Why do you play games other than D&D?

Morrus · Jul 10, 2019

Inspired by a question somebody asked on Twitter. My response was that every system feels different and provides a different play experience. You can certainly make most any system do anything, but playing Call of Cthulhu with the Mutants & Masterminds rules is going to feel very different to CoC with the CoC rules.

Every game has it's own niche and just needs to serve that niche well.

In the last year I've run: D&D 5E, WOIN, Pathfinder 2E Playtest, Ghostbusters 1980s RPG, Call of Cthuhu. Some for longer than others (Ghostbusters was just a couple of sessions, and we only got halfway through the PF2 playtest because the playtest schedule was so fast). Each of those games feels very different.

So why do you play games other than D&D? What is it that your game of choice does that makes it the best fit for the stories and genres you're playing with?

steenan · Jul 10, 2019

I think the question is strange. It treats D&D as some kind of default, as if one needed a reason to play something different. For me, D&D was just one of the games I tried; neither the first nor the best one.

In general, I prefer varied experiences. I switch between games to do something different. Sometimes, we play series of one-shots, jumping between games. At other times, we play campaigns, but we still interweave them with single sessions ran on different systems. If I had to play a single game for long time, it would become stale and risk burning me out. I went through that once and I don't want it to happen again.

Other than just getting a broader range of experiences, I like learning new things. Some of the new things I never return to; some become my new favorites. Between these extremes are games that show me new niches, new styles of play, new kinds of mechanics or new tools that can be re-used elsewhere. By reading and playing different games and comparing them I learn how they affect the process of play, what works well and what doesn't, what are their strengths and limitations.

Last but not least, I like focused games. They have much better ratio of fun to play an prep time than games that try to do everything; they are also much easier to teach to new players. But because they are narrow, it's hard to find interesting things to explore when playing a single game of this kind for a long time. It's much better to play a session or two, change to something else and return when an inspiration strikes that matches the first game's focus.

Last year I created a new group, introducing some of my co-workers to RPGs and helping some return to the hobby after many years of not playing. Each adventure I ran for them used a different system, specifically to show them how varied RPGs are and to help them identify their preferences. We went through Mouse Guard, Dogs in the Vineyard, Masks, Urban Shadows, Monsterhearts, Strike and Nobilis. And it worked great. Not only the group really bought into playing, one of them recently ran their first session (Mouse Guard) as a GM.

lowkey13 · Jul 10, 2019

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Aldarc · Jul 10, 2019

Morrus said:
Inspired by a question somebody asked on Twitter. My response was that every system feels different and provides a different play experience. You can certainly make most any system do anything, but playing Call of Cthulhu with the Mutants & Masterminds rules is going to feel very different to CoC with the CoC rules.

Every game has it's own niche and just needs to serve that niche well.

In the last year I've run: D&D 5E, WOIN, Pathfinder 2E Playtest, Ghostbusters 1980s RPG, Call of Cthuhu. Some for longer than others (Ghostbusters was just a couple of sessions, and we only got halfway through the PF2 playtest because the playtest schedule was so fast). Each of those games feels very different.

So why do you play games other than D&D? What is it that your game of choice does that makes it the best fit for the stories and genres you're playing with?

It may help if you embed or supply the Tweet in context. I know that Tweet, if this is the one I think it is, has essentially gone viral among my contacts and triggered a lot of responses from designers, writers, and players alike. But the question is more from the design-side of things, essentially about designing games in the context of D&D as the elephant in the room.

Fenris-77 · Jul 10, 2019

D&D does some stuff that I like really well, and that (plus a healthy dose of nostalgia) is why I play D&D - swords and sorcery and high heroism are my jam.

There are lots of other things that I also really like, and like to RP about/in that D&D doesn't do - existential horror, cinematic action of various sorts, etc etc etc. So for those things I play those games. I also play those games to try out various other mechanics to see if I like them and want to port them over to D&D or just put them in my general bag of tricks. I also have a keen interest in game design, so sometimes it's just to try out a shiny new toy someone has developed.

Tony Vargas · Jul 10, 2019

Every game has it's own niche and just needs to serve that niche well.

That was very true back in the 90s. Then d20 ate the hobby. Now we've come full circle and the hobby /is/ D&D, again - as far as anyone looking at it from the outside can tell.

There are finally non-trivial non-d20 games out there, again, a lot of them coming back, themselves, from the height of their relative in-their-niceh popularity in the 90s (or even 80s or 70s), which is cool. So you might play a re-printed or re-launched Storyteller or Traveler or whatever for the same reasons you first dipped your toes back in D&D when 5e came out: which, generally, boil down to nostalgia.

The 'new wave' and indy trends, though utterly overwhelmed by d20 never went away, and they're actually going strong just way under the radar with D&D grabbing all the attention. You'd play them for the same reason you would in '92: you're experimenting, trying to break out of the first RPG's narrow paradigm.

lowkey13 said:
Is the question strange?

If you include PF as part of the greater D&D family (a reasonably supposition), then you will usually see that more than 80% of all games and players are playing "D&D," with no other RPG getting any real noticeable push. Everything is niche compared to D&D/PF.

I'm not sure that bundling PF into it really makes a big difference anymore. In 2013, sure, but now, with D&D, itself, growing by leaps and bounds for the last 4 or 5 years, and PF in a pre-rev-roll doldrum?

So, yeah, I'd certainly say that D&D is the default for TTRPGs.(Even moreso when you people who aren't familiar with TTRPGs try and discuss it, and "D&D" becomes a generic way of referring to the games- much like Kleenex for tissue or Xerox for photocopy or Google to search for something on the internet.... I mean, you can bing all of this if you want.)

Yep, unless you're already deep into the hobby, D&D /always/ has been the default TTRPG.
It's the game the mainstreamers have heard of. In the 80s, when they heard it was associated with Satanism & suicide (like Heavy Metal music had been), it was a fad. In the 90s, & 00s, when it was associated with elitist nerdrage and 40-yo virgins, not s'much.
Today, with nerd chic downright mainstream and D&D prominently featured in pop culture, it's back with a vengeance.

If you walk into the FLGS on RPG night and there's a table playing something other than D&D, it's probably M:tG, or a boardgame - because they didn't realize it was RPG night, and there was a table free. ;P

lowkey13 · Jul 10, 2019

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Tony Vargas · Jul 10, 2019

lowkey13 said:
And I think one way of looking at it isn't why not D&D, it's ... why D&D?
D&D is the default for a reason.

I think we covered that, above. Mad market dominance. Sole name recognition. Current version in print still recognizable as the same game that started it all 45 years ago.

It's easy in so many ways. You can't play TTRPGs and not have played D&D at one time (pretty sure about that!).

That's not easy, that's familiar. I mean, it's absolutely true: If you're in the hobby, chances are you got into it through D&D, and have mastered, or at least learned to tolerate, it's many eccentricities and shortcomings, and it's rules are second nature to you. They seem easy, because you've invested a lot of energy in getting them down pat - probably when you were young & had that energy to spare.

Now, not s'much ("learn another system? Ugh, they're all so complicated, I'd rather take a nap, then maybe play some D&D when I have more energy...")

(Yeah, I'm a cranky old man, but at least I admit it.)

But, no, it's NOT easy. If it were, we wouldn't always be shoving the (Champion) Fighter at the newbie because it's the simplest (sub)class, they'd be able to play whatever concept appealed to them.

New players have an instinctive understanding of at least some of the tropes of D&D (fireball! elves!). When it comes to parents, many of them want their kids to learn "D&D" because they have vague memories of the smart kids back in the day playing it (go figure, right? it's like SAT prep now). It's just ... you know ... there. And it's easy to discuss with other people- I mean, try and strike up a conversation about Amber (the diceless RPG) or Boot Hill or Torg or Living Steel or any of countless other games, and you might get a few takers, but talk about D&D, and the wall come a tumblin' down.
But D&D is, by its very nature as the market-dominant force, not for everyone. It can't be niche.

I mean, it /is/ for everyone, in the that market-dominant force sense, so can't be niche. Yet it /is/ actually kinda niche - it's one (sub)genre, done one, rather unique, way with about the same mechanics (class/level, daily spells, hps, deflection-only armor, roll that d20 to hit, roll that d8 for your longsword's damage) it's always used. But it's the hobby's gatekeeper, so it's niche /is/ the hobby, we're barely aware of the range of possible RPGs excluded from consideration because they wouldn't be enough like D&D to be recognized & accepted /as/ RPGs. (Heck, we see some people publish those, and hear "but that's not really an RPG is it?")

To be fair, it's pretty idiosyncratic (thanks, EGG!) for something so dominant, but still ... it has to continue to appeal to a broad swath of people.

Which it does, just not through it's idiosyncracies, but through name recognition, market appeal - and, I guess we could say, by virtue of being indoctrinated into it before you can uncover the more isolated corners of the hobby...

ART! · Jul 10, 2019

I played a couple sessions of 5E soon after it came out, and I didn't have anything against it nor was I particularly into it.

Two years passed and I'd had no reliable group to play with for all that time. A friend gave me a copy of the PHB and DMG, I got into it.

Given past experience, I knew the best way to get a reliable group together was to say I was going to run D&D, so I did. We've been playing almost weekly ever since.

The one foray into something else was intentionally shortlived, because it was obvious everyone wanted to get back to D&D after the end of the previous campaign/storyline.

So that's a long way of saying I play other games as a brief break from 5E. I like seeing how game designers prioritize, incentivize, and emulate things, and how that all feels at the table.

I'm totally fine and have a long history with playing other systems, but my priority is having a reliable gaming group, 5E has achieved that for us, and I'm very happy with that.