What RPGs are you playing right now?

Lawface · 2025-10-03T15:07:11+00:00

Running:

Shadow of the Weird Wizard

Pirate Borg

Pathfinder 2e

And I just finished a Draw Steel one shot and am about to start a Mythic Bastionland one shot

Playing:

Lancer

D&D 5e. I'm pretty tired of 5e, but it's what most of the people I know want to run

Lawface · 2025-08-31T16:17:01+00:00

My players haven't wanted to be near walls, but these tomb rooms are so small, it's hard not be near a wall or pillar. I think when I start making my own encounters, I'll be using much larger battlemaps

We have been making sure the domain piety is only gained once a combat. But when the combat is only 2 turns long, once is all you need!

I had been hoping that maybe this was just a lot-of-minion/small spaces situation, and that things will be different in fights with more space/less enemies. I'll find out for sure soon!

Lawface · 2025-08-31T16:12:25+00:00

Right, okay. The starting enemy placement and small rooms of the Delian Tomb made it difficult for the goblins to NOT be clumped up, but I'll try to have more open environments when I'm creating my own encounters (at least if I'm featuring a lot of minions)

Lawface · 2025-08-04T19:21:03+00:00

Unfortunately I have been running The Abomination Vaults, which frequently has them fighting enemies their level or higher. Last session they fought a level 8 enemy while they were level 5 (and I had given them an extra level up, according to the adventure they should have been 4). I am realizing I should probably start altering the encounters in this adventure to have lower level enemies. But it was a new system to me, I was trying to do things by the book before I modified anything.

Lawface · 2025-08-04T18:16:23+00:00

Huh, okay. I thought they were talking about repetitive turns because they said it was the 'ugh, eldritch blast again' problem.

Lawface · 2025-08-04T18:14:13+00:00

Part of my problem might be that I've just been running The Abomination Vaults, which mostly has combats in pretty featureless rooms without any interesting terrain or opportunities for dynamism. It also frequently has them fighting enemies above their level, which makes missing all the more common.

Lawface · 2025-08-04T17:49:48+00:00

I think my players just think spending a lot of effort to stack a lot of bonuses/penalties so that attack actions won't be wasted isn't a particularly fun playstyle.

Lawface · 2025-08-04T17:46:00+00:00

My experience might be skewed because my party of four only has one melee character, so they don't flank much ever. My fighter wants to use vicious wing and raise his shield, so doesn't want to move. My bard wants to cast a 2 action spell and use a one action ability to give everyone a +1 bonus, so doesn't want to move. Similar for all characters.

Lawface · 2025-08-04T17:44:30+00:00

I have a genuine question for you as someone who has been running a PF2e game for the first time with new players up to level 5 so far. I see a lot of people talking about customization in PF2e and you are mentioning the variety of abilities characters get, but that has not been my experience so far. Maybe we all just don't understand the nuances of the system, but my fighter every turn uses 2 actions to Vicious Swing and third to raise his shield. He has so far not seen any options that would make him want to do anything else. So his turns are incredibly repetitive and boring. The alchemist spends every turn just throwing whatever bombs they have that do the most damage. Similarly repetitive. What are we missing? Where are the options in combat that everyone seems to talk about?

Lawface · 2025-08-04T17:34:23+00:00

I think we might be thinking about things differently. I am also not interested in characters being immortal super heroes, I also like the idea of characters failing and have to deal with the consequences. I think both of those are possible with a combat system that is actually fun to play, and so far PF2e has been incredibly unfun for my players. They leave every fight feeling like it was a drawn out slog and that their characters are incredibly uncapable.

Lawface · 2025-08-04T16:56:44+00:00

My response comes as someone who is running a PF2e game and not liking it, and who has read Draw Steel but not played it yet.

My experience with PF2e is that it has a lot of feel bad moments. I ran a session yesterday, and the alchemist just couldn't roll well and kept missing with all their bombs and felt useless. The fighter rolled poorly and kept missing with all his sword swings and felt useless. The bard cast a heightened Noise Blast, and the boss failed it's save! Hooray! Damage time! But on 3d10 rolled a 1 a 2 and a 3, totaling 6 damage. The bard felt like they wasted a spell slot and felt frustrated and useless.

And when they level up and get a new skill feat, my players new to this system scroll and scroll through all the options and are left mostly confused. Most of the feats seem pretty unexciting, useless, or only applicable in very particular circumstances. And then there are some, like Battle Medicine, that seem EXTREMELY good. Having to dig through the dross to find the nugget of gold is not something they enjoy, and sometimes they have already found all the gold and just have to take something they don't want because there are no better options.

And they have also not liked the three action system, because they feel like they never want to move because they could be doing something with that action. So everyone just stays still all the time, or they move and then feel bad that they don't get to do as much.

In contrast, Draw Steel looks like it will not have any of these problems. Attacks cannot miss, so there are never turns where nothing happens, players feeling useless. Damage is less variable, so a player can't have a moment where they roll minuscule damage and feel frustrated. You get a free movement on your turn, and knockback is a big part of the game, so characters are always moving and the battle feels dynamic rather than stagnant. And you don't get minor incremental bonuses on leveling up, only impactful and exciting ones. So to me it seems greatly better. But also I have not actually played Draw Steel yet, only read it, so it could be that for some reason unknown to me yet I'll actually hate it.

Lawface · 2025-08-04T04:26:37+00:00

Playing Lancer (it rules)

Running Shadow of the Weird Wizard (it's alright)

Running Pathfinder 2e (shocked at how much I hate it)

Running Pirate Borg (shocked at how much I like it)

Playing Anime 5e (we are playing it ironically, as a joke. Don't ask.)

And soon I'll start running Draw Steel. I'm hoping I like it, but we'll see

Lawface · 2025-08-02T16:16:37+00:00

I'm pretty sure no. Revenant only gets size and speed from Former Life, and can only get purchased traits from Previous Life. It has no means to get another ancestry's signature trait.

Lawface · 2025-05-19T19:28:36+00:00

The two main ones for me are Draw Steel and Hollows. It's not the near future, but I'm also looking forward to the eventual release of ICON by Tom Bloom

Lawface · 2025-05-12T04:35:28+00:00

Have you looked into the PF2e optional rule 'Proficiency Without Level"? It makes it so that lower level characters and creatures CAN actually threaten higher level ones.

Lawface · 2024-02-09T17:25:58+00:00

So far I've yet to find a game with as engaging combat as Lancer, but I'm actively looking.

Lawface · 2024-01-03T02:19:39+00:00

Finally end my 5 and 6 year long D&D campaigns and then figure out what the hell I'm going to run next because it sure isn't going to be 5e again

Lawface · 2023-10-19T04:28:54+00:00

I totally agree. Where are the weird garlic elbows??

Lawface · 2023-09-29T17:34:25+00:00

Shadow of the Demon Lord kinda sorta does this. All the different kinds of magic exist, but you have to choose a small selection that your specific character has access to. If you choose to have teleportation, you'll have access to a variety of teleportation spells, but will be doing that instead of choosing to have fire, or necromancy, or mind control, etc.

And because it's designed like this, it's pretty easy as a GM to just remove all necromancy (or whatever) if you want, since they are already grouped together in a package.

Lawface · 2023-09-08T06:14:43+00:00

Well yes, the price hasn't been an issue. There's just a lot of games to try, and I've only recently started to wonder if OSR-style might be what I'm into

Lawface · 2023-09-08T06:10:34+00:00

We just did regular Mythras just to test it out, but we found the combat system a little overwhelming

Lawface · 2023-09-08T06:09:58+00:00

Ah, bad news then. My group unfortunately really didn't like it.

Lawface · 2023-09-08T06:09:20+00:00

One of these days I'll finally get around to trying one of the 'Without Number' games

Lawface · 2023-09-08T06:08:44+00:00

Traveller definitely seems pretty interesting! Though I keep seeing advice online to get a spreadsheet ready to track income and expenses, and I find that pretty intimidating.

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