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

[EzekielRaiden]

What resistance are you talking about. This is not, I think, something I have encountered before.

Really? Have you somehow managed to be on this forum and read nothing whatsoever about D&D 5e in the past decade+?

 

[DEFCON 1]

Odd. I've seen exactly the opposite. Plenty of people on this forum alone would love to see better, more interesting stuff in this regard. And it isn't just folks who like "modern" RPG rules as opposed to "old school" ones. Spells that screw up the ability to run a difficult survival challenge (where food and water are scarce and the party must carefully manage their resources) are lamented all the time by folks who would like an exploration experience with mechanical teeth to it.

Those aren't "mini-games" though... at least not in the way overgeeked seemed to be advocating for (unless I misunderstood them.)

Do you think even half the players of D&D want a "social combat" system for the Interaction pillar that is on par with what we have for Combat? With moves, and argumentative attacks, and verbal defenses and the like? And "social hit points" that go down whenever someone makes a good point? I've seen a few games that do in fact have systems of that nature and they've never really seemed to catch on. So while I do not begrudge someone for thinking D&D could benefit from a "social combat" system... I do not see why WotC should be the one to necessarily make it, especially not in the core Player's Handbook.

 

[dave2008]

Really? Have you somehow managed to be on this forum and read nothing whatsoever about D&D 5e in the past decade+?

Really. I may be misunderstanding the intent of the OP and maybe it is clarified elsewhere in this thread. However, I a have never seen anyone, outside the satanic panic, who didn't think it was a game.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The point was to show that you cannot just reason from "it's faster" to "it's better."

Obviously it is a judgment call. That's the point! The whole point is that this requires careful thought and consideration.

But, all else being equal, if you have a choice between using a method that is enjoyable in and of itself, and a method that is not at all enjoyable in and of itself, the former is clearly preferable unless you explain why it would be bad. Hence, the centerpiece of your reasoning--that, because it is merely a means and not an end, it is irrelevant whether it is good or bad--is simply, unequivocally false.

I'm failing to see how your points here relate to the dice in D&D? Unless you are suggesting that because dice rolling is fun (at least for some people) that the act of rolling the dice is at least equal to the results that the dice give us? The dice rolling itself is the end, not the means to an end.

If that's your argument... that the act of rolling is just as important as the information the die result give us, and thus we should put in more systems into D&D that allow us the joy of rolling dice (regardless of how necessary they are to getting us the results we want from them)... I mean, I won't discount that some people might enjoy that. But I don't personally see that to be a thing that most folks feel is missing? Maybe I'm wrong! Maybe rolling more dice just for the pleasure of rolling more dice is in fact wanted by a majority of the playerbase. But I guess we'll have to wait and see if WotC feels that is true enough to warrant putting more dice rolling into the game?

 

[overgeeked]

Oh man, I'm writing a philosophy PhD thesis on narratives and you're wrong. Not every sequence of events automatically makes a narrative. A narrative is a narrative because there are meaningful connections - in terms of agency, explanatory power, and so on. So no, you're wrong in saying that the mechanics don't produce the story. In simulationist games, the rules are literally there to create a sequence of events that are meaningfully connected (and since they also simulate high-intensity situations where victory and defeat are on the line, that meaning is also emotionally charged), and that meaningful connection is what makes a game's narrative different from the story of a boardgame or a League of Legends match. Not to mention the fact that you are completely overlooking immersion as a factor, and that is a (pardon the pun) gamechanger since it completely changes how you relate to the story that arises out of the game (consuming it vs. actively living it).

Maybe it's a terms thing. I'm distinguishing between narrative and story.

Games will always have a narrative because the players experience time linearly and so will construct a narrative sequence of events based on their gameplay. Games don't always have a story because some games are not designed to have a story. Tetris does not have a story. Bejeweled does not have a story. But if you recount your play of the game to someone you have constructed a narrative of your play. Story is the thing imposed from the outside; narrative is what emerges from play.

Like the difference between two groups who play the same module. They both experience the same story (the plot elements, NPCs, etc that exist in the module), but they both have different narratives ("When we went through Lost Mines of Phandelver the first goblin one-shot our fighter and we had to run away." "Wow...in our Lost Mines game we...").

 

[Vaalingrade]

Really. I may be misunderstanding the intent of the OP and maybe it is clarified elsewhere in this thread. However, I a have never seen anyone, outside the satanic panic, who didn't think it was a game.

Just search here for 'gamey' or 'game-y' and watch the bad arguments roll in.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Those aren't "mini-games" though... at least not in the way overgeeked seemed to be advocating for (unless I misunderstood them.)

Do you think even half the players of D&D want a "social combat" system for the Interaction pillar that is on par with what we have for Combat? With moves, and argumentative attacks, and verbal defenses and the like? And "social hit points" that go down whenever someone makes a good point? I've seen a few games that do in fact have systems of that nature and they've never really seemed to catch on. So while I do not begrudge someone for thinking D&D could benefit from a "social combat" system... I do not see why WotC should be the one to necessarily make it, especially not in the core Player's Handbook.

You didn't say "even half." You said nobody at all wanted this stuff. Those two are very, very different standards--and I was responding to the standard originally used. If you are backing off of that standard, and instead saying that you haven't seen the majority of people want these very specific things, then okay; but that would be not only a far weaker claim, it would also be quite different. No longer a sweeping generalization about all possible ways to make the other pillars more engaging, and no longer a "nobody wants that," it would instead be most people don't want these specific changes. Which...I mean, sure, in absence of actual survey data, I can't really say either way what a majority of people think, but the claim is so weak that it's hard to deny.

Don't pull a motte and bailey on this. You didn't say, "I don't see at least half of people clamoring for very specifically social combat." Your phrasing was, exactly as I quoted (before an edit, I believe): "I see few people clamoring for the same thing in Exploration and Interaction." I took this to mean, "I see few people clamoring for equally engaging mechanics." Because...yeah, I actually see quite a bit of that. There are plenty of people who want socialization and exploration to have teeth to them. Who find it rather dull that D&D 5e's non-combat mechanics boil down to some combination of the following things:

• DM says what happens
• You keep rolling until you succeed, or you walk away
• You cast a spell that solves the problem instantly

And the vast majority of cases are just the first bullet point. That's not particularly engaging gameplay. Indeed, in many ways, it only barely qualifies as "gameplay" at all.

If all you were saying was that you see few people clamoring for very specifically and exclusively Social Combat with Social HP and Social Attacks and Social etc. etc., then sure. You'd also be making, as stated, an incredibly weak claim that doesn't really assert very much--and, perhaps more importantly, a claim that is pretty much a total non-sequitur to what Overgeeked wrote.

Really. I may be misunderstanding the intent of the OP and maybe it is clarified elsewhere in this thread. However, I a have never seen anyone, outside the satanic panic, who didn't think it was a game.

That's....really difficult to respond to, then.

Because there are a LOT of things, on this very forum, where people are pretty antagonistic to any approach to D&D play that involves gameplay conveniences that are not in keeping with (their individual, often incorrect) understanding of IRL physics/biology/etc. Which is what being resistant to considering D&D as a game means. Folks who hate treating D&D as a product of human artifice, a thing intentionally designed for human entertainment with abstractions, simplifications, and ignored or elided things that are inconvenient or not very engaging.

Those people are quite common on this very forum. So it's...just hard to respond. If you don't see that opposition, I don't know how I could communicate it to you.

I'm failing to see how your points here relate to the dice in D&D? Unless you are suggesting that because dice rolling is fun (at least for some people) that the act of rolling the dice is at least equal to the results that the dice give us?

If that's your argument... that the act of rolling is just as important as the information the die result give us, and thus we should put in more systems into D&D that allow us the joy of rolling dice (regardless of how necessary they are to getting us the results we want from them)... I mean, I won't discount that some people might enjoy that. But I don't personally see that to be a thing that most folks feel is missing? Maybe I'm wrong! Maybe rolling more dice just for the pleasure of rolling more dice is in fact wanted by a majority of the playerbase. But I guess we'll have to wait and see if WotC feels that is true enough to warrant putting more dice rolling into the game?

Perhaps I have simply misunderstood the conversation, but nothing in Overgeeked's post you quoted said anything at all about dice specifically. Indeed, @overgeeked didn't even use the word "dice." The only references to anything at all involving dice were that they dislike the fact that non-combat stuff in 5e is "roll until you succeed, or walk away," which pretty clearly means they want something more than dice, not just more dice!

So, no, my argument has nothing whatever to do with the act of rolling being important. It has everything to do with using the rules being important. Equally important to responding to the resolution, because the method you use to achieve that resolution can be fun or laborious, engaging or boring, strategic or simplistic, etc. Dice are one specific form of resolution mechanic. There are others, and further, there are different ways to involve or manipulate dice. The actual, physical act of tossing a die? Not that interesting, generally speaking. But the prelude to tossing that die, the mechanics involved in setting up that die roll? Those can be quite interesting indeed. The (difficult!) trick, of course, is to make the prelude interesting for those who want high-engagement rules, while not making it punishing for those who want low-engagement rules. Tricky, but possible. Of course, D&D has an extremely spotty track record on that front, but that doesn't mean things can't change.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Just a side comment that, while its possible this is particularly pronounced with D&D, the hostility to the game-centric elements in RPGs is not exactly rare outside of it.

 

[CleverNickName]

Just search here for 'gamey' or 'game-y' and watch the bad arguments roll in.

Yeah, there's a reason why certain folks prefer to use the term "gamey" instead of the more accurate "game-like."

 

[overgeeked]

I don't think we are far apart here. I agree that CRPGs are more easily immersive and probably also more deeply than traditional TTRPGs. I can immerse myself in a book too however, so it is not impossible for TTRPGs, it is 'just' harder. Props, terrain / battlemaps, music, etc. can all help with that too.

Maybe for you, but they have the opposite effect on me. Except music, depending on the music. Sitting there watching the referee place dozens of terrain pieces does not immerse me in the game's fiction. Ignoring that and focusing on the game play...nope. I still have to stand up, move around the table, move a chair or another player to see what's going on. Terrain emphasizes the fact that it's a game, not mask it.

What takes me out of the immersion differs between the two though. In CRPGs I can run into the borders of the map, the limitations of the game engine, etc. In TTRPGs this is much easier, there the difficulty is more for the experience to (as) immersive to begin with. For me it will be interesting to see how far VTTs will close the gap to CRPGs in the next years.

It'll definitely be interesting.

agreed, but that is by design. If you want to hover in the center of things, you have to let go of the edges. Any 'edge' you cling to is pushing other people away from the game. You basically have to design for the flavorless vanilla experience, because any flavor will be something that some people like and some do not. Your problem starts when too many people feel your offering is too bland, but so far this does not seem to be the case for D&D, when looking at the number of players.

You can't both design for blandness and design for richness. I think that's part of what I'm running into. 5E tries to be everything to all gamers and doesn't do much, if anything, well.

I am ok with people dropping the game again and moving to a more flavorful TTRPG, in whichever direction that takes them. If WotC is not, then they are the ones that need to address that (if the playtest is anything to go by, they are not doing that....)

And that runs into the social problems surrounding the hobby. D&D is, effective, the only game in town. Other games exist, but practically speaking, re: actually being able to play them, they might as well not exist. So it's D&D 5E or nothing for a lot of people.

no disagreement here either, which shows that it sits dead center, otherwise all the pulling would come from one side

Which means it's bland. It's not a good game because it's not really good at doing anything.

That is a problem, I wish people would be more interested in trying different things. The only solution to this would be a more modular design where you can replace one rules-module with a different one that better fits your needs, but I am not seeing WotC doing this any better now than they have in the past, so it is up to the DM to houserule or for the whole group to jump ship

Right. But the result will be people simply leaving the hobby, not jumping to other games in any appreciable numbers. Even with the OGL fiasco and a few other games having their best sales ever for a month or two, the needle barely moved. Unless the MCDM RPG or Daggerheart somehow take the industry by storm. Best wishes to the other companies doing their not-5E games, but I don't see any of them moving the needle much at all.