I'm not discussing PbtA any more. If you want to discuss D&D or details on how you could apply an aspect of another game to D&D that wouldn't require D&D to morph into something it's not, I might be interested in discussing.
Alright. My apologies if it drifts too far--the line for this standard is invisible, if indeed a line exists at all.
Do you agree that rules can act as tools, and thus, can be shaped and honed more effectively to achieve the purpose for which they were designed? If so, we can then ask an important question about D&D:
What is it for?
I don't mean this in some highfalutin philosophical sense. I mean in a very specifically practical sense. What is playing D&D
for? What purpose(s) do people sit down to pursue at the table, when they say they want to play D&D, as opposed to any other TTRPG (like DW), any other tabletop game generally (like Monopoly), or any other activity whether group or solo?
Based on the design commitments of D&D, and looking at the cultures of play that have historically held sway, I think there's actually quite a lot we can say to answer this question. D&D is:
- A group activity. No official D&D ruleset, to the best of my knowledge, has ever supported fully solo play. Even "duo" play, with just one player and the DM, tends to conflict with the design of D&D, regardless of edition.
- Collaborative. Even in the (somewhat uncommon) cultures of play where openly competitive/"PVP" play is allowed (or even expected/encouraged), the exercise as a whole is collaborative. There is no game without the other participants, and various forms of influence over what is "in" the game are permitted (e.g., PC backstory is usually allowed, if not free reign, rather a lot of leeway.)
- Mostly cooperative. As noted, some specific cultures of play allow/expect/encourage PVP, but even within that, you usually have at least two players working together. The design of the game, whether "strengths vs weaknesses" or "complementary/synergistic niches," is specifically present to encourage cooperation and diversification of labor.
- Teamwork-focused. As noted, the design encourages players to support one another, and many players have a stated policy of "I'll play whatever the group needs." This is also why player policies like "don't split the party" and "kill the healer first" are central. Preserving your own teamwork capacity and breaking enemy teamwork are essential strategies in every version of D&D.
- Rooted in mathematics, specifically statistics. Every version of D&D, and indeed a majority of TTRPGs, uses a mathematical framework built around some source of randomness (usually dice) to add uncertainty. Despite the next point, this framework is very important to many players, even ones who sometimes disclaim caring about it. (Consider the backlash against silvery barbs.)
- Story-related. Doesn't need to tell a story, per se, nor will a story always result from play. But story--"a narrative, designed to interest, amuse, or instruct"--is pretty important. It's why names and archetypes matter. It isn't just bare math, and some players take great pains to emphasize just how highly they prize the story element.
- Fantastical. While some effort has been put into "modern" and sci-fi rules, the vast majority is either pure fantasy, or science fantasy (e.g. the Barrier Peaks.) This means "magic," a blessing and a curse because of how easy it is to abuse, but it also means an emphasis on letting players do what they like, within some boundary, often explicitly a greater boundary than other pastimes (video games are often explicitly contrasted here.)
- Focused on individuals and (relatively) small groups. One does not, generally, run a single session for more than (say) eight people, and even that would be an unusually large group today (less unusual for early D&D.) Some cultures of play encourage having many distinct PCs, but many do not. Almost all players will at least expect to only play one character at a time, and the gameplay process will focus on only one set of active characters. (What occurs outside of actual, in-session play may differ wildly.)
- Extemporaneous for DMs, improvisational for players. DMs will do varying degrees of prep work before running a game, while maintaining the flexibility to adapt to things they didn't prepare for (again, commonly compared to video games.) Generally speaking, players will do little to no such prep work, and instead focus on responding to events moment to moment.
I'm dead certain I could come up with more if I wished to, but that will do for now. That's a lot of stuff we can say about what it means to play D&D! It also is a lot of stuff we can use for
honing the rules, so that they support the things above as fully as possible. That final bullet, for example, emphasizes that DM prep is a pretty important concern. Rules that make DM prep easier, or more effective, are thus pretty much unequivocally good things.
From the above, we can at least take an initial
stab at describing the core concepts--what is
most important about "playing D&D"--and fundamental methods and guidance for fulfilling them. For example, consider the contrast between "story-related" and "rooted in mathematics." As noted, plenty of people--even people on this board who have publicly opposed 'balance' in the past--will speak up about an option or spell or feature which they consider to be
mechanically unacceptable, even if it is in no way
narratively problematic.
Silvery barbs is sort of the poster child there, but the Twilight Cleric got similar arguments. (Generally, math-based opposition is to anything considered to be overpowered; things considered weak rarely get the outrage
solely for mathematical reasons.) Conversely, some things are opposed purely for their narrative content, without any regard to their power; as I've mentioned in other and previous threads, opposition to dragonborn and tieflings often boils down to "I think the story behind this is dumb and bad, and don't want anyone playing dumb and bad stories."
Much of the time, however, the two concerns mix. E.g., the
depressingly gleeful celebration when we learned that the Sorcerer optional feature Spell Versatility was being axed. That was rooted in the combination of "the Wizard should be better than the Sorcerer at spellcasting" (a mostly/exclusively narrative concern) and "Spell Versatility makes the Sorcerer have access to every spell on their list" (a mostly/exclusively mathematical concern.) Totally separating mechanics from thematics or vice-versa is a fool's errand, but that doesn't mean they're exactly equal in importance. So, perhaps we can come up with a principle that reflects this. Something like:
Function follows form: The nature of a thing should guide you on how it works.
This is at best a rough draft hypothetical--as I have said many, many times, these things would need to be tested, a LOT, and almost certainly repeatedly revised. But this is the kind of thing I would expect as a "Principle" for D&D (sorry for making comparisons to DW, hope I haven't crossed your invisible line of "morph[ing D&D] into something it's not.") It would require elaboration, just as Principles in PbtA games do, because just SAYING it is not as helpful as actually going over it. The pithy phrase (in this case, "function follows form") is just there to make it easier to remember the guidance.
By comparison, an "Agenda"-equivalent is something that needs to be extremely high level--something that binds in basically all cases, less "guidance" and more "you need to be doing this for it to count as D&D at all." I'm afraid I'm drawing a blank for something that would work as a D&D "Agenda" that isn't simply a rephrase of one of the DW ones. For example, "Play to find out what happens" already contains within it the thing I wanted to phrase as a "D&D Agenda," something to the effect of, "Respect the consequences of everyone's actions," which has been brought up repeatedly as a mantra in this thread, that anything which might somehow "take away" consequences is anathema.
*By which I mean: an ability score bonus is a strength, an ability score penalty is a weakness. This form of design is in some sense "transactional," requiring that a strength in one area be "paid for" by a weakness in another. Niche-based design, whether complementary or synergistic, focuses on ensuring that each character has some particular
thing they definitely DO contribute, but which on its own is not
enough. It is thus, in the strict sense of "it adds things," a purely "positive" design. Both things are used in pretty much every edition of D&D.
