In Defence of D&D: The "Good Enough" System

[Bedrockgames]

The issue is there are a range of tastes out there but people need to play the game as a group. It is a bit like creating the right coffee to serve to a 5 people with different preferences for strength, bitterness, acidity, etc. In order to succeed you have to compromise and brew a pot of coffee everyone can live with. This is the position the designers are in right now. If they create a system designed to suit a specific taste again (like 4E) they will just further fragment the base.

 

[Wightbred]

Thanks guys!

There is a metric ton of mind fuel in this thread so far. After all I can't recall ever hearing anyone talk about fixing chess.

I just wish I had something clever or witty to add to it.

I think this is clever: chess is the perfect analogy for "good enough" and 5e.

Many of people do try to improve chess with rules variations with minor rules variation or even 3D. But these people understand (in my experience) that their variety is unique and the base "good enough" chess is the core that makes their unique game easy to explain. The base chess is also what they can play quickly and easily without explanation when they sit down with others for an ad-hoc game.

This is what I want from 5e. A "good enough" base that we all agree on that we can build our own specific rules systems on top off. Adding "3D" minis rules to D&D should be like adding 3D to chess: it doesn't change the core moves that we can play together at the drop of the hat, but at home I can quickly explain and play on my funky 3D board with my friends.

 

[steenan]

I don't have time for playing "good enough" games nor money for buying them. Either a game is very good in what it does, or I'm not interested. That's why I play many different games - they are good at different things and I like mixing different styles.

I'm all for a modular game that my group may tune to work perfectly for our needs. But if the cost is leaving it unfocused and not supporting any style coherently, we'll just play something else.

 

[Bluenose]

This idea that other systems are objectively better is interesting to me, because I've tried a couple other RPG systems in my time, and I always come back to D&D (and now Pathfinder)--not because of the size of the fanbase, or even because of the quality of the support materials, but because I just like the mechanics better.

Classes, Races, 6 attributes, AC, hp, levels, alignment, d20+x, house rules--all the stuff that makes D&D D&D--I love that stuff.

I know everyone likes and dislikes D&D's (any edition) mechanics to varying degrees, and I'm not claiming that its the best game out there, just that its the best game for me. But all that said, I'd love to hear what specific mechanics in other RPG systems you and other folks think are objectively better?

Demonstrably, characters involved in "The Matter of Britain" medieval tales perform actions more effectively when they are inspired by something that really matters to them. This is reflected in the rules of Pendragon by invoking Passions and sometimes Traits. If you wish a game to evoke the feel of "The Matter of Britain" as expressed in those tales, your rules should reflect this. D&D rules do not. Thus, if genre emulation is your goal, Pendragon is objectively better at handling "The Matter of Britain."

Glorantha is a world where magic is present nearly everywhere, where a farmer performs a magical ritual before ploughing a field to make the ploughing work better and a warrior going into battle might suddenly end up channeling the spirit of one of his ancestors and going berserk. Except that magic isn't reliable, you can't depend on it. Runequest in it's various editions reflects that. D&D does not. If you want a game to simulate Glorantha, D&D is objectively worse at it than Runequest.

I don't have time for playing "good enough" games nor money for buying them. Either a game is very good in what it does, or I'm not interested. That's why I play many different games - they are good at different things and I like mixing different styles.

I'm all for a modular game that my group may tune to work perfectly for our needs. But if the cost is leaving it unfocused and not supporting any style coherently, we'll just play something else.

Yes, this is my feeling on the subject. Games written to do specific things or to play a particular way often do that better (often, as some are just badly done) than a game written to do nothing in particular, even if that game has various add-ons that supposedly make it capable of handling a wide range of subjects.

 

[Hassassin]

I don't have time for playing "good enough" games nor money for buying them. Either a game is very good in what it does, or I'm not interested.

But isn't "good enough" by definition good enough for you to be interested?

 

[Raith5]

I love 4th ed but I agree with the OP.

I have played all the editions of D and D, and I think that 4th is significantly the best system I have played. Because it tried a few new things and addressed things that were (IMO) clear as daylight problems with 3rd edition (which I also think was good when I played it) - problems of the shortened adventuring day, casters being a touch too strong, boring fighters etc.

But I think the OP is right when he says that one style of play was prioritized - despite the fact that there were non-combat innovations in 4th ed - especially skill challenges and some utility powers.

But 4th ed has to be seen in the context of its time - fear of aging demographic, the lure of a market of those who play WOW and other computer games, the drive to have online play, the longing desire to be legolas. In doing so WOTC were driven by a hypothetical market rather than the existing market.

The clearest evidence that WOTC has reversed this is that existing players are involved in the design of the game (compared with 4th ed). Whehter this produces a common deminitor or baseline of play remains to be seen. As others have said, the drive for modularity enables a wider margin of error in that respect.

 

[MrGrenadine]

Demonstrably, characters involved in "The Matter of Britain" medieval tales perform actions more effectively when they are inspired by something that really matters to them. This is reflected in the rules of Pendragon by invoking Passions and sometimes Traits. If you wish a game to evoke the feel of "The Matter of Britain" as expressed in those tales, your rules should reflect this. D&D rules do not. Thus, if genre emulation is your goal, Pendragon is objectively better at handling "The Matter of Britain."

Glorantha is a world where magic is present nearly everywhere, where a farmer performs a magical ritual before ploughing a field to make the ploughing work better and a warrior going into battle might suddenly end up channeling the spirit of one of his ancestors and going berserk. Except that magic isn't reliable, you can't depend on it. Runequest in it's various editions reflects that. D&D does not. If you want a game to simulate Glorantha, D&D is objectively worse at it than Runequest.

Not to be argumentative, because those sound like great games, but I was looking more for what kind of mechanics folks thought were objectively better in other systems. Your examples both seem to hinge on your preferred play style for "Matter of Britain" games and campaigns set in Glorantha, and how that preferred play style is supported by Pendragon or Runequest.

As for me, I wouldn't agree that dealing with "Passions" and "Traits" is objectively better than just RP-ing those moments.

 

[darjr]

I think this is spot on.

There is a part of me that doesn't like it, darn it I want the game that's perfect for me. But that game could be different depending upon my mood or who I'm playing with or my experience.

Good enough to get a group and have a good time. Yes.

 

[Umbran]

Anyways, simply put, 3E was not "good enough". Neither is 4E, for that matter. I think there are tons of fans who feel that way.

Which brings me to a note I've seen as more and more true these days: we, collectively, are too darned picky. So picky, that we make perfect the enemy of good.

By that, I mean that we will trash something that is good, and would be fun to play, because isn't *exactly* what we want. We are frequently unwilling to compromise, bend, or consider things outside of our personal ideal cases as worthy of time or attention. That makes it darned hard to create games for us.

We rarely look at a game and think about what we can do within it's scope - we generally first think of what we want to do, then look at how we need to change the scope of the game to fit that, and find the need to change as a fault in the game, rather than in our preconceived specifications.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Which brings me to a note I've seen as more and more true these days: we, collectively, are too darned picky. So picky, that we make perfect the enemy of good.

By that, I mean that we will trash something that is good, and would be fun to play, because isn't *exactly* what we want. We are frequently unwilling to compromise, bend, or consider things outside of our personal ideal cases as worthy of time or attention. That makes it darned hard to create games for us.

We rarely look at a game and think about what we can do within it's scope - we generally first think of what we want to do, then look at how we need to change the scope of the game to fit that, and find the need to change as a fault in the game, rather than in our preconceived specifications.

Because this quoted me, it feels a bit like a sideways insult, to be honest...

Personally, I don't think being picky or being unwilling to compromise has anything to do with complaints that 3E or 4E are not good enough. The simple truth is that 3E and 4E have all kinds of clear complaints you can make about them. They have obvious, glaring flaws. Discussion about those games always leads back to those flaws not because people have different styles or because they are picky, but because they really are genuine problems that could stand to be improved. Good games simply don't have those kinds of issues.

There are plenty of good games out there. There are plenty of games that I'm perfectly willing to approach for what they are, rather than what I want them to be. But I'm not willing to put up with what is essentially a poorly designed game, and that is what D&D has been for the last few editions (Or maybe every edition. I wouldn't know since I haven't played the older ones).