D&D 5E Justin Alexander's review of Shattered Obelisk is pretty scathing

[Hussar]

As a DM, if you include monsters that don’t speak common (because seriously why would they?) and ruins are covered in ancient text, your players will be incentivized to learn additional languages.

Conversely, if one or more of your players takes the Linguist feat, you are incentivized to include situations where it pays off.

Absolutely. Totally agree.

But Thieves Cant certainly won’t feature in ancient ruins. And virtually nothing speaks Druidic.

I’m not arguing against languages. That’s fine. I’m pointing to the fact that thieves can’t and Druidic specifically have never featured in any gaming material I’ve ever heard of. Certainly never seen it used.

Hell Fantasy Grounds doesn’t even recognize either as a language. That’s how little used it is.

 

[Arilyn]

After decades of play and many druid characters, I used Druidic for the very first time a couple of months ago. I was so excited! Come on, the payoff was so worth it. Can't remember the exact details, but I used Druidic, in an actual role playing scene!

 

[Thomas Shey]

Then make the other parts of the game more interesting.

That requires a great degree of mechanical design that I'm going to flat out say simply no one is willing to do. The closest thing I've even seen to it was JAGS Revised's system for building subsystems.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Indeed. How about asking players to use their brains to solve a problem? E.g. they need to figure out what an actually NPC wants, by asking the right questions.

How about not limiting mechanics to just combat? I realize some people hate it for any intellectual or social usage, but you're not the only ones who play RPGs.

 

[Pedantic]

How about not limiting mechanics to just combat? I realize some people hate it for any intellectual or social usage, but you're not the only ones who play RPGs.

I just want to play real games, where I think about stuff and try to win. It's so exhausting that apparently I'm supposed to be doing something else.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That requires a great degree of mechanical design that I'm going to flat out say simply no one is willing to do. The closest thing I've even seen to it was JAGS Revised's system for building subsystems.

Really? No one? I've seen D&D style games that do a better job of handling out of combat actions than WotC D&D. Heck, adding a graded scale of success and failure beyond a mere binary goes a long way.

 

[Micah Sweet]

How about not limiting mechanics to just combat? I realize some people hate it for any intellectual or social usage, but you're not the only ones who play RPGs.

But any given game product, if they care about anything other than maximizing their audience, has to make a design decision in this area.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Really? No one? I've seen D&D style games that do a better job of handling out of combat actions than WotC D&D. Heck, adding a graded scale of success and failure beyond a mere binary goes a long way.

Not nearly as far as I'm talking about. Come back when your intrusion game in D&D has as many meaningful decisions that are not just GM arbitration as combat does.

 

[Thomas Shey]

But any given game product, if they care about anything other than maximizing their audience, has to make a design decision in this area.

And this is why I say what I'm talking about is never going to happen.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not nearly as far as I'm talking about. Come back when your intrusion game in D&D has as many meaningful decisions that are not just GM arbitration as combat does.

Give me an example of what you mean. Does it have to be Blades in the Dark to matter?