Game Mechanics & Lore

[MGibster]

I very seldom have used a setting with the system intended for it. It always sems to me that if the setting is great, they skimp on the system. (looking at you in particular, L5R).

Which edition of L5R do you refer? One of the things that impressed me about the 1st edition of the game was how well suited the rules were to the setting.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Which edition of L5R do you refer? One of the things that impressed me about the 1st edition of the game was how well suited the rules were to the setting.

Everything after 1e. Combat should be fast, fluid, and lethal, but the higher the edition, the slower and clunkier it gets. I'm just going to use a different system, because 1e books are mostly scans.

 

[aco175]

I think a lot of people on this site will say 5e let them down since it is not Dark Sun or Birthright. But D&D is supposed to be generic like @payn mentioned above. Each world has its own schtick where the flavor is found.

 

[Argyle King]

Fluff and Crunch should have a coherent relationship.

If the dice are regularly telling a different story than what the fiction of the game is telling, there's an issue.

 

[James Gasik]

The thing about "gritty low-fantasy" settings with visceral, brutal combat that I think a lot of people gloss over is the copious amounts of plot armor the main characters have to have to survive their stories. Conan is superhuman in his ability to absorb punishment, and that's a trait shared with most of his contemporaries, along with crazy amounts of luck. So the question is begged "do people want to replicate Conan's adventures" or "the adventures of people who aren't main characters in Conan's world"? Because one will feel a lot more like D&D, and the other more like Runequest or Rolemaster.

 

[Jd Smith1]

I think a lot of people on this site will say 5e let them down since it is not Dark Sun or Birthright. But D&D is supposed to be generic like @payn mentioned above. Each world has its own schtick where the flavor is found.

True, but Dark Sun's setting really needs a different system to make it work. 5e is a fantasy superhero system, while Dark Suns is deeply gritty and hand-to-mouth.

 

[MGibster]

Everything after 1e. Combat should be fast, fluid, and lethal, but the higher the edition, the slower and clunkier it gets. I'm just going to use a different system, because 1e books are mostly scans.

I think 2nd edition was the first time I'd ever been disappointed in a new edition of a game I had previously enjoyed. I cannot remember exactly what it was about 2nd edition I didn't like because it's been so long. The last time I ran a campaign it was for 4th edition, which had some problems, the Tsuruchi Bounty Hunter school was completely bonkers when it came to archery, but it worked fairly well. The latest edition switched to a system that uses proprietary dice like Fantasy Flight Games' Star Wars. Not my cup of tea.

So the question is begged "do people want to replicate Conan's adventures" or "the adventures of people who aren't main characters in Conan's world"? Because one will feel a lot more like D&D, and the other more like Runequest or Rolemaster.

We kind of run into some problems with interpreting the rules as written and rules as intended. Conan wouldn't just leap from a 200 foot chasm without something to slow his fall because Howard knew the audience wouldn't accept it. They'll accept a giant snake, gorilla monsters, and magic, but suspension of disbelief only goes so far. The player of a high enough level D&D character might just leap from that same chasm for lulz knowing he can't take enough damage to die.

Of course the rules are not a perfect representation of what the game world is. Players are very creative, and there simply aren't enough rules to cover every plan they come up with or action they execute. I remember years ago a letter to Palladium about what to do in the event a player character does something that would normally be monumentally suicidal. In the example, a player character jumped on a grenade, arguing it couldn't do enough damage to get through his SDC. (Characters in Palladium games have SDC and then Hit Points....I don't want to go too in-depth, but you usually took damage to SDC and had many more of that than you did Hit Points.)

Whoever wrote back from Palladium said to let the character die. The game in question wasn't Rifts, Hero's Unlimited, or one of their other more fantastical games where throwing yourself on a grenade was less likely to result in death, it was one of their more down to earth games. The person answering Palladium's fan mail basically said if a PC does something suicidal then just let them die no matter the rules as written. Personally, my advice would be to have the grenade to Hit Point damage directly, bypassing SDC altogether, but I can't say just killing the character is bad.

 

[Tonguez]

DnD does heroic fantasy with a bit of tactical jiggling, it can overlay different settings on that - everything from Spelljammer to Eberron even Ravenloft, but at the end of the day its Tiefling barbarians swinging flaming megaswords. Its not doing horror, or intrigue or investigation without add-on mechanics that try to lean into that lore.

 

[Argyle King]

The thing about "gritty low-fantasy" settings with visceral, brutal combat that I think a lot of people gloss over is the copious amounts of plot armor the main characters have to have to survive their stories. Conan is superhuman in his ability to absorb punishment, and that's a trait shared with most of his contemporaries, along with crazy amounts of luck. So the question is begged "do people want to replicate Conan's adventures" or "the adventures of people who aren't main characters in Conan's world"? Because one will feel a lot more like D&D, and the other more like Runequest or Rolemaster.

There's truth to this, but even Conan could (and did) fail at things.

Yes, he could fight multiple combatants and win, but he still needed an army to fight an army. He could bleed. He could be hurt or captured.

Sometimes, luck was a factor, but he also had tangible skill in leading a combat unit; had a combination of natural talent and skill at swordplay, and other things.

In contrast, a D&D character in the same situations maybe marks off a handful of HP and is perfectly fine.

That Conan and the not-Conan characters could plausibly be in the same stories and face the same challenges with the same risks is something that contemporary D&D and D&D-adjacent games would struggle to emulate.

 

[Flying Toaster]

I think 2nd edition was the first time I'd ever been disappointed in a new edition of a game I had previously enjoyed. I cannot remember exactly what it was about 2nd edition I didn't like because it's been so long.

The player of a high enough level D&D character might just leap from that same chasm for lulz knowing he can't take enough damage to die.

Every table is different. When the 2E PHB came out in 1989 we eagerly adopted it with no hesitation. I was already chafing at what I saw as limitations in the 1E rules and the only disappointment I felt about 2E was that it did not go farther: ditch the weird AD&D ability score tables and use the nice smooth bell curves from B/X, beef up crossbows and slings, ditch demi-human class and level limits altogether in favor of XP penalties to slow advancement, etc. We now know that the designers wanted to make more revisions but were held back in the name of backwards compatibility.

We used all the optional rules that gave spellcasters and Thieves more customized options. The 2E Ranger was a bit of a letdown I guess. I have a distinct memory of our group’s first look at the 2E PHB as we read the new rules and rolled up characters. I looked up and said “Hey guys, did you notice something? They took out the Assassin, Monk, and Half-Orc!”. We paused for a moment.. and then just shrugged and went back to what we were doing, because no one in our group had ever played any of those options. I did not even mention the deletion of the overpowered UA options like the Barbarian and Cavalier because we had never even considered using those.

Your example of a high level D&D character deliberately jumping off a cliff because they have no fear of falling damage is IIRC the very hypothetical that set off an epic series of arguments in the Forum column of Dragon magazine. The 1980’s RPG scene had a preoccupation with realism, perhaps a holdover from the wargaming days. Falling damage in particular was the kind of topic that would have people cracking open their college physics textbooks in order to bolster their arguments.

A PC nonchalantly jumping off a cliff is a pretty clear example of the rules interfering with immersion. I would probably give that player a stern warning and then let them take the damage if they insist. Of course there might be something nasty lying in wait at the bottom of the cliff...