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

[Charlaquin]

There’s a lot more reasons a person may want to easily hack D&D mechanics than migrate to a new system.

• People might like the brand
• They may like the published adventures
• They may like the community
• They may struggle to find players for other systems
• They may not have other systems supported on their VTT of choice

The bolded is a big one - it’s often easier to find players for “D&D but X” than for an indie game they’ve nevertheless heard of, even if it is purpose-built for X.

I also suspect there’s an element of trying to fight this in people’s suggestions to play another game if you want X. If you prefer other systems, it can get frustrating that so many people would rather just kitbash D&D than try them, so it’s tempting to try and say “you only think D&D works for X because you haven’t played a real X game!”

 

[CleverNickName]

So, there is a lot of traffic on the internet dedicated to the idea that DnD is a very limited game, and if you want to run a heist or have romantic fantasy narratives, or even just play a game where bonds with other people is very important, then you should play some indie game that is built for that thing, rather than D&D.

I disagree. I play other games sometimes, to tell short stories with my friends, or to explore and learn different ways of running and constructing a game. For my regular game, I'd almost always rather play dnd. Not only am I so familiar with it that I don't need to think about the rules to use them, but it is a game that is very easy to add to.
...
What about you?

I agree with the OP. The 5E rules are flexible enough, and modular enough, to fit just about anything I can imagine. I feel the same way about the old BECM rules, too, but that's another thread.

I don't want to disrespect any indie games out there, though. If you find a game that you like, then buy it and play it! 5E isn't the only game on the shelf, and words like "better" and "easier" are relative.

 

[MGibster]

There’s a lot more reasons a person may want to easily hack D&D mechanics than migrate to a new system.

Each one of those is a valid reason not to migrate to a new system. Hell, "I don't feel like it" is a valid reason in my opinion.

PS Did I mention it’s easy to hack the mechanics.

You did, yeah, but I still think it's going to take a lot of heavy lifting to get D&D to provide me a similar experience to that of Blue Planet, Shadowrun, or Vampire.

When we start talking about Savage Worlds, Cypher, Cortex Prime, Fate, and GURPS we are talking about systems specifically designed to be adapted to various uses.

Savage Worlds is my go to system when I want to run an oddball game that won't fit well with D&D. When I run fantasy games that stray too far from orthodox D&Dism, I'd rather run Savage Worlds than try to get D&D to fit my vision. But even as much as I love Savage Worlds, if I want to run Vampire I'm using Vampire.

 

[loverdrive]

As for "looking for players", I personally tend to turn down offers to play D&D from people I don't already know well, because I don't know what to expect.

When someone invites me to play Blades, or Monsterhearts, or Delta Green, I know what I will get. D&D? A damn mixed bag.

 

[dave2008]

By "hackable" I mean that modifications wouldn't have unexpected side effects and/or edge-cases to be addressed.

Changing the way damage works in Fate would not produce side effects, in D&D.... You'd need to look over a bunch of stuff and make sure it still works as intended.

Regarding Fate (since I don't know it and you said it was very hackable), does it have the following and if not how difficult would it be to add them:

1. Armor as both damage avoidance and damage reduction.
2. An abstract measure of damage/exhaustion (hit points in 5e), and...
3. A concrete measure of bodily damage (vitality points, injuries,)

My group will no longer play games that don't incorporate these mechanics and I have to hack them into any system we play. It was very easy in 5e. How difficult would it be to do in fate?

 

[dave2008]

As for "looking for players", I personally tend to turn down offers to play D&D from people I don't already know well, because I don't know what to expect.

When someone invites me to play Blades, or Monsterhearts, or Delta Green, I know what I will get. D&D? A damn mixed bag.

And that is why some love it. To each his or her own.

Of course form one perspective you are agreeing with the premise that 5e is hackable in this statement. But I know that is not what you are intending to say.

 

[dave2008]

You did, yeah, but I still think it's going to take a lot of heavy lifting to get D&D to provide me a similar experience to that of Blue Planet, Shadowrun, or Vampire.

Similar is of course subjective. What is similar to me, may not feel similar to you. I think that is where many get hung up when they say D&D can't do this or that.

 

[MGibster]

Similar is of course subjective. What is similar to me, may not feel similar to you. I think that is where many get hung up when they say D&D can't do this or that.

I think that goes without saying. And go ahead and just assume anything I write here starts off with "In my opinion," unless I'm stating an actual fact. I do that for everyone else and it makes things a lot easier for me.

In my opinion, it is very difficult to use D&D to provide players with a similar experience they would have playing Vampire.
In my opinion, 5th edition is the best incarnation of Dungeons and Dragons.

D&D 5th edition was released in 2014.
Mgibster is the most handsome, intelligent, and witty individual posting at ENWorld. (Facts that we can all plainly see.)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Of course form one perspective you are agreeing with the premise that 5e is hackable in this statement. But I know that is not what you are intending to say.

That's a serious case of believing what you want to believe, mate, come on.

The reality is that many D&D groups house-rule stuff in crazy, crazy ways, whether they work or make any sense at all. No other game has ever suffered from this as severely - it's not because D&D actually is easy to hack, it's because D&D encourages people to make up rules (and has done in all editions except 3E and 4E) in the actual rulebook. If D&D was genuinely "easy" to hack it would be less of a problem because most of the changes would merely be logical extensions of existing rules approaches - this would be true for most of the generic RPGs, such as those mentioned by Umbran. Instead with D&D it tends to be idiocy that stems from people not even understanding the rules. This is amazingly obvious when you get "what are your house rules?" threads on reddit (or even here, at least a few years ago), where literally 40-60% or sometimes even higher of the "house rules" stem from people not knowing the rules, often making up house rules to attempt to "fill gaps" which aren't actually gaps at all - just the person making up the rules doesn't even know the rules.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Each one of those is a valid reason not to migrate to a new system. Hell, "I don't feel like it" is a valid reason in my opinion.

You did, yeah, but I still think it's going to take a lot of heavy lifting to get D&D to provide me a similar experience to that of Blue Planet, Shadowrun, or Vampire.


Savage Worlds is my go to system when I want to run an oddball game that won't fit well with D&D. When I run fantasy games that stray too far from orthodox D&Dism, I'd rather run Savage Worlds than try to get D&D to fit my vision. But even as much as I love Savage Worlds, if I want to run Vampire I'm using Vampire.

I think it is very much a matter of how much each of us/our groups need different mechanics in order to play differently. My group buys into a story type, theme, etc, and just plays that. We could play vampire in stock dnd, and just improv things like fighting against our internal hunger, and I trust every player at the table to decide honestly how hard it is to resist their hunger, and we either roll for it or if there is a narratively certain result, we just explore that.

However, that doesn't mean we don't enjoy bespoke mechanics. In fact my strong preference is a fairly general system that includes specific mechanics and player options that are purpose built to do or model a specific thing.

Since I like the VtM mechanics and player options, I'd suggest playing it to the group, but if more than one person doesn't want to learn how to play it, I'd then suggest making lineages for each bloodline, and talk about how we want to model other aspects of the game and figure out if we can build a module for dnd of variant rules options that is small enough that we can all remember most of it without having to constantly reference it.