D&D General D&D as a Curated, DIY Game or "By the Book": Examining DM and Player Agency, and the DM as Game Designer

[tetrasodium]

The idea that 5e doesn't have a structure to build on and customize on is strange to me.

The shadow of the skeleton they used to make the rules is all over the place.

I mean, go and make a class-by-class graph of gear-less characters damage output against AC 12+level/2 monsters (save +level/2) from level 1 to 20 fighting a set of 7 encounters with 2 short rests, aoes hitting 2.5 monsters, and each encounter 5 rounds long.

Then slide the length of encounters forward and back, the short rests forward and back, and look at the lines dance.

5e has piles of math under the hood.

The monsters are a combination of surprise puzzle creatures and the rest. For the rest, the DP3R, accuracy, defence and HP gives a pretty good estimation of the monster's CR, for all of people's complaining.

The system of subclasses, which has permitted 5e to keep to its core 12 (now 13) classes while allowing a huge wealth of different PC "flavors", is also pretty easy to eyeball.

The DMG optional rules? You'll note how little they change the above math. They are examples of fiddling around the clothing hanging on the skeleton of the game.

You pointed the spotlight at a bunch of insane & unstructured things... All that math you cite works great with no feats and no magic items, except almost nobody plays that way & that carefully curated balance collapses badly enough to invert linear fighter quadratic wizard. Why the heck should this particular spherical cow be praised?

Subclasses? Neat idea sure, except every class has different levels for class/archetype gains because there are thirteen different sets of rules they use. WotC couldn't even standardize the level classes split into archetypes as more than a class by class one off rule. You only need to look as far as screwball implementations like the cavalier who waits until level seven to get their first ability related to being a cavalier rather than a odd version of compelled duel because the class/archetype scheduling was done so haphazardly & couldn't be changed without causing problems.

The system of subclasses with no entry qualifications other than N levels of Y class is only deserving of praise if the pros outweigh the cons & it's far from a slam dunk there when you start looking at problems like the cavalier's as a result of not being a class/prc of its own rather than having to fit the concept into a rather unworkable mold or things like the completely & utterly unforeseeable results of having multiple frontloaded SAD charisma based classes with multiplicative results Don't forget the fact that wotc was happy to throw math out the window so they could make a bunch of spells "intentionally overtuned" & "unbalanced on purpose" & so that they have the power of a spell 1-2 levels higher because the dead simple dmg284 table was not convenient

 

[PsyzhranV2]

The issue I have with the "D&D as DIY hobby" viewpoint approach is this:

Why would I ever DIY for my home game using D&D as the foundation, when FATE and Cortex are right there and come with much less baggage to unpack and discard?

If I was in the business of producing RPGs commercially, then I could see the argument for making a 5e hack along the lines of AiME, Esper Genesis, Five Torches Deep, Pugmire, etc. Alternatively, I could try and make something new out of the rules chassis of earlier editions; Pathfinder did it with 3.5, Lancer did it with 4e, and the OSR market is (over)saturated with B/X and AD&D clones and hacks. But if you aren't interested in going so far as to creating a new game entirely (and possibly monetizing it), then I don't see trying to make 5e work for purposes beyond its RAW state worth the effort.

In the context of the 90s and the early 00s, when the Internet wasn't as developed as it is today and both games themselves and in-depth discussions on games theory and design wasn't as accessible, I can understand why DIY became the dominant ethos. But the field has shifted, the breadth of tabletop games has massively expanded, and I am very tempted to say that the community overall has a better understanding of the hows and whys of the ways tabletop RPGs function.

In that light, I feel that there's two ways you can go with DIYing 5e and have it be worth the time investment: you either make some very minor aesthetic changes, or commit to really taking it apart and putting it back together in a standalone game. If you don't commit to either extreme, you'll more than likely find yourself in some weird limbo of messy and clunky design that wasn't really worth the effort and probably would have been better off just using another game for your purposes, whether generic or specific.

 

[zarionofarabel]

I think disallowing stuff in D&D is easy on most levels. Don't want elves in the game, simply tell the players they can't play elves, very simple. Don't want magic, well, that's just as easy, but it invalidates alot of things, and newer editions seem to have more and more classes built with magic. Don't want Dragons, or dungeons, or orcs, or any humanoids other than humans, super easy.

Adding things in is a different story. I don't think D&D has ever been a toolkit, at least not compared to many other systems.

 

[prabe]

I think disallowing stuff in D&D is easy on most levels. Don't want elves in the game, simply tell the players they can't play elves, very simple. Don't want magic, well, that's just as easy, but it invalidates alot of things, and newer editions seem to have more and more classes built with magic. Don't want Dragons, or dungeons, or orcs, or any humanoids other than humans, super easy.

Adding things in is a different story. I don't think D&D has ever been a toolkit, at least not compared to many other systems.

Adding things is exactly as easy as disallowing them. Want goliaths in your campaign? Done. Want more or different magic--either spells or schools? Done.

Now, finding the stuff you want to add--that, I'll grant you, is a little harder; but it's exactly as easy as finding something in the "core" of the game and deciding you don't want that.

Is D&D a toolkit in a way a game designed from the start to be generic/universal is? Nope. Is it a toolkit a table can use to build their ideal game of D&D (or maybe a game closely adjacent)? Yup.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Why would I ever DIY for my home game using D&D as the foundation, when FATE and Cortex are right there and come with much less baggage to unpack and discard?

This is a strawman really. You can say "there are no Elves in this setting" without having any effect on game mechanics. 5e does not require elves to function. And there are many other minor changes you can make that don't affect gameplay but can make settings more varied of flavourful, and/or better reflect different fantasy sub-genres.

Even if you want to make significant changes, e.g. to the way magic works, there is a very simple reason for using D&D as a basis: familiarity. players know how to play D&D 5e. The DM might be interested in running a game using an obscure system, but players generally don't want to be bothered learning a new set of rules, even if they are as bored with GenericFantasyLand as the DM.

 

[Minigiant]

This is a strawman really. You can say "there are no Elves in this setting" without having any effect on game mechanics. 5e does not require elves to function. And there are many other minor changes you can make that don't affect gameplay but can make settings more varied of flavourful, and/or better reflect different fantasy sub-genres.

Even if you want to make significant changes, e.g. to the way magic works, there is a very simple reason for using D&D as a basis: familiarity. players know how to play D&D 5e. The DM might be interested in running a game using an obscure system, but players generally don't want to be bothered learning a new set of rules, even if they are as bored with GenericFantasyLand as the DM.

But doesn't that push moretothe side the "So now the DM must prove they knowwhat they are doing" argument. Because mostof the "Just trust the DM" mentality of the hobby view came from a place when RPGs were in there infancy and god game design is unknown, and info was hard to get..

But today , there is all kinds of advice, posts, books, and articles to hack D&D into other styles of games. So players aren't blind to what works and what doesn't and can feel empowered and knowledgable about how a specific DM's hacking may look in play.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The issue I have with the "D&D as DIY hobby" viewpoint approach is this:

Why would I ever DIY for my home game using D&D as the foundation, when FATE and Cortex are right there and come with much less baggage to unpack and discard?

Because (and I speak as someone who thinks that Leverage deserves far more recognition as it gets and Marvel Heroic Roleplaying was until recently comfortably the best superhero system I'd ever used) there are things D&D does significantly better than either. In particular the density of the rules and the over-exuberance of the levelling system keep things going longer than something as clean as Fate does in my experience. Which is why both my big system hack are heavily D&D based (a 4e retroclone and a D&D meets WFRP that actually has pulled out the class and level system but is a lot cleaner than WFRP while providing a temptation mechanic towards the Lords of Despair (based on the Chaos Gods))

In that light, I feel that there's two ways you can go with DIYing 5e and have it be worth the time investment: you either make some very minor aesthetic changes, or commit to really taking it apart and putting it back together in a standalone game. If you don't commit to either extreme, you'll more than likely find yourself in some weird limbo of messy and clunky design that wasn't really worth the effort and probably would have been better off just using another game for your purposes, whether generic or specific.

The thing is that if you are looking for a fairly classic aesthetic with pass/fail die rolls and character stats that are mostly about your character's capabilities the D&D 4e and 5e engines are both pretty clean by the standards of e.g. the latest version of Shadowrun, WFRP, or even Cyberpunk. Meanwhile to use your two examples Fate is too much about aspects and Cortex Plus/Prime is incredibly swingy (while I'd say any of the WotC D&D engines is more than a match for Classic Cortex).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

But doesn't that push moretothe side the "So now the DM must prove they knowwhat they are doing" argument. Because mostof the "Just trust the DM" mentality of the hobby view came from a place when RPGs were in there infancy and god game design is unknown, and info was hard to get..

But today , there is all kinds of advice, posts, books, and articles to hack D&D into other styles of games. So players aren't blind to what works and what doesn't and can feel empowered and knowledgable about how a specific DM's hacking may look in play.

In my experience, most of my players aren't particularly interested in the rules and only read the basic rules, if that. Why have a dog (DM) and bark yourself?

 

[Minigiant]

In my experience, most of my players aren't particularly interested in the rules and only read the basic rules, if that. Why have a dog (DM) and bark yourself?

True...


but when the DM changes part of the basic rules, the players will notice.

 

[ccs]

Pointless debates.
Ages ago 11 year old me was told in the opening pages of my Basic book by the games creators that even though these were the "rules", they couldn't cover everything. So I was expected to alter things. To add things. That I could even change what was written. I was encouraged to carefully consider the changes I was making though.
And then in the 1e DMG Gygax again says much the same.
I have been faithfully following that advice since Christmas 1980.

It's been reiterated in every edition since (I'll assume it's in 4e as well) in various forms. So I don't see what all the discussion is about.

A game with intentionally completely malleable rules.... Mind (of an 11 year old) blown.
This is what elevates this game above most others.