ive been a halfhearted dnd defender for a minute, bc i was really involved in indie ttrpg twitter for a while and I Am Not Anymore because frankly. it just got too hostile and crab bucket-y. a lot of people acting like critical role or dimension 20 were opposing them by playing a game that had widespread brand recognition (and also getting mad whenever critrole played something OTHER than dnd. i haven't forgotten how hostile everyone i knew in that scene was when critrole played monster hearts. like what do you want??) or like people who play dnd are popular jocks and people who play indie games are bullied nerds. when actually we're all nerds. nobody is cool here.
and i would especially get frustrated when people would recommend games to play instead of dnd that are not at all a comparable experience, or didnt have the same things people liked in dnd. sure, you could play Masks if you want to play a superhero game instead of just reskinning DnD, but Masks is about teens, and the fact that you're playing as teens is core to the mechanics, so it's not a good suggestion for someone who wants to play as adult superheroes. sure you can suggest someone play Blades in the Dark if they want to play a heist team, but BitD is incredibly punishing! every time ive played it, it felt almost impossible to get a full success at anything. that can be fun, if that's the kind of game you want, but if i want to play a game where i feel cool and like im good at things, then BitD is not a good replacement! I cant tell you how many times I've seen people say that you don't need to just reskin dnd when there are games that are more specifically tailored to the experience you want, and then in the same breath act like the games they're suggesting ARENT specific actually and can be used to craft any kind of experience you want. Is the genre baked into the mechanics, or isnt it? because it cant be both!
and thats not even getting into when people would suggest replacements that aren't even close. a lot of "dnd sucks nobody should ever play dnd. instead of dnd, why don't you play MY game, where youre a couple thats getting married in 2 months and you're still planning your wedding?" like... why would i play that instead of dnd, if i want to play dnd? those have nothing in common, beyond the fact that theyre both tabletop games. it's like saying "Instead of watching Star Wars, you should watch Get Out!" sure, they're both MOVIES, and Get Out is GOOD, but i think to suggest that someone who wants to watch Star Wars would have an equal if not better experience watching Get Out instead devalues both. They're not interchangeable because they're trying to do entirely different things
So I would get incredibly frustrated when people acted like people who were choosing to play DnD were just making a mistake, and that they couldn't possibly be getting anything out of playing that game specifically
ALL THAT BEING SAID wizards of the coast sucks ass and they can clean my balls. they should get put in the stocks and i should get to pelt them with tomatoes. i like playing in the sword and sorcery fantasy setting, and dnd was always my go-to game for that because Dungeon World is the worst game I've ever played (i can think of one or two other games in the same sort of setting, but i haven't tried them or met anyone willing to run them) but ah well. WotC can eat shit for this copyright bullshit
I agree with most of this (save for throwing dungeon world under the bus like that at the end haha), and above all that WotC can go to hell with their new copyright BS. I think recommendations not only fall short often because they are completely unrelated but because people have different, and often set expectations when looking at other systems. OP said dungeon world was the worst game they've played, while I had some of the best ttrpg experiences in that system, and some not-so-great ones with dnd. It just shows how all of it is very subjective. IF someone's saying "oh I wish dnd had less focus on combat, and more focus on RP and world-building together" THEN, I'd recommend dungeon world. Because it's not enough to compare dnd and dungeon world based on the sword and sorcery setting. It'd be like someone looking for a competitive shooter game and recommending them stardew valley... It's a rules-lithe system compared to dnd, And I'd be the first one to admit that the base game might be nothing new and boring as all hell to a seasoned group of players. But that being said, it's *extremely* and easily customizable. Don't like the basic classes that come with the book? Try class warfare, compendium material that allows you to build your own class and tailor it to your character, picking from hundreds of archetypes that you can mix and match. Don't like some rules and wanna change them? Or want to add some? You can do that, it's a system that was meant to be hacked. If you like homebrew content, or as a player like to be an active part of the world-building, it's a great system. I'd definitely say it falls short when it comes to combat, you won't have epic fights lasting hours, but like I said, it's not a system meant for that. It might not the best for very long campaigns (although I've been running one that's been ongoing for 2 years now with the system, and we are still going strong).
No matter what system anyone recommends, if the ppl are looking to play basically dnd just called something else, nothing will live up to that, because all alternatives are different. Because dnd is the go-to system for most players and DMs, it's basically what everything gets compared to. Even systems that are meant to be different get compared to it, and ofc, because they were not meant to be the same or an alternative, they fall short. There's no alternative to dnd, there are different systems.
