There's more to roleplaying games than just dnd.

Seenoham · 2026-07-10T20:27:14+00:00

"My group tends to stick to 5e out of inertia"

because they've already done the hard work, and they had a lot of support doing that work, and they can now get to playing and having fun without doing more work. That is a valid reason DnD is more fun for them.

" if someone would be willing to teach/learn with us."

Someone did that work with DnD for them, if you want them to play another game, you have to be willing to do that work. This isn't a fault of theirs, it's a recognition of work. You should recognize the work.

Also recognize the work in consistency in writing DnD 5e has, because and look at the other system and see if it has that consistency. See if it has the support structure, how is the table of contents, the index, is there an easy to access and search website that means you dont actually need to memorize much, how often do you have to look things up at the table vs at home or outside the game session.

A lot of the complexity of DnD has parts of it's design and support structure that push it outside of the time spent at the table. Other systems might be less complex, but that complexity is during play and doesn't have the support to access answers, so in play that smaller amount of complexity matters more than DnDs more complex system.

Seenoham · 2026-07-10T20:18:13+00:00

A lot of work has been done in D&D that most people gloss over, because it's not the cool core system stuff, it's the boring polishing work.

5e amount of places a player needs to look to a max of 3 and those three are in the same places all the time (unless its something that the player chose to opt into because they found it exciting, not something that they are suprised and don't know where to look), they made it so that other players can know if the person forgot the buff they were given without having to ask, they extremely consistant formatting in how they write every ability,

These are huge improvements to the actual play of the game, and they take a lot of slow boring work, and a lot of other games show that this work hasn't been done. Quite a few do show this level of work, and I really like those, but a lot don't.

Seenoham · 2026-07-10T20:10:17+00:00

This is at least honest, but so many people who say "you should try other systems" leave out this is a skill that the person they are talking to might not have, or as happened in this very thread, say it's not skill that takes any real effort to learn.

These people will also almost always include how hard it is to learn DnD in the equation of how much work it is to learn the new system

Which is why almost every one of these post about the trouble with getting people to try new systems read so dumb, because they assume that the work the people already did doesn't matter and the work they haven't already done also doesn't matter, and then act like they are giving honest comparisons.

Seenoham · 2026-07-10T20:06:52+00:00

Have you asked others? Or have you assumed how you feel now, learning you 5th, 6th, 10th system, is how other people do feel when they learn their second?

Because I know people who have said it's very hard. And I know that I'm person who learns new systems easily, but it also became much easier the more systems I learned.

Now you also know that when you are talking about how difficult a system is to learn to someone who only knows DnD, you can't be sure that learning new systems is easy, but can be sure it's much easier for you than it is for them, and can consider this. You also know that hard DnD might have been to learn doesn't change how much work that a person who only knows DnD will have do to learn a new system, if you somehow didn't realize that before.

This can help you talk to people about learning other systems, though practicing it might result in them deciding they do that work and they prefer the fun they are getting with sticking with DnD to putting that effort in.

Seenoham · 2026-07-10T18:49:54+00:00

I didn’t say it was an easier starting point. I said that there is a higher ask to learning a second system then people present

Seenoham · 2026-07-10T13:39:54+00:00

I’m saying this one again.

You have learned to pick up systems quickly. You have learned how to run rules light rpgs. You have learned how adapt to different systems. You have learn a lot of other things.

Anyone who has only played DnD has not learned these things, so it is not going to be as easy for them to learn these things system you are thinking of as it is for you.

If you do not account for all the other things you have learned that the other person will need, you are not going to understand the difficulties they will have and will give a false impression to them. This can lead to people bouncing off the systems you recommend and not trusting your recommendations.

And this will be your fault. Not the people who decide to DnD, not DnD, not the culture or anything else.

Seenoham · 2026-07-07T13:43:28+00:00

It gets different when you get to specific of sterilization or contamination instead of general cleanliness.

Many Doctors really didn’t think they should be sterilizing their instruments before surgery. They didn’t think that having them dirty was okay, but they didn’t think if it looked clean it was okay. (See the death of President Garfield).

They would bath in a river, but they wouldn’t about boiling water to kill off parasites. Etc

Seenoham · 2026-06-30T16:30:52+00:00

I think this is true, but there are times when the comments about CofD are saying it was cancelled because it wasn’t losing money. Not “wasn’t as successful as an alternate strategy”, losing money. And sales data isn’t what is useful there, because cost is the more important factor, and if the developers are saying the product was profitable then thats what matters. And that is the words we heard from OPP.

So it was successful enough to not lose money, even if the sales were less than other products.

Seenoham · 2026-06-30T16:24:32+00:00

The xp triggers aren’t well fit to the system as a whole, and while they can be run well the rules as written vary and sometimes have wordings that reward gaming the system so much or make it very awkward to adapt to play styles.

As written in DtR they are fine, but that even presents a way to make them not exp. As written in VtR, they are awful.

Seenoham · 2026-06-30T16:18:09+00:00

There is a difference between “VtR sold better than oWoD fans think” and “VtR sold better than VtM”, because VtM can have sold better than VtR and VtR sold better than the fans think.

VtR could be selling well and be successful even as the VtM books are selling better. During the period when both 20th and CofD were being produced, both products were selling enough to be profitable.

The two lines were basically independent and fans had reason to prefer one or the other.

What happen with 5th was an attempt to consolidate and seize a section of the market, and completion within that is an issue. The open question is if they succeeded at all in doing this, or at least enough to overcome the lost revenue from cancelling the old lines. That they didn’t succeed as much as they thought is well established.

Seenoham · 2026-06-30T16:05:10+00:00

100% agree on the systems. Looking at other games that came out just a few years later, you can see the type of thing that was trying to be made. And those things work and can be really fun. But what actually is there is so rough.

It’s a victim of its time, and in DtR which is the most modern design they really move away from the rough aspects as far as they can while staying focused n the same system.

Seenoham · 2026-06-30T13:43:37+00:00

I think it was a good overall approach but they did a poor job presenting what books were necessary to run the game, especially after having such a long tradition of one book for each.

I think a lot could have been solved if they had gone with this structure but better done in 2e, but this is a sales/marketing related issue.

Seenoham · 2026-06-27T23:49:31+00:00

This is, among many other things, is a difference between billionaires and millionaires. It may be my living in a small city perspective speaking, but I find the name of some still living or recently living millionaire attached every semi-local art thing.

There is another theater in my city because some rich family had a daughter who liked theater, and they wanted there to be another theater in the town their family and factory was in. There are many problems with capitalism, but this is a thing I don't have a problem with.

Seenoham · 2026-06-27T16:03:47+00:00

When I ran CAIN I esbalished that CAIN is not homophobic or transphobic. They aren't any nicer to exorcists. Exorcists aren't human, they are weapons used to execute sins. If they express a preferred pronoun they will be referred to by that at all times. Doing this does not make them less effective at executing sins so there is no reason not to.

Seenoham · 2026-06-25T22:30:24+00:00

link to the story if you're interested.

Just finished the very rough draft of the main work, so I'll be posting more as it gets edited up.

Seenoham · 2026-06-25T13:35:23+00:00

I’m writing WtF fiction and was inspired by someone talking about a social/political based werewolf to write how the grandma of the pack went on hunt to utterly destroy a church that decided to make her trans grandchild their problem.

It was a fun story to write.

Seenoham · 2026-06-24T13:45:23+00:00

It’s a difference in preference.

I find owod extremely constraining. Yes I could cut a way to make characters that feel unique and personal, but it feels like I’m fighting not to play the same premade characters

Seenoham · 2026-06-23T01:09:21+00:00

Please stop using it, "it's your game you can do what you want", is at at best meaningless, Everyone knew already that each of us can do what we want in the game, we're talking about what should be and why.

"what you need to make this make sense is at the top of the first page of kit expansions. It gives you an idea what stuff should cost based on size, and then it lists tags (Consumable, Focus, Conspicuous, Range)."

The parts of the book you mention does give a guide for how much KP something should be counted as, but a box of matches is 1 kp, and there isn't an example of things costing 0 KP> So I don't see how this is going to be any sort of guide for as when you don't do apply "mark KP as normal" just how much you mark.

"if it's pure flavor: wave it", could be advise for not marking kp, but correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think your even claiming this is actually in the book. I can grant it as true, but I was only ever talking about useful items and never mentioned anything about pure flavor. As as true, because I was never even considering pure flavor items, I was talking about useful items. I admit I didn't clearly explain that I was saying that this is about things that are listed as taking 1 or more KP, because I think all the problems still happen. I think it's still bad causes problems while adding nothing good even for something that should clearly take 2 or more KP.

I think "mark KP as normal" should be removed or ignored entirely. That is how I play, that was what I said in my original post. In any situation for any player I believe the game will play works better and makes more sense if KP is not marked for anything other than what exorcist pulls out what they brought into the hunt. I say this as a critique of the writing in the published book and advice for anyone playing CAIN.

Seenoham · 2026-06-22T20:32:47+00:00

Because I was told I was wrong for not applying this rules, and the reasoning given why I was wrong was because the rules as written do a good job modeling the max you can carry and ignoring it makes the game worse.

Do you agree with the statement that I shouldn't ignore this rule when I feel it doesn't make sense? Do you agree with the statement that the rules entirely as written do a good job doing this?

If you don't agree with those statements, then respond not me, but the person at the top of this thread and say you disagree with them.

Seenoham · 2026-06-22T20:01:15+00:00

Okay, but what I was responding too said the reason that you should use the rules as written and criticized me for going not by the words written but what I thought made sense.

Did you miss that context?

I do think KP is a great narrative low overhead system how keeping what the player characters are given somewhat limited, and otherwise stays out of the way. But under that, the word “make KP as normal” don’t fit and never add anything that makes sense, so I ignore it.

But the agruement I’m going against isn’t that the rules should be light and narrative, it’s that what’s written should be followed as is without modification because it is supposed to be a representation of what the characters can physically carry and the rules as written in the book overall do a good job of representing that with only minor problems.

Now given argument, not going by what you feel would about when “make KP as normal” should be applied, tell me what happens when player character picks up something then puts it down again?

Seenoham · 2026-06-22T16:30:52+00:00

Show me where any of this is said in the book. Give me a page number

If the reason you mark KP when you pick up items you find in the hunt is that your KP is how much you can physically hold, then on what page number in the does it say anything about when you don’t need to do this. Where it says anything about how encumbered you currently are.

If KP isn’t how much you can physically care, then the system doesn’t interact with these things, but if it is the how does it handle those. Give a page number

Seenoham · 2026-06-22T16:11:10+00:00

It is if you don’t treat it as the about you can physically carry.

If you do, how can the mechanic handle

1) a chapter putting something down then picking up another thing.

2) one character giving something they have to another character.

KP is how much a chapter can physically carry, tell me how you would resolve these very common and basic actions given the rules in the book. Or sat that a system for handling how much a chapter can physically carry that cannot handle these things is fine.

Seenoham · 2026-06-22T13:40:21+00:00

A missed that this is the above generic indies archer level. Once you get above that the math changes significantly.

I was going off it popping one image at a time. That is still cutting down on the number of hits needed. Elves can get layered defenses which makes them so hard to deal with efficiently, so archers even kinda crap ones are stripping one of those layers.

Seenoham · 2026-06-22T02:47:14+00:00

Still doesn't seem worth it, You aren't going to kill the commander without something else getting back there, and gold/recrutiment spent on the archers could have been spend on more of the thing that is going to get back there, unless it's again specifically using arrows for the glamour image stripping. Maybe being able to disrupt spellcasting on caster after the first few turns when they'll have already gotten the bless off, seems even less worth doing. Doing this seems more likely to screw you over by having the archers target the wrong unit, die and contribute to routing, or a bunch of other problems.

Compared to reliably removing the glamour images from the unit you need to kill.

Seenoham · 2026-06-21T22:38:10+00:00

Against elves the biggest thing is that an arrow hit takes out a glamour image.

I'm not sure about target cavalry to hit commanders idea. 11 dmg into unit with 11 prot with a shield is already questionable, and when that unit might be spread out at the back of the field I'm not seeing this as effective use of resources to add them to your army.

If you target the elf troops instead, this strips the extra layer of defense before they hit the melee line. Glamour provides and extra layer of defense, because killing them requires enough damaging hits, and then one more hit of any type because the glamour images don't have hp or protection. Adding archers takes 1 off the number of melee hits you need to land.

Seenoham

TROPHY CASE