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

doctorbadwolf · Jun 18, 2019

CapnZapp said:
Now you're contorting yourselves just for the sake of argument.

Any "one hit kill" reality, where a gun doing 10% of your hit points is "mockery", is one where you need to look elsewhere than D&D. Yes, it really is that simple.

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.

Paul Farquhar · Jun 18, 2019

Derren said:
but the fights were still melee,

Actually, no they weren't. See decisive weapons: English(Welsh) Longbow, Mongolian horsebow.

There is also a story in a very old book in which a cheating shepherd boy takes out the enemy's best warrior with a sling before he can get close enough to use his weapons.

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.

Paul Farquhar · Jun 18, 2019

Leatherhead said:
Spaghetti Western, sure. Classical Western, not so much. They are too "Black and White" (in regards to morality, not a technicolor joke) and try to stay away from, or pretty up, the ugly bits of the Old West.

This is really the thing. "Western" means something completly different to people of different generations. The Western genre used to synonomus with stories with symplistic morality "black hats and white hats" and what we would now consider an action movie sensibility, where heroes (and main villains) could absorb ridiculous amounts of damage without batting an eyelid.

Then, round about the sixties, film makers did a Game of Thrones number on the genre and everying went grimdark, with unclear morality, violence and sudden death.

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.

delph · Jun 18, 2019

anique Greece - gods, demigods, many monstrosity beasts...

MarkB · Jun 18, 2019

One thing I'd do with a Western adaptation of D&D would be to drastically increase the way that cover modifies Armour Class. Essentially, anyone not in cover would have the AC you'd expect an unarmoured D&D character to have, making walking around in the open during combat pretty much suicide except for those specifically built as a high mobility / agility build. But anyone in decent cover would gain the equivalent of medium-armour protection, while those specifically built around hunkering down could push that up to heavy armour levels.

That should encourage a lot more tactical positioning and attacking from range.

CapnZapp · Jun 18, 2019

Sacrosanct said:
And I'm saying this is wrong.

Now you're just trying to tell people they're playing the game badwrongfun, so good luck with that.

CapnZapp · 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.

This

CapnZapp · Jun 18, 2019

Sacrosanct said:
Goes back to my double standard. Implying D&D works good for melee but not ranged when you're holding a different set of standards to each. D&D works the same for melee and ranged. It's just that with one, you're willing to have suspense of disbelief, but not the other.

Yes this.

But there is nothing wrong about it.

D&D encourages melee by providing heroes with mobile shield packs called hit points. These enable you to go boldly forth and slay the enemy.

Without them you are encouraged to use cover, tactics, and surveillance.

This is why it is quite natural for people to resist using D&D for games with firearms. Because there's anything wrong with D&D?

No, because it's a different genre. You're expected to move and act differently in most Old Westerns.

Less charging the enemy while kissing your biceps; more skulking from house to house, always keeping yourself in cover.

This boils down to the damage model. The damage model tells game characters how to act; it tells them if ranged fire can be shrugged off or not.

Sure there are exceptions, but those do not make the general idea less true.

CapnZapp · Jun 18, 2019

Saelorn said:
I do

Okay.

CapnZapp · Jun 18, 2019

Derren said:
In D&D western most combats would devolve into melee fights with axes and knifes or close range gun-fu. But that is not how "western" worked both in real life and in fiction.

D&D combat also do not capture how medieval fights worked because of HP pools, but the fights were still melee, both in D&D, other medieval media and history, so there is much less of a disconnect there.

This.