What third-party books do the most interesting stuff with the 5e engine?

DammitVictor · Apr 10, 2018

Personally, my group is only willing to play Riddle of Steel set in East Berlin between 1978 and 1984.

I guess our tastes are just more refined than you plebs. To be expected, really.

Fanaelialae · Apr 10, 2018

Morrus said:
If you’ve succeeded in making D&D more suited to most genres than other games specifically designed for those genres, you’re a better GM than I.

Classes and levels and zero to hero just don’t work for Call of Cthulhu. And I’ve never seen a better investigative system than GUMSHOE. And for pure suspense, Dread has all beat. That’s all just my mileage though.

I have to disagree to an extent. Back in the day there was a d20 Cthulhu book which we used to run a game. It was quite successful, in the sense that most of the PCs died or went insane by the end (level 6 or 7), and we all had fun.

Admittedly, it was a mod of D&D with a much shallower power curve. If you took the D&D classes and just dropped them in the Cthulhu mythos setting, you might end up with very different results.

If the players and DM buy in to the premise, I think with the right modifications D&D can accomplish most things quite successfully. My group has run all kinds of crazy games using modded variants of D&D (from modern supernatural investigators to sci-fi settings where we played as alien invaders with incredibly powerful personal force fields). I won't go so far as to say other games can't do it better (while I've never had a chance to play them, I've heard great things about Dread and I really like the Gumshoe system as well) but D&D can be perfectly functional with the right tweaks and proper mindset.

Morrus · Apr 10, 2018

dave2008 said:
My point is: I don't see how a system geared to a certain style of play will accommodate people who don't like that style of play. If my D&D players don't like low magic fantasy, how will TOR make them enjoy it more than AiME?

I doubt that it will.

happyhermit · Apr 10, 2018

FaerieGodfather said:
Personally, my group is only willing to play Riddle of Steel set in East Berlin between 1978 and 1984.

I guess our tastes are just more refined than you plebs. To be expected, really.

That's certainly a common attitude, that D&D is the lowest common denominator and other games are more advanced/refined/sophisticated. Maybe it's true and the people I play with are just pathetic compared to those who prefer other games, it seems like we are having fun but that could just be due to our ignorance. On the other hand maybe people just have different preferences.

dave2008 · Apr 10, 2018

Morrus said:
I doubt that it will.

OK, I thought you were imply that when you said TOR would work for you players who are dissatisfied by AiME (presumably because of the lack of magic). My understand now is something like: your plays enjoy other styles of play and that TOR would allow them to embrace that style better than AiME? Is that close?

Morrus · Apr 10, 2018

dave2008 said:
OK, I thought you were imply that when you said TOR would work for you players who are dissatisfied by AiME (presumably because of the lack of magic). My understand now is something like: your plays enjoy other styles of play and that TOR would allow them to embrace that style better than AiME? Is that close?

No, I said TOR does Middle Earth better than D&D does. I haven’t even thought about playing styles, let alone mentioned them.

dave2008 · Apr 10, 2018

Morrus said:
No, I said TOR does Middle Earth better than D&D does. I haven’t even thought about playing styles, let alone mentioned them.

I must have read into it then, my bad. To be honest I am having a hard time untying the not of setting (middle earth), system (TOR & AiME/5e), and playstyle (high magic vs low/no magic); and what helps or hinders what! Of course it is complicated as by the fact that at least setting and playstyle are somewhat subjective.

Blue · Apr 10, 2018

Fanaelialae said:
If the players and DM buy in to the premise, I think with the right modifications D&D can accomplish most things quite successfully. My group has run all kinds of crazy games using modded variants of D&D (from modern supernatural investigators to sci-fi settings where we played as alien invaders with incredibly powerful personal force fields). I won't go so far as to say other games can't do it better (while I've never had a chance to play them, I've heard great things about Dread and I really like the Gumshoe system as well) but D&D can be perfectly functional with the right tweaks and proper mindset.

There's a difference between "can do successfully" and "the mechanics really evoke and support the setting."

There's also an axis from "unmodified D&D" to "a different system that supports the feel I want", and modding D&D is moving along that axis toward the second one already.

Can I run anything I want in unmodded D&D? Eh, sure. But that doesn't mean that there are places where the mechanics either lets you down or actively fights you in evoking the flavor of what you want. At that point mods can hit some low hanging fruit, and table buy-in to gloss over other issues can go a long way.

But that doesn't mean that a system designed from the floor up won't do a better job.

I'll take a fairly extreme example just to show off differences: Consider Don't Rest Your Head, a game about being awake in your dreams where you get both more powerful and more vulnerable as your get exhausted. It's a lot about exploring your psyche and your choices. With mechanical support for that exploration.

No one is putting down 5e - it's a great system. Every system has things it natively supports better.

DEFCON 1 · Apr 10, 2018

Fanaelialae said:
I have to disagree to an extent. Back in the day there was a d20 Cthulhu book which we used to run a game. It was quite successful, in the sense that most of the PCs died or went insane by the end (level 6 or 7), and we all had fun.

Admittedly, it was a mod of D&D with a much shallower power curve. If you took the D&D classes and just dropped them in the Cthulhu mythos setting, you might end up with very different results.

If the players and DM buy in to the premise, I think with the right modifications D&D can accomplish most things quite successfully. My group has run all kinds of crazy games using modded variants of D&D (from modern supernatural investigators to sci-fi settings where we played as alien invaders with incredibly powerful personal force fields). I won't go so far as to say other games can't do it better (while I've never had a chance to play them, I've heard great things about Dread and I really like the Gumshoe system as well) but D&D can be perfectly functional with the right tweaks and proper mindset.

The question becomes though, is why go through all the effort to modify D&D to play (for example) Call of Cthulu, when you can just play the actual Call of Cthulu in the first place?

Our of curiosity, had any of you played the original Call of Cthulu RPG prior to playing the jerry-rigged d20 version? If you had and the d20 version gave you a comparable mechanical experience, then that's interesting (and in my mind a bit unexpected.) I usually don't ever expect the jerry-rigged d20 version of any game to be as tight as the original version they were trying to copy. Swashbuckling Adventures was a pale shadow of 7th Sea and the Roll & Keep system. And I really preferred the West End d6 Star Wars to the WotC version. I can only imagine how d20 CoC plays compared to its original.

BookBarbarian · Apr 10, 2018

It's interesting how some of it is the game encouraging a type of play and some of it is player expectations.

I'm running a very successful game of AiME, but with players that haven't played that much D&D. Some LMoP and a few one shots, but never over 3rd level, and only one of them played spellcasters. So far no one misses magic missile or fireball.

For us AiME does a fine job of a Middle Earth game, if more action packed than you'd expect from the books, but actually pretty spot on for what you would expect from the films. Shadow points, Journeys, and Audiences do a good job of filling in the non-combat pillars of the game.

I can't say if TOR does it better, I've yet to play it. It probably does as it doesn't have the D&D baggage.

But for lots of people AiME may be good enough. As far as I can tell it's outselling TOR by a pretty wide margin these days.

Sometimes good enough and popular is preferable to better but more obscure. In fact that's about how I feel about 5e in general.

What third-party books do the most interesting stuff with the 5e engine?

DammitVictor

Trust the Fungus

Fanaelialae

Legend

Morrus

Well, that was fun

happyhermit

Adventurer

dave2008

Legend

Morrus

Well, that was fun

dave2008

Legend

Blue

Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal

DEFCON 1

Legend

BookBarbarian

Expert Long Rester

Similar Threads