D&D General The Problem with Talking About D&D

[eyeheartawk]

In 2d20's defense, Modiphius adjusts the system, sometimes in very significant ways, to suit different settings and their related playstyles. Conan is a wildly different game than Dune or John Carter, and Achtung! Cthulhu plays very different from Infinity. I personally really like Conan and AC, while Infinity is too fussy for me, and I think Dune is like an attempt to make PbtA without the best thing about PbtA, which is cool Playbooks. But I respect that they don't treat all of these settings as nothing but lore grafted onto a core system. They risk some amount of player confusion and griping by creating new versions of the core system.

But I know, that's just a tangent. Really I'm agreeing with you, that the game designed to do the specific thing is usually preferable. I just think 5e is also very bad at doing anything other than a certain kind of fantasy gaming.

Fair enough.

I agree that 5e is best for epic fantasy and things immediately adjacent, that's really all I would personally use it for.

As for 2D20, yeah, they do change it for the various games, but does every game need meta currency dice pools, you know? Also, strongly agree about Dune, it always kind of struck me as Cortex Prime with extra steps and Dune especially so.

 

[Thomas Shey]

RE: houserules. My stance is quite simple: if you introduce house rules, you're playing your own game now. Give it a name of its own because it deserves one.

Wow. What a binary view. While I agree that at some point a houserules set becomes a different game, I've had plenty of games where I changed three things, all either minor or rarely invoked, and calling that "a different game" seems hyperbole at best.

 

[Guest 7034872]

I guess I'm with @Thomas Shey on this: house rules don't stop D&D from being D&D. I mean, think of it this way a moment: what percentage of DMs and players actually even know all the rules?

Suppose some table of friends (casual players and DM, all of them) plays what they call D&D, but they have no idea what the flanking rule is or how it's used. Further suppose the players on their own come up with a flanking action in some pitched combat and ask the DM for her judgment on whether they can get some kind of attack bonus for it, and she says, "Sure. I'll give you bonus x under conditions y." Now further further suppose the bonus she gives them is not the one in the book. Are they not still playing D&D? I certainly would say they are.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Fair enough.

I agree that 5e is best for epic fantasy and things immediately adjacent, that's really all I would personally use it for.

As for 2D20, yeah, they do change it for the various games, but does every game need meta currency dice pools, you know? Also, strongly agree about Dune, it always kind of struck me as Cortex Prime with extra steps and Dune especially so.

Well, if your view on RPGs is that metacurrency dice pools is that they're a generally good way to control fictional thrust without direct intervention, I'd guess the answer is "yes". That doesn't mean its a premise you have to agree with, but if you accept it as a given, I'm not sure why they'd not do so in any of their games I'm familiar with.

It seems like asking the question "does every game need attributes?" (and the answer is "no" from some designers POVs as I know of ones that don't have them); if you think they're a good general way to represent some things, there's not an obvious reason to suddenly stop.

 

[Guest 7034872]

Colville has spoken. What do you think?

In the end, I think Colville is right in his factual claim that the greatest real-world variations come from different tables with different groups (never mind any "shoulds" regarding this), not from the written rules or how much people (think they) adhere to them. I give friends their bad moves back in chess all the time: that would never fly in a tournament, but we're not playing in a tournament. Friends and I routinely chat with each other about life during our chess games: that would never, ever fly in a tournament, but we're not playing in a tournament.

It's still chess, though. T'ain't Mahjong.

 

[eyeheartawk]

Well, if your view on RPGs is that metacurrency dice pools is that they're a generally good way to control fictional thrust without direct intervention, I'd guess the answer is "yes". That doesn't mean its a premise you have to agree with, but if you accept it as a given, I'm not sure why they'd not do so in any of their games I'm familiar with.

It seems like asking the question "does every game need attributes?" (and the answer is "no" from some designers POVs as I know of ones that don't have them); if you think they're a good general way to represent some things, there's not an obvious reason to suddenly stop.

But does every game table need Funyuns?

I think that you'll find that they are stuck in the machine, but also yes.

 

[Thomas Shey]

But does every game table need Funyuns?

I think that you'll find that they are stuck in the machine, but also yes.

But there you are; not everyone is going to want Momentum (I'm not sure it'd work that well with either of my groups) but there's nothing about their different games that seems to make it especially more appropriate for one than another.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Honestly, I'm not huge on the idea of focused, prescriptive play styles always producing a better experience, I think it introduces trade offs because sometimes you want to do something outside of it without necessarily breaking from the current game. I think its the current movement in a lot of the RPG scene, but I don't think its the be all end all of good design.

A game designed to be less prescriptive can deliberately choose mechanics that support multiple styles without actually being worse for it. I don't regard 5e as a great example, but that's just because I don't love it as a system, and I think it breaks down too easily. But something like 4e, or especially PF2e, succeeds in terms of design because they're good at adding elements of the game that the people using the game system can use to different degrees or in different ways and still have a good time with the game. Its just that different games might require you to emphasize parts of the same rule set, you know?

I did recently pick up Cortex Prime, after one of my players was looking through the Xadia game, and I'm interested in trying it out at some point-- the idea of universal systems with toolboxes you can implement to create whatever experience you please seems super compatible with my preferences, but we'll see how it plays out at my table someday, we like our texture.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I did recently pick up Cortex Prime, after one of my players was looking through the Xadia game, and I'm interested in trying it out at some point-- the idea of universal systems with toolboxes you can implement to create whatever experience you please seems super compatible with my preferences, but we'll see how it plays out at my table someday, we like our texture.

As someone who quite respects Cortex and was a backer, just let me make one side comment here: when setting up a campaign make sure you're willing to do the heavy lifting to have the components you need. I tried to cut corners on mine and found it progressively a less satisfying experience until I gave up. But I think that was as much my problem as one with the system.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

As someone who quite respects Cortex and was a backer, just let me make one side comment here: when setting up a campaign make sure you're willing to do the heavy lifting to have the components you need. I tried to cut corners on mine and found it progressively a less satisfying experience until I gave up. But I think that was as much my problem as one with the system.

I figured as much, there's a lot of mods to work through, and then a lot of other stuff that seems like it would need to be set up, unless you're going for something super duper light.