What’s a good system to wean my players off 5e? My 5e Curse of Strahd game is ending soonish. Some of the players feel reliant on D&D Beyond because they worry about missing or forgetting class abilities. Do any other systems have something similiar?
Quite a few systems out there aren't even complicated enough to need outside software or tracking tools just to organize what's on your sheet.
Something like Call of Cthulhu is basically just a list of attributes and skills, for example.
I will say you'd probably have better luck convincing them to try other things the further those things are from 5e. If you just pitch them a slightly different fantasy RPG, they're probably just going to ask why you aren't playing D&D instead.
Better to go for something modern or sci-fi where you can more easily point out the fact that just tossing in a laser pistol statblock doesn't make 5e work for that purpose.
>wean my players off 5e
>reliant on (mechanical aid) because (dementia)
no, 5e is the only system with widespread mechanical aid, with pathfinder having some and the rest having largely nil
you'll have to get them to actually crack open the book for anything else (good luck)
Cyberpunk Red has a really cool companion app that will roll dice for you, keep track of ammo (assuming you roll attacks properly), keeps track of how insane you are, etc. Their marketing sucks fricking ass, I'm surprised that R. Talsorian doesn't just say 'we have a phone app'.
Play B/X
This.
Either BX or Traveller.
Unfortunately commies hate it because it's about self reliance and amassing wealth. And most 5e players are commies.
>5e players
There is no hope. The brain-rot is terminal. Find new players.
I’m not going to ditch my friends of over a decade because they have bad taste in rpgs.
He's exaggerating. Did you actually asked them to try something new?
I would suggest to pick something of YOUR liking, study the rulesystem by yourself by making some featureless grey plain encounters to test and learn the mechanics (making some solo game would speed up significally the process but it's an overlill mostly). Then when you're confident propose a game and guide your players as you play making the transition smooth and transparent.
I’ve made a few suggestions. People didn’t seem overly interested in anything outside of 5e. That being said one of my players has a side game (which I can’t join because his sister thinks I’m a rapist) which is WoD so they’re at least open to trying other systems. I was thinking about doing a few one shots for games like Nova maybe Dark Heresy. Call of Cthulhu is sounding good too.
>which I can’t join because his sister thinks I’m a rapist
storytime, breathe some life into this dead thread
Not much to say. She’s friends with an ex girlfriend from 2013. Apparently after we broke up she started saying I was an abusive butthole who date raped her. She never went to the police but I lost friends because of it. I even had a fee threats to physically harm me for it. She never went to the police or anything. She’s said the same thing about every ex-boyfriend since then too. But here I am 10 years later and my friend’s sister despises me for some bullshit from a long time ago.
I’m married now with children. My wife finds the whole thing ridiculous and said I’ve never been abusive with her.
kek, I got accused of organising a gang rape by a friend’s gf, she never went to the cops either
Thats...quite a serious allegation. What made her think you did that?
nah, her boyfriend cheated on her with her best friend and she accused the entire circle of gang raping her, somehow I got made into being the mastermind behind it
Did you?
No officer
reminder that an anon from /misc/ was arrested based on what he posted on Ganker.
So don't confess crimes here. You are not, in fact, anonymous.
Obviously i was talking about my Minecraft server officer
Oh ok, you're clear then. Carry on.
>was arrested
And then released because freedom of speech means the sheriff just wasted thousands of tax payer dollars for a publicity stunt.
Your best choice Is finding something that appeals to another genre (sci fi, horror, etc) if you say "guys, do you like Star wars? You know there's a Star wars game?" and such usually works
Superhero is a genre I haven't ever had any trouble getting nogames to want to play. They get it. There's no lore dump. They're usually scared of anything that's not D&D. Other than that i usually tell them Pathfinder is D&D and just call it D&D the whole time, and they call it D&D and say "I play D&D" and I've never felt bad about that
I was like "what's D&D Beyond" why do they need it. Oh jeez, your party is worried about making a character with pencil. Superhero genre might be too much for them, the good systems are point buy, create-a-hero. Run some WoD and get the person who knows how to play in on it and if your stuff is already printed and ready just be ready to move without them. These games are at a teenage level, it's not competitive, you can mess up but it's not like you lose anything if you do. good luck OP
I quite like WoD. Maybe I’ll do a werewolf game. One of my favorite campaigns I’ve run was Mutants and Masterminds but that was ages ago and with a different group. The guy running WoD was in that game though. Have there been better systems for superhero games more recently?
Nah, I just run M&M too but figured there was a decent GURP for it too.
If you've run it, mod it to be a bit like 5E, just do Advantage and be done with it, explain that Hero points are like what Inspiration should be, ban the powers that need banned (nulify and minions, maybe some others), and after that your stats are D&D stats. Other than toughness they already know how to play.
Maybe print some example characters from the book and say, and then make a custom crazy anime bullshit character with all kinds of limits and say "but you can also do this, you can make anything, you can be a housecat, a ghost, an alien, but we all have the same power level so it's fair." People who knew nothing created such good characters out of it because they didn't have to get their heads around power level not being important. This one guy was like "okay, i want my right side to be fire and my left side is ice and i have to alternate or I'll overheat or freeze" and drawbacks are so key to how the game works, but he didn't know that, it was just a cool story.
If anyone wants to use an example book character let them. Opening the book made it harder on my players, even GM level players... if you have it figured out so they don't have to, i would try it.
CoC is a solid game with great pre-made adventures that are more or less compatible between all editions of the game
Pathfinder 2e is fairly close in spirit.
Call of cthulu is completely different but its great if you're looking to try something new. CoC is really good at what it does
Shadow of the Demon Lord if you want to keep playing fantasy adventures, it's basically just 5e but good and with less to remember.
If your group likes mechs, Lancer has an incredibly comprehensive online resource for building characters.
Nearly any of the OSR games, or retroclones thereof, will fit your needs, anon. I'm rehabilitating a handful of 5e players with BFRPG.
If you still want to maintain a bunch of class/character options with nothing egregiously overpowered, pathfinder second edition is pretty good.
If you want to limit some mechanical choice for a more streamlined experience I’d start looking towards the OSR. Shadowdark has a lot of similar qualities with 5e but tonally different.
Can’t go wrong with either, I started as a 5e GM and play both the above. Pathfinder for online and Shadowdark for in person.
Positive of shadowdark is you can run any TSR module with 0 changes. Characters a bit stronger so I would forgo a lot of hirelings. 1-2 at most is good.
Really depends on what they're in the mood for, but it sounds like they have a very common problem that many D&D players have with the DNDB reliance, so maybe pick a simpler system. They might like some PbtA games where all your abilities are laid out as simple little moves that tell you what happens based on your roll. Most other systems do not have an entire subscription service built around managing a core aspect of the game, so you may be better off finding simpler systems with different feels to them, but that's still going to come down to what sort of game they feel like playing instead.
Wrong question, ask them (or ask yourself) what kind of game they want to play. Especially for fantasy, trying to get them to learn a whole different system is futile when they are going to ask "Why don't we just do this with 5e?"
Especially to those homosexuals recommending different editions of D&D or OSR shit, go frick yourself. Nothing is going to change about your game if you play those with the same mentality, you're just tracking numbers slightly differently and get confused about rules differences that will seem moronic to you.
>"Why don't we just do this with 5e?"
Because 5e isn't that great.
You don't have to convince me, you'd have to convince that group.
>it won't be that different
"So why do I have to read another book if it's still mostly the same?"
>The difference in power level between B/X and 5e is significant to the point that it’s a night and day difference in combat
Yes, but asking magic-users if they'd like to sit in a corner and be useless after running out of spell slots and thieves if they like to suck at everything is not the best sales pitch when you otherwise play it with the same mentality.
>you can bolt everything outside combat onto 5e if you like
lmao, B/X having things outside combat to bolt onto other systems.
>You don't have to convince me, you'd have to convince that group.
Try something like "If you think 5e is so great, how about you run a Campaign for it. Otherwise, I'd like to GM for a different system for a change."
>So why do I have to read another book if it's still mostly the same?"
"You won't, here, this is the character sheet, just read each section out loud and i will explain them to you on the fly. After that we're ready to go"
The difference in power level between B/X and 5e is significant to the point that it’s a night and day difference in combat, you can bolt everything outside combat onto 5e if you like but you probably won’t utilize your shitbrew systems since you’re still playing rocket tag in combat
>Why don't we just do this with 5e
"You're welcome to run a game in 5e but if i have to GM i will pick [rulesystem] for this game because i like it and i want to try it. Come on, it's not like you know the rules of 5e either, half of the time i have to remind you how your character traits work, it won't be that different"
Why would you sit there and decide whether to fight, flee, or parley when you know hardly anything can kill you and you can take on almost all threats? In B/X you’re throwing daggers as a MU and in 5e you get cantrips that scale with level
"I'll be running BECMI or B/X going forwards on day X. I hope you'll join me for those adventures.
I just don't enjoy running 5E anymore, but I'd be happy to be a player if one of you wants to run a 5E adventure path next"
Solved.
You people all seem to be having these imaginary conversations with my group. I don’t doubt they’ll try a new system I want to make sure it’s one that they enjoy playing. They seem to love DDB for some reason (I hate that shit) so I wanted to see if other games had something like it.
Imaginary conversation with your group?
No sir, this is what I did to my group.
10 months into OSR sessions, they suffer.
I'm just telling you what worked for me.
Symbaroum is easy, player-facing and unique in tone, my group enjoyed the change of pace.
Conan 2d20 is another good one, sword & sorcery was interesting enough for them to give it a go and they liked it.
Dark Heresy always works, good memories from past campaigns mean we can always get back to that.
You say "I wanna try a long shot, like 3-4 sessions, with system X" and then you describe whatever kind of long shot you had in mind.
Old School Essentials might feel barebones for players from a character building perspective, but you can sell it as "let's play old school d&d. It's gonna be very lethal, so build two characters, and levels are based on XP which is based on gold. It's a dungeon crawl ass dungeon crawl"
Pathfinder is another option. There's tons of OSR stuff worth checking out. CoC is very different. Alien has a cool system. Star Wars too.
Just start exploring and see what interests you. Don't sell it as a big ongoing thing. Try an one shot or a very short campaign. I ran Mausritter for my 5e players and they collectively realized "we should play more different RPGs".
Commonly, players fear moving out of a system because of mechanical familiarity. There's a few approaches to take here:
>Simplicity:
Play to ease of mechanics by choosing a system with smaller amounts of dice, abilities, and stat tracking. Try HERO, perhaps, or one of the less intense Storyteller games.
>Similarity
You might want to try something adjecant to what they know. Some d20 system, for example.
>aSsistance
They're worried about class abilities and stat tracking? Find something with a strong VTT. Beyond is very robust, certainly, but I'm sure someone here knows of similar (and possibly free) tools for other games, I wouldn't be shocked.
As someone who frequently bakes pies, and who especially likes apple pies, this pisses me the frick off.
Goddamned pie-thieves deserve to get what#s coming to them. Frick those pie-stealing bastards.