Hi everyone, I thought I’d say hi in this new community as a new moderator. I’m Foon (she/her), and I love table top games. My partner and I have been gaming a lot in the past 5 years or so, and we have a bunch of friends that turned into boardgamers too, and boardgamers that we turned into friends. So on average we get almost a game a day in.
I’m excited to discuss all things tabletop gaming with you all. Some of my favourite games are Gloomhaven/Frosthaven, Spirit Island, Aeon’s End, Terraforming Mars.
What are y’all’s favourite games?
If you get into PF2 know that it does everything DnD does, but different (and much better imo). So try not to get frustrated with things at first because I’ve seen that from a lot of 5e players who go into it bringing their 5e expectations.
Also teamwork is critical. In 5e everybody is a one person army after level 5 or 6 and teamwork isn’t really needed unless forced by the DM. In PF2 you won’t be able to land a hit on certain enemies unless you coordinate with teammates to lower their AC with various techniques and abilities.
Also, since there’s so much customization with PCs during leveling everybody in the party could make a human fighter and end up with WILDLY different characters by level four or five.
I could talk for a while about it, but since switching away from 5e I’ve been much happier. I’d say start with the core rulebook stuff first and then add books from there. Going with all of them right out of the gate might give some analysis paralysis because there are so many player options.
Happy to discuss more though, I’d love to get as many people as I can to not only try what I feel is a better system but one not owned by WotC. Paizo is unionized and doesn’t send Pinkertons to peoples homes so I like them a lot more lol
Yeah I’m a bit hesitant to try to switch exactly because of what you describe. I worry that everything is just going to be frustrating because we can do the same things, but just have to do them differently. We did discuss making the switch in our group (exactly because we want to step away from WotC and it seems to offer great gameplay), but ultimately it’s up to the DM. I do know they bought a whole lot of source books already, so who knows, maybe soon.
I would love to try different systems for oneshots I run, though, but then to start with I think they need to be very different from D&D 5e so I don’t get things mixed up. Any suggestions? 😊
I think as long as you’re aware of those differences it should go a lot smoother for you. Just try to let go of the “well I’ve always done it this way” which I know is easier said than done. I like to bring up familiars as a good example between the two systems. Apologies if this comes across as over explaining or anything, just wanting to be clear and I really love this system lol
In 5e, I’m sure you’re familiar, you cast the Find Familiar spell and pick from a list of stat blocks provided by RAW or by your DM. Boom, you’re done.
In PF2 though, you create your own familiar from scratch, and you can do it every day. So it’s a little more involved but it feels truly unique to you and your imagination since there’s no limits on what it can look like. Here’s a link to the rule itself (another bonus to PF2 is they host all the rules online for free), but basically all you need to know is:
So if we’re making an Owl familiar like they show in the rule description, you’d select Flier and one other ability you want your familiar to be able to do such as the Speech which would allow it to speak a language you know. Or, you could pick Manual Dexterity if you want it to be able to do more fine tuned motor skills. Some classes and feats you select will allow you to pick more than two abilities if you want to make your familiar more powerful. So you could as you level up have that Owl familiar with the Flier, Speech, Manual Dexterity, and then combine that with Lab Assistant for a perfect recreation of Merlin’s Archimedes 😄
Or you could choose any other number of abilities to take your Owl familiar in a different direction, like Burrower for example. No reason you can’t make a tunneling Owl, because why not? It’s your familiar!
Things like that, people say it’s more complicated and I guess you could say that it is because there’s more options. But I feel it’s still very intuitive, easy to pick up and gives players soooo much more empowerment over their characters.
I have a looooot of systems I could recommend tbh lol
To help narrow it down are you looking for something of a specific genre like scifi, fantasty, post apoc, etc?
Actually, I’ll throw one right out of the gate that you might like based on the vibes I’m getting from your comments and you can start today if you wanted. It’s an indie solo journaling RPG called Apothecaria (Link here). You play as a witch in a village that makes potions for the villagers that come to you. You go through week by week to forage for ingredients, brew the cure they need, and sell it. Instead of dice it works based on a normal 52 card deck of cards and what happens is based on the card you draw. I only recently started trying solo RPG’s like this but it’s been a fun one.
Let me know if you want more recommendations based on if you want something more fluffy or more crunchy or if there’s a specific genre you’re interested in. I love talking shop 😄
Definitely easier said than done… I’m sure I’d really struggle with that.
I think the Familiar example is a great explanation. It really does sound much cooler. In 5e, you don’t really get a whole lot of meaningful choices after level 3 or so.
Based on this description, you seem to have picked up my “vibes” pretty well :D It sounds super cute. I’m not sure about the solo aspect, though. I generally don’t enjoy solo gaming as much, and especially TTRPGs are something I do with friends.
But generally, I like whimsical and cute settings. I’m much more of a fantasy person than scifi. Also not looking for dystopian worlds, right now that’s not something my group would handle well. Also a big fan of strange creatures (for example the Feywild is my favourite realm in D&D) and animals. Generally looking for more wholesomeness. More “Help the Forest Queen and her pack of magical forest creatures get rid of the creeping blight in the forest” rather than “A cabal of evil people has released a monster that’s set to devour all the poor people”.
Edit: Also, a strong bonus would be tight rules. With little ambiguity. So players can have clear expectations of the consequences of their actions, rather than just “GMs discretion”.
Does that help at all? I’m excited to learn about new systems.