Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="doctorbadwolf" data-source="post: 8316586" data-attributes="member: 6704184">Informal voting, basically. We eventually developed a cyclical method of running NPCs in combat and social skill challenges, that would have applied had we run into this problem more than we did. When your turn is done, you take on most of the job of running NPCs until the next PCs turn. We evenly spaced PCs and NPCs based on initiative, so about the same number of NPCs go between any two PC turns, and that order stands throughout a scene even if a combat switches to a skill challenge or vice versa. That is generally the cost of open ended flexibility, sure. Just like PC gaming vs console gaming, for instance. IMO you’d get even better results by taking some specific elements of pbta games and adding them to the D&D game, but I suspect it will end up being a situstion where the D&D model works better for established groups (as a lot of trust based dynamics do), while the pbta model will be easier to pick and and play without  extensive instructions. Then again we played MoTW wrong at first, because we didn’t fully read the play guidance. It was still very very fun, however. So much so that my own TTRPG has moved a bit more toward a pbta model in some aspects. Okay, I won’t go point by point on that, but you raise some interesting points. I’m going to address the thrust of the above as best I can while be a distractible rambler.   Gunslinger’s Creed! The weird west TTRPG of gunfights, broken dreams, and love won and lost!  I’d play it, either way system, first of all. Okay, so, I like D&D combat for shootouts, but I’d model duels using the basic structure of the cleverly hidden 5e skill challenge. Downtime activities! Using specifically Crime as my model, I’ll do a rough sketch of how I’d approach this.  Establish stakes for a total loss, mixed result, and total victory. Next prescribe 1 -  3 proficiencies, possibly letting the player choose from a list, using each proficiency only once. The DC is determined by the skill of the opponent, either in opposed checks, or giving each NPC a Gunfighting DC based on their proficiency bonus, and how many relevant proficiencies they have. Crime just has three DC options the player can select from by choosing a small, moderate, or big, score, but I’d want it more dynamic. Other activities in Xanathar’s have a modifier that you add to a 2d10 roll to determine the DC.   Regardless, you’d have variable DCs, but the player would be able to find out how hard the DC will be by either observing the opponent in a fight, or by making an Insight or Investigation check while interacting with them socially. Being hard to read, being good at sizing up someone you may have to fight, etc, is a big deal in these kinds of stories. You could break this down into multiple checks with variable success, if you want to emphasize it more.   On consequences and stakes, I’d definitely advise making them transparent in general, along with how difficulty works, etc. Ironically, perhaps, I always advise making this stuff transparent and reliable, even prescribed, in the context of a group and campaign. I just like to be able to change it to better fit the campaign, adventure, etc. but my players know what they can do and how hard it will be. Any given adventure I run is quite focused, but the campaign, much less all my campaigns taken together, are very very varied.  Anyway, consequences would probably range from a clean victory, to getting taken down, to a middle state where you can either take an injury to win, or neither get a good hit and transition into a gunfight, or neither gets hit and sue for calling the duel a draw.   In general, I find a lot of the statements you’ve made as to why “will inevitably happen or result from a thing” or what can’t be achieved, etc, to be fairly confusing. I may go back and collect them all at a later time, and use them to start a separate discussion about D&D specifically (rather than comparatively) if you’re okay with that?You don’t feel the tension your character feels in D&D?  No matter how it’s run? Is it possible for you to believe that other people do?Okay, but even if we just accept all this without challenge, how does that make a game based on applying these principles to a specific genre not more focused than 5e D&D?   And again, why is it a bad thing to be more focused? I see 5e derided all the time for lacking focus, particularly in comparison to games like blades or AW. People who are really into those games often say that D&D doesn't know what it wants to be, and site all kinds of focused mechanics to bring about a specific intended play experience, and claim that 5e D&D has nothing like that.   Before this thread and the last one, I’d never seen anyone treat focus as a bad thing, or suggest that 5e was as focused as the other games.</blockquote>

Verification