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https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/5549/paizo

We want to move from 5e to a different system. What should we choose?

We want to be able to feel like Heroes at higher levels, but not necessarily at lower ones.

We like having a skill list.

We want combat as war, not combat as sport. Brutal and unpredictable.

Generally, we like the D&D style, just not the game system itself. We were thinking about Dragonbane or Vagabond, but I don't know if they are heroic.

I'm pretty new to GMing, and I've been running a few sessions of Beyond the Wall and have been having quite a bit of fun with it, and I've had decent feedback about what the players want to do next, but during the last game they were surprised that they weren't rolling dice that much. The session was mostly talking to people and trying to suss out a mystery before making their case to a minor elf lord, so I didn't see a reason to roll much other than "does this guy trust what you're saying?" and "see if you can gauge the inscrutable elf lords mental state". I like rolling dice but I feel that sometimes the reward for making up clever solutions is that you don't need a roll. You've made an impassioned plea for mercy for this guy to the elf lord, invoking the name of an honoured ancestor, so yes they are willing to listen to you, no charisma check needed.

All this to say, should I be asking for more rolls? How should I go about that? I don't want to go back to D&D where people fail catastrophically at basic things because they rolled bad.

For those of you who have relocated to a new city with zero connections, how have you used TTRPGs as an outlet to meet people and make friends? Do you use Discord or Reddit to find new sessions to join/start, or do you prefer going to a local hobby shop to inquire in person? What type of genres or titles do you seek or are willing to try?

Regardless of your moving situation, how successful have you been converting your game group into friendships that have a place outside of TTRPG gaming? Is this a rare phenomenon that happens on occasion or something that you put a conscious effort toward?

In my experience as a player (and my husband as a GM), we have tried to establish new groups in two different cities. We love to host, cook, and bake for our groups-- my husband paints miniatures and provides unique dice to players-- yet we feel we're only treated as a source of entertainment, and these various groups fell apart. Perhaps when using TTRPGs as a social outlet, it is better to reverse the order: make friends who express an interest in the hobby, then form a group based on that.

Ultimately my question is: what are your thoughts and experiences on friendships within this hobby, especially in a new and unfamiliar environment?

But I couldn't help but think: isn't that kinda the point?

With a game like the DCCRPG, I feel that the fun comes from making your own Crawler, putting them through the wringer to experience the world Dungeon from another perspective.

If you just wanted to reenact the main DCC story, I feel that you'd just want to re-read (or listen) to the books, no?

I don't wanna yuck anyone's yum, but I was honestly shocked that people wouldn't want to make their own unique Crawler. Or if they re-created the characters, things didn't happen just like it did in the books.

I was redirected here after asking a question in a DnD focused subreddit.

I am writing a low fantasy and low magic game with a focus on both combat and investigation. By low magic I do mean magic does exist but is just incredibly inaccessible to the common person, which the player will be starting off as.

If possible, it would be a great addition for training to be a valid way for the players to improve and level up.

I honestly do not know what information would be important, so if I need to add anything, lmk and I'll comment or edit the post later

A lot of stuff we do in RPGs can be classified as a group effort (or "group check"), where all heroes work together to attempt a single shared goal. For example:

• Scaling a cliff
• Scouting a hostile landscape
• Making a good first impression on a leader or community
• Maneuvering a ship

But despite how common this kind of thing is, most of the games I've read or played address group efforts in a way that kinda feels like an afterthought. It usually involves something along the lines of:

• Everyone makes an individual action/move/skill check (however that works), and the group succeeds if at least half of the individuals succeed
• Or if it's a "weakest-link" type challenge, like sneaking, everyone has to succeed
• Or—and?—heroes can "Help" each other (edit: or more specifically, a point person or leader), where helping is a mechanically-defined action that yields extra successes or advantage

Of course, most games are built around a turn-based resolution system where individual actions are resolved one by one, so group efforts often feel like an afterthought extension of that system.

I'm curious if there are any games that take a different approach. In my own system, I recently decided to make group efforts the central mechanic of exploration, and resolve them as a "pool of effort":

• The GM determines the difficulty of the effort by multiplying a base difficulty (easy/medium/hard) by the number of heroes attempting it
• All the heroes take whatever action/move they think best contributes to the effort, add their results together, and compare the sum to the threshold

My game doesn't work like a d20 game, but in D&D/Pathfinder terms, this would look like:

• The DM decides it's a hard effort, so sets a DC of 80 (20 x four heroes)
• All heroes roll whatever skill best contributes to the effort (with the DM's input/veto)
• If the sum meets or beats 80, it succeeds

In a PbtA-style game, this would get a little tricker since there's three possible outcomes, (6- fail, 7-9 partial, 10+ succeed) but the thresholds are static, so you could do something similar. For example, for a group of four heroes, a group effort:

• Partially succeeds on a result sum of 28–36 (that is, 7x4 to 9x4)
• Fails below this threshold
• Succeeds above this threshold

Doing group efforts this way does take a little math up front on the GM's part. But in my experience, pooling results like this feels more organic as a simulation of working together vs. resolving each roll singly. It also encourages players to narrate how they work together, how one player's strength counteracts another's weakness. The probability does get a little funky to think about (more players = smoother bell curve), but it mostly works as expected.

I'm curious if I actually came up with this idea or if I'm inadvertently stealing it from some game I've never heard of. I'd also love to hear what y'all think about group checks and if you have your own approaches to them.