Although I have played and enjoyed some of the crunchier games out there, sometimes they just start to feel more exhausting than fun. I’ve also found it hard to get players to buy into games where you have 20+ different questions/choices during character creation.
Ontop of those, sometimes a systems release schedule has made me stop wanting to run the game, I am personally not a huge fan of games that put out 3+ books a year,
How much is too much for you/your table?
I’m relatively new to the hobby since I began playing in late 2019, but I discovered that the narrative and rules-loose games are not for me, so my question would be ”How little is too little?".
I’ve played some narrative campaigns using the Stalker RPG (diceless narrative), Ironsworn, FATE and I ended up loathing purely narrative systems. Now it’s been 6 months since I started to play solo and I keep buying new systems whenever I can, but as of now, I’m completely enamored with 5e adaptations like CARBON 2185, and other systems like Lancer, Twilight 2K, Shadowrun, Mutant Year Zero, and Savage Worlds’ Settings.
Maybe my perspective would change if I went back to play with more people and had to wait 25 minutes to play the next 6 seconds of my actions, on a fight that would take 2 IRL hours to resolve, but as a solo player, what I want is plenty of improv and creativity for the lore/narrative parts (which is why I appreciate lore books and supplements) but complex, high-stakes board/wargame mechanics for the build/combat segments without a GM fudging rolls or events to maintain me alive or to add drama or keep the story going, which was my resumed experience with narrative systems.
I assume the game that puts out 3+ books a year is D&D?
I haven’t touched that game in a while. I was personally referring to Starfinder and Pathfinder, but D&D might also have that problem now that I think about it.
Things I’ve said or heard during character creation for these games:
“I know there are just shy of 4000 feats, but…”, or “Okay, so your role in social encounters in the group is the face, debuffing-support in combat, in ship combat you’re the pilot, so what’s your idea for mech combat?”