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A lot has been said about modern versions of games being betrayals of their original conceits or audiences, but at least we can kind of see some vestigial elements or other aesthetic or thematic tissue connected to its origin. I wonder about the truly out there cases, the ones where the jump from first to last edition leaves you wondering why the game still keeps its name.

I've been GMing on and off a campaign in D&D 3.5 and my players are now level 10. We really want to continue, but I'm struggling more and more to put together and run battles in this system. After months of play, I still can't evaluate well the difficulty of the encounters I prepare, and they always end up either trivial or way too hard. And the monsters have so many abilities that I always end up overwhelmed when I run them in play. I'd like to port the characters to another, simpler system, but I don't know which one to chose.

Could you recommend a generic fantasy trad system that does high level (10 to 15 at least) well, has good encounter balancing rules and makes running monsters easy for the GM ? Especially by not giving them too many abilities ?

Of course, I've considered Pathfinder (either 1e or 2e), but while it does encounter balancing well, I've heard that it's even worse than D&D in terms of number of abilities to juggle.

Do you have any suggestions ? No lightweight narrative systems please. OSR-adjacent might be fine, but not too lethal and my players would still like a bit of crunch in terms of characters abilities.

Another broad question, but this is one that came to my mind after yesterday's thread, and really excited me. There's a quote from a book I quite like-Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Messy, True Story Behind the Making of Video Games. That I often find myself reciting whenever I dislike any game or system.

"No one ever sets out to make an intentionally bad game"

There were some really interesting tidbits about how often controversial or disliked systems in games were made with a genuine assumption from the design team. This came to my mind with the Alpha for VtM 6E and the controversial addition of a meta currency. The team themselves admitted in a blog post that they had tried to use Drama for the sake of introducing friction to the story outside the story itself, without feeling punitive towards the players. This however, didn't work as intended ("it added needless bookeeping to something storytellers were already able to do without it") and it seems the team will either be revising it or scrapping the mechanic.

Whether you think it's something that they should have known beforehand or not, I think it's a stark reminder that human error is a very real issue when it comes to game design, whether virtual, board, card, or TTRPGs. Very often a bad mechanic* (itself subjective because people like and dislike different things.) was done because the design team genuinely thought it would make the game or system better.

So that's what I wanted to ask about today, what are some mechanics or systems you dislike, and why do you think the designers made it that way? I don't intend for this to be a negativity thread, quite the opposite really. I want folks to be able to take a hard look at what they dislike, and think about how or why it was made that way. I hope it might generate some interesting discussion or appreciation for something you otherwise dislike.

I've always wanted to try mystery solving, investigation system like Call of Cthulhu and WoD games. Yet i don't really know how to "prepare" a oneshot/campaign for that kind of gameplay. Any idea on where/how i should start?

There are so many different kinds of horror game. It's difficult to pick a favorite, but chainsaw to my throat, I'd probably choose Ten Candles. The handful of times I've played it the ritual of play is just so engrossing. I've never played another game like it. Close second is Dread. That tower tension locks in the whole table.

What is your favorite horror game? More importantly, why?

Hi all! I'm currently working on a system set in a mythicized version of the 1700 BC Levant, heavily inspired by apocrypha, angelology and Judeo-Christian mythology. While I don't mind the occasional divergence from the "historical" aspects of the setting, I do have a particular feel of alterity that I want to preserve. Therefore, it felt like a breach in tonality to simply introduce a DnD style "Gold/Silver/Copper pieces" economy. The time and place I'm trying to portray did not have coinage and relied on a mostly barter-driven palace economy, although I've read that silver by weight was commonly used as a sort of proto-currency.

Iam therefore trying to figure out a system for how the players can acquire/trade for stuff without relying on minted coinage.

In case this is relevant: I plan on basing my system on the skeleton of DnD (mainly because it is the most familiar to both myself and my players), keeping combat, skills, and abilities mostly the same, but revamping classes, race, spellcasting among other things.

One problem I find myself running into is that I am stuck between the two extremes. On the one hand I have "let's just use silver as a stand in currency", which I feel would disrupt the setting as well as robbing the system of a potential cool and useful aspect. On the other hand, just having the items barter e.g. dungeon loot would be hard to systemize, leaving a lot of arbitrary things like who wants which wares, how much they're worth to whom etc. at the DMs discretion (imo a player-hostile and confusing way to handle an economy) and it would be a nightmare to keep track of. It also leaves the question of "what merchant/trader wants what" and "How do we transport substantial amounts of barter wealth".

I struggle to find a sensible balance between the two or to come up with a usable third option. Is there anyone who has previously run/designed working barter systems or maybe has some ideas how to make this work? Help is greatly appreciated.

Several years after release, how has Pathfinder 2e been treating you? There’s a local game advert and I’m likely going to sign up to see how it plays.

What have you liked? Disliked? What keeps you playing, or what caused you to drop it?

I’m curious to return to crunchy “trad” play after so long steeping myself in the old-school scene.

Hi everyone,

I'd like to know if the backers have already received their copies of the Broken Empires PDF, and if so, what their first impressions of the game are.

Thank you for your answers.

Hi there,

In the last few years my taste as a DM have mutate a lot. I have enjoy a variety of settings and systems but I have grown tired a lot.

Everything just revolves around a few ideas and archetypes of what is a fantasy or sci-fi or terror ( you get my point) game.

In the past months I like the fresh taste of : vampires and claymores, chicken not pie, the skeletons, every villain is a loser and vaesen (naming a few).

I realized I have grown tired of : mörk Borg system (Lore is pretty cool and community content too), DND style games, chulthu style games, daggerheart, exalted, city of mist, dragon bane, blades in the dark etc.

Could you recommend me a ttrpg that feels like something very smart or innovative or new or with a original system or just make you feel Inlove again with roleplaying?