Unpopular opinions go here
- Thread starter Whizbang Dustyboots
- Start date
- Status
overgeeked
Open-World Sandbox
Having both ability scores and modifiers is redundant. Pick one or the other.
Hit points are just pointless extra maths to determine how many times you can get hit before falling unconscious...so just skip the maths and list the number of hits you can take.
Most monster design is backasswards. Filling hundreds of books with hundreds of pages of stat blocks is an absolute waste of time and money. Designing monsters as relative to the PCs' power or a simple chart for basic stats would save a lot of space and is infinitely more flexible.
A superhero fantasy game is a wonderful idea. D&D's game system is absolutely terrible at delivering that kind of play.
4E is the best designed edition of D&D WotC ever produced. It has the best lore, the best monster design, the best DM advice, the best class balance, the best use of non-combat magic, the best system for non-combat encounters, on and on and on. It's only flaws are that combat takes too long and that skill challenges needed a few more revisions before publication.
B/X is the best designed edition of D&D TSR ever produced.
D&D's almost always reliable magic is boring. Games with rolling for magic are much more exciting. Games like DCC and WFRP do magic better.
The response "you have infinite dragons" is just a useless thing to say. You might as well say "you have infinite rocks." To say either entirely misses the point.
RPGs are not story-generating games. Most are incredibly bad at creating stories. Even the dedicated storygames are generally bad at generating story.
Railroading is literally the worst thing you can do as a referee. Railroading is the negation of player agency.
Hit points are just pointless extra maths to determine how many times you can get hit before falling unconscious...so just skip the maths and list the number of hits you can take.
Most monster design is backasswards. Filling hundreds of books with hundreds of pages of stat blocks is an absolute waste of time and money. Designing monsters as relative to the PCs' power or a simple chart for basic stats would save a lot of space and is infinitely more flexible.
A superhero fantasy game is a wonderful idea. D&D's game system is absolutely terrible at delivering that kind of play.
4E is the best designed edition of D&D WotC ever produced. It has the best lore, the best monster design, the best DM advice, the best class balance, the best use of non-combat magic, the best system for non-combat encounters, on and on and on. It's only flaws are that combat takes too long and that skill challenges needed a few more revisions before publication.
B/X is the best designed edition of D&D TSR ever produced.
D&D's almost always reliable magic is boring. Games with rolling for magic are much more exciting. Games like DCC and WFRP do magic better.
The response "you have infinite dragons" is just a useless thing to say. You might as well say "you have infinite rocks." To say either entirely misses the point.
RPGs are not story-generating games. Most are incredibly bad at creating stories. Even the dedicated storygames are generally bad at generating story.
Railroading is literally the worst thing you can do as a referee. Railroading is the negation of player agency.
overgeeked
Open-World Sandbox
Never played. A quick Google search suggests they're close to what I had in mind.
Warriors, magic-users, and scouts. Everything in modern D&D is a minor variation on these or a multiclass combo of these.
Barbarians are low armor, high damage warriors. Fighters are high armor, low damage warriors. Monks are high mobility, medium damage warriors.
Wizards are arcane magic-users. Druids are primal magic-users. Clerics are divine magic-users.
Rangers are wilderness scouts. Rogues are urban scouts.
Paladins are cleric/fighters. Bards are wizard/rogues. Artificers are wizard/rogues. Warlocks and sorcerers are a mechanics/gameplay skin on wizards.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
I think this is close to the consensus in 2023.
Shadowdark's spellcasting check system, where one can cast a spell indefinitely if they succeed and lose it for the day if they fail, has been a lot easier for my players to grasp than D&D's and more fun for everyone.
humble minion
Legend
Even in 4e, D&D needed more monsters linked to the classical elements like it needed a hole in the head. We already had elementals, dragons, genies - increasing the elemental theming of giants was a mistake, and a lazy one. Giants needed a complete retcon.
And while we're in the unpopular opinions thread, the whole Dawn War cosmology was rubbish anyway.
loverdrive
Prophet of the profane (She/Her)
My unpopular opinion would be: almost every game that features supernatural/sci-fi elements would be straight up better without them.
Cowboys, spies, detectives or peaky blinders don't need magic to be interesting, and existence of supernatural only drives attention away from what makes them click.
Cowboys, spies, detectives or peaky blinders don't need magic to be interesting, and existence of supernatural only drives attention away from what makes them click.
loverdrive
Prophet of the profane (She/Her)
Another one: essence/cyberpsychosis/whatever are stupid ideas that don't make sense in Cyberpunk. Not even mentioning problematic implications (I have half of my body surgically constructed, am I less of a human?), it removes a ship of Theseus paradox that is important to cyberpunk as a genre and replaces it with nothing.
humble minion
Legend
Counterpoint to that though - I hate DMing magic- and supernatural-free games because your logic and plotting has to be just SO much more rigorous. Magic (or mysterious/secret hypertech, or superpowers, etc, whatever you want to label it) gives you much more freedom as a DM to handwave stuff in order to set up the plot you want to run.
Von Corellon
Adventurer
Royalty-free so it’s invasive
CreamCloud0
Hero
Alignments are actually a cool idea but people have bad experiences from bad mechanics or their misuse(or have heard horror stories) and don't want to bother trying again, honestly there just needs a clear definitive explaination for what defines each one and people need to stop applying their own definitions or assuming they already know what they mean by what they're called.
ps: evil player characters aren't the problem you think they are, problem players can be awful in any alignment but they just abuse evil's sterotypes to be more blatant about their awfulness, it's not evil's fault.
Species based ASI actually make sense and should be included in their default stats, and they're not actually inherently racist because species aren't actually races, people just make them racist by making comparisons to real world peoples.
The standard adventuring day is functionally 24 hours for most groups and fullcasters' slots need to be reballanced around their use over that duration, i say just wholesale cut them directly in half.
Wizards ought to have 90% of their levelled offensive magic removed and be turned into the magic toolbox utility caster.
Edit: i don't know any of the lore, the most i know is that the outer planes all exist on a ring or something, and i don't really care about learning any of it either.
ps: evil player characters aren't the problem you think they are, problem players can be awful in any alignment but they just abuse evil's sterotypes to be more blatant about their awfulness, it's not evil's fault.
Species based ASI actually make sense and should be included in their default stats, and they're not actually inherently racist because species aren't actually races, people just make them racist by making comparisons to real world peoples.
The standard adventuring day is functionally 24 hours for most groups and fullcasters' slots need to be reballanced around their use over that duration, i say just wholesale cut them directly in half.
Wizards ought to have 90% of their levelled offensive magic removed and be turned into the magic toolbox utility caster.
Edit: i don't know any of the lore, the most i know is that the outer planes all exist on a ring or something, and i don't really care about learning any of it either.
- Status
Similar Threads
