Call of Cthulhu vibes here. Some rolls you want to fail, because you’re better off not knowing.

Word. I’m trying to follow CR, watch through Drakkenheim, and start Oxventure. But my Drakkenheim watching has been on pause for two months and I only manage to keep up with the one odd OX games like BitD and Deadlands.

Yeah, I think if I do end up playing it’ll be the newest version. I have the patience for crunchy systems but most of the people I play with don’t. And the thought of playing anything more complex than 5e with some of them terrifies me.

Star wars FFG and Deadlands. I love the flavor of both. I doubt I’ll ever play star wars, but some of my current groups will probably give deadlands a try.

If I’ve got intelligent enemies with ranged attacks they’re absolutely going for that thing once it makes its utility known. Though it’s not like they generally do much with their reactions anyway.

Toss them a minor magic item. Prep while they squabble over who should take it for 30-60 minutes.

In 3 months, you’ll forget they have it and they’ll use it to completely bypass a 4 hour combat you planned, leaving you in the exact fake boat you are now but even worse.

But that’s a problem for future you.

I’ve got 4 groups.

Groups 1 and 2 are small groups made of friends and we handle everything over text. We do tend to have a lot of “hey, are we playing today?” texts on the day of.

Group 3 started as a work game and has a larger group with less consistency of who shows up week to week. We use discord. Creating events, hosting lore, and places to stash special/homebrew rules is nice.

Group 4 is a west marches-ish game with about 10 players. Discord for that also, though once a group is set for a couple sessions we switch from the discord channel to a group message for communication.

I’ve used Teams in the past as well but I find discord to be better for managing the various things I need to organize a game.

It’s not malicious. I just can’t resist the trope of having that epic spider v. praying mantis battle that’s comparably totally inconsequential at standard scale. Makes me giggle.

I mean, if the first clip didn’t sell me on it, this one did

Kobolds play minion based puzzle games, where individual units are super expendable. Pikmin, Lemmings, Overlord, etc.

Gnomes have incredibly realistic flight simulators and spreadsheet management sims life Football Manager and Eve

Dragonborn lack a well defined cultural niche so they get nothing.

So it’s not exactly that, but if you want a rhythm game with some more nuance, Before the Echo is awesome.

You’ve got 3 different screens (mana gathering, spell casting, and enemy attacks) and you need to balance which you’re prioritizing at any time. Mana is needed to cast spells, spells are needed to defeat the enemy, but you need to block their attacks to not lose all your HP. Each one goes different parts of he music, and as a bonus all the music is from Ronald Jenkees.

It’s old, and while funny is also sometimes very cringey, but still a terrific bit of fun.

My favorite little twist is that rolling your number results in “laser feelings”, which instructs the DM to reveal something important to the PC.

It’s basically a narrative shove forward every time it happens and keeps the game fast and fresh.

It’s my go to system for a quick one shot to introduce people to ttrpgs. Always fun, crazy, and simple to learn. And minimal work for the DM so long as you’re willing to bounce off whatever your players come up with.

I’ve run some one shots for more experienced players that have been really memorable and full of creative play, too. The simple mechanics don’t hold it back. It excels when you’re willing to “yes, and” pretty much everything.

http://www.onesevendesign.com/laserfeelings/

Also had about a billion hacks https://writingalchemy.net/resources/lasers-and-feelings-hacks/

Cars and Family provided one of my favorite games I’ve ever run

I’ve been meaning to make a statement block and encounter for this forever. I should really get around to it.

My initial thought when reading OP’s request and list of issues with other systems was that something PbtA would make sense.