D&D General If you could put D&D into any other non middle ages genre, what would it be?

CapnZapp · Jun 18, 2019

MarkB said:
If both sides are using ranged weapons, then neither side is trying to get close. Instead, they're firing at each other from positions of cover in an extended ranged battle. Which is exactly like any typical Western movie.

Except that would make the session suck, at least for me.

You're painting a picture where everybody's mostly missing because everybody's AC is increased by cover.

Not to mention how spectacularly unsuited 5th edition in particular would be with how it allows you to move, shoot, and move. You would always have to rely on your reaction, since everyone stays inside their house or whatever with full cover (no attack possible), except during their turn, when they move out, shoot, and move back out of sight again. But I'll give you that this wasn't what you had in mind, and so I won't discuss this particular scenario more.

What I will say is, that sooner or later one hero will realize two things:
1) their crowbar or axe deals more or less the same damage as their revolver
2) their hit points make it fairly safe to leave cover for a short while?

So why not just rush the bandits and axe them to death in melee? In most Westerns they're spread out, and would individually be helpless against this bold and surprising tactic!

CapnZapp · Jun 18, 2019

doctorbadwolf said:
You dont, though. Again, you can just increase the damage. Like many genre games of dnd, you’d want new classes or at least subclasses, but that’s it. The damage values of weapons aren’t inextricably built into the engine.

Increasing the damage is functionally identical to reducing your hit point total.

Come on, just admit that it is the damage model that is important here. D&D uses one fundamentally incompatible to most people's expectations on firearms, because they assume cover and tactical movement should be more important than melee.

At it's core, D&D features a very primitive damage model. Then it adds a lot of mostly magic to spruce it up. And yes, it needs to be simple to not bog down the full game with Elves, Dragons and Wizards.

But when you strip all that away, as I presume you would for a Wild West game, all you keep is a damage model that encourages you to act in a way more in line with the way Conan the Barbarian acts than the way sheriffs and outlaws act.

CapnZapp · Jun 18, 2019

Paul Farquhar said:
It doesn't matter what period of history you are dealing with, it's always advantageous to be able to take out the enemy at range before they can get close enough to use their weapons.

Which is why hit points were invented!

That is to say, you are absolutely correct.

But reality has surprisingly little relevance to a discussion such as this one...

CapnZapp · Jun 18, 2019

Paul Farquhar said:
If you want to do grimdark 5e D&D rules really don't work well irrespective of setting, since it is designed around player characters having action movie plot armour.

And also how having plot armor deemphasizes the need to act the way people generally act when firearms are involved: staying behind cover, focusing on tactical awareness and flanking.

D&D doesn't want you to do that; it wants you to get up close and dirty.

Lanefan · Jun 18, 2019

Oofta said:
Anything remotely approaching reality would include disabilities, hindrances, bleeding out, infections, etc. We don't include those in many styles of games because it wouldn't be fun.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy D&D. For all it's flaws, HP works. I just think that many things have to be vastly simplified to work as a game. Whether that's HP or armor or weapons or ease of recovery or the turn based system.

And IMO the game works even better if some of those things are modified to be perhaps a bit less simplified and-or a bit more realistic.

Ease of recovery is trivially simple to alter. Armour actually works not too badly as is. The turn-based system can be made much less rigid simply by rerolling initiative each round (and allowing ties). Adding a wound-vitality or body-fatigue system to HP in the name of realism is easy - it must be, 'cause we've done it and we ain't no hifalutin' game designers.

As for firearms, I certainly perceive them in reality as being more deadly than melee weapons: if I'm unarmed and someone's pointing a gun at me from beyond my reach I'm screwed, but if someone rushes at me with a sword I feel like I've at least got a chance to do something about it.

Paul Farquhar · Jun 18, 2019

CapnZapp said:
And also how having plot armor deemphasizes the need to act the way people generally act when firearms are involved: staying behind cover, focusing on tactical awareness and flanking.

D&D doesn't want you to do that; it wants you to get up close and dirty.

Again, that is a function of they type of game you want to play, not the setting.

Arnie Schwarzenegger in Commando does not stay behind cover and focus on tactical positioning. He stands out in the open with an assault rifle in each hand.

CapnZapp · Jun 18, 2019

Paul Farquhar said:
Again, that is a function of they type of game you want to play, not the setting.

Arnie Schwarzenegger in Commando does not stay behind cover and focus on tactical positioning. He stands out in the open with an assault rifle in each hand.

Yes, he's essentially Conan throwing rocks.

The point is: when most people mention a modern game with insurgents or drug dealers, Commando is not what they have in mind, and D&D is not an obvious fit.

In other words, the setting suggests different ways to play.

Most people expects ranged combat, maneuvering and tactics to play a greater role if armed with a knife and a firearm instead of a short sword and bow and arrows.

D&D is great and all, but it does one of them better than the other.

You *can* tell people it's Commando you have in mind, and if so maybe D&D does work.

MarkB · Jun 18, 2019

CapnZapp said:
Except that would make the session suck, at least for me.

You're painting a picture where everybody's mostly missing because everybody's AC is increased by cover.

Yeah, but increased from what? Denim shirts don't provide much in the way of Armour Class.

Ancalagon · Jun 18, 2019

Paul Farquhar said:
Rubbish. In Game of Thrones swords are extremely lethal. e.g. In series 1 a character is wounded by a single spear thrust in the leg and limps for the rest of the series (until it is cured by amputation, at the neck).

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Lone Ranger faces the Black Hat gang in a hail of hundreds of bullets.

It's tone, not genre, that determines the lethality of the setting.

I disagree with your implied definition of genre, which seems muddled with setting. The wild west is not a genre! It's a setting.

But I haven't read the entire thread yet, so maybe I am not fully understanding your position.

Ancalagon · Jun 18, 2019

Derren said:
Yes, and also a choice which makes D&D unsuitable for any setting with primarily ranged weapons, simply because D&D is written to support melee. Unless you play at 1st level or have super optimized characters it is impossible to kill enemies from range before they reach you and go into melee because of the short ranges and HP pool.

Just imagine another common western scenario, the wagon fort surrounded by native americans. In D&D western they would have no trouble to rush the people inside the forth with melee weapons, even if that takes 1-2 rounds and the entire scene would devolve into some strange gun-fu close combat shooting with the cowboys running circles inside the fort to shoot and the natives charging every round to hit them with tomahawks (*play yakety sax*).

Which edition are you talking about? In 5e range is superior to melee. Most of us are pretending it isn't but...