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

[Manbearcat]

Thing is, and maybe this is just me failing to grok 4e, but when a module suggests that some element within it be resolved as a skill challenge what that says to me is that the module author expects this to be an unimportant bit of the adventure with the die rolls for the SC in effect taking the place of some handwaving. Put another way, it's expecting very low granularity and level of detail in resolution, almost but not quite to the point of handwave it or skip it.

Which is incredibly ironic because this is, quite literally, the 180 degree opposite case!

Any game that features conflict resolution mechanics (whether its D&D's Combat, or Dungeon World's Perilous Journeys, or Mouse Guards Conflict for Mail Delivery et al, or Dogs in the Vineyard's Just Talkin' > Escalate, or Blades' Racing/Mission/Tug-of-War Clocks, or 4e's Skill Challenges for all of the above except Combat) is telling you exactly what the game wants you to focus on...where the tension/stakes lies!

The other stuff is what you can handwave/vignette/skip!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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?



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!

LOL! Yeah, I cannot literally remember exactly which posters had what opinions 8 years ago, precisely, but there was a block of 'D&D traditionalists' who certainly said those things back then. Some people in this thread were probably there then too. I am more sure that you, me, @pemerton and some people who don't seem to post anymore were there. The general consensus was as you say, that SCs were this weird imposition of structure onto the sacred 'mechanics exactly and only reflect game world stuff' canon. So, for instance it was considered unconscionable to have a mechanism like "when there are 3 failures, then that signals the gig is up on this challenge" because either A) that set of 3 isn't strictly linked in some direct causal way to a specific failure condition in the fiction, and/or B) it would be necessary to create such a linkage and doing so for all possible permutations of failure paths in the SC would be exceedingly hard, at best.

My understanding at least of the theoretical game-design aspects has improved a lot in the last few years. I might not be totally clear on some of the details of how the process was understood to be structured back then. I don't think I would have, for instance, talked about the weakness of basic checks in terms of structure in as much depth or with as much understanding. Particularly PbtA games were only starting to appear then, like DW. Playing that, and some other less common games, has refined my understanding of process and principles greatly. Back then I seem to recall just talking about SCs as a 'gauge of when you had required enough rolls', though I guess that does capture the essence of things.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Kiting as a tactic is to me one of the awful results of strict turn-based combat. Fine for computer games. Not fine for any sort of realistic setting where the ogre can (and would) match your movement step for step and be whaling on your undefended back all the while.

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.

Never mind that the 19 h.p. ogre had just as reasonable chance of one-shotting your 1st-level fighter. But, too many people complained about rocket tag and so now it's all a slog...guess we can't have it both ways, and there's a middle ground somewhere in there they haven't really found yet.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

My recollection is that virtually all such discussions after about 2011 started and ended with "those just don't work, we don't use them, they're crap." end of report. That is there were 2 camps, those who refused to use them at all and simply dismissed the whole topic out of hand, and those who discussed how they were used. Frequently there would be a post asking for advice, usually from some infrequent/new poster, and there would be a bunch of "don't bother with that!" or even "play Pathfinder!" and then the other posts would be about how to actually play it. Now and then things would go edition war or whatever. I don't recall much in the way of "SCs in principle are OK but the solution is flawed in 4e" from people who rejected the concept. It was more people who LIKED them and were onboard with the arguments in favor who would say some things could be hacked or whatever. The 'Obsidian Skill Challenge System' was quite popular for a year or two around 2008-10.

 

[Imaro]

[/QUOTE]

That 5e resolution discussion has reminded me of a little game we used to play to decide who is doing dishes after the session.

The perceived rules are very simple: I silently decide on a number between 1 and 10. Everyone else names their number between 1 and 10, whoever hit closest to my number does the dishes.

The actual rules were even simpler: they name a number and then whoever has pissed me off that day does the dishes.

So you were disingenuous and dishonest in your application of the rules and didn't play the game with integrity. Sounds like a disaster for any game.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

I disagree: using the math as a physics engine - if done halfway right - leads to a far less artificial-feeling world IMO, because that underlying physics engine helps keep things consistent within the setting.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

There's a very big factor missing from your analysis in part 2: in 4e the monsters also mechanically "shrink" as the PCs advance in level, unlike any other edition where they don't; and this makes both the perceived and actual increase much greater, relative to the setting.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@Argyle King

Oh don't get me wrong. Skill Challenge Math was absolutely a complaint. But it was comparatively a nothingburger (across the distribution of all of the commenters who complained about 4e, Skill Challenges, Objective DCs, Fail Forward, etc etc etc) when stacked up against the rest of that stuff (I'm talking total complaints + vociferousness).

It is worth noting that SC math was fixed in THE VERY FIRST errata to 4e, IIRC. It was much sooner than DMG2. So the actual DMG1 system was barely the official rules for more than a month or two (though obviously a lot of people didn't bother to get errata and wouldn't have known, possibly until DMG2 came out, though anyone posting on Enworld would have at least HEARD of this errata).

EDIT - As far as 4e Resistances go, nothing changed from PHB1. I mean there may have been some clarification direct from the devs or something, but the PHB rulebook is clear enough to me that I never had any issues with it. Resistance is against a specific element only. So if you have a Thunder keyword attack, you only do Thunder keyword damage on that attack and Thunder Resistance 5 lops off 5 of that damage. If that same attack has a Lightning Keyword as well, it does both Lightning and Thunder damage so your specific Thunder Resistance doesn't negate the Lightning. The Lightning keyword infuses your attack with Lightning as well as Thunder and there isn't anything to indicate in either the Keyword section or the Resistance section or the Vulnerabilities section that would lead someone to believe there is any discretized math to it; eg half Thunder and half Lightning. Damage expressions are metagame units to resolve HP ablation only (not 1/3 Fire, 1/3 Frost, 1/3 Thunder if you have all 3 Keywords). Keywords infuse attacks with that property/element. None of that is "physics engine." Its just stuff to facilitate play expeditiously.

Lets of situations created weird 'mixed damage packets'. That is you could do something like 2d6 fire damage + 1d8 acid damage, or some stupid thing like that. It was later (though ambiguously) clarified that these types should be combined. Post core books WotC also went to pains to eliminate things which created these situations (even though they were mostly moot). So, that might account for people's perception.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Except, and here's the crux of it, you aren't doing horror in 5e, you're just doing horror and happen to be using 5e.

I genuinely don't care about this line of discussion. Your whole perspective on what rules even are is...not something I am going to have an easy time being nice about. I find it absurd to the point of being comperable to replaying to the question "What is the result of 5 minus 5?" with "Apple".

The kind of improv approach you seem to favor from the examples of your play you've provided makes it clear that you're more than happy to just make it up and use your GM's chair to make it happen.

Not really. We use the 5e rules and mechanics, with some additional mechanics to modify gameplay. Improv is a large part of the point of playing TTRPGs, IMO, but that doesn't mean I'm just ignoring the rules and playing calvinball.

On the other hand, the rules do not matter or have any actual authority. Full stop. They exist to facilitate play, and that is the context they are used in. We use them because it's easier to do so than to just make everything up, and because we have found that different stories emerge when we freeform roleplay vs when we have constraints and oddball idiosyncrasies to bump up against and interact with.

There is a famous scene in the actual play podcast Adventure Zone, in the first campaign, Adventure Zone: Balance, that just would not ever happen in a story that doesn't feature the wierd idiosyncrasy that is the Magic Jar spell, or the way that dnd planes work, or some other stuff in that scene. Likewise, parts of that scene wouldn't happen in a game that makes a GM feel like improvising the fighter being robbed of their body and then possessing a wooden mannequin is going outside the scope of the game.

Again, while system matters, I believe that finding a mechanical framework you enjoy most, and then expanding that framework to encompass different genres, tones, themes, stories, etc,is worthwhile, because that is the primary sense in which system matters, IMO. The rules of a TTRPG are an illusion created by clever system designers to help a group facilitate satisfying experiences in the world of make believe. That's all they are.

Because of all of the above, I'm running a full campaign, or a game that doesn't stray waaaaaay outside of the wheelhouse of dnd (and so, doesn't feature any action of adventure or elements of the fantastical, pretty much) I will more often opt to adopt optional and unofficial and third party mechanics into 5e dnd, because my group enjoys and groks the basic systems of 5e DnD, and I can balance things at a glance when running it, and they know that when I say, "we are using XYZ optional rule" or "I'd like to try out using a success ladder of set DCs instead of coming up with DCs on the fly, and see how it feels" or "I've ported some concepts from various other games where players control more of the narrative than just their character's actions to a framework that I think will fit seemlessly into our play experience, are ya'll down to try it out?", they know what I'm saying, what to expect, what is being modified.

You keep saying that 5e doesn't have this or that rule, but what you're ignoring is that there is no one 5e DnD. My 5e game does have those rules, as does my fellow frequent DM, and as does my wife's when she runs the occasional game for her book club friends. In each case, the players do know what they're dealing with, and what the rules are, because they know our 5e. They know that in our 5e most important tasks will have multiple rolls, that they'll know how many before they roll the first one, and that they will have broad latitude in deciding what skills and how to use them. They know that languages are valuable both because lack of a language can cause disadvantage or simply cause a roll to be called for when it wouldn't be if they spoke the same language fluently, and that they can leverage a language just like they can leverage tools (xanathar's) to get advantage.

You can say all you want that "players don't know what the DC is so there is no rule except ask the DM" but I've never seen a single table actually run that way. I've never seen players uncertain of what their chances were or what would be asked of them or how a given task would generally be handled.

5e can be considered as much a toolkit to cooperatively make a game as it can be considered a game. That is what makes it better than some games for "hacking", that's why you can use the damage by spell level chart to balance damn near anything in the game with an understanding that the system only even tries to be balanced within a range of a couple spell levels in any given case, and it's why it has so many optional rules.

I think you'd be just fine making all of these claims in another system, provided it's at least similar in the way it puts things into the GM's hands. I also think that you'd find the constraints on the GM enforced by a PbtA game to be absolutely frustrating.

If I were to try and run Monster of The Week for an extended period, I would end up hacking it pretty inevitably, because yes, the system should not constrain the group. DM or players. IMO, of course, since apperently such caveats are required in this thread to not have one's words blatantly twisted.

As to the bolded text, well, that's the whole damn point, isn't it.

Which is, again, fine. The argument isn't that this isn't a great way to play -- clearly you and yours have fun, so it is a great way to play. The argument has been on whether this is a function of you and your table or the system. I'm saying it's you.

And you're wrong. Full stop. I didn't play this way in 4e because 4e actively fights against being played this way. You're essentially saying in one post that system matters, and in another that it doesn't. Which is fine. I'm doing the same thing, but inverted, but at least recognize what you're doing.


So, to sum up;

• System frameworks create differing levels of freedom, differing levels of prescription of process, and thus work better or worse for different groups in general. A group that prefers one isn't likely to get great results from the other.
• Mechanics can impact things like tone and genre, but because we are telling stories, prescribed bespoke genre mechanics are a bonus not a requirement for nearly any genre or theme.
• A game that presents a toolkit from which to build your game is not a game without rules, it's just a game where every table won't play exactly the same way.
• What is easy for one person is not as easy for another, and may be too hard to bother with for another, even if all three people are equally competent and intelligent.
• Pretty much no person's experience of anything is universal, so it is not reasonable to tell someone they can't do something just because you couldn't. It is reasonable to warn them of particular difficulties and pitfalls.

 

[Campbell]

@doctorbadwolf

You are smuggling in your play priorities into an analysis of all RPGs. A game is much more than the sum of its mechanics. It's also how you are expected to utilize and engage with those mechanics. Blades in the Dark is a lot more than flashbacks, gathering information, scores, heat, etc. It's being a desperate scoundrel at the edge of their ropes, playing your character with integrity, and seeing where the winds take you.

In a Story Now game we are not meant to be telling stories. It's about experiencing the story in motion and seeing where it leads without expectation. It's leaping before you look (especially in Blades). Monsterhearts has rules for being attracted to someone you did not choose to be because that is what your character is experiencing. It wants you to emotionally engage with their situation, not choose their emotional state as an author would. Keep the story feral and all that jazz. This includes the GM by the way. We're all supposed to be fans of the PCs and curious about how things will turn up. Story Now.

There's no conch passing or improv going on. I mean we are improvising, but not in the sense of improv sensibilities.

It is possible to do this sort of thing without much support, but it's much harder. It is however impossible to do so while engaging in the sort of improv you are talking about.