.”
Okay and in Pathfinder you have Ustalav where you could play a horror campaign filled with vampires and werewolves, you’ve got Tian Xia for weeb shit, you’ve got pirate themed adventures like skull and shackles, and plenty more or hell you have Starfinder for space fantasy (soon to be interchangeable with 2e). I know DnD has settings that are different as well. Complaining about setting is very whatever, but also of course people go to Tolkien fantasy it’s what everyone for sure knows. But also pathfinder 2e and DnD 5e are both mechanically similar. DCC does at least offer a different type of gameplay, a lot less power crazy and honestly felt more like mausritter to me than DnD.
But yes, you could play plenty of other games. I’m not saying don’t play those. I’m just saying calling DCC the same thing as 5e is just rude, the same way calling caccio e Pepe the same thing as mac n cheese would probably get you stabbed by Italians. (edit: lol autocorrect cacciatore)
Idk, I run a game club for kids and most just wanna fight things and play what they see on stranger things and thus other systems don’t matter or interest them because they would have to learn how a d10 system or clocks or etc work. They also all know what fuckin generic Tolkien fantasy is, so you don’t have to explain what a geist is or etc. something like DCC at least plays similar enough and has a similar theme while still offering different enough gameplay to have some kids realize they like shit that isn’t just DND, or allowing the kids bored of 5e something a little different.
In my experience when I’ve been playing any system for a long time and my players say “hey do something different” they are almost always looking for something very different from what we are all playing. I’ve spent the most amount of time playing Mage the Ascension in my rpg career, eventually my current group was hey Mage is getting a bit stale, let’s do another game. So we did some Vampire the Masquerade, and it was too close in flavor to Mage. So we started playing some Pathfinder and that was the breath of fresh air we were looking for. Eventually we did switch back to mage, but one of my players decided to run their own campaign set in Star Wars which was a ton of fun.
So forgive me for using my own experience of when my players have asked to play something different my understanding is they are looking for something more drastic that going from one Tolkien inspired fantasy game to another Tolkien inspired fantasy game or from one modern Gothic punk game with magic to another modern Gothic punk game with fangs.
I understand, I’d say moving from world of darkness’s most powerful book to its 2nd most powerful book isn’t that large of a difference, maaaybe geist or idk I haven’t tried mummy or any of those they could play different but eh.
DCC felt very much like a rules lite, low power, riskier game, which still makes it very different from standard DND/Pathfinder so it just felt rude to completely dismiss it. Sure it’s the same setting but if it gets people to try something and they like it and want to branch out into other rules light stuff that’s cool? Again mostly coming from my experience of everyone is comfortable with generic fantasy Tolkien so they’re more willing to try it than say, Mork Borg. So I understand most public places more focused on that, and once people wanna break out and try weirder things with their groups they can.
Is the US situation that bad regarding game diversity ?
I am in a very active club, and less than half of the games are D&D and clones (including pathfinder and OSR in D&D and clones), before that I was part of an active online community, and again while D&D was big it wasn’t more than half of the game ran.
And if you look at new games starting, due to D&D tendency to be relatively long campaign, it’s even hard to find a seat at a D&D game because relatively few games starts compared to other games. (And then there is a couple of indie-game one-shots GM, meaning that there is always a slot open for a less known and often weirder game)
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Be the change you want to see. Try to start up something new.
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Paranoia and Mothership
I finished up a Mutants and Masterminds campaign last month, now I run two DnD games weekly, one for my particular party and one open to all comers.
Thank you! You’re doing Lliira’s work!
Well, the rule at the shop is you need to DM a game open to everyone to get to reserve a spot for your own stuff.
Spare a thought for those of us running a TTRPG via Foundry VTT. 90% of the cool mods are for DnD or Pathfinder, which is a problem if you’re running Dark Heresy or FATE or something.
the fabula ultima mod for foundryvtt is tasty and excellent
Can’t find that in the Foundry mod store? Is that only for Fabula Ultima or system agnostic?
https://github.com/League-of-Fabulous-Developers/FoundryVTT-Fabula-Ultima
still in beta afaik!
I’m prepping a one-shot with Fangelsehala and a longer campaign with Mothership.
I’m gonna bookmark this. Please let me go how the Mothership Campaign goes. I would live to run something in that system. But it seems like the character die way to fast for ä ling lasting campaign.
I own the tidebreaker extension and if your experience is good I’d love to run it as a campaign setting with my group.
I’ll send you an update once it’s done. My group rotates GMs and systems but within a few months I’ll have them doing Gradient Descent.
I’m wondering if I could adapt storypath ultra to WoD. The turn thing probably won’t be in it but all the other things look mighty fine.
just never could get into D&D.
currently playing Apocalypse Keys. planning a FATE game, and Outgunned.
No Daggerheart?
is that any good now? Know it’s probably changed a lot since the initial latest was released but that initial release looked…. Bad.
No idea honestly. What did you dislike about it?
Idk the math all seemed ehh (like going evasion was 1000% better than going tanky in that it was cheaper and you’ll take less damage) the whole duality dice stuff seemed… ehh. It just came off as trying to change just to say it was different. Idk.
A lot of the usual suspects, but when my group of grognards plays we reach back a bit. Tomorrow we’re playing Traveler. Last few times we played it was Champions.
I’d like to run an OpenD6 game of I can pull a group together. The last few times I ran it was D6 Star Wars, but I like the system for other genres as well.
I’ve been doing some Delta Green and it’s been great. We’re about to close the campaign and I fear for my character’s life and or sanity.
Das schwarze Auge, Hexxen, Mothership and Warhammer Fantasy. I do still have a long running DnD Campaign, but I’m hoping on finishing that sometime this or early next year.
