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

[prabe]

As I've already posted - how is 5e any different in this respect from just about any RPG published since 1980? I mean, I can replace "5e" and "DMG" in your post with a reference to RM, or RQ, or GURPS, or whatever, and it still comes out true.

I think I was endeavoring to describe a difference in viewpoints, between people who feel a framework is enough for adjudication, and those who want specific rules. This can apply to scenarios (heists, cooking competitions, whatever) as well as to specific actions.

I can do it in Apocalypse World, too: it might be Seduce/Maniuplate (if the pressure point is obtaining a key ingredient) or Act Under Fire (if the pressure is a time limit) or Read A Situation or a Person (if the pressure point is working out what will please the judges).

If the pressure point is, you know, the actual cooking, I think Read a situation/person, so you could understand your goals, and then Act Under Fire to do the cooking. Of course, I don't think Apocalypse World is intended to have Moves chained like that (I'm OK with being wrong about that).

How is 5e D&D special here?

Did I say it is? I've said I like it and I understand it, and that I'm willing/able to hack it; I don't know that I've said it is special.

 

[Imaro]

I can't think of anything @Hussar has said that might lead to you asking for clarification. He said here "What don't we have in a heist movie/story? The protagonists' plan fails five minutes into the heist because that guard rolled a decent spot check and noticed the invisible fighter clanking past in his armor."

That's not at all the same as the heist not ending in failure in the end. If, five minutes into the heist, the guard notices the fighter in plate armour (plate armour being a minor wtf in Blades) then Blades gives you guidance that the situation gets worse. There are actual tools and mechanics in Blades for how much worse things get and what will commence is a plate-spinning exercise as the PCs get into a more dangerous spot and get more stressed as they start to deal with this obnoxiously alert guard.

And it's possible that all these plates will come crashing to the ground and the heist ends in failure because of one obnoxiously alert guard. But the guard being obnoxiously alert at the five minute mark will only provide a complication. Dealing with the complication may bring down the heist at around the half hour mark - but it's not failed by the one single roll.

Meanwhile D&D 5e being a "Rulings not rules"/"Mother may I" system provides precisely none of the tools Blades has to say what failing the stealth check means in practice - which in the context of a heist game is about as helpful as a "combat system" where you've no guidance for what happens when someone succeeds at an attack roll; you've no hit point, wound/injury, or healing mechanics at all.

I realized I might have been mis-remembering or mis-representing @Hussar 's position thus the ask for clarification on what his stance is/was. Though I'm not sure why you're worried about me asking another poster for clarification...

 

[Neonchameleon]

IMO when you say something has NO support for something that means it can't be done in any capacity with the rules present in the game.

And at this point I'm going to talk about the Headless Man Principle; headless men are not a thing that actually happens in real life so when a law appears to be referring to headless men it has almost certainly been misinterpreted.

All of the RPGs I can think of have either a task or a conflict resolution system with something you could roll (or otherwise use to resolve) for stealth and something you could roll for persuasion - and this is true whether we take one page RPGs like Lasers and Feelings, comedy games like I Am Killbot, focused games on something else like My Life with Master, or even liminal games like Fiasco. I'd therefore say that if we're avoiding interpreting the statement as being one saying no headless men, "No support" means "No support beyond the absolute bare minimum required to be a functional RPG."

Of course Honey Heist doesn't really provide more support and the word Heist is in the name. But then in Honey Heist you're playing bears trying to steal honey and the whole thing ending up in a disaster is the point.

 

[loverdrive]

I think you're underselling the limits of the characters in BitD to do this, and ... also possibly underselling the resilience of D&D characters.

Most flashbacks are supposed to cost 0-1 stress, and, yeah, resists are costly, but not that necessary when the position isn't desperate. I'd say the main limiting factor for Blades characters to be awesome and hyper-prepared is actually money. Oh, and also there are probably two times more PCs than there are players, and each comes with a 9-slot stress track...

D&D characters, on the other hand, are resilient as all nine hells (it's not like any scoundrel in Doskvol can reliably survive a fall from 10-floor building, and then proceed with their day as if nothing happened), but they can't just say "no, no, we didn't alert the guards". When the dice hit the table and the GM tells you what happens next, it happens. Deal with it.

So then we'd be discussing how robust that support is. Exalted...yes ruins of ancient civilizations to explore, Legend of the Five RIngs...a shadowlands based adventure could be a dungeoncrawl and I think you could do it for the most par with L5R rules. Longterm I'd be less apt to use either of those rules sets but that's not what we are talking about. IMO when you say something has NO support for something that means it can't be done in any capacity with the rules present in the game.

That's a very weird definition of "support" -- by which every system has support for everything (in any system you can just make judgment calls, and if we allow ignoring and modifying rules, then even the sky is no limit). Doesn't sound like a useful metric for me.

What I mean (and think is a common understanding of the phrase) by "[X] has support for [Y]" is "[X] significantly helps when doing [Y]". You know, provides support.

Running a heist in D&D would require pulling rulings outta thin air at every turn, and just following the rules wouldn't lead to a cool heisting experience.

or one can look at it as there's a framework to base adjudication on, so there's plenty of support

Is there a framework, though? I wouldn't call "Choose an Ability, a Skill, figure out a DC, roll the dice, and decide what happens next" a framework, especially compared to, say, the Agenda, Principles, and soft move - hard move structure of PbtA.

 

[Campbell]

From my perspective support means just that. The game helping you to do a thing better than you could do otherwise. I mean we can do anything completely freeform.

 

[Imaro]

From my perspective support means just that. The game helping you to do a thing better than you could do otherwise. I mean we can do anything completely freeform.

Okay... combat is part of a dungeoncrawl, traps are part of a dungeoncrawl, ancient or abandoned structures are part of a dungeoncrawl, monsters are part of a dungeoncrawl... Does L5R and Exalted both have rules for all of these things? I believe so and IMO that is support... Now my preference may be for a specific process to use when running them, but that is a specific type of support and not one every person wants or needs.

EDIT: The fact that I am not creating all of this from scratch is the game helping me do a thing better than I could otherwise.

 

[prabe]

Is there a framework, though? I wouldn't call "Choose an Ability, a Skill, figure out a DC, roll the dice, and decide what happens next" a framework, especially compared to, say, the Agenda, Principles, and soft move - hard move structure of PbtA.

If the DM in 5E is "decid[ing] what comes next" based on what has come before, and doing so honestly, I think they're at least as constrained as a GM in some PbtA thing, as far as "what comes next." And there's plenty of framework in 5E for someone interested to build a subsystem to run a heist, or ad hoc some sort of cooking competition.

From my perspective support means just that. The game helping you to do a thing better than you could do otherwise. I mean we can do anything completely freeform.

A foundation is also support. I think 5E has plenty of foundation. I'd rather work out what rules I'm going to be using, then tell the players, then use the rules; that doesn't sound exactly like freeform to me, but it's possible we have different ideas of what "freeform" means.

 

[pemerton]

Did I say it is? I've said I like it and I understand it, and that I'm willing/able to hack it; I don't know that I've said it is special.

I guess if 5e D&D is not special, then either (i) no one can ever talk meaningfully about any RPG being better than any other, or (ii) it must be possible for some RPGs to be better than others (in general? at this specific thing? for this particular purpose?) in which case the OP is wrong.

 

[jmartkdr2]

edit to add - sorry, forgot my manners. Thank you both for answering. I would really love to see how you can have a couple of dozen infiltration scenarios where the PC's are successful without the scenario turning into a kick in the door scenario. I know that my experience directly mirrors what @Manbearcat outlines above. As in, pretty much word for word through multiple DM's and across multiple editions of D&D.

Since this is over a long period - several dm's, a few different systems, many years - I think the only constant is "illusions."

Which are, of course, highly dm-dependent. If you're dm lets you use illusions to fool the guards, it's a perfectly valid strategy/doctrine. If the dm has every guard inspect any illusion that that doesn't totally match what they expected to see, then a more violent raid is now the only option.

 

[prabe]

I guess if 5e D&D is not special, then either (i) no one can ever talk meaningfully about any RPG being better than any other, or (ii) it must be possible for some RPGs to be better than others (in general? at this specific thing? for this particular purpose?) in which case the OP is wrong.

I am inclined to say that your (ii) is correct, except that since I understood the OP to be expressing a preference, I do not believe it follows from your (ii) that his preference is wrong.