D&D General Why the resistance to D&D being a game?

[Charlaquin]

Aren't their GM-less RPGs? (Google says so, but I litteraly went no farther than seeing that things vaugely relevant looking popped up).

Yeah, though in such games, the necessary functions a DM serves in D&D are still fulfilled. They’re just a shared responsibility between players (and sometimes a degree of procedural generation) rather than taken on entirely by one participant.

 

[mamba]

I don't think immersion is necessary or even particularly desirable all the time.

I disagree, if there is no immersion, then we are playing chess or something like that, not an RPG. It is always desirable, it might not always be accomplished.

 

[Scribe]

A game also being/creating a story, is still a game.

I honestly cannot understand the issue here. Art, can still be a game, or a game can also be art. A game can also be a performance, or have a component that is a performance.

Game, is not some 4 letter word. Look at the games we have throughout our history as a species, games ARE an art.

D&D absolutely is a game.

 

[Reynard]

I disagree, if there is no immersion, then we are playing chess or something like that, not an RPG. It is always desirable, it might not always be accomplished.

No you're not. You can go anywhere or attempt anything in chess. The defining feature of an RPG isn't immersion, it is player agency.

 

[mamba]

No you're not. You can go anywhere or attempt anything in chess. The defining feature of an RPG isn't immersion, it is player agency.

well, I disagree with that too Chess does not let me attempt anything, just anything within a very limiting set of rules, and I absolutely value immersion over player agency past a certain threshold

 

[overgeeked]

Oh. Wow. The thread really moved overnight. To avoid posting a dozen responses, here's a few responses.

Immersion. Tabletop RPGs have never been that immersive for me. Never. I'm always trying to find that immersion, but it's elusive. The fact that you have to stop pretending to engage with the mechanics breaks immersion. That you're literally sitting around a table with other people who're talking, planning, grabbing food and drink, etc breaks immersion for me. I've never been that immersed in a tabletop RPG. I have been far more immersed in video games. Not because or in spite of the mechanics, but because the whole experience is far more immersive. The graphics, the sound, the smoothness of play, etc. All together that feels far more like a secondary world you could live in infinitely more than any tabletop RPG experience I've ever had. And I've played with some amazing GMs in some amazing games. What breaks immersion in those video games is running into things you cannot interact with, doors that won't open, objects you can't touch, people you can't talk to, etc. The tabletop RPG GM solves for that problem...but utterly lacks all the elements that make a video game immersive. So why prevent the game from being well designed to preserve immersion when tabletop RPGs are so bad at immersion?

Because there are people who object to the players being able to use the rules to make decisions. Lots of play that gets denigrated as "gamish" seems to me as though it's basically "the player knows the rules and uses them."

I don't think that's really an objection to the players knowing the rules, rather it's an objection to the rules being so badly designed. At least that's my objection to optimization. I don't care that the player knows the rules and can exploit them...I really hate the fact that the game is so badly designed that there are such glaringly obvious exploits in the game. Like...one person reading the book and making a post breaks the game...and yet the "professional game designers" completely missed that? People with basic math skills can spot that this combo is mathematically superior to every other option...and yet the "professional game designers" completely missed that? Fire the "professional game designers" and hire the people who can break the game in an afternoon with basic math skills and some thinking.

But, the flip side of that is players who know the rules and think they're limited to those rules. That's not how tabletop RPGs work. PCs have tactical infinity. That's what the GM is for. To adjudicate all the nonsense the players get up to.

Then again I don't think D&D is "badly" designed for it's intended purpose even if other games might handle those tight focuses better.

If it doesn't handle elements it's supposed to well, that's bad design. What is D&D's "intended purpose"?

Fiction First. Yes, fiction-first games exist. And it's my preferred mode of play. But even those games are still games. They still have rules and procedures. The rules should be fun to interact with, those procedures should produce the kind of play the designers intend. If the rules and procedures do not produce the kind of play the designers intend, then it's a badly designed game. Playing the game should be fun for some subset of players. If not, then it's either not a game for them or it's badly designed.

I'm clearly doing a bad job of explaining myself. I'm not advocating for centering the game mechanics over everything else. I'm wondering why the design has to be so sloppy and produce pointlessly lame gameplay. Like...everything that's not combat in 5E. Most things are one-and-done. Make one roll and that's it. Either it's solved or it's not. And the only real option is to keep rolling until you succeed or walk away. That's lame. And yet that's how the game's designed. Make exploration into a fun part of gameplay, make it a mini game that's actually fun and engaging. But make it optional so tables can engage with it or ignore it as their preferences dictate. Same with social interaction. The minigame of social interaction is anemic at best. So make that into a fun and robust minigame. But one that tables can opt into or out of depending on their preferences. And even combat suffers because most combats are either a pointless cakewalk that's utterly boring or they're a slog with bags of boring hit points.

Realism and Verisimilitude. I've made this argument myself. It really rings hollow. The options are not 1) good, well-designed game rules or 2) verisimilitude. That's a false dichotomy. You can have both by designing the game rules to produce verisimilitude*. Trouble is, this is a selectively invoked argument. Verisimilitude only seems to come up when talking about non-casters. No one's arguing about how magic breaks their verisimilitude. Why? Because it's a fantasy game and magic is cool. Okay, so why make the verisimilitude argument about non-casters? Why can't they be awesome and do cool stuff too? It's honestly a terrible argument.

* But you need to know what the game's goal is as a game. Is the goal of D&D to produce verisimilitude? Then it does a terrible job at it. Is the goal of D&D to do something else? What? Design for that. Pick the thing D&D is good at and design for it. As it stands, D&D is half-assing everything.

Ownership and Modularity. Yeah, that's basically my feelings as well. Everyone thinks their way is right, everyone else's way is wrong...and yet we're all pretending to play the same game. This is what I was talking about earlier in the thread about trying to accomplish too many disparate and mutually exclusive goals. No one game can serve all gamers, yet D&D tries and so does nothing particularly well. There are other games that do things D&D does only they do it far, far better.

I loved the idea of modularity from the DND Next playtests. Such a great premise and promise, and such a disappointment when that rug was pulled.

Playing a role is about making choices as if you were that character, so for a game to be a roleplaying game, the mechanics of the game have to be about making and resolving choices as if you were the character.

There's a lot of people who've been playing RPGs for decades who'd disagree with you there. For quite a few people the role-playing there means they’re controlling one character rather than an army. How they go about controlling that one character is not something the game gets to dictate.

When the mechanics of the game require you to make choices which are dissociated with the character and the choices made by the character, then your not roleplaying in a roleplaying game.

It's a false dichotomy. You can have rules that reinforce the RP, the verisimilitude, the story, etc. Some rules of some RPGs don't. Some rules do.

I don't think "good game design" correlates 100% with "fun." I certainly have encountered games I thought were well-designed that I didn't think were fun.

I'd argue that those weren't well-designed games then. Because yes, good game design leads to fun gameplay. Not every game is fun for every player, of course. But a heap of rules, no matter how elegant, that produces boring gameplay is not well designed.

 

[mamba]

Immersion. Tabletop RPGs have never been that immersive for me. Never. I'm always trying to find that immersion, but it's elusive. The fact that you have to stop pretending to engage with the mechanics breaks immersion. That you're literally sitting around a table with other people who're talking, planning, grabbing food and drink, etc breaks immersion for me. I've never been that immersed in a tabletop RPG. I have been far more immersed in video games. Not because or in spite of the mechanics, but because the whole experience is far more immersive. The graphics, the sound, the smoothness of play, etc. All together that feels far more like a secondary world you could live in infinitely more than any tabletop RPG experience I've ever had. And I've played with some amazing GMs in some amazing games. What breaks immersion in those video games is running into things you cannot interact with, doors that won't open, objects you can't touch, people you can't talk to, etc. The tabletop RPG GM solves for that problem...but utterly lacks all the elements that make a video game immersive.

I agree that video games have a much easier time being immersive, thanks to being such a visual medium. The areas where you bump into the barrier of immersion are different between CRPGs and TTRPGs. For CRPGs it is whenever you want to do something that the game does not allow for (which can be very rare or never), TTRPGs struggle with the presentation, but allow you to do / try anything you want to.

So why prevent the game from being well designed to preserve immersion when tabletop RPGs are so bad at immersion?

this is a false dichotomy. I want a well designed games with rules that enhance immersion rather than hinder / prevent it

The rules should be fun to interact with, those procedures should produce the kind of play the designers intend. If the rules and procedures do not produce the kind of play the designers intend, then it's a badly designed game.

and a game that does what the designers intended can still be a bad game for me or anyone else, because we have different interests from the designers

What we are all looking for is a well designed game for our intentions

 

[Composer99]

Didn't say you should but it'd be nice if even one example could be pointed to as an example.

Excellent, then you'll be pleased to know others have stepped up to the plate.

I would tentatively nominate GURPS here, along with Amazing Engine.

Savage Worlds too.

As for...

But these don't change the fundamental way the game is played...

How is the playstyle of using Tome of battle different from the playstyle of regular 3rd edition? It offers a different type of martial class but that's no different than having the spellcasting differences of a warlock vs. a wizard.

Epic Level Handbook... Not too familiar with this so I'll ask... how does the fundamental playstyle change when using this book.

Psionics/Incarnum/etc. Again add player options but don't change the playstyle of the game.

Same with the campaign settings mentioned... the playstyle isn't really changed... Maybe we are talking about two different things here.

So...

Part of your initial enquiry was:

EDIT: To better clarify what I'm asking... is there an example of a ttrpg that is modularly designed to accommodate *through robust support) a multitude of playstyles?

To my mind, there is nothing in there that suggests the game had to fundamentally change its nature. So you'll have to excuse me for feeling a little grumpy that this additional criterion is being brought up.

Also, I'm not sure that even would be desirable: when you play GURPS or D&D, there is probably still an expectation that you are sitting down to play GURPS or D&D, even if you are sitting down to play D&D. In. Spaaaaace! (aka Spelljammer) versus when you are sitting down to play Grimdark. D&D (aka Dark Sun). There's still a reasonable expectation that both of those games should recognisably be D&D to some extent, even if there are also differences.

At any rate, I would posit that the gameplay introduced by ToB or ELH, even if they aren't fundamental (and in some cases they may well be), are still different enough from the core gameplay of the 3.5 PHB that they could (and did) satisfy the gameplay preferences of player constituencies that WotC was interested in retaining and whose preferences were "under-satisfied" as it were, by the core rules.

For instance, in the Epic-Level Handbook, the rules for epic uses of the Balance skill provide for balancing on surfaces less than 1 inch thick (including hair-thin surfaces) or even for balancing on a cloud. These use cases of Balance are still using the 3.X mechanics for skills, so in a very real sense the fundamental gameplay hasn't changed. But even so, the epic-level "module" has something to offer for those players who want an "epic" or "mythic" gameplay experience outside of what is offered by the core rules, while still recognisably being "D&D" (in its 3.X form).

---

As an example of what have in mind for how D&D could be designed with more of this modularity in mind, I would assert that, for instance, D&D could probably dispense with most of its mundane equipment being explicitly listed as a "core" rule element in the PHB. For what I suspect is the largest player constituency of D&D these days, it just doesn't matter whether you have "tent" written down in your inventory or not (and so on and so forth with most, if not all, regular items), and it just doesn't matter how many pounds of stuff you can carry - up to a point: most players, I expect, will probably happily concede their barbarian can't carry a 10,000-pound golden statue all by themselves.

Now, it may seem odd for me to be in agreement with @Micah Sweet but, like Micah, I would personally find this unsatisfying. I like a bit more heft to mundane equipment (albeit maybe not to the same extent as Micah). Instead of having the current set-up, where the PHB is littered with vestigial gear, I'd rather have a core rule as above, a variant rule in the PHB that adds some of the heft I want (like an abstracted slot encumbrance and "Gear" item that takes up space in your inventory, that you expend as you use it and as time goes by, but lets you abstractly handle some details of inventory management) and a second variant rule that has a more fulsome list of items probably not far off from what is in the PHB now, which may or may not include some descriptions of how they're typically used and/or (à la Torchbearer) at least one concrete benefit for bringing each such item along on adventures. That way:
(1) The largest player constituency or constituencies get what they want - not to have to bother with inventory management at all;
(2) I get what I want, or at least something close to it;
(3) Micah Sweet gets what they want, or at least something close to it;
without either (a) the rules being a wishy-washy compromise that don't particularly satisfy any of us or (b) us having to squabble over whose vision for inventory management ought to prevail.

I'd be willing to bet that the space savings from cutting down on "core" equipment for group (1) frees up almost enough page space to add the content for group (2) and (3) without having to add too many extra pages.

Meanwhile, the DMG could include some discussion about why you might choose the "standard" rule over one of the variants (or vice-versa).

Now, would this be easy, especially once you start taking other aspects of the game into account? Certainly not! I am sure that in many cases bland or unsatisfying compromises would still have to be made. Would it be possible? Well, I don't think we'll really know until WotC tries. Would it be successful? I fear that for that to happen, a lot of us would have to be willing to put aside sensibilities of exclusivity in ownership.

 

[Imaro]

Also, I'm not sure that even would be desirable: when you play GURPS or D&D, there is probably still an expectation that you are sitting down to play GURPS or D&D, even if you are sitting down to play D&D. In. Spaaaaace! (aka Spelljammer) versus when you are sitting down to play Grimdark. D&D (aka Dark Sun). There's still a reasonable expectation that both of those games should recognisably be D&D to some extent, even if there are also differences.

See and this is the crux of my questioning... what is the recognizable D&D that should be the base? How do you even determine that? Is it low level dangerous play, tactical play, resource management, combat as war, combat as sport, high level superhero-esque play? hexcrawl, sandbox, linear adventure, meta-currency, and so on. Over the various editions of D&D it has been all these things and more. If all you're saying is support D&D in space or D&D at higher levels that, IMO isn't supporting different playstyles... it's supporting various aspects of D&D.

Now if you're saying there should be a robust tactical module, a module that makes the game narrative driven, or a module that supports hexcrawling or an extensive social module for non-combat settling of conflict... these are playstyles. They aren't dependent on level or simple trappings they are in fact different ways/styles the game can be played and I don't think one game can robustly support them all and stay commercially viable at the level D&D is on.

 

[overgeeked]

I agree that video games have a much easier time being immersive, thanks to being such a visual medium. The areas where you bump into the barrier of immersion are different between CRPGs and TTRPGs. For CRPGs it is whenever you want to do something that the game does not allow for (which can be very rare or never), TTRPGs struggle with the presentation, but allow you to do / try anything you want to.

Right. But, to me at least, immersion is far more about presentation than tactical infinity. If I don't have tactical infinity, I can still be immersed in a game, see video games. If I don't have a good presentation, I cannot be immersed in a game, see literally all tabletop RPGs. Mostly because they literally can't offer the presentation of video games. Even the absolute best GMs I've seen, Matt Mercer, Brennan Lee Mulligan, etc, do not immerse me in their stories. It's always a person on the other side of the screen describing things, no matter how flowery or awesome.

this is a false dichotomy. I want a well designed games with rules that enhance immersion rather than hinder / prevent it

I said as much later in that same post. But, you run face first into other gamers' preferences. See rules like encumbrance and ammo tracking, etc.

and a game that does what the designers intended can still be a bad game for me or anyone else, because we have different interests from the designers

Absolutely.

What we are all looking for is a well designed game for our intentions

Exactly. And that's the problem. D&D tries to be all things to all gamers and therefore doesn't do anything particularly well.
It's being pulled in a dozen different directions trying to serve a dozen different design goals. Even older editions of D&D do different parts of the game better than 5E does. But, 5E is effectively the only game in town. Other games literally exist, but they might as well not considering how difficult it is to find players, GMs, etc. So D&D has all the players and playstyles under one big tent and they do not all fit together. Yet here we are.