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

[Manbearcat]

The problem for me is, he seems to be saying those DMs are running D&D right and that he runs D&D that way. If that understanding is correct, then your understanding is wrong, and he absolutely is being completely ridiculous. Certainly he's misrepresenting D&D 5E's rules as a very simple matter of undeniable fact. And I don't think it's wrong for anyone to point that out.

I guess we could ask him.

@Hussar , what are you saying?

Which of the two are you saying:

1) There is a right way to run 5e and its correct for 5e GM's to adjudicate "stealth obstacle failure = you're seen = the stealth ops part of the caper is up = deal with the new 'you're seen and alarm/violence is about to happen' framing = pretty much combat/A-Team or Wizard ensorcelling them if they can win initiative."

2) There is a stock/orthodox way to run 5e and thus an overwhelming majority of 5e GMs adjudicate "stealth obstacle failure = you're seen = the stealth ops part of the caper is up = deal with the new 'you're seen and alarm/violence is about to happen' framing = pretty much combat/A-Team or Wizard ensorcelling them if they can win initiative."

Which of those two are you saying?

I feel like you might be slightly overstating how people felt about skill challenges honestly. I saw a lot of people who weren't running 4E saying they were a good concept but didn't like the math and stuff, and I saw way more complaints about the math (which died down after they got revised) than any conceptual elements.

Really? That is fascinating. We were in the same threads and our takeaway is entirely different. My entire experience and the point of my postings on here from 2012-2014 was to explain how Skill Challenges are indie conflict resolution that are informed by the techniques of Change the Situation, Say Yes or Roll the Dice, Cut to the Action, Genre Logic, Success With Complications, and Fail Forward.

I only saw math complaints unbelievably sparingly. The place I saw math complaints were in the Monster Math/Damage Expressions. THERE I saw plenty of complaints. Skill Challenges? Virtually nothing because the overwhelming majority of people weren't using them/hate them/didn't know how to use them.

Almost all of my interactions with complaints were:

* Skill Challenges don't work and end up in a pointless dice-rolling exercise disconnected from the fiction (because the people who were saying it didn't work weren't using the techniques above)...its all Fighters arbitrarily using push-ups to impress the king or lifting the king on his throne kind of incoherent nonsense.

* Both Success w/ Complications and Fail Forward underwritten by Genre Logic sucks because Genre Logic (rather than Process Sim) creates a lack of common inference-point between player and GM (hence the shifting sands commentary)...PROCESS SIM RULES!

* Fail Forward sucks because its EZMode for the players + GM Storytelling that removes player agency.

* Indie Scene Resolution (Skill Challenge) is garbage because Win Cons (x success) and Loss Cons (3 failures) for noncombat are metagame/artificial crap are jarring (remember that word!) and pull me out of my immersion (but HP...those Win Con/Loss Cons are not metagame in any way and are just fine!).


I mean, a lot of people in this thread were involved with those posts. Anyone commenting here want to chime in? Am I crazy? @AbdulAlhazred , @pemerton , @Campbell , @TwoSix , @Neonchameleon , @Aldarc and all the other folks who were on the other side of it who were among the vast chorus making the claims above (several of which are in this thread...but they're a tiny drop in the bucket of the outspoken Skill Challenge/4e detractors!)? I'm MORE than happy to be corrected!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Really? That is fascinating. We were in the same threads and our takeaway is entirely different. My entire experience and the point of my postings on here from 2012-2014 was to explain how Skill Challenges are indie conflict resolution that are informed by the techniques of Change the Situation, Say Yes or Roll the Dice, Cut to the Action, Genre Logic, Success With Complications, and Fail Forward.

I suspect the second sentence explains why our experiences were so different. If you got into long arguments with the weird, most-extreme SC-haters, you were bound to go out into the weeds with the weird and irrational objections. Whereas I didn't, and the sort of people who complained casually about SC focused on the math - also a lot stopped complaining after DMG2 IIRC, so long before 2012-2014. By 2012 only hardcore dedicated 4E-haters were even still talking about SCs.

 

[Neonchameleon]

And which 5e has also solved. You preferred 4e's solution, I prefer 5e's.

But the point is that 5e hasn't solved the problem in question. It's reintroduced it when 4e did solve it. Common monsters like low-mid level humanoid archers and ogres alike have very little counterplay. Diving the back lines is pointless and so is trying to kite the ogres.

They didn't have any more tactical counterplay in AD&D - but AD&D had the virtue of being fast. An ogre in AD&D had 19hp and could be brought down by a first level fighter with STR 16 and weapon specialisation in the greatsword in one hit on good roll and by a similar fighter with a longsword (and specialisation in that) on average damage rolls if both attacks hit. It was fast. An ogre in 5e is a bullet sponge with 59hp and even your basic orc has 15hp.

 

[tetrasodium]

SR fanboys were absolutely more vocal than AD&D fanboys about this in, say, 1994, but back then there were a lot more SR fans and insanely fewer AD&D fans (as proportion of the community). I know because I used to be very much part of that community.

As for Cyberpunk, RT Talsorian just turned into a mediocre generic RPG - FUZION - and then tried to make it run every genre under the sun. The results were sufficiently bad that literally the only game my group has ever rejected after one sessions was a FUZION game.

But the main difference is that there are probably 100 D&D fans for every Cyberpunk fan.

This tells us a lot more about how the groups you've played with approached stuff than how D&D works, frankly, contrary to what you seem to think.

Oh then I'm sure you can elaborate the rules players can draw upon if they want to change how things are on a collision towards failure of a plan to give them similar levels of influence as the shadowrun stuff I noted? Heck you can even climb out of the dark ages & dive into wide magic settings like eberron & magic as high tech analogue settings like sigil itself & pre-cleansing war Athas if you want where some of those tools could plausibly exist in some form if 5e were not so exclusively bonded to the needs of FR

 

[Campbell]

For what it's worth (beyond some scenarios) I don't think Shadowrun or Cyberpunk have any more support for heists than any version of D&D.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Oh then I'm sure you can elaborate the rules players can draw upon if they want to change how things are on a collision towards failure of a plan to give them similar levels of influence as the shadowrun stuff I noted? Heck you can even climb out of the dark ages & dive into wide magic settings like eberron & magic as high tech analogue settings like sigil itself & pre-cleansing war Athas if you want where some of those tools could plausibly exist in some form if 5e were not so exclusively bonded to the needs of FR

You're not describing using rules directly re: SR, though. You're describing using the environment and drones etc. - this is absolutely possible in D&D mostly via magic, familiars, hirelings, and so on. It won't be identical, but the idea that in D&D you are just "riding the rail passively until the crash happens" is not rooted in the actual rules, it's rooted in play-approach.

 

[Neonchameleon]

For what it's worth (beyond some scenarios) I don't think Shadowrun or Cyberpunk have any more support for heists than any version of D&D.

For what it's worth Shadowrun from memory talked about heists - and presented reskinned dungeon crawls where you were absolutely intended to get in with violence and the main difference was you were stealing from a corporation rather than a dragon.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

For what it's worth Shadowrun from memory talked about heists - and presented reskinned dungeon crawls where you were absolutely intended to get in with violence and the main difference was you were stealing from a corporation rather than a dragon.

There's no denying that there was a fair bit of that in pre-gen SR adventures. Though IIRC you usually got in sneakily and the shooting started part of the way through.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Except not, because 5e is literally successfully being used for multiple genres and games. There are like 3 really good sci-fi games based on 5e.

I will have to take your word for that, but again, the question of 'popular vs good' is a complex question. I don't even know what 'based on' means, nor is 'sci-fi' a very narrow genre (IE Gamma World is called a Sci-Fi RPG, but it is nothing like Traveler, and the same system would definitely not work for both, not in 1000 years).

And TSR made every game super different because they thought they’d do better that way, because the idea was that people wouldn’t want to buy Alternity if it was just 2e D&D in space. they’re different because TSR thought otherwise people will say, “what’s the difference? Why should I buy this additional thing?”

I disagree. TSR, or any other game designer which is seriously in it as a business, designed its games to be successful games. There were clearly game design reasons why D&D was not turned into a 'platform system' like BRP or GURPS.

The different TSR games have different engines even when there is literally no tonal difference from the different engine. Alternity doesn’t actually play significantly differently. The different health system is the only difference that really changes things, and even it doesn’t exactly make you super fragile. They just came up with different mechanics for every game so that the game would have a different engine.

See, again, you seem to be insensitive to the MASSIVE differences between Alternity and D&D. They are completely different beasts! Alternity is sort of a cross between a straight up skill-based system and the 'shift' system that TSR employed in the Marvel game. It features multiple levels of both success and failure, though the way it achieves the equivalent of shifting is via different types of dice. The 'toughness' of characters is much less variable than in a D&D game, and depends somewhat on which game you are playing, since Alternity itself is simply a core system (interesting how TSR actually DID PRODUCE a core system, but it is nothing like D&D). Beyond that, I think I would say that, even for its time, Alternity was a bit behind in terms of sophisticated process mechanics. I haven't played any of the Alternity-based games myself, but I don't see where they introduce things like metagame resources or a more structured approach to setting odds and putting checks into a bigger mechanical/procedural/conceptual framework. I could be wrong though, my familiarity with the system is limited.

 

[billd91]

But the point is that 5e hasn't solved the problem in question. It's reintroduced it when 4e did solve it. Common monsters like low-mid level humanoid archers and ogres alike have very little counterplay. Diving the back lines is pointless and so is trying to kite the ogres.

Just because those tactics work doesn't mean there isn't any tactics - you might not find plain ogres that exciting, but your tactics would probably be different if you're dealing with an ogre, a chain brute, or bolt launcher. But then, that's a preference more than a problem.