D&D 5E Is 5e's Success Actually Bad for Other Games?

[doctorbadwolf]

"Prevents" seems overly strong; but I'd agree with "discourages".

Evens discourages seems like a stretch to me. “Doesn’t actively push people to seek out other games”?

 

[pemerton]

I don’t understand the question maybe.
“Can I do x?” Or “I do x” Is something asked/said in many games.

I can only speak for myself.

What is key, in my view, is how that question is answered. Different approaches give the GM a different degree of control over both what the answer is and how what happens next is worked out.

5e leaves nearly everything in the hands of a GM. To set up a really clear contrast, Apocalypse World doesn't. Hence quite different play experiences from those two RPGs!

 

[cmad1977]

I can only speak for myself.

What is key, in my view, is how that question is answered. Different approaches give the GM a different degree of control over both what the answer is and how what happens next is worked out.

5e leaves nearly everything in the hands of a GM. To set up a really clear contrast, Apocalypse World doesn't. Hence quite different play experiences from those two RPGs!

Well yeah…
I guess I’m just good about people doing things that aren’t on their sheets.
A lot times when I see someone poring over their sheet for something to do I ask
“What are you looking to accomplish?”
To which a poster above might say
“We’ll I want to use the table to force the 3 guards out the door… but it’s not on my sheet.”
To which I reply
“That’s ok. Maybe you pick up the table and… give me an athletics check(maybe at disadvantage vs a decent DC. Maybe make it contested if it’s a combat thing)
Done.

 

[pemerton]

Well yeah…
I guess I’m just good about people doing things that aren’t on their sheets.
A lot times when I see someone poring over their sheet for something to do I ask
“What are you looking to accomplish?”
To which a poster above might say
“We’ll I want to use the table to force the 3 guards out the door… but it’s not on my sheet.”
To which I reply
“That’s ok. Maybe you pick up the table and… give me an athletics check(maybe at disadvantage vs a decent DC. Maybe make it contested if it’s a combat thing)
Done.

OK.

The thing is that in different RPGs, the move from "What are you looking to accomplish" to "Done" happens in different ways, that give the GM more or less power to determine what the ensuing fiction looks like.

 

[Malmuria]

Any avant garde will always be subject to these same sorts of pressures, given that mass consumerism as the basis of economic life isn't going anywhere in a hurry. So the idea of a mass RPG with indie sensibilities is probably always going to be unrealistic. (And when some bowdlerised version comes along, some of us will play it but complain about how it was better when it was coming out via independent publication from Luke Crane's basement.)

I was listening to an episode of the Grognard files sometime this past year, and they had an anecdote/point about how the existence of a welfare state in the 70s/80s (in the UK) basically allowed a lot of people the time and space to be creative in all sorts of different ways (small example: rpgs, bigger example: new wave).

 

[MichaelSomething]

It really isn’t. I feel bad if you’ve been in a game run that way.


Edit: I mean…

No more so than any other game. I don’t understand the question maybe.
“Can I do x?” Or “I do x” Is something asked/said in many games.

Well at least some people were in games like that; and that was why 4E was made

 

[billd91]

Well at least some people were in games like that; and that was why 4E was made

Not really, no. That's why 3e was written the way it was.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I can only speak for myself.

What is key, in my view, is how that question is answered. Different approaches give the GM a different degree of control over both what the answer is and how what happens next is worked out.

5e leaves nearly everything in the hands of a GM. To set up a really clear contrast, Apocalypse World doesn't. Hence quite different play experiences from those two RPGs!

Or as I put it "Degree matters. Most food needs salt. That doesn't mean I want half a shaker."

 

[Thomas Shey]

Evens discourages seems like a stretch to me. “Doesn’t actively push people to seek out other games”?

I think the presence of organized play and other elements go a bit beyond that. They make it actively unattractive to fish in other ponds.

 

[Don Durito]

Well yeah…
I guess I’m just good about people doing things that aren’t on their sheets.
A lot times when I see someone poring over their sheet for something to do I ask
“What are you looking to accomplish?”
To which a poster above might say
“We’ll I want to use the table to force the 3 guards out the door… but it’s not on my sheet.”
To which I reply
“That’s ok. Maybe you pick up the table and… give me an athletics check(maybe at disadvantage vs a decent DC. Maybe make it contested if it’s a combat thing)
Done.

The problem here is that if I have to make an Athletics check at disadvantage, then I'll probably learn that it's not worth doing and not try again. In fact if I have to make a skill check in order to make a second roll such as an attack roll, the same problem remains.

This is part of the issue. Stunts need to be a better option than what is capable of being done otherwise. There is an opportunity cost. (This tends to become more significant when characters get their second attacks as then the opportunity cost of being unsuccessful increases.) 4e, which did have a stunt system, had this issue. You had to make an additional roll to do a stunt, which was the equivalent to having disadvantage.

And this means stunts tend to suffer from being at a tactical disadvantage. It is almost always better to make two attacks for regular damage than one attack for double damage. You are also usually better off, tactically, sticking with predictable outcomes, something you negotiate with the GM is by definition unpredictable.

Leaving it up to the GM demands the GM have a rock solid grasp of the percentages and odds for resolution.

It's not just will the GM let me do it, it's will the GM make it worth doing? (In the first case the answer is usually yes. In the second it's almost always, in my experience, no).

This is why the Dungeon Crawls Classics system works well. There is never an opportunity cost for attempting something beyond just attacking.

Maybe people just don't worry about the tactical tradeoffs. Maybe they just play 5e as some kind of collaborative storytelling (although it boggles my mind that you would use this system to do that.)