I found that the idea of “D&D” doesn’t match with the reality of D&D® (or adjacent like Pathfinder and Shadow of the Demon Lord). Like most people think of grand stories with climactic moments and character growth and the modern D&D offers more of a “square - counting, binary pass/fail roll slog, abstract resource management with little character choice after 3rd level, and almost zero risk” experience. Which is great in a video game, but boring at the table.
I’ve ran D&D® (or adjacent) for numerous groups for over 30 years now across multiple editions and the most success in the D&D® framework I had was B/X, but I think the game that comes closest to realizing “D&D” as a concept is Dungeon World. No overwhelming player facing textbooks, and it constantly pushes the narrative forward no matter what the outcome of a roll is. It’s also free.
There’s thousands of different games out there from more complex than D&D to single word RPGs. Find the right one for you and your group 😄
What other game is the second group playing?
I found that the idea of “D&D” doesn’t match with the reality of D&D® (or adjacent like Pathfinder and Shadow of the Demon Lord). Like most people think of grand stories with climactic moments and character growth and the modern D&D offers more of a “square - counting, binary pass/fail roll slog, abstract resource management with little character choice after 3rd level, and almost zero risk” experience. Which is great in a video game, but boring at the table.
I’ve ran D&D® (or adjacent) for numerous groups for over 30 years now across multiple editions and the most success in the D&D® framework I had was B/X, but I think the game that comes closest to realizing “D&D” as a concept is Dungeon World. No overwhelming player facing textbooks, and it constantly pushes the narrative forward no matter what the outcome of a roll is. It’s also free.
There’s thousands of different games out there from more complex than D&D to single word RPGs. Find the right one for you and your group 😄