Reinventing the Wheel

[Committed Hero]

What should be recommended???

I envision five categories of usefulness, although genre can easily get swamped.
Mechanics: dice pool, percentile, roll over, roll under, maybe an exploding die game.
Style of play: tactical, narrative, mystery/procedural, universal.
Genre: fantasy, sci-fi, supers, horror.
Character construction: class/level, point buy, life path.
Adventure design: one-shots, story path, sandbox.

D&D is the only required one. Some PbtA game since the system is also on the design forefront, as well as an alternate way to consider classes. Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green. A World of Darkness game or Shadowrun. Hero or GURPS. Probably Traveller, or Savage Worlds. Maybe Ars Magica as an alternate to Vancian magic. And I'd want a licensed property - a Modiphius or Free League title for a contemporary game, or even an older one like FF Star Wars, Smallville, or Dresden Files.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Part of what is going on as well is we are still kind of in the wake of the d20 boom (I think in a lot of ways it never ended). I remember before that how it was just standard for any game to be a new system. How it wasn't that unusual in the groups I was in to play D&D for sure but also play like 4-6 other games pretty regularly (and to try new systems all the time). SO I think the environment people are operating in is just very different as well and the culture of play and design is totally different. That said, there is a lot of stuff going on outside d20 style systems, it just doesn't get the same coverage (one only has to look at the predominance of D&D and d20 threads here as an example of that)

 

[innerdude]

What year did you start? Do you think being exclusively d20 that long is a common experience?

There are outliers, obviously, but I think spending years, possibly even decades safely ensconced in the d20 / D&D cocoon is pretty normal.

I played BECMI / Rules Cyclopedia as a kid in the late '80s through early teen-ager-hood in the mid-'90s. Then took a long break, then picked up playing again in 2003 with a friend who was way into D&D 3.5. Played 3.5 from 2003 through 2009, then played Pathfinder 1e from 2009 through 2011, with some (very) short stints into Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved, D20 Modern, and Star Wars Saga Edition.

I did own Top Secret S.I. as a kid as well, though I never actually played the system. It's a percentile roll-under. I didn't know it at the time, but it's pretty clearly a spin on BRP / Runequest. Without access to the internet at the time (1990 was a different world), there was pretty much no way to bounce ideas off people on using it, though even at a tender age I converted a magic system using percentile skill rolls to tack on to it.

But even that tiny exposure to an alternative system was basically an afterthought. By the time I actually played anything other than a d20 system (GURPS in late 2011 and Savage Worlds in early 2012), It had been what, more than 20 years since I'd even looked at something other than D&D / d20?

At that point, if I had had any inclination for homebrewing rules, it would have been solely from the perspective of trying to "Fix D&D / d20" from within its known structure.

For the "old school" among us, the outliers in most cases are individuals that started with something other than D&D. They arrived into the hobby via Vampire: the Masquerade, GURPS, Runequest, something Palladium, Champions/HERO, or Rolemaster. If you were introduced to RPGs in the '90s, I'd say there's a 60% chance you entered through D&D, a 35% chance through VtM, and 5% chance for the others. But even in the '90s, entering the hobby through VtM would still be 1.5x less probable than through D&D, and anything other than D&D + VtM were extreme outliers.

I think it's safe to say that a vast majority of "current gen" roleplayers arrived through 5e (with an enormous helping of Critical Role) almost exclusively.

 

[Committed Hero]

I think it's safe to say that a vast majority of "current gen" roleplayers arrived through 5e almost exclusively.

It's easy at a site with experienced roleplayers - and on a board which is explicitly set aside for non D&D games - to under appreciate the saturation of D&D in the industry. But the fact is that one could design completely within the 5E space very profitably without noticing other games.

 

[John Dallman]

I think it's safe to say that a vast majority of "current gen" roleplayers arrived through 5e (with an enormous helping of Critical Role) almost exclusively.

Very different from when I started in 1979. I doubt I'd played D&D for ten weeks before I was exposed to Traveller and En Garde, and after three months I was already looking in shops for other RPGs in search of new ideas.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Very different from when I started in 1979. I doubt I'd played D&D for ten weeks before I was exposed to Traveller and En Garde, and after three months I was already looking in shops for other RPGs in search of new ideas.

Even though D&D was fairly dominant even early on, it had not expanded to fill the economic and mindspace to the degree it does now. It used to be the big dog in the industry. Now its effectively almost an industry of its own.

 

[Aldarc]

Very different from when I started in 1979. I doubt I'd played D&D for ten weeks before I was exposed to Traveller and En Garde, and after three months I was already looking in shops for other RPGs in search of new ideas.

Traveller was scarcely mentioned by anyone I knew or interacted with. Most people who talked about it were usually 20-40 years older than I was. If they mentioned the game, it invariably invovled the usual horrible sales pitch that "you can die in character creation." So that tended to kill any interest in Traveller at the outset. Seriously, Traveller fans should work on improving their sales pitch. This is not to mention the whole confusing issue of which Traveller edition. There were a number of concurrent versions. And every time you blinked, there would be a new edition.

Even though D&D was fairly dominant even early on, it had not expanded to fill the economic and mindspace to the degree it does now. It used to be the big dog in the industry. Now its effectively almost an industry of its own.

Same energy.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Traveller was scarcely mentioned by anyone I knew or interacted with. Most people who talked about it were usually 20-40 years older than I was. If they mentioned the game, it invariably invovled the usual horrible sales pitch that "you can die in character creation." So that tended to kill any interest in Traveller at the outset. Seriously, Traveller fans should work on improving their sales pitch. This is not to mention the whole confusing issue of which Traveller edition. There were a number of concurrent versions. And every time you blinked, there would be a new edition.

Note when he mentioned he started. In 1979 there had been, at most, two Trav editions, and as far as SF RPGs went, it was nearly the only game in town.

Same energy.

While I get the reference, I'm not sure I get the point.

 

[Aldarc]

Note when he mentioned he started. In 1979 there had been, at most, two Trav editions, and as far as SF RPGs went, it was nearly the only game in town.

Oh yeah. I know. Just sharing my own personal experience. I think that the OGL (and the d20 Bubble) did a number on the TTRPG industry.

While I get the reference, I'm not sure I get the point.

WotC could easily declare themselves "I am the TTRPG industry" and crown themselves emperor at this point of the story.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Oh yeah. I know. Just sharing my own personal experience. I think that the OGL (and the d20 Bubble) did a number on the TTRPG industry.

It was certainly a massive disrupter. I've never been able to decide whether in a good or bad way.

WotC could easily declare themselves "I am the TTRPG industry" and crown themselves emperor at this point of the story.

I suppose, though I'm not sure it would mean anything unless the launched into some really ill-thought-through legal maneuvers to go with it.