the trouble with dnd is that it eating up so much psychic space in the tabletop scene means that there's some truly incredible work out there devoured by a system that just isn't very good. i have recently discovered ONE NIGHT STRAHD and it has me wanting to play dnd, which is insane, because i know how badly dnd plays on account of having played it. like check this shit out


the art style here is just miles above and beyond anything in the player's handbook—it's starker, more evocative, more gothic, and more sinister. like i've seen the curse of strahd book, i've even played a bit of it from years back, and onenight is leaps and bounds ahead of it in tone and mood, and it's just...shackled to a badly designed and deeply unbalanced system in which the optimal tactical strategy is "everyone takes two levels of The Warlock That Gets Armor, traps their foes in a spiderweb, and laser beams them to death with eldritch blast" and the optimal roleplay strategy is "boy i sure hope i have the Better At Everything Spell so i can cast it on the rogue or the bard"
