Break up Google, Facebook, and the other big platforms that let disinformation run rampant.

Hold decision makers at those organizations personally accountable.

I don’t find “lol 5% of the time something WACKY happens!” very fun very long, no. That is too high a frequency for freak events. Actually, it’s 10% because people do wackiness on natural 1s and natural 20s. That’s too much! That’s so much it’s distracting.

I outlined the dice system I liked from nWoD in another comment. You can get some wild outcomes there, but it’s not the absurd flat “10% of every roll is insanely good or bad”. You get the occasional “I can’t believe I rolled three tens convinced the vampire I was a wizard!”, still.

I am a huge fan of dice pools and absolutely done with “roll one die vs target”. The flat probability you get from one die doesn’t give results that feel good.

I was a big fan of the nWoD’s S10 system. Add up your stat, skill, and relevant bonuses, roll this many d10s. Every one that comes up as {8, 9, 10} adds to degree of success. Roll another die for every one that came up {10}, possibly repeating if you keep rolling 10s.

You get pretty consistent results. Someone who’s a professional will throw ~6 dice on average, so they’re very likely to succeed on basic tasks. Much less of that “lol the wizard rolled a 1 and forgot how to read” or “barbarian rolled a 20, I guess he can speak infernal?” weirdness. You still get freak outliers every once in a while, where someone rolls like six 10s in a row and everyone’s cheering. But not 5% of the time, and not so binary.

Plus there’s other “dice tricks” you can apply for different circumstances. “Reroll all failed dice once”, “reroll 9s like 10s”, etc.

1d20+stuff is just so basic and threadbare. It’s not even easier. nWod’s dice pool you don’t even have to add. You just count. We all know players that can’t add 16+7, but they can probably count to 4.

Not a fan of the “lol natural 20 zaniness happens” trope. That’s 5% of the time.

Also Shadowrun doesn’t even use d20s

This is stupid to do this at the OS level. Where are the small government conservatives demanding the private market meet this need? (They are liars, fools, and scumbags who don’t sincerely believe what they say)

I want job postings and a way to reach people I worked with.

I absolutely do not want the click bait and slop.

New players really should be told to play Pathfinder 2e at this point, not D&D5e

It’s unfortunate that DND 5e is the sole mega popular game.

People who want fantasy tactical combat would probably do well with Pathfinder 2e. But people who just want to tell a fun story would probably have a lot more fun with something lighter, like Fate.

There’s so many games out there and most don’t get the love they deserve

DND is a weird mix of too many rules and not enough rules.

Given how many people post questions about how to handle parties losing conflicts, I’d say yes.

Also it operates at the out-of-chatacter level. It’s not the character conceding, it’s the player. This allows for solutions like “they shoot me and I fall into the river, where I’ll wash up somewhere by evening”. It’s not always an in-character surrender.

You can’t really surrender to all things, too, such as wolves, zombies, or an avalanche.

Whenever it came down to “your character might die” I’d roll on the table. I don’t want anyone to think I’m fudging.

I also really like Fate’s “concede” rule. A player (not the character!) can concede at any point in a conflict before dice are rolled. They don’t get whatever they wanted out of the conflict, but they get to negotiate where the story goes. Maybe the bandits decide to take you alive for ransom. Maybe they take your stuff and leave you to tell their tale. It’s whatever the table thinks is best.

If they instead tough it out and let the dice fall, whoever took them out has the final say in what happens.

Right? It’s so coarse. You can’t take wild shape without also getting full spell casting. The game is full of stuff like that. No fine control. Also huge opportunity costs. Dip into another class? Enjoy not getting your second attack for weeks of real life time.

The coarse bundling probably good for some kinds of beginner players, but it’s really restrictive.

Or just… Email.

My parents just email me pictures of stuff. It’s fine.

I agree, play the class how you want, it’s one of the major appeals of the game

I remember the first time I encountered systems that aren’t strict class + level, and realizing I had so much more freedom to make the ideas I had. D&D (and close relatives) are surprisingly anti-creative.

The biggest problem is most players aren’t paying attention and won’t remember everything.

If you do elves and dwarves, they’ll have some idea of what’s happening.

If you do the Wilfren and the Senderri, they won’t. Even if you explain it a dozen times. Even if you show them in a dozen scenes.

I may just have trauma from being in poorly fitting groups, but I think getting people to learn a bunch of your custom lore is always going to be a long shot.

If you make the world collectively, you’ll have a better chance of it working. But some players hate being creative like that.

There are other games than DND. Play more of them and steal ideas from them.

That’s too much money. Especially for a company that kind of sucks and is succeeding largely on inertia.

I like the idea. I don’t want to use facebook or similar, but that’s where stuff like “BuyNothing” is most active.

Unfortunately, I don’t know much about self hosting (beyond what I’ve picked up working in software development) so I don’t see myself running one of these myself. I’d probably use it if it came to my neck of the woods (NYC)

Most developers I’ve looked at would happily just paste the curl|bash thing into the terminal.

I often would skim the script in the browser, but a. This post shows that’s not fool proof and b. a sufficiently sophisticated malicious script would fool a casual read