The Technocratic Union are the primary antagonists to the 9 Traditions. No so much purely evil for the sake of evil but a well funded highly authoritarian secret society ideologically opposed to the Traditions. The Technocracy brought us modern plumbing, vaccination and modern medicine, toilet paper, and nuclear weapons, advanced bioweapons, capitalism, and the prison industrial complex.

The Nephandi are the evil for evil sake mages. They are seeking to spread as much pain and misery and bring in the descent of humanity into destruction.

And then there’s the marauders, mages who’s magickal hubris gets the better of them and they succumb to a reality warping madness.

In my experience when I’ve been playing any system for a long time and my players say “hey do something different” they are almost always looking for something very different from what we are all playing. I’ve spent the most amount of time playing Mage the Ascension in my rpg career, eventually my current group was hey Mage is getting a bit stale, let’s do another game. So we did some Vampire the Masquerade, and it was too close in flavor to Mage. So we started playing some Pathfinder and that was the breath of fresh air we were looking for. Eventually we did switch back to mage, but one of my players decided to run their own campaign set in Star Wars which was a ton of fun.

So forgive me for using my own experience of when my players have asked to play something different my understanding is they are looking for something more drastic that going from one Tolkien inspired fantasy game to another Tolkien inspired fantasy game or from one modern Gothic punk game with magic to another modern Gothic punk game with fangs.

I’m getting tired of eating Mac and Cheese all the time “have you tried Caccio e Pepe?”

It’s still pasta and cheese.

If someone asked me for something other than dnd to play, I’d imagine they’re looking to get out of the tolkein flavored medieval fantasy genre into something different and recommend something like World of Darkness, modern supernatural urban fantasy for political intrigue and melodramatics, or Blades in the Dark, victorian industrial fantasy heists. Not “grittier Tolkien flavored medieval fantasy.”

Imo WoD I feel gets the right balance of RP and streamlined combat with optional additional rules if they are needed. I’m also generally a firm believer in combat means all other forms of diplomacy has failed. I also love that no matter how strong you are, everyone has 7 points of health they can take (but there are ways of getting around that especially for mages)

And for all the good and bad that the 5e splats that Paradox is putting out, the “3 rounds and call it” philosophy of combat is something I enjoy immensely.

In my eyes rolls basically need to be Yes Ands or Yes Buts.

Roll well: Yes And you figure out some extra information/figure it out quickly so you have advantage on your escape/you look impressive in front of the guards who did let you into the room

Roll poorly: Yes But you take a bit too long figuring it out, now guards are walking into the room/one of the guards escorting you into the room points something out to you making you look a unobservant/you accidentally break something and you’ve now left evidence you were here.

I’ve run 10 Candles a number of times and had an absolutely fantastic time every single time. It’s perfect for a horror one shot and character creation is built right into setting up the game. Definitely talk with the group beforehand whether you all want to play a more light hearted comedic horror or something scarier.

https://youtu.be/GfePLMYmA7k

I really like WoD’s Resources background, one thing I do tend to append to the rules is separate out recurring income from lump assets.

Basically Income Resources are used up and refresh each month worth of time provided players maintain their income or have retainers keep watch over the accounts. Lump Resources are like having a big pile of gold, or a big inheritance from an eccentric uncle or just a bunch of money in a savings account. Once they’re used up, they’re used up.

Less about specifically hating Roll20, than the blatant engagement in anti-competetive practices and the monopolization of the industry in a push toward a vertically integrated monopoly.

Sort of like if Hasbro bought out the main book printer used by a bunch of TTRPGs so they have a vertical integration and can basically force all those other games to either deal with a hostile competitor to get books printed at unsustainable prices or completely upend a huge section of their development pipelines, try to find another printer, build that relationship, rework the pipeline and formatting guides so the printer actually can print the books. That’s a process that could take multiple years and millions of dollars to do. Both of which options would kill even large rpg studios.