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

[Imaro]

Oh, I know of "things go bad" kind of heists movies, but in that case planning makes even less sense.

If we already know that the "perfect plan" isn't supposed to actually work and the exciting stuff is going to be the result of naughty word going south, then what's the point of spending time on formulating a perfect plan?

That's the difference between a game and a movie/book... the author knows the plan is going FUBAR... the players are finding out if their plan does or does not fail.

 

[Imaro]

"Heist" is a very specific genre to those who have studied media. "Features a robbery" is not sufficient. HEAT is not, by that definition, a heist movie. The Mission Impossible TV series is a better example of the genre.

I'm genuinely curious...What genre is it in then? It doesn't just feature a robbery... it's a movie about those who commit heists and those who are trying to catch them.

As to other examples of plan blows up and we deal with the aftermath heist movies... Yes MI is probably one, Fast and furious later movies are another. Which is my larger point... the flashback and we totally outsmarted them heist movie/story is only a subset.

 

[Neonchameleon]

What genre is it in then? It doesn't just feature a robbery... it's a movie about those who commit heists and those who are trying to catch them.

Wikipedia calls it a crime drama.

A heist film has a lot of emphasis on the heist itself. That said so does Heat.

On the gripping hand anything that happens in the first five minutes of a film is backstory and is there for setting the stakes. It's the central heist rather than establishing the characters that needs to unfold before going wrong.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

What genre is it in then? It doesn't just feature a robbery... it's a movie about those who commit heists and those who are trying to catch them.

It's a crime drama.

See here: Heist film - Wikipedia

A "heist" is more than just a robbery, and may not be a crime at all. For example Thor: the Dark World features a "Heist" sequence.

 

[Aldarc]

I don't know if I agree here... HEAT (arguably one of the greatest heist movies ever made)... five minutes into the first bank robbery and it all goes to hell (and surprise, surprise becomes a giant bloody battle). I think a very specific type of heist movie/show is being presented by some in this thread as representative of all heist movies and shows in general when it's only one subtype.

This is a good point, but I would say that in BitD this is generally represented by the engagement roll. Just because flashbacks can be used in BitD to mitigate these things doesn't mean that they will always be employed as a result of bad engagement rolls. Sometimes players will want to roll with the punches.

It's a crime drama.

See here: Heist film - Wikipedia

It's not going to help your argument to say Heat is a "crime drama" and not a heist film and then link to a list of heist films that includes Heat.

 

[Imaro]

This is a good point, but I would say that in BitD this is generally represented by the engagement roll. Just because flashbacks can be used in BitD to mitigate these things doesn't mean that they will always be employed as a result of bad engagement rolls. Sometimes players will want to roll with the punches.

Yeah I get what you are saying and agree... I was more so addressing this idea that seems to be permeating the thread that in order to run a "good" heist story that emulates movies or literature all the heroes have to be hyper-competent in stealth and no bloody battles can break out during the heist. When in actuality there are a ton of heist movies where the first isn't the case and the second does happen.

 

[tetrasodium]

"Heist" is a very specific genre to those who have studied media. "Features a robbery" is not sufficient. HEAT is not, by media studies definition, a heist movie. The Mission Impossible TV series is a better example of the genre.

Heat doesn't ring any bells fir me, but fiasco is a game built to showcase that "everything went to hell and the plan couldn't have failed worse" type situation with tools for straw grasping and such while falling but that doesn't lend itself well to ongoing campaigns over one shots

 

[Imaro]

On the gripping hand anything that happens in the first five minutes of a film is backstory and is there for setting the stakes. It's the central heist rather than establishing the characters that needs to unfold before going wrong.

I'm not sure how that's "backstory" in Heat when it is happening in the present of the movie. That scene isn't a flashback or a memory, it's our first introduction to the characters as they are in the movie... in the present tense.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's not going to help your argument to say Heat is a "crime drama" and not a heist film and then link to a list of heist films that includes Heat.

Genres are never easy to pin down, and HEAT is certainly very close to how things are likely to go down if you use the D&D ruleset. "Is HEAT a Heist movie" is certainly long essay material for a media studies student. It focuses on a particular element - the bit where it all falls apart. Which is pretty much a morality thing - criminals can't be shown to be rewarded for their crime.

When the perpetrators are not criminals, e.g. Mission Impossible, "it all falls apart" is an element which is often omitted.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Oh, I know of "things go bad" kind of heists movies, but in that case planning makes even less sense.

If we already know that the "perfect plan" isn't supposed to actually work and the exciting stuff is going to be the result of naughty word going south, then what's the point of spending time on formulating a perfect plan?

I think at this point you just profoundly don't want to understand the concept, because your objection here makes zero sense in the context of my post, which explained the point! At length! And you're acting like I didn't so either you didn't read it (which would be weird), or just don't want to engage with it, which is kind of funny and a bit sad. It's one thing to say "what works for you doesn't work for me" or something, but when I explained the point, and you're still saying "what's the point?!" and not even referencing what I said? That's on you mate. Feel free to re-read my earlier post to learn the point.

It's okay though, there are people who fundamentally don't get Torchbearer, for example, just cannot for the life of them figure out how that could possibly be fun. I pity them personally, but YMMV.

Or maybe a book. I do think that genre emulation is an important part of our general TTRPG play. I mean, if I wanted to play a game of superheroes, then I’m certainly hoping to emulate one or more superhero media, whether in comic book, film, or televised form. I’m not sure why crime heists would be different.

When I read through BitD, it reminded me A LOT about The Lies of Locke Lamora. A fantasy book of ambitious thieves pulling elaborate scores against the upper crust of a quasi-Venetian city. The story often involves jumping into the action of the scene, only to do a flashback later (generally the next chapter) that reveals the behind-the-scenes planning.

Thinking genre emulation is the only "sensible" way is just plain narrow-minded and deeply ignorant of the history of TT RPGs, though (the whole dungeon-crawling and sandbox approaches stand in hard opposition to genre emulation). So it's weird to back up that bad take (which wasn't your take, I note, but @loverdrive's take). I'd also really argue that the original Locke Lamora is not actually a good match for BitD, the way it plays out. That was one of the major problems my Locke Lamora-loving group had with it. With LL there's a mixture of pre-planning and understanding quite elaborate stuff (which BitD does NOT want to happen), and the flashbacks are used in a very different way to BitD and Ocean's 11. It makes sense that the BitD author hadn't read LL, because the subject matter is close but the approach is significantly different.

EDIT- Hell the existence and popularity of D&D really calls into question the whole "genre emulation" thing, because D&D only "emulates" the D&D genre. Indeed most of the "big" RPGs aren't genre-emulation ones, they're ones which are vaguely genre-themed (often really, really vaguely, and mashing up multiple genres), but ones that are doing their own thing (including the WoD, which isn't really genre-emulating, though VtM is the closest to it, it's still kind of defining its own genre).

PtbA games tend somewhat to be genre-emulating (though not exclusively, and often obliquely, or emulate a genre of their own), and I've always liked genre-emulating RPGs, all the way back to Feng Shui and so on, but the idea that they're the only way or primary way or something is just fanciful nonsense, especially given we're posting on a D&D board!

Yeah I get what you are saying and agree... I was more so addressing this idea that seems to be permeating the thread that in order to run a "good" heist story that emulates movies or literature all the heroes have to be hyper-competent in stealth and no bloody battles can break out during the heist. When in actuality there are a ton of heist movies where the first isn't the case and the second does happen.

Yup. As I pointed out earlier, you basically have two kinds of heist movie. The fanciful/elegant kind (which is often quite enjoyable) where everything goes pretty perfectly because a magical mastermind came up with the plan, and usually the only things that go wrong are the result of personally-motivated double-cross, triple-crosses and so on (though there is often a section where the heroes have to improvise because some part of the plan is stuck, usually because some individual isn't where they're expected to be), and the grittier kind where typically the planning is more shown, and there's a lot less of this "ahaha I knew this would happen so!" deal (sometimes none at all), and things often get a lot messier (though not necessarily immediately, and still often because of a personality clash). BitD tries to chart a weird middle path, doesn't really engage with the personality-clash stuff (unless I'm really misremembering it), perhaps for the obvious reason that it might not work well in an RPG, and really, really doesn't want you to do any actual planning at all (very different from the elaborate plans in stuff like LL).