Three-way tie. Unfortunately there hasn't been movement on any due to personal stuff, but hopefully soon:
Pathfinder 2e for a modern D&D-type experience. (Not to yuck anyone's yum, but I have plenty of gripes with 5e.)
Dolmenwood. Currently awaiting delivery of the Kickstarter. For those old-school D&D vibes.
Burning Wheel. My favorite game I've never played, even after owning the books for nearly two decades. :P But for real this time!
Fun fact/wet blanket:
Actually those are just coins, which can sometimes be triangular in the Forgotten Realms.
Interestingly (to me at least), the only specific example I found was the Sembian silver piece, or "hawk." In the image, we also see what looks like copper and gold, too, at the minimum.
Sokka, Scanlan, John Snow, Walter White - except “more based” or “less of a cuck”.
The two that stick out most to me are Sokka and Walter White.
A major part of Sokka's character arc is outgrowing his misogyny. I mean, Christ, the Kyoshi Warriors episode had him humble himself, ask to learn, and crossdress.
As for Walter White, his arc is becoming "more based" and "less of a cuck." It's also about him becoming a total monster.
There's been a lot of discourse about "media literacy," and it's frustrating that the people who most lack it, often in destructive ways, end up just dismissing the criticism out of hand, as though it's not dead-on.
I really want to get Crown & Skull! The physical book reminds me a lot of Burning Wheel, which is my favorite physical RPG book. Only I think I'd have an easier time getting Crown & Skull to the table. :P
Ooh, I'll have to keep my eye out for that. I haven't had a chance to play it, but I picked up a copy of Dragonbane, and it does a lot that I like.
I feel like 13th Age had some of the wind taken out of its sails because it came out around the same time as 5e. I wonder what it will be like this time. If 6e is a dud, they might get a bump.
And, on the flip side, there's also their total blindness to many examples of old Trek being decidedly unsubtle. They just will not address those, because to do so would completely undermine their point—and they're not interested in the truth, really. They just want their anger.
I don't know how someone can be a Star Trek fan and not get it. It's an attitude diametrically opposed to the core spirit of the franchise. How do these people enjoy a show about exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, but they can't stand the presence of different humans?
And their recommendation engine sucks.
Netflix used to be famously good at suggesting films. Articles were written about it, and there was even a cash reward for anyone who could contribute to its performance. Then it just turned to shit.
And the funny thing is that it would have helped counteract the shrinking library. Sure, there would be fewer films on the platform, so you'd be less likely to find a specific title, but at least you could select a film Netflix recommended based on your past ratings and be fairly confident you'd enjoy it. Now? Absolutely not.
To make this extra stressful, Revivify is the only resurrection spell I allow if I'm running 5e. :)
(Okay, to be fair, that doesn't mean I ban player resurrection in heroic campaigns. I just want it to be more of an ordeal, y'know? So it has to be a quest, or require bargaining with some kind of supernatural entity, or come with a price or chance of failure, etc. I just don't want it to be "I cast the spell, or go to someone who can cast the spell and pay some gold.")
I dunno. When I was reading through PF2e, at a certain point it clicked for me that a lot of the rules actually make it easier to play a character by ear.
Take feats. There are tons, of different kinds, with different levels, sometimes with prerequisites. It seems like a lot of rules overhead, but that also means that you're not picking from the whole list every time you get one. If a player doesn't want to make a ton of choices, they can just pick one of the highest level feats they qualify for and have a pretty decent build. Maybe not optimized, but if they don't want to dig into the nitty gritty, that wasn't a priority anyway.
Plus, if a player wants to change their mind, the rules explicitly say you can swap things around. I know that works in 5e anyway by DM fiat, but still, it's nice to have a "don't worry too much" clause written in the books.
Ultimately a matter of personal preference, of course. I just think PF2e actually scales pretty well with player investment in the system, whether someone's really into character builds or just wants to follow some steps and get into the action.
I don't know if it scratches the same itch for you, but Archetypes do for me.
Honestly, that's one of my biggest gripes: so many character abilities are just "turn this part of the game off." Something like Goodberry completely obviates the need to worry about food, and darkvision leads to annoying assymetry, and incentivizes the GM to just gloss over it, or hand the one player who doesn't get it from their race or class some magic goggles and be done with it.
If you don't want to play worrying about light sources or food, you can just do that. If you want to track those things, you can make it fun. But 5e's approach is kind of neither. It's there, but it sucks, so it doesn't matter. Bleh.
My experience with FitD games is the same. I appreciate them, I'm glad they're there, but after trying them out a bunch, realized it just wasn't the experience I wanted, nor what my group wanted.
Obviously for a lot of people that isn't the case, and if they're having a fantastic time, great! It's just a personal preference.
The conversation around this topic always seems directly or indirectly framed around a zero-sum framing: what's better and what's worse? Which side wins? Even if you disagree with the premise, that's what's shaping the conversation. I don't think the article suggested there's a "correct" answer, but it was clearly inspired by people who think the author was doing things wrong.
It can simultaneously be true that there are successful long-term campaigns with and without high character turnover due to death. It's a mater of personal preference and successful execution. The only thing categorically false is the idea that character deaths, in and of themselves, are inherently bad for long-term play.
You're right that multiclassing an optional rule, but in practice, I think nearly every player assume it's in use unless the DM says otherwise (and they will likely complain if the DM says otherwise). So I'd bet that if a ruleset basedo n 5e disabled multiclassing, people would either complain about it, or ignore that part and then complain when it breaks the game.
I guess as the devil's advocate, the publisher put out both. So it seemed like it was the high-effort way to both create a bespoke system, and appeal to the people who are completely stuck on D&D.
Lowering HP would absolutely go a long way, you're right. I think limiting or disabling multiclassing would also help, but that would be an extremely unpopular change that most people would ignore anyway. :/
Fair point. I think it would still take a lot of work, though, since Diablo includes a lot of fast-paced, high-powered stuff, while 5e kind of falls apart and turns into a slog at higher levels. To put it another way, it handles up to the heroic level fine, but the epic levels can feel like a drag, and WotC's solution was to mostly publish adventures that stop at level 15. Cutting HP would be a part of it, maybe streamlining some stuff, creating a different inventory system...
So it can be done. But the fact that it's not D&D also means there's a higher floor to how much thought was put into the game, you know? Sometimes designers put the work in, but sometimes they just pick D&D to be lazy or as a cash grab.
Speaking of Adventures in Middle-Earth, I haven't played it, but I heard the 5e edition is actually pretty good. You're right in that Tolkien's fantasy is way different from the high-fantasy superheroics of 5e, but I heard it had great rules for going on a journey, which 5e mostly glosses over (at least in practice).
I'm tempted! I'm sure this will be a great game. It's from an established designer, I backed Into the Odd and it turned out gorgeous, and the previews look fantastic.
...I just have to decide if I really need another game in my collection. :P There are already too many that I haven't had the chance to play, and while I like reading and collecting RPGs for their own sake, I dunno.
Oh for sure! It's really just treating D&D as the default that I have a problem with, not using an existing system per se. Sometimes it works, but a lot of the time making D&D support a radically different style of play is a bad idea. It also tends to suggest that either the designer doesn't really know that much about RPGs, or the publisher doesn't care and just wants to cash in on what's popular. If they picked even another existing system, that at least suggests they're aware of other games, and probably picked something they thought was a good fit.
Again, this is just speaking in generalities. There are good games based on 5e. It's a red flag, but not a deal breaker.
I would put these in my D&D campaign.