Do you prefer your character to be connected or unconnected to the adventure hook?

Ovinomancer · Sep 21, 2020

Snarf Zagyg said:
Don't know. You probably didn't use enough paragraphs to explain it.

Heh, irony. I like it.

hawkeyefan · Sep 21, 2020

Maxperson said:
Speaking for myself. When I was in high school and the years right after, I had tons of time. We would sometimes play for days or even weeks straight. We played lots of D&D, but we also played Gamma World, Star Frontiers, Marver Super Heroes, Boot Hill, and some others. The time was there. What we didn't have were families, full time jobs and other responsibilities.

Now, I have all of those things. I get to game once a week for about 4 hours. I don't have the time to really invest in learning and playing a new game for long enough to really decide if it's good or not. Myself and my group love D&D and don't want to take months of time away from D&D to give a new game a fair shake, and it would be a waste of time to give it an unfair shake. So we only play D&D.

Yeah, I get that. My experience is largely the same.

I don't know if it takes as much investment to learn or try new games as you suggest, although everyone's availability and ability will vary, of course. I've been trying to get my group to try different games for the past couple years, to varying success. We have indeed played a few....mostly Blades in the Dark, but also Alien, Star Trek Adventures, Mothership, and City of Mist. I don't think the learning curve is all that steep and in most cases, one person can learn the game and then teach it to others. That's what happened with each of the examples I give above. City of Mists and Blades had the steepest learning curve, but I think that's largely due to the fact that those games are the most different from D&D in the way that they play.

I know that's just my anecdote and that everyone's situation is different. But I think it can be done. And I think it's a worthwhile thing to do, even if a group only stuck with a new game for a few sessions.

Snarf Zagyg said:
1. Path dependency.

2. Network effects.

It's pretty simple. Most people play D&D* because most people play D&D, and have played D&D. Most new players who are introduced into RPGs learn to play D&D from other people playing D&D. They then invest in D&D material to play D&D. If they move to a new place, they are likely to find other D&D players.

D&D is easy, and it is ubiquitous. It is both a lingua franca and a fallback. It is easier for most people to customize D&D to what they want (with other people who know D&D) than to play a new game.

It is what it is; simply put, any other game will merely be an alternative.

*I am broadly including all versions of D&D and D&D clones, here, including PF.

Sure.....as I said, I understand that D&D (and yes, I'm also lumping together all its versions for the purpose of this discussion) is foundational. It's the entry point for most of us, and it's the most present game out there. As I mentioned, the vast majority of my gaming experience has been with D&D.

But I still find it a bit surprising how few folks who would happily categorize themselves as gamers or gaming enthusiasts or RPGers or what have you play only the one game.

It's like a film buff who only watches rom-coms, or a foodie who only eats fast food. It seems odd.

I realize this is perhaps wishful thinking on my part, and I'm okay with that, but I think if more folks in general and also here on these boards branched out a little, it'd likely be a good thing overall. I'm not knocking D&D any more than I am super-hero movies or pop music or any other subset of a larger thing.

Cadence · Sep 21, 2020

Ovinomancer said:
People spend huge amounts of effort to customize it because that's what they know and there's a weird identity thing in saying you play D&D, even if a heavily house-ruled version. Most of the effort I see people doing in trying to modify D&D would be clearly better served by picking up a game that already does that. What's even more odd about D&D fixation is the edition thing -- people stick to an edition. You'd think, given the huge range of OSR games that have already made modification to do specific things they'd be more used, but people really seem to want to put a designer hat on with D&D.

I wonder if modifying game systems scratches the same itch for some people that fixing up or modifying cards does. It's fun to build things.

Ovinomancer said:
I wish every D&D player would, at some point, give an earnest try of a different system. They can hate it, that's fine, but the experience is still very rewarding when you come back to D&D-- open eyes make for better choices. My D&D games got lots better after I branched out because, when I play D&D, I'm not trying to make the game anything other than what it is; I embrace it and play it that way. It's when you use D&D to do something that D&D isn't that you get into trouble, and most with only D&D experience think D&D can do way more than it actually does.

What are some alterations you think people try that try to make D&D into something very different? (Asking out of curiosity). I've played Fate and 13th Age and don't have much there I'd like to bring back. I do have things I'd like to swap between different versions of D&D/PF to make be the one I want.

Snarf Zagyg · Sep 21, 2020

hawkeyefan said:
I realize this is perhaps wishful thinking on my part, and I'm okay with that, but I think if more folks in general and also here on these boards branched out a little, it'd likely be a good thing overall. I'm not knocking D&D any more than I am super-hero movies or pop music or any other subset of a larger thing.

So, it's a little different than just being popular. It's the combination of network effects and path dependency. Think of it like this- the Cheesecake Factory effect.

Imagine you have a group of 6 friends. Whenever you get together to eat, you almost always go to the Cheesecake Factory (put in whatever restaurant you want here). It's close to all of you and it has enough different stuff that almost everyone can enjoy, plus booze. So no one loves it, but it's good enough for everyone. Perhaps 1, 2, or even all 6 of you might prefer to go someplace else- maybe you really like the local Vietnamese place; but your friend Jake hates Pho. And so on. It's the safe, compromise solution that is easy, and everyone knows.

That's D&D. In my time spent gaming, I've led my groups to all sorts of different TTRPGs. But none ever stick, because there's always a Jake (usually more). You can, occasionally, get a group to try a new game. But because "D&D is the default," because it's the Cheesecake Factory, when one or more players has an issue with the new system ... it's back to D&D.

It's a fascinating dynamic that you rarely see. Because of the primacy of D&D within the TTRPG market, and because of the need to play with multiple people, it continues to re-occur. But yeah, people should try different things. Pho is delicious. And nothing beats a good banh mi .

Ovinomancer · Sep 21, 2020

Cadence said:
I wonder if modifying game systems scratches the same itch for some people that fixing up or modifying cards does. It's fun to build things.

What are some alterations you think people try that try to make D&D into something very different? (Asking out of curiosity). I've played Fate and 13th Age and don't have much there I'd like to bring back. I do have things I'd like to swap between different versions of D&D/PF to make be the one I want.

Right, absolutely, totally agree. The problem that occurs is that if you only know the one thing, it's very hard to peer under the hood and see how things work. If you don't know how things work, or what the range of options are, then it gets real hard to make changes that actually do what you want. Mostly, since D&D does a lot of simulation-style mechanics, a lot of people go hard on sim with their modifications, trying to reach what they think they want with increased layers of sim-style additional rules, like expanded skill systems or combat options or, god forbid, economics. Usually, this causes difficulty in keeping/training players and never really gets the "feel" that the designer wanted. I may, uh, speak from experience.

Ovinomancer · Sep 21, 2020

Snarf Zagyg said:
So, it's a little different than just being popular. It's the combination of network effects and path dependency. Think of it like this- the Cheesecake Factory effect.

Imagine you have a group of 6 friends. Whenever you get together to eat, you almost always go to the Cheesecake Factory (put in whatever restaurant you want here). It's close to all of you and it has enough different stuff that almost everyone can enjoy, plus booze. So no one loves it, but it's good enough for everyone. Perhaps 1, 2, or even all 6 of you might prefer to go someplace else- maybe you really like the local Vietnamese place; but your friend Jake hates Pho. And so on. It's the safe, compromise solution that is easy, and everyone knows.

That's D&D. In my time spent gaming, I've led my groups to all sorts of different TTRPGs. But none ever stick, because there's always a Jake (usually more). You can, occasionally, get a group to try a new game. But because "D&D is the default," because it's the Cheesecake Factory, when one or more players has an issue with the new system ... it's back to D&D.

It's a fascinating dynamic that you rarely see. Because of the primacy of D&D within the TTRPG market, and because of the need to play with multiple people, it continues to re-occur. But yeah, people should try different things. Pho is delicious. And nothing beats a good banh mi .

I love the Cheesecake Factory example, this is classic game theory stuff where the best option for a group is the most generally tolerated one. But, that doesn't really have anything to do with path dependencies or network effects. Network dependency would be better pointed out by looking to Facebook -- everyone started using it and so it gained value because more people that you might want to talk to are on Facebook -- hence network. Path dependency is also a big thing in D&D's dominance, but not because of group adequacy but because people have historically invested in D&D so it's easier to invest in more D&D, even over edition changes. Also because a player's history of playing might not have every exposed them to alternatives, so there's ignorance reinforcing the choice to go to D&D. The general reluctance to try new things adds in.

You named three solid reasons D&D is the 8,000-lb gorilla (I added a zero for truthiness) in RPGs. Just teasing out the differences between them.

Flexor the Mighty! · Sep 21, 2020

Other than maybe the initial dungeon delve of a first level PC where my guy lives in a nearby village or something I don't really make up much of a background or try to tie them to much of anything other than a desire for wealth and glory.

Maxperson · Sep 22, 2020

hawkeyefan said:
Yeah, I get that. My experience is largely the same.

I don't know if it takes as much investment to learn or try new games as you suggest, although everyone's availability and ability will vary, of course. I've been trying to get my group to try different games for the past couple years, to varying success. We have indeed played a few....mostly Blades in the Dark, but also Alien, Star Trek Adventures, Mothership, and City of Mist. I don't think the learning curve is all that steep and in most cases, one person can learn the game and then teach it to others. That's what happened with each of the examples I give above. City of Mists and Blades had the steepest learning curve, but I think that's largely due to the fact that those games are the most different from D&D in the way that they play.

I know that's just my anecdote and that everyone's situation is different. But I think it can be done. And I think it's a worthwhile thing to do, even if a group only stuck with a new game for a few sessions.

Yeah. My thought on the time it takes to give a new game a fair shake goes like this. Learn game. Make a bunch of mistakes, because new game. Discover said mistakes during game play over a period of weeks, since we only play 4 hours a week. Once all/most mistakes are ironed out, see how the game really plays over a period of more weeks so that we can see how the game plays in different situations. That to me is giving a game a fair shake.

I can see it going faster or slower, depending on the group, though.

pemerton · Sep 22, 2020

Snarf Zagyg said:
D&D is easy, and it is ubiquitous. It is both a lingua franca and a fallback. It is easier for most people to customize D&D to what they want (with other people who know D&D) than to play a new game.

Ovinomancer said:
It's not actually easier to customize D&D to do what you want, unless you're staying in a pretty narrow band of play. People spend huge amounts of effort to customize it because that's what they know and there's a weird identity thing in saying you play D&D, even if a heavily house-ruled version. Most of the effort I see people doing in trying to modify D&D would be clearly better served by picking up a game that already does that.

<snip>

Further to that, having only had experience with D&D, they rarely actually realize what the game is doing because that's all they know, so their mods don't really address the problems they have.

<snip>

most with only D&D experience think D&D can do way more than it actually does.

hawkeyefan said:
I realize this is perhaps wishful thinking on my part, and I'm okay with that, but I think if more folks in general and also here on these boards branched out a little, it'd likely be a good thing overall. I'm not knocking D&D any more than I am super-hero movies or pop music or any other subset of a larger thing.

From a high-level perspective D&D is socially and economically easy.

From other perspectives, of course, it's not easy. D&D has the potential to be far more expensive then many other RPGs - given its large number of large rulebooks, sourcebooks etc. And from an actual system/game-play point of view there are many things that are not at all easy to do in D&D. Not only stuff that might be seen as somewhat outre relative to the core D&D experience (eg a cooking and eating competition) but even relatively genre-core stuff like races and chases. (I mention these because Burning Wheel handles both pretty easily, and a cooking and eating competition is the sample scenario in The Dying Earth RPG core book. 4e D&D can do the races and chases, but still isn't very well-suited to the cooking and eating.)

For a given, established group of RPGers the significance of network externalities and path dependency reduces, as they have already met up with one another, and at any moment can choose whether to buy another D&D book or to buy and use a book for a different game. There may be that one member of the group who is very set in his/her ways and so won't try anything new, but as @Ovinomancer said that's not really an issue of path dependency. (The analogy to disliking Vietnamese food doesn't work here, either, as it's typically not about disliking the new thing but rather about a disinclination to try the new thing.)

Of course it's none of my business whether people stick to what they know and like, or branch out and take risks. What does sometimes frustrate me, though, is when people who seem to be familiar only with one approach to RPGing make pronouncements about what is or isn't possible in RPGing which were possibly false even in the late 70s (given what could and can be done with Classic Traveller and RuneQuest) and have almost certainly been false since the late 90s (when Prince Valiant was already 10 years old, and Maelstrom Storytelling was published).

hawkeyefan · Sep 22, 2020

Cadence said:
I wonder if modifying game systems scratches the same itch for some people that fixing up or modifying cards does. It's fun to build things.

What are some alterations you think people try that try to make D&D into something very different? (Asking out of curiosity). I've played Fate and 13th Age and don't have much there I'd like to bring back. I do have things I'd like to swap between different versions of D&D/PF to make be the one I want.

This isn't a radical change to D&D and I've mentioned it elsewhere on the boards, but my group and I pretty recently changed the way we do initiative in 5E D&D. Rather than each participant rolling and then going in order, we instead do team based initiative. So, unless there's a compelling reason otherwise, the PCs go first. They decide which PC will go. Then the NPCs go, and I as GM decide which one will act. Then another PC goes, and we keep alternating sides like that until everyone on each side has gone and then the round is over.

We lifted this from Star Trek Adventures by Modiphius. We find it works really well in D&D because it keeps the players engaged as they decide who is best suited to go at any given PC turn. It opens up some strategies and allows for more teamwork and cooperation.

I do think D&D is a pretty easily modifiable game, especially 5E. You can tweak just about any component in some way. But there does come a point where changes are either so drastic or numerous that I have to wonder why people even started with D&D as a foundation.

Maxperson said:
Yeah. My thought on the time it takes to give a new game a fair shake goes like this. Learn game. Make a bunch of mistakes, because new game. Discover said mistakes during game play over a period of weeks, since we only play 4 hours a week. Once all/most mistakes are ironed out, see how the game really plays over a period of more weeks so that we can see how the game plays in different situations. That to me is giving a game a fair shake.

I can see it going faster or slower, depending on the group, though.

Sure, it's going to take longer to get a level of mastery to which many long time D&D players will be accustomed. But it shouldn't take long at all for people to get the gist and have a sense of whether a game is worthwhile or not. It took my group one session to have a good grasp of the Alien RPG. Did we mess up a couple of things? Sure. Were there any rules that we skipped initially? One or two. But we got the core mechanics, and we got the mounting sense of dread as our PCs accumulated Stress and needed to make Panic rolls.

Also, most games are not as complex as D&D. I know we think of it as easy....especially 5E....but there's quite a bit to it. Many other games are much simpler and don't require the amount of time to learn.

Flexor the Mighty! said:
Other than maybe the initial dungeon delve of a first level PC where my guy lives in a nearby village or something I don't really make up much of a background or try to tie them to much of anything other than a desire for wealth and glory.

Why do you think that is? Is it a conscious decision, or just what you do by feeling? If it's conscious, why do you choose to do that?