#dnd is my least favorite system ive ever fucking played which is how i know m not a dnd elitist/snob

[malevolententity]

sometimes i wonder if m a dnd elitist and then i remember no. i actually just enjoy a wide spread of ttrpg systems indie and mainstream. and just get very annoyed that everyone else in the world is seemingly too allergic to shopping around for systems so instead of finding an indie system that does what they want. theyll just break dnd to the point where it doesnt even resemble dnd anymore. like oh? youre playing dnd 5e but youve changed half the stat names and all basic mechanics? and the only dice you roll is d6s?? GO BUY MONSTER OF THE WEEK. THAT IS THE SYSTEM U WANNA PLAY IT ALREADY EXISTS AND IS VERY FUN. YOU CAN PLAY OTHER GAMES ITS OKAY I PROMISE

[kuzupekos]

maybe people like the game/system for dnd for how easy to learn it is despite not caring about the setting? genuinely i cannot understand why, if they have the interest in running games, people wouldn’t want to homebrew their own settings in literally any ttrpg and just ignore the original lore. literally every group my friends and i have been in does that no matter the game/system. like that seems infinitely more to the spirit and appeal of tabletop to me you know?

holy shit did you just call dnd easy to learn??? it’s the most complicated system ive ever fucking seen and most dm’s i speak to say they don’t even know half the rules and are winging it most of the time. matthew fucking mercer, professional dm and decades long dnd nerd, gets the rules wrong sometimes live on his show where he plays dnd for a living. literally all this ask tells me is you’ve never played a game other than dnd.

i run a lot of pbta games. i pretty much play them exactly as written, because they’re already fun when i bought the book. the settings are fun and interesting but with enough flexibility that i can have a good time creating a sandbox that i then let my players run loose in. all really interesting stories with mechanics written to enhance the stories, not be a simulation of how many feet you can move in a few minutes or how hard you can hit someone. they’re easy enough to pick up that i can teach people how to play in 20 minutes or less and we can jump right into the story, no two hour long character creation period or multiple sessions dedicated to people finding their feet. it’s a lot less work for me as a gm. it’s a lot more fun for me as a gm.

i’m not a game developer. i am interested in game development and find it very interesting, but that's not really where my skills are. if i buy a game i want to be able to play it, not rewrite the setting and rule book. i don’t know why you’re giving devs so much credit for a game that, by people’s admission, is not fun until you fuck with it so much it barely resembles the original. like... the only thing i can really think to compare it to is skyrim, which everyone says they don’t play until they’ve modded it until it breaks, but everyone at least agrees that skyrim is a bad game and todd howard is a hack.

listen, if you like high fantasy combat and want a heavily simulation-based experience, dnd is the perfect game for you. that’s what it’s written to be. it likes to pretend it can be anything, but it is a combat simulator at its core and the moment you try to play a character or story that doesn’t want to engage in combat it becomes incredibly clear that dnd is not, in fact, for everyone. which is fine. it doesn’t have to be for me. one of my favorite things about watching critical role is how much the cast absolutely delights in dnd as it is written. but when you start taking a hammer to the lore, the mechanics, homebrewing everything, essentially rewriting the game before you can play it... why not just play a game that suits you better?