D&D General Styles of D&D Play

[GrimCo]

In my experience most people are reluctant to deviate from the rules written in the book, even if these rules go against their preferences. I complained about Exalted, and after one campaign with the second edition rules I basically rewrote all the powers and bunch of other stuff to be more of my liking. I have quite a bit of houserules for my D&D game. But most people don't do this.

Most people don't do that because they don't have knowledge, time or will to do it. They just pick up the game and play it as is. At most, they ignore rules they don't like if they can do it without breaking core mechanics of the game. Some people like to tinker and DIY stuff. Some just like to buy and use.

There are a ton of threads on this forum where people complain about some aspect of the game, but they still refuse to implement houserules or even official optional rules that would fix or alleviate the issue. They want the official rules to be changed to their liking. So yes, official rules is what most people will use, and if the discomfort gets too high, like with 4e, they just abandon the whole game rather than change the game.

Complaining and not doing anything to solve problems is national sport where i'm from. Bitching about something is easy. Doing something to fix it is hard. And people tend to be like electricity- follow the path of least resistance.

Although, if you need to do serious rework of good portion of basic game mechanic, maybe it's not best choice for you. Lots of times it's just more time efficient to just pick up another game that matches your play style better out of box. Problem is, sometimes there aren't enough people in your area that want to switch to something else.

 

[Lanefan]

Umm... welcome to D&D? This has been true since OD&D. PC's were never subject to NPC charisma checks for their reactions, nor were they ever subject to morale checks. D&D has never allowed social skills of any flavor to influence player characters in any edition.

That's right. They haven't. And I'm fine with that.

What I'm not fine with is NPCs being susceptible to social interaction mechanics while PCs are not. And as making PCs susceptible to them is probably not the way to go, the obvious answer is to make NPCs work like PCs in that their actions and reactions are what their player (the DM) decides, without mechanical interference unless by choice (if a player or DM isn't sure what their character would do next, informal dice rolls can be great decision-helpers!).

Can you think of a single example in D&D where the rules allowed NPC's to dictate player actions? Outside of charm spells, I suppose, which have always been an exception.

Not off the top. I can't remember if by RAW some of the 4e forced-move combat effects (pulls, pushes, Come And Get It, etc.) could be used by NPCs against PCs; if they could, that's as close as I can get right now.

 

[Lanefan]

In my experience most people are reluctant to deviate from the rules written in the book, even if these rules go against their preferences. I complained about Exalted, and after one campaign with the second edition rules I basically rewrote all the powers and bunch of other stuff to be more of my liking. I have quite a bit of houserules for my D&D game. But most people don't do this. There are a ton of threads on this forum where people complain about some aspect of the game, but they still refuse to implement houserules or even official optional rules that would fix or alleviate the issue. They want the official rules to be changed to their liking. So yes, official rules is what most people will use, and if the discomfort gets too high, like with 4e, they just abandon the whole game rather than change the game.

There's also a lot of situations where people simply aren't allowed to deviate from what's in the book, the most prevalent of which is "official" organized play, a.k.a. AL.

 

[GrimCo]

Adventurers league? Did that ever became a thing? I was just looking at their site and i could only find one game in whole Milano Metro area, zero in Vienna or Munich ( cities where i live and where i lived). Or their online locator doesn't really work. PF Society usually fares better, but last time i went to PFS game, most of people there also know each other and play or played in each others home games.

On topic, convention games and PFS/AL are special cases. But i think that those are more popular in US than in European countries. Even LGS games are not that common here from my personal experience.

 

[Aldarc]

That arcane magic has lost its drawbacks over the editions is IMO a huge failure of design leading directly to this century's constant howls that wizards are too powerful.

I agree to an extent. Some of those drawbacks for arcane magic weren't all that fun for some people then and also now. However, I'm also of the opinion that while many of those drawbacks were removed, not a lot else was done for the overall power scope of mages to tune them down, and I don't necessarily think - and I understand here that your opinion differs from mine - that the solution rests in returning things to how they once were.

I long ago made Druids into Nature Clerics (they were a subclass of Cleric anyway, in 1e) and with that came the Cleric drawbacks along with the benefit of being able to be any alignment.

I would generally prefer Druids to be their own thing apart from Wizards and Clerics. But I would also prefer Clerics (or their equivalent) to use Charisma rather than Wisdom.

Not something I'm personally a huge fan of. I like the idea that your character can fail morale checks and run away, even if you, the player, don't want to. But then, I'm also a big fan of ceding some control over the actions of a character to the mechanics in order to force players (and myself) to react to things that I wouldn't necessarily think to do.

Part of the problem, IMHO, is how people commonly imagine social mechanics. Social mechanics can work for D&D but IMO this requires rethinking how we understand or design them. Again, there are a fair number of PbtA games where social mechanics certainly involve negotiation but also about PCs and NPCs revealing information: "what would it take to convince me/them/you to do this?"

In my experience most people are reluctant to deviate from the rules written in the book, even if these rules go against their preferences. I complained about Exalted, and after one campaign with the second edition rules I basically rewrote all the powers and bunch of other stuff to be more of my liking. I have quite a bit of houserules for my D&D game. But most people don't do this. There are a ton of threads on this forum where people complain about some aspect of the game, but they still refuse to implement houserules or even official optional rules that would fix or alleviate the issue. They want the official rules to be changed to their liking. So yes, official rules is what most people will use, and if the discomfort gets too high, like with 4e, they just abandon the whole game rather than change the game.

This seems at odds with how I am repeatedly reminded of the DIY kitbashing spirit that exists in the hobby where people are constantly houseruling, tinkering, and changing the game, especially when that game is D&D. Now people care about following the rules? But not for everything else where people had no problem changing/ignoring the rules to accomodate their own preferences?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This of course assumes that the things @Lanefan and I are advocating for, which were present both in earlier editions and in OSR games to which those editions contributed their DNA, are somehow objectively tedious and annoying. Obviously I we disagree on that point.

Random spell selection? Constantly losing spells? Having a literal "(s)he sees you when you're sleeping, (s)he knows if you're awake, (s)he knows if you've been bad or good" setup?

Yeah, I would say these things are pretty clearly annoyances implemented because the tools they impede access to are overpowered. That's the whole point of the old school spellcaster design; make it so effective play is only achievable by gritting your teeth and enduring the stuff actively preventing you from playing your class.

 

[Hussar]

What I'm not fine with is NPCs being susceptible to social interaction mechanics while PCs are not.

?

D&D has always worked like this. There has never been a point where NPC's are not susceptible to social interaction mechanics. Even in AD&D you had reaction rolls that were adjusted by the PC's Cha scores.

 

[Hussar]

In my experience most people are reluctant to deviate from the rules written in the book, even if these rules go against their preferences. I complained about Exalted, and after one campaign with the second edition rules I basically rewrote all the powers and bunch of other stuff to be more of my liking. I have quite a bit of houserules for my D&D game. But most people don't do this. There are a ton of threads on this forum where people complain about some aspect of the game, but they still refuse to implement houserules or even official optional rules that would fix or alleviate the issue. They want the official rules to be changed to their liking. So yes, official rules is what most people will use, and if the discomfort gets too high, like with 4e, they just abandon the whole game rather than change the game.

So people, who would abandon free form play if given the choice, must never be allowed to have that choice? The only way we can have free form play is if we force everyone to play a single way?

And this is considered a good thing?

As I said, if people's playstyle preferences are so fragile that the mere existence of rules causes groups to abandon that playstyle, then that playstyle has no right to be catered to. I'm sorry. I have zero sympathy here. I'm being thrown under the bus, told that I must never get what I want, because if I get what I want, people, once given the choice, will no longer be beholden to the DM's preferences.

Sorry, but that has to be the lamest excuse for gate keeping the game I've ever heard.

"No, you cannot have more extensive skill rules because if they add more extensive skill rules into the game, nobody will play the game the way I want to play it" is the upshot here.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't think it's nearly as cut and dried as you're making it out to be.

All our lives and in every facet of life we're told that if there's a rule (or law) for something then we're expected to obey it; and this sinks in.

And so, often the only time people feel free to not follow rules is when there are no rules to follow. As soon as any rules appear then that lifetime of training kicks in and people (usually) start to follow those rules, whether they in fact want to or not.

People tend to run and play games as written. Those rules often create a culture of play. But you put the same players in a system that does things differently and they are often more satisfied with the result.

Also when mechanics are baked in to a system. It can be very difficult to just ignore them (especially if they are part of the overall consideration of the system and impact other areas of play). Again this is why the 2E NWP approach works so well. Not using them, or using them, are both painless decisions. The game is designed to work with them and without them.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So people, who would abandon free form play if given the choice, must never be allowed to have that choice? The only way we can have free form play is if we force everyone to play a single way?

And this is considered a good thing?

As I said, if people's playstyle preferences are so fragile that the mere existence of rules causes groups to abandon that playstyle, then that playstyle has no right to be catered to. I'm sorry. I have zero sympathy here. I'm being thrown under the bus, told that I must never get what I want, because if I get what I want, people, once given the choice, will no longer be beholden to the DM's preferences.

Sorry, but that has to be the lamest excuse for gate keeping the game I've ever heard.

"No, you cannot have more extensive skill rules because if they add more extensive skill rules into the game, nobody will play the game the way I want to play it" is the upshot here.

This is not about my preferences. They can add all sort of things, they can change how the game works. But history has shown, that what happens if people don't like those changes or the new mechanics enough, is that they just abandon the game, not that they keep playing and change the bits they don't like. So in that regard it makes sense for WotC to try to keep the game in such condition that it appeals to majority of players, instead of adding things that cater to small groups of disgruntled players.

I don't think that there is any indication that more extensive social mechanics is something a lot of people feel is needed, so there is no need for WotC to include such and risk alienating the people who think the game is fine as it is.