Indie Games Are Not More Focused. They Are Differently Focused.

[Campbell]

Oof. So between you and other posters, those of us who say (correctly) that many indie games are purpose built to tell a single type of story very very well, while D&D and some ther games are built to tell a wider variety of games with a wider variety of play styles, are ignorant of both indie games…and D&D…awesome.

Has it literally ever occurred to you that we are very familiar with both, and just have an opinion that’s different from yours?

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?

 

[Umbran]

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?

So, he did not say that D&D could be used to emulate specific other games.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Ignoring all the optional rules that change how the game runs, and the fact that the gameplay process is less prescribed than games like Blades In The Dark, a game that is made to not break when modified is more flexible, yes.

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.

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. 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.

I think your assumption that Blades has more prescriptions here is a bit off. Nor is Blades a game that breaks when modified.

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 not at all a moot point. A game that is built to be modified is meaningfully different from a game that is not built for that. The most prominent difference is simply that the game built for modification is less likely to break with modification, but it's also a matter of game culture. I get a lot less flak when I talk about modifiying DnD than when I talk about modifying even WoD, much less Monster of The Week.

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.

Game culture has traditionally had a very DIY mentality, and I think that's alive and kicking across the board. I wouldn't give D&D nor more indie-minded games an edge here. Who can possibly gauge that? Look at the DMs Guild and there is tons of stuff for D&D. Go on itch.io and you'll see the same for all kinds of games.

Likewise, more GMs will mod a game that tells them to do what they want and "follow their bliss", than a game that is clearly built under the design ethos that the GM should follow the rules and trust the process or play something else.

What games insist that the game be played as is or that you should play something else?

 

[Umbran]

So between you and other posters, ..., are ignorant of both indie games…and D&D…awesome.

Has it literally ever occurred to you that we are very familiar with both, and just have an opinion that’s different from yours?

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.

 

[Staffan]

The implication from your examples is that Fate will be silly, while Age of Rebellion will be serious, which is far from the fact.

Who you are matters in a Fate game, yes. But the structure of that, in terms of developing events, is only formulaic if your GM has a structured approach to compels. GMs can be formulaic when playing any game at all.

I did not mean that Fate is silly like Blackadder. I mean, Fate was to some degree engineered out of Fudge in order to provide an engine for the Dresden Files RPG, and I wouldn't call Dresden Files silly.

My point was that Blackadder has a lot of structural similarity in each episode, and perhaps moreso between each series, in the same way that you can play Fate in many different settings and in different situations, but the system with compels and such push a certain narrative style. I won't say they force it, but the system certainly leans that way. Blackadder was just the first TV show that came to mind that combined superficial differences with structural similarities, because of the way it spans multiple eras.

Different systems care about different things, and in doing so they push different narratives. Let's look at two very different games: GURPS and Heroquest.

GURPS is a highly simulationist game. If you want to know if you can endure a particular hardship, you look at things like your Health, Will, various advantages and disadvantages, situational things like fatigue, and so on. You then make a roll based on these reasonably objective inputs to see how well you do.

Hero Quest, on the other hand, is more flexible. Among other things, Abilities can be more nebulous things, like personality traits, and personal values and such.

In GURPS, Sam and Frodo are toast in Shelob's lair. They're tiny little hobbitses, and Shelob is an ancient arachnid demi-god who knows every inch of her lair, and who is among the mightiest beings of the age. They're goners. Had they been mightier heroes, like Elrond or Gandalf, they might have had a chance, but no way they can do it as they are.

But in Hero Quest, Sam can find the strength in his loyalty to Frodo and manage to scare off Shelob by wounding her with Sting and then rescue Frodo and bring him through the lair. In other words, the two games are designed to tell very different stories.

Or take another example: Vampire 5th edition. Whenever you make a roll in V5, you replace some of your dice with Hunger dice, depending on how hungry you are. If you get certain results on these dice, you can either get a Bestial Failure or a Messy Crit, which both represent the vampiric Beast affecting you. Instead of just pushing a mook trying to bar your way to the side, you throw them across the room, breaking multiple bones in the process, because they DARED trying to stop you. This shows how vampires aren't fully human anymore, and have impulses that are hard to control. Keeping yourself well fed placates the Beast to some extent, but it won't be fully satisfied unless you drink a human to the death (non-lethal feeding can't take you below Hunger 1). Vampire always had "A monster I am, lest a monster I become" as one of its themes, but it hasn't really been shown mechanically until now.

This is a great example of a thing I’ve said many times in the past. A lot of the perceived inflexibility of D&D is actually just relics from the past and people ignoring that they aren’t necessarily a thing anymore.

In 5e, the gods don’t necessarily grant magical abilities. You can play a game with no extra planar beings, much less gods. Clerics and Paladins can be dedicated to ideals, rather than gods. And yet, people act like there is something in the rules that makes it so that gods give power to followers.

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. Clerics also play a very important meta-game role as healers, which means many parties don't feel complete without them. 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.

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.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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.

Actually wait, I went back and reread the post. I may have formatted the sentence in a way that contributed to the misunderstanding, but I did say that the other poster was saying that I was ignorant of D&D. I did not say that he was ignorant.

 

[hawkeyefan]

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 was the one who said that, and no, that's not what I meant. I'll cite your own words as an example of what I'm talking about:

This is a great example of a thing I’ve said many times in the past. A lot of the perceived inflexibility of D&D is actually just relics from the past and people ignoring that they aren’t necessarily a thing anymore.

In 5e, the gods don’t necessarily grant magical abilities. You can play a game with no extra planar beings, much less gods. Clerics and Paladins can be dedicated to ideals, rather than gods. And yet, people act like there is something in the rules that makes it so that gods give power to followers.

This is a purely cosmetic change. It's the kind that I'm talking about that gives the perception of flexibility. Sure, the settings are a bit different, but one that has divine class abilities as a gift from the gods and one that has the same class abilities attributed to some other fictional element is not all that different.

Changing the make believe associated with the game isn't system flexibility. This is one of the ways I think that flexibility is more "perceived" than actual.

The other is based on perceptions folks have about games with which they have little to no experience.

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.

It's incredibly structured. It's got rounds and turns and initiative and actions and bonus actions and move actions and reactions and difficulty classes and saving throws and stats and levels and spell levels all kinds of structure to it.

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?

It's not a rule, no. But it's as close as you can get to a rule without being a rule. It's referenced all throughout the books. And in discussion.

Yet, you're right, there will be some exceptions. And of course, a game could be played with 1 player and 1 GM, so there's always that exception, too.

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.

The vast majority of D&D rules are about violence.

I was referring more to the character level system and how ubiquitous it is throughout the game.

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.

Ignore what rules? I really don't know what you're talking about here.

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.

So the fact that D&D can deviate from the rules as presented by including optional rules or house rules is a sign of D&D's flexibility, but if I do the same with another game, I'm ignoring the rules?

Or did you mean something else here? Because it really sounds a bit unfair.

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.

Have you the data to prove this? Of course not. It's poppycock.

3. DnD is particularly flexible because it contains rather a lot of optional rules and systems that alter the gameplay in significant ways.

Well, I don't know about this. First, I think many other games allow all sorts of optional rules, too. Can you site games that as you mentioned earlier say "play this way or else play another game"?

Second, it depends on the amount of work "significant" is doing here. A cleric getting his spells from a god versus from the sun is, in my opinion, not all that significant from a game perspective.

The most common change I've seen made to D&D 5E rules usually relates to the rest/HP recovery system. People want the game to be "deadlier" or "grittier". Such a change has an impact on play, to be sure....but I don't know if I'd say it "significantly alters gameplay". Are there or can there be more severe changes? Sure. Would they significantly alter the gameplay? Hard to say given the subjective nature of "significant".

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.

Using the Forged in the Dark system to create something else IS hacking the game. I don't know why you hold this separate from someone coming up with a house rule for Blades or a homebrew setting for D&D.

There is an entire website and discord devoted to Blades in the Dark and a significant portion of that is people making changes to the game, either for their Blades game, or to use the system for some other setting or genre. You also may not see as much pushback because the default setting of Blades was designed and is presented with flexibility in mind.

It's not a common topic here because this site is more broadly focused, with a heavy leaning toward D&D. So maybe you're not seeing as wide a view of the hobby overall as you may think?

And again, if we're talking indie games in general, then I think you're even more off.

And I don't mean to imply that D&D doesn't have plenty of folks who houserule things.....I know they do. I'm just saying that it's not necessarily any more or less so with other games, and there's no way to really track it.

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.

Yeah, I don't know about that. I don't know what your experience is or what games you're talking about beyond D&D and BitD, but it just doesn't match what I know of those games.....the two games I spend the majority of my RPG time playing. And Blades is just one indie type game....there are so many others.

Look at Apocalypse World and the insane number of games it spawned. The variety is pretty incredible, not just in settings, but in changes or adjustments to the rules to deliver different experiences.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I was the one who said that, and no, that's not what I meant. I'll cite your own words as an example of what I'm talking about:


This is a purely cosmetic change. It's the kind that I'm talking about that gives the perception of flexibility. Sure, the settings are a bit different, but one that has divine class abilities as a gift from the gods and one that has the same class abilities attributed to some other fictional element is not all that different.

I’ve included actual examples of mechanical flexibility, but you chose to use instead an example of how people talk about lore as if it were a mechanical restriction of the system.

Changing the make believe associated with the game isn't system flexibility. This is one of the ways I think that flexibility is more "perceived" than actual.

Okay. It was an example someone else used to say that D&D is restricted, and I pointed out that it is just flavor, not an actual restrictionist the system.

The other is based on perceptions folks have about games with which they have little to no experience.

No. Assuming ignorance because people disagree with you is contemptible behavior.

It's incredibly structured. It's got rounds and turns and initiative and actions and bonus actions and move actions and reactions and difficulty classes and saving throws and stats and levels and spell levels all kinds of structure to it.

So…action resolution. Like I said. Okay?

It's not a rule, no. But it's as close as you can get to a rule without being a rule. It's referenced all throughout the books. And in discussion.

And yet, I’m not changing the rules at all by running a differently structured game. Or adventure. Or session.

Yet, you're right, there will be some exceptions. And of course, a game could be played with 1 player and 1 GM, so there's always that exception, too.

Which is flexibility.

The vast majority of D&D rules are about violence.

And yet, no rules that say, “you pick a quest in town, and then do a Delve, which consists of these phases.”

The One Ring, otoh, literally structures the whole process of hanging out at home, then going on a journey (which happens in a specific order that prescribes how you prep and how things play out), then doing the adventure, then going home again and maintaining your normal life (with structured rules on how that works), and structures how those can be interrupted by Audiences, Combat Encounters, and other pretty tightly prescribed scenes.

Very little is free form. Contrast with D&D , where pretty much only combat is more prescribed than “here is how you determine success or failure”, and even that has options I make it less structured and more free form (degrees of success, fail forward, etc, all function to make resolution less strictly determined by the dice outcome).

Ignore what rules? I really don't know what you're talking about here.

If you play Blades without doing Scores, you’re ignoring the rules of the game. If you play D&D without Delving into dungeons, you aren’t ignoring anything except some people’s expectations.

So the fact that D&D can deviate from the rules as presented by including optional rules or house rules is a sign of D&D's flexibility, but if I do the same with another game, I'm ignoring the rules?

Or did you mean something else here? Because it really sounds a bit unfair.

I don’t know how to be more clear on this part.

Ive laid out several aspects of flexibility. Mechanically, D&D is more flexible, because less of the game is prescribed.

Have you the data to prove this? Of course not. It's poppycock.

Of course. My experience is “poppycock”. Awesome.

Well, I don't know about this. First, I think many other games allow all sorts of optional rules, too. Can you site games that as you mentioned earlier say "play this way or else play another game"?

Second, it depends on the amount of work "significant" is doing here. A cleric getting his spells from a god versus from the sun is, in my opinion, not all that significant from a game perspective.

You keep harping on that. Why, when it wasn’t brought up as proof of mechanical flexibility?

The most common change I've seen made to D&D 5E rules usually relates to the rest/HP recovery system. People want the game to be "deadlier" or "grittier". Such a change has an impact on play, to be sure....but I don't know if I'd say it "significantly alters gameplay". Are there or can there be more severe changes? Sure. Would they significantly alter the gameplay? Hard to say given the subjective nature of "significant".

Making a long rest take multiple days is an enormous change to gameplay. The approach to dangerous situations changes dramatically. And it doesn’t matter what the most common changes you see are, flexibility is determined by what changes are available.

Using the Forged in the Dark system to create something else IS hacking the game. I don't know why you hold this separate from someone coming up with a house rule for Blades or a homebrew setting for D&D.

LOL Well then look at all the 3pp games based on 5e. Apparently they are modifications of the game, right? Except Adventures in Middle Earth is actually compatible with PHB 5e.

There is an entire website and discord devoted to Blades in the Dark and a significant portion of that is people making changes to the game, either for their Blades game, or to use the system for some other setting or genre. You also may not see as much pushback because the default setting of Blades was designed and is presented with flexibility in mind.

It's not a common topic here because this site is more broadly focused, with a heavy leaning toward D&D. So maybe you're not seeing as wide a view of the hobby overall as you may think?

yeah I’m just ignorant, again. Sure, bud.

And again, if we're talking indie games in general, then I think you're even more off.

And I don't mean to imply that D&D doesn't have plenty of folks who houserule things.....I know they do. I'm just saying that it's not necessarily any more or less so with other games, and there's no way to really track it.



Yeah, I don't know about that. I don't know what your experience is or what games you're talking about beyond D&D and BitD, but it just doesn't match what I know of those games.....the two games I spend the majority of my RPG time playing. And Blades is just one indie type game....there are so many others.

Look at Apocalypse World and the insane number of games it spawned. The variety is pretty incredible, not just in settings, but in changes or adjustments to the rules to deliver different experiences.

That’s a group of games. Apocalypse World is a specific game that does a fairly specific thing. It is certainly not the same game as Monster of The Week. Either 5e’s 3pp and public homebrew stuff is part of 5e’s versatility, or pbta games aren’t part of Apocalypse World’s flexibility. You can’t have it both ways.

 

[Campbell]

What I was mostly speaking to upthread is that in my experience the vast majority of people who play only D&D likes do not see the constraints they are operating under because they do not feel constraining to them. They like the game their playing. They don't have the same experiences that someone like me has because they have never really broken with more typical play processes. I say this is someone who spent years trying to make D&D fit my purposes. "I fought the law and the won" type experiences.

I think trying to analyze games, especially ones like D&D that have such strong cultural traditions as if they were not a strong culture of play in effect is deeply flawed. It's punishing other games for explicitly stating the stuff D&D leaves implied. I have experienced what happens when you try to bring in techniques from other games and D&D players are not ready for it. I have experienced a culture of play that is generally fine with some minor house rules, but trying to change the expectations of play has been pretty damn difficult.

I have also put in the reps running Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, Dogs in the Vineyard, Sorcerer, Monsterhearts, Masks and others for lengthy periods of time (multiple 6+ month games). I have seen how flexible these games are over long periods of play. It takes a lot of reps too. When the game is novel it can be easy to get drawn into just what's different about it. Once you have become really practiced at the skills involved which are pretty different you get to see how flexible the games really are.

I have also seen that while you might play a game set in post apocalyptic wasteland using D&D like procedures that just does not result in anything that comes close to the type of stories we get to experience when playing Apocalypse World because the games promote completely different views of the characters. The D&D type procedures are just not going to focus on the cyclical nature of violence, trust issues, and how broken characters can come together in the same way. D&D type procedures might get you Beyond the Thunderdome, but they won't really get you Fury Road. Both are awesome. They're just different.