Embrace the power of "and". The points you two are making aren't mutually exclusive. You can both be correct.
Yes, D&D can produce some different gameplay experiences. However, several things people claim are differences... aren't all that different. And, in many cases, those differences aren't about the game.
As a broad example - some folks say D&D isn't great at horror. If you say you've produced a great horror experience by adding music, scents and lighting effects to your play area, that's nothing to do with the game system proper.
I would say that what I responded to does preclude what I'm saying, because "I think a lot of the “variety” that D&D allows is more perceived than actual. Like playing in Ebberon versus Dark Sun. Sure, the settings are different, but the game will largely flow the same way." does actually suggest that those of us who disagree are wrong about our own experiences, only "percieving" dnd to produce varied results. Nope. DnD does produce varied results, and I know that from direct personal experience both with dnd and with a decent number of other games. (I am reluctant to say many, in a world of thousands upon thousands of TTRPGs, ranging from DnD clones to one-page games with basically a dice mechanic and a description of the play loop.)
Then you should have the ability to articulate how. How do I get a game that feels like Apocalypse World, Burning Wheel or even Exalted Third Editon from 5e? What am I missing here?
As Umbran pointed out, I never said you could. I have never made any claim like that. What 5e DnD can do is emulate a wide array of
genres and a decently wide array of
playstyles, broadening out even more when you are willing to use optional rules and supplementary materials. I have also claimed, elsewhere, that DnD remains DnD even if you put it in a modern urban setting and play supernatural cops, or put it in space and treat light space craft like starfighters/interceptors as big magic flying armor mechanically rather than like vehicles as such, and then use lightly modified ship combat rules for space ships. Very little else needs to change to play a team of explorers, the elite squadron of a defensive force patroling the border world between the free people republic and the evil empire, or something like a mix between Jedi and the Galaxy Rangers.
Some playstyles need more work than others, but generally when I see people talking about wanting something similar to Blades in The Dark, but not focused on criminal Scores, or whatever, people tell them to use Blades as inspiration to
make a purpose built game, while with DnD people suggest houserules or 3pp additions (outside of the inevitable "play this game that doesn't do half of what you want because it is built specifically to do the one thing you're trying to add to DnD, because I've entirely missed the point" replies).
So, he did not say that D&D could be used to emulate specific other games.
Exactly, but I'm used to what I did say being misinterpreted, regadless of how many different ways I try to say it.
Who's ignoring those?
I think there is a bit more of a specific structure to Blades in the Dark, but I don't know if that means it's somehow less flexible. The structure is there as a tool, not as a requirement. And D&D is also very structured as well. I think the significant difference here is the clarify or formalization of the structure.
DnD isn't especially structured, though. It certainly doesn't have a strongly prescribed mode of play. What it does prescribe is how to resolve things that players try to do, and that's most of it.
There are MANY prescribed elements for D&D, which I think is the point. Sure, a game like Blades may ask you to select the type of group your PCs are.....Assassins, Shadows, Hawkers, etc. and D&D doesn't require that. But you're still going to have a group of people working together.
Is that a rule? Where? Am I suddenly not playing DnD if my PCs are all disparate individuals from different factions all pulled into a situation, with cross purposes and varying goals and methodologies?
You're still going to be resolving most conflict through violence, you're still going to progress to higher levels and gain new abilities, allowing you to face more dangerous challenges.....and so on.
Is there a rule about violence? And most games have an increase in abilities of some kind. I'd hardly call that a significant or strong prescription of play.
I think your assumption that Blades has more prescriptions here is a bit off. Nor is Blades a game that breaks when modified.
It is, though. You can ignore the rules if you want, but see below on that. Those are two branches of the discussions, not one.
1. DnD is particularly flexible because the actual "play loop" is only prescribed in terms of action resolution, not in terms of what kind of scenes follow a given scene, any sort of narrative structure or order, etc. Many indie games do prescribe those elements. The fact you can deviate if you want to doesn't make them not prescribed, just like I wouldn't claim that dnd's action resolution isn't prescribed just because I modify it from the 5e default in my games to better suite my group.
2. DnD is particularly flexible because the community is more accepting of homebrew, houserules, and 3pp supplements, and large swathes of the community consider it outright weird to play RAW.
3. DnD is particularly flexible because it contains rather a lot of optional rules and systems that alter the gameplay in significant ways.
Not to mention the plethora of other games.
No one is saying that indie games offer MORE flexibility......just that there seems to be a preconception that they offer less. That they have a very specific experience to deliver, while D&D allows for all kinds of experiences. It's just a silly claim.
It's an accurate claim, based on both direct experience and observation of discussion in those games' communities and of actual play/exhibitive online content about the games. I rarely see someone suggest hacks for Blades when someone wants something different in genre or gameplay from it. Instead, I see, "check out forged in the dark, and make a new game that does what you want" or "here is a similar game that does what you want", and much less pushback against those suggestions than I see in the dnd community, because more people expect dnd to have houserules and homebrew and 3pp material.
Sure it is. I acknowledged that we can grant some bit of flexibility to a game that is designed with hacking in mind. But that applies to most or at least many games, I would say, so it isn't all that relevant.
It's very relevant, for all the reasons I've stated.
Game culture has traditionally had a very DIY mentality, and I think that's alive and kicking across the board.
My experience is that it's much more "alive and kicking" in some games than in others, but also that it is directed differently in indie games, which have more of a "make your own indie game" mentality opposed to dnd's "make DnD into the game you want" mentality. So, perhaps "Indie games" as a sweeping whole are collectively more flexible than dnd (or indeed any single game), but any given indie game? Not IME.
Dude - they disagree with you, so you call them ignorant? That's weak sauce.
To use your own words, has it literally ever occurred to you that they are familiar with both, and have an opinion that's different?
"You disagree with me, so you must not know what you are talking about," already got someone red text today. You have good enough points that you shouldn't be that guy.
That there is a typo. My bad. I was responding to the accusation of ignorance, not making such an accusation myself.
Yes, you can have clerics and paladins gaining power from ideals or the like. But it still means that you get power from devotion somehow, which is still a poor fit for many settings.
and in those settings you don't use clerics.
Clerics also play a very important meta-game role as healers, which means many parties don't feel complete without them.
That isn't the game, that's the history of adventure fantasy games giving people expectations. This is like blaming VtM when some groups try to play it like a hack and slash adventure game.
The importance of this role has waxed and waned over the years, but you still have the archetypal party consisting of a Fighter, a Cleric, a Wizard, and a Rogue. You can probably fill the Fighter role equally well with a paladin or a barbarian, and a bard or druid can sub in for a wizard, but the cleric role is much harder to replace. Not impossible by any means, but harder.
Not the least miniscule but harder, actually. Trivially easy, in fact. I have found, in 5e and 4e before it, that the Cleric is 100% superfulous to the game on every level. The only reason I haven't excised it from my games is that I don't believe that the GM should do things like that just because they don't like a class. I just don't use clerics unless a player decides to play one, which is rare because most of my players share my dislike for the class. Plenty of Paladins, but Clerics just aren't popular in my group at all.
But yeah, the party loses nothing significant when not having a cleric. Bards and Druids heal just as well, and Rangers and Paladins can heal well enough to get by.
And even if you have ideal-based clerics, they still use the very divine-flavored cleric spell list. You have spell like Spirit Guardians, Conjure Celestial, Divination, and Guardian of Faith. You have class abilities like Channel Divinity and Divine Intervention. De-goding the cleric would be quite a lot of work.
It takes no work at all. You just don't interpret any of those things as having to do with gods, but instead with either faith, devotion to your community, or whatever else makes sense for your world and story. I know people who run and play clerics entirely as White Mage characters. Their magic comes from within, and from the world (often in a very final fantasy 7 lifestream kind of way), and from their empathy and desire to help others. Divine Intervention is just a massive swell of power that you cannot easily do again if you manage to do it, and that you can't always successfully manage to do. I wish sorcerers had something like that.