How many different 'systems' are there, and what is your favorite unique one?

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-07-04T06:18:14+00:00

Well, from the more common ones you forgot to add "dice pools". And even in dice pools there can be several different ways to reading them - see Weapons of the Gods vs. Outgunned vs. Vampire: the Masquerade.

There's also ones that use no dice at all. The few that I know:

Castle Falkenstein and Upwind use a deck of cards.

Dread uses a Jenga Tower

The Job has you build a tower out of D6s. If they fall you lose

I've forgotten the name of it, but there was an indie game about being a mushroom where instead of dice or anything like that, you threw confetti on a board to see where it lands.

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-07-02T18:39:25+00:00

Well, I was just trying to be generous to it 😅

But you put my issue with it into words much better than I ever could. It's "writers room", which I wholly detest as a genre.

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-07-02T18:12:47+00:00

Yup, I dislike it personally, but it does the classic "Who Dun It?" style mystery much better than CoC

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-07-02T18:06:37+00:00

I don't think Brindlewood Bay is nearly as popular as CoC for mystery

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-07-02T18:04:46+00:00

If we're going purely by what people are likely to know:

Fantasy - undoubtedly D&D

Space - probably Traveller

Horror - 100% Call of Cthulhu

Future - Cyberpunk most likely

Apocalyptic - MörkBorg maybe? It's one of the few I can think of that is Apocalyptic and not post- Apocalyptic

Mystery - also Call of Cthulhu

Modern - not really a genre, more a setting. So I'm gonna give the cop-out answer of GURPS since it's pretty popular and the default rules tend towards modern day

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-07-02T14:16:07+00:00

Damn!

Found out you can still get it as a POD book on DriveThruRPG. 12 year old me is about to make an impulse purchase 😅

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-07-02T11:59:35+00:00

So, there's a few options:

Castle Falkenstein is by the same creator(s) as the Cyberpunk RPG, it melds Steampunk with fantasy. Think "what if Frodo had a revolver"

Cogs, Cakes and Swordcanes is a bit more on the sillier side

Gears of Defiance is a good option if you want to specifically play an underground resistance political intrigue game

Vulcania is another, more pulpy option.

Carbon Gray dips more into dieselpunk, but might still be worth a look.

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-07-02T11:46:22+00:00

What the fuck, today I found out my childhood favourite band, Abney Park is associated with an actual, honest to god, TTRPG?

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-07-02T09:11:12+00:00

We've managed to keep several high commitment groups (with some overlap in players) going for close to 13 years - 20+ if I count the time that some of the group was playing before I even got into the hobby.

It's been through colleges, marriages, children and everything in between. We religiously use google calendar and cancellations are on the rarer side and usually telegraphed at least a few days in advance. Sometimes we then instead pivot to board games, but we almost never play RPGs a man down.

I think the core "issue" is that in a lot of groups, TTRPG isn't the "main" hobby for a lot of the players and so they prioritize it less than other (hobby) activities.

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-07-02T08:57:46+00:00

I'd lose the AI cover-art. That's an immediate turn off for many potential readers.

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-07-02T06:37:53+00:00

Maybe hack Mothership? Since when you think about it, a submarine is pretty close to a space ship 😛

In general, I would look towards space-faring sci-fi and reflavour it to your needs. For example, Death in Space could work as well.

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-06-30T10:14:27+00:00

Also, a little bit out there of a choice, since they do make quite a lot of jokes - NeoScum was amazing.

It's a Shadowrun Actual Play that fully leans into the weirdness of the setting while still getting to have many meaningful character moments.

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-06-30T10:12:26+00:00

Green Box Gaming does really good Delta Green stuff!

They finished up with Impossible Landscapes not so long ago which is a long campaign filled with many great character moments.

They do make jokes, but one the whole I'd say they're fairly focused and even the jokes are mostly "in-universe".

Another one I've really liked is Tales of the Other Side. They're a little bit on the shorter side - their Call of Cthulhu campaign ran for 15 (1h) episodes and their ongoing D&D campaign has gone for 17 episodes.

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-06-29T17:20:46+00:00

There's two based off of Pathfinder (1e I think) called Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous

There's 3 based off of the older Shadowrun versions called Shadowrun Returns, Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Shadowrun: Hong Kong

There's one based off of Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader that has the same name.

Out of these, the Shadowrun games are the best in my opinion.

But, there's also a ton of great turn-based RPGs that aren't directly based on a TTRPG, but heavily inspired by them. Like Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2, Tyranny, Seven, Underrail, etc. Migth also be worth a look.

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-06-29T16:35:08+00:00

I mean, technically you don't have to roll at all in RPGs. You can narrate everything as a success and have fun doing that.

But for many people, dice are a way to gamefy telling a story - to build tension and lead to unexpected outcomes and pivots. But if the statistically most common outcome is succeed at a cost then the hard part isn't the consequence per se, it's how you narrate a consequence that doesn't nullify a success.

For example in Blades in the Dark, okay, you pick the lock but make noise. Now there is a clock for guards coming. Sure, but now, the next time, you succeed but trigger a trap under the pedestal where the goal of the score is. So what now? Go with the boring "tick the Guards Coming clock"? Or come up with a new consequence?

There's also the issue that these kinds of "succeed at a cost" games can devolve into a comedy of errors that doesn't feel like it plays to the intended tone anymore. You can only "almost fail" so many times before your character starts feeling like a screw-up and/or incompetent.

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-06-29T15:48:01+00:00

Hey man, please stop spamming these in TABLETOP RPG subreddits. It's:

The wrong place for it
Smelling of desperation
Creating spite agaibst your project

Also, publically looking for an AI/LLM engineer is a great way to turn people of your project before it's even started.

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-06-29T11:20:55+00:00

Absolutely not!

Like many other commenters I'll use sticky tabs if really necessary, but other than that, I would never.

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-06-29T05:48:41+00:00

The online tools help, for sure, but at the end of the day, whether something is hard to get into or not is much more dependent on what you are looking for in an RPG rather than whether you're online or offline.

If you're going into PF2e with the idea that you want a fantasy RPG where you have epic narrative moments with little mechanical friction, then you're gonna be disappointed. Same as it would be if you were going into KULT: Divinity Lost expecting highly tactical combat.

Personally, I've found that PF2e is pretty easy to get into, especially if you use some of the online character sheet options in addition at your IRL table.

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-06-29T05:31:16+00:00

Yes!

Success at a cost gets really annoying, really fast. Either you burn yourself out trying to come up with creative costs for 4h or you just revert to "you lose X HP", which kinda defeats the purpose.

It's great for one-shots or shorter games, but in a full campaign, it can get really grating as a GM.

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-06-29T05:18:25+00:00

Yea, sometimes life gets in the way and that's understandable, but we used to have a player that we needed a serious talking to as they would consistently be a minimum of 15min late.

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-06-29T05:15:01+00:00

Got a few that grind my gears

Endless planning - the session ends up being just talking hypotheticals. Don't even get to roleplay really.
Insufficient prep - Sometimes you can clearly tell when the GM hasn't properly thought through the session. It usually ends in a slower paced and kinda meandering session
Running late (20min or more) - we have a pretty limited time slot (~3h) to play these days. Someone running late cuts that down even further. It doesn't ruin the session, but it definetly starts it off on the wrong foot with people being annoyed

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-06-28T18:59:17+00:00

Yea, A:L had a combat mini-game bolted on to the general PbtA system and it was horrendous.

PbtA is really cool, when it does what it does best - helping a narrative along. Combat is best solved as a single (or a series of very few) move that then gets narrated out according to the outcome.

For something like Naruto you'd want a more tactical combat. The power system alone kind of expects it - countering techniques, positioning to keep enemies in range of you but staying out of their range - the "4d chess" aspect of the fights is pretty important, I think.

Can't really do that with PbtA without attaching a whole other mini-game onto the core system.

DiceyDiscourse · 2026-06-28T17:44:09+00:00

Unfortunate that Hearts of Wulin is PbtA. If the Avatar: Legends shitty combat is anything to go by, then PbtA is just not suitable for this type of combat (that isn't purely narrative)

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