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Historically, for me, a Rules Lawyer was someone who typically knew the rules very well and staunchly insisted that everything be done by RAW. Further, they would argue that varying interpretations or ambiguities be handled based on how they interpret it. Notoriously these people would pedantically correct everyone and slow down the flow of the game.

Similarly, Rule of Cool, use to mean occasionally allowing something to happen for the sake of a cool scene or character moment, even if not allowed or within the rules.

Now, if I see game advertisements like, "We play by Rule of Cool, no Rules Lawyers;" I am coming to find what they are actually saying is, "Our group has a poor grasp of the rules, we aren't bothering to learn them; and don't disagree when our arbitrary, whimsical, and ever-changing 'homebrew' has adverse effects on your character."

I didn't know if this is a growing phenomenon or I just had some bad luck.

Edit 1: I was not the person accused of being the Rules Lawyer by these groups.

Edit 2: Since there were some request for context.

Situation 1: A player was playing PF1e. The player made a single diagonal move on the grid. Then a group member and the GM said, "You cannot do that, you don't have enough movement to move 10ft." (Which is hypocritical for a group claiming they don't like Rules Lawyers). The player said, "The first diagonal is only 5 feet." Then the established group mobbed the player saying he was a Rules Lawyer and that isn't the way they play. The group didn't know the rules, and jumped all over the player for correcting their error, while they were trying to correct that player, erroneously as per RAW. Then the group chimed in invoking Rule of Cool, which in their terms, seemed to mean whatever arbitrary decision the GM made was better than just reading the book.

Situation 2: Also, PF1e. A player cast a spell that was not subject to Spell Resistance. The GM said, "Roll to break Spell Resistance." The player, very normally, said, "This spell is not subject to Spell Resistance." The GM said "I think Spell Resistance should apply to any spell, or else what's the point." Then, once again, all the established players chimed in supporting the GM's off-the-cuff ruling and accusing the person of being a Rules Lawyer and power gaming, further adding that they play by the Rule of Cool, which made no sense based on my understanding of Rule of Cool.

I am not here to argue in favor of one side or the other. I posted this to just see if those terms may have morphed to mean something different than what I understood them to be for a long time.

I have been planning a Legends in the Mist campaign for the last couple of weeks. The whole idea was that death as a concept was literally dying, with my plan for it being a darkest dungeon-style dark fantasy, mildly eldritch horror campaign.

The issue is that, before even session 0, my players have all collectively decided to be part of the same mafia. While the idea isn't exactly bad, they didn't even give me a chance to explain the setting, basic premise, or the themes I was going for this campaign. They have told me in the past that they typically preferred more fantasy-oriented campaigns, so I planned for that, not for a mafia thriller, which I was only told they were doing literally yesterday.

It feels like they have just told me what campaign to run for them, and while a mafia-inspired campaign wouldn't necessarily be bad, it just isn't what I planned at all. Would I be in the wrong for shutting this idea down? They seem weirdly dead set on this idea despite the fact that I was never given a chance to even explain anything yet.

So we've been playing TTRPGs for about a decade now. Standard evolution. Started with 5e, moved on to pathfinder 2e, dabbled in Daggerheart and Forbidden Lands. Our current long term campaign is PF2e. We have just spent a whole week in Italy together enjoying the summer and playing Pathfinder every evening, which is something we try to do every year. And while we did have a blast, we felt like we need to move on to another system after this campaign. Here are the main issues we had with the system:

Because we are high level now (lvl 17) it's more apparent than ever that pathfinder can hardly be played without technical aid. We use Foundry. We miss the feeling of just rolling dice and pushing minis around on a flip side battle map. Also combat is taking way too long. We like combat and everybody is excited about it for 15-30 minutes but everything after that is just a slog and really tough to roleplay. Additionally I, the DM, feel like it's too prep heavy. Combat is very tough to make interesting or even know how to play a monster without prepping it beforehand. But also the "story" part of it. There is just not enough mechanics that facilitate interesting story beats or mechanics around emergent gameplay. For context we always play PC focused sandboxes where the story evolves around the decisions the players make at the table. We use fronts from dungeon world for that.

So I think what we are looking for is:
- crunch but complex not complicated (ie 6 different conditions not 27)
- can be played in person without technical aids
- combat that is fun, interesting, cinematic and somewhat short (this might be utopic ^^)
- a lot of character choices / interesting character choices
- emergent gameplay through mechanics and/or other systems
- low/no prep
- geared towards interesting stories/character development/character focused stories (probably narrative mechanics, but maybe there is other things I'm not aware of)

I loved forbidden lands personally for the emergent gameplay and the way monsters are played. Just rolling to see what the monster does was extremely fun. Same reason why I love the beholder. But I think for my players it's not.. heroic? crunchy? .. enough? With Daggerheart I really liked to spend fear because it felt like I, as the GM, was a player as well and creating bad circumstances felt more "justified". But it didn't have enough interesting character choices for us and combat didn't really feel challenging or deadly. One of the reasons we've played PF2e for so long is the crunchy combat and the feeling of danger. Please keep in mind all of this is personal experience and we've only played a couple sessions each. I'm not knocking these games or anything. They are great games.

Ok so the strongest contestants at the moment are:
- 13th age 2e (seems like a really good fit)
- DnD 4e (just the monster roles and ease of encounter design alone make it very enticing)
- savage worlds?

I don't know if there is a game system that does everything I've listed. But please let me know what you think the right system for our group would be.

Seen it on drivethrurpg a few times, wondering what the community thought.

I'd love to hear different ideas and perspectives on this.

I'm in a sort of enviable position where my RPG group is on board to learn just about any system so we can stay together as a group with me as DM. We're just wrapping up a 4-year D&D 5e campaign, and I was suffering from pretty severe burnout, nearly to the point of wanting to drop RPGs indefinitely. However, I'm now in a much better space mentally, and we were able to wrap that campaign in a pretty satisfying way. My group loves playing and want to have me continue DMing, which I'm fine with, and they're down to learn any system I want. Narrative has always been my strong suit and what my group like most, and combat/encounter building are something I want to avoid for the time being. I've looked into a handful of games/systems like Wanderhome, PbtA, Cypher, etc., but I wanted to ask the community for opinions.

If you had complete freedom of choice to run a solely narrative (or at least just not focused on combat) RPG, what would you pick? Rules-light, super crunchy, grimdark, cozy, high fantasy, hard sci-fi; it's all on the table.

I GM Daggerheart and Dungeons and Dragons 5e and enjoy them both for different reasons. The recent humble bundle has me interested in trying Pathfinder but everything I can find just calls it a D&D alternative or what Pepsi is to Coke. If I'm already satisfied with Coke is it worth trying Pepsi to a table of fellow Coca-Cola enjoyers? I got lost in that metaphor but I think you get what I mean. What can Pathfinder do for me that other TTRPGs can't?

In Ashes Without Numbers, is the unarmed combatant intended to make punches lethal? Or just hit really hard? And how would brass knuckles factor in?

I find when games use both abstract resources and physical coins that it I start to struggle to contain the whole deal in my mind. How are folk handling it? Stonetop is a barter system of exchanges, trust and honour. But there are supposed places that mint coin. And the merchants that come to Stonetop take coin, but all have different preferences...

I guess this is a matter of discovery and hand waving. But I would like to hear about people's interaction with this part of the game and what you experienced and handled it?

A bit of background: I've played RPG's with various gaming groups for decades, and most of the time I end up as the GM. I do a lot of improvisation and character voices in my games, and I can usually come up with a simple story and just let the players provide the input to fill in the gaps.

Fast forward to this weekend. I'm cleaning up some stuff and my daughter finds a pair of D20's and asks how they work. After showing her a few rolls, she wanted to "play" with them by each rolling and seeing whose was higher. I laughed and told her there were better ways to play with them.

So, after I finished tidying up, I grabbed the two dice and told her to follow me downstairs,. I said we're going to play a game where we make up a story and when it comes time for a choice, we'd roll the dice, and whoever got the higher roll would get their option.

My daughter absolutely loves The Smurfs, so I had decided to base the story in that setting: What villain was going to encounter the Smurf Village, which Smurfs would go on the adventure to solve the problem, and how they would deal with the villain were all determined by our dice rolls. I used my GM skills in improv to tell the story and I used as many voices as I could for each of the characters. In the end, the Smurfs ended up rescuing some of their friends from Gargamel's castle by luring the Ogre Big Mouth there with a blueberry pie. They then escaped using a magic catapult which flung them back to the Smurf Village after trapping Gargamel's cat Azreal in a broom closet.

Let me tell you, I have never had so much fun playing a game with my daughter as what we did today. She laughed at the funny outcomes, cheered at the results of the dice rolls, and we both had a blast. This was roleplay as I have always enjoyed it, and we're definitely going to try it again soon! Just figured I'd share, but I think this was a great first step in showing her some of the games I like to play!

My friend is trying to get me into the Infinity Wargame and I noticed that they had a TTRPG as well made or produced by Modiphius. I've had no experience with their games and the only thing I've heard about them was a negative review from one of my other friends so not really any well sourced argument.