Chaltab
Legend
Yes?... Things can accomplish more than one task. I don't even know why you're being so pedantic about this.
D&D General Self-Defeating Rules in D&D
- Thread starter Pamphylian
- Start date
Older Beholder
Hero
Not what the thread is about, but I've made my own self defeating rules as a player (For roleplay purposes):
A Barbarian that is trying to contain their rage
A Warlock that tries not to use their powers out of fear of drawing their Patrons attention
A Genasi Arcana Cleric that upon gaining access to Wish could only cast it to grant the wishes of others (due to his Genie heritage)
A Barbarian that is trying to contain their rage
A Warlock that tries not to use their powers out of fear of drawing their Patrons attention
A Genasi Arcana Cleric that upon gaining access to Wish could only cast it to grant the wishes of others (due to his Genie heritage)
Composer99
Hero
I'm broadly of the view that D&D could stand to pick a lane on this kind of thing, which I would imagine means leaning into heroic fantasy tropes with much less concern for logistics except as an occasional challenge, in much the same way that food is presented as a concern occasionally in, say, LotR.
Or, if it still wants to be "the biggest possible tent game", it could stand to try to find ways to make the big tent more comfortable to play in, as it were. Personally, I would suggest stripping away the anemic survival-sim mechanics that D&D currently possesses from the core rules and then having... maybe not survival-sim mechanics, as such, but at least, let's say, "logistics matter" mechanics in an optional rules module. Not unlike how the 2024 DMG has a maybe-kinda-sorta domain play module with Bastions.
By way of example of a game where something like this has actually been done, the strategic-operational WW2 game Axis Empires has an abstracted system for handling air and naval forces, the rules for which occupy ~4 pages in a 60-ish-page core rulebook. It also has a separate module, named Schiffskrieg, with more concrete rules governing the operations of air and naval forces, with just shy of 30 pages of rules that the designers managed to plug neatly into the sequence of play of the base game.
And, sure, D&D is hardly a hex-and-counter wargame. On the other hand, the actual "procedural" rules of D&D, you might say - the rules telling you how to play the game, as opposed to, say, the reams of exception-based-design content such as spells, magic items, classes, and so on, is probably not far off from the main rules of Axis Empires in terms of page count. Indeed, the chapter on playing the game in the 2024 PHB is just around 30 pages, and the rules glossary at the end is just around 20 pages, in a larger typeface and with only two columns per page (as opposed to Axis Empires' three columns).
Or, if it still wants to be "the biggest possible tent game", it could stand to try to find ways to make the big tent more comfortable to play in, as it were. Personally, I would suggest stripping away the anemic survival-sim mechanics that D&D currently possesses from the core rules and then having... maybe not survival-sim mechanics, as such, but at least, let's say, "logistics matter" mechanics in an optional rules module. Not unlike how the 2024 DMG has a maybe-kinda-sorta domain play module with Bastions.
By way of example of a game where something like this has actually been done, the strategic-operational WW2 game Axis Empires has an abstracted system for handling air and naval forces, the rules for which occupy ~4 pages in a 60-ish-page core rulebook. It also has a separate module, named Schiffskrieg, with more concrete rules governing the operations of air and naval forces, with just shy of 30 pages of rules that the designers managed to plug neatly into the sequence of play of the base game.
And, sure, D&D is hardly a hex-and-counter wargame. On the other hand, the actual "procedural" rules of D&D, you might say - the rules telling you how to play the game, as opposed to, say, the reams of exception-based-design content such as spells, magic items, classes, and so on, is probably not far off from the main rules of Axis Empires in terms of page count. Indeed, the chapter on playing the game in the 2024 PHB is just around 30 pages, and the rules glossary at the end is just around 20 pages, in a larger typeface and with only two columns per page (as opposed to Axis Empires' three columns).
And to stick with the topic, Heward's Handy Haversack shows up pretty early in many games and largely solves the encumbrance thing*. Or even just a masterwork backpack. *Well, except for the sheep. They kinda need air and stuff, but that stuff fits in the haversack.
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