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

[AbdulAlhazred]

From what I know of its evolution, I'd suggest this is what happens when you try to make a game to appeal to a wide range of people who have conflicting desires.

Having been in the thick of things, so to speak, in the developmental phase of this game, I consider 5e's design to be almost entirely a reactionary document. It is basically, at its core, a REJECTION of things, which then re-establishes what came before as basically a 'status quo antebellum' sort of situation. Though he will never say, I suspect Monte Cooke felt kind of the same way, that it was not really so much a 'design' as an anti-design. Clearly he lost interest quickly, or got told to shut up and follow the company line, and bailed instead (not a biggie, creative differences are common and not always a bad thing).

During this process Mike, or someone in the 5e design team, wielded the 'big tent' rhetoric to at least argue that some fig leaves be grafted onto the game. Hit Dice are one (though I think it is fair to say they are reasonably integral to how the game typically plays, so 'fig leaf' may be selling them a bit short) that is pretty obvious. The various optional check rules, and Inspiration, are another relic of this. Some of this material was part of more extensive proposals for actual mechanical/process that certain progressive factions wanted in the core rules. Some of those proposals were pretty much promised as 'modules' to be included either as options in the core books, or as additional published material. This was reneged on, though Mike and WotC have conveniently forgotten (and erased) all the discussion that took place on this back in the day. So at this point they claim 5e delivered on all their promises, but this is clearly nothing like the case.

So, yes, conflicting desires, and an arbiter with a serious bias.

 

[Argyle King]

Thank you for using the term "Physics Engine Math", not because I agree with it but because I emphatically don't - but can see where you'd get if you used it.

In almost all RPGs the math is not intended to be a physics engine; it is a user interface. Treating it as a physics engine is a design mistake made by GURPS and 3.X among others and leads to a highly artificial feeling world. The game rules provide you an interface with tools to manipulate the shared fictional reality but are not themselves the reality, and a hit point isn't a real thing.

FWIW, I highly enjoy GURPS, so... Though, I would agree that it was a mistake on the part of 3.x because 3.x was trying to emulate what GURPS was doing while also adhering to the tenets of a d20 system and D&D style linear levels; the two design goals generally conflict.

Also, I think you're likely focusing on the wrong part. It's not that I expected 4E to be "real" in terms of the real world; I simply expected it to be "real" in the context of the story it was telling. Edit: ...or more accurately, at least attempt to be real in the context of the story the game was trying to tell me.

If it is established in the story that some demon or dragon is a terror to behold and the scourge of the world, it's a bit strange when that same creature struggles to perform tasks which are trivial to the PCs. The lore of the game didn't match up with what happened when the game was brought to the table.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

@doctorbadwolf

Here's the thing. What you are calling an open ended approach does not contain the same approach as you see in games like Blades and Dungeon World within its core. It's not an expanded version of it. It's just different on a fundamental level.

Yes. That has been part of my point at various points, but I recognize I haven't adequately communicated why. I'll get to that at the end, here.

In other games you might be able to explore the same themes, but not in the same way. An approach that takes a more storyteller oriented methodology as you seem to you don't get to experience the tension of play in the same way that you experience in a Story Now game played with a sense of vulnerability. It's just not there.

I think this exagerates things a little. You aren't likely to get the same kind of tension of play, but it's certainly possible, and probably the reverse as well, though I've not tried that. The two are better suited to different foundation-level gameplay ideals, however. Absolutely.

Stuff like vulnerability, though, is a matter of scale and consequence. I think one of the big differences from 4e to 5e is that 4e is designed to do everything it's meant to be able to do out of the box without any tinkering or system mastery, while 5e is designed to work out of the box, but be able to do many different types of things with a bit of system familiarity and use of optional rules and homebrew/3pp additions. So, the vulnerability arguement, to me, applies to 4e vastly more than to 5e, because in 5e it is very normal, as far as I can tell, to houserule things like how easy resurrection is, how natural healing works, etc, and to use different encounter building guidelines than those provided in the book.

Likewise your collaborative story telling / improv approach has advantages that's not apparent in Story Now play. I'm honestly not the best person to describe those advantages though.

Sure. Again, the two have advantages and disadvantages. Some people want to customize their own computer, some people want to open the box and plug it in and be online 5 minutes later getting precisely the experience they came for without any need to dig into how the parts work beyond how to use them. Some people want something in between. Just as one example of the differences between the two.

My point has been, if you enjoy the basic gameplay framework of a game more than that of other games, and you want to add some genre convention mechanics onto that game rather than change to a very different gameplay framework just to get that genre feel, that is perfectly valid and shouldn't be treated as foolish or crazy or as if the person just doesn't know better.

I mean, we got people in this thread playing victim every time someone says that it's totally doable to play horror in dnd, while also advocating for telling people in advice threads that they don't know their own preferences and only want to play dnd because they don't know any better.

 

[Campbell]

Programming Note : I meant emotional vulnerability.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I think part of what makes me scratch my head is that, from most of the examples provided, folks who are saying D&D can be modified to deliver a different experience (horror, crime, etc.) are generally adopting the kinds of mechanics that are inherent parts of other games.

It’s odd.

I don’t think it is that surprising. There has always been a lot of cross-pollination in the hobby, and there aren’t unlimited ways to implement concepts simply.

So, when I modify the 5e inspiration rules to give out much more inspiration and permit rerolls after the fact, am I cribbing from Savage Worlds bennies, PF2 Hero Points, or just implementing my own hack?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Battlemaster isn't and has never in my eyes been a warlord replacement. What it is is more of a slayer replacement; the battlemaster dice is a simple fun and visceral way of working in encounter powers that don't do that much other than DPR on a class based on basic attacks for people who don't like faffing with power cards.

Eh, it can do a simplistic version of some of what the Warlord's role is in 4e. OTOH 5e's combat system is so much more simplistic in terms of tactics that the scope for a Warlord is a bit limited. I think it would work though as maybe almost a 4e-style 'healer' (IE unlock some hit dice during combat). Unfortunately position is not something that 5e really has much rules for, so a lot of its scope is lost there.

The point about BA vs the 4e scaling is that the 4e scaling is at least in my opinion too severe - but 5e is too gentle. I'd like somewhere between the two, especially regarding attack rolls. B.A. I see as an overcorrection. +4 over the full 20 levels and not affecting AC or untrained skills is too little, +15 over the full 30 levels before other modifiers to much.

Oh, and the other thing. 4e had far too many feats.

Well, there have been 3 regimes here in the history of D&D:

1) classic - AC doesn't really change much, attack bonus increases at a rate of about +1/level. Hit points increase linearly from a very low number. In this regime the increase in potency over levels is VERY great. a level 4 fighter has about +3 to-hit over a level 1 fighter. AC is harder to gauge, but it could be anywhere from no change to 4 or more points better. Still, from this point on if you already have good armor and some magic, you will not increase much more. The oddity of this regime is it is a bit like BA, a level 1 fighter can hit a Hill Giant (an 8 hit die monster). OTOH Hill Giants totally outclass said fighters and will beat them every time without special circumstances due to much better to-hit and many more hit points. There is also kind of 2 'tiers' of monsters, those like the Hill Giant who's AC is about the same as level 1 PCs, and 'magical' creatures, which may have very much faster AC progression, at least 1 point/2 levels. Note that damage does scale, but it is HIGHLY variable and it is almost impossible to quantify.

2) 4e - Everything increases by 1 point per level, flat across the board. Any variations aside due to build or whatever are usually less than +/- 3 point variances. Hit points still increase linearly, but start much higher, so the increase is proportionately less. Damage also scales.

3) 5e - Attack bonuses increase slowly, and AC increases even more slowly, probably about the same as AD&D. hit points start higher and then increase linearly. Damage increases are steeper than attack bonus or AC increases.

Each of these has its detractors. I would have been happier with a more constrained progression in terms of things not shifting around so much. The virtue of 4e is that the math pretty much works the same at all levels. In other editions things get weird. In 5e hit points proportionately increase a lot, and so does damage, but defenses and attack bonuses just don't change much. This is weird to me and doesn't make high level PCs really seem that tough. At least a level 10 4e PC laughs at low level orcs.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Shadowrun isn't quite a class game, but the way the pointbuy & prereqs work it's kinda midway between classless & having classes. Face, Decker, & sometimes riggers tend to have a lot of ways that can influence the path of that rail of disaster & even the others often have contacts if nothing else.

I don't see how you think this contradicts me lol? I've played Shadowrun for a very long time, I guessing longer than you, because I started in 1990, so this isn't exactly news. D&D also has classes, which also can many things basically equivalent to SR characters, especially you use your brain. Certainly D&D characters never have to "[ride] the rail passively until the crash happens". The idea that you do is just funny.

I mean to be honest, some D&D players absolutely are stuck in a mindset of "[ride] the rail passively until the crash happens" - they follow the adventure, they don't create their own adventure, they just follow, and if it goes wrong whilst they're following it, they just curse their rolls or the adventure design or whatever. But it doesn't have to be like that. (Ironically the only other game I've seen players behave like this, which wasn't a direct D&D relative, was Shadowrun!).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think the boredom factor is very real and serious, both in terms of setting up the heist beforehand (see every full session of prep before starting the actual shadowrun in Shadowrun) and making it run smoothly. This is why I'm drawn to some of the mechanics in BitD, like using flashbacks to retcon elements of the heist prep in-the-moment. Any system that uses meta-currency can adopt that mechanic without any real work.

Endless planning is fun for some groups, but if it's not fun for even one person, one time, it becomes a huge drag (in my experience) and leads to moments like that random assassination you described. And sure, the reason the movie Heat is a movie is because it kicks off with a crew member killing someone for no reason. That's the catalyst for the whole story. But a bored PC throwing an inexplicable tantrum rarely leads to that sort of interesting narrative sequence, in part because RPG etiquette sort of gets in the way of the rest of the party doing what they should--immediately murdering Mr. I-Was-Bored (or trying to). So if someone does something dumb everyone basically has to shrug it off, and that's rarely good for the story.

I would LITERALLY call BitD "Shadowrun meets PbtA" in a sense. My Shadowrun experience is VERY ANCIENT, so maybe not 100% relevant to more recent editions nor filled with an incisive recollection of the rules system beyond "Its a dice pool", but what I remember is tons of standing around being bored. If you were the Decker, you got to hack stuff, and that was pretty much solo, and then you hid in some bunker while the 'action' went down, providing support, maybe. The more action-oriented PCs (sorry, I forget what they were called in that game) OTOH have nothing to do in the early parts, and then get to die in scads later (but at least they are doing something).

That, coupled with the primitive game process where each check sort of doesn't really mean anything specific (IE much like 5e) and the stakes are not clearly set out, nor are there really decision points for the players in terms of where things go, means most games consist of make intricate plan -> initiate plan -> plan goes tits up -> non-deckers die -> pick up the pieces and try again. Now, it wasn't exclusively a 'caper/heist' game, so other stuff would happen, but the same issues would always arise. We played a few campaigns with this, but it never really worked out well. Maybe we were just not suited to this genre, but basically we would get tired of taking crap and then boom, we'd all be wiped out. At least in Traveler you can jump on your ship, outrun the local patrol boat, and jump system, lol.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

(though I think it is fair to say they are reasonably integral to how the game typically plays, so 'fig leaf' may be selling them a bit short)

No I think fig leaf is exactly right because whilst they matter, they're very "stuck on", and not at all integrated into the rest of the game like you'd expect - you'd really expect them to interact with healing spells, for example. I note that WWN has what is basically a superior version of them with its System Strain mechanic.

Some of those proposals were pretty much promised as 'modules' to be included either as options in the core books, or as additional published material. This was reneged on, though Mike and WotC have conveniently forgotten (and erased) all the discussion that took place on this back in the day. So at this point they claim 5e delivered on all their promises, but this is clearly nothing like the case.

Hell I wasn't even directly involved in the play testing, just receiving the stuff illegitimately and talking to people who got it legit, and even I know about those false promises. They are largely forgotten now, you're right, been years since I thought about them.

 

[tetrasodium]

I don't see how you think this contradicts me lol? I've played Shadowrun for a very long time, I guessing longer than you, because I started in 1990. D&D also has classes, which also can many things basically equivalent to SR characters, especially you use your brain. Certainly D&D characters never have to "[ride] the rail passively until the crash happens". The idea that you do is just funny.

What the heck is your point? You appear to have missed the original point I was responding to about shadowrun offering/not offering better support for heist type situations. The presence of tools abilities & archetypes built in to enable elements of that style of gameplay is an objective metric for how it does that. You complained that shadowrun doesn't actually do any of that in an absurd fashion by claiming they are mere setting elements despite how much the system is built to enable them.

As to experience with the system, I too remember when a hacker needed to physically jack into a network & chose to grab something from a more recent version simply because it's more relevant than a 30 year old edition.