Yes, I want my players to roleplay. The issue I have with pf2 and 5e is that they require way more work to get into a decent balance between combat, roleplaying and exploration. Often ending up very combat heavy and characters that "excel" at non-combat encounters end up trivializing them instead.
These dice rolls end up replacing roleplaying instead of enhancing it. In addition because of the rules interactions, poor wording and power creep in these systems the ability for GMs to avoid burn out is low. I don't like them because they are toxic to new gamemasters, I have no technical issue running them. I ran several long campaigns in 5e, 3.5 and pf1. I don't have burn out issues with Hackmaster, WFRP, Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu, WoD, Ryuutama, ... . It's purely a problem with recent d20 player option focused systems and it will only get worse with more WotC and Paizo releases.
My GMing is fine. I make mistakes at times and don't always follow my own best practices. But I run fun games in many systems easily. I don't get why you are trying to gatekeep me out of the hobby. I don't like two games because they suffer from fundamental flaws born out of ivory tower game design. If you can't see those flaws, that's you.
Maybe I should make my point clear. Players love 5e and PF2, GMs learn to hate them or quit. Because they are only noob friendly to players, not GMs. It's why homebrew games are less common in them and typically only run by veteran GMs. I literally do not care how hard players have it to learn a system. Players always have a GM to support them, it's trivial to teach a player. Teaching a new GM is frustrating when 5e and pf2 teach bad habits like everything is combat or a pass/fail roll.
Why is everyone here so bad at reading? I specifically am calling out PF2 for being designed as if it was a video game. I am saying Paizo doesn't understand the medium of RPGs, because they don't.
Where did I say I don't like dice or crunch? I literally run Hackmaster. You don't even know Hackmaster do you? Sure I don't like bloated player options that cause power creep and slow the game down. But that doesn't mean I do sloppy improv or storytell railroads like Critical Role or Dimension 20.
I've only been running rpgs 20 years. Has it occurred to you that you don't like rpgs if you just play 5e or PF2. Are you even a gamemaster?
No. I use different ways to resolve social conflicts based on what the situation is. Sometimes that's rolling dice, sometimes it's talking in character and sometimes it's in-between stuff. Stop trying to shove me into some stereotype. Are you going to stereotype me as a Hackmaster gm? A Keeper? An ultraviolet? A storyteller?
I don't expect pf2 players to understand my point of view, especially non-gamemasters.
No, I dislike games like pf2 because the MDA framework they have designed is detrimental to the medium of roleplaying games. Because the mechanics encourage players to use PC in non-diegetic dynamics crippling the aesthetics of any setting or genre.
Can you read? I hate the bloat. I play games that are not bloated. I played these games for years and found that I dislike the game philosophies they have. Those game philosophies directly result in bloat.
It's not the complexity. It's the bloat, terrible interactions and game dynamics. 3.5 didn't suffer from gm burn out, but 5e does. Because 5e is a bigger mess.
Have you ever played with new players? I've ran non-dnd with new players several times. Including systems like Call of Cthulhu. Objectively speaking Cthulhu (BRP) is pretty rules light and my players had no trouble learning it. They just said what they wanted to do and I told them what to roll. They start to find the freedom in the system and get more creative. And a similar situation happens when I run more complex systems. I honestly have no clue what you are worried about. Players can learn how to play these games, they aren't that hard.
Did I say I still run these games? I hate 5e, pf2, pf1 and wouldn't touch 3/3.5 again. I ran all of these in the past, except pf2 but I've played pf2 plenty to know I hate and will never run it.
I run Hackmaster and other systems (oWoD, Cthulhu, WFRP, ...) which aren't bloated messes. I just think pf1 is slightly better than pf2 because that was my experience. But that seems ridiculous to you, because you feel insulted or something. I really don't care.
It doesn't. It just conditions players towards not doing it by replacing interacting with the world with interacting with rules and dice. Which doesn't stop experienced players, but misleads new players in a video game mindset.
Yes, I've played it. And a lot of other games. PF2 balance is only okay and they had to do several annoying things to do it. Like how do you balance a mixed level party in pf2? The system really doesn't like that, because of it's number inflation.
Well they could stop gamifying RP and exploration so players actually get into character instead of just rolling dice. But that's a pretty fundamental shift, so they won't do it.
Nope, I know both. They both suck because of the required over optimization. But pf1 at least didn't have characters constantly at full hp, which is one of the biggest balance issues.
He's likely referring to the New TSR, which did make a pretty racist race section for a game. But they already are basically dead as a company, if not actually bankrupt.
The only other scandals would be WotC getting sued for labelling Adnd stuff as racist, when WotC made at least 2 books with racist art in the 2020s. Or the Zac S lawsuit, where a pornstar OSR creator was accused of stuff then won the lawsuit so easily he looks like the nice guy in porn. Reggie (LotFP) is also weird, but not the average creator. He's basically just an eccentric artist.
The OSR is way less bigotted than WotC. Hell Shadowdark was made by a lesbian and she is very well regarded even by people critical of SD as a system.
This is entirely correct. Balance does not matter in most games, because most games have resources that are depleted over a long term. You don't need balance when healing takes weeks or difficult to replace resources.
For games like 5e and pf2, where characters constantly are at full health, spells and equipment, combat needs to almost kill the party every time to be worth rolling dice.
PF2 is certainly easier to run. But tell me when it becomes a RPG, it's basically a video game system ported to tabletop. Everything is about the builds, not the characters.
PF2e is a joke. It requires reading the whole rules and planning out a character for multiple levels before making your first character. It gatekeeps the hobby worse than FATAL.
Yeah, PF1 and 3.5e are bloated as hell. But you didn't need to read all the feats for all the races before picking human fighter. Plus the people still playing those never used everything that was published.
Yes, I want my players to roleplay. The issue I have with pf2 and 5e is that they require way more work to get into a decent balance between combat, roleplaying and exploration. Often ending up very combat heavy and characters that "excel" at non-combat encounters end up trivializing them instead.
These dice rolls end up replacing roleplaying instead of enhancing it. In addition because of the rules interactions, poor wording and power creep in these systems the ability for GMs to avoid burn out is low. I don't like them because they are toxic to new gamemasters, I have no technical issue running them. I ran several long campaigns in 5e, 3.5 and pf1. I don't have burn out issues with Hackmaster, WFRP, Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu, WoD, Ryuutama, ... . It's purely a problem with recent d20 player option focused systems and it will only get worse with more WotC and Paizo releases.
My GMing is fine. I make mistakes at times and don't always follow my own best practices. But I run fun games in many systems easily. I don't get why you are trying to gatekeep me out of the hobby. I don't like two games because they suffer from fundamental flaws born out of ivory tower game design. If you can't see those flaws, that's you.
Maybe I should make my point clear. Players love 5e and PF2, GMs learn to hate them or quit. Because they are only noob friendly to players, not GMs. It's why homebrew games are less common in them and typically only run by veteran GMs. I literally do not care how hard players have it to learn a system. Players always have a GM to support them, it's trivial to teach a player. Teaching a new GM is frustrating when 5e and pf2 teach bad habits like everything is combat or a pass/fail roll.