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

 

[Manbearcat]

I think @Paul Farquhar already answered this adequately. I'm just glad that concussion head injury turned out to be false.


I don't ensure satisfying dramatic arcs happen in games I DM. I set up the world, opportunities and obstacles that can take the shape of environments, NPCs and monsters. Hopefully fun and dramatic story arcs evolve out of that but I'm not telling a story. I've built a world and the players interact with it.

I'm not an author, I'm running the world the PCs interact with.


Not really. They may make good efforts and fail miserably. Which in the grand scheme of things can be it's own reward.

To use your analogy if my team makes a goal, your team is not penalized. It's not about rewards and penalties it's about who achieves the goals of the game more effectively.



This is where your analogy really falls apart for me. Yes, in general I expect the PCs to win, at least in the long term. I do give them the opportunity to face obstacles that they will likely overcome. However, the first level PCs are always free to head out into the wilderness in search of a dragon.

I do give people fair warning, but they can do whatever they want.

Since I've rejected your previous assumptions, I also reject this statement.




Analogies are flawed as you stated. You can't just throw out a flawed analogy and not expect people to respond with a heavy dose of trying to relate your analogy back to what actually happens. Analogies only work if there are similarities, I don't see a lot of similarities between your analogy and D&D. Or any sport really.

If I'm playing football (American or not), there are a set of rules I must follow. Certain things that will be considered cheating that will be penalized. But the referees are not there to ensure that one team wins or not. The referee is not there to ensure that the home team wins dramatically by scoring a point during the last seconds of the game. The referee is there to ensure that the rules are followed.

The referee hat that DMs wear is the same. They're there to ensure that the rules are followed. The other hats? Well I'm not sure I can talk about those without giving examples from actual game experience which you don't want to seem to hear.

I was analogizing into sport to try to communicate the concept of competitive integrity better. Because I was charged with intellectual snobbery, I figured I’d build an analogous toy model showing how competitive integrity can be compromised in sport. This isn’t about your personal TTRPG play Oofta. Can we just focus on the toy model I constructed and remove you and your TTRPGing from the equation?

Do you understand the component parts of the toy model I created for sports? If so, do you understand the implications on the play and the participants (the referee and the players)? This toy model is a thing for youth sports and professional sports and gambling (where the paradigm for refereeing taking on a more active role changes the very nature of play).

 

[Eric V]

Do you actually want to talk about this or are you just actively wasting my time and my sincerity?

Do you want to tell me where you don’t understand the model or is this just an Internet thing that’s happening right now that would never happen in real life?

Just wanted to say, your examples have been constructive, well-thought out, and your patience is to be commended.

All over an issue which is fairly obvious: D&D lacks robust social mechanics. This statement is not up for debate; it's seen as a "feature" for those who enjoy that the "rules get out of the way." It's seen as a "bug" for those who feel they are overly simple. Neither of those preferences change the truth of the original statement that D&D lacks robust social mechanics.

This lack of robust mechanics (as compared to the fairly robust mechanics of combat) is a design choice. There is more design focus on combat than on the exploration and social pillars. This seems to have been done with intention, and has contributed to D&D being more popular than ever. Great for D&D fans! But as a rules set that I purchase, the focus on combat is fairly clear and purposeful. Maybe not 90%, but that was just hyperbole to prove a point and the focus on that number specifically was missing the point a bit, IMO.

But yeah, great work; wish you had been getting engaged responses.

 

[Oofta]

I was analogizing into sport to try to communicate the concept of competitive integrity better. Because I was charged with intellectual snobbery, I figured I’d build an analogous toy model showing how competitive integrity can be compromised in sport. This isn’t about your personal TTRPG play Oofta. Can we just focus on the toy model I constructed and remove you and your TTRPGing from the equation?

Do you understand the component parts of the toy model I created for sports? If so, do you understand the implications on the play and the participants (the referee and the players)? This toy model is a thing for youth sports and professional sports and gambling (where the paradigm for refereeing taking on a more active role changes the very nature of play).

Sticking on topic using a sports analogy that does not work and is not applicable to discussions of the D&D play cycle but we can't discuss D&D because that would mean we're not talking about an analogy that is not applicable does not work for me. Or something. I'm trying to engage in an honest conversation but your insistence that I did not answer your post the "correct" way doesn't help. An analogy with no similarity to topic being discussed is not constructive. Can I see your point? Sure. Does it apply in any way to D&D or to any of the RPG examples that have been given by others? That's what I disagree with.

To put it another way, I just googled "competitive integrity" and got the following definition:

Competitive integrity means that we want aspiring pros to have a fair shot at reaching the highest levels of play through merit-based competition. We will work tirelessly to ensure matches are won and lost based on a person’s skill and teamwork rather than external factors.​

I have a problem with applying competitive integrity to most RPGs, not just D&D. The game is not a competition. It's not even really about how good you are at playing D&D. It's about having fun engaging with a fantasy world with friends. Should the DM have integrity, should they be relatively unbiased and present the world the PCs are interacting with fairly? Yes. How you achieve that has little or nothing to do with the term.

Your analogy seems to be begging the question. I don't think anyone wants a referee playing favorites, but it simply doesn't apply in any meaningful way that I can tell. Either try a different analogy or try to get your point across using terms that are not from an advanced philosophy college course.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Just wanted to say, your examples have been constructive, well-thought out, and your patience is to be commended.

All over an issue which is fairly obvious: D&D lacks robust social mechanics. This statement is not up for debate; it's seen as a "feature" for those who enjoy that the "rules get out of the way." It's seen as a "bug" for those who feel they are overly simple. Neither of those preferences change the truth of the original statement that D&D lacks robust social mechanics.

This lack of robust mechanics (as compared to the fairly robust mechanics of combat) is a design choice. There is more design focus on combat than on the exploration and social pillars. This seems to have been done with intention, and has contributed to D&D being more popular than ever. Great for D&D fans! But as a rules set that I purchase, the focus on combat is fairly clear and purposeful. Maybe not 90%, but that was just hyperbole to prove a point and the focus on that number specifically was missing the point a bit, IMO.

But yeah, great work; wish you had been getting engaged responses.

Lovely post, but to touch on the feature/bug -- I look at it as neither but rather just what the system is. When I pick up 5e to play a game, I'm not picking it up to do courtly intrigue because that's not a particular strength of the game. I do pick it up to do the zero-to-hero heroic story that D&D does so well. In that, there may be some social stuff, but it's not going to be a focus of the game, so the weaker structure can actually aid. I don't really want to do the work to add social mechanics that have teeth into 5e because I'm not interested in using the system for that! To me, doing so will always be a bolt-on, halfway measure and that juice isn't going to be worth the squeeze to me. But, then, I also don't have the particular feeling that 5e needs to be my only game option and so should fill all niches. I play it for the niche it's designed for and play something else for other things.

 

[Eric V]

Lovely post, but to touch on the feature/bug -- I look at it as neither but rather just what the system is. When I pick up 5e to play a game, I'm not picking it up to do courtly intrigue because that's not a particular strength of the game. I do pick it up to do the zero-to-hero heroic story that D&D does so well. In that, there may be some social stuff, but it's not going to be a focus of the game, so the weaker structure can actually aid. I don't really want to do the work to add social mechanics that have teeth into 5e because I'm not interested in using the system for that! To me, doing so will always be a bolt-on, halfway measure and that juice isn't going to be worth the squeeze to me. But, then, I also don't have the particular feeling that 5e needs to be my only game option and so should fill all niches. I play it for the niche it's designed for and play something else for other things.

I completely agree; I believe I posted earlier that I would find 5e a bizarre choice for someone who doesn't like combat. I was just trying to point out that the relative merits of robust social mechanics or thin social mechanics are irrelevant when asking if the rules set of 5e actually has social mechanics as robust as those for combat.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I have a problem with applying competitive integrity to most RPGs, not just D&D. The game is not a competition. It's not even really about how good you are at playing D&D. It's about having fun engaging with a fantasy world with friends. Should the DM have integrity, should they be relatively unbiased and present the world the PCs are interacting with fairly? Yes. How you achieve that has little or nothing to do with the term.

Are you interested in having the events of play be challenging to the players? Do you select opponents for them that are dangerous? That are suitable challenges to whatever level the characters are?

Do you ever find yourself softballing things? Where for whatever reason, you ease up on them?

Sure, we’re all pretending and doing so to have fun. That goal is present in every RPG. But somehow I doubt that you’d continually throw CR 1/2 goblins at a party of 10th level characters because it wouldn’t constitute a suitable challenge and because challenge is part of what makes the game fun.

Start there and then maybe you’ll see the points being made.

 

[Oofta]

Are you interested in having the events of play be challenging to the players? Do you select opponents for them that are dangerous? That are suitable challenges to whatever level the characters are?

Do you ever find yourself softballing things? Where for whatever reason, you ease up on them?

Sure, we’re all pretending and doing so to have fun. That goal is present in every RPG. But somehow I doubt that you’d continually throw CR 1/2 goblins at a party of 10th level characters because it wouldn’t constitute a suitable challenge and because challenge is part of what makes the game fun.

Start there and then maybe you’ll see the points being made.

What's your point? I'm not being sarcastic here, I really don't understand what you're getting at.

I tried to link an analogy to the topic of this forum and thread. When I did that I was told that D&D wasn't relevant. The topic of the thread is about whether D&D is 90% combat. Unless you discard the parts that aren't integrally tied to specific rules, I would say that in most games the answer is no. What does competitive integrity have to do with the topic, or even this D&D forum? If you can't show how competitive integrity applies to D&D I don't see why it even enters the discussion.

 

[hawkeyefan]

What's your point? I'm not being sarcastic here, I really don't understand what you're getting at.

I tried to link an analogy to the topic of this forum and thread. When I did that I was told that D&D wasn't relevant. The topic of the thread is about whether D&D is 90% combat. Unless you discard the parts that aren't integrally tied to specific rules, I would say that in most games the answer is no. What does competitive integrity have to do with the topic, or even this D&D forum? If you can't show how competitive integrity applies to D&D I don't see why it even enters the discussion.

I just tried to show you. I asked a few questions. If you answered them, then I think you’d see how competitive integrity applies to D&D. Or at least, you’d have a starting point for discussion.

But instead of considering the questions and how you’d answer them, you opted to challenge why I’d even ask them.

The way this relates to D&D, and at least relating to some of what @Manbearcat was talking about, do you think the different roles of the DM in 5e can at times be at odds with one another? And if so, do you think having clear rules and processes help mitigate that conflict or somehow make it worse?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

What is your support that the social mechanics of 5e are robust? That they are equal but different to the combat mechanics. How do you justify this assessment?

See the bottom of this post, but putting aside that robust doesn’t mean what you seem to want it to mean, I’ve answered these questions several times in reply to multiple people. I’m not going to repeat myself.

What can I say? Entire modules are predicated on precisely this. Most recently The FinalEnemy in Ghosts ofSaltmarsh.

Can you explain? I’m not really seeing what you mean reading it. Again, I suspect that what you are trying to communicate is not what is coming across.

One person's robust is another person's artificial and constraining.

Yep. Not only that, but as I explain below, robust =\= detailed and tightly defined. The two ideas are orthogonal.

All over an issue which is fairly obvious: D&D lacks robust social mechanics. This statement is not up for debate; it's seen as a "feature" for those who enjoy that the "rules get out of the way." It's seen as a "bug" for those who feel they are overly simple. Neither of those preferences change the truth of the original statement that D&D lacks robust social mechanics.

It’s absolutely up for debate, because y’all are literally using “robust” incorrectly. At best, you’re insisting on a very particular usage that is not the primary usage.

Robust means sturdy and strong. It does not mean detailed, specific, or anything else it would have to mean for the above to be true.

5e has robust social rules because the rules work very well, are hard to break, can stand up very sturdily to modification or added subsystems, etc. 4e didn’t in the original iteration, because skill challenges didn’t work well, broke easily, and didn’t stand up to modification.

I would argue that nothing in 3.5 D&D is robust, but the vastly simpler and less hyper-specified Monster of The Week is very robust in most aspects of the system.

 

[hawkeyefan]

5e has robust social rules because the rules work very well, are hard to break, can stand up very sturdily to modification or added subsystems, etc. 4e didn’t in the original iteration, because skill challenges didn’t work well, broke easily, and didn’t stand up to modification.

Are DCs to be shared with players prior to a roll being made? What do the robust rules say?