D&D 5E D&D compared to Bespoke Genre TTRPGs

[Argyle King]

I liked the concept of skill checks in 4E.

At the same time, I found (back when I was running 4E) that I enjoyed them far more (and felt they worked better) by constructing them in a way which heavily departed (and sometimes outright ignored) the official way of doing them.

One example is that instead of X successes before Y failures producing a binary yes/no or pass/fail result, I ran a few in such a way that the players had a certain amount of rolls for a situation and the number of successes and failures achieved within those rolls would help determine how good (or bad) the outcome was on more of a sliding scale.

So, let's say there were a total of 6 possible rolls to do an Audience With the King Skill Challenge. •6 success - 0 failure = the results were especially good; not only was the request granted, but the PCs receive something extra
•5 - 1 = The request was granted.
•4 - 2 = mostly granted, but with a small caveat
•3 - 3 = some complication prevents the request from being granted
•2-4 = the request cannot be granted either due to failure on the part of the PCs or due to some external complications
•1-5 = the request is denied
•0-6 = the results were especially bad and could range from simple refusal to the PCs having somehow insulting the king and making their situation worse... depending upon what exactly was said and etc

I had other different ways of constructing them too. The disease track was the basis for how I did a few of them if the problem faced was ongoing and didn't have a definitive beginning or end.

An example of that would be an encounter I ran in which the PCs were stuck in a room which was meant to be one huge magical trap & maze of doors. The idea was basically a room with multiple doors; choosing wrong door would lead to it appearing as though you had somehow walked back into the same room again, but with a variety of traps, monsters, and effects. Rolls could be made against insight, arcana, and various other skills to gain hints concerning which door would lead back in the "healthy" direction. Choosing wrong lead to a situation which became increasingly worse -sliding down the "disease" track.

In some cases, it wasn't necessary to even announce that a skill check was happening. In the audience example, it would simply be presented as an audience and I would keep track of skill check results as they occurred.

The same idea could still work in 5E.

I've found that using proficiency dice (an alternate rule from the 5E DMG) woks better than a flat proficiency bonus. It encourages people to try things rather than just asking who has the biggest bonus.

 

[dave2008]

@dave2008's solutions were very good, but drastically increase the lethality of the game (stripping out casters means no healing and no way to remove status effects) which I didn't want. So, no, it's not easy to do X in 5e. It's easy to do X only so long as you get to control what X is.

Though I agree generally with this statement, my solution did not strip out all spell casting and healing magic. Cantrips and first level spells were available (via magic initiate) and any ritual (via ritual caster). If you wanted more spells, just say you can cast any spell as a ritual.

Though it is odd to me to complain about needing healing magic when you said you only wanted one spell cast per encounter (at most), that was the reason for the severe reduction in spell casting, so it is not like you were planning on lots of healing magic. And of course with the standard HD healing you don't need magic to heal in 5e. But I never pushed back because I assumed you had your reasons.

 

[dave2008]

At which point we actually stop playing D&D and start pretending that we are playing D&D?

As soon as you roll the dice. There is no D&D, only the pretending.

 

[Bedrockgames]

D&D 5E is not designed to do horror, for example, as part of its core prototypical gameplay. It's prototypical gameplay is neo-traditional style (super)heroic fantasy adventure with sub-classes that have been inspired by popular anime, superheroes, and even Star Wars. The DMG provides some options for changing this up to do horror as does the Ravenloft book. But the prototypical core of 5e gameplay is going to be about that (super)heroic fantasy adventure. I do think that system matters in that regard even within the sphere of D&D but between editions. I'm sure that you recall that @Bedrockgames has repeatedly reported how different and off-putting Ravenloft was in the context of 3e D&D as compared to his initial Ravenloft experiences in either 1e or 2e. And one can only imagine how he would have reacted to Ravenloft were it adapted for 4e. Part of that involves the expected prototypical gameplay experience for 5e in comparison with other editions.

I haven't played 5E much so can't comment on its ability to do horror. I think with 3E characters had become too durable perhaps. But the real problem for me, more than anything else, was the introduction of skills. 2E had NWPs, but a NWP like etttiquete isn't something you roll in order to behave in the right way, it is a knowledge skill basically and it specifically says in the entry that it isn't used to RP (i.e. the GM tells the player which fork is the appropriate one to use, and the player then decides what to do with that information). Same for things like Bluff, Gather Information and Spot. Those skills are fine, but my Ravenloft games in the 90s, used to be very much about players 'feeling' the setting: asking specific questions to NPCs, actively telling me where they were looking, etc. Very investigatory, very heavy on in character talking. I just noticed this really evaporated during my 3E campaigns, even with the same players. The mood was just very different as well. I genuinely just chalked this up to nostalgia. I was in my late teens and early 20s in the 90s, I figured those were just the days when we played D&D four times a week and didn't think about it (it just had a more magical vibe). But I started going through the 2E material again around 2009 or so, and ran a campaign. Instantly it felt like the old Ravenloft to me. There are lots of other rules reasons for that. But it was stark. I will say, I think that is a separate question from can 3E do horror, can 2E do horror, and what is the best system for horror. That is a much deeper question. I think 3E can do horror, I don't think it does it in the same was as 2E (and personally I found it much easier to frighten players using 2E). But some of it might have come down to the modifications that 3E made to the system versus 2E. Ravenloft modifies the core system in order to make the horror work. I think for 3E they essentially ported over most of the kinds of changes that were used for 2E, but they are two totally different games. You really needed to crack down on lots of other things that were less of an issue in 2E (multi classing needed to be made more difficult to avoid optimization, they probably should have removed feats completely for 3E ravenloft, and, in my opinion, they should have taken out lots of skills). I would have to revisit 3E again to really make a serious effort to figure out what needs changing. But it really required different changes I believe than 2E required. And I think that was one of the biggest issues I had with 3E Ravenloft. Another issue was less about mechanics and more about flavor. Third edition Ravenloft was basically put out by white wolf if I recall. And it felt very white wolf to me (to me it felt very emo, very much like the characters weren't pulled out of classic horror stories but more like gamers LARPing Gothic if that makes sense: I used to call this 'nerd projection' where we project our own sensibilities and our own social circle into a setting rather than have it be its authentic self---it is like mary sue but more across the board (you aren't just inserting yourself, you are inserting your friends, the style and temperament of your clique, etc). In its worst form you have fighters who don't look like they can hold a sword in the art. Someone might have a better term for this.

 

[Alzrius]

I haven't played 5E much so can't comment on its ability to do horror. I think with 3E characters had become too durable perhaps. But the real problem for me, more than anything else, was the introduction of skills. 2E had NWPs, but a NWP like etttiquete isn't something you roll in order to behave in the right way, it is a knowledge skill basically and it specifically says in the entry that it isn't used to RP (i.e. the GM tells the player which fork is the appropriate one to use, and the player then decides what to do with that information). Same for things like Bluff, Gather Information and Spot. Those skills are fine, but my Ravenloft games in the 90s, used to be very much about players 'feeling' the setting: asking specific questions to NPCs, actively telling me where they were looking, etc. Very investigatory, very heavy on in character talking. I just noticed this really evaporated during my 3E campaigns, even with the same players. The mood was just very different as well. I genuinely just chalked this up to nostalgia. I was in my late teens and early 20s in the 90s, I figured those were just the days when we played D&D four times a week and didn't think about it (it just had a more magical vibe). But I started going through the 2E material again around 2009 or so, and ran a campaign. Instantly it felt like the old Ravenloft to me. There are lots of other rules reasons for that. But it was stark. I will say, I think that is a separate question from can 3E do horror, can 2E do horror, and what is the best system for horror. That is a much deeper question. I think 3E can do horror, I don't think it does it in the same was as 2E (and personally I found it much easier to frighten players using 2E). But some of it might have come down to the modifications that 3E made to the system versus 2E. Ravenloft modifies the core system in order to make the horror work. I think for 3E they essentially ported over most of the kinds of changes that were used for 2E, but they are two totally different games. You really needed to crack down on lots of other things that were less of an issue in 2E (multi classing needed to be made more difficult to avoid optimization, they probably should have removed feats completely for 3E ravenloft, and, in my opinion, they should have taken out lots of skills). I would have to revisit 3E again to really make a serious effort to figure out what needs changing. But it really required different changes I believe than 2E required. And I think that was one of the biggest issues I had with 3E Ravenloft. Another issue was less about mechanics and more about flavor. Third edition Ravenloft was basically put out by white wolf if I recall. And it felt very white wolf to me (to me it felt very emo, very much like the characters weren't pulled out of classic horror stories but more like gamers LARPing Gothic if that makes sense: I used to call this 'nerd projection' where we project our own sensibilities and our own social circle into a setting rather than have it be its authentic self---it is like mary sue but more across the board (you aren't just inserting yourself, you are inserting your friends, the style and temperament of your clique, etc). In its worst form you have fighters who don't look like they can hold a sword in the art. Someone might have a better term for this.

I say this with all due respect, but I really wish you used paragraph breaks in your posts, rather than big walls of text.

 

[jmartkdr2]

In what way are you disagreeing with what I said? At best, you can tell the DM you want to do X. It is entirely up to the DM whether you actually can or not. Vs a system with actual skill support where the player TELLS the DM that he or she is doing X and the DM must now incorporate that into the game.

Because 5e's skill system is entirely DM dependent, the system doesn't really help you much. All the heavy lifting is done by the DM and whatever the DM wants to have happen in the game. Want to swing across the room on a chandelier? In some systems, you tell the DM that that's what you're doing. In 5e, maybe you can, maybe you can't. Depends on if the stars align and if the DM wants you to be able to do that.

I feel the need to step back and ask a couple clarifying, framing questions, to make sure we aren't talking past each other:

1. How are you defining a 'heist'? What are the essential components that must be present?

2. Do you believe it is impossible, with or without houserules, to run a heist in 5e DnD?

3. If the answer to 2 is "yes, but...", do you believe 5e DnD does a crap job of running heists without extensive implicit or explicit houserules?

(My answers: 1. An adventure where the objective is to steal something with as little violence as possible. 2. Yes, it is possible. 3. 5e using RAW only does a poor job of it.)

Yes it is.

If this isn't sarcasm, we're not speaking the same language.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Really? Infiltration/heist scenarios were common in older fantasy? Would that be Conan? Well, no, most Conan stories are not about infiltration/heist scenarios, there's no "planning phase" certainly and even in stories like Tower of the Elephant, which is a kind of heist story, it still doesn't have any planning scene and most of the conflict is resolved by violence. It's a pretty bog standard dungeon crawl really.

I'm wracking my brains for the sneak and steal scenes in The Lord of the Rings. Or Three Hearts and Three Lions. Granted, I've read nowhere near as much Lieber as I would like to, but, Lankhmar is something of its own thing.

Frankly, D&D is about killing stuff and taking its treasure. And, as for doing that, it's really, really good at it. The further you move away from killing stuff and taking its treasure, the less apt D&D is to be able do it without a lot of legwork from the DM. To me, it really is that simple. Note, I LIKE killing stuff and taking its treasure, so, I certainly don't mean that as a bad thing.

Early D&D is virtually all attempted ambushes and involves a huge amount of sneaking up on people and murdering them. Virtually every Leiber story involves sneaking, stealing and murdering. Lankhmar is more D&D than LotR or Three Hearts and Three Lions.

This whole "fair fight" approach 5E takes is pretty antithetical to early D&D's approach (the same with 4E). The extreme crap-ness of surprise is part of that.

I think your idea that heists/infiltration can't/don't involve violence is completely incomprehensible, especially in the context of BitD which involves violence virtually every session. No idea how to help you with that. If we're saying heists can't feature large amounts of violence (or "turn into HEAT" - presumably meaning the shootout late in HEAT, because the initial violence/stealth-based heist in HEAT was successful) then I'm really confused by why we're using BitD as an example of a "heist" system. Maybe we need to move to the Leverage RPG or something - seems like that might have avoided it.

 

[Campbell]

My personal issues with heists in D&D (and most traditional RPGs) is the game's reliance on map and key resolution, the way it tends to create a mindset that is overly focused on tactical and logistical minutiae (movement rates, stats for everything), the overhead involved in running concurrent scenes, and characters that are overly dependent on each other such that splitting up is almost always detrimental to their continued existence. In my experience a heist in D&D pretty much ends up feeling like any other adventure in D&D. It certainly does not feel like Leverage, Snatch, Reservoir Dogs, Ocean's 11 or Dishonored. It can still be a lot of fun, but it lacks the same emotional kick.

For something to feel like heist media to me it's important to be able to easily cut back and forth to different locations, run concurrent scenes, and for things to feel punchy (resolve quickly). The game we are playing needs to be able to handle one PC distracting someone important while another searches through their belongings in a way that feels fluid and tense.

I love D&D. I have about 6 different versions of it on my shelf. I play the current version biweekly. I think it handles heist scenarios just fine (in a very D&D way), but I think there are innumerable features of the game that are counterproductive if we want our game to feel like heist media. Heist scenarios end up feeling more Tom Clancy than Guy Ritchie.

 

[loverdrive]

I think your idea that heists/infiltration can't/don't involve violence is completely incomprehensible, especially in the context of BitD which involves violence virtually every session. No idea how to help you with that. If we're saying heists can't feature large amounts of violence (or "turn into HEAT" - presumably meaning the shootout late in HEAT, because the initial violence/stealth-based heist in HEAT was successful) then I'm really confused by why we're using BitD as an example of a "heist" system. Maybe we need to move to the Leverage RPG or something - seems like that might have avoided it.

Blades actively discourage violence, unless you're playing Assasins or Bravos. In my experience, the guns are drawn for intimidation far far more often than for shooting.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

But, see, here's the thing. It works both ways. Because, as often as you've seen people suggesting using a different system, I've seen people make claims that 5e can easily do just about anything. (Or D&D in general). So, if I ask "How do I do X in D&D" and you have tried to do X and it didn't work, isn't it perfectly fair to say, "Hey, don't try to do that - it is an exercise in futility because D&D doesn't really do that."

I mean, @Imaro's solution was I should pick up a 200+ page book in order to find answers. Which is perfectly fine. But, if it takes a 200 + page book to solve my problems, that, to me anyways, means that 5e doesn't really do what I want it to do. @dave2008's solutions were very good, but drastically increase the lethality of the game (stripping out casters means no healing and no way to remove status effects) which I didn't want. So, no, it's not easy to do X in 5e. It's easy to do X only so long as you get to control what X is.

No, I don’t think it’s fair to say that. You don’t know what will or won’t work for another group. The fact that something was bad for you does not mean it will be bad for everyone.

Look at the example you give here. You are literally describing a scenario in which something works for one group but not for another.

I don’t actually care at all about the abstract arguments regarding whether RAW or stock D&D can do XYZ, and I shouldn’t have let myself get dragged into them when they are tangential to the point.

This is the most important thing to me; If I am asking for advice on doing A Thing, it is rude and adds nothing whatsoever to just give a drive by “Don’t do the Thing, it sucks.” Without any explanation.

“D&D doesn't do that” is vague and unhelpful, especially when it is advice that is clearly incorrect for many people, because whether D&D can do a thing depends on the particulars of the thing, what the group wants from it, how the group plays D&D, and other factors. Warning someone that the system isn’t built with that thing in mind, and/pointing out specific problems with doing it in D&D, is great!

“Don’t do it.” Is presumptuous and rude, and attempts to make your experience universal.