D&D General Can we talk about best practices?

[Ovinomancer]

Who said anything about supporting? It's flexible enough to allow you to play a broad set of playstyles. Optional rules and 3P products do offer support to varying degrees (and I suppose the new Ravenloft book offers support for horror games) but the core game doesn't support the broad range of play styles that the game is used for.

But it gets used nonetheless, and it handles those playstyles. Otherwise, you wouldn't hear so many people complaining about it. When was the last time you heard someone complaining that Fate doesn't support their OS dungeon crawl? I've literally never seen that complaint, because I doubt anyone is crazy enough to try, and certainly no one is crazy enough to expect it to work.

Also, you utterly fail to take into account anyone who isn't complaining (like myself) because they're happily satisfied with how 5e performs.

Yes, D&D is a game that expects to be house ruled, and kitbashed, and flavored to taste. It's not a bespoke game. If you're evaluating it using the same criteria as a bespoke game, you're missing the point. As for people "long internalizing the idea", 5e has brought in a ton of new blood. How are players who've only played a few years (or even less than a year) long internalizing this concept? The simple answer is, they aren't. And the people you think have long internalized the idea haven't, they just recognize and accept D&D for the game it is, rather than what they think it ought to be.

No. If the 5e engine isn't doing the supporting, then it's not flexible -- you are. And this is the secret sauce, you're told to make it your own. And that's great. Please understand I enjoy 5e and am actively playing it -- I don't have an axe to grind here. The thing I don't get, and what you do here, again, is after you've added your own stuff and fixed the problems that arise from the changes and have your game how you want it, you credit 5e for this. I just don't get why you'd take your creative efforts and just give them away to 5e. I don't. I've made 5e work for a lot of styles -- big plot, hexcrawls, and essentially monster of the week. But I made changes for this stuff to work -- 5e didn't help.

 

[Fanaelialae]

No. If the 5e engine isn't doing the supporting, then it's not flexible -- you are. And this is the secret sauce, you're told to make it your own. And that's great. Please understand I enjoy 5e and am actively playing it -- I don't have an axe to grind here. The thing I don't get, and what you do here, again, is after you've added your own stuff and fixed the problems that arise from the changes and have your game how you want it, you credit 5e for this. I just don't get why you'd take your creative efforts and just give them away to 5e. I don't. I've made 5e work for a lot of styles -- big plot, hexcrawls, and essentially monster of the week. But I made changes for this stuff to work -- 5e didn't help.

One would assume that you used 5e as the base for some reason (not simply just because it was there).

That said, I don't credit 5e for my mods when I mod it, except with being flexible enough to mod (not every system is).

 

[Ovinomancer]

One would assume that you used 5e as the base for some reason (not simply just because it was there).

Yes, it's the current edition of D&D, I like D&D, and my friends wanted to play it. I certainly am not using 5e because it's a good base for anything other than, well, 5e flavored D&D.

That said, I don't credit 5e for my mods when I mod it, except with being flexible enough to mod (not every system is).

It's not that flexible, though, as shown by how badly it meets expectations with some rather minor changes to it's core assumptions (which are largely hidden). It does itself pretty okay, though, so as long as you're sticking close to what 5e is, it works okay.

I mean, the difference in playstyles you're actually talking about isn't a big change in how the game plays, or what a character can do, but rather almost entirely how the GM structures their setting, secret backstories, plot points, and allowable action sequences. It's all GM side. Have you noticed this? The game plays pretty much the same from the player perspective.

 

[pemerton]

When was the last time you heard someone complaining that Fate doesn't support their OS dungeon crawl? I've literally never seen that complaint, because I doubt anyone is crazy enough to try, and certainly no one is crazy enough to expect it to work.

<snip>

D&D is a game that expects to be house ruled, and kitbashed, and flavored to taste. It's not a bespoke game.

If the 5e engine isn't doing the supporting, then it's not flexible -- you are. And this is the secret sauce, you're told to make it your own.

<snip>

I've made 5e work for a lot of styles -- big plot, hexcrawls, and essentially monster of the week. But I made changes for this stuff to work -- 5e didn't help.

One would assume that you used 5e as the base for some reason (not simply just because it was there).

That said, I don't credit 5e for my mods when I mod it, except with being flexible enough to mod (not every system is).

I can't speak for Ovinomancer, but I think in many if not most cases the reason 5e is being used as the base absolutely is because it is there. 5e D&D (like many other versions of D&D) has a degree of penetration and ubiquity that no other RPG compares to.

I guess there are some RPGers out there who know of Fate but don't know of Moldvay Basic or one of its retroclone variants, but their number must be in the double or triple digits at most. Is there anyone who plays (say) Dogs in the Vineyard that isn't aware of, and probably experienced with, a variety of other RPGs?

As far as not every system being flexible enough to mod is concerned, I'm curious which these systems are that lack this flexibility. The only thing that 5e D&D brings to the table that is generic is a system for building PC effectiveness (in terms of stats and skills) and resilience (in terms of hp and saving throws). Most other RPGs bring something pretty comparable.

EDIT: Cross-posting reveals that perhaps I can speak for @Ovinomancer, at least on this particular topic!

 

[Oofta]

Yes, it's the current edition of D&D, I like D&D, and my friends wanted to play it. I certainly am not using 5e because it's a good base for anything other than, well, 5e flavored D&D.

It's not that flexible, though, as shown by how badly it meets expectations with some rather minor changes to it's core assumptions (which are largely hidden). It does itself pretty okay, though, so as long as you're sticking close to what 5e is, it works okay.

I mean, the difference in playstyles you're actually talking about isn't a big change in how the game plays, or what a character can do, but rather almost entirely how the GM structures their setting, secret backstories, plot points, and allowable action sequences. It's all GM side. Have you noticed this? The game plays pretty much the same from the player perspective.

Yes and no. The previous two editions really tried to lock things down into a specific style of play. There were rules for how to stealth, what DC it was to climb specific types of walls, rules for ... well they tried to make a rule for just about everything. So as a player you could always say "here on page XX is says that YY so you have to play that way". While the intent may have been admirable, it never really seemed to work very well.

Maybe there could be some kind of compromise, maybe not. That, and maybe I'm understanding what you're trying to say and maybe it's just been a long day and just ignore what I said.

 

[Lanefan]

I'd go a step further than that: there are clear guidelines that help provide a better play experience and yes they can be ignored but if they are ignored without understanding the play experience will likely be worse.

True; there's a difference between a) knowingly ignoring them for what seem like good reasons and b) never knowing them in the first place.

Ideally a thread like this will fill in b) for some people. We can't, however, deny anyone their right to do a) should they so desire; nor castigate them for it if their reasons are sound.

I think there might be a little of that, but it's more "how can we expand the D&D experience into something more..."

But there has to be an understanding that 5e does certain things well and other games (Fate, Burning Wheel etc.) do different things well.

The question is whether people want a system flexible enough to do a lot of things in the 5-to-8 out of 10 range, or a more rigid or bespoke system that does one specific thing in the 9-10 range and most other things in the 1-3 range.

Give me the flexible system every single time. That way I only have to learn one system, once.

 

[pemerton]

In terms of the best advice for a 5e playstyle, here's what we get from the starter set

<snip>

Meanwhile the dmg presents a checklist for two types of adventures--Location-Based and Event-Based--with about a page of supplemental advice for Mysteries (like a murder mystery) and Intrigue (political intrigue...the advice here is particularly useless and boils down to 'think about who the villain(s) might be and what they want, then think about how the PCs get involved').

<snip>

If any of this suggests a design intention, then it is toward a scripted trad-type game.

<snip>

Is any of this useful advice?

Yes, given the goal of play as you identify it. But it's incomplete. It doesn't actually describe processes of play. The first list is some tips to help decide what to say as GM, but doesn't say anything about when to say stuff, or how this relates to the shared fiction or what anyone else has said. The second bundle of lists are checklists for prep. Apocalypse World has those, but it also talks about how to actually play the game when sitting around the table with your friends.

How did your daughter find it disappointing?

It was directionless. Nothing happened.

My daughter is a teenager. She's seen RPG play going on (ie mine) since she was a baby. She's seen people play Rolemaster, 4e D&D, Classic Traveller, Prince Valiant, Burning Wheel, MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, and a few other one-shots on top of that. She knows that RPGing involves talking about what is going on in the fiction, and getting excited about dice rolls.

She's also done a little bit of playing as opposed to observing - eg a solo Classic Traveller session last year. She was really looking forward to playing in her own game with her friends. And as I said, she's been disappointed.

The game has all the typical pathologies of schoolkid play - a goblin fighter who gets drunk; silly PvP about nothing that matters; a tendency to think that a 1 on a check must mean some sort of comical disaster; and a general inability to actually get on with things. But what has struck me is how little structure D&D 5e has to avoid this sort of nonsense. For instance:

* There is no structure for bringing the PCs together into a party (and I think in my daughter's game this took two sessions = 3+ hours to achieve);​

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* There is no structure for telling the players what they should be doing, leading to "hunting for the plot";​

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* There is no structure to tell that GM what to do if the PCs say "we spend the night in the woods" and then don't declare watches (as happened in this game) - eg there's no articulated framework for saying "time passes" nor one for saying "make a sleeping-in-peril check".​

I hope that conveys the gist of it.

My daughter and I had a spare 40 or so minutes last Friday and I pulled out Moldvay Basic. She rolled up 2 PCs. I helped her choose classes (a Halfling and a Fighter) and equipment. Then we did about three rooms of The Haunted Keep (the example dungeon at the back of the book): she drew a map, made checks to open doors, put out her lantern to save oil while resting; I rolled wandering monster checks and got some fire beetles but the reaction roll showed they were friendly (which I took to mean inquisitive and harmless).

Now from my point of view the main take away was a reminder of my lack of interest in classic D&D play. And the only real "action" was one PC falling down a pit - the Halfling, and I'd forgotten to put rope on her gear lists (crack Sam Gamgee jokes here - we did). I asked my daughter how she gets out. It took a while. I had thought the Fighter's scabbarded two-handed sword would be the solution, but she didn't think of that; instead she asked how big a large sack is - and I allowed it to be long enough for a Halfling to grab hold of and be pulled up with (maybe I called for DEX checks, with a failed one adding a turn to the clock). From my daughter's point of view working out how to get through the pool of water in one of the rooms probably also counted as action - the Fighter waded through carrying the Halfling on his shoulders (as per the room description, the water itself is harmless).

But my other take away was that my daughter noticed the effects of structure, in the sense that she knew what to do (make her way through the dungeon, looking for treasure), things were happening (opening doors, finding pits and pools of water, encountering fire beetles on the other side of a door) and she had tangible indicators of progress (checking out rooms, making her map, having the inquisitive fire beetles leave her PCs alone as they walked among them). It wasn't exactly exciting but it wasn't directionless and silly either.

And all that structure is provided by the published rulebook, some of it express (the turn structure, the rules for doors, the principles around mapping, etc) and some of it implicit in what the GM and players are told to do - the GM is told to draw up a dungeon (or pick one off the shelf, as I did) and the players are told (i) that their adventure will begin with their PCs at the dungeon entrance, and (ii) that their goal is to explore the dungeon for treasure. (The sample dungeon also has a backstory about finding and rescuing prisoners, but that's a veneer whose thinness no one tries to conceal!)

I'm not arguing that 5e D&D should be a dungeon crawl game. I'm arguing that, however exactly it is meant to be played, it should be possible to state processes and principles that - if followed - will bring it about that the participants will have that sort of experience. Which I think can probably be more rewarding than the dragonborn bard putting the drunk goblin fighter into a sack.

 

[hawkeyefan]

@pemerton that’s an interesting example regarding your daughter’s play with her friends.

It sounds like they would likely be best served if the GM was running a published adventure like the one found in the Starter Set, List Mines of Phandelver. That might help give them some kind of structure. It sounds like the GM is just not familiar enough with gaming to handle things. Which is understandable, of course, given their age and so on.

That sense of structure either comes from a written adventure or from the GM.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Yes and no. The previous two editions really tried to lock things down into a specific style of play. There were rules for how to stealth, what DC it was to climb specific types of walls, rules for ... well they tried to make a rule for just about everything. So as a player you could always say "here on page XX is says that YY so you have to play that way". While the intent may have been admirable, it never really seemed to work very well.

Maybe there could be some kind of compromise, maybe not. That, and maybe I'm understanding what you're trying to say and maybe it's just been a long day and just ignore what I said.

Yeah, I don't really know how this applies. Cheers.

 

[pemerton]

It sounds like they would likely be best served if the GM was running a published adventure like the one found in the Starter Set, List Mines of Phandelver. That might help give them some kind of structure.

Agreed. I assumed this is what they would be playing, but as far as I can tell it's not. Does Phandelver have gricks? I think in one of her latest sessions something happened with gricks.

It sounds like the GM is just not familiar enough with gaming to handle things. Which is understandable, of course, given their age and so on.

That sense of structure either comes from a written adventure or from the GM.

Or from the rules text! When friends and I started playing Moldvay Basic our dungeons were pretty bad, and our play pretty unskilled, but we were at least doing what we were meant to be doing! Because Moldvay sets it out, in simple steps.

Conversely, one reason I found Classic Traveller so hard to grasp when I first read it (c 1979) is that it doesn't set out the structure for play. It assumes the reader already knows what to do. Coming back to it now with decades of experience I can see the structure in there, and how to use the random patron table, and the soft move/hard move structure of manoeuvring-in-vacc-suit resolution, and the function of Streetwise checks to generate not just in-fiction outcomes but backstory as well. But it doesn't spell all this out with the sort of clarity that Moldvay does.

I can't remember how long ago I last posted this - maybe as much as a decade ago - but I still find it bizarre that D&D rulebook writing peaked about 40 years ago!