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

[Ruin Explorer]

There are some RPGs that allow you to expend a resource to recover from a failed roll*. Shadowrun is pretty similar to D&D though. I've never played Cyberpunk 2020.


*If I did want to come up with a D&D hack for heists this is something I would put in.

That's true, I guess I was thinking, fail a role, there are consequences, but you can then recover from there, but you're referring to fail a roll, retcon that failure out of existence for a resource, which some games do allow (though not PtbA ones interestingly, at least not mostly - in fact I think BitD absolutely doesn't allow it).

And yeah a limited resource to allow you to re-roll or auto-pass stuff would be extremely valuable to a D&D heist hack and indeed I've used that as a house rule before (though not in my example above, which was before it occurred to me).

I was waiting too damn long for my steak and I thought of a game where, uhm, planning and executing a heist sounds cool to me. Don't think I'd count it as an RPG though.

So, the GM (or whoever we may call her, maybe, the House? Idk) has a pool of points to spend on security measures of the heist mark, cameras, turrets, whatever. The players have a similar pool of options for their preparation -- acquiring termite, helicopters and whatnot. Maybe also include casing here, so they can spend points from their pool to ask questions.

Then, execution. Let's see whether their plan works, and if not, whether they'll still succeed.

I don't see how that "wouldn't be an RPG", but do we really want to play the "NO TRUUUUUUUEE RPGEEEEE!" game like we're videogamers arguing over whether Mass Effect 2 is an RPG or not?

But this is somewhat close to what what Logan Bonner did with Blood Money, an D&D 4E adventure written in 2010 in Dungeon issue 200, page 60, I'm just going to link it now: Dungeon Magazine #200 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Also maybe we should just call all this stuff "capers", because that definitely includes everything everyone is talking about whereas heist can be used so narrowly it largely excludes BitD even.

 

[dave2008]

There are some RPGs that allow you to expend a resource to recover from a failed roll*. Shadowrun is pretty similar to D&D though. I've never played Cyberpunk 2020.


*If I did want to come up with a D&D hack for heists this is something I would put in.

Other than failing forward, multiple checks, and degrees of success (all in the DMG), isn't that what Inspiration and Hero Points are for (also both in the DMG)? I've never used them, but that was my basic understanding, but I could easily be mistaken.

EDIT: I just checked and hero points by RAW are applied after the roll, but before the result. A simple house rule would allow these to appleid after the result (and possible using more than 1 too). If I were to use them, that is what I would do I think. More heroic that way.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

isn't that what Inspiration and Hero Points are for

Not with Inspiration. Sadly.

Inspiration is trash, RAW. You can only how one, RAW, and it must be pre-emptively, and just gives you Advantage on that one roll. IRL of course, so many people don't play it that way that, in for example Baldur's Gate 3, it acts as a re-roll - which is exactly how most groups play it.

With Hero Points, sorta, they have badly-drafted rule that you have to play them "after the roll but before the results are applied", whatever the hell that means (DMs will interpret it varyingly), and you can use one to add +1d6 to your roll, so that might be enough to let you succeed.

 

[Ovinomancer]

There's been an argument recently, not sure if it was by @dave2000 or @ruinexplorer or someone else, sorry, that D&D supports multiple ways of adjudicating failures than outright failure. This is put forwards as if it is a good thing, that it solves the binary pass/fail problem, or at least the 'worst thing happens on a fail.' And, to so extent it does, but at what cost?

Now, we've taken a system that is already GM decides -- does this action have a chance, what's the DC, what's the roll, what happens on a result -- and we've added additional confusion as to how this roll will be used in a larger adjudication process. We haven't nailed it down, though, we've just added more GM decides points. This means that players have even less understanding of what risks are in an action, and they already don't find out what some of those risks are until the GM has irrecoverably accepted their action and asked for a roll, setting both the ability used and the DC (and presuming they don't actually overstep to naming the skill proficiency, although many do this anyway out of prior edition training). The result is that things are even more dependent on the GM and the players have even less insight into how a given action will be resolved. When we're talking about potentially show stopping actions, this is not a plus.

Usually this is going to be countered by claims of GM trust among the players, and that's fine, but the argument isn't about whether or not a given table's players have lots of faith in their GM, but if the system provides support. Here, the argument is that 5e provides additional support by offering many potential ways for the GM to decide how to adjudicate a failure roll. This isn't actually functionally true, though, because this "support" just erodes other areas and puts them even more on GM support.

I mean, I can do a lot in 5e because I have a great rapport with my table, mostly because I'm almost always 100% clear about the stakes, what a success looks like, and what a failure looks like. I learned to do this from other games, though, and brought this in to help clear up the black box problem of "GM decides" that exists in 5e. When I say I do this, I'm almost immediately met with claims from others that this destroys the mystery of the game, so its clearly not a universal solution, but it works at my table. This means that my solution is idiosyncratic to me, and isn't "supported" by 5e because the other ways of doing it have equal "support," which is to say, they tell the GM to decide how they want to do things.

t;l:dr -- adding more GM decides points doesn't actually offer support for a thing, it puts it even more on the GM and hides it more from the players.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I was waiting too damn long for my steak and I thought of a game where, uhm, planning and executing a heist sounds cool to me. Don't think I'd count it as an RPG though.

So, the GM (or whoever we may call her, maybe, the House? Idk) has a pool of points to spend on security measures of the heist mark, cameras, turrets, whatever. The players have a similar pool of options for their preparation -- acquiring termite, helicopters and whatnot. Maybe also include casing here, so they can spend points from their pool to ask questions.

Then, execution. Let's see whether their plan works, and if not, whether they'll still succeed.

If you're willing to slightly genre-drift this sounds a lot like Android: Netrunner to me.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Inspiration is trash, RAW. You can only how one, RAW, and it must be pre-emptively, and just gives you Advantage on that one roll. IRL of course, so many people don't play it that way that, in for example Baldur's Gate 3, it acts as a re-roll - which is exactly how most groups play it.

I'm no 5E fan but I'm still shocked that the Inspiration mechanic is as bad as it is. For a high-fantasy game with mythic/LotR trappings to not give you lots of ways to push or repeat rolls seems like a pretty damning oversight.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There's been an argument recently, not sure if it was by @dave2000 or @ruinexplorer or someone else, sorry, that D&D supports multiple ways of adjudicating failures than outright failure. This is put forwards as if it is a good thing, that it solves the binary pass/fail problem, or at least the 'worst thing happens on a fail.' And, to so extent it does, but at what cost?

That's dave. I don't think using the page 242 of the DMG rules is actually particularly beneficial, so broadly agree with you, though people acting like they don't exist is unhelpful.

However, have you actually read them? The way your post is phrased it suggests to me that you haven't. I agree in very broad terms with your general point that using them doesn't necessarily improve the situation, however, I think your suggestion that they actually further cloud the waters and actually make things worse is borne out of ignorance of what is being suggested on page 242.

t;l:dr -- adding more GM decides points doesn't actually offer support for a thing, it puts it even more on the GM and hides it more from the players.

I'm with you on this sentence until you get to "hides it more from the players". I don't see that as justifiable on the basis of what is actually being suggested on page 242. I can see why you might guess that though.

I'd also suggest that I'm not really buying the apparent underlying notion that D&D is peculiar in the players having limited tools to assert fiction and the DM deciding what happens on success/failure. I would say that the vast majority of successful RPGs on the market are like D&D in this.

If we look at DriveThru's top sellers for example (ignoring supplements/modules):

1. WWN - like D&D (does have more heist-friendly rules though due to multi-dice skills and Execution attacks).
2. Dune - Totally honestly I have no clue. It's 2d20 system, and it sounds like it's the same as D&D, but I could be wrong.
3. Hard-Wired Island - Like D&D only it's clearer that the DM has options, which by your logic is worse than D&D - specifically failure = GM picks between outright failure, success-at-a-cost, or a bargain, which seems to be exactly what you're condemning. Yet this is regarded as a narrative-friendly, player-friendly modern system.
4. SWN - See WWN.
5. Cyberpunk Red - Like D&D.
6. Blades in the Dark - As discussed at terminal length!

We could go on.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

I'd also suggest that I'm not really buying the apparent underlying notion that D&D is peculiar in the players having limited tools to assert fiction and the DM deciding what happens on success/failure. I would say that the vast majority of successful RPGs on the market are like D&D in this.

If we look at DriveThru's top sellers for example (ignoring supplements/modules):

1. WWN - like D&D (does have more heist-friendly rules though due to multi-dice skills and Execution attacks).
2. Dune - Totally honestly I have no clue. It's 2d20 system, and it sounds like it's the same as D&D, but I could be wrong.
3. Hard-Wired Island - Like D&D only it's clearer that the DM has options, which by your logic is worse than D&D - specifically failure = GM picks between outright failure, success-at-a-cost, or a bargain, which seems to be exactly what you're condemning. Yet this is regarded as a narrative-friendly, player-friendly modern system.
4. SWN - See WWN.
5. Cyberpunk Red - Like D&D.
6. Blades in the Dark - As discussed at terminal length!

Dune is a real outlier in that top 5. Lots of ways for players to assert fiction and for GMs to specify different kinds of success and failure. But I'm a huge grump about the new Dune game and think people are mostly scooping it up because it's Dune, without realizing how hard it swings toward the narrative/improv end of the spectrum. For example, as a player you can try to add a "Truth" to a scene, which is something you essentially make up and roll to see if it happens. It's much, much less crunchy than other 2d20 games, imo, and all about collaboration. Maybe everyone who's buying it right now is playing it, but I suspect not.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm no 5E fan but I'm still shocked that the Inspiration mechanic is as bad as it is. For a high-fantasy game with mythic/LotR trappings to not give you lots of ways to push or repeat rolls seems like a pretty damning oversight.

I would completely agree.

5E is a weird game when closely analyzed. It has some forward-looking and modern elements, and some ancient ones, but once you get outside the core of the PHB, i.e. the races/classes/skills/combat etc., it gets more and more sketchy and half-arsed-seeming, like they nailed down the core and then just rushed to add in other systems with very little consideration. Much of the DMG seems deeply half-arsed, and the optional rules are especially poorly-considered, and seem like something someone dashed off (at least in terms of thinking them through, I'm sure the actual layout, editing, etc. took ages) in a serious hurry.

Inspiration feels like it was from some earlier "build" of 5E where Advantage was really hard to come by and amazing to use, not pretty routine (which it is in 5E, RAW) and basically just equivalent to a +4.5 bonus to most rolls (I mean, it's more complicated but...). Even as a re-roll, capping it at 1 seems silly - the idea seems to be that you'll pass it around, as RAW you can "give" your Inspiration to other players if you have it, but the fact that it has to be pre-payed before you even roll (because all it does is give Advantage) and doesn't stack with Advantage means it's pretty lame.

The internet has dedicated a lot of time to "fixing" it though - in one group I play in it's still capped at 1 but gives you a re-roll (at Advantage/Disadvantage if you had that condition) and can be passed around or used on other people's rolls including after the roll, and in another it's capped at 3 and stacks with Advantage or negates Disadvantage, but can't be passed around (that game also uses Hero Points to add to the confusion).

Dune is a real outlier in that top 5. Lots of ways for players to assert fiction and for GMs to specify different kinds of success and failure. But I'm a huge grump about the new Dune game and think people are mostly scooping it up because it's Dune, without realizing how hard it swings toward the narrative/improv end of the spectrum. For example, as a player you can try to add a "Truth" to a scene, which is something you essentially make up and roll to see if it happens. It's much, much less crunchy than other 2d20 games, imo, and all about collaboration. Maybe everyone who's buying it right now is playing it, but I suspect not.

Ahhhh very interesting. That actually makes me more likely to buy it hilariously. I was studiously ignoring it because I hate roll-under systems and was under the impression 2d20 is roll-under (which I think is correct), but this seems potentially cool. I do agree though that I suspect it'd be selling less well if more people knew that!

 

[billd91]

It's one of the key places I find 5e makes combat positioning a lot less tactical and interesting. And it's a lot more than two editions IIRC.

The other one is the default rules allowing for Str for thrown weapons and Dex melee for finesse weapons. This is fine for most PCs who know where they want to be anyway and have things like fighting styles or smites. But if you try kiting an ogre or gluing its feet down its weapon damage drops from 2d8 for its greatclub to 2d6 for its javelin and nothing else changes (it might even be more dangerous thanks to better target selection). By contrast if you rush an archer they will draw a shortsword or scimitar and now drop from 1d8 (longbow) to 1d6 (scimitar) and nothing else changes. It's barely worth it.

I think they must have learned some lessons from the giant problems in 3e where they went from being dangerous at both melee and ranged in AD&D to hell on wheels at melee but shockingly weak at range because their Dexterity scores were all crap compared to their Strength scores. You may want to pin the ogre down to reduce the danger he represents, but it's too costly for too many other cases like rock-throwing giants for it to be a system structure.
Though, in this case, you still end up reducing the ogre's offense because he probably doesn't have unlimited javelins...