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

[dave2008]

You're wrong, and it's hard to see why you'd think you were right, because it's pretty clear. Lovecraft's stories are not about level-headed and sensible individuals sanely staving off the Mythos with their sensible spells, for god's sake.

There is quite a bit of lovecraft where the narrator / protagonist doesn't have anything to do with magic, so it is hardly a required tenet of the genre.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't feel the same way myself in PtbA games, because there are so many potential hard moves you could make, and they could range from stuff that's going to just make things a bit harder, to things which make things vastly harder or virtually impossible. I haven't DM'd BitD though, maybe it has a much narrower range of hard moves allowable? With stuff like DW though I always find myself holding back - not going for the maximum adversity, but rather what is going to make things interesting/scary/exciting/funny.

I understand what you mean re: jacket though. Oddly I felt 4E D&D was best for that, because in 4E, if I balanced an encounter properly, I could go absolutely all out and try to do everything I could to kill the PCs with the monsters I had available, yet everyone would have a good time. Never before had an RPG really offered me this opportunity. In earlier editions of D&D, if you went all out, you'd simply TPK the party sooner rather than later, because the encounter-balancing was either non-existent (1E/2E) or so bad it was literally worse than non-existent (3.XE - the CR system there is literally more misleading than eyeballing it). 5E is mediocre at this. It's not actively bad like 3.XE, and the systems provided are a bit better than just eyeballing it, but you can't just do things right and then go all out unless you <3 regular TPKs. You don't need to fudge rolls or anything, to be clear, just not go for maximum adversity tactics at all times (to be fair this often lines up well with RPing the enemies anyway).

Fair enough, I misremembered that. They still half-arsed it by not having SAN reversed when making ability checks though.

That was you, though. The system handles the harder moves just fine. You brought with you some of that need to balance things like you have to do in D&D so that it stays on track. You don't have to do this, though. You can level the hose and the game works just fine.

It can feel like you're being mean. Some have said that it feels adversarial. And, if it were D&D, then that would be so. But it what the system expects in PbtA.

 

[loverdrive]

SO madness doesn't impart understanding... it's a result of understanding. In other words a lower san score doesn't allow for a better understanding it occurs due to exposure to the truths.

And rational, sane minds try to explain the universe through mundane means, thus missing the point completely, while a madman sees the world the way it is.

Again I get you like PbtA and FitD... I mean you even published a game under FitD so there's the incentive of more players for your own game...but you do get that some people may not like this style of game... right? Let me be clear, you don't have to come around to my preferences but I get the impression that you think alot of your statements are objective truths. If that's not the case and you are talking personal preference just say so but even this post above seems to push that having constraints, codified agenda, principles and moves is the objectively better way to go for a ttrpg and it's not, not for everyone.

I mean... It is. There are still expectations and lines you shouldn't cross and it's always better to make sure everyone knows and understands them.

For example, if we're playing a game of tactical combat, then everyone at the table should understand that tactical combat is what we're here for, strive for engaging it and embrace the fact that a non-violent approach will never work. And brute force will never work, too.

If there are no constraints, even if there was a good pitch (that's a thing I rarely see, by the way), there's a significant chance that at some point everyone will start to push the game in several different directions.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That was you, though. The system handles the harder moves just fine. You brought with you some of that need to balance things like you have to do in D&D so that it stays on track. You don't have to do this, though. You can level the hose and the game works just fine.

It can feel like you're being mean. Some have said that it feels adversarial. And, if it were D&D, then that would be so. But it what the system expects in PbtA.

I don't really believe you, I have to say, because it doesn't at all match up with the advice given in DW or any other PtbA I can off-hand think of reading the DM advice bits of. I've never read anything like "Make the hardest possible moves you can" - and I don't see that listed in the imperatives. Maybe it is in BitD?

Nor does it at all match up with Actual Plays I've read of PtbA games I've read/watched.

And I kind of bet that if I watched your BitD game, I could see a lot harder of moves you could be making (again, unless BitD has a more restricted set of hard moves).

So you're saying "that's you", but I think unless BitD is different, it's actually you.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Again don't agree...understanding something is based on rationalism... not insanity.

Um... a core tenet of cosmic horror is that the true nature of reality utterly defies our conception of rationality. You don't understand things about the mythos because you've readoned out how it works, but rather because you've grasped a fragment of a thought that is utterly irrational and against all you thought was true. The true nature of reality is isane and anti-rational. Being sane is the state of ignorance in the mythos.

 

[loverdrive]

I don't feel the same way myself in PtbA games, because there are so many potential hard moves you could make, and they could range from stuff that's going to just make things a bit harder, to things which make things vastly harder or virtually impossible. I haven't DM'd BitD though, maybe it has a much narrower range of hard moves allowable? With stuff like DW though I always find myself holding back - not going for the maximum adversity, but rather what is going to make things interesting/scary/exciting/funny.

Yeah, when running PbtA I kinda have to force myself to punch'em harder too. In BitD, though, you have a position to determine the "hardness" of moves. If you agreed that the position is Desperate, then results of a 1-3 or 4/5 should reflect that.

 

[Imaro]

Sure, in a sense. But they're intertwined. You can't retain your sanity and understand, not as a human being in the Cthulhu Mythos. As you understand more, you slide into madness. You can't have the deep understanding without being "crazy".

Yes because the exposure causes you to spiral further and further into madness

But there are also hints of the opposite direction too - i.e. people who seem like they've always been mad, but who seem to understand the Mythos. Some shuffling tramp might never have been an Arkham professor or whatever, might always have been "off", but he recognises the signs of the impending apocalypse or the like. And frequently "primitive" or "feral" people, who have no training, no deep intellectual understanding of the universe, just some kind of implicit one, or instinctive one, and whose minds are already "mad" or "bestial" (and yeah there's a ton of racism in there, but let's skip lightly over that), also understand the Mythos.

San isn't about training or deep intellectual understanding of the universe it is literally your mental fortitude when faced with the unspeakable. So let me ask where is it ever clearly stated that their madness was in effect before they came into contact with the mythos... because I've never looked at it that way and I can't remember a story where someone started of mad (from a non-mythos source) and suddenly was able to cast spells and understand the mythos as soon as they encountered it. Can you point to a specific story that goes this way?

Civilized men of the type that are the heroes of his stories become gibbering heaps, sure, yeah. Sometimes they literally become a non-human being of some kind. But we see characters who are not such men, who are crazed, but not totally ineffective (just usually totally devoted to an Old God or the like).

All you're pointing to is the fact that their san score degraded to the point that they could no longer function in any way rationally... how do you cast a spell without functioning at least somewhat rationally? How do you comprehend a book if your mind is totally taken over by madness? If more madness equals more understanding and more power why do we see that there is a point where madness no longer allows any of that. the simplest answer is that the madness is a byproduct not the source.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yeah, when running PbtA I kinda have to force myself to punch'em harder too. In BitD, though, you have a position to determine the "hardness" of moves. If you agreed that the position is Desperate, then results of a 1-3 or 4/5 should reflect that.

Yeah that sounds like a pretty key different between BitD and other PtbAs. I mean, here are the principles for DW:

Draw maps, leave blanks •  Address the characters, not the players •  Embrace the fantastic •  Make a move that follows •  Never speak the name of your move •  Give every monster life •  Name every person •  Ask questions and use the answers •  Be a fan of the characters •  Think dangerous •  Begin and end with the fiction •  Think offscreen, too

"Think dangerous" is the closest one, but that's clarified to basically mean "you should threaten everything, and make the world worse if the PCs don't help", not "Go for the hardest moves you can imagine".

 

[Imaro]

Um... a core tenet of cosmic horror is that the true nature of reality utterly defies our conception of rationality. You don't understand things about the mythos because you've readoned out how it works, but rather because you've grasped a fragment of a thought that is utterly irrational and against all you thought was true. The true nature of reality is isane and anti-rational. Being sane is the state of ignorance in the mythos.

Is this in the tropes article referenced earlier?

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't really believe you, I have to say, because it doesn't at all match up with the advice given in DW or any other PtbA I can off-hand think of reading the DM advice bits of. I've never read anything like "Make the hardest possible moves you can" - and I don't see that listed in the imperatives. Maybe it is in BitD?

Nor does it at all match up with Actual Plays I've read of PtbA games I've read/watched.

And I kind of bet that if I watched your BitD game, I could see a lot harder of moves you could be making (again, unless BitD has a more restricted set of hard moves).

So you're saying "that's you", but I think unless BitD is different, it's actually you.

You making a facile argument here, that you might have a different idea and that this idea may strike you as harder in some sense. Okay, so what? I said that the game handles hard moves just fine, and the feeling you have to pull punches for the game to be better is on you. You can throw as hard as you want and the game is built to handle this. You don't ever have to pull a punch.

This doesn't mean you always have to swing for the fences, but ratger that you always can swing for the fences. You still have to follow the fiction, though, you can't just yell, "SURPRISE DRAGON."