D&D 5E What is the appeal of the weird fantasy races?

[Minigiant]

Well, there have been a lot of claims that unless you run a kitchen sink campaign or give players carte blanche to do world building that the game will be automatically boring.

You have no clue if my campaign is boring. My players certainly don't think so. It may not be the campaign for you, but yes I get tired of baseless accusations. Want to do kitchen sink? Go for it if you have fun. Tell me my campaign is crap or that my player's PCs are cardboard cutouts because I don't run it exactly like you do? Yeah, you're going to get pushback.

There is no one true way to run games. Every DM, every group, needs to develop a style that works for them.

No one is calling your game at your table boring.

I thought the whole point of this thread is that different people like different things?

If Suzie likes X and Y and your game lacks Candy Y, it will be boring to Suzie. No need to pushback against that statement.

 

[Jack Daniel]

Playing D&D where you eject well over half the material on your shelves is kinda like using a PS5 to play Pong. Sure, you can do it, but, what a waste. Why not use something that's actually designed to run Pong, rather than using something where you're only using about 10% of its potential?

First off, tabletop RPGs do not evolve or improve over time like video game technology, so the analogy is a poor one.
Second, kitbashing is not wasteful, and you don't get to judge others for doing it. How dare you.
Third, we run emulators on modern gaming rigs because it's awesome (and it saves shelf-space).

You want to play humans only and 3 classes? WTF are you using D&D for? It's such a poor system for doing something like that.

Bold claim there, hombre. Prove it.

If the DM has created a historical campaign set during the Hundred Years War then you don't get to play a wizard. Or for that matter a cleric. Or any other spellcasting class. At which point the huge question is "Why use D&D for this when it is so clearly unsuited to the task?"

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe it says "Dungeons & Dragons" on the covers of all these sourcebooks.

 

[Oofta]

No one is calling your game at your table boring.

I thought the whole point of this thread is that different people like different things?

If Suzie likes X and Y and your game lacks Candy Y, it will be boring to Suzie. No need to pushback against that statement.

Really? You missed this gem that I just read this morning? There have been plenty of others, some directed at me, some directed at others. There are a lot of baseless assumptions and attempts to conflate bad DMing with curated games.

End of the day it just comes down to preferences and both sides agreeing that we don't all need to play exactly the same. It's one of the strengths of D&D that it can support so many styles.

 

[loverdrive]

Bold claim there, hombre. Prove it.

A better idea would be to prove that D&D would help to run such kind of game. What kind of mechanics work towards establishing the historical tone? What kind of rewards mechanisms encourage players to further the goals of the Crown?

As far as I see it, D&D ruleset would only help to answer the least important question: what kinds of dice players should be rollin.

First off, tabletop RPGs do not evolve or improve over time like video game technology, so the analogy is a poor one.

Well, they actually do. Game design as a field have gone a long way over the years.

 

[TwoSix]

Well, there have been a lot of claims that unless you run a kitchen sink campaign or give players carte blanche to do world building that the game will be automatically boring.

It's not that it's automatically boring. It's just that if I saw that listing on a hypothetical DM-Tinder, I'd need to see something else compelling to know the DM actually has an interesting hook rather than a psychological aversion to novelty. DMs who are set in their ways are almost always a swipe left for me.

 

[Neonchameleon]

First off, tabletop RPGs do not evolve or improve over time like video game technology, so the analogy is a poor one.

No. They evolve and improve over time like video game design. We may be more or less playing on the same hardware - but you can tell the difference between a late and an early game from a given console generation. And sometimes the games that broke open the genres are still among the best after all this time.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe it says "Dungeons & Dragons" on the covers of all these sourcebooks.

In a paraphrase of Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park "Just because you can doesn't mean you should".

And I don't think that I've ever seen anyone defend all of the 2e (or 3.X) shovelware as anything resembling good.

 

[Maxperson]

So you have three classes and more than a total of seven subclasses

Okay. So what. Your argument boils down to a group of people in a standard D&D campaign who choose to play 2 fighters, a barbarian and a rogue, having bad wrong fun.

That's simply not true. D&D functions very well now with no casters in the party.

Last time I checked real world clerics couldn't Cure wounds and real world psychics kept getting debunked.

Last time I checked lots of people believe in real world divine healing and psychics.

Even if "there could be magic" would it be D&D magic (and especially WotC D&D magic) with its short casting times, reliable casting, and very very limited and rare backlash?

I'd be much more inclined to see a WFRP-like magic system than D&D as reflective of the way magic was perceived round the 100 years war.

It doesn't matter. This is a D&D game ser around the Hundred Years War. D&D magic could easily be

Question: Do you believe in real world magic?

Question 2: Do you believe that real world magic is anything like D&D magic?

Because if the answer to either of those is no then if you use D&D magic you aren't playing a 100 years war game, you're playing a D&D/100 years war mash-up which looks a lot like D&D with a coat of 100 years war paint over the top.

I would be playing a D&D game set during the Hundred Years War, yea. That's the point.

 

[Oofta]

It's not that it's automatically boring. It's just that if I saw that listing on a hypothetical DM-Tinder, I'd need to see something else compelling to know the DM actually has an interesting hook rather than a psychological aversion to novelty. DMs who are set in their ways are almost always a swipe left for me.

But ... but ... I like long walks on the beach! On the freaking beach! Isn't that enough?

 

[Neonchameleon]

Okay. So what. Your argument boils down to a group of people in a standard D&D campaign who choose to play 2 fighters, a barbarian and a rogue, having bad wrong fun.

No. My argument boils down to a DM choosing to force a group to play 2 fighters, a barbarian, and a rogue to be a problem DM. It's not that the players decided to do this. It's the DM mandating this that's the problem.

If the players choose to play 2 fighters, a barbarian, and a rogue there should be a discussion going forward because it does cause problems for D&D. The players may have someone change class, may be curious to see where it leads, or may be stubborn in sticking to their choices. But this is entirely different from the DM saying "You shall play fighters, barbarians, rogues, and nothing else! To try to play something else is badwrongfun. Respect mah authoritah!"

That's simply not true. D&D functions very well now with no casters in the party.

That's simply not true. D&D 4e functions well with no casters. D&D 5e is just about functional with no casters - but beats everything before 4e.

Last time I checked lots of people believe in real world divine healing and psychics.

Last time I checked:

1. Just because people believe in something doesn't make it real.
2. That doesn't mean that the type of magic and psychics they believe in resemble D&D magic. Not all magical systems are remotely the same.

It doesn't matter. This is a D&D game ser around the Hundred Years War. D&D magic could easily be

In which case the setting is D&D with a light 100 years war gloss.

Not all forms of fictional magic are the same at all. And D&D is ultra-high magic and ultra-flashy (see the "Gandalf was a fifth level magic user" argument in days of yore).

 

[Jack Daniel]

A better idea would be to

—shift the burden of proof? Nah.

No. They evolve and improve over time like video game design. We may be more or less playing on the same hardware - but you can tell the difference between a late and an early game from a given console generation. And sometimes the games that broke open the genres are still among the best after all this time.

You could call what RPGs do evolution in the strict sense (change over time to suit the present circumstances, the way organisms and languages evolve), but it's not evolution in the colloquial sense (improvement over time, the way technology evolves). RPGs are not a "technology" in that regard. You can't say that 5th edition is better than 4th because it's newer. You can't say 1st edition is worse than 2nd because it's older. And if you do think that… that's, just, like, your opinion, man.

And I don't think that I've ever seen anyone defend all of the 2e (or 3.X) shovelware as anything resembling good.

Edition snobbery? Classy.

That's simply not true. D&D 4e functions well with no casters. D&D 5e is just about functional with no casters - but beats everything before 4e.

Every edition works without casters.