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

 

[Paul Farquhar]

um, are you assuming that Monopoly is a role playing game?

Well, I have to pretend to be a person who is interested in making money, does that count?

 

[Ovinomancer]

(1) It's not just a longstanding form of TTRPGs, but also boardgames. One of the things that I have learned time and time again from playing board/card games with different people is that people have their house rules for these games that they grew up with and modified over time. Sometimes they are shocked to discover that they have been playing with house rules, rather than the standard rules, their entire life. I experienced this several times when playing board games with my partner (e.g., Uno, Monopoly, etc.) and I forced us to play according to the rules as written rather than either of our disparate family house rules.

(2) As you say, it is a longstanding form of the game. There are many TTRPGs outside of the Dragon Game family that likewise admit that once the book/rules are in the table's hand, there is not much that the designer can do about how that table chooses to play it. It is an admission of the TTRPG equivalent of the "death of the author" idea: either "la mort du créateur" or "la mort du concepteur." Unless you are stuck playing Jumanji, the game in your hands is yours to do with as you like.

100%

But this becomes useless when talking about how the game works. It's like if we're talking about how Monopoly plays, and I'm using the rulebook and you're telling me that putting fees/fines/taxes in the middle of the board and paying it out to whoever lands on Free Parking. Your house rule for this (while common) isn't actually part of the rules. So when I talk about how Monopoly does something, and am speaking to the rules of the game, interjections about how Free Parking house rules work are talking about a different game -- a slightly different game, but a different game. And that one change can, by personal experience, have large impacts on the game.

 

[Ovinomancer]

um, are you assuming that Monopoly is a role playing game?

In an extremely vague sense, it actually is. But, that aside, no, I'm speaking to it as a game. RPGs are games. They include more roleplaying than many other games (the Monopoly discussion), but that doesn't change the game part. There's no reason that RPGs get a special pass in looking at how the game works just because there's some roleplaying involved.

 

[Plaguescarred]

D&D has 3 pillars with which any group can make more or less use of; combat, exploration and roleplay social interactions. Some campaign are more combat focused, having less place for exploration or social. Others are more roleplay focused, relying less on combat or exploration and others more exploration focused than the other pillars. And some that use a fair mix of each, varying in chapters as the campaign progress etc...

To say D&D is 90% combat is not necessarily false, but it's simply one way to experience the game out of many others.

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

You're mistaking me entirely. I don't care about the outcome, I care about the how. No two D&D games are likely to have the same outcome even if they use the rules. How you get to the outcomes can be the same, though -- did you use the rules given or did you do something else, and if something else, what?

This still labors under the assumption that only one rule can come into play at a given time.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

D&D has 3 pillars with which any group can make more or less use of; combat, exploration and roleplay social interactions. Some campaign are more combat focused, having less place for exploration or social. Others are more roleplay focused, relying less on combat or exploration and others more exploration focused than the other pillars. And some that use a fair mix of each, varying in chapters as the campaign progress etc...

To say D&D is 90% combat is not necessarily false, but it's simply one way to experience the game out of many others.

I think what the disconnect comes down to, is that some people value mechanical “teeth” to a degree and in a way that means that any part of a game that puts the consequences purely in the narrative via the conversational mechanic of the game, rather than prescribing any direct mechanical consequences, is a part of the system that essentially doesn’t exist.

I obviously find this position farcical, but it isn’t exactly unheard of.

 

[Oofta]

This still labors under the assumption that only one rule can come into play at a given time.

To me the big question is - why would you care if two groups had a different outcome? Are both groups having fun? That's all that matters.

 

[Ovinomancer]

This still labors under the assumption that only one rule can come into play at a given time.

No, it doesn't, and it's very odd you keep insisting that it does. Multiple rules can be invoked at the same time. That's kinda obvious -- if I'm resolving an attack roll I'm using those rules, rules for my class, rules for proficiency bonuses, rules for advantage/disadvantage, rules for AC, rules for magic items, rules for all kinds of things. If I slip in there a rule that says you get +2 to your attack roll if you announce in a singsong, then I can point to that difference directly and even infer what effect it will have on play that makes that play look different from play without that added house rule.

 

[Campbell]

Do you disagree then? Do you not think all other RPGs are virtually unknown outside of the community?

Does it matter when discussing games based on their qualities?

 

[Hussar]

Have you played the Planescape: Torment CRPG? It might be relevant to note that whilst based on the 2nd edition rules, it departs quite significantly. And that's creative, not a game engine thing - Icewind Dale uses much the same engine and is much closer to the 2nd edition ruleset.

Played it for about an hour, loathed it, turned it off and never looked at it again. And I’ve played baldurs gate and ice wind dale multiple times.