My kids (10 & 13) and I are wrapping up our first campaign together in D&D 5e, and I’m starting to think about the next one. It’s going to be a homebrew setting–future humanity decimated by climate change, but also elements of weird magic with giant plants and insects, inspired by things like Studio Ghibli, Kipo, etc.
After watching the recent Critical Role - Tears of the Kingdom oneshot, I started tinkering with my own system (PbtA based, with lots of opportunities for inventive crafting, and a video-game-inspired skill tree rather than strict classes) which is fun, but really time-consuming.
Wondering if anyone knows of an existing system that would work well for this setting? I’d like to find something simpler than 5e (which is the only system I know well), since they mainly enjoy the story and role-playing rather than lots of number crunching and detailed rules.
Apocalypse World is a pretty good one. It’s very rules-lite and narrative focused. Players are more in control of the narrative than most RPGs; the players can declare what they want to do (e.g. “I want to drive really fast towards that group of bandits, then jump out of the truck just before it hits them, do a backflip in the air, and shoot the two on the left while the truck runs over the two on the right”), and rather than the response being “You can’t do that”, it’s typically “Okay, but”. Getting a die roll that isn’t high enough to just flat out accomplish what you were trying typically still lets you succeed, but with some caveats, which the player typically gets to make the final decision on - for instance, in the above case, you might roll a 7 (a middle-tier roll), and be told that you can choose 2 of the following: You accurately shoot the two bandits on the left, the truck kills the two on the right, you don’t hurt yourself when you land, and your gun doesn’t explode.