Unpopular opinions go here

[Tony Vargas]

Given all those, claiming D&D 5E isn't combat focused seems rather disconnected from reality.

That is an unpopular opinion.

That D&D has always been combat-focused is less opinion than fact. Why, whether it's intentional, whether it's a bad thing or not, that's all a lot less clear and open to interpretation & opinion.

D&D has, almost from the very beginning, been accused of being a violent game, so it's natural, if you like the game, to push back against that... but it's not necessary, or even realistic to do so. There's a lot of that in fandoms, really, fans don't like their beloved being criticised, even when the criticism is 100% accurate and not even a bad thing.

D&D is focused on combat!
Why, yes, it was a wargame, combat is a major feature of the genre it tries to emulate, combat is consistently life-or-death, combat is what failed activity in non-combat can lead into, combat is often the last resort available in many a dramatic situation.
It had better be able to handle combat really well!

an elf, at least from the point of view of most of the other races, immortal SHOULD be a HUGE element in your character. It has virtually no actual mechanical import or impact, but, elven longevity is probably one of the biggest defining elements of elves in D&D.

Back in the day there was a lot of magical aging and only some of it was tuned to affect different-longevity races differently, so there was a mechanical impact. Also, death by old age was a hard limit that couldn't be entirely bypassed. I don't know if anyone ever ran a campaign that outlived it's human characters, and their players rolled up a succession of heirs and new characters while the elf just kept dividing exp among three classes while slowly advancing only in Thief....

you can extend the logic of this argument to any part of the game where the system limits choice.

Yes! Choice is good. As long as you keep those choices balanced. Which does make providing unlimited choice very tough on the designer, but, were a designer ever able to deliver, it'd be pretty awesome.

Of course, limiting choice can focus what a game, or better, setting or campaign, is about. A genre game reasonably could restrict you from breaking out of the most universal genre tropes, for instance, and a licensed game would be well advised to limit player choice to what's established in and consistent with the franchise, etc...

 

[deganawida]

Why not background?

(Personally, I do not much care for floating ASIs, but only because I think that they actually reduce meaningful choice. But I'm also not a huge fan of racial ASIs, either.)

Background is also a great place to put it. Probably makes more sense than just ability score generation, since your background would affect what ability scores increase. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[Thomas Shey]

Back in the day, you got the enemy's attention by being the biggest threat in the room.

Of course pretty quickly that was almost always the MU. No matter what the fighter was doing, things like Sleep and other take-outs were just not something you could ignore.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Of course, limiting choice can focus what a game, or better, setting or campaign, is about. A genre game reasonably could restrict you from breaking out of the most universal genre tropes, for instance, and a licensed game would be well advised to limit player choice to what's established in and consistent with the franchise, etc...

I think my feeling here is there are games I go to that have customizability and they work pretty well. But D&D has long been a class based game, and just my feeling from the experience I have had across editions is it tends to function better when it limits some of these choices (especially choices involving class and race). Obviously there have been differences across editions. But my favorites tend to lean more on that simplicity of class or class+race.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I think my feeling here is there are games I go to that have customizability and they work pretty well. But D&D has long been a class based game, and just my feeling from the experience I have had across editions is it tends to function better when it limits some of these choices (especially choices involving class and race). Obviously there have been differences across editions. But my favorites tend to lean more on that simplicity of class or class+race.

I don't disagree, but as long as D&D, heh, bestrides the industry like a colossus, presenting itself as the greatest and virtually only RPG, people are going to vocally want to adapt D&D to what they need from a game, instead of try to sort through the hundreds of obscure, under-supported, games that are technically better....

Back in the day, you got the enemy's attention by being the biggest threat in the room.

Of course pretty quickly that was almost always the MU. No matter what the fighter was doing, things like Sleep and other take-outs were just not something you could ignore.

That was a big difference between how D&D was reputed to play in the TSR era, and what MMOs discovered when they tried to program it to work that way - that you needed a mechanic to make the disposable resource-poor fighter functionally the 'biggest threat,' when taking down the resource-heavy casters was the best way to defeat the party.
In the olden days, good DMs would be running dungeons with fighters blocking the corridor or standing in a doorway, defending by taking up space and having high AC & hp, or when that didn't happen to be the case, just attacking the fighter because, well, that's what one does. Absent a conscientious human controlling the ruthless evil monsters and having them act in the interests of the party, they needed something to make that happen.
Aggro was the result.

Hey, and that brings us back to the very unpopular opinion of "criticisms that aren't really criticisms" and people getting freaked out about 'em.
"Your D&D is just like an MMO!" "MMO? You mean the class of on-line games that are orders of magnitude more popular and profitable than ttrpgs, that are backed with tons of money and updated frequently to keep them balanced, playable, and fun for everyone who plays them? Why thank you, yes, yes it is."

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Don't get me wrong, I like online games. I play mostly online, so everyone is on a device for the most part as well. The only thing I avoid online is virtual tabletop (I prefer keeping it theater of the mind). I still would maintain that when we are playing in person and devices are down, you get a better baseline level of attentiveness and engagement (there is an certain amount of inevitable surfing that will go on in online games----for example when players are waiting for their turn in combat----that can lead to distraction). But I also agree it has advantages with things like notes and such. I like online gaming, but it took me a while to warm up to it because there is definitely more work to get the feel of a live table. I like online gaming because I have health issues that make in person harder (I can do it, it just isn't especially easy or comfortable for me) and I like that online gaming broadens my player pool to people all over the world. This allows me to have players in my group from England, other states, etc.

Just so we’re 100% clear, I wasn’t talking about online gaming- I’ve never done that myself.

So everything I was saying about using mobile devices involved in-person gaming with me at the table.

 

[Campbell]

I am not concerned with mobile device use at the table, but I think players should be expected to pay attention and like actively appreciate the parts of the game where the spotlight is on other player characters. Part of that might involve us all working on creating characters we all find interesting and building in relevant connections between the characters, but if your eyes glaze over when its someone else's turn to speak there is a problem that needs to be addressed.

 

[MGibster]

I don't disagree, but as long as D&D, heh, bestrides the industry like a colossus, presenting itself as the greatest and virtually only RPG, people are going to vocally want to adapt D&D to what they need from a game, instead of try to sort through the hundreds of obscure, under-supported, games that are technically better....

It's like Blade said, "Some mother#@%#% are always trying to ice skate up hill."

 

[Umbran]

In other words, why do other people need the entire game, for everyone, to fit the new pattern?

Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Not quite: The old pattern is a subset of the new one - you can construct the traditional characters from the new pattern. The reverse is not true - so there is asymmetry, not equivalence.

If we do not see any balance issues from the new pattern, it makes sense to have the more general form be the standard, and allow folks to restrict if they want, rather than keep the specific form standard, and have people have to figure out the generalization on their own.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not quite: The old pattern is a subset of the new one - you can construct the traditional characters from the new pattern. The reverse is not true - so there is asymmetry, not equivalence.

If we do not see any balance issues from the new pattern, it makes sense to have the more general form be the standard, and allow folks to restrict if they want, rather than keep the specific form standard, and have people have to figure out the generalization on their own.

Except human nature tends to resent restriction.

Of course, I'm sure you'll respond with,"Well, I guess that means they weren't on board with what you want anyway!"

sarcastic chuckle optional but common