i'm going to talk shit about d&d for a second, because theres a recent dicebreaker article about how nakedly soulless it is. i'm putting that under a tag because you probably don't need that negativity in your life.
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The executives are less worried about design than installing more on-ramps for players to spend their money. Williams mentioned that while dungeon masters comprise roughly 20% of the D&D player base, they make up “the largest share of our paying players”. An investment in digital, she posits, will allow Wizards of the Coast to “unlock the type of recurrent spending you see in digital games”.
it's already hilarious to watch the contortions brand-loyalty drones snap and crack their bones twisting into to defend why it's easier/cheaper to spend $150 on three core books that are like one third "have your GM wing it" by volume, but i can't wait to see them trying to maintain it when it's a monthly subscription fee for each involved player!
every other game on the market is a single pdf at $30 max, and many are written with love and care by someone who acknowledges game design has advanced since 1990. but why on earth would anyone want that when they could get a worse game designed by committee for five times the price ceiling?
anyway now that my rant about the bad corporate franchise choking the life out of the hobby is over, some quick tabletop recs that i am into.
free tier
- fate condensed is setting-independent and rules-light enough to be quick to learn but meaty enough to be more worthwhile than just not having rules at all.
- worlds without number does a particular one of the styles people like d&d for in a much more thoughtful and well-balanced way. there's a deluxe version for pay with some bonus stuff, and an expansion book, but the free version is genuinely everything you need to not just play it, but run it as a GM.
not free but great and worth it
- hard-wired island is thoughtful leftist cyberpunk with a sense of humor and a rich vein of hope. no one can take on the megacorps by themselves but you can help people and do cool things in a really interesting and well-detailed setting. watch for my deadname in the kickstarter backer list! i won't tell you which it is!
- lancer is a rich and meaty tactical mech combat game in an incredibly interesting and unique setting with reams of unimaginably gorgeous art. the free version is enough to play but not run, so that's why i put it in nonfree tier. it has an incredibly slick and free official online character/mech creation app that is honestly the gold fuckin standard for such things, so you don't even need an excel spreadsheet or a calculator to track your 3d-printed mech designed by a partly supernatural hacker collective that has a move with the flavor text "And RA Said Unto Themself: LET MY NAME ENVELOP YOU. SEEK NO SHELTER FROM THE FLAME OR THE TEETH OF THE BEAST. CLOAK YOURSELF IN THE FIRE OF MY WORD AND CAST BACK TO YOUR ENEMIES THAT WHICH WOULD BLACKEN YOUR FORM."
- blades in the dark is a scrappy dark fantasy heist crew game that owns bones and has spawned a zillion reskins of it in other settings because it is so good mechanically. fans of thief the dark project and dishonored and stealing everything that isn't nailed down from some asshole's townhouse in a fucked up city while covered in grime and terrified of multiple ongoing factional crises should look into this one.
- wanderhome is a beautiful game textually and mechanically of interpersonal compassion and.... listen i don't know how to describe this one very well, but it's beautiful as a game and also the cost of the pdf is worth it as a gorgeous artbook alone. packed with beauty, densely.
please take the time to play something other than d&d if you're in the tabletop hobby. there's a whole ass world out there and people who exclusively play d&d are basically hiding in a bunker staring at a postage stamp of a drawing of a sword, and thinking that's all there is. nah, at any time you can take a step out and see some fuckin' vast expanses.