this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024
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If you want to move away from 5e, but remain in a heroic fantasy:
Pathfinder 2e is flat out better than 5e at being D&D. However, it's got much less of the rules ambiguity that plagues 5e. This can be both good and bad: it's good because there's a lower cognitive load for the gamemaster, it's bad because there's a higher cognitive load for players to remember their mechanics. A more even division, but some groups will be reticent to switch just because it's not 5e.
Dungeon World is 5e if you went the complete other way and ditched the crunch rules for narrative ones. Faster to learn and pick up but not for players who enjoy tactical play. Member of an entire genre of games on the same "engine", Powered By The Apocalypse, which gives us Blades in the Dark, the best heisting RPG, and Monster of the Week, a top tier urban fantasy RPG in the vein of X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Learning any of these qualifies a group to play all of them with far less friction.
Songbirds is D&D stripped of its noxious past. Proudly queer, a heroic, not necessarily medieval fantasy setting. Takes what's best of D&D into a lighter RPG that's more narratively strong but still provides some tactical play.
ICON, an in-development, open play test heroic fantasy RPG in the New Weird genre. By the same people as LANCER, the best tactical Mecha RPG out there. Tom Bloom, its designer, also has Maleghast, GUN, Broken Worlds, Goblin With A Fat Ass, and more, spanning genres.
There's also a few games coming out that are just 5e with a hat on, made by prominent creators in response to last year's license controversy. Desiring to move away from dependency on WotC, we now have Kobold Press's Tales of the Valiant, and Matt Colville's MCDM RPG.
Or play DnD 3.5e, a horrible game but one we run a West Marches server for (link in bio)
I am obssessed with PF2e and feel compelled to jump to it's defence against your incredibly minor criticism: The higher cognitive load for players is there, but I would say that there are 2 mitigating factors. Firstly, the rules have an underlying mechanical unity that makes new rules easy to understand once you've gotten used to the basics, and secondly, the lower cognitive load for the gamemaster actually makes it a lot easier for them to support the players in learning the rules through play.
I think the real issue for PF2e is that in being the best D&D it does actually require tactical combat, so can be very frustrating for more casual players who just want do a lot of damage rather than thinking about debuffs and positioning. Shadow of the Demon Lord/Weird Wizard nicely fits the niche between PF2e and DW that 5e should occupy, with a balance of narrative and crunch to its combat.
There's plenty to critique about the game in its own right, such as spells being balanced around mostly failing, which doesn't feel great, and the weirdly large number of plant person species to choose from instead of enhancing existing species with more options, but those are all internal criticisms that don't really apply when making an external comparison to 5e. If comparing to 5e all you really need to do is describe how it'll play differently for the players, and in my experience players aren't usually 100% open to learning a new system if there's any friction in doing so.
There's only 2! Even "living soul sealed in a constructed body" gets 3. There's like 10 "humans but short/shorter/skinny/underwater/etc" ancestries. Mammals and Lizards get like 5 each. Plant ancestries (Plantcestries) and Mineral ancestries are grossly underrepresented in general.
Also, I've found the easy way to convert players is start playing the different game and if they question anything tell them it's homebrew.
Apocalypse (based on my experience playing monster of the week) has some awkwardness due to how rules light it is (maybe 4 pages? Super light) , but after getting over the awkward part it's super fun.
I'd definitely recommend it to a group looking for more casual sessions or to introduce people to role playing, it really gives the players a lot of room to play.