D&D 5E On rulings, rules, and Twitter, or: How Sage Advice Changed

[mrpopstar]

That's an odd place to leap to.

I dunno, man. The general vibe of your posts is that the rules are terrible and tables are in conflict. That all feels very high stakes and its affecting me. LOL

To me, that's not a good reason. "I support it because it's there," doesn't inspire others very much.

I am lawful and good.

I'm told that's annoying.

It's a little difficult to have these high-level design discussions with people who only play traditional RPGs, especially those whose primary game is D&D.

You may be onto something as D&D is the only RPG I've ever played. (Like, literally ever.)

Edit: formatting​

 

[mrpopstar]

It's only because I'm pathologically optimistic that I haven't bowed out feeling like a jackass Dungeon Master, high on kool-aid, fanboying over a garbage ruleset only because I don't know first thing about "real" roleplaying games.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You may be onto something as D&D is the only RPG I've ever played. (Like, literally ever.)

Edit: formatting​

Well, you'd be far from alone. People (especially those who are heavily into the wider world of RPGs) often forget that there are sizeable pockets of players and GMs who have (and possibly always will) only play D&D; some may not even be aware other RPGs exist (though that's starting to approach "living in a cave and avoiding the Internet" these days).

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's only because I'm pathologically optimistic that I haven't bowed out feeling like a jackass Dungeon Master, high on kool-aid, fanboying over a garbage ruleset only because I don't know first thing about "real" roleplaying games.

Well, and don't take this in any way wrong: people only know what they experience. D&D 5e is functional. To anyone who'd only experienced OD&D in the old days (and wasn't convinced that being schematic was a virtue) it'd seem a revelation. And an awful lot of people played and enjoyed OD&D for years.

Many of them, however, also had little or no contact with other games; the same element of accidental parochialism I mentioned in my prior post applied every bit as much then. It was not particularly uncommon for those that did to move on, sometimes, well, forcefully. This didn't mean anything had changed in OD&D; it just meant they had things they didn't like about the design, and once exposed to other options, couldn't ignore them any more.

(Of course sometimes it was quite acknowledged, as the various reams of houserules sometimes to be seen showed).

Or, honestly, D&D5 could be supplying you everything you need and any problems are largely theoretical and irrelevant to you. That's entirely possible, too. Different people like different things. Different people are bothered by different things to different degrees.

 

[Oofta]

Well, you'd be far from alone. People (especially those who are heavily into the wider world of RPGs) often forget that there are sizeable pockets of players and GMs who have (and possibly always will) only play D&D; some may not even be aware other RPGs exist (though that's starting to approach "living in a cave and avoiding the Internet" these days).

Speaking for myself, I've played a lot of different games, but I will admit that D&D is the only RPG. It does what I need it to do and I enjoy it. I've read up on and discussed other games and they just don't do it for me. Same way I know I'll never go scuba diving. I understand why people would enjoy it, I can see what they get out of it, it's not something I want.

But I do find some people a bit holier-than-thou because they play a variety of games. I mean, I get it. More power to you, I'm glad you have the time, willingness and groups to do that with. That doesn't elevate your opinion above that of others.

 

[mrpopstar]

Well, you'd be far from alone. People (especially those who are heavily into the wider world of RPGs) often forget that there are sizeable pockets of players and GMs who have (and possibly always will) only play D&D; some may not even be aware other RPGs exist (though that's starting to approach "living in a cave and avoiding the Internet" these days).

Dungeons & Dragons 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th editions. That is all.

 

[Oofta]

Sigh, 5e isn't that flexible (nor is D&D in general). Everyone here is playing pretty much the same way, with small differences that are imagined to be large so that 5e is flexible enough to accommodate them. But, everyone is expecting the GM to drive the game, everyone is expecting the GM to be in charge and have the say, and everyone is fine with play constraints that are very tight on players and very loose on the GM. This latter is usually what's confused for flexibility -- the game's core mechanic is "GM decides" and so different decisions is viewed as those big difference and flexibility -- but the choices are still in a pretty small bubble of play for RPGs as a whole. The whole argument about house-rules and tinkering enabling flexibility is similarly mistaken -- 5e is going to be D&D unless you change a huge amount, and it's going to play pretty much the same way -- the GM decides. This isn't an actual feature of 5e, which hides it's core assumptions (look to resting and encounter building, which is tied deeply into classes) so that it's hard to make good changes without serious examination. It's as much of a feature of 5e as it is of Monopoly, which you can play like Risk with enough houserules. This is a feature of people. 5e doesn't help much.

It's not as flexible as some games, but you can have very different tones to games even if the combat resolution mechanics are the same. Is it the most flexible system ever? No, of course not. But some people play very RP heavy games with sessions where very few dice are rolled others do old school dungeon crawls with everything and every tangent in between. One campaign world may look completely different from another, in some people's games elves are purple or have 4 arms. The rules are a chassis, what the DM and the group do with it is up to them.

But it's not worth arguing over since it's just, like, an opinion man.

 

[mrpopstar]

Well, and don't take this in any way wrong: people only know what they experience. D&D 5e is functional. To anyone who'd only experienced OD&D in the old days (and wasn't convinced that being schematic was a virtue) it'd seem a revelation. And an awful lot of people played and enjoyed OD&D for years.

Many of them, however, also had little or no contact with other games; the same element of accidental parochialism I mentioned in my prior post applied every bit as much then. It was not particularly uncommon for those that did to move on, sometimes, well, forcefully. This didn't mean anything had changed in OD&D; it just meant they had things they didn't like about the design, and once exposed to other options, couldn't ignore them any more.

(Of course sometimes it was quite acknowledged, as the various reams of houserules sometimes to be seen showed).

Or, honestly, D&D5 could be supplying you everything you need and any problems are largely theoretical and irrelevant to you. That's entirely possible, too. Different people like different things. Different people are bothered by different things to different degrees.

No offense taken! And it's not an accidental parochialism. I have other interests that I also wish to pursue, so I make careful choices about my time and headspace.

 

[Thomas Shey]

No offense taken! And it's not an accidental parochialism. I have other interests that I also wish to pursue, so I make careful choices about my time and headspace.

That was more a reference to the fact some people only play D&D because they're players, not GMs by inclination and D&D is "the only game in town." They aren't so much playing only D&D deliberately, as by the fact no one is running anything else.

(This can happen to GMs too, though there they've got a little more ability to try to push for something else if they're really interested.)

 

[Thomas Shey]

Speaking for myself, I've played a lot of different games, but I will admit that D&D is the only RPG. It does what I need it to do and I enjoy it. I've read up on and discussed other games and they just don't do it for me. Same way I know I'll never go scuba diving. I understand why people would enjoy it, I can see what they get out of it, it's not something I want.

But I do find some people a bit holier-than-thou because they play a variety of games. I mean, I get it. More power to you, I'm glad you have the time, willingness and groups to do that with. That doesn't elevate your opinion above that of others.

I think, and note what I'm saying here, in one respect they're not wrong; people who've played a variety of games do have the right to say they have a slightly broader perspective on mechanics, what works in what circumstances, and why. That's kind of inevitable from knowing other systems, not only theoretically but "on the ground" as it were.

What that doesn't say is that they have a right to tell people what to enjoy. Nor to project on others their assumptions that the other person is kidding themself.

But the latter doesn't tell me I should stop telling people they seem to be using a wrench as a hammer in some cases.

(Though the point in the post I was replying to was to note that there's a class of player/GM who's outside this whole discussion; they aren't really so much saying D&D is what they prefer as saying its all they've known and it has served them well enough they haven't been motivated to do the heavy lifting to try anything else. If they did, they might well decide, like you, D&D was really what they did want, or like many other people, that' they'd just been getting by with it. There's just no way to say because their situation hasn't exposed them to anything else enough to try.)