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Recently sat down with my group, same people I've been playing PF2e with for a long time now, hundreds of hours between us. We started comparing thoughts on the system, and I'm slowly arriving at the conclusion I want to share.

On paper PF2e is excellent. Three actions, four degrees of success, tight math, everything in its place. And Paizo's APs are some of the best tactical content on the market. The first few hundred hours of PF2e are the best d20 fantasy out there, no question!

But the better you know the system, the more this strange feeling creeps in: every fight starts to feel roughly the same.

Not in terms of content. Encounters are different, monsters are different, biomes are different. We've experimented with mythic, with non-standard objectives -- "stop the ritual", "rescue the hostage", "stage a fake battle" -- on top of normal Low-to-Extreme combat.

The sameness is in the cognitive texture of every turn. We're solving the same puzzle every time. How many actions on a Strike vs. something useful. Whether to Demoralize. Whether to Raise a Shield. Where to stand for flanking. Plus one or two actions from your build. Every turn, every fight, every session.

The strangest part -- classes start to feel similar once you see the math through them. The flavor's different, the abilities are different, but the actual decision space on your turn collapses into the same shape.

The math is so tuned that surprises have almost stopped happening. They still do, occasionally, but more because we're real people playing a tabletop game with friends than because the system generated anything. Fights look beautiful, run smooth. But that smoothness has started working against the system -- the moments where something goes off-plan and creates a story have become rare.

And it gets stranger. Even when the GM tries to break the pattern with a non-standard encounter, the math is so narrow that any deviation either snaps back to template within a round or breaks balance in an unpleasant way. So the plateau isn't about lazy GMing or repetitive content. It's the system itself, IMO.

For comparison:

PF1e -- those off-plan moments happen constantly because the math is uneven. With system mastery the GM and players can collaborate on basically any kind of game they want, with table buy-in. Draw Steel surprises because villain actions and Malice were designed to break predictability. PF2e is the one that hits a plateau, and it hits it because predictability is what the system was designed for. Which is impressive engineering. Just not what I want at hour 400.

The thing I keep coming back to -- Paizo went hard on clean balance and it put them in this odd middle position. PF1e wins long-campaign d20 for me, even now. People play with one group for years and keep finding new combos, new concepts. You have to like that style, and you need a GM who builds for the party rather than just running stat blocks. With that kind of GM, PF2e fights back. The system actively resists it after some "knowledge point".

What's interesting is MCDM tightened the math hard with Draw Steel too, and the game isn't simple. But they went all-in on tactics + cinematic combat, and left everything else either simple, dramatic, or absent. Paizo landed in the middle. They started moving away from simulationism but kept a lot of "sacred cows". That middle is where I think the issue lives.

The encouraging part -- looking at recent APs and newer classes (Daredevil especially), it feels like they're drifting toward Draw Steel territory anyway. Curious what PF3e looks like.

AI Notice: I typed the whole text myself word by word in my native language first and then I used Claude to translate while proofreading extensively. The experience and the thoughts are original.
Sorry if it doesn't sound like a native English speaker (and I'm not sure if it sounds AI-ish). But it's two times better than my English skills allow for such complex thoughts.

I've heard great things about it, and the Dracula Dossier as a sandbox campaign specifically. The whole conspyramid/vamypyramid idea is supposed to be awesome, pushing adventure design ahead to the next level. What are people's thoughts?

I've got groups that are interested in tactical combat games, and I have experience with pf2e. I recently got Draw Steel books and they seem more up my alley, but I haven't played it yet. How does Draw Steel compare to PF2e I'm your experience? Is the combat more tactically interesting? Is it easier or harder to prep for? And how does it stand up to long term campaigns? Would really appreciate any insights!

I've recently become much more involved as a D&D 5E GM just under a year of being a player. I've only run a handful of (successful) sessions, but since exams are fast-approaching, I'm struggling to find the time to prep and run them (particularly since we're using Roll20, which I think asks a lot more of the GM than in-person games).

I wondered whether anyone had any recommendations for low-prep rpg systems that don't require much mechanical planning.

I've considered "Blades in the Dark" as it seems like a nice sandbox where the party's decisions could guide the story. "Numenera" also looks tempting due to its lack of complicated rules. I've also had a quick look at "Ironsworn", which is more of a co-op experience and looks interesting.

Does anyone have any particular recommendations or any advice regarding those I mentioned?

Thanks.

So I got a chance to meet Tommy Sunzenauer at a Mörk Borg adventure tournament yesterday. He's made the found-footage game Obscure (which won a 2024 Judges' Spotlight Ennie), Mörk Död (you all play Doom Slayers in the far future) and a cozy fishing game, among others!

I had to restrain myself from buying literally everything at his stand. Great art style in all his games.

Recently, Quinn's Quest "went apeshit" for Public Access. I was close to crowdfunding, but in the end chose not to, mostly because the conceit of piecing together rumors gives me strong Clue vibes without one Truth of what really happened bugs me. Quinn says players roll to see if their interpretation is correct.

Has anyone played both and can compare their play experiences to me?

Good Evening!

As some of you know, I have recently started GM'ing for people, and I am having a lot of fun running the Vagabond system for people!

It got me curious though, as someone who loves Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green, is there a rules lite Call of Cthulhu alternative?

I would love to run games for people but I would really like something that is easier to run, kinda like Shadowdark and Vagabond.

Thank you all for your help!

Edit: Maybe something where I could still use Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green materials with? If not, no biggy.

Currently, I am trying to learn how to run Legends in the Mist because I believe it would be excellent for a campaign that I would like to run. However, I am fairly new to PbtA and would like some more experience, or at least a better way to learn how to run it or run a game based on PbtA. If anyone has any suggestions on what I should do, I would appreciate it.

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Hey everyone, I’m looking for some advice on a couple of issues I’ve been having as a GM.

I’ve been running Pathfinder and Pathfinder 2e for my friend group for a long while now, and lately I’ve noticed an adversarial mindset creeping into my games. Basically, my players spend a lot of time building very combat-focused characters with niche contingencies, and then they’ll talk trash about the combats being too easy or openly cheer for my bad rolls.

The problem is, I can feel myself reacting to that. I start playing enemies way more optimized, like a shark smelling blood in the water, and sometimes it gets to the point where I’m nearly TPK’ing the party. It ends up feeling less like a fun game and more like a weird arms race or dick-measuring contest.

That sucks, because I genuinely want the game to be fun. I want there to be room for storytelling, character moments, and chill adventuring instead of every session turning into “players vs GM.” I’ve talked to them before about not goading me, and I’ve also tried encouraging them to build characters with more story-driven choices instead of only combat optimization. But even when we have those conversations, we tend to slip back into the same pattern.

I know Pathfinder can attract combat-heavy players, and I don’t think that’s automatically bad. I also want to be clear that these are my best friends, and they’re awesome people despite this issue. I’m not looking to drop the group or anything like that. I just miss when our games felt more relaxed and less like a constant escalation.

For those of you who have dealt with something similar, how did you mend it? How do you get out of that GM-vs-player mindset when both sides keep accidentally feeding into it?

Greetings everyone,

Recently I have had this idea for a game that I have been sitting on and thinking about. I am thinking about running a game where the heroes are a group of spies and they are trying to set up a spy network. The players can make any kind of character that they want provided that they are willing to work with a rebellion against the powers that be. As I was crafting it I came across a thought that I wanted to run by the community to see if this is a dumb idea or if it could work and if others have tried it to what level of success?

So far the main idea is that the players come to the table with their characters and I have a set of cards that I can deal out to them at the beginning of the game. This will tell them if they are a member of the "resistance" or if they are a spy trying to disrupt the goals. The cards will have goals, win conditions for the player to try and complete that lets them know if they win or not.

Let me know what you think. I would love to hear any advice or even if you think that this is not a good idea to try.

halfway through a troika campaign and am looking for some systems to play after with the aforementioned group, sci-fi, spy, and mafia are the genres I’m intrested most in, but would love to hear about any and all.

Anyone who was into the martial arts videogame scene in the late 2010s remembers Absolver. The idea behind it was pretty awesome; masked robed martial artists go around learning moves from fights and building those techinques into a custom combat style. It remains one of my favorite games of all time.

I wana run an absolver campaign, but I don't really know what system to run it with. I was looking at Exalted 3e and its expansive martial arts systems and decided that wasn't it, but I do have a copy of Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate and Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades.

Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas?