D&D General Games People Play: Looking at the Gaming Aspects of D&D

[loverdrive]

I guess I am confused as to why you are interested in a discussion about Dungeons and Dragons at all

Well, Snarf @ ed me.

it seems like a style of game that could not be to your taste while still remaining the game that most of its adherents desire (e.g. an improvisational storytelling RPG)

Nah, it easily can be.

If there was, well, actually engaging gameplay (like in 4E or, better, Strike!) and tight rules on encounter creation, instead of mere "guidelines", it would work.

Like, yeah, it wouldn't be a storytelling game (as outcomes are decided by the effectiveness of players' actions, rather than necessities of the story), but D&D isn't even remotely a storytelling game anyway.

For millions of players, D&D and related games, which are rules heavy yet narratively driven with significant player agency, seem to find a sweet spot that keeps them coming back for more, sometimes for years or even decades in the same campaign. Why is that, in your opinion? I assume that most people are rational agents, so these games must be doing something right.

I assume most people don't care enough about RPGs to actually learn something about them, so they rely on the world's best source of information: marketing materials!

Playing D&D is like drinking bud light or being straight: things that seem alright until you try better options.

Skill expression is not limited to planning ahead in detail, as I already pointed out.

Unless you unironically think that "not forgetting to say 'I look up'" is a skill, how, exactly, skill expression in D&D looks like? What separates an untouchable god gamer that wins 100% of the time from a mere mortal who just understood the rules the other day?

There's no skill involved in execution, as you're just rolling dice.
There's no skill in character optimization, as you just build the most generalist character, instead of tailoring your build to counter a specific threat.
There's no skill in combat, as you can't predict the opponent's next move or entrap them to do exactly what you want.

I'm failing to see where all this cool nail-biting engaging gameplay that makes people sweat lies.

 

[SteveC]

I don't think this gets said enough: thanks for posting these thought/discussion provoking threads. They are much appreciated.

 

[mamba]

Well, Snarf @ ed me.

well, that turned out to be a regrettable mistake

Unless you unironically think that "not forgetting to say 'I look up'" is a skill, how, exactly, skill expression in D&D looks like?

in building a char that is universally useful. In your example you prepare the char for exactly one scenario which you know the details of ahead of time. In mine you try to be prepared for whatever is getting thrown at you that you do not know beforehand.

I do not see the former requiring more skill.

What separates an untouchable god gamer that wins 100% of the time from a mere mortal who just understood the rules the other day?

the same thing it does in your scenario, how well the char is adapted for what they encounter. How well they can deal with the unexpected, roll with the punches, think on their feet and make the best of any given situation.

The difference is they did not plan it to death and can cope with changes, while your one-trick pony falls apart in that situation.

There's no skill involved in execution, as you're just rolling dice.

if you think D&D is just rolling dice, then I do not know what to tell you. I might as well say wargaming is just moving miniatures around.

There's no skill in character optimization, as you just build the most generalist character, instead of tailoring your build to counter a specific threat.

yeah, because building a universally useful char requires less skill than building one that is good at throwing fireballs around…

There's no skill in combat, as you can't predict the opponent's next move or entrap them to do exactly what you want.

you are seeing this through the lens of wargaming. I might as well say where is the skill in a combat where you know what the enemy will do.

All you do is solve a trivial math equation and call it gaming

I'm failing to see where all this cool nail-biting engaging gameplay that makes people sweat lies.

I see that

 

[Iosue]

A super God-tier D&D gamer would

• be able build a wide variety of characters adaptable to any party and most situations encountered in the game
• have an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules, to aid the DM and other players in resolving procedures
• understand the tropes and style of a DM’s game and play accordingly
• be an ace at improv for character interactions
• come up with imaginative uses of abilities, equipment, and environment
• know when to let others have the spotlight

Because D&D is a cooperative social game, skill is displayed not merely in surmounting the challenges proffered by the DM, but in enhancing the experience for the other players, through multiple facets of the game.

 

[overgeeked]

have an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules, to aid the DM and other players in resolving procedures

Nice list. I like all of them except this one. I’ve found that rules knowledge leads to rules lawyers and rules arguments more often than aiding play.

The only rules the players need is whatever character creation the referee is using and to roll the dice the referee tells them, when the referee tells them to roll. The players don’t need any more than that.

As an example, that’s exactly how the early players did it. No one at Arneson’s table had a copy of the rules. And when D&D was finally published and the players bought the books thinking they’d finally know the rules, Dave laughed and told them they weren’t using those rules.

 

[mamba]

Am I the only one who finds it irritating that quotes disappear when the OP deletes their post? Or is that them hiding their content from me?

 

[Iosue]

Nice list. I like all of them except this one. I’ve found that rules knowledge leads to rules lawyers and rules arguments more often than aiding play.

Well, it’s a list of skills possible in a perfectly spherical D&D player, not necessary conditions to be a good player. Most folks only achieve high levels in a few of these skills. IMXP, though, I’ve benefited as a DM from having players well-versed in the rules. Rules lawyers tend to be rules knowledgeable, but not all rule knowledgeable players are rules lawyers.

 

[niklinna]

Pretty much none of RPGs feel like games to me, as RPGs, are, by their nature, impossible to replay. There's no way I can end up in the exact same scenario I was before to see whether a different option would yield different results.

Sure there is. You can rewind to the exact point you wanted and make a different choice and see what happens. Just like with saves on computer RPGs. It's just that, for some reason, nobody ever seems to do it.

 

[pemerton]

As to Forge, this is the other extreme I am not interested in, I am not interested in playing the equivalent of telling a story around a campfire.

From this, I infer that you have never played Apocalypse World or Burning Wheel.

 

[kenada]

While, yes, the first thing I imagine when thinking about "player skill" is hitting railgun shots at supersonic speeds, the first example I lead with was a tabletop wargame -- Warhammer 40000.

A good Warhammer player,

• Before the game: leverages their knowledge of other armies and current meta to build a competitive roster
• During the game: leverages their knowledge of opponent's units and their rules to gain every possible advantage and win the game
• After the game: reviews performance and learns lessons

All of which are venues for skill expression.

In a team tournament (which used to be the main competitive format back in my days, but I haven't touched the game in half a decade now), there's also skill expression in captain's job of securing favourable match ups, building a well-rounded team that can handle any challenge, knowing what positions to give up, all that.

All of this would be completely impossible if all the participants didn't know exactly what their opponents can bring to the table. You can't really play Warhammer when someone can just decide to pull a new mini outta their backside or when you don't know how many shots a gravigun makes.

The Information Gathering phase in Blades in the Dark seems to do what you’re saying here. If one does it well, you’re using it to establish facts about the score that you can exploit to your advantage.

In our last one in @Manbearcat’s game, we were hired to assassinate the former head of the watch. During the course of our information gathering, we established the target was hiding at his mansion in one of two safe rooms. We had schematics for one way into the place, and we also learned he had a carriage he used to travel. We considered sending a bomb up the dumbwaiter revealed by the plans, but we decided instead to pull strings with Cabbies (a +3 ally) to have the carriage called in for service. Since there’s a threat on the former head’s life, we were able to leverage our relationship with the Blue Coats (another +3 ally) to set up checkpoints where I could rig it up with a small (tier 7) bomb after it had been inspected but before the driver was done dealing with the guards.

This put us in a very strong position for the attempt on our target because: it created a distraction for the frontal assault team, it took out a chunk of the target’s high-tier defenses (a tier 5 squad), and it gave the other team easy access to the back of the compound (since it was literally blown wide open). The actual assault wasn’t easy (though I somehow came out of it with very little stress and harm), but I think it would have considerably more dangerous if we hadn’t pushed our strengths and advantages like we did. We had a lot of allies, and those relationships proved very valuable.

I know you’ve said before that you don’t consider Blades as much of a game because you can’t say you’ve gotten better at it (e.g., here), but I’ve played with another group who didn’t push the system like we did in the game we just finished. This group that just finished only had one failed score out of 70 or so, and @Manbearcat definitely didn’t go easy on us. If we had played like that other group, we definitely would have done worse, especially when we punched up at some pretty nasty targets (like when we killed Lord Scurlock or took out a higher tier cult we discovered out in the Deathlands).

To bring things back around to D&D, I think a more robust information gathering procedure could fill in the knowledge gaps. That would allow a skilled group to find out about the opposition and plan an effective strategy against it. Traditionally, D&D does already provide for gathering information, but it seems like that information is typically oriented towards providing the PCs with clues and hooks to advance the adventure rather than for providing details you can leverage into an advantage. I think you’d need to make sure the kind of information that can really be exploited is obtainable (even if it requires some work) and not hidden away behind difficult or impossible DCs.

 

[Umbran]

Am I the only one who finds it irritating that quotes disappear when the OP deletes their post? Or is that them hiding their content from me?

Mod Note:

When you have made yourself sufficiently unpleasant to someone, they may use the Ignore/Block function, and that would be the result.

 

[mamba]

Mod Note:

When you have made yourself sufficiently unpleasant to someone, they may use the Ignore/Block function, and that would be the result.

I kinda expected that to result in them not seeing my posts, not the other way around.

 

[Umbran]

I kinda expected that to result in them not seeing my posts, not the other way around.

Mod Note:
Moderation posts are not an initiation to discussion - quite the opposite, in fact. If you want to talk about how Ignore/Block works, or if you ever have question or comment on moderation posts, please take it to PMs with any member of the moderation staff, and let the discussion continue without the derailment. Thanks.

 

[Clint_L]

Well, Snarf @ ed me.


Nah, it easily can be.

If there was, well, actually engaging gameplay (like in 4E or, better, Strike!) and tight rules on encounter creation, instead of mere "guidelines", it would work.

Like, yeah, it wouldn't be a storytelling game (as outcomes are decided by the effectiveness of players' actions, rather than necessities of the story), but D&D isn't even remotely a storytelling game anyway.


I assume most people don't care enough about RPGs to actually learn something about them, so they rely on the world's best source of information: marketing materials!

Playing D&D is like drinking bud light or being straight: things that seem alright until you try better options.

I generally reject the "people who disagree with me must be ignorant" argument. It is usually a sign that I need to look more closely at my own assumptions. Is it possible that I am wrong, or that there is another perspective that, while I disagree with it, could still be valid? When it is a large number of people who disagree with me, I try to keep an open mind.

Your claim that D&D is "not remotely a storytelling game" seems very hyperbolic. When I DM, I prepare various story elements of setting, plot, characters, etc. Players narrate what they do, making choices that alter the direction of the story, sometimes in completely unexpected ways. Dice rolls similarly add new elements to the story, so that both they and I have to improvise. At the end, a story has definitely happened, and we usually have a great time. Often, it is hilarious or exciting. Occasionally it is sad, stressful, or frustrating. These are definitely stories in the way I normally use the term.

I don't understand how you can claim otherwise, unless you are using a very idiosyncratic definition of the word "story." Perhaps I am misunderstanding your point. What would be an example of a game that is a storytelling game?

 

[loverdrive]

Players narrate what they do, making choices that alter the direction of the story, sometimes in completely unexpected ways. Dice rolls similarly add new elements to the story, so that both they and I have to improvise. At the end, a story has definitely happened, and we usually have a great time.

All activities produce stories, that is just a natural byproduct of events happening in a sequential order.

Yesterday, I played Team Fortress, I flirted with this girl playing Soldier, and then I popped kritz on her and she bathed me in the blood of the enemy team. Story! Or, in-universe: yesterday, a group of 12 mercenaries hired by Builders League United took control of a gravel processing plant in the New Mexico desert with minimal casualties, soldier Jane Doe (callsign "♡Diana♡") and known war criminal Fritz Ludwig (callsign "Alice can't hit pipes") earned commendation medals from the corporation. Story!

OK, I know I'm being cheeky. But in, say, Warhammer, people been writing, uhm, literary (?) battle reports where unit movements and shootouts are woven into narrative since before my ma even decided she wanted a kid, but calling Warhammer a storytelling game would be lunacy.

D&D isn't a storytelling game because it provides no tools and no incentive to engage with Shared Imaginary Space through the lens of storytelling, and the rules themselves don't act as such a lens either.

What would be an example of a game that is a storytelling game?

The best storytelling game I know of is probably Daniil Shipaev's MUJIK IS DEAD. It directly provides prompts for situations (like "Falling in love" or "Money problems"), and the players purposefully weave a tragic story of suffering and misery. One player takes on the role of the titular Mujik (translated: rough, tough, "real" man), the others are playing as his destructive drives. At the start of each scene, a random prompt is chosen and Mujik describes the situation, the other players tell what they think should happen next, they all roll dice and the winner narrates the outcome.

The story isn't just a byproduct of the gameplay, it is the gameplay. The dice are rolled not to determine success or failure, but to decide who has narrative authority.

A more mainstream example would be Fate, where

1. The players can directly declare facts using Fate points (like "I'm a *Seasoned Explorer, so of course I find a secret passage here, hidden behind a loose brick wall") and gain Fate points if the fact is detrimental (like "I'm a *Wanted Fugitive, so of course our contact will recognize my face").
2. Storytelling concepts, like genre, tone, tropes can be codified directly into aspects, and leveraged in the same way. Your game being an *Amateur neo-noir webseries, or your character being a *Designated Love Interest are all part of the mechanics, and players can and should leverage them.
3. Most importantly, players have an option to back out of pretty much any situation, so they can safely raise stakes and create trouble.

An example of a game where rules act as a storytelling lens would be Horror Movie World (or Dread that you've mentioned upthread): the rules are specifically designed to replicate slasher flicks, where a colorful cast gets picked off one by one, being competent is the easiest way to die, all that.

 

[SteveC]

Sure there is. You can rewind to the exact point you wanted and make a different choice and see what happens. Just like with saves on computer RPGs. It's just that, for some reason, nobody ever seems to do it.

That's not really true. The Pathfinder games from Owlcat have people who've done dozens of playthroughs on them to see different things. I am amazed that people have that much time! Similarly, Pillars of Eternity and the Divinity games are quite similar. There are people who talk about playing the first Act of Divinity II multiple times.

It's been my experience that a game with branching paths and different outcomes creates this sort of interest.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That is one way of looking at it, for sure, but the question remains: why do so many players enjoy that kind of play? They could be saying, "nope, this takes way too long and everything moves so goddamn slow." But they're not. They are voting with their time and money in support of that style of RPG.

Thus my speculation above: the complicated rules, coupled with gradual level progression and randomization (e.g. dice) - what I think Snarf is calling the "crunchy gaminess" - are features rather than a flaws.

Well, the simple answer is that appropriate pace is in the eye of the beholder, but beyond that, the question can turn on "What is worth taking up time in a game?" Different people are going to have different ideas of that, and thus, what is appropriate or not to remove to make a game move faster. I'm on record as saying for my purposes a lot of fast-moving and lighter games are overly-schematic in design; they lack the tools to give me part of the play experience I'm there for (and to make it clear, this is not specifically a trad game/other game bifurcation, as I felt that way about OD&D many years ago).

 

[niklinna]

That's not really true. The Pathfinder games from Owlcat have people who've done dozens of playthroughs on them to see different things. I am amazed that people have that much time! Similarly, Pillars of Eternity and the Divinity games are quite similar. There are people who talk about playing the first Act of Divinity II multiple times.

It's been my experience that a game with branching paths and different outcomes creates this sort of interest.

Those are computer games, and therefore they are exactly examples of what I pointed out as possible to do in TTRPGs, but which nobody seems to do.

 

[mamba]

Those are computer games, and therefore they are exactly examples of what I pointed out as possible to do in TTRPGs, but which nobody seems to do.

so you are saying if the fight against the dragon goes wrong, the party rewinds back to when they entered its lair and tries again?

Yeah, in theory that could be done, but then the DM could also just decide that the dragon hit its head so hard that it falls unconscious as things start to go wrong for the party.

Cheating when you are the only player (CRPG) is easier than if there is a group… the reason it is not being done imo is that you want to simulate ‘reality’ in your TTRPG while rewinding to checkpoints is the very opposite of that

 

[Pedantic]

To bring things back around to D&D, I think a more robust information gathering procedure could fill in the knowledge gaps. That would allow a skilled group to find out about the opposition and plan an effective strategy against it. Traditionally, D&D does already provide for gathering information, but it seems like that information is typically oriented towards providing the PCs with clues and hooks to advance the adventure rather than for providing details you can leverage into an advantage. I think you’d need to make sure the kind of information that can really be exploited is obtainable (even if it requires some work) and not hidden away behind difficult or impossible DCs.

I definitely agree here. Particularly for monster capabilities, a robust knowledge/monster lore system, that includes signs/information that can be derived before engaging in direct combat and the ability to deduce monster abilities/statistics in combat should be robustly included in the base game.