I’d agree with your first point re: D&D ®️ esp re 5th Edition. My wife took a long time to get in to ttrpgs, something that I’ve enjoyed for over 30 years bc I kept trying to do the D&D®️ thing. I’d recommend you try other games that actually “play” at the table. Dungeon World is great and almost anything in the PbtA family does such a great job of driving the action forward (5e doesn’t), having actual stakes and danger (5e doesn’t), actually meaningful character choices (5e doesn’t), not a beat-the-designer/video-gamist philosophy (5e DOES have this), and not ran by a shitty corporation that hires mercenary thugs to intimidate people, since literally anyone can make a PbtA game about anything.
Agree 💯 on the d20. I think it works in some games, notable Mörk Borg and like b/x D&D - games where if you are rolling dice, you already have fucked up
I can’t speak to the groups you played with , but have you tried getting people that aren’t in to the hobby in to it? I run games for new players often and they never have the baggage I think you’re speaking about
Re the preparation you do, be sure to always prep situations not plots. There should be a law that states “the more prep the DM puts into a game is directly proportional to how quickly the players will force their prep off the rails”. The game is a conversation, and I think D&D®️ 5e has fucked this up bc of how they format their adventures WITHOUT EVER TELLING YOU HOW TO ACTUALLY RUN A GAME! Plus, Christ they are fucking textbooks written by committee! I would say a couple things, first: look at Dungeon World as a guideline for how to format your adventures, and second: don’t plan huge arcs, just plan individual moments that you want to happen. The characters will get there, even if it is a roundabout way. The Lazy DM by Sly Flourish has a lot of help here that can work for any game, and there’s this blog post that talks about the literal easiest foolproof prep method.
Your last point doesn’t make sense… Check out itch.io and their physical games category. There are RPGs for literally any genre or setting you can think of. TinyD6 and FAE are two really good generic games that if you can’t find your setting, you just slap these bad boys in there and you have an RPG
It really is a fun and exciting hobby and I’m sorry you’ve had a bad time previously.
A lot of the worst experiences I’ve were trying to run games to get friends into it, doubly so because I have so little practical experience running a game beyond reading books and copying from them thinking I’m about to have fun, and none actually playing beyond what I described.
I’ve explored alternate systems such as GURPS and tried brewing a few of my own. I can criticize the rules all day but at the end it was always much the same experience trying to run those against a group that intentionally spites any prep (usually geared more toward worldbuilding and important NPCs than any specific story arc, I realize you can’t force that stuff) I tried to do. Anything that I had a sheet of paper for, they would turn and walk away every single time.
As for setting… fam there’s not a lot I can do when everyone i know who plays only ever wants to play vanilla DnD or their take on MtG flavored DnD, and they’re not going to change what they’re doing just because I’m sick to death of generic corporate fantasy worlds and waiting around for 9/10 of the time we’re at the table.
I’d agree with your first point re: D&D ®️ esp re 5th Edition. My wife took a long time to get in to ttrpgs, something that I’ve enjoyed for over 30 years bc I kept trying to do the D&D®️ thing. I’d recommend you try other games that actually “play” at the table. Dungeon World is great and almost anything in the PbtA family does such a great job of driving the action forward (5e doesn’t), having actual stakes and danger (5e doesn’t), actually meaningful character choices (5e doesn’t), not a beat-the-designer/video-gamist philosophy (5e DOES have this), and not ran by a shitty corporation that hires mercenary thugs to intimidate people, since literally anyone can make a PbtA game about anything.
Agree 💯 on the d20. I think it works in some games, notable Mörk Borg and like b/x D&D - games where if you are rolling dice, you already have fucked up
I can’t speak to the groups you played with , but have you tried getting people that aren’t in to the hobby in to it? I run games for new players often and they never have the baggage I think you’re speaking about
Re the preparation you do, be sure to always prep situations not plots. There should be a law that states “the more prep the DM puts into a game is directly proportional to how quickly the players will force their prep off the rails”. The game is a conversation, and I think D&D®️ 5e has fucked this up bc of how they format their adventures WITHOUT EVER TELLING YOU HOW TO ACTUALLY RUN A GAME! Plus, Christ they are fucking textbooks written by committee! I would say a couple things, first: look at Dungeon World as a guideline for how to format your adventures, and second: don’t plan huge arcs, just plan individual moments that you want to happen. The characters will get there, even if it is a roundabout way. The Lazy DM by Sly Flourish has a lot of help here that can work for any game, and there’s this blog post that talks about the literal easiest foolproof prep method.
Your last point doesn’t make sense… Check out itch.io and their physical games category. There are RPGs for literally any genre or setting you can think of. TinyD6 and FAE are two really good generic games that if you can’t find your setting, you just slap these bad boys in there and you have an RPG
It really is a fun and exciting hobby and I’m sorry you’ve had a bad time previously.
A lot of the worst experiences I’ve were trying to run games to get friends into it, doubly so because I have so little practical experience running a game beyond reading books and copying from them thinking I’m about to have fun, and none actually playing beyond what I described.
I’ve explored alternate systems such as GURPS and tried brewing a few of my own. I can criticize the rules all day but at the end it was always much the same experience trying to run those against a group that intentionally spites any prep (usually geared more toward worldbuilding and important NPCs than any specific story arc, I realize you can’t force that stuff) I tried to do. Anything that I had a sheet of paper for, they would turn and walk away every single time.
As for setting… fam there’s not a lot I can do when everyone i know who plays only ever wants to play vanilla DnD or their take on MtG flavored DnD, and they’re not going to change what they’re doing just because I’m sick to death of generic corporate fantasy worlds and waiting around for 9/10 of the time we’re at the table.