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

[Ovinomancer]

I see @doctorbadwolf is back to laughing at posts in mockery.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Just read your dinner-with-the-Baron example and yeah, that works. You spanned the skill challenge out across the whole role-played episode rather than do it all at once.

My counter-example comes from the WotC 4e module Marauders of the Dune Sea. In it, assuming the party follow the proper breadcrumbs, they reach a permanent sandstorm in the middle of a desert. I forget the mechanism by which the module informs the players/PCs that they need to enter the sandstorm in order to continue (when I ran it I had them sent in there on a broad-based mission that something's goign on in the sandstorm and important people want to know what it is), but in they eventually have to go.

The whole business of the party finding its way through the sandstorm to the small dungeon within is reduced to a single skill challenge; succeed and you reach the dungeon, fail and you're back outside the sandstorm (I think in a random direction but might always be where you started - it's nearly 10 years since I ran this) after some time has passed and can - I think - try again. Nice and fast to resolve at the table perhaps but horribly boring and a bit disconnected: the module author goes to all the trouble of providing an excellent terrain/environment set-up and then IMO rather wastes it all by reducing the passage to a few dice rolls.

When I ran this I got a lot more granular with resolving this piece; also inserted the idea of wandering monsters inside the sandstorm (i.e. the dungeon inhabitants weren't always just going to stay put), and got about a session's worth of good adventuring out of it rather than the five or ten minutes a skill challenge would have taken.

I never read the module, so I am not sure of all the particulars of that SC. IMHO though, it isn't necessarily that bad. I mean, I would certainly make something like that into a Complexity 1 challenge if I was going to frame it the way you describe. Also, I'm not enamored by the "end up outside, try again" aspect. ANY good SC has to involve fictional situation changing, both during and as a result of, the challenge. I guess if the point was simply depletion of supplies, then OK, but if it was me I'd have the end result be you get to the center no matter what, and your supplies are depleted (creating later complications) on a failure. Something like that. Also I don't know what happens DURING the challenge, but it should definitely involve several obstacles and allow for various possible solutions (including ones unforeseen by the GM/Module author). Again, being Complexity 1, this doesn't have to be TOO elaborate.

Obviously you were interested in playing up the storm and getting through it as a major activity. That's fine too, and if I was wanting to do that, then I wouldn't run it as an SC, or I would put a lot more into said SC and it would probably be a Complexity 5 with a number of pieces to it. 4e says "skip to the interesting parts", but it doesn't really say what they are, except that they are 'encounters' and thus USUALLY use either the combat and/or SC system (puzzles are an exception, and traps are technically combat, but could play more like free-form or etc.).

Anyway, WotC, especially in early 4e, definitely wasn't too good at SC formulation. They are also hard to create in a module format, because they tie so much into the plot, and every group will mangle the imagined plot in various ways. So I found very few written SCs that were really reliably good. Most of those however WERE 'survival tests', but carefully written. Social situations can work, but they really need to generally be situated at the START of a module, or at the very penultimate point, otherwise its hard to end up with the situation being exactly what was imagined by the author.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I see @doctorbadwolf is back to laughing at posts in mockery.

Surprise, more than mockery.

edit: incredulity, perhaps is a better word

 

[Ovinomancer]

Surprise, more than mockery.

edit: incredulity, perhaps is a better word

Inappropriate is maybe what you should be reaching for, here.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Well, because you seem to have completely misunderstood my point and instead landed at "the player understands what the outcome is after it happens, and maybe can see how the GM used one of the techniques, so your argument it increases ambiguity for the player is wrong." Except that I've been explicitly talking about the risk envelope for an action, which occurs when the player is suggesting the action to begin with. Take the intimidate the kobold example. As a player, I declare and action to intimidate the kobold into telling me secrets. When I look at the possible outcome space for this check, I can approach it from the baseline -- failure on the check means no progress. So, I make the check, and if I fail, then the kobold doesn't tell me anything. This seems fine, so I make the check, and fail by 2. However, the GM decides, at this point, to enact success at cost, and goes with the example -- the kobold tells me the secrets I wanted (maybe, honestly it could be anything here, it's all up to the GM) but does so by screaming loudly and alerting nearby kobolds! Now, the issue here is that the player had one expectation of the outcome space -- success or no progress -- but this is not what the actual outcome space was. Perhaps, had the player been aware that the kobold could, without the player being able to stop them, start screaming to alert the rest of the kobolds on a failure, they might have taken a different action or made some allowances for precautions. However, they misunderstood the possible outcome space because the GM decides to use success at a cost and decided this was the cost they wanted. These rules give the GM even more space on the resolution of tasks (and, honestly, I'd argue the GM takes this space anyway because no GM I know follows the baseline suggestions of just no progress on a failed check), and this means that the possible outcome space is even more opaque to the player, not less. It's just more permission for the GM to do whatever they want, and not a structure that improves play by informing players of the risk envelope and enabling agency to make meaningful choices.

Again, the usual response to this is an appeal to GM trust, but that's a table issue, not a system support one. The additional ways to adjudicate actions just put more on the GM decides plate, so it's not really support so much as more shuffling off onto the GM how things will work.

No, there isn't, this is a bad take on the system. The GM in PbtA can either say yes to an action declaration or they can challenge it with the mechanics. The mechanics absolutely tell you how they work - you do not need to ask the GThe result of that check will absolutely bind all parties to the outcomes -- no one needs to ask the GM how it works.

Nope, this is an appeal to popularity. You're saying that the issue I'm bringing up is misguided because so many popular games use it. This isn't addressing the quality of the issue, or it's arguments, it's saying that since so many popular things do it, it must be wrong. It's a classic appeal to popularity.

No, we wouldn't, this is a strawman. I happen to think that Cyberpunk does heists slightly better than D&D, but has the same tendencies to devolve to A-Team results due to the same issues in the systems. Still, it at least has a few better formed mechanics for heists (or capers) than D&D does, because it has a bit more codification which makes players better able to ascertain the risks of a given action. Still, it's not great, just passable. Cyberpunk's big draw is really it's setting, not it's gameplay.

I have no idea what Hard-Wired Island is, I cannot speak to it. Forgive me if I'm not taking your gloss here as definitive enough to form an opinion.

Page 242 is not bad. I told you this was a bad take above, but you seem to be wedded to persisting with it. I'm saying that it doesn't actually provide more support for "capers" because it causes as much harm to that goal and any assistance is provides. Largely, this is because it just puts more on the GM decides plate, making it not support, but more idiosyncratic for a given table.

Ah, yes. The rules don’t exist if the GM can choose between multiple options.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Inappropriate is maybe what you should be reaching for, here.

That wouldn’t exactly make semantic sense, now would it?

The implied statement would read; “I laughed not in mockery, but in inappropriate.”

That would be a terrible sentence.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Ah, yes. The rules don’t exist if the GM can choose between multiple options.

What a silly thing to say, of course they exist. The rules just tell the GM to decide what happens, so they don't actually do much. They certainly exist, though.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Going to try a slightly different tact.

The vast majority of the pushback you see in this thread (particularly from people like me) comes down to juxtaposing D&D (5e) against "bespoke genre games" which from my perspective is just a really cute way to say indie RPGs. This concept of the narrow focused indie RPG is a pernicious one that just will not seem to die despite never actually being backed up in any substantial way. Just because something is a cultural maxim does not make it true.

I don't think every bespoke RPG is "indie" in any real sense (I wouldn't class most of the Gumshoe games as "indie" in any real way), but I do absolutely think you see more among some modern designs than you did for many years. I also don't think, despite some posters' dislike for more focused games that its in any way an insult to them; there have always been people who, to one degree or another, are resistant to games having any sort of constraints on them beyond what the players bring (I've had people outright say that if the players can't do absolutely anything they want with their characters and still stay in the campaign, its not an RPG. Someone in this thread said something pretty close to that at one point).

But I don't think its any virtue to act like there's no difference in focus level between most trad games and, say, Monsterhearts, and acknowledging that seems in no way an insult to the latter. As I've said before, a Swiss army knife is not a better tool than a laminate miter cutter just because you can do more things with it; the latter does its job far better than anything anything you'd do with the former. There are people who don't find it so, and others who just don't want to acknowledge it might be so, but that's on them, not the more specialized system or acknowledging they exist.

I think telling someone to play another game when they are looking for feedback or advice on how to hack the game they are playing is rude regardless if the recommended game is "bespoke" or not. It's really not any better if I tell to you to go play Pathfinder Second Edition, GURPS, Exalted or Worlds Without Number instead of Blades.

This, on the other hand, I agree about. It doesn't help that its often connected to people who will, in fact, sometimes suggest it to people for whom it manifestly will not serve their purposes (years ago when Fate was really first becoming a thing, I referred to it as "Apparently its both a desert topping and a floor wax".)

 

[doctorbadwolf]

What a silly thing to say, of course they exist. The rules just tell the GM to decide what happens, so they don't actually do much. They certainly exist, though.

Of course it’s silly, it’s a summation of an astonishingly silly argument. It manages to be less silly, surprisingly, than you reply to it, which is so absurd as to be impossible to even meaningfully engage with.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That wouldn’t exactly make semantic sense, now would it?

The implied statement would read; “I laughed not in mockery, but in in appropriate.”

That would be a terrible sentence.

"I laughed inappropriately," would be the proper phrasing. If your intent is to avoid being rude, I guess.