D&D 5E D&D compared to Bespoke Genre TTRPGs

[doctorbadwolf]

Most of that material is utter naughty word.

Bull. (Edit: remembered the forum rules on vulgarity)

There's dozens and dozens of moving parts, and every change creates a ripple effect. I just don't understand how anyone can argue with this.

Who is arguing with it? It just doesn’t mean it’s hard to add, remove, or replace, mechanics in 5e D&D. The “ripple effects” are actually very small and mild, and have little effect on play. Most of the worries about balance in 5e are purely hypothetical, and come from hyper focusing on minutia in a white room.

Now compare it with,a again, Fate, where there's nothing to break

Fate is one of the least enjoyable gaming experiences I have ever had, so no thanks.

i enjoyed playing the somewhat simplified version of Blades that a friend ran, and Monsterhearts was fun for the most part but harder to take seriously due to rolling to see if the other character successfully turned on my character even though the correct answer was obvious to everyone in the scene by virtue of being in our character’s headspace, Monster of The Week is a blast, Vampire is always fun as long as the group has no annoying edge lords in it, The One Ring is one of my favorite systems ever, etc, etc.
I’ve played a lot of games. I enjoyed GURPS, Hero, Alternity, d6 Star Wars, etc.

Fate is, IMO, a terrible game. The only other game I played that I didn’t really enjoy was Mouseguard. I don’t want to review my entire damn character sheet every time I take an action to figure out how many dice I should roll. This does not lead me to thinking as my character, it leads to me thinking about the mechanics, in a way that reduces my character to a machine for producing a dice pool.
Love that setting, though.

I hold Cthulhu d20 in high esteem as it's an excellent adaptation with some of the best advice I've seen for new Keepers and Investigators. But adapting the d20 rules for a Call of Cthulhu atmosphere required an awful lot of heavy lifting that I wouldn't want to have to do myself.

I definitely think a 5e based version would need vastly less work, and also that d20 Cthulu did more than it needed to, and some of the pain points of the system were a result of that. (The massively unneeded complexity of that era of the d20 system didn’t help)

There is far less "why" to your OP than "HOW DARE THEY SUGGEST?!" And the tone throughout the thread definitely leans towards the latter than the former. Maybe formulate your posts better in the future so you communicate your intent better. I still disagree with your sentiment, which definitely comes across as dismissive.

Yeah no. I stand by my statement that this particular misunderstanding is on the reader, even if it is understandable given the tenor of many past threads. I didn’t dismiss anything, I just made a thread about modifying D&D vs switching systems, and why “just play something else” is generally bad advice that ignores and dismisses the goals of the person asking for the advise.

 

[Charlaquin]

My response would be that it was largely unnecessary (given BRP is easier to learn as a system than like, a few pages of 3E rules),

Well, yes, but tell that to someone who’s first RPG experience was 3e. The difficulty of learning that game was enough to put anyone off trying to learn another system, because in their limited experience RPG systems are a huge undertaking to learn

and today, would be completely unnecessary, because any number of horror RPGs (including Cthulhu-themed ones) are so easy to learn, that even if you're "still learning" 5E you can learn them.

I mean, today we have stuff like The Cthulhu Hack, which I think is actually quite a good horror RPG built on a 5e framework (kind of - it’s built on the Black Hack, which is an OSR game built on a 5e framework)

It was back in a very different era, when people were just mindlessly making godawful "d20 version of X" (even WoD met this fate) RPGs.

We don’t talk about McWoD.

CoC stood out as a lot less bad than most, but it was still bad, real bad. And they could have vastly improved it and still not made it any harder to learn, just removing more d20 elements.

System-wise it was kinda bad, but it was well-written and approachable in that era when every genre under the sun was getting a d20 version. And the sample adventures in it were excellent.

As for "horror from buy-in", sure, but you can do that with D&D's own rules so long as the PCs are reasonably low level. You don't even need to modify the rules, though I admit I have never managed to get enough candles going to actually play by candle light (just not enough light being generated!), and the one time we really gave it our best shot (Vampire back in the day), yes, we did manage to catch a character sheet on fire!

Haha really it was less “played by candle light” and more “started in the early evening and had candles lit” until the sun went down, at which point we used a flashlight

 

[dave2008]

I definitely think a 5e based version would need vastly less work, and also that d20 Cthulu did more than it needed to, and some of the pain points of the system were a result of that. (The massively unneeded complexity of that era of the d20 system didn’t help)

Have you checked out Sandy Peterson's Cthulhu Mythos for 5e? I have it, but pretty much only reviewed the monsters section (that is really all I need to run a CoC game in 5e), but there is a lot more there. Just curious what someone else thought about it.

 

[MGibster]

The thing about hacking D&D by bolting on rules from other games is that I've still got to purchase and read the rules for those other games.

 

[dave2008]

The thing about hacking D&D by bolting on rules from other games is that I've still got to purchase and read the rules for those other games.

You would have to do the same if you were going to play that game. The questions is not D&D or CoC, but add horror to my D&D game or play CoC. The D&D cost is the assumed baseline.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Then why is it so easy to hack?

It absolutely isn't.

D&D is hard to hack well for most things. There are some hacks which are easy because they align with D&D's structure, but most of the hacks you could do? No.

D&D is a rules medium-heavy system, with a very peculiar and specific approach. It's certainly not "easy to hack" in any objective sense. Most RPGs are easier to hack. But as

Sorry to come back to this by I was think about this thread while picking up lunch and I realized something that was bothering me. This sentiment is basically the issue I have with the argument to use another system. This is basically a claim that we (people who like to mod D&D) don't really know what we are talking about because we are not playing the real thing. It comes off, whether intended or not, as elitist and condescending. It is implied that we can't "really" play CoC horror in D&D and we would have much more authentic experience if we played a game designed for that genre. That may be your opinion or experience, but for me personally, we (my group_ really did play CoC style horror in D&D. I've read Lovecraft and I played CoC. IMO, I was able to create an experience more authentic to the books in 5e D&D than I was with CoC* with the minor changes I listed in another post.

*To be fair, I was teenage DM with maybe 5 years of rpg experience at the time versus 30+ years now.

So first off, we know why from the last sentence, but second off, CoC is a terrible, terrible, godawful example of a "Bespoke Genre TTRPG", because essentially it isn't.

CoC is using a system almost as specific as D&D. CoC uses Basic Roleplaying - BRP. BRP is an intentionally-generic system. It's used for quite a number of games. Is it a good fit for Cthulhu-related stuff? Not really, I'd say. Is it a better fit than D&D? Sure. But so is GURPS or any number of other systems. More modern Cthulhu-related games are typically significantly better at doing Cthulhu mythos stuff than CoC.

So that you were able to get a better result, 30 years on, with another ill-suited system isn't at all surprising. It was 30 years later! You'd hope! I know I'm able to a hell of a lot more now than in 1989.

People pushing CoC as a good example are being foolish, imho. It's a bad example of a "Bespoke Genre RPG". Indeed most RPGs from before about 2000-2005, maybe later, that are "Bespoke Genre RPGs" are pretty bad at it. Even the good ones aren't great. Let's look at example of what was once a wonderful "Bespoke Genre RPG" - Feng Shui, which basically a Hong Kong action genre RPG, with some time-travel and stuff going on as well. In the early 1990s, it was absolutely stunning. Now? I wouldn't use that system for that genre. I could go on.

I think the real point is that D&D isn't a good base for a lot of genres. Someone earlier in the thread said D&D was Fantasy Heroic Adventure, and I agree, and the more a genre you want to do matches up with those elements, the better D&D is going to work for it. Indiana Jones stuff, for example, is Heroic Adventure (and even has fantasy elements), so is likely to do well. Cyberpunk, which is none of those things, is not, but is so aesthetic you might get away with it if it was the shallowest kind of cyberpunk. And so on.

 

[MGibster]

Fate is, IMO, a terrible game. The only other game I played that I didn’t really enjoy was Mouseguard. I don’t want to review my entire damn character sheet every time I take an action to figure out how many dice I should roll. This does not lead me to thinking as my character, it leads to me thinking about the mechanics, in a way that reduces my character to a machine for producing a dice pool.

I don't mind playing Fate but I don't care to run it. I refer to Fate as that game where you come up with any reason, no matter how contrived, for one of your Aspects to affect the roll.

Well, yes, but tell that to someone who’s first RPG experience was 3e. The difficulty of learning that game was enough to put anyone off trying to learn another system, because in their limited experience RPG systems are a huge undertaking to learn

Call of Cthulhu has it's own little quirks. As a new Keeper, it was sometimes confusing to figure out whether or not a player should use Fast Talk, Persuasion, or Credit Rating for social interactions as the game left it up to me to figure out which was best for the situation. And is there any reason we have the skills of Handgun, Rifle/Shotgun, and Machine Gun are all separate skills? If my character has a History of 65% that's knowledge covers the entire breadth and scope of human civilization but we need to get into the nitty gritty with weapon skills? And the advice for running investigative games wasn't the best though they've improved this quite a bit with 7th edition.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yes, we never liked the sanity mechanic. Probably a reason we stopped playing CoC. I did not import that to 5e (though you could) when we did a CoC style game in 5e.

It isn’t just about the sanity mechanic though, it’s about the inverted character progression. You could bring Sanity into D&D, but you’d still have a game where the characters face challenges and grow stronger from it, rather than a game where characters are worn down to almost nothing by one harrowing experience after another.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Well, yes, but tell that to someone who’s first RPG experience was 3e. The difficulty of learning that game was enough to put anyone off trying to learn another system, because in their limited experience RPG systems are a huge undertaking to learn

This is totally true and one of the reason I so hated d20's success. They were trying onboard everyone with this ghastly overcomplicated monstrosity of a system full of noob traps and idiocy. It's part of why the people who came onboard in 3.XE/d20 were very different demographically and in terms of interests to those with 5E (and why they were so much less numerous).

Back in the '90s we really tore up our players just introducing them to one rules-heavy system after another. Nowadays with stuff like PtbA games it's relatively easy to convince people to try new things, esp. as even if not PtbA, 90% of new RPGs are rules-light and accessible (not true in the 1990s nor '00s).

We don’t talk about McWoD.

"The Scottish RPG"

System-wise it was kinda bad, but it was well-written and approachable in that era when every genre under the sun was getting a d20 version. And the sample adventures in it were excellent.

Yeah like, let's be real - it was better-written than 95% of d20 stuff, and had better graphic design and so on than like 99%, so it helped invite people in. I just wish they'd gone a little further in paring down the rules. Well a lot further, as I'm supposed to be being real lol.

 

[TheSword]

There’s a lot more reasons a person may want to easily hack D&D mechanics than migrate to a new system.

• People might like the brand
• They may like the published adventures
• They may like the community
• They may struggle to find players for other systems
• They may not have other systems supported on their VTT of choice

All of these would make me want to stick with D&D. Plus don’t forget it’s easy to hack mechanics.

Also because it’s derived/combined from several other editions there is a huge backlog of material that’s easy to adapt.

PS Did I mention it’s easy to hack the mechanics.