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First thing you need to do when designing a game is to clearly define the goals you want to achieve. There are two kinds of goals and both are important. The first kind of goals is external to the game itself. They are about why you're creating it. Is it for your group only? Do you want to...

I think the OP makes a lot of assumptions that cause the whole train of thought to basically reduce to "D&D works like D&D". Taking a wider perspective on how various RPGs are designed could make it much more useful. A game does not need to be focused on "GM storytelling" to not be lethal...

I think the question is strange. It treats D&D as some kind of default, as if one needed a reason to play something different. For me, D&D was just one of the games I tried; neither the first nor the best one. In general, I prefer varied experiences. I switch between games to do something...

While I like many systems, I put Fate at the top of my list 1. Aspects and fate point economy. A beautiful way of making various facts of the fiction tangible and meaningful. Compels help in introducing complications that the players are interested in. 2. Concessions and stress-out. Making...

Exalted. I fell in love with the setting, but the system was awful - overwhelmingly complicated and completely unbalanced. I tried several different rulesets instead. Ended up running a very satisfying campaign with a Fate-based system. Cthulhutech. The concept is inspiring, but both the rules...

Isn't this what the IIEE framework for resolution is about? There are two separate but connected parts of an action a player declares. What the character does (in a "thin" sense) and what the player wants to achieve. Action description is necessary to give it a solid form in the fiction. Intent...

Our long campaigns last for 20-30 sessions, 4-6 hours each. It translates to 1-2 IRL years. We have also played a few short (5-10 sessions) campaigns and a big number of single adventures (1-3 sessions). The campaigns generally last until they get an appropriate closure. None of our campaigns...

Your characterization screams "Dogs in the Vineyard" to me. It's a great game because, despite being about defenders of faith and faithful and containing supernatural evil, it's not a game of "us versus them". You have the rules of faith. Then you get faced with situations that are much more...

I'm not against making some character concepts gender-specific. But I'm definitely against making some character concepts legal, but painfully suboptimal. It wastes time for players who need to filter out such options and is a trap for these who start with a concept and don't notice in time...

The games that changed the way I play were, in chronological order: Call of Cthulhu - First RPG I played and ran that made building an appropriate mood the focus of play. It wasn't about playing to win, it was about playing stories like Lovecraft's. Characters dying or going insane was as...

That's definitely not the case with Capes. The flow of play in Capes is very structured. It's clear who makes each decision, who narrates each part and what exactly is resolved by dice. What is, in traditional games, the responsibility of GM, in Capes is not only distributed between players...

It's just a matter of the game following a consistent set of assumptions instead of a contradictory one. If character arcs and character development are an important part of the game then the game shouldn't have random character death. There are many more interesting stakes and consequences...

Complexity is always a cost. It requires mental effort and time spent handling it during play. This, in itself, does not make complexity bad. It makes it a budget. The question is, how well it is spent. How much value does the game offer in exchange for the complexity? Or, in other words, how...

I'm playing in a fantasy Fate campaign, ran by my wife. We'll finish it quite soon, although I don't know how many sessions it will take to wrap it up. My character is a prophet, re-igniting the cult of an elven god that wants to return to previous power and influence. It's very fun to play a...

D&D 3e, Nobilis 3e, Mistborn Adventure Game, Blood&Smoke (aka Vampire the Requiem 2e), Mage the Awakening 2e, Fate (several campaigns in different settings) And a handful homebrew games.

It has a lot in common with Stanford Prison Experiment. Nearly all traditional games game the GM a lot of authority and power, without anything to keep it in check. A GM had nearly total control over in-game events, could change or ignore the rules, could reward and punish players. In such...

If I remember correctly, I left D&D for Dogs in the Vineyard. Or, more precisely, a 2 year long D&D campaign burned me so hard that I couldn't run a game for several months. Then I encountered Forge boards, read several games created there and fell in love. DitV was the first one of them I ran...

I call a game "rules light" if I can run it for players new to the game and they have all the information they need on their character sheets and single page cheat sheet. No need to browse books during character creation or during play, no need for me to handle the mechanics because it takes too...

I think it's important to notice that there are two different axes that have to do with rules' "precision". One of them is the amount of detail, the other is strictness of the rules. Strict rules work well when used as written; making choices where the rules prompt them, but not ignoring any...

I'm not sure if it's fair for me to answer this thread's question as I mainly play non-D&D games. But if I were to design a game that could be identified as D&D and keep at least some of the D&D tropes, I'd start by deciding what I want the game to do, what is its main goal. I see several...