Is D&D a setting or a toolbox?

[innerdude]

It seems to me that the main core of attraction in D&D is the "D&D-ness" of it, not the systems, as such.

Yup--which is why I'm slowly coming around to 5e, because I'm tired of 3e, don't really want to switch to 4e, but still want some "D&D-ness" in my life.

 

[Hussar]

Ideally? It would be close to 100% toolbox.

As to what's been published, it varies. The d20 system is a toolbox, and 3e is the toolboxiest iteration of D&D, but it still has a lot of setting in it. It would be nice to see the toolbox mentality expanded upon.

Wow. Talk about totally different experiences. I find 3e, now, to be one of the least toolboxy editions. Trying to deviate from the baseline presumptions makes the game go wahoonie shaped.

Take a standard 3e party. Change their wealth baseline and suddenly game play becomes much, much more difficult. Either the party is much more powerful than expected, or much less. Heck, change the baseline point buy value and you radically change the balance of the game.

I found 3e worked best when I, as DM, sat back and let 3e be 3e. I didn't try to change it very much and it worked pretty well. Make minor changes and all sorts of effects percolate down through the system and cause problems later on.

Don't get me wrong. I like 3e. I do. But, toolbox? Not compared to earlier editions, where you could rip out entire sections of mechanics and have the game play work. To be honest, I find 4e a much better toolbox, simply because the transparency of the mechanics makes making changes very easy and easy to predict.

 

[JamesonCourage]

D&D is definitly NOT a tool box. At all. If you think it is, you haven't played RPGs which ARE tool boxes, namely HERO and GURPs which has been mentioned before.

I play Mutants and Masterminds, and my RPG is a fantasy game that can make (much to my chagrin) anything from Hercules to Green Lantern to Indiana Jones, and back to Ned Stark or mad scientists or politicians or crafftsmen or whatever.

And I still went with "toolbox", based on how the original poster asked the question:

D&D-as-toolbox is the game giving you the mechanics you need to run the game, and nothing else. You have the rules for making characters, running combat and leveling up, stats for monsters and treasures, and really that's all there is to it. Some elements, such as the nature of classes, spells, monsters, etc. might make an implication about the sort of game that the rules are best geared towards, but this is, at most, very vague. No part of the rules defines the setting for you, it's something you make up yourself. Take it for what you will that this is how D&D was originally created.

Which do you prefer?

In a broader sense I'd agree with you; within the context of how the question was asked, though, I don't agree with your dismissal of my opinion whatsoever. So, there's that. As always, play what you like

 

[Ahnehnois]

Take a standard 3e party. Change their wealth baseline and suddenly game play becomes much, much more difficult. Either the party is much more powerful than expected, or much less. Heck, change the baseline point buy value and you radically change the balance of the game.

I don't know that I've ever seen the point buy system in the books used, or the treasure tables. Usually I make NPCs, give them items arbitrarily and calculate the costs later, and the PCs acquire items from them at a completely unpredictable rate. I've had parties with probably less than the chart, and more frequently with five or ten times the book value. Didn't cause any problems.

Never mind the glut of custom classes, monstrous characters, artifacts, and other "game-breaking" factors. I find that d20 mechanics are much easier to read than 2e was; it's very clear to me as a DM what each number means. How they all fit together (i.e. balance) is quite malleable.

The toolbox aspect is in the dissolution of the class system, standardization of player characters and monsters, and the skills and feats.

Anyone who thinks that "sexist" art - which I presume means artwork of scantily-clad women, which is not in-and-of itself sexist - is unique to D&D among RPGs is wearing some very, very thick blinders.

D&D is a smorgasbord of various influences. Nothing is unique to D&D. But some things are strongly associated with it. But this one is a whole can of worm best not opened in this thread.

Those have never been "distinctively D&D", those are symptoms of the last 2 editions (especially the very last), which are often derided.

Fair enough, but keep in mind that anything older than the last two editions is pretty old at this point. There are many people for whom 3e (or 4e) is the definitive D&D and anything older than that is not on the radar.

 

[Jester David]

To put it another way, there are people who play D&D-as-toolbox, and those who play D&D-as-setting.

Which do you prefer?

There are hundreds of game systems out there. They're a dime-a-dozen. Especially with PDFs and Print-on-Demand publishing. I can find one just right for me if I look hard enough.

As a ruleset, D&D can offer a little extra playtesting and polished support but little else. Nothing really separates one rule set from another.
What D&D can offer that no other game can is the lore. The monsters, the demon lords, the gods, the races, etc.

You can ignore the lore. That isn't hard.
But it's harder to add uniquely D&D elements and lore to a non-D&D game.

 

[billd91]

D&D is definitly NOT a tool box. At all. If you think it is, you haven't played RPGs which ARE tool boxes, namely HERO and GURPs which has been mentioned before. Toolbox RPGs allow you do nearly infinite things and allow (and push) for maximum customizability. HERO is my favorite because I CAN run any game I want to. With D&D as other have said there are built in assumptions, although Pathfinder and their archetypes and alternate rules are doing some cool stuff, it is wayyyyyy low on the tiers of true "toolbox" rpgs.

Not being a generic toolbox does not preclude D&D from being a toolbox. A watchmaker may have a more limited set of tools and outcomes than a carpenter, but his toolkit is still a toolkit. There is no need to build a hierarchy here.

D&D has proven capable of supporting diverse fantasy campaigns from historical, to post-apocalyptic, and from Conanesque swords and sorcery to whacked out fantasy space epics. The diversity of home-grown campaigns is staggering, all generated with the same basic tools and thousands of differing permutations of those tools.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

D&D will never be an adequate, let alone a good toolbox game as long as it is class and level based. Classes and levels define extremely large portions of the game. And this is fine, so long as we realize that.

If what you want is a fantasy toolbox, D&D is not the game you are looking for. And I don't mean that to be dismissive. Seeking out other games is a great idea. It certainly helped me come to terms with D&D.

 

[TrippyHippy]

It's a toolbox with a heavily implied setting.

 

[Hussar]

D&D will never be an adequate, let alone a good toolbox game as long as it is class and level based. Classes and levels define extremely large portions of the game. And this is fine, so long as we realize that.

If what you want is a fantasy toolbox, D&D is not the game you are looking for. And I don't mean that to be dismissive. Seeking out other games is a great idea. It certainly helped me come to terms with D&D.

I'm not sure why a class/level based system negates a toolbox. Sure, ok, classes and levels obviously define quite a bit, but, how does that change a game from toolbox to setting based?

I guess I'm looking at the huge variation in D&D settings and wondering how you can claim that this is not a toolbox. Is it as wide open, as say, HERO? Maybe not. But, compared to say, Rifts or Battletech or Shadowrun or even Vampire, it's a heck of a lot more open than those games.

It's genre based, but, not really setting based.

 

[JamesonCourage]

D&D will never be an adequate, let alone a good toolbox game as long as it is class and level based.

I'm not sure why a class/level based system negates a toolbox. Sure, ok, classes and levels obviously define quite a bit, but, how does that change a game from toolbox to setting based?

I'm kinda curious how level plays into making something a worse toolbox, too. Can you expand on this, Jeff? Thanks. As always, play what you like