Peasant Railgun

For what it's worth, there are plenty of tables that focus a lot less on plot & roleplaying, and more on the combat & puzzle aspect. There are even whole RPGs that are effectively dungeon crawls, where your characters don't need much of a personality, and are often explicitly disposable.

D&D may not be for you, but I bet there's a RPG out there that is!

I personally haven't found much luck with finding tables that focus less on plot and roleplaying. Ever since Critical Role became very popular, the hobby has skewed heavily towards Roleplay and it's really disappointing

I don't know why people bother to play a game with rules when they don't actually want to engage with the rules ever

Check out simple combat games by Steve Jackson Games (melee, wizard) circa 1977. No RP required

That was us way back in the day. The same dungeon map over and over with nothing but random encounters. I forget how long it took before someone finally lived to make 2nd level.

> I don't know why people bother to play a game with rules when they don't actually want to engage with the rules ever

There are definitely groups of players where there is an overemphasis on rules and combat.

To each their own.

An overemphasis on playing the game using the rules in the book?

Why even buy the book if you aren't going to play by the rules in the book? I have never understood this

I'm heavy into roleplay, and that's how I prefer to play D&D.

And I think you're probably right.

D&D is barely the right fit for the kind of game I like to play. But D&D is wildly popular, and it's much easier to find people who'll play D&D with a heavy emphasis on roleplay, than it is to find people who'll play Heart, or Wildsea, or things that are even further way from the "roll-play" aspect.

For what it's worth, we still engage in combat, we use our various abilities outside of combat, etc. Most of the rules are about combat. Even the magic section is framed around using magic in actions. But exploration, etc., is still a part of the game; it's just that those rules are jotted down on like 5 pages out of the 200.

> But D&D is wildly popular, and it's much easier to find people who'll play D&D with a heavy emphasis on roleplay,

Yes, to my dismay.

I like classic D&D, dungeon crawling and what people so derisively call "rollplaying". I find amateur theater improv quite tedious and uninteresting

I haven't been able to find other players like me at all for ages. Everyone I meet "Just got into the game because of Critical Role"

I feel quite strongly that my lifelong hobby has been warped away from me. I try hard not to be resentful but it sucks I can't find groups to play with that want the same kind of game I do

You should play Nethack. Not a TTRPG though.

The first dungeon from the red-book DM guide was merciless for parties of less than 6ish. Before you even got into the dungeon, there was a carrion crawler that got a guaranteed surprise round with 6 attacks with paralysis on each attack. The only time it didn't TPK a new group I ran it with was when the thief ran back to town.

Finding local players is always an issue, but there's tons of folks who prefer the more classic style of D&D. Take a look into Dungeon Crawl Classic and OSR takes on D&D like the Black Hack. Those tend to put dungeon crawling front and center. Finding a group usually involves trawling OSR discords or GMing your own local playgroup, but sometimes you can luck out at your local game store.

I strongly believe that the influence of Critical Role has been detrimental to D&D. So many people believe that the "acting" style (for lack of a better term) is the right way to play, and that others are invalid, because their introduction was from that show. Moreover, a lot of DMs stress out putting pressure on themselves to try to run sessions on par with what these shows have. I wish people would embrace just hanging out with friends and rolling dice more.

I'm right there with you. I want D&D to be the equivalent to a board game night, not amateur improv sessions with a ton of pressure on the DM to deliver an 'experience'

An overemphasis on never having any homebrew rules and only using the rules in the book verbatim and being OCD about it.

I thought that would be clear from the context, but I guess it wasn't.

I have played plenty of Nethack

I like TTRPGs because they involve other people