Call of Cthulhu vibes here. Some rolls you want to fail, because you’re better off not knowing.

Star wars FFG and Deadlands. I love the flavor of both. I doubt I’ll ever play star wars, but some of my current groups will probably give deadlands a try.

It might even make roll20 get off their ass and make it more usable.

I love your optimism

I’ve got 4 groups.

Groups 1 and 2 are small groups made of friends and we handle everything over text. We do tend to have a lot of “hey, are we playing today?” texts on the day of.

Group 3 started as a work game and has a larger group with less consistency of who shows up week to week. We use discord. Creating events, hosting lore, and places to stash special/homebrew rules is nice.

Group 4 is a west marches-ish game with about 10 players. Discord for that also, though once a group is set for a couple sessions we switch from the discord channel to a group message for communication.

I’ve used Teams in the past as well but I find discord to be better for managing the various things I need to organize a game.

It’s not malicious. I just can’t resist the trope of having that epic spider v. praying mantis battle that’s comparably totally inconsequential at standard scale. Makes me giggle.

I mean, if the first clip didn’t sell me on it, this one did

Kobolds play minion based puzzle games, where individual units are super expendable. Pikmin, Lemmings, Overlord, etc.

Gnomes have incredibly realistic flight simulators and spreadsheet management sims life Football Manager and Eve

Dragonborn lack a well defined cultural niche so they get nothing.

So it’s not exactly that, but if you want a rhythm game with some more nuance, Before the Echo is awesome.

You’ve got 3 different screens (mana gathering, spell casting, and enemy attacks) and you need to balance which you’re prioritizing at any time. Mana is needed to cast spells, spells are needed to defeat the enemy, but you need to block their attacks to not lose all your HP. Each one goes different parts of he music, and as a bonus all the music is from Ronald Jenkees.

It’s old, and while funny is also sometimes very cringey, but still a terrific bit of fun.

• Contested succession or political election situation. Give the candidates qualities that appeal to and are disliked by different party members. Expect them to put themselves forward as 3rd party candidates so have a plan for that.

• Hostage situation

• Curse then with something that needs wish to solve. I’m running The Scriveners Tale from Candlekeep Mysteries right now and it’s the most heartburn my level 14 party has had in a long time.

• World ending shit where they can’t (or probably can’t) stop everything bad from happening. Make them choose to save the city or their favored NPC.

They’ve basically turned into superman by the time they’re 3rd or 4th tier so hit them with the line of stuff that makes for interesting superman stories.

My favorite little twist is that rolling your number results in “laser feelings”, which instructs the DM to reveal something important to the PC.

It’s basically a narrative shove forward every time it happens and keeps the game fast and fresh.

It’s my go to system for a quick one shot to introduce people to ttrpgs. Always fun, crazy, and simple to learn. And minimal work for the DM so long as you’re willing to bounce off whatever your players come up with.

I’ve run some one shots for more experienced players that have been really memorable and full of creative play, too. The simple mechanics don’t hold it back. It excels when you’re willing to “yes, and” pretty much everything.

http://www.onesevendesign.com/laserfeelings/

Also had about a billion hacks https://writingalchemy.net/resources/lasers-and-feelings-hacks/

Cars and Family provided one of my favorite games I’ve ever run

I’ve been meaning to make a statement block and encounter for this forever. I should really get around to it.

My initial thought when reading OP’s request and list of issues with other systems was that something PbtA would make sense.