Good luck running it, it tries really hard to emulate mechanics from Fallout 4 and runs into some issues because of it. Enemies seem to be balanced around the idea of players spending time picking up scrap, crafting/upgrading gear, and eating food for temporary buffs beforehand even if it's the basic level 1 raider.
If it's one character, they just die. If it's TPK, the party goes to prison. Maybe I roll to see if some of them were killed. Next few sessions is breakout.
Worst of all: it is 2d20, so it feels identical to every other 2d20 game, so if you've ever played one, then beware! Also, unlike other games with a metacurrency, 2d20's momentum and doom (I was introduced to it through Conan, don't know the terms in the other versions), are a hostage situation in a way that the LS-DS tokens, Edge, and Artha of Star Wars FFG, Shadowrun, and Burning Wheel, respectively, aren't.
Actually I will propose another: Shadowun. You can easily use the systems for magic for the various insane nonsense going on. It is something I have considered for running a Fallout game in, should I ever actually get around to it.
Though Twilight 2000 might also be solid choices but Shadowrun minus the magic would be an interesting choice indeed.
I've played a couple games of Conan and the GM was good but the system left a little to be desired. The character creation seemed to take forever but we randomly rolled everything, not sure how well just picking the stuff I would want would work out.
You could try Genesys, it uses those dice from the fantasy flight starwars game (with slightly different symbols). I played in a very fallout-like post apocalypse game using that system and it seemed to work out well. Problem with it is that you're not going to pick up a ton of tactical combat from it and a lot of the die rolls come down to interpreting things on the fly. Works for some people, doesn't work for others but I had a lot of fun with it. The Keyforge book was really cool, there's a lot of weird options for players to make their own races in it, so if you want to have a bunch of mutants that would be a good start.
Also (at least in 5th, don't remember off the top of my head) it has rules for radiation, and really robust drug addiction rules, so you can really get the great trade off for using Jet for additional initiative dice or psycho for pain resistance and whatever bonuses you feel are appropriate.
Genesys is great, yeah, I also considered using it, though the lack of really tactical gameplay nixed it early on for Shadowrun instead.
If I were rebuilding D&D from the ground up, weapons rules and prestige classes would be the only things that I would keep from the 3/3.5 era. I miss the ability to hop into another class that continues the one that you're on in an interesting and flavorful direction... or not, it's up to you.
Because most of these people are tourists who want to play D&D brand D&D for the cultural cache and the prospect of learning something even slightly different is scary. It's kind of fucking depressing.
I'm not sure what you mean by "proliferation of bad RNG results culls the game early"
The other thing with 3.5 is that the d20 system has been hacked to death such that you can pitch anything based on d20 as "3.5 homebrew" and trick them into playing another system. Just take your favorite game, make a half-assed d20 conversion, get your group to try it out, then say "A lot of these mechanics are similar to [SYSTEM] want to give it a try?"
I guess, from my experience, is 5e players are less grogs and more frightened of leaving their comfort zone; they are gaming shut-ins.
I've never had to make a PC Enjoy Prison, but I have also learned Gygax's lesson about the importance of time keeping. That is, there is always a ticking clock for the party. It might not be a very tight time limits, but any imprisonment is likely going to be longer than the Necrocult needs to complete their ritual.
On one hand, a lot of busted Reddit builds depend on either obscure splats that can easily be excluded or questionable interpretation of rules the GM might just say "no, fuck you".
Never done 2d20, care to explain the issues you are referencing?
A lot of the busted builds people post on reddit, forums, etc.(and this has been the case for ages) have another major issue. Unless you've found yourself a table that the DM has told you to make up a character for because the party is level 14 or whatever to actually start with some of the dumb builds out there, that player isn't doing shit. Congratulations, you've got a build from 6 different classes that doesn't start to contribute to the table until level 12, is finally busted at level 18, and you're starting the game at lvl 1 being a fucking boat anchor for everyone else for the next 6-12 months(lets be real most of these people's campaigns don't last that long either).
The idea of a 5e grognards at this point is funny, but I'm sure there's a few out there if you look at the corners of the internet throwing fits about D&D 2024 still. They just don't know they're the grognard yet. But yes, most of them are more like shut-ins too afraid to anything that isn't D&D 5e and if you can drag them into even a one shot with pregen characters in another system maybe wake up and realize there are other systems and even genres out there.
The smart ones though will look for things like the broken artificifier wizard so they can be super broken at 5th level. One of the PF1e grogs who (probably for the best) was too busy with real life to join the 4e game had done a build similar; they had bag with a couple of homunculi in it and they just crafted non-stop until his equipment was vastly OP and at that point didn't even need the other players anymore.
You touch on a fair point that Grognarding usually comes with age.
Oh for sure there's absolutely a bunch of busted builds that come online early enough to actually matter in the average campaign length, and while I don't recall 4e's crafting a lot of that stuff in most systems still gets shut down just by time. Fine you've created your infinite engine of producing whatever, however as you said about the timekeeping thing with the necrocult you've either not participated and the adventurers saved the day without you, or got held back so long waiting for you that the world has already ended. And even if that timekeeping isn't about the time purely spent crafting, it can also be shut down simply by not having the time to gather the resources.
Exactly, that's why I said they just may not know/realize it yet.
There's definitely an expectation of building with high competence in pf1e, although I don't know if I agree that it's harder to play around with meme builds. If you've got a party that is built competently you can have a meme of a character in it without too much trouble as the gear treadmill tends to make up for quite a bit of it so long as you're on it(which is a separate problem that automatic bonus progression tried to fix and then managed to fuck things up in other ways). I will agree that the experimentation part is completely fucked for players without as much experience but that's because the system has so many useless options or dead ends of progression for someone to fall into without reading guides and forum posts, some of which also get shit wrong in their interpretations of things or direct players to random splats for shit that doesn't make sense in your campaign and still need to be told "No", especially with some of the weird shit they were releasing in the last couple years of pf1e.
Right, my mistake there. I was referring to 5e and OneD&D though. Thought that was obvious.
I played with a guy that was a power gamer to hell and back. I am talking about he would only make the most broken builds possible so he would always be the best at his niche, would complain about party composition "we need a tank, a DPS, support, ya'll should use these classes with these specifications with those races", and all of his characters when he was not DMing was the same "I am crazy haha" with no substance. He was like this with any system we played. Pf2e? "I will make the strongest tank". 5e? "I will make a character that reaches 28 AC at level 5, has more DPS than anyone combined and attacks 5 times a turn". He would get annoyed if 2 players wished to have the same race and shit like that.
I noticed that. 5e players are just very adamant in playing the same game, with no variation. They'd rather convert the entire system to play fallout, for example, than playing the TTRPG of fallout, regardless if its good or not, at least give it a try? like, its not that hard.
I mean, we are playing a game that is all about rolling dice at the end of the day. I think its fine to have a gimmick like this, especially since I checked that module, the cards are not all pre-determinated, it seems you can make your own aswell. They just give pointers of what the cards could do. And most are to introduce some boosts to the NPCs and the PCs to change how the combat flows, which in 4e tactical combat is kinda of its thing.
The 2d20 system was created by Modiphius for their Star Trek game, which I have been told it works very well for, where the momentum and doom system makes sense. You have one PC in engineering makes rolls to "give it more power" or whatever, generates some momentum that another PC can use to make it easier, etc. The problem is that from setting to setting, they haven't ever substantially changed how anything works or feels, so it is sort of a bland morass. As for the metacurrencies, momentum and doom work by getting good successes or bad failures, and can be accumulated by the players and GM, respectively. However, unlike other systems, it can really accumulate and become far more hostile to balance or encounter flow due to how it works, and manipulating the currencies with great intention is basically impossible.
Bit late but if/when they get their shit sorted out I think they'll eat Roll20's lunch. A sickeningly large amount of my various player groups use D&D Beyond for their character sheets and have purchased content on there. I get it, it's a nice clean system you can easily travel with and modify without needing to print pages off or read what to do but at the same time I hate it and everything about it.
^^^ this right here. I cannot stress this enough, even if there isn't a clock initially, having some sort of fire under the PCs ass is so so so important to keeping things moving. It makes such a difference and really enhances everyone's experience.