When I first started playing 5e, I thought it was the stupidest, most obnoxious bullshit that I'd ever seen...

When I first started playing 5e, I thought it was the stupidest, most obnoxious bullshit that I'd ever seen. I couldn't understand why it was getting praised so much.

I joined a Pathfinder campaign recdntly. Now I understand. It's the most broken, unbalanced, sloppy shit that I've ever seen in my life. I can't even imagine what 3e looked like.

The druid in our group is particularly awful. We're level 6 and our GM is throwing CR 10 shit at us just to challenge this motherfucker. Character creation is an ordeal. I'm on my 3rd character, and making it is paralyzing because I don't know which options will screw me and which ones are actually useful.

Who likes this? Who finds this fun? Why do people play this fucking system?

Try Moldvay's Basic D&D. None of the things you described are a problem there. I personally prefer AD&D but it can get a bit too clunky for your tastes.

We've got a thread for those over here.

Power and options. 3e was broken because the scaling was insane. It went into magical superhero realm. But some people enjoy that, and find anything short of it to be boring. Pathfinder took the concept and ran with it. The game is mature enough to have a zillion options on top of that, and games are expected to allow many of them by potential players.

Go to /pfg/ and pitch anything other than a game about epic tier heroes or a lewdgame and you're going to get laughed out of the room. You can make the system do whatever you need it to do, but you can't do a damn thing about the player base. Treat pathfinder as a containment game if you want to keep your sanity.

>Who likes this?

Shitlord neckbeards.

>Who finds this fun?

Neckbearded shitlords.

>Why do people play this fucking system?

DnD is a prominent brand and therefore hoovers in customers. Starting with 3.5, some then gravitated to PF. Many people continue to play it because they have a degree of system mastery. They're usually the kind that enjoy working with game mechanics but don't really want to be seriously challenged (and will whine about "muh CR" or "muh WBL" if they are).

>Who likes this? Who finds this fun? Why do people play this fucking system?
People who take gold in mental gymnastics like D&D and find it fun. People play it because everyone supports the D&D meme by saying you can't find a group unless you play D&D, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Some people also get really hung-up on the name of the game they're playing for whatever reason.

It's a combination of cultural inertia and sunk cost.

Most people who play 3.PF have been playing it for years. They have spent a huge amount of time and money learning to deal with the broken bullshit of the system, adapting it and tweaking it and figuring out how to make it work. But they've had fun, so they associate the system with that fun, and get defensive when people criticise it. Because if it really is mechanically flawed, then all that investment is devalued and they don't want to feel like an idiot.

It's dumb insecurity of course. It's fine to like and enjoy bad games, and admitting that they're bad and that it took a lot of work to make them run smoothly is part of appreciating them, warts and all.

The cultural inertia side is the D&D brand. More people will recognise the term 'Dungeons and Dragons' than will recognise the term 'Roleplaying Game'. While it and its echoes have been losing market share slowly, they're still larger in and of themselves than all other roleplaying games put together. A single game and its variants eclipsing the whole rest of the medium. It's a pretty unique situation.

So...how is 5e better? I see a lot of bitching and moaning, but that's it.

That's a huge question with lots of subjective points. Anyone can be proven 'wrong' if they pick out a few bits to hammer on.

But in general I would argue that it was a return to form. 5e feels more like a modernized version of 2e. Not quite, but closer. 3e went crazy on power and scaling, putting heroes in another realm of potential entirely, which was a major escalation from earlier editions where you had more gritty heroes who pulled themselves through death dungeons care of blood sweat and tears. 5e put the brakes on number inflation, cut away a lot of the rules bloat and options like feats, and revamped the magic system to sharply reduce caster dominance (which is itself a huge debate still).

5e is the safest, most bland and generic form of D&D possible, but it's decently well executed. The content for it generally works, is decently balanced, and caters to its core demographic.

It's dull as dishwater for me, but I'm not part of their target audience. For people who love 'D&D', as an idea, 5e is a flat, functional, simplified version of it for you to project your preferences and tendencies onto.

what system do you play, would recommend?

Not him, but I doo agree with what he says: for my suggestions see

Ah, the bitter contrarians are really amped up again.

It's funny, because it's usually around the weekend when the rest of us are going out to games that they really get active with their shitposting.

Sad, sad D&D-haters, lamenting having no one to play their inferior games with them. So sad indeed.

I play a load of different things. Currently active games of Legends of the Wulin, D&D 4e, the recently released Infinity RPG and Anima: Beyond Fantasy, in the past I've played the Iron Kingdoms RPG, Through the Breach, D&D 3.PF, Dogs in the Vineyard, Unknown Armies, Delta Green, FATE, Maid, BESM, Mutants and Masterminds... Some I can't remember. A fuckton of stuff, basically.

It's hard to give advice in a vacuum. RPG's are a huge medium with a lot of variety, it all depends on the kind of experiences you're looking for, the kinds of genre and theme and mechanical weight, as well as design focus, that you enjoy and appreciate.

Personally I also enjoy playing a variety of systems. Even if I have a few favourites, learning a new system is always a unique and interesting experience, exploring the various ways different systems do things and how they influence the stories told in them.

The breadth of systems I play is probably a large part of why I find 5e so boring. Everything it does, something else has done better. But, again, I'm not knocking the people who love it- I respect the design that went into it. They made the exact system their core demographic and target audience wanted.

whats so good about moldvay? what options does it offer to players?

>buzzwords and transparent b8 smugness

Gotta be 18 to post here, champ.

It doesn't, which is the point.

For high fantasy whit combat as fast as in 5e and unique characters with varied power, what system would yo recommend?

what? explain

Oldschool D&D has nothing in the way of mechanics beyond rolling your d20 against a stat or save. It's basically just freeform with a d20 giving you yes/no answers. Extremely unfulfilling way to play, IMO, but some people enjoy it.

Awwwww.
My condolences. I hoped to keep it heavy-handed so you could just ignore it in and keep what shred of pride you still had, but it looks like I hit you somewhere where it hurts.

I run and play it because the breadth of options provides the systems, styles, and potentials I want to run and play without me having to make up a bunch of extra shit that isn't actually in any rule books.

In other words, it allows me to homebrew with minimal effort as opposed to world-build with a lot of effort that players don't give a fucking shit about and expect you to explain to them over and over again because they can't be bothered to listen the first time.

I also play and run GURPS, because again, I can homebrew more effectively with building blocks my players can cope with.

As your your opinions, they're yours. i'm not going to deny you your opinions, only the satisfaction that you think you are somehow superior because you can't be bothered to think for yourself.

If you haven't, I'd say 4e is worth a try. Despite the bad reputation characters do actually play very differently, it's just all powers operating within the same metastructure that rubs people the wrong way. With the updated monster math combat is about as fast as D&D combat ever was, and while there are some rough edges to work around it's solid though. It isn't a system for everyone- It's very much focused on the idea of high action fantasy heroes- but for people who enjoy that style of thing it executes it very well.

As a more out there suggestion, the translations for a recently released Japanese RPG, Kamigakari, have been floating around on Veeky Forums recently, and it does seem very interesting.

Beyond that... Pointbuy systems like Mutants and Masterminds can work. I'd love to recommend Rule of Cool's Legend d20 but the lack of a proper monster manual and limited content sadly undermines a lot of that systems potential.

Mentioning Legend, of course, opens up the world of fantasy heartbreakers, the vast array of not-quite D&D RPG's which lurk in its shadow. Some people love Fantasycraft, some people love 13th age, all these games which are not quite D&D and do things differently, which some people love and some people hate.

Shop around, I'd say. Look at a few and see what seems interesting.

It has very little options for you. All it has is the raw iron core, just about the least amount you can get away with.

If you hate having too many options and spending hours in chargen, you'll find Moldvay worth looking into.

>false logic
>sunk cost fallacy

...I don't think you know what the sunk cost fallacy actually means

5e is missing a lot in the way of system depth, but when I was running it I didn't ever feel the need to look up some obscure rule or end up in a debate about how a mechanic applied in a certain situation according to an RAI implication in a feat in a splat separate from what we are actually looking at. Just made a ruling and went with it. No need to worry whether it'd be consistent with the ten thousand things about the system I wasn't considering and which the players or flow of the game might bring up.
But the advantage of running Pathfinder is

I have seen and play some dnd like games like Radiance and Shadow of the demon lord

I saw you mentioned anima, how is it? i always liked the concept of it but i think the system is a monster

the problem with osr is that is a little hard at making varied characters with mechanics that help them, and them not being overpowered

>give players less than the game assumes they have
>WOW ENTITLED PLAYER I BET YOU DON'T ACTUALLY WANT TO BE CHALLENGED

It kind of is. I enjoyed my time with Anima, but it's a weird system and dear god combat in that game is so fucking slow. Slow and swingy and... Not great, honestly. Then again, from what I've heard my GM ran it badly, but given he followed RAW that's not exactly a defence of the system.

Anima is weirdly divided as a system. It's full of over the top high fantasy bullshit that gives you all these amazing options... And then the system and setting is full of things that prevent you from using them, or punish you for trying, like super-brutal injury recovery times or dull, granular encumbrance systems.

I think the system would be a lot better off if the system decided what it wanted to be and focused on it, but in the end it turned out a complicated clusterfuck. Still possible to have fun with, but you'll be working against the system just as much as you'll be working with it.

OSR is largely centered around fast, deadly dungeon crawling, where mortality rate is high. Putting a lot of detail on character creation would under these circumstances just waste everyone's time.

If they survive a few levels, the tales of heroism they've managed to gather may be enough to distinguish them from one another, if not mechanically.

This is a really good answer.

Wait, what? You talk about not having to make up a bunch of extra shit that isn't in the rulebook, and then talk about homebrewing? Isn't homebrewing, by definition, making shit up which isn't in the rulebook?

Homebrewing a setting, not a system. It's easier to build a word when everybody has somewhat of an understand of how the physics and magics of that world work.

Brevity is wit. You have neither.

What do you think about Iron Kingdoms? I'm gearing up to run it and not quite sure what to expect except some miniature combat for the first time in my life. I know about 4e and it seems more like that in some ways but at the same time I feel like it's more lethal and maybe without as much forced movement and similar.

Iron Kingdoms is... Okay, but has a fundamental problem with Warcasters.

Fluffwise, you'd expect a single warcaster and a party of allies, except due to action economy warcasters are ridiculously fucking OP. However, running for a group of warcasters is also a fucking nightmare because it doubles the number of participants in combat, if not more, requiring more enemies to oppose them and making everything drag out forever.

The easiest way to get around this is no warcaster parties... But in that case you're missing out on one of the most distinctive parts of the setting.

It's a hard problem to solve and the RPG pretty much doesn't even try, which is sad. The mechanics are okay, a few weird quirks in the skill system and some classes that are really good/pretty shitty, but on the whole solid.

Cool, thanks. I've heard warcasters are really OP but don't want to ban it straight out of the gate since a player wants to play it. I'll try to adapt and make it less useful in most encounters, making them have to get fuel etc.

Well, it depends, and it's something to talk to your group about. If one person plays the Warnoun (Since the Hordes version are also available), they're going to be the main character. Supporting them, keeping them alive and such will basically be everyone elses primary duty because even one Warjack is a force to be reckoned with.

The thing is, being super stingy with fuel and denying them the warjack a lot will just make it really boring for the warcaster, since they'll very rarely get to enjoy their big advantage.

It's not the class mechanics that make then varied, it's what they have and how they use it

Yeah I realize that it could be really annoying, I'll have to play it and try to figure out how to make it less powerful but not leaving the player feeling gimped.

What are the steps needed to to set up your young feudal lord as your puppet, ensure his survival (lords without heir and that young don't live long), rise in power of the house and obedience?

>I can't even imagine what 3e looked like.
Actually, 3e (or rather 3.5) is still a bit more sane. PF is the result of someone looking at 3.5 and going: "Casters are too weak and Martials are too strong. We have to do something about that."

I just want to play DnD with my friends for a two hours on the weekend for fun, how autistic do you have to be to care about which version to play. We went from 3.5 to 5e.

really?
for me, i have also tried a large collection of RPGs, but i always come back to 5e as a something dependable and easy to use

its simplicity and user-friendliness is probably one of the most important things to me, especially when i am playing with people who have never played before

How stupid do you have to be to not care when the past 4 editions will all produce completely different play experiences from each other?