2w ago

"So what games are people running in your shop?"

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I'm being a little lazy - I made this about 18 months ago after a conversation in one shop. A couple of days ago in a different shop the "alternative" mentioned was Dungeon Crawl Classics. As far as I'm concerned, D&D with the serial numbers filed off is still D&D.
- I mean DCC & 5e are very different.
  
  I'm getting tired of eating Mac and Cheese all the time "have you tried Caccio e Pepe?"
  It's still pasta and cheese.
  If someone asked me for something other than dnd to play, I'd imagine they're looking to get out of the tolkein flavored medieval fantasy genre into something different and recommend something like World of Darkness, modern supernatural urban fantasy for political intrigue and melodramatics, or Blades in the Dark, victorian industrial fantasy heists. Not "grittier Tolkien flavored medieval fantasy."
  
  Okay and in Pathfinder you have Ustalav where you could play a horror campaign filled with vampires and werewolves, you’ve got Tian Xia for weeb shit, you’ve got pirate themed adventures like skull and shackles, and plenty more or hell you have Starfinder for space fantasy (soon to be interchangeable with 2e). I know DnD has settings that are different as well. Complaining about setting is very whatever, but also of course people go to Tolkien fantasy it’s what everyone for sure knows. But also pathfinder 2e and DnD 5e are both mechanically similar. DCC does at least offer a different type of gameplay, a lot less power crazy and honestly felt more like mausritter to me than DnD.
  But yes, you could play plenty of other games. I’m not saying don’t play those. I’m just saying calling DCC the same thing as 5e is just rude, the same way calling caccio e Pepe the same thing as mac n cheese would probably get you stabbed by Italians. (edit: lol autocorrect cacciatore)
  Idk, I run a game club for kids and most just wanna fight things and play what they see on stranger things and thus other systems don’t matter or interest them because they would have to learn how a d10 system or clocks or etc work. They also all know what fuckin generic Tolkien fantasy is, so you don’t have to explain what a geist is or etc. something like DCC at least plays similar enough and has a similar theme while still offering different enough gameplay to have some kids realize they like shit that isn’t just DND, or allowing the kids bored of 5e something a little different.
  
  In my experience when I've been playing any system for a long time and my players say "hey do something different" they are almost always looking for something very different from what we are all playing. I've spent the most amount of time playing Mage the Ascension in my rpg career, eventually my current group was hey Mage is getting a bit stale, let's do another game. So we did some Vampire the Masquerade, and it was too close in flavor to Mage. So we started playing some Pathfinder and that was the breath of fresh air we were looking for. Eventually we did switch back to mage, but one of my players decided to run their own campaign set in Star Wars which was a ton of fun.
  So forgive me for using my own experience of when my players have asked to play something different my understanding is they are looking for something more drastic that going from one Tolkien inspired fantasy game to another Tolkien inspired fantasy game or from one modern Gothic punk game with magic to another modern Gothic punk game with fangs.
  
  I understand, I’d say moving from world of darkness’s most powerful book to its 2nd most powerful book isn’t that large of a difference, maaaybe geist or idk I haven’t tried mummy or any of those they could play different but eh.
  DCC felt very much like a rules lite, low power, riskier game, which still makes it very different from standard DND/Pathfinder so it just felt rude to completely dismiss it. Sure it’s the same setting but if it gets people to try something and they like it and want to branch out into other rules light stuff that’s cool? Again mostly coming from my experience of everyone is comfortable with generic fantasy Tolkien so they’re more willing to try it than say, Mork Borg. So I understand most public places more focused on that, and once people wanna break out and try weirder things with their groups they can.
  
  D&D with the serial numbers filed off is still D&D.

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