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

[Imaro]

I am still trying to wrap my head around Blades, but I think this does get at some kind of style line for me with the system. Where when I am playing an organized crime or heist campaign most of the fun for us is the planning phase, and we want the details of our plan to matter, and we want our reconnaissance to be important to (and be somewhat 'exploration' based). I am still fuzzy on blades so I am going with what I've read in the book and what I have seen described here. But there is something more amorphous about how it deals with setting details that would make the strategics aspect of the heist seem less interesting to me (I could be wrong). What it seems great for though is nailing the dramatics. Like I could see it playing out kind of like Reservoir Dogs and do a very good job of it. Correct me if I am off on this. But you mentioning hyper detailed planning being potentially a problem brought this to my mind (and I have noticed both me and my players tend to lean on hyper detailed planning).

Apparently you and your group are not sensible or playing with the correct goal in mind...

 

[loverdrive]

Not everyone is trying to faithfully emulate some specific thing. If a group enjoys planning and executing that plan, then it is good that there are games that don’t actively fight them doing so.

I don't think it's a good idea to not actively preventing lose-lose scenario.

With planning on TTRPGs there are only two options:
A) The plan worked as expected, so you've wasted time on redundant execution
B) The plan didn't work, so you've wasted your time on planning next steps

Also, I really don't think there are that many uncannily smart people with the ability to plan contingencies that borders on supernatural playing RPGs out there. And that's exactly a thing that separates a heist from a plain robbery.

 

[Campbell]

A big part of what makes a game like Blades really well suited for heists and crime fiction is how fluid it is. It's extremely easy to transition from stealth to violence back to a social scene with minimal cognitive overhead.

It's also makes running concurrent scenes where the PCs are all doing different things exceptionally smooth. The game has a real cinematic flow to it.

 

[Imaro]

No I gotcha.

I know what you're asking.

I'm asking you to give me a quick, made-up excerpt of play (the broad > then the zoom) which you feel would help illuminate how Blades (as a system) "supports" play.

You give me the skin. I'll give you the skeleton.

You give me the paint. I'll give you the chassis/engine.

You give me the potatoes. I'll mash them and put garlic/butter/cream in them.

Cool...

1) Propose a broad scenario.

2) Zoom in very tight on a singular moment of action resolution within the conflict and I'll give you a specific example that intersects with your proposal (which should do the most work on illuminating how Blades tech/structure/ethos supports play)
You give me the...you get the idea.

1.) A wealthy noble and secret cult leader of an elder sea god has acquired a sentient cursed relic which he keeps in the catacomb temple beneath his manor. The PC's are stealing said relic.


2.) The PC's have found their way to the central chamber of the catacomb temple, an enormous cavern that is flooded with murky sea water and guarded by cult members who have all been mutated by the relic so that they are equal part human and squid. The relic itself is on a small artificially made island in the flooded cavern that can be reached by a thin bridge of damp, brittle coral that stretches from the only adjoining tunnel to the small isle. The relic itself rests on an altar, in the middle of the isle, constructed of shells, barnacles and sea urchin spines that havebeen coated with a potent sea urchin venom. Finally the relic itself being sentient has a connection to the noble and will alert him if it senses that anything is amiss.

Not sure if this was what you were looking for or not. Hopefully it is but if not I'd be willing to take another crack at it with more guidance.

 

[prabe]

Not everyone is trying to faithfully emulate some specific thing.

I'll go a step further and say that setting out to emulate books, or TV shows, or movies in a TRPG is a very bad idea. TRPGs are very much their own thing, and generally work better if you don't try to shoehorn them into other things.

If a group enjoys planning and executing that plan, then it is good that there are games that don’t actively fight them doing so.

Absolutely this. One of the strengths of TRPGs is that you get to do what you enjoy doing. If you enjoy the planning, roleplay the planning; if you enjoy diving in headfirst like an idiot getting straight to the thing being planned, roleplay that. If a given game system doesn't work for what you enjoy, don't play that game system.

It doesn't seem all that difficult to me.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, my point is modern vs naive. HERO/Champions is ancient, largely naive design, only tweaked gradually to modernise it. Steve Kenson is a designer I think of as part of the whole modern thing. SAS, M&M and so on show clear attempts to move Supers towards a modern, genre-supporting design. M&M is a genuine example of working towards a market, given the d20 mechanic, which I suspect he'd rather not have used, but attempting to avoid as much of the d20 baggage as possible. And this is, for my money, modern design. Early-modern but modern, conscious stuff. Looking at his bibliography you can see even since the '90s he's been involved with games which take an increasingly conscious approach to design, and aren't merely "here's a system, how do I represent things in it".

The problem is M&M is exactly the example of a deliberate compromise in design, and not just in using a D20 (the specifics of M&M's evolution as a D20 derived game may not be well known, but they aren't exactly a secret, either). To show the contrast, to look at a game where he deliberately moved toward harder genre focus, look at Icons, and note it and M&M overlapped in design period, so it wasn't a case of him not being entirely aware of how he wanted to go about things; it was that the two games were serving different audiences, and he was well aware of that.

I'm sure that's true but that doesn't make it typical or common, and I think most of the times I can think of designers saying things like this it's been a matter of "we could use a better mechanic, but the audience is used to this one" and there's an underlying vibe of "and we don't think they're smart enough or daring enough to change", which I think at least in the modern era is underestimating the audience (I feel like it was at all times except during the d20 boom, but YMMV).

I think that's a poor reading of what's been said; as I note Kenson has outright said "Icons is closer to what I want, but not everyone wants what I do". That and the fact for a number of years M&M was probably the most successful SHRPG on the market (including during periods when other more genre-hard games already exist) suggests to me, again, that what people want out of a game is not exactly what they want out of a comic book, movie, or TV show (and I'll note the expectations for those three aren't identical, either).

These are to me "inside-the-box" things that evolved from when it becomes obvious the system is failing at supporting something about the subject matter, rather than conscious design - i.e. reactionary corrections. Not sure what you mean re: disadvantage system though.

I happen to have some history with the system's development and you'd simply be wrong. Most of them were consciously done right out the gate because people realized that there were areas where super universe reality simply didn't match up with real world expectations. The damage done by high strength was absolutely a case of this for example (as was the damage system in general), because its always been notable that attacks in superhero settings that will blow through walls rarely pulp enemy supers, even ones without avowed high levels of toughness.

The Disadvantage System was put together because (and this is not entirely unique to supers, but its particularly pronounced there throughout its history) superheroic characters are generally defined both by the things they do well (their skills and powers) and the things that hold them back (a wide range of disadvantages). As such the reward system in disadvantages was designed to encourage people to put such things on characters without forcing it. You can argue there have been better takes on that since then (the reward-on-trigger of things like M&M Complications, say, rather than reward-up-front) but its an explicitly genre-support tool.

I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at here. Could you expand on this?

A lot of people would be perfectly happy doing something where they simply had a number of, say, "preparation points" where they could retroactively have an item/set up a place/found out some information that they need to do something and get on with the actual heist; the flashbacks and focus on the set up that is at least part of the genre, however you care to handle it, just isn't that interesting to them.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Superhero stuff is particularly a no-brainer if you have any pre-prepared villains. It writes itself, as they say. I literally can't think of anything easier to prep than Marvel FASERIP (excluding ultra-light improv games like "Roll for shoes" or whatever its called).

Even more complicated games, the biggest part is in character creation; and there are ways even in a game as detailed as Hero to fake one up on the fly if you need to and have a general sense of the system. Its damn near trivial in M&M (I used to fit simple one-off villains in literally two lines of text by simply noting Attack, Defense, Saves and Effect value, and a terse list of the powers they had).

But yes, I usually found the hardest part of setting up a superhero setting was conceptual; a lot of the rest I could do on the fly if necessary.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I don't think it's a good idea to not actively preventing lose-lose scenario.

With planning on TTRPGs there are only two options:
A) The plan worked as expected, so you've wasted time on redundant execution
B) The plan didn't work, so you've wasted your time on planning next steps

Also, I really don't think there are that many uncannily smart people with the ability to plan contingencies that borders on supernatural playing RPGs out there. And that's exactly a thing that separates a heist from a plain robbery.

If you suggested this to either of my live groups, they'd mutiny. It's removing the part where they play the game and skipping to the part where they find out if they won, which would make any success hollow, to them.

Planning is the fun part, so skipping that would go over like a lead balloon.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I don't think it's a good idea to not actively preventing lose-lose scenario.

With planning on TTRPGs there are only two options:
A) The plan worked as expected, so you've wasted time on redundant execution
B) The plan didn't work, so you've wasted your time on planning next steps

Also, I really don't think there are that many uncannily smart people with the ability to plan contingencies that borders on supernatural playing RPGs out there. And that's exactly a thing that separates a heist from a plain robbery.

I’m sorry to be short about this, but no. I’m not even going to entertain as valid an argument that is literally “the thing these folks enjoy is wrong and bad, and they’re wrong to think they enjoy it.”

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'll go a step further and say that setting out to emulate books, or TV shows, or movies in a TRPG is a very bad idea. TRPGs are very much their own thing, and generally work better if you don't try to shoehorn them into other things.

Absolutely this. One of the strengths of TRPGs is that you get to do what you enjoy doing. If you enjoy the planning, roleplay the planning; if you enjoy diving in headfirst like an idiot getting straight to the thing being planned, roleplay that. If a given game system doesn't work for what you enjoy, don't play that game system.

It doesn't seem all that difficult to me.

The problem is that I think you're missing that some people want the game to play out like certain elements have occurred without having to engage with those elements.

If I can draw a parallel, old school D&D often put a lot of emphasis on things like making sure you had all the right gear and mapping out the dungeon in detail. A lot of modern D&D players just find that all tedious and would prefer to abstract most of that out--but that doesn't mean they assume their characters aren't doing it, any more than they assume their characters don't sharpen their swords. They just don't want to deal with it themselves.