"Maybe D&D isn't for you..."

[Schwann145]

When people have complaints/issues/etc with D&D, very often the answer is suggestions to try other games, as something else might suit their tastes better.

I don't disagree at all. However...

Do the people who offer this advice realize how unhelpful it actually is?
For instance, my favorite RPG is Legend of the Five Rings. I'm part of communities of that game/setting, and I couldn't even begin to tell you how to find a game to join. Unless you're offering to run one, you're pretty much SOL, and people looking for a new game are certainly not prepared to run it!

And L5R is not a particularly unknown IP. It's pretty popular for a non-D&D game! Imagine games with even less recognition?
For instance, I'm incredibly interested in trying the 2d20 Conan RPG. I've purchased the rulebook, read through it enough to have a basic grasp of the game, and I think it looks outstanding for the type of game I'd love to play.
And I'm sure I'll never get to play it. I've never seen or heard of any groups playing, let alone advertising open spots, and that's with actively looking!

D&D is THE game. It takes up about 92% of the gaming community's attention, with World of Darkness taking up about 6% of the leftovers.
So while finding a different game might be the right advice, I feel like that alone is never good advice.

"Not happy with D&D? Maybe try and find another game that no one else is playing and you'll probably never find a game for."
How is that helpful?
Am I alone in thinking this?

[Lord Raziere]

I know this pain, man.

I'm an Exalted fan. I'm lucky if I find a game at all.

I like Anima Beyond Fantasy. finding any person willing to run this is a rare find.

I have a bunch of fate games I'll never get to play.

Legends of Wulin will never happen because people prefer to force DnD into being wuxia using supplements.

and when will I ever play Tenra Bansho Zero?

I have a bunch of pdfs that all are good for are reading and probably use as inspiration to write books from because no one's willing to actually play or run them, because DnD not being for someone is only half the problem, the other half is making the other option viable at all against the "I don't want to learn a new system" inertia. if that is the attitude to being asked to play it with me in return, what use is acknowledging that DnD isn't for me? whats the use if no one is willing to pull the other end? this kind of a thing is a two-way street, you can't just tell others to walk down it without making steps yourself.

[Yora]

The most useless advice in RPGs.

There are some other classic stinkers, but this one beats them all.

[Batcathat]

Yeah, it's probably not very helpful advice in a lot of cases, but I also think the opposite can be a problem – where some people stick to D&D no matter how much they have force it into something it's not designed for.

As a Swede, I suppose I haven't had this specific problem as much, since D&D isn't really the RPG here the way it is in other parts of the world, but the basic issue of getting people to play less prominent systems is probably universial.

[Tanarii]

Given that the vast majority of the time the advice is being offered to someone thinking about starting a new campaign with a pre-existing group of players, ie the GM, asking for advice on how to make D&D do something it's incredibly unsuited for, it's usually perfectly applicable and useful advice. Provided, and this is a big caveat, the GM can sell the group on trying a non-D&D system. Easier said than done.

Also for those few times it's suggested to someone looking to be a player, gameshops have folks running non-D&D games all the time. Provided you're playing a current game. I do often see games more than 5-10 years old suggested, and that's not going to work out for someone looking to play. Like, it's unlikely anyone will run Savage Worlds any more. But IIRC there were talks about spinning up a Blades in the Dark campaigns at game stores I frequented before they had to shut down, and Lancer will almost certainly get one eventually.

[Berenger]

According to a 2021 survey, it looks more like this in Germany:

"Which systems are you playing right now?"

D&D 39,95%
Others 38%
The Dark Eye 38,3%
Call of Cthulhu 25,1%
Shadowrun 24,6%
World of Darkness 15,3%
Homebrew Systems 15,2%
Pathfinder 14,6%
Splittermond 11,7%
Star Wars (various systems) 11,7%
Warhammer 8,7%
Powered by the Apocalypse 8,4%
Fate 7,3%
Savage Worlds 7,0%
17 other listed systems between 4,8% and 1,0%, not included in "Others".


This corresponds to my personal experience as well, as my group of friends tried 15+ systems over about as many years and we had at least one long campaign in several of them (d20 Modern, The Dark Eye, Scion, Star Wars, WoD Vampire, HackMaster, Stars Without Number). Most of the time it's literally just "Hey guys, would you like to check out this great new RPG I bought / got for christmas / read an article about?" "Yeah, okay, bring the books and we'll give it a try." As a matter of fact, I just asked our GM to check out the new Vaesen RPG and tell me if he'd like that as a present for his next birthday. Before I read Yoras comment, I'd have said that this is a fairly typical experience over here. So, it's sometimes hard to remember that this is just not an option for everybody.

[Eldan]

Yeah, that's the case for me too. I've never in my life met a mono-system player. All the RPG-affiliated people I know have at least three systems at home and have probably played a lot more. That said, all the players I know are older and have had more time to experiment. Also, they all played for many years before the current D&D boom.

(If anything, as a teenager and in my 20s, I had problems finding anyone who wanted to play D&D. It had a bad reputation around here and my problem was I never liked DSA.)

[Batcathat]

Yeah, that's the case for me too. I've never in my life met a mono-system player. All the RPG-affiliated people I know have at least three systems at home and have probably played a lot more. That said, all the players I know are older and have had more time to experiment. Also, they all played for many years before the current D&D boom.

Yeah, this is similar to my experience. While not everyone is interested in every single system, most people I know are at least open to the idea of trying something new.

[Satinavian]

Personally i have slightly lost interest in new systems.

I have played so many ... you would have to make a good argument what this new thing can do that all the others can not. And that has to be something i like.

[KorvinStarmast]

Given that the vast majority of the time the advice is being offered to someone thinking about starting a new campaign with a pre-existing group of players, ie the GM, asking for advice on how to make D&D do something it's incredibly unsuited for, it's usually perfectly applicable and useful advice. Provided, and this is a big caveat, the GM can sell the group on trying a non-D&D system. Easier said than done.

We started a Tunnels and Trolls (5th edition) game a few years ago, thanks to an adventurous GM, but our problem was that other than me, the other five players basically never showed up two weeks in a row. It's all well and good to talk about starting a new group, but if people won't {scrubbed} show up any DM/GM will eventually let the game die due to a lack of player buy in. Unsurprisingly, one of those same players was in our CoS D&D campaign and ended up bailing out on us. (But the silver lining to that cloud was that Kurt Kurageous joined our on line group. )

Same GM has offered to start a Blades in the Dark game in a couple of months. I got the books from DTRPG and am hoping this one does not go the way that T & T did.

Game shops? The one near where I live closed during COVID and was barely staying alive before that.
FLGS for me simply isn't an option for the next year or two, at best.

[Berenger]

Personally i have slightly lost interest in new systems.

I have played so many ... you would have to make a good argument what this new thing can do that all the others can not. And that has to be something i like.

Understandable - the more systems you know, the lesser the probability that a new one will offer radically different oportunities. But I'd hazard a guess that you wouldn't be content with picking one of these systems and using it for everything, forever. That is, unless you are a die-hard GURPS fan.

[Thrudd]

This is perfectly reasonable advice, in general. The specifics of any person's situation may make it less useful. If you're a player searching for new games at public venues - it may not always be actionable, but it is still useful advice. At least you'll know to be on the lookout for games run in those systems people here are recommending to you, even if it's less than 1% of GMs that might be running it. You might never see the game being recommended, but at least now you know it exists, right?

If you're a GM, it is also perfectly good advice to recommend a system that is designed to do the things you want to do. If you have players who obstinately refuse to try anything other than D&D, and you know that because you've tried many times to convince them to try different systems, that's information you might want to give when bringing your concerns to the forum.

If you're a GM looking to recruit new players from public venues, it doesn't hurt to offer to run a system other than D&D. True, you might not get much interest depending on the venue you've chosen and your location, but you never know until you try. If, after a while, there's not enough interest, just go back to offering to run D&D. Every chance you get, offer to run the new system. If you find a consistent group, and they come to enjoy your DMing, your chances of convincing them to try the new thing will likely increase.

Of course, the way the advice is presented is sometimes what causes distaste, when the advice giver comes off as condescending or treats someone's concerns and questions as illegitimate, or gives this advice without actually fully reading and comprehending the situation presented. But that doesn't only apply to this particular piece of advice, that's across the board. It's more a problem of people not really paying attention to what the other is saying, and offering useless advice because they haven't grasped the actual concern.

[Easy e]

Wargaming has this same problem, but with Games Workshop games being the dominant game.

Unless you are willing to be the GM, then you are mostly SOL.

[Vahnavoi]

D&D being the only game around the block is self-created and self-perpetuated problem. The solution is and has always been for people to pick up & hold games that aren't D&D. There are no shortcuts. As Tanarii noted, the advice is most commonly targeted at prospecting game masters, not people who never hold games of their own. If you are one of the people who never hold games, maybe it's time to consider changing that. If you insist on not holding games, then yes, the advice may become unworkable. That doesn't make the advice bad.

[Willie the Duck]

"Not happy with D&D? Maybe try and find another game that no one else is playing and you'll probably never find a game for."
How is that helpful?
Am I alone in thinking this?

I think there are a few key issues I think come into play with this.

Firstly, I tend to think of this as the equivalent of the old IT advice of 'Have you tried turning it off and turning it on again?' -- it is frustrating to hear, unhelpful in many many instances, but at the end of the day, a non-trivial number (sufficient to make the potential for frustration worthwhile) of people are served by the advice. People (often highly competent people who know their way around a computer) don't reboot their computers, are certain that that is not the issue, and are resistant to doing so... right up until the IT help desk person requires it as a next step and it solves the problem. There isn't an exact parallel for D&D with RPGs, but it's probably true that, in 1 case out of X, trying a different game to accomplish goal Y was the right answer and person Z has the option to do so, but was so stuck in the D&D framing that this wasn't registering.

Second, there is the issue of what each person's game-group situation looks like. As an example, I have two main groups, and then on occasion check out the FLGS. One group is, effectively, '[current edition] D&D and only D&D and no we don't want to have to learn a new system and yes we will constrain what types of games we run to keep that going,' while the other is more, 'Oh, next campaign, let's try a <genre/style> campaign using <specific game system>.' The FLGS is mostly 5e, but you can also find several other games being played (so you can't go there and find a specific other game group, but you can find groups with other games, and if you would be willing to GM system X, you probably could get together enough people interested in it to get an at-least-12-session campaign run). If someone's experience of gaming groups is closer to the first situation, 'have you tried not-D&D?' is unhelpful. If it is the second, it is helpful (although you probably would have already thought of that). If the third, it would depend (and be most helpful if you can GM the thing). I think differences in how realistic the second situation is probably drives a lot of the difference in whether one considers the advise helpful.

Thirdly, I think part of this might be aspirational/idealistic/thinking towards the way things 'ought' to be. After all, D&D will always be the majority of many TTRPG markets right up until a critical mass of people decide that they can use a different system that better fits their goals and set about shifting the market and player base. I think there are a lot of gamers who would really like that to happen (especially, to be fair, if someone else can do the heavy lifting). Also it is very easy to interpret someone else's problems as made up of perfectly spherical cows and thus the theoretically 'right' answer to be appropriate.

Those are the situations where I think these responses are genuine attempts at being helpful. Of course there is a fourth situation, which are people that... well, just aren't. Be that because they are viewing the situation through the lens of 'you are complaining about something being the way I like it, clearly you are the problem,' to merely (mistakenly, but perhaps backed by past experience) assuming that this is just another axe-grinding session in the guise of advice-seeking.

I wouldn't hazard a guess on the actual numbers, but I would bet on #3 is the largest category (just imagine a fellow gamer nerd staring at the computer going, "Whatdya mean unhelpful? The best way to get D&D to emulate this thing that L5R does well is to use L5R in the first place! Why is that not the right answer?!?").

So while finding a different game might be the right advice, I feel like that alone is never good advice.

I think that's it in a nutshell. I think, for a number of people, 'Don't give me the right advice, give me what would be good advice' is, if not a non-starter, at least an unusual framing that would kinda require per-thread prefacing of the question with such a disclaimer. If you have a question, and include, "and yes, I know there are plenty of TTRPGs which already have this functionality. Unfortunately that's not an option open to me in this case," and people still answer with 'play not-D&D instead,' then yes they are being systematically unhelpful. Even then, it's entirely possible that they are really (poorly communicated) saying, "okay, wow. Yeah, I got nothing. My advise would be 'play not-D&D instead,' but you excluded that option, so I really don't have anything to add except point out what my advice would have been." Why bother posting then? Good question.

[Tanarii]

Game shops? The one near where I live closed during COVID and was barely staying alive before that.
FLGS for me simply isn't an option for the next year or two, at best.

Agreed, it's not currently a solid option. Also I sometimes forget not everyone lives in a big city with multiple game shops in spitting distance.

[Jervis]

I’m of the opposite opinion. Getting more people to try new games chips away at DnD’s lead in the west and will make it easier to find other games. Sometimes that means running games yourself to see if you find anyone else who wants to run one for you.

[NRSASD]

Having grown up playing AD&D and being the primary DM for our gaming circle of about 20 people, I’m eager to try new things. That said, our one campaign in Blades in the Dark got the most backhanded compliment I’ve heard. I played it with my veteran crew, and after 3 months I asked their verdict.

“We love it! The world, the characters, everything, except the ruleset. It would work better in D&D.”

[halfeye]

There are also games that aren't RPGs.

[KorvinStarmast]

If you are one of the people who never hold games, maybe it's time to consider changing that. If you insist on not holding games, then yes, the advice may become unworkable. That doesn't make the advice bad.

Amen, deacon.

That said, our one campaign in Blades in the Dark got the most backhanded compliment I’ve heard. I played it with my veteran crew, and after 3 months I asked their verdict.

“We love it! The world, the characters, everything, except the ruleset. It would work better in D&D.”

Laughed, I did, out loud.

[Lord Raziere]

There are also games that aren't RPGs.

well yeah, but speaking as a videogamer and roleplayer, no amount of playing them can replace or substitute what you want to roleplay. they're fundamentally different experiences and pleasures. my replaying of Skyrim and New Vegas has nothing to do with me wanting to someday play an Infernal Exalted or Getimian. playing Stellaris is fundamentally different from actually roleplaying a star empire. they're designed to hit different parts of brain, so they can't really be compared.

[kyoryu]

I think it's, in general, good advice, but you need to be aware that circumstances vary.

To get people to play other games, I find this works:

1. Accept some people don't want to
2. Be willing to run games
3. Find a pool of players - FLGS, meetup, online, friends, club, whatever.
4. Propose a one shot or at most a short arc of 2-3 sessions
5. Be willing to play with who wants to play, unless you kick them for disruption reasons

In most cases, it's very possible. It's only hard if you can't budge on who you play with ("must be my friends!") or how you play ("can't be online!"). One-shots are always a good idea for new stuff, as the commitment level is much lower, especially if you can provide characters. "Show up one saturday for three hours" is a lot lower commitment than "commit to this every tuesday for a year".

[Satinavian]

I agree.

The best way to get other people to run system X for you is to run system X yourself first. Getting players for a niche system is easier than finding GMs for that niche system. But after you ran a campaign, you know several people who are familiar the rules and if your campaign was not a failure, even some who like the system. Chances are good that one of them would be willing to run the next campaign.

[Alcore]

I have played so many ... you would have to make a good argument what this new thing can do that all the others can not. And that has to be something i like.

If for a real life game my go to argument; It is what your friends will be playing

[Jervis]

“We love it! The world, the characters, everything, except the ruleset. It would work better in D&D.”

This is gonna seem weird for a guy who comments mostly in the dnd forums but the idea that X would work better in dnd always makes me irrationally angry. You don’t realize how much those rules morph and break your setting until you stop and think about it. A lot of the “fixes” you need to use dnd to run setting outside of heroic mid-high fantasy all have the problem of creating more issues the more you change. That’s because the problems you’re fixing aren’t so much bugs as they are features, and changing those features means you need to change everything. It’s like using a saw to hammer a nail, it can do it but you aren’t gonna have a easy time. The adventuring day is a good example of this where no matter what you’re doing 4-6 medium to hard difficulty encounters will show up between long rests or else the class balance just stops working.

[False God]

I mean, you're not wrong but...

What other option is there? D&D can only be stretched so far to accommodate certain alternate modes of play, and the further you stretch it, the fewer players you find.

Frankly, I find it's worse than you present. It's not that D&D takes up 90% of the conversation, but 70% of D&D is aimed at shallow, short PUG games. Even looking for a game where you aren't following this year's campaign release or this season's AL or some kind of long-term game you can really invest in and make some friends with is just as hard as finding a game in an entirely different system.

At least suggesting "play something else" expands the potential player pool of "something else". And getting into different systems usually makes you more likely to get into even more new systems. Which if nothing else expands your concept of what a good game could look like.

[farothel]

The last time I played D&D was 3.5 back in 2015 (I don't even have any v4 or v5 books). Of course, I've played Pathfinder, which has similar mechanics. I must admit I've been playing in a highly stable group for almost 20 years now and we often try new things, or get our old stuff back out when someone makes a campaign in it. I've GMed Alternity and Star Trek (also one of the old systems) quite recently (at least after we did the D&D) and currently we have an Alien campaign, a Pathfinder 2.0 campaign and a L5R campaign running with our group (we switch GM duties so everybody can play at times). We had a Vampire Dark Ages and the Pendragon campaign, but those seemed to have stopped.

I think it's a question of asking around and forums like this can help in finding people (or playing online). A lot of game systems have their own, specific, forum and those can also help.

[Jay R]

Do the people who offer this advice realize how unhelpful it actually is?

This advice is quite helpful, but only if you follow it to its correct conclusion.

For instance, my favorite RPG is Legend of the Five Rings. I'm part of communities of that game/setting, and I couldn't even begin to tell you how to find a game to join. Unless you're offering to run one, you're pretty much SOL, and people looking for a new game are certainly not prepared to run it!

Bingo! If you want the game you're playing to change, then you should be the one to change it. You should offer to run the game you want all your friends to play.

This is no different from saying that if you want ice cream, then you should go get ice cream.

"Not happy with D&D? Maybe try and find another game that no one else is playing and you'll probably never find a game for."
How is that helpful?
Am I alone in thinking this?

Don't find a game for it; make a game for it.

Run the game for your group. Emphasize the parts you love. Make them love it too. Eventually, one of them may start to run it, or hear about another game nearby somebody is running.

I have gotten to play Flashing Blades a few times. But the referees who ran it all played in my game first. I ran original D&D for some friends about ten years ago -- then I got to play it for awhile. I have a group right now that I want to play 3.5e with -- so I'm DMing it for them to teach it to them. I've played Chivalry & Sorcery, run by somebody whom I introduced to the system. I've played Champions after running it. I got to play Fantasy Hero after introducing somebody to it. [It doesn't always work. I have run TOON and Pendragon and never gotten to play them.]

But it's the only method that is likely to work -- for all the reasons you documented.

And it's not just RPGs. I get to fence with a lot of people that I taught how to fence.

When you want change to happen, you need to be the change.

[NRSASD]

Amen, deacon.
Laughed, I did, out loud.

That answer still makes me laugh. I wasn’t insulted, just deeply amused. Oh well!

This is gonna seem weird for a guy who comments mostly in the dnd forums but the idea that X would work better in dnd always makes me irrationally angry. You don’t realize how much those rules morph and break your setting until you stop and think about it. A lot of the “fixes” you need to use dnd to run setting outside of heroic mid-high fantasy all have the problem of creating more issues the more you change. That’s because the problems you’re fixing aren’t so much bugs as they are features, and changing those features means you need to change everything. It’s like using a saw to hammer a nail, it can do it but you aren’t gonna have a easy time. The adventuring day is a good example of this where no matter what you’re doing 4-6 medium to hard difficulty encounters will show up between long rests or else the class balance just stops working.

I totally hear that. In my case, I’ve grown up using heavily modified rule sets already, so I’m not shy of reworking things. For example, I’m currently running a French Revolution game using the D&D 5E rules and it works great. Rather than a class, I built 4 lists of feats (most of which were class features from 5E that fit the theme), then told the players to pick one from each. That way, instead of building a bunch of new classes, I had 1 that could be specced into 10. From there, it was easy enough to tweak the weapons, the bad guys, and blam, done.

Point of the matter is, 5E’s d20 ruleset is extremely versatile and useable for basically anything that deals with individual characters (vehicles, groups, or other things not so much). You just need to recreate the things that are connected to it if you want to make it work for you. Is it a lot of work? Yes, but not more than setting a campaign up, plus your players can drop right in with no rule explanations, which in my group is worth a ton.

[halfeye]

well yeah, but speaking as a videogamer and roleplayer, no amount of playing them can replace or substitute what you want to roleplay. they're fundamentally different experiences and pleasures. my replaying of Skyrim and New Vegas has nothing to do with me wanting to someday play an Infernal Exalted or Getimian. playing Stellaris is fundamentally different from actually roleplaying a star empire. they're designed to hit different parts of brain, so they can't really be compared.

There are still more games outside those.

I like Go, I'd sort of maybe like to play contract bridge if it wasn't deadly serious (which I don't know it is, but I don't know that I know anyone who plays), there are sports.

Nothing's for everyone, people can play whatever they want.