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

[Neonchameleon]

What's so hard about running a heist in DnD? I feel like this has been the example for a while and that people think that it is somehow difficult. Doesn't seem to me like a heist isn't really any different than any other adventure. The party has a goal and decides how they will proceed. They use their skills, their abilities, and their equipment to complete it. Maybe I just don't understand what blades in the dark offers, but I see no reason why a heist couldn't be done in DnD, my friend even ran one and it worked fine.

I've seen an old school dungeon crawl described as a poorly planned and extremely violent heist.

In practice the problem preparing a detailed heist where the players have the initiative is the sheer amount of preparation work for the time taken. There is a wide variety of possible approaches to heisting any given target - and if you prepare four the players are only going to take the one they think is the easiest - and if you as a DM can see four basic approaches your players between them will probably see six.

What Blades does is enables satisfying heists run on a wing and a prayer where instead of you the DM having to prepare complications to throw the complications normally arise out of success-with-consequences mechanics and the pacing tools that Blades has that D&D doesn't.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

EDIT - the more I think about it, the more I find it interesting that BitD totally doesn't include the major genre element of betrayal/backstabbing/unreliable people within the crew. It's a good illustration of @Thomas Shey 's point re: excluding genre elements which don't work well for RPGs.

I don't know the game, but can't you do it the same way as you would do it in D&D, and have one of the players act as a mole?

RotFM has a bash at this with it's secrets.

 

[Aldarc]

Thinking genre emulation is the only "sensible" way is just plain narrow-minded and deeply ignorant of the history of TT RPGs, though (the whole dungeon-crawling and sandbox approaches stand in hard opposition to genre emulation). So it's weird to back up that bad take (which wasn't your take, I note, but @loverdrive's take). I'd also really argue that the original Locke Lamora is not actually a good match for BitD, the way it plays out. That was one of the major problems my Locke Lamora-loving group had with it. With LL there's a mixture of pre-planning and understanding quite elaborate stuff (which BitD does NOT want to happen), and the flashbacks are used in a very different way to BitD and Ocean's 11. It makes sense that the BitD author hadn't read LL, because the subject matter is close but the approach is significantly different.

EDIT- Hell the existence and popularity of D&D really calls into question the whole "genre emulation" thing, because D&D only "emulates" the D&D genre. Indeed most of the "big" RPGs aren't genre-emulation ones, they're ones which are vaguely genre-themed (often really, really vaguely, and mashing up multiple genres), but ones that are doing their own thing (including the WoD, which isn't really genre-emulating, though VtM is the closest to it, it's still kind of defining its own genre).

PtbA games tend somewhat to be genre-emulating (though not exclusively, and often obliquely, or emulate a genre of their own), and I've always liked genre-emulating RPGs, all the way back to Feng Shui and so on, but the idea that they're the only way or primary way or something is just fanciful nonsense, especially given we're posting on a D&D board!

When you find the other Aldarc whose argument you are arguing against, please let me know.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Yeah I was actually noticing that as I was typing up my post. I'm not sure it really emulates any of those particularly closely, because it has it's own whole thing going on, and is missing elements that they have too, but it is going for a more TV-series-ish structure. I dunno if you could do the movie betrayal thing well in an RPG because the reasons for the betrayal are usually terrible, and who is going to want to be that guy? It might make an interesting one-shot though.

It doesn't ... and it does. One of the things Blades provides is its downtime pressure mechanics. It does the meat of each episode fairly decently, but it has its framing story. So in Burn Notice Michael Weston is a CIA spy struggling to find out who burned him, in Alias Sydney Bristow is trying to juggle multiple spy agencies, in Supernatural there are damn good reasons the Winchesters are moving on after each episode and people chasing them and in Blades in the Dark the framing mechanics are about turf as well as recovering stress.

And yes, Supernatural isn't a heist show. It is, however, a procedural where things go sideways in each episode and the monsters aren't that well defined going in until at least the later seasons. I

 

[Ovinomancer]

I mean until he says "Yeah, that's what I meant", I think you're in a bit of a quantum superposition.

Sorry, I am not. If you need to know, then that is acknowledging that you liked his post without understanding it. I'm not out on a limb here -- my points do not, at all, rely on what Magic Sword might think the reason 5e is easy to create ad hoc GM solutions for things. I've already made the point why this is -- it's not something hard to disagree with, it's just being fought against because, well, not really sure, seems like some sort of strange need to protect 5e.

5e is easy to create ad hoc solutions for things because it is built to do so. How do you bribe a guard? The GM will tell you. How do you sneak into a vault? The GM will tell you. How do you disguise yourself as the king? The GM will tell you. There's no support in 5e for any of these things because it's all been passed off onto the GM to determine how these things work. How do you kill the orc, though, has pages of rules. There's support for hitting things with pointy sticks. And, the way you determine this support, is read the rules as a player and try to find out how you gather information on your target, how you do the actions, and how you determine what happens afterwards (success, failure, or both). All of these bits exist in Blades -- you can read the rules and know how these things will happen within the rules -- the game is the details and actually seeing what bits do happen. In 5e, you cannot find any of this -- at all. It doesn't exist. In it's place is a great big, "the GM will tell you how this works." 5e lacks support for heists -- it requires, as a point of design, that the GM create/determine how this works.

Now, here's the thing, and the point I've been saving because it's done a good job rearing up in this thread -- this is fine. If it's what you like -- if you like the GM creating these kinds of things ad hoc and running with it, if you trust your GM to do so and do so well, then AWESOME! This is great. The problem comes in not in that you cannot get a good outcome for a heist in 5e, but that any such outcome is entirely a product of your table and your GM. 5e does not help you. The thing that this means is that if it's worked for you, if you're happy with your table, it's quite easy to mistake your table for 5e, and that's quite a lot of what I see in these threads. The suggestion to look to other games because they have support for things in their rules is taken as a slight on how well your table has done it, and there's little thought to how much effort and trust and experience actually went into it going well at your table. This is an ongoing problem for 5e -- the good GM fallacy. That all it takes is a good GM, which you cannot get a consensus on what makes a good GM outside of a few very broad things, to make 5e the bestest. That failure to get 5e to do all the things is a failure of good GMing, and the answer isn't to look to other systems, but rather to "get gud." This is damaging to the hobby.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I've seen an old school dungeon crawl described as a poorly planned and extremely violent heist.

In practice the problem preparing a detailed heist where the players have the initiative is the sheer amount of preparation work for the time taken. There is a wide variety of possible approaches to heisting any given target - and if you prepare four the players are only going to take the one they think is the easiest - and if you as a DM can see four basic approaches your players between them will probably see six.

Why are people finding heists so hard to prep? What are you doing wrong? Or am I a magic pixie?

This is really mystifying to me. Like, haven't you people run Shadowrun or Cyberpunk 2020 for years, where like, 90% of adventures are roughly "heists" (in that the players need to get in somewhere, get a thing/person, and get out)? How is that hard to write? I can write a good heist scenario, with a lot of moving parts, which I know will be a ton of fun, in like a few hours. You say "players will see six ways when you see four!", and seem to think this is a bad thing. It isn't. It's wonderful. If you just set up a fun scenario, with a few layers to it, then when the players take an unexpected tack, that's likely to still result in a really fun game. Only if you habitually design extremely fragile scenarios where the players averting one thing basically breaks the whole deal is the "oh no an approach I didn't consider!" thing even an issue. I think the last time I designed a scenario that fragile was when I was a fairly young teenager. Just add more layers!

That's ridiculously easier than writing a mystery that makes complete sense (i.e. no huge plothole that one of the players will immediately spot), or a really lengthy dungeon crawl, or just almost any other genre of adventure that's pre-written.

If you need to know, then that is acknowledging that you liked his post without understanding it.

That'd make sense if Iiked his post, but I didn't so that's nonsensical. And your argument after that is pretty incoherent and fails to acknowledge that BitD doesn't feature support for procedural heists, only cinematic ones. Indeed it actively anti-supports procedural ones. 5E helps you a lot more than BitD does if you want to take that approach, just by not actively getting in your way.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Why are people finding heists so hard to prep? What are you doing wrong? Or am I a magic pixie?

This is really mystifying to me. Like, haven't you people run Shadowrun or Cyberpunk 2020 for years, where like, 90% of adventures are roughly "heists" (in that the players need to get in somewhere, get a thing/person, and get out)? How is that hard to write? I can write a good heist scenario, with a lot of moving parts, which I know will be a ton of fun, in like a few hours. You say "players will see six ways when you see four!", and seem to think this is a bad thing. It isn't. It's wonderful. If you just set up a fun scenario, with a few layers to it, then when the players take an unexpected tack, that's likely to still result in a really fun game. Only if you habitually design extremely fragile scenarios where the players averting one thing basically breaks the whole deal is the "oh no an approach I didn't consider!" thing even an issue. I think the last time I designed a scenario that fragile was when I was a fairly young teenager. Just add more layers!

That's ridiculously easier than writing a mystery that makes complete sense (i.e. no huge plothole that one of the players will immediately spot), or a really lengthy dungeon crawl, or just almost any other genre of adventure that's pre-written.


That'd make sense if Iiked his post, but I didn't so that's nonsensical. And your argument after that is pretty incoherent and fails to acknowledge that BitD doesn't feature support for procedural heists, only cinematic ones. Indeed it actively anti-supports procedural ones. 5E helps you a lot more than BitD does if you want to take that approach, just by not actively getting in your way.

My bad. I assumed your response was due to my post referring to you, but it seems you're maintaining a good level of consistency in that you disagreed with me when I said what I said, and you're similarly disagreeing with Magic Sword. Or, am I misunderstanding because I'm having to assume where you stand on this issue?

 

[Imaro]

I'm gonna bullet point and treat "heist" as being shorthand for any kind of criminal type skullduggery, heist is just one example of a Score, honestly. I'll start out by saying that in 5e D&D, things that are related to skullduggery and theft are mostly left to the Rogue class, with a little carry over to some other classes, and also through use of the Criminal Background. But unless a party is specifically specced out for stealth and deception, there will be weak spots.

Emphasis mine... While I don't necessarily disagree, I'm not sure having some weak spots in a party will be so detrimental that it will make for a bad heist adventure (Or can't be covered by another team member) and that having said weak spots isn't actually part of some subtypes of heist movies.

- Less niche protection- Blades PCs are all reasonably capable at any and all actions; yes they have areas they are strong at and areas they are not, but at worst, they're still capable- they are also flexible, your playbook choice only determines 3 of your starting 7 stat points and your XP triggers; you can then assign 4 points however you wish among your other stats and you are also free to take abilities from other playbooks freely when you get a new one, you're not limited to your playbook nor do you have to multiclass or anything like that- PCs are more broadly competent and flexible than in D&D

I agree here but again I don't think having weaknesses in the party are necessarily a detriment to a heist adventure unless you are tryng to run a hyper-competent heist adventure.

- Stress- every PC has Stress to deploy in order to improve their chances at actions- they can more easily shore up those shortcomings they do have, which again are not as bad as 5E- they can spend stress to increase their dice pool or to increase the effect of their action, giving them tools beyond a simple skill check that will allow them to perform

I think magic could play a similar role here. Spells like guidance, invisibility, sleep, and so on are low level spells that can greatly influence/enhance the party's chances

- Resistance Rolls- these allow the PC to shrug off consequences from any action that imposes a consequence- so if a failed Prowl roll results in a guard being alerted, he has the ability to Resist that consequence

There are a few resources like this that are optional in the DMG and there is of course certain magics that would be able to negate consequences from the result of actions already taken... but I agree that if desired, this is definitely something that BitD has a clezar advantage over D&D with.

- Group moves and Assists- these allow the entire crew to contribute to an action that would normally be one or two characters' specialty in D&D- so group Prowl moves when the whole crew needs to infiltrate or a group Skirmish move when the crew gets into a brawl, etc. Assists are a simpler way for some teamwork, and can help quite a bit- teamwork is promoted with assists because the cost to assist another PC is 1 Stress but the cost to push your own roll is 2 Stress

There are group checks, aid actions, etc. in D&D. I might be missing the differences dues to lack of familiarity so let me know if Iam.

- Load and Gear- allowing Gear to be chosen as needed gives that "the right tool for the job" feeling; it makes the character seem like a competent criminal who knows what they'll likely need- I know a lot of people would disagree with this, but no- in D&D, the player is choosing gear, not the character, and the player's information is incomplete and imperfect because it is being relayed through another- who would better plan for a crime, a criminal or a roleplayer? The criminal. This mechanic portrays that.

- Flashbacks- another way to make the character a criminal in a city that they know and are familiar with and were they have contacts and means of finding out information. Flashbacks help the players by allowing the characters to prepare for the challenges they face, again shifting play in a different direction that still takes some skill, but which doesn't rely on the player somehow being as competent a criminal as the character.

- Position and Effect- this promotes a uniform process of play which is open and player facing, and negotiable- this means that players will always know a sense of the odds they have at any given action- that player awareness bleeds over to character awareness, again portraying the scoundrels as competent

These all seem to ultimately be based around engendering more competency... that said too much competency and certainty does push hard against some types of heist films and books. So it may make it harder to run certain types of heist stories with BitD.

- XP For Desperate Actions- this is a great one, and it epitomizes what some of the others also do- it encourages bold and daring play- scoundrels of the type in Blades are meant to be bold and daring, taking on threats that they shouldn't be, and somehow scraping by- giving XP for putting themselves in danger is quite the opposite of what many D&D games are, which is about mitigating risk

I don't really think 5e D&D is about mitigating risk, unless we are talking level 1 or level 2 characters... the game is ultimately about being heroes, mitigating risk would be staying at home farming. With milestone XP the DM has the tools to reward the accomplishment of specific goals but the players have the freedom to decide how to approach said goals. The difference I think is that in a D&D game the characters aren't assumed to be inherently competent in any particular thing but competency comes from decisions, management of resources, planning, teamwork, etc as opposed to a buffer of baked in competency.

- Success With Consequences- this is another important one as it's what allows a Gm to turn just about any Action taken by a player into a dynamic situation that mounts as you play- D&D really lacks in this area- I know that this is a suggestion in the DMG, but I don't think many GMs use it to great effect, and the way the D&D fanbase shot down the Skill Challenges of 4E, I'm surprised to see such support for it in this conversation- It's much more uniformly, fundamentally, and smoothly deployed in Blades

I think SC's as presented in the 4e DMG were...well... kind of garbage. They weren't explained well and they were mechanically broken (so it wasn't just a presentation issue the mechanics for them weren't good). And yes in DMG 2 they fixed them but come on...majority of gamers don't buy supplemental books. I actually use 4e essentials to supplement my 5e games at times but most pro-4e fans tend to look down on those books for... reasons. IMO WotC poisoned it's own well on that one with 4e and those who thought it was an intersting concept or had promise and who didn't pick up DMG 2 kind of did their own thing with them so I'm not surprised that there are people who have taken the concept and put it to good use.

- Action Rolls- they all work the same; want to stab the guard? Want to sneak past him? Want to trick him into letting you past? All these things function in the same way- all can become dynamic and interesting situations that potentially include all the other rules of the game- this makes non-combat actions as viable as fighting- I'm sure we've all seen the slow but inevitable resort to combat in D&D and it's because the skill system is too simple on its own- it's not robust enough to actually support a mechanically engaging encounter and so players decide okay let's get to the fun stuff

The DMG has optional rules for people who want a little more depth to their skills... but one could also argue that BitD combat systm is kind of simplistic and it is probably a result of it using the same system as everything else.

There are likely more, but those are the kind of bare bones ones that I think are significant. Didn't even get into playbook abilities and the like; I wanted to stick to elements common to all characters or just fundamental to the game.

Again thanks for this hawkeyefan... I'll be honest my takeaway is that BitD allows you to play out hyper-competent criminals who have a near supernatural ability to mastermind and pull off capers successfully without having to actually come up with plans or manage anything in real time... and while yes there are heist movies and shows that circle around this subtype of the genre (I do find it interesting that they are often comedies both Oceans 11 and Leverage come to mind) It doesn't seem like it would do something more grounded and gritty or where things fall apart without the players or the GM purposefully gimping themselves (and thus not really playing in the spirit of the game). What are your thoughts on that?

 

[prabe]

It doesn't seem like it would do something more grounded and gritty or where things fall apart

Things falling apart in practice is built into BitD. Any time you roll the dice, you are more likely to either make things worse or bring something into the fiction that will make things worse, than you are to smoothly accomplish your goals. Much of the talk about how ultra-competent the PCs are in BitD (and PbtA games) is ... flattery. If and when an outcome is in doubt, the odds are by definition against you.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Emphasis mine... While I don't necessarily disagree, I'm not sure having some weak spots in a party will be so detrimental that it will make for a bad heist adventure (Or can't be covered by another team member) and that having said weak spots isn't actually part of some subtypes of heist movies.



I agree here but again I don't think having weaknesses in the party are necessarily a detriment to a heist adventure unless you are tryng to run a hyper-competent heist adventure.



I think magic could play a similar role here. Spells like guidance, invisibility, sleep, and so on are low level spells that can greatly influence/enhance the party's chances



There are a few resources like this that are optional in the DMG and there is of course certain magics that would be able to negate consequences from the result of actions already taken... but I agree that if desired, this is definitely something that BitD has a clezar advantage over D&D with.



There are group checks, aid actions, etc. in D&D. I might be missing the differences dues to lack of familiarity so let me know if Iam.



These all seem to ultimately be based around engendering more competency... that said too much competency and certainty does push hard against some types of heist films and books. So it may make it harder to run certain types of heist stories with BitD.



I don't really think 5e D&D is about mitigating risk, unless we are talking level 1 or level 2 characters... the game is ultimately about being heroes, mitigating risk would be staying at home farming. With milestone XP the DM has the tools to reward the accomplishment of specific goals but the players have the freedom to decide how to approach said goals. The difference I think is that in a D&D game the characters aren't assumed to be inherently competent in any particular thing but competency comes from decisions, management of resources, planning, teamwork, etc as opposed to a buffer of baked in competency.



I think SC's as presented in the 4e DMG were...well... kind of garbage. They weren't explained well and they were mechanically broken (so it wasn't just a presentation issue the mechanics for them weren't good). And yes in DMG 2 they fixed them but come on...majority of gamers don't buy supplemental books. I actually use 4e essentials to supplement my 5e games at times but most pro-4e fans tend to look down on those books for... reasons. IMO WotC poisoned it's own well on that one with 4e and those who thought it was an intersting concept or had promise and who didn't pick up DMG 2 kind of did their own thing with them so I'm not surprised that there are people who have taken the concept and put it to good use.



The DMG has optional rules for people who want a little more depth to their skills... but one could also argue that BitD combat systm is kind of simplistic and it is probably a result of it using the same system as everything else.



Again thanks for this hawkeyefan... I'll be honest my takeaway is that BitD allows you to play out hyper-competent criminals who have a near supernatural ability to mastermind and pull off capers successfully without having to actually come up with plans or manage anything in real time... and while yes there are heist movies and shows that circle around this subtype of the genre (I do find it interesting that they are often comedies both Oceans 11 and Leverage come to mind) It doesn't seem like it would do something more grounded and gritty or where things fall apart without the players or the GM purposefully gimping themselves (and thus not really playing in the spirit of the game). What are your thoughts on that?

Heh, you've never actually played a Blades game if you think this last paragraph describes play. It's possible it turns out like that, just like it's possible a 1st level character beats Tiamat, but not at all likely.