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

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

As (I believe) Aldarac said above, how people play games at individual tables has nothing to do with how the game was designed and has support for. People do the gaming equivalent of hammering nails with a wrench all the time, for a variety of reasons.

 

[Thomas Shey]

And, "people can just drop out" is a dodge. People dropping out (for other than personal reasons external to the game) is a failure mode for an RPG, and a social group. Once someone's sitting down at the table to play, everyone's got some responsibility to help each other have fun. If someone drops because the game is that unfun, somewhere there was a failure to meet that responsibility.

I half agree with this and half don't.

The half I agree with is everyone has some responsibility for making it fun for others, too.

However, that said, sometimes what fun someone gets out of the game is fundamentally incompatible with the fun someone else does; making it more fun for you makes it less fun for them and vice versa. In some cases this can turn into a case where the majority of the game is thoroughly boring for one player, because its focusing more on the things the other four players are interested in. (In a few extreme cases what some people want out of the game can be actively off-putting for others).

So under some circumstances, dropping out can simply be a recognition that you're in the wrong group/

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Plus, those sorts of declarations can be abused pretty heavily for a player to exercise outsized control over the game by essentially shaming the other participants into compliance with whatever, it only really works if everyone holds themselves equally responsible for respecting other people's fun, and that is practically never the case-- even and more cynically, especially with people who claim it is. Its way too easy to rationalize someone else as being unreasonable, or playing up dislikes to make them deal breakers because how important a given element's presence or absence is subjective. Its a big part of the reason "play style judgement" takes up so much bandwidth on the internet, its building up a movement-as-infrastructure to make some kinds of fun culturally more valuable than others. Its why we have so much discourse where the question of something being "fun" and "not fun" become load bearing statements in contradiction of the fact that they are invariably and absolutely, objectively fun to someone, and unfun to someone else. It becomes a lot of turf-fighting that's essentially a step removed from edition warring, where people are taking a winner-take-all mentality to the very idea of hashing out what fun is so that they can let other people know that their fun isn't actually fun.

Which all makes it hard to run a game that prioritizes notions of 'inclusive tastes' over 'exclusive ones' because people tend to see the presence of something they don't like as de-legitimizing the concept of a fun game, the thinking becomes that other people should, generally be the ones doing the compromising to accommodate them. In order to fight that you essentially need the group as a whole to draw boundaries concerning taste intolerance and make it clear that everyone is expected to be less picky about the game out of respect for the other player's preferences and acquire a taste for multiple things so that there isn't a building resentment during the parts they don't like. Its an affective problem, for a group to solve in a society that is so fiercely individualistic and self centered (speaking chiefly of the American market) that a need to be respectful of someone else's emotional state is held up as abuse, and an uncompromising, assertive nature is considered a matter of psychological health.

Before anyone asks, I'll level with you: I'm a bit more cynical than usual today, I'm dealing with a bunch of stress, which is a bunch of disparate things... but one of them involves a player who has informed me that they don't actually like the game due to taste differences but feels too comfortable to leave, but fully intends to keep pushing for us to play more fully in their preferred style and generally treats attempts at, or reminders of compromise as something to be exasperated about because its still not how they'd do it, regardless of how much energy I put into making sure they have their fun stuff in addition to the stuff I like, and the stuff the rest of the group likes. They're sympathetic to the idea that I'm stressed about it, but... any sense of responsibility for changing it just washes off them, I think they think of it as being more a quirk about my own mentality than anything they're responsible for changing, which almost makes me feel like I'm being tolerated.

Grumbling Noises

 

[jgsugden]

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.

As (I believe) Aldarac said above, how people play games at individual tables has nothing to do with how the game was designed and has support for. People do the gaming equivalent of hammering nails with a wrench all the time, for a variety of reasons.

Yeah ... there was a joke there that went a coupl feet over some people's heads, it seems.

I don't understand how we can have a thread arguing over this when clearly the amount of combat in a campaign is entirely in the hands of the DM (mostly) and the players (to a lesser extent).

I don't understand how we can continue to argue over this when many people offered their experience that the ratio tends to change both between DMs, and between campaigns run by those DMs, and between session run by those DMs within campaigns.

When asking if D&D is 90% combat, the only reasonable answer that has broad application between games seems to be, "Sometimes." With that being true, the majority of this thread becomes people that can't see the forest for the treants.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Yeah ... there was a joke there that went a coupl feet over some people's heads, it seems.

I don't understand how we can have a thread arguing over this when clearly the amount of combat in a campaign is entirely in the hands of the DM (mostly) and the players (to a lesser extent).

I don't understand how we can continue to argue over this when many people offered their experience that the ratio tends to change both between DMs, and between campaigns run by those DMs, and between session run by those DMs within campaigns.

When asking if D&D is 90% combat, the only reasonable answer that has broad application between games seems to be, "Sometimes." With that being true, the majority of this thread becomes people that can't see the forest for the treants.

People can be of many different heights. There are extremely tall people, and extremely short people. Over the life of a single person, heights vary dramatically. Is there then no point to discussing what the average height of people are, what the standard deviations from that height might be, and how we end up at extremely?

Yes, a given data point can be a wild outlier. Your game may be X, my game may be Y. But, if you look at both how the rulebooks present that game, how the published adventures present the game, and also how the game is discussed, you get to see a fairly clear picture of what the average game might be and what the usual bounds of play around that average are. This doesn't discount your X, nor does it remotely show 90% combat as the average. That was always hyperbole to make the point that D&D is overwhelmingly, by any measure you'd like to choose outside of single game data points, focused on combat.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

Remind me again, where exactly it is written, implied, or expected that the three pillars should be equally represented in the rules of the game (D&D 5e) or in actual play? Or that D&D is played exactly the same way with the same expectations at every table by every DM and every player that participates?

So what if the rules represent 90% of combat, or 9%. If your 18th-level fighter proved themself by being a master negotiator and diplomat because your DM based an entire campaign on Scooby Doo episodes, and your group had fun doing that, then more power to you. You could have chosen another game system with different mechanics supporting actions and resolutions outside of combat, but you chose freeform and a random chance roll instead. Good for you!

Now explain to me why when someone makes a claim that D&D is mostly about combat, or that it offers fewer mechanics/support regarding anything outside of combat, or that other game systems might have more equalized approaches and mechanics for all three pillars, that it is somehow impeding on their decision and their choices to continue doing what they like. I'd like to think that it doesn't, but judging how some people have been fighting tooth and nail in this thread for days, I could be wrong.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Fudging dice rolls may not be best practice (I can't remember the last time I did) but that's not a game rule. Same with letting people know the DC ahead of time. I don't for various reasons other than a general "it looks [easy/difficult, etc.]". But the DM always sets the DC. They can set it to 50 as easily as they can set it to 5. If it's a contest, there are even more variables.

I mean, dice rolls and setting DCs are rules, I'd say. If that's not how you see it, okay, but I don't want to split hairs. Let's just assume that "rules" also includes the required procedures and processes of play, and how they're applied.

Other games absolutely do this in such a way that makes it very hard for the GM to put their thumb on the scale, or at the very least to make it very obvious when the GM does it.

For D&D, it's a bit trickier because the rules and processes make it very easy for the GM to put their thumb on the scales. This is especially true in Ability checks, where the rules don't even clearly state if a DC should be known or unknown by the players. You could even make a strong argument that the D&D rules actively promote the DM being able to put his thumb on the scales, or at the very least do nothing to prevent it. That has a huge impact on the integrity of the game.

By integrity here, what I mean is that when my character faces off against a troll, I want to know that I will win or lose that encounter based on my skill as a player, the capabilities of my character, and the results of the dice. I don't want the GM to step in and shift things one way or the other. That's all that competitive integrity means. It's not about me and the GM being in opposition as folks seem to read it.

So, to address your idea of a DC 50 task.....yes, in D&D the DM is always free to do that, but requiring that DCs are openly announced, the players can at least have a chance to raise their eyebrows at that and say "a 50, really?" They know before they even roll that they cannot mathematically succeed. This gives them a chance to abandon that path in favor of another approach. It doesn't allow the DM to secretly laugh at their plight as they vainly roll the dice hoping to succeed where clearly they cannot.

I think that's a clear example of how a rule is applied, or how a process is followed, impacts the competitive integrity of the game.

Now, in this example, sure, this would seem more a case of the DM being a jerk and we could dismiss it as "well jerk's gonna be a jerk" but that doesn't mean that having transparent rules don't help, and that they can't also help in less extreme examples. They remove any kind of doubt about the integrity of the GM because the processes are known, and success or failure is quantifiable; the GM is not free to put their thumb on the scale unknown to the players.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, dice rolls and setting DCs are rules, I'd say. If that's not how you see it, okay, but I don't want to split hairs. Let's just assume that "rules" also includes the required procedures and processes of play, and how they're applied.

Other games absolutely do this in such a way that makes it very hard for the GM to put their thumb on the scale, or at the very least to make it very obvious when the GM does it.

For D&D, it's a bit trickier because the rules and processes make it very easy for the GM to put their thumb on the scales. This is especially true in Ability checks, where the rules don't even clearly state if a DC should be known or unknown by the players. You could even make a strong argument that the D&D rules actively promote the DM being able to put his thumb on the scales, or at the very least do nothing to prevent it. That has a huge impact on the integrity of the game.

By integrity here, what I mean is that when my character faces off against a troll, I want to know that I will win or lose that encounter based on my skill as a player, the capabilities of my character, and the results of the dice. I don't want the GM to step in and shift things one way or the other. That's all that competitive integrity means. It's not about me and the GM being in opposition as folks seem to read it.

So, to address your idea of a DC 50 task.....yes, in D&D the DM is always free to do that, but requiring that DCs are openly announced, the players can at least have a chance to raise their eyebrows at that and say "a 50, really?" They know before they even roll that they cannot mathematically succeed. This gives them a chance to abandon that path in favor of another approach. It doesn't allow the DM to secretly laugh at their plight as they vainly roll the dice hoping to succeed where clearly they cannot.

I think that's a clear example of how a rule is applied, or how a process is followed, impacts the competitive integrity of the game.

Now, in this example, sure, this would seem more a case of the DM being a jerk and we could dismiss it as "well jerk's gonna be a jerk" but that doesn't mean that having transparent rules don't help, and that they can't also help in less extreme examples. They remove any kind of doubt about the integrity of the GM because the processes are known, and success or failure is quantifiable; the GM is not free to put their thumb on the scale unknown to the players.

I get what you're saying, I simply don't believe that the game should operate on the assumption that the DM might be a jerk and incorporate rules to limit them. It's bad faith design.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I get what you're saying, I simply don't believe that the game should operate on the assumption that the DM might be a jerk and incorporate rules to limit them. It's bad faith design.

It's not about trying to prevent the DM from being a jerk though. I was just working with the example offered where the DM had a DC 50 task in place. Setting a DC at 50 and not sharing that with the players is a pretty jerkish thing to do, I'd say.

It's about helping to make sure the DM's judgment is applied where it should be (determining the difficulty of the task based on relevant factors) rather than where it should not be (deciding that a check succeeded despite the math of the dice in order to spare a PC or something similar).

This is why combat rules are so specific. So that they work in a predictable way that's understood by the participants. When I attack, I have a sense of my chance of success, and if I succeed, I know how much damage I'll do. When I cast a fireball spell, I can see how many targets I can affect and know about how much damage I'll do. And so on.

It's much harder for the DM to put their thumb on the scale in combat, because of the existing rules and processes; it's much clearer when those are being set aside. Take that mechanical structure away, as social encounters do, and it all becomes hard to predict or understand, and increasingly relies not on the game structure, but more on the DM.

It's not about preventing bad DMing so much as about trying to promote and assist good DMing. Let the DM spend effort and energy in the areas where they're best applied.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Grumbling Noises

That's really unfortunate, and--you're not wrong.

There really is an issue that has to be engaged with about people who have extremely specific wants, and anything that doesn't fill those is actively detracting from their fun. There's no answer to that except "go find a group that's entirely in your bucket." And in a case like your friend, who doesn't seem to really understand that other people genuinely want different things out of the game, this may have to be done--forcefully.

But the other end of this is people who will just run over others in their own pursuit of fun--the classic being the "I'm just playing my character' types. At some point these people really do need to have it made clear that thinking of others is expected, and if they can't be bothered, they, too, need to be escorted out.

Fortunately most people are in a middle ground so that their needs aren't so exclusive that some expectation of accommodation for each other is impossible (though it can still get sticky if you have a group that all has some give, but, say, one member really wants more of something than the rest are gonna want to give them). At worst some are simply so trained to keep to their own character they need to be trained out of it.