i love dnd. seriously love it. not 5e specifically – I use the term dnd to mean any ttrpg. I know, I know. you hate that. It’s okay. I talk about why I love dnd so much here but when it comes to Fifth edition dungeons of dragons specifically – there’s a bit of a love/hate relationship.
5e is the system that got me into dnd. I owe a lot of the fun times that i’ve had over the last many years and many many many hours (geeze – do not count it up – seriously!) to the games that system has facilitated. but as my experience with it has grown, so too some of my frustrations.
I love the stories. I love the dungeon crawling. I love the maps. I love the chance to improv with my friends. I love that I can build lots of different character concepts.
but I’ve come to absolutely dread playing 5e for one specific reason: combat.
I like board games. I like strategy. I like random chance. I like a lot about the concept of 5e combat. but i hate the reality of it: I hit it with my rapier. sneak attack. bonus action hide. it gets repetitive, and boring, and it doesn’t feel dynamic. You could argue that’s just bad dming. you’ve got a great point. but I’d argue that a well-designed game shouldn’t take world-class facilitators who have watched hours of youtube videos on honing the craft of creating compelling combat flow.
enter the idea.
Some time last year a great friend of mine and fellow dm (er – gm – he’s a PF guy – barf) sat around talking about what we loved and didn’t love about playing ttrpgs like 5e and pF. We both loved the idea of old-school gritty dungeon delving reminiscent of the pulp-fantasy settings that we were both too young to enjoy when we were kids. Could we just try to play Adnd? maybe? another system? probably.
or we could try something else.
we could try to build our own system. so we did. with the help of another close friend of ours we built and play tested a system that borrowed concepts from games that we loved, edited ideas from things we thought could improve, and tried to take some novel approaches to ttrpg game rules. we set out to build a system with a few “core values”:
1) The system should be setting agnostic
2) combat should flow quickly and be dynamic
3) the rules should strive flexibility and simplicity over addressing every situation with a specific rule
With that in mind, we built a system that we’ve been play-testing off and on for half a year or so. The math still needs a bit of tweaking to make it really math but for the most part – we feel like we nailed our vision. The very first time we playtested the system with a group of buddies around a couple of old tables in a dark house, we knew 2 things: 1 – we need to fix a lot. 2 – we’re onto something very fun.
so we tweaked, changed rules, removed stuff, added things back in, removed things again. over time, the ruleset grew into more than what we first dreamed up. but I think we got to a point where we’ve really drilled down on the core values. The system is called “Weary”
Weary is a ttrpg ruleset where flexibility and dynamic combat pair with tough decision making choices, gritty realism, and ease of play. The system is classless (you read that right, no classes in this game) and focuses on building up your character through the accumulation of loot and perks.
Want to learn more? well – i’ll probably write more about it. probably.