D&D 5E Is Neil Gaiman Wrong?

[Doug McCrae]

One can't meaningfully compare D&D, a wargame-style rpg, with the Avengers movies or comics because it's not comparing like with like.

It's very rare for all the protagonists to die in adventure fiction, whether it's fantasy or superhero. The PCs can all die in wargame-style rpgs. This is true of both D&D and Champions.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

If you think that OD&D is not a fairy tale simulator but 5e D&D is, then which changes to the rules have made it so?

I think OD&D is already a fairy-tale simulator. It stopped being a wargame approximately when it stopped being Chainmail.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I think OD&D is already a fairy-tale simulator.

What do you mean by that? Which features of fairy tales does it simulate? It has monsters and magic, but so does the fantasy supplement for Chainmail.

 

[Bohandas]

I just had a 15th level TPK. That wouldn't happen to the Avengers or JLA.

What about Infinity War Part 1?

 

[Doug McCrae]

Are fairy tales typically concerned with whether someone is wearing plate or mail? With the range of a longbow? Chainmail and D&D are concerned with these things.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

What do you mean by that? Which features of fairy tales does it simulate? It has monsters and magic, but so does the fantasy supplement for Chainmail.

Just take a look at the structure of an OD&D adventure module. It's not a wargame scenario. It's, well, it's an adventure. I'm not trying to make any especially subtle or deep observation with this: it's just about a story in a way that wargames aren't.

Taking a step back a bit, what is the point of this line of questioning? You're clearly attempting to prove something here, but I don't understand what. If we were to agree that D&D is still a wargame (somehow), what would follow from that?

 

[Doug McCrae]

You're clearly attempting to prove something here, but I don't understand what. If we were to agree that D&D is still a wargame (somehow), what would follow from that?

My point is that there are rpgs, lots of them, that do try to simulate stories but they don't have the same sorts of rules that D&D does. There's nothing in D&D to simulate the rising and falling action of a typical action movie for instance. In D&D the GM has to force that kind of thing if they want it.

D&D's rules are fairly simulationist in much the same way that the rules of a wargame are. Frex if a character, or figure, is wearing plate armour then that means they are less likely to die. D&D has all kinds of rules like this. Characters and figures can just die if they take too much damage. They're not protected in the way the protagonist of a story is. D&D has these kinds of rules, what I'm calling wargame-style rules, because it developed from a wargame, Chainmail.

D&D takes elements from fiction but it's not a fiction simulator. Like I said upthread, it takes elements such as dragons and places them in a wargame framework.

EDIT: I should add that I'm not saying that D&D is a wargame. It's a roleplaying game. But it's part of a subset of rpgs that have rules that are closer to those of wargames.

 

[Doug McCrae]

As an aside, Chainmail actually has a rule to allow heroes to kill dragons: "A Hero-type, armed with a bow, shoots a dragon passing within range overhead out of the air and kills it on a two dice roll of 10 or better, with 2 plus 1 on the dice firing an enchanted arrow." (Super-heroes only need an 8 or better.)

The reason it has this rule is that it happens in The Hobbit, and the fantasy supplement for Chainmail is intended to run Tolkien style battles. And the reason the hero kills the dragon in The Hobbit is because the hero kills the dragon in Beowulf*.

*EDIT: And the Völsunga saga.

 

[Fenris-77]

Lots of games, maybe even most games, don't have mechanics to simulate rising and falling action, or story beats, or any of a host of other story writing techniques and tools. That's because RPGs are more about ways to simluate the action that happens in a certain sort of story, not to simulate the story itself. The rules of a given game generally index a more or less specific set of genre conventions, but that's not about story structure, that's about actions. The creation of the story is up to some mix of the GM and players, the exact mix depends on the rules set and group in question and how they apportion authority over the diagetic frame.

Some games do have suggestions, or frameworks, or mechanics that are designed to aid the construction of narrative elements like you describe, but even those games still aren't 'simulating a story'.

 

[MGibster]

Are fairy tales typically concerned with whether someone is wearing plate or mail? With the range of a longbow? Chainmail and D&D are concerned with these things.

I always wondered how much damage Grandma took every round while sitting in the Big Bad Wolf's stomach. I bet she had a ring of acid protection.