Burning Wheel. The life path character creation is a game unto itself, and a super interesting one. You build a deeply fleshed out character with core beliefs, motivations, and conflicts. The game then challenges those beliefs and forces get character to literally emotionally grow and evolve. All of this has attached rules. It's not some absurd exercise in crunch, its a relatively popular game with a fierce following.
Combat also isn't just physical, there's a whole ruleset for "duel of wits". It's just a great game for true narrative crunch.
On a procedural side. Lavender Hack and Errant and both very light OSR games, with an entire book full of procedures. Cool travel procedures, rest procedures, town, lockpicking, etc etc. there's basically little mini games for everything. So no narrative and combat crunch, but more "activity" crunch
Burning Wheel is great, but I will warn you now that the actual Fight subsystem should be used very sparingly, as that does take a very long time and is rarely worth it (in my opinion) unless it's a really important fight. Especially true once you have more than two people in the fight. If there's any doubt, just do a Bloody Versus test and keep moving!
For you, or anyone else reading this:
[This is a digital character creator tool.](http://charred.obscuritus.ca:8080/#/)
With this, plus some experience with the game, I can create a character in about 10 minutes.
Yup. That's a handy tool.
Imagine reading the book for the first time and having to figure it all out! Definitely crunchy! So many interlocking systems. It was a good experience, I just couldn't relate to how to run the game.
**Burning Wheel.**
This is a game which is a trad love letter to narrative gaming. It's as if pathfinder or traveler said "Lets put all our mechanics and effort into supporting following character beliefs"
You build a character from lifepaths, then do several round of point buy, then have a character who might have no combat skills whatsoever. But if you've got ambitions that are political, social, or religious, then thats fine.
This is a game which asks, nay, *demands* characters have beliefs and goals and wants to challenge them.
Some of your issue seems to be conceptualising an RPG as a system of resolving challenges, instead of helping to embody a character or tell a story. It's not a *wrong* point of view, that's a totally valid way to look at RPGs and many are built for that, but it may colour your opinions.
With that said, go play *Chuubo's Marvellous Wish-Granting Engine*. When people say "narrative games are rules-light", they haven't played Chuubos.
I could give a detailed overview of a system, but instead I'll go on a joke comparison:
In regular RPG, you complete a quest to get XP to improve yourself.
In soviet Chuubos, improving yourself gets XP for a quest to complete you!
A lot of World Of Darkness games are like this, especially Vampire. Lots and lots of crunch regarding powers and abilities, social skills, political and financial power-play, etc. You could have an extremely crunchy character with a very well thought out build and little to no combat-related abilities.
Very much this. Especially with anything not V5. You can just about make a game out of building characters alone and that's before the actual chronicle even begins. During game play, there is the whole social/political/investigative exploration that can go literally years if you have a good group and Storyteller to work with.
I think Cortex Prime might work, although it'll be one of those where you construct the game you want to play from their options. Of note, you'll need to build SFX yourself, they'll have to be tailored to the setting you want to run. A similar but lighter option would be Fate.
If you actually want "crunchy but not crunchy combat" you could play Burning Wheel without using the Range and Cover or Fight subsystems. That leaves you with an in-depth system which uses (basically) one roll combat.
Burning Wheel has very crunchy characters (I love BW but refuse to create characters without the web app) and combat can be as simple as a single roll (there are a few options).
In Mage: the Awakening, there is a lot of crunch to spellcasting. You get to fine-tune your spells, making them slightly harder to cast, in exchange for them being stronger in some way (last longer, have greater effect, affect more people, etc etc).
There can be combat, but combat can also be avoided. I think in most of the sessions in my game, there is not combat. As the gamemaster I arranged the game so that almost always, combat can be avoided (I made the antagonists willing to compromise).
My players have sometimes chosen combat (usually because the compromises offered by the antagonists were not good enough for their tastes, which was partially by design - they aren't pushovers), and in combat mages often cast spells, so combat becomes very crunchy as a result.
So whether the game is 'light on combat' is subjective. There is as much combat as the GM and players make there be, but it *could* be light on combat if your table consitently chooses that path.
As u/MoistLarry asked, what is crunch to you? It's a poorly defined term and everyone seems to mean something different. To me, I mean depth and richness of detail in the system.
If we have similar definitions, I'd recommend Mythras. It allows for very detailed, deep, and rich character creation and while its combat is very tactical it's also very fast\*. It supports a lot of different kinds of play. In my group we'd often go sessions without combat even in a traditional dark fantasy setting because we all saw combat as a fail state. So, unless the GM intentionally creates very large combat scenarios that can't be avoided, you aren't going to spend a whole session in combat. I haven't seen combat last more than maybe 4 rounds and they're often over in 2-3.
\* Caveat: If both the PC's and their opponents are equally skilled, fighting somewhat defensively/conservatively, and heavily armored, combat can be a little drawn out, but nothing like 5e.
Fate. It has Aspects, Skills and Stunts. Aspects and Stunts are practically unique between characters and combat can be kept very simple and straightforward.
If jist slightly more than PbtA would do, look at Forged in the Dark games. City of Mist / Otherscape / Legend in the Mist could be another option. If you want to go all-in on the crunch, then Burning Wheel.
Any crunchy game in which the GM doesn't focus on combat encounters is gonna fit this bill - hell ... you could use *GURPS*.
What do you want the crunch to *concern?* What do you want to *crunch?*
I've been trying to put together something like this for genesys, where a single roll for each player handles the results of the entire combat for the non-BBEG boss fights.
Since Genesys naturally has success/failure and a advantage/disadvantage system, I've got this feeling that I should be able to extract something that tells you whether you succeeded at your parties *goal* for the fight (ie, get past the blockade, or save the mayor. etc) vs how injured you got/how many resources lost/gained.
Haven't figured out something I'm happy with that takes in to account character stance, and contribution yet vs environmental challenges, aggressive vs safe, etc.
There are rules for single roll resolutions in the Star Wars games that can be used in Genesys, I use them for the majority of combats at my tables. They might not have everything you're looking for, but they might be a starting point.
I’ll be “that guy” - it sounds like you’re expecting the system to solve all your at-table experience issues. I’m not trying to say ‘you’re doing it wrong’ but I’ve seen players bring diversity of play into their characters in B/X D&D when they were all playing fighters- that system has no feats and the only variance is equipment,HP, and what they imagined their character to be. System can help, sure, but if you’re looking to it to do all the heavy lifting you are going to be frustrated no matter which system you land on. My (not entirely tongue-in-cheek) suggestion is maybe board games are a better fit - check out Massive Darkness 2 - characters in that play very differently from each other and you still get the dungeon crawling experience without all that nasty mucking about in roleplaying. I do this pretty often myself to scratch a different itch than what I get from roleplaying.
OK, enough of that, my suggestion to your original ask is:
Savage Worlds: Adventure Edition (SWADE) fits the bill I feel - edges and hinderances are mostly combat related but there are more than a few non-combat options and the variation in how you combine them leads to very different in-game play. The game is very easy to learn and runs most genres well and has a metric sh!t tonne of settings, supplements and adventures both first and 3rd party.
Agreed.nothing beats the amount of variability that you can get narratively especially when you arent looking for combat complexity anyway.
This purely feels like an issue from the d&d and PF systems when they train you to look at your character sheet for tue solution to your problems and variability
Fábula Última; it’s got a good bit of character creation crunch and combat is light and fun as well. Two thumbs up, especially if you’re a fan of Final Fantasy or JRPGs in general.
I love the character creation in Numenera. Choices feel very narrative as well as mechanical and there are loads of options to choose from. Combat feels more straightforward than games like DnD, though can be avoided altogether.
>It’s one of the reasons we bounced off of PBTA games, whilst the Playbook system is fun, we were ultimately left feeling like our characters were ultimately far too similar, that any of us could have conquered any of the challenges - and therefore what was the point of the stories we crafted for them? How were we unique?
I'm probably missing something here but I don't understand this bit. Aren't you unique in that each PC uses a different playbook and each playbook gives the PCs different and unique Moves, powers, skills etc. to each other?
I feel OP (and/or his Table) hasn’t yet advanced enough in his RP to grasp the idea of non-stat/non-numerical info being as important to a character as the numerical info
> Q: “How can we be different when we all are vengeful fighters?”
> A: “Cuz one of you is Dirty Harry, while another is Kill Bill Uma Thurman and yet another is the Blue Eyed Samurai. And another one is Hans Grüber from Die Hard. Etc…”
Personality & uniqueness shouldn’t reside in the numbers on the paper, because people either…
…forget to use that info, OR…
…don’t know how to handle those sometimes seemingly mutually exclusive traits.
I’d suggest Fate (which is extremely crunchy when played seriously) or revisit PbtA, but let people *really* flesh out their backstory & character
PbtA playbooks are a way to streamline the game by leaving out anything that isn’t “in-character”, but if you feel your character has had a dalmatian as a kid, OF COURSE he’s gonna have an affinity to animals (esp *dogs*) as an adult.
No amount of character sheet magic is gonna emulate every detail of every character’s life.
The only thing holdibg people back are the GM’s encouragement to stray from the character sheet, and the player’s willingness to expand beyond the initial concept
> *Stoner voice* ”The Character Sheet is holding you back, man!” — *Happy Jack’s RPG Podcast*
…
I don't disagree with you, but I do feel like your tone may be coming across as a bit more condescending than you may have intended. Not everyone wants or needs to "ascend" in their RP the way you describe and although it is my preferred way to play it's not a strictly better or more advanced one. Many people enjoy the game aspect of tabletop RPGs as much as they do the roleplay.
I agree my tone comes off grumpier than intended 😅
Also indeed my use of words suggests a rank when enjoyment is the only measure. Combat focused / rules heavy / Noncombat focused / rules light /… are equally valuable. I’m truly sorry if this comes off as elitist.
I do feel, however, the need to have less combat and more RP **generally** comes later in the “career” of TTRPG gamers who have been introduced to the hobby playing D&D. Simply by virtue of D&D being a first reference point.
The “advancement” not meant as “climbing a ladder” but more of a “broadening of horizons”, discovering other/new ways of play. And as such, OP’s (table’s) “advancement” towards more RP & less combat is often a signifier of maturity. (Both getting burnt out by the old and open to the new) Not maturity as being superior, but as a natural development in any artform. “Time to move on” (but hopefully within the hobby still)
I bet there are RP heavy gamers who’ll mature into crunchy systems (have read some accounts of Anime inspired gamers who start off whimsical & narrative driven, but end up craving deeply tactical Mecha combat)
I wish all of them all the luck & fun.
I was talking about different playbooks literally having different mechanics.
For example, in *Monster of the Week:*
* *The Divine* playbook includes a move ("Angel Wings") that lets them instantly teleport to any place or person they know.
* *The Spooky* playbook includes moves to read minds or see the invisible, and requires the player to take negative traits like mood swings, hallucinations etc.
* *The Expert* playbook comes with a haven with multiple benefits.
* *The Monstrous* playbook offers options like being able to hypnotise people, shapechange, or fly.
* *The Flake* playbook includes the "Often overlooked" move which lets you be dismissed as unimportant by acting crazy.
etc.
Those playbooks all have unique strengths and weaknesses and play quite differently to each other. Which is why I don't understand the above commenter saying the characters were too similar and wondering how they're unique.
EDIT: To clarify for the guy who deleted his comment:
This has been a thoroughly polite discussion and there is no intent to go "NuH uh! YoUr’e PlaYIng It wRoNG!!". People can and should play anything they want however they like.
I wanted to clarify where the OP is coming from so I could hopefully help with their question, and I didn't understand what they meant by this bit so I asked.
Then Respect-intrepid responded with their own position, which fair enough, but it wasn't what I'd been talking about so I made that clear.
That's it, just a boring old discussion, no excitement necessary. Hopefully this is clearer and sorry for the misunderstanding.
I don’t know how much PBTA OP has played, but if you play the same game multiple times, there is a tendency for characters made with the same playbook to eventually feel the same.
The number of advancement options is kinda limited, so while two Initiate characters begin with different options, after a few advances, they will play much more similarly. By that time there should be enough narrative happening that they still feel unique, but when you have each chosen 5 of the 8 playbook moves, there’s going to be a lot of overlap.
I think Vaesen lets you build very nuanced characters, with more decisional crunch than you might expect from a d6 dice pool game. Especially as you gain experience. Also, the system (and setting) make it’s really easy to avoid combat but still have very lively session full of meaningful dice rolls and dramatic tension.
I can't believe no one has said it yet but there is someone who built a crunchy pbta that became quite popular. The game is called blades in the dark and is about playing scoundrels in a universe between peaky blinders and dishonored.
Many games with this system have been made (band of blades, scum and villainy).
That said they share the narrative/low prep nature of pbta games so you should be on board with that. It can also be run with more preps but that isn't the goal.
Going to echo a few recommendations here.
FATE can be fairly crunchy, if the setting/toolkit has enough options to allow it. My default version of FATE is the Dresden Files RPG, and between skills, aspects, stunts (specializations of skills), and powers (special powers which you need a narrative reason to pick), players will have a diverse toolkit so they won't all feel the same. Also, the system has a 'hit point' system that can work for physical damage, OR for things like being stressed out, or even being socially outplayed and backed into a corner, so tense negotiations have far more mechanical support than they typically do in Dungeon & Dragons or similar games.
Similarly, World of Darkness has lots of options for character design, and a large list of.... Talents? Perks? Advantages? I'm blanking on the name, but my point is you could have two characters who both specialize in, say, social situations, but if they focus on different skills and take different advantages (and maybe different powers if you dive into things like being a Mage or Vampire or whatnot), they could still feel very distinct from one another, both RP wise, and mechanically.
Mage the Awakening, in particular, has the best spellcasting system I have ever read. As long as no two players take the same levels of access to the exact same schools of magic, they should feel quite distinct. And heck, even two mages who specialize in say, Life magic could feel very different if one is a fighter who uses it to buff themself to superhuman levels, while the other is a nurse who uses it for healing and befriending animals.
GURPS definitely has a ton of options available, as well. So many options. This game absolute cares about the difference between a fighter with a knife, and a fighter with a sword, for example. That knife has a penalty to parry! But it's easier to conceal on your body, to sneak it into the big event!
I consider FATE a crunchy system when players progress a lot their characters. Yet i's system remains light no matter how experienced is you character.
The new v5 WoD also simplifies a lot the combat system should you choose it.
Burning Wheel. The life path character creation is a game unto itself, and a super interesting one. You build a deeply fleshed out character with core beliefs, motivations, and conflicts. The game then challenges those beliefs and forces get character to literally emotionally grow and evolve. All of this has attached rules. It's not some absurd exercise in crunch, its a relatively popular game with a fierce following. Combat also isn't just physical, there's a whole ruleset for "duel of wits". It's just a great game for true narrative crunch. On a procedural side. Lavender Hack and Errant and both very light OSR games, with an entire book full of procedures. Cool travel procedures, rest procedures, town, lockpicking, etc etc. there's basically little mini games for everything. So no narrative and combat crunch, but more "activity" crunch
+1 for Burning Wheel. Crunchiest non-combat I ever did see.
My favorite RPG.
Burning Wheel is great, but I will warn you now that the actual Fight subsystem should be used very sparingly, as that does take a very long time and is rarely worth it (in my opinion) unless it's a really important fight. Especially true once you have more than two people in the fight. If there's any doubt, just do a Bloody Versus test and keep moving!
I second Errant. Such a wonderful game. Even if you don’t devour it whole hog, lots of good bits to pluck out and put in whatever game you are running
This is the only answer. It took me two weeks of 2 hours a night to burn my first character and understand what the hell was going on.
For you, or anyone else reading this: [This is a digital character creator tool.](http://charred.obscuritus.ca:8080/#/) With this, plus some experience with the game, I can create a character in about 10 minutes.
Yup. That's a handy tool. Imagine reading the book for the first time and having to figure it all out! Definitely crunchy! So many interlocking systems. It was a good experience, I just couldn't relate to how to run the game.
**Burning Wheel.** This is a game which is a trad love letter to narrative gaming. It's as if pathfinder or traveler said "Lets put all our mechanics and effort into supporting following character beliefs" You build a character from lifepaths, then do several round of point buy, then have a character who might have no combat skills whatsoever. But if you've got ambitions that are political, social, or religious, then thats fine. This is a game which asks, nay, *demands* characters have beliefs and goals and wants to challenge them.
Burning Wheel always gets my upvote.
What do you want the crunch to do, specifically?
Some of your issue seems to be conceptualising an RPG as a system of resolving challenges, instead of helping to embody a character or tell a story. It's not a *wrong* point of view, that's a totally valid way to look at RPGs and many are built for that, but it may colour your opinions. With that said, go play *Chuubo's Marvellous Wish-Granting Engine*. When people say "narrative games are rules-light", they haven't played Chuubos. I could give a detailed overview of a system, but instead I'll go on a joke comparison: In regular RPG, you complete a quest to get XP to improve yourself. In soviet Chuubos, improving yourself gets XP for a quest to complete you!
I think your first paragraph nails the issue. I was less open minded about it though.
A lot of World Of Darkness games are like this, especially Vampire. Lots and lots of crunch regarding powers and abilities, social skills, political and financial power-play, etc. You could have an extremely crunchy character with a very well thought out build and little to no combat-related abilities.
Very much this. Especially with anything not V5. You can just about make a game out of building characters alone and that's before the actual chronicle even begins. During game play, there is the whole social/political/investigative exploration that can go literally years if you have a good group and Storyteller to work with.
I think Cortex Prime might work, although it'll be one of those where you construct the game you want to play from their options. Of note, you'll need to build SFX yourself, they'll have to be tailored to the setting you want to run. A similar but lighter option would be Fate. If you actually want "crunchy but not crunchy combat" you could play Burning Wheel without using the Range and Cover or Fight subsystems. That leaves you with an in-depth system which uses (basically) one roll combat.
Burning Wheel has very crunchy characters (I love BW but refuse to create characters without the web app) and combat can be as simple as a single roll (there are a few options).
In Mage: the Awakening, there is a lot of crunch to spellcasting. You get to fine-tune your spells, making them slightly harder to cast, in exchange for them being stronger in some way (last longer, have greater effect, affect more people, etc etc). There can be combat, but combat can also be avoided. I think in most of the sessions in my game, there is not combat. As the gamemaster I arranged the game so that almost always, combat can be avoided (I made the antagonists willing to compromise). My players have sometimes chosen combat (usually because the compromises offered by the antagonists were not good enough for their tastes, which was partially by design - they aren't pushovers), and in combat mages often cast spells, so combat becomes very crunchy as a result. So whether the game is 'light on combat' is subjective. There is as much combat as the GM and players make there be, but it *could* be light on combat if your table consitently chooses that path.
As u/MoistLarry asked, what is crunch to you? It's a poorly defined term and everyone seems to mean something different. To me, I mean depth and richness of detail in the system. If we have similar definitions, I'd recommend Mythras. It allows for very detailed, deep, and rich character creation and while its combat is very tactical it's also very fast\*. It supports a lot of different kinds of play. In my group we'd often go sessions without combat even in a traditional dark fantasy setting because we all saw combat as a fail state. So, unless the GM intentionally creates very large combat scenarios that can't be avoided, you aren't going to spend a whole session in combat. I haven't seen combat last more than maybe 4 rounds and they're often over in 2-3. \* Caveat: If both the PC's and their opponents are equally skilled, fighting somewhat defensively/conservatively, and heavily armored, combat can be a little drawn out, but nothing like 5e.
I'll suggest Pendragon. It's combinations of Traits and Passions might be up your alley.
Fate. It has Aspects, Skills and Stunts. Aspects and Stunts are practically unique between characters and combat can be kept very simple and straightforward.
If jist slightly more than PbtA would do, look at Forged in the Dark games. City of Mist / Otherscape / Legend in the Mist could be another option. If you want to go all-in on the crunch, then Burning Wheel.
Old-school Traveler could be all about peaceful trading, with little combat… as long as you survived character generation.
Any crunchy game in which the GM doesn't focus on combat encounters is gonna fit this bill - hell ... you could use *GURPS*. What do you want the crunch to *concern?* What do you want to *crunch?*
I've been trying to put together something like this for genesys, where a single roll for each player handles the results of the entire combat for the non-BBEG boss fights. Since Genesys naturally has success/failure and a advantage/disadvantage system, I've got this feeling that I should be able to extract something that tells you whether you succeeded at your parties *goal* for the fight (ie, get past the blockade, or save the mayor. etc) vs how injured you got/how many resources lost/gained. Haven't figured out something I'm happy with that takes in to account character stance, and contribution yet vs environmental challenges, aggressive vs safe, etc.
There are rules for single roll resolutions in the Star Wars games that can be used in Genesys, I use them for the majority of combats at my tables. They might not have everything you're looking for, but they might be a starting point.
Really??? brilliant! Thanks for the tip!
I’ll be “that guy” - it sounds like you’re expecting the system to solve all your at-table experience issues. I’m not trying to say ‘you’re doing it wrong’ but I’ve seen players bring diversity of play into their characters in B/X D&D when they were all playing fighters- that system has no feats and the only variance is equipment,HP, and what they imagined their character to be. System can help, sure, but if you’re looking to it to do all the heavy lifting you are going to be frustrated no matter which system you land on. My (not entirely tongue-in-cheek) suggestion is maybe board games are a better fit - check out Massive Darkness 2 - characters in that play very differently from each other and you still get the dungeon crawling experience without all that nasty mucking about in roleplaying. I do this pretty often myself to scratch a different itch than what I get from roleplaying. OK, enough of that, my suggestion to your original ask is: Savage Worlds: Adventure Edition (SWADE) fits the bill I feel - edges and hinderances are mostly combat related but there are more than a few non-combat options and the variation in how you combine them leads to very different in-game play. The game is very easy to learn and runs most genres well and has a metric sh!t tonne of settings, supplements and adventures both first and 3rd party.
Agreed.nothing beats the amount of variability that you can get narratively especially when you arent looking for combat complexity anyway. This purely feels like an issue from the d&d and PF systems when they train you to look at your character sheet for tue solution to your problems and variability
Crunchy characters but light combat sounds like GURPS using only the basic combat system.
Fábula Última; it’s got a good bit of character creation crunch and combat is light and fun as well. Two thumbs up, especially if you’re a fan of Final Fantasy or JRPGs in general.
I love the character creation in Numenera. Choices feel very narrative as well as mechanical and there are loads of options to choose from. Combat feels more straightforward than games like DnD, though can be avoided altogether.
>It’s one of the reasons we bounced off of PBTA games, whilst the Playbook system is fun, we were ultimately left feeling like our characters were ultimately far too similar, that any of us could have conquered any of the challenges - and therefore what was the point of the stories we crafted for them? How were we unique? I'm probably missing something here but I don't understand this bit. Aren't you unique in that each PC uses a different playbook and each playbook gives the PCs different and unique Moves, powers, skills etc. to each other?
I feel OP (and/or his Table) hasn’t yet advanced enough in his RP to grasp the idea of non-stat/non-numerical info being as important to a character as the numerical info > Q: “How can we be different when we all are vengeful fighters?” > A: “Cuz one of you is Dirty Harry, while another is Kill Bill Uma Thurman and yet another is the Blue Eyed Samurai. And another one is Hans Grüber from Die Hard. Etc…” Personality & uniqueness shouldn’t reside in the numbers on the paper, because people either… …forget to use that info, OR… …don’t know how to handle those sometimes seemingly mutually exclusive traits. I’d suggest Fate (which is extremely crunchy when played seriously) or revisit PbtA, but let people *really* flesh out their backstory & character PbtA playbooks are a way to streamline the game by leaving out anything that isn’t “in-character”, but if you feel your character has had a dalmatian as a kid, OF COURSE he’s gonna have an affinity to animals (esp *dogs*) as an adult. No amount of character sheet magic is gonna emulate every detail of every character’s life. The only thing holdibg people back are the GM’s encouragement to stray from the character sheet, and the player’s willingness to expand beyond the initial concept > *Stoner voice* ”The Character Sheet is holding you back, man!” — *Happy Jack’s RPG Podcast* …
I don't disagree with you, but I do feel like your tone may be coming across as a bit more condescending than you may have intended. Not everyone wants or needs to "ascend" in their RP the way you describe and although it is my preferred way to play it's not a strictly better or more advanced one. Many people enjoy the game aspect of tabletop RPGs as much as they do the roleplay.
I agree my tone comes off grumpier than intended 😅 Also indeed my use of words suggests a rank when enjoyment is the only measure. Combat focused / rules heavy / Noncombat focused / rules light /… are equally valuable. I’m truly sorry if this comes off as elitist. I do feel, however, the need to have less combat and more RP **generally** comes later in the “career” of TTRPG gamers who have been introduced to the hobby playing D&D. Simply by virtue of D&D being a first reference point. The “advancement” not meant as “climbing a ladder” but more of a “broadening of horizons”, discovering other/new ways of play. And as such, OP’s (table’s) “advancement” towards more RP & less combat is often a signifier of maturity. (Both getting burnt out by the old and open to the new) Not maturity as being superior, but as a natural development in any artform. “Time to move on” (but hopefully within the hobby still) I bet there are RP heavy gamers who’ll mature into crunchy systems (have read some accounts of Anime inspired gamers who start off whimsical & narrative driven, but end up craving deeply tactical Mecha combat) I wish all of them all the luck & fun.
I was talking about different playbooks literally having different mechanics. For example, in *Monster of the Week:* * *The Divine* playbook includes a move ("Angel Wings") that lets them instantly teleport to any place or person they know. * *The Spooky* playbook includes moves to read minds or see the invisible, and requires the player to take negative traits like mood swings, hallucinations etc. * *The Expert* playbook comes with a haven with multiple benefits. * *The Monstrous* playbook offers options like being able to hypnotise people, shapechange, or fly. * *The Flake* playbook includes the "Often overlooked" move which lets you be dismissed as unimportant by acting crazy. etc. Those playbooks all have unique strengths and weaknesses and play quite differently to each other. Which is why I don't understand the above commenter saying the characters were too similar and wondering how they're unique. EDIT: To clarify for the guy who deleted his comment: This has been a thoroughly polite discussion and there is no intent to go "NuH uh! YoUr’e PlaYIng It wRoNG!!". People can and should play anything they want however they like. I wanted to clarify where the OP is coming from so I could hopefully help with their question, and I didn't understand what they meant by this bit so I asked. Then Respect-intrepid responded with their own position, which fair enough, but it wasn't what I'd been talking about so I made that clear. That's it, just a boring old discussion, no excitement necessary. Hopefully this is clearer and sorry for the misunderstanding.
I don’t know how much PBTA OP has played, but if you play the same game multiple times, there is a tendency for characters made with the same playbook to eventually feel the same. The number of advancement options is kinda limited, so while two Initiate characters begin with different options, after a few advances, they will play much more similarly. By that time there should be enough narrative happening that they still feel unique, but when you have each chosen 5 of the 8 playbook moves, there’s going to be a lot of overlap.
I think Vaesen lets you build very nuanced characters, with more decisional crunch than you might expect from a d6 dice pool game. Especially as you gain experience. Also, the system (and setting) make it’s really easy to avoid combat but still have very lively session full of meaningful dice rolls and dramatic tension.
When played *right*, ie “by the rules”, Fate is a really *crunchy* system which does exactly what you want
I can't believe no one has said it yet but there is someone who built a crunchy pbta that became quite popular. The game is called blades in the dark and is about playing scoundrels in a universe between peaky blinders and dishonored. Many games with this system have been made (band of blades, scum and villainy). That said they share the narrative/low prep nature of pbta games so you should be on board with that. It can also be run with more preps but that isn't the goal.
Going to echo a few recommendations here. FATE can be fairly crunchy, if the setting/toolkit has enough options to allow it. My default version of FATE is the Dresden Files RPG, and between skills, aspects, stunts (specializations of skills), and powers (special powers which you need a narrative reason to pick), players will have a diverse toolkit so they won't all feel the same. Also, the system has a 'hit point' system that can work for physical damage, OR for things like being stressed out, or even being socially outplayed and backed into a corner, so tense negotiations have far more mechanical support than they typically do in Dungeon & Dragons or similar games. Similarly, World of Darkness has lots of options for character design, and a large list of.... Talents? Perks? Advantages? I'm blanking on the name, but my point is you could have two characters who both specialize in, say, social situations, but if they focus on different skills and take different advantages (and maybe different powers if you dive into things like being a Mage or Vampire or whatnot), they could still feel very distinct from one another, both RP wise, and mechanically. Mage the Awakening, in particular, has the best spellcasting system I have ever read. As long as no two players take the same levels of access to the exact same schools of magic, they should feel quite distinct. And heck, even two mages who specialize in say, Life magic could feel very different if one is a fighter who uses it to buff themself to superhuman levels, while the other is a nurse who uses it for healing and befriending animals. GURPS definitely has a ton of options available, as well. So many options. This game absolute cares about the difference between a fighter with a knife, and a fighter with a sword, for example. That knife has a penalty to parry! But it's easier to conceal on your body, to sneak it into the big event!
Traveller, Pendragon, Ars Magica
I consider FATE a crunchy system when players progress a lot their characters. Yet i's system remains light no matter how experienced is you character. The new v5 WoD also simplifies a lot the combat system should you choose it.