I'm done with that freakshow, Pathfinder 1E, excellent, great stuff. Started looking into 2e and nearly puked.

Anyone know an RPG that's lore and dungeon/towers/ruins/castles heavy, normal horror, not too much satanic and occult crap, wildreness is cool, taverns gothic look style with some werewolves running around. You guys know what I'm talking about.

No woke crud though please, and must have color art.

PS> Something like Old school essentials with it's awesome rules but in color and more lore would be fantastic.

I'm trying to think of other games that are as well supported as Pathfinder 1. Really nothing is other than 3.5 D&D itself, but some come closer than others.

If you want to go down the scale in terms of complexity, Castles & Crusades would probably be a good bet.  If you want something with equivalent crunch, Fantasy Craft is very similar, but I believe it's black and white art. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying, maybe? Roughly equal crunch, albeit with a different underlying system, and the 4th edition at least has color art. Fantasy Age roughly fits into that niche as well, but you'll have to ask others about it. I've only ever skimmed the books. Shadow of the Demon Lord might fit the bill. It has a horror aesthetic to the books, but there's no reason you couldn't run it as straight classic fantasy. There's a less-dark version out called Shadow of the Weird Wizard, but since it's brand new I don't think it's well supported (and I don't know how woke it may or may not be).

Dragonbane might be worth checking out.  It has really nice color art and it seems to tick many of the boxes you mention.  I don't know how deep the lore is, though.

I didn't catch the bit about lore the first time around. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying definitely has you covered there. One of the most lore-rich fantasy universes out there and very easy to brush up on. There are literally dozens of Youtube channels devoted to it.

The expectation with most D&D alternatives is that they'll be at least mostly setting-neutral, and then you take the game and run your preferred setting with it. So you could easily take something like OSE or Castles and Crusades and then just keep running Golarion or start getting into something like Mystara or Midgard. Both have many books devoted to them.

Castles & Crusades if you want something closer to AD&D. It's the spiritual successor, basically AD&D 3rd edition and it was actually designed FOR Gary Gygax to have a set of rules similar to AD&D to publish his adventures. They just came out with their "Reforged" (read: non-OGL) books.

It has a default setting that's heavily inspired by Germanic mythology, but it can get pretty in-depth and a little boring, kind of like reading The Silmarillion.

Quote from: ForgottenF on December 23, 2024, 11:50:25 PMWarhammer Fantasy Roleplaying definitely has you covered there.

If you can get your hands on 2e*, it plays very well. 3e is not what you are looking for. 4e is beautiful to look at, but the crunch of the mechanics is a bit too much in places.

* I believe the pdfs are easy to purchase online.

I'll recommend Shadow of the Demon Lord, or its less-grimdark cousin Shadow of the Weird Wizard.

Guys, thanks for the recommendations I'm going to list them all here so I can look into them today in order. I should mention Warhammer confuses me, I'm not sure what it's all about, I just have the idea of guns and cannons mixed with fantasy stuck in my head, or the limited amount of monsters, I always picture vast armies just fighting each other. Am I completely wrong here? Is there a wife enough bestiary in this?

BTW, when you guys say crunch do you mean like the stats and fighting style? I really don't care about that part, I'm really just a lore, story and settings guy. I really love the rules of Old School Essentials and I guess D&D BX/E? The part about hiding in the shadows, wandering monsters and not attacking the monsters themselves all the time is appealing to me for a dungeon setting. Basically more strategy but not where it becomes into a stealth rogue type. Never liked rogues either lol, I always choose Fighter and Paladin but a bit tired of the straight up just fighting part and basically always winning etc..

- Castles & Crusades
- Fantasy Craft ---- I dug up everywhere, not much besides a black and white book and an RPG game that looked so - so.
- Fantasy Age ----- Looked interesting, but noticed quite a few woke crap
- Shadow of the Demon Lord Great assortment of monsters nad nice looking book and art, but don't need pentagrams on all my pages with a massive one in the end as a bonus lol, witchcraft and the devil aint fun and games peeps
- Shadow of the Weird Wizard
- Dragonbane That wyrm cover is like one of my all time favorites, I think I'm going to check this out, Symbaroum, Vaesen, Alien, and more from Free League Publishing.
- Mystara ----- Looks interesting
- Midgard ----- Looks VERY interesting
- Warhammer

PS> Found another great one Lex Occultum, gothic type.

Why not go back to Pathfinder 1E? Why did you migrate in the first place? That might give a clue to what might be satisfying.

Quote from: easywolf32 on December 24, 2024, 10:27:20 AMGuys, thanks for the recommendations I'm going to list them all here so I can look into them today in order. I should mention Warhammer confuses me, I'm not sure what it's all about, I just have the idea of guns and cannons mixed with fantasy stuck in my head, or the limited amount of monsters, I always picture vast armies just fighting each other. Am I completely wrong here? Is there a wife enough bestiary in this?

BTW, when you guys say crunch do you mean like the stats and fighting style? I really don't care about that part, I'm really just a lore, story and settings guy. I really love the rules of Old School Essentials and I guess D&D BX/E? The part about hiding in the shadows, wandering monsters and not attacking the monsters themselves all the time is appealing to me for a dungeon setting. Basically more strategy but not where it becomes into a stealth rogue type. Never liked rogues either lol, I always choose Fighter and Paladin but a bit tired of the straight up just fighting part and basically always winning etc..

- 3.5 D&D
- Castles & Crusades
- Fantasy Craft
- Fantasy Age
- Shadow of the Demon Lord
- Shadow of the Weird Wizard
- Dragonbane
- Mystara
- Midgard
- Warhammer

Since you're a lore guy, I'll float a couple of Youtube recommendations on the settings I mentioned.

For Warhammer Fantasy, there's a lot of channels. I think The Book of Choyer is considered a good middle-of-the-road channel by most. I'm partial to Arch's lore videos myself, and have re-ordered them to give to players for a WFRP campaign I'm planning. Just started watching The Inept General as well. The latter two frame their videos as speculation around the Total War Warhammer computer games, but it's all lore from the tabletop games.

For Mystara Mr. Welch Is very much the guy on that topic. If you look around on the internet, you can find a sourcebook he wrote for the setting for 5e which I think was published for free. BECMI Berserker has been walking through the setting books as well.

I'm not as into Midgard, but it seems like you really have to go to The Book for it. That said, this guy has a playlist talking about it (which I haven't seen).

I updated that post, good points on Midgard and Mystara, and Pathfinder 1E, also found another interesting one called Lex Occultum.

Uh........ maybe 13th Age?

I didn't think of it before, but 7th Sea is another lore-heavy game. Good production values, too.

EDIT: On the subject of production value, I think the best looking RPG I've ever seen is Trudvang Chronicles. Nobody plays it, though, and I think it's out of print.

Another really good one is Shadows of Esteren

https://portal.esteren.org/en

It is a beautifully presented game, with traditional art, a gothic setting, and is largely human-focused (you don't play elves, dwarves, etc.)

it is also relatively rules-light and easy to pick up

Lots of moldering castles, abandoned monasteries, etc.

just keep playing pf1. grab some 3.0/.5 content. why does it matter if it's in colour?