I am specificly referring to things like the battledome and retained retraining rules. The creators don’t seem to understand what an RPG is and are treating it like video game mini-games are an ideal play pattern. Like are you going to want to reference some poorly designed minigame rule for Negg management?

Neopets seems like an ideal IP for something rules light, not something that is trying to be GTA on paper. I also sense that some of these designs might make the game feel unfaithful to Neopets.

Note that it’s making a lot of promises for more rules, but not describing what those rules are. Which is likely a sign of the rules being very rough and needing a lot of work. Which is why I say it looks like a mess.

This looks like a trainwreck of video game mechanics that don’t translate into RPG mechanics.

It’s a jab at players for being overly attached to the system. Basically that pf2 players are wearing rose colored glasses.

Where did I say I don’t like dice or crunch? I literally run Hackmaster. You don’t even know Hackmaster do you? Sure I don’t like bloated player options that cause power creep and slow the game down. But that doesn’t mean I do sloppy improv or storytell railroads like Critical Role or Dimension 20.

I’ve only been running rpgs 20 years. Has it occurred to you that you don’t like rpgs if you just play 5e or PF2. Are you even a gamemaster?

It doesn’t. It just conditions players towards not doing it by replacing interacting with the world with interacting with rules and dice. Which doesn’t stop experienced players, but misleads new players in a video game mindset.

Well they could stop gamifying RP and exploration so players actually get into character instead of just rolling dice. But that’s a pretty fundamental shift, so they won’t do it.

PF2 is certainly easier to run. But tell me when it becomes a RPG, it’s basically a video game system ported to tabletop. Everything is about the builds, not the characters.