D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[robertsconley]

I have quite a bit of experience with this, especially when it comes to adapting D&D’s magic system. I’d be happy to offer a detailed response if you're interested. I just don’t want to assume.

The core issue with using D&D as a generic toolkit system is its magic system. D&D has an incredibly specific, bespoke magic system.

You can strip it out fairly easily, sure, and use the remaining resolution systems as a core chassis. But to do that, you've stripped out so much from the game that the question becomes "What's left?"

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

i don't think i'm seeing the argument you're trying to make, it was a fixed world, influenced by the actions of players, that all seems to follow well enough right up until the point where the GM goes 'and so five minutes after leaving your henchdwarves suffered a lethal bout of idiocy that just undid everything you worked for', which is very far down the scale of plausible and logical

What if, instead of being a black box, the GM in this case just explicated the risks and rewards? Instead what I see is that typically tad play involves the players having no idea whatsoever as to the implications of an action. This is a great strength of good Narrativist play. I mean, at least tell me that my henchmen are idiots! I'd have gone out and hired a castellan or something.

 

[Campbell]

That's a pretty excellent point.

2E, 3E, and 5E have all featured a lot of tracking of resources that aren't actually going to run out or even have to be rationed on a given day. It's usually only your top three levels of spells that really are likely to be depleted, and even then, in so many D&D games, one-combat or two-combat workdays are so common - due to plot, not due to player shenanigans or DM incompetence - that often doesn't happen.

4E's tracking of more limited and commonly-depleted resources was much closer to serving an actual purpose, and less burdensome too, as only Dailies and Healing Surges really needed tracking outside of an individual combat.

My groups have been quite unusual outliers here, but our trad games tend to be extraordinarily light on violent conflict and tend to have several days in the fiction between significant events quite often. I think our Classic Deadlands game that ran for 6 months might have had 6 fights with at least one of those basically being a one round ambush.

Classic Deadlands was actually perfect for that sort of play experience because its magic systems are risk based instead of refresh based.

 

[Bedrockgames]

What if, instead of being a black box, the GM in this case just explicated the risks and rewards? Instead what I see is that typically tad play involves the players having no idea whatsoever as to the implications of an action. This is a great strength of good Narrativist play. I mean, at least tell me that my henchmen are idiots! I'd have gone out and hired a castellan or something.

I don’t think players need to have all info, keeping things POV can be important. But if players have henchman I let them figure out their talents. Usually in my campaigns that will be handled in game because that is what we like to do. For example some of my players recruited disciples. I typically rolled them up randomly and had a system for determining the levels of those who responded. But the players basically did a job interview. This did mean some disciples might impress more if they got a lucky roll demonstrating their martial arts, but overall the players got an accurate impression and could put out more specific calls and offers if they wanted different calibers of fighter

 

[Ruin Explorer]

What if, instead of being a black box, the GM in this case just explicated the risks and rewards? Instead what I see is that typically tad play involves the players having no idea whatsoever as to the implications of an action. This is a great strength of good Narrativist play. I mean, at least tell me that my henchmen are idiots! I'd have gone out and hired a castellan or something.

Yeah narrativist stuff is very good at calling out that the DM should explain the risks/rewards, which I've always found a little odd, not because it shouldn't be being done or anything, but simply because I'm not sure there's anything that links that concept more to narrativism than there is to link it to gamism (which I feel like it most naturally sits with), and even to simulationism to some extent (maybe you simulationism would want you to make a check to know your henchmen were idiots, but still, it's within the possibility of knowing).

My groups have been quite unusual outliers here, but our trad games tend to be extraordinarily light on violent conflict and tend to have several days in the fiction between significant events quite often. I think our Classic Deadlands game that ran for 6 months might have had 6 fights with at least one of those basically being a one round ambush.

I'd say the people I play with normally are, um, fairly typically aggressive, more reasonable than actual murderhobos but absolutely able and willing to see "But what if y'all were dead and looted? What about then?" as a perfectly good solution. And yet we too have often seen conflict averted repeatedly, even in D&D. I once had an entire, elaborate 4E dungeon basically completely avoided by the players by repeatedly coming with schemes and plans that subverted things and let them go around/past enemies. Hell, the ringleader was the player who had an absolute terrifying combat monster of a character, but he really loves a good "scheme" lol.

We do end up with an awful lot of days in D&D where, unless we're actually in an actual dungeon, there are 0-2 real resource-burning encounters like combat.

 

[Enrahim]

My groups have been quite unusual outliers here, but our trad games tend to be extraordinarily light on violent conflict and tend to have several days in the fiction between significant events quite often. I think our Classic Deadlands game that ran for 6 months might have had 6 fights with at least one of those basically being a one round ambush.

Classic Deadlands was actually perfect for that sort of play experience because its magic systems are risk based instead of refresh based.

I am curious how much of an outlier this is. My favorite games has also been year long D&D games with typically several sesions between each fight. My favorite D&D actual play podcast is also D&D (OSE) with multiple hour long sesions between even a dice get rolled.

 

[robertsconley]

That's an awful lot of words to fundamentally not disagree with what I'm saying. I guess you did say you were nuancing it, so I can't complain!

But as I've repeatedly pointed out, it is 5E specifically that always gets suggested. It's literally never the editions you're discussing. No-one comes into a thread where people are discussing say, which RPG for John Wick-style action, and say "Well, why don't you build a John Wick style game based loosely on the OD&D rules-set!". They say stuff like "I just use 5E and change the names of stuff!". And further, let's be honest, even working from those editions require a level of creativity and follow-through using a generic system with supplements flatly does not. You can't even argue otherwise! It's simply a fact that you have to put massively more effort in. Whereas both generic RPGs with appropriate supplements, or specifically-designed RPGs require basically very little construction effort!

I understand where you’re coming from better now, thanks for clarifying. I also realize I didn’t explain the core of my point well.

I think the real devil’s in the lists, not the core mechanics. That’s what often gets overlooked when people assume systems like GURPS or Savage Worlds are “easier” to adapt. Sure, they’re generic in theory, but in practice, you still have to wade through catalogs of traits, gear, abilities, and system-specific edge cases. Then you have to curate what actually fits your tone, genre, and setting. It sounds modular on paper, but the actual process can be just as involved as working from a non-generic chassis.

Some generic systems help by offering strong ready-to-play content, Savage Worlds and BRP do this well. GURPS choose poorly. Until products like Dungeon Fantasy or Monster Hunters came along, you were stuck deep in the catalog, building from scratch. So even in “generic” systems, you're often still doing heavy lifting unless you buy into a very specific supplement line.

D&D, even 5E (though not 4E), has fewer assumptions baked into the core than many people think. The base mechanics are straightforward; the genre flavor comes from the surrounding lists: classes, monsters, spell options, equipment. In that sense, it's structurally different from GURPS, but not inherently harder to adapt. Having rebuilt 5E for my Majestic Fantasy setting, I found the basic components very modular. Most classes/subclasses come down to five or six new features, and the mechanics slot together cleanly once you understand the internal logic.

That said, 5E does have its difficult points. The 20-level progression encourages far more development than most campaigns ever need, and the Warlock, while conceptually cool, feels like a dumping ground for kewl powers. But even so, the overall effort wasn’t significantly different from what I had to do when adapting GURPS 4e for a similar purpose back in the day.

Majestic Fantasy Rules for 5e

Also, I wouldn’t say Crawford’s approach is rare in the OSR anymore. He may have been an early standard-bearer, but over the last several years, more designers have embraced the same spirit, treating classic D&D mechanics as a toolkit rather than a script.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah narrativist stuff is very good at calling out that the DM should explain the risks/rewards, which I've always found a little odd, not because it shouldn't be being done or anything, but simply because I'm not sure there's anything that links that concept more to narrativism than there is to link it to gamism (which I feel like it most naturally sits with), and even to simulationism to some extent (maybe you simulationism would want you to make a check to know your henchmen were idiots, but still, it's within the possibility of knowing).

Wasn't it Edwards who pointed out that narrative and gamist agendas are pretty compatible? And yes, this sort of stakes setting serves both, is in fact vital to both. @Manbearcat has also pointed this out many times. 4e is quintessentially this type of game and the entire design is architected to make the odds clear.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Wasn't it Edwards who pointed out that narrative and gamist agendas are pretty compatible?

Probably! And certainly I agree with the sentiment. For an easy recent example Outgunned and its relatives are absolutely both gamist and narrativist (as well as genre-simulating).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I understand where you’re coming from better now, thanks for clarifying. I also realize I didn’t explain the core of my point well.

I think the real devil’s in the lists, not the core mechanics. That’s what often gets overlooked when people assume systems like GURPS or Savage Worlds are “easier” to adapt. Sure, they’re generic in theory, but in practice, you still have to wade through catalogs of traits, gear, abilities, and system-specific edge cases. Then you have to curate what actually fits your tone, genre, and setting. It sounds modular on paper, but the actual process can be just as involved as working from a non-generic chassis.

Some generic systems help by offering strong ready-to-play content, Savage Worlds and BRP do this well. GURPS choose poorly. Until products like Dungeon Fantasy or Monster Hunters came along, you were stuck deep in the catalog, building from scratch. So even in “generic” systems, you're often still doing heavy lifting unless you buy into a very specific supplement line.

D&D, even 5E (though not 4E), has fewer assumptions baked into the core than many people think. The base mechanics are straightforward; the genre flavor comes from the surrounding lists: classes, monsters, spell options, equipment. In that sense, it's structurally different from GURPS, but not inherently harder to adapt. Having rebuilt 5E for my Majestic Fantasy setting, I found the basic components very modular. Most classes/subclasses come down to five or six new features, and the mechanics slot together cleanly once you understand the internal logic.

That said, 5E does have its difficult points. The 20-level progression encourages far more development than most campaigns ever need, and the Warlock, while conceptually cool, feels like a dumping ground for kewl powers. But even so, the overall effort wasn’t significantly different from what I had to do when adapting GURPS 4e for a similar purpose back in the day.

Majestic Fantasy Rules for 5e

Also, I wouldn’t say Crawford’s approach is rare in the OSR anymore. He may have been an early standard-bearer, but over the last several years, more designers have embraced the same spirit, treating classic D&D mechanics as a toolkit rather than a script.

My experience is that generic rules tend to produce bland technically sim-centered play that generally fails to capture what is really interesting. All GURPS is GURPS. D&D, any iteration, is not really all that flexible either. This is why d20 modern quickly fizzled. Every game is just D&D with some subsystem hacks, it fails usually to get the right feel or focus.

4e is a bit different, you can radically reskin it pretty easily. I looked in on a 4e game where everything was resigned Star Wars. No actual mechanical changes or additions were made. It was amazing. However, Star Wars is very close in many respects, genre wise to 4e. It wouldn't work if you wanted to make it do hard sci Fi, for example.