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

 

[Oofta]

Alright, this is probably going to be my final contribution to the thread.



Let's do like Inigo Montoya and go back to the beginning.

This is what you said:



Now that initial statement that I responded to looks a hair different than what you've posted above. Initially it was "I don't see anything wrong with wanting to play that way (a competitive gaming environment)" and now its "I loathe competitive sport" and "a majority of people on both sides of the argument reject this idea."

But this is all an aside...because its mostly an incorrect understanding of what I'm trying to convey with my intellectual snobbery. I'm going repost the first part of my initial response to you and then I'm going to stay as far away from sport as possible since you've said above that it makes you see red (and people who are seeing red don't do their best communicating or considering).



So let me try something different. Let us try the effects of division of labor in your standard workplace.

You know how the structure of a work environment fails when one person has too much placed upon them while another has too little (yet their compensation is roughly the same)? You know how this in turn undermines both the chemistry of the workplace and incentive structures toward individual hard work + pursuit of excellence and collective hard work + pursuit of excellence?

That is an example of the competitive integrity inherent to a system failing.

The actual agency and responsibilities toward excellence and production of an individual is disconnected from how the workplace model purports to divide those things among a collective of folks (a collective of which that alleges to pursue excellence in both (a) the chemistry of work environment and (b) whatever product the collective is putting out).

So singular individuals become disincentivized both toward competing internally with themselves to improve their capabilities and to compete as a cohesive unit toward achieving the idealized version of their unit's capabilities.

This is all due to a loss of integrity at the division of labor/agency level, individual responsibility level, and shared responsibility level. Therefore, incentive structures collapse and dysfunctional individual behavior ensues and a dysfunctional collective emerges (that simultaneously becomes intolerable to work in and fails in its effort to compete toward and then achieve their idealized version of themselves).

This is what I'm talking about. Its when meritocracy becomes totally dysfunctional. There is a marketed idea of what the workplace culture, division of labor/agency, and incentive structures is supposed to look like...and then there is the corrupt, dysfunctional version that has actually emerged (because of a host of reasons). The integrity of interpersonal competition and intrapersonal competition and team competition (toward both achieving their "best individual self" and toward outcompeting the marketplace) collapses.

I've been in groups with no leader, no one to make the final decision. It was either dysfunctional or someone became the de facto leader. If you have an autocratic supervisor it falls apart of course. Just like if you have an autocratic DM that doesn't work with the group.

I'll repeat my question from above: what rules could you possibly implement without changing the very nature of D&D that would stop bad DMing?

---

One last attempt.

Imagine a game Ouija. Everyone's hands are on the planchette. Imagine we're supposed to secretly not secretly kinda take take turns guiding the planchette so we can each contribute to the creepy story of the spirit we're connecting with.

Except...

One person keeps applying too much pressure to the planchette and forcing repeated responses toward their own designs on this "spiritual interaction." Instead of us all contributing relatively equally to this (likely incoherent) creepy story, one of us has an outsized influence on the creative propulsion that produces the whole experience.

We're now having a bad time and we don't give a crap where the planchette goes or what creepy ghost story emerges. We're not going to put forth our best creative effort. We're not going to work hard to build off of what came before. Hell, one of us (or more) might make overt efforts to screw up the whole thing (acting very forcefully with the planchette or saying silly, genre-bending nonsense when they wrest the planchette from the player who has been overwhelmingly controlling it).

Roughly the same concept.

---

This is not saying this is what all D&D play looks like.

This is not saying this is what your (or others) D&D play looks like.

This is trying to demonstrate the concept and how things can go wildly pear-shaped because of extreme integrity loss.

In Quija, someone is pushing the planchette whether they acknowledge it or not. That's how it works.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Are you sure this is what he's saying?

No. I'm not even sure if they are for or against the original question. It's my best guess.

 

[jgsugden]

I've played in games with 95% combat, and games that were 10% combat. How much combat is there in your game? That is 75% up to the DM, and 25% up to the players.

Well, that is absoluely accurate and undeniable. I wish someone had said that 3 weeks ago so that we wouldn't have had 3 weeks of pointless debate.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I don't see anyone stating that the DM should have integrity and run the game fairly. But what does that mean? That's what I've been arguing. We're not playing a board game. If the DM makes decisions that are not controlled by the entire group, they can always tip things in their favor if they want.

Nobody ever seems to address that though or how more detailed rules would fix a perceived problem. There will always be bad DMs, you can't constrain them to the point of nonexistence.

The way the game deals with bad DMs is you don't have to play with them. A bad DM can't do any harm if they have no players.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Well, that is absoluely accurate and undeniable. I wish someone had said that 3 weeks ago so that we wouldn't have had 3 weeks of pointless debate.

I'm pretty sure someone (lots of people) did say that. The issue seems to be some people can't accept that not everyone plays D&D like they do.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I personally prefer limited rules outside of combat, even though out-of-combat stuff is as or more important than combat. That makes the non-combat stuff quite meaningful to me and my group. You want a different game.

The non-combat stuff is certainly meaningful irrespective of which side of the coin you fall on this.

Enworld posters regularly create threads on various ideas for social and exploration mechanics or how to improve the Inspiration, Bonds, Flaws, Ideals chassis. We constantly delve into possibilities of mechanising Alignment, PvP influencing, deconstructing and reforging the skill system. We have expanded Journey and Downtime rules from various published material including Level Up and 5e adjacent games. Numerous threads have opened up on how gold can be utilised/spent. Then there is Stronghold and Followers by Matt Colville and other similar material. We have entire debates about the benefits of low magic campaigns which allow the table to increase the importance of the exploration pillar and resource management aspect of the game. Etc.

What I'm trying to say through all this rambling above is:
Because of the importance and the way combat is defined in the game, the community (at least here) constantly strives to find a way to boost the other two pillars. IMO that would not be the case if combat didn't dominate the game the way it does.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

resource management

Arrow counting? Who wants more of that?!

 

[AnotherGuy]

Arrow counting? Who wants more of that?!

Hehe. There is that, but I was thinking more on the lines of water, food, light, shelter, item creation...etc

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yeah, the three pillars were definitely not given the same level of design...I hope they weren't meant to all hold up the same ceiling.

And this is why analogies fail.

"aspects of play" would be better than "pillars". Then it's easier to point out that it is neither necessary nor desirable that all three aspects should have the same weighting, and how much emphasis you put on each is a matter of personal preference. I'm pretty sure it does say that somewhere in the DMG, but referring to them of pillars does misleadingly suggest equal weighting should be given to each.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I think the debate here has lasted so long because of how each of us have chosen to view the OP question.
Is it D&D in a general overview sense? Is it combat according to our table? Is it based on expected playstyle of the community? Is it according to the content as per the books? Is it all the above or something else entirely?