Explain to me why your game is better than D&D. I explicit terms. If you're going to highlight a negative of D&D...

Zweihander is the latest iteration of WHFRP 2e, an unofficial fan mod that became its own game.

Hey, you're the one who wanted explicit terms.
If you're talking about 4e, giving players the ability to contribute equally in play is not going to be an applicable argument.

What does "heroic fantasy" mean? Like, what's the definition, what qualities does it have that D&D has?

WFRP2E is super-tight, has a ton of supplements, and a metric ton of fan created work. ZWEIHANDER is neat, but pretty new, and you'd have to do a lot of conversion work for it. Save it until you get into 2e proper

Heroes in an old-timey fantasy setting go on quests other people gave them

D&D does fantasy, not just "heroic fantasy."

That means it does horror, gothic horror, space-fantasy, grimdark, low fantasy, and even does a fair shake at historical and plain sci-fi.

Don't pay attention to trolls. They LITERALLY only talk shit about D&D because it's popular, not because there's anything wrong with it.

As a classless point-buy system with lots of options available, my game allows my players--assuming their character concept is campaign-appropriate--to simply make their character the way they want to rather than forcing them to jump through hoops and collect a grab-bag of racial abilities, feats, magic items, spell effects, and class features from four different books just so they can do one niche thing.

Fantasy Craft. I'm going to assume you're talking about 3.5 because that's the one we argue about, though from I'm guessing you're just going to be a dickwad and not tell us which system you mean so you can act smug and say "But X edition doesn't have that problem."

>All the core rules are in one book rather than 3.
>The NPC creation system is far more robust and easy for the GM to use, even allowing NPCs to just be scaled up as the PCs level.
>Non-combat characters are viable in a way that they never were in D&D, and martials are on a level with casters without casters being completely neutered.
>Divine magic is actually mechanically different from arcane magic, rather than just being the exact same but stuck to a different stat.
>All feats are actually worth shit.
>The addition of Specialties adds greater mechanical variety to characters early on.
>The addition of Talents means humans aren't the boring basic bitch race they always are in D&D.
>Campaign qualities mean the system really can be used for any style of fantasy, unlike D&D, which can only really do heroic fantasy unless you use a setting with optional subsystems to support other genres like Ravenloft or Dark Sun. (Granted, these are similar to Campaign Qualities, but Campaign Qualities are available from the core book while you'd need to buy those setting books to use their rules.)
>You can play a clockwork robot wizard with six legs.

I wish any of my friends were interested in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

I disagree. Not that user, but I think DnD pretends to do those things but fucks them irreversibly thanks to the way it handles power levels. It's a system meant for gonzo adventuring, where you go from hero to megahero to godhero

It's so simulationist, it's almost freeform.

That argument hinges on what D&D is good at, which I've never gotten a clear answer for. 0/1e excel at dungeon crawling and quickly begin to fall apart outside of that. Later editions try to look like a jack of all trades while only managing miniatures combat well and being shit at anything else.

Mechanically, D&D is about 95% combat and traps. You play a class that can do specific things that fall within varying degrees of realism and fantastic power level depending on edition. "Heroic Fantasy" implies the characters have abilities somewhere between Robin Hood and shounenshit, with the edition setting the range.

>D&D
>Low fantasy
That's a funny joke.

Sure, just as Paranoia can do gritty trench combat.

Just because you 'could' do something doesnt mean the system supports or encourages that kind of game.
and DnD does 'not' support those examples. At all.

Two words: Cardboard Crack

Except this is a non-argument which serves only to protect D&D from all criticism, adding nothing to the conversation.

It supports them as long as what you're doing meets how the system handles it. You're not getting CoC horror out of it, but it could do Pitch Black.

You shouldn't. It's a decisively mediocre game, the equivalent to a tie-in that only has a few fans because they're already a fan of the brand.

It's major problem is that it has some of the grossest misuse of Fate points in any game, effectively a band-aid to keep it from falling apart at the mechanical seams.

You mean it's not a COUNTERargument. And even then, the opponents of D&D here would have to first provide an argument.

He's sort of right, though, but only because "D&D" includes so many wildly-different games under that name. For example, AD&D could do horror and low-fantasy, so D&D can do horror and low-fantasy even though the last three editions are so horribly suited for those genres that the very idea is laughable.

Did you read the thread?

>it's never a case of 'this is explicitly better' and more 'this is more suitable to this specific premise'.
Wisdom. Listen to this man.

Fantasy or 40k?

Sure, but the only premise that D&D is explicitly suited for is "A group of adventurers go into a dungeon to fight through a series of encounters (puzzles, traps, combat) until they reach the end." Anything besides that is shoehorned into D&D, badly, and there are systems that do it better.

I just want a fantasy system that has mechanical support for gritty, down-to-earth survivalism but also has rules for magic while avoiding the anti-storytelling wizards of D&D, and preferably involves some kind of corruption system.

No, it's more designed for people playing a few set levels, since it can take years to progress from 1-20.

It's meant for basically anything that you can slap fantasy on.

What? Even if you stripped D&D of all its magic, it's still a robust system that's larger and more in depth than even many specialized low-fantasy games.

The best argument in favor of my game is that you don't play it.

But here's the fundamental problem with your assertion.

You assume that the only people who could possibly criticise or speak badly of D&D are its 'opponents', when in actual fact the people who know and love the system are likely the best equipped and the most vocal about its flaws, because being aware and discussing the flaws of a system you love is useful. It's an effective way to crowdsource solutions and to provide advice for people having trouble with it.

What do you mean? It's not meant to address criticism, it's meant to address retarded trolls.

Are you still going to try and pretend there are not retarded trolls bitching about D&D because it's popular?

WFRP

You're taking the bait. Don't reply, just ignore it.

>What? Even if you stripped D&D of all its magic, it's still a robust system that's larger and more in depth than even many specialized low-fantasy games.

Horseshit. D&D without magic barely exists. At least, from 3.PF onwards, where the 'spell' became the fundamental unit of design.

Here's the fundamental flaw with your damage control.

You're trying to pretend the trolls are not obvious. And that the people who bitch incessantly about D&D are doing it for any reason beyond them hating how popular it is.

>mechanical support for gritty, down-to-earth survivalism but also has rules for magic with corruption system
Sounds like GURPS, senpai.

GURPS has all of that, you know. GURPS Dungeon Fantasy + GURPS Magic using corruption rules/additional corruption rules from GURPS Thaumatology/GURPS Horror. But nobody ever takes a GURPS recommendation seriously because of memes, even though it'll do exactly what they want.

If you're just going to blatantly lie like this, no one will be able to take you seriously.

It's too bad GURPS in general is such a bad game that it sucks with any expansion. The core is so bad, that even if you manage to navigate your way through the expansions to get a game that sort of works, it still is boring and tedious to play through.

Maybe GURPS? By default, it's pretty gritty in terms of combat lethality and has survival rules of various depth scattered about. Magic is along those lines, and GURPS: Thaumatology is essentially Variant Magic Systems: The Book, so you should find something there to your liking. The Horror splat has a corruption system that has worked in my games.

Dungeon Fantasy even includes not!D&D character templates and streamlined rules to make things easier.

But it is. Magic is always the largest chapter of each book, and there are multiple cases where entirely mundane or unrelated things are represented with 'use the rules for this spell'.

Fuck, it's clearest in the monster design. Genies, mythological beings of great power... Have an ability which mimics the 'Wish' spell, citing the magic system for reference. One of their most defining, thematically iconic traits is 'just a spell'. Because spells are the fundamental unit of design in post-3.PF D&D.

Nah, GURPS is great fun to play, even with core alone.

The only disadvantage is that it takes a lot of work from the GM to get started. But once you get started it runs very smoothly.

You're looking at a portion of the game, agreeably a large portion, and somehow misconstruing it to be the game in its entirety.

Look at the Goblin. No reference to a spell there. Or the Hill Giant. Or the Shark. Or Troll. Or the Elephant. Or the Pegasus. Or hundreds of other monsters and animals, including warriors, knights, thieves, and barbarians.

There's so much to the game, that not only is low-fantasy fairly easy to do, it is in fact the standard for low-level play.

Fantasy Craft doesn't have the biggest focus on playing a survivalist but you can make it as gritty as you like with campaign qualities, and magic is fairly well balanced. There's also the Corrupting Magic option for the Sorcery campaign quality.

To be fair, the layout in Basic Set sucks dick; three columns is an unnecessary strain on the eyes and makes it look like a damn textbook, and some of the pretty important rules are placed in horrible easy-to-miss locations.

It's still my favorite system and I'll run it till I die, but man I'd give my left nut for a revised Basic Set.

I've had it run smoothly, but it runs dully. It's hard to actually make the mechanics do anything exciting, like there's a wet blanket over everything, forcing you to go to extra lengths to keep the players interested.

d20srd.org/srd/monsters/pegasus.htm

>Spell-Like Abilities

Try again

You seem like you're specifically asking for Warhammer with the corruption bit. The roleplaying game is pretty solid along the lines you mentioned, lightweight and quick, and it's great at enabling you to focus on story. I've never played 1E, but 2E is pretty fantastic. Avoid 3E...but maybe keep an eye out for 4E, when Cubicle7 release it later this year.

ZWEIHANDER is probably what you're looking for, too.

Sounds like a problem of taste, or GMing. I've never had more fun in a game than I have had in GURPS, and even with mediocre GMs the mechanics themselves are just fun to interact with.

Not the guy you were arguing with, but if I can use a game that's 60% magic and 40% non-magic, or a game that's 40% magic and 60% non-magic, and both cost the same to buy, then for a non-magical game I'll use the 60% non-magic game. The quantity of material is irrelevant if the majority of it is for a purpose I don't need. It's basic e

I actually quite like 3e, although it's a very different game to the prior ones, and its physical components focus is weird and a bit hard to get used to.

>Sounds like a problem of taste

Fucking GURPSfags

*It's basic economics.

I am not a clever man.

99% of what I hear about it is negative due to the boardgame-esque approach, and because it diverged so harshly from the previous approach. I hear the adventures themselves aren't bad, though.

my group is playing warhammer 2nd edition using a slightly modified version of Mutant year zero as the system. Works really well so far.

2nd edition of WFRP is the best, but you'd be surprised by how many systems in general can run the setting. Burning Wheel and Lamentations of the Flame Princess are both fantastic for it.

If one game is 600 pages, and the other is 40, You're still looking at the former having far, far, far more content.

>both cost the same to buy
>what are pdfs

Oh wow, you got me.

You are completely ignoring factors such as information density and content quality.

That seems more like a personal preference. Especially since D&D can't solve every problem; they're run out of spells eventually, particularly in the levels 5-15 range that D&D actually has a tendency to be played at. Not many people actually play 20th level games.

How so?

Again, this seems like a personal preference, not something that's objectively better (or worse).

Give an example, please, of both your RPG succeeding at doing thing X, and D&D failing. And also explicitly define thing X.

This is...reasonably explicit, except:

>Campaign qualities mean the system really can be used for any style of fantasy, unlike D&D, which can only really do heroic fantasy

What are campaign qualities, and how are they so utterly transforming that it's better to have them mechanically statted out rather than D&D's "DM says we're doing gothic horror, so this is a gothic horror game"?

>and being shit at anything else.

In what way is D&D shit at anything else? Particularly from 3e onwards where everything operates under a single unified mechanic, I've never had trouble doing anything non-combat in D&D.

The impression I get from D&D is that it's not necessarily the best at anything, but it's good ENOUGH everywhere. Like, I'd never use World of Darkness (either version) for a high fantasy dungeon crawl, but conversely I'd happily use a reflavored (but mechanically identical) 3e or 5e for a gothic-punk modern horror game.

Actual crack is cheaper than MtG.

All of the math and assumptions of the system assume PC casters are a thing, though. This is most obvious with the removal or sharp reduction of healing magic; warriors are damage sponges focused on taking injury rather than avoiding it (dodging, blocking, DR from armor, etc.), and this works fine when the system is working as intended with druids and clerics there to provide rest and succor to the brave knight between skirmishes. Remove that, though, and suddenly those frontline warriors become by necessity disposable meatshields because they're relying on natural healing and can't be good for more than one or two fights per week. In other systems, this isn't an issue because fighters in those systems rely on more than raw HP for tanking.

D&D 5e, disallow Bard, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, and Wizard, use the following rules from the DMG:
- Healer's Kit Dependency (can't spend HD to heal unless someone has a healer's kit)
- Slow Natural healing (character's don't automatically regain HP at the end of a long rest, instead they expend HD)
- Gritty Realism (a short rest is 8 hours and a long rest is 7 days)
- Climb Onto a Bigger Creature (this has nothing to do with the campaign in general, it should just always be allowed in every campaign)
- Madness
- Sanity

Then make it so that every time a character casts a spell, he must make a Sanity saving throw (against his own spell save DC) or lose 1 sanity.

>How so?
Opportunity cost of actions outside of "I attack" is minimal compared to D&D, as is investment, so it's possible to build to concept without being useless because you aren't keeping up with some level curve.

No. I'm sparing you that because saying 600 pages of good, professional content vs. 40 pages of amateur-quality content would just infuriate you.

It's not "just a spell", it's inarguably the most powerful spell in a book, and something that's only available to characters who are so powerful that they can duplicate many of the feats performed by gods or demigods in actual Earth mythology.

Every single thing Jesus did in the Bible, for example, can be replicated by a 15th level 3.5 Druid. Go into the game with that mindset.

Yeah, because it's a pointless comparison that does not even have any relation to the topic at hand.

But that's irrelevant to the central point?

D&D uses spells as a central unit of design. So many things in the system which aren't spells are treated as them, because magic is the single most well developed subsystem in the entire game.

It's more of just hitting the nail on the head gets you upset.
You sound like a dumb cunt though, so I'll leave you to your gnashing of teeth.

It's better than D&D B/X because it's the exact same thing but better-formatted and slightly simpler, so it's easier to use.

I think you are actually getting dumber with each post.
>So many things in the system which aren't spells are treated as them

Yep. This is what happens when idiots who just hate D&D don't even bother hiding how dumb they are.

...But it's literally a statement of fact.

The players have a meaningful amount of agency, are encouraged to find alternatives to combat, and are required to have meaningful backgrounds and relationships with npcs.

>Actual crack is cheaper than MtG.
Actual crack is also only temporary. You can play with cardboard crack.

It's advanced, says so right there.

>In what way is D&D shit at anything else?
What stands out for me is the system has a certain power level and style of play with features to back it up but never outright states what it is and what it excels at in the rules. This isn't really a failing of the system, but of every DM that doesn't understand the implied style of play and tries to shoehorn their game into a system not built for it at all. Like when I got stuck in a low-combat diplomatic game where I would gladly put up with everything wrong with just because it actually has rules that support that kind of game.

In with this is the issue is an actual problem that many features (especially class related) aren't actually what they say they are and doing what you had in mind is a fucking nightmare.

I'll give you a pro-tip.
Rules for "diplomatic" games? They tend to suck.
The less rules, the better, and D&D already has more rules for running a low-combat diplomatic game than you'll probably need, and does a fine job at it.

>Give an example, please, of both your RPG succeeding at doing thing X, and D&D failing. And also explicitly define thing X.
Gladly. I want to make a fighter that jumps good; it's the one holdover I still have from my ultra-weeb phase (the legend of Cuculain was unknown to my pleb ass). Preferably, I'd like the jumps to be useful in combat as well, such as such as landing on foes after a mighty leap a'la FF's Dragoon.

When I tried this in 3.5, there was one way I found to do it. It required starting as a duskblade, the fighty-mage base class; taking a region-specific feat from a Forgotten Realms book along with another generic feat from one of the Complete X books; taking levels in a prestige class from Oriental Adventures; and equipping myself with a lance that has a specific enchantment on it to take advantage of my leaps in combat. This type of character may be easier in 4e or 5e, but I'm guessing it still takes one of racial ability, magic, or monk not!magic.

In GURPS, I take a few levels of Super Jump. That's it. I can then get on with fleshing my character out.

>tl;dr to make a niche warrior in GURPS, take an advantage; to make a niche warrior in 3.PF, make a wizard.

I'm also free if you want to be regaled with the tale of the evil undead warlord in a "high power, high fantasy game" that was really just a generic cleric because martial can't have nice things.

There's several simple feats that let you jump good. i don't know how you missed them.

Or, ring of jumping.
Are you a special kind of stupid autist?

...

I refluffed mouseguard and it was great for it because you could use connections and assets mechanically. Knowing the right people had mechanical weight and your backstory mattered. D&D has nothing like that besides a bonus to a diplomacy roll.

So basically your problem is you want to make gimmick characters instead of people, and are upset D&D forces you to play well rounded adventurers with it's class system.

>Well-rounded
>With its class system

Are you gonna define which edition you're talking about, at least? 5e won't let a sorcerer use a sword without a subclass, feat or race

>D&D forces you to play well rounded adventurers with it's class system.
Pfffthahahahaha. If you think a fighter comes out of chargen "well-rounded," there is no hope for you. "I can hit things" "I can hit things harder" "I can hit things more often" is not well-rounded. It's a gimmick.

So what you're complaining about is that a 1st-level, fresh-off-the-farm, just-finished-training D&D character, is not capable of duplicating the mighty leaps of a participant in the Grail War (I'm assuming), who are explicitly drawn from some of the most potent individuals in all of human mythos and history.

Is that your specific complaint? Because it seems...stupid.

> D&D has nothing like that besides a bonus to a diplomacy roll.

Actually, there's a ton of other features, not even including all the magic you could work into it. Stuff like party reputation scores, the BGs of 5e, and regional bonuses/penalties.

But, most people prefer to keep diplomacy simple and unfettered by mechanics, because it's a part of the game that really doesn't benefit much from mechanical intrusion.

>
What are campaign qualities, and how are they so utterly transforming that it's better to have them mechanically statted out rather than D&D's "DM says we're doing gothic horror, so this is a gothic horror game"?
Campaign qualities are optional systems you can apply to the campaign in order to change the actual rules of the game. Essentially, they're houserules that are put in the book so you can customise the game to fit a certain genre.

Going on the gothic horror example, in D&D the DM would say "This is gothic horror", and that's that. It'd still play the same, just that everyone would have a germanic name and you'd have vampires instead of dragons or something. In Fantasy Craft, meanwhile, the GM would say "I'm going to be using the Hewn Limbs, Lesser Heroes, Paranoia, Savage Wilds, Sorcery (Corrupting Magic) and Tense campaign qualities, and removing Miracles." In other words, the game now has brutal combat with critical wounds that give various different penalties due to wounds and injuries, social situations are more difficult due to rampant paranoia and suspicion, monsters fill the wilderness, magic is powerful but evil and corrupting, the gods are absent from this forsaken world, and the player characters are both weaker than normal due to less attribute points at character creation and more easily affected by Stress damage due to the horrors surrounding them. Suddenly, the mechanics of the game are completely altered, and you're playing a true dark fantasy game, rather than just a standard D&D campaign but with more undead.

The Sorcerer can use it, he's just not proficient. And the PHB right in it has rules for training to learn to use something without needing another class, feat, or race.

They're not exactly the best rules, but they're there.

Jokes on you, I've been running a group in BW for almost two years now.

Granted, they're all college graduates.

I get the sense you are not even trying anymore. Trip up, so we can be warned to ignore you?

>well rounded adventurers with it's class system.
That's literally the opposite of what a class system does you dummy.

...how is that any different than what I suggested here, , for a gritty realism game? For the record you could do exactly the same thing in 3.5, as well.

FantasyCraft seems to have just grouped a bunch of extant variant rules under a single banner. That's convenient, I guess, but hardly innovative, and again nothing that D&D can't itself do.