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Unpopular Opinion?: D&D is a terrible venue for horror
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<blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8101858" data-attributes="member: 16814"><p>No, which is why I haven't mentioned them. Clearly, altering the rest schedule puts more stress on the resources of the players, but those resources are still mostly extracted via the combat engine, which, to me, is a primary issue with resolving conflict in a way conducive to horror tropes. Again, it's not impossible, but the 5e system in general, and especially with the combat engine, works against the effort. You have to do extra work to overcome the system. To me, this is a hallmark of a system not well designed for that style of play.</p><p></p><p>And, to say it one more time, this isn't to say that you cannot do horror in 5e, but that you have to overcome certain things in the system to do it well. That's something you can do, clearly, but being able to overcome the system doesn't mean the system is good for horror. Some of the options help, but, if you ask me, the options that help the most to do horror are the success at a cost and fail forward options. These two allow for being able to layer on additional stress and more clearly evoke the descent into horror during a session. The typical failure condition for checks of no progress does little to no work to aid evoking a scene where consequences are imposed but the action keeps going forward. Note that success at cost isn't at all part of the combat engine and fail forward could only be used at the end of a combat, where it would stick out due to how combats in D&D tend to end with the removal of all hp.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ovinomancer, post: 8101858, member: 16814"] No, which is why I haven't mentioned them. Clearly, altering the rest schedule puts more stress on the resources of the players, but those resources are still mostly extracted via the combat engine, which, to me, is a primary issue with resolving conflict in a way conducive to horror tropes. Again, it's not impossible, but the 5e system in general, and especially with the combat engine, works against the effort. You have to do extra work to overcome the system. To me, this is a hallmark of a system not well designed for that style of play. And, to say it one more time, this isn't to say that you cannot do horror in 5e, but that you have to overcome certain things in the system to do it well. That's something you can do, clearly, but being able to overcome the system doesn't mean the system is good for horror. Some of the options help, but, if you ask me, the options that help the most to do horror are the success at a cost and fail forward options. These two allow for being able to layer on additional stress and more clearly evoke the descent into horror during a session. The typical failure condition for checks of no progress does little to no work to aid evoking a scene where consequences are imposed but the action keeps going forward. Note that success at cost isn't at all part of the combat engine and fail forward could only be used at the end of a combat, where it would stick out due to how combats in D&D tend to end with the removal of all hp. [/QUOTE]
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Unpopular Opinion?: D&D is a terrible venue for horror
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