I started off with DND 5E and still enjoy it, but I started playing Pathfinder 2E a few months ago and just adore it. I think it’s a better system overall and would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys TTRPGs. It’s complicated, probably more so than DND, but it’s worth it imo. The three-action economy, four degrees of success, and sheer amount of character customization are my favorite features.
I’ve played a pretty broad variety of characters. Mechanically, my favorite was my first ever character–a draconic sorcerer. I like blowing stuff up, what can I say. Roleplay-wise, it’s a tie between my swashbuckler rogue and my celestial warlock. All of those were in DND, since I haven’t been playing PF for very long. I’ve liked every character I’ve played, but I tend to enjoy characters with high CHA the most.
Right now, I’m playing a DND campaign and two PF campaigns. My characters are a grave domain cleric, a barbarian with the titan wrestler archetype, and a champion with the sorcerer archetype.
I’ve also played a little Dungeon World and a tiny one-shot called (iirc) The Witch Is Dead. One of my DMs is getting into Daggerheart, so I may be picking up a game in that system soon. I think I may play a rogue.
Tell me about your TTRPG experiences!
My own, tbh.
Way back in the day, I played with some guys. D&d, call of Cthulu, and a modified GURPS system the primary DM had cooked up that allowed for a kind of cross system compatibility.
When I partially fell out with the group, I still thought a system that could easily incorporate characters from most systems was a brilliant idea. So I cooked up my own.
Took some ideas from everything I had played up to that point, made some up, and then figured out a conversion/compatibility method. You could, in theory, bring a d&d character, a Marvel heroes ttrpg character, a Cthulu character and a GURPS character all into the same party and play them in a given setting with only minor extra math.
After a few play sessions with friends, I had to rework some things, changed up how you rolled a character, built a single set of trait scaling tables and threw out classes entirely. By the end of about a year of play, I had modified the original concept into something that worked okay as a cross-compatible thing, but worked very well on its own, and the setting became the focus.
It ended up being really flexible for character concepts because without classes, you’re free to follow any number of paths all at once, or separately. As the setting developed, I cooked up various “races” that were available to play that are either unique entirely, or (like with vampires or werewolves) exist as their own iteration of something generic. My best friend designed a couple of specialized magic systems that are kinda classes just because of the degree of prerequisites it requires to start as one, but the overall play style remains really character driven rather than class driven
Thing is, as time passed, the viability of moving characters from other systems into it fizzled because the upper end of power thresholds gets way beyond what even super high level d&d characters can pull off. So you could bring your level 20 mage in and play it, but they might get roflstomped by a kid from Chicago with the right powers and abilities that’s level 1. Including things that allow players to run what amounts to a superhero kinda makes even a level 20 d&d fighter a joke, at least at first.
But it’s the setting that really makes the system work. It’s near-future, based in the milky way galaxy in a universe that is high magic and high tech. Sci-fi and fantasy merged with superheroes and gods.
Thing is, I still love d&d, and my setting for that is tied to my “core reality” by a shared world building concept. The d&d setting is all on the surface of my version of the goddess Tiamat (who is not the d&d dragon goddess). Each continent is a scale on the solar system sized snake that is one aspect of the goddess.
Anyway, that’s my favorite system. But I have only ever played in it once, when my best friend ran a campaign using the system in his own setting. It was awesome, but he’s really the only other person that’s wanted to run a game in it.
As a player, I guess d&d is what I’ve played most, and I really love the game, no matter what setting it’s in. I prefer 3.x edition over the other options, but enjoy every other edition except 4e.
Since I was mostly the forever DM, I tend to like playing really simple characters. The sort that don’t take a lot of character sheet fiddling to play, so I can role play as my primary source of fun. So I usually end up playing fighters of some variety. Maybe a paladin or rogue rather than barbarian or fighter, but something melee based almost always.
I’m currently playing for the first time in ages, but it’s an online vampire the masquerade game. The white wolf stuff isn’t my favorite system since the clan thing is kinda boring to me. IDGAF about the millennia of drama if I can’t actually play a character that’s old enough to have been there for it, and nobody ever runs those games that I’m able to play in. But I don’t mind playing the regular kind of game since it’s going to be a chance to fuck around as someone else.
Don’t wanna give much in the way of detail on the off chance someone in the game uses lemmy, but my character is a hecata that used to be a doctor, and now raises zombies for fun and profit.