D&D General D&D tries to be a little of everything, and that's its secret strength (and weakness)

[Maxperson]

D&D has baggage that makes it D&D.

That's good and bad.

But it's what makes it D&D.

And why PCs are called murderhobos.

 

[Blue Orange]

It benefits massively from network effects because all the players have to play the same game, so advantage obtains to the game with the most widespread knowledge.

That said, I like it. It does sword and sorcery or high fantasy reasonably well, and that's enough for many people. Its influences stretch as far as Japanese isekai anime and articles on 'levelling up your sales skills'.

It ain't perfect, but it's good enough for most things.

 

[Shardstone]

D&D has baggage that makes it D&D.

That's good and bad.

But it's what makes it D&D.

While I can understand the sentiment, I really think this line of thought ignores what it actually means to be D&D. Painting D&D to be only some ouroboros that only needs itself and thus is perfect with itself is flawed thinking IMO. I, personally, don't have a strong schema for "what is D&D." I've played for a decent time, almost the entire lifespan of 5E, and I've played a lot of other RPGs too, and I've done a lot of design work but personally and professionally as well. And with all that said, I truly just don't think this idea of "D&D's baggage makes it D&D" is true.

Why? Because so many people I've played with transpose their baggage onto D&D and overwrite it. Likewise, when you begin designing for D&D and start really playing with the mechanical and narrative frameworks, this concept of "D&D baggage" completely disappears. I know many die-hard fans who don't care about things like FR, Mind Flayers, Beholders, Druids, etc. They instead either mold concepts into what their own fantasy touchstones are or bring in new ideas and reflavor or stretch the game to fit them.

In other words, D&D isn't D&D because of its baggage. It's D&D because it provides a flavorful but generic enough game that you can sorta kinda put whatever ideas you want into it. When people say things like D&D is D&D because it's D&D, they're basically projecting their own preferences onto the game and acting like this is what D&D truly is and always has been. But everything, even Chromatic Dragons, even the Classes, even the Spells and Spell System -- all of these things can and have been modified, changed, edited, removed, and replaced at various times and yet people still feel like it's D&D.

This, IMO, is a lot better and a lot healthier of a mindset then acting like D&D is D&D and thus it can be nothing else. Even at the game's inception, Gygax and Arneson disagreed on how to design the game and the world. Then Gygax and TSR had a disagreement. Then TSR had a bunch of disagreements and the game moved to WotC, who have changed it three times now, adding and removing and embracing and negating any number of ideas, mechanical or narrative. The radical evolution in the game, even if it feels coherent to people who've lived through it, is proof enough that D&D is a quantum thing that totally changes when exposed to other ideas.

And tbh, having played a lot of RPGs, most of them feel like something similar. Yeah, there's a lot of exceptions; Fate of the Norns is pretty unique in terms of mechanics...but all these fantastical games are really just about tapping into your imagination and giving you rules to do different things. But those rules only matter so much as the flavor they are tied too, and that flavor, in D&D, has been liquid since the game's creation.

 

[Shardstone]

The thing I always find curious though is that we KNOW what D&D is. It is what it is. And yet we still see so many people get bent out of shape at places like here when D&D isn't something else. The fact that D&D doesn't do X particularly well (at least not as well as another game that was built specifically for the purpose of doing X well)... gets them genuinely upset. Which is just bizarre to me. We KNOW the designers of the game are never going to turn D&D into whatever it is we think it "should" be... so why does that bother us so? Why have we put so much emphasis on this game of 'D&D' that we need THIS game to be the game WE want, when we could just as easily play the game that was designed to be what we want?

Now of course the answers are 'nostalgia', 'community' and 'laziness'. 'Nostalgia' because we remember playing and loving D&D in the previous times-- back when we didn't care about X, Y, or Z in our gaming-- and wish we could still play and love D&D that same way again even though we want our gaming to include X, Y, and Z.

'Community' because it is indeed the largest and most popular roleplaying game out there, and there is something to be said to feeling good about being part of a group. So we want that community aspect, but just wish the game we have to play to be a part of it was more to our liking.

And 'laziness'? Heh... well, that just comes down to not going all-out to find those 3 other people somewhere out there in the great wide world that are willing to sit at our table and play whatever ridiculous, bizarro-world version of an RPG that we are desperate to play. Finding 3 people who will play my game with all my crazy, out-there beliefs of what makes a good RPG... all my weird house rules that make the game run in a certain way... all that can be a tall order and tiring task. And at some point if I can't find them, rather than keeping at it and working harder to find those 3 players to sit at my table... I just instead come to places like this and demand that the WotC designers turn D&D into my ridiculous, bizarro-world RPG so that my pool of player options becomes larger and I don't have to work as hard to fill my table.

But of course the issue with that is that the designers of D&D don't give a rat's ass that you can't find players that go along with whatever hyper-specific, weird way you feel like you need your game to be to be happy. So they aren't going to change their priorities just for you. You just need to work harder and do a better job in selling your ridiculous and bizarro-world RPG idea to eventually find those 3 players.

I really think this is a toxic post man. You have a bad habit of essentially devaluing other people's ideas. In this post, you create this very gross strawman about hyper-specific houserules not even 3 people in the whole wide world would want to play. I agree with your core premise that D&D is trying to remain consistent with what it wants to do, which is Fantasy combat and adventure, but the way you paint people who want to play with it in other ways is flatout demeaning.

 

[Alzrius]

 

[nevin]

I really think this is a toxic post man. You have a bad habit of essentially devaluing other people's ideas. In this post, you create this very gross strawman about hyper-specific houserules not even 3 people in the whole wide world would want to play. I agree with your core premise that D&D is trying to remain consistent with what it wants to do, which is Fantasy combat and adventure, but the way you paint people who want to play with it in other ways is flatout demeaning.

while i do agree his wording could be far better I do think the idea he buried in his unfortunate choice of words, that changing the game for the people on the fringes is silly is a sold one. Far too many people come to forums looking for ways to fix D&D when they'd be far better off with another game system. Or the ones who, when you finally get them to admit it are trying to stealth mod thier d&D game into something else because their players refuse to play their game of choice. I've even seen people post that they don't like D&D but it's the most popular game so they want it fixed.

 

[darjr]

While I can understand the sentiment, I really think this line of thought ignores what it actually means to be D&D. Painting D&D to be only some ouroboros that only needs itself and thus is perfect with itself is flawed thinking IMO. I, personally, don't have a strong schema for "what is D&D." I've played for a decent time, almost the entire lifespan of 5E, and I've played a lot of other RPGs too, and I've done a lot of design work but personally and professionally as well. And with all that said, I truly just don't think this idea of "D&D's baggage makes it D&D" is true.

Why? Because so many people I've played with transpose their baggage onto D&D and overwrite it. Likewise, when you begin designing for D&D and start really playing with the mechanical and narrative frameworks, this concept of "D&D baggage" completely disappears. I know many die-hard fans who don't care about things like FR, Mind Flayers, Beholders, Druids, etc. They instead either mold concepts into what their own fantasy touchstones are or bring in new ideas and reflavor or stretch the game to fit them.

In other words, D&D isn't D&D because of its baggage. It's D&D because it provides a flavorful but generic enough game that you can sorta kinda put whatever ideas you want into it. When people say things like D&D is D&D because it's D&D, they're basically projecting their own preferences onto the game and acting like this is what D&D truly is and always has been. But everything, even Chromatic Dragons, even the Classes, even the Spells and Spell System -- all of these things can and have been modified, changed, edited, removed, and replaced at various times and yet people still feel like it's D&D.

This, IMO, is a lot better and a lot healthier of a mindset then acting like D&D is D&D and thus it can be nothing else. Even at the game's inception, Gygax and Arneson disagreed on how to design the game and the world. Then Gygax and TSR had a disagreement. Then TSR had a bunch of disagreements and the game moved to WotC, who have changed it three times now, adding and removing and embracing and negating any number of ideas, mechanical or narrative. The radical evolution in the game, even if it feels coherent to people who've lived through it, is proof enough that D&D is a quantum thing that totally changes when exposed to other ideas.

And tbh, having played a lot of RPGs, most of them feel like something similar. Yeah, there's a lot of exceptions; Fate of the Norns is pretty unique in terms of mechanics...but all these fantastical games are really just about tapping into your imagination and giving you rules to do different things. But those rules only matter so much as the flavor they are tied too, and that flavor, in D&D, has been liquid since the game's creation.

Yea. But that’s also one of the bags.

From almost day one people have been making their own thing out of D&D. Sometimes you almost had too.

How many times have we heard folks lament, just run another system, and yet people do things with D&D.

 

[Shardstone]

Yea. But that’s also one of the bags.

From almost day one people have been making their own thing out of D&D. Sometimes you almost had too.

How many times have we heard folks lament, just run another system, and yet people do things with D&D.

And this gets to a deeper idea, IMO, which is that while rules can reinforce narrative/thematic ideas, they only do so if you're told so; otherwise, you can project whatever you want to any rule.

So when you're buying a specific game, you're buying the angle the designers have for the rules. Since you're really just buying the angle, that means you can change the angle for any ruleset to achieve something similar to what you want.

Playing games like Dungeon World, BRP, Mork Borg, Mythic Bastionland -- all of these games feel like "D&D," so long as I focus on the heroic adventure angle (or for OSR, the get rich or die trying angle). That's why I usually ignore it when people talk about "This doesn't feel like D&D" when they talk about rules, or when people say "D&D can't do that, play another game." Telling someone to play another game is just a cop out that people use to maintain the dogmatic truth of their projections onto the rule system. I've played 5E as a horror game, as an OSR game, as an action simulator, as a political drama game, as a historical Roman and Celt game, and more on. Yeah, it required some modifying of the rules, but the whole reason we play TTRPGs is so that, unlike in a video game, we aren't pigeonholed to just what the designers envisioned.

 

[Shardstone]

while i do agree his wording could be far better I do think the idea he buried in his unfortunate choice of words, that changing the game for the people on the fringes is silly is a sold one. Far too many people come to forums looking for ways to fix D&D when they'd be far better off with another game system. Or the ones who, when you finally get them to admit it are trying to stealth mod thier d&D game into something else because their players refuse to play their game of choice. I've even seen people post that they don't like D&D but it's the most popular game so they want it fixed.

I don't accept the assertion that people would be better off playing another game. I think that ignores a lot of nuance and shuts down innovation. D&D can be "fixed" to fit your table's desires, and it isn't nearly as difficult as a lot of people want everyone else to believe.

I'm not saying change the core game for this, I'm just saying, this anti-DIY attitude in the D&D audience is boring, anti-innovation, and exists only to shut down conversation. I don't want to play another game that is radically different. I want to modify D&D to do what I want it to do. And if I want to talk about how I want D&D to change, I shouldn't have to wade through a sea of "Screw off loser, play a different game" to figure out some cool ways to modify the rules.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I've been thinking a lot lately about how different everyone's experiences with D&D are. I feel like in the same thread we have folks who enjoy dungeons, who only use dungeons, who never use dungeons... Folks who play fighters as magic-powered beings and folks who play fighters as purely mundane... Folks who play only levels 1 - 10 and folks who prefer high level...

I feel like D&D actively tries to meet all these demands in its design. It's a combat simulator and also a shared storytelling engine. Some parts of the rules are super gritty, others are basically hand-waved. There is no one official setting, but there is a base set of assumptions about the world portrayed in the rules.

To me, I see this as a huge strength of D&D. The fact that everyone can have these equally valid but very different experiences with D&D helps it reach a wider audience and survive over generations. The game can evolve not just over editions, but also over time at a single gaming table. (I know the friends I played with 20 years ago now play a lot differently!)

But at the same time, this design philosophy can be a weakness. D&D seems like it's trying to balance itself between so many playstyles that, at times, it doesn't do any of them well. It can also lack the richness of lore and theme that RPGs that focus on a single setting or playstyles do.

These are just some basic thoughts, but what do you think? Has D&D always tried to be lots of things to lots of people? Would it benefit from a clearer, narrower vision? Or is its messiness a benefit?

When you say, "D&D", do you mean, "the version of D&D 5e currently published by Wizards of the Coast"? Because different versions of the game have leaned one way or another towards incentivizing different play styles, both in game published by TSR or WotC (very different from each other) and various 3pp games related to versions of D&D.