this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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What part of D&D do you not like? Depending on the specific issue, you could have fun with Pathfinder: Kingmaker or Divinity: Original Sin.
the part where you sit down at the table and it takes all night but it's 90% keeping yourself occupied while waiting around and nothing of consequence ever happens and everyone loses interest after four sessions max, and this is so predictable and dependable that in 20 years of never saying no to a TTRPG I've never leveled up a character
the part where the underlying rules systems are deeply flawed in every edition, down to the d20 being an awful choice for the skill die due to how swingy it is, to the point that you may as well make your own better game from scratch for how much you have to homebrew to make it not clunky as hell
the part where every group has been toxic as hell and defended their bigots to the person until I decided it wasn't acceptable and quit playing
the part where I would spend a month filling a binder with campaign plans and the average player does everything in their power to intentionally avoid everything I've prepared because it's funny to waste the fuck out of my time or something.
not to mention the setting is the genre equivalent of plain yogurt, it's just straight up uncompelling and done to death.
i used to LOVE the idea of TTRPGs but in two decades of "giving it a chance" it's literally never been a good experience.
The computer takes care of all the tedium, speeds the game up like 50 times compared to tabletop, and the genre is decidedly singleplayer so you never risk encountering toxic players.
Either way, there's lots of CRPGs that aren't based on anything tabletop, like Divinity: Original Sin.
Sounds like you've just had shitty friends / gaming groups.
over a dozen different groups in three cities over the course of 20 years. i don't think the issue is luck, i think it's the culture around the game.
I'd agree with your first point re: D&D ®️ esp re 5th Edition. My wife took a long time to get in to ttrpgs, something that I've enjoyed for over 30 years bc I kept trying to do the D&D®️ thing. I'd recommend you try other games that actually "play" at the table. Dungeon World is great and almost anything in the PbtA family does such a great job of driving the action forward (5e doesn't), having actual stakes and danger (5e doesn't), actually meaningful character choices (5e doesn't), not a beat-the-designer/video-gamist philosophy (5e DOES have this), and not ran by a shitty corporation that hires mercenary thugs to intimidate people, since literally anyone can make a PbtA game about anything.
Agree 💯 on the d20. I think it works in some games, notable Mörk Borg and like b/x D&D - games where if you are rolling dice, you already have fucked up
I can't speak to the groups you played with , but have you tried getting people that aren't in to the hobby in to it? I run games for new players often and they never have the baggage I think you're speaking about
Re the preparation you do, be sure to always prep situations not plots. There should be a law that states "the more prep the DM puts into a game is directly proportional to how quickly the players will force their prep off the rails". The game is a conversation, and I think D&D®️ 5e has fucked this up bc of how they format their adventures WITHOUT EVER TELLING YOU HOW TO ACTUALLY RUN A GAME! Plus, Christ they are fucking textbooks written by committee! I would say a couple things, first: look at Dungeon World as a guideline for how to format your adventures, and second: don't plan huge arcs, just plan individual moments that you want to happen. The characters will get there, even if it is a roundabout way. The Lazy DM by Sly Flourish has a lot of help here that can work for any game, and there's this blog post that talks about the literal easiest foolproof prep method.
Your last point doesn't make sense... Check out itch.io and their physical games category. There are RPGs for literally any genre or setting you can think of. TinyD6 and FAE are two really good generic games that if you can't find your setting, you just slap these bad boys in there and you have an RPG
It really is a fun and exciting hobby and I'm sorry you've had a bad time previously.
A lot of the worst experiences I've were trying to run games to get friends into it, doubly so because I have so little practical experience running a game beyond reading books and copying from them thinking I'm about to have fun, and none actually playing beyond what I described.
I've explored alternate systems such as GURPS and tried brewing a few of my own. I can criticize the rules all day but at the end it was always much the same experience trying to run those against a group that intentionally spites any prep (usually geared more toward worldbuilding and important NPCs than any specific story arc, I realize you can't force that stuff) I tried to do. Anything that I had a sheet of paper for, they would turn and walk away every single time.
As for setting... fam there's not a lot I can do when everyone i know who plays only ever wants to play vanilla DnD or their take on MtG flavored DnD, and they're not going to change what they're doing just because I'm sick to death of generic corporate fantasy worlds and waiting around for 9/10 of the time we're at the table.