Sylvester the Spy as his real look and as the persona he's been trapped in for the past Whole Campaign™

The Bramble Beast is a particularly nasty piece of work and would probably kill a PC so sadly I can't use it until I've tested more things... My players said they wanted to fight a boss with more danger, but my favorite monster might be a bit much for them at the moment >:(

Just wanted to talk about my experience with fantasy rpgs recently: So, my group started off fantasy RPGs with 5e, pretty typical stuff. Did a bit over half a campaign in 5e and ended up switching to Quest to finish it, which worked out quite well

I just finished running a 3-year long campaign in Quest. That was better and worse in different ways. Overall it was better, because the more rules-lite approach was good for our group, but I have some enormous issues with the way Quest's skill trees work for long-term games (very, very poorly), and although a lot of the skills are quite neat, the game struggles with mechanical flexibility

So, about a year ago, me and my partner made a system of our own, called Where Heroes Tread (hasn't been released yet, working on it). It's a system that uses a D20 (the one part of the design I couldn't get them to budge on lol, they like D20s), a resistance-system style Stress+Consequences system, and a fellowship-inspired combat system. It also uses a Skills system, where each skill gives 6 narrative talents, which are divided up into talents you have to roll for and talents you can always do. There's also a special set of talents for each skill that you can always do, but they cost you stress, and are especially powerful. We've written 50+ skills, with 9 talents each

(as an example for skills, the characters in the current campaign we're playing started with the skills: Umbramancy/Mystical Patron, My Body Is a Sword/Artificing, Cosmic Magic/Illusions, Mycology/Witchcraft, and Highland Survival/Sleuthing)

The biggest change I've noticed is a game that flows much more like a PbtA game - we also leaned more towards a non-punishing system than the resistance system. The story is very narrative, and fights are rare.

But the biggest change I've noticed is that our characters don't kill anymore. Combat is not really any different from the rest of the game: it's not given any special weight. It's very easy to make a character that is bad at fighting, and even combat-focused skills are majorly focused on how a character acts out of fights.

While 5e and (to a lesser degree) Quest make the assumption the characters are going to fight and kill their opponents, we treated it as a tool in the toolbox, but didn't give it any special rules or weight. And y'know what? Fighting starts to look a lot less appealing when the system doesn't demand that you do it to make use of your abilities.

We still get into fights a decent amount, but we fight with people whose names we know. We have villains that we foil, or hurt, or trap. We scare off beasts and end rituals summoning monsters. I'm sure our characters will eventually kill over the course of the game - our group loves melodrama and won't be able to resist. But so far, we've gone a year of playing, 26 sessions in, huge amounts of plot advancement, and there hasn't been a single death.

If you’ve been interested in solo rpgs - specifically be your own GM style games - but you’ve been intimidated by big rulebooks, then I highly highly recommend Quest. 

My current main solo rpg I’ve been playing is Quest-based with some slight modifications. It is a very easy game to mod if you want to include a specific mechanic. There are so many great points to this game. You can read the entire rulesbook in under an hour, the digital copy of the rulebook is free, and it’s genuinely fun. 

I also just learned about an open source companion app to help keep track of the character sheet stuff too if you don’t want to do that by hand. It has a free tier. 

I’m putting their core deck and their item book on my wishlist for Christmas because I enjoy it so much. 

MASKS: A NEW GENERATION (powered by the apocalypse engine, 2d6 core resolution): Play as teenaged superheroes! Emulate the feel of a comic book or animated TV series like Young Justice, Teen Titans, etc. DEATH IS NOT A STAKE (unless you’re The Doomed): emotional trauma is instead! FAST, narratively driven combat; complex antagonists; sessions structured by “scenes” instead of encounters to encourage roleplaying and story above all else! Perfect for folks who love superhero stories, exploring adolescent angst, and colorful combat.

URBAN SHADOWS 1E (powered by the apocalypse engine, 2d6 core resolution): A political urban fantasy game about the debts you owe, and the lengths you’re willing to go to seize power in a seedy city. Think Mortal Instruments, Twilight, etc. Play as a werewolf, vampire, hunter, wizard, etc. all vying for power. A corruption mechanic encourages backstabbing and betrayal between PCs, with the hanging sword of PCs who go too far retiring as NPC threats. Perfect for evil parties and social intrigue-heavy campaigns.

QUEST (d20 core resolution): A fantasy, medieval-suited but genre-expansive system that can replace D&D pretty fluidly, and makes for an easy transition from one system to another. No stats, only features that classes can invoke at will or with a single, unmodified d20 roll. All PCs have the same health and deal the same base damage, making combat a breeze, freeing the GM up to focus on the story. A sliding scale of success from 1 to 20 instead of a binary pass/fail like D&D!

These are just a few systems I’ve either played and/or have run, and can recommend based on my personal experience. Either way, it’s worth looking into other systems to improve and expand your own GMing chops for D&D if nothing else.

Other TTRPG systems you should check out that I don’t have the time to delve into right now: Monster of the Week (PBTA like above, 2d6 core resolution, emulate the feel of an episodic monster hunting show like Supernatural, Buffy, etc.), Numenera (complex system comparable in scope to D&D), Fiasco (GMless, improv only, card based, over the top Coen Brothers movie generator), Root RPG (play as woodland creatures!), Bluebeard’s Bride (play as different aspects of the same woman surviving a murderous pirate!), Vampire: The Masquerade (play as scheming vampires fighting back your thirst!), Call of Cthulhu (classic eldritch horror TTRPG), Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall (play as a Chinese immigrant family fighting racism and hopping vampires!), Ald-Amura: Monster Care Squad (HEAL monsters instead of kill them; threat clocks advance the story); Star-Crossed (2-player, GMless, Jenga tower based game about forbidden love, PERFECT for couples), Dread (Jenga tower based horror system), City of Mist (similar to Urban Shadows — gritty modern fantasy), and more!!