I just wanna start DMing a game and I need to buy $150 in books to do so? The fuck.
Edit: Lots of people telling me to play other systems. Here’s what’s up:
- I want to play a 1-on-1 game with my wife
- I’ve never DMed before
- She’s never played a TTRPG, so this would be her introduction
- She’s been reading a lot of fae-related fantasy, which has me thinking she may want to play roleplay heavy with some fae storylines present
- Ideally the system wouldn’t be too crunchy or combat focused
Edit 2: I’ve spoken with her and she actually wants a more modern setting
They don't. One of the many, many things that sucks about D&D is that it's the most recognised, so people think it's a good place to start with TTRPGs.
It's not. It has most of the complexity of a crunchy game like PF2e, but no mechanical unification, so every action has its own rule, rather than similar actions just being small variants on the same. Rules are often specific, applying only to certain situations, but still vague, forcing the DM to decide how they're actually meant to be applied. Similarly, it's very crunchy and combat focused but combat is pretty barebones, just being a case of standing in front of an enemy and hitting it until one of you falls over. Could be either you or the enemy, the balance is skewed at best.
As if there weren't enough mechanical problems, the lore stagnated after 3.x, and wasn't that deep even then; The Forgotten Realms setting in particular is extremely barebones once you're off the Sword Coast, and regularly leans all the way over to downright offensive. Like ye olde minstral show racism in stuff printed in the last 5 years. And they charge you a fucking arm and a leg for everything, so, like you say, you need to pay like $150 just to play in a homebrew setting.You don't want to play D&D. If you do, you want to play Pathfinder 2e, Savage Worlds, or Shadow of the Demon Lord/Weird Wizard instead. Pathfinder in particular has great fey lore, even if you pick a different system it'd be worth looking at Kingmaker for fey storyline ideas.
What you probably want is something like Fate or Monster of the Week, a more storytelling focused system that isn't so balanced around parties. FitD games would also be worth looking at.
As others have said, pirate things. I'd also suggest looking for legally dubious online resources, lots of websites out there that have SRDs and splatbooks laid out in an easier-to-navigate website ways than PDFs.
To your points, D&D would be a terrible choice.
- It's balanced around a party of 4-6
- It has almost no advice of how to run it
- It's incredibly combat-focused, with balance assuming you'll get into 6+ fights per in-game day
Glad to hear you're going with something else, good luck!
I have trouble navigating the PDFs but it’s looking like I don’t have a choice. I don’t have that kind of money.
The physical books can be had on secondhand bookstores for significantly less, albeit they're still sold for more than they aught to be, usually. Thriftbooks is an online reseller that has them for around $25 USD but local thrift stores and library book sales have them sometimes and will sell them for next to nothing.
There are some inexpensive/free programs/websites that exist to automate and simplify basically everything in the game. IME the only advantages the manuals have over the apps is that the manuals convey the bigger picture of how the game works.
Monster of the Week? Anything Powered by the Apocalypse is going to be much stronger in Game Master support and explanations than D&D. If you want something friendlier there are also games like Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast that has no focus on combat. Wanderhome, as well -- albeit that one isn't modern. You've got a lot of options, don't be fooled by Hasbro!
Hasbro gotta make that $$$
Just steal them, pdfs aren't hard to find.
There's a podcast that only does 1 on 1 RP games called Party of One. It might give you two some ideas!
D&D kind of sucks, and especially sucks for what you want to do.
- It's not good for 1:1 games. It makes many assumptions about there being a full party
- It doesn't offer much advice for DMing, and has a lot of ways to fuck it up.
- It has like no rules for roleplay. It has very vague "If you roll a high number maybe they'll do you a favor" suggestions, but for something like "I want to stand up straight, look him in the eye, and tell him he should yield or suffer the wrath of my patron" it leaves it entirely up to the DM how to resolve. Other games provide a lot more guidance
- It is entirely combat focused. It is crunchy in annoying ways.
Chronicles of Darkness is modern day occult. it's not very light, but it's closer to what you want. I'm fond of Mage: The Awakening.
Fate is a good general purpose system that's more in line with how I think people imagine RPGs are. It's also free. It cares a lot more about the narrative than D&D. D&D puts most narrative detail squarely in "unimportant flavor". So if your character's story is they were a pirate, that doesn't do anything in the game unless you have the pirate background, and those tend to be very limited. Contrast with Fate that is much more explicit about "Aspects give you permission. If your character has 'Former Pirate' on their sheet, they definitely know some sea shanties and how to move around on a boat". D&D leaves that up to the DM. And then a lot of people are like, if it's leaving so much up to the DM why am I even buying this book.
Powered by the Apocalypse games are also popular. I don't personally like them that much, but I see why people do.
Pick a different system, or download copies and have them printed, or just print the key pages, or look for used copies. Also 5e.tools is a great resource
Eclipse Phase is available free because the designers are all filthy anarchists.
Yeah but then you gotta play Eclipse Phase.
Love the setting, the system is pretty janky (I have not read 2e)
It's very, very, similar to GURPS Transhuman Space - mainly adding Cortical Stacks from Altered Carbon, spessmagic, and an apocalypse.
There wouldn't be many problems just running the setting with THS.
Supposedly 2e is significantly more playable. I think there's also a powered by the apocalypse version.
Also presumably if TheDoctor is looking at D&D they're interested in fantasy adventure and not like, hard-ish scifi intrigue
I’m not personally opposed to sci-fi, but my wife has been reading a lot of fantasy the past year or so so that’s probably what I’m gonna go with.
Pathfinder has a lot of materials available online for free. It's got enough in common with D&D to matter and the things you buy won't be feeding the WOTC/Hasbro corpo octopus with its increasingly insidious pricing and monetization and subscription-seeking.
Pathfinder is also much crunchier than 5th eds restrictively simple system, which I prefer.
Admittedly, yes, I do like simple systems when I just want to have that in the background and focus on the characters and story.
If there was a simplified Pathfinder that's be great, but either way, I despise WOTC and am not going back a second time, not after their latest bazinga skullduggery of subscription seeking and license throttling and treat printers being proposed to replace DMs and tell the main campaign module stories.
Disregard this I didn't notice it was you. That said, have you tried any of those systems? I'd like to hear your thoughts.
Have you tried other systems? D&D is not a very good story telling system. I'm not sure what the state of the art is but systems like Powered By The Apocalypse had a reputation as good story and character focused systems a few years ago. Mouse Guard, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and Blades in the Dark are all supposed to be quite good for that.
Have you tried other systems?
I've tried many systems but my group often only plays other games for a few sessions before wanting to go back to D&D or D&D-like for the most part and that's why I suggested Pathfinder if someone else is having a similar issue or has similar needs.
I can sometimes go an entire session without a single combat die roll, so I make storytelling happen even in a system that's kind of hostile to it. I do what I have to do.
I had a blast running Heavy Gear's RPG mode, but Dream Pod 9 sort of abandoned it, switched to "Heroclix" hype then some esports bullshit kickstarter that went nowhere, and the setting's basically dead.
That's too bad, because Heavy Gear's "Silhouette" system does really fast and exciting high-stakes kick-ass-or-die mecha combat. At the high end it feels like piloting mobile suits that either rock face, fall apart into a failure spiral, or sometimes just instantly explode.
Combat resolves really quickly if you get used to it, almost at the speed of a cinematic story.
: p I had some fun with hero-clix style stuff when I was, like, idk 12? Because it was much easier for me to get in to than WH40k or something. I think the version I played was MageKnight.
I'll have to look up the old Heavy Gear stuff. I really enjoyed the first PC game. My computer could only barely run it, I had to turn on the wireframe mode in any actual fight!
There was a lot of potential for the Heavy Gear series as a RPG setting. Even the characters listed in the core books had a novel "chess piece" system to show how important they might be to future books (so GMs wouldn't get them killed off or otherwise changed too much if they were too important for future canon plots) which made me expect a vast post-interpolar war story spanning the terran colonies on the scale of Legend of the Galactic Heroes, or at least Gundam.
That didn't happen because Heavy Gear became "Clix'd" and sort of abandoned any attempt at a long-running ongoing story, so it was up to me to fill in the blanks for as long as my tabletop group wanted to play.
Fate is a simple system, not very combat focused, and everything should be available here https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/basics
shakes fist at funny dice
(fate is fine)
(this makes me want to write a system again, though I tend towards wargames as far as rules go)
Do not let WotC trick you into thinking you need to pay them 150 bucks to start a game.
One, sail the high seas if you really wanna play D&D 5th edition (or whatever new edition they come out with).
Secondly, consider other systems. Depending on what exactly you wanna get from D&D (solving problems in a fantasy setting, character customization, playing in a particular setting, character drama in a fantasy setting, battles with cool powers, a sense of progressing from a nobody to a hero, feeling like a hero from day 1, etc) there is probably a better system for that than 5e and the majority of them don't require more than 2, or often even just 1 book. Plus several that have 2 only charge for digital versions of the GM book.
Oh, consider dungeon world. It's a simpler system that lends itself to fail forward, and the basic moves/character sheets are all available for download for free.
Looking at this now. The mechanics look simpler for sure. I’m playing a game just me and my wife and she’s never played a tabletop rpg before, so that might be a good call.
Oh if you've got a new person then fuck d&d unless they really want to specifically play d&d. If not, there are way better systems for shared storytelling. I introduce people to rpging via dungeon world 10 times out of 10.
I'd have to look when I get home, but I've got a fair amount of 5th edition books I'd be willing to let go for not much more than shipping costs...
One-page RPGs might be better for this than 5e or 5.24. There are literally thousands of them and most of them are free or really cheap.
