D&D General Styles of D&D Play

[Oofta]

I agree with the OP's list and I think another aspect is tone and setting. There are many different styles of campaign to run such as gothic or eldritch horror, steampunk (magipunk?), urban campaigns or wilderness, dungeon crawls or hex exploration of uncharted lands. Do your adventures take place in the mortal realm or are you plane hopping or in space? By land or by sea? Are you playing heroes, scoundrels, heroes who everyone thinks are scoundrels? Combat heavy or combat light? Do you have base of operations and if it's a city are you on good terms with the government or are they corrupt, or perhaps you're the corrupt ones!

Can many of these stories be told with other games? Of course. But if you're playing BitD (Blades in the Dark) you pretty much assume you're doing a heist campaign. Call of Cthulhu? Good luck holding on to your sanity as long as you can. Meanwhile in D&D we can discuss this kind of stuff in a session 0 and we're off to the races. I like that the system gets out of the way of what kind of game I want to play and just lets me do what I want. It's not unlimited of course, but it is adaptable to a wide variety of games. It's part of why it's as popular as it is.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I agree with @Hussar that there is a difference between "supporting" a gameplay style, and "not actively resisting" a gameplay style.

D&D has always supported "Killing Monsters". That's been its raison d'etre since the beginning. And we all know this because virtually everything on a character sheet is there specifically to illustrate just how well the character is in killing monsters. And indeed one entire book of three core books of each edition of Dungeons & Dragons is a tome full of nothing but said monsters, all of whose mechanical heft is geared towards fighting the characters and defending against them.

D&D "supports" the monster killing gameplay style. That's what it's written to do.

But while almost all the other gameplay styles can certainly be accomplished within the game of D&D... the game itself does not do much of anything to help make those gameplay styles easier to run, nor are there any rules written specifically for those styles. So any connection between those gameplay styles and the game of D&D is purely coincidental.

Which isn't a bad thing, let me be clear! No game can include every style within it with full rules support because then the whole thing becomes a messy hodge-podge without any cohesion. I mean can you imagine a D&D game that includes using a Dread Jenga stack for tracking "tension" all the time? AND includes Fiasco characterization connections required for every party build and whose scene results are dictated by the other players by merely handing the players a white or black die to support the character interaction and relationship pillar?

And these are only two gameplay styles out of the dozens of different games out there that their design was built on that you would need to incorporate into D&D itself in some form or fashion to truly support those styles. It would become too much.

 

[cranberry]

It seems like the OP covered all of them.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

Speaking in the most general terms makes this applicable to any number of RPG systems/editions. But that has always been the greatest appeal of roleplaying games. People can decide exactly how they want to play their games together.

 

[Umbran]

1. Problem Solving - D&D actively works against this. The magic system allows the players to bypass so many problems without actually taking any time to directly try to solve a problem. Why bother working out the combination lock on that lost tomb when you can simply use any of fifteen different magic effects to bypass it?

I disagree with you here, because is assumes "problem" is "thing that would vex normal non-adventuring people". Problems should be defined within the context of the set of tools the characters have.

Like, sure, a simple combination lock may be a problem for you or me, but isn't a problem for someone with a Knock spell. But, neither are they a problem for any competent thief character in heist fiction. But heist fiction is still all about solving the problems that come up in the heist.

2. Character Driven - very little in D&D actually supports this. The skill system is so basic that it's largely pointless.

"Character-driven" is not about skills. It is about personality, relationships, and player-defined goals. Now, I agree that D&D doesn't give you a whole lot of mechanics around personality, relationships, and goals either.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

I strongly disagree with you here. Most of the things you've listed aren't actually supported by D&D. At best they're freeform which is system independent.

For example:

1. Problem Solving - D&D actively works against this. The magic system allows the players to bypass so many problems without actually taking any time to directly try to solve a problem. Why bother working out the combination lock on that lost tomb when you can simply use any of fifteen different magic effects to bypass it?

2. Character Driven - very little in D&D actually supports this. The skill system is so basic that it's largely pointless. The system does not reward any character growth at all. Falling in love and getting married, for example, is entirely free-form. Nothing in the system actually supports or rewards this.

3. Political - again, nothing in D&D supports this. Your character wants to win over the population of the town to get elected. What in D&D actually allows you to do this? This is all freeform or ad hoc DM fiat to resolve.

4. Historical Simulation? Seriously? In a game where 30 of the 36 base classes in the PHB all have spells? You'd have to slice out about 4/5ths of the rules just to start doing something like this. My next question would be, why on earth would you even begin to use D&D for this? I couldn't even imagine where you'd start trying to do something like this.

It depends what you mean but "support," but you can definitely do all of those things in D&D. All you need is a basic resolution mechanic and everything can develop from that. Basically freeform as you said, but that is OK for many, if not most, people. With 5e's reliance on ability checks it makes many of these types of games very easy to do it you want and are willing/able to improv (which is definitely not for everyone).

 

[Krachek]

According to the 5ed DM guide “play style“ slide on one axis : Hack and slash vs Immersive storytelling.

They refer to multiple flavors of Fantasy : Heroic, Sword and sorcery, Epic, mythic, dark, intrigue, mystery, swashbuckling. Warfare, Wuxia.

They also present various interest for players :
Acting
Exploring
Instigating
Fighting
Optimizing
Problem solving
Story telling

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

But while almost all the other gameplay styles can certainly be accomplished within the game of D&D... the game itself does not do much of anything to help make those gameplay styles easier to run, nor are there any rules written specifically for those styles. So any connection between those gameplay styles and the game of D&D is purely coincidental.

While I agree that D&D is geared for combat, there are definitely rules provided for other things. They are in both the PHB and DMG. It is just there are a lot more rules for combat.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

While I agree that D&D is geared for combat, there are definitely rules provided for other things. They are in both the PHB and DMG. It is just there are a lot more rules for combat.

Combat needs rules. Going into a hat shop and trying on hats whist conversing with the shopkeeper does not. But both of these things occur during a game of D&D.

 

[Minigiant]

Character driven campaigns should be about character's personalities, not skills per se. I have run character driven campaigns in a wide variety of systems. You don't need mechanics for characterization to run a character driven campaign. In fact this is an area where I prefer the system to get out of the way so we can focus on playing our characters

Skill based rollplay and Freeform roleplay are both valid playstyles.

The ironic aspect of a large coterie of fans deriding the first even though D&D handles it better than freeform due to the strong magic and difficulty of wearing down resources in low combat play.

Good old "Give me a Wisdom check. You can add X if you are proficient" is sooooo good. D&D in all editions handles that well.