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

[Imaro]

Sure, but as @FrozenNorth pointed at the narrator/protagonist who do use magic, don't go insane from doing so, or are the required to insane to use magic. And there are quite a few Lovecraft tales were the narrator/protagonist is simply disturbed by what they found. I go back to "At the Mountains of Madness" because I reread the end of it yesterday and the narrator was involved first person in the events of the story and did not go insane (one of his colleagues did though), even facing down and elder thing (old one) and a shoggoth and reading the "real" history of the earth. He his disturbed by the experience and warns others not to go back, but it is from all appearance completely sane and rational.

Yeah I don't think it's very consistent either and thus I don't think the way D&D handles it is a dealbreaker... but I can better understand why it might not work for those with a specific view of the mythos in mind.

 

[dave2008]

Regarding horror: has anyone played the Alien RPG? Does it do anything to create a horror story or is it more Aliens than Alien?

 

[Ovinomancer]

Have you actually played CoC? It sounds like you haven't.

You can't start with any points in Cthulhu Mythos. At all. You don't gain skill points by using Cthulhu Mythos. At all.

Let me quote DIRECTLY from CoC for you:

"Instead, points in Cthulhu Mythos are gained by encounters with the Mythos that result in insanity, by insane insights into the true nature of the universe, and by reading forbidden books and other Mythos writings. A character’s Sanity may never be higher than 99 minus his or her Cthulhu Mythos skill. As Cthulhu Mythos points proliferate, they crowd out Sanity points, and leave the investigator vulnerable."

It exactly works like I'm suggesting. EXACTLY. You're flatly and completely wrong. Your Mythos skill is acts a hard barrier to your max sanity. This is not how the suggested system in D&D works. It is how the SAN/ALN system I proposed works, though, but you ignored that in favour of the outright false claim that Cthulhu RPGs let you be sane and have high Mythos. They do not.

I think that demonstrates you conclusively wrong on this point, do you agree?


Christ mate, maybe read the last sentence in the bit you quoted from me? If we'd been using volume as a metaphor, rather than boxing, this entire conversation wouldn't have happened, because I'd have said "Volume set to 5" or something instead of "pulling punches". I've clarified that I meant jabbing.

I will say though, this kind of thing, is why PtbA kind of gets a bad name in some areas of the role-playing community. Some fans just wanna preach and can't/won't listen to what people are saying to them. I don't agree with that bad name, but I think you're helping to exemplify it. To be fair it also happens with any other new/popular RPG which is a bit different. Albeit weirdly FATE fans are seemingly never like that.

Sigh. In any case you felt the need to set the volume to 5 because of principles, I'm saying that thise principles do not require that. You can go to 10 at any time and be fine. Being a fan doesn't mean you turn down the volume because ypu're a fan. Following the fiction might mean the volume us capped, but not that you need to turn it down because of the principles. The udea is that you are free to make as hard a move as you like. You can crank up the volume at any point and the game doesn't break. The principles aren't telling you to turn it down, they, at best, say it can only go this high. This is following the fiction in, because thise are hiw you set the stakes for an action. You need never tyrn down the volume voluntarily, though. This is why it says make as hard a move as you like.

You complain this is why PbtA gets a bad rap, but you've made some statements that are respresenting the game a bit off. You said you had problems because you felt the need to tone down GM moves to help the game along. You don't, you just need to let go of that last vestige of feeling responsible for balancing the game like you do 5e. Swing hard, turn the volume up, whatever you want to call it, and the game will deal just fine. That's my point.

I'd have let this go awhile back, but you keep including statement like the principles of tge game make you feel like you can't/shouldn't go hard/swing hard/turn the volume up. This isn't correct -- you xan make as hard a move as you like and the game works fine. You don't have to, but that's your call. The game doesn't need you to balance it like this. If you do swing hard, it'll work just fine.

I mean, I've felt it. I had a game where the PCs had a terrible run of failures, back to back. It felt somehow wrong to just keep pouring it on. But, I stuck the the principles and did, and it worked just fine. Completely altered the course of the game, but that's how it's supposed to go. There's nothing in the principles that says you ever need to not go hard. Most encourage you to do so.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Sure, but as @FrozenNorth pointed at the narrator/protagonist who do use magic, don't go insane from doing so, or are the required to insane to use magic. And there are quite a few Lovecraft tales were the narrator/protagonist is simply disturbed by what they found. I go back to "At the Mountains of Madness" because I reread the end of it yesterday and the narrator was involved first person in the events of the story and did not go insane (one of his colleagues did though), even facing down and elder thing (old one) and a shoggoth and reading the "real" history of the earth. He his disturbed by the experience and warns others not to go back, but it is from all appearance completely sane and rational.

I don't think "completely sane and rational" is necessarily accurate, and perhaps the point is, he would going to be regarded as insane, by making these claims/telling this story. It is also fair to say that it doesn't correspond well with a lot of other Mythos material where people go nuts or freak out when exposed to far, far lesser things. That dude must have been rolling nothing but 1s on the SAN damage dice!

I agree that you don't have to be outright nuts to use magic, but you do have to be alienated from the reality most people know.

It is a trope; however, it is not 100% born out by the fiction that started the genre. There are plenty of examples of narrators/protagonist not going insane from interaction with the Mythos in Lovecraft's work. Much more frequent is the NPC insanity. So there is definitely precedent for the "heroes"* in the Lovecrafts work being able to withstand the mind bending influences of the Mythos.

This is misleading.

None of these people survive repeated encounters with the Mythos, let alone violent encounters.

There is precedent for people passing through Mythos, not really interacting with it, just witnessing it, and getting away "basically sane", but with a story no-one will ever believe (and that rejection will mentally harm them, realistically).

Having PCs who repeatedly contact the Mythos, for whom At the Mountains of Madness is basically "a Tuesday" is absolutely NOT SUPPORTED by Lovecraft's fiction. Only people who largely pass through, and only do so once or perhaps twice, get to stay roughly sane.

 

[Ovinomancer]

What?? Where did I state this? Please show me where I said you cannot learn Mythos unless you are sane... I didn't plain and simple.

If you're using SAN to represent your ability to successful learn Mythos using thr check system, then a SAN of 1 makes checks extremely unlikely. The lower your SAN, the less likely you are to succeed at checks made to know or decipher knew things. I was a tad hyperbolic, but this is the direct result of your suggestion -- people with lower SAN scores are less likely to succeed at Mythos checks of any kind.

Which is weird.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't really believe you, I have to say, because it doesn't at all match up with the advice given in DW or any other PtbA I can off-hand think of reading the DM advice bits of. I've never read anything like "Make the hardest possible moves you can" - and I don't see that listed in the imperatives. Maybe it is in BitD?

Nor does it at all match up with Actual Plays I've read of PtbA games I've read/watched.

And I kind of bet that if I watched your BitD game, I could see a lot harder of moves you could be making (again, unless BitD has a more restricted set of hard moves).

So you're saying "that's you", but I think unless BitD is different, it's actually you.

Dungeon World is structured with a set of agenda and principles that, in light of the rest of the games mechanics, pretty well shows you what to do next. The GM is the 'fan of the PCs', his agenda is basically to give them a chance to be big heroes by pushing them, throwing adversity at them, and seeing what happens. If they get themselves out of one pickle (out of the frying pan) by gosh you make the "Reveal an Unwelcome Truth" move and now THEY ARE IN THE FIRE!

I mean, sure, in PbtA games it is up to the GM to figure out what move to make in order to frame things in the direction the players want to go, and to introduce pressure and drive the story forward. You DO have choices. However, if you read the rules carefully there is a lot of very solid GMing advice, and a number of subsystems like fronts and dooms, that naturally reinforce a virtuous cycle. And honestly, the fiction, and how exactly you interpret it mechanically can help set the tone of the game. You can make the PCs be almost super hero-like, or they can seem practically like just schmucks grubbing in the dust. That's where the flexibility really is in terms of what games a PbtA can run.

FitD is MUCH more process intensive and pretty much everything drives off of position and what sorts of effect the players can get, etc. The GM in that game is not free to set these constraints, normally. They will be mostly dictated by the rules. A threat of a certain tier in a given situation generates a certain initial position (modulated by a die roll). From there things evolve based on what choices the players make and what the dice produce. The GM is just serving it up and creating scenes as needed.

 

[Imaro]

If you're using SAN to represent your ability to successful learn Mythos using thr check system, then a SAN of 1 makes checks extremely unlikely. The lower your SAN, the less likely you are to succeed at checks made to know or decipher knew things. I was a tad hyperbolic, but this is the direct result of your suggestion -- people with lower SAN scores are less likely to succeed at Mythos checks of any kind.

Which is weird.

You're going to have skill bonuses as well I would think. But to your bigger point... It's weird if you view Lovecraft's mythos through a specific lens which, IMO is fine but he's not really consistent on the point in his stories, especially when it comes to the protagonists.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I mean, I've felt it. I had a game where the PCs had a terrible run of failures, back to back. It felt somehow wrong to just keep pouring it on. But, I stuck the the principles and did, and it worked just fine. Completely altered the course of the game, but that's how it's supposed to go. There's nothing in the principles that says you ever need to not go hard. Most encourage you to do so.

I can't see any support for this view in DW's principles. You're saying "most encourage you to do so"? Which ones specifically? I listed them all upthread in case you need a reference.

It's fine that your approach worked out, but you've failed offer any textual support for "always go hard".

Also, talking of claims of misrepresenting, weren't you the guy who claimed there were no retcons in BitD? Or was that someone else? Because I just read BitD and that's just not true:

"Hold on lightly. Always feel free to rewind, revise, and reconsider events as needed. This is not a “no take backs” kind of game. You can always say, “Actually, no... let’s say it was only two guys, instead. I don’t know why they’d have any more than that here.” This can be a tricky principle to internalize. It can be so tempting to put your foot down (often for no good reason) or to treat elements of the game as too sacred. Resist that impulse!"

Further, re: "misrepresentation", that's proving my point re: "this is why PtbA gets a bad rap", because this straightforward One True Way-ism on your part. You have your way, and unless I completely agree with it, I'm doing it wrong AND not only doing it wrong, I'm "misrepresenting" the game in a way so dangerous it has to be called out. I mean dude. You are being the problem here, and I think on some level you know it, given your "I'd have stopped but..." comment. You don't have textual support. It's not something that any principle outright states (it may well be in other PtbA games, but it isn't in DW and doesn't appear to be in BitD either, though I've only glanced through the latter). It's not something the game in general supports. The jab vs haymaker point (i.e. 5 vs 11 on the volume) wasn't even made by me, it was made by another DW DM earlier in this thread, but I guess he is also "misrepresenting" DW. Sheesh.

 

[dave2008]

None of these people survive repeated encounters with the Mythos, let alone violent encounters.

There is precedent for people passing through Mythos, not really interacting with it, just witnessing it, and getting away "basically sane", but with a story no-one will ever believe (and that rejection will mentally harm them, realistically).

Having PCs who repeatedly contact the Mythos, for whom At the Mountains of Madness is basically "a Tuesday" is absolutely NOT SUPPORTED by Lovecraft's fiction. Only people who largely pass through, and only do so once or perhaps twice, get to stay roughly sane.

While I generally agree with this statement I believe at least the character who repeated adventured in the dreamlands did so without going insane. I could be wrong, but that is my recollection. He had a campaign's worth of adventures.

Now, I also don't see any issue with extrapolating from the examples we have of characters remaining mentally sounds and saying PCs can do it for an adventure or campaign.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You're going to have skill bonuses as well I would think. But to your bigger point... It's weird if you view Lovecraft's mythos through a specific lens which, IMO is fine but he's not really consistent on the point in his stories, especially when it comes to the protagonists.

He's more consistent than you're suggesting. No-one is going around surviving multiple encounters and staying sane.