Thoughts on Fantasy TTRPG Design:
I think, as a player and a GM and a designer, I would prefer one game for exploration & survival & dungeon crawling, and other for Heroic Fantasy rather than one game that doesn’t really do either well.
1/ Some folks bounced of Strongholds & Followers and I now realize it's because I was taking a bunch of house rules from the Survival/Exploration era, which is much more about Individual Achievement, but they were using 5E for Heroic Fantasy which is more team-based.
2/— Matt Colville? (@mattcolville) July 2, 2021
In other words, even my ideas of DOWNTIME are based in a specific style of play (survival/exploration). Heroic Fantasy is more about being a team and saving the world.
3/? I had a lot more thoughts on this but I couldn't figure out how to organize them into tweets.— Matt Colville? (@mattcolville) July 3, 2021
But I think basically I've decided no game can do both well.
— Matt Colville? (@mattcolville) July 3, 2021
Do you think it’s at least possible to make the core game system the same at least? Like using same stats, die rolls, etc, but use different classes and checks for the different systems, or would that still hamstring one or the other too much? I dunno, I don't think I would accept that as a design challenge. I would want each game to be free to be the best version of that game and if that means different stats? Different ways of tracking hit points? So be it.
— Matt Colville? (@mattcolville) July 3, 2021
Is 4e a good example of heroic fantasy? 100%
— Matt Colville? (@mattcolville) July 3, 2021