honestly, this is fine. I think people within the rpg space forget that the general public largely has no idea that the space exists. they have never heard the term “tabletop role-playing game,” but they have a vague impression that “d&d” means nerds sitting around rolling dice and pretending to be in a fictional scenario, so if your game is anything like that, “kinda like d&d” is a fine descriptor for that audience
or as the famous tweet says: “guy who’s only ever seen Boss Baby watching a second movie: kinda getting Boss Baby vibes.” inaccurate or ridiculous as it may seem, if that’s the only exposure someone has to the concept of a “movie,” then using that as a jumping-off point to explain that other stories of different types can be told by pre-recorded moving images is still useful. you have to introduce the medium in general before worrying about genres within the medium, or works within the genre
JUST BECAUSE IT’S BASED ON THE D20 SYSTEM DOES NOT MEAN IT’S LIKE D&D BRIAN
sigh
I take off my robe and wizard hat.
Okay, but if your cyperpunk RPG has “d20 plus modifier vs target number” action resolution, 4-8 ability scores, skill bonuses, feats, classes, races/ancestries/backgrounds… You’re going to need to explain how it’s NOT like D&D. And if you proceed to describe PbtA, I will laugh at you.
I won’t shame you for being like D&D. I will shame you for pretending you’re not.
It depends what you mean by “like d&d”. I’ve heard the phrase is used by different groups to mean:
- Has a generic fantasy setting
- Has similar mechanics to d&d
- Has bad mechanics
- Has dice mechanics
- Is mostly about fighting
- Is a trad game
- Is not a story game
- Is an RPG
- Is not cool
As someone who recently started a GURPS game set in Cyberpunk 2077… nope! Been some really rough spots introducing it to my table that’s been running Pathfinder for over a decade
Has it been a fun campaign? Been kind of scared of GURPS but I love the idea. Tried Fate as universal system but it’s not that great.
Only started a couple weeks ago so we’ve had 2 sessions. Too early to tell, but it’s taken me a LOT of work to read through several books, decide which rules to go with or ignore, make a document to copy those rules to, and go through the character creation. And even then, I screwed up several things. I feel like it’s probably a good system, but the barrier to entry is something the writers need to work on substantially. If my game takes off, I’m planning on posting my document to the GURPS sublemmy, but I don’t have an ETA.
I did design the tutorial mission on the first level of Hotline Miami though.
This is exactly how i feel anytime i hear the phrase souls-like
So, like Gamma World?
