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

 

[Ovinomancer]

Would most people think of WoW as a TTRPG?

For TTRPGs, outside of those who are regularly playing them, is the old VtM/WoD the closest it's come to having a non-D&D TTRPG being "well known' outside TTRPG culture?

Most people don't really even know there's a difference. TTRPGs are growing, sure, but they're pretty far behind video games in public perception.

I just gave the example of how Shadowrun successfully kickstarted a 3 game video game series that did pretty darned well. Certainly much better games than D&D has managed since the early '90s.

ETA: honestly, I'm just arguing against using popularity as a means to gatekeep what's allowable in discussions of RPGs.

 

[Older Beholder]

You have a character. Name your character. Describe a thing about them that's cool. During play, alternate with the other players to say what your character does and how it turns out. If one of the other players challenges your call, flip a coin. If you get a head, you get to say what happens. Otherwise, the other player gets to say what happens. If the action involved your character's cool thing, flip 2 coins.

Okay, stupid simple RPG there. And I can absolutely use it to play a Tortle, a Yuan-Ti, or a Githyanki. I can play any of these characters in the Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, or Eberron.

If the only thing you attribute to D&D is it's combat system then I can understand why you think D&D is 90% combat. Personally I think things like campaign settings such as Forgotten Realms and races like Githyanki are a big part of the games identity and the reason people play, it's in the D&DNA so to speak.

In the same way I'm sure there are people that want to play a Star Wars RPG to be a Jedi rather than anything to do with the rule system.

 

[Ovinomancer]

If the only thing you attribute to D&D is it's combat system then I can understand why you think D&D is 90% combat. Personally I think things like campaign settings such as Forgotten Realms and races like Githyanki are a big part of the games identity and the reason people play, it's in the D&DNA so to speak.

No, the thing I attribute to D&D as a game are the rules. Settings are not fixed into D&D the game, but alongside it. I can play D&D with or without your list of things you want and it's just fine. I can bring those things into other games entirely. So, yeah, when we're talking about D&D the game, that's a separate thing from any given setting.

In the same way I'm sure there are people that want to play a Star Wars RPG to be a Jedi rather than anything to do with the rule system.

And this is a good point, but if the game has terrible rules for Jedi (and IIRC d20 version (not SAGA, although kinda SAGA)) then it's not going to be great even if you're playing a Jedi. There's a synergy, here, and that's important. I mean, playing a Jedi in SAGA feels pretty different from playing a Jedi in Star Wars: Force and Destiny! And that's because the system used does rather different things and has rather different focuses of play.

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

The reason I keep seeing D&D listed as being able to swing at all is that people just ignore any systems in D&D that they don't want and replace it with freeplay and GM Says. And, if that's the bar then every game has this option. There's nothing special about D&D.

Frankly, I get a bit confused when D&D gets hailed as this great game because you can just play pretend and ignore it when you want to. I get you're staying in the genre/tropes of D&D, but that's genre/tropes, not the actual game.

Why is there a conflict or disagreement here? I mean is your point just "I disagree with your semantics"? Where is the content, the substance in that? The "actual game" says "yargh, maties, these be but guidelines", so what the heck is the point of people trying to do String Theory physics when they talk about how much or little home brewing is needed for it to no longer be considered "the actual game"?

Everyone takes some sections and ignores them. Some ignore more sections, some ignore less. Not everyone thinks the same sections are "the core important stuff that makes this D&D" or "what makes this D&D 5E". So at the end of the day people are only making semantic distinctions, they're arguing "my connotations are a little different from your connotations". Okay, we get it, sometimes language does its languagey thing, what does this actually establish?

Where does it happen, Ovinomancer? Does it stop being 5E at 51% of the rules being used? Does it stop being 5E when some particular section is ignored? If there's no hard and fast science to any of this then why make such positive assertions about it?

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

No clue. You started it...

The amount of posturing and hat tipping in this conversation...

 

[Ovinomancer]

Why is there a conflict or disagreement here? I mean is your point just "I disagree with your semantics"? Where is the content, the substance in that? The "actual game" says "yargh, maties, these be but guidelines", so what the heck is the point of people trying to do String Theory physics when they talk about how much or little home brewing is needed for it to no longer be considered "the actual game"?

Everyone takes some sections and ignores them. Some ignore more sections, some ignore less. Not everyone thinks the same sections are "the core important stuff that makes this D&D" or "what makes this D&D 5E". So at the end of the day people are only making semantic distinctions, they're arguing "my connotations are a little different from your connotations". Okay, we get it, sometimes language does its languagey thing, what does this actually establish?

Where does it happen, Ovinomancer? Does it stop being 5E at 51% of the rules being used? Does it stop being 5E when some particular section is ignored? If there's no hard and fast science to any of this then why make such positive assertions about it?

The moments where you're in freeplay and just GM Says and not using anything that's actually part of the 5e rules to play, you're outside of 5e. This doesn't mean some "not playing 5e" business, I'm not interested in being the 5e police. What I am interested in is looking at what a game does, where it does it, and how it does it. When we get to the point we're assigning things the game isn't doing to the game, we're past any reasonable place to discuss the game -- we're just throwing chatter around and not going anywhere. We can't, because we've stripped any real ability to discuss the game out of the conversation in favor of just telling each other stories about playtime.

5e is the rules of 5e. This is the only real way to discuss how the game works. If you add houserules, those need to be up front in discussion so everyone can be on the same page. If you're outright ignoring rules, well, you can absolutely do that, but I find it weird to credit 5e for the bits that you've tossed out. If we're going to look at the game and see what it does, we have to look at the game, not the bits we ignore and imagine ourselves and then, for some bizarre reason, call the game.

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

The moments where you're in freeplay and just GM Says and not using anything that's actually part of the 5e rules to play, you're outside of 5e. This doesn't mean some "not playing 5e" business, I'm not interested in being the 5e police. What I am interested in is looking at what a game does, where it does it, and how it does it. When we get to the point we're assigning things the game isn't doing to the game, we're past any reasonable place to discuss the game -- we're just throwing chatter around and not going anywhere. We can't, because we've stripped any real ability to discuss the game out of the conversation in favor of just telling each other stories about playtime.

5e is the rules of 5e. This is the only real way to discuss how the game works. If you add houserules, those need to be up front in discussion so everyone can be on the same page. If you're outright ignoring rules, well, you can absolutely do that, but I find it weird to credit 5e for the bits that you've tossed out. If we're going to look at the game and see what it does, we have to look at the game, not the bits we ignore and imagine ourselves and then, for some bizarre reason, call the game.

Please don't take this statement from me in an insulting or adversarial tone, but you weren't being terribly consistent or clear so far as I can tell in applying this line of thought.

E.g. there have been instances in this thread where while interacting with me or others, you have said "that's not 5E you're crediting your homebrew back to 5E" when all that happened was someone had used both homebrew rules and 5E rules. The presence of homebrewing at all meant that it was the homebrewing that made, e.g. avoiding combat, possible, and not the 5E rules.

That doesn't make sense because yes homebrew rules were used, but ALSO 5E rules were used. So at what stage was something "purely homebrew" or "clearly 5E" happening? As I've been saying, it often just boils down to semantics, and "well now you're only using 51%" kind of hair splitting, "your monsters didn't have the right DC for that, their CR wasn't right" in spite of a billion other aspects of the scenario clearly representing 5E rules.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Please don't take this statement from me in an insulting or adversarial tone, but you weren't being terribly consistent or clear so far as I can tell in applying this line of thought.

E.g. there have been instances in this thread where while interacting with me or others, you have said "that's not 5E you're crediting your homebrew back to 5E" when all that happened was someone had used both homebrew rules and 5E rules. The presence of homebrewing at all meant that it was the homebrewing that made, e.g. avoiding combat, possible, and not the 5E rules.

That doesn't make sense because yes homebrew rules were used, but ALSO 5E rules were used. So at what stage was something "purely homebrew" or "clearly 5E" happening? As I've been saying, it often just boils down to semantics, and "well now you're only using 51%" kind of hair splitting, "your monsters didn't have the right DC for that, their CR wasn't right" in spite of a billion other aspects of the scenario clearly representing 5E rules.

No, it's very consistent. Homebrew are rules you made up. They are not rules that 5e provided you. This should be extremely clear, I would think. If you've done the work of your own game design, even on the back of 5e, why would you then credit your own work and present it as 5e? I'm not saying any amount of homebrew totally removes any amount of 5e, I'm saying that the parts that you homebrew are yours, not 5e's.

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

No, it's very consistent. Homebrew are rules you made up. They are not rules that 5e provided you. This should be extremely clear, I would think. If you've done the work of your own game design, even on the back of 5e, why would you then credit your own work and present it as 5e? I'm not saying any amount of homebrew totally removes any amount of 5e, I'm saying that the parts that you homebrew are yours, not 5e's.

I completely understand you saying the parts that I homebrew aren't 5E. What I don't understand and you haven't explained is you telling me "that wasn't 5E" when given a scenario where both homebrew rules and 5E rules came into play. You never explained what took it over the edge, past the "51%" or whatever, and I understand you didn't explain that because you didn't see that kind of dilemma as a logical consequence.

The problem is that dilemma does appear to be a logical consequence. You can't tell someone "well it's your homebrewing that made it like that, not the rules" without explaining exactly how that is so.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I completely understand you saying the parts that I homebrew aren't 5E. What I don't understand and you haven't explained is you telling me "that wasn't 5E" when given a scenario where both homebrew rules and 5E rules came into play. You never explained what took it over the edge, past the "51%" or whatever, and I understand you didn't explain that because you didn't see that kind of dilemma as a logical consequence.

The problem is that dilemma does appear to be a logical consequence. You can't tell someone "well it's your homebrewing that made it like that, not the rules" without explaining exactly how that is so.

Um, if I can look at a described bit of play and don't see anything in the 5e rules that allows it, but they present their house rule that does, it's fairly easy to tell how play ended up there. I mean, if I'm playing football/soccer by the rules of the game published by FIFA, and you receive a forward pass from a teammate while ahead of the last defender, you're offside. If, in the game you're telling me you played, you say that you received that pass, and scored, because you have a house rule that you don't play with offside rules, then I can absolutely tell you the reason that goal counted.

You seem to want me to tell you the point at which using a house rules makes the game not 5e as a whole. I'm not interested in that at all -- it's not something I care to even consider. So you won't get an answer on that from me. I do care about what's happening in play in a given moment -- what's happening? How was it resolved? And there, in the moment of play, it's pretty easy to tell what rule is governing that resolution.