D&D 5E Is D&D 90% Combat?

In response to Cubicle 7’s announcement that their next Doctor Who role playing game would be powered by D&D 5E, there was a vehement (and in some places toxic) backlash on social media. While that backlash has several dimensions, one element of it is a claim that D&D is mainly about combat.

Head of D&D Ray Winninger disagreed (with snark!), tweeting "Woke up this morning to Twitter assuring me that [D&D] is "ninety percent combat." I must be playing (and designing) it wrong." WotC's Dan Dillon also said "So guess we're gonna recall all those Wild Beyond the Witchlight books and rework them into combat slogs, yeah? Since we did it wrong."

So, is D&D 90% combat?



And in other news, attacking C7 designers for making games is not OK.

D&D 5E - Doctors & Daleks - Cubicle 7 Brings Doctor Who to D&D 5E

Cubicle 7 -- makers of the official Doctor Who roleplaying game -- has announced that the Doctor will officially be coming to 5E soon under the name Doctors and Daleks. There are no dates or details yet, over than that the Doctors and Daleks Player's Guide will launch 'soon'. A NEW COMPANION...

www.enworld.org

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sure. But that's the the point of it's not a competition. "Fun" arises from playing the game, not winning or losing.

If you think everyone gets fun out of their character failing regularly, you honestly need to meet more people. If, instead, you simply think they should, this is another case of deciding where other people should get their fun.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Speak for your own game, you are not qualified to speak form mine.

Even you don't get to speak for your game. You're not your players.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Ace didn't have abilities that don't fit into a fairly mundane modern-setting skill system. Demolitions and Stealth are not a stretch.

But they also aren't things that leave you as nothing but a sidekick. Nor, if they're going to be the focus of the game, are they things that need a character class system to support, nor indeed even does a character class system bring much to them.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't know about your games, I only know about my games.

So you're just asserting that you thinking about the hows, whats, and whys of how you run would make it more difficult for you to run? Okay. Noted.

 

[hawkeyefan]

If you artificially divide up roles you are going to create a conflict where no conflict is necessary. The point in being a referee is to help the players have fun. It is not separate to that.

It's not artificial to look at the different roles the GM of an RPG has to perform. The 5e books actually point it out, too, within the first couple of pages of the DMG with their whole "master of worlds, master of adventures, master of rules" sections. I wouldn't call this division "artificial" so much as "fundamental to understanding and performing the role".

And yes, there is conflict in the game. That's the entire point of the game. Not conflict between the players and the GM, but conflict between the characters and the world. There are challenges that the characters will face and which the players are expected to navigate with skill... by managing their resources effectively and working together and so on.

You see the language of this all throughout the game... Difficulty Class, Challenge Rating, and so on. Competition is absolutely baked into the game.

No.

This is why it matters that it is not a competition. Having fun is not connected to winning.

Having fun can be connected to winning, for sure. It isn't always, and doesn't need to be, but it can be. There are all kinds of takes on this, and they'll vary from person to person. The same for losing; a lot of people don't like losing, even if it's "just a game". Look at how many games of Monopoly or Risk end with flipped boards. People can be competitive even with activities whose sole purpose is to have fun. Personally, I'd find a game of D&D where the characters lost encounter after encounter to be frustrating and not fun. I imagine there are many people who would agree.

However, I think you're focusing on the wrong element of my TPK example. It's not about the winning/losing angle so much as an unsatisfactory result. There are so many factors that can contribute to a TPK, or any other frustrating result in a game, that when these things happen, they may not feel satisfactory. Again, which factors are tolerable and which are not will vary from person to person. For me, if the dice dictate that something like a TPK happens, I'd most likely be fine with it. If I feel the GM somehow arranged the situation so that the TPK happened when it could have been avoided, then I'd likely have an issue with it.

If I play a friendly game of basketball with my buddy, and he wins, and we can both smile and high five and say "that was fun, good game" then we've both had fun, but that doesn't mean it was not competitive. It doesn't mean we just took turns making baskets and then complimenting each other.

The same applies to D&D or any other RPG.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The same for losing; a lot of people don't like losing, even if it's "just a game"

Sure, there are lots of people like that. We call them sore losers and don't play with them. Simples.

If you want to play a competitive game, you are free to do so. Our game works specifically because it's not competitive. Hence my dislike of any rules based around making things like social situations competitive.

 

[Manbearcat]

So you're just asserting that you thinking about the hows, whats, and whys of how you run would make it more difficult for you to run? Okay. Noted.

This cannot be true. I have it on good authority that you're making a mountain out of a molehill...that overburdening a GM's cognitive workspace is not a thing...that the mental overhead a GM assumes is a relatively small affair so overthinking or introducing more stuff can't be a problem for GMs generally or any GM specifically.

Everything is fun. Its all fun. Just do the fun and have the fun.

I've composed a Venn Diagram for D&D and the fun for you. In case you run into a problem while you're running a game, whip this out to guide you through your trying time. If your players ever protest, just subtly place this on the table.

Remember...

fun

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If your players ever protest, just subtly place this on the table.

If the players protest, they are welcome to go away. Preferably as far as possible.

Since I have never had a player protest (and have a waiting list), whatever I do must work. Do your players protest?

 

[Thomas Shey]

If the players protest, they are welcome to go away. Preferably as far as possible.

Since I have never had a player protest (and have a waiting list), whatever I do must work. Do your players protest?

This is a massive jump to conclusions. You may well be just the best of a set of bad options (you can always get people respond with "no gaming is better than bad gaming", but to a lot of people hit-or-miss gaming is better than no gaming), and from your attitude here, protesting would just get them blown off or told to go away.

 

[Manbearcat]

If the players protest, they are welcome to go away. Preferably as far as possible.

Since I have never had a player protest (and have a waiting list), whatever I do must work. Do your players protest?

Overwhelmingly, yes. The players of my games typically don't find the fun. They are mostly miserable.

Its clear to me now that I've spent far too much time trying to GM a huge variety of games, GM for a huge number of players, deconstruct play paradigms with thoughtful GMs, and think hard about and work even harder on my craft.

All this time the problem was that I_just_wasnt_looking for the fun.

I think I've got it now though. I'm going to keep my Venn Diagram that I've constructed and attached above for my Thursday Stonetop game, my Friday Blades in the Dark game and my Monday Torchbearer game. When my players inevitably protest, I'll take a deep breath and look at that beautiful resource I've created.

If they still protest, I'll roll it up like a newspaper and beat them with the fun.