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

[Thomas Shey]

As an aside, how to handle closely connected areas with multiple encounters has been something D&D and its offshoots have been blase about forever. People act like this is only an issue with modern CR/Level Appropriate encountering and so on, but even before attempts to do that, it was a problem, it was just a bit less obvious. Rolling together three encounters because they were all within shouting distance could be a party roflstomp all the way back to OD&D.

 

[tetrasodium]

The 5E books are horrible for reference during play. Horrible.

Lost Mines of Phandelver is better than those that followed because it is shorter and is like 40 pages and a softcover.

Those big books are tough. Especially when like a rules realted question comes up....hold on everybody while I reference two separate 300 page hardbacks. Ugh.

even just a lore question s tough.. forget what a given group is?... easy just flip through the entire book & hope you find a stray sentence in some seemingly unrelated NPC's writeup who could possibly want things like "(pg###)" to save them time

 

[MichaelSomething]

Now, I know many GMs here could rip this example apart. They could offer amazing advice on how to structure the scene and make it compelling and all that. They have years, no...decades of experience.

I just think it’d be better if the books offered that advice and people were able to learn this stuff without the years and years of trial and error that so many others had to spend.

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[loverdrive]

even just a lore question s tough.. forget what a given group is?... easy just flip through the entire book & hope you find a stray sentence in some seemingly unrelated NPC's writeup who could possibly want things like "(pg###)" to save them time

Well, for lore you at least have FR wiki.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I own and have run or played in CoS, SKT, and DiA. I own a few others. They're full of this stuff. The entrance to the Amber Temple is like this. The Dungeon of the Dead three has a lot of this. Most of the giant lairs in SKT had immediate alerts for failing a stealth check. Do you run the WotC APs? Own them? If so, I'm struggling to understand how you're not aware of this stuff, unless it just doesn't register with you or you're using a weird definition here and think that these don't count as examples of what's being cited as immediate negative consequences for failing a single check.

The problem, as I see it, is people just have very subjective memories. So, like people claiming that the G modules were infiltration missions, like actually viable ones. DMs either just run things in a ridiculous way (the other guards 40' away never hear the bloody melee, and the front gate guards mysteriously spend 4 rounds fighting before one makes a dash for the alarm bell). That is remembered as "you can get past this even if you fail some checks." Even if the party does NOT actually fail any, the memory is "well, maybe we could have and still made it" without actually testing that.

Beyond that, maybe you CAN get past, if you selected the right spells, because spells always solve everything. This is why D&D has gotten away with this stuff for decades, because the truth is Invisibility, Silence, Charm, Magic Missile, etc. is really the logical infiltration tactics. Relying on skills is just basically a 'spell saver', you can try it first, but make sure to be ready with the magic when it goes bad. 5e has made this MUCH more effective too, since you don't need to exactly memorize the precise spells you need in the precise quantity.

 

[Lanefan]

I think one of the most cogent arguments here is that of symmetry. Someone mentioned it up thread (@Ovinomancer maybe, or maybe it was @Hussar). That is, if you assert that the rules, particularly the check system, represents a mechanical implementation of the 'reality' of the game world, then of course a check which fails must result in distinct, discrete, immediate failure consequences. This is because this system NECESSARILY must model all characters in the game, PCs, NPCs, monsters, everything. If the result of a monster failing a check when it attempts some action is an immediate discrete failure with consequences, then the same must be true for a failed check made by a PC, otherwise you've undermined the whole concept of mechanics bind to game world reality. While you can certainly make those consequences more or less wide ranging, in every specific case the GM would have to be able to fairly state that the consequences to a PC are exactly equivalent to those which would be suffered by an NPC/monster.

Yes. You've summed up my take quite well here.

Honestly, I think simply thinking about checks and other mechanics in this way naturally leads to rulings like "the guard spotted you, he sounds the alarm!" This is another way in which the attempt to create PC/NPC rule symmetry, and 'rules as physics' is not really a strong approach.

But then you jump to this, which doesn't really fly. Both PCs and NPCs can fail in non-catastrophic ways. For example, reverse the situation: if a PC standing watch sees someone sneaking up on the party's camp does she wake everyone with a holler or does she maybe try to deal with it herself (maybe even via diplomacy!) and not disturb everyone's sleep or does she just wake one other person as a backup?

 

[Lanefan]

The lair was kind of a maze. We’re playing over Discord, theater of the mind, so no maps or visuals. He seemed to have a loose idea of using skills for us to navigate the maze.

In person this would have been easier, in that someone could haul out a piece of paper and do some rough mapping.

Voice-only, this sort of maze scenario would be a pain for DM and player alike.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

For what its worth, the ones on RPG.net at the time were every bit as bad, if not worse.

Heh, none of you people obviously posted on the WotC D&D forums then, or read them. It was BEYOND toxic. You couldn't even have a conversation of any kind whatsoever, it would literally FILL with drive-by 'this game sucks' posts. EnWorld always had MUCH stronger moderation, but it was still pretty harsh. I'd say c. 2009 most posts with a 4e tag on them lasted 10 pages, tops before the thread got closed, and usually 2-3 people got kicked off before that happened. RPG.net is pretty similar mod-wise.

I mean, we did have some good discussions here, sometimes even on the WotC pages, but I used to have like a dozen people on perma-ignore. Every thread was the same too, it was all '4e is WoW' etc. etc. etc. You still here some of the same substantive objections you did back then, if you open a similar type of thread, but lately it does seem like people have come around to an extent. Like in the last 2-3 years I rarely hear what amounts to '4e is insulting my preferred way of playing' sort of logic (it was always kind of roundabout, but it was there). Instead people have come around more to a "yeah, maybe I just don't like to play that way", which obviously is not something anyone should object to.

 

[pemerton]

I think one of the most cogent arguments here is that of symmetry. Someone mentioned it up thread (@Ovinomancer maybe, or maybe it was @Hussar).

It was @Campbell.

 

[pemerton]

some combat with some sahaughin (or however the hell you spell that) our PCs were pursuing some Dagon worshippers who had kidnapped some townfolk, including one of our friends. We entered their underground lair after beating the sahag...sauhag...fish people

I think you mean shark people.

Kuo-toa (sp?) are fish people. (Also known to their detractors as "gogglers" on account of their bulbous fishy eyes.)

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