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

 

[billd91]

I don't know. If we're using downtime rules to find out how much money you make proselyting the masses, then it appears to be a game of church management -- or self enrichment. I pointed out this was a tad crass, you fired back it isn't, so I thought you must have some insight into how 5e does financial management of congregations. I very much know 5e isn't an economy simulator; I wasn't confused on this issue, and I was asking how an answer that provides a monetary result actually works out.

If it's a social matter, pointing out how to repurpose a downtime activity to find out how much money you make seems to have missed the mark. It doesn't answer the question at all, because it gives an answer in gold pieces, not in people attracted to the church. I asked how you can tell who was attracted with this - you seem to have missed this. But regardless, the goal post shift from (paraphrase) "how do we determine how many people I convert" into "how much money do I make" is not getting to the point being made. 5e just doesn't do this well, and so anything done is arbitrary (which I've already said). The idea you've had that how much money you make using downtime rules is a proxy for how many you converted is left pretty open -- how many people does 10 gold coins represent? How many does 1 represent?

As for what 5e is for, I covered this ground already in the first post of mine you quoted (you snipped it out). Telling me the same thing now as if you're giving me new stuff seems pretty odd.

As for are there games where growing a congregation could be an important question? Yup. Are they specific about that one question? No, that's a silly thing to say.

Since your typical church lives on donations from congregants, it's not crass to look at a method of generating income by working and translating that into people coming to your work (particularly since that's what the work entails). That it doesn't automatically generate the exact nature of the people coming by doesn't really matter. Nobles, commoners - that's what human decision-making is for, not roll tables. The choice of it being a well-heeled noble or a bunch of commoners can be an interesting way to generate more interesting interactions and role play.
At the very least, it gives you a starting point for thinking about how a D&D preacher PC might make use of stuff already in D&D to look at bringing people by their temple, something your obtuse tangents obscure.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Since your typical church lives on donations from congregants, it's not crass to look at a method of generating income by working and translating that into people coming to your work (particularly since that's what the work entails). That it doesn't automatically generate the exact nature of the people coming by doesn't really matter. Nobles, commoners - that's what human decision-making is for, not roll tables. The choice of it being a well-heeled noble or a bunch of commoners can be an interesting way to generate more interesting interactions and role play.
At the very least, it gives you a starting point for thinking about how a D&D preacher PC might make use of stuff already in D&D to look at bringing people by their temple, something your obtuse tangents obscure.

Sigh. Are churches in D&D typical? Forget that question. The ask was "if I spend a week proselytizing, how many people join my faith?" The answer that you're arguing for is "X gold coins worth, which goes to the PC directly because we have no way to determine, nor is it something worth doing, how much money it costs to run a church." You can keep spinning around this, if you like, but I've finding the increasing twistiness of the argument to be disheartening.

 

[Umbran]

You keep asserting this. Which, fine. You like something I don't think I would.

I think you may have lost the context of this. I wasn't trying to convince anyone they would like it. I was addressing a difficulty in trying to make satisfying social rules. So... bit of a strawman there.

But can you point to a free example of what your talking about?

The above said, fine, an example. There are several that might do. The first example that comes to mind is Fate, if only because the mechanics for what we might call Combat, Exploration, and Social resolution are exactly the same. They can interweave seamlessly, so that the Paladin could attack the Black Knight with a sword, while the Squire throws in insults about the Black Knight's form and honor, and both can be equally effective in the fight.

So, in Fate Accelerated, we could have that fight going on thusly:

Spoiler: Because it is long

The Squire launches an insult, saying he's seen better sword skills on the duck he roasted for the Paladin's dinner last night. He rolls 4dF, adds +2 for his Clever attribute, and adds +2 for his Scathing Sarcasm stunt. Maybe he gets a total of +6.

To resist, the Knight rolls 4dF, adds +3 for his Forceful trait, spends a fate point, and adds +2 for his Grim Determination Aspect. But rolls badly, and only gets a net +1. The Squire has Succeeded with Style, and has created the aspect "Flustered" on the knight, with a free tag that he allows the Paladin to use.

The Paladin goes next trying to run the Black Knight through with his Magic Sword. He Rolls 4dF, adds +3 for his Forceful trait, adds +2 for his Best with a Blade stunt, and tags the Flustered trait for another +2. He holds off spending a Fate point on his Magic Sword to see if he will need a re-roll...

The Black knight will roll to defend, and if the Paladin wins, the night will take Stress equal to the difference in their scores.

And so on.

Cortex Prime takes the same route, in that the rules are the same for whatever challenge you face - you assemble dice pools for physical or social challenges in the same way, just based off different character traits. And, like Fate, in many cases they can mix and match in the same challenge - a challenge is then no longer specifically Social or Combat - it is just a challenge. Any approach that makes narrative sense is fair game, and the mechanics don't change.

On the other hand, I don't see why I can't make a judgement call based on my preferences and what people have explained.

You can. Go ahead. Judge away. I don't care, as this is orthogonal to what I was discussing. Go use what you want and leave me out of it.

 

[billd91]

Sigh. Are churches in D&D typical? Forget that question. The ask was "if I spend a week proselytizing, how many people join my faith?" The answer that you're arguing for is "X gold coins worth, which goes to the PC directly because we have no way to determine, nor is it something worth doing, how much money it costs to run a church." You can keep spinning around this, if you like, but I've finding the increasing twistiness of the argument to be disheartening.

Who cares how much money it costs to run the church? It's not relevant in this case. That's twistiness you're adding to the discussion, not anyone else. Umbran suggested that using downtime procedures for work could be used to model a PC preaching and generating a result that could be a starting point for determining people coming through the doors of the temple. Not particularly twisty or crass before you got ahold of it.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Who cares how much money it costs to run the church? It's not relevant in this case. That's twistiness you're adding to the discussion, not anyone else. Umbran suggested that using downtime procedures for work could be used to model a PC preaching and generating a result that could be a starting point for determining people coming through the doors of the temple. Not particularly twisty or crass before you got ahold of it.

Okay, I got 10 gp of people this week. How many was that? You've replaced the answer to the question with what you're claiming is a proxy, but the question is still the same, we've just added a middleman. We still don't have an answer. 10 gp could be 1 wealthy merchant, or 100 paupers paying a copper each. Those answers have very different effects on the fiction and what might go forward from here. You can't just drop in a undefined proxy and say "we've advanced." You haven't, the question is still unanswered.

 

[Umbran]

Who cares how much money it costs to run the church? It's not relevant in this case. That's twistiness you're adding to the discussion, not anyone else. Umbran suggested that using downtime procedures for work could be used to model a PC preaching and generating a result that could be a starting point for determining people coming through the doors of the temple. Not particularly twisty or crass before you got ahold of it.

Yeah. I suggested using the typical result for work as a proxy for how many come in. Whether there's actual money collected in the fiction is beside the point.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Yeah. I suggested using the typical result for work as a proxy for how many come in. Whether there's actual money collected in the fiction is beside the point.

What is the proxy? Is it 10 gold per person, 1 gold per person, .1 gold per person? I mean, we don't know because this proxy doesn't answer the question or even provide insight or estimates for the answer. You changed people converting to a faith into gold pieces, and haven't explained how gold pieces answer the question. Proxies are useful when you cannot measure a thing but you can measure the proxy, but only then if you have a good model for how the proxy relates to the thing you want to know. Gold pieces doesn't relate at all to "how many did I convert to my faith this week?" via any model that provides any real use. It just provided coin, which in 5e is one of the least interesting things the game actually deals with.

And the proxy provide zero fictional details with which to do anything -- there's no more play to gold pieces. It's done, nothing more to do there, until you resolve gold pieces back into people that you can fictionally leverage in play. And if you do that, if you resolve this proxy-that-isn't-a-proxy, then we're left with the question "why didn't we just go ahead and do this?"

 

[tetrasodium]

Okay, I got 10 gp of people this week. How many was that? You've replaced the answer to the question with what you're claiming is a proxy, but the question is still the same, we've just added a middleman. We still don't have an answer. 10 gp could be 1 wealthy merchant, or 100 paupers paying a copper each. Those answers have very different effects on the fiction and what might go forward from here. You can't just drop in a undefined proxy and say "we've advanced." You haven't, the question is still unanswered.

What is the proxy? Is it 10 gold per person, 1 gold per person, .1 gold per person? I mean, we don't know because this proxy doesn't answer the question or even provide insight or estimates for the answer. You changed people converting to a faith into gold pieces, and haven't explained how gold pieces answer the question. Proxies are useful when you cannot measure a thing but you can measure the proxy, but only then if you have a good model for how the proxy relates to the thing you want to know. Gold pieces doesn't relate at all to "how many did I convert to my faith this week?" via any model that provides any real use. It just provided coin, which in 5e is one of the least interesting things the game actually deals with.

And the proxy provide zero fictional details with which to do anything -- there's no more play to gold pieces. It's done, nothing more to do there, until you resolve gold pieces back into people that you can fictionally leverage in play. And if you do that, if you resolve this proxy-that-isn't-a-proxy, then we're left with the question "why didn't we just go ahead and do this?"

Why does it matter? It seems like your missing a step. What impact on play does congregation size have on gameplay? Do they count as some kind of follower/henchmen type rules addition? Are they being used towards the old epic level handbook deific levels based on followers?... didn't that need huge numbers? Did I miss something?

 

[Staffan]

Is the system and score transparent? Do the characters know where they stand and how to gain (or I guess lose) influence?

Semi-transparent. You can figure out what someone's intimacies are either by educated guesses based on roleplaying ("That guy sure is talking a lot about the proud history of his people, so I'll try to appeal to his patriotism."), or by actively trying to discern them which is resolved by a roll. Of course, the public agenda and persona of someone is not always the true one. There's also a sidebar about different ways to treat difficulty levels as secrets or not, depending on play style. If you're rolling a Bargain to present a potential ally with riches and attempting to get them to help you in an upcoming battle, some players are cool with separating player knowledge of a failed roll from character knowledge, and some aren't.

 

[Oofta]

...

You can. Go ahead. Judge away. I don't care, as this is orthogonal to what I was discussing. Go use what you want and leave me out of it.

I appreciate the example. But why the attitude? I was just trying to give some friendly feedback. But statements like

Option C.1 - Most folks have so little experience with extensive social mechanics that they don't know what they want from them, so that it is hard to make any of them seem good.

To me come off as "if you only tried it you'd like it". That's all. Sorry if I offended.