D&D 5E Does/Should D&D Have the Player's Game Experience as a goal?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think the designers 100% have an idea in mind of what sort of game 5E supports. That they don't say so up front seems disingenuous and it leads people to become invested in a narrative that I don't think WotC itself believes -- that 5E is the best system to run any kind of fantasy RPG game.

You could technically enter your Kia Soul in a Formula 1 race and could walk away saying that you successfully raced in the Grand Prix just using the car you already owned. But I don't think anyone would say it was the most effective tool for the job. And conversely, taking a Formula 1 car to the grocery store or to pick your kids up after school would likewise be a profoundly disappointing experience.

I own and run several fantasy roleplaying games and can, in theory, run the same adventures in all of them. But running a high-chaos, high-lethality pirate adventure in 5E requires creating nautical rules and twisting a bunch of dials to change the default play experience to be more dangerous and more random. I could definitely do it, but at a certain point, I will have invested more time in remaking 5E than I would in very briefly teaching my players how to play Pirate Borg.

Similarly, anyone familiar with 5E rules isn't going to buy that a dungeon crawl is going to be a gritty and terrifying experience unless I do a lot of modifications to the core game. And since most of those modifications would be making it look like Shadowdark, I could just use Shadowdark, which is my preferred game for those kind of gritty experiences.

On the other hand, if I wanted to run a high adventure game with heroes who would go from zeros to heroes and would go on to save the kingdom, the world or even the multiverse, Pirate Borg and Shadowdark would be terrible choices for them. It's extremely unlikely the characters from the first session will be around by the end and will likely have been replaced many times over, meaning that what motivated those characters -- who are almost certainly strangers to the final party -- likely won't motivate the characters at the end. I could twist a bunch of dials to make Pirate Borg or Shadowdark characters more robust and make leveling up more satisfying and give players the ability to help shape PCs into the characters of their dreams -- or I could just play 5E, which already is set up to do that.

Different games can be good at different things without diminishing any of them. Chess is a terrible version of competitive crosswords and Scrabble doesn't have deep strategy. But no one would seriously insist that chess is the only board game anyone ever needs or that it can represent every style of board game, if only one was willing to draw the map of Candyland on the board or create scenarios where players have to uncover who murdered Queen's Bishop.

It was a very late rulebook for 3E, and probably not a big seller, but I wish 5E could take some inspiration from the Rules Compendium and just talk about this stuff, ideally in the PHB, but certainly in the DMG, even if it's in the context of "we're going to show you how to do horror in D&D, but just so you know, our feelings won't be hurt if you wanted to grab a copy of Dread to use with your Halloween game this year."

 

[jgsugden]

....Similarly, anyone familiar with 5E rules isn't going to buy that a dungeon crawl is going to be a gritty and terrifying experience unless I do a lot of modifications to the core game. And since most of those modifications would be making it look like Shadowdark, I could just use Shadowdark, which is my preferred game for those kind of gritty experiences...

While I agree that different systems are better at different things, I am going to strongly disagree with the notion that you can't run a gritty and terrifying dungeon crawl in 5E. The PCs in my current campaign are currently living through a Groundhog Day type Ravenloft scenario and it starts out in the morning by being a bright and cheery day - and descending into madness and despair ove the day ... and each day they lose a little more of themselves to the shadows and gloom that takes the world during that day. They need to figure out how to escape the realm, and how to achieve their goals in the realm. One of their goals will require them to get through a short dungeon that changes every cycle. It has claimed them three times already - and each time the situation has gotten worse for them in a predictable way.

Terrifying is more about storytelling than rules, and gritty is many things to many people - but to me it means there are real stakes and you can feel the weight of losses you sustain in a meaningful way. In my opinion, this game is hitting those marks without major modification to the rules - most of what I am doing is straight out of the books.

Yes - other rule sets better facilitate some of these concepts - but I have yet to find a type of fantasy storytelling that I can't run on the fly in 5E.

 

[overgeeked]

I think the designers 100% have an idea in mind of what sort of game 5E supports. That they don't say so up front seems disingenuous and it leads people to become invested in a narrative that I don't think WotC itself believes -- that 5E is the best system to run any kind of fantasy RPG game.

It would cost them sales if they said what the focus of the game is. They get more sales by pretending that 5E can do anything and be everything to everyone. They’d also have fans of the game say they’re lying because that officially-stated focus doesn’t line up with what those fans think the focus of the game is.

 

[Hussar]

It would cost them sales if they said what the focus of the game is. They get more sales by pretending that 5E can do anything and be everything to everyone. They’d also have fans of the game say they’re lying because that officially-stated focus doesn’t line up with what those fans think the focus of the game is.

Which is pretty much exactly what happened in 4e. I said as much upthread. WotC would be cutting their own throat to actually come down on a side here. It's just not going to happen.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Which is pretty much exactly what happened in 4e. I said as much upthread. WotC would be cutting their own throat to actually come down on a side here. It's just not going to happen.

"Cutting their own throat" is pretty dramatic. Acknowledging the existence of Dread won't make Curse of Strahd not their consistent best-selling adventure. It would also lend credibility to everything else they say, when we can know that they'll tell the truth, even if it's not what some hardliner in marketing would have them do.

WotC has acknowledged the existence of other games in the past. This zero sum game that everyone wants them to be in is pretty silly and doesn't do anything helpful other than to max out a few C-suite executives' end of year bonuses. It certainly doesn't help D&D players to pretend that D&D is a magical multitool that's better than bespoke tools offered by other companies for narrower purposes.

 

[Hussar]

"Cutting their own throat" is pretty dramatic. Acknowledging the existence of Dread won't make Curse of Strahd not their consistent best-selling adventure. It would also lend credibility to everything else they say, when we can know that they'll tell the truth, even if it's not what some hardliner in marketing would have them do.

WotC has acknowledged the existence of other games in the past. This zero sum game that everyone wants them to be in is pretty silly and doesn't do anything helpful other than to max out a few C-suite executives' end of year bonuses. It certainly doesn't help D&D players to pretend that D&D is a magical multitool that's better than bespoke tools offered by other companies for narrower purposes.

It's one thing to acknowledge the existence of other games. That's probably fine. But, if WotC came out and said, "Hey, we think that 5e D&D plays best if you do X, Y and Z", the fandom would absolutely crucify them. If WotC actually publicly admitted that D&D is not a magical multi-tool, then they would be accused of badwrongfun and insulting gamers and hating the hobby.

I mean, heck, look at the reaction here to @pogre suggesting that D&D is not a magical multi-tool. It's been shown time and time again that WotC gains nothing by engaging with fans directly. Everything they say will be twisted into an insult by a very vocal branch of the fandom that absolutely will not allow any comment to pass.

 

[Lanefan]

Because, by and large, D&D avoids being explicit about it's expectations in play. And has become less and less explicit over time. AD&D was actually pretty clear in how you were meant to play the game - dungeon crawling, time tracking, troupe play. But, that got largely ignored because then the modules presented adventures that were anything but that. 5e is largely silent in what it expects groups to do. WotC absolutely learned that lesson from 4e. Trying to be explicit and say - "for best results with this system, here's how we think you should play" was rejected by the fandom.

Part (if not nearly all) of the reason for that was that while 1e was indeed fairly clear about how you were intended to play it, at the same time it was also flexible enough to handle playing those adventures (and thus, styles) that didn't match that intent*. You could play 1e with small tight parties, minimal attention to time (e.g. handwaving spell durations etc.), and with nary a dungeon in sight if you wanted to; and the game could handle it to a surprising extent before starting to fight back very much. You could play west marches, Dragonlance sagas, or anything in between and the game almost wouldn't bat an eyelid. And you can reduce the granularity of resolution fairly easily if you want to.

4e, while also fairly clear on how you're intended to play it, from all I can tell lacks the same flexibility: trying to run 4e in a dungeon-crawling time-tracking troupe-style play style with big parties is going to blow the game's expected math out of the water, and the experience likely won't be stellar. You also can't increase the granularity of resolution without quite a lot of work (when 4e came out I gave some serious thought to trying to kitbash it into something I'd be willing to run/play, before chucking in the idea on realizing just how much I'd have to do to it).

* - exception: one major element that doesn't transfer well either way is player-side caution. 1e expects cautious careful play, 4e expects heroic storm-the-castle play; and trying either style in the other system is likely to end poorly, with frequent TPKs in 1e and frequent boredom in 4e.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Everything they say will be twisted into an insult by a very vocal branch of the fandom that absolutely will not allow any comment to pass.

I don't know that living your life being scared of your most toxic customers is any kind of career.

I called back a woman who claimed she was going to sue me today and, without conceding any of her crazy town arguments, calmed her down and sent her on her way. (And of course she didn't sue me. They never do, no matter how unpleasant their voicemails or emails might be.) But I know not everyone is as OK with conflict as I am.

 

[MichaelSomething]

The rules have been trying to shape the game since OD&D; and we've been fighting it since then.
Race as Class?
Gold for XP?
Analyzing a feat to see if you should take it?
Skill Challenges?
The Adventuring day?

All things, we the players, have simply ignored!!

 

[Hussar]

It would probably be more productive if folks who really didn’t know a whole lot about a given system would refrain from commenting on that system.

But @Whizbang Dustyboots- what can I say? The fandom has demonstrated over and over again that they will fall all over themselves to interpret anything WotC says on the most negative way possible. So WotC just doesn’t talk to the fandom directly any more. It’s always through heavily vetted channels.