D&D 5E Indifying 5e

[The Crimson Binome]

That's a bit odd!

Can I infer from this that you're not very familiar with games like Over the Edge, HeroWars/Quest, Burning Wheel, Dungeon World, Marvel Heroic RP, etc?

Just personally, from my perspective, I draw a line between in-character games where you play a role and everything you do is what your character would do, and games where you are primarily telling a story and the players share narrative control in addition to controlling protagonists in the story.

I know that it's not perfectly cut-and-dried, and (for example) the older editions of D&D gave some narrative control to the players, but it's still clear to me where there's a line between story-telling-games-with-role-play-elements and role-playing-games-with-story-elements. It might be hard for me to explain where that line is, in words, but it's very obvious to me whenever I cross that line.

From what I've heard of them, I would place those games you list into the former category rather than the latter. I don't really have interest in them, because I don't consider them to be role-playing games; they lack the quality which I really care about in an RPG.

 

[Unwise]

In response to the OP, I have done the following little changes mostly stolen from the PDQ system.

1) Bonds etc are replaced with a simple Vice and Virtue. Each PC starts with one of each and can gain another later on through RP in the game. Each time you screw yourself or the party with your vice, you get a use of advantage (or auto-crit if DM feeling kind, or if the Vice really screwed you hard) in accordance with your virtue. E.G. the preacher has "I drink to forget" as his vice, he drinks while he should be on guard duty and fails to see the oncoming ambush. Later on, when preparing an ambush he uses his "Patience to spare" virtue to get an autocrit on his first sniping shot.

2) All skills are turned into statements about your character, or aspects.
So Athletics becomes "I Won a College Football Scholarship".
Medicine might become "I spent a summer volunteering as a nurse in a war torn area".
Persuasion could become "A have a knightly bearing".
Animal handling becomes "I grew up as a cowboy".

Not only do these flesh out the character, they apply more broadly than skills do. So a college jock can use his aspect to intimidate nerds, pick up cheerleaders, party with fratboys, as well as all the stuff you would expect from the athletics skill. The cowboy can play the harmonica, lasso stuff, get on well with country folk and rednecks as well as doing all the herding and shodding and stuff you would expect from animal handling.

This makes for a far more interesting set of characters, as well as allowing people to do the stuff you would expect them to be able to do. It always seems odd that the Folk Hero ranger is worse at talking to country folks than the city slicking poet. A jock should be able to do streetwise on a college campus. A classically trained wizard should know how to use a library and talk to academics.

3) Environmental Abilities - Borrowed from FATE. I am having trouble converting this from my 4e rules. In 4e, each terrain feature could offer a free use of an encounter power based upon it. Its chance to hit would be no less than your normal attack, so as not to discourage cool actions. E.g. The bag of flour would be a 3x3 save vs blinding. Cutting the chandelier might be a 3x3 proning attack. In 4e I had a bank of encounter powers to compare them against to keep things somewhat internally balanced. Given that 5e characters don't have encounter powers of their own, I am struggling to not make these terrain powers always the best option.

 

[aramis erak]

For me, Burning Wheel is indie D&D also.

Once you compare BW to Torchbearer, BW won't seem very D&D-ish.

Torchbearer is Moldvay twisted into BWHQ's general house mechanics, complete with classes and levels. BW itself looks a lot more like RuneQuest than like D&D - Skills only, no classes, use it to raise it...

"Indie D&D" to me is TB. Hands down. Hell, it even mentions D&D.

 

[pemerton]

Once you compare BW to Torchbearer, BW won't seem very D&D-ish.

Torchbearer is Moldvay twisted into BWHQ's general house mechanics, complete with classes and levels. BW itself looks a lot more like RuneQuest than like D&D - Skills only, no classes, use it to raise it...

"Indie D&D" to me is TB. Hands down. Hell, it even mentions D&D.

I don't know Torchbearer very well, but given what I do know of it I'm sure it is closer to Moldvay Basic than BW is.

But Moldvay Basic is only one version of D&D, and even Moldvay Basic isn't monolithic: a lot of us played it not as a skill-based dungeon crawl but in a more "modern" character/plot-oriented style.

I agree that BW has affinity to RQ (and Rolemaster, too), with its skill list and wounds and what-not. But neither of those games appears in the credits, and AD&D 2nd ed (and, in the Adventure Burner, D&D 4e) do. And D&D is also cited in the Magic Burner. The game has wizards, and priests, and elves and dwarves and orcs.

I don't think it's mechanically very D&D, but for me D&D is tropes as much as (maybe more than) mechanics, and BW has these. My current BW game is set in Greyhawk (the middle of the map, with the Wild Coast and Pomarj on the left, the Bright Desert on the right, the ocean below and the City of Greyhawk itself above). The fit is very smooth. (It probably wouldn't be for a world like Forgotten Realms, but AD&D isn't monolithic either.)

 

[Gorgon Zee]

The OP asked for a way to introduce more narrative elements; for that it would be really hard not to think that 13th Age is the game to look at. It pretty much exactly does that -- start with a familiar model, kill the annoying stuff and introduce more narrative/indie elements.

If you want to play a full-on indie fame, then no, that is not what it is. It is specifically designed to be an in-between sort of thing. If you want an all-indie game there are many possibilities, and it really becomes a question of what style of play do you want. The group that loves Mouse Guard may not gel with Apocalypse World and descendants. FATE (recommend FATE:Freeport) might be exactly cool. Hard to say without more info.

But if you want a game that takes a fairly trad system and slants it indie-ward, 13th Age is definitely your first-to-look-at.

 

[Mallus]

More RPGs need to be written in breezy, clever voices.

It would make rule books more pleasurable to read!

I'm not sure Luke Crane's voice counts as breezy, but it's definitely clever, and is an important factor in the quality of the Burning Wheel rulebooks!

I've had Burning Wheel recommended as the replacement go-to system for my group's campaigns more than once. Maybe one day... we were discussing starting a Mouse Guard game. Of course, the first two proposed PCs were "Maus Kinsky" and "Maus Nomi" -- apparently it would be set in 1980s-era West Berlin -- so that might explain why it didn't happen.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

Spells, cleric and fighter abilities that hold the promise of something very cool but often never come to fruition because the natural dice never get there. This happened to my players every single session every single battle and frustrated the crap out of them. The cleric buffs were really bad for this and the fighter player grew frustrated checking which moves he qualified for and then seeing it didn't do anything appropriate or MIGHT help him next round.

This is a bit of advice that it would have been good to have added into the main text: Only a minority of the classes have variable effects based on dice rolls, and if you are the sort of person who wants more control than that, you really should not play those characters. A second bit of advice would be: if you are that sort of person, and you REALLY DO want to play that character, play the half-elf (or just ask the GM to swap your race's ability for the half-elf's). A final piece of advice is: Yeah, it can be annoying at level 1 when you cannot build alternatives and are more dependent on the dice, so take your first increment as a power that allows an alternative so you feel less unhappy.

But generally, the first is the more important: If you, as a player, do not feel comfortable playing a character which might either have a +2 defense or an expanded critical range each round, don't play the fighter. It's a major class feature and even if it's less noticeable at higher levels, you will still be about as happy as 3.5 cleric who hates being the heal-bot.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

Oh, also something that should be noted -- I don't think you need to switch to 13th Age to use a lot of the ideas. I personally way prefer 13th Age, but if you are cool with 5e, you should be able to use a lot of the more indie ideas in your game. Things like montage scenes, One Unique Things, Backgrounds and the powers that are highly open-ended should not be too hard to use -- grab a copy of the book and mark up the parts that seem cool to you and adapt them.

 

[I'm A Banana]

3) Environmental Abilities - Borrowed from FATE. I am having trouble converting this from my 4e rules. In 4e, each terrain feature could offer a free use of an encounter power based upon it. Its chance to hit would be no less than your normal attack, so as not to discourage cool actions. E.g. The bag of flour would be a 3x3 save vs blinding. Cutting the chandelier might be a 3x3 proning attack. In 4e I had a bank of encounter powers to compare them against to keep things somewhat internally balanced. Given that 5e characters don't have encounter powers of their own, I am struggling to not make these terrain powers always the best option.

If you're looking for some advice on how to make them not always the best option, there's a few things you might try.

• Don't give characters their Proficiency bonus on the saves or attack rolls these environmental powers grant. They can still get lucky, but these attacks are less reliable (you might want to set the DC/attack bonus a little high to compensate - it shouldn't be a choice between basically always missing and basically always hititng).
• Have them cost actions, but not deal damage. PC's IMXP are loathe to do much that is not an attack, or that takes the place of their attack. Blind is good, but dead is better, so if you have to choose between the two, blind is not always going to be the clear winner.
• Let them just be better. if what you want is a lot of environmental interaction, and these moves are good enough to encourage that, that sounds like a win! Maybe use them sparingly (only 1-2 per encounter) if they are over-used. And let enemies use them, too!

 

[pemerton]

I've had Burning Wheel recommended as the replacement go-to system for my group's campaigns more than once. Maybe one day... we were discussing starting a Mouse Guard game. Of course, the first two proposed PCs were "Maus Kinsky" and "Maus Nomi" -- apparently it would be set in 1980s-era West Berlin -- so that might explain why it didn't happen.

I suspect that BW, at least in its default presentation, might take itself a bit seriously for you and your group . . .

(It's also very mechanically intricate and crunchy - Dan Davenport, in his rpg.net review, said "If you've ever wanted to combine the powerful emotions and epic grandeur of Lord of the Rings with the brutally detailed combat of RuneQuest, then boy, do I have the game for you", and I think that's pretty fair.)