D&D 5E Is D&D 90% Combat?

In response to Cubicle 7’s announcement that their next Doctor Who role playing game would be powered by D&D 5E, there was a vehement (and in some places toxic) backlash on social media. While that backlash has several dimensions, one element of it is a claim that D&D is mainly about combat.

Head of D&D Ray Winninger disagreed (with snark!), tweeting "Woke up this morning to Twitter assuring me that [D&D] is "ninety percent combat." I must be playing (and designing) it wrong." WotC's Dan Dillon also said "So guess we're gonna recall all those Wild Beyond the Witchlight books and rework them into combat slogs, yeah? Since we did it wrong."

So, is D&D 90% combat?



And in other news, attacking C7 designers for making games is not OK.

D&D 5E - Doctors & Daleks - Cubicle 7 Brings Doctor Who to D&D 5E

Cubicle 7 -- makers of the official Doctor Who roleplaying game -- has announced that the Doctor will officially be coming to 5E soon under the name Doctors and Daleks. There are no dates or details yet, over than that the Doctors and Daleks Player's Guide will launch 'soon'. A NEW COMPANION...

www.enworld.org

 

[Umbran]

My cleric wants to preach to the masses. He's going to spend a week (to pick a random number) preaching to the masses. Does he convince anyone to come to his temple?

In D&D, how would you even start to do that?

In 5e? Xanathar's "Downtime Activities" seems like the appropriate basis - either "religious service" or "work", depending on what seems like the most analogous. I might choose "Work", with a Charisma (Religion or Performance) check, and the money gained is a measure of donations, which is then a measure of how many people came.

What Xanathar's (and D&D overall) lacks are mechanics for growing a congregation beyond that. But it isn't even clear if that fits under "social mechanics".

 

[Jer]

Let’s be honest here. Most of us have played DnD so long that we don’t even think too much about how it does stuff. It’s so second nature.

Which really hits home when you start trying out other systems.

I remember our ancient 007 games of yesteryear looking a LOT like DnD very quickly. It’s hard to break out of those habits.

It's not just that it's hard to break out of habits - it's also that sometimes the players aren't as interested in playing a different game as the GM is in running it.

My regular table of players have pretty good buy in on any action/adventure type game I want to run. But I can usually forget about running a slower burn investigative or spy type game with them because about half the table wants action/adventure when we sit down to play. It's not always combat but they want action of some kind and researching leads or interacting with informants isn't why they play RPGs. So they'll either tune out or we'll drag the game into being less investigative, more actiony just out of a tendency to make sure everyone's having fun. (Fortunately when the whole group can't meet it's often the ones who are more into the investigative games who can, so we can run one-shots to satisfy my overwhelming need to run mystery games occasionaly).

 

[Ovinomancer]

In 5e? Xanathar's "Downtime Activities" seems like the appropriate basis - either "religious service" or "work", depending on what seems like the most analogous. I might choose "Work", with a Charisma (Religion or Performance) check, and the money gained is a measure of donations, which is then a measure of how many people came.

What Xanathar's (and D&D overall) lacks are mechanics for growing a congregation beyond that. But it isn't even clear if that fits under "social mechanics".

To recap, to the question "how do you do this in D&D" the answer is "there's no rules for it, but if you wanted to do a different thing and treat it as work for income, you could do this thing." Did I miss anything?

 

[Ovinomancer]

It's not just that it's hard to break out of habits - it's also that sometimes the players aren't as interested in playing a different game as the GM is in running it.

My regular table of players have pretty good buy in on any action/adventure type game I want to run. But I can usually forget about running a slower burn investigative or spy type game with them because about half the table wants action/adventure when we sit down to play. It's not always combat but they want action of some kind and researching leads or interacting with informants isn't why they play RPGs. So they'll either tune out or we'll drag the game into being less investigative, more actiony just out of a tendency to make sure everyone's having fun. (Fortunately when the whole group can't meet it's often the ones who are more into the investigative games who can, so we can run one-shots to satisfy my overwhelming need to run mystery games occasionaly).

Oh, sure, no one should be suggesting that all tables are good fits for all games. You have to tailor. Still, habit is a big hurdle.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It's not just that it's hard to break out of habits - it's also that sometimes the players aren't as interested in playing a different game as the GM is in running it.

I think this is an interesting element of the discussion. The difference in play experience from one game to another compared to the difference in GM experience from one game to another. Those differences don’t always match.

Some games may improve the GM experience, but do little to improve the player side of things. Or, very often, may require more effort on the part of the players. Some players may jump at such a change, but others will balk.

Other games may improve things for the players, but come with an increased workload for the GM. And so on.

D&D very much relies on the GM and what they prepare for play. This is by design. Many games are designed similarly. Some games are not. If moving from D&D to a game that’s designed differently, the GM and the players will hopefully like the change in how their role works, but first they’ll have to understand the changes.

If there’s a mismatch there, or if the changes aren’t really understood, then there’ll be issues. Some players don’t want to go through that, even if things may improve after they’ve had time to acclimate. I think for many people, they’ve been playing for years or decades, and so any shift to a position where they’re not proficient is seen as some kind of step backward.

 

[Parmandur]

Do you have examples of this? I ask because I found them stringy and easily forgotten. Honest question, are they expanded on in supplements and/or given further depth in players guides for published modules and campaigns?

I mean, it's all in the PHB, though Xanathar's does offer some more there, particularly the lifepath generator.

Just knowing that I'm a Noble or a Soldier makes a difference in approach to my Fighter's decision making and interaction with the world, and then the traits offer some more nice hooks on which to hang characterization: I've seen people turn their rolled personality traits statements into catchphrases, for instance.

 

[Umbran]

To recap, to the question "how do you do this in D&D" the answer is "there's no rules for it, but if you wanted to do a different thing and treat it as work for income, you could do this thing." Did I miss anything?

You put emphasis on "there's no rules for it" as if this were surprising. Game rulebooks are tiny thing, as compared to the vastness of all the things that people might try to do. If you want a game to be tractable, it cannot have a rule for everything. It may have rules you can reinterpret or modify.

The original question was, "Does he convince anyone to come to his temple? In D&D, how would you even start to do that?" I reinterpreted an existing rule to give a proxy for how many people come to the temple. I am using "work for income" to be "work for getting people into temple, which just happens to generate a bit of income, if you want".

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Do you have examples of this?

It's one of those things that varies between players - and not in a randomised fashion. Players learn off each other, so for one group backgrounds might be a big thing, for another they are pretty much ignored.

 

[Ovinomancer]

You put emphasis on "there's no rules for it" as if this were surprising. Game rulebooks are tiny thing, as compared to the vastness of all the things that people might try to do. If you want a game to be tractable, it cannot have a rule for everything. It may have rules you can reinterpret or modify.

The original question was, "Does he convince anyone to come to his temple? In D&D, how would you even start to do that?" I reinterpreted an existing rule to give a proxy for how many people come to the temple. I am using "work for income" to be "work for getting people into temple, which just happens to generate a bit of income, if you want".

Yeah, you shifted the intent -- he was clearly trying to get new people to join the congregation, not make money (which is a rather crass view, in my opinion). And the response was "there's no rules for that." Which didn't answer the question, which was "how would you even start to do this [in 5e]?" You didn't really address that question, so I was recapping to make sure that you didn't think you'd addressed that question but I failed to understand how. I see now that you didn't.

It's actually an interesting question, and the reason rules don't exist, or even really guidance, is also interesting. D&D isn't about getting people to join your religion. It's not a focus of the game. So the game doesn't provide anything for this, or even things near this, because it's not what the game is trying to do. Other games do include things like this, and so have easily reachable methods to answer this question. I could pretty trivially answer this question in a number of other systems, but I stumble with 5e because there's nothing like it in the design of the game. I could come up with something, sure, but it would be fairly arbitrary. And then I'm not sure what additional members in a congregation even means in 5e terms -- what do I get for this? Your answer -- coin -- is the least interesting one to me. Unless the PC is a con man, in which case we've subtly moved the pea a bit.

 

[billd91]

Yeah, you shifted the intent -- he was clearly trying to get new people to join the congregation, not make money (which is a rather crass view, in my opinion). And the response was "there's no rules for that." Which didn't answer the question, which was "how would you even start to do this [in 5e]?" You didn't really address that question, so I was recapping to make sure that you didn't think you'd addressed that question but I failed to understand how. I see now that you didn't.

I don't know why equating increased traffic at a temple with cash is crass considering the role of donations in supporting a religion and its ongoing operations. More people = more donations, generally speaking.