A couple of possible games

D&D 5e with Witch+Craft

D&D is the classic fantasy ttrpg and it’s standard style of gameplay involves a lot of killing “evil” things and taking their stuff. Which, besides being a bit boring, is somewhat problematic. So I’ve been thinking of running a game that explicitly avoids being this based on the Witch+Craft supplement and some house rules.

The Witch+Craft supplement is all about making things using a kind of creative positive form of magic that is accessible to all. The crafting system is supposed to be more open and free form, focussed on building things for others or the community and less about making the best gear for yourself. This combined with some house rules that make combat less lethal and changes the reward/xp mechanics should hopefully result in a game that’s not about killing things and taking their stuff.

However in my opinion tactical combat is a core part of D&D and if you’re going to do away with it you might as well play something entirely different. But it should be possible to still have this aspect of the game by: make surrender/fleeing the default outcome of a fight, provide opponents that are ethically okay to destroy (undead, demons, mindless creatures, etc), and create tactical challenges that are strictly speaking not a fight.

The premise of the story and the setting should be made up by the group collectively. Though for the setting I imagine some kind of frontier society consisting of a series of small settlements that lie in the shadows of the ruins of some ancient civilization.

Cortex Prime

Cortex Prime is a modular generic ttrpg system and could in principle be used to run any story you want. It is closer to Fate than D&D in the sense that it’s rules tend to model how a story works.

There is this idea for a game I’ve had for a while now that might work well with this system. An urban fantasy type game about people being trapped in a slowly unfolding supernatural disaster trying to figure out what is going on while the government is being no help at all. (An idea blatantly stolen from Devil Survivor games.) It’d start with the characters finding out that the government is blocking entrance/exit from whatever community/neighbourhood they’re in and over time things would get more weird, supernaturally and apocalyptically.

Ironsworn

Ironsworn is a recent powered by the apocalypse game about multicultural viking types trying to survive in a harsh new land after fleeing their old homes due to some disaster or something. The game has the standard powered by the apocalypse move based system but all the moves are very comprehensive and provide a lot of structure for playing the kind of game it is supposed to be. It is possible to play this game without a GM (hence all the need for a clear structure) but it can still be played with one, in which case it is probably a pretty good system for a more improvisational player-driven type game.

The standard setting of Ironsworn is a low-magic slightly more gritty affair about surviving in a harsh mysterious land. Most of the details are left up to the group through a series of questions about the setting that the group ought to answer in session zero. But one of the important constants is the religious significance of Iron and oaths being sworn on Iron being rather significant. (Swearing oaths is a central part of the game’s mechanics. It’s how the players steer the direction of the story and how character advancement occurs.)

Also the core rules of Ironsworn are released under a creative commons license and available here.

Forged in Darkness

In my opinion Forged in darkness games are characterised by two things: a rigid downtime / mission structure with different rules for each type of play and a story that puts the individual characters second to the group they belong to (including a playbook/class for the group itself). The result is a system that is really well structured to tell the kinds of stories it is supposed to tell and a system that works well with groups that vary in size from session to session. (Cause each mission is supposed to happen within a single session.) I have a couple of forged in darkness games.

There is Blades in the Dark, the original forged in darkness game, in it you play as members of a criminal gang in a weird post-apocalyptic victorianish steampunk city ruled by organised crime (with electrical ghosts). The gang earns reputation and coin by doing crime jobs (e.g. assasinations, heists, smuggling runs, etc). The setting is somewhat reminiscent of the Dishonered games but even more fucked up with the sun being dead.

And there is Hack the Planet a cyber/climate-punk game that could be accurately described as blade runner meets twister. It’s similar to the original blades in the sense that you play as a group of criminals but instead of a fantasy city of gangs it takes place in a megacorp run city on a planet ravaged by climate change. The characters are all punk members of the underclass, climate refugees and such, who went “off grid” to survive in ways that are not strictly legal.

(Strictly speaking I’m also interested in Forged in the Marches a West Marches hack of blades. It does some interesting things and the hexcrawl style of gameplay is really appropriate for the forged in darkness system. But it’s really pre-alpha so probably more effort than it’s worth for the time being.)

Eclipse Phase

Eclipse Phase is a hard-ish sci-fi transhumanist lovecraftian existential horror post-apocalyptic game where super intelligent AIs play the role of uncaring unknowable elder gods. Humanity invented all the crazy transhumanist tech (mind uploads, ai, uplifts, etc) and spread out throughout the solar system but never quite managed to figure out ftl. Then an AI uprising (with a good helping of human infighting) managed to make the earth uninhabitable and kill off most of humanity. Now all that’s left of humanity is a couple of tens of million people who weren’t on earth when the fall happened. Basically The Expanse meets Altered Carbon.

In the default kind of game in Eclipse Phase the players characters are all members of Firewall a clandestine organisation with the aim of preventing another (probably final) fall from ever happening again through whatever means necessary. This would probably involve investigating strange occurrences/rumours and containing anything that might pose a threat to humanity. Another style of play is a gatecrashing campaign where the players explore alien worlds through Pandora gates (basically stargates but more existential horrory).

Also it’s released under a creative commons license, which is really cool, one of the authors has made all the pdfs available online.

One major drawback (besides me not having any really good ideas for a plot or anything) is that by virtue of it’s theme this game would push boundaries most ttrpgs don’t push. Expect existential dread, body horror, brain washing and all kinds of other fucked up stuff. So it might not be for everybody.