Make sure the system you use matches the kind of players you have, for an optimal experience
Admin Note: This is part of the ongoing series called “D&D isn’t the only TTRPG if you don’t want fantasy play another goddamn game!”
I already reblogged this once but this is important:
Like I run a D&D blog. I understand that D&D is the most well-known and popular RPG in the world. But a lot of the time I see people going like “Hey I want to run a D&D campaign and throw out all the D&Disms and here’s all the notes I have for running a campaign about courtly romance and chivalry in a historical setting” and I’m just like STOP YOU DON’T NEED TO RUN THIS USING D&D
There’s a sort of a mistaken assumption that because D&D is the biggest game on the market and that it’s fantasy that it should be the go-to fantasy game but look it’s not D&D isn’t a generic fantasy game it’s a very specific kind of fantasy all of its own, one that steals liberally from swords & sorcery and high fantasy and adds fucking extradimensional cube robots for good measure
So next time you’re thinking about a fantasy campaign in a decidedly non-D&Dish setting consider instead of jamming the square peg that is D&D into a round hole trying to find a system that actually supports what you’re trying to do
And this is not to say that you shouldn’t play D&D: D&D is hella fun. But there’s a lot of genres and styles that D&D does a piss-poor job of doing, and because of that it’s so good we’ve got other games
*cracks knuckles*
All right then. I’ve been meaning to dust off my own D&D sideblog for a while, so here we go with providing some examples. I’m limiting this specifically to other types of fantasy outside of the standard high fantasy and sword & sorcery millieu.
Courtly Romance and Chivalry
There are a number of options for this, and they range from standard secondary world fantasy to more historical and mythological settings. My list here shouldn’t be treated as fully extensive.
Blue Rose – based on the romantic fantasy subgenre, specifically as seen in the works of Tamora Pierce and Mercedes Lackey. A lot of courtly drama and intrigue and swashbuckling, based in a fictional world.
Pendragon – naturally based off of Arthurian mythology, and having a lot of stuff given over to the court of Camelot and the chivalric adventures of the various knights. The same company also has a kickstarter for a spin-off called Paladin: Warriors of Charlemagne that might be worth checking out.
Historical Fantasy
This one’s a bit more prominent as historical settings serve as an inspiration for a variety of fantasy worlds and games, and this of course invariably extends to settings that actually use historical settings with a degree of fantasy elements thrown in. Note that I’m going to emphasise Europe here simply due to greater familiarity with games in that millieu, and as a European myself I’m ill-equipped to judge how accurate or respectful games using other settings actually are.
Because of this, feel free to add other examples in reblogs
Chivalry & Sorcery – one of the early tabletop games inspired by D&D, taking a more pseudo-historical approach.
It’s based on 12th century France and strives for a degree of historical accuracy and medieval politics.
World of Darkness, Dark Ages (including Vampire and Mage) – while the World of Darkness has earned some negative attention lately (and for good reason), the dark ages RPGs are still an old favourite of mine. Also worth checking out is Mage: The Sorcerer’s Crusade, set during the Renaissance. The Mage stuff has a really cool open-ended magic system worth checking out.
Ars Magica – this exists along very similar lines to the dark age material above, based around mages and magic-users in a ‘Mythic Europe’ setting. It also has a really cool open-ended magic system, and one of my personal favourites.
Awwww shit heck yes I might want to add to this list but this is a really good starting point
ALWAYS MAKE SURE TO FIND THE SYSTEM FOR YOU
AEG (A Legend of the Five Rings)
COMPLETE TABLETOP RPG ARCHIVE
A dating service where matching is based on people’s search history exists. You’re a serial killer. You go on a date with a writer.
Serial Killer: metaphorically, if you were to kill someone, how would you do it?
Writer: Air shot between the toes, it’ll look like a heart attack.
Serial Killer who is obviously in love already: *sucks in a breath* ok
Writer: how long would it take to die if you were to potentially stab someone in the guts
Serial killer: anywhere from 2 to 30 minutes
Writer, already bringing a ring out: *shaking* thanks
Like, if you’re gonna be an adult who’s really into children’s media the least you can do is actually internalize all those themes of being a good and kind person
Maybe people are so upset with Nike because they know Nike spends millions on market research and still calculated that pissing off people who hate players kneeling was actually a smart business move.
my favorite kind of fanfics are “canon divergence” because it’s always like handing back a reviewed essay with comments like “I enjoyed the strong beginning but here is where you lost me, I’ve made some notes”
Feeling tired but not wanting to go to sleep because you don’t want to miss the little time you have at home to relax from work although you are too tired to do anything else is a hopeless feeling.
So, when I was doing my thesis on whether or not fanfiction should be considered a legitimate genre of literature, my advising professor asked me for examples. I gave him the generic ones, of course – “Pride & Prejudice and Zombies” is a horror fanfic of “Pride & Prejudice”, “50 Shades of Grey” is an erotica fic of “Twilight" – and that seemed to make him understand what fanfiction is, but not how it’s useful. So I thought about it, and, after about a minute, I said, “Paradise Lost is basically a fanfiction of the Book of Genesis. And The Divine Comedy is an epic self-insertion fic for Catholic doctrine. So, basically, you were teaching us fanfiction last semester.” I had never before seen a grown man’s eyes widen with such fear, incomprehension, disgust, awe, and understanding.
#does that mean the renaissance was almost entirely fan art?
Yes. Yes it does. All ur classic favs had the Renaissance version of DeviantArt.
l i s t e n
Do companies realize that they’ll eventually run out of people who can realistically fill their demands if they keep demanding you have 3-5+ years experience at 25 and refuse to hire anything less
actually, I think what they are doing is hiring 25 year olds with 1 year of experience and using that as a way to coerce the 25 year old to accept less pay.
They post 3-5 years experience at 45,000 on the job boards. Which is the market value of the position.But not for someone who has worked in the field for 5 years who at that point in their career might demand 50,000 instead.
then when people come in with 1 year of experience *(which is really secretly all the experience that is needed for the job) they go “oohhhh so. we really like you but based on your experience level we’re going to start you at 35k? is that okay? You know, cause we could be getting someone with 5 years experience, but we really like you.”
And then the 25 year old feels lucky to get ahead and get the job in the first place so they say yes
there’s also been a surge of companies complaining they “have to” relax their hiring standards (and, yeop, lower pay) bc otherwise they can’t find candidates, so yea you’re not wrong
Artisan Scribbles 