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

[Hussar]

I guess I'm with @Thomas Shey on this: house rules don't stop D&D from being D&D. I mean, think of it this way a moment: what percentage of DMs and players actually even know all the rules?

Suppose some table of friends (casual players and DM, all of them) plays what they call D&D, but they have no idea what the flanking rule is or how it's used. Further suppose the players on their own come up with a flanking action in some pitched combat and ask the DM for her judgment on whether they can get some kind of attack bonus for it, and she says, "Sure. I'll give you bonus x under conditions y." Now further further suppose the bonus she gives them is not the one in the book. Are they not still playing D&D? I certainly would say they are.

Yeah, being "not D&D" is probably too strong a term. But, the basic point about calling it your own game is a decent one. Because we see it all the time when two posters are completely talking past each other because their play styles and play experiences are so different from each other's that they really, really aren't playing the same game.

One poster, @Lanefan, that I constantly stand in awe of runs these decades long campaigns. I think my longest, ever, campaign was like a year and a half, maybe two years? The vast majority have been one year or less. Which means that we constantly have very different views on gaming because, frankly, neither of us plays the same game. What works for me and what works for him are completely different because every single thing at our tables is based on entirely different priorities.

Which doesn't make either of us right or wrong. That's always the mistake in these conversations. Trying to determine a "right" answer. At best, you can get a "Well this is the right answer for me at this point in time" answer. Which might be the entirely wrong answer six months from now and would have been the wrong answer six months ago.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I feel like once some starts declaring what is and isn't D&D, they can safely be ignored forever.

 

[Jahydin]

Are you under the impression people don't sometimes have an issue with some of these sort of things, too? If so, let me disabuse you.

Oh no, haha. There is a reason they're "secret" mechanics. I find them interesting though. Also, the thought of applying similar tricks to my own games has crossed my mind...

 

[Thomas Shey]

I figured as much, there's a lot of mods to work through, and then a lot of other stuff that seems like it would need to be set up, unless you're going for something super duper light.

Yeah, I was adapting Lords of Gossamer and Shadows to it, and took a brute force shortcut to adapting powers, and it didn't work out well.

 

[overgeeked]

Honestly, I'm not huge on the idea of focused, prescriptive play styles always producing a better experience, I think it introduces trade offs because sometimes you want to do something outside of it without necessarily breaking from the current game. I think its the current movement in a lot of the RPG scene, but I don't think its the be all end all of good design.

A game designed to be less prescriptive can deliberately choose mechanics that support multiple styles without actually being worse for it. I don't regard 5e as a great example, but that's just because I don't love it as a system, and I think it breaks down too easily. But something like 4e, or especially PF2e, succeeds in terms of design because they're good at adding elements of the game that the people using the game system can use to different degrees or in different ways and still have a good time with the game. Its just that different games might require you to emphasize parts of the same rule set, you know?

I did recently pick up Cortex Prime, after one of my players was looking through the Xadia game, and I'm interested in trying it out at some point-- the idea of universal systems with toolboxes you can implement to create whatever experience you please seems super compatible with my preferences, but we'll see how it plays out at my table someday, we like our texture.

I don't read what Colville is suggesting as "focused, prescriptive play". Rather just being up front about what assumptions the module in question is designed around. "This module features heavy roleplay" isn't focused, prescriptive play in the same sense that an Apocalypse World game would be or Dogs in the Vineyard. It's just a "hey, do you like crazy tactical play, check me out."

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, I mean, he's not wrong. Look at something like Dragon Heist. A very, VERY different module from, say, Princes of the Apocalypse. And, some very polarizing views of Dragon Heist. You'll see people absolutely loathe this module. It's the worst thing in the world. OTOH, others like it and have a good time with it. It was certainly popular enough saleswise that there's probably a fairly big selection of people who played it. And, judging from the additions to it on things like DM's Guild or Reddit, it certainly wasn't universally hated.

But, I wonder how much of how people judge the module is based on their own group. I have a sneaking suspicion that a large part of what people think about a product is based heavily on the group that that person plays with. We especially saw this in the 4e days when you had a game that was strongly based around the idea that you would be playing with strangers and people with stable groups really reacting very negatively to that. Not because it was bad per se, but, because the solutions the game was offering were to problems they were never seeing.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I don't read what Colville is suggesting as "focused, prescriptive play". Rather just being up front about what assumptions the module in question is designed around. "This module features heavy roleplay" isn't focused, prescriptive play in the same sense that an Apocalypse World game would be or Dogs in the Vineyard. It's just a "hey, do you like crazy tactical play, check me out."

Yeah sorry I was responding to some of the discussion in the thread dismissing games that don't prescribe a way of playing as functionally immoral, not Colville, that wasn't clear.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah sorry I was responding to some of the discussion in the thread dismissing games that don't prescribe a way of playing as functionally immoral, not Colville, that wasn't clear.

I think that might be a little harsh characterization, though I think if you said some people consider such games only semi-functional, I think that'd be defensible.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I think that might be a little harsh characterization, though I think if you said some people consider such games only semi-functional, I think that'd be defensible.

I just double checked, you might be right, but I wouldn't be able to truthfully assert that reading of it.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Didn't we learn in the 80's that the entire game was immoral?

That's why I started playing in the first place.