What third-party books do the most interesting stuff with the 5e engine?

[Blue]

Personally, my group is only willing to play Riddle of Steel set in East Berlin between 1978 and 1984.

I guess our tastes are just more refined than you plebs. To be expected, really.

Well, Riddle of Steel does have a rather realistic simulation combat system. It's for the games where when your hero is surrounded by three bandits you prepare to die.

But everyone knows it's best at simulating West Berlin, you insensitive clod!

 

[Fanaelialae]

There's a difference between "can do successfully" and "the mechanics really evoke and support the setting."

There's also an axis from "unmodified D&D" to "a different system that supports the feel I want", and modding D&D is moving along that axis toward the second one already.

Can I run anything I want in unmodded D&D? Eh, sure. But that doesn't mean that there are places where the mechanics either lets you down or actively fights you in evoking the flavor of what you want. At that point mods can hit some low hanging fruit, and table buy-in to gloss over other issues can go a long way.

But that doesn't mean that a system designed from the floor up won't do a better job.

I'll take a fairly extreme example just to show off differences: Consider Don't Rest Your Head, a game about being awake in your dreams where you get both more powerful and more vulnerable as your get exhausted. It's a lot about exploring your psyche and your choices. With mechanical support for that exploration.

No one is putting down 5e - it's a great system. Every system has things it natively supports better.

I wasn't suggesting that anyone was putting down 5e (and in any case, all of the experiences I related were from 3.x and 4e).

I was simply saying that the "engine" of D&D (whatever edition) isn't limited to doing only D&D-esque game play well.

Don't Rest Your Head is a cool game, but it wouldn't be that hard to port some of the concepts over if you wanted to do something similar.

The question becomes though, is why go through all the effort to modify D&D to play (for example) Call of Cthulu, when you can just play the actual Call of Cthulu in the first place?

Our of curiosity, had any of you played the original Call of Cthulu RPG prior to playing the jerry-rigged d20 version? If you had and the d20 version gave you a comparable mechanical experience, then that's interesting (and in my mind a bit unexpected.) I usually don't ever expect the jerry-rigged d20 version of any game to be as tight as the original version they were trying to copy. Swashbuckling Adventures was a pale shadow of 7th Sea and the Roll & Keep system. And I really preferred the West End d6 Star Wars to the WotC version. I can only imagine how d20 CoC plays compared to its original.

I hadn't played CoC (although I had read the rulebook) but some of the other guys had, and there were no complaints that I recall. Maybe it would have been different if we had played to 20th level, but that would have been an odd CoC game.

Then again, I'll grant that my primary group is perhaps a bit strange in this respect. Aside from myself, they are very resistant to trying new systems (unless it has been homebrewed by one of us). But we all love to mod, oftentimes extensively. To each his or her own, I suppose.

 

[DammitVictor]

But everyone knows it's best at simulating West Berlin, you insensitive clod!

Maybe in the early Seventies, you artless poseur! Anything after 1974-- but absolutely no later than 1982-- can only be represented authentically by the overexuberant capitalist decadence of Cyborg Commando.

Roleplaying is dead, sirrah, and your unfortunate ilk bear the full, collective shame of having killed it.

 

[Blue]

Maybe in the early Seventies, you artless poseur! Anything after 1974-- but absolutely no later than 1982-- can only be represented authentically by the overexuberant capitalist decadence of Cyborg Commando.

Roleplaying is dead, sirrah, and your unfortunate ilk bear the full, collective shame of having killed it.

Pish tosh my fine gentleman - and I use that title with irony and derision. The late master's Cyborg Commando works best in a late Renaissance setting, perhaps featuring composers and, of course, set near the picturesque Rhine. A hotbed of psychic ability covered up by mechanical inventions if I ever saw one.

You obviously were grasping for, and failing to find, My Life With Master as your disco-era piece-de-resistance. You are welcome.

 

[DammitVictor]

You obviously were grasping for, and failing to find, My Life With Master as your disco-era piece-de-resistance. You are welcome.

Fairly certain that if I even mention comparing MAID RPG to Cold War geopolitics, Eric Noah's granny would reupholster the leather seats of her Bitchin' Camaro with my favorite skin-- so I will concede this round to you.

 

[cooperjer]

I'm running a game of 5e using the Southlands setting from Kobold Press. They converted the crunchy sections (classes, magic, & races) from Pathfinder for use in 5e. Thus far I've run about 12 hours of game play and completed the Cat and Mouse adventure with half complete in Tomb of Tiberesh. They setting book for Southlands presents a land with enough variety to run many different adventures, with the exception of something like Storm Kings Thunder that almost requires a frozen North. Right now my players are enjoying the Indiana Jones style of exploration in a tomb. The next story, Gramelkin, will be a little more of the same, but it will also introduce some of the politics found in the city of Per Bastet. From there, the local setting (desert northern region) lends itself to use Al-Qadim adventures.

If I wanted to run something like Storm Kings Thunder I feel the Midgard setting by Kobold Press would work well.

 

[Blue]

Fairly certain that if I even mention comparing MAID RPG to Cold War geopolitics, Eric Noah's granny would reupholster the leather seats of her Bitchin' Camaro with my favorite skin-- so I will concede this round to you.

*tips hat* Thanks, that was fun.

Though actually you win - I don't know MAID RPG from a hole in the wall. And I'm still laughing from Eric's Grandmother's "Bitchin' Camaro". Well played sir, well played.

 

[Eric V]

[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION], which adventure are you running? I bought the books and thought it would be a good change of pace from my Al-Qadim game, but your comments are giving me pause...how is it less fun, basically?

 

[Morrus]

[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION], which adventure are you running? I bought the books and thought it would be a good change of pace from my Al-Qadim game, but your comments are giving me pause...how is it less fun, basically?

I just think ToR is better suited to Middle Earth’s atmosphere than D&D is. I’m running the wilderness campaign book of 7 adventures (just finishing the third).