You’d think I’d have noticed that there were no monsters in my Pathfinder manual. But I never read the GM bits, since I never wanted to GM.
Okay I misread your previous sentence about 50 bucks.
This is turning into quite the epic thread! I love it.
Truth be told, my most memorable RPG experiences have been In systems that are neither PF or 5e. Everytime I went to the spielbar I’d end up playing something new and they were all better than ‘D&D’ 
Admittedly, this was just in a one-shot situation. I don’t know how these systems would have worked over a longer period or maybe the story or the setting drew me in more than the system?
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You went to the Spielbar ? *
*… Just kidding 
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Belated thanks for the kind words. And apologies for giving your character a hard time. Paladins have issues.
But summoning me to a thread discussing the merits of both Pathfinder and 5th edition? And Mouse Guard, too? Thopthes, you have a weird sense of humor. 
Do I at least get a saving throw? No? All right, here goes.
Pathfinder is perhaps the more consistent system; 5th ed. is more a spoonful of this, a spoonful of that.
It’s probably easier to find people with whom to play 5th ed. Not everybody (Neil comes to mind) enjoys the things Pathfinder focuses on, while 5th ed. has been described as everybody’s second-favorite edition. There’s probably some truth to that, if you lump all the old ones together.
Agreed, and I think both are miscast as such. D&D makes a lot more sense as the sword and sorcery game it was intended to be.
Absolutely. It’s worth keeping in mind, however, that at their hearts, both Pathfinder and 5th ed. are unequivocal rejections of 4th ed.
As Thopthes says, don’t underestimate the D&D name. If it were called Caverns & Cockatrices, it would be crickets.
This is a challenge for many such games. How do you make something that takes two or three paragraphs in a book and a minute or two in real life interesting over an extended period? For some Pathfinder’s approach works, for some it doesn’t.
While I can understand the urge to encourage roleplaying, I’ve found that most rules with this intention are actually detrimental.
Fate points may seem like player empowerment, but are often really just rewards for playing the way the DM wants you to. Beliefs, traits and goals narrow players’ options and hinder character growth, one of the most potentially rewarding aspects of these games of ours.
Mouse Guard is a particularly egregious example. A Most Valuable Player Award? And a mechanical reward for good roleplaying that can’t be earned by everyone in the group? That’s the opposite of everything I think roleplaying should be.
(A shame, too, because mice with swords are fun and Mouse Guard might be the most beautiful RPG book I’ve ever seen. The game is a stinker, though.)
Sure, I’d say it’s absolutely possible. I think Thopthes’s scenario (which I enjoyed very much) showed that there are quite a few different approaches that you can take with the game.
I sometimes make fun of Pathfinder’s ever-expanding library, too, but it’s really a comment on the RPG business paradigm as a whole rather than Pathfinder specifically. You have to give Paizo a lot of credit for its dedication to the adventure path model when the game was young.
In any case, take all this with a large grain of salt. I’m not the greatest fan of either Pathfinder or 5th ed: I think that Pathfinder tries to accomplish something that RPGs by their very nature have a hard time with, and that 5th ed. doesn’t bring anything new to the table.
But I also feel (unlike many here) that all this doesn’t matter all that much. Sure, we should encourage high quality in these games, and it’s fun to shoot the breeze about these things, but the impact of systems is often overstated. Roleplaying games are like parks, not books. If you’re reading a bad book, you’re not going to have a good time, and there’s not much you can do about it. But we all have memories of having a blast in badly-designed or run-down parks, and I’ve had plenty of good times playing games I thought were lackluster designs.
RPGs are our parks, and the people at the table and the day’s scenario are far more important than any system of rules.
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And never, NEVER underestimate the the power of a good GM. Seriously. Ultimately, the rules are what the GM says they are, and knowing when to bend the rules (or outright break them) and when not to, so that the game is still balanced but a lot more fun/wacky, is crucial.
I tease @H a lot, by calling him the evil GM (v. @Simon’s good GM), but truly, we are blessed to have two REALLY good GM’s that have completely different gaming styles.
I agree that some of the rewards that can be earned only by one player are pretty BS.
Completely agree. My experience is just that the people I have been playing with (not at the Spielbar), don’t know how to play in a park. And thus the rules helped them to find an identity for their character, and by writing it down it was way more concrete.
I think this is something experienced players can do intuitively, but newbies can definitely benefit from.
And as a GM the belief stuff tells me what the players want the game to be about. It makes this implicit stuff explicit.
the background traits stuff imho helps to define a starting point and can give players (and gms) something to hold onto when they don’t know how they want to react to a specific situation
but yes i agree that RPGs are kind of like parks and we as players and gms get to decide what to do in there 