Unpopular opinions go here

[overgeeked]

Just because you can add roleplaying on top of an existing game does not make it an RPG. Roleplaying the pieces in chess doesn’t make it an RPG.

 

[CleverNickName]

You don't need a battle mat to play D&D. Yes, even that edition.

But the most unpopular opinion of all: You don't need more than one set of dice.

 

[payn]

You don't need a battle mat to play D&D. Yes, even that edition.

But the most unpopular opinion of all: You don't need more than one set of dice.

Close, it's actually that you dont need dice at all.

 

[CleverNickName]

Just because you can add roleplaying on top of an existing game does not make it an RPG. Roleplaying the pieces in chess doesn’t make it an RPG.

Depends on what you mean by "add roleplaying." If we're just adding the word, I agree completely. But if you add rules for roleplaying on top of an existing game, or even just a story with called actions and consequences, you absolutely CAN turn it into an RPG.

Case in point: look what it did for Jenga.

 

[J.Quondam]

Close, it's actually that you dont need dice at all.

CHITS!

 

[CleverNickName]

CHITS!

I played D&D once with a deck of poker cards instead of dice. It worked better than expected.

Some clarification for @Thomas Shey, below:

Spoiler: Ask me how!

It borrowed a bit from Blackjack. Face-cards were 10, Aces were 11 or 1 (your choice), all other cards were their face number.

I'd shuffle the deck of cards and whenever it was time for someone to roll, I would flip a card over. The number pulled was the number "rolled." Of course, the player could ask for one or more cards to add to the number ("hit me!") in hopes of getting a higher result...but if they went over 20, they "busted" and it was a critical fail (treated as a nat-1). If they managed to pull 5 cards without going over 20, it was a critical success (treated as a nat-20). Those cards went into a discard pile, and we reshuffled the pile whenever we ran out of cards in the draw stack.

It was a lot slower than just rolling some dice, but we were in a bind: we wanted to play D&D, but my buddy didn't have any dice at all. So we worked with what we had, and it was actually pretty fun. Not something I'd do for every game, but it'll do in a pinch.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I played D&D once with a deck of poker cards instead of dice. It worked better than expected.

Well, if you were just using ace-to-10, those are just big chunky chits.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

WotC has tried, and failed, for three full editions and two half editions to capture the essence of the ranger class. In one page, Shadowdark utterly nailed it.

It helps that Kelsey had to satisfy Kelsey when designing the ranger. In contrast, WotC had a committee trying to satisfy tens of thousands of people who want contradictory things.

I suspect it's a lot easier to be a designer as an auteur, rather than as an employee of a publicly traded company working for a highly valuable brand.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

You don't need a battle mat to play D&D. Yes, even that edition.

Very very true!

But the most unpopular opinion of all: You don't need more than one set of dice.

Very very wrong!

 

[Moonmover]

One man's terrorist, is another man's freedom fighter.

The fact people cannot get past certain arguments or views on alignment will likely always be weird to me.

"Its a straight jacket!" said the person wrong on alignment a million times.

People who say alignment is a straightjacket are Chaos-aligned.

If fantasy was criticized with the rigor science fiction is criticized, it would collapse.

It's called romanticism, and it's what makes fantasy great. Fantasy does not exist in the realm of the rational, but the emotional.

That is also why "hard" magic systems never quite satisfy. They are missing the point.