D&D 5E DnDBeyond: on adapting genre to D&D

[Parmandur]

He says it's fine to ADD revolvers to D&D. The issue is with restrictions and alterations - to make a D&D game feel like Game of Thrones may require radical restrictions such that you'd be better off buying A Song of Ice & Fire RPG. OTOH you could add GoT elements to a 'Birthright' style D&D campaign.

But "gritty" rules are also in the DMG.

Honestly, this article is less useful than the DMG guidelines, so, eh.

 

[S'mon]

But "gritty" rules are also in the DMG.

Honestly, this article is less useful than the DMG guidelines, so, eh.

I think it makes a good coda to that section of the DMG.

 

[Kurotowa]

Having been in a couple brief lived campaigns where the DM tried to change the genre by going the route this article advises against and hacking away large sections of core material... I feel it gives very good advice. Those games were painful.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But "gritty" rules are also in the DMG.

Of course, every variant in the DMG is still circumscribed by the basic limitations of the game. Using the most-restrictive combination of variant rules possible, you can still heal up from 1hp to full overnight. If you really wanted a gritty game, then you'd be better off playing something else.

Likewise with setting options. The Forgotten Realms is such a massive morass of nonsense that you'd have to cut most of the classes/races/etc before you approached a reasonable setting, at which point it would make sense to start adding new stuff again.

Fifth Edition is such an extreme corner-case that you're almost always better finding a better game, rather than trying to force some other genre into its inconveniently-shaped box.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The area of D&D most ripe for subtraction is probably the Monster Manual. I played in a campaign where the DM was aiming for a Middle-Earth feel, which I think he achieved, and he cut the "savage humanoids" down to just goblins and orcs. We actually encountered a flail snail in that game but it was an exhibit in a travelling circus.

EDIT: Should've had my PC think the flail snail was a fake, claim it was made of wood and painted canvas and animated with a clever assortment of pulleys and ropes, and try to get into the cage to prove it. Oh well, thought of that about 28 years too late.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I dont know, I feel like it would be somewhat easy to fit GoT in 5e:
Races are now Houses
Stark
Lannister
Tully
Greyjoy etc

Classes are:
Fighter, rogue, slayer (barbarian), warden (AiME spell less bard), wanderer (AiME spell less ranger) and Scholar (spell less healer).

Create some pertinent backgrounds.

Use gritty rules, permanent injuries etc

Kill characters a lot.

 

[Remathilis]

Hey, if something is worth doing...

As I said, it's not really necessarily helpful advise.

Its helpful if your intention is to play a Dungeons & Dragons game that features cosmic horror, not try to make a 5e version of Call of Cthulhu .

I think that's the point he's trying to make; the DMG rules for gritty or firearms still reflect the fundamental basis of the game; they don't replace or neuter classes, they don't remove spells or spellcasting, they don't make other elements of the game inoperable like removing Hit Dice. They play within the framework.

I think its worth cautioning that trying to turn D&D into something its not is a fools errand. I have considered in the past converting Masque of the Red Death from its 2e/3e roots to 5e; but the sheer amount of re-writing necessary to accommodate a low-magic world set in 1890's Earth is practically a new game unto itself. Just to start, you'd need to re-write every class (and cut most of them) and subclass, every background, large swaths of the combat rules and magic, and the entire equipment chapter right down to the copper piece. All to fit a square peg in a round hole. I'm sure there is a system that handles Gothic Horror much better than D&D (and I'm all ears if you have a suggestion for one) so making D&D try to handle Penny Dreadfuls is more effort than its worth.

Compare that to Curse of Strahd, which is basically Dracula/Transylvania in all but name, but doesn't attempt to emulate the gaslight world of Victorian London but instead sets the D&D tropes up front (even as it twists some of them). You are still an elven mage or a dwarf barbarian or a dragonborn paladin facing off against Strahd. Your magic might not work right and Strahd might have far more power than a common vampire should, but its still fundamentally D&D, just with a thick coat of Brahm Stoker on top of it.

So the point is that D&D is best when its D&D with flavoring or seasoning, not when its contorted to emulate a genre its ill-suited to play in. D&D is not a generic RPG like GURPS is; it excels best when it does what it does.

 

[Parmandur]

Its helpful if your intention is to play a Dungeons & Dragons game that features cosmic horror, not try to make a 5e version of Call of Cthulhu .

I think that's the point he's trying to make; the DMG rules for gritty or firearms still reflect the fundamental basis of the game; they don't replace or neuter classes, they don't remove spells or spellcasting, they don't make other elements of the game inoperable like removing Hit Dice. They play within the framework.

I think its worth cautioning that trying to turn D&D into something its not is a fools errand. I have considered in the past converting Masque of the Red Death from its 2e/3e roots to 5e; but the sheer amount of re-writing necessary to accommodate a low-magic world set in 1890's Earth is practically a new game unto itself. Just to start, you'd need to re-write every class (and cut most of them) and subclass, every background, large swaths of the combat rules and magic, and the entire equipment chapter right down to the copper piece. All to fit a square peg in a round hole. I'm sure there is a system that handles Gothic Horror much better than D&D (and I'm all ears if you have a suggestion for one) so making D&D try to handle Penny Dreadfuls is more effort than its worth.

Compare that to Curse of Strahd, which is basically Dracula/Transylvania in all but name, but doesn't attempt to emulate the gaslight world of Victorian London but instead sets the D&D tropes up front (even as it twists some of them). You are still an elven mage or a dwarf barbarian or a dragonborn paladin facing off against Strahd. Your magic might not work right and Strahd might have far more power than a common vampire should, but its still fundamentally D&D, just with a thick coat of Brahm Stoker on top of it.

So the point is that D&D is best when its D&D with flavoring or seasoning, not when its contorted to emulate a genre its ill-suited to play in. D&D is not a generic RPG like GURPS is; it excels best when it does what it does.

Restrict the Class options with extreme prejudice, use the firearm rules from the DMG, maybe the Insanity rules. Completely doable.

 

[Beleriphon]

Restrict the Class options with extreme prejudice, use the firearm rules from the DMG, maybe the Insanity rules. Completely doable.

I think the point of the article is at that point why are we using D&D? Not that it can't be done, but why are we doing it?

To quote the infinitely quotable Ian Malcolm, "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

 

[Parmandur]

I think the point of the article is at that point why are we using D&D? Not that it can't be done, but why are we doing it?

To quote the infinitely quotable Ian Malcolm, "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

Sunk cost for system familiarity, same reason my college group played Call of Cthulu d20 even if standard CoC might be "objectively" "better" for the task.