I’m looking for a better TTRPG experience.
Started with AD&D in satanic panic era, left, came back to 5E a half dozen years ago. Got a great group & GM but some things just don’t suit me.
For one, wouldn’t mind being done with Hasbro.
My biggest issues in D&D? Character regret, & swinginess. Rolling up a character idea that sounds fun, but in-game always seems to go some completely different direction & now I’ve got an established character everyone depends on but locked into an un-fun stat / ability set.
And ALWAYS whatever my concept is I can’t seem to roll for crap in those stats even with the bonuses, failing check after check when it’s the one thing I should be good at. That should only be possible rarely IMHO.
Goals:
I want above to go away or be much weaker.
I want to be able to introduce friends & family who are new & unsure, probably rules light? But I do like dice rolling & some structure, don’t know if a pure storytelling game would work. Can’t be purely abstract.
I love a good campaign but also a lot of times just want to be a beer league player, sit down, go to a cave & smash stuff, without needing a complex story to it. Party needs gold, rescue the missing turtle, let’s get swinging. Have thought for a long time about maybe west marches type scenarios. Show up, solve problems, check boxes, bring a new sheet to the next game whenever. Would work great for some of the gang.
Not at all adverse to player death.
Sorry so long, love to hear opinions!
Maybe FATE would be worth checking out?
Things I think it might hit for you:
Characters are good at what they're good at. You define the core concepts of your character and use them to get bonuses. Your character is a Highly Trained Ninja? Then yeah, you'll be getting bonuses to all your sneaking, hiding, acrobatics, flashy martial arts, etc. Plus, the way the maths work, the dice have a bell curve centred at +0 (extremes of +4/-4) so the +4 in your character's best skill is constantly having a huge impact on outcomes. Contrast that with your +7 in D&D which is still missing 25% of the time
Fairly simple rules. The core is, describe what you're trying to do, and then use one of four basic actions to model it if a roll seems appropriate: Attack, Defend, Overcome (beat a DC) or Create an Advantage (alter circumstances/environment/characters to tip the odds in your favour). However, there's a little more for combat and also a meta currency to manage, which I'll talk about below
Very quick to get off the ground. Character creation can take only minutes if you want. No mucking about with long lists of feats and spells and class builds and whatnot. You're actively encouraged to leave spots blank and fill them in during play when an idea strikes you, great for new and unsure players
Completely setting agnostic, it's flexible enough to do almost anything
Things I think it might miss for you:
FATE's approach is much closer to a story game, especially compared to something like D&D which leans towards the simulation side of the spectrum. Its meta currency, Fate points, aims to emulate the feel of an action movie or TV show. Spend points to do awesome things, get them back for accepting challenges, complications, and setbacks in your character's arc. That latter point especially often means the table needs to have a "writer's room" mentality, which isn't a good fit for all players.
FATE doesn't really try to do certain things that D&D does, like strict resource management, accumulation of powerful loot, big powerful character level ups, or dungeon crawling. It can be done, and guides are out there to help you do so, but you will be bolting a lot of extras onto the system, so watch out if those are what you enjoy
Which brings me to the last point, FATE is a system that really wants you to hack it and make it your own. It's very resilient to this sort of thing compared to something like D&D where getting some maths wrong can make things unfun in innumerable ways, but it does take effort and thought regardless, which may not be to everyone's taste. For example, you won't really find a "bestiary" of monsters to throw at players, you'll be making them up yourself, maybe entirely on the fly.
The rules are all freely available online or in pay-what-you-want PDFs. There are three current editions:
FATE Core, all the rules of the game plus lots of extras, examples, optional systems, things like that
FATE Condensed, all the rules same as Core, but with most of the extras cut out and overall streamlined down to 60 pages from 300 or so
FATE Accelerated, uses the same basic ideas for its rules, but simplifies things down to the barest of minimums, e.g. dropping the skill list for 6 basic "approaches", simplifying the damage system.
Here's a link to FATE Condensed, as I personally found it easiest to start with: https://fate-srd.com/fate-condensed
One disclaimer: I haven't actually played it myself yet, but I have been prepping a one shot I'll be taking my D&D 5e group through this weekend to see if it's going to be a good fit for us, so I have been doing a lot of research!
Fate is a good game and I think it's more like what people who have never played RPGs imagine. DND really hammers certain creative impulses out of players.
You've probably all seen it. A new player is like "I want to jump on the railing and sing my sea shanty to get people going! We'll turn them against the invaders!" -> "uh bob your fighter has 8 charisma and no proficiency. I guess you can roll for it?" -> "but my character has been a pirate for years! He has to know how to sing " -> "sorry, your backstory is pirate but your character mechanics are just fighter " -> "ok uh I guess I'll just attack then"
THIS very much. Thanks!