Two that come to mind is Testament: Role-playing in the Biblical Era and Dogs in the Vinyard.
Ayckshully, the Faith of All Things in the King of Life, Reborn is not technically Mormonism. It's just vague enough to really be any isolationist sect, imo.
I think a lot of people are using the release of 5.5/6e/D&D2024 as a crowbar to finally get their players to play something else. A lot of the newcomers have been stuck with 5e and nothing but since the Pandemic because that's all anyone was comfortable with. One of the most common complaints I see from DM's is "I really want to play another system but my group won't let go of 5e."
I dunno how successful that will be; I will shit on 5e all day, everyday but if you/your group legitimately like 5e there is enough content out there there isn't any need to move to another system.
Black Lodge Games, check out their YT channel, and their latest release "Cults of Zahak" (sic?)
In heroic tier you have 3 encounter, 2 daily, in paragon you have 4 encounter and 3 daily, in epic you have 4 encounter and 4 daily+ upgraded at wills.
They're either going to duck out from playing anymore due to the lack of perception and trendiness, or they're just gonna become grogs and stick with 5e like what happened with each change in edition prior to that. It's what I did with 3.x due to Wizard's antics tuning me out of 5e, and the new edition is doing that even better.
Out of curiosity, I've got a copy of PF1e. As a 3.x grog, how do you think it stacks up as a fix for that editions problems?
It doesn't fix them at all; it just hides them better by giving fun abilities and stuff to the Martials. Wizards and Clerics actually are more broken in it than they are 3.5, and the only one of the broken fucks that got nerfed were Druids, the weakest of the lot. Players won't tend to notice the imbalance for a while longer at least.
You can name drop me. I won't be offended.
That's an interesting idea. They could even have kept the upgrades like the 3 action economy, fixed the worst feats, reduced the skills.
I'm not sure. When I first started playing PF1, our DM sent us a pdf called "elephant guide to feat taxes" or something, and told us to choose "unchained" if there were two classes the same.
How is the combat in Mothership? I like that ease-of-use in everything else about it but combat seems a bit underbaked in theory. I don’t know how fun it is in practice, though.
It doesn't. At all. It makes them worse. The only 'improvement' (for non-minmax munchkins) is they clarify some rulings and simply a few linked mechanics. People call PF1 it 3.75 for a reason.
You're right; I run 4e when I can and most of my games are lvl-2 one-shots or megadungeons at lvl 5-with-optional-advancement-to-6 so I forgot you get a 3rd encounter at 7 and a 3rd daily at 9.
Same. There just aren't that many 4e grogs and those that are didn't want the return to caster supremacy PF2e started back down the road of again. But there are so many 5e players who don't want a new system; even if 6e is really just 5.gay edition. But those PF2 things like tiered action economy and race/class feat chains would map well I think.
System influences the GM. For me for 5e, the system is just... extremely unsatisfying. I read someone else saying it was soulless and that matched with me. I borrow some stuff from 5e, I like their healing system, but the parts just don't gel together for me.
The combat is underbaked because you are supposed to be fighting horror movie villains and you aren't supposed to actually be able to kill them until act 3.
4e assumes you min/max on a party level, so in some way it's even worse than 3.5, since you need to choose your powers to maximize party synergies.
True, but I guess since you get to swap a power & feat at every level, that happens more fluidly and requires the players to collaborate and discus. Vs. sitting around with the PHB and reddit/slackoverflow on their phones trying to make the most broken shit possible. I haven't seen a lot of "you should take this power because it'll let me do an extra 1d6" from the frontliner, and more the rear line saying "Do you have anything that hits extra hard with Combat Advantage? You should take that because I have something that will distract enemies."
There's a tweet I've not been able to find that summed it up perfectly. To paraphrase.
Then someone replies "but DnD is a framework to build anything", completely missing the point.
I won't beat a dead horse, but I'm the opposite. I find meat grinders lead to less interesting stories, because how could you be interested in, say, LotR if every 10 minutes half the fellowship is replaced with new characters, and by the end none of the original characters are left. Or where they get a bunch of hirelings they send to do all the dirty work.
Or the opposite problem, where someone wants to do something creative but there's no rules for that. eg. In one game there were giant walking candles (basically golems) and one player wanted to put a bucket on it's head to snuff out the flame. What skill is that? I quickly made up an athletics number and told them to roll. I don't really find it to be a 5e problem, but a crunchy games problem.
That testament one sounds intriguing but not quite what I'm looking for. Something less mythical. Where the supernatural isn't something normal, which it seems like to be in this.
I'll look into them. From what little I have seen they make supplements for other games right?
Cults of Zahak does use the Mythras system, yes. They are primarily world developers, but they delve into mechanics as well. The two creators are Christian, but the fictional environment I cited is polytheistic. Utilize that info as you wish. BLG frequently do Q and A livestreams and the nuances of their games, gaming environments and offline philosophies can be found there. It really doesn't summarize well in a sound bite or even a series of sound bites.
