Do TTRPGs Need to "Modernize?"

[mamba]

I'd say showing up to a 3-4 hour social activity where your presence is important for 30 minutes or less isn't a good return on investment.

the other players also get their 30 min of being important, you are not the only one at the table…

When you get right down to it, for many board games that is no different, you are not needed while another player is taking their turn

 

[Wolfpack48]

A simple solution...

a. Let the character be effective in the role assigned in the party. So if you're a fighter, you're good at fighting. If you're a wizard, you're good at magic.

b. Let the character be good at other things, not connected to the role in the party. So if you're a fighter, you're good at fighting AND (if you choose it) you are interested in the lore of noble houses - so you're also good at identifying nobles and you have a basic understanding of the Ps and Qs of social situations. Or you're a doctor who has dabbled in the Occult, so you can heal the party while helping point out weaknesses in supernatural creatures.

In too many games you must sacrifice what you are obligated to do for the good of the game to have diversity in abilities. This shouldn't be a thing.

Games like BRP/RQ/Mythras/CoC handle this by forgoing class and using a purely skill based system - a magic user can fight, a fighter can pick locks, a thief can have social skills. It does allow for more situational flexibility. 5e I believe added skills to classes as well to allow for some of this- you can always use characteristicX5 in a pinch.

 

[Retreater]

Again, you're stuck in the false assumption that you're limited to the mechanics on your character sheet and nothing else. You're also adding in what I can only assume are what you presume will be my responses, then adding in reasons why those won't work. It's a weird kind of strawman you're building here.

When there are any Knowledge skills on a character sheet, that is how you solve the problem. If you don't use the skills on the sheet, then you might as well not have them. And you completely erase the need to take them in the future.
Either the rules are important or they're not.

You're assuming that you have to hit the target where it's strongest and since that doesn't work, you throw up your hands and quit. It's an odd reaction.

This is where creativity in general and creativity specifically with spells comes into play. The old standbys of casting rock to mud on the ground and letting the tough opponent sink into the mud...only to cancel or cast the reverse spell, mud to rock, thereby trapping the opponent in the rock and making them an easier target. Or casting wall of stone above the target's head and letting gravity do its thing. You don't have to attack the target directly.

Except there are very few of those spells in the game, fewer available at low level, and fewer still that are actually prepared. More than likely you don't have access to anything that can have an effect. Maybe you have Grease, Web, or Fog Cloud - but in those cases you're also messing over the party too.
And they're probably going to fail anyway.

You're a spellcaster, okay...so? Don't attack them directly with magic. Attack them indirectly with magic or directly with non-magical means. Don't have a staff, dagger, sling, crossbow, etc? That was a mistake on your part. Don't have utility spells that can effect the environment? That was a mistake on your part. If nothing else, pick up a rock from the ground and throw it.

But can you hit the AC? Can you get past the DR with a non-magical weapon? Can you do anything?
In my case of playing Numenera, no you couldn't. The DRs were so high that unless you were a warrior, you had no hope to do anything.

So what was the barbarian doing during the hours of planning and setup?

Being told to sit down and shut up at the local pub. The preliminary activities you mentioned would likely ruin the entire operation and blow all the cover. The barbarian would get discovered and it would be all for not.

If you intentionally exclude every way the wizard can make that scouting mission easier or completely obviate it, sure. All the charm spells, all the divination spells, all the transmutation spells, polymorph, invisibility, portable holes, bags of holding, etc. If you decide ahead of time that the only useful thing is a Dexterity (Stealth) check, then sure...having a high Dexterity and expertise in Stealth wins the day. But you're intentionally ignoring about 1/4 of the wizard's spell list to get there.

Yeah. You can go that way. So then you can completely shut out the rogue. Or the paladin. Take your pick - it's a solo game at that point.

Yes, going out of your way to make a pacifist healer in a game about fighting monsters means you're not going to be as effective in combat. That's a character "build" problem. It's also worth noting that this isn't how D&D has actually worked since 3E. There are no ranks in skills. Haven't been since about 2008. In both 4E and 5E you have to work really, really hard to make a character who's not effective in combat.

A big note here: having social skills is not required to roleplay. You can roleplay with terrible social skills.

I think a secondary problem is you might be doing the "if it's not perfect, it sucks" thing where you decide ahead of time that only the character with the best stat+skill combo is allowed to make the check. That's not a game problem. That's a player mentality problem.

The example I gave was actually inspired from a medic I played in Traveler.
If you aren't maxxed out in social skills, you had better let the maxxed out social guy do it, or the mission will fail. It's better to just shut up.
The moment you bust out the dice for roleplaying, it becomes a win/lose game. The second you put skill points into "persuade" it becomes a quantifiable metric the same as an attack bonus is.
We either use the rules, or we don't. And if you're suggesting we don't use the rules, then you are with me in admitting that there are serious flaws with how these games are designed.

There's also a bit of "always needing the spotlight" going on. The other characters get to shine, too. Not every character is going to be the star of every scene. If the referee is lingering on some character's spotlight time while glossing over others' spotlight time, that's a referee problem.

There's "star of the scene" and "my character is completely pointless for a big chunk of the game." The most popular RPGs on the market are designed so as to make characters pointless for hours each session. I think it's a bad return on investment. I think games can be made better, especially when we look at how the mainline RPGs haven't really changed their core design since the 1970s/80s.

And - yeah - some people are saying "obviously people love D&D - it's so popular." That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to improve the game experience for our players.

 

[mamba]

When there are any Knowledge skills on a character sheet, that is how you solve the problem.

not every problem is a knowledge check, if you discuss your strategy / options / etc. no one is rolling to check whether the Barbarian is able to come up with a good idea, they just do

 

[dragoner]

They are. I mean vids are usually just clickbait. Games went through a big experimental explosion almost from the beginning. We were just discussing this on masto.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

And - yeah - some people are saying "obviously people love D&D - it's so popular." That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to improve the game experience for our players.

No, that's not what they're saying.

Allow me to translate myself.

You posted a youtube clickbait-y video. About using boardgame innovations in RPGs. Now, we immediately have two problems-

1. It's a youtube clickbait video.
2. Boardgames are not RPGs. The ideas, lessons, and mechanics of boardgames have very little to do with RPGs.

But moving on from there, the problem is that you posited general lessons to apply to RPGs, but in reality you are making a specific argument about D&D. So that's a bait-and-switch.

In response, people are saying that, in fact, the following things are indisputably true-

A. Game design has changed greatly within D&D in the past 50 years. OD&D is not 5e.
B. Moreover, there is an entire fertile field of RPGs that you are completely ignoring. How do your suggestions work for Ten Candles? For FKR games? For Blades in the Dark? For Dialect? For The Witch is Dead?

In summary- if you don't like the design of 5e, then just make a post saying, "I don't like 5e. Here's the reasons why, and here's what I want to change." People can evaluate those claims on their merits. Of course, we will probably still end up in the regress of, "Well, D&D is popular, so it's likely that you have the minority opinion on some of the things you like, which is okay, and that's why there's all these other games out there with completely different designs!"

 

[Wolfpack48]

not every problem is a knowledge check, if you discuss your strategy / options / etc. no one is rolling to check whether the Barbarian is able to come up with a good idea, they just do

Agreed. You are allowed to come up with ideas as a player and I’ve never been at a table where a player was told to sit out brainstorming because their character’s INT was low.

 

[Retreater]

Your examples in the post above go a long way to undermine this. Where being effective in their role is used against the characters and players.

We talked about healers/medics/etc.
Healing is usually based off a mental stat (Wisdom, Wits, Intelligence, etc.) which is not useful in any combat situation. If I take my point allotment from Healing and put it in an Attack ability, that makes me less good at what the party needs me to be. Or if I invest in Social skills instead of being able to cure poison.
You get something like 2 trained skills in D&D (for example). You can't diversify your character enough to be good at more than one thing.

That's exactly what skills and backgrounds and feats do in 5E. You absolutely can have a noble-born fighter who's good with social situations or a wizard with the medicine skill.

But you're never actually decent at it. If you take a decent Charisma score, then you've sacrificed HP by tanking Con or your ability to hit and damage by tanking Str or Dex.
And is it being a bad sport to tank your scores that are important to your role to be able to engage with social situations? Shouldn't the bard just be doing that?

These two are also specifically things that can happen in DCC RPG. Other games like Cortex Prime, Fate, etc all let you make whatever kind of character you want.

I've never played Cortex, and I don't think I've had a decent/proper game of Fate or DCC - so I can't judge any of them fairly.
One game I remember that handled this somewhat decently was 13th Age. It doesn't have skills at all. You have a background independent of your class. For example, you could say "sailor." You put ranks into "sailor" and anytime you have to roll a skill check, you add those ranks if they're relevant. You could make the case of adding ranks for boating, tying knots, but also gathering information on the docks, knowing how to supply for a long journey, carpentry, etc.

Do you have specific examples of games you're talking about?

Pretty much any major game on the market. D&D, Pathfinder, Traveler, Cthulhu, etc.

 

[billd91]

There are some serious problems with assumptions and styles going on here that aren't necessarily a problem with rules.

When there are any Knowledge skills on a character sheet, that is how you solve the problem. If you don't use the skills on the sheet, then you might as well not have them. And you completely erase the need to take them in the future.
Either the rules are important or they're not.

In most cases I've encountered, rules like Knowledge skills are helpful and good ways to enable the DM to feed information to the PCs, but I've rarely encountered situations where they ARE the solution more than ideas from the players. And I don't think there are any rules implying they SHOULD be the only solutions to problems.

But can you hit the AC? Can you get past the DR with a non-magical weapon? Can you do anything?
In my case of playing Numenera, no you couldn't. The DRs were so high that unless you were a warrior, you had no hope to do anything.

This is one of the very few situations in this thread where I see rules being part of the actual problem. If the ACs or DRs, or the specific game's equivalent, are set so high that you need a lot of optimization to hit them - that, I agree, is a rule design problem. Those things should generally be designed for a more moderate build, with rare exceptions pushing the envelope and forcing some kind of method of cooperation between players to beat something. But plenty of RPGs DO include these kinds of things - Help actions in D&D and BRP, flanking in D&D, combining attacks in Champions, etc - for just such situations.

Being told to sit down and shut up at the local pub. The preliminary activities you mentioned would likely ruin the entire operation and blow all the cover. The barbarian would get discovered and it would be all for not.

Why would a barbarian hitting up the rumor mill in a bar give the operation away? Or, for that matter, why would the barbarian being one of the dinner guess screw things over without play getting kind of stupid (either from the GMs or player's side of table). A barbarian doesn't have to be played as a boorish lout, and the GM doesn't need to cut a barbarian's impact on a dinner party out or have any delicate negotiations fail. The barbarian could distract some of the courtiers as a fascinating or exotic social outsider and make the party face's job easier. Players and GMs should be working with each other, right, instead of maybe treating PCs stereotypically and forcing them to stay in their lanes.

The example I gave was actually inspired from a medic I played in Traveler.
If you aren't maxxed out in social skills, you had better let the maxxed out social guy do it, or the mission will fail. It's better to just shut up.
The moment you bust out the dice for roleplaying, it becomes a win/lose game. The second you put skill points into "persuade" it becomes a quantifiable metric the same as an attack bonus is.
We either use the rules, or we don't. And if you're suggesting we don't use the rules, then you are with me in admitting that there are serious flaws with how these games are designed.

I fail to see how things always need to be maxed out. Are you setting the difficulties too high? Not allowing players to help each other? It may be that the math of the situation encourages maxing things out, but in my experience relatively few games make it impossible to succeed without maxing things out.

There's "star of the scene" and "my character is completely pointless for a big chunk of the game." The most popular RPGs on the market are designed so as to make characters pointless for hours each session. I think it's a bad return on investment. I think games can be made better, especially when we look at how the mainline RPGs haven't really changed their core design since the 1970s/80s.

Yeah, well, if you don't allow certain stars of the scene to happen every once in a while, why bother having multiple players and multiple characters at all? I can see where you don't want extended sessions with just a single player while nobody else is involved, but 5-10 minutes here or there shouldn't really be a problem. If you're not directly involved, be respectful. The attitude about checking out or leaving and getting a beer is a problematic one because it underscores you're not a fan of the OTHER players when they get a chance to be in the spotlight without YOU. If extended solos are coming up, then it's a problem with the GM and pacing more than rules.

 

[Retreater]

1. It's a youtube clickbait video.

I didn't consider it clickbait. I guess if it meets your criteria for clickbait, that's your decision.

2. Boardgames are not RPGs. The ideas, lessons, and mechanics of boardgames have very little to do with RPGs.

Right. Boardgames are not RPGs. We could just as well be talking about filmmaking techniques or things we could learn from video games. This is a jumping off point for a discussion. If you're not interested in the premise of the discussion, I can't help ya.

But moving on from there, the problem is that you posited general lessons to apply to RPGs, but in reality you are making a specific argument about D&D. So that's a bait-and-switch.

We're a D&D-focused board, but some of my experiences come from other games such as Cthulhu, Traveler, Numenera, Fate, and others. I am translating the experience to D&D so we're using a lingua franca. If you'd prefer, I can show why these issues come up in Traveler, for example.

A. Game design has changed greatly within D&D in the past 50 years. OD&D is not 5e.

5e certainly looks back to the past more than any other edition of the WotC era. I'd say 5e is closer to OD&D than 3rd edition was, and I think many would agree with me. There are still "dead turns" in 5e. There's still a heavy reliance on luck. Many of the points made in the video about older boardgame design are still there in those modern RPGs that are connected to 1970s RPG tropes.

B. Moreover, there is an entire fertile field of RPGs that you are completely ignoring. How do your suggestions work for Ten Candles? For FKR games? For Blades in the Dark? For Dialect? For The Witch is Dead?

I ignore them because I've never heard of them and can't speak to them (well, I have heard of Blades but I've never played it). That would be a great opportunity to offer something constructive to the conversation and say "hey - Dialect does this. Maybe you could try that game or implement this idea in your game of Cthulhu?"

In summary- if you don't like the design of 5e, then just make a post saying, "I don't like 5e. Here's the reasons why, and here's what I want to change." People can evaluate those claims on their merits. Of course, we will probably still end up in the regress of, "Well, D&D is popular, so it's likely that you have the minority opinion on some of the things you like, which is okay, and that's why there's all these other games out there with completely different designs!"

True, I don't like the design of 5e. But I'm also wondering what to do when there isn't a thing I can do in Traveler. Or my friend is sitting there in our Call of Cthulhu game bored out of his mind because he's good at talking in social situations and researching in libraries - but we're in an abandoned mine this session.