How Dragonbane Pointed out the Clashing Desires of My Gaming Group

[Edgar Ironpelt]

Oh no! That's the one system I've sworn I'd never run again. Not even for a hearty handshake and a "job well done."

I'm your opposite number there. I run 3.5e when I run D&D and for me it's the sweet spot of the D&D editions, or at least can be made into one with heavy curating of the options and some judicious house rules.

When 4e came out, I looked and said "Nope!" and likewise "Nope!" to PF, 5e, and 5e++ And I'm not going back to any of the earlier (A)D&D editions.

As a thought, it sounds to me like some - not all, probably not most, but some - of your troubles are due to the PCs starting as starting characters, as green-as-grass newbies who are not quite competent yet.

I do have some sympathy toward your players. My preferences aren't as extreme as theirs, but I did find myself nodding at certain points.

I wouldn't want to have to make survival rolls to camp in the wilderness - I'd want an auto-success, unless something has gone very wrong, or unless my character is completely untrained and inexperienced at camping, in which case having to camp at all "in the heat of an adventure" means that something has gone very wrong.

And I definitely would want a full recharge each day and full HP back after each encounter. Any exceptions would either be RARE occasions where something has gone Horribly Wrong, or else the sort of Hard Fun that I find no fun at all.

On the other hand, I do want a mix of roleplaying, exploration, combat, and other activities, even if I also want that mix to be generous with the combat. So I wouldn't want a game that drops the roleplaying and exploration in favor of a more nearly pure combat game.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

Damn it, that's a great idea. I may have to take advantage of that myself.

Now, the game's cost, which seems to be a lot of people's complaints. But, I'd say most games seem to run between $5-20USD a session, which can make it about $5/hr.

As far as 'obscure systems', now, you see mostly D&D, but you will also see a lot of various editions of WoD. I've seen Amber Diceless, GURPS, a decent amount of CoC - including people running the complete Masks of Nylarhotep.

Before I found the Traveller game I'm in, I played in a few through StartPlaying. The nice thing is, if the game wasn't for me (often a play style difference, or weird mechanical rulings by the GM), you're absolutely free to keep it movin' and leave the game - I find THAT'S pretty nice for avoiding what OP is talking about with a friend-group.

 

[Retreater]

Honestly it sounds like they just want 5e with a combat fest. Why not that? You don't want it to be TOO tactical so that rules out PF and 3/3.5, so that leaves 5e.

Hell D&D 2024 is even closer to what they want now.

I wouldn't listen to the BS list of perfect game qualities, all of that is wishful thinking and trying to fool themselves. Go with what you see them responding to.

I haven't had great luck with 5e because I haven't been able to figure out how to make combats exciting or how to award treasure properly. Also, the more tactical-minded players (such as my wife - who is the biggest proponent of games like 4E and PF2) get bored with the lack of combat options. I'm hesitant to get into 2024 because all we have is the PHB - and that doesn't offer the help I need to DM.

This might be able to be managed by utilizing more 3PP sources I now have. Throw in the occasional boss fight with solo and minion monster rules from Matt Colville's Flee Mortals. Use the magic item costs and offer martial maneuvers from Level Up. Find a good third party adventure since we've been through all the official WotC ones that interested us.

This might make it workable for me to run 5e. I'm still not interested in running a complete "combat fest" - nor do I think the other like-minded player would enjoy it. If I don't get to do some world building, roleplaying, etc., I end up feeling like a guy who is just there to provide a good time for players, just like a CPU running computations.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Just weird. I'm happy to play anything a GM feels like running. I've played rules-lite games, crunchy games, indie games, mass-market games. It'll be fun, whatever. I can't even imagine whining about how the system isn't tailored to me.

When it comes down to it, the people are more important than the system. That's just the medium.

This was really apparent to me recently when I went to a local convention and played Dragonbane, Blade Runner, D&D 2014, Shadowdark, and Pirate Borg in like a 48 hour period. When one squints, they're basically the same sort of thing. A GM spells out a situation and the players navigate it with whatever tools the RPG decides to focus on whether it's d20 roll under, d20 + modifier versus a DC, some sort of dice pool, or whatever. It sort of didn't matter. We sat around a table for two to four hours and shared a story.

 

[Retreater]

I'm your opposite number there. I run 3.5e when I run D&D and for me it's the sweet spot of the D&D editions, or at least can be made into one with heavy curating of the options and some judicious house rules.

3.5/PF1 was just too much. Too many bonuses of different types. Too many action types. Too many ongoing effects. Diagonal movement turning every round into counting squares like a game of checkers. Grappling. Feats. Multiclass and Prestige class. Monster statblocks that took up multiple pages, and you'd still need need to look up their spell descriptions in other books. Attacks of Opportunity were pretty complex.
More power to you if you like 3.5 - I just can't do it anymore.

I wouldn't want to have to make survival rolls to camp in the wilderness - I'd want an auto-success, unless something has gone very wrong, or unless my character is completely untrained and inexperienced at camping, in which case having to camp at all "in the heat of an adventure" means that something has gone very wrong.

And I definitely would want a full recharge each day and full HP back after each encounter. Any exceptions would either be RARE occasions where something has gone Horribly Wrong, or else the sort of Hard Fun that I find no fun at all.

On the other hand, I do want a mix of roleplaying, exploration, combat, and other activities, even if I also want that mix to be generous with the combat. So I wouldn't want a game that drops the roleplaying and exploration in favor of a more nearly pure combat game.

I do understand that. There seems to be an idea in more modern gaming that the only challenge to a group is when the Initiative die is rolled and ends after the combat is over. That puts 100% of the job on the encounter balance to provide all the threat - to be just enough to make the characters use N% of their resources but not die - because that's really the only cost you can put in a combat.
If you don't have a full heal-up, you can have attrition. You can have pressure besides just what happens between initiative rolls.
If you have dwindling resources - rations in the wilderness or torches in the cave - that is additional pressure that isn't just HP loss in a single combat. (In Lord of the Rings, do they run low on food/arrows? In Die Hard, does he have to scrounge for gear and fight while injured? Yes to both. This stuff is also high adventure.)
I think this is ultimately what I wanted with Dragonbane. In 4E I was responsible for balancing every fight, making every aspect utterly thrilling with a variety of aspects, dynamic monsters used to tactical perfection. The perfect placement of traps and hazardous terrain that makes the field of battle spring to life like an opponent itself.
No one gave a darn about political stakes, about the story of the world, about forging alliances with different factions, of achieving personal goals. It was 100% on me to basically be a Baldur's Gate designer to create interesting battles every week.

 

[Retreater]

This was really apparent to me recently when I went to a local convention and played Dragonbane, Blade Runner, D&D 2014, Shadowdark, and Pirate Borg in like a 48 hour period. When one squints, they're basically the same sort of thing. A GM spells out a situation and the players navigate it with whatever tools the RPG decides to focus on whether it's d20 roll under, d20 + modifier versus a DC, some sort of dice pool, or whatever. It sort of didn't matter. We sat around a table for two to four hours and shared a story.

It's great when people can find love of the hobby in general.
In my case, it's like I'm hanging out with folks who claim to be Star Wars fans who like only the theatrical releases of the original trilogy, hate all the Expanded Universe with the exception of the Thrawn Trilogy, despise the prequels, sequels, and Clone Wars, like only 3 episodes of the 1st season of the Mandalorian, and the Bea Arthur musical number of the Holiday Special.
Makes you wonder if they're gaming fans at all.

 

[R_J_K75]

I'm hesitant to get into 2024 because all we have is the PHB - and that doesn't offer the help I need to DM.

Kind of off topic but since you mentioned it, I'm going to add something. I'm not planning on investing in 5E 2024 either but all I have seen are reviews of the new PHB. I'm curious to see reviews from people who have actually played the game, not just read the books, once all 3 books are out. Unlikely, but if the reviews lean mostly towards its a better game and plays better, my friend may buy it so we can try it.

 

[Retreater]

Kind of off topic but since you mentioned it, I'm going to add something. I'm not planning on investing in 5E 2024 either but all I have seen are reviews of the new PHB. I'm curious to see reviews from people who have actually played the game, not just read the books, once all 3 books are out. Unlikely, but if the reviews lean mostly towards its a better game and plays better, my friend may buy it so we can try it.

Yeah it's hard to tell at this stage. I'll definitely take a look at that SRD when it's all released.
I have a feeling that I already have a better version of 5E for me without waiting until 2025. I own hard copies of Level Up and Flee Mortals. I have PDFs of a lot of Sly Flourish stuff I can use.
Again, I'm coming from a background of having purchased and studied a lot of new systems in a vain attempt to find the "perfect" game. It's time to focus on what I already have for a bit.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I’ve long struggled trying to find the “perfect” system for my group, as evidenced in my Post-Mortems about various 5E campaigns, Savage Worlds Holler, the recent 8-month campaign in 4E, and a series of indie one-shots including Dread, Monster of the Week, and Alice is Missing. Finally, I decided that there isn't a "perfect" system - but that we should switch it up to appeal to everyone in the group, players and GM alike.

The 5E and 4E games were especially taxing on me. Finally, I was asked “what would you like to run?” I created a spreadsheet of all my available systems to try to maximize what I wanted, which would be a departure from the very tactical experience of 4E, which would allow me and the player who had felt a little neglected on the story/roleplaying/exploration fronts, which still wouldn’t be as deadly as many OSR systems, which still had some character customization, thrilling battles, still in print, etc.

After pondering this for over a month, I picked Dragonbane, which was a system I’d played a handful of times. I thought it would be good for myself and the one player who likes the story/roleplaying/exploration angle, and the other players who like more of a “beer and pretzels” style game. I created a campaign notebook to detail the characters, their motivations. Took notes about the NPCs and the quests. This was going to be my first campaign in years that would “matter.”

In our first session we had a dangerous fight, some wilderness survival, roleplaying in the town, meeting NPCs, shopping, picking up quests, etc. It was a very typical fantasy RPG session for a first session of a campaign. After the conclusion, I asked the players how they thought it went, and here are some of the responses…

• didn’t like tracking inventory
• didn't like rolling a survival check to camp in the wilderness
• thought their turns were boring ("all I did one round was roll to defend")
• characters felt “puny”
• didn't like that boss monsters played by different rules
• didn't like random character creation
• didn't like inventory slots
• complaints that there was roleplaying
• complaints there was exploration
• didn't like card initiative
• didn’t like that it used the metric system (even when I converted it to “squares” for them)
• didn’t like not getting all their HP back every day
• didn’t like pushing their rolls and getting disadvantage conditions on future ability checks
• didn’t like that they couldn’t roll to tell when an NPC was hiding a secret (even when I basically just told them that was the case)
• didn’t like that they wouldn’t be getting levels (it’s a skill-based game, not class-based)
• “I get bored when there’s not fighting. But you can let other people roleplay and explore.”
• I was asked “what made you think we’d actually like this game?”

So, I have one player and myself who prefer this style of gaming and two other players who honestly should be playing Gloomhaven. However, the “Gloomhaven” group consists of my wife – whom I obviously can’t kick out of the group – and my neighbor who brought the more story-driven player to the group and probably wouldn’t want to be uninvited.

Just to distill what they want…

• No real roleplaying stakes or exploration
• Interesting tactical combat that isn’t actually threatening
• Full HP and power recharge between battles
• Can’t be a miniatures wargame because it needs to be fought in squares – not measuring tape (my wife’s specification)
• Handwave all tracking of resources, including rations, torches, arrows, etc.

Anyways, when I post about being in a bad mood about gaming on here, this is why. Just the utter crushing feeling of running games for people who hate my concept of RPGs and don’t even appreciate when I suffer for months to run the games they prefer (like the 8-month 4E campaign). They won’t run them – and even if they did – I wouldn’t want to play them.

Holy Moses man. It’s not you.

 

[Aldarc]

(Most of) your players are jerks. Don’t waste your time on them. Take the one non-jerk and start a new group.