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D&D alternatives
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Has anyone played Numenera? How did it feel?
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@Arkandel I have not actually played it, but have heard enough great hype about it that I bought a bunch of the books and have many theoretical characters ready to go.
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I’ve enjoyed Pathfinder 1E if you want the closest-to-D&D3.5-you-can-get experience. They made some things better, they made some things way more complicated, but it’s good stuff in general.
If you like fast and simple, Savage Worlds is solid for that. I want it to be a little more detailed, personally, but it’s good for what it does.
I’ve only been able to play a tiny bit of it, but I do like the A Song of Ice and Fire RPG, and I’ve heard really good things about the AGE system from Green Roninm, but have never played it.
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My game of choice is Pathfinder 2nd right now for my fantasy games. About to start diving into Savage Worlds. I have heard good things.
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@BloodAngel said in D&D alternatives:
My game of choice is Pathfinder 2nd right now for my fantasy games.
That’s a great opportunity then to ask - what made you choose that over 5E? Since (I assume) you did so before this WOTC drama.
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@Arkandel Honestly, I enjoy the CG. I like the Ancestries a ton, I love how characters at least in my games, feel more natural and not just generic fighters. I also love the Goblins of the pathfinder world, also the lore of the system itself with the lost gods. Both games I’m running now are using the default setting, just creating the big bad and the plot myself. I enjoy the diversity of the world out of the box and that is very rare for me when I run games.
I never even jumped on 5TH, due to how much I was not too fond of the 4th edition. So I went from 3.5, right to Pathfinder, and never looked back.
But to be frank, I’m not the rules lawyer of my group. I run with the goal of telling a narrative and plot. So, if you want more of that side of things, I’m not your guy sadly.
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My group had a little fun with Dungeon World (which is a powered by the apocalypse system) and I bullied them into CGing for a Thirsty Sword Lesbians game that never got off the ground but it was definitely in a fantasy universe.
I’m NGL though I’m set up for 5e, I own all the books, even with a canceled dndbeyond sub it’s going to be real hard to make the switch. I don’t want to go back to Pathfinder.
maybe i’ll go to pathfinder 2.0, i’ve heard it’s more slick, but mostly I’m probably just going to whine and cry a lot.
let it be a challenge to you
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My preference for high fantasy gaming right now is 13th Age. It took a bit more from 4th Edition D&D than other D&D-a-likes, and it’s great fun.
I haven’t played Ironsworn, but I’m in a Starforged game - using the same system but for SF, and I’m absolutely loving the system. If the fantasy variant is half as good, I think I’ll try it for my next fantasy campaign.
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@Arkandel said in D&D alternatives:
Has anyone played Numenera? How did it feel?
I’ve played it and love it. My only complaint is a completely irrational one. See, the way challenges work is, they’re ranked from 6-18, the number you have to roll on a d20 to succeed. You can bring this number down in increments of 3 by spending from an appropriate pool, which you have to do before you roll the die. So I can spend half my daily allotment of muscle to reduce the difficulty to roll a boulder, then roll a nat 20 and feel like a chump who overpaid. It’s the miser in me speaking.
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@GF Solving this with a house rule just for you (now hunt down the coders for me, plz)
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@GF said in D&D alternatives:
@Arkandel said in D&D alternatives:
Has anyone played Numenera? How did it feel?
I’ve played it and love it.
How easy is it to run a custom campaign based on your own setting rather than its own?
My perception of Numenera is it’s basically hard-set in a world with disposable artifacts etc, which can be a lot of fun if that is what you want to play, but for example what if I wanted to run in a gothic horror Ravenloft-style instead?
Would the mechanics kinda dictate the content?
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@Arkandel said in D&D alternatives:
What if I wanted to run in a gothic horror Ravenloft-style instead?
I don’t see why you couldn’t. The world is so screwed up from a billion years of pre-apocalypse cultures trying to rewrite reality that there’s doubtlessly a Ravenloft out there somewhere. I don’t know how well the mechanics are suited to the kinds of things you’d expect from a horror game, though.
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@GF One of the things I appreciated about D&D is that you could pull all kinds of themes with its mechanics without feeling odd about it. Horror (Ravenloft), post-apocalyptic (Dark Sun), high fantasy of course, play in other dimensions like the Nine Hells (Descent into Avernus), etc.
There’s something to be said about mechanical flexibility enabling GMs to run whatever they have in their head.
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@Arkandel Honestly, horror D&D never made much sense to me. The mechanics, at least in the editions I’ve been aware of, have always been in support of killing things to get their loot. Horror is about helplessness, so D&D has always felt like a bad match to me.
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@Arkandel There is a setting-agnostic, generic version of the Numenera rules (cypher) and a different setting (the strange), so… it’s already not required to be a billion years in the future.
You can fluff up the mechanics in different ways. Force field… I think you mean holy symbol that needs fresh holy water to ward off attacks! Grenade? Alchemical bottle.
… hell, call everything a potion.
The trickiest part is character descriptors. ‘Replaced flesh with Cybernetics’ might not work 1:1 (but maybe clockwork?)
Also also, one of this is to say that there isn’t a corner of the Numenera setting that thinks it is a replica of Ravenloft, everything looks like it exactly, and now a cyborg arrives in a very GURPS fashion.
Edit for spelling and calling the one book by it’s actual name.
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More Bundles of Holding!
Shadowrun 3e if you are feeling nostalgic for a few editions ago from the time before smart phones. But it’s Shadowrun so it is pretty crunchy.
Numenera Bundle 1 for some fancy Numenera stuff, a billion years in the future where Earth has a single continent and it has slowed to a 28h Day.
Numenera Bundle 2 for moar Numenera stuff, mostly new books since Bundle 1 is a revived Bundle from 2021, but I think there’s some old kickstarter stuff in here, too?
There’s a couple Traveller Bundles and more, go forth, splurge.
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@sao said in D&D alternatives:
maybe i’ll go to pathfinder 2.0, i’ve heard it’s more slick, but mostly I’m probably just going to whine and cry a lot.
2e is wildly different to 1e, for what it’s worth, and essentially every change is an improvement. It’s still customizable and fun, but the three-action economy is such a huge leap forward in streamlined play that it makes it basically impossible for me to go back to pf1e or 5e.
Plus, archetypes. Being able to suplex a dragon (if your rolls are good enough) is supremely cool.
