D&D General The Problem with Talking About D&D

[billd91]

At the risk of resuscitating an old and recurring argument, I don't think it's correct to draw a straight line between 5e's commercial success and some set of ingenious design decisions. This, again, defaults to an odd sort of corporate worship--whoever's biggest must be biggest because they're so smart, not because of tons of factors that have nothing to do with intent or quality. This kind of logic puts Disney on a pedestal for becoming the monoculture, or Facebook for buying their way to relevance through acquisitions (Oculus, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.). Legacy advantages such as free marketing, universal name recognition, celebrity champions, all of that is business world business. That exists in one world, and design is wholly in another.

All of those are factors - but all of those are factors that should have worked for previous editions as well as they do for 5e. Yet 5e is the runaway success example of D&D in the 21st Century. Clearly, there's something more at work than the external factors you suggest.
There are a variety of medium positions between corporate worship and dismissal of savvy design decision in 5e's success.

But all of this comes back to the assumption that the 5e is some sort of intentionally generic fantasy toolbox, designed for a broad array of playstyles and settings. Never mind the absolute specificity of level-based progression, default XP-for-killing, the focus on CR-balanced encounters, and on and on, design decisions that don't actually support versatile play at all, but rather D&D-style-play. It's a toolbox with a few tools and lots of empty cut-outs for missing tools. Or, really, it's a screwdriver you can use to hammer nails if nothing else is around, but it still sucks at hammering.

I'm pretty sure it is an intentionally generic fantasy toolbox given couple of assumptions (leveled advancement being a primary one, numerous magic-wielding classes being another) - all of those D&D-style-play things you cite are defaults but generally "fuzzy" defaults with plenty of explicit caveats.

 

[James Gasik]

Why is D&D successful right now? A combination of factors. Marketing, the explosion of youtube content (seriously, there's so much of it now!), the rise of D&D tiktok videos, and the fact that finally, D&D has wholly been embraced by pop culture at large. People know what the game is now, and we're no longer suffering from the "Satanic Panic". We're not strange nerds in dimly lit rooms uttering incantations and performing strange Rituals (unless we're Tome Pact Warlocks).

The bar for entry into the game is low, but not the lowest it's ever been. The bar for DMing isn't the greatest it's ever been either, but there's enough youtube videos to pick up the slack of the DMG.

And oofta isn't wrong here, the broad base appeal, while it hasn't made D&D the best game, has somehow created the largest community D&D has ever seen.

I mean, think about it, fifteen years ago, you couldn't get the grognards, the optimizers, the storytellers and the NuD&D crowd playing the same game! A lot of times, we hyperbolically despise each other for playing the game wrong, or twisting the "true D&D" (whatever that is) into something it was never meant to be!

We're still arguing about what D&D is, but at least now we're doing it in the same room!

 

[overgeeked]

You're missing @loverdrive 's point, whether deliberately or not. Just because something is good for business doesn't mean it's a good design or creative decision. A movie that tries to appeal to all audiences and winds up bland in the process isn't arguably superior to a leaner and more focused one, simply because the bland one did better box office. This notion that D&D's design is unassailable because of its market dominance...I mean, it's such an exhausting refrain, as though a game like Blades in the Dark is somehow making a big, dumb obvious blunder by going after a very specific, tuned playstyle, and not pretending it can do everything, for no reason other than it doesn't really provide mechanics beyond zero-to-hero combat-heavy progression.

People have an incredibly hard time separating popularity and quality. They’re not synonyms, but people act as if they were. Especially if they like something that happens to be popular.

 

[overgeeked]

From a bottom-line, money-making perspective? No value, of course. From a design, better-game-making perspective? A lot.

You wouldn't be handcuffed to anything by the designers choosing to speak the truth. Every game has a method of play it was designed for, there's no way around it. The only option is to deliberately obfuscate it.

It'd be easier to recognize whether the game actually works for you or not, supports your playstyle or not, and make an informed decision to stay or leave to play something else when the intent is clear.

But if they did that, 5E wouldn’t be all things to all gamers.

It’s worth noting that WotC has explicitly detailed what playstyle they’re pushing, both in the text itself and in various statement. People just ignore it, find workarounds, or pretend it’s all good despite not working for them.

 

[Oofta]

But if they did that, 5E wouldn’t be all things to all gamers.

It’s worth noting that WotC has explicitly detailed what playstyle they’re pushing, both in the text itself and in various statement. People just ignore it, find workarounds, or pretend it’s all good despite not working for them.

What playstyle would that be? Because from what I see you can do everything from heavy RP games like CR to straight up dungeon crawls and things in between. The published modules have spanned all of them. Throw in things like The Role of Dice that talks about using dice rolls to resolve just about anything uncertain to rarely if ever touching dice outside of combat. Not to mention things like the stealth rules that basically leave most of it in the hands of the DM.

D&D has always had some advice on being respectful of each other, general guidelines to what makes a good game and so on. I assume most games do. As far as the game "not working" .... it works just fine for me and pretty much everyone else I've ever played with, which is not something I could have said about previous editions.

WOTC did not slip something into our water. We are not subject to mass hallucination. It's never going to be a perfect game, nothing ever will be. But the people I actually play with have their own styles and are not beholden to any corporate overlords.

 

[James Gasik]

That bit about the Stealth rules amuses me. WotC has never once made good Stealth rules (the 4e ones are particularly....profoundly bad), so in 5e, these professional game designers who are paid in real money just said "man, Stealth is hard. Bethesda strategy! The modding community will fix it for us!"

 

[eyeheartawk]

Bottom line?

WOTC realized the value of becoming the Lingua Franca of roleplaying games. That isn't really an inherently bad approach from a design space, but yeah, you sacrifice optimization and specificity towards a particular identity and way of play when doing that.

Is that bad? Depends.

For what it's worth I think 5e pulls it off better than, say, 2D20, but acknowledging the downsides of that approach is valid also. Like, could you make a Shadow of the Demon Lord game out of 5e if you really wanted to? Yeah, sure. Should you? When you can just buy Shadow of the Demon Lord off the shelf, do no additional work and just run the game designed to do the thing? I would probably opt for the latter.

 

[Oofta]

That bit about the Stealth rules amuses me. WotC has never once made good Stealth rules (the 4e ones are particularly....profoundly bad), so in 5e, these professional game designers who are paid in real money just said "man, Stealth is hard. Bethesda strategy! The modding community will fix it for us!"

There was a podcast where they actually talk about this, how it's just kind of a never-ending rabbit hole of endless rules and exceptions. You can listen to it here, the stuff on stealth starts around the 16 minute mark.

I actually like the stealth rules myself, probably because they made such a hash of it in previous editions. Now when I DM it's just a question of "does it make sense".

 

[James Gasik]

See as much as people hate comparing D&D to video games, I honestly think the "stealth mode" you see in most games makes sense. Hell, ironically, despite my Bethesda joke, Skyrim stealth is pretty decently modeled.

Your character creeps slowly across the map, and if they are in line of sight to someone, they can be detected, forcing them to distract potential viewers, or duck further out of sight.

 

[loverdrive]

Because from what I see you can do everything from heavy RP games like CR to straight up dungeon crawls and things in between. The published modules have spanned all of them. Throw in things like The Role of Dice that talks about using dice rolls to resolve just about anything uncertain to rarely if ever touching dice outside of combat. Not to mention things like the stealth rules that basically leave most of it in the hands of the DM.

Something being possible doesn't mean that the rules support it (read: make it easier).

But, before I continue. How do you define "the game working"? What should it be doing to be considered "working"?