I recommend this video to look more into OSR philosophy regarding the rules: https://www.youtube.com/live/bCxZ3TivVUM?si=aZ-y2U_AVjn9a6Ua
I dunno. Every time I try to make a fighter. I have problems with the rules. Like, I wanna suplex an orc. What do I even roll?
5e has both too many rules and not enough rules.
It has very specific rules in some places. Item interactions, many spell specifics, grapple, holding your breath, etc.
It has very lackluster rules in other places. Social conflict, item and spell crafting, metagame stuff like making your own class or species.
I think a lot of people playing DND would be happier playing a different system. Just not the same system for everyone.
It also suffers from not using consistent language and keywords in the rulings.
The more recent rewrites are better but there would be way fewer discussions on “what exactly does this mean” if there were consistent keywords for things.
…also I am currently writing a pile of homebrew to try and run a spelljammer game because those books they released inspired me to run a Treasure Planet campaign but didn’t give me nearly enough material.
Exactly. It’s sort of an uncomfortable middle ground, but also just kind of messy.
And I’m tired, as someone who DMed it a bunch, hearing people act like broken or missing rules aren’t a problem, or somehow even a good thing, because the DM can just make something up. Yeah, not shit. I can do that in literally any game I run. It’s just unpleasant to do in 5e, yet I have to do it all the damn time to keep the game running smoothly. I’d rather have a game that either supports me as a GM, or is easier to improvise.
I think it was a different thread where I posted about how a guy in my dnd group straight face told us something like “the beauty of DND is we can just try out different rules. If we want to do a chase scene we can try it one way, and if it doesn’t work or we don’t like it we can try something else”.
I’m just like that’s not a unique property of DND. That’s just how playing make believe works. And I’d rather have a game that runs okay out of the box rather than keep playtesting as a DM, or deal with unchecked dm whims as a player.
Calling 5e and pf2e bloated with unnecessary rules, meanwhile Pathfinder and 3.5e are quite literally full of a couple decade’s worth of volumes and modules, in comparison to OSR?
I don’t know if you’re a boomer, a troll, or both
PF2e is a joke. It requires reading the whole rules and planning out a character for multiple levels before making your first character. It gatekeeps the hobby worse than FATAL.
Yeah, PF1 and 3.5e are bloated as hell. But you didn’t need to read all the feats for all the races before picking human fighter. Plus the people still playing those never used everything that was published.
Lmao, I think you confused pf1 and pf2. In pf1 you can build yourself into a corner and create useless characters with ease. In 2e the worst characters are still decent
Nope, I know both. They both suck because of the required over optimization. But pf1 at least didn’t have characters constantly at full hp, which is one of the biggest balance issues.
I hereby grant everyone permission to make up whatever rules they want for their rule sets.
Having rules for more situations is a feature, not a bug. You can always choose not to look up the rule and make something up, but if you ever want something that a designer spent some time on instead of making it up on the fly, you have the option
On the other hand, if you had basic rules be flexible and understandable enough, you could by common sense apply them to most of situations and devs could focus on polishing the edges where you would need a specific rules, which should be few and far in-between.
It really is crazy how hard new players defend 5e and pf2 when so many other games make GMing actually fun and easy.
5e is pretty light though, and in most cases too light so the DM has no idea what to do and has to resort to “Rulings”.
PF2e on the otherhand is crunchy AF and its awesome like that. It doesn´t have extra rules for everything, its all based on the same framework, which is pretty awesome.
PF2 is certainly easier to run. But tell me when it becomes a RPG, it’s basically a video game system ported to tabletop. Everything is about the builds, not the characters.
What would it take to make it a RPG? Some characters are flawed in certain things while excel at others. But what you want your character to be, its in your hands due to how you build your character. That´s part of your character, same goes to the backstory you may have developed and inform your build.
Well they could stop gamifying RP and exploration so players actually get into character instead of just rolling dice. But that’s a pretty fundamental shift, so they won’t do it.
To be clear, you’re mad that an RPG has too much G in its RP?
No, I dislike games like pf2 because the MDA framework they have designed is detrimental to the medium of roleplaying games. Because the mechanics encourage players to use PC in non-diegetic dynamics crippling the aesthetics of any setting or genre.
Are you one of the players who wants to “just talk out” social conflicts? That’s a totally valid way to play but I hate it. Or at least I hate it when the game has stats for like charisma and intelligence. I cannot be 20 charisma in real life do not try to make me.
Let me get this straight: you don’t like crunchy rule sets, you don’t like character builds and progression and you don’t like rolling dice? Sounds to me like you don’t like TTRPGs.
I mean you can just read a story to your players or skip the whole tabletop part altogether and do an improv theatre session.
Where did I say I don’t like dice or crunch? I literally run Hackmaster. You don’t even know Hackmaster do you? Sure I don’t like bloated player options that cause power creep and slow the game down. But that doesn’t mean I do sloppy improv or storytell railroads like Critical Role or Dimension 20.
I’ve only been running rpgs 20 years. Has it occurred to you that you don’t like rpgs if you just play 5e or PF2. Are you even a gamemaster?
Maybe it’s just my imagination, but didn’t you comment multiple times that you want your players rather roleplay than rolling dice, play their characters and not the character builds they created and that systems like PF2e are too videogamey?
But to quench your thirst about my experiences: I am playing and DMing TTRPGs for about 10 years now. My groups are mostly running PF1e, Call of Cthulhu and Numenera, but for one shots we also like to try smaller systems like Dungeon Crawl Classics, Paranoia or Savage Worlds. I play with and DM for veterans and new players alike. I would say that I know one or two things about this matter, but who knows.
No matter what system we run, we never really have a problem with the rules and there is always room for fun and engaging RP. To me the overall critique in this thread sounds like a homemade problem on the DM side of things. You don’t have to know and use all the rules a system is offering you (looking at you, Pathfinder), but it’s really nice to know that there are rules for almost anything. And if you get the feeling that you have to fill the gaps with homebrew rules too often, then maybe the system isn’t the right one for what you are going for in your campaign or maybe you have to adjust your style of DMing.
This year for example I started a new PF1e campaign with people that never played a TTRPG before and they love it. I was afraid that this system could be too much for inexperienced players but they already get creative with the rules in combat and they engage in serious RP. They reached level 6 and can’t wait to develop the stories of their characters further.
But calling a watered down and noob friendly system like D&D5e being too complicated and rule heavy? Or calling a system like Pathfinder not a true RPG? Idk man. Maybe TTRPGs aren’t your thing if you really think that or maybe your approach at DMing is fundamentally flawed.
But tell me when it becomes a RPG, it’s basically a video game system ported to tabletop
Uh… tabletop came before videogames…
Anyway, no. An RPG is a Role Playing Game, it’s a game where you take the role of someone, either created by you or given by the game (be it a videogame or not), and you experience the things that happens to that character.
Saying that TTRPGs are video games ported to TT is like saying that Lord of the Rings is a story written within the DnD lore. It’s completely wrong.
Why is everyone here so bad at reading? I specifically am calling out PF2 for being designed as if it was a video game. I am saying Paizo doesn’t understand the medium of RPGs, because they don’t.
Well, given their success as a release, I’d say that they do inderstand the medium, and that not all RPGs must be made in the same line. I’d hate to play a game where I rescind all power to the GM.
I know that GMs always have the final say in any system, but having an expectation of what is going to happen is crucial to me as a player, and as stated in another comment, GMs need to have fun too, and sometimes having a well defined system is what a GM needs to feel like all they need to do is design and let the game take reins for balance. I understand that there are different types of GMs, but that’s kind of the point.
Understanding the market is not understanding the medium. Why is everyone putting words in my mouth. I am not advocating for some crazy free form improv without rolls or some other ruleless non-sense.
I’m saying that 5e and PF2 are not well-defined systems. You can have a different opinion, of course you will. And specifically that GMs burn out in these systems because they are not fun for GMs longterm.
