Well, it looks like a lot of people are suddenly interested in doing fantasy heartbreakers again so let’s have a thread for it.
I have come all the way back around multiple times on race as class, from hating it, to seeing it as elegant simplicity, to finding it restrictive, to wanting it as an option alongside standard choices. (I'd probably rename "elf" to "elf mageblade" or something, though.)
I cannot fathom ever going back to a game with to-hit or saving throw matrices or charts for thieves skills. d20 resolution systems for me, thanks.
I like advantage/disadvantage, because it simplifies what can be an unwieldy Lego tower of bonuses and penalties to keep track of for each character.
Despite people earnestly telling me that law/chaos/neutrality is better than standard alignments, I've never actually seen an explanation of how or why that would be. That said, the old World of Darkness nature/demeanor system seems to create more believable characters. Let cosmic Good and Evil (and sure, Law and Chaos) be factions in a game world, rather than something every level one PC starts off committed to.
The Powered by the Apocalypse playbook system is
wonderful. It works great in Monster of the Week to create veteran monster hunters whose connections were established in a previous episode, but it also works great in Beyond the Wall to create parties whose characters are naturally interwoven together. Anyone who hasn't played BtW should pick it up (ASAP, really, since I haven't heard how Flatland is responding to the OGL debacle).
I quite like the contemporary idea that monstrous people are just people. As we know from the real world, anyone can be evil or good, so there's no shortage of enemies to stick swords into, if that's what your players are after. If I were creating a monster book, I would make it clear that Bandits, Slavers, Cultists and others in the opponents section could be of any ancestry, either homogeneously or heterogeneously. I'm creating/reskinning a new monstrous people for my #dungeon23 adventure and, from the jump, I'm noting that while
most of them believe in a demonic creation myth and are demon worshipers, there's evidence that they were a pre-existing people whose leadership have taken them down this path and killed anyone who acknowledged their previous identity. I'm even going to provide a way for players to play one as a PC, should they choose (and once they find out the secrets of this group).
3E incantations are better than 5E ritual magic. A wizard doing a ritual spell during downtime is just a bookkeeping exercise. The barbarian piecing together an incantation from tomb walls and scraps of paper he has to get untrustworthy sages to translate for him, that he then casts in desperate hope to save his people, is epic.
I like the idea of games where there's a progression of abilities or skills based on different dice sizes (Kids on Bikes, Tails of Equestria), but the jump from d12 to d20 is way too big. If you're going to use that kind of system (and playing with more dice can be fun), you need to use the whole Zocchi dice spectrum for a smoother progression. I taught my youngest how to play RPGs with Tails from Equestria and the moment anyone got to the d20 level, it basically short-circuited the game, since that PC now could dominate adventures.
