What does "Support" for a play style mean to you?

[El Mahdi]

Well, as someone who chose this option, I wouldn't say it is mean spirited at all. After all, it's just a rehash of the first option just from the other direction. If the game works smoothly when you play by your style, then obviously that game has been written with your play style in mind.

I've spent years playing D&D when D&D wasn't really written with my playstyle in mind, so, I have some experience with changing D&D quite a lot in order to conform with what I want out of it. Of course, sometimes I just caved in and played the way the rules were pushing me and I had a good time then too. OTOH, 4e is fairly expressly written for a different play style than 3e, and it suits my game better.

Given the rather large amount of games out there, why wouldn't you play a game that was written with your playstyle in mind? Isn't that the whole point of things like the OSR and the Indie games movements?

That wasn't the only option I was talking about when I said that. There were two, and the one I found mean-spirited was: The game mechanically discourages play styles I dislike.

People have actually picked that one, and I feel that's simply being mean and selfish. However, I do consider the other selfish also. Just because one hasn't had the game they prefer before, doesn't mean one is suddenly owed the game they prefer this time around...at least not in the base system. I think the base system should only be as simple a game as possible, and as a result, be disigned for and support all playstyles equally (equally barebones for everybody). Nobody should be favored over anybody else...even you.

If one wants to play 5E in a manner suited for the style they prefer, I believe everybody should have to use optional modules to best do so.

IMO, wanting to not need to use optional modules for oneself, but expecting the game to be designed in a manner that everybody else does, is selfish. And that's the unspoken part of those options.

 

[Balesir]

That wasn't the only option I was talking about when I said that. There were two, and the one I found mean-spirited was: The game mechanically discourages play styles I dislike.

Yeah, I think the wording there is somewhat problematic, as I have bolded it. I didn't choose this answer, but had it been "The game mechanically discourages play styles other than those aimed at" I might well have done. I don't have a single, unwavering style that "I like", for one thing. I'll happily play any one of several styles - but I do like to play a game that coherently supports a style.

I have actually ignored rules in games that I thought worked counter to the main style supported. HârnMaster and RuneQuest (original), for example, I find work best when the "style" focusses on experiencing and soaking up the amazing worlds of Hârn and Glorantha, respectively - and yet both systems have an "experience" system that says you get a skill improvement roll every time you use a skill in a "stressful situation" (or words to that effect). This means that when characters in Hârn encounter an Amorvrin, and one of them successfully identifies what it is they are up against, the chances are that instead of "oh, my god - we're in trouble, now, but at least we know what we're up against!" the player's next words will be "woo-hoo - I got a check for my Arcane Lore skill!"...

Examples of this done well and poorly abound. Original D&D was pretty sound:

- a game about looting treasure; you get rewarded for looting treasure, both in xp and in cool items, and you get better at surviving the place you loot treasure from as your reward.

4E is also pretty coherent:

- the game is about overcoming challenges; you get rewarded for overcoming challenges, and as a result you get better at overcoming challenges (and so can take on tougher ones).

In between, there were some pretty odd departures, though, like 2e:

- the game is about making stories; you get rewarded for using your class abilities and killing stuff, for which you get better at, er, killing stuff. And using your class abilities...

 

[Tony Vargas]

Yeah, I think the wording there is somewhat problematic, as I have bolded it. I didn't choose this answer, but had it been "The game mechanically discourages play styles other than those aimed at" I might well have done.

I wish I'd come up with a better wording on that one. I did revise it from 'punishes' to 'discourages.' I was trying to go for a flip side of "The game mechanically rewards my play style." Even with 'dislike' in there, it is something of a flip side of the same thing. Mechanically rewarding only one playstyle is not that different from mechanically discouraging all others.

 

[chaochou]

People have actually picked that one, and I feel that's simply being mean and selfish. However, I do consider the other selfish also.

Except that the question is 'What does support for a playstyle mean to you?' It's asking for a definition, however broad, for the concept of 'support for a playstyle'.

Here's what the OP said...

I'm interested in what people mean by 'support,' when they complain that a game doesn't 'support' what they want to do.

The question you appear to be substituting in is 'How should 5e be designed?'. That isn't the question at the top of the poll.

 

[Hussar]

That's definitely not how I intended the first option. I meant it to be fairly neutral, and I think most people got that, which is why it's been so popular. The game runs smoothly with your play style /just/ means that, not that it doesn't run smoothly with others, not that it does, just that it works with yours. The 'RAW leads to my play style' is a more extreme meaning of 'support,' as it's quite exclusive, implying that a game can generally only "support" one play style.

The second option is more inclusive, acknowledging that you can have more than one style at the same table - and, you'll notice, it's not so popular.

This is the kind of thing I was wanting to understand about what people mean by "support" - is support an exclusive thing? Does supporting one style preclude supporting others? Or is support non-destructive, allowing a single system to support multiple styles?


A related question is whether there are some styles that are naturally exclusive, that can't be simultaneously supported?

You may have meant it to be neutral, but, I don't interpret it that way. If the game supports your playstyle, then it supports your playstyle. End of story. That it might support other playstyles might or might not be true, that's not in the choices. The option is, "The game runs smoothly when I play it in my preferred style". Fine, that means that that game has been designed with that playstyle in mind.

The option: "Playing the game by the rules-as-written naturally leads to playing it in the style I prefer." is a natural outgrowth of that. If I have to rewrite the game in order for it to fit my playstyle, then the game will not run smoothly when I play it in my preferred style. If it did, then I wouldn't have to change RAW to achieve what I want.

To me, they're natural bookends to the same thing. If the game runs smoothly out of the box, then it's written with my playstyle in mind. If it's written with my playstyle in mind, then running the game by RAW will naturally lead to the supported playstyle(s). And since the first option establishes that I prefer systems that run to my tastes out of the box, this option simply reinforces that.

See, I think where the problem lies is that people who had been catered to for three editions of D&D, pretty specifically, never realized how much their playstyles were causing frustration for others. It wasn't until we got a system that really catered to another playstyle that we say all the criticisms like, "4e only caters to a narrow group of players". It's not that at all. It caters to a DIFFERENT group of players, one that, up to now, had been pretty much ignored.

I'll give a more concrete example. If I were to play or run a First Edition AD&D game by RAW, I would not enjoy it. There are too many things in that game that I do not like. Playing that system, by RAW, caters to a very different set of tastes than mine. Now, if I did try to use that system, I'd have to rewrite vast swaths of it to suit me, so, it wouldn't work smoothly for me either.

Which only means that I don't like AD&D. Not a big shock there. Where the problem is, I think, is that people keep trying to tell me that older editions were more broadly appealing and that newer editions are more narrow. It's not that at all. They have different appeals, not more or less narrow ones.

 

[Tony Vargas]

You may have meant it to be neutral, but, I don't interpret it that way. If the game supports your playstyle, then it supports your playstyle. End of story. That it might support other playstyles might or might not be true, that's not in the choices.

What 'support' means to you is what I'm trying to find out.

The option is, "The game runs smoothly when I play it in my preferred style". Fine, that means that that game has been designed with that playstyle in mind.

Does it? Could be a coincidence that it runs smoothly with your style. Or, it might run smoothly with many different styles. With that question, I'm trying to feel out the scope of what 'support' means to people. Is 'support' closer to 'allow' or is it closer to 'force?'

The second question, I'd hoped, would help clarify it. It allows that multiple styles can be supported at once. Since 5e is trying to get everyone back in one big, happy D&D family, it had better /hope/ that multiple styles can be supported...

The option: "Playing the game by the rules-as-written naturally leads to playing it in the style I prefer." is a natural outgrowth of that.

It's a much stronger statement. It says the game can only easily ('naturally') be played in one way.

I'm not sure if it's actually possible for a game to achieve that level 'support.' That is, I don't know if it's possible to create an RPG that can be played only one way when played by RAW.

Where the problem is, I think, is that people keep trying to tell me that older editions were more broadly appealing and that newer editions are more narrow. It's not that at all. They have different appeals, not more or less narrow ones.

I'm not sure. Knowing what people mean by 'support,' I'm hoping, might give me a clue.

So, to be clear, your idea of 'support' for a play style is that the game is designed with that style in mind, and playing it RAW leads to playing in that style. So it's prettymuch one style to a game, it's not, possible for a game to support more than one style without becoming a different game (having substantial rule changes via modules or house-rules, for instance)?

 

[Hussar]

/snip
The second question, I'd hoped, would help clarify it. It allows that multiple styles can be supported at once. Since 5e is trying to get everyone back in one big, happy D&D family, it had better /hope/ that multiple styles can be supported...

It's a much stronger statement. It says the game can only easily ('naturally') be played in one way.
/snip

Well, not really. If a game supports multiple styles at once, then by playing by RAW, it would still support my gaming style. It might also support other playstyles, but, it actually does support mine. Nothing in the question precludes that.

So, to be clear, your idea of 'support' for a play style is that the game is designed with that style in mind, and playing it RAW leads to playing in that style. So it's prettymuch one style to a game, it's not, possible for a game to support more than one style without becoming a different game (having substantial rule changes via modules or house-rules, for instance)?

Honestly, yes, I do think that games specifically support a fairly narrow range of playstyles with varying degrees of variation from that baseline. I could try to play a high intrigue, court romance game using the Basic/Expert D&D rules, but, I'm getting pretty much zero support for that game or playstyle from that ruleset.

If I want to play a very low magic, grim and gritty game, then 3e is not going to work very well. It's not really designed for that. Ten years of people trying to houserule 3e into doing low magic shows that quite well. 3e does high magic extremely well. But, it takes something like E6 to beat it into submission to do low magic. Or one of the many d20 variants like True 20.

No version of D&D does High Fantasy particularly well because no version of D&D has a decent set of rules to support mass battles. Nor does any version of D&D do Merchant Houses in the New World particularly well because the economics mechanics (such as they are) continuously get in the way.

Any version of D&D DOES do Dungeon Crawling for Fun and Profit very well. And it should. That is the baseline presumption of the game that your small band of adventurers is going to go out on adventures, meet interesting things, kill them and take their stuff. Everything in the game (any edition) will support you in that endevour fully.

So, no, I don't think that games support multiple very different playstyles and goals very well. Different editions support different playstyles better than others, and there are variations within those playstyles, but, once you get outside the fairly broad baseline, the system stops supporting play and you're more or less back to freeforming.

 

[pemerton]

I think where the problem lies is that people who had been catered to for three editions of D&D, pretty specifically, never realized how much their playstyles were causing frustration for others. It wasn't until we got a system that really catered to another playstyle that we say all the criticisms like, "4e only caters to a narrow group of players". It's not that at all. It caters to a DIFFERENT group of players, one that, up to now, had been pretty much ignored.

<snip>

people keep trying to tell me that older editions were more broadly appealing and that newer editions are more narrow. It's not that at all. They have different appeals, not more or less narrow ones.

Completely agree. Athough because the rules were less robust in some places, the amount of drifting that was taking place to push the game in other directions was perhaps a bit less obvious.

I do think that games specifically support a fairly narrow range of playstyles with varying degrees of variation from that baseline. I could try to play a high intrigue, court romance game using the Basic/Expert D&D rules, but, I'm getting pretty much zero support for that game or playstyle from that ruleset.

And now you're just asking someone to come by and tell you how they did this using nothing but a pair of d6s and the B/X Reaction Roll table!

(Just joking - in case it wasn't obvious. I take it as almost beyond argument that you're right - and am surprised how often it is asserted that B/X had these great exploration rules, when in fact once you go beyond traps, fairly heavy wooden doors and secret doors you're basically on your own.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You may have meant it to be neutral, but, I don't interpret it that way. If the game supports your playstyle, then it supports your playstyle. End of story. That it might support other playstyles might or might not be true, that's not in the choices. The option is, "The game runs smoothly when I play it in my preferred style". Fine, that means that that game has been designed with that playstyle in mind.

The option: "Playing the game by the rules-as-written naturally leads to playing it in the style I prefer." is a natural outgrowth of that. If I have to rewrite the game in order for it to fit my playstyle, then the game will not run smoothly when I play it in my preferred style. If it did, then I wouldn't have to change RAW to achieve what I want.

To me, they're natural bookends to the same thing. If the game runs smoothly out of the box, then it's written with my playstyle in mind. If it's written with my playstyle in mind, then running the game by RAW will naturally lead to the supported playstyle(s). And since the first option establishes that I prefer systems that run to my tastes out of the box, this option simply reinforces that.

See, I think where the problem lies is that people who had been catered to for three editions of D&D, pretty specifically, never realized how much their playstyles were causing frustration for others. It wasn't until we got a system that really catered to another playstyle that we say all the criticisms like, "4e only caters to a narrow group of players". It's not that at all. It caters to a DIFFERENT group of players, one that, up to now, had been pretty much ignored.

I'll give a more concrete example. If I were to play or run a First Edition AD&D game by RAW, I would not enjoy it. There are too many things in that game that I do not like. Playing that system, by RAW, caters to a very different set of tastes than mine. Now, if I did try to use that system, I'd have to rewrite vast swaths of it to suit me, so, it wouldn't work smoothly for me either.

Which only means that I don't like AD&D. Not a big shock there. Where the problem is, I think, is that people keep trying to tell me that older editions were more broadly appealing and that newer editions are more narrow. It's not that at all. They have different appeals, not more or less narrow ones.

Heh, couldn't XP you on that, but definitely agree. AD&D for sure was a very narrow game in what it actually supported. I get tired of hearing how wonderful it was and how it sliced bread and juliened fries, etc. Nonsense.