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Well, there are plenty of other task-focused games, but I'd also suggest that even in action-resolution games, there are typically mechanisms for converting actions -> tasks. A good example is Skill Challenges. They form a mechanism for taking a desired task and allowing you to use actions to...

If you are giving two sentences of info to 4 players, it doesn't seem that is any less interesting, fun or informative than giving eight pieces of information to one group. This is the same as if you have four players searching a room -- you don't go into huge detail about everything each of...

If you are of the school that says one you have a written encounter, you cannot change it to react to the players' actions, yes, absolutely. For me, that is a failing of that style of play. To me, deciding on a suitable challenge the day before the game isn't any more of a privileged position...

So the issue is that when scenes are being run, you don't switch between them -- you complete a scene completely and then do the next one? And there is no interaction between scenes? Ok, I can see that that would be tedious, assuming scenes aren't more than a couple of minutes. I have done that...

I guess I’m a little surprised that handling a split group seems so unusual and hard to do for people. I thought we had moved a bit behind the traditional D&D don’t-split-the-party stage of game play. It’s probably more unusual for me to have a session where everyone is always together for every...

For modern, my favorite system for a heist adventure would likely be FATE. Their most likely actions would be to create an advantage, but there are also a fair number of leadership feats you can take which would be useful. FATE doesn’t really encourage a one-trick character like a Heavy, but...

It depends on the degree of feeling. If one player doesn’t like puzzles and the rest do, then it’s reasonable to have puzzles show up every now and then. But if one player has a severe reaction to, say, spiders, and the rest don’t, then you shouldn’t design a scenario with spiders. Both these...

Yes, that’s right. It’s the way I have played and run for 20 years or so now. I used to be more into the “you rolled a 1 so you die” style of play, but over time I found that it rarely made the game more fun. I also have a really great bunch of players, so I can trust them to make good...

It really does depend on your play style. In my style of play, no-one dies just because they get bad dice rolls, or just because they get in over their heads. That would be what I call arbitrary. In the style of game I run, it has to be a combination of things: Doing something you know is...

I want my players to feel comfortable, so I tell them. Sometimes it’s very explicit: “we’re playing The Great Pendragon Campaign” or “I’m adapting <TSR D&D module> to start our 13th age campaign”. Sometimes it’s more general “I’m using a mix of LFR high tier adventures as part of the campaign”...

I ran a lot of D&D4E LFR scenarios back in the day, and at mid-high levels I’d typically ask a group if they had RRoT feats, the magic dice, frost-based feats or radiance builds. If they did, I’d say something like this: “I can run this as a standard friendly GM, and with your optimized...

You usually get 3 actions a round, and at medium-high levels haste is common enough to give you four, so three actions is basically a one round action. Also PF2 strongly penalizes you for taking each action to attack, so a very common strategy is 2 swings and a move, so if you spread the...

I found that a little fiddly to work out — although I like it in theory — so what I tend to do is assume you can take a short move to a wall or away from it; a 5’ step or so for a normal speed character. If you have to move a decent distance, then to me it makes sense to use an action. So hand...

That’s a pretty strong statement. Perhaps you might want to check out what actual people say, rather than make assumptions. A basic web search will immediately give you threads, like this one — the first one I read: () where most people — and all the more experienced GMs — say to use the...

Say I want to climb onto a ledge to kick a flaming brazier on the surrounding cultists. That's one action to move to the ledge, one action to stow my shield and another to stow my sword. Then another action for every 5 ft I want to climb (assuming I make the check). Then another action to move...

Well, to be fair, it is disdain not just for the mechanics, but for a style of play. I like games with complex mechanics, because a lot of the fun I find is in building characters with unusual mechanics and trying to use those mechanics in play in fun and interesting ways. I also like very...

While this is true, some systems make it much easier than others. For example, when I ran and AD&D campaign, combat was pretty brief because there's not a ton of opportunity to work together so the teamwork factor was low. Mostly "clear that space; fireball incoming" or "shoot the caster" sort...

There are a couple of APs that are quite hard, but for the most part you don’t actually need to play optimized characters. If you do, then you are indeed locking yourself into a single way of playing and yup, it may well be very boring. The social contract is not so much “you must be optimized”...

Outgunned is very effective for the action movie genre., Just played a couple of one shots over the weekend -- Knights vs. Nazis, in which we played Knights of the Round Table brought back to WW2 to fight in British Special Services; and Zombies vs. Robotys where we were playing a ragtag...

Answering the OP question: No, not really. The market for people who want a version of 3.0/3.5 that is not PF1 and is not 4E and is not PF2 and is not 5E is essentially people who have been playing 3.0 / 3.5 for decades and have a list of changes they'd like to see, but generally like it. And...