Guys, I don't know what to do anymore. I think I've dissected TRPGs straight out of my life tonight

Guys, I don't know what to do anymore. I think I've dissected TRPGs straight out of my life tonight.

I developed too many problems with D&D, and afterwards, I started to develop problems with level based games in general, and nothing I played except for OSR games could really do it for me anymore. Except my players suck at old school so I can't play that anymore.

Just now, I got out of a session I ended after 20 minutes where we played a second session of a game that is pure character building. No levels, just build characters, buy points, buy stats, etc. And I hated it. As the first fight of the night went on, I became gravely aware of all of the flaws of the system just like that, and I couldn't even stomach it anymore.

I really don't know where to go from here. I don't like playing games where the players get too powerful and by proxy I don't like 99% of games that have leveling systems, and I have developed a distaste for the core principals of character building games. I have two weeks to figure out where to transfer the system too, and I'm not even sure if I want to go through the effort anymore.

Are Table Top games just forever flawed for me?

Sure. Just find something else to do, a better hobby? Maybe look into fitness or art or something, maybe table top games could be fresh for you after a while of trying other stuff.

What said is good advice. I see this across all hobby boards. People get burned out, people don't like what they are doing anymore but they keep doing it out of inertia.

Just take a break, don't have tabletop gaming be your defining feature. Go try something else for awhile, come back later, if you still don't like it that's fine, but don't tie yourself to one thing you think have to be doing.

You could also try going full-on freeform roleplaying. Those are really hard to find good groups for though. You can also try ERP, that's also fun.

You can burn out on TTRPGs, no shame in that. Just take a break from the hobby and if after a couple years your interest comes back, that's what happened to me.

Daily reminder HAVE YOU TRIED NOT PLAYING D&D.

Like, it is totally valid to burn out on TTRPGs, but it sounds like you are simply oblivious to your actual problem that you need to play almost anything except D&D.

Given you are upset at character building, you could try some games that do not feature any character building at all. There is no shortage of these. Have you considered Dread or Fiasco, the most notable examples of such games?

I'm so sorry you suffer from such severe autism

Whatever anons above said. Take a break, relax.

And, looks like you missed the point of role-playing. Find a better group that focuses on actual roleplaying more, not system wankery. Try lighter or more narrative systems, like Fate.

You don't know the joy of at some point looking backwards and realizing that you made a character, not a statblock, and it has actually grown and developed over the course of the game.

1. I haven't played D&D in years.

2. I don't particularly care for narrative games because I'm not interested in jacking off my players for 4 hours.

It's not the roleplaying aspects that bother me. The group can roleplay just fine. What I dislike is when the system that is meant to drive the story, the physics, and the narrative cannot match up with the roleplay or the lore unless you stick in some cheese into your game.

Are you actually retarded?

Players are supposed to drive the story. And the GM is a player in this sense, too.

The rules are guidelines. They can and must be broken if it fits the story.

>The rules are guidelines

Yes, for how the world interacts with them, and when the rules that the players agree to act upon do not match up to the lore or even the present narrative, then the system has failed the players.

If the rules must be broken to fit the story, I don't believe that you have a good story. I believe you have written yourself into a corner and justify it with "rule of cool" to excuse discrepancies.

If I wanted to let players break rules to be as cool as possible to write a story, I would throw away my rule books and sit down and just write a collaborative story with them for four hours every week.

We meet because we want to play a game. A game with narrative structure, adventure, and adaptability.

>because I'm not interested in jacking off my players for 4 hours.

Play OSR

Read OP.

I think you are confusing not playing something labelled as D&D with not playing something that functionally speaking may as well be D&D.

Have you considered GUMSHOE?

I was playing Mini Six.

Before that, we were playing Call of Cthulhu.

Please tell me what parts of those games are D&D. I'll wait.

That's a rhetorical challenge. I'm being a snooty asshole because you are massively assuming things about me and my discomfort with TRPGs to fit in with your stance on D&D. Don't actually autistically list the few things that are similar with those games, I'm not interested.

I haven't tried GUMSHOE in specific, but the players aren't as good at investigative things and we're all burnt out on cosmic horror/modern mystery in general.

Have you tried Song of Swords?

Oh so you're a literal autist. I'm sorry.

Mini Six, my nigga.

I understand the sentiment but I don't get to game enough that I ever feel like I get burnt out.
How often do you actually get to game?

Once a week, but we've been playing for a long time, and I'm always the GM, so there's a lot more effort on my shoulders. I haven't even been preparing anymore, I just feel so out of it.

I've been running a Microlite20 game for about a year and a half but I get to run it an average of once every four months or so.

I have to agree with these guys. Take it easy, take any minis you have for your game and maybe play some skirmish games with your friends or other locals to break it up a bit.

A BB gun is also fun.

so what don't you like with character building games? i think they're cool but i too don't like when characters get too powerful.
right now i'm running a 5e game where i froze everyone at third level and have just been letting them get abilities whenever i feel like they hit some kind of milestone. not keeping track of xp or anything.

>so what don't you like with character building games?
I've become increasingly aware of the dangers of over specialization and how that will impact gaming as a whole. I.E., someone builds a physical combat monster who cannot do anything other than combat, but they do that insanely well. Meaning to give them any sense of tension, I would have to hit at their weaknesses, which feels like shit and just counter building to bust the character, and also invalidates their character. The other option is to throw monsters every now and then at him to intentionally be destroyed by him, but then I'm just sitting there, wanking him off at the table while the other players try to get out of the way. And of course, if I mention social skills, he will either play using player skill and not character social skill, invalidating his weaknesses, OR, he'll be so useless if I enforce social rolls that it would seem like I'm punishing his character.

The only solution to this is to prevent him from building anything but balanced characters, but then why even character build? I'd be better off just pre making characters and forcing my players to roll with that.

ah. yeah. that is a problem. i think 5e was on the right track with having backgrounds be a separate mechanical benefit from your class for out of combat stuff, and classes being mostly combat related stuff. therefore you need a bit of two things. but its just too lopsided how they oriented the game that way. like had they stuck with it better somehow (background levels? idk) they would have really been onto something.
5e is fatally flawed though. my game i'm running doesn't even really look like 5e anymore. i kind of want to try running a hugely simplistic OSR game (lotfp maybe? idk) mashed up with backgrounds from 5e, expanded, and maybe a little bit extra put into the combat system that i've been brewing.
that way you have simplistic combat, class based roles, out of combat abilities and characteristics that are important.
just blogging at you i guess, sorry.

A large problem with levels in D&D is a lot of things plainly don't have them: what's the statistics of a level 2 tarasque? A level 3 balrog? How do you explain a bunch of teenagers who started their adventure a year ago being able to take out a dragon while a middle-aged veteran whose been in multiple wars and done countless missions is only a level 1 fighter? It would make more sense if everything had a level like the way most cRpgs do it.

Unless you have the type of brain damage we've come to associate with 3.PF there is no reason to have a level 20 appropriate Mall Security Guard or a level 1 Final Boss.

3 step plan for recovery, if you're interested:

1) Stop being an idiot.
2) Let your players start out weak. There is no magic level where the game suddenly gets fun. Start early, tell early stories, and fill in the blanks.
3) Let your players actually get strong. Stop the "moron treadmill" of just letting the rest of the world level up whenever the players do so that the numbers get bigger and the builds get more complicated but no one ever actually gets stronger. If your fighter has been to so many extraordinary places and found so many extraordinary things that he can solo a bandit camp, let him just solo the fucking bandit camp. When you're that good, level appropriate shit finds you, not the other way around.

Or just say "no, it is the modern era who is wrong" and fuck off to PFG.

FPBP

Have you tried having a disparity of player power?
Or maybe not allowing characters that cause cognitive dissonance by their very existence?
> what's the statistics of a level 2 tarasque? A level 3 balrog?
Those things don't exist and in no way should you ever be in a situation where they need to.
> How do you explain a bunch of teenagers who started their adventure a year ago being able to take out a dragon
Either it's some weirdness functioning of the system or you don't allow such things. Time is a thing that exists and things (read: adventures and downtime) take time. People get older.

What about something like Barbarians of Lemuria, which has really simple rules, and seems conducive to old-school adjacent play? For that matter, have you considered that it might not be the rules that are the problem--at least not solely--but rather the play-style of the folks you game with? I don't want to say that game mechanics are irrelevant, but as long as they don't get in your way too much, you should at least potentially be able to have fun in any campaign where you like the setting and play-style.

>If the rules must be broken to fit the story, I don't believe that you have a good story. I believe you have written yourself into a corner and justify it with "rule of cool" to excuse discrepancies.
It's not that the rules MUST be broken in order to have a good story, it's that good GM's realize that maintaining the flow of the narrative is more important than making sure that every rule is followed to the letter.

There's no point in following the rules when doing so makes the game worse overall, and I say this as a player in games where the GM is overall pretty good, but has to always consult the rulebook if you a) do something that's more complicated than attacking and b) ask him what a skill/feat/spell/etc. does before committing to an action.
>We meet because we want to play a game. A game with narrative structure, adventure, and adaptability.
There isn't a system that can accomplish this w/o either rendering the GM obsolete or suffering from rules bloat.

My brother, you are not burned out on TTRPGs. No, you simply require something with a bit more... kick to it.

What you desire is not gamism or narrativism, but something deeper, something more fulfilling, something more complex. You require... simulationism.

Come, join us at . You have nothing to lose but your chains comrade

OP,

so did i. it's just fun collecting for me now.

so, quit being a faggot and get on with the rest of your life....

Have you considered playing games with no levels? AKA good games?

Shadowrun?
nWoD pre-CoD?
Traveler?

>It's a complex kind of bait

Sounds like you want a board/wargame with a narrative built in that you find engaging. Games with narrative and adaptability have to be more flexible because narrative creation in groups is inherently messy. The good ones of those incorporate/focus on that. Seems like you want there to be a narrative that everyone follows through via mechanics, that's different.

You can try talking to everyone together beforehand about what the story arc, themes and tones of the game you all want to run. Doesn't sound like you're up for it though really.

Take a few weeks break. Talk to your players/friends, let them know you're kind of burnt out and need time to not be the gm. They can organize a game, playing is good for gms, they should do it more often. Or you can try something else for a bit. Look into the boardgames general and the historical wargames stuff. Lots of narrative structure meshed into mechanics there.