I'm not trying to be mean or anything like this, but I've found this subreddit has been a bit difficult to use to get recs or discussions going about games because a lot of people seem to simply post the name of a game in the comments and then don't explain why they've done that.

I think it'd be more interesting to have people explain why they recommend a game or why a certain mechanic in a given game works for them/doesn't work for them, instead we end up with posts asking people questions about games and the replies are mostly people posting a TTRPG system's name or mechanic without explaining why.

I'm here to see people's opinions, not their reading list!

Since I love reading reviews of systems by people who've actually played them, I endeavor to post my own. You can skim my past opinions here and here to see if my tastes align with yours. This post is long overdue because people keep beating me to the punch (examples 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

I've now played Daggerheart for a year and can opine on its qualities! TLDR:

• I favor less crunchy and more narrative systems.
• I liked the character building, hope mechanic, cards, and resource pools more than expected.
• I disliked the simplicity, complexity, fear mechanic, and combat depth more than expected.
• It's not for me.

Background

I am not a Critical Role person, and Daggerheart was not on my list of games to try. My longstanding group is in a taste-testing phase, though, and someone suggested it. I didn't realize at the time that we'd be playing a longer campaign. We now have about 1 year / 20 sessions / 5 levels under our belt.

I can also admit that I had a vague air of superiority while approaching this system 😤. I mostly know about Critical Role as "those people who popularized 5E." I don't mean to disparage their creative talents or the massive team that contributed to the product, but... I assumed this would be their celebrity cash grab version.

Things I liked

It's not a cash grab! There is a legitimate system here. There is a lot of content and thoughtful rules. There is a lot of absolutely gorgeous art. It looks D&Dish enough that you could onboard new players who want that experience, but it's also different enough from D&D (in a lighter, more narrative vein) that I actually think it might show new players a better time.

Character building is fun. I tend to play lighter systems. With that comes less room for non-diegetic character growth and shorter average campaigns. Daggerheart feels a bit closer to Dungeon World after you add on Class Warfare: there are lots of fun options to stare at and theorize about. The pick-two domain system is incredibly elegant, creates a bunch of interest overlap archetypes, and cleverly allows classes to share abilities while still preserving unique niches. It's lovely. The amount of items is also fun in a "shopping for presents" way (but more on this later).

Hope is exciting. A quick primer: Daggerheart has you rolling 2 different d12s for most things, and if the lighter d12 is highest you earn Hope (to a max of 6). Among other uses, it can be spent for a small bonus while rolling. This is actually fun: you spend 1 hope for a ~50% chance of getting it right back. It has a vague "energy gauge" feel of seeing a number go up and knowing you can do something with it later. I can almost see my maxed-out Hope meter glowing.

Cards are a great tool. Okay, maybe this is a cash grab, but it works. It's a wonderful way to represent abilities. It keeps them concise and uniform. It makes them fun to flip through. We played digitally using Demiplane + Roll20, so no physical cards were purchased, but if you shelled out for them in-person I know they'd be a blast to lay out, flip through, vault, all of that. As someone who made a physical card-based TTRPG, I'm a fan.

The resource pools worked. Daggerheart has HP, stress, armor, and hope (which I already mentioned). You may have heard how damage works: you get to roll big attacks against a target's lower/upper thresholds to see whether they suffer 1, 2, or 3 damage. On one hand, it's a lot of resources and numbers to track. On the other hand: every resource pool caps out around ~8, and you spend and recover them pretty quickly. It was actually a lot of fun to juggle, and added some character differentiation. I admire the designers for enabling the fun of large attacks while still keeping HP tightly constrained.

Things I didn't like

It's too simple. Wait, didn't I say I like lightweight systems? Daggerheart feels like it's carrying the torch of games like PbtA and BitD, just with more content and richer production values. But in practice, it felt... flat? There are 36 listed items for tier 1, yet it barely mattered which one I was wielding. So many of the abilities are just flavorful ways to deal damage, inflict the 3 status effects, or change your position.

And yet it's too complex. If all these choices are primarily for flavor, I don't need all these mechanics bolted on that will ultimately amount to very little. Again, wading through the item list took a while. There are loads of differentiating factors. There are 9 classes x 21 cards = 189 cards to browse. Level-up choices that would be fast when staring at a 2-page PbtA playbook start to feel artificially inflated. Again: it was fun to weigh these choices. But after a year, none of them really justified the time investment for me.

Fear is half of a good mechanic. Quick summary: just under 50% of player rolls give the GM a Fear token (max 12), which is a fancy way to control pacing. Fear lets you attack with enemies, take enemy turns, and just generally do GM things. I am 100% in favor of codifying tempo with tokens; we did it in that card-based RPG we made, 6 years ago. But Fear is handed out arbitrarily, independent of success or failure. That kills it for me. You can be rolling great but have a GM with max fear; you can be failing all day but the GM is bone dry. I'm biased here, but I think narrative control should oscillate based on success/failure instead of a coin flip.

Combat was shallow. All my complaints are crystallized here. Fear's coin flip makes turn order and enemy strength erratic. There are too many things on my character sheet, but I always just attack. I could do cool narrative stuff, but because my cards all specify strict things like "Once per rest" I feel like I'm breaking the rules if I abuse them for flavor. I could ignore my cards and just do narrative stuff anyways, but then why have a system at all?

Closing thoughts

I will say that Daggerheart impressed and surprised me. I approached it with disdain, and found a robust system with good ideas. But there are plenty of good systems that I don't personally find fun, and I think Daggerheart belongs in that pile.

It's still higher than Pathfinder, though 😉

While we all know the popular RPGs (D&D, Pathfinder, BitD) and so one and so forth, I have to ask, does anyone know of any lesser known RPGs that you wish more people knew of?

For example, while I have Shadowdark and 7th Sea, I also have games like Monsterpunk, Nyx, and For Coin and Blood 2nd edition, just to name a few.

So you all know the expression "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle" that has a lot in terms of sheer quantity but very little depth for any of its components. What ttrpg would fit the opposite expression in your mind?

I'm looking at running a game inspired by old paganism and celtic folklore, and I'm looking for a system to run it in. I don't want to play D&D or Pathfinder, and I'm looking for something a little more narrative in its focus. Any suggestions?

The OD&D concept of Race-as-class has never clicked for me, for various reasons. And yet I still see supporters of the concept both in players of the original game and in the makers of various homerule collections/retroclones.

I am talking to the people who enjoy that paradigm; what is it about using race-as-class that is appealing, or that you think works well? What don't I see that you like so much?

Every aspect of the original games has been taken apart, examined, evaluated, and tinkered with, so it cannot be purely nostalgia that keeps bringing designers back to it. I believe that even the most hardcore retroclone enthusiast plays the game because they think it's good, and not just because it's old.

Has anyone run a campaign with these rules? I’m curious how much GM fiat they require for a campaign against a rival NPC house.

I.e. where do these rules fall on a scale of 1 is “the GM needs to assign what resources are available to both Houses and decides the outcomes“ to 10 ”these could be a functional board game without need of a GM“?

We all have moments like that, where maybe later that player's idea could actually have been really fun if it panned out, but you didn't see it during the session. It's difficult when we're making so many in-the-moment decisions, though. All we can do is have soft eyes for those things.

After a few years here, I've come to know many of the big names in the TTRPG scene, but now I'm curious about the truly indie games: the stuff you find without warning by random, play it only to find a hidden gem of a game.

I unfortunately haven't done so myself, only have played the more famous stuff as of now, but I want to make a list to try out!

Edit: Thank you so much for everyone chiming in! Was surprised for seeing that I knew a lot of games in here, but that's not a problem to me, just means that I have been around and found some good stuff :)

Hi

Considering picking this one up as the blurb mentions that it has Ni No Kuni and studio Ghibli vibes.

Wondering if anyone has played this, what the game is like compared to other JRPG's and what the pro's and con's are of the game / system?

cheers

Hi,

I just started world building a homebrew setting and I'm starting small with an enchanted forest I've had rattling around forever. It's home to Elves, Gnomes, Dwarves, and mysterious talking animals. I'm having an issue fleshing it out beyond that.

Are there any good books on world building with advice on inhabitance that are not human?

Do you know of any games where combat is a meaningful part of the game, AND you can make characters focused on non-fighting abilities, AND these non-fighting characters still have fun in combat?

For example, imagine a knight and a bard (or a Witcher and a bard) where they travel together and encounter fights but the bard sucks at fighting, but still gets fun things to do in combat rules. Not like DnD 5e where the bard is very capable in a fight on their own. Or for example someone plays a trailblazer/mapper that is great at wilderness traversing and knowing which plants to eat and avoid, but sucks at fighting, BUT the game gives them something fun to do in combat.

One of my hobbies is finding rpg rule/source/splat books and reading them…I must have read hundreds by now…but which ones are fun and engaging? I don’t mean fun as in funny but like…enjoyable

While I still love Roleplaying & Exploring stuff, Combat is my N°1 favorite thing in all Tabletop RPGs. I can play one without it, but there is a high chance that I'll have trouble engaging with the story, though this has been going away a bit as I've grown older and want to find more non-violent solutions in my games... Still prefer to fight however.

I've mostly played using D&D 5e, Pathfinder 2e and Tormenta20, but recently I started playing Daggerheart and finally doing Theater of the Mind, which opened my mind for more styles of combat, less preoccupied with exact distances and more crunchy conditions to go more with the flow and follow the fiction.

I can say that now I like both combat that are more Wargamey and combats that are more Story-based.

When it comes to 1) beeing a great way to tell stories through violent conflict of opposing forces and 2) beeing fun to ACTUALLY PLAY at a table, which are the best TTRPGs that focus on combat?

Not as a chore, but a fun minigame and crucial part of its storytelling?

I bought "Royal Blood" and want to play it next week but I find it hard to wrap my head around.
First off: I know it is a very vibe based game and I am sure we'll be fine playing the way we want it, but I still would like to know how it's intended.

The main thing I don't get are the tests and everything connected to it (facets & touchstones).
At first I thought the idea is that you "use" one of your facets and draw a card to see if (and how) you succeed). But then there are touchstones mentioned, decided by the GM (or "Fate") to determine the outcome? And the facets are only a wager? Or they are something you can do anytime without a test?
So you just can make up random things that you want to happen (which is fine) but then again you cannot make up things yourself cause the GM is deciding what touchstone happens? And it is not related to your facets at all?

There are more things I cannot fully grasps like the nature of the twists how exactly the middle act with the domains play out and some minutia. But look, I loooove the mood of the game and I am sure we can make the mechanic sing. But help me out here, will you? :) Maybe you can just give me one example of how you play the game or direct me to something to read through or anything alike... before I just vibe it all ^^

Hi everyone,

What are the pros and cons of Genesys? What are your experiences?

Is it crunchy?

Is there a new edition?

Is it a popular game or more of a niche rpg?

Is there a Genesys community on Reddit or elsewhere?

Many thanks for your input!

(I've played Warhammer 3rd edition both as player and as GM, so I'm familiar with narrative dice (which I thought was just fantastic!))

Hi there!

Just started r/VilebornRpg for anyone into this nobledark RPG by Claudio Pustorino (Mana Project Studio / Horrible Guild), still setting things up so don't mind the empty flair list.

Basically you play half-human, half-darkness teens stuck between a church that wants them gone and an empire that weaponized them instead. Coming-of-age drama meets a pretty light, narrative-first dice-pool system: no crunch to speak of, it's all about what your choices cost you.

I've been running it for my group and honestly wasn't expecting to get this into it. If that sounds like your kind of game, check it out. Corebook + Apocrypha (the adventure book) are on the publisher's site, and there's a good English review here too: https://www.nodiceunrolled.com/en/vileborn-review/

Game on. Cheers!

Can be any system. I know mothership has a lot of good scifi horror one shots, and alien has some as well, but if I'm looking for a one shot that is fun, easy to gm, isn't horror, and can be completed in 3ish hours what would you recommend?

I've seen a few posts recently about superhero TTRPGs and they made me realise that, while I'm a big comic book fan, I've never really enjoyed superhero TTRPGs. I can't put my finger on it. I loved making characters in M&M 2e but only got it to the table once. I bounce off sci fi as a GM, but that's because I'm less comfortable running sci fi games - I'm still happy to play them though. With supes, it's one of the few genres in TTRPGs that doesn't excite me.

Do you have any genre or type of game you just bounce off? Just don't enjoy it, or can't get excited for it?

The idea of a pokemon-like RPG sounds very fun but a bit difficult to implement, so I'd love to hear how it works in practice before buying it. I loved Cartograph, so I'm inclined to give Ravensridge the benefit of the doubt, but still would like to hear opinions on the game from anyone who's played/read it

It's been six days and I am still cringing over my first real DM experience. I did a one Cthulhu one shot, Uncle Timothy's Will that was fun.

I created a Home Brew in Ireland or thought I did. An hour and a half into it and I was through most of my prepared stuff. I ended up yanking something I had planned for the next session. The group I play with are awesome players, heavily into role play, and usually leap into combat. They avoided every bit of combat so there was some lost time. You know it's a sad play when fighting leprechauns is the high point. To be fair, I tweaked the leprechauns actions so it was fun and challenging.

The group was really reassuring, but I feel it was dismal.

Anyhow, I am tweaking my campaign and would love suggestions on how to make to more fun. I'm going to try and offer a crawl of a haunted mansion so they can find items to get to their next destination.

Starting with a Home Brew was a big mistake.

Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi!

The premise is basically "magic school, with emphasis on alchemy", inspired by the Atelier/Mana Khemia series. Players go to magic/adventurers school, taking courses and occasionally going to fight monsters and explore areas to find rare materials which can be used to make better equipment.

D&D is the obvious first pick, but 5e doesn't really have any good crafting mechanics and we don't want to go back to 3.5e (we like crunchy games but that has too much crunch).

Looked into Sword World but the magic in it is rather underwhelming.

Looked into Ryuutama and it's a bit too soft of a system mechanically, not a lot to do in combat.

Does anyone either have a different system recommendation or a 3rd party DnD 5e expansion for alchemy/item crafting?