...the more I like GURPS. Specifically, Dungeon Fantasy. 5E these days is tired, and I have the newer. Community 5E games such as Tales of the Valiant and Level Up Advanced 5E, but the character design options are not there. All I see are specific, narrowly designed, "a reaction to 5E" designs for classes and subclasses engineered to be "fun" versus the vanilla experience of D&D.
You only play "alt 5E" because it offers a more fun experience at the table than the alternatives. You still have all the same shortcomings. Even when a game tries to "patch" things, like Level Up and them writing custom rules for exploration and throwing social bonuses at you like candy - it does not replace a game that natively supports exploration, survival, and social encounters from the get-go.
Similarly, they import all of 5E's flaws. The D&D designers invented these silly things called "tool proficiencies" to make up for the fact their skill system sucks. And some classes can "swap tool proficiencies" during a long rest. First, saying a tool proficiency replaces a skill is like going to Home Depot and saying that if you can buy a toolbox, it makes you a skilled carpenter.
And don't get me started on swapping skill proficiencies. This isn't cyberpunk, where you can "slot in" new skills and hot-swap out others.
We don't need a thief; I am proficient with "trap-finding kits, " including chalk dust, a magnifying glass, a 10-foot pole, and a book of traps. I have a "scroll casting kit" with a lamp, a how-to book, and a lectern! Can I attempt a disarm? I am skilled in a "disarming kit" with a special dagger, glue, a net, a lever, and tongs.
Give me a fully fleshed-out skill system, please, and rip all these system dongles out of here and get them off my character sheet. Sometimes, a broken game can get patched so much that it becomes harder to play than a "complete" roleplaying game that does things right in the first place.
The one-second combat turn in GURPS is genius and simplifies play. I am not sorting through a half-dozen actions and options, bonus actions, reactions, and taking 30 minutes to figure out my turn. Oh, your sword isn't drawn? Draw it, or make a fast-draw roll and tell me what else you are doing. Done. Next?
Then, there is the whole part where I have to buy hundreds of dollars of 3rd-party books to get a few character options I need for a specific campaign.
Oh, and 5E does not support low-magic or low-power-level games at all. Specific campaign settings made for 5E (Primeval Thule, Dark Sun, and Brancalonia) were ruined by it being too high-magic or high-powered. The casters are far more potent when characters get past 6th level than the martial characters. The idea of a low-magic anything disappears as the party becomes "Gandalf, Dumbledore, and the All-Magic Avengers."
Conan sits over there with his broken-bone sword, wondering why he had ever rolled a barbarian. The magic-using party members cast the fly spell and simulate the Apocalypse Now chopper attack sequence with infinite-cast cantrips as their rocket pods and machine guns.
Only one version of 5E did low magic right (Low Fantasy Gaming), and they had to practically rewrite the game to pull it off.
GURPS does all those 5E low-magic settings far better. Martial characters define the game; magic can be put on a power level and rarity slider. I recently got the Brancalonia setting book for 5E, and I read through it. I am wondering why I would ever ruin this with the 5E rules? The book puts a level six cap on all characters, and most 5E players I know would never touch a game that limits character power like that. You are breaking my build!
GURPS, Low Tech, a few Venice PDFs, and Swashbucklers would do this setting right. Given that the setting has a theme where most combat is settled by "fisticuffs," martial arts fighting styles will probably be helpful here. Also, this setting has a concept that most gear is low quality, so on all failed attacks, defenses, and skill rolls, you will be rolling X in 6 to see if something falls off or breaks. Or just referee caveat, based on the degree of failure.
I will go into a setting, be excited, design a few 5E characters, and never play because I don't feel the characters will work well in the setting. Or the 5E characters are too much like "generic fantasy" and don't take advantage of the setting's special features and strengths. If in a "spaghetti Italian Renaissance" setting, lore, history, family ties, religion, and heraldry are important - then I will focus on those skills in GURPS.
In 5E, I only have three skills to master, and you can write off specializations. In GURPS, I can have a lore-monkey-type character who knows every family, all the ins and outs, who the local constable is, can the local guilds be trusted, what the church is up to, and tells me what faction owns what acre in what year. That character in a heavy-roleplay setting will get me much farther than a generic fighter with a short rest action surge power.
Who cares about the 5E characters at this point? I can't do anything with them except kill things when they are not trying to sleep in dungeon closets. The "fakery" of short and long rests in 5E, leading players to "video gaming" the system rather than living in a world and immersing themselves in it.
The 5E game's pen-and-paper ARPG system ruins beautifully crafted and artistic settings like the above. GURPS does this so much better, and it isn't even funny. I can play the XYZ of the ABC faction, which does DEF and knows GHI in GURPS, with a few JLK backgrounds. In 5E? I am a fighter with a subclass, maybe an elf or Dragonborn who comes from the city. I look at a character like that and think, "Yeah, this has nothing to do with the setting. Pass."
Even this book's specialized 5E character options make up for the flavorless and bland system, and the skills and passive systems will kneecap you once you get rolling. The best 5E does for this system is force you to use funny voices to read the text boxes. That is your setting flavor.
It is the difference between the authentic Italian food of GURPS and the Italian-flavored food of 5E.
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