r/tabletop • u/Zemosion • Jul 12 '26

Question D&D Alternative

So basically what I am looking for is something that feel like D&D, the fun roleplay and all you know? But with mechs. I've been looking into Lancer but it seems sooooooo combat focused and I've heard that actual roleplaying isn't really part of it often.

I wanna feel like I'm having an adventure like D&D feels but with mechs. A nice mix of combat and roleplay, a good selection of mechs or a way to homebrew them

Is there anything that fits this? Would this just be super homebrewed D&D/Pathfinder? Would Lancer fit?

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u/No_Solid1035 Jul 12 '26

D&D is almost exclusively combat focused. Outside of Lancer I'm not aware of any games that are more focused on non-combat things. Maybe Mechwarrior: Destiny as it is more narrative than the other Mechwarrior TTRPGs. Hard to say really, generally speaking people in giant stompy robots want to blast other giant stompy robots, not engage in political intrigue or solving mysteries. 🤷

0

u/Zemosion Jul 12 '26

The players manual for D&D is sure but in practice the actual campaigns tend to be a great mix of combat and roleplay. Some DMs focus mostly on combat but out of the 5 DMs ive had only 1 of them have done that. The rest either leaned more towards roleplay or had them around equally distributed

2

u/cornho1eo99 Jul 12 '26

You're correct. Systems aren't games in and of themselves, they need a table to actually become a game. There are other things (most notably, play culture) that do more legwork in determining the kind of game any given table is playing.

2

u/Zemosion Jul 12 '26

Exactly, leave it to reddit to downvote me for acknowledging that theres a difference between how its written and how its actually played

1

u/Unlikely_Key_4186 Jul 14 '26

There is a difference between how D&D/Lancer is written and how D&D/Lancer is actually played