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And as far has heartbreakers, it might sound weird to say, but Pathfinder 1e might actually be it. Mostly because by the time I was done with it, I fully recognized that my "D&D" heart was, in fact, broken. I was in a full and complete and total reevaluation of everything I thought I wanted...

I had to think for a minute. My first non-D&D "brand" fantasy game was Pathfinder in 2010. But since it's really just "D&D", I don't think it counts. My D&D chronology goes something like: BECMI ('86-'91) >> 10 year gap >> 3/3.5 (2001-2008) >> 3 year gap >> PF1 (2010-2011) Between all of...

Very nice! My use of Foundry has dropped off now that we're meeting in person again, but it's nice to see a clean, solid product ready and waiting if I needed. it.

It's . . . PbtA adjacent, I suppose, but in play I found it to feel very, very differently from Dungeon World (which I thought was . . . merely okay, and my group bounced off of it pretty hard). It has enough additional rules "heft", with the condition tracking, momentum mechanic, and the use...

From my experience, if you really really still want Fantasy tropes in your game: Ironsworn (I seriously can't recommend this enough, it's awesome) Savage Worlds + Shaintar Genesys + Realms of Terrinoth

I've documented on these boards before that other than a handful of 1-3 session mini campaigns (1 in 4e, 1 in 3.5, 2 in 5e) I have played zero actual "D&D" or derivatives since 2011. Since then I've played a ton of Savage Worlds (300+ sessions), but have also played GURPS, Dungeon World...

Alien dragon lizard? Shoot it! (Edge of the Empire)

I'd say, if you're not totally married to your homebrew, you sound like an outstanding candidate for Tiny Dungeons. The whole core mechanic is rolling 2 dice (regular), 3 dice (advantage), or 1 die (disadvantage). All dice are d6. If any dice rolled are a 5 or 6, it's a success. If at...

Hmmm..... TOR 2E kickstarter $170 Tiny Dungeons $17.99 Tiny Frontiers $23.99 Level Up kickstarter $90 Age of Rebellion Core Rules $49 Ironsworn Hard Copy $29 Ironsworn Delve $31 Spellbound Kingdoms Hardcover $32 Total: $443.98 Not bad. That's downright restrained, for me.

This plays into a key point for me. At surface glance, having another character to play off of is helpful because it helps me take my character out of a vacuum and into the actual "space within the fiction." Character development can only go so far within a vacuum. All of us recognize that the...

Character gen, narrative dice, confusion.

I think there may be some overlap, but neotrad is precisely different because traditional play always has the assumption in the background that the GM's prerogatives supersede the players'. When push comes to shove, the GM's ideas for the game world / continuity will take precedence, period...

Definitely agree with this. My stress levels are higher and overall life enjoyment noticeably lower when I go without my RPG group for more than a month (we typically play every two weeks).

Stop spending money on systems I'm never going to play. I'm realizing more and more that I derive no value from stuff that's never going to hit the table. In the past I've bought stuff thinking, "Oh it'll be nice to have that as a reference for some other thing I'm doing." Or thinking that...

The strongest overarching theme of Star Wars, in my mind, speaks to the ways in which those in power choose to wield it. So for me, the backdrop of the Star Wars Galaxy is most interesting when it addresses those issues. I've long felt that the greatest misstep of Eps. VII, VIII, and IX was...

Please please please please, when someone suggests Dungeon World for a Powered by the Apocalypse option, please please substitute Ironsworn instead. It actually delivers on the promise that Dungeon World only partially realized, IMHO. Also, Shaintar or Pathfinder for Savage Worlds, Fantasy...

Well obviously the big tension between RPG play and performance is that performance largely assumes there's a script, and if you go off script, it breaks the performance. Which would beg the point, why are you playing an RPG, with its random chance and die rolls and fickle GMs and players just...

Yeah, it's almost as if neotrad sees it as strictly performative. Much the same way TikTok is performative. In fact, I think that's a pretty good comparison, the more I think about it. Neotrad = "RPG play as TikTok". The main point of the exercise is to perform for an audience using a crafted...

And I should follow up by saying, there's absolutely nothing wrong with just wanting to be Batman. It's totally valid. There's absolutely value in using RPGs as an escape, to just show up, roll some dice, and "be Batman" every other Thursday. And I can see from the neotrad perspective...

Perhaps a slightly less pejorative way of describing neotrad play, using an ever-popular Batman meme --- "Always be yourself. Unless you can be Batman, then be Batman." It's really easy to picture a player looking at an RPG and saying to him/herself, "I just want to be Batman." And in the...