D&D 5E (2024) Preferences in a New Official 5.5e Specific Setting

[Remathilis]

you are posting this in a thread about creating a setting for 5.5, so either the rules can come first or the whole thread falls apart

Me: D&D should really only support one setting.
Enworld: Noooo! D&D's strength is that it can handle many different genres and settings!
Me: oh? How do you make a S&S setting for D&D?
Enworld: well, first you create a bunch of house rules that change the player options, combat and magic system, then...
Me:

 

[Marc17]

Me: D&D should really only support one setting.
Enworld: Noooo! D&D's strength is that it can handle many different genres and settings!
Me: oh? How do you make a S&S setting for D&D?
Enworld: well, first you create a bunch of house rules that change the player options, combat and magic system, then...
Me:

Well, I see that this is true. Support just one setting and way of playing things, and you have a niche game and limit the appeal. Create a game that can support multiple settings and use optional rules to support the specific type of game you want to play and you have a much superior system.

But really as per the OP:
Sword and Sorcery portrays the struggle of characters to achieve their own personal goals(, ranging from questionable to decidedly unsavory)

Base D&D is Sword and Sorcery (after you exclude the bit in parenthesis as it is a non-sensical attack on player agency).

 

[Remathilis]

Well, I see that this is true. Support just one setting and way of playing things, and you have a niche game and limit the appeal. Create a game that can support multiple settings and use optional rules to support the specific type of game you want to play and you have a much superior system.

Optional rules, like piety or dark gifts, I can understand. When you are rewriting whole chunks of the PHB, you are creating a new 5e d20 compatible game, not playing D&D anymore. I feel a lot of people mistake the two and feel as long as you are still rolling a d20, it's D&D. Whereas I feel the more of the Phb you change or remove, the less "D&D" it is an the more d20 third party game it is.

Ymmv and all.

 

[mamba]

Me: oh? How do you make a S&S setting for D&D?

yeah, I did not vote for S&S in this mostly because D&D is no good at it. That is not the only possible setting however, nor is D&D the only game, for the rule to be true this would need to apply to a lot more than one example.

 

[Marc17]

Optional rules, like piety or dark gifts, I can understand. When you are rewriting whole chunks of the PHB, you are creating a new 5e d20 compatible game, not playing D&D anymore. I feel a lot of people mistake the two and feel as long as you are still rolling a d20, it's D&D. Whereas I feel the more of the Phb you change or remove, the less "D&D" it is an the more d20 third party game it is.

Ymmv and all.

Well, I pretty much agree with Mamba that this is a thread about D&D and those are the rules the setting is going to have to fit, not the other way around. I usually go for some additional mechanics to fit things. Like I ran a campaign about a fantasy magical school, where the PCs showed up as unleveled characters and had mechanics for them getting Study Points to go through four steps of them choosing a class and getting features and cantrips, and finally becoming 1st level. However, it was also supposed to be a horror game.* I looked at various corruption and horror mechanics and found them all lacking. I decided the best way was just to go with better story telling and showing what happens rather than telling them exactly what is going on. (eg describe spell effects and monsters rather than than present by name)

For major changes and limitations to the ruleset, the best thing to do in most cases is just get player buy in**. In the above case, it was agreed, they would all be playing an arcane magic using class that got spells at first level.

*It was original pitched as a cross between Harry Potter and Twin Peaks with some True Detective Season 1 thrown in.

**ETA: So, if you want to run an S&S inspired game, you just explain what you intend to do to the PCs, tell them what limitations they can expect and what you expect from them, and see if they want to play it. Even with people have suggested here, I really don't see Greyhawk not working for that. Forgotten Realms gets hard if you keep up with all lore.

 

[Remathilis]

yeah, I did not vote for S&S in this mostly because D&D is no good at it. That is not the only possible setting however, nor is D&D the only game, for the rule to be true this would need to apply to a lot more than one example.

I only used it as an example because it's the current topic. You can easily make that argument about horror, or noir, or wuxia, etc. D&D's take on a genre like horror compared to a bespoke horror game is like comparing authentic Mexican food to Taco Bell. D&D can borrow the names and ideas, but it isn't going to replicate authentic cooking with ground beef and cheddar cheese. That said, I still love Taco Bell for exactly what it is, and I don't delude myself it's anything resembling real Mexican. I think people would be happier if they treat D&D the same way: a tasty but inauthentic experience.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

My house rule is longer weapons can attack first.

A new setting, I say it again, should be enoughly interesting to can become a multingenre franchise.

Maybe Hasbro should acquire IPs from bankrupt companies.

A worldbuilding is not only to create a geography and a History for each realm but also interesting factions. Here the handicap is players will not pay for the lore of the worldbuilding if they can read it freely in some fandom wiki.

I feel interest into wuxia/xuanhuan/jianghu/quinhuan but if may become a risky bet if in the next years something happens in the real life and then it could become taboo, Other option could be a mixture of genre, Western in the cover but Asian in the core.

 

[mamba]

I only used it as an example because it's the current topic. You can easily make that argument about horror, or noir, or wuxia, etc. D&D's take on a genre like horror compared to a bespoke horror game is like comparing authentic Mexican food to Taco Bell.

the argument isn’t that D&D does cover a given genre just as well as games specifically designed for it, but that you need to create the setting first and then need to create a custom game to match it. I disagree with that, you can create a setting to match an existing game just as well, there is not only one correct order to do this in.

As to ‘game X does genre Y better than D&D does’, sure, there will be cases of that. D&D tries to cover more than one genre so cannot lean in as much as more specific games. That is not the same as D&D being impossible to use for that genre however.

My main issue with 5e is how superheroic it is, that gets in the way of S&S, I don’t think the OSR could not cover that however. Personally I would get rid of all full casters, at best you are a half-caster along the lines of the abandoned 2024 warlock, and stop somewhere around levels 10-12. Solves much of what makes 5e unsuitable, but obviously is a pretty big rewrite / homebrew

 

[Minigiant]

Love Character Dementia? Lick Crying Demons? Large Caffeinated Drinks?

Lowest Common Denominator.

The concern was less on simplicity and more onboarding. Similar but not identical

:
Sword and Sorcery portrays the struggle of characters to achieve their own personal goals(, ranging from questionable to decidedly unsavory)

Base D&D is Sword and Sorcery (after you exclude the bit in parenthesis as it is a non-sensical attack on player agency).

Base 5e is Heroic Fantasy.

Actual S&S needs heavy supplements or variant rules.

 

[pemerton]

Of course, the problem is making that all work under the context of a power-scaling group dynamic Game.

Aspects like localized baddies, sacrifice and loss, etc is very hard to do in a game where four or more players sit around, eating Cheetos and quoting Monty Python. It's the same reason why horror in RPGs tends to be very different from horror in other media; a lot of the core defining tropes (weak protagonists, isolation, escalating body count) aren't well suited to reoccurring character group play with power accumulation.

So you end up stealing the wallpaper of the genre, not the structure. In horror, D&D steals the spooky castle and vampire lord, but it can't recreate the visceral fear of Harker locked in Dracula's Castle. The same is true if S&S; you're barbarian can look like Conan but he can't be the invincible slab of meat going against overwhelming forces playing out a rather intimate tail of revenge. At best he's a strong warrior fighting a giant snake monster.

Which I guess is to say that in the context of RPGs in general and D&D in specific, the GAME elements have to come first. You still design for the fighter, cleric, wizard and rogue, even if they are all wearing loin clothes and sandals. You can't beat D&D into confirming to the genre tropes without it breaking somewhere. So the best you can do is give it a gritty sand-covered coat of paint.

Which, bases on the original premise of this thread, is all an official D&D S&S setting would do. No low magic, rewritten classes, or radical overhauls. D&D with a taste of the S&S flavor. Anything else requires more rewriting than an official product would dare and probably is needed.

Traditional sword and sorcery has a very narrow amount of available options for both player characters and regular enemies. Therefore you would need a tactical rules variant to spice up 5th edition in order for it to be satisfying as sword and sorcery.

Or you accept your S&S 5e setting has a bunch of casters.

I don't know how hard or easy it would be to do a S&S version of 5e D&D.

But I don't think that there is anything about RPGing per se that makes it hard to have S&S RPGing.