D&D 5E 5e and the Cheesecake Factory: Explaining Good Enough

[Blue]

It’s automatically assumed when people say “How do I do X with 5e”, that what the person really meant was “Please suggest alternative games to me even though I specifically asked you not to.”

I can't disagree with this, but I don't think it's always "5e sucks". With how popular D&D is, many many other-genre games are just not well known. There are some "big-tent" RPGs that handle the assumptions of a specific genre very well, and there are some laser-targeted modern RPGs that are designed just to play X and have very large amounts of rule support for that feel.

There are some people who will, exactly as you say, put down D&D in other genres. But I think there's also legitimate responses educating people (maybe the OP and maybe those reading the thread) about alternatives out that are worth exploring for that particular genre.

We do the same even within D&D. I may mention how a d20 handles a particular problem that someone is having with D&D - that doesn't mean D& sucks, it that here's an elegant solution that might be worth checking out. Perhaps just to yoink and import into our game.

 

[jmartkdr2]

My point was at least as much that some portion of the criticism (and I think it's the criticism that's most likely to be contentious) of 5E seems to come from people who don't like or play it. I don't doubt their honesty, or their ability to analyze the game and see how and why it doesn't suit them, but it's easier to accept a criticism of a thing you enjoy, from someone else who enjoys it, than from someone who doesn't--even in the absence of malice.

(Also, there seems to me to be more acceptance that someone might dislike 5E without having played it, than that someone might dislike BitD without having played it. That might be my perceptions not aligning to consensus reality, though.)

There's another point, related to it all being subjective:

If someone doesn't like the movies you like, and like a bunch f movies you don't like, because they have different taste in movies, that's perfectly fine. But their movie recommendation aren't worth much to you.

It's the same with game critique/suggestions/houserule ideas. If someone opens with why they really don't like [game I like], I default to assuming they want a style of game I'm not looking for. Ergo, their suggestions for 'improvement' will probably make the game less to my liking. So I'm not inclined to follow them.

 

[Campbell]

Wrong thread also

 

[TheSword]

I’m reminded of the customer came in and

There's another point, related to it all being subjective:

If someone doesn't like the movies you like, and like a bunch f movies you don't like, because they have different taste in movies, that's perfectly fine. But their movie recommendation aren't worth much to you.

It's the same with game critique/suggestions/houserule ideas. If someone opens with why they really don't like [game I like], I default to assuming they want a style of game I'm not looking for. Ergo, their suggestions for 'improvement' will probably make the game less to my liking. So I'm not inclined to follow them.

In the days before social media became big, Malcolm Gladwell identifies the following individuals responsible for take up of ideas.

- Mavens who keep their ear to the ground, and like gathering information about lots of different things. They test and gather ideas.

- Connectors who have contacts with lots of people.

- Salespeople who can bring other people along with their ideas either because they’re particularly persuasive or be because they have a personality that makes you want to agree with them.

With the forums we’re all connectors. I see a lot of Mavens on here... not so many sales people.

 

[Gorg]

I have to agree with the OP, for the most part. 5th ed is easy to learn- because it's relatively simple at heart. ALL the confusion I've had is attributable to baggage from earlier editions. (and some odd editing/arrangement choices) Which means it's within the grasp of most people.

You can play it however you like! Want a goofy, humorous game you and your players can yuk it up to? Have at it! Like lots of action and fights? Gotcha covered! Want an involved, epic story- and a living world to go with it? Check! Like playing in character, and social interaction? You can! While it DOES feature a fairly specific genre- swords and sorcery adventure- there's plenty of room to work with, to make it your own. And with all the 3rd party publishers involved, there's a good chance somebody has come up with something that gets you close.

It's also the genre- Don't underestimate the impact that the LOTR/Hobbit; Narnia; and Harry Potter films had on putting society in the right frame of mind for THIS game to be wildly popular again. All of them were hugely popular, and since D&D has both the name recognition, and practically defines that genre of TTRPGS...

And for us geezers, it's an awful lot like the versions we cut our teeth on back in the day. Not the SAME, but perfectly familiar- and it has that simplicity of play many of us loved.

And I fully agree with the "good enough" theory. Gaming forums are full of people who like ultra specific genres, or who just cannot resist the temptation to add complexity and make a molehill into a mountain. Or who simply live for the endless debates about minutiae. Not to mention fans of OTHER games, by other companies- and the temptation to want to push D&D closer to that one. And then there's the universal law on opinions, lol.

As was posted, D&D may not do "it" as well as a game that specializes in "it", but it can usually do it good enough for a group of people around a table to enjoy it.

 

[Jack Daniel]

Again, I think 4E undercuts this argument. 4E was laser-focused on the "core experience" of D&D--the dungeon crawl--and it executed on it very well. No other edition holds a candle to 4E for exciting, dynamic battles. But 4E failed, while 5E succeeded despite being much less focused.

I thought the problem with 4e was that it wasn't any good for dungeon-crawling. Combat, sure, but not dungeon-crawling.

Seriously?

The popularity of 5th edition is trivially easy to explain. It's the edition that was designed by a public-test-and-reaction cycle. It turns out, astonishingly enough, that asking the public what it likes is better at figuring out what will be popular with the public than design methods that don't involve asking the public what they like.

Honestly, this is probably closer to the mark. 5e was surveyed and focus-grouped and in the end practically grown in a lab for mass market appeal.

You cannot, for instance, replicate the majority of play in BitD in a D&D game -- you'd have to rewrite so much of D&D to do so that you'd essentially just recreate BitD.

This seems to be your pet peeve. I don't think anybody would claim that D&D can produce identical play to BitD. I have, however, seen plenty people make the opposite claim: D&D cannot do genre X because game Y does it better. That because BitD exists, D&D cannot do "gangs of scoundrels plotting heists in an industrial-fantasy milieu." Which is absurd.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

I don't really think it's that at all. I think it's more that D&D is the only game a lot of people have heard of, it's the first one they play, it's the one everybody else plays, and they're not really exposed to anything else because what they have works for them. In that analogy, it isn't that each of those people have different dietary requirements, it's that the Cheesecake Factory is the only restaurant in town unless they wish to drive to the next town to try some obscure restaurant they've never heard of.

To build on this, I'll add a very different analogy, of instead of chain restaurants, but instead computer operating systems. Ignore whatever OS you personally prefer; what matters more is how popular they are.

D&D is very much Windows. It's the most popular OS (by a lot, 76%), it's one that everyone knows of and has used at least once in their life, and one that every almost every computer company builds their product line around (and most other computer-parallel industries). There are folks who use Windows, will also use Windows, and will never use anything else. There are other folks who have tried Windows, but prefer something else (usually MacOS). There are even folks who use more niche things, like Linux.

Why is Windows so popular? It's popular... well, because it's popular. Everyone knows it, most people use it, and it's not unreasonable to expect your employees to be use it. Whether it's the best operating system is not important; it's way too costly, and too frustrating, to expect a company to force their employees to use something like FreeBSD or something.

D&D is the same. It is the brand almost everyone knows, and it would be extremely weird for someone to recognize the game "Call of Cthulhu" but not "Dungeons and Dragons." Yes, there are players who prefer non-D&D games, but they've almost all tried D&D. And the majority of people who have played TTRPGs have played only D&D.

D&D is popular because it's popular. Everyone has heard of it, most TTRPG players have played it and are familiar with it, and that makes it by far the easiest to set up a game for, either among veteran TTRPG players, or among folks completely new.

It also helps that 5E is one of the (if not the) easiest editions of the game for new folks to pick up and play, helping with its exponential growth.

 

[clearstream]

Seriously? Are you spoiling for a fight?

Let me make this explicitly clear:

I was responding to @Aldarc who stated that 5e was often referred to as the second-favorite edition on these forums (aka, "here").

I made a joke that most people understand to be self-denigrating that invokes the fact that most of the people commenting on these forums are, in fact, older - not only "3e" older but we also have a lot of people that go back to 2e, 1e, and OD&D.

Which is why people here would think of 5e as their second-favorite edition; because most people fall in love with their FIRST game they play.

Now, I will explain this in even more painstaking detail. Many of the olds here, like me, played another edition first, that we fell in love with. So 5e is most likely to be our second-favorite edition. But a person who has just come into the game would only have played 5e, so it would be their first love, and their favorite edition. Therefore, sampling the comments here would necessarily be skewed, because ... wait for it ... the people who type long comments on the forum are going to be older than the people who have just started playing D&D with 5e.

Now, if you would like to get into giant INTERNETZ FIGHT, feel free, but I need to go yell at some clouds. Take care!

I played other editions first and 5e is my favourite edition. Misunderstandings abound.

 

[Campbell]

@Jack Daniel

My personal experience has been that if you want to change the energy or character of play you have to change the process of play. If you attempt to play a thieves' guild game in D&D and just change the content without changing the process of play what you get is still essentially the same game of following plot hooks, challenge oriented group problem solving, and incentive structure that points towards solving most problems with violence. That's still a great game, but it is not remotely what a typical Blades in the Dark experience feels like in play.

Can you change the process of play while mostly using D&D character sheets? Sure, but at that point I think you are mostly playing a different game.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I thought the problem with 4e was that it wasn't any good for dungeon-crawling. Combat, sure, but not dungeon-crawling.

It's fine enough at it. It is a D&D game, after all. Is it as good at it as Moldvay Basic? Nope. 5e? But it's good enough at it to not merit saying it's not good at it.

I think that this statement is more that "4e doesn't do dungeon crawling like other D&D editions -- you can't make the same assumptions and have it work well as you can in, say 5e." This is a truth -- 4e's resolution mechanics are different enough that trying to run an AP from another edition, or just trying to run in that same style, will be painful. That said, a few adjustments to your assumption set and 4e could do just fine. I never had a problem with it, even if I did completely miss that 4e is very compatible with a Story Now style of play.

Honestly, this is probably closer to the mark. 5e was surveyed and focus-grouped and in the end practically grown in a lab for mass market appeal.

I disagree with this, to a point. 5e was playtested, but the design wasn't open sourced -- the designers designed, and then after that ran a playtest to see if people liked it. The game wasn't designed in playtest, it was just playtested more widely than was (or is) the norm. This gave good feedback to the designers to iterate. The actual design work is still pretty closed.

This seems to be your pet peeve. I don't think anybody would claim that D&D can produce identical play to BitD. I have, however, seen plenty people make the opposite claim: D&D cannot do genre X because game Y does it better. That because BitD exists, D&D cannot do "gangs of scoundrels plotting heists in an industrial-fantasy milieu." Which is absurd.

Pet peeve is strong, perhaps 'argument I'm tired of.' As for that claim, please point me at who says this because I'll verbally punch them in the face for saying something so stupid. I'll need your help, though, because I've never seen that said on this board.