Why is realism "lame"?

[Hussar]

If that's what you think, then I think you have a far, far too narrow definition of grim and gritty. Mid-level party but with limited magic and healing in the game (actually quite easy to do in D&D) and you're still staring grim and gritty right in the face. You can take a few hits but each hit point becomes a precious resource. Name level PCs, in a typical magic-rich D&D campaign, are potent. No doubt about it. But that doesn't prevent a DM from adjusting a few assumptions and playing much more gritty. And it really does only take a few adjustments for the rules to work gritty. Check out the Thieves World supplements for d20. Not many changes, game much grittier than base assumption D&D.

Honestly haven't read the Theves World rules so I cannot specifically comment but in baseline D20 D&D, no wounds can ever take longer fhan a week of bedewt to heal and typically wounds are gone the next day or maybe the day after. So HP as "precious resource" certainly doesn't fit.

As I said, people will make all these claims about the game but almost nver actually back them up with direct evidence from the game.

It's funny. You go back a few years in posts on En World and you'll see almost weekly threads of people trying to do low magic or grim and gritty D&D and not having much success. Yet apparently it's a trivial thing to do it.

 

[billd91]

Honestly haven't read the Theves World rules so I cannot specifically comment but in baseline D20 D&D, no wounds can ever take longer fhan a week of bedewt to heal and typically wounds are gone the next day or maybe the day after. So HP as "precious resource" certainly doesn't fit.

As I said, people will make all these claims about the game but almost nver actually back them up with direct evidence from the game.

It's funny. You go back a few years in posts on En World and you'll see almost weekly threads of people trying to do low magic or grim and gritty D&D and not having much success. Yet apparently it's a trivial thing to do it.

It is actually pretty easy but the decision to have that kind of campaign is wide-reaching and will affect the sorts of creatures and resources you can use in the campaign. And frankly I haven't seen that many threads with people saying they're failing to have success with low magic D&D. What I see is a lot of critics chiming into those threads saying that they can't succeed because it's too hard to do. And that's untrue.

Edit: It might also help to remember that in editions before 3e, you healed a hit point a day, maybe two, no matter what your level was. True, you regained all hit points in a month's time, but that's hardly recovering the next day or even over the course of a single week.

 

[I'm A Banana]

See this last bit I strongly disagree with. It's not some recent thing. The game has never really supported this style of play and imo actively worked against it. Even something as fundamental as the level system makes grim and gritty very difficult. By the time you hit "name" level, your PC is pretty close to a superhero. A character that can stand toe to toe with dragons (plural) and reasonably expect to win.

By the time a PC hits about fifth level, he's far, far beyond grim and gritty.

More recent editions of the game have resisted tinkering more strongly. In 3e, there was such a complex web of inter-connectivity, if you changed one option (like the rate of magic the party got awarded), the whole house was liable to fall to pieces. 4e shared that problem to a large degree, and where it didn't, the game took such a strongly "my way or the highway" approach that tinkering was only welcome in certain proscribed ways. This is part of making a solid, balanced system, but it's also something that has said to a lot of people who want to play the game slightly differently: "This isn't FOR you."

Levels aren't inherently contra to a grim-n-gritty experience. It has more to do with hit point:damage ratios, ovreall character aplomb, and perhaps certain kinds of spells. And even 4e, tight as it is, tries to make some accommodation for it (see: Dark Sun). It's not something that is especially difficult to do. To decide that the game can't support it is to decide that this hammer can't POSSIBLY have a claw on the back because it was made for HAMMERING! A game engine isn't really a single-purpose tool.

 

[CroBob]

More recent editions of the game have resisted tinkering more strongly. In 3e, there was such a complex web of inter-connectivity, if you changed one option (like the rate of magic the party got awarded), the whole house was liable to fall to pieces. 4e shared that problem to a large degree, and where it didn't, the game took such a strongly "my way or the highway" approach that tinkering was only welcome in certain proscribed ways. This is part of making a solid, balanced system, but it's also something that has said to a lot of people who want to play the game slightly differently: "This isn't FOR you."

Levels aren't inherently contra to a grim-n-gritty experience. It has more to do with hit point:damage ratios, ovreall character aplomb, and perhaps certain kinds of spells. And even 4e, tight as it is, tries to make some accommodation for it (see: Dark Sun). It's not something that is especially difficult to do. To decide that the game can't support it is to decide that this hammer can't POSSIBLY have a claw on the back because it was made for HAMMERING! A game engine isn't really a single-purpose tool.

I see where this is coming from, but at the same time my nigh irrelevant anecdotal evidence of personal games contradicts what you're claiming. I've never had a problem with anything from adding additional powers to altering the feel of the game as a whole. I'm not going to claim it didn't require any testing or tinkering, but it wasn't exactly difficult, either. Granted, I don't think my goal was to ever make it more "gritty", so my anecdotal evidence is irrelevant in regards to that anyhow, but making changes to how the game works isn't difficult. Just off the top of my head, for 4E, going for gritty;

1) No in-combat healing powers aside your single second wind (which, let's face facts, could easily be too little and too late by the time you decide you need it).
2) -1 to D20 rolls when bloodied, maybe even -2 when under a quarter of your HPs... "super-bloodied" until a good name comes up.
3) One death saving throw instead of three, and when you succeed you end up with some sort of penalty imposing injury (requiring a ritual to fix).
4) No Action Points.
5) Monsters do higher than normal damage, but, maybe, have fewer HPs.
6) You have a maximum of 2 Encounter powers, switching out for a higher level one when you'd normally gain a new one.

That's what I'd start with if I were aiming for gritty, and I'd adjust it after a few test games if necessary.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I've never had a problem with anything from adding additional powers to altering the feel of the game as a whole.

That makes sense -- different players have different thresholds for change/chaos/tinkering/whatnot. Saying that it's more difficult isn't even saying that it is especially difficult per se, just that it's harder with more interconnection and tighter balance concerns. In 1e/2e, it was easier to ditch part of the rules (like the original initiative rules, or the weapon vs. armor rules, or the grappling table, or random encounters) without quite as many unexpected cascading effects (3e) or built-in mitigating factors (4e). My central thesis is, after all, that D&D can and should support it!

 

[Umbran]

There's some folks here who are getting more than a tad personal. Please allow me to remind you that this is a bad idea - address the logic of the post, not the person behind the post, please.

 

[Hussar]

Oh hey. Just second here. I'm most certainly not saying it can't be done. What I am saying is that the system is not geared for it and you're going to get little, if any, support when you try.

Can it be done? Oh sure. Is it going to do it out of the box without considerable tinkering? I really do not think so.

For example, KM is right that a level based system isn't necessarily a problem. However, the level system in D&D is. The power curve works very strongly against what you want. Thus Elf Witch's comments about falling damage or being able to face off against dozens of archers in an open field and win.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Oh hey. Just second here. I'm most certainly not saying it can't be done. What I am saying is that the system is not geared for it and you're going to get little, if any, support when you try.

Can it be done? Oh sure. Is it going to do it out of the box without considerable tinkering? I really do not think so.

For example, KM is right that a level based system isn't necessarily a problem. However, the level system in D&D is. The power curve works very strongly against what you want. Thus Elf Witch's comments about falling damage or being able to face off against dozens of archers in an open field and win.

So if we can put that hook on the back of that hammer....why shouldn't we? If we can improve the support for [MENTION=9037]Elf Witch[/MENTION] 's games by building a system that is happy to accommodate them, why not do that? If D&D CAN support more "realism," why shouldn't it?

I think sometimes people get wrapped up in the idea that this is a zero-sum kind of situation, but it's not. Leveling in D&D doesn't HAVE to come with big HP boosts, and it doesn't have to NOT come with big HP boosts, it can be both, one at one table, one at another, maybe both swapping off at the same table depending on the style of the game you want (Dark Sun maybe grim-n-gritty, FR maybe not).

I don't see any convincing argument that says that D&D shouldn't take the fact that some people use it for some grim-n-gritty games, and make that more possible. It's had a history of enabling or at least permitting it already, and it's something that it keeps trying to make stabs at once in a while, it's something there's clearly a demand for, so why not just build a game engine robust enough to friggin' do it already and stop trying to pretend that everyone's D&D games should play exactly the same and that if it doesn't play that way it shouldn't be "D&D"? That sort of gatekeeping does not mesh with the way RPGs are played (and my own pet theory is that part of why 4e struggled was because it tried to keep the gates like that).

There is reason to believe 5e is going to do this, and the d20 system proved the underlying assumption: you do not need to learn an entirely different game to play a slightly more gritty version of heroic fantasy. You can play D&D. D&D just needs to let itself be used like that.

 

[CroBob]

That makes sense -- different players have different thresholds for change/chaos/tinkering/whatnot. Saying that it's more difficult isn't even saying that it is especially difficult per se, just that it's harder with more interconnection and tighter balance concerns. In 1e/2e, it was easier to ditch part of the rules (like the original initiative rules, or the weapon vs. armor rules, or the grappling table, or random encounters) without quite as many unexpected cascading effects (3e) or built-in mitigating factors (4e). My central thesis is, after all, that D&D can and should support it!

Hrm... sort of. A system which is very complex, the complexity would certainly make altering it more difficult relative to other systems. However, with a system like 4E, the base system itself is actually very simple. As, in my not entirely humble opinion, it should be. When the base system is simple, it's easy to figure out what kind of effect each change will have on the game. So while earlier iterations may have been more modular, newer systems are more easily molded as a whole, while allowing for modular upgrades to also be easy to do.

 

[CroBob]

So if we can put that hook on the back of that hammer....why shouldn't we? If we can improve the support for @Elf Witch 's games by building a system that is happy to accommodate them, why not do that? If D&D CAN support more "realism," why shouldn't it?

I think sometimes people get wrapped up in the idea that this is a zero-sum kind of situation, but it's not. Leveling in D&D doesn't HAVE to come with big HP boosts, and it doesn't have to NOT come with big HP boosts, it can be both, one at one table, one at another, maybe both swapping off at the same table depending on the style of the game you want (Dark Sun maybe grim-n-gritty, FR maybe not).

I don't see any convincing argument that says that D&D shouldn't take the fact that some people use it for some grim-n-gritty games, and make that more possible. It's had a history of enabling or at least permitting it already, and it's something that it keeps trying to make stabs at once in a while, it's something there's clearly a demand for, so why not just build a game engine robust enough to friggin' do it already and stop trying to pretend that everyone's D&D games should play exactly the same and that if it doesn't play that way it shouldn't be "D&D"? That sort of gatekeeping does not mesh with the way RPGs are played (and my own pet theory is that part of why 4e struggled was because it tried to keep the gates like that).

There is reason to believe 5e is going to do this, and the d20 system proved the underlying assumption: you do not need to learn an entirely different game to play a slightly more gritty version of heroic fantasy. You can play D&D. D&D just needs to let itself be used like that.

I do think the idea of modular modification is a good one, but at what point is it too much? At what point do you have too much "The fighter gains a d10 HPs per level. For a less random HP total, the Fighter gains 6 HPs per level. For a grittier game, the Fighter gains a d6 HPs. For a less gritty game, the Fighter gains a d12. Etc, etc."?

I do think options should be part of basically every RPG, but at what point do you give up on writing a rule book at all and just hand people a business card that says "Do whatever you want"? Does a game gain anything through trying to bend over backwards so that it can be a different game entirely at every other table, instead of simply writing a few different games marketed towards those different groups? There's a point where something becomes so flexible and modular that it loses it's identity and utility entirely.

Is D&D good for gritty, realistic games? No. Can it be made that way? Sure. You can modify it to be anything you want. You can do the same thing to any other game system as well. So what? Is there a reason the gaming style you desire must be made under the D&D banner? Does the title really matter that much? Why not find a game that's already close to what you're looking for and play that one? I could come up with a d20 game that's gritty in under a week, and it'd probably even be fun. It wouldn't resemble D&D all that much, though. I mean, it'd be d20 based, and there'd be skills and probably feat like things. I made it quickly, after all, but would it be right to call this quick game of mine "Dungeons and Dragons" just because it's based on rolling a d20?