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

[Imaro]

I'm sorry @Imaro, but, I refuse to play this game with you. The goalposts are on roller skates and no matter what I say, it will never be acknowledged that there is even the possibility that the mechanics are the problem. After that back and forth about infiltration/heists, I have zero interest in providing you with any evidence or depth. You insist that the mechanics worked for you, yet provide no examples (that I saw anyway) or description of how they worked for your table. So, I will return the favor, insist that the mechanics didn't work, and I can say that I will never use them again because they were so bad.

Yeah going to go with you didn't actually use the rules... cool.

 

[dave2008]

Wasn't there quite a bit of discussion odetailing hiw it's an I'll fitting bolt on thst clashes with s&d norms built into the system and lacks anything in the way of mechanical teeth yesterday?... there you go.

I don't know about clashes with the system, but the madness tables have some serious teeth. The can be seriously debilitated in standard D&D regardless of genre.

 

[tetrasodium]

As you noted in another post. Different idea of cosmic horror I guess. I've taken to calling mine Cthulhu Horror (since we literal played out the short story Call of Cthulhu) to help with the confusion. But for me cosmic/ Cthulhu horror is about a few things:

• Cosmic entities of reality bending / destroying might that simple do not care about humanity. Their desires and goals are unknowable to humanity. If summoned they are as likely to kill their cultists as do their bidding.
• An uncaring universe. There are no forces of good to rescue humanity. We are all we have to stem back the tide.
• Various cultist and alien beings with wicked agendas.
• The only hope is to escape notice or delay the inevitable doom. You cannot "win," only delay.

To achieve those goals, the only change I need to make to 5e, IMO, is to make PCs insignificant. The rest is handled by the extant rules and how we roleplay / DM. I chose to do that by limiting the level range, class restrictions, and reducing HP.

I do want to acknowledge that sanity is a thing in cosmic horror; however, as I have fairly recently read Call of Cthulhu (a year+ ago) and At the Mountains of Madness (yesterday) I want to point out that narrator / protagonist in both stories does not suffer any madness (other characters do). And that is the role I see the PCs, the protagonist of the story. They investigate and fight (futilely) the horrors, but are rarely driven insane by them.

PS Have you read Dracula? Once Van Helsing gets involved the title character is pretty much running with his tail between his legs the whole time, and he ends up destroyed.

Tvtropes is great for avoiding these kind of misunderstandings. It sounds like your talking about lovecraft lite or something similar. Triples usually include a reference to similar tropes if the first doesn't quite fit. It's also pretty easy to say like x trope but more/less/different y thing

Lovecraft Lite - TV Tropes

Oh no! The Cult of K'rzy has read from the Book of Darned Awful Things and unleashed the dreaded might of Yog-Sofserve, the Black Goat of the Cream with a Thousand Flavors! Yep, it's end of the world time. But wait! Those big damned heroes showed …

tvtropes.org

 

[Umbran]

I shouldn’t have clicked the button to see ignored content. But I did, and I saw this BS, and I feel the need to correct it.

Mod Note:

So, in other words, you cannot resist your impulses in this thread.

Okay then, you're done here.

 

[Imaro]

Tvtropes is great for avoiding these kind of misunderstandings. It sounds like your talking about lovecraft lite or something similar. Triples usually include a reference to similar tropes if the first doesn't quite fit. It's also pretty easy to say like x trope but more/less/different y thing

Lovecraft Lite - TV Tropes

Oh no! The Cult of K'rzy has read from the Book of Darned Awful Things and unleashed the dreaded might of Yog-Sofserve, the Black Goat of the Cream with a Thousand Flavors! Yep, it's end of the world time. But wait! Those big damned heroes showed …

tvtropes.org

So under Cosmic Horror it states...

• Even IF the heroes do manage by some miracle of fate to save the day, are they driven irreversibly mad by their experiences, or did they have to make one hell of a sacrifice, or did they only stop it temporarily and eventually it will rise again causing the cycle to repeat?note .

That's 3 options and only 1 involves being driven mad... so that would seem to indicate madness in the protagonists is not a requirement for cosmic horror.

EDIT: Also the heroes can save the day in a cosmic horror story.

 

[dave2008]

Sort of.

They were better than they started all the way up to the end. That's not quite what I meant. Killing PC's is easy, particularly when you stack the deck like that. Making D&D PC's suffer is not easy. There are very few mechanics for long term disabilities, ability score drain, and whatnot. I was not sitting at your table, so, I cannot comment and obviously YOU enjoyed what happened, so, that's a win. It just doesn't really sound very Mythos to me from what you've described. Horror? Certainly. Cosmic Horror? I'm not so sure.

They had marginally more HP and skills yes, but that made no difference in the face of cosmic horror. It helped them investigate a bit better and maybe survive some cultist, but not the real cosmic level threats. Heck, they would have been pretty useless vs a shoggoth if I had used one. The important part is that it played very different from standard fantasy 5e D&D. The players new any mistake could easily be death. They had to be cautious.

Also, I noted in my post about the changes we made for this genre that we used the lingering injuries table which has long term disabilities. These ended up only affecting one PC in the penultimate battle in the swamp. The PCs had enough time before the search for R'yleh so they let his broken leg (#3 on the table) heal before they left. However, I ruled he still had a limp (#4 on the table) which was a factor in him not getting away from the big C.

I will note that the the character in HPL's story escaped Cthulhu, so he did better than my group!

 

[pemerton]

When it comes to fault tolerance, the ability to adjust on the fly, and iterating changes to a game's design few games have a more solid core than Blades in the Dark or Apocalypse World. Apocalypse World in particular goes into substantial detail in its text on how to expand and alter the game. Vincent Baker goes into detail in this blog entry how Apocalypse World was designed with the idea of concentric or layered design in mind:

<snip Baker's outline of the deep stability of AW as a system, in play>

This is what modular design actually looks like in practice. The idea that this is somehow a less flexible game is utterly bizarre to me.

I'm glad you posted this. Something recently made me think about that blog post; I can't remember if it was this thread or something else I was thinking about. But in any event it's (i) highly relevant and (ii) a thing of beauty in itself, independently of its relevance to this thread!

As you know I'm a huge 4e D&D fan: but this is a huge contrast with 4e, which doesn't have anything like those layers (so many interacting systems that are necessary to make the game hum along); and while Burning Wheel sets out to be more modular (with its hubs and spokes and rim) it still doesn't have the sort of systemic stability that Baker describes. Of games I play the only one I can think of that comes close is Prince Valiant, but it doesn't have the same intricacy of layers built around the core that collapse so elegantly inwards.

 

[dave2008]

Tvtropes is great for avoiding these kind of misunderstandings. It sounds like your talking about lovecraft lite or something similar. Triples usually include a reference to similar tropes if the first doesn't quite fit. It's also pretty easy to say like x trope but more/less/different y thing

Lovecraft Lite - TV Tropes

Oh no! The Cult of K'rzy has read from the Book of Darned Awful Things and unleashed the dreaded might of Yog-Sofserve, the Black Goat of the Cream with a Thousand Flavors! Yep, it's end of the world time. But wait! Those big damned heroes showed …

tvtropes.org

Thank you. That was helpful and confirms that I was using the definition of Cosmic Horror Story correctly and that is indeed the genre we played our 5e Cthulhu game in. Thank you again for the help!

So @Hussar, the definition provide by @tetrasodium confirms the game I played in 5e was indeed Cosmic Horror. Does his / the websites definition fit your definition?

 

[loverdrive]

As evidence by all the people playing it.

Well, yes, the fact that one D&D campaign is nothing like another even if both groups follow the rules closely is a very strong evidence.

This isn't slapstick if it's not roleplayed for comedy... it's strange off putting and is similar to many portrayals of Reinfield in Dracula media when he eats bugs or other disgusting things.

Is Reinfield a main character in Dracula or just another freak who is there just to be off-putting? Eating bugs and being weird is what Reinfeld was born to do. He's just doing his job. The same doesn't apply to a damn protagonist.

I can't conceive any way to make a brave fighter eating dirt because he've seen a tentacled mess (and then being okay 1d10 minutes after) seem believable.

So we want mechanical teeth... without teeth?? The unconscious for hours is a genre trope...are you serious??

Mechanical teeth refers to teeth on a gear, not to teeth in a dragon's maw.

Wait.

Do I really need to explain that removing a player from a game for a considerable amount of time isn't a good idea in any RPG?

Nope, it trusts the player to roleplay the actual flaw just like some of the other games presented here... and honestly for an indefinite madness I think it's the best approach since player buy in is crucial.

It gives gimmicks, not flaws. That, again, don't encourage using them to get your character in trouble.

Huh?? You seek it because you need to... not because you want to.

That's not how game design works. The best, most effective move available to a player should always align with the tone of the story. With madness rules the best, most effective move is to say "no way I'm doing this" and "screw this naughty word, let's get outta here".

They don't reward the players for placing their characters into dire situations and driving them insane. On the contrary, the rules punish them for doing their job properly.

I'm sorry you had such issues with it, but it did work and will be working for me when my campaign starts back up.

Dude. That's what this whole thread is about.

If the rules don't work for me and work for you, even if we both followed them, then... The rules don't produce reliable results and don't funnel the participants towards genre-appropriate experience. In short, they don't work.

Again, madness and sanity optional rules didn't make your campaign horror. You did.

 

[Imaro]

Dude. That's what this whole thread is about.

If the rules don't work for me and work for you, even if we both followed them, then... The rules don't produce reliable results and don't funnel the participants towards genre-appropriate experience. In short, they don't work.

Could you give some details on how you used the rules? I gave a breakdown earlier in the thread I'd be interested in something similar from you... I'd really like to understand better, from a play perspective what went wrong when you used them.

Again, madness and sanity optional rules didn't make your campaign horror. You did.

Yep I created the rules for sanity, the charts I rolled on, the mechanics for madness... wait no I didn't.