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

[Arilyn]

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

Not so as I've noticed.

But not from Lovecraft's perspective. Lovecraft leans into an unknowing, uncaring universe, where humans are powerless and insignificant. His mythos gods represent this horror. They are not like us at all.

Yes, we are still highly illogical, and have done horrible harm, but I cling to the hope that science will get us out of the mess we've created.

 

[Arilyn]

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

In the lore, however, dwelling on these "truths" too much or too long will drive most people insane. I mean that might not be what would really happen, but that's part of Lovecraft. Maybe games take it too far? I'm not a cosmic horror fan. But spells and impossible angles impact the protagonists' sanity. You just can't keep it up. But being in the know, our rpg investigators keep at it, sacrificing their lives and sanity on keeping the terrors at bay.... today. That's Cthulhu games. So a robust sanity mechanic is essential.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yeah that's not good, being put on a ignore list for having a different opinion - especially when the OP has phrased the question such as to harvest differing opinions. If the OP simply wanted validation for their opinion then the original question was badly posited.

That isn’t why they’re on my ignore list. They’re there because they were cos intently being needlessly aggro, disrespectful, and dismissive, while making bad faith accusations about my intentions.

Yep that was me. Again I was trying to recreate cosmic horror as I understood it from reading Lovecraft's work. I was not trying to recreate the CoC game. I've never felt that mechanic was particularly relevant for recreating what I've read of HPL.

It is interesting though that the new Ravenloft book will have Fear (mostly roleplay) and Stress (similar to CoC sanity mechanics) rules in it. I don't run a lot of horror, but I am curious about the simple approach WotC will undoubtedly take to these mechanics.

I am with you on both parts of this. The whole sanity thing doesn’t resonate. Reading the book makes you lose sanity? Really? Information?

I think a big issue has been people saying they want to borrow genre bits for their game and other people assuming they want to change the genre of the whole game/campaign when that is not what the suggested.

However, I also think there are others who are completely fine with changing the genre and are simply confused that some cannot understand that. There are also those that have a different understanding of what constitutes a particular genre. I personally don't think sanity rules are important for cosmic horror, but several others seem too; my idea of low magic is not the same as @Hussar's;etc. I can change 5e to make it what I want in low magic, gritty realism, or cosmic horror fairly simply. It may not meet someone else's definitions of those genres and they may even dismissed as not 5e anymore, but to me and my group it is a 5e genre swap and that is all that really matters.

Exactly. Folks can say “5e can’t do that” all day, meanwhile some of us are just out here doing it.

Well, cosmic horror is defined as coming up against the unknowable and the incomprehensible. If you "learn" things about the horrors, they are things that are incompatible with sanity, by definition. So, yeah, the core tenet of cosmic horror is that you can't stay sane in the face of the horror. The knock on to this is that you just can't beat up the horrors. Some, sure, but these are minor plot movers or serve to damage the sanity anyway.

You port this into D&D and you run into problems straight off. Firstly, D&D character's mental states are inviolable normally. They can be temporarily affected by a spell or condition, but even then the actual thinking of the PC is under the sole control of the player. This is a core tenet of D&D -- the player controls the PC's thinking and feeling. So, the effects of going against the incomprehensible is already running afoul of D&Disms. The second thing is that D&D characters are super charged with combat effectiveness, and the D&D ruleset requires monsters be built under the combat system. Not doing so tosses the majority of the ruleset.

All this goes to say that the actual genre of Cosmic Horror is largely incompatible with the D&D ruleset. You are not changing genres, in other words, with a hack that adds some mythos but keeps 5e recognizably intact. Instead, you're playing the D&D genre and adding in some Cosmic Horror spice. That you didn't go with any sanity loss is a great indication, here, not of your understanding of the Cosmic Horror genre (if so, then you misunderstand it's core components) but rather that you've chosen to prioritize the D&D genre over Cosmic Horror. You've chosen to play D&D with a few tentacle horrors and a few bits and pieces of scenery color. And that's great. But it's still 5e doing 5e with a few bits of extra color, it's not a change in genre to Cosmic Horror. You aren't doing Cosmic Horror, in other words, you've just borrowed some scenery -- the play is still D&D.

This is the issue, though. For people that actually shift to different genres, this is apparent. The change is not a matter of some scenery changes and a few tidbits tossed out, it is a fundamental shift in what's important and how things are expected to work. Genre logic changes between genres. So, when it's suggested that someone wants to do genre A, these assume that genre A is the actual goal, and recognize how hard it is to move to genre A with a game firmly rooted in genre D&D. So they recommend a game that does genre A well. But, the question is often misphrased or misunderstood by the asker -- they don't actually want genre A, they want genre D&D with some genre A set dressings. So, the recommendation for a different game seems insulting because the unstated ask is that genre D&D still be the primary genre, and how can you get that if you're not playing D&D?!

Or, you could realize that you’re not actually smarter than other people, and don’t know what they want better than they do, and stop talking down to anyone who disagrees with you.

I've always thought combat rules were so granular and detailed because it is the area of the game where character death is most likely to be an outcome.

Pretty much. And because combat is more fun that way, for a lot of people.

Characters other than the narrators (in first-person) go insane pretty frequently. The narrators themselves usually either just catch a glimpse and come away scarred but functional, or they suffer a break they barely remember. In either event, HPL tends to try to imply things that violate our general understanding of reality--non-Euclidean geometry is a big one, IIRC.

As someone who doesn’t even experience the Uncanny Valley, it’s pretty easy for me to imagine characters who witness non-Euclidean geometry and just get annoyed that they can’t map it like they’re used to, and otherwise roll with it.
Which is part of why I like a lot of other cosmic horror more than I like HPL. Well that and he comes across as an easily terrified dingus who fears mixed-race people as much as he fear unnatural monsters.

Because whodunit is another type of story that typically can't be solved by fighting stuff. If tossing out the combat system ("80% of the game") as the way to "solve" an adventure is violating the conventions of the game, it doesn't seem as though it would make a difference whether that adventure was Cosmic Horror or a whodunit.

I don't think I specified Cosmic Horror. Yes, the Great Old One (there's exactly one in my campaign setting) has been a bit of a recurring theme, but that's not the only type of horror I've deployed. Many of the deeply unsettling things the parties have encountered have been deeply unsettling things they could fight, but I don't see that as suddenly making it Not-Horror.

(And generally one stops the Great Old Ones by stopping those trying to summon them, if one can stop them at all.)

I agree there are D&D-isms. Classes, levels, hit points, the magic system, the focus on combat. And yes, you're still playing 5E, even if there's something the PCs don't have the resources to defeat present; you're still playing 5E if you go three sessions without a combat; you're still playing 5E if you have a situation that cannot be solved by fighting. I don't think anyone has said they weren't playing 5E--I'm pretty sure I haven't. I think some of us have said we feel as though we can tell more kinds of stories in 5E than in some game that we see as more narrowly focused, even if we have to hack 5E on occasion to do so.

Exactly.

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. Lovecaft mythos is so unknowable and strange that no one can even formulate coherent theories. It gets into your head, but you can't truly grasp any of it and you know that there are things that shouldn't exist but do, and so many tentacles! And you are utterly insignificant to these beings who, for the most part, utterly don't care.

Nothing about that is scary. The only scary thing about the mythos is the idea of malevolent beings that can’t be defeated, that I can’t protect my loved ones from.

Well, and the idea of magic books that break your brain with magic, because that’s the only way I can take seriously the notion that I should be afraid of information.

But all that aside, what this whole cosmic horror discussion illustrates is exactly what I’ve been saying. Skimming a request for advice and just dropping useless “don’t try it” advice is both unhelpful, and rude, because you don’t know their group, what they enjoy or get out of the thing they’re asking about, etc.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

But not from Lovecraft's perspective. Lovecraft leans into an unknowing, uncaring universe, where humans are powerless and insignificant.

That's just how the universe is. It might have bothered Lovecraft, but rest of us just accept it and get on with our insignificant lives.

His mythos gods represent this horror. They are not like us at all.

A termite colony is a mind "not like us at all". If it where more alien than a termite colony, no one would recognise it was a mind. And you can't be disturbed by it if you don't recognise what it is.

Yes, we are still highly illogical, and have done horrible harm, but I cling to the hope that science will get us out of the mess we've created.

Science doesn't have the answers, it's up to humans to do better.

 

[Aldarc]

Its an issue you always have to deal with regarding this sort of discussion. When I'm feeling snarky, the way I frame it is "Any game can work for any genre or setting--for some values of 'work'." But its also true. If someone is willing to force enough elements manually, or the element doesn't matter, or at least don't matter as much as other properties of the experience at hand, its going to be really, really hard to convey what the real benefit of a more dedicated tool for the job is. I've been on both sides of that divide, as some comments I've made in this thread may show.

As I said before, simply establishing that any game can work for setting or genre play is a bit of a banal claim. It's mainly changing the shade of lipstick and dresses that your pet pig is wearing.

I also think that this tends to involve communities invested in their pet games or systems. Some in the Fate community claim that Fate can do anything, but then you also have people like Rob Donoghue, one of the creators of Fate, saying "Umm...no it can't. Please stop saying this." Or you have people using the Cypher System who claim that it can do everything. I got chewed out for even asking fans what they thought the limitations of the Cypher System were. Nearly anything that wasn't "there are none" were unacceptable answers.

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.

Necessary? I don't know. Necessity is a bit too strong a phrasing. Again, YMMV, but it does feel somewhat unsatisfactory and kinda just there. I'm not sure if it has been playtested either. I don't recall Madness/Sanity rules in the D&D Next playtest. It only pops up three times in Curse of Strahd: two of which are about deciding what form of madness NPCs have.

Do you use or have you used these Madness and Sanity rules?

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

It's admittedly an informal sense, but I don't hear about people here and elsewhere talking about 5e really engaging these rules ever. Feats, spells, and things get engaged in discussion constantly. Madness? Not so much. Silence is sometimes more damning than controversy. It means people generally don't even care enough about it to engage or talk about it. The latest ENWorld thread with "madness" in the title about the madness rules in 5E was from 2014. Searching for "madness rules," I've found only a handful of people who say they have used it. There is a short thread last year about the Sanity stat; it was pretty disparaging of it.

 

[dave2008]

But not from Lovecraft's perspective. Lovecraft leans into an unknowing, uncaring universe, where humans are powerless and insignificant.

Yes, and that is reality IRL. Very few, possibly 0, people go insane when they realize this. I mean I came to this realization some time in late elementary/middle/highschool and I have yet to go insane.

His mythos gods represent this horror. They are not like us at all.

Sure, but how does D&D fail to express that?

 

[Aldarc]

Yes, and that is reality IRL. Very few, possibly 0, people go insane when they realize this. I mean I came to this realization some time in late elementary/middle/highschool and I have yet to go insane.

The early writers of cyberpunk completely failed to see that the Internet was mostly going to be about pr0n, but we still treat cyberpunk and its tropes as part of the genre rather than some sort infallible reality or truth about "cyberspace." I think that the same is true for cosmic horror. It's less about whether we do go insane or not from the incomprehensible, but, rather, it's a world in which we do and plays into that fear of the alien and unknown. Otherwise, you may as well be complaining about how unrealistic D&D's approach to magic and world-building is, but you seem perfectly willing to gloss over that.

 

[dave2008]

In the lore, however, dwelling on these "truths" too much or too long will drive most people insane.

In a lot of the HPL fiction I have read, that is not what I would take away from it. That definitely occurs, but it is not universal. I would say there is just as much fighting against the horrors, if not more, as there is going insance.

Maybe games take it too far?

I think there is some truth to that and I think some people think it was more prevalent in the fiction than it was. I read In the Mountains of Madness fairly recently I don't recall anyone going insane from finding the Elder Thing or deciphering the "real" history of the earth recorded in their city. Now, they were understandably terrified by the appearance and threat of the shoggoth.

I'm not a cosmic horror fan. But spells and impossible angles impact the protagonists' sanity. You just can't keep it up. But being in the know, our rpg investigators keep at it, sacrificing their lives and sanity on keeping the terrors at bay.... today. That's Cthulhu games. So a robust sanity mechanic is essential.

Yes, but that is not needed for a cosmic horror game IMO.

 

[prabe]

The early writers of cyberpunk completely failed to see that the Internet was mostly going to be about pr0n, but we still treat cyberpunk and its tropes as part of the genre rather than some sort infallible reality or truth about "cyberspace." I think that the same is true for cosmic horror. It's less about whether we do go insane or not from the incomprehensible, but, rather, it's a world in which we do and plays into that fear of the alien and unknown. Otherwise, you may as well be complaining about how unrealistic D&D's approach to magic and world-building is, but you seem perfectly willing to gloss over that.

My biggest complaint in this regard was when a GM docked my character's sanity because I came to a conclusion reasonably supported by what we'd seen in-game. I mean, it literally (that I know of) didn't cost me sanity to see that connection; why is my character being beaten up for it?

As I said (or at least implied) above, though, this was not what kicked me out of CoC permanently.

 

[Aldarc]

My biggest complaint in this regard was when a GM docked my character's sanity because I came to a conclusion reasonably supported by what we'd seen in-game. I mean, it literally (that I know of) didn't cost me sanity to see that connection; why is my character being beaten up for it?

As I said (or at least implied) above, though, this was not what kicked me out of CoC permanently.

"GM decides."