Faolyn
(she/her)
Depends on the game. I've seen games where yes, the players have world-building authority. For example, Fabula Ultima.
D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.
- Thread starter Reynard
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Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Disregarding 4e for the moment, what about Burning Wheel and Dungeon World makes them D&D-like games? Just the genre? Because I'm talking about mechanics and playstyle.
Even disregarding 4e, this varies considerably between D&D editions. TSR editions are very different to WotC editions for a start.
A poster asked about GM-ed, D&D-esque games that permit a high degree of player agency - that are less "linear" and more "sandbox-y" than the sort of game that @Hussar was critiquing. I offered some examples.
If you play D&D in a way that is similar to one or more of those examples, then your game is probably not of the sort that Hussar was critiquing.
That said, one obstacle to playing 5e D&D in that sort of way is the lack of clear rules and principles for framing and resolving non-combat challenges. This is not an insuperable obstacle, but it's one that a group that wants to run a game with a high degree of player agency will need to tackle.
And that obstacle is actually, probably, two slightly different obstacles: the rules for ability/skill checks (as presented in the rulebooks, these are not very tight; they will need tightening to play in a way similar to the games I mentioned); and the fact that the use of non-combat spells doesn't normally involve any risk of failure, making it hard to incorporate their use into the overall dynamic of play other than by way of GM fiat. (4e D&D deals with this issue by having ritual use just be one move within the context of a skill challenge.)
Burning Wheel lists AD&D as one of its inspirations. It is a FRPG with Humans, Elves, Dwarves and Orcs, and one in which humans can be wizards who learn discrete spells, or faithful priest who call down miracles from their deities.
Dungeon World, in its Influences appendix, states that
Vincent Baker’s Apocalypse World, as well as Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson’s Dungeons and Dragons are the reason we made this game. The Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set, edited by Tom Moldvay, and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons were our references of choice.
Characters in DW are Bards, Clerics, Druids, Fighters, Paladins, Rangers, Thieves and Wizards. They are Halflings, Elves, Dwarves and Humans. They are statted up with STR, INT, WIS, DEX, CON and CHA (rated from 3 to 18, with adjustments from -3 to +3). They deliver, and suffer, hit points of damage.
Now of course if you define D&D's playstyle as GM decides and is never bound by rules, then these games are not D&D-like. But in that case, why did you ask a question to which you already knew the answer?
I don't see how that affects whether or not a game allows for sandbox play. All I see is a preference for a different game with different approach to resolving out of combat challenges.
People keep insisting other games allow sandboxes and D&D doesn't. Just trying to figure out what they think makes a difference. What makes a sandbox a sandbox is having real options and the choices having real impact on the direction of the campaign.
Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
I've always found D&D very suitable to sandbox. For me it is one of the easier systems to run as one
I've bolded two parts of your post.
Players' choices probably won't have real impact on the direction of the campaign if the only way they are resolved is by the GM deciding what happens, without any input or constraint that comes from the players.
Players choices having real impact depends on the DM. No, I'm not forced to do something I don't think makes sense in context of the game but that doesn't mean things always go the way I expect them to. Enemies have been made allies, deals I never expected have been made, opportunities to gain a positive result have been ignored or failed completely. If a GM is not being objective they can always throw roadblocks in the way.
What, specifically, do other games do that D&D does not?
Same here, not that I've run games using other systems for quite some time. I get that some games have different rules for handling out of combat checks (although an idea of what that really means would be nice, specific details are always left vague but the other systems are somehow "better") but the biggest impacts in games I've run or played had little to do with the rules of the game. In fact D&D being a bit rules light for non-combat parts of the game actually makes it pretty flexible.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
That was the point. There isn't one. Because being D&D-alike gets in the way. The whole point is that the hyper-centralism of DM authority gets in the way. This isn't a criticism (as I've said like four times now...). I think the DM/GM role is useful and have said as much. But as with any tool, its use comes with both utility and limitations. That is the nature of all tools, be they concrete or abstract. The Law of Non-contradiction is a tool, which limits what we are allowed to talk about (it makes it so we cannot engage with contradictions in a meaningful way), but by adopting it we gain the extremely powerful ability to do proof by contradiction. Using it, there is more we can prove, but less we can say (with any significance or meaning, I mean.) Avoiding it, there is less we can prove, but more statements we can make with valid meaning: its use or non-use is a trade-off between richness or description and analytic power. It is not objectively better nor worse to not use it; it is only better for particular purposes. And, much like using a DM/GM role, most of the time this tool is worth using, and the things lost when we choose to not use it may be sufficiently painful that the gain is not worth the loss. (Inconsistency-tolerant logics are fascinating, but often more for exploration than for use.)
I was responding to comments I saw as needlessly reductive and adversarial first.
I don't like being adversarial. At all. But when people are brusque, flippant, and dismissive, I get quite annoyed. So when I see a comment which strikes me as flippant and dismissive, I respond by inverting the logic thereof, to throw a spotlight on how the reasoning behind it seems invalid to me. It is a pithy and efficient way to do so, which thus avoids the usual problem people have with my posts, that they are too long-winded and unnecessarily detailed.
(And, incidentally, this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say that if I post a long post, people complain I never get to the point; but when I post succinctly, people get mad about the succinct argument lacking nuance and detail.)
No. People are putting words in my mouth and getting upset about things I never said, sometimes literally saying things as if I were somehow disagreeing with a point I had made hours or even more minutes before.
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