What's the best system for running a Witcher-esque campaign? Not really looking to use the setting itself (although a lot of the folkloric monsters and their biology and behaviour I'll probably borrow), but really want something that'd let the group play professional monster hunters with an emphasis on tracking creatures, identifying what they are and planning ways to trap, lure, kill and generally stack the odds in their favour rather than just relying on powerful abilities and the like.
What's the best system for running a Witcher-esque campaign...
Adam Baker
Ryan Garcia
GM with 22 years experience here. (22 of GMing, more of playing).
Use Dungeon World system, but adapt (Dungeon World calls it "hacking" the system) it to Witcher setting. Just steal the core of the rules, if you're a regular dm/gm I'm sure you know how to do that. You can create your own custom moves and there is a guide in the book how to do that.
www.dungeonworldsrd.com
It's 2d6+appropriate mod, 6- = fail with consequences 7-9 = success but with consequences, 10+ = pure success.
Only players roll.
It is one of THE greatest systems I have ever played. The entire dw book is like a manual on how to be a great gm. The only bad advice I found in there was to split up your players as a 'move' you can make. That's always a terrible idea, unless its VERY temporary, like split them up but in the same room, to solve a trap puzzle.
Other than that, no warnings
The system is built to make amazing narrative with very even pacing and lots of interaction.
Let your players make up as much or as little as you like while still having as much control as GM as you want - but if you're stuck for an idea or etc. you can actually ask a player 'what is here?' or 'why is that?' and have what they say become reality.
I know what I'm saying isn't going to make complete sense without having read the rule book but trust me - its worth your time.
The rule book reads pretty bland and unappealing, that's VERY deceptive. I wasn't impressed by the actual book itself -- until I actually TRIED the system.
Blew me away.
I almost feel like I could never go back to a pass-fail dice system ever again. (Like anything d20, or d100.)
You can find the rules at www.dungeonworldsrd.com.
Good luck!
Jason Rivera
baka
William Wood
>Dungeon World
Is this pasta?
Mason Richardson
No system takes it upon itself to make out of combat interactions as deep and as meaningful as in combat interactions. At that point just pick your poison.
Joshua Cooper
It's reheated pasta.
PbtA games aren't bad though. You could definitely capture the Witcher feel with it, although you'd need players who collaborate.
John Reed
This guy is full of shit.
Heavily shopped Barbarians of Lemuria could work. Its got minimalist magic (like the witcher), broad and diverse character creation options, and the system can handle basically anything by design as long as the players are willing and capable to roleplay well.
Nolan Mitchell
FATE handles combat basically the same as non-combat. So do PbtA systems, now that I think about it (except DW).
Joshua Cook
>This guy is full of shit.
Prove me wrong.
Kevin James
Legend of the Five Rings. There, you're wrong.
Owen Barnes
What does it do differently from D&D's binary single-roll resolution method?
Luis Nguyen
Pasta aside, how is dungeon world?
Adrian Powell
Barbarians of Lemuria, L5R, Fate, and even the kind of toxic horsecrap WW puts out all fly in the face of your BS "I only play D&D" mentality.
If you want to get technical, proving a negative is almost always rhetorically impossible: prove you're right.
Gavin Lewis
>GM with 22 years experience here.
Redflag
>rest
Oh, it's just pasta
Jose Morgan
I cant remember if its a horrible 3.5 clone or not, or if thats RQ. If its the one Im thinking of its a mess.
Robert Allen
Pathfinder is the best game to realistically create the gritty world needed for the Witcher. The casual realism in the system will also let your players be able to make roleplay decisions with the utmost mechanical information.
There's even an alchemist class so you can faithfully recreate a Witcher.
Gabriel Bennett
>Pathfinder is the best game to-
Let me just stop you there, because there are very few circumstances where Pathfinder is the best game for any purpose.
Pathfinder is like Java: it'll work for most things, but you'd better have an excuse for why you're not using something better.
Michael Collins
Dungeon World is an attempt to transfer the "feel" of D&D into a PbtA game, with mixed results. Honestly I'd say the GM advice parts are probably the best things in the book.
Adam Koebel is a great GM. As a game designer I'm not so sure.
Nathaniel Rivera
It's pretty okay. It is simple, has a good GM-ing guide (thinking about it, it gives some good advice for factions, for example, and although I never used it much, it's got things like city-developing/trading and such which is something that happens in the third game), but it's also very narrative and some things it got from the D&D side of the family tree (like HP or the way stats are set up) clash with that style, hard.
Overall, good game, not the best it could be. Grab a PDF from somewhere.
You are definitely thinking of something else.
Asher Morris
Not interested in dungeon world necessarily, I'm looking for a system to hold some fantasy one shot with, obviously not interested in going back to D&D. Even generic systems like GURPS or savage worlds can be fine if they're decent. Not too rule-heavy and I don't need much prep time as with my players I learned to be flexible and make up stuff on the fly to go with the flow.
Christopher Sanders
DW is pretty good for oneshots, it has all the rules needed by the players on their sheet, for example, and it thrives on a DM who can do good improv.
Jackson Hall
Will definitely look into it then, thank you
Chase Gonzalez
Memes aside it doesn't really work mostly because of all the D&D mechanical stuff tacked to it that doesn't work as the rules don't really care about mechanics.
Apocalypse World on the other hand is really good at what it does as a fiction first, narrative story telling game.
There's not a lot of the 'game' portion of RPG and things can feel very arbitrary as there's no real mechanics to adjudicate things logically but it's fun and simple to.play as like a baby's first RPG.
Easton Bailey
Andrew Murphy
So a bunch of rangers in DnD with their spells mucked about with.
Eli Stewart
GURPS
Some guys made a setting book and bestiary.
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