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I was on Giants In The Playground today and I saw a thread on their forum that caught my eye. It was about casual perspectives that are often lost when discussing games online.

Most of the thread got hung up on mechanics so I decided to just jump to the end and give my own take. I thought it may be an interesting conversation starter here:

A casual perspective easily lost is that many casual people don't really play D&D as a game.

As a game dev, one bitter pill that I had to swallow was the reality that most people do not actually care about game mechanics. Which hurt, a little.

The 5e wave -- emboldened by Critical Role & COVID -- are mostly casual gamers who see D&D akin to Fortnite, Dead By Daylight, Fall Guys, and other social games. Sometimes, insultingly called "Friend Slop."

There is a first layer of casual where players are pretty much fine as long as the game is a good enough excuse to hangout with their friends. They just want to hangout with an activity to drive conversation. All the "friend slop" titles are no different to them than a poker night. It's just an excuse to hangout.

These mega casual players are probably the majority of the current hobby.

After that, you got the people who do care about it as a game, but only surface level. They want to make a cool build or have some fun specific to D&D...but, if you sat there and got really deep into game dev, they'd tune out.

Want to chat about making Toph Beifong in 5e? They'd love that. Want to talk about class balance and the game design philosophy underpinning 5e that means you can't ever actually feel like Toph ---- because the game can't let any one person be that good, especially at low levels, since it ruins the point of team balance and challenging combat design & D&D uses a specific effect system when compared to the freeform nature of bending so you'd likely need to borrow Star Wars Saga's Use The Force Check OR play a game with freeform magic like Fate or Cortex or PbtA ---, they tune out.

That group is smaller, but probably the second largest group of players.

We are in the third, fourth and fifth groups. People who really get in the nitty gritty on games, people who play games other than D&D, and even people who make our own games. And we are probably the smallest groups. Our encloypedic knowledge of gaming history, our discussion on mechanics, our lists of game recommendations, etc. is weird to the other two groups.

Not that we should divide nor should there be animosity. Just a reality we like this game and hobby for different reasons. And that can preclude us from enjoying things that they can easily enjoy. And they may not appreciate the things we enjoy because things like ludonarrative synergy or more engaging gameplay is not why they are in the hobby.

Edit: Inb4 we go on a tangent on how to do Toph in 5e.

I played *years* of this TTRPG in college (2008-2010) and I cannot remember the name of it. Maybe someone here might know 🤔

The rule book was a light blue-ish background with a single male on the cover.

In the game you can play as multiple races that have angel or supernatural ancestry. I played a character that had to roll after a conversation or whoever I was speaking to would forget they just saw/spoke with me.

I have tried many variations on Google- maybe someone here has an idea? Help!

EDIT: Solved! You're all awesome! It was Anima: Beyond Fantasy 🤩

I've been looking for a good place to go for video reviews of TTRPGs. Any suggestions?

Inspired by this post and the endless deluge of videos talking about them. I don't think I've ever actually seen or heard of one being used, it's always endless hypotheticals about their "storytelling potential" or whatever, when the format (when kept to a strict 5 rooms) seems very limiting.

Hell, even the smallest dungeon I've personally ran was 6 rooms (Bloat, from Mork Borg). Idk I've always thought they were a silly idea.

Mothership is going to be my group’s first foray into sci-fi and horror, and I’m so excited! However, in the Quinn’s Quest review (in which he showers Mothership with praise), his biggest complaint was that the game doesn’t do anything to support character growth.

I figured this is because Mothership feels more well suited for a one shot (or multi-shot) since characters will die, but…I’m sure there’s something I can do about this?

I want my players to not play caricatures or horror stereotypes because I want their deaths to feel BIG when it happens! So what would you do?

What tools or strategies do you use to give more character care and muscle to systems that do nothing to support that beyond what you can bring as a GM?

Let me better describe what I mean: One of the things I love in video games that I'm seldom able to capture in TTRPGs is the feeling of making a fun build for my character. NOTE: I don't mean a fun backstory, lots of systems have a great way to build out character history, I mean a fun build in the sense that it feels like individual pieces of your build are synergizing with each other to make something greater.

Here is my dilemma, I've felt this in games like DnD or pathfinder, you can make some really cool builds that feel like what your character provides in combat is a little more "unique" even though ultimately you're still just doing bigger damage numbers.

When I have run more narrative focused systems like PbtA, it feels like a better fit for my players, but we're all missing that buildmaking element.

Is it possible to have fun/diverse buildmaking in a game without having a lot of number crunch? Or will you inherently need a system with more crunch to actually feel like you're making something with some synergy and not just adding exciting flavor to your +1 to hit?

Thanks for any of your thoughts on the subject! If you think of any games where you have particularly enjoyed the "buildmaking" aspect, please let me know!

Wondering if anyone has tried out Wandering Blades, and if so, what they think of it.

Beginner GM here with 20 plays of Mothership experience.

I'm going through the Heart book and the openness scares me a little bit. Creating delves from scratch with events and connections seems like too much prep (or improv?). And then somehow connecting a bunch of disconnected landmarks and weaving an overall plot through all this. Or maybe I'm overthinking this?

So I've been thinking of grabbing the Dagger in the Heart book to have a campaign framework but maybe that's not the intended way to play the game?

hi! does anyone know a good ttrpg focused mostly on melee fighters?

i'm used to playing dnd and heavily homebrewing it (it turns out, for me a lot of the fun comes from creating additional rules)

i want to run a small game based on specifically japanese medieval military chronicles, but while my first idea was just creating a dnd module and making everyone play a fighter, i'd much rather adapt a system built around warriors.

i don't know if it exists, though.

does it?

i'd be very happy to hear your recommendations! thank you!

Hey People,

I'm looking for an RPG to buy for my son's birthday (11).
We'd be playing it with him & my wife.
I've never really GM'd - he started doing DnD at school in an after school club and is loving it We all play quite some boardgames including more difficult ones like Chip Theory's The Elder Scrolls and Hexplore it -so the rules don't have to be too light.... but no Grimdark and he's not really into horror stuff (so sadly, no Cthulhu).

He likes Fantasy, not a real sci-fi head....
Also - I'd like to buy real something physical if possible. (so anything books / card based would be preferable over just PDF) And based in UK (London).

Any help is welcome.

Some time ago I was blown away by the campaign module Dagger in the Heart for the game Heart, the City Beneath (No relation to Daggerheart). I wanted to run more stuff like it, but no matter how much I looked, I've yet to find another campaign that comes close to this one.

I was wondering if maybe the collective knowledge of this sub could help me find something.

To be more specific, the main things I like about this campaign are:

• A strong narrative that is directly tied to the PCs, it's not a story about random adventurers going through a random dungeon they have no relation to, nor is it a sandbox.
• No wasted time, every character, location or enemy is an interesting set piece, and the campaign doesn't feel the need to add random fights with wolves or meaningless sidequests to be more realistic.
• The structure is modular and nodebased, allowing for a cohesive narrative while not being a railroad.
• Preferably on the shorter side, between 9 to 12 sessions, but it's not a requirement
• Preferably fantasy themed, but I'm open to anything.

The only other thing even remotely similar I found was the campaign for Dungeons of Drakkenheim. Is there anything else like this?