On Behavioral Realism

[Maxperson]

If you need to pretend that D&D is something more than it is, fine. Buts thats how situations like what the OP describes happen.

There is no pretense. D&D is not a tactical board game. It's a ROLEPLAYING game, which entails more than just combat.

The D&D rules is centred around combat, the goal is to amass loot and become powerful in the process. Just open the books and adventure and look how much of the content is about this. It is no surprise that you end up with edgy PCs which behave very unnaturally or PCs which concentrate on the one thing D&D is about, namely combat, and forsake everything else.

This is simply not relevant to the fact that D&D is a roleplaying game that entails more than combat and exploration. The social pillar is one of the big three pillars. It's not all combat and exploration.

So unless you have players who feel the same need as you to pretend D&D is something different then you are stuck with changing the game. Either literally by changing to a different system or changing much of D&D itself so that the core of the game is not dungeon crawling, defeating mosters, etc.
Just be aware that its a lot of work to change a system away from its core goal.

Or maybe he just wants the players to play D&D as it is. A game with combat, exploration AND social.

 

[bloodtide]

D&D is a combat adventure game, and always has been: it is a ''role playing game" in name only. Just look at the proof, at least 75% of the crunch mechanics of the game are about combat. Sure there is a whole crunchy mechanical paragraph about how you can talk to an NPC, and then 500 pages on ways to kill NPCs. The Players Handbook has a whole chapter on Combat, but no equal chapter on non-combat.

Though THIS IS the strgenth of D&D and what has made it popular for decades. You can play the game as just pure mindless crunch mechanical combat....OR you can do more: YOU can add in role playing. A lot of people do add role playing to the game, but note the game still has no 500 pages on crunchy mechanical non combat support.

The problem is when the players view don't mix with the DMs view. As often happens, like with the OP: The players just want to do combat adventure....the DM wants some type of light reality simulation, where players go out of the way to ''role play" things like washing hands, cooking food or other mundane things.

So on one had you have the players, ready to go on a combat adventure.....and you have the DM saying ''guy how about your characters go take a bath".

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Almost everything in the above is categorically inaccurate.

I'm genuinely puzzled by the people who really strongly need to pretend DnD needs special homebrew rules to do roleplaying well.

Two knights want to determine who is sponsored by their paramour at a joust? Okay, opposed Charisma (Persuasion) checks. 5e has rules for that.

Or, if you're playing a specialized enough game, you add a few skills into the campaign to cover specialized social stuff, but you don't need to do that.

 

[Derren]

I'm genuinely puzzled by the people who really strongly need to pretend DnD needs special homebrew rules to do roleplaying well.

Two knights want to determine who is sponsored by their paramour at a joust? Okay, opposed Charisma (Persuasion) checks. 5e has rules for that.

Or, if you're playing a specialized enough game, you add a few skills into the campaign to cover specialized social stuff, but you don't need to do that.

I'm genuinely puzzled by the people who feel the need to pretend that D&D is not 95% about combat and that this is how D&D is meant to be played. It even has a recommended number of combats per day.

Just because you can do charisma checks doesn't negate that the 200+ pages of combat rules or how all the classes are centred around combat power.

 

[Reynard]

I'm genuinely puzzled by the people who feel the need to pretend that D&D is not 95% about combat and that this is how D&D is meant to be played. It even has a recommended number of combats per day.

Just because you can do charisma checks doesn't negate that the 200+ pages of combat rules or how all the classes are centred around combat power.

40 years of D&D doing a bunch of things in addition to combat, from exploration to grand storytelling, and you are going to ignore all that? I mean, your claim is easily demonstrably false from the very first publication of the game that was not just adding wizards and orcs to the Chainmail Rules.

No one is suggesting that D&D does not include or even embrace combat, but you are arguing as if people are saying that and countering with it is "only" about combat. I'm sorry if you have ever only played in terrible games with DMs that turned everything into a grind a slog. If you would like, I imagine we can find an online game you can join and experience D&D as it was meant to be played.

 

[John Dallman]

I'm genuinely puzzled by the people who feel the need to pretend that D&D is not 95% about combat and that this is how D&D is meant to be played. It even has a recommended number of combats per day.

Rules ideas like that are significant reasons why I continue to play and run AD&D1e as 90-ish% of my D&D.

 

[pemerton]

Two knights want to determine who is sponsored by their paramour at a joust? Okay, opposed Charisma (Persuasion) checks. 5e has rules for that.

I think rolling opposed CHA checks runs the risk of not being that engaging. Many systems that have engaging social conflict resolution mechanics find ways to make it more engaging - a bit like many RPGs combat systems.

I'm saying this from three perspectives: (i) "top down" theory; (ii) my own actual play experience; and (iii) the fact that I think my Prince Valian experience is probably fairly typical for that system - given the contents of the published material - whereas I don't think I've ever seen D&D actual play reports about jousts, romantic rivalry, founding military orders, etc.

When D&D routinely produces the outcomes @Reynard is a bit bothered by, whereas other systems routinely produce the outcomes that he is looking for, it's probably worth looking at what those other systems offer that D&D doesn't.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

One can certainly play any type of game with any type of system. Want to do a Harlequin novel romance with Pathfinder v1? Go for it.

BUT when a game has piles of mechanics for a given facet of RPGing (be it combat, or magical & scholarly learning, or kissing stuff) the players of that game are going to utilise those mechanics. They just will, for a whole bunch of reasons. (We can list out these reasons if we want.) This will give the game it's own... I'm just gonna call it zeitgeist.

You can try to go counter to this zeitgeist; but if you do you will (I suspect in almost all cases) face resistance that will make doing so more work than if you just play the game in the style which the design intends.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I think rolling opposed CHA checks runs the risk of not being that engaging. Many systems that have engaging social conflict resolution mechanics find ways to make it more engaging - a bit like many RPGs combat systems.

I'm saying this from three perspectives: (i) "top down" theory; (ii) my own actual play experience; and (iii) the fact that I think my Prince Valian experience is probably fairly typical for that system - given the contents of the published material - whereas I don't think I've ever seen D&D actual play reports about jousts, romantic rivalry, founding military orders, etc.

When D&D routinely produces the outcomes @Reynard is a bit bothered by, whereas other systems routinely produce the outcomes that he is looking for, it's probably worth looking at what those other systems offer that D&D doesn't.

One of those things is to present a game with a specified play focus.

D&D doesnt do that, which is why D&D has a thousand and one 3pp products that do.

Now, I have had all those things happen in my games, and in games I’ve been a player in, without any added rules. OP doesn’t need to learn a new system, they just need to focus on what the sort of game they want, and houserule to taste if they want to.

How different is an opposed fellowship roll to an opposed Charisma roll? Is it modified by past interactions and some sort of score that represent the relationships involved? There are DMG rules that can be used to do the same thing, or it can be kept even easier and just create a downtime activity for the joust that includes a roll to gain the favor of the crowd, a new paramour, or gain the sponsorship of an existing paramour. The two knights would compete in that one roll, and then go about the joust. The sponsorship would literally be one success or failure in a series of tests to see how well they do in the joust.

That isn’t even new rules, that is just making a new downtime activity, which is about as much “homebrew” as making a unique background.

But knights founding a chivalric order? That is...classic D&D? I mean, I can’t imagine that not happening in a game with the same themes as Prince Valiant.

“You’re all chivalric knights in a world inspired by late medieval French romanticisation of chivalric knights and the kingdoms they fought and died on behalf of. You’re assumed to be good, honorable, and genuine, and things like reputation, (ideally, I know my Arthurian myth too well to expect actually) chaste romance, and defending the weak against the dishonorable strong, are all things that actually matter to any PC in this campaign.”

That’s a perfectly reasonable campaign brief in D&D. Absolutely no rule in 5e D&D actually pushes you toward dungeons, or worrying about treasure, or being homeless. For goodness sakes, your background can be Noble, or Knight, right in the PHB.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

One can certainly play any type of game with any type of system. Want to do a Harlequin novel romance with Pathfinder v1? Go for it.

BUT when a game has piles of mechanics for a given facet of RPGing (be it combat, or magical & scholarly learning, or kissing stuff) the players of that game are going to utilise those mechanics. They just will, for a whole bunch of reasons. (We can list out these reasons if we want.) This will give the game it's own... I'm just gonna call it zeitgeist.

You can try to go counter to this zeitgeist; but if you do you will (I suspect in almost all cases) face resistance that will make doing so more work than if you just play the game in the style which the design intends.

Maybe the dozens of people I’ve gained with on a regular basis over the last decade or so are just coincidentally weirdos of the same type, but...nah?

D&D has many combat mechanics. Sure. Unless you’re looking to play a game that just isn’t going to ever involve fighting, so what?

I’ve played dnd games very much like @pemerton describes his Prince Valiant game, and games very like The Hobbit, and others that centered on solving great mysteries while staying one step ahead of enigmatic enemies, and others centered on exploration of new worlds in a fantasy Star Trek sort of theme, etc.

If someone finds that their D&D game is always the same murder-hobo dungeon crawler, it’s because that’s how they are running the game.