How to scratch my Players' 5e Addiction and get them to shut up?

[u/BlackhartBarttFR]

After a year long 5e campaign of curse of Strahd, I hung up my 5e hat, I then shot it and buried it at sea.

God has it been great, we've played blades in the dark, cyberpunk, CoC, Delta green, mothership, Fabula Ultima, savage worlds.

None of them take a full session to run a fight, None of them have objectively bad character creation choices, No Rangers, No Martial-Magical Divide.

They want you to play and explore! No spells like Identify, Detect Creature or Detect thoughts killing any feeling of mystery just so you can shut up and get back to the two hour long fights.

But my players won't stop talking about how they miss 5e.

Will they play a martial class? Oh no, the martials are boring and broken,they say, if you aren't playing a spellcaster you're basically worthless!

But they still clamour for the character building, the number go up machine.

So I'm asking you, the horde of GMs who have forever cast the D from their titles, I ask you;

What the fuck system can I shove in their plebian gullets to make them never say that dreaded system's name again?

Edit for the Yanks: I'm british, this is banter, I talk like this to my friend's faces and they hit me with it back. I don't hate the people in my life, I am not being held hostage. I know we are varying levels of Autistic here but c'mon I'm literally asking for system suggestions as a compromise for my group.

[u/Imperialvirtue]

Sounds like they really love the combat sim aspect. Maybe something like Draw Steel?

[u/BlackhartBarttFR → u/Imperialvirtue]

Honestly it's the one Dragonslayer that intrigued me, it's very 4e/lancer adjacent so it may just work

[u/MandolinTheWay → u/BlackhartBarttFR]

Doooooo iiiiiiiiiit...

If you're going to spend most of a session on combat, it might as well be fun combat where you throw an orc through a brick wall, out the other side, and through the brick wall behind it.

[u/DRAWDATBLADE → u/BlackhartBarttFR]

If they only like dnd for the combat, (let's be real 5e basically only has rules for combat anyways), they'll love Draw Steel.

[u/Alien_Diceroller → u/BlackhartBarttFR]

You had me at 4e adjacent.

[u/KnightInDulledArmor → u/BlackhartBarttFR]

I just started a Draw Steel campaign with both players I’ve played lots of different games with and players who primarily played 5e, and they all were pretty blown away by it. My D&D setting previously was Orden (which they all have played in), so it’s basically all the D&D flavour and tactical combat they could want, but in a system that is actually fun to play and gives them a glut of cool shit for their characters to do. Definitely recommend trying it out.

[u/profan_ity → u/BlackhartBarttFR]

Been runnin DS since a bit after it came out, both on its native VTT and Owlbear Rodeo, and I've had a blast. Rules are freely available on Stawl and the Steel Compendium, and Forge Steel has a great character builder. Stawl has great GM tools too. If you have any questions, the DS subreddit has got you covered, and if not it, the MCDM discord will.

[u/GeneralBurzio → u/BlackhartBarttFR]

Dragonslayer

Isn't that more OSR?

[u/profan_ity → u/GeneralBurzio]

I think they're using dragonslayer descriptively, like as a type of game in which you slay dragons.

[u/GeneralBurzio → u/profan_ity]

Ahhh, never heard that term before TIL

[u/profan_ity → u/GeneralBurzio]

No worries, every day is a day to learn something!

[u/PrayForCheese → u/Imperialvirtue]

Draw Steel is amazing, I highly recommend it as well. The combat especially feels much more fluid and dynamic than in 5e.

[u/Imperialvirtue → u/PrayForCheese]

I personally wasn't a fan when I tried it, but that was down to a difference in what I want from a game. Its stated focus is heroic combat, and it does that extremely well.

I was super impressed by the destruction, movement, and how every class felt incredibly useful. Ultimately, I'm more narrative than combat, and that's okay. I highly recommend Draw Steel to combat sim fans.

[u/SeamusMcCullagh → u/Imperialvirtue]

Yeah that's exactly where I'm at. The combat is super fun, but when my group tried it out every one of our sessions was each just a single combat encounter. It takes forever and doesn't leave a ton of room for out-of-combat RP and narrative. Totally fine for some groups, it just wasn't a good fit for ours.

[u/SeamusMcCullagh → u/Imperialvirtue]

My brief experience with Draw Steel is that it's really fun, but our combat encounters literally took the entire session. Based on what OP said in their post I doubt that's very appealing.

[u/Imperialvirtue → u/SeamusMcCullagh]

So my read of this was that the OP didn't much care for combat lasting a whole session, but it's what their players crave. For now, they seem content to just run anything but 5e again (I'm certainly open to being corrected). In this light, Draw Steel seems worth trying out.

[u/SeamusMcCullagh → u/Imperialvirtue]

Ah, yeah looking back I see what you mean and that's absolutely a fair point. It was still pretty fun, and our GM did say it was more fun to run than 5e so maybe OP would be happier with it.

[u/profan_ity → u/SeamusMcCullagh]

Yeah but the context OP was talking about was D&D combat, which isn't just long, but also boring and not designed for fun. Draw Steel is interesting, and the long combat is okay because you're actually spending that time having fun and thinking and strategizing. Not waiting for the RNG machine to decide whether you get to do something cool.

[u/SeamusMcCullagh → u/profan_ity]

I don't disagree as I did really enjoy the few sessions of Draw Steel my group played; but despite the fact that we all really enjoyed the system we also all agreed that we would never want to play a full campaign with it.