Jon Peterson: Does System Matter?

D&D historian Jon Peterson asks the question on his blog as he does a deep dive into how early tabletop RPG enthusiasts wrestled with the same thing.

Based around the concept that 'D&D can do anything, so why learn a new system?', the conversation examines whether the system itself affects the playstyle of those playing it. Some systems are custom-designed to create a certain atmosphere (see Dread's suspenseful Jenga-tower narrative game), and Call of Cthulhu certainly discourages the D&D style of play, despite a d20 version in early 2000s.

Does System Matter?

Dungeons & Dragons started out as a game with such an adaptable and open-ended set of rules that early adopters questioned whether any fur...

playingattheworld.blogspot.com

 

[Fenris-77]

I tend to call the one thing an engine and the other a system. The D&D engine is very flexible while the system isn't. To play sci fi successfully you'd need a different system wrapped around the engine.

 

[TwoSix]

I think I do - it's a fight between two different views of "system", from what I can tell.
TheSword is looking at 5e as a system by looking at its chassis - 6 stats, checks are made on those stats modified by proficiency modifier, etc and asserting that system can be used for gritty sci fi like Alien by changing or reskinning the details that are hung on that chassis.
The people he is arguing with aren't separating chassis from details when looking at 5e as a system.

Yea, I think that's largely correct. The mechanical chassis is an important part of the system, but all the other details are also part of the system. Like, 3.0, 3.5, and PF all have the same chassis, but I would say they are all different systems.

 

[Manbearcat]

I think I do - it's a fight between two different views of "system", from what I can tell.
TheSword is looking at 5e as a system by looking at its chassis - 6 stats, checks are made on those stats modified by proficiency modifier, etc and asserting that system can be used for gritty sci fi like Alien by changing or reskinning the details that are hung on that chassis.
The people he is arguing with aren't separating chassis from details when looking at 5e as a system.

The below post addresses this: ...just a (a) core action resolution engine +(b) a set of play priorities + (c) GMing ethos = chassis or base game. Differing (d) through (f) with (a) - (c) fundamentally intact constitutes a hack (eg Dungeon World is a hack of Apocalypse World in in the family of PBtA games).

I mentioned in the other thread what I see as the fault line for a "hack" (which is a new game despite being in the family of games of the original):

* Blades in the Dark isn't just a (a) core action resolution engine and (b) a set of play priorities and (c) GMing ethos. Its a game with (d) a specific setting/genre, (e) a specific Win/Loss Con. Then it has (f) a particular set of mechanics that integrate and facilitate the realization of that a - e.

So all of that a - f has to be in there for it to be BitD.

* Forged in the Dark (FitD) is just like Powered By the Apocalypse (PBtA). Its a chassis that always incorporates (a) (though not exactly the same in each instantiation), (b), and (c). Meanwhile, d - f is subtly (or more) different in each case.

* Band of Blades is a stand-alone, FitD game that is different d - f than Blades in the Dark.

So, I would say a 5e hack is when a game has (a) - (c) kindred with 5e but d - f are subtly (or more) different to create a new game.

Obviously if any of (a) - (c) are changed then you must have a new game (and not even a hack).

 

[Aldarc]

I tend to call the one thing an engine and the other a system. The D&D engine is very flexible while the system isn't. To play sci fi successfully you'd need a different system wrapped around the engine.

While the 5e engine is incredibly flexible - as it's really just a modified version of the twenty-year-old d20 system - I don't think that the game is necessarily equipped to handle other types of games or genres as well as some imagine. I think part of that comes from a reticence for including the sorts of mechanics that makes other games appropriate for certain genres and/or playstyles. One just has to discuss those other mechanics and you can see the hairs stand on end. It's the subtext that reads "Of course the 5e engine could do that but don't bring those mechanics anywhere close to the 5e engine."

 

[fearsomepirate]

If you want to see how badly the basic D&D approach of ascending damage, defense, and hit points works if you do something other than "journey to the fantastic," even within high fantasy, try the game Divinity: Original Sin II some time. You spend a great deal of time traveling laterally, from city to city. In order to somehow squash this into a D&D-ish mold (yes, I know it's not based on any edition of DnD), everyone from military officers to beggars and stray dogs have increasingly higher and higher hit points and do more and more damage as you progress through the story.

Mechanically, it's absurd to see a 220-hp dog after you had earlier slain a 25-hp warrior, and illustrates the basic inadequacy of this sort of "more hit points and damage dice" structure to handle this kind of adventure.

D&D is also completely incapable of handling the "legendary hero killed by a twist of fate" trope, which is as common in myth as it is in real life. Many an experienced warrior has been killed by a stray bullet , surprise ambush, or duel gone wrong, by a comparative nobody. In D&D, or any game that follows its basic structure, the chance of a powerful warrior being killed in a blow by "just some guy" is zero. You'd need something completely different than escalating hit points and damage to represent power.

 

[prabe]

D&D is also completely incapable of handling the "legendary hero killed by a twist of fate" trope, which is as common in myth as it is in real life. Many an experienced warrior has been killed by a stray bullet , surprise ambush, or duel gone wrong, by a comparative nobody. In D&D, or any game that follows its basic structure, the chance of a powerful warrior being killed in a blow by "just some guy" is zero. You'd need something completely different than escalating hit points and damage to represent power.

Or resolve the "twist of fate" as something more than, e.g., one attack. Not arguing, just mentioning another possibility (as someone who has at times come to think of Multiattack, at least for PCs, as representing/modeling at least the possibility of doing more damage with a single blow).

 

[TheSword]

I think I do - it's a fight between two different views of "system", from what I can tell.
TheSword is looking at 5e as a system by looking at its chassis - 6 stats, checks are made on those stats modified by proficiency modifier, etc and asserting that system can be used for gritty sci fi like Alien by changing or reskinning the details that are hung on that chassis.
The people he is arguing with aren't separating chassis from details when looking at 5e as a system.

That’s pretty much it. The system is just a way of working out how likely something is to succeed or fail. Whether that’s jump a gap, kill a monster (or a PC) or drive a cart. Abilities, equipment etc just modifies this in unusual ways.

What I like about D&D is balance, simplicity, and ease of modification. While still playable with minimal effort in its own right.

If I want a particular monster for conversion from another system i can generally do it in a couple of mins in a Roll20 NPC template. Less if there’s a suitable alternative as base. Same with items.

Yet it has enough crunch that there ARE alternatives and I’m not creating everything from scratch.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Or resolve the "twist of fate" as something more than, e.g., one attack. Not arguing, just mentioning another possibility (as someone who has at times come to think of Multiattack, at least for PCs, as representing/modeling at least the possibility of doing more damage with a single blow).

"The Commoner has held a grudge against you since you accidentally trampled his beloved cat with your horse while riding through town. Yes, you're 20th level, but owing to the situation, he gets 40 attacks during the first round."

I mean, you could.

I think if you wanted to handle Achilles getting got by Paris, Wild Bill getting shot in the back of the head, or King Saul dying to a stray arrow, you'd need a system that, instead of Hit Points and Damage, relied instead heavily on luck. Dice pool systems are much better at this.

So a system where hit points are extremely bounded, we're talking no more than 10, ever, but a large dice pool means the chance of a low-level character ever killing a high-level character is zero, can easily admit something like, say, a Vendetta score or a Favor of the Gods score.

So, e.g., Wild Bill is a high-level Gunslinger. His dice pool is big. Jack McCall is a low-level Hunter. His dice pool is small. But Wild Bill is sitting with his back to the door (remove some dice from his pool) and Jack is pissed off from losing the game last night, so he gets extra dice from his Vendetta score. Since Jack was drunk when Wild Bill tried to help him, there's a chance your help gets perceived as an insult, bad roll, so Vendetta increases, Jack gets extra dice.

By the time you've resolved the pools, Jack has a surprisingly good chance to kill Wild Bill, due to events modifying the pools.

 

[TheSword]

If you want to see how badly the basic D&D approach of ascending damage, defense, and hit points works if you do something other than "journey to the fantastic," even within high fantasy, try the game Divinity: Original Sin II some time. You spend a great deal of time traveling laterally, from city to city. In order to somehow squash this into a D&D-ish mold (yes, I know it's not based on any edition of DnD), everyone from military officers to beggars and stray dogs have increasingly higher and higher hit points and do more and more damage as you progress through the story.

Mechanically, it's absurd to see a 220-hp dog after you had earlier slain a 25-hp warrior, and illustrates the basic inadequacy of this sort of "more hit points and damage dice" structure to handle this kind of adventure.

D&D is also completely incapable of handling the "legendary hero killed by a twist of fate" trope, which is as common in myth as it is in real life. Many an experienced warrior has been killed by a stray bullet , surprise ambush, or duel gone wrong, by a comparative nobody. In D&D, or any game that follows its basic structure, the chance of a powerful warrior being killed in a blow by "just some guy" is zero. You'd need something completely different than escalating hit points and damage to represent power.

You understand that this is a choice though not a flaw. Most people don’t want to have their year and a half invested character taken out by an arrow from a goblin. I do think bounded accuracy is the closest we’ve got in the editions though past level 5.

WFRP had deadly combat, low wounds and limbs flying in everywhere. But it mitigates this with fate points so that you don’t really die much more frequently - you just nearly do.

I’m currently working through Assassins creed Odyssey which levels up enemies like you described. I’m sure you know it’s to facilitate the sandbox open world setting just like Skyrim, and a host of other poplar games.

There are games that avoid this like the Dark Souls franchise but they usually do it by making enemies so damned hard to start with you’re glad of the break.

I always like the Guildwars system of levelling up where you didn’t necessarily become stronger you just gained more powers. After a brief intro, everyone was level 20 and development was about finding equipment and elite powers. It was very playable.

 

[prabe]

I think if you wanted to handle Achilles getting got by Paris, Wild Bill getting shot in the back of the head, or King Saul dying to a stray arrow, you'd need a system that, instead of Hit Points and Damage, relied instead heavily on luck. Dice pool systems are much better at this.

I guess you could get somewhere close by using Massive Damage rules closer to what d20 Modern did, where IIRC the damage threshold above which instant death was possible was your CON score. In 5E you'd be making those rolls all the flipping time, but you've have a much deadlier combat--and the possibility of the commoner getting lucky with their one attack.

This isn't a recommendation that anyone try that, especially not if your combats already run slow (and I think I've seen that you have at least one player who decides slowly, so yours do).