Fate, another great “do all” system with like 2 pages of rules, and mitigation against the dice, you can decide to take a malus now to be able to have a bonus later. Though it’s not combat focused, but that usually means you can develop your encounters more rather than use braindead agressive enemies all the time, and make combat to the death only a last resort.
Fate is much more my jam when it comes to “rework for everything” systems. It fits narrative elements with mechanics without being constraining.
Whenever I play PBTA I keep bouncing against the limits of the system because most of them are laser focused on emulating some sort of narrative genre, and often I want more from my characters than to just play out a selected arrangement of tropes. And as a GM I occasionally feature quests that pull from entirely different genres.
I really like Fate and hope to one day find a group that clicks with it. It avoids many of the tropes I’m tired of in D&D.
But in my experience it does need players who are going to do more than phone it in. Passive players can really drag it down. “I dunno I hit him with my sword” kind of works in D&D but not very well in Fate.
Some more freeform systems:
Fate, another great “do all” system with like 2 pages of rules, and mitigation against the dice, you can decide to take a malus now to be able to have a bonus later. Though it’s not combat focused, but that usually means you can develop your encounters more rather than use braindead agressive enemies all the time, and make combat to the death only a last resort.
Hillfolk, more like theater impro framework.
“2 pages of rules” 400-pages FATE rulebook next to me: Am I a joke to you?
Another shoutout for Fate! It’s great
Fate is much more my jam when it comes to “rework for everything” systems. It fits narrative elements with mechanics without being constraining.
Whenever I play PBTA I keep bouncing against the limits of the system because most of them are laser focused on emulating some sort of narrative genre, and often I want more from my characters than to just play out a selected arrangement of tropes. And as a GM I occasionally feature quests that pull from entirely different genres.
I really like Fate and hope to one day find a group that clicks with it. It avoids many of the tropes I’m tired of in D&D.
But in my experience it does need players who are going to do more than phone it in. Passive players can really drag it down. “I dunno I hit him with my sword” kind of works in D&D but not very well in Fate.