D&D General What Is D&D Generally Bad At That You Wish It Was Better At?

[Umbran]

The point is not to claim that Clue (or Risk, or any other specific game) is bad--it is to highlight how ridiculous it is to claim that a game lacking an official "Rule Zero" is axiomatically and inherently bad,

Then we agree. I just didn't use sarcasm to communicate the point.

 

[pemerton]

Heroic is...hard to apply to early-edition D&D in the manner it was intended to be played--but note "intended." A lot of people wanted to be Aragorn or the like, when the intent was Conan or Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser or the like, morally-grey mercenaries fighting not for Good but for Civilization, because that's where they could spend their haul from trawling the murder-holes. GP=XP, among other things, strongly encouraged a selfish, mercenary playstyle even for groups that maintained high internal cohesion

I'm not sure how much REH Conan you've read - but based on my experience and my (direct and indirect) observation, GP=XP, and classic D&D more generally, does not produce Conan-esque play:

*Conan frequently abandons possible loot/treasure so as to do the "right" or honourable or non-selfish thing;

*Conan frequently makes intuitive or even reckless decisions, without much planning and without much heed for the consequences.​

GP=XP expressly pushes against the first of these; the general approach to dungeon design and consequences of action resolution in classic D&D strongly pushes against the second.

 

[jdrakeh]

Horror.

D&D doesn't handle real horror well because after 5th level, everyone D&D is a Big Damn Hero. D&D handles action-movie horror like Castlevania, but not real horror unless you are house rulling it into oblivion.

Agree. I once saw a reviewer (correctly) refer to D&D horror as "a werewolf in every wood and a vampire in every cupboard" which is apt. D&D horror has a lot of the superficial trappings of the genre, but handles the execution poorly, IMO.

[Edit: As another post in this thread noted, you can run a good horror game with D&D, but doing so is mostly independent of the rules. The rules just don't mechanically support horror very well.]

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm not sure how much REH Conan you've read - but based on my experience and my (direct and indirect) observation, GP=XP, and classic D&D more generally, does not produce Conan-esque play:

*Conan frequently abandons possible loot/treasure so as to do the "right" or honourable or non-selfish thing;​

​

*Conan frequently makes intuitive or even reckless decisions, without much planning and without much heed for the consequences.​

GP=XP expressly pushes against the first of these; the general approach to dungeon design and consequences of action resolution in classic D&D strongly pushes against the second.

I am not terribly familiar with the stories, only the movie and the reputation others present for the character. I was given to understand that Conan was more on the amoral side, not a bad person but doing things for personal benefit (glory, achievement, power) rather than because they were particularly virtuous. I certainly grant the second part, though, so it's really only the first one that was a mistake on my part.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Agree. I once saw a reviewer (correctly) refer to D&D horror as "a werewolf in every wood and a vampire in every cupboard" which is apt. D&D horror has a lot of the superficial trappings of the genre, but handles the execution poorly, IMO.

[Edit: As another post in this thread noted, you can run a good horror game with D&D, but doing so is mostly independent of the rules. The rules just don't mechanically support horror very well.]

I find that the real problem with D&D-as-horror is that it simply does not handle dread very well. It does "scary" just fine, where you're worried about whether you'll survive, whether you'll lose something you care about, etc. But slow-burn dread, constant creeping anxiety that never releases? It's just not a thing D&D is equipped to do.

The much tougher question, I think, is whether it is possible to support that without breaking away from the other things D&D is currently good at. I am inclined to say "no", but I could be persuaded otherwise.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

That is why your position on this is completely ridiculous. Every game that exists--absolutely every single one--can be changed the way you describe. It might be easy, it might be hard. It might be official, it might be unofficial. Doesn't matter. It can be done. Always.

to be perfectly fair, i can think of a few video games that practically (if not literally) cannot be modified by anyone but the developers. i wouldn't necessarily call all of them bad games, but i'd certainly say their inability to be modified leaves them worse off.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Reading this thread, I would have to say that D&D is bad at setting expectations. Many people come to D&D with opposing desires; either with other players or with the game itself.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

to be perfectly fair, i can think of a few video games that practically (if not literally) cannot be modified by anyone but the developers. i wouldn't necessarily call all of them bad games, but i'd certainly say their inability to be modified leaves them worse off.

Oh, if we're including video games, then sure, that's a much different thing. There, the rules are actually encoded into binary, and it can be an absolute nightmare to try to figure out how to modify it. (Hence why so many say: "SAVE. YOUR. SOURCE. CODE.")

Video games are a different beast, most certainly. I was only speaking of tabletop games (and sports, since those were referenced too), be they board games, TTRPGs, card games, whatever. Any game where the rules-implementer is people rather than a machine of some kind, you can make changes.

A good example where you can't play it your own way is certain versions of Dr. Nim, because there, the physical construction of the board prevents modification without literally damaging the board itself. No TTRPG has anything equivalent to this, as far as I know.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Having to tell a player to roll to see if their character is smart enough to have an idea is policing their RPing. Not interested in that at all.

if you don't want your RP policed maybe you shouldn't of played a game where your character's capabilities are directly tied to numerical values that you yourself assigned, or maybe you should've assigned them differently.

 

[GobHag]

if you don't want your RP policed maybe you shouldn't of played a game where your character's capabilities are directly tied to numerical values that you yourself assigned, or maybe you should've assigned them differently.

Nah. I'm just gonna outright say that if a DM goes to the low INT character and say; "you're acting too smart, please start making stupid decisions." is a bad GM and shouldn't try to run a game with that attitude.