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

[doctorbadwolf]

Well that is generally what I was going for, except the potential phone damage.

No phones were damaged luckily! it was close tho!

So, the thing here is interesting and it happens to conflict with the GM centered nature of play. Presumably, you'll have largely prepped the heist location, obstacles and threats therein, and the goals. The players then need to find out what these are, make a plan, and execute the plan successfully. This is very dependent on the GM -- how free a given GM is with allowing information gathering, how free a GM is with accomodaying planning steps, and how freely the GM adjudicates the results. These are all going to be highly idiosyncratic, so it's very difficult to provide support under this schema of simulationism and heavy GM authority.

It's telling that both of the most explaned methods for dealing with heists in 5e (@doctorbadwolf, @Laurefindel) both add new player-side plot coupons style mechanics and run very loosely in an ad-lib manner. Not knocking either of these approaches at all, just pointing them out as both stepping away from a hard-coded GM prep schema where the heist is more like a puzzle to solve.

it can’t be “stepping away from” something I’ve never done in D&D in any context, nor a thing that can reasonably be assumed about the specific game type in question.

Further, I should clarify that I reference Blades in context of using flashbacks for heists because Blades is a commonly known fantasy crime game with flashbacks. I never intended to mimic or evoke or otherwise be in any way beholden to a specific game’s mechanics when adding flashbacks to 5e.

Also I wouldn’t describe what I ran as super loose and ad lib, though anything I run leans strongly into improv and player creativity. I can see how my particular example could come across that way, though.

People like 5e, and so use that preference in place of actually analyzing the system...

You keep coming back to this, and IME it is dead wrong. People aren’t saying 5e can do heists because they are just super into 5e, and repeatedly reducing the arguments of people you disagree with to this is insulting, and frankly ludicrous.

5e can do heists just fine in part because heists do not actually require special mechanics, but can benefit from them, and 5e is very good at handling add-on systems, because it only gets nitty gritty with combat.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Looking at this from a slightly different angle, I've actually found D&D isn't the game or genre where I've most often seen a rules/subject conflict, nor seen "system matters" illustrated so obviously.

Supers is.

Virtually every generic RPG has tried to do Supers, and some have even made it their main thing (HERO/Champions). Virtually all of them are godawful if you're trying to run a game that feels like a comic-book or a superhero movie, because the rules push so hard against that. HERO/Champions was the first time I really felt this was thrown in my face. Rules-on-paper, it's basically a tightly-designed squad-combat game, ideally suited to having say two relatively small squads of soldiers shoot it out with each other in a pretty precise and balanced way. Yet it's being given all these massive superhero and superpower rules. And if you actually play it, does it play out like a comic-book, even if the players and DM try to make it? Not really. It plays out more like if XCOM involved superheroes. There's huge effort put in to try and allow for some superhero stuff, but it's very clunky and the game really shoves you towards this tactical approach pretty hard.

Whereas the somewhat naively-designed FASERIP worked extremely well for Supers, and still does.

And then loads of Supers games came after FASERIP... and most of them had issues like HERO/Champions - they didn't promote play like comic books or movies, they promoted something more like their underlying design. GURPS Supers is particularly bad for this too.

But finally MSHAG came out in the late '90s and did a good job... and again, into the '00s a lot of Supers RPGs continued to take a really HERO/GURPS-y approach of "Well we provided rules for loads of powers and power pools and power stunts and so on, so we must be a good superhero RPG!", despite having rules which didn't really support hero-ing.

Of course the funny thing is gore-y superhero deconstruction stuff like The Boys would probably work better with HERO/Champions than, say, The Avengers or or most Marvel stuff. Right tool for the job. If I wanted to run something like Guardians of the Galaxy I'm pretty sure I'd be looking at PtbA or FASERIP or the like (maybe a hack of City of Mists), but if I wanted to do Suicide Squad, bring on HERO or GURPS, because brains splattered on walls and guns being actually useful and so on works great there.

The obvious thought is that you're talking about CoC-style Madness, but I'm wondering if maybe you have something else in mind for "mechanics which explicitly support horror-based play?" Mostly, to be honest, because I didn't find that Madness really did that ...

I do agree, though, that D&D's approach--levels and HP and all-a-that--doesn't exactly work with horror.

I'm not using CoC as an example on purpose, because CoC is pretty naively designed and BRP isn't really designed for horror. And the SAN system creates a kind of horror but it's not necessarily very compelling.

Games with systems where PCs regularly have to make Fear checks (esp. which aren't as ludicrous/OTT in results as D&D) or the like, and where enemies are extremely hard to kill or require very specific tactics, where players can lose control of their PCs in ways that don't just feel tactical or boring, and where it happens routinely tend to support horror a lot better. Where magic and so on isn't completely reliable/predictable.

5E is a bit to keen on tactics and balance to really mesh well with horror, even beyond HP/levels/etc.

 

[tetrasodium]

I think the way to run a heist without flashbacks would be to run it as linear as possible. You (the DM) would have to prep the place to be heisted, then y'all would have to play out all the info-gathering, planning, and anything else (such as social-engineering) that needed done before the heist, then y'all would have to play out the heist. You (the GM) would have to have the players' trust that you'd run all of that in good faith.

I think 5E could work pretty well mostly as-is for this. I think it's an entirely different playstyle than BitD is aiming for, and I'm not sure how much anything from it (other than maybe clocks) would be applicable. It's plausible, as @tetrasodium seems to imply, that maintaining believability will be difficult if there's asymmetry of real-world security expertise between the players and the DM. You're a far better judge of whether that's likely to be a problem at your table than anyone else in this thread is likely to be. (IMO, if no one is an expert in the field, it probably won't be a problem.)

social engineering & cloaking themselves in a SEP field seemed like the most compatible way of doing it but those often involve things like a tshirt hat & dolley to steal cases of beer through the front door during operating hours & other unbelievably bad security & are hard to explain. There might be other ways of doing it, but something like that absolutely requires a GM willing to believe that sort of brazenness is not only possible but easy in addition to one or more players capable of thinking inside that kind of box. bitd & fate have ways of paving a path & bridging the gap through negotiation but d&d is basically fiat>react>fiat>react so it's a little less flexible

 

[Manbearcat]

There are so many issues with that proposed Blades hack that I read. Some initial thoughts:

* D&D 5e doesn't remotely have the kind of authority distribution and transparency in action resolution that Blades possesses. This is for a number of reasons that don't just begin and end with "well, start asking questions and using answers in 5e just like in Blades!" You'd have to change the DC spread/complication paradigm (DC isn't Position...its not Effect...its not some amorphous combination of the two...they're conceptually different enough that you have an issue), you'd have to tighten up and stabilize the numbers (the maths between the two systems are different), you'd have to conceive of a functional and integrated Teamwork/Push/Devil's Bargain system, and you'd have to make table-facing the entire action resolution structure (the easiest part).

* The pressure points of the two games are entirely different (both in the breadth of them and in the potency of them). There is so many missing analogous pieces (Hit Points/HD are not even close to Stress and Fatigue isn't remotely Trauma and the suite of restoration abilities that PCs have for them in 5e immediately alters the play space and the moment to moment gamestate to a point that it a hack attempt looks unrecoverable...and that is just scratching the surface...how do you create a Coin > Get Stuff Done model that is stable and intuitable...what is the Heat analogue?).

* The incentive structures are entirely different. What is the carrot that equates to negotiating for Desperate Position so you can get xp? 1 Inspiration ain't it...and if you used that, the downstream effects are significant (you're suddenly exchanging the mechanics and incentive structures of Push/Devil's Bargain for the incentive structures of advancement that push the game toward "be bold and tempt fate"...that alone changes the nature of play and decision-points).


That is just scratching the surface. Int for Flashacks? That again rewards smarty-pants Wizards (D&D needs more of that!) and punishes martial characters that aren't F-Ms!


I think if I was actually trying to hack in something like Blades tech into 5e, the very first thing I would think of is "how can I stabilize + tune + integrate all the Help/Teamwork/DB stuff within the action resolution mechanics, make them table-facing, and give them teeth!"

Very first question. Tackle that and then you can get on with the rest (which doesn't just including changing stuff, but integrating it). Some initial thoughts I'd throw around:

* 1 Flashback per Score per PC.

* Somehow make Fatigue into Harm and make it very difficult to recover (the current D&D model makes it trivial to recover). Downtime Activities can recover it on a Clock w/ a Healer's help.

* Figure out and tightly tune the Coin > Get Assets/Get Stuff Done/Advance Level economy.

* Figure out how Heat + Wanted Level + Engagements works (what it is...what it does > Entanglements are basically Random Encounters, so there is that kindred part).

* X number of Stress per Score (not HP, not HD...it can't scale and it can't be restored in Score via all the various ways D&D PCs can) and if you Stress out in a Score, your PC is taken out and you add a Flaw that is like Blades Trauma (Cold, Haunted, Obsessed, et al) that the (a) has teeth and (b) the player and the GM can use the pressure point later as complications that earn xp.

* Saving Throw System is somehow Resistance Rolls where you can risk increased Stress to mitigate complications.

That is kind of the starting point. No D&D scaling of integral stuff. 1 Flashback per Score. Hit Points/HD aren't Stress. Somehow make Fatigue into Harm. Flaws are Trauma.

Lot of figuring out to do. But that is just the beginning. Then you have to tightly tune and integrate all the stuff.

This project feels like the "well 5e is basically 4e D&D because HD and Healing Surges!" that was/is thrown about. No. Not at all. But that is just the tip of the iceberg (navigating the reality that HDs and Healing Surges don't have the same immediate and longterm gamestate implications). Once you've got all the parts, you have to tightly tune and integrate everything.

The sort of "modular-based" + "just let the GM deploy the Triple F (Feel, Fiat, and Force) to get it to roughly hang together" thinking that undergirds 5e (and the overwhelming majority of the D&D hacking community) is extremely different than "holistic, integrated, tightly tuned design" where GM's aren't performing Fiat or Force and the extreme corner cases where they're deploying Feel its as tightly guided/constrained by the system as a game could be (upthread I mentioned Genre Hold 'Em conflict resolution...that is as corner case as it gets).

 

[hawkeyefan]

I still need to dig into it more, but I am getting broad idea of what BinD is from you and other respondents now. Unfortunately I am not liking what I am hearing. I need to verify, but they type of gameplay fostered by BinD doesn't appear to be what I want at all. So not likely something I am going to play of borrow from, at least I don't think so at this time.

I expect it would indeed be different than what you’re used to. I would recommend it even if only to try a game with a different approach than you’re used to.

But you’re right...not every game is for every group. It may not be a good fit for you and your players.

Sorry, the nuance in your analogy is lost on me as I don't play video games. I get the concept your describing, but with not understanding of the games I don't "feel" the difference your talking about.

it’s just about what the games are designed to do. In Overwatch, for example, there are two teams and they basically duke it out. There are characters who have stealth abilities and the like, but all of those are in service to eliminating the opposition.

Other games have stealth and similar elements as the primary purpose. The game world is designed with this in mind, and actively promotes that kind of play.

So this comparison is about game design, and how games are designed will promote specific experiences.

So D&D primarily promotes combat. Look at how combat works and how many options each of the classes has for how they engage with combat. There are class abilities like Fighting Styles and there are Feats like Sharpshooter and there are spells like Fireball and Spirit Guardians.....and so on. Just tons and tons of options for what to do in a fight.

But what about what to do in a conversation? When you’re trying to convince someone of something? Or if you’re trying to infiltrate a location? In these areas, almost all those options vanish, and you’re left with a couple of applicable skills, and a handful of feats, and a few spells.

Instead of a combat with all kinds of decision points and lots of options for each character to deploy, and likely dozens of rolls, an infiltration will likely consist of a couple of skill checks, and maybe a spell cast. And most likely this will fall on one person because most parties in D&D are not optimized for stealth across the board.

It’s just a matter of design.

Now, if your D&D game only requires this kind of stuff upon occasion, then you can likely get by. But if your D&D game is going to focus on this kind of stuff, then you may not.

I think this is very true and probably why I will likely stick with D&D. I don't want to run a BinD style heist, I want to run a D&D style heist. Who knew!

While I personally want to see more people trying more games beyond D&D, ultimately you should use the game that would be the most fun for you and your group.

 

[Imaro]

There are so many issues with that proposed Blades hack that I read. Some initial thoughts:

* D&D 5e doesn't remotely have the kind of authority distribution and transparency in action resolution that Blades possesses. This is for a number of reasons that don't just begin and end with "well, start asking questions and using answers in 5e just like in Blades!" You'd have to change (DC isn't Position...its not Effect...its not some amorphous combination of the two...they're conceptually different enough that you have an issue), you'd have to tighten up and stabilize the numbers (the maths between the two systems are different), you'd have to conceive of a functional and integrated Teamwork/Push/Devil's Bargain system, and you'd have to make table-facing the entire action resolution structure (the easiest part).

* The pressure points of the two games are entirely different (both in the breadth of them and in the potency of them). There is so many missing analogous pieces (Hit Points/HD are not even close to Stress and Fatigue isn't remotely Trauma and the suite of restoration abilities that PCs have for them in 5e immediately alters the play space and the moment to moment gamestate to a point that it a hack attempt looks unrecoverable...and that is just scratching the surface...how do you create a Coin > Get Stuff Done model that is stable and intuitable...what is the Heat analogue?).

* The incentive structures are entirely different. What is the carrot that equates to negotiating for Desperate Position so you can get xp? 1 Inspiration ain't it...and if you used that, the downstream effects are significant (you're suddenly exchanging the mechanics and incentive structures of Push/Devil's Bargain for the incentive structures of advancement that push the game toward "be bold and tempt fate"...that alone changes the nature of play and decision-points).


That is just scratching the surface. Int for Flashacks? That again rewards smarty-pants Wizards (D&D needs more of that!) and punishes martial characters that aren't F-Ms!


I think if I was actually trying to hack in something like Blades tech into 5e, the very first thing I would think of is "how can I stabilize + tune + integrate all the Help/Teamwork/DB stuff within the action resolution mechanics, make them table-facing, and give them teeth!"

Very first question. Tackle that and then you can get on with the rest (which doesn't just including changing stuff, but integrating it). Some initial thoughts I'd throw around:

* 1 Flashback per Score per PC.

* Somehow make Fatigue into Harm and make it very difficult to recover (the current D&D model makes it trivial to recover). Downtime Activities can recover it on a Clock w/ a Healer's help.

* Figure out and tightly tune the Coin > Get Assets/Get Stuff Done/Advance Level economy.

* Figure out how Heat + Wanted Level + Engagements works (what it is...what it does > Entanglements are basically Random Encounters, so there is that kindred part).

* X number of Stress per Score (not HP, not HD...it can't scale and it can't be restored in Score via all the various ways D&D PCs can) and if you Stress out in a Score, your PC is taken out and you add a Flaw that is like Blades Trauma (Cold, Haunted, Obsessed, et al) that the (a) has teeth and (b) the player and the GM can use the pressure point later as complications that earn xp.

* Saving Throw System is somehow Resistance Rolls where you can risk increased Stress to mitigate complications.

That is kind of the starting point. No D&D scaling of integral stuff. 1 Flashback per Score. Hit Points/HD aren't Stress. Somehow make Fatigue into Harm. Flaws are Trauma.

Lot of figuring out to do. But that is just the beginning. Then you have to tightly tune and integrate all the stuff.

This project feels like the "well 5e is basically 4e D&D because HD and Healing Surges!" that was/is thrown about. No. Not at all. But that is just the tip of the iceberg (navigating the reality that HDs and Healing Surges don't have the same immediate and longterm gamestate implications). Once you've got all the parts, you have to tightly tune and integrate everything.

The sort of "modular-based" + "just let the GM deploy the Triple F (Feel, Fiat, and Force) to get it to roughly hang together" thinking that undergirds 5e (and the overwhelming majority of the D&D hacking community) is extremely different than "holistic, integrated, tightly tuned design" where GM's aren't performing Fiat or Force and the extreme corner cases where they're deploying Feel its as tightly guided/constrained by the system as a game could be (upthread I mentioned Genre Hold 'Em conflict resolution...that is as corner case as it gets).

Is this you trying to get 5e to run like BitD... or you trying to use a mechanic or two from BitD to enhance a 5e heist adventure. I'm just asking for clarity...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

social engineering & cloaking themselves in a SEP field seemed like the most compatible way of doing it but those often involve things like a tshirt hat & dolley to steal cases of beer through the front door during operating hours & other unbelievably bad security & are hard to explain. There might be other ways of doing it, but something like that absolutely requires a GM willing to believe that sort of brazenness is not only possible but easy in addition to one or more players capable of thinking inside that kind of box. bitd & fate have ways of paving a path & bridging the gap through negotiation but d&d is basically fiat>react>fiat>react so it's a little less flexible

This is why that Dungeon adventure I keep talking about is relevant.

Dungeon Issue 200, page 60, Blood Money, by Logan Bonner, basically somewhat similar concepts to BitD, including the players earning the ability to assert fiction like "Actually I did remember to bring 100' of silk rope and a muffled grappling hook!".

If it's alright to link to archive.org I will, but I know I had a non-mod person get really mad about it once (I think because they were confused by w/e). Really feel like almost everyone in the thread could stand to read it.

 

[Manbearcat]

Is this you trying to get 5e to run like BitD... or you trying to use a mechanic or two from BitD to enhance a 5e heist adventure. I'm just asking for clarity...

Neither.

The former isn't possible and the second is necessary but not sufficient.

Somewhere in between where you're making decision-points (both action resolution and economy-based) and dealing with gamestates (and their changes) that are even remotely kindred in feel and heft and downstream effect.

So what I was thinking on certainly isn't "Coat of Paint + GM use Feel, Fiat, Force to figure out the rest." I mean, if that is all people are looking for then just keep playing 5e as is and let people use the 5e Ability Check system to subtly (GM decides of course) change a present complication in the here and now; Flashback.

On a "This feels/plays like Blades" 1-100 continuum, the hack I saw proposed is probably an 11? My last paragraph is probably a 6, but its way less intrusive/laborious to hack.

 

[Laurefindel]

There are so many issues with that proposed Blades hack that I read. Some initial thoughts:

* D&D 5e doesn't remotely have the kind of authority distribution and transparency in action resolution that Blades possesses. This is for a number of reasons that don't just begin and end with "well, start asking questions and using answers in 5e just like in Blades!" You'd have to change the DC spread/complication paradigm (DC isn't Position...its not Effect...its not some amorphous combination of the two...they're conceptually different enough that you have an issue), you'd have to tighten up and stabilize the numbers (the maths between the two systems are different), you'd have to conceive of a functional and integrated Teamwork/Push/Devil's Bargain system, and you'd have to make table-facing the entire action resolution structure (the easiest part).

* The pressure points of the two games are entirely different (both in the breadth of them and in the potency of them). There is so many missing analogous pieces (Hit Points/HD are not even close to Stress and Fatigue isn't remotely Trauma and the suite of restoration abilities that PCs have for them in 5e immediately alters the play space and the moment to moment gamestate to a point that it a hack attempt looks unrecoverable...and that is just scratching the surface...how do you create a Coin > Get Stuff Done model that is stable and intuitable...what is the Heat analogue?).

* The incentive structures are entirely different. What is the carrot that equates to negotiating for Desperate Position so you can get xp? 1 Inspiration ain't it...and if you used that, the downstream effects are significant (you're suddenly exchanging the mechanics and incentive structures of Push/Devil's Bargain for the incentive structures of advancement that push the game toward "be bold and tempt fate"...that alone changes the nature of play and decision-points).


That is just scratching the surface. Int for Flashacks? That again rewards smarty-pants Wizards (D&D needs more of that!) and punishes martial characters that aren't F-Ms!


I think if I was actually trying to hack in something like Blades tech into 5e, the very first thing I would think of is "how can I stabilize + tune + integrate all the Help/Teamwork/DB stuff within the action resolution mechanics, make them table-facing, and give them teeth!"

Very first question. Tackle that and then you can get on with the rest (which doesn't just including changing stuff, but integrating it). Some initial thoughts I'd throw around:

* 1 Flashback per Score per PC.

* Somehow make Fatigue into Harm and make it very difficult to recover (the current D&D model makes it trivial to recover). Downtime Activities can recover it on a Clock w/ a Healer's help.

* Figure out and tightly tune the Coin > Get Assets/Get Stuff Done/Advance Level economy.

* Figure out how Heat + Wanted Level + Engagements works (what it is...what it does > Entanglements are basically Random Encounters, so there is that kindred part).

* X number of Stress per Score (not HP, not HD...it can't scale and it can't be restored in Score via all the various ways D&D PCs can) and if you Stress out in a Score, your PC is taken out and you add a Flaw that is like Blades Trauma (Cold, Haunted, Obsessed, et al) that the (a) has teeth and (b) the player and the GM can use the pressure point later as complications that earn xp.

* Saving Throw System is somehow Resistance Rolls where you can risk increased Stress to mitigate complications.

That is kind of the starting point. No D&D scaling of integral stuff. 1 Flashback per Score. Hit Points/HD aren't Stress. Somehow make Fatigue into Harm. Flaws are Trauma.

Lot of figuring out to do. But that is just the beginning. Then you have to tightly tune and integrate all the stuff.

This project feels like the "well 5e is basically 4e D&D because HD and Healing Surges!" that was/is thrown about. No. Not at all. But that is just the tip of the iceberg (navigating the reality that HDs and Healing Surges don't have the same immediate and longterm gamestate implications). Once you've got all the parts, you have to tightly tune and integrate everything.

The sort of "modular-based" + "just let the GM deploy the Triple F (Feel, Fiat, and Force) to get it to roughly hang together" thinking that undergirds 5e (and the overwhelming majority of the D&D hacking community) is extremely different than "holistic, integrated, tightly tuned design" where GM's aren't performing Fiat or Force and the extreme corner cases where they're deploying Feel its as tightly guided/constrained by the system as a game could be (upthread I mentioned Genre Hold 'Em conflict resolution...that is as corner case as it gets).

It always depends what the intention is.

are you trying to do BitD in D&D, or are you trying to do heist in D&D by porting mechanics from BitD?

if I were to do the former, I’d rework D&D in a way you described. Since I was doing the second, I was happy with the results I achieved.

if I were posting a thread about taking inspiration from BitD to do heist in D&D, your advice/opinion would have been very helpful and welcome, even if I didn’t agree with it all.

i would have felt frustrated if you’d said “too hard, don’t do it, just play BitD” however... (to circle back to the OP)

 

[prabe]

social engineering & cloaking themselves in a SEP field seemed like the most compatible way of doing it but those often involve things like a tshirt hat & dolley to steal cases of beer through the front door during operating hours & other unbelievably bad security & are hard to explain. There might be other ways of doing it, but something like that absolutely requires a GM willing to believe that sort of brazenness is not only possible but easy in addition to one or more players capable of thinking inside that kind of box. bitd & fate have ways of paving a path & bridging the gap through negotiation but d&d is basically fiat>react>fiat>react so it's a little less flexible

I had two points, I think, which both were intended more broadly than I think you're responding to, here.

First, if there's asymmetry in knowledge between the GM and the player/s about a specific field, it can cause problems, mostly centered around plausibility and suspension of disbelief (or possibly agency, if the players have to follow the GM's lead as far as what's possible). If everyone is equally ignorant, it's easier to handwave something, or to land on something that seems fun (but really wouldn't work).

Second, I don't think 5E is as inflexible as you do--though I'm not looking for an argument, here. Obviously this will also depend on the table: Different people have different thresholds of objectionability regarding things like GM Fiat.