My perrmaD&D5e zoomer players only have enough attention span to play through one 5 hour session of a system and I'm trying to convince them to play something else other than fricking D&D 5e. Give me your top 3 games to run a one shot with that can show them the light. Everything goes, crunchy, rules-lite, any setting.
Everyone Is John is the perfect one-shot party game.
Along with what said, Fiasco is another amazing pick for the one-shot party game category. Short, chaotic, easy to setup, and pretty sweet charming.
I had a gay ol time with the Alien game from FL, can't speak to particular strengths as I also only played a oneshot but the management of stress was tied strongly into the game's mechanics and fed into RP really well. Left a solid impression on my table
Should be a great showing for dndrones that other systems do things way fricking better than wotc ever has
>5 hour session
That's where the problem is. Needless to say, if you don't know how to present your story shortly and optimize the system with homemade rules, then you're just a very bad DM.
5 hours is a short session, if you actually enjoy the game
The degree of enjoyment does not depend on the amount of time spent. Although I noticed that personally it is better for me when DM and a game system can do everything in a short time.
That sounds like a very easy way to burn yourself out and make scheduling impossible.
A lot of people seems to have forgotten that 6h long sessions were for many decades the standard to play, the reason for that being that it was a hobby that demanded investment and dedication to be thoroughly enjoyed.
As time passed and consumerism media became more prominent, the new audience became the kind to rather experience 6 half assed products than 1 dedicated one. Online play is also more tiring to play due the nature of TVs.
But irl? you should have no problem spending a whole evening with people you care about playing a game that's personal. Do take into account "6h of play" usually has breaks and includes the pre-post talk to a degree.
There is a correlation between the enshitification of TTRPGs quality and GMs along lessened attention spans from new blood.
It really depends completely on your style of play. Large group, trawling through dungeons? You could spend six hours just going through a pre-prepared dungeon without really stretching yourself as a DM.
Six hours in a narrative based game with a small group, and only sporadic combat encounters? You'd basically have to improvise entire plotlines on the spot. Not impossible, but you'd definitely have to stretch yourself.
You shouldn't use words you don't know the meaning of. "Enshittification" is how online platforms, which shift from appealing to the userbase to monetizing the userbase on behalf of more traditional companies, causes the platform to become awful for the userbase to use, and then proceeds to make it worse for the client companies in turn because of competition forces, so that the platform company is the only one winning since everyone else is trapped. You want to disguise your b***hass grognardism and you're using the wrong buzzwords as cover.
Not that anon but it's not that deep, and you can obviously infer what they mean when they use the word. Also words evolve with usage over time.
Even if you wanted a textbook definition, it literally only means "decrease in quality in online services over time" and considering services like Roll20 are over 10 years old and D&D Beyond is like 7 years old, then yeah ttrpgs exist in an online space, and have obviously gotten worse over time. Quit being a chud.
Pick your favorite of B/X, OD&D, and AD&D1e
I like legend of the 5 rings (4th edition) a lot, as a jump over from DnD that replaces some of those annoying DnDisms that often disillusion people with your average DnD game.
The established setting does a better job of explaining who are character is and what they are in the world once they are at the other end of character creation. It gives them strong archetypes to play into or against and comprehensive social norms, factions and threats. It is much easier for players to have motivations and get immersed when the setting out the box is less of a kitchen sink.
Combat can be pretty quick, lethal, it can drag if a lot is going on and people are just learning the system, but overall with combat rolled into the skill system and getting attacked always being a risky, as well as the setting norms emphasizing the power of bureaucracy and hierarchy, a variety of content types like combat, exploration, intrigue and so on feel a bit more natural. There is a death spiral though, which some people hate.
The 'class' system is softer than usual, making a particular character vision easy to realise without having to figure out the whole system if you want to make a fighter who fights really well. The roll and keep system will present a different experience to the d20 introducing the wonderful world of dice pools.
But, the aesthetic of whole thing - high fantasy with monsters, swords and 'kingdoms' - makes for an intuitive kick-off point for DnD players. 7th Sea (1st Ed) uses a similar system and has a great age of sail setting but isn't so much able to build that world around characters as you build them unless everyone wants to become a loremaster, and you can do that with DnD.
Cyberpunk RED recently surprised me with the lethality actually feeling like a nice balance between the kind of schlocky 80's punky daredevil rule of cool tone and the gritty low life urban misery street trash a shotgun to the chest will kill you tone that 2020's rules were more in line with. With health around 30-60 and damage done around 2 to 5d10's, the fact that damage rolls explode on the 10 means you can probably eat a strong shot or a few weak ones, but a stray exploding roll will ruin your day, so you don't want to frick around and be constantly gun ho. When things do go wrong, you have 3-8 luck points spent one for one to buff a roll. So if you fail to dodge by a lot, you're probably fricked, but can skate by a few close calls until your luck runs out. The setting is really well put together in terms of supporting a range of specific tones and the whole neon, shades and bringing a katana to a gunfight in the acid rain style-heavy slant of the game offers an easy hook and fun aesthetic experience.
The app is also top tier, so much so that no will know the rules for the game because the app is so comprehensive, taking a lot of work out of character creation, skil/combat rolls and buying shit. Hacking is a pain to learn and often a distraction as the hacker can potentially start playing a different game to others; I haven't seen a sci-fi game solve this problem but an upcoming supplement emphasizing on-site 'quickhacking' could be the way to go to keep things smooth.
It's pretty easy to kill players in this game, so a one shot with a dramatic ending could work well.
I don't play or run a tonne of other games geared well to one-shots or weaning people off DnD. A Dirty World is a simple system using the one-roll engine vaguely decent for running noir-ish type games, Lancer with some premade mechs to choose from could make for a fun evening of set-piece fights, Eclipse Phase has some wacky modules utilising the body-hopping conceit of the setting that could work for a one shot, vampire the Masquerade is kind of a middle ground between having the more coherent setting, soft classes and dice pools of L5R with the ease-of-entry shades and trenchcoats aesthetic storytelling of Cyberpunk.
did RED get a revamp? IIRC combat is measured in d6's and damage rolls don't explode - hits do which are meaningless 95% of the time.
Your version sounds much better tbh.
no I'm actually mixing up the d10 exploding attack dice and the damage, but it does mean shots from far away can tag you unexpectedly.
With weaker weapons and even just light armor you can definitely prance around for a bit, but there are a lot of weapons and threats that can ruin your day and the GM should be pointing a few at you regularly to keep things interesting.
Vaesen
OSR
Aight.
Make them play jap shit because that's some of the tightest systems ever.
>Tenra Bansho Zero
To experience the game as a testosteron fueled show full of scene transitioning, dramatic entrances, interpersonal relationships being part of the system mechanics and all around input feom everyone. The meta currency is your base mechanic for 90% of cool sgit and even character progress and you gain It by staying in role, even If that means spouting cliche one-liners. Players reward players with that shit and It makes EVERYONE actually play and be engaged. It made some of the boring players I know into actual good players
>Sword World 2.5
For an easy 2d6 system that wants you to mix classes a lot and tests your ideas in a light tactical combat. It's incredibly hard to frick up your character and the game flows fast and easy
>Tokyo Nova
Cyberpunk but instead of dice, you use cards. Everything you do depends on your hand and knowing when to hold to tour strong cards and when to use your weak in hopes of shuffling something better makes for an interesting experience. The game has a shitload of skills, equipment and a lot of classes, each having some game breaking stuff, called miracles. Using them can be pretty tricky tho because gm characters can have miracles as well and to only by using one, you can counter one. The game is an amazing mix of a tense "skill poker" and plain put styling on the world
You probably won't try any of them but these are AMAZING games and in my group, each contributed to make mediocre and beginner players great players.
/end ad
Mausritter is pretty quick and easy to pick up, and ADD zoomers usually love the whole "be a little mouse with a sword" angle, and there's a massive online database with hundreds of premade one shots
best one would be Dungeon Crawl Classics. You can give them an old-school D&D like experience, with a new system.
I never understood the idea of power sessions. We have a set 3 hour game every Thursday from 6pm-9pm. This has been consistent for 10 straight years. We've played a variety of systems, but normally our campaigns use DnD. We like the system, the game, and are all familiar enough with it that each of us has had a chance to run a campaign.
just tell them that you'll play old-school dnd, and then play basic D&D (basic). watch them die and then (hopefully) adapt to the new surroundings.
>Rules Light Game
B/X, AD&D, one of the Börgs, Tiny Dungeons, 5 Torches Deep
>Cyberpunk
Pick a screamsheet and do a little taste scenario.
>Blades in the Dark
Do a heist. Simple, easy, fun.
>Call of Cthulhu / Delta Green
Requires players who aren’t morons and prep from you as DM but in my experience works really well to open people’s minds out of the 5e stupor.
>AD&D
wasn't the knock against AD&D that it had rules for everything before 3e decided to have rules for EVERYthing? I might be getting my wires crossed
No that’s a fair argument, but that’s what B/X is for.
Dungeon Crawl Classics.
or something super-RP-heavy with light and lethal rules, like Shadows of Esteren.
the Storyteller System is pretty robust while being different from 5e. Regular vanilla-WoD paranormal investigation? Or Vampire, with the premise being that they're all errand boys/girls who do the grunt day-to-day work of enforcing the Masquerade. THEY are the ones who extract torpor'd vampires from the morgue. THEY make the evidence disappear. THEY have to kill inconvenient people in unsuspicious ways. Keeps things tightly mission-based instead of turning into slice-of-life vampwank.
One thing I think 5e players need beaten out of them is their excessive attachment to their original donut steal character. Make them play a some sort of precon that has a pre-baked motivation in the adventure (kinda like in Pathfinder Society, where each faction has a side agenda in the adventure) that forces them to roleplay instead of self-insert or jack off to their own writing. or DCC, where stuff is so hilariously lethal characters are disposable.
Unknown Armies. Put a real shock to their system by putting them in a contemporary setting with dice rules that only need 2d10s
Call of Cthulhu, Shadow of the Demon Lord, Vaesen
Dread, and the introductory scenario for delta green from the quickstart rules.
Dungeons: the Dragoning 40,000 7th Edition
Dtd40k7e is super fun, and makes good stories. screw balance, screw everything-- just have fun.
D&D 3.5
Pathfinder 1e
D&D 3.0