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

Really?

Strength - how strong is my character
Dexterity - how agile or fast is my character
Constitution - how hardy is my character
Intelligence - how smart is my character
Wisdom - how attentive is my character
Charisma - how likeable is my character

vs

Sanity - how well can I learn insane things while going insane.

One of these things is not like the other.
While agree the Sanity score is not completely like the other ability scores, it is not as far afield as you place it. From the DMG:

"A character with a high Sanity is level-headed even in the face of insane circumstances, while a character with low Sanity is unsteady, breaking easily when confronted by eldritch horrors that are beyond normal reason."
 

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While agree the Sanity score is not completely like the other ability scores, it is not as far afield as you place it. From the DMG:

"A character with a high Sanity is level-headed even in the face of insane circumstances, while a character with low Sanity is unsteady, breaking easily when confronted by eldritch horrors that are beyond normal reason."
Only trick is, in play, that doesn't actually fit with what is happening.

The range between Sanity scores is so small, and overwhelmed by the d20, that unless we're talking an 18 vs a 6, (and even that's only a +6 spread), there isn't much, if any difference between two characters. Whereas having that much of a spread in any other stat is easily noticeable. A 3 point spread (say a 16 vs a 10) only matters about 15% of the time. That 16 San character fails slightly less than the 10 San character. And, note, there's nothing else that modifies the check - not class or background or anything. Additionally, if you play with point buy, like I do, then everyone has virtually the same San score anyway - maybe a +1 on the check vs no modifier.

And, remember, this is quite different from what @Imaro is saying in that a high Sanity score lets you understand the ineffable better than a low Sanity score.

Which brings around my other major problem here. It's entirely a binary system - either you fail on a San check or succeed. Fail is an entirely random effect from a table. Succeed and ... nothing. There's nothing the players can do with this. They can't use it in any way. It's not like every other stat where having a good score lets me succeed on checks that I can initiate - I want to jump far, have a good Str score. I want to be good at noticing things, have a good Wis score. But Sanity just sits there like this lump.
 

Be careful with that assumption. On the old WotC boards I was constantly told I was playing 4e wrong too. How we played 4e at our table seemed to be very different than a lot of other people. Heck we played a 4e adventure without powers once, completely improv - just player description and DM adjudication!
While I would never say you were doing it wrong, I would say that that's a bit of an outlier.

But, my point about 5e is that it becomes really marked. As I said, I've never played in a group (typically 5 PC's) without at least 3 casters. We also allowed buying magic items. Which meant that that fairly optimizing oriented players who favored paladins and rangers, pretty much universally picked up flaming weapons. Which, for a very minimal investment, effectively doubles your DPR vs anything that isn't fire resistant. Add in feats like Great Weapon fighting, and it wasn't unusual for our 6th level fighter types (barbarian, fighter, ranger, paladin) to be dealing upwards of 50-60 points of damage per round, each. (Flaming Great Axe=4d6+4 (str) damage, plus another 10 for GWF= an average of 28 points/hit or 56 point/round) Multiply that by 3 fighter types, and any single target was virtually obliterated in a couple of rounds.

In 4e you simply can't do that because the math is so much tighter. You can't really double your DPR vs someone with the same character at the same level. While it might have been weird to play 4e purely on improve, it was certainly supported by the system. Page 42 for the win baby.
 

Only trick is, in play, that doesn't actually fit with what is happening.

The range between Sanity scores is so small, and overwhelmed by the d20, that unless we're talking an 18 vs a 6, (and even that's only a +6 spread), there isn't much, if any difference between two characters. Whereas having that much of a spread in any other stat is easily noticeable. A 3 point spread (say a 16 vs a 10) only matters about 15% of the time. That 16 San character fails slightly less than the 10 San character. And, note, there's nothing else that modifies the check - not class or background or anything. Additionally, if you play with point buy, like I do, then everyone has virtually the same San score anyway - maybe a +1 on the check vs no modifier.

And, remember, this is quite different from what @Imaro is saying in that a high Sanity score lets you understand the ineffable better than a low Sanity score.

Which brings around my other major problem here. It's entirely a binary system - either you fail on a San check or succeed. Fail is an entirely random effect from a table. Succeed and ... nothing. There's nothing the players can do with this. They can't use it in any way. It's not like every other stat where having a good score lets me succeed on checks that I can initiate - I want to jump far, have a good Str score. I want to be good at noticing things, have a good Wis score. But Sanity just sits there like this lump.
Out of curiosity, are you familiar with how Shadow of the Demon Lord handles sanity and madness? It's not an attribute in SotDL, but, rather, a score measured against your Will stat, and you are rolling your Will attribute when dealing with madness. When the two are equal? Congrats, you are now an insane wreck.

In general though, I would also recommend SotDL (and its future Gygaxian fantasy version: Tales of the Weird Wizard), if you haven't done so already, as it reads like an alternate version of 5e, but with 4e and Warhammer influences.
 

In 4e you simply can't do that because the math is so much tighter. You can't really double your DPR vs someone with the same character at the same level. While it might have been weird to play 4e purely on improve, it was certainly supported by the system. Page 42 for the win baby.
I agree with DMG 42, though I will say the 5e DMG has even better tools for improv, they are just unfortunately scattered throughout the book.

However, there were a lot of opportunities to optimize in 4e (especially party coordination) and though a individual character might not look that different (but that is debatable too) a whole party could. It you checked out the WotC 4e optimization boards they had builds for characters that cold solo a Level 30+ solo monster. With party synergy, or lack thereof, two groups could have very different experiences with the same adventure / encounter.

IDK how much time you spent on the 4e WotC forums, but vast difference in play were definitely possible.
 

Really?

Strength - how strong is my character
Dexterity - how agile or fast is my character
Constitution - how hardy is my character
Intelligence - how smart is my character
Wisdom - how attentive is my character
Charisma - how likeable is my character

vs

Sanity - how well can I learn insane things while going insane.

One of these things is not like the other.
That's not really the description of Sanity. And I do think the description of Wisdom as attentiveness... isn't the traditional definition of wisdom whatsoever and Charisma also does double duty as force of personality not just likeability and so on. But you know what this isn't really a hill I'm committed to dying on so if you feel D&D defines all attributes in line with their commonly understood definitions that's fine.


Now hang on. Yes, I'm probably the last person to say this because I've brought up the Oberoni thing more than a few times. But, dogpiling like that isn't cool either. We could all benefit from ratcheting down the tension several notches. While I might disagree with @Imaro, to my knowledge, he hasn't really claimed that any of this is "easy" or "simple" and has more than a few times shown a willingness to discuss rather than just pontificate.

This has been my position and I've avoided arguing whether it's easy or hard because I think alot of that actually is tied up with how long you've played the game, your familiarity and the fact that different people find different cognitive processes easier or harder to deal with. That said there were a few people who were claiming you couldn't do X in D&D especially earlier in the thread... now whether this was just hyperbole or not I was addressing this specifically and somehow got pulled into a discussion about the minutae of cosmic horror and implementing it in a D&D game.

Now while the optional rules may not be to everyone's tastes because of the whole madness debate, and I'm honestly not interested in going down that road again as I am a firm believer that at this point HP Lovecraft is not the mythos or cosmic horror and so there is room for differing interpretations... @Ruin Explorer suggests a pretty simple add-on to the Sanity rules that pretty much satisfies the madness=understanding criteria that some feel is necessary for cosmic horror. See below. IMO (and apparently in Ruin Explorer's opinion as well) this isn't hard to implement and is reminiscent of the madness track in Unknown Armies 3rd ed (which honestly is a game I hold in pretty high regard). Now let me ask do you think this solution is too long (It was less than a page to explain and lay out)... do you think it would be too hard to implement at a mechanical level? Do you think it does a serviceable job at representing insanity in the cosmic horror genre?
It's really easy dude I showed how to do it in like three paragraphs upthread. You just separate SAN and ALN (Alienation), make it mandatory that they always total to 20. SAN is used for saves, Alienation is used for ability checks.
 
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In 4e you simply can't do that because the math is so much tighter. You can't really double your DPR vs someone with the same character at the same level. While it might have been weird to play 4e purely on improve, it was certainly supported by the system. Page 42 for the win baby.

While I think you may be right about combat (I'm not 100% sure either way)... by the end of it's lifecycle this was very much possible with skills if someone really wanted to.
 

But, again, in the context of this thread, I'm not sure how that is terribly different from suggesting a different game. A several hundred page supplement to help you do one small part of a campaign seems a bit overkill. Remember, we're not supposed to talk about someone who is basing a whole campaign on this change. They just want to run one or two adventures.

So, can someone please tell me how a several hundred page door stopper for doing Lovecraft in D&D is better than just suggesting a 4 page free pdf? And that somehow a 4 page pdf is insulting and bad but it's perfectly fine to suggest that someone go out and buy this?

((Note, I love the idea of the book, and I'm probably going to buy it when I have a bit of extra cash, but, we're talking about giving advice to DM's and how it's bad to suggest other games.))
OK, returning to this question now.

The benefits of something like SPCM (5e) is over Cthulhu Dark (I assume that is the 4 page game your talking about) are several:
  1. It provides pages and pages of advice on how to run horror games. Heck it has 4 pages just describing different types of insanity! - 10+/- pages
  2. Detailed information on Mythos items and equipment - 14 pages
  3. Detailed information on Mythos monsters - 242 pages!
  4. Indepth information on the setting - 22+/- pages
  5. Familiarity with a system. If you know 5e your good to go. This is essential a setting guide and bestiary. With 60 pages of character options (races, subclasses, & feats) and 10 pages of new rules (Dread and Sanity and a huge portion of that is just a description of different types of insanity).
However, as not it is not self contained. There are now combat, skill, or other rules in the book. So you still need the PHB & DMG. However, the assumption would be that you have those.
 
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OK, returning to this question now.

The benefits of something like SPCM (5e) is over ToC (I assume that is the 4 page game your talking about) are several:
There are a number of Cthulhu Mythos games that have been mentioned thus far:
  • Call of Cthulhu (Basic Roleplaying)
  • Trail of Cthulhu (Gumshoe) - the core rulebook is 250 pgs.
  • Cthulhu Dark (the free 4 page pdf)
  • Fate of Cthulhu (Fate)

There may have been others, but these are the ones that I recall off-hand that have been mentioned in the thread.
 

Into the Woods

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