My kids (10 & 13) and I are wrapping up our first campaign together in D&D 5e, and I'm starting to think about the next one. It's going to be a homebrew setting--future humanity decimated by climate change, but also elements of weird magic with giant plants and insects, inspired by things like Studio Ghibli, Kipo, etc.
After watching the recent Critical Role - Tears of the Kingdom oneshot, I started tinkering with my own system (PbtA based, with lots of opportunities for inventive crafting, and a video-game-inspired skill tree rather than strict classes) which is fun, but really time-consuming.
Wondering if anyone knows of an existing system that would work well for this setting? I'd like to find something simpler than 5e (which is the only system I know well), since they mainly enjoy the story and role-playing rather than lots of number crunching and detailed rules.
I can think of three options, none are perfect, but each could be tinkered with to get what you want:
In the Light of a Ghost Star – This is much further in the future than you intend. But it has incredibly simple rules which are easy to customize. Also I made a psionics supplement for it here. I had pretty good success running it.
Mutants & Machine-guns - A loose, fairly tongue-in-cheek system. Free.
Mutant Future - Basically a cleaned up clone of early edition Gamma World. Less light than other games mentioned.
Wow, I haven't heard of any of those. This decision is going to be harder than I thought! Thanks!