My kids (10 & 13) and I are wrapping up our first campaign together in D&D 5e, and I’m starting to think about the next one. It’s going to be a homebrew setting–future humanity decimated by climate change, but also elements of weird magic with giant plants and insects, inspired by things like Studio Ghibli, Kipo, etc.
After watching the recent Critical Role - Tears of the Kingdom oneshot, I started tinkering with my own system (PbtA based, with lots of opportunities for inventive crafting, and a video-game-inspired skill tree rather than strict classes) which is fun, but really time-consuming.
Wondering if anyone knows of an existing system that would work well for this setting? I’d like to find something simpler than 5e (which is the only system I know well), since they mainly enjoy the story and role-playing rather than lots of number crunching and detailed rules.
I can think of three options, none are perfect, but each could be tinkered with to get what you want:
In the Light of a Ghost Star – This is much further in the future than you intend. But it has incredibly simple rules which are easy to customize. Also I made a psionics supplement for it here. I had pretty good success running it.
Mutants & Machine-guns - A loose, fairly tongue-in-cheek system. Free.
Mutant Future - Basically a cleaned up clone of early edition Gamma World. Less light than other games mentioned.
Wow, I haven’t heard of any of those. This decision is going to be harder than I thought! Thanks!
Sorcery and Super Science might work for this. It’s already most of the way there. Most characters are mutants though and all humans are sorcerers so it might not be a perfect fit
You can also try a bit of a combo move with Worlds Without Number and Stars Without Number. Both games could probably handle this by themselves, but the rules are similar enough to combine which would give you scifi and magic together
Flatpack: Fix the Future is the first game in the smash Hyperoptimistic Postapocalyptic genre of gaming. Flatpack is a game about building a new society using pre-apocalypse technology that you don’t always trust or understand, and solving terrible problems creatively.
I think Barbarians of the Aftermath could be a good fit for you. It allows to make up your own apocalypse, to customize it as you like. And it based on the simple and excellent Barbarians of Lemuria system.
How simple do you want to get? You could reduce PbtA down to a single move Defy Danger. Still works.
Mutants & Masterminds 3e – available for free online as d20herosrd.com – can do literally anything. It’s originally written for superheroes (obviously), but I’ve seen it used for D&D style fantasy, sci-fi, and so on. There is literally one single spell in all of fiction and film that I have tried to replicate in that system and not been able to (Balefire, from The Wheel of Time, because weird shit with time). It’s all the flexibility of GURPS with a fraction as much math, all the power-fantasy of D&D without the game-breaking power-loops (there are a few but they’re easy to spot and avoid). And all the complexity is front-loaded; once you get through character creation, it’s all just d20s. If you can play D&D you can play M&M.
For something less crunchy, try Fate. Whether Core or Accelerated or whatever I couldn’t tell you – I personally hate this entire family of systems – but it is very rules-light and storytelling-focused. It might suit your needs.
Trying to figure out balefire in a D&D campaign sounds horrifying… would be fun though!
Technically there is a WoT d20 version of it, but trying to shoehorn WoT into Vancian magic works about as terribly as you would expect.
Apocalypse World is a pretty good one. It’s very rules-lite and narrative focused. Players are more in control of the narrative than most RPGs; the players can declare what they want to do (e.g. “I want to drive really fast towards that group of bandits, then jump out of the truck just before it hits them, do a backflip in the air, and shoot the two on the left while the truck runs over the two on the right”), and rather than the response being “You can’t do that”, it’s typically “Okay, but”. Getting a die roll that isn’t high enough to just flat out accomplish what you were trying typically still lets you succeed, but with some caveats, which the player typically gets to make the final decision on - for instance, in the above case, you might roll a 7 (a middle-tier roll), and be told that you can choose 2 of the following: You accurately shoot the two bandits on the left, the truck kills the two on the right, you don’t hurt yourself when you land, and your gun doesn’t explode.
Recently I’ve tried Blades in the Dark which from my perspective ticks a lot of your boxes. Simpler than D&D for sure, similar to PbtA in terms of rolls and character sheets, and set in a post-apocalyptic world (albeit Victorian era).
Other than that I love the flexibility of Savage Worlds with its kind of simple rules and many many different extensions for different settings. Good base for tinkering imho.
And of course if you mention PbtA, why not go with Apocalypse World?
Interesting, BitD has come up a few times as I’ve been trying to research other systems. I’d better check it out. Apocalypse World would take a lot of censoring from what I’ve seen of the character sheets! I do really like the flexibility and leveling options of Savage Worlds, so that’s definitely a contender. Thanks!
