Put the “Master” in “Game Master!” ~Professor DM, Dungeon Craft
I think it’s an error to treat “I play DND” the same as “I play RPGs”. It’s like “I play baseball” vs “I play sports”.
There are too many reasons to succinctly list why people might be sticking to DND.
In my experience, you’ll have better luck finding players who want to play something else rather than trying to convert DND players.
People just don’t like homework. (Which is perfectly understandable) And for most people most of the time, learning a new system is homework.
Some people never really learned DND either, but kind of get carried along by the group. I feel like you could switch out systems on those people and they wouldn’t do any worse.
But I get it. Some people are more casual. Some people have executive dysfunction. My current strategy is to find people who want to play what I want to play, and it’s working okay. Still makes me a little sad that DND is so mega popular, but okay.
I also feel like D&D is kinda hard to learn and has decades of terminology and baggage that contribute to that. Ah well
I was once explaining a rules lite system I wanted to try to someone, and he kept complaining about how difficult it would be for him to learn a new system. I had to point out that I had already fully explained the rules while we were talking, and we weren’t even talking long.
I think some people just think every system is as complex as D&D.
This is very often a thing people believe! Especially if the other system they’re looking at is like Pathfinder (similarly complex) or some close D&D relatives that have a different set of arbitrary numbers. Like, in this game a 15 strength is +3! We have 50 feats with similar names but different behaviors! They might not even realize that not every game has six stats, or long lists of “feats”, or anything even like “feats”. And a lot of games (most of them?) don’t have weird tables and mappings.
Like if you’re playing Fate Core, and you want to burgle, you just your burgle score. One number.
But I think a lot of the time when people present that kind of resistance, it’s coming from an emotional place. Telling them facts isn’t going to do much. They might feel embarrassed about not being good at the new game. They might feel bad about spending $80 on the D&D books and unusual dice when the new game has a free book and just uses d6. That kind of stuff. Unfortunately, most people aren’t really introspective enough to surface those feelings quickly and accurately. (I include myself in “most people” there, sadly.)
I had a guy in an old group that once with full sincerity said “The best thing about D&D is we can just try out different house rules, and if we don’t like them we can change something out.” Like, my guy, that’s not a unique property of D&D. If anything, D&D is harder to homebrew because it has oddly specific rules and assumptions.
Pathfinder is close enough to D&D that I’ve had success converting people to it because fuck Wizards of the Coast and their recurring attempts to gouge everyone with mandatory subscriptions and predatory licensing rackets.
Also Pathfinder’s setting is downright more creative because they don’t keep digging deeper into that boring old “what if underdark and illithids… AGAIN?” well.
I haven’t played Pathfinder 2e but my understanding is it had a lot more choices at the turn level and character build level. that’s good if you want that, but I think for a lot of people the shallowness of 5e is a plus. There are other games that would also be a good fit if you’re not looking for deep tactics or builds, though.
I run two groups right now - one for d&d and one for Blades in the Dark. Blades group are people with whom we tried D&D before but they found it too combat-focused and “like someone put his gross math fetish into a game”. First group I may one day run Pathfinder 2e for ew camapign. Second one I don’t even suggest this option.
People complain about it a lot, but I’ve never actually ran into a system that uses any maths beyond what a five-year-old should be capable of. Closest I think might be Mutants and Masterminds with stacking multipliers, but still just some extra steps. Nothing that knowing your times tables wouldn’t prepare you for.
If you’re having fun with friends who cares about the system?
When you’re a forever GM and have been running the same system for a decade, you start to care about the system.
The spirit of my comment being “if you’re having fun with friends, who cares if you switch systems?”
Conversely,if you’re not having fun with friends, then who doesn’t care about the system? If it’s getting in the way, then ofc switch.
Really, the core point is don’t let the system get in the way of fun social time
10 years? , on average, I change game yearly
My campaigns tend to last 2-3 years.
I said I wanted to take a break from DMing. Group vanished.
F
My players love Pathfinder, but after running a 1-20 campaign for years I needed a break from it. So far this year we’ve played Apocalypse Frame, Delta Green, and Troika. It’s been a blast trying out different systems and settings, had a few surprises about how much we liked or didn’t like different mechanics.
After running some Dungeon World I have little interest in ever playing or running d&d again. It’s so much better for organic storytelling, and combat is much less of a slog.
If they don’t want to play it, running it isn’t gonna be that fun. That’s why I haven’t ran the Shadowrun campaign I made for my group. Nobody other than my sister wants to play SR. :/
I like SR way more than D&D, personally.
SR lore is so good and the system has so much potential.
We’ve switched from D&D to SR4 and BOY does that rulebook have a lot of holes. So many contradictions and omissions, so often things are very unclear. Top that with the insane decision to have the group play basically three separate space-time lines with the real world, the spirit world and the matrix. Let’s all wait around the table for an hour while our decker does matrix that takes a second of in-game time and then our shaman projects into the astral plane and that’s not as fast as the matrix but still a lot faster and takes another hour but it’s only a minute in-game.
We stopped after like 6 months. And it’s a shame because the world is so fun.
SR6 is way better now. There’s also another system (Anarchy) is you want.
And.since a year or two, there are metaplans.
We shopped around for a bit, read reviews and talked to some SR veteran players and most pointed to SR4 being the one to go with.
But Anarchy sounds like a thing I should look into, thanks!
Anarchy in its original version is unperfect. Consult it before trying to sell it to your players (except if you can read the French version which is kind of a version 1.5)
Is SR6 easier to make characters for/doesn’t need a whole-ass paid-for program to do the job?
I created a character without issues. This is just my experience. I never heard of a program for SR4 though.
