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

[Steampunkette]

The feeling is mutual.

I never said they were minimal... and if you believe I did please show me where. I conceded they were not structured in a specific process, which I understand you prefer but I posted a list of mechanics in D&D all related to exploration which was pretty comprehensive... I then asked you what you felt was missing... well besides a process what is?

Structure does not in turn mean more mechanics... you get that right? My structured process could be flip a coin every 8 miles traveled, heads combat encounter and tails no encounter... its s structured process but it has minimal mechanics.

Gameplay.

Your comprehensive list of all the stuff in D&D that is related to exploration is great! It's -cool-. But there's barely anything there. Not that you care for Quantitative measures. It's got a lot of individual headings and that's plenty! It has at least- two whole paragraphs and a chart describing weather events, that's way more than you need! Don't count how many pages those paragraphs take up compared to combat, though, 'cause that's a poor measure of what's actually here!

Who cares if the game doesn't actually have any, y'know, -game- invested in that aspect of it. That it's just set dressing.

Of course when I pointed this out, before, you were quick to pass it off as a matter of "Wanting More". Of me, personally, being unsatisfied that it had everything I needed but somehow -I- was unable to put it together. Quite insulting, by the way.

And now you're seriously arguing that a few paragraphs and charts compares to game systems that devotes to Exploration as much space as D&D does to Combat have no "More Mechanics" than D&D does for Exploration.

It's mind-boggling, in all honesty.

 

[dave2008]

1) The fact that they're moving away from it doesn't mean it is now somehow divested of it's ability of providing that morality play.

2) It's barely -there- is the point. Not whether it does what I -want- it to or not.

You're the one who made a thread comparing D&D to "Bespoke Genre TTRPGs". Many of them have a more robust Exploration or Social Pillar than D&D does. If you're going to argue that they don't have them because you don't -like- their particular systems or prefer D&D's then we're not going to get anywhere. That's like arguing Rocky Road doesn't -exist- because you prefer chocolate ice cream, my dude.


Notice it specifically calls itself "Detect Evil and Good" this implies that those monster types are, inherently, evil or good.

Your mileage may vary on how useful that information is or isn't.

I also like how it can tell you if something has been consecrated (Good) or desecrated (Evil). Even though that's -really- not what Desecrated means!

Though, again, for all the stuff WotC is trying to pull out of it, it remains really good at the Morality Play. I'm so confused as to why you all are arguing that it's no longer good at this thing because these functions are being stripped away... It's a -good- thing to be good at something. And D&D is good at the high fantasy morality play.

Like... I'm not sure what you're trying to convince me of, here. I get that they're making moral judgements less core to the identity of the product going forward. It's still REALLY GOOD at presenting it.

I am not really trying to convince you of anything, I guess would never think to describe D&D in terms of morality. That is just my experience.

I've have played D&D for 30+ years and never used alignment or based our games in strict morality / alignment terms, so I simple don't see it as core principle of the game. Even when there were mechanics for it, they affect nothing in our games if we ignored them (which we did).

 

[dave2008]

Oh, hey. Look. The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. I wonder if the Faerunian Deities have any kind of alignments...

View attachment 136661
Well gosh, would you look at that...

Page 21 of Wildemount.
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Page 34 of Theros.
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They all have this same sort of table.

My mistake, I forgot Theros had that table. I was thinking of the individual deity descriptions where they do not mention alignment. Thank you for correcting me. Though it is relevant that Theros specifically mentions followers could be of different alignments.

 

[Steampunkette]

I am not really trying to convince you of anything, I guess would never think to describe D&D in terms of morality. That is just my experience.

I've have played D&D for 30+ years and never used alignment or based our games in strict morality / alignment terms, so I simple don't see it as core principle of the game. Even when there were mechanics for it, they affect nothing in our games if we ignored them (which we did).

Even if you don't use Morality in the strict gameplay mechanics terms... it's -still- a morality play.

It's the good guys who fight the BBEG. Who save the princess and slay the evil dragon. Who help the orphans and fight the goblins and uphold justice and goodness. Who strap on the armor and face down demons and cruel tyrants and various allegories for capitalism and bigotry... Most people don't play D&D to be the bad guy who does evil things for no purpose but to do them. Or a Mercenary who does good and evil in equal proportion without a care in the world.

Unless you're playing murderhobos, but, y'know. That's it's own thing.

It's just how D&D is structured, really. How pretty much all High Fantasy is structured.

 

[tetrasodium]

I feel, at this point, that you cannot be arguing in good faith.

D&D has absolutely minimal mechanics with no cohesive structure toward travel or social pillars, both you and DoctorBadWolf have acknowledged this and lauded it as a good thing. In your case even to the point of being directly insulting.

But even LevelUp, which takes D&D's mechanics and restructures them with the addition of only a handful of rules, has more gameplay mechanics related to travel and the exploration pillar by -definition-. Similarly, -any- game which has a structure for the Social or Exploration pillars is going to have more mechanics than D&D because D&D has -very little-.

And at -no- point have I made mention "Better" mechanics or implied other games were "Better" than D&D as a value judgement.

That "cohesive structure" (or lack of it) is critical in how much work it is to make rules changes to a system & a lack of cohesion feeds into creating the sort of cursed problems @loverdrive mentioned earlier. I can hack grid combat into fate trivially to insert tactical wargame positionin type combat elements with like a half page of bulletpoints & description by hooking the new mechanics onto the cohesive structure of fate. By contrast if I want to run genre of game that requires greater lethality, no matter how I tweak phb197 I'm going to immediately run face first into the fact that either players lack defenses & healing capabilities to keep up without the damage beyond 0 goes away so I need to redesign one or both of those -or- I'll need to target the healing spells &abilities directly one by one -or I'll need to redesign defenses -or- I'll need to do some combination. Whatever I wind up doing will lead to an endless march of one off edge cases that need addressing in order to keep within the new theme or compensate for how corrections in one area hit various class/archetype/monster/etc. The lack of cohesive structure to hang those changes on raises the bar for making any kind of simple changes

I used grid combat in fate as an example because someone mentioned "fate does not do tactical wargame combat, and trying to graft it on will be a Herculean task - if you were playing Fate, and asked me how to do tactical combat, with tight physical positioning and all, I'd tell you to go play D&D or something." so it makes a good example of something that looks like an impossible task while something like "greater lethality" usually seems like something that should be a fairly low bar

d&d was not always this way. If you look at AoOs in 3.5 barring special exceptions from feats & PrC abilities they were pretty much move more than 5 feet in threatened squares, make a ranged weapon attack, cast a spell/use an ability with a (Sp) tag that makes it a spell like ability plus skill checks that seem like they should. If you had an ability that was (Ex)traordinary or (Su)pernatural it did not trigger one. It ran into headaches when you stared getting a lot of rules exceptions from feats & such but a one off edge case ruling on a rules exception is different from a bunch of step one edge case rulings

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yes but in the hypothetical example of someone telling you to play another game, your justification has been that you want to run your D&D campaign. That’s what I’m addressing here.

Okay

So for the heist example, DBW said “why would I want to switch games to Blades in the Dark to run a heist when after the heist we’ll move on to some other genre”. He’s made similar statements throughout the thread.

Right. That’s the point of that example, that “play Blades” is useless advice for someone wanted to make their next adventure within a campaign a heist, and it amounts to threadcrapping when given in a thread asking for Advice on their D&D game.

The argument seems to be “I’m gonna play D&D and I’m gonna incorporate some other genres as needed, so don’t tell me to play another game suited for that genre”.

If I ask for a game recommendation, feel free.

Not a big deal, just that the Aliens game would be a much better choice to play an Aliens game.

But the ask isn’t for advice to play Aliens. It’s for advice to play a fantasy adventure game that will feature similar themes and elements. The thread isn’t about times when someone asks for advice about playing an aliens game in general.

As I said earlier, there is a difference between playing a horror game and playing D&D with a horror vibe. Clearly you want the latter. Anyone who wants the former should look for a specific game to get what they want.

Yes. Are you having fun arguing with someone that agrees with you?

I disagree that weak is a value judgement by definition. Weak does not mean "Bad". It just means Weak.

Weak Intellectual Property laws are good for the advancement of culture, for example, as the Public Domain is a wonderful thing. A weak board in a staircase is bad.

That, then, is the core of our miscommunication.

Weak IP law is indeed a good thing. That doesn’t change that it’s a value judgment about the efficacy of those laws.

If you wanted to effectively communicate laws that aren’t meant to be strict, and thus are doing what they’re meant to, it would be confusing for a reader if you used “weak”, rather than something like “lenient” or “permissive” or “open”.

Anyway, semantics about how the term is being used is indeed the source of miscommunication. Now that I know what you mean, I agree that 5e has light exploration and social rules. I don’t agree with your statements that this means D&D 5e doesn’t do social or exploration gameplay as well as games with very codified mechanics for those gameplay aspects.

 

[Steampunkette]

Okay

Right. That’s the point of that example, that “play Blades” is useless advice for someone wanted to make their next adventure within a campaign a heist, and it amounts to threadcrapping when given in a thread asking for Advice on their D&D game.

If I ask for a game recommendation, feel free.

But the ask isn’t for advice to play Aliens. It’s for advice to play a fantasy adventure game that will feature similar themes and elements. The thread isn’t about times when someone asks for advice about playing an aliens game in general.

Yes. Are you having fun arguing with someone that agrees with you?

Weak IP law is indeed a good thing. That doesn’t change that it’s a value judgment about the efficacy of those laws.

If you wanted to effectively communicate laws that aren’t meant to be strict, and thus are doing what they’re meant to, it would be confusing for a reader if you used “weak”, rather than something like “lenient” or “permissive” or “open”.

Anyway, semantics about how the term is being used is indeed the source of miscommunication. Now that I know what you mean, I agree that 5e has light exploration and social rules.

Cool! I'm glad that we've gotten to the same pa-

I don’t agree with your statements that this means D&D 5e doesn’t do social or exploration gameplay as well as games with very codified mechanics for those gameplay aspects.

...

cries in frustration

At no point have I made a statement that it doesn't do it "As Well". Or that it is in any way "Less Than" another system. I've been pretty careful about that, here.

Only that it doesn't have them. That other games do. That it's exploration content is very minimal compared to other systems that focus on those aspects.

That's been it. The whole of it.

I compared it as a flat-head screwdriver to another system as a power drill with interchangeable heads, but that's really more about ease than effectiveness, 'cause you're still getting that phillips head screw into the wall, and potentially easier than you would with the multitool that has a mess of different screwheads but a terrible structure to hold in a human hand.

But never did I say it was "Bad". Just "Minimal"

 

[dave2008]

By contrast if I want to run genre of game that requires greater lethality, no matter how I tweak phb197 I'm going to immediately run face first into the fact that either players lack defenses & healing capabilities to keep up without the damage beyond 0 goes away so I need to redesign one or both of those -or- I'll need to target the healing spells &abilities directly one by one -or I'll need to redesign defenses -or- I'll need to do some combination. Whatever I wind up doing will lead to an endless march of one off edge cases that need addressing in order to keep within the new theme or compensate for how corrections in one area hit various class/archetype/monster/etc. The lack of cohesive structure to hang those changes on raises the bar for making any kind of simple changes

This is not my experience. We have 1 page of house rules for our standard low magic* higher lethality game (we actually had to revise the initial rules because they were to lethal for us). The changes are, IMO, trivial to make D&D more lethal. In addition, I have run a CoC style game in in which I tweaked our standard house rules slightly and made it really lethal. I could make 5e much more lethal with probably just 3 changes:

1. Change Rest (this may or may not be required)
2. Change Healing
3. Change Hit Points

That is about a paragraph or two of changes. Heck I could even do it quicker and easier:

1. Add a monsters CR to the damage of its attacks. That alone is much more lethal, but then...
2. Death at 0.

*By low magic I mean the setting is low magic (highest NPC lvl is 12, magic users and magic items are rare to very rare, we still have a wizard in our group that has no changes to the class.

Since you already disagree there is no need to reply as we will get no where. I know it works for me and my group. Perhaps he hasn't worked for you and your group. We can both be correct on that. However, you can't tell me doesn't work universally.

 

[tetrasodium]

This is not my experience. We have 1 page of house rules for our standard low magic* higher lethality game (we actually had to revise the initial rules because they were to lethal for us). The changes are, IMO, trivial to make D&D more lethal. In addition, I have run a CoC style game in in which I tweaked our standard house rules slightly and made it really lethal. I could make 5e much more lethal with probably just 3 changes:

1. Change Rest (this may or may not be required)
2. Change Healing
3. Change Hit Points

That is about a paragraph or two of changes. Heck I could even do it quicker and easier:

1. Add a monsters CR to the damage of its attacks. That alone is much more lethal, but then...
2. Death at 0.

*By low magic I mean the setting is low magic (highest NPC lvl is 12, magic users and magic items are rare to very rare, we still have a wizard in our group that has no changes to the class.

Since you already disagree there is no need to reply as we will get no where. I know it works for me and my group. Perhaps he hasn't worked for you and your group. We can both be correct on that. However, you can't tell me doesn't work universally.

Such as?

 

[Krachek]

This is not my experience. We have 1 page of house rules for our standard low magic* higher lethality game (we actually had to revise the initial rules because they were to lethal for us). The changes are, IMO, trivial to make D&D more lethal. In addition, I have run a CoC style game in in which I tweaked our standard house rules slightly and made it really lethal. I could make 5e much more lethal with probably just 3 changes:

1. Change Rest (this may or may not be required)
2. Change Healing
3. Change Hit Points

That is about a paragraph or two of changes. Heck I could even do it quicker and easier:

1. Add a monsters CR to the damage of its attacks. That alone is much more lethal, but then...
2. Death at 0.

*By low magic I mean the setting is low magic (highest NPC lvl is 12, magic users and magic items are rare to very rare, we still have a wizard in our group that has no changes to the class.

Since you already disagree there is no need to reply as we will get no where. I know it works for me and my group. Perhaps he hasn't worked for you and your group. We can both be correct on that. However, you can't tell me doesn't work universally.

Another simple trick to increase lethality is to remove some spells like healing word, revivify.
a page or even half page of selected house rules can do a lot of change in the play style.