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

[Jack Daniel]

So, for me, "you'd be better off playing a game that is made for that" usually rings hollow. What about you?

Super hollow, if only because I see it all the blasted time and it gets tiresome. A dedicated D&D player who wants to sample other genres and play "space-flavored D&D" or "pulp-flavored D&D" or "modern-flavored D&D" can already do that—provided one is willing to play either an OSR game or a 3e-based d20 System game. In fact, it's hard to think of genres that haven't been given the D&D treatment at some point within the last twenty years.

Of course the end result isn't going to be a different RPG. It's going to feel like D&D. And that's the whole point! If what you want is a heroic adventure game with experience levels and character classes, why would you look anywhere else? Which is why this attitude—

This. You can send D&D characters into space, but it remains D&D in space.

If I want to have a starship battle the D&D rules don't cover it, but other RPGs do.

—baffles me. As if "D&D in space" were somehow undesirable (or difficult to achieve given all the extant material out there—there are no fewer than four OD&D-compatible sets of starship rules and probably more for 3e sitting on my bookshelf right now). No, it won't be Star Trek or Star Wars, it'll just be star-flavored D&D, but why wouldn't a group of D&D players want that? Sometimes the goal isn't to feel like you're in a weekly Trek episode or a bad Star Wars sequel movie. Sometimes the goal is to earn XP and gain levels as a Jedi or a Science Officer or whatever.

 

[MichaelSomething]

So has anyone here ran a commoner campaign???

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Super hollow, if only because I see it all the blasted time and it gets tiresome. A dedicated D&D player who wants to sample other genres and play "space-flavored D&D" or "pulp-flavored D&D" or "modern-flavored D&D" can already do that—provided one is willing to play either an OSR game or a 3e-based d20 System game. In fact, it's hard to think of genres that haven't been given the D&D treatment at some point within the last twenty years.

Of course the end result isn't going to be a different RPG. It's going to feel like D&D. And that's the whole point! If what you want is a heroic adventure game with experience levels and character classes, why would you look anywhere else? Which is why this attitude—



—baffles me. As if "D&D in space" were somehow undesirable (or difficult to achieve given all the extant material out there—there are no fewer than four OD&D-compatible sets of starship rules and probably more for 3e sitting on my bookshelf right now). No, it won't be Star Trek or Star Wars, it'll just be star-flavored D&D, but why wouldn't a group of D&D players want that? Sometimes the goal isn't to feel like you're in a weekly Trek episode or a bad Star Wars sequel movie. Sometimes the goal is to earn XP and gain levels as a Jedi or a Science Officer or whatever.

Yeah, that as well.

If I’m playing D&D in space...why would I mind that it feels like D&D, as long as it also feels like a Space Opera?

 

[Hussar]

I didn't play d20, but we found it pretty easy to adopt the essence of CoC (or our perception of it) to our 5e game.

But, couldn't the argument be made that sanity is a major element of a CoC game? That by leaving one of the most iconic elements of CoC out of your D&D hack, you aren't really doing what CoC does - emulate the slow dissolution of the protagonists sanity in the face of unspeakable horror but rather simply doing D&D with a bit of horror? I don't doubt your group had fun. And that's great. But, if we're judging how well a hack evokes CoC, can you really claim you're emulating CoC when there is no threat that your PC's will lose their minds?

 

[Hussar]

And, from my own experience, 5e is a terrible game to try to do low magic fantasy in. Something with, say, classic pulp level magics like Conan. You have to strip out 3/4 of the game - almost all the classes for one - to do it. To the point where it really wasn't worth it when I did it. The system was fighting me every step of the way.

By low magic, I mean similar to say, 1e D&D where a given encounter might feature a single spell cast in the entire encounter, vs 5e where you have multiple characters casting spells every round.

And, I would point out, that since it's a perennial thread topic - just search the forums for things like how to do low magic 5e - I'm hardly the only one who has difficulty making 5e work this way. And, yeah, if I wanted to do low magic D&D, I'd go back to 4e which does it straight out of the box without any need for modifying anything. Or, something like Savage Worlds, which also does it out of the box. There are far, far better solutions to a low magic campaign than kit bashing 5e D&D.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

And, from my own experience, 5e is a terrible game to try to do low magic fantasy in. Something with, say, classic pulp level magics like Conan. You have to strip out 3/4 of the game - almost all the classes for one - to do it. To the point where it really wasn't worth it when I did it. The system was fighting me every step of the way.

By low magic, I mean similar to say, 1e D&D where a given encounter might feature a single spell cast in the entire encounter, vs 5e where you have multiple characters casting spells every round.

And, I would point out, that since it's a perennial thread topic - just search the forums for things like how to do low magic 5e - I'm hardly the only one who has difficulty making 5e work this way. And, yeah, if I wanted to do low magic D&D, I'd go back to 4e which does it straight out of the box without any need for modifying anything. Or, something like Savage Worlds, which also does it out of the box. There are far, far better solutions to a low magic campaign than kit bashing 5e D&D.

There aren’t if the goal for your group is to play the same system they’ve been playing, but low magic.

And it’s not much work to get a copy of Adventures In Middle Earth and use the classes from it. None of them cast any actual spells at all, and magic items are quite rare and fairly low powered.

Works great.

 

[Fanaelialae]

So has anyone here ran a commoner campaign???

Not commoner per se, but I did play in a modern campaign where we were ordinary people. I played a journalist for a local paper, another player was a handyman, and the third was a college student. We weren't exactly powerhouses in combat, but we were reasonably competent outside it. I think we were around 4th level when we were TPK'd by a giant scorpion (in retrospect, we really should have run).

 

[Jaeger]

Here’s a thing. You aren’t required to use all tiers of play.

A theoretical point that doesn't hold up in practice.

No 5e based game does that. Does the d20 game have 20 levels? Then you get 20 levels of HP progression.

20 levels of advancement with fixed HP? You are looking at a serious rules hack because so much of D&D's system math for monsters and spells is scaled for the constant HP progression. Even the d20 OSR guys don't really break from this paradigm.

How many are willing to redesign/rescale 3/4ths of the spells and monsters to keep the feel of a single tier?

Not many as the 5e compatible Adventures in Middle Earth game shows.

D&D with (insert setting here)-Veneer rules the day.

But, couldn't the argument be made that sanity is a major element of a CoC game? That by leaving one of the most iconic elements of CoC out of your D&D hack, you aren't really doing what CoC does - emulate the slow dissolution of the protagonists sanity in the face of unspeakable horror but rather simply doing D&D with a bit of horror? I don't doubt your group had fun. And that's great. But, if we're judging how well a hack evokes CoC, can you really claim you're emulating CoC when there is no threat that your PC's will lose their minds?

I would say that the point isn't to do what the BRP/CoC game does.

It is: "That looks like a cool setting to play in. Lets do it with D&D!."

 

[MichaelSomething]

Not commoner per se, but I did play in a modern campaign where we were ordinary people. I played a journalist for a local paper, another player was a handyman, and the third was a college student. We weren't exactly powerhouses in combat, but we were reasonably competent outside it. I think we were around 4th level when we were TPK'd by a giant scorpion (in retrospect, we really should have run).

So it sounds like you ran it in a non D&D system???

 

[Fanaelialae]

So it sounds like you ran it in a non D&D system???

It was D&D 3.x. I think it might have borrowed character creation from the D&D CoC book, but I'm not certain (it was almost 2 decades ago).

We've run similar campaigns in 4e and 5e as well though.