I found that the idea of “D&D” doesn’t match with the reality of D&D® (or adjacent like Pathfinder and Shadow of the Demon Lord). Like most people think of grand stories with climactic moments and character growth and the modern D&D offers more of a “square - counting, binary pass/fail roll slog, abstract resource management with little character choice after 3rd level, and almost zero risk” experience. Which is great in a video game, but boring at the table.
I’ve ran D&D® (or adjacent) for numerous groups for over 30 years now across multiple editions and the most success in the D&D® framework I had was B/X, but I think the game that comes closest to realizing “D&D” as a concept is Dungeon World. No overwhelming player facing textbooks, and it constantly pushes the narrative forward no matter what the outcome of a roll is. It’s also free.
There’s thousands of different games out there from more complex than D&D to single word RPGs. Find the right one for you and your group 😄
The other game is Mage: The Awakening (2e). It’s very, very, different than D&D. It’s one of my big game crushes that I’ve rarely been able to play.
But the player decision space is pretty huge, and the players have a lot of tools at hand. I don’t really want to remind them every time like “You can use Web Weaver to make the connection easier to work with” or “You can ritually cast instead of instant cast to get more dice and reaches”
What other game is the second group playing?
I found that the idea of “D&D” doesn’t match with the reality of D&D® (or adjacent like Pathfinder and Shadow of the Demon Lord). Like most people think of grand stories with climactic moments and character growth and the modern D&D offers more of a “square - counting, binary pass/fail roll slog, abstract resource management with little character choice after 3rd level, and almost zero risk” experience. Which is great in a video game, but boring at the table.
I’ve ran D&D® (or adjacent) for numerous groups for over 30 years now across multiple editions and the most success in the D&D® framework I had was B/X, but I think the game that comes closest to realizing “D&D” as a concept is Dungeon World. No overwhelming player facing textbooks, and it constantly pushes the narrative forward no matter what the outcome of a roll is. It’s also free.
There’s thousands of different games out there from more complex than D&D to single word RPGs. Find the right one for you and your group 😄
The other game is Mage: The Awakening (2e). It’s very, very, different than D&D. It’s one of my big game crushes that I’ve rarely been able to play.
But the player decision space is pretty huge, and the players have a lot of tools at hand. I don’t really want to remind them every time like “You can use Web Weaver to make the connection easier to work with” or “You can ritually cast instead of instant cast to get more dice and reaches”