Imaro
Legend
My claim is that the flexibility of D&D is overrated, and that the non-flexibility of (say) BW is exaggerated. Hence I point to constraints in D&D, and to variants of BW.
Okay.
The idea that D&D is flexible because there are lots of house rules, variants etc out there doesn't change my mind. I'm aware of a reasonable number of them.
I'm not really trying to change your mind but since you brought it up... what exactly would change your mind?
But other systems can be modified and house-ruled too. The Cortex+ Hacker's Guide is full of such stuff for MHRP, Leverage and Smallville, for instance - I used some of those ideas to run my MHRP/Cortex Fantasy Hack.
Never said they couldn't but I am moreso speaking of different ways to play or focuses when playing said games. Can their play procedures, goals, etc. be changed and hacked? Can I run a game that focuses on powergamming with MHRP? Can I play a tactical combat game with Cortex?
When I look at 5e, the variants are mostly around PC build rules and some elements of combat action resolution.
Really... have you looked in the 5e DMG? It's not really bursting with PC build options or options specifically for combat resolutions but instead has a multitude of ways to modify all aspects of 5e to play differently. Everything from hero points to adding honor or sanity into the game...more abstract skills in play and optional systems for dispersing narrative control through plot points and more are covered in that book alone.
But at it's core it doesn't look that flexible. Just to give one example: the rate of PC failure in BW is, to me at least, very striking. It's a core feature of the system, and a lot of other system elements are built around it. It's very hard for me to see how 5e would be modified to deliver that sort of experience in any coherent way.
Wouldn't you just adjust what the DC's represent, shifting higher numbers for easier tasks? Or maybe I'm missing a key part of this comparison?
The Ideals/Bonds/Flaws mechanic doesn't contain a system for change.
No but they are a part of the game and with the general resolution system for reactions and skills in general, it's a pretty easy mod.
And the Inspiration mechanic is triggered by "playing your character in a way that’s true to his or her personality traits, ideal, bond, and flaw" and/or "when you play out your personality traits, give in to the drawbacks presented by a flaw or bond, and otherwise portray your character in a compelling way" (SRD pp59-60). In the PC build dimension, and in the award of Inspiration dimension, there is no concern for conflict.
Actually the DMG goes into more depth making it clear that inspiration is malleable and can be awarded for a multitude of actions depending on how you want to shape your campaign. The DMG specifically mentions using it as a tool for encouraging roleplaying (what you cited above), heroism, as a reward for victories, genre emulation and so on. There are also optional rules for letting players award inspiration as opposed to the DM as well as altogether ignoring inspiration.
It's also far from clear that the maths of the game, and the basiscs of PC build, support constant access to advantage (eg look at barbarians' Reckless Attack), which means that the GM has a mechanical reason to be cautious in awards of Inspiration.
Well if a DM is truly worried about that... there's actually an optional rule where the players hand out inspiration and the DM in turn receives inspiration to use for the foes of the PC's depending on how often they hand it out. So problem solved.
Conversely, the system in BW works in part by relying on the maths of the game: failure is a common default, so spending artha to boost rolls doesn't break the maths, it simply reduces the incidence of failure. A dice-pool system in which players are rolling for successes, not totalling the dice, means that adding bonus dice (Persona points add bonus dice 1-for-1; Fate points allow adding bonus dice by way of opening up 6s for re-rolls) increases the prospects of success while still leaving failure as an option (unlike bonuses in the d20 system); and there are rules for enhancing abilities, over the long sequence of play, by spending artha on them, which give players another consideration to factor in in spending their artha; etc.
Ah... ok. So basically you are put at a standard disadvantage in order to get you to do something around your beliefs (this sound surprisingly similar to what default inspiration does in D&D for ideals, flaws and traits) in order to receive artha so that you can reach a level of minimal competence?
Also, on a side note... advantage doesn't give you an actual bonus even with advantage your roll can't be higher than a 20...so granting advantage in and of itself doesn't determine whether failure is impossible or not.
Well, hit points and damage dice are central to any D&D game. Does that mean that all the "flexible" options you are pointing to are all just changes in scenery?
Does play center around damage and hit points like it does beliefs in BW? I'd even argue you are overstating the importance of damage dice since in 5e monster damage can be run with average damage and it would be trivial to do the same with PC's
Furthermore, Burning THACO presents a completely different way of establishing and using backstory, and of establishing Beliefs: instead of the players working out Beliefs for their PCs, and the GM "going where the action is", the GM (via choice of module) establishes what the action is, and estabishes a whole lot of secret backstory (contained in the module keys) that s/he will use to adjudicate action declarations, and the players set Beliefs that fit with the module. That you see this shift from largely player-driven to largey GM-driven play as "a mere change of scenery" is to me very telling. It suggests that, in judging whether or not D&D is notably flexible compared to other systems, there are whole dimensions of game play that you are disregarding.
But it is still play centered around player character beliefs.
In any event, if you wanted to strip Beliefs, artha etc out of BW (and the "fail forward" resolution logic that accompanies it) then you'd have a simulationist dice-pool system that plays a bit like RQ or RM (or a fantasy version of Classic Traveller). I don't know if that would be fun or not - they're fairly brutal systems, and BW played in this way would be just as brutal, I suspect - but it could be done easily enough. You could even - to ameliorate the brutality - just put in a rule where each player gets (say) 2 Fate and 1 Persona at the start of each session.
So you wouldn't really be playing BW anymore...
Which is actually another thing D&D can't do: this sort of classic sim game.
Color me confused...
Seriously? So D&D is flexible because it has all these official and unofficial house rules, including under the OGL, but Torchbearear and Mouse Guard - which are BW variants designed and published by the BW designers and which have a greater degree of mechanical resemblance to BW than Moldvay Basic does to 5e - don't count as indicators of BW's flexibility?
D&D (and again I am speaking to 5e here) is flexible because it let's the group determine what the focus of play is vs. determining it for you and pushing it with mechanics tailored for that specific goal.
OK, then, you win. (And no doubt that the HeroQuest revised rulebook is full of example that include low-brow superhero hijinks doesn't tell us anything about what that game can be used for either.)
It's not about winning, I'm stating my view and you're stating yours... and again I'll ask could you provide some examples, it's been a while since I've read Heroquest. I do remember that DC's increased or decreased depending on your previous successes or failures (getting harder the more you succeed and getting easier when you fail)... but I don't specifically remember that being tied to low brow superhero examples... that's why I asked for some examples.