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

[tetrasodium]

I don't think "GM decides" is a rule that can be meaningfully interacted with — it's not a mechanic that provides gameplay the way negotiations for P/E in Blades, or choosing my options in a PbtA does.

In an imaginary PbtA game, imaginary move "SKULK: when you sneak quietly in the shadows to get somewhere or gather information, roll +Sneak. • On 10+, choose two: it didn't take much time — or — you didn't leave a trace behind — or — you still have a way out. • On 7-9, choose one." is gameplay in of itself, and more importantly, it gives me clarity and structure, whether I am GM or a player.

"The GM will tell you what to roll and your DC (maybe by consulting on some table somewhere) and then will tell you what happens next" doesn't give me neither


That's actually poses a very interesting question worth discussing.

At which point we actually stop playing D&D and start pretending that we are playing D&D?

It's very clear with, say, Dungeon World. If I'm running a murder mystery set in an absolutely mundane vaguely medieval city, where the PCs are hunting for clues and piecing together a puzzle, while not being in any danger themselves, I'm not running Dungeon World anymore:

• I'm not playing to find out what happens — the important things already have happened and the main thing is figuring them out
• I'm not portraying a magical world
• I'm not filling the PC's lives with adventure

It's pretty obvious, and undeniable — at best, I'm running a hack of Dungeon World with different Agenda and Principles (even if they are not formulated), at worst I'm fooling myself and everyone else.

This is the problem with the level of overhead involved in taking wotc up on the simplified for rulings not rules & to let each table customize it to fit the kind of game they want to run. The system needs to be built to support that from the start & the state of the dmg optional rules shows just how much of an afterthought it was. even simple things quickly start spiraling into the depths of "is this still d&d 5e" because there aren't enough hooks, things from past editions that would enable aren't even listed as options*, & frequently the system is coded against doing that.

* which I guess puts them in the same state as the unsupported "optional" feats & magic items minus actually having any ink or pagespace devoted to them

 

[doctorbadwolf]

See, in this particular example, I just use the 4e rules for stealth because they are a lot better.

Makes sense.

This is one of the great issues with D&D - some characters can tell the DM what's happening, others have to ask

Agreed, though I wouldn’t want the solution to that to be forcing all characters to have distinct limited action-widgets. As much as I love 4e, I love it most in its full publication, including Essentials.

I do want to see the next “of everything” book full of advice on running and playing the game, including how to expand the mechanics used for some downtime activities into other parts of the game, player advice on using ability checks more fully, and optional rules for player agency that don’t rely on codification of many distinct abilities.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Guard hears something and raises the alarm. Heist done, out come the swords and it ends in a massacre.

In BitD, doing that would be very, very difficult as the players have multiple options for making that not happen, as has been elucidated repeatedly in this thread.

AND, going back to my point way back when, is it even worth discussing this 'heist' thing? D&D is NOT A HEIST GAME. So, of course it doesn't do them like BitD does. In fact it is a 'violently look dungeons' game, so it does "everything turns to violent mayhem after a bit of sneaking" pretty well. I mean, that's a bit trite in the sense that some mix of stealth, violence, etc. where skill checks are basically just color and setup for the hack-n-slash or "spell/potion/scroll our way through this" happens.

My only problem was the OP's conclusion. IMHO there are games that CAN do all of it. Yes they will be better at some things, but a game with a lot of the elements of 4e, maybe closer to some other more seriously narrative games, a BW-based game. You can do most of all this stuff. It is just a matter of exercising the fairly universal mechanics, which are driven by scene framing processes. What you WILL get out of play is hard to predict, but if you wanted it to be heist, or loot dungeon, or spy on folks, it all follows the same process.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The skill system is an optional rule?

Yes it is.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I don't think "GM decides" is a rule that can be meaningfully interacted with — it's not a mechanic that provides gameplay the way negotiations for P/E in Blades, or choosing my options in a PbtA does.

Honestly at this point I’ve stopped caring.

I’ve already provided counter arguments to this. Several.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I admire your thread stamina.

But the OP has taken a very heads I win, tails you lose, stance defending his position.

He has openly declared:



To the point of having to re-write 5e into an entirely new "5e based" game; the OP will not concede that there is a genre that 5e cannot do well.

That ain’t what the quoted text says, but okay.

I genuinely laughed at the idea that changing the way health works makes it a completely different game, but beyond that...I explicitly said I’d probably not be down to do that work.

But I guess feel free to just misrepresent my word to say whatever the hell you want.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yes it is.

Good lord. I’m out. Have fun y’all, I officially no longer care about this thread.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The quite clear laying out is in the DMG 2. I think it's also laid out in the DMG, but I'm prepared to concede that, while clear, it's not quite clear!

The bigger point, which relates to my post not too far upthread about structure and constraint, is made in your first para. What does failing this check mean for my overall prospects of success? The skill challenge framework answers that question. It establishes parameters for what the GM may narrate - it can't be a fiction of total failure, if it's not the third failed check.

One parallel in PbtA systems is Perception/Discern Realities-type checks that oblige the GM to tell the player something true and useful. The GM is under constraints on what is narrated. Likewise (turning from success to failure) the basic process of first making soft moves - to set up threat/stakes/consequences - and then following through with hard moves (ie irrevocable fall-out).

The contrast with 5e seems pretty clear to me. There is no soft-move/hard-move process. There is no structural constraint on what sort of outcomes of successful or failed checks the GM should narrate. In another recent thread a 5e proponent was arguing that there is no obligation, if a lore check is successful, for the GM to provide the player with any useful lore.

This is all relevant to how, and how well, a system permits adjudication of a heist, or any other high-stakes but non-combat endeavour.

Well, more to the core point, and this is why in my own homebrew HoML system there are ONLY challenges, without a rules context in which to gauge the valence of checks, or other similar mechanics, they really don't MEAN anything. It can be the system of moves and the principles and procedures of PbtA, or 4e's SC system, etc. Without SOMETHING along those lines, a way to know what the player's intent is, what the risk and reward (effect) of the action taken is, there's no real mechanical or fictional meaning to it.

Back in the dim old days when we were running 1e, we would sit behind our DM's screens, and the player would say "yeah, I go talk to the bartender about it." and then I would just pick up some die or other and think in my head "well, maybe if I roll a 6 on this die, he'll tell the character something interesting." Its no different from that. I didn't have to roll that die, nobody saw it, nobody can say what any number that came up means. It was no more than a mental tool to use, or a whim perhaps. Skill checks, taken in isolation, or similar types of isolated unstructured resolution techniques are really no more valent than that. Sometimes I wouldn't like the number I got on my idly pitched die, and I would ignore it. Or maybe it would inform some trivial bit of fiction that didn't come to anything. It was all just my choice.

I don't mean this to sound too judgmental either. We got good stories out of almost nothing, and we had fun. 5e-style skill checks certainly have SOME sort of relationship to fiction, and will most likely color the overall outcome in some degree. It isn't a meaningless tool, but in a sense it is hard to say that games like 5e or 3e are either good or bad at any operational kind of play. It is really 100% up to the GM, and the players if the GM is willing. I guess one could say there's more raw storytelling than if mechanics really have bite!

 

[Hussar]

If you made the choice to hose the heist because of ONE FAILED CHECK, did your players have fun? If this is hypothetical, do you THINK your players will have fun with it or do you think they’ll be disappointed?
And if it’s not hypothetical and your players didn’t have fun, did you learn from the experience? I mean, we all make mistakes, but the big ones are not to learn from them or to dig in deeper over them.

If following the rules of the game results in the game not doing X, is it fair to say that the game does not support X?

I mean, the rules are pretty clear here. On a failed Stealth check, the character using Perception SEES the other character. So, what should the guard do when he can actually see an intruder?

Note, this isn't hypothetical. I've seen this done by multiple DM's in multiple editions of D&D. Granted, I can't think of a time it happened when I DM'd, but, that's because I refuse to run Infiltration/Heist scenarios because I know they don't work worth a damn in D&D. IOW, yeah, I learned from my experience - Don't do that type of scenario in D&D because it's not worth it/.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

To be fair, the discussion is about running the game, not publishing the game.

This isn’t the case. D&D is able to satisfyingly for many groups, do things like heists and horror. That’s the whole claim.

Yeah the whole thing of tying make one game do another game is just an idea that has become part of the thread over time. The premise is that D&D can do heists or horror or fairy tales or whatever else, and that some of those would benefit from borrowing mechanics and play procedures and such from other games that are built for that genre.

This.

It is perfectly valid to have consequences and “teeth” be decided outside the game’s mechanical structure.

Incompatible? No. Of course not. However, 5e is more flexible out of combat than in combat, because it just provides the rules for adjudication, with multiple methods available, and a basic list of PC competencies and things that can be referenced (backgrounds and the like), and advice for using them. This leaves more room to add a flashback mechanic without running into some unexpected conflict later.

I’m not sure of that either. I am sure that 5e is plenty flexible enough to do any genre that can intersect naturally with fantasy adventure, and reasonably confident that it can do most genres that can intersect at all with fantasy, with varying degrees of work, homebrew, and/or optional rules.

And I’m 100% sure of the advice portion of the premise of the thread.

I think you cannot actually GET more flexible than a system like 4e SCs, which cover ANY POSSIBLE SCENARIO with a structured resolution system. It is like having a combat system, but for anything. You want to navigate a minefield? SC. You want to do a bank heist? SC. You want to negotiate trading rights with the Spacing Guild? SC. I mean, why do I need some other less structured way to do it? I don't get it at all. Adding SCs to 5e universally makes all these things easier. Ergo there are systems that are better than 5e at basically anything you can use 5e for.

So, yes, I understand your point, the existence of games that do ONE THING better doesn't answer the question, but I think my final answer is, there are PLENTY of games, and they are all scene framing style narrative focus mechanics games, that do EVERYTHING better, except maybe the actual core forte of 5e/D&D generally, at which D&D is a quite competent game, overall (some versions maybe more so than others, depending on which elements of the game you focus on).