Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 8641022" data-attributes="member: 1465">Really liked your summary, but with regard to this last bit, I must say that personally I feel I can play several different games I want, using 5e core rulebooks, and not just one. The key is to treat the core game more as a toolbox and less as a religious book. Sometimes Crawford & pals actually remember about this and tell us so in their "interview" videos or posts, but most of the time they still act more like they're telling us the mandatory way to play the game. But the core books have A LOT of stuff that probably the majority of us aren't following religiously in our games (only in our theoretical discussions), and by changing the focus on one aspect or rule somewhere along the line between "key feature of our game" and ignoring it completely, you can definitely steer the game towards many different styles. One example could be how much you use Inspiration and how often you grant (dis)advantage by narrative descriptions done by the players: change these habits, and the game can swing heavily between a more narrative style and a more technical style.But then indeed, some things that depend on numbers can't be changed easily at all. If someone considers having two-digit bonuses an essential element of playing "3e style" or non-linear ability bonuses for playing "BECMI style", then clearly 5e doesn't offer these options.Yes but if someone expects a "module" to be an entire book, or at least a beefy chapter, perhaps it's because they are underestimating how many rules are needed to actually make a difference. You don't need a book for a "called shots/permanent injuries" module, you can probably have that in one single page. You can make BIG changes to how your game plays just by changing the standard duration of short/long rests.It's primarily a failure of the gaming community, which is on average way too obsessed by what is the "current official rule/version".It is also a failure of the game designers, when they push something to be less than optional, where actually almost everything in the game could be optional by nature.Take something like passive checks. In theory the PHB goes quite light with them, the text is more about suggestions. And yet there's a couple of specific abilities (maybe a couple of feats) which refer to passive checks and would lose some meaning if a gaming group decided not to use passive checks. But then the DMG goes down in a more patronizing way about how the DM actually should use them by default for secret doors and such. The failure of the designers here was not to recognize how the gameplay style changes: use passive checks regularly and the game is a lot more predictable outside of combat, ignore them and it get a lot more random. How is that not very much a gamestyle preference that should be left to each gaming group? Why was it not more presented as a "dialable" part of the game, like for example group checks (which have similar power in swinging the overall feel of the game outside combat)?</blockquote>

Verification