sup /tg/, a friend of mine is looking for a classless, magicless d20 medieval-like system to run a game in. He has 0 GM-ing experience but thinks he can run a game within 2 weeks. What do you recommend?
I've been looking at the 'Knave' system with him, and he was like "but I can run D&D without magic no?" and I died inside as he said those words.
please help
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Do you similarly tardrage about d% systems?
>Help!
>Help is provided
>Lmao, rage much?
Go choke on a dick, c**t
Raging about the randomizer isn't helpful, actually.
>Nobody rages about anything
... are you really this fricking starved for human interaction?
>Go frick yourself, you stupid shite, it's 2d6
>If you want to have d20 just for the sake of it, you are moronic and deserve to be mogged by Black folk in a dark alley
This is an example of raging over something very stupid, actually.
> I am raging about something inane
> I got called out for it
> I will respond by making a strawman about how nobody rages about anything
You are simultaneously socially moronic and dishonest.
don't worry. I personally prefer dicepool systems.
Then HEX or any of its derivatives.
Alternatively, if it's intended to be fast and lose, then Wushu
>DnD without magic
Fricking L O L
Dude, spells is over 100 pages of the 300 page Players Handbook and 4/5ths of the classes in the game use magic of some kind. You can't really have a game that's "like DnD" without magic, because DnD is basically a magic-simulator at this point.
Call your friend a moron and tell him to run a scifi game or something instead.
>i've been consumed by troll logic
Christ, how do people this moronic even manage to get on the internet?
Look. I'll explain this to you like you're an idiot, because you are.
What's the purpose of rules? That's right! They exist to help settle disputes that might occur during a game!
What are some things that might cause disputes? C'mon, think for a minute. What about something like combat, where the GM and the player may disagree on how they'd like an action to be resolved. You can probably expect the page count of any system that includes combat to be quite high.
What about something like magic? Yes, people will have very different ideas about magic, thanks to magic not having a consistent real-world base to build around. You can expect the page count of any system that includes magic to have a fair percentage dedicated to it. Wow! It's almost like trying to use page count to describe what a system can or cannot be used for is silly, since there are just certain topics the necessitate more rules governing them.
Now, here's the part that's going to melt your mind. There are some systems, that, in their entirety, are only a page long. The vast majority of systems are under 30 pages. So, if you have a game that's 300 pages long and it has 200 pages devoted to magic, you'd still be left with a hundred pages that put it three times larger than the vast majority of games. We're not just talking about a working system, but a robust system.
it's always embarrassing to see trolls try to pigeonhole an RPG into a specific type of playstyle, when the very foundation of RPGs is them being adaptable. I understand it's because they're contrarian idiots with an axe to grind, but they're doing the world a disservice with their lies.
Yes, there's ready made magic-less games, and they're worth looking into. But acting like adaptable games aren't adaptable just makes the trolls look like braindead homosexuals who can't do something even children can do.
>Wall of text shilling for DnD
Tl;Dr. Is it time for you clock out yet, WotC employee?
>I roleplay as a cyberpunk fighting against the evil corpo!
>by shitposting endless lies on a taiwanese basket-weaving forum where everyone pirates the game anyway
Christ you're a gay.
You've never played any other games, have you? 600-page systems are not at all uncommon. Stuff besides PbtA exists.
>600-page systems are not at all uncommon.
That doesn't alter the fact that the vast majority of systems are under 30 pages.
Fricking moron.
Name ten.
Hard mode, they can't be PbtA spinoffs.
Insanity Mode, no Car Lesbians or Lasers and Feelings non-games.
https://rowanrookanddecard.com/product-category/game-systems/one-page-games/
Have fun.
OK, so by "vast majority" you mean zero-effort kickstarter scams that nobody plays, got it.
I bet you also make threads on Ganker judging all games by the standards of Mobil shovelware.
Actually, the vast majority of RPG systems are free, rather than scams.
I won't deny that they're mostly low effort and very few people play them, but that's kind of just the unfortunate truth. Hell, the truth is that outside of the D&Ds, very few people play any other RPGs at all, something to the tune of 90% playing some flavor of D&D, and the remaining 10% split between the remaining games.
Most of these are not TTRPGS.
>I changed Lasers and Feelings to [Noun] and [Noun], that counts as a new game, right!
If these are your idea of legitimate games, I can see why you think D&D is the greatest thing ever.
No one said D&D is the greatest thing ever. All I said was that it's far more adaptable than you're willing to give it credit for, largely because you're one of those idiot trolls trying to figure out how to lie to people in order to convince them they need to stop playing D&D.
You could be honest, and just say that there's other games that maybe more aligned towards someone's personal tastes, but we're all aware that's not really that persuasive. So, instead, you've chosen to lie and scream about how awful D&D is, how it only can be used for a single type of game and can't be altered nor adjusted, and how not playing D&D will win the fight against Hasbro, who we're all apparently supposed to be dedicating our lives and free time to fighting against because waging war on toy companies is some sort of moral duty.
>All I said was that it's far more adaptable than you're willing to give it credit for
And you're wrong.
Nah, you're just one of those idiot trolls trying to figure out how to lie to people in order to convince them they need to stop playing D&D. You could be honest, and just say that there's other games that maybe more aligned towards someone's personal tastes, but we're all aware that's not really that persuasive. So, instead, you've chosen to lie and scream about how awful D&D is, how it only can be used for a single type of game and can't be altered nor adjusted, and how not playing D&D will win the fight against Hasbro, who we're all apparently supposed to be dedicating our lives and free time to fighting against because waging war on toy companies is some sort of moral duty.
I've seen enough threads of people trying to do 'survival games' in D&D and it shitting the bed nearly immediately. Same thing with 'Steve Jobs' being a level 16 Wiz- I mean CEO, with 96 Health point, because apparently being good at something means becoming bulletproof.
The problems with "survival 5e" are a combination of innumeracy of the GM, and the presence of a few tools, which you can remove from the game to adjust the game loop. DMs don't actually know how many resources players have, and how much they need to attrite to pressure the party in that manner.
A lot of the time, the GM is ignoring existing default rules that would move things toward the survival side of the spectrum. The other problem is that survival isn't that interesting. Once the characters get to a state where they're thriving, that story of survival is over. The other problem lies at the other side of the DM's screen - players often don't actually want to be put under strict attrition pressure, and throw a giant b***hfit of you do. They might say they do, but revealed preferences suggest otherwise. And you can't have a campaign without player buy-in.
This. Not even in terms of Survival either. Play with Caster players and given them 3 or more encounters without a long rest. Holy frick the b***hing you will hear about spell slots and how it's not fun to be "shut down"... even though they chose to waste three fireballs in a row on a solitary target.
It's also that 5e's rules are fricking moronic when it comes to that kind of attrition. What are you gonna do, throw fatigue at them? Deal some HP damage? It doesn't have resources to actually push players, to nudge them with inconveniences to convince them to play more safely or to change their strategy to go faster. There's also no real options for doing that - Once you start traveling or searching that's all you do, the magic and abilities that affect it straight-up invalidate instead of change how you interact with.
It's just shit, play another system if you want any survival systems.
>What are you gonna do, throw fatigue at them? Deal some HP damage?
Yes. Moreso than regular 5e, monsters should be glass cannons. The damage output should be considerably greater. Let's not forget that a strenuous interruption fricks the entire Long Rest, without having to houserule anything.
Run resting RAW in a non-passive world, and a substantial number of DM complaints disappear. The problem in practice is that many players viscerally HATE not being a medieval MCU hero that's never in serious danger. They get filtered the way people bounced off the AC6 helicopter.
Resting RAW in a non-passive world is going to completely frick over short rest PCs and you know it.
Classically, the wandering monster chance is 1-6 per hour. Every couple 5e adventuring days, a short test in the dungeon will get fricked by an encounter - which is plenty to keep the average players on their toes.
You can either extrapolate that to "you cannot Long Rest in hostile territory", or have it be interrupted every few sessions in a similar ratio.
If you run these RAW and account for the opportunity cost, that's often enough put players into a survival mentality. To me, survival doesn't necessarily mean Outward Bound - it can be like Dark Souls or Resident Evil. Maybe this is an issue of semantics and misunderstanding. While you're correct that food isn't a resource 5e PCs are really worried about, they are worried about their hp, power slots, and gear. Those are the best resources to attrite to get them into a survival mentality. If you want to kill PCs, you can always "rock falls"; but killing PCs ime isn't the point of a survival game - it's about keeping them in that 33-66% resources zone where they're thinking about opportunity costs and trying to apply lateral thinking instead of fireballing all their problems.
It's actually 1/6 per 10 minutes.
5e doesn't have a strict timeframe for random encounters. It just suggests for the DM to roll whatever odds for whatever timeframe he feels like.
Yes, it's a slider that's up to you. There are guidelines from previous editions that you can use, but understanding the "why" is more important than the specific rate.
>Maybe this is an issue of semantics and misunderstanding. While you're correct that food isn't a resource 5e PCs are really worried about, they are worried about their hp, power slots, and gear.
I don't classify a game where the primary resources to manage are things like HP and spells to be specific to a survival game. That's just D&D's standard resources. And in my experience, 5e PCs have plenty of resources unless players are extremely dumb.
>And in my experience, 5e PCs have plenty of resources unless players are extremely dumb.
If you're a pussy in your encounter design, that's on you. If your players say they want more pressure, but howl when you apply it, that's on them.
Every time I share examples of my encounters in /5eg/ I get accused of being a killer DM. I've still never had the players complain about things being too difficult.
It is ultimately my own anecdotal experience, but it's truly funny to imagine that there might be players out there who would struggle with even less.
If you're getting them down to <25% of their daily resources between long rests, you're probably doing fine, and arguably doing it by the book.
Doing fine? Sure. By the book? Far from it. Which is ultimately my point. One has to really work past 5e's default assumptions to actually get the sort of experience it advertises.
Implicitly, the CR system I supposed to leave PCs at about 20% of their daily combat resources when it was introduced in 3e, with 4 equal ECL encounters leaving 20% of daily resources at the end.
5e splits the day into 1/3s, and they have about 1.5x their HP with short rests, so you're probably intended to finish an adventuring day with <33% of daily combat resources as a buffer. I don't think the monster math, but the idea is there.
The idea might be there, but running the recommended number of encounters of the recommended CR and difficulty from the DMG would result in an unmitigated snoozefest.
Yes. My big gripe with 5e is how slow and fiddly combat is for how boring it is.
I think it would be dramatically improved with group initiative to let turns cycle faster. Shadow of the Doo-Doo Lord also has a nice system.
>The other problem is that survival isn't that interesting. Once the characters get to a state where they're thriving, that story of survival is over.
Nta and i don't want to tackle on your argument specifically but i can't stop myself from pointing that if you genuinely believe in the part of your post i quoted then you're inconceivably closed minded. A survival based game isn't about survival full-stop, the survival element is the bedrock where the game lies on, it's a resource sarcity game with an overarching undertheme.
There's quite a few things in 5e that basically bypass Survival entirely, be it spells or backgrounds. Even assuming you ban those though, even a character with relatively mediocre Strength can carry a ton of rations and water in order to last a long time in the wilderness. If you apply encumbrance, mules are cheap and can carry a lot.
And even if the players are shipwrecked with no supplies whatsoever and all of the above applies, the DC to find several pounds of food and water for the day is fairly easy. A character with proficiency in Survival and 14 Wisdom has a 50% chance of finding 3-8 (5.5 average) days of rations/water per day. And that's for a character that didn't highly specialize the highest possible Wisdom or Expertise in Survival. As long as you're not in a barren wasteland and you can spare 2 characters to forage, odds are you come out ahead.
>And even if the players are shipwrecked with no supplies whatsoever and all of the above applies, the DC to find several pounds of food and water for the day is fairly easy.
The DM is supposed to set appropriate DCs for the situation. Which in the typical shipwreck situation would be closer to DC 20 for "Very little, if any, food and water source", giving your example character a 30% chance of success and an untrained character a whopping 5%. And the Outlander's Wanderer feature wouldn't work since the land doesn't offer berries, small game, water, and so forth.
>typical shipwreck situation
Depends entirely on where they get shipwrecked. If it's some barren rock in the middle of the sea, sure. If it's some tropical island, then no.
You may want to see a psychologist about these paranoid delusions you're suffering from. They're only going to get worse the longer you wait.
No, you're wrong and you're too inexperienced with RPGs to understand why. Shit no effort no thought houserules are not adaptations.
Monotasker RPGs aren't actually fun in long term serialized play. Support for a variety of scenarios is what tends to make for a good system for campaigns.
As it turns out, fight monsters to take their stuff to fight bigger monsters with better stuff is a pretty fun main activity for most RPG players, but D&D also offers enough support for both lateral thinking to solve problems, and other types of scenarios like horror and mystery to provide variety when the dungeon is getting a bit stale or to recontextualize those familiar elements.
If playing low/no magic D&D was as simple as tearing out the pages that reference spells and spellcasters, then something like
which does sweeping alterations to the game and introduces new classes wouldn't be beneficial or necessary.
It is not impossible to adapt D&D for that, but we're in a thread for recommendations for someone with 0 GMing experience. Wanting them to run D&D with vast sweeping changes as their first game is not a good recommendation.
Someone with zero DMing experience shouldn't be running DnD 5e to begin with, regardless of what they want to do with their game. It's a bad system that teaches bad habits and ruins players and DMs alike with the "DnD'isms" it teaches.
What system do you recommend? And what D&Disms are "bad habits"?
Players not wanting to adjust is nothing new. Counterstrike players b***hed up a storm whenever something besides Asks and M4s are good. Not wanting to adapt is human.
Stop encouraging that troll to mouth off.
The worst habit D&D teaches is thinking that there's any one system that you can just learn and then turn your brain off forever. You should be reading through and checking out lots of systems and taking what's useful. Get familiar with Shadowrun, GURPS, and L5R to see what games that are completely different look like. Check out Torchbearer, Pathfinder, and Fantasycraft to see what other people are doing to 'fix' problems with D&D and see what problems they have in return. Check out Dungeon World, Blades in the Dark, and Powered by the Apocalypse for games that trim fat for a simpler, more narrative-driven system way better than 5e does.
You won't like all the games and every single one of them has problems, but they're all more interesting and the variety will make you a better player/gm. Also, d20's are the shittiest mechanic for dice resolution, just complete dogshit, and the sooner you learn that the better.
Nta but
>What system do you recommend?
For a 1st time GM and first time dipping toes in the hobby? B/X (or BFRPG if we want to avoid thAC0 at all costs), Call of Cthulhu, some nuOSR microsystem (eg Knave or Beyond the Wall), RISUS. I may think of more but i'm just listing the first coming out if my mind.
>And what D&Disms are "bad habits"?
D&D doesn't instill bad habits per se, it's just not particularly good ar "correcting" them. Most bad habits are derivative of vidya mindset, to make an example the rulesystem doesn't clearly states that the majority of creatures won't actually fight to the death hence you get most people running (wotc)d&d have fights to the death all the times.
What world are you living in where the average TTRPG is 30 pages? This does NOT describe the "vast majority" of TTRPGS by any stretch of the imagination, unless you consider stuff like "Everyone is John" and "Cards Against Humanity" to be TTRPGS. But you're confusing TTRPGS with Traditional Games.
>The vast majority of systems are under 30 pages.
What if we actually want an interesting and playable system, ie, what if we want something that isn't unfinished, unpolished, self-published amateur home brew but something actually worth playing?
I sampled 30 systems' core rule books. The shortest, assuming 500 words per page, was 22.5 pages. That was the only one under 30 pages. The next shortest was just over 30 pages. The mean and sd estimate were size 217 and 144, the quartiles and median were 83, 205, 345. The largest was 538 pages. Several of those numbers underestimate page counts as some of the rules were split across multiple books and I only counted one book per system. Only a few of the games sampled had magic. None of them would have gone under 30 if I had excluded spell descriptions.
I obviously have a bias which influences the sample I could obtain but the almost complete lack of sub 30 page games suggests your number is not representative of good or popular rpgs. I have an idea of where you got your number.
>The vast majority of systems are under 30 pages
Nta but tell me you're a secondary homosexual without saying it.
Drink bleach insecure b***h
Pick any system, ignore the magic, done.
>t. would run Cyberpunk with D&D
>verification not required
>>"but I can run D&D without magic no?"
>Pick any system, ignore the magic, done.
Oh look, it's moron o'clock!
I have two recommendations and each one only partially fulfills your requirements.
Iron heroes is a d20 based RPG that uses the 3.5 rules as a base. It's designed around entirely mundane martial heroes no spell casting whatsoever. However it is not classless. I've never played it, so I have no idea how good it is. I'm theory you should be able to drop these characters into any 3.5 world and have them be able to compete with monsters at high level play.
GURPS is classless very flexible and has a ton of options to spice up melee and ranged medieval combat. However it's not d20, and it's probably a pretty steep sell for the guy who "just wants to run d&d but without the magic". There's a pretty good free pre-written adventure called Caravan to Ein Arris that is based in a realistic medieval society, and the free GURPS Lite rules are all you need to run it and make characters. If you need help with GURPS rules and stuff, you can always check out the gurpsgen, there are usually some helpful anons there.
GURPS
the key problem with GURPS, Which I like (I've ran 3 games in it) is that we need to teach someone who played D&D Thrice the 'How to' of tabletop and how to run a game. of all the suggestions so far, Wushu seems rules light enough that it might work.
>a friend of mine is looking for a classless, magicless d20 medieval-like system to run a game in.
If he wants d&d he should just fricking go with d&d, i mean there's a plethora of non-d20 games out there why the frick he's fixated specifically on a d20 one other that wanting "d&d except [whatever]".
Anyway if he's an irredeemable 5e wienergurgling Black person homosexual you can try proposing picrel because is d&d without casters, he can easily start from there and make whatever moronic shit he's thinking. Now get the frick out homosexual.
Since i'm on a relatively good mood i'll add picrel as suggestion. Is basically gurps d20, uses three baseline classes but ultimately counts as a classless rulesystem
???
????????????????????????
????????
what did anon mean by this?
What part of that post you don't understand?
d20 GURPS
three baseline classes but classless
Two oxymorons don't make a cogent statement, they make a moron.
>d20 GURPS
As in a generic universal roleplay system based on the d20 dice, it's not rocket science
>three baseline classes but classless
"but ULTIMATELY classless" as in the fact there are three bland classes (warrior, adept, expert) that are just a vague categorisation on traits per thematics.
>As in a generic universal roleplay system based on the d20 dice, it's not rocket science
No, it's not rocket science because it's completely wrong.
>"but ULTIMATELY classless" as in the fact there are three bland classes (warrior, adept, expert) that are just a vague categorisation on traits per thematics.
"it's exactly like a ferrari except it's a fiero"
>No, it's not rocket science because it's completely wrong.
"It's like the gurps of d20 system games" sounds better for you anal autistic homosexual?
>"it's exactly like a ferrari except it's a fiero"
exactly != "ultimately counts as" illiterate-kun.
That said frick off, i'm not going to keep arguing semantics.
>"It's like the gurps of d20 system games" sounds better for you anal autistic homosexual?
Try "It's a d20 toolkit system"
>exactly != "ultimately counts as" illiterate-kun.
Do you think "it's like a ferrari, it's a fiero" is better? Because Pontiac did not win that argument.
>That said frick off, i'm not going to keep arguing semantics.
I don't blame you, you're exceptionally bad at it, as you are at communication in general.
NTA
You're moronic. Both "GURPS but in d20" and "base classes but ultimately classless" perfectly communicate what he was intending.
But you are that anon. You incorrectly assumed earlier in this exchange that I was samegayging. So you're now trying it out for yourself.
You're bad at communication. Just take the lesson and move on in your life.
Whatever soothes your overactive imagination schizo
>schizo projects
pottery
>hey guys, I want to do a survival focused game, so I'm editing the spell list
What's amazing is that you've never considered that to be an option.
You really are the dumbest moron on this board.
Use B/X and Knave to run a Nice classless system.
It does have Magic but I hope he wont mind it that much If Magic was only contained only in ancient Scrolls, tomes and books.
Id say however that Dungeon crawling is not exactly easy to run without any kind of Magic, and well, Knave is made for this kind of game.
And make him include Guns
>Use B/X
>Nice classless system.
Doesn't compute.
That is why I said AND KNAVE. Because Knave is classles and has its own rules but It also requires a complimentary system with bestiary, Dungeon and hex procedures, spells etc. And that is where B/X comes in.
Any recs of sci-fi systems for a newbie GM?
High-flying space opera or streetlevel cyberpunk, I'm partial to anything.
Jesus christ this troll is a moron.
Recommending DW, BitD and PbtA is recommending "D&D, but worse".
And holy frick how dumb do you need to be to fail to appreciate the d20 as a core die. It's flat 5% increments.
You have never played any of those games.
You seem to have mistaken me for yourself.
I kinda have doubts he's played even half the games he's recommending.
I actually have doubts he's played any games at all.
Yeah, play different games and all that, but none of those games are actually departures from the basic model that D&D laid out and really are just reinventing the wheel for the most part.
Narrative games do not play like D&D and they're not built off of D&D's framework.
>man who's never had a narrative session of D&D tries to give his opinion
Aw, how cute.
That has nothing to do with D&D whatsoever and there are zero rules to back it up.
>y-y-you can't have narrative session of D&D! I DON'T BELIEVE IT! IT'S NOT POSSIBLE!!!
lol
Yes. You're not playing D&D.
You're not the one who decides what D&D is or isn't, especially when you're only using a definition to try and pigeonhole the game into something you think no one should play.
I'm not arguing against D&D you dense moron, I'm arguing against your braindead moronic claim that unrelated games with a completely different framework and conceptions of player and GM relation are just D&D with a coat of paint.
>with a completely different framework and conceptions of player and GM relation
I feel like you are particularly naive.
Y'know what? Let me try this out for size.
What do you think about this spell?
https://dnd.arkalseif.info/spells/book-of-vile-darkness--37/mindrape--165/index.html
It's irrelevant to the discussion because it's not a player-facing meta mechanic that gives them control over the game world. You don't understand what's being discussed at all.
No, I fully understand what's being discussed, I was just wondering if you considered something like a metapoint that allowed a player to reroll an attack or conjure up some helpful npc was that different from a spell that could rape someone's mind in the grand scheme of things.
This is the most midwit discussion I have ever seen
I first played D&D in 1975. Everything is D&D.
Are you actually trying to say D&D doesn't have narrative rules or rules to support a more narrative structure? Aside from the joke being that narrative games don't need a lot of rules, even if you were using no rules it would still be better than the assbackwards ideas that exist in Blades in the Dark, a deep failure of a game that can only be applauded for figuring out how to suck all the excitement out of a heist.
The closest D&D has ever come to narrative rules were action points and 4E powers.
They mean in the Forge sense where it's only narrative of there are meta mechanics to give players control over the world state like the GMs. They don't consider Vampire to be narrative either for this reason.
It sounds unintuitive based on the dictionary definition, but he's using specific jargon from some indy RPG theorists from a niche forum from 20 years ago.
Which is the right thing to do when we're talking about PbtA games and BitD.
I don't think you should expect people to know about the specific jargon of a locked, dead forum whose theory and jargon is not used in the broader game design space.
I can and should expect that when we're talking about games directly informed by it.
> Magicless d20 medieval-like
If you're going to d20, just D&D. If not, try Dream Pod 9's. The ([Skill rank]d6; pick highest) works well with low fantasy / sci-fi. Heck, even PbtA would be a substantially better pick.
While we are talking about system recommendations, I vaguely remember a bug RPG in which each different type of bug is its own race. I also recall that one of them betrayed the others in exchange for dark powers and now they're screwed. I watched a youtube video that presented the setting but I cannot for the life of me put my finger on what the name was.
>Classless d20 medeival-like system
I've got one-
>Magicless
Ehhh...
It's not really in focus for players, but magic exists in Pendragon the same way that magic exists in Arthurian literature. But it's a game with an incredibly elaborate pre-written campaign you can use (which may aid your new GM friend), and it's about playing as medieval knights whose stories intersect the legends. It's d20 roll-under, and you can invest in being good at a variety of skills, earn glory, build your estate and legacy, etc.
Almost all classless systems can be run without magic
Yeah, but how many of them are a D20 system?
Plus like, some games just have slightly better groundwork for it than others. A lot of games that have magic rules lean on them as an important piece of the party, where you feel like you're missing something if you don't have it.
The Chronicle system (just as an example) was explicitly designed to have no magic characters, so it's martial character designs are much more diversified, and it has more options for purely social focused characters. That way everyone can still build distinct characters, but you don't feel like there are massive gaps in the party.
And since were limited to medieval settings, like... The only classless medieval systems I know of are GURPS (which I think should generally be avoided if a better option exists, just for specificity sake) HERO (which is awful, building a character feels like your doing taxes) Agone (a game defined by the party all having some kind of magic powers) OWoD (the medieval setting, but again, it assumes you are all engaged in the supernatural in some way) the Chronicle system, the Dark Eye, and that's really everything I've experienced that's classless and medieval.
I assume there are more, but like, the best one out of them in my opinion for what the OP asked is the Chronicle System cause it was designed specifically for magicless campaigns and has lots of rules and ideas for things the party can do that don't involve magic.
If you have other suggestions go ahead, but unless they fit the OPs criteria perfectly I'm not sure how much better they are gonna be.
>classless
>magicless
>D20
That is a really tricky set of 3 there. The Dark Eye is technically a D20 system, and the magic is not as integral to the game as in D&D, so you could strip it out, but when I say "Technically a D20 system" I'm being very loose here. It uses D20s, but it has almost no similarity to D&D.
Most classless games really aren't D20 games (at least not In the D&D sense) cause character classes are such an integral part of it. Sine Nominee games are probably the closest you can get to "classless" in a D20 system whole still maintaining the core mechanics. Of that's a route you'd be down to investigate, Wolves of God probably fits your criteria the best. There is technically "magic" but it's explicitly made non integral to the party dynamic, and is low fantasy enough that you can just ignore it entirely.
If you are willing to step outside of the D20 set though, the game I would reccomend the most (because I think it's just better than the above two in general) is the Chronicle system by Green Ronin. It was designed from the ground up to be a medieval system in a setting that had little to no magic (wasn't even released with any significant magic rules, just a handful of setting specific special abilities). It does have magic rules in the core book now, but the game was designed with the idea of a party having no magic users (and there generally being no magical opposition in the setting) so ignoring them is going to be the easiest of all these suggestions, since the magic system is explicitly meant to be modular. The only issue is it used a D6 dicepool system, but it's really not that difficult to learn, and in my opinion much easier to pick up than D20 rules.
Hope any of this is helpful.
I'm not looking for a full system, just a mechanic. I need a mechanic to represent maze exploration.
Obviously there's a naive implementation where there is literally a maze and the players can't see the whole maze and have to explore it segment by segment. This is sensible but seems kind of tedious.
I've seen an experimental game where the player physically wanders around with their eyes closed while the GMs (plural) block their way until they handle their encounter/riddle and send them on their way. While I find this idea fascinating, it's a little much for me.
Any games which handle mazes in an interesting way?
Now, are we talking a dungeon crawl with a mazelike layout, or just a straight-up classic labyrinth?
Labyrinth
the Vornheim book, as well as A Red and Pleasant Land from LOTFP might be interesting to you for finding labyrinth mechanics.
Do you have a quick description of them before I hunt down a PDF?
>Vornheim: The Complete City Kit
A supplement about running games in a medieval themed mega city, it has mechanics for players traversing and mapping what is meant to be a near infinite labyrinthine city. Not exactly what you were looking for, but I think it might be worth looking into, since you might be able to adapt some of the rules for smaller scale.
>A Red and Pleasant Land
has similar mechanics but for traversing a grimdark Alice in Wonderland-esque setting. Similar to above, but I think there are some actual examples of labyrinths as dungeons in this as well.
And a third one that I just remembered:
> Veins of the Earth
Has mechanics for designing dungeons meant to emulate actual natural cave systems, which are significantly more labyrinthine than commonly depicted in TTRPGs.
Maybe just put things in the dead ends, or make the maze magic if you don't want it to just be a linear dungeon. Actually navigating a maze is pretty simple if the party's not on some kind of time limit.
D&D is popular because other rpgs at their best are significantly worse than wotc at their worst.
>j-just find other systems
maybe other rpg companies should make *drum roll* better games!
>D&D is popular because other rpgs at their best are significantly worse than wotc at their worst.
I wonder if you can say this very phrase irl with a straight face
Is it summer already?
the angry responses just prove this right
Angry? Where?
>"IF I CAN DETERMINE THE EMIOTIONAL STATE OF SOMEONE OVER THE INTERNET, THEN I WIN! GLORY TO REDDIT!"
Eat shit. If I'm angry, you're a furry.
smile anon
Talislanta 4E ignore all sections on magic.
tell him to play mythic bastionland
https://www.bastionland.com/2022/07/primeval-bastionland-playtest.html?m=1
Your friend is an idiot. I'd recommend finding a new one.
D&D with magic-user classes are "villain-only".
Preferably level maxcapped at five.
Assuming 5e, how many options are there for purely magicless characters? 2 fighter subclasses, 2 thief subclasses, 1 barbarian subclass?
There's more if you go beyond the PHB, but even then it's not great.
Barbarian has Berserker and Battlerager, neither of which are great.
Fighter has Champion and Battlemaster from core, and also has a few more like PDK, Cavalier, and Samurai, the latter two of which are solid.
Rogue has Thief and Assassin core, as well as Inquisitive, Mastermind, Scout, and Swashbuckler. Swashbuckler probably being the overall best of those.
If you cap it at level 5, then a case could probably be made for Monk. There's some blatantly wuxia stuff, but Open Hand, Drunken Master, and Kensei are all ostensibly mundane.
The end result is still chopping off massive chunks of the game though and will likely end up funneling all the players towards being the same few archetypes of Fighter or Rogue, and there's not really any benefit being gained out of 5e for that sort of setup. 5e assumes a lot of combat, but combat in that context is going to be overly simple, because the characters don't have any options.
At that point if one were only willing to use D&D, it'd probably be better to just embrace it, going for AD&D with Fighters only and just dismissing any idea of customization from the get-go so that everyone is on the same page.
Thief loses a bit without Use Magic Device. If there are no mind readers then at least of one of Mastermind's capstones is wasted.
>Assuming 5e
WRONG ASSUMPTION.
Basic D&D.
How is that ACKII system?
Frick off, shill.
>Friendly reminder that there's an active Kickstarter for ACKS right now and shills haunt this board.
Also, it is no better than D&D
This. I actually like ACKS but the obvious shilling is making me roll eyes constantly. How the frick publishers don't understand that shilling something on this site will have the opposite effect is beyond me.
Classic /tg/ the only real ttrpg is DnD, but also it sucks, but also all other games are shit, but also wotc sucks, but also they make the only good game but it sucks so don't bother with other games.
What is it that you shitheads actually want? You're all just biting your own tail and getting mad at things that are different than what you remember but you also hate what you remember.
You all just want to be mad rather than actually take steps towards an actual solution that isn't 'kill the hobby entirely and shank anyone that even mentions it besides you and you friends (optimistic word to use) who have stopped playing because it isn't fun for us.' For fricks sake just actually try to enjoy something instead of trying to ruin it for others.
I mean, you really want to know?
The only good ttrpg is the one you make yourself for your group. Published games are just there to steal ideas from.
Anyone who argues that this game or that game is shit is likely just coming here to troll, and anyone who encourages you to buy something instead of pirating it is almost certainly a homosexual. This hobby doesn't need companies publishing books, and people sharing their ideas and games online have produced far better games than the gays trying to make money off of the sort of idiots who buy games instead of making their own.
make one yourself
Whats a good, simple and fast combat system with high lethality I can adapt into my erotic roleplaying game where you try to fight off rape aliens as a adepta sororitas rip off?
>Simple and Fast, High Lethality
AD&D or OSR titles.
Generally you'll find that games that incorporate higher lethality also get more complex because they want you to have more ways to mitigate harm or negate enemy mitigation.
AD&D/OSR tends to simply say
>Hit/Miss
>Damage
With HP numbers being low enough that getting one-shot is pretty consistently a threat from big enemies, while small enemies will whittle away at your limited HP resource.
Dominion Rules
The way it's injury system works actually suits your specific needs pretty well.
Have them look at SRDR
You having game times no yeah!