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Looking for a good set of rules that blend both the Golden Age of Piracy and the Occult, no D&D and FATE cause my group is not a fan.

I used to follow ttrpgs quite closely in terms of game design and innovations. Of course, the medium being as historied as it is, it might be better to call major developments in the space trends rather than innovations. Though I still play ttrpgs, I haven't gotten to read new ones as much as I want and so I would love to hear everyone's recommendations for rpgs with particularly interesting or innovative mechanics.

For some examples of what I'm talking about:

When I read FATE for the first time (many years ago) the concept of meta currency and more collaborative storytelling was quite innovative to me.

Dungeon World (which was my entry point to the PbtA lineage) introduced me to an game design philosophy centered around complications and a non binary core resolution mechanic.

Blades in the Dark was interesting for it's elegant and high level of abstraction, as with gear, flashbacks, clocks, etc.

I still vaguely follow the scene, so I at least know the names of some new games (esp the ones made popular from Quinn's Quest for example) but I'm wholly ignorant to the mechanics contained within.

Anyways, I guess I'm looking for more games to read that make me go "Wow I never thought of it that way!"

A lot of games seem to want the player to know the basics of the world they are in, but are there any that are designed for the player to not know the basics of this new world?

My nominee for this would be Alan Moore’s Top Ten. We’ve had superhero rpgs, but none where literally everyone has a unique superpower…… suddenly I feel that Alan Moore glaring at me disapprovingly across time and space…

Does anyone know any RPG system that has roleplay-centric combat that isn't just math and/or getting better weapons?

What I mean here is things that utilize the environment a lot (jumping on ledges, jumping on monsters, using traps, ropes, distracting monsters with things, illusions, hiding behind objects, etc) as well as placement of hits (whether you hit the head, tail, chest, arms, etc) more than just pure math of strength x weapon damage x spell you use x dice roll.

Of course I know every setting has some rules for these types of things, but I want a setting where it's the major thing to consider rather than something people usually ignore. I want it to be something that actively affects every part of combat constantly, consistently. I want a setting that actively forces you to use the rope or trap or decide which body part you injure, instead of just losing more or less hp depending on where you are that you hit from.

In short:

I want a system that actively forces players to use creative ways to defeat a monster (example: hit the legs to make it slower, lure it to a spot now that its slow enough it cannot catch you easily, drop a boulder on it), instead of allowing them to just hit things with a sword and win.

I want to run a campaign that is puzzle-heavy, with scary beasts that are more so meant to be obstacles to find ways around rather than something to stab - but still defeatable as long as you put in the effort to interact with the environment or be smart - so players would go in with that in mind, but it's still best to have a system that works with my ideas.

While I know I could probably just solve it by taking something like DnD and just making the monster have a lot of HP, I feel like it would be better if it was something written into the system, and not just me hp-boosting bosses and homebrewing effects of stabbing each limb separately.

I go to a community center to DM oneshots and occasionally get to actually play the game every once in a while. No I do not associate being a DM and a player of D&D as being the same experience, because the roles are absolutely not the same. The thing is, D&D is not my favorite system but I'm sure that's a common notion on this sub. The kicker is that my usual players are a mix of older children and teenagers, and they will absolutely NOT play anything but D&D 5e/5.5.

These guys are basically either all new to the game or don't wanna bother to learn how it works and actually play it. I'm typically running "baby-D&D", because despite me explaining how the game mechanics work, repeatedly, they still barely know what the hell they're doing the majority of the time and the other regulars are practically clueless as to how a lot of the game works despite being repeat offenders.

The sessions are typically unconnected one shots where the party goes dungeon crawl inside tombs, labyrinths, costcos, whilst they pursue a "kill x" or "find x" goal, stuff like that. People laugh, we have a bit of fun as some people suggest stupid solutions that sometimes work, and the couple of folk who have some idea of what they're doing do a little bit of roleplay. But this is not actual D&D in any capacity outside of maybe the really old systems. Which I am not a fan of personally.

I really do not like running vanilla D&D and I'm kind of just at an impasse here. But at this point I'm basically one of the regular DMs. There's typically one other person on game day that actually runs anything (only D&D as usual), and I've tried running stuff like Pathfinder to switch it up some. That went horrible, as despite me hyping it up as basically better D&D, all but two people literally got up and left the table to go surround the D&D DM as soon as they saw the Pathfinder sheets. There was literally a huge crowd piling up around this girl so I had to relent and run a 5e one shot to make it more manageable.

Mind you, the only two that stayed were one of the more experienced players and one of the "despite being here multiple times all I do is light things on fire, play monks, and fart at the table" kind of teenagers. I wasn't running a small game with that. In fact, the other two also eventually got up and left. It was bad.

Bascially, what the hell can I do here? This is getting grating. I can't even do any homebrew because if they can't read a book they sure as hell won't read a google doc or Lazer Llama thing with more mechanics. They've started a discord where the players can join but no one talks on there besides me and the other GM.

Edit:

I do not have a responsibility to keep going, but I keep going there because if I don't run something, something might happen like that one time I tried running PF. Like, 16 people all surrounding one DM and trying to play when you've only got four hours to do something max. I'd feel so bad for them if that were to happen but the only other capable guy is only occasionally there.

But yeah I understand. On the topic of trying to run a different, easier game to play, that also didn't work. I tried running that one OSR clone that I forgot the name of (begrudgingly), but they also noped out of that. That was with a significantly smaller group during an off day with few attendees but I thought it was just a fluke back then. I didn't realize how stubborn they were until I tried running PF.

Edit 2:

It was Shadowdark I think

Edit 3:

It was specifcially PF2E and me encounraging them to use Pathbuilder because it automates stuff. I thought it'd be pretty clever at first since they barely know the rules already and Pathbuilder just works, but I was evidently mistaken.

Forged in the Dark games have a cycle between jobs and downtime (or a variation), and Night's Black Agents has the genius Conspyramid and Vampyramid. It's been a while since I've read Apocalypse World, but I believe it has a way to organize threats to make it easy for MCs to keep their thoughts straight.

What are some other tools that systems provide to organize campaigns/scenarios?

This is an indie ttrpg by Alexei Vella, based on the Backrooms. Looking over the rules, my initial sense is that it's too structured; rolling for turns, moving into rooms, etc. and not free flowing enough to capture the eeriness. Curious if anyone has played it and can tell me otherwise.

Dear Toon fanatics, if you didn't already have your first edition Toon supplements, which ones would you insist on getting? I lost all my 1E Toon stuff many years ago to a hurricane.

Cypher 2026 edition is now open to regular backers as well. Do you think the changes are good? What should we expect that’s different from first edition except for the wounds according to you? From what I can see, the system has become more grounded and has gained a bit of “crunch,” which is good for giving the system its own distinct character, but it also seems to have lost some of the flexibility of being a toolbox. New character sheet looks much better. I should also add that the GM book hasn’t been released for regular backers yet, and because of that, some points in the new updates are a bit unclear.

As a loose follow up to my last post I would like to ask you for recommendations. I would love to see some system for fantasy that allows me some if not all of following:

-Fast combat

-Flavourful and interesting character creation and advancement

-Subsystems for resolving social combat, tasks and chases

-Creating various magic systems

-running game in my own world without crude cutting chunks of its core mechanic

-Creating my own monsters, hazards

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I am afraid that PF2E and DnD don't satisfy that taste. I want system that supports running game like it is a novel or movie where heroes are capable of standing against overhelming odds but are constantly at risk, have to sacrifice something or have good plan etc. Think about Malazan, First Law or Dresden Files (that's Urban fantasy but similar logic) where mortals have bad odds against supernatural but if they can exploit weaknesses of powerful creatures and pick ground to fight on, they can get upper hand

It could be narrative or crunchier, as long as it is not overly simplistic and has some meat on its bones and something to play with - tools for GM, fun systems etc