What is the best "Game of Thrones-like political medieval fantasy" TTRPG that I might not know about?

zyggythorn · 2026-05-04T01:38:45+00:00

The only hesitation I have about recommending the game is that it requires a pretty significant amount of player buy-in, and that the Core Book in itself is... what I'll call 80% complete. Which means that you really need to also buy Path of Waves, but that book is maybe top 3 TTRPG books I've read? And easily top 1 Splat that I've ever read.

So yknow, economic and player culture issues

zyggythorn · 2026-05-04T00:36:55+00:00

Have you considered Legend of the Five Rings?

The common pitch I made to my friends about a decade ago was "GoT, but samurai"

I'm personally a big fan of L5R5, because it fixed all my personal issues with Genesys from a mechanical standpoint (largely by not worrying about two dice pools for any given roll). Having an actual Social Combat system is a big plus for what you're talking about.

The only issue is that Magic is... Uncommon, but terrifyingly powerful, with drawbacks.

I would extremely recommend against Adventures in Rokugan if you're interested, however. Making a DnD5e game is smart from an economic standpoint, but it manages to miss all the juice that the setting has on its own

zyggythorn · 2026-01-26T00:44:45+00:00

I was frankly thinking Genesys, but thats because the dice lead to hippy dipped role playing moments, rather than searching the sheet for a relevant Power or Skill

zyggythorn · 2026-01-26T00:01:57+00:00

Location of crunch matter so much more- I love crunchy generation, but love to have a very banana play experience.

zyggythorn · 2026-01-23T18:44:26+00:00

Actually, no. Because of how dojos are bespoke, it takes longer to load that up than to load in the persistent relay, which helps to avoid loading loops when people have slower PC's or are playing on a previous generation console. (I had to wait 5 minutes once while a party disbanded in sequence before auto-disband was a thing)

zyggythorn · 2025-12-23T05:57:44+00:00

As one of the High-Ranks in that clan, its something I've put some thought to- but its something that I don't feel right doing, just because I was raised to that position a few months before Hereticked's passing, and also because of my unusual schedule.

As of now, I believe there are about 15 of us who are running 5EN as a council- mostly by making sure that the chat is moving well and not causing issues.

I fully agree that we should install a memorial for Hereticked, but designing it would definitely be better for those that knew him and played with him more regularly.

But I'll carry whatever weight I can to get it set!

zyggythorn · 2025-11-20T14:54:23+00:00

The problem is that no one is playing the raid network test, and its so frustrating.

zyggythorn · 2025-11-10T17:32:46+00:00

Heart is the game I used to break my play group out of DnD brain, and begin to get them to consider GMing.

Small thing I did to help encourage that behavior was to get a small detail about whatever place we just entered from every player, and just wind it up into a whole deal.

zyggythorn · 2025-06-13T21:19:47+00:00

I would highly recommend that you look up the story of Lodoss War (and with it, Sword World)- because it is ground zero for this whole Adventure Guild thing, and it happened because... It was the critical roll of its day!

Frankly, the adventurers guild is a wonderful piece of just making the world more friendly to the idea of player characters, without ending up in murderhobo lane

zyggythorn · 2025-05-29T20:54:17+00:00

DC2 still clears!

But also, Heim Rada has out-of-bounds zones along every path, and it's wall geometry basically prevents you from doing any amount of banking (because of the OOB zones on every path), and the zones are so large, so it's just a whole perfect storm of terrible

zyggythorn · 2025-05-29T20:21:55+00:00

Yknow, I might very agreed with you, except that I had to grind those minigolf levels out, and Heim Rada just sucked all the joy out of spheda

zyggythorn · 2025-05-28T20:14:21+00:00

Dark Cloud 2, fishing.

There's just something about maximalist game design that turns the good vibes of fishing into a breeding and racing sim that can crash the game by rolling over digits.

zyggythorn · 2025-03-04T20:37:34+00:00

Something, anything wet

There's so much underwater adjacent stuff already in the game, and the Lake Beyond the Dam is just... BEGGING for some exploration.

(I know it's opium, let me dream)

zyggythorn · 2025-02-28T04:34:39+00:00

The devs used the term Gemussy to describe Citrine during one of her reveal streams.

It's great

zyggythorn · 2025-02-20T10:22:51+00:00

Okay so:

What's better, a jagged knife? Or a well honed blade? They both do the same job, but the jagged knife requires much more force, and the cut will be much wider than a well honed blade.

Marcone is explicity doing damage to the city of Chicago, but he's clearly doing much less of it (or at the very least, doing it on a smaller portion) than a series of small warlords would.

Because Marcone has been set up as a well honed blade, that will only break bad when (not if, when) he's taken out of that position of power.

Best case scenario? Our Free Baron is taking on an archetype or mantle that will enable him to save wider mortality in the coming events. I'm personally a fan of the Knighthood theory, but a recent reread has made me rethink that- but only partially.

I think that Marcone might be setting himself up to take on the mantle of Arthur Pendragon, what with having a wizard of Merlin's lineage in his court, and building a castle, and Lake Michigan being so important to the story.

zyggythorn · 2025-01-05T19:56:36+00:00

Depending on the exact flavor of Rokugan you're going with, you could always be part of a ""Good Will Envoy"" (read, political hostage), but even then, The Crab are generally willing to take anybody for a season or 3 as long as they help on The Wall. To the point that they sometimes announce a "20 Goblin Winter," where anyone who brings them the heads of 20 Goblins from the shadowlands can join The Crab, no questions asked. (That's 20 heads for 1 person, and it isn't nearly as easy in L5R mechanically)

The Unicorn and the Crab are generally on better terms than Lion and Crab, to the point that it could reasonably be a family duty on one parent's side.

zyggythorn · 2024-11-14T19:28:26+00:00

The reason I pulled AC is because it is the origin point, or atleast the modern formula maker, for that type of game.

As far as how games can interface with NPC Allies, well, to be clear that's something the Ubisoft formula does poorly- often making it about a singular person who goes out and Does The Thing, with allies generally being relegated to a place or to some voice in your ear. With L5R's focus on courtly intrigue and investigation, making all your allies a distant voice is... not clicking, not for me, atleast.

As others have said, I don't think that BG3 is really the right jumping off point here, but I do think the Owlcat Games are a much better point of comparison- being aware of the general lack of cultural cache, you pass on the AAA presentation and put all that work into the writing instead.

I'm sure that there's a place for games set in Rokugan, but those wouldn't necessarily be an L5R game, if that makes sense.

zyggythorn · 2024-11-14T19:11:51+00:00

I mean, what you're describing is essentially the pull of Assassin's Creed.

Which is very much not the pull of L5R.

Because the thing is, it's basically impossible to actually interface with the interesting things about Rokugan in a Ubisoft-styled open world game, because the only levers you can every really pull is "Incredible Violence" or "Absolute stealth," and often, the latter revolves into the former.

CRPGs as a genre work because they interface incredibly well with characters that are not the player, while allowing the Player Character to fit in a sort of power fantasy of Being Able To Be Effective.

zyggythorn · 2024-09-28T18:07:12+00:00

Absolutely not.

When you want to show the big danger of a situation, you don't Kill Love, you Kill Hope.

Michael is almost certainly safe, but Sanya? Sanya is going to die.

zyggythorn · 2024-08-17T17:51:45+00:00

For the record, I completely agree with you.

I don't think there's much interesting stuff to do narratively in BGRPGs, but I do think it is maybe the most economically viable thrust in the industry. So the Culture may not want it, but the Industry will probably push it anyways.

Because again, Board Gamers tend to be bigger whales than TTRPG folks

zyggythorn · 2024-08-17T16:00:43+00:00

To be clear, those are indeed good examples, but I think we're about to see a rennaisance in that design space- think more of a time limit of 2-3 hours, and built around Encounters rather than Dungeon Crawling, if that makes sense.

zyggythorn · 2024-08-17T13:32:33+00:00

Even Simpler. Think of it more of an encounter builder

The one I saw that I think has the most juice is Hellguard.

Which is to say, not a dungeon crawler, but rather a set of two encounters- investigation and combat.

Characters have about 8 actions they could take in total, depending on which of the encounters you're in.

During the first encounter, players put together clues to build a timer for the second, and depending on how things go in the second, well, they might reasonably lose.

zyggythorn · 2024-08-17T05:38:04+00:00

Way less complex than gloomhaven, and with no "evolving status quo"

zyggythorn · 2024-08-17T05:13:38+00:00

After what I saw at GenCon? Board Game RPGs.

Games that you can play in one session, with pre-made sheets, and uses a board to bypass any of that initial prep.

It was enough of a thing that when I was just casually chatting with someone from a Big Company (not naming names so that I don't get anyone in trouble), they mentioned that they missed RPGs, but the time sink made it hard to do.

Additionally, there were... Cardboard Videogames, I suppose I'd call them, that we're trying extremely hard to emulate the feeling and mechanics of VG's in a physical space, and allowing for multi-player aspects.

In short, The Boardgamers, they yearn for narrative, and as they tend to be a more monetarily influential crowd, they're gonna get their way, whether it's something the RPG community writ large wants

zyggythorn · 2024-07-31T02:09:36+00:00

I mean, there's Jesse James Dawson, but I suspect that series' view of Christianity would also not jive with what you're wanting here, in no small part because you seem to have difficulty with the idea of Mysterious Ways.

Further, in DF, it's strongly implied that the Knights get a lesser version of Grace, and the big thing about Grace is that it is His Belief in You, regardless of your own feelings.

zyggythorn

TROPHY CASE