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

[Ovinomancer]

Again that is a definition of cosmic horror, but I was explicitly referencing my experience from reading HPL, not someone else's definition, posibly even the standard definition, of cosmic horror. The sanity mechanic in CoC didn't make me feel like we were playing a HPL story and that is what I want in my "cosmic horror," and that is what I was able to achieve with my D&D 5e hacks.

Do a google search for Cosmic Horror and you'll see it's the standard definition. It's also exactly what I picked up from HPL stories. I'm not sure what you picked up, but if it wasn't going mad in the face of the incompressible horror of the Other, then I'm curious what stories you actually read and what you got out of them.

I mean in the story Call of Cthulhu a person literally rams a ship into Cthulhu, after seeing the rest of his group destroyed by it, and then escapes.

Which does nothing to Cthulhu. He didn't actually fight or defeat the creature, he did a desperate act that didn't make a difference and managed to survive. Honestly, surviving is the only hopeful outcome of HPL stories, and that's not universal.

PS The adventure I ran for my group was an interpretation of Call of Cthulhu were the events happen in a more linear fashion (not through flashbacks) to the protagonist (players).

Did they defeat Cthulhu?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

No, they don't. Cosmologists deal with a universe they do not yet understand, but not something that cannot be understood by man.

Wrong. Speaking as someone who has studied Cosmology (PhD Astrophys) I can tell you that there is no reason to suspect a comprehensible explanation is at all likely, ever. The best we can do is develop models and try and understand those. And even those tell us that nothing we understand as real, is.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I wonder if the new Stress mechanic will change your opinion? I'm guessing it will not.

Do a google search for Cosmic Horror and you'll see it's the standard definition. It's also exactly what I picked up from HPL stories. I'm not sure what you picked up, but if it wasn't going mad in the face of the incompressible horror of the Other, then I'm curious what stories you actually read and what you got out of them.

Which does nothing to Cthulhu. He didn't actually fight or defeat the creature, he did a desperate act that didn't make a difference and managed to survive. Honestly, surviving is the only hopeful outcome of HPL stories, and that's not universal.

Did they defeat Cthulhu?

I haven't seen it. It's possible it's a well integrated mechanic that does a good job -- I don't prejudge. You're treating me like I dislike 5e, which is far from the truth. You're also treating me like I'm arguing from a irrational position -- that I will reject things that disagree with a held premise, sight unseen. This is also far from the truth. It's possible that WotC has figured out a great way to morph 5e into being something not D&D with the Stress mechanic. Unlikely, and I'd question why they want to -- being D&D is really the primary selling point of 5e, and Ravenloft is the D&D horror version. It's not Horror first, though, it's D&D first, so I fully expect WotC to understand and design towards that goal. I hope they do come up with a good mechanic with Stress that enables more horror in D&D.

 

[loverdrive]

But, it does, according to the ruleset. You have to alter the base assumptions of the game to change this, and all you do then is say that combat is still an option, but you should better weigh the risks. The point is that whatever you meet can be defeated in combat, if you're lucky, strong, smart, or can get enough help on your side. This is pointedly against the concept of Cosmic Horror, though. You cannot fight Cthulhu at all.

Don't know about Ctulhu, but there's one famous old man who've managed to kill Hastur...

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Don't know about Ctulhu, but there's one famous old man who've managed to kill Hastur...

Ernest Hemmingway?

 

[prabe]

You are not. If a cosmic horror arises, and you're moving entirely into that genre, then you're ignoring 80% of the ruleset. I mean, I kept typing Cosmic Horror. How does that get swapped into Whodunnit?!

Because whodunit is another type of story that typically can't be solved by fighting stuff. If tossing out the combat system ("80% of the game") as the way to "solve" an adventure is violating the conventions of the game, it doesn't seem as though it would make a difference whether that adventure was Cosmic Horror or a whodunit.

But, it does, according to the ruleset. You have to alter the base assumptions of the game to change this, and all you do then is say that combat is still an option, but you should better weigh the risks. The point is that whatever you meet can be defeated in combat, if you're lucky, strong, smart, or can get enough help on your side. This is pointedly against the concept of Cosmic Horror, though. You cannot fight Cthulhu at all.

I don't think I specified Cosmic Horror. Yes, the Great Old One (there's exactly one in my campaign setting) has been a bit of a recurring theme, but that's not the only type of horror I've deployed. Many of the deeply unsettling things the parties have encountered have been deeply unsettling things they could fight, but I don't see that as suddenly making it Not-Horror.

(And generally one stops the Great Old Ones by stopping those trying to summon them, if one can stop them at all.)

I disagree that the 5e recipe is as changeable as your example. 5e has a very strong flavor -- the D&D genre assumptions are baked in. You can change some of the spices and get a different flavor, but you're still playing D&D.

I agree there are D&D-isms. Classes, levels, hit points, the magic system, the focus on combat. And yes, you're still playing 5E, even if there's something the PCs don't have the resources to defeat present; you're still playing 5E if you go three sessions without a combat; you're still playing 5E if you have a situation that cannot be solved by fighting. I don't think anyone has said they weren't playing 5E--I'm pretty sure I haven't. I think some of us have said we feel as though we can tell more kinds of stories in 5E than in some game that we see as more narrowly focused, even if we have to hack 5E on occasion to do so.

 

[loverdrive]

Ernest Hemmingway?

Henderson was his name, I believe. Don't know if it's a last or first name, though.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Wrong. Speaking as someone who has studied Cosmology (PhD Astrophys) I can tell you that there is no reason to suspect a comprehensible explanation is at all likely, ever. The best we can do is develop models and try and understand those. And even those tell us that nothing we understand as real, is.

If there's no reason to suspect an understandable explanation, then why study? It's just going to be fruitless?

Ah, because there is the possibility of understanding, and we improve moving towards that with every model and experiment to prove that model. Because there is understanding that is possible.

I'm happy you got your PhD, but I'm confused why you got it in a field you think is incomprehensible?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Henderson was his name, I believe. Don't know if it's a last or first name, though.

Ah, I think it must have been Dagon who Hemmingway killed.

 

[Imaro]

Counterfactuals are not usually illuminating to an example of play. I mean, he could have played Trail of Cthulhu, too. What-ifs are not where you want to go, here.

Well if you're claiming a game is not able to do something and it does... I think a counterfactual is the correct way to go.

That said, the Madness rules in the DMG are abjectly terrible. They are non-integrated, incoherent rules that fight the rest of the system instead of adding to them. I mean, they add to existing things on the GM's whim, are based off of WIS and CHA saves which means that melee classes are gimped while those that dabble in the arcane are stronger against them -- an inversion of the tropes. Further, the impacts are either negligible or incapacitating, and not much between. Finally, all of the "permanent" madness effects tie into the BIFTs and are totally ignorable -- there is no teeth at all to enforce them. So, what you end up with using the Madness rules are trope inversions, effects that are either incapacitating or ignorable, and then only in the short term. And the effects that are incapacitating are all tightly tied to the combat engine.

Uhm... this is flat out wrong and not how sanity works in 5e. Sanity is it's own stat that you make a save with... so no, the classes with higher Wis or Cha aren't better at it, those classes with a higher sanity score are. Madness is just used to generate the effect if they fail.

I'd be curious to know if the Call of Cthulhu game has indefinite madness effects that cause mechanical penalties... Though honestly if you want indefinite mechanical effects it would be trivial to institute the long-term madness as indefinite. Though I personally think most games nowadays leave things like this (incurable, indefinite madness) in the hands of the players to roleplay... but maybe I'm wrong.

This is what happens when you try to slap a poorly conceived rule on top of 5e. You find out that what appears to be the big problems, like permanent insanity, are actually unenforceable in the rulesset and the only effects you have that have teeth are tied into the combat rules.

It doesn't seem poorly conceived, and there are effects throughout the madness tables that have nothing to do with combat. I think your being a little disingenuous here or you didn't really look over the tables.