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

 

[AnotherGuy]

Bit pressed for time so can't answer your post in full. I see some folks already answered in my stead (and I agree with their posts). Is that sufficient or would you like me to come back to this later (maybe tonight if I can) and respond with my own words?

No stress. I think @hawkeyefan made a decent point hence my reaction to his post, but I wouldn't bother with answering me as funnily enough @doctorbadwolf has made a similar query to you as of now. I will just read your exchange with him.

 

[Thomas Shey]

except again what part of the show? I doubt the default assumes you play as the doctor... so once you introduce 1 new rogue timelord why not 3 working together?

Because it may be easier to manage one than three. Its notable that the periods when there are more than one of those in the show at once--or even other things that are close--are rather short.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Manbearcat I generally agree with your posts but I found your latest post's comparison not hitting the mark.

Can we just unpack this paragraph please.


Can you give me an example of huge setting canon that is prevalent in 5e that wasn't in 4e that would require the increased cognitive workspace?


So a DM deciding a DC for a skill check for an action declared which is strictly not listed plainly in the book. This never happened in 4e? Are you saying players never thought beyond their power cards?


Monsters of 5e are complex as opposed to 4e? Maybe I dunno, but I doubt any sane DM would be designing 5e monsters during play. People generally wing it.


For those that actually use it, and not wing it in similar fashion to how many of us did with rules from earlier editions - those kind of DMs would usually pre-plan the session and the necessary encounter budgets.
Remember your opposition in this thread are people who like to wing/roleplay out the social challenges. I'd hazard they likely throw monsters that make sense and not sit down and work out encounter budgets with a calculator during play.

I just do not see the head-space that you think is necessary for all this or even to compare it to issues that particular set of the player-base experienced with 4e player option bloat.

Have I misunderstood your point?

I believe you did misunderstand. The list of GM-side cognitive loadings are largely ubiquitous to D&D and the normal ways people approach playing it and are not provided as some contrast between 5e and 4e. 4e was being referenced only for the expansion of player-side cognitive workspace expansion. 4e, regardless of anything else, did do this. But it certainly didn't require any lessening of the GM-side in response.

That said, you could have approached 4e from a different angle that significantly does reduce GM cognitive overhead (overhead meaning those things the GM has to juggle to run the game). This, however, involves recognizing that the structure of 4e easily drifts into using Story Now techniques, where prep is minimal and setting is low or no myth. The reduction here doesn't really come from the structure of 4e, but from how you approach that structure with the intent to reduce overhead.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Okay, let's call this role of making sure the players are having fun the role of "Host".

Let's call the role of applying the rules and making rulings the role of "Referee".

If you artificially divide up roles you are going to create a conflict where no conflict is necessary. The point in being a referee is to help the players have fun. It is not separate to that.

Do you not worry about that and instead let the dice fall where they may, and trust that although they may not find it fun, the players will accept a TPK as a result of play?

No.

This is why it matters that it is not a competition. Having fun is not connected to winning.

Consider a situation similar to Thorin's company arriving at Laketown. Depending on how the players interact with the townsfolk, there are a range of possible outcomes. They might be:

1) The adventures impress the townsfolk and are welcomed with open arms, giving them free food and equipment. Consequence: the players have fun.

2) The adventures annoy the townsfolk and are thrown into prison. They have to escape and steal the stuff they need. Consequence: the players have fun.

3) The players make an indifferent impression. They are allowed into town but have to pay for the stuff they need. Consequence: the players have fun.

4) Something else I haven't thought of but arises through play. Consequence: the players have fun.


Given that there is no outcome that does not lead to fun, there is no reason to want to fudge any dice rolls.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's a term for the capacity a person has to think about a thing or set of things. E.G., "I can do 3x2 digit multiplication in my head, but 3x3 gets hard and anything more is outside my available cognitive workspace." In relation to games, it's the capacity to hold the rules, the setting details, the players' wants, the current fictional situation, and do operations on all of these things. Use of things like maps and tokens are an example of things used to reduce the cognitive workspace needed to play games because they're external cues that can be offloaded from the cognitive workspace (and also to reduce confusion with shared fiction that needs to be precisely referenced by multiple people).

Thanks.

It sounds like making mountains out of molehills then. The "cognitive workspace" required to be a DM is only a fraction of that required to be a classroom teacher. Say 6/30 = 20%.

So it's not really a significant consideration. It's not showing off, lots of people can learn to be a classroom teacher, and DMing is a lot easier.

 

[Aldarc]

Given that there is no outcome that does not lead to fun, there is no reason to want to fudge any dice rolls.

The assumption in bold is doing a lot of heavy lifting for your argument.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The assumption in bold is doing a lot of heavy lifting for your argument.

Sure. But that's the the point of it's not a competition. "Fun" arises from playing the game, not winning or losing.

 

[loverdrive]

Is the person gullible? Wary? Stubborn? Do they trust me or do they think I'm a manipulative bastard, based on past experience? What am I trying to convince them of? And so and so on.

Persuasion requires sufficient leverage (give them a reason, remember?), and what constitutes sufficient leverage is 100% context-dependent.

If you want to trick a gullible person into doing your bidding, you can get away with a nonsensical reason, but if they have a reason to suspect something fishy, you'll need something more convincing.

 

[loverdrive]

Sure. But that's the the point of it's not a competition. "Fun" arises from playing the game, not winning or losing.

Assuming that every activity that the game allows for is inherently fun, which isn't the case in reality.

 

[Aldarc]

Assuming that every activity that the game allows for is inherently fun, which isn't the case in reality.

Plus, one can still have fun with friends while playing something that is a competition regardless of whether one wins or loses: e.g., sports, board game, card game, etc.

This idea is very much in the spirit of what the PHB says. The players can fail to complete an adventure, but still "win" in the sense that they all had fun, which is very much something that is also true for the aforementioned games and not somehow unique to D&D. But if the players did not have fun, does that then mean that they lost the game?

The 5e PHB may as well be reciting the famous sports writing quote:

“For when the One Great Scorer
comes to mark against your name,
He writes not that you won or lost,
but how you played the game!”
– Grantland Rice