D&D 5E Is 5e's Success Actually Bad for Other Games?

[Thomas Shey]

Can you give particular examples of what is not doable with a flexible system in your experience?

I've already indicated I don't find it a virtue to have to make decisions on that sort of thing constantly. We can go back and forth why I think so, you can disagree with me its a thing, and then we'll be back where we started.

Done this dance on and off with people for years--decades really. Not interested in doing it again.

 

[Parmandur]

Part of the reason why I am happy to play, but will not run 5e anymore is that it lacks the flexibility to run the game in the way I generally like to run games. It makes me responsible for things I don't want to be responsible for. I have to manage the pacing of the adventuring day. I have to make decisions that impact the course of the narrative instead of focusing on the situation. I have to engage in spotlight balancing because characters are so narrowly focused. I do not ever really get to sit back as an audience member wondering how things will turn out. I don't get to frame a scene where the players' characters are in a tough spot and simply focus on providing honest adversity.

This flexibility argument relies on the conceit that GMs have the foresight of a mentaat, considering every possible in mere seconds and the discipline of a buddhist monk. Human cognition does not work like that though. Our imagination and cognition in any given moment is finite. We need to direct our mental energies if we are going to be effective. We have to act with intention if we are going to reliably do anything.

In my experience there are a pretty common set of principles most 5e GMs rely on though. Any GM worth their salt is going to run a game in a principled way and the DMG actually points towards a very consistent playstyle that is not far off what we see from Matt Colville and the Critical Role crew with some side eye glances towards traditional sandboxes.

Really, it doesn't take that much focus: usually we play two sheets to the wind, and it works fine.

 

[Parmandur]

I've already indicated I don't find it a virtue to have to make decisions on that sort of thing constantly. We can go back and forth why I think so, you can disagree with me its a thing, and then we'll be back where we started.

Done this dance on and off with people for years--decades really. Not interested in doing it again.

Well, either way, decisions will have to be made: the question is if the rules work, not whether or not decisions need to be made.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Why bother to think up stuff myself when other people already took the effort??

 

[pemerton]

In practice as a player I feel that throwing a curveball at the GM in combat they have to adjudicate just adds too much to their cognitive load. With everything else that the GM has to worry about, having me suddenly announce I want overturn the wooden table and use it to push the enemies out of the room is clearly a headache.

It also interferes somewhat with the notion of a mechanical challenge.

I think there are some more basic considerations that push in the same direction as what you have posted:

In another currently active thread, about spellcasters-to-fighter-balance in 5e, I am being told that the DC to kill an ogre with a single sword blow is declare attacks using your actions in the prescribed action economy, rolling damage as and when appropriate, and once the ogre is dead we'll narrate that as a series of feints followed by a single killing blow.

It's taken as premise in that thread that does not need to be argued that there is no DC for a fighter's check to call magical lightning bolts from the sky. I haven't seen anyone contest that premise.

What's the DC for the following action declaration: I use my knowledge of the dungeon to travel to the largest treasure horde on the 9th level, where I confront its guardians? I don't think 5e even permits that as an action declaration, and I don't think it has any canonical way of setting a DC or evaluating consequences for success or failure; but there are other RPGs that would be fine with this.

In other words, it's simply not true that there is nothing more to action resolution in 5e D&D then declare an action then roll to meet a target number. There are all sorts of parameters - grounded in class design, spell design, barely articulated principles about what minutiae of the fiction matters and what doesn't, etc - that govern what is a permissible action declaration, what the scope of permitted consequences is, etc. Playing the game depends upon knowing what all those parameters are.

The only RPGs I can think of that can actually be run with nothing more to action resolution than declaring an action and then making a roll are HeroQuest revised, Burning Wheel (if all the optional more complex subsystems are eschewed and everything is done using the simple test rules) and Cthulhu Dark. Even Prince Valiant, which is far more mechanically simple than 5e D&D, uses complex resolution (ie multiple checks with the fiction unfolding from check to check, like a 4e skill challenge) in some contexts; Classic Traveller, another mechanically lighter game, has rules for how to adjudicate wounding and injury that go beyond the basic check rules and also has a number of subsystems to resolve different sorts of activities; RQ is similar in this context to Traveller; etc.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Honestly, I don't think it makes any difference; without a halfway detailed framework to at least let the player know where he can expect to be able to do something or not, its still wrestling with jello. At the very minimum there needs to be a halfway extensive set of benchmarking numbers, and I suspect that's going to violate some people's desire to never look anything up.

That is needed to match your preferences, sure. As much as I enjoy running and playing 4e, I find the gameplay much more enjoyable when run very loosely, and when I play an essentials class.

Bone stock, it’s fun but challenging due to just how much is codified, and the learning curve to get to a place where people improvise is much higher than it is with 5e.

In practice as a player I feel that throwing a curveball at the GM in combat they have to adjudicate just adds too much to their cognitive load. With everything else that the GM has to worry about, having me suddenly announce I want overturn the wooden table and use it to push the enemies out of the room is clearly a headache.

Huh. As a DM, I love stuff like that.

It also interferes somewhat with the notion of a mechanical challenge. If the DM has designed the fight to be a challenge, then he is not incentivised to let a stunt be more effective than what would be achievable otherwise (as this would negate the challenge).

IME, most DMs have a pretty solid sense of what should work, and that if a legitimately good idea from the PCs makes the encounter less challenging, that is a feature, not a bug. PC cleverness and creativity should be a valid path to victory, otherwise why aren’t we just playing Neverwinter Online or DDO?

As a GM I find that players have enough to worry about that they rarely consider trying stunts.

There is something to the idea that stripping back rules encourages creativity, but you actually have to do that. Again, I'm talking about something like Barbarians of Lemuria here.

It works to some extent in old school games (although not well as advocates claim), in part because they're so deadly, and in part because there's no notion of balanced encounters, and in part because low levels, at least, are so stripped bare of player options. 5e though is none of these things.

IME 5e promotes an incredible amount of improvisation by telling DMs to employ a “yes, and” philosophy, and provide broadly applicable tools with multiple options, that don’t need to be referenced in play too much.

5e can be stripped of much player options, at the player’s discretion. I have characters I play who are mechanically complex, and characters who are dirt simple. I improvise with both, but it’s different when I’m playing my Rogue/Wizard Inventor/Alchemist/Ritualist/Magic item crafter, vs when I’m playing my halfling Swashbuckler with basically no mechanical widgets.

Some players are only happy with one or the other, or with something else. 5e let’s them all play together without much system conflict getting in the way.

 

[BigZebra]

Why bother to think up stuff myself when other people already took the effort??

I pretty much stopped reading DnD stuff on twitter. People are so aggresive, angry, black-and-white-ish. Intolerance all over.

 

[Don Durito]

I think if we're discussing structure for stunts it's worth looking at Dungeon Crawl Classics' take on the Warrior.

You get a Deed Die. You roll this die when you make an attack. You declare an effect you want in addition to a basic attack. The harder or more effective the effect the higher the number you need on the Deed Die. Then you roll your die along with your D20, you see if you hit, and you see if you get the effect off. There are some examples DCs for effects, but you're not limited to them, there's room for improvisation and adjudication.

More importantly, there's actually a structure for it. The mechanics tell you can do something, give you a means to resolve it, and give the expectation that things can be attempted. Basically this is the one OSR game that basically went past the canard that you don't need maneuvers and the like, you just need "rulings not rules" and actually put some thought into what a basic rules structure would look like that actually implemented that philosophy (rather than people just pretending that a bare structure does).

 

[Mirtek]

and neither in video games

Actually WoW was very bad for the PC games market at it's beginning and a great many WoW players hardly bought anything else when WoW was an endless drain of time and money

 

[Thomas Shey]

That is needed to match your preferences, sure. As much as I enjoy running and playing 4e, I find the gameplay much more enjoyable when run very loosely, and when I play an essentials class.

I believe I phrased it in that context for several posts now.