Hi all,
I'm starting to think about the next campaign we're going to play after we wrap up our current Dark Heresy game. After playing a ton of systems over twenty years, I have a pretty good idea of what major problems I have with RPG systems (for my group, at least), and I'd love to get for our next game a system that at least makes a honest attempt to address them. None of the systems I'm familiar with do this, so I'm turning to you for advice.
The big problem we had with 3E was that mechanical complexity grows superlinearly with levels, so that the bookkeeping becomes increasingly more untolerable over time, plus it takes forever to decide tactics. On the other hand, we also had major problems with systems like e.g. Chaosium Call of Cthulhu where mechanical complexity is just too low for some players. The kicker is, the sweet spot is different for different people; I've got some players who love to have loads of weird powers that can alter the battlefield situation if we can just wait a minute for them to figure it out, and others who would like nothing more than roll to hit, roll to damage, next please. I hear that 5E attempts to address this by letting different characters in the same campaign use different rules, is this true? Does it really work? I've played a little bit of 4E, but no 5E at all.
Next, the big problem I have with Dark Heresy was that you can spend inordinate amounts of real time during downtime searching for gear or crafting gear or customizing gear. That stuff is fun, within limits. There are games where those limits get broken all the time. I have to admit that I'm not 100% clear on exactly what I want here, but I know that I hate spending an entire session rolling dice to see if you can find or craft every rare item in the game. I'd love suggestions.
And then there's the overspecialized characters. The guy who can kill damn near anything, but is utterly useless any time he's not killing something. He overshadows the other characters in combat, and sits on his thumbs outside combat, resulting in a worsened gaming experience for the group in both situations. Plus, anything that challenges him will wipe the floor with the rest of the group, and anything that's a reasonable challenge for the rest of the group will just get killed in the first two rounds by him. I'd like a system where that doesn't happen much. 3E was fairly good at this in combat, but sucked at this outside combat. DH looked promising at first, until you get a Vindicare Assassin and a high-charisma skillmonkey in the same group. Basically, during combat one plays and the other goes out for a smoke, then during social situations they switch. Ew.
Of course, a good DM has ways to deal with that, and I do, but if I'm to use a new system, I'd really like one that actually helps me rather than one I have to deal with. Currently, I have ideas for mechanics that could help with those problems, but I'd much happier if it turned out that somebody else out there had the same problems, built a system to address them, playtested it, and could sell it to me.
Suggestions, ideas?
