Congratulations, that is no small feat! Got it in you to tell us about it? I love hearing campaign stories
Hey, perhaps this is a bit silly, but I just wanted to let you know I always look at these and read through your notes. I really enjoy Satisfactory, but don't have as much time to play as I did once, so it's always a delight when I stumble across one of your posts on my feed and I get to see the progress you're making.
I appreciate the time you take to plan everything out and make your builds look good, it's always inspiring.
Anyway, that's all. Keep it up mate!
Congratulations! It's an exciting time and they are such marvellous little creatures. Here are some random thoughts that may be useful
Pregnancy
Delivery
Most hospitals / maternity wards offer tours. If you are planning a hospital birth, going in the week before to see the place helped reduce a lot of the anxiety when the time finally came. They can't be scheduled far in advance because it depends on how busy they are, so keep checking
Familiarise yourself with the physical details of the birth process. We read through "The Birth Partner" (Simkin and Cheney) together in the preceding months. There is one chapter where they subtly endorse some pseudoscience, but if you can skip over that when you run into it, we found it very informative and helpful about what to expect.
The event itself is exciting, but overwhelming. Again, your wife will be entirely consumed by managing the physical demands. You can help by taking care of the logistical and emotional demands. Advocate for her. The staff are on the same team as you, but you are the only one with the brain space to ensure that the decisions your wife wants for the birth are being kept in mind.
Newborn
The first 2-3 weeks are the hardest. You're adjusting, and the baby is adjusting, and all three of you will have to figure out how to make it work. I hope you are in a place where you can all take time off work. We were lucky in that we were able to breastfeed without too many issues, but regardless if it works the same for you or not, those early days must be a team effort. My wife fed, I did the diapers, and we all woke up together.
Early on, we ran into some pretty difficult nights where the baby just would not sleep. It turned out she was not getting enough breast milk. Once we started adding some formula, she went right back to sleep. We did this until my wife's supply increased, which is a fairly common pattern.
I don't know why I didn't expect this, but newborns generally dislike the experience of getting their diapers changed. It will be a fight for a little while. I say this because, if they ever stop crying while you are in the middle of one, duck and cover. That means they are about ready for part two. And it can come with some force. Those little changing mats do not cover nearly enough. We had to put down an extra layer of paper towels along the whole "trajectory". (This does calm down eventually)
Babies are demanding. It is rewarding, but there will be exhausting days. Early on, my wife and I devised a system where we each get one day a week that we have "off" from the baby, barring emergencies. I can't overstate how much of a difference having that one "recharge" day makes in managing the stress, it has been extremely helpful.
Things we got that have been worth their weight in gold:
Things we got that really weren't as important as we thought they were going to be
I know that looks like a lot, but it's really not bad, because most of it is extra, conveniences and nice-to-have things. As long as you have food, diapers, and a safe place for the baby to sleep, all of that other stuff can be figured out on the go, and you will figure it out as you find what works for you. And the love and joy that come with the baby are indescribable. The rewards are there, and they eclipse the challenges.
You can do this, and it will be wonderful!
Outer Wilds. Endings of both the main game and the DLC can still get me to tear up a bit. I saw a post somewhere, don't remember, that said something along the lines of "Listening to the Outer Wilds OST is the only way I feel my feelings any more." It's about like that.
I have put hundreds of hours into RoR2 on PC, love the game. I recently purchased a Switch copy so I could play with a friend of mine who is console-only. Sadly, the port is still in a pretty bad place when I checked last (2-3 weeks ago).
I am not expecting the PC and console experience to be identical by any stretch, but I am talking about basic issues like the music on each stage cutting out after playing for only 10-15 seconds, wonky damage (Beetle Queens absolutely massacring us even on Rainstorm if we touched their projectile splash zones), and all the other miscellaneous issues from the patch like logbook being glitches, unlocks being unpredictable, etc.
I think it could potentially be fixed, but I would give them time to put out a few more bugfix patches before I considered a console purchase
I have not yet played Return of the Obra Dinn, but it is always high up on the list when I look for games like Outer Wilds. I'm a huge fan of Outer Wilds, so maybe the recommendation can work in reverse
From what I have heard, the deduction is not as intense as in Obra Dinn, but there is very little hand holding, and the whole game has been brilliantly designed so that it is driven entirely by your natural human curiosity. Once you get through the initial "tutorial" section (probably the roughest part of the game, push through!) the whole game is wide open. See something weird orbiting a distant planet? You can go straight there and start poking around. If you follow the leads that turn up there, you will eventually even figure out what it is, and why it is there. Do that enough and you'll eventually figure out the strange mystery of your home solar system.
Can't recommend it highly enough, but you only get to play it without knowing the secrets once, so go in as blind as you can. It took me 20-30 hours to "solve" the main game, maybe another 20 for the DLC, which is also well worth it
Man, we ended up setting up a wiki for all the ones from my last campaign... it's down at the moment, but here are a few I have saved on my phone:
"My companions and I are professional adventurers"
"Some of us more professional than others..."
"For no sexy reason, what does the pope look like?"
"Also, I'm not doing terrible! But I definitely just got stabbed."
Bard: "No, this is wholesome [Bard] moment! Anyway, how much money do you have?"
Sorcerer: "[Ranger], we are about to do some wacky-ass magic"
Ranger: "In that case, I would like to watch it from over there."
Sorcerer: "I will not be doing it. I will be joining you."
GM: "Divine and wild magic start pouring into and it's like... Have you ever licked a battery?"
GM: "Divine, chaos, and dragon magic flows through you—"
Bard: "And bardic from the inspiration!"
Ranger: "Oh I can add some ranger nature!"
Sorcerer: "And I have one that can help! I cast minor illusion to make a "do not disturb" sign."
"If I take one more step, it'll be the furthest I've ever been from home..."
"You didn't even have to step."
"If I take one more interdimensional vortex..."
"Your left or my left? You're an orb."
"I am."
"Float like a flowerpot, sting like a school bus."
Outer Wilds
If you're a naturally curious person, the odds are you will probably enjoy Outer Wilds. No other game I've played has ever had quite the same blend of mystery, conquering the unknown, and semi-realistic space exploration.
Could someone make another game like it? Not impossible, I suppose, but I think you would be hard pressed.
Should you keep playing the original? You really can't, one time through is all you get. Once you have discovered all the secrets and uncovered the mysteries, that is your journey through it. Still fun to visit every once in a while, though
Maybe FATE would be worth checking out?
Things I think it might hit for you:
Characters are good at what they're good at. You define the core concepts of your character and use them to get bonuses. Your character is a Highly Trained Ninja? Then yeah, you'll be getting bonuses to all your sneaking, hiding, acrobatics, flashy martial arts, etc. Plus, the way the maths work, the dice have a bell curve centred at +0 (extremes of +4/-4) so the +4 in your character's best skill is constantly having a huge impact on outcomes. Contrast that with your +7 in D&D which is still missing 25% of the time
Fairly simple rules. The core is, describe what you're trying to do, and then use one of four basic actions to model it if a roll seems appropriate: Attack, Defend, Overcome (beat a DC) or Create an Advantage (alter circumstances/environment/characters to tip the odds in your favour). However, there's a little more for combat and also a meta currency to manage, which I'll talk about below
Very quick to get off the ground. Character creation can take only minutes if you want. No mucking about with long lists of feats and spells and class builds and whatnot. You're actively encouraged to leave spots blank and fill them in during play when an idea strikes you, great for new and unsure players
Completely setting agnostic, it's flexible enough to do almost anything
Things I think it might miss for you:
FATE's approach is much closer to a story game, especially compared to something like D&D which leans towards the simulation side of the spectrum. Its meta currency, Fate points, aims to emulate the feel of an action movie or TV show. Spend points to do awesome things, get them back for accepting challenges, complications, and setbacks in your character's arc. That latter point especially often means the table needs to have a "writer's room" mentality, which isn't a good fit for all players.
FATE doesn't really try to do certain things that D&D does, like strict resource management, accumulation of powerful loot, big powerful character level ups, or dungeon crawling. It can be done, and guides are out there to help you do so, but you will be bolting a lot of extras onto the system, so watch out if those are what you enjoy
Which brings me to the last point, FATE is a system that really wants you to hack it and make it your own. It's very resilient to this sort of thing compared to something like D&D where getting some maths wrong can make things unfun in innumerable ways, but it does take effort and thought regardless, which may not be to everyone's taste. For example, you won't really find a "bestiary" of monsters to throw at players, you'll be making them up yourself, maybe entirely on the fly.
The rules are all freely available online or in pay-what-you-want PDFs. There are three current editions:
FATE Core, all the rules of the game plus lots of extras, examples, optional systems, things like that
FATE Condensed, all the rules same as Core, but with most of the extras cut out and overall streamlined down to 60 pages from 300 or so
FATE Accelerated, uses the same basic ideas for its rules, but simplifies things down to the barest of minimums, e.g. dropping the skill list for 6 basic "approaches", simplifying the damage system.
Here's a link to FATE Condensed, as I personally found it easiest to start with: https://fate-srd.com/fate-condensed
One disclaimer: I haven't actually played it myself yet, but I have been prepping a one shot I'll be taking my D&D 5e group through this weekend to see if it's going to be a good fit for us, so I have been doing a lot of research!
I think you've received lots of great advice here already. One additional thing you may want to keep in mind as you're weighing your options is how the manner in which this character exits may impact other players.
Obviously, the needs of this player come first, and making whatever changes they need to ensure they can keep having fun in the game is most important. But I bring it up because, in a similar situation where I was running a game for a player who wanted to switch characters, I executed the change in a bit of a clumsy way that one of my other players found frustrating.
I had worked together with the player who wanted to change to craft a heroic last stand scenario in which their old character would sacrifice himself to allow the rest of the party to escape. Critically, we didn't discuss these intentions with anyone else at the table. One of my other players picked up on what was happening the moment we started playing it out, and did everything he could to prevent the loss of a party member. I essentially railroaded right over anything they tried.
Afterwards, they told me that while they understood why I ran it that way once the other player had a chance to explain their intentions and new character, it still wasn't very much fun to play through in the moment.
All this to say, if I had to do it again, I would make sure I have some sort of buy-in from the other players. They wouldn't need to know all the details, certainly, but I think a little heads-up would have made that experience much smoother for everyone.
Amber is a classic example that comes up in these discussions.
Intrepid uses playing cards instead of dice to resolve scenes and combat. For scenes, two people each narrate an outcome, and players vote on the version they prefer using red or black playing cards. A card is then selected and that outcome becomes the truth, so there is still an element of randomness.
In combat, each suit has a specific meaning for the ebb and flow of the battle, jokers change the scene, and the first person to draw the 4th ace wins the fight.
Most of Ben Robbins' don't have a random element at all and conflicts are resolved through procedure. Follow uses two coloured stones/poker chips/tokenswhich are drawn from a bag, similar to Intrepid. He also provides a "finger dice" system for getting dice-like results without using dice. On a signal, every player throws from 0 to 5 fingers, and groups of 5 fingers are eliminated. The remainder is roughly equivalent to a d6 roll.