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

[Paul Farquhar]

I just want to step into the debate going on about science. We are progressing and there appears to be underlying truths and a logic that holds up. We can't prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are in anyway correct. It's possible I'm just a figment of my dog's imagination.

However, we aren't finding glimpses of ancient uncaring gods. Mathematical formulas aren't literally driving anyone crazy. There are puzzles and mysteries, but these excite scientists rather then send them screaming into madness.

"Ancient uncaring gods" is a pretty comprehensible answer compared to the alternative.

You can break it down: "ancient" implies simple linear time. Very comprehensible (and not supported by the evidence). "uncaring" is kind of a standard assumption about the universe. It would be more disturbing if it did care. "gods" implies minds somewhat like ours, and possibly a creator, and hence a beginning, or "bottom turtle".

 

[Thomas Shey]

I've seen the thought that in games where combat is more detailed than other resolutions (like skill use) it's to make dying (and killing) harder, or at least slower. I don't think that argues much with your point, here.

I'm not sure its so much to make it harder as--more controlled. In most combat systems, you have a lot of influencers you can bring to bare on the final result, and even with relatively gritty systems usually some degree of pace-of-resolution to give you time to change tack and/or potentially pull out of the situation altogether. A simple resolution roll doesn't provide much time to present any influences other than what you sort of do passively. Its much the same reason save-or-die spells have run out of favor.

 

[Imaro]

I think it's poorly conceived. I have looked over the tables. But overall I don't think that it's a matter of combat or not. It just feels on the whole like a half-baked afterthought that they wrote just to say that they had rules for madness. "We wrote 1-2 pages of madness tables and a page about a sanity score. Let's call it a day." Obviously YMMV.

Well I can't argue against your feelings. But what more is necessary? D&D isn't a dedicated cosmological horror game but I feel it's definitely a good jumping off point and is adequate in a pinch. Now I expect more in Ravenloft as a horror dedicated supplement/campaign book and sourcebook. But for D&D I think the optional rules are adequate.

But I've never heard of anyone use these rules. I see a lot of people homebrew or publish rules for madness and insanity as if they didn't exist in the DMG. I don't recall if the new Ravenloft book will reference them any. It sounds like they are shifting to some other subsystem for horror rather than use what they already made. That's usually a red flag, for me at least, of a half-baked or "meh " sub-system.

Again not sure how you can measure who is or who isn't using the rules. But again is it just a question of quantity because the rules seem perfectly serviceable

 

[Ovinomancer]

Which is how cosmologists continue to operate. You put one foot in front of the other and you move down the road. The foot, the road and the movement may not be real in any fundamental sense, but it's true enough for us to get on with our lives. You do not need to believe in a fundamental reality to remain sane.

I'm arguing that there is no way to prove it won't all change tomorrow. That the universe is rational is something that has to be assumed in order to do science, it is not provable with science.

Negative proof is the only kind of proof science deals with. You can prove something is false, but you cannot prove something is true, because however many times you repeat an experiment and get the same result there is now way to prove that the next experiment won't produce a different result without actually doing the experiment.

This may be the case. Or it may not. It is, as I said, faith, not science. From what I have learned of cosmology, I'm pretty sure humans can't comprehend it, since we are already relying on computers to do a lot of the thinking for us. Whether is could be comprehended by hypothetical intellects as far beyond us as we are beyond a goldfish, I doubt that too. As a wise person once said "it's turtles all the way down".

It's not science, either, because science relies on the axiom that it is knowable. It's required to science to function as science. Otherwise, science doesn't work.

This seems like a partial thinking on the philosophies of science and a failure to understand that science is just a philosophy, not something more or different. And, as a philosophy, it makes some axiomatic statements. You can't claim that belief that the universe is knowable is against science, because it's exactly the belief that science is based on. You're arguing as if science is something outside philosophy, as if it's a truth of existence that can be used to prove itself false. Science can never prove itself false.

Here is one for CoC players: there are beings as far beyond Cthulhu as Cthulhu is beyond humanity. And another set of beings beyond them, and beyond them, and beyond them...

Interesting, and expected, but this is actually not part of the Cosmic Horror, nor is it required by it. It can be just that that's the stopping point -- that reality is antithetical to human existence.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Interesting, and expected, but this is actually not part of the Cosmic Horror, nor is it required by it. It can be just that that's the stopping point -- that reality is antithetical to human existence.

But does that idea make it more disturbing, or less?

 

[Ovinomancer]

But does that idea make it more disturbing, or less?

It makes it incomprehensible, so your question is ill posed.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It makes it incomprehensible, so your question is ill posed.

Bah, you ninja-edited your typo! I was going to say you can't squash Cthulhu!

 

[Arilyn]

"Ancient uncaring gods" is a pretty comprehensible answer compared to the alternative.

You can break it down: "ancient" implies simple linear time. Very comprehensible (and not supported by the evidence). "uncaring" is kind of a standard assumption about the universe. It would be more disturbing if it did care. "gods" implies minds somewhat like ours, and possibly a creator, and hence a beginning, or "bottom turtle".

From Lovecraft's point of view, no they have minds not even remotely like ours.

The more science progresses, the less fearful we become because we aren't attributing events to angry spirits or superstition. Okay, we still do this, but we are doing it less.

Maybe poking into the mythos would just have folks adapting to that reality, but that's not the genre trope. A party of investigators who continue to poke are going to suffer mentally. It's an extrapolation because parties of investigators are uncommon in Lovecraft. And mostly don't keep looking for trouble.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

From Lovecraft's point of view, no they have minds not even remotely like ours.

If it's recognisable as a mind, it's like ours from a scientist's perspective.

The more science progresses, the less fearful we become because we aren't attributing events to angry spirits or superstition. Okay, we still do this, but we are doing it less.

Not so as I've noticed.

 

[dave2008]

And you are utterly insignificant to these beings who, for the most part, utterly don't care.

To me that is the essence of cosmic horror - not the protagonists sanity or lack of it