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HumanFighter
2021-10-06, 03:48 PM
Feel free to share your opinions about any tabletop rpgs you want here. I am just curious to know what people think.
My intention here is to create a relatively safe space to express opinions, not as an excuse for flaming and/or trolling.
Doesn't matter how unpopular or controversial your opinion may be, I am not here to judge you. I simply want to know what people out there think about these games.
Keep in mind this doesn't have to necessarily be about D&D, just any game will do.

I'll start off with a taste of my own unpopular opinions: I don't really like D&D 5th edition. I know it's the most popular one or whatever, but honestly I would rather play 4th edition than this. I feel they did the skills dirty in 5e. I mean it's still playable, but I just don't really enjoy it much.
D&D 3.5e was my first ever tabletop rpg, and so I have a heavy bias in favor of it. Still, even then I can see its flaws. The over-reliance on equipment and magic items, for example. But, it will always be my fav.

Anyways, thanks and I hope you enjoy sharing what your thoughts are on the various D&D editions and other such games.

OldTrees1
2021-10-06, 03:53 PM
There should be:

A spellcaster that casts at will (unpopular but not too unpopular).

A mage that does not have spellcasting (unpopular due to rarity rather than disagreement).

Batcathat
2021-10-06, 04:09 PM
This opinion probably isn't that unpopular, but still: alignments is a sacred cow that should've been slaughtered and eaten long ago. They have lots of potential downsides and I've yet to see a single upside that can't be attained some other way.

JNAProductions
2021-10-06, 04:12 PM
4th edition was good.

Not very D&D-like, but for what it set out to do, it was good. And it was also fun to play, which is more important.

NichG
2021-10-06, 05:27 PM
I could do without dice at all.

Binary proficiencies from older editions are more potentially interesting than skill checks.

D&D with rare combat is fine, no need for multiple fights a session.

Balance doesn't matter and balance-focused design often sells out the weird and inspiring soul of a thing in exchange for making stuff quantitatively comparable.

icefractal
2021-10-06, 05:50 PM
A mage that does not have spellcasting (unpopular due to rarity rather than disagreement).What do they have/do instead?


D&D with rare combat is fine, no need for multiple fights a session.

Balance doesn't matter and balance-focused design often sells out the weird and inspiring soul of a thing in exchange for making stuff quantitatively comparable.Ditto. I mean, I'll gladly take balance when it's "free", but the cost paid for it is often too high.


Some of mine:
Things being "off the RNG" is not inherently a problem and can in fact be desirable.

Being a luddite doesn't have to be balanced with using technology and probably shouldn't be.

"Tucker's Kobolds" may get lionized but most players hate that kind of scenario - they want to be the ones punching above their weight class with cleverness, not the ones looking like chumps.

"Use the environment, not your character sheet" is sometimes just code for "Don't pay attention to that stupid crap you made (the character), pay attention to this awesome stuff I made (the scene description)."

Saving the entire world is over-used and either very high-pressure or merely fake danger (depending on whether the GM is willing to actually have the world be destroyed) and fewer campaigns should have it as the goal.

A session where nothing is high-intensity and the characters face no significant risks can still be plenty of fun.

Lord Raziere
2021-10-06, 06:18 PM
I agree with batcathat and also think that there should be no evil races. (I don't care if you make them "alien" I just want them to not be evil and to play them). I don't need a reason why other than the fact I don't like them, and don't any projection or resemblance to anything to not want them.

also that separating race into ancestry and culture is a good idea.

DnD can learn a lot from the Spheres of Power system about how to make characters.

there needs to be more mundane classes than fighter and rogue.

Dragonlance is straight up just not a good setting in general, and neither is Forgotten Realms.

The Unexpectables as a campaign while good to watch, has a numerous flaws in it that keeps it from being the best it could be.

I hold no love for gnomes or kobolds and do not see why people like them so much.

I am not particularly fond of the cautious paranoia playstyle and wish more DnD games would loosen up, be more bold and risk-taking rather than being bogged down in constant planning, because I think the tendency towards that mindset has hurt the hobby by encouraging inaction and indecision when you need to act to keep the game moving.

4e Warlord was a good idea that should be brought back.

Kraynic
2021-10-06, 06:48 PM
What do they have/do instead?

The first thing that comes to my mind is the "mechanic" mage (if I remember correctly) from Robert Asprin's Myth series. All of their powers come from objects, and they actually have no inherent magical ability at all.

OldTrees1
2021-10-06, 07:14 PM
What do they have/do instead?

They have Magic. Spellcasting is a rather niche interpretation of a mage but it dominates the available mechanical options because it is so easy to write.

One interpretation:
A spell less Necromancer would have a cohort of undead, have fortified their own body & soul, be able to drain various types of vitality from their foes, and stave off death for their allies. (If you are familiar with 3E Dread Necromancer, remove their spells and give them even more class features is a start in this direction)

A spell less Pyromancer is surrounded by an every growing amount of flame that they have increasing control over. They can form it into elementals, while they are encased in a sphere of fire, and causing their enemies to ignite.

Magic for the spellcaster is a discrete fleeting flash. A spell that lasts for a bit and then is completely gone. Mages don't necessarily need to only exist in that form. Magic could be permanent and continuous. The Mage wields magic and becomes magic. Basically mechanics described by words like passive or continuous rather than described by words like uses or duration. However that is just one interpretation of the mage that is not a spellcaster.

Frogreaver
2021-10-06, 07:22 PM
5e is far from perfect.

Telok
2021-10-06, 07:48 PM
D&d 5e is: ad&d 1e mushed against d&d 4e, discard all humor & whimsey, add more hit points to everything, add a very few select ideas from d&d 3.x, homogenize, add more hit points to everything again, paint job with a flashy ad campaign.


WotC shows how much they care about you by releasing ToB errata. (Yes I'm still salty about that. The utter disrespect for their consumers shown by not even admitting any mistake is despicable.)


There are people who need rules and guidelines or they will screw up certain things. Maybe its old habits, maybe a personality trait, maybe ignorance, maybe inexperience. There are some people who need guiderails to play or run a roleplaying game.

LibraryOgre
2021-10-06, 08:10 PM
In AD&D, Weapon Specialization was a better implementation of "give fighters extra combat ability above what other classes can achieve" than % strength.

Alignment is a useful shorthand to general actions.

The current take on goblins is pretty much just an unwashed kender who needs a dialect coach.

The current take on tieflings is pretty much the same as the 90s/00s version of the drow.

dafrca
2021-10-06, 08:25 PM
A mage that does not have spellcasting (unpopular due to rarity rather than disagreement).
Interesting, my mind now wants to know what makes them a mage then? I know maybe another thread but you do have me curious to see what they could do with it. :smallbiggrin:

GentlemanVoodoo
2021-10-06, 08:44 PM
5e was never a perfect system but it started out in the right direction as being a "best of" compilation for all the prior editions. There was a little bit of everything for everyone. The key enjoyment was more on simplistic options and classes. However this was broken when Tasha's and all other books there after where published which broke a solid design mold.

The Artificer should have never been a stand alone class. It should have been a Wizard subclass. Additional subclasses could have been added to the other classes for the Eberron setting book such has the Battle Smite going to the Ranger for instance.

On the whole there was nothing wrong with the Ranger that was first printed in the PHB. It was a nicely done class that played to being a wilderness person relying on skills as much as magic and combat to take on foes. The revisions made to the class as a whole took away from that and made it more video game like.

Forgotten Realms is not a good setting but could be if more was done with it. Every adventure module for 5e in this setting has been set in or around the Sword Coast. They have ignored more interesting regions like Kara-Tu or Maztica.

Some sacred cows like alignment restrictions and also druids cannot use metal need to die. On the druid, I find it hard to believe they would be against using natural occurring metals that are in the ground like iron or copper. More so, the whole fey connection needs to be dialed down. Some options that have a more shaman feel or "spirit of the earth" vibe (think Native Americans) are just as viable for a druid to be.
On alignment, it makes only sense for those that need to follow some code where opposite actions have consequences like for paladins or clerics violating the doctrines of their god.

Paladins should not be just limited to the "Knight In Shinning Armor" troupe. A Paladin is a holy warrior to a god no matter if they are good, evil, lawful, chaotic, or neutral of some type.

The sneak attack feature of the Rogue needs to go away. All it has done is pigeon-hold the Rogue into very limited play style.

Dragonlance was boring.

The Psychic Energy die of the Soulknife and Psi-Warrior is a dumb mechanic. Done only so as a gimmick just to say they did something different to represent psionics.

MrZJunior
2021-10-06, 08:52 PM
Skill systems are lame. I want people to describe how they overcome challenges. What do you say to the guard to convince him to let you through? How do you disable the trap? That is much more interesting than rolling some dice.

YoungestGruff
2021-10-06, 08:58 PM
Druids should be a kind of Cleric, whose Channel Divinity merges with Wildshape.

Warlocks and Sorcerers should be merged thematically and thus mechanically. Magic Sugar Daddy vs Magic Daddy just steps all over each other. Let Sorcerers and Wizards make bad deals for power without obligating a class.

Rangers should have a more specific role (not controversial). That role should be support and single target ranged attacks; like a sniper and wilderness guide (more controversial).

Bards should be half-casters, not full. Arcane Paladins, if you will.

DEX shouldn't govern Initiative. It shouldn't be tied to a stat at all.

WOTC is getting satisfied with dominating the market. They no longer have to try that hard anymore, plus they have a vested interest in failing to innovate. 5e is suffering for it, now.

Also, none of this actually matters to 90 percent of the people who play this game.

Cluedrew
2021-10-06, 09:04 PM
Is this "D&D" (as in the title) or "RPG" (as in the description)? I'm going to stick to the overlap for now. And stick to my most unpopular opinions, so get ready:

D&D alignment is a reasonable tool applied badly. The alignments themselves aren't the problem.
D&D 4th was the best designed edition of D&D They were however, designing the wrong game.
D&D shouldn't be the iconic role-playing game. I don't think it is a good first role-playing game.

Hytheter
2021-10-06, 09:21 PM
They have Magic. Spellcasting is a rather niche interpretation of a mage but it dominates the available mechanical options because it is so easy to write.

One interpretation:
A spell less Necromancer would have a cohort of undead, have fortified their own body & soul, be able to drain various types of vitality from their foes, and stave off death for their allies. (If you are familiar with 3E Dread Necromancer, remove their spells and give them even more class features is a start in this direction)

A spell less Pyromancer is surrounded by an every growing amount of flame that they have increasing control over. They can form it into elementals, while they are encased in a sphere of fire, and causing their enemies to ignite.

Magic for the spellcaster is a discrete fleeting flash. A spell that lasts for a bit and then is completely gone. Mages don't necessarily need to only exist in that form. Magic could be permanent and continuous. The Mage wields magic and becomes magic. Basically mechanics described by words like passive or continuous rather than described by words like uses or duration. However that is just one interpretation of the mage that is not a spellcaster.

So, basically you want magic as class features rather than as a list of spells? I don't disagree. It would be a great approach for mages that are supposed to have a tight thematic focus.

ventoAureo
2021-10-06, 09:38 PM
HP ARE meat points! It's just that not every point of damage is equal. A Level 1 chump getting a sword swung in their face doesn't have the know-how and experience to move their body at just the right time so that the swing doesn't kill them. So almost any hit is gonna down them.

Whereas a Level 10 hero is going to be able to take on all sorts of punishment because they've faced danger lots of time before and know how to come out from it alive.

EDIT: Oh, here's another one! The mechanic known as "alignment" should be renamed "morality" if it's going to be kept around. Most people use it as this, anyways.

OldTrees1
2021-10-06, 09:58 PM
Interesting, my mind now wants to know what makes them a mage then? I know maybe another thread but you do have me curious to see what they could do with it. :smallbiggrin:

I answered a similar question a bit earlier.


Examples

They are a mage because they are still a class that revolves around using magic. The magic is just not in the limited mechanical form we call spells/spellcasting.

Think of it as a mage that uses permanent magic by is still limited to controlling a level appropriate amount of magic at a time. Some would use mental control as the limiting factor (how many minions can you control?). Some would provide benefits to allies but there is a limit to how many wards an ally can handle as each additional ward strains their health/fortitude. Some would be constrained by action economy to use their various ongoing effects. Others would be constrained by how strong they can push their effects (the magnitude of the effect scales with level).

Basically spellcasters are mundane peasants anytime they are not casting a spell. Why is magic so fleeting? Why not a subsystem that expects magic to be continuous (class features representing ongoing effects) rather than fleeting (limited uses of effects with finite durations if not instantaneous).


So, basically you want magic as class features rather than as a list of spells? I don't disagree. It would be a great approach for mages that are supposed to have a tight thematic focus.

Yup. This also gives the opportunity to explore passive magic in more ways than spell could.

Tanarii
2021-10-06, 10:16 PM
Every new edition of D&D was superior to the last one. Even if I still get nostalgic for concepts from AD&D and BECMI occasionally.

Roleplaying games are not automatically about storytelling, collaborative or otherwise.

Alignments as presented in 5e (as part of the personality system) are the best thing to happen to D&D alignment to date.

Orcs and Drow are not racist.

Kevin Siembieda is a "RP" elitist.

Player-Character separation is a myth.

Metagaming is an abused term that's been been used to do more harm than good in TTRPGs.

Edit: 2e Kender were awesome, and 3e/4e halflings were greatly improved from their hobbit ancestry as a direct result.

clash
2021-10-06, 10:47 PM
Removing attribute points from race was one of the best changes they could have made. Why shouldn't my orc be a good of a wizard as that high elf.

Cantrips should scale with class not character.

Spellcasting slots are stupid and everyone should use mana.

Martials do fine damage without weapon feats.

Warlocks are close to the best designed class after paladin.

Wizard and fighter are the two classes that never needed to exist in 5e. Every other class at least had a theme.

Ameraaaaaa
2021-10-06, 10:48 PM
Dnd 5e isn't overrated. It just doesn't appeal to every style of play. The people who like 5e aren't deluded or anything they just like that playstyle which is a 100% valid. I don't personally like 5e but that's also 100% valid as long as i don't treat myself as superior for doing so.

Pbta games are too specific for my wants. Masks seems good but i don't want to play emotionally wrecked teen heroes for example. I'm sure there's some pbta games I'd love but those typically are too obscure to find someone to play with online.

There should be more games where you can play mad scientist with a freeform crafting systems or otherwise flexible enough where i can create a crazy amount of different stuff. Mad scientists are cool and crazy inventions are cooler.

Don't tell me your an expert on obscure games until you've read games such as S.M.A.R.T RPG, the beast of broly, the pulp hack, let’s be grandma's and active exploits. This last one is a joke but the fact i know those games exists says a lotta bout me.

Ps i also stopped collecting extremely obscure rpgs after realising nobody is gonna play them with me.

Telok
2021-10-06, 11:36 PM
The weirdness of kobolds turning from lap-dog sized gnolls into chicken walker mini-dragon-wizards is both annoying with its odd semi-fandom and seriously undermines the whole "scrappy underdog" think with Tuckers.

Mastikator
2021-10-07, 12:58 AM
There are too many playable races, especially animal/furry races.

The move from human-centric D&D is bad.

Humans shouldn't be the most boring race but they are, that is a game design failure.

D&D 5e is the best D&D version, I agree with @Tanarii that each version is better than the previous.

HP being meat points and plot armor simultaneously is immersion breaking.

Bounded accuracy is a very good thing.

Batcathat
2021-10-07, 01:14 AM
Humans shouldn't be the most boring race but they are, that is a game design failure.

I think that's kind of hard to get away from, considering they're the baseline for all the other races from our perspective. If D&D was written from a dog's perspective humans would be this weird race that can't smell worth a damn but have the really overpowered ability to grip things.

Of course, it's possible to give D&D humans abilities beyond real life humans but then I suspect people would complain about humans not being humans anymore.

Mastikator
2021-10-07, 01:29 AM
I think that's kind of hard to get away from, considering they're the baseline for all the other races from our perspective. If D&D was written from a dog's perspective humans would be this weird race that can't smell worth a damn but have the really overpowered ability to grip things.

Of course, it's possibly to give D&D humans abilities beyond real life humans but then I suspect people would complain about humans not being humans anymore.

Or just don't give human abilities to all the other races? All the other races are designed as human +. The only answer is to not do this. It doesn't even make sense that the furry animal or scaly races should have even remotely close to human level stamina when they clearly can't sweat with all that fur. (or if they could it would only dehydrate them) Dragonborn and haregons should be exhaustion galore, dwarves with their extremely stout structure and short arms should be terrible with bows and thrown weapons. Not only does it devalue humans or as JC calls it "eat their lunch" it also makes non-humans feel like humans with funny hats. I figured out how to do this in the game I designed and I am just a schmuck, why can't giants like Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins figure it out?

In other words actually give races drawbacks.

Batcathat
2021-10-07, 01:34 AM
Or just don't give human abilities to all the other races? All the other races are designed as human +. The only answer is to not do this. It doesn't even make sense that the furry animal or scaly races should have even remotely close to human level stamina when they clearly can't sweat with all that fur. (or if they could it would only dehydrate them) Dragonborn and haregons should be exhaustion galore, dwarves with their extremely stout structure and short arms should be terrible with bows and thrown weapons. Not only does it devalue humans or as JC calls it "eat their lunch" it also makes non-humans feel like humans with funny hats. I figured out how to do this in the game I designed and I am just a schmuck, why can't giants like Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins figure it out?

Yes, I suppose that's true. While I don't really mind humans being boring, I do dislike other creatures being basically almost humans so even if I don't agree with your complaint, I can agree with your proposed solution.

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-07, 01:54 AM
Skill systems are lame. I want people to describe how they overcome challenges. What do you say to the guard to convince him to let you through? How do you disable the trap? That is much more interesting than rolling some dice.

I'd really rather not have to get knowledge I don't have just to play a rogue/wizard/floomwoozle (delete as appropriate). Leave such descriptions to Stunting mechanics.


Scaling hp is bad and in practice almost always leads to either padded sumo or rocket tag combat.

Random character generation is not a problem, but I should not be penalised for just choosing.

If I'm throwing fireballs or lightning bolts, or have a duel for everything, then your magic system is boring. Give me thematic magic that does cool things, but it's limited in scope. Like clothing magic, or smoking magic.

Lacco
2021-10-07, 02:08 AM
Ever since 3.5, character building is more fun than the actual game.

And for a game that is mainly about combat, D&D offers very unsatisfying combat system.

Eldan
2021-10-07, 03:03 AM
Interesting, my mind now wants to know what makes them a mage then? I know maybe another thread but you do have me curious to see what they could do with it. :smallbiggrin:

I mean, I always wanted a low-magic system where the mage is mainly there as a scholar and that's viable. Haven't really found one so far. You know, the wilderness guy, the main fighter, the rogue and the smart guy are sneaking through the abandoned tunnels, when the smart guy holds up his hands and says "The runes on this door say there is a powerful curse on this place". And then he maybe knows how to get around that curse by sprinking salt and carry a hawthorn branch in your left hand.

But then you still get the problem of one guy just sitting on the sidelines in combat. Kind of a reverse of the Shadowrun problem with hacking and astral projection.

Altheus
2021-10-07, 03:04 AM
Too many classes with access to magic. Restrict it to mages / sorcerers / warlocks / clerics. While we're at it, just do away with sorcerers, they don't add anything of value to the game.

Warriors should get their level x2 added to their initiative. Champion fighters should do triple damage on crits.

HP should cap out at 2x con, make combat dangerous again.

NovenFromTheSun
2021-10-07, 05:27 AM
High HP meaning superhuman durability is perfectly valid.

5e gnolls are metal.

Asmodeus is a projection of Ahriman.

The “in between” alignment planes have valid reasons to exist.

On a related note, Gatetowns should be more than just “towns”, but the capitals of nations within the Outland.

Divine spells should be called charisms, because that word isn’t used nearly enough.

Being “interesting and nuanced” doesn’t require libertarian free will.

Lemures and manes need to actually be used more as low level enemies.

Celestials should do things on occasion. The celestial pact warlock helps with this a little admittedly.

Railroading is better than demanding the players railroad themselves.

I like the Blood War.

Glorthindel
2021-10-07, 05:29 AM
If you are going to remove fixed racial attribute bonuses, just remove racial attribute bonuses all together.

In fact, just remove attributes (and bonuses) all together - we know all characters try to start with +4 on their attack stat, at least +2 hit points, and as much dex bonus to AC as they can get. After that, they only effect your skills. Just add those things to the character baseline, change how skills work, and move on with your day.

And the big one...

Make Wizards Fragile again. Lets dial back some of those edition on edition buffs and see some of those old second edition checks and balances returned. No, you can't wear armour and cast spells, even if you are multiclassed. D4 hit points for you. No Int bonus to spell hit rolls. Goodbye unlimited attack cantrips superior to weapon attacks. Take a hit before your turn came around, spell fizzle and lost slot. There is a reason Wizards are powerful, and it should be because Wizard life is not easy.

Faily
2021-10-07, 07:14 AM
I find 5e to be a relatively boring edition. I prefer it to 4e, and I tolerate playing it, but mechanically and for character creation I get very little satisfaction from it. (Don't get me wrong, it's well-designed mostly and works pretty well overall, but it's just... boring)

Cantrips shouldn't be unlimited. In fact, casters shouldn't have unlimited magic.

Spell DCs should scale with Character Level as well. (I like Pathfinder's DCs for class abilities, which is 10 + 1/2 class level + Ability modifier)

Bards should have less spells and more unique class features that utilize performances (think Seeker of the Song prc from 3.5, in Complete Arcane). I don't want a slow-progressing Sorcerer who sings, I want someone who creates magical effects with their music.

D&D should be, and can be, just as fun at high levels as low levels. 5e seems to wallow in this idea that gameplay stops at level 10 or so, as one can tell by how classes get less exciting around from there.

Clerics should be held to the same standards as Paladins, as they are both chosen servants of their God. I hate how the Paladin gets a strict Code of Conduct (for some cool but not game-breaking abilities), whereas the Cleric just has to "remain within one step of their God's alignment" but are Tier 1 and clearly one of the best classes in the game (and gets 9th-level spells). They're the same, just serving two different purposes for their god, one a warrior and the other a spiritual leader.

I'm fine with Alignment (this seems to be an unpopular opinion in the Playground).

Caster/Martial Disparity has never been a problem for me in my almost 20 years of playing, has never been a problem in the various groups I've played in with the many different people I've played with, and I didn't know it was a problem until I started frequenting forums like the Playground.

Cicciograna
2021-10-07, 07:25 AM
The Forgotten Realms are a crazy place which has turned into a sheethole, all in all it's a bad setting in which everything feels overdone and stale...and yet we all love it, for a reason or the other, so it will never really go.

Xervous
2021-10-07, 07:26 AM
Fighter is an npc class, or at best 1/4 a class that’s missing the rest of its progression. Similar case for a smattering of constrained concept classes.

The D20 is too swingy, and bounded accuracy makes this far worse.

Keywords are your Allies, they shouldn’t Intimidate you.

Good editiing are a rarerty,

If the game has you build with point buy, you should progress by point buy.

Racial ability score adjustments are not good or bad in a vacuum, it’s just a design tool to cater to a customer type. It’s not like apple catering to iDiots, it’s just I ordered a pizza and pineapple doesn’t go on pizzas!

Corvus
2021-10-07, 07:33 AM
3e was a bad system (worse than 4e) that broke far more than it fixed.

oxybe
2021-10-07, 07:45 AM
5e does nothing special.

it's not as quick to play, lethal or easy to make characters as 1e/2e, the character creation isn't nearly as deep or expressive as what 3e could get down to, 4e combat leaves 5e in the dust. 5e tries to be a "best of" but doesn't actually go so far to actually do what made those best bits "the best" and the end product is the most milquetoast version of D&D to date. While mechanically it's less flawed then previous editions, i can play around or even with those flaws (and the shenanigans that occur with doing so) without issue and would play any older ed over 5e given a choice.
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People fetishize story and narrative too much nowadays.

EVERYTHING is about crafting a story is seems now. *pulls out rocking chair and puts on old man voice* Back in the day, the story is what you crafted AFTER the adventure was over, once you were at the tavern during downtime. The stories that we used to tell were those of stuff that happened organically due to the circumstances around the play, now every other group or player seems to be out to make the next great literary novel, but in RP form. And boy could I not care any less.
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Get rid of stats

Whole stats, like a con of 14, has been largely pointless since 3rd ed since only the derived mod is used.

I could also go with cutting stats out entirely and having the game focus on the skills, but the 6 stats is a very "D&D" thing and largely part of the brand identity, imo.

Ameraaaaaa
2021-10-07, 07:53 AM
People fetishize story and narrative too much nowadays.

EVERYTHING is about crafting a story is seems now. *pulls out rocking chair and puts on old man voice* Back in the day, the story is what you crafted AFTER the adventure was over, once you were at the tavern during downtime. The stories that we used to tell were those of stuff that happened organically due to the circumstances around the play, now every other group or player seems to be out to make the next great literary novel, but in RP form. And boy could I not care any less.


Totally agreed there. Imo nothing wrong with both styles if the individual enjoys them but I'm very much a "i just want to rp my character" guy. I don't want to be thinking about my characters future story arcs or who he'll fall in love with. I just wanna act as my character in the moment and see where his decisions take him. Regardless of it's a novel worthy story or not.

Glorthindel
2021-10-07, 08:05 AM
Oh, and one more:

NPC's should be built using the same rules as characters. Fight me.

Cicciograna
2021-10-07, 08:45 AM
It's impossible to make everybody happy, there will always be players unhappy with whatever evolution the game will go through.

Mordante
2021-10-07, 08:46 AM
Melee combat has bad design. It should be weapon skill vs weapon skill and armour acts as damage reduction.

Character levels is a bad design. Skills should increase, not hitpoints.

Tanarii
2021-10-07, 08:50 AM
In other words actually give races drawbacks.
Adding to my list:
They need to reintroduce non-human level limits and class restrictions. Those were a feature, not a bug.


D&D should be, and can be, just as fun at high levels as low levels. 5e seems to wallow in this idea that gameplay stops at level 10 or so, as one can tell by how classes get less exciting around from there.
Add three to my list:
Level advancement is too fast. Time to scale it back so it takes more than six months of weekly play to reach level 11 and a year to reach level 20. Slow it down by at least a factor to two, preferably as much as four.

Levels 1-10 are all that's needed in a PHB. Levels 11+ should be in a Name-level expansion book.

Levels 11+ should ne primarily about strongholds, domain management and army warfare, with occasional high level adventuring sprinkled in to support the costs. Context switching for the name-level game was a feature, not a bug.

Cicciograna
2021-10-07, 08:54 AM
stuff I agree with

The standard reaction to this is that "the game is played by human beings, it's only natural to standardize everything to human level".

There is so much fear of the diverse and the implications of diversity that, rather than learning to accept and value what would be diverse, the default solution is to make every race a reskin of Humans.

Batcathat
2021-10-07, 08:56 AM
Adding to my list:
They need to reintroduce non-human level limits and class restrictions. Those were a feature, not a bug.

Whether or not it would make sense from a mechanical standpoint, I feel like most of that would be difficult to explain in universe.

Imbalance
2021-10-07, 09:00 AM
Miniatures are cool.

Cicciograna
2021-10-07, 09:06 AM
Miniatures are cool.

Is this really an unpopular opinion?

Imbalance
2021-10-07, 09:15 AM
Is this really an unpopular opinion?

Very few on this forum ever talk about them except to say how expensive they are.

Xervous
2021-10-07, 09:17 AM
Miniatures are cool.

Clearly there are some people that think they’re hot, else why would they be spending thousands of dollars on miniatures of 500 year old dragons?

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-07, 09:17 AM
5e does nothing special.

it's not as quick to play, lethal or easy to make characters as 1e/2e, the character creation isn't nearly as deep or expressive as what 3e could get down to, 4e combat leaves 5e in the dust. 5e tries to be a "best of" but doesn't actually go so far to actually do what made those best bits "the best" and the end product is the most milquetoast version of D&D to date. While mechanically it's less flawed then previous editions, i can play around or even with those flaws (and the shenanigans that occur with doing so) without issue and would play any older ed over 5e given a choice.

As an addition, anything new in 5e it's a poorly implemented version of something an indie game did better ten years back.

Although to be fair the designers couldn't even copy 4e without removing the good bits (like Healing Surges, the attacker always rolling, and no multiclassing).




People fetishize story and narrative too much nowadays.

EVERYTHING is about crafting a story is seems now. *pulls out rocking chair and puts on old man voice* Back in the day, the story is what you crafted AFTER the adventure was over, once you were at the tavern during downtime. The stories that we used to tell were those of stuff that happened organically due to the circumstances around the play, now every other group or player seems to be out to make the next great literary novel, but in RP form. And boy could I not care any less.

Eh, for many games 'collaborative storytelling experience' is code for 'we don't want to admit it's just about combat'. It's not always the case, but after some really good narrative games came out of now seems to be the default defence. Or maybe it was World of Darkness that started it, that came out before the actually good narrative games.

The best stories from games are those that emerge from games that try to emulate narrative pacing. And they're still nowhere near amazing.

Tanarii
2021-10-07, 09:18 AM
Whether or not it would make sense from a mechanical standpoint, I feel like most of that would be difficult to explain in universe.
The old explanation works fine.

Demi humans (ie Team Good Guy non-humans) are old races fading from the limelight. They can't produce heroes of the caliber of humans any more. Demi-human level limits are just there to prevent new Demi-god strength non-humans. Which is why they're typically around of about name level. You can be a mover and shaker of (at least small) nations. Just not a level 17 superhuman. Admittedly AD&D had some pseudo-class restrictions with very low level limits of 4-8. That's fine too.

Limiting humanoids (ie Team Bad Guy non-humans) is harder to justify. It's not that they have limitations, it's just that adventurers usually cut them down before they get too powerful. Which is why PCs have to face boss-level chieftains and the like as they get more powerful. But that doesn't matter because those races aren't intended to be playable.

Easy e
2021-10-07, 09:19 AM
D&D Combat is really boring. Traps are boring.

Player agency is over-rated. Railroading is a valuable tool when used sparingly and appropriately.

An RPG only needs rules to determine if characters' pass/fail a test. Everything else is window dressing.

People value the strategic choices in D&D more than actually playing the game.

Xervous
2021-10-07, 09:23 AM
People value the strategic choices in D&D more than actually playing the game.

How does one narrowly define ‘playing the game’ for a system that’s marketing itself to all kinds of audiences?

Tanarii
2021-10-07, 09:26 AM
People value the strategic choices in D&D more than actually playing the game.


How does one narrowly define ‘playing the game’ for a system that’s marketing itself to all kinds of audiences?
Character Building or white room example discussion on forums vs running adventures at the table with a DM and multiple players.

But I'm not sure that's what Easy e meant.

LibraryOgre
2021-10-07, 09:32 AM
AD&D humans need actual mechanical advantages.

In AD&D, it was not "Humans get to be paladins" but "Paladins have to be humans"; it was a restriction on the class's power, not a benefit to humans.

kyoryu
2021-10-07, 09:43 AM
D&D is not a good generic RPG. It is actually a very niche RPG. It's just so popular that it's niche is for some reason considered "standard". It's very good in its niche, but doesn't do a good job outside of it. (Evidence: For 95% of fictional settings, D&D is in the bottom 20% or so of systems for ease and fidelity of converting to that setting)

jjordan
2021-10-07, 10:03 AM
Exploration and Social are not under-represented in D&D 5e. They aren't played as much because most players don't want to play them. I'll be fair and admit that the mechanics make combat the default last resort for social encounters that go bad (you're one bad die roll away from fighting your grandmother), but most players prefer to solve their problems with violence. Exploration is a logistics game and most players can't even be bothered to track encumbrance let alone dealing with all the factors involved in exploration. Likewise, all the tools needed for social are there but players would rather fight a Tarrasque than walk into a social setting without a full set of armor and an array of weapons that would frighten a town dweller to death.

I don't like the random swings of the d20 mechanic. Players who play to their strengths should have a very good chance of success and not be left staring in horror at a sub-5 die roll that destroys the plan they spent an hour crafting. The d20 mechanic pretty much pushes every contested encounter into combat and players can save a ton of stress by simply going straight to the violence.

Players are over-powered. Yeah, I know the video-game/superhero mechanic is super popular and a large part of the reason D&D 5e is so successful and it makes all sorts of good sense. I just don't like it.

The magic system. It ought to be skill based, highly adaptable, and if things go far wrong magic users' brains should decorate the walls like a gory abstract pointillist painting. But, again, d20 makes that artistic outcome far too likely so they've got to use something else. And the Vancian style does adhere to their simplicity of play mantra.

dafrca
2021-10-07, 10:13 AM
I answered a similar question a bit earlier. Yep, saw it only after I posted. :smallsmile:

And yes, an interesting idea.

dafrca
2021-10-07, 10:18 AM
5e is going down the hill not up the hill.

D&D 3.5 was not as bad as some people would have us believe.

If they end up changing everything (or a major number of things) it is just a new game with a D&D brand slapped on to it.

I miss when I just played the game and didn't worry what people thought, I need to return to that "I do not care what you think" attitude.

Warder
2021-10-07, 10:18 AM
"Balance" is on the whole pretty unimportant. No one remembers a session for being well balanced. You remember the times you did something amazing, or the times you were thoroughly trounced, but not the times you performed exactly as expected. The whole reason we even talk about it is because its opposite, imbalance, can be disruptive if things swing too far in that direction, but by itself balance brings very little to the table. It gets far more discussion time than it actually deserves.

dafrca
2021-10-07, 10:20 AM
"Balance" is on the whole pretty unimportant. No one remembers a session for being well balanced. You remember the times you did something amazing, or the times you were thoroughly trounced, but not the times you performed exactly as expected. The whole reason we even talk about it is because its opposite, imbalance, can be disruptive if things swing too far in that direction, but by itself balance brings very little to the table. It gets far more discussion time than it actually deserves.

Amen :smallbiggrin:

Eldan
2021-10-07, 10:21 AM
Attribute bonuses from race in 5E were meaningless from the start and only became more so. If everyone just gets a + they can put anywhere, just give everyone some more point buy points and get over it. It's just increasing the average for no reason.

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-07, 10:31 AM
High stats are overrated, low stats are underrated.

Telok
2021-10-07, 10:32 AM
Clearly there are some people that think they’re hot, else why would they be spending thousands of dollars on miniatures of 500 year old dragons?

Re: minis
I gifted myself a 3d printer a few years ago. I now have more minis than I use. I have a 2-goblins-in-a-trenchcoat and a walrus space pirate with bad fashion sense. I have glow in the dark ghosts and Godzilla. For $25 in plastic, a few internet searches, cleaning off flash, and a bit of paint or fine tip premanent marker I have another 500 minis. I have no clue why people spend more than $5 for a cheap plastic dinosaur with wings.

On topic: The changes to gnolls are random and useless. What was once a plains nomads/tribal dog-person species with some rp/character race potential is being turned into generic low end demons with fur. If you needed a low end demon with fur just put fur on a lemure, mane, or other weak demon.

It seems like two or three monster races get totally rewritten every edition at random and for no reason. Just wait, someday the dart will hit the board on something like trolls and they'll turn into misunderstood pacifist bioweapons from the last halfling vs elf genocide war.

Faily
2021-10-07, 10:49 AM
"Balance" is on the whole pretty unimportant. No one remembers a session for being well balanced. You remember the times you did something amazing, or the times you were thoroughly trounced, but not the times you performed exactly as expected. The whole reason we even talk about it is because its opposite, imbalance, can be disruptive if things swing too far in that direction, but by itself balance brings very little to the table. It gets far more discussion time than it actually deserves.

Seconding the amen!

Willie the Duck
2021-10-07, 10:49 AM
Is this really an unpopular opinion?
A huge swath of what has been so far mentioned either isn't unpopular or at least is a common minority opinion.


Anyways, I should put one out as well: --
For as much as we gripe about some of the ways things have evolved in the game over time (5e changed gnolls, kobold becoming dragonkin, wizards used to be squishy, this modern rule has this unfortunate incentivization effect, etc...), huge swaths of stuff that has been around since the beginning or first half decade of the game was equally arbitrary, poorly thought out, or had bizarre incentivization structures. Gnolls were originally going to be gnome-trolls and somehow became hyena-men. Super-squishy magic users with no HP, few total spells per day and few weapons meant one had MUs who spent much of their time lobbing oil from the rear ranks (anyone remember that from iconic pulp fantasy novels? Me neither). The last half of the levels were set up to be a (poorly mechanized) Keep & Rulership game which nearly every group tried once or twice at most.

Luccan
2021-10-07, 10:53 AM
Railroading is better than demanding the players railroad themselves.


What does this mean? I can't parse this in a way that makes sense.

Edit: It's mostly that I don't know what "demanding players railroad themselves" is supposed to mean. I can make several guesses, but I've never heard anyone talk about players railroading themselves before and I certainly don't see the meaningful difference with any of my guesses between that and regular railroading

Mastikator
2021-10-07, 11:13 AM
D&D is not a good generic RPG. It is actually a very niche RPG. It's just so popular that it's niche is for some reason considered "standard". It's very good in its niche, but doesn't do a good job outside of it. (Evidence: For 95% of fictional settings, D&D is in the bottom 20% or so of systems for ease and fidelity of converting to that setting)

I 100% agree with this. D&D is a power fantasy dungeon crawler. It's a super hero game in a space opera setting with a medieval aesthetic.

Faily
2021-10-07, 11:13 AM
I like Vancian casting.

kyoryu
2021-10-07, 11:13 AM
Anyways, I should put one out as well: --
For as much as we gripe about some of the ways things have evolved in the game over time (5e changed gnolls, kobold becoming dragonkin, wizards used to be squishy, this modern rule has this unfortunate incentivization effect, etc...), huge swaths of stuff that has been around since the beginning or first half decade of the game was equally arbitrary, poorly thought out, or had bizarre incentivization structures. Gnolls were originally going to be gnome-trolls and somehow became hyena-men. Super-squishy magic users with no HP, few total spells per day and few weapons meant one had MUs who spent much of their time lobbing oil from the rear ranks (anyone remember that from iconic pulp fantasy novels? Me neither). The last half of the levels were set up to be a (poorly mechanized) Keep & Rulership game which nearly every group tried once or twice at most.

A lot of this stuff worked at least reasonably well if done from an open-table, stable-of-characters view.

Once your high level guys started getting into the domain management stuff, they were, for the most part, retired. The idea wasn't that that became the main mode of play - it was that that's what your high level guys did while you more actively played the others.


I 100% agree with this. D&D is a power fantasy dungeon crawler. It's a super hero game in a space opera setting with a medieval aesthetic.

Not just that, but the high emphasis on combat, zero-to-superhero level of advancement, emphasis on fighters basically being "me hit wid stik", etc.

Eldan
2021-10-07, 11:38 AM
I like Vancian casting.

I love Vancian casting, think it's superior to many other magic systems in RPGs and will go on at length when asked about this. For several pages, if necessary.

I also think that D&D never has done Vancian magic that well.

Eldan
2021-10-07, 11:39 AM
High stats are overrated, low stats are underrated.

To expand on that, one reason I dislike point buy in most versions of D&D is that they don't allow me (by the book) to make a character with a serious weakness.

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-07, 11:48 AM
To expand on that, one reason I dislike point buy in most versions of D&D is that they don't allow me (by the book) to make a character with a serious weakness.

Party of the issue is that dropping most stats below eight rarely matters. Either you'll be avoiding using them anyway, or there's some way around the issues.

How many 5e characters would take a 3 in Strength if allowed? In my experience many, I've only been in one group which tracked encumbrance (and we had to have separate 'dropped pack' values noted because everybody dropped theirs of a fight broke out). Same for Charisma and Intelligence.

On the other hand, adding a note that you can drop any stat you want, but won't get points for it, will fix that.

DigoDragon
2021-10-07, 11:51 AM
"You don't need to be dealing lots of damage to be the MVP of a battle."

I've been in groups where the majority thought process is to be optimized in dishing out lots of damage. They never acknowledge those times where I'd save the party from a TPK with defensive abilities and healing powers. There's more to combat than DPS.



The D20 is too swingy

I play a lot of GURPS and I find that 3d6 to be much more agreeable to work with for checks and actions. Might be something to see D&D switch to that in a future edition. ... doubt it'll happen cause of how iconic the d20 is.

Theoboldi
2021-10-07, 12:49 PM
- Planescape and Eberron are decent settings, but severely overrated. Both of them are bloated kitchen sinks that get lost in trying to be overly unique at the same time. Dinosaur-riding halflings aren't cool, and the Lady of Pain is the most blatant and obnoxious plot device I've ever seen.

- Psionics are an iconic and fun part of D&D, and they deserve a proper system of their own in every edition. And a base class at launch. The archetype presents at least as many character concepts as the wizard, and hybrid psionic characters work great as subclasses or prestige classes for martial and skill-based types.

These are the only ones of mine I can think of that are actually really unpopular. :smalltongue:

Ikoma
2021-10-07, 01:04 PM
I don't like it, and it's current zeitgeist makes me feel like an outsider in the hobby more than 20+ years of gaming before it. I try and stay away from dnd videos and discussions because I know I'll just bring negativity to them, but that means I have very little content to engage with outside of my one personal table. And sometimes that's enough... and sometimes it really isn't.

Jay R
2021-10-07, 01:35 PM
The way my group likes to play is fine for us, and the way your group likes to play is fine for your group.

AvatarVecna
2021-10-07, 01:43 PM
4e is only despised because it kicked out a lot of golden cows and laid bare that D&D has never been anything more than a wargame with a roleplaying paint job.

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-07, 01:50 PM
4e is only despised because it kicked out a lot of golden cows and laid bare that D&D has never been anything more than a wargame with a roleplaying paint job.

Actual question, what was 0e marketed as? I wouldn't be surprised if it was presented as more of a wargame.

Related to this, D&D got a lot worse when it started to shed the wargaming elements. Not the most unpopular opinion out there (see: OSR), but was somewhat who grew up mainly with 3e I can actually see how earlier email might have worked much, much better when played a more of a gamey dungeon crawler where the GM was adversarial but fair.

gijoemike
2021-10-07, 02:08 PM
Fighter is an npc class, or at best 1/4 a class that’s missing the rest of its progression. Similar case for a smattering of constrained concept classes.

The D20 is too swingy, and bounded accuracy makes this far worse.


ABSOLUTELY THIS

The Fighter is an NPC class that exists to give NPCs a feat and extra HP. Should NEVER be used by a PC.

The bounded accuracy of 5e is capped far too low. A level 18 master artisan can easily lose to level 1 character with training. Master rolls a 10 with +11 skill, lvl 1 char with +2 prof and +2 Attribute rolls an 18.

5th Ed tosses out 15 years of lessons learned by 3.0, 3.5, Pathfinder, and a dozen other spin off games based on the d20 system and makes Martial fighters into "I swing my sword, Its all I do". This makes them very boring.

Paladins aren't religious. They are the big damn hero archetype. Yes, go read the PHB for 3.X. Paladins didn't have to serve a deity.

Anything akin to warrior for a deity is called a Cleric. That is why they have armor/weapon proficiencies.

Tvtyrant
2021-10-07, 02:10 PM
Ever since 3.5, character building is more fun than the actual game.

And for a game that is mainly about combat, D&D offers very unsatisfying combat system.

This is extremely accurate. 3.5 and 5E are fun despite their combat, not because of it. Our current DM sometimes wants big battles and we all seek to avoid them, because the otherwise fun settings get bogged down in 3 hours of blankly fighting ennui.

gijoemike
2021-10-07, 02:20 PM
NovenFromTheSun
Railroading is better than demanding the players railroad themselves.

What does this mean? I can't parse this in a way that makes sense.

Edit: It's mostly that I don't know what "demanding players railroad themselves" is supposed to mean. I can make several guesses, but I've never heard anyone talk about players railroading themselves before and I certainly don't see the meaningful difference with any of my guesses between that and regular railroading

I have been in a game that NovenFromTheSun is talking about.

Railroad is, of course, you are on the DM's set story and you cannot escape. Nothing you do matters or really changes the story.

Sandbox is where the players drive the story and the GM fleshes out the ideas. The GM offers a few ideas/plot hooks and the players drive the game forward.

But "demanding the players railroad themselves" is when a GM, frankly doesn't care. The setup the initial town/city setting and check out. There is never a wanted poster, damsel in distress, plea of help from another kingdom. No plot hooks, no rumors, no random bar fight unless a PC starts it. The PC exists but the question of "OK, What can I do?" is never addressed or answered. The players must place themselves onto a story path (Railroad) entirely of their own design and then proceed to push it along. The DM never provides conflict. This type of story is always pitched as a sandbox game but then the DM is physically present but has abandoned the concept of the game.

Batcathat
2021-10-07, 02:35 PM
But "demanding the players railroad themselves" is when a GM, frankly doesn't care. The setup the initial town/city setting and check out. There is never a wanted poster, damsel in distress, plea of help from another kingdom. No plot hooks, no rumors, no random bar fight unless a PC starts it. The PC exists but the question of "OK, What can I do?" is never addressed or answered. The players must place themselves onto a story path (Railroad) entirely of their own design and then proceed to push it along. The DM never provides conflict. This type of story is always pitched as a sandbox game but then the DM is physically present but has abandoned the concept of the game.

While I could see why that would be a problem, calling it railroading themselves seems misleading. The point of railroading is that the players can't control where they're going (literally or metaphorically), in this scenario they're the only ones who control that and can presumably change direction at any time. So rather than "railroading" it's like... driving around in the forest without any roads at all, I guess? Is there a word for that?

Easy e
2021-10-07, 02:45 PM
While I could see why that would be a problem, calling it railroading themselves seems misleading. The point of railroading is that the players can't control where they're going (literally or metaphorically), in this scenario they're the only ones who control that and can presumably change direction at any time. So rather than "railroading" it's like... driving around in the forest without any roads at all, I guess? Is there a word for that?

Off-roading?

Shpadoinkle
2021-10-07, 02:52 PM
Magic for the spellcaster is a discrete fleeting flash. A spell that lasts for a bit and then is completely gone. Mages don't necessarily need to only exist in that form. Magic could be permanent and continuous. The Mage wields magic and becomes magic. Basically mechanics described by words like passive or continuous rather than described by words like uses or duration. However that is just one interpretation of the mage that is not a spellcaster.

Serious suggestion here: Have a look at Magic of Incarnum, it's a 3.5e book. Pathfinder 1e has a similar system in akashic magic.

Basically, instead of preparing "one and done" spells like wizards, sorcerers, clerics, etc., these classes form temporary magic items, and can thereafter use their abilities all day. For instance, in MoI there's an ability called Dissolving Spittle, which lets you spit acid. You can do this all day and you never 'run out' of uses. Other abilities grant you bonuses to various skills, a couple let you fly, one even lets you teleport short distances, some grant you bonus HP or bonuses on your attack or damage rolls or saving throws, and lots of other things.

Sorta unrelated, but in the game I'm currently running I've reflavored the incarnate and totemist classes as various (Eastern-style) monastic traditions, to create ki-user classes that I honestly think do it way better than the PHB monk.

Luccan
2021-10-07, 03:11 PM
I have been in a game that NovenFromTheSun is talking about.

Railroad is, of course, you are on the DM's set story and you cannot escape. Nothing you do matters or really changes the story.

Sandbox is where the players drive the story and the GM fleshes out the ideas. The GM offers a few ideas/plot hooks and the players drive the game forward.

But "demanding the players railroad themselves" is when a GM, frankly doesn't care. The setup the initial town/city setting and check out. There is never a wanted poster, damsel in distress, plea of help from another kingdom. No plot hooks, no rumors, no random bar fight unless a PC starts it. The PC exists but the question of "OK, What can I do?" is never addressed or answered. The players must place themselves onto a story path (Railroad) entirely of their own design and then proceed to push it along. The DM never provides conflict. This type of story is always pitched as a sandbox game but then the DM is physically present but has abandoned the concept of the game.

Oh, ok that's not what I was thinking at all. I think batcathat raises a good point that "railroading" isn't the most accurate term. But I'd agree that's bad in a different way. Idk if it's worse than railroading, both seem to fall under the "no gaming is better than bad gaming" rule. The DM should put in effort and I didn't come hear to listen to the DM tell a story and report die rolls.

Batcathat
2021-10-07, 03:19 PM
Off-roading?

Ah, so obvious. Can't believe I didn't think of it myself. Yes, that seems like an excellent term for what gijoemike described.

Imbalance
2021-10-07, 03:38 PM
Miniatures are cool.


Is this really an unpopular opinion?


Very few on this forum ever talk about them except to say how expensive they are.

Exhibits A and B:

Clearly there are some people that think they’re hot, else why would they be spending thousands of dollars on miniatures of 500 year old dragons?


I have no clue why people spend more than $5 for a cheap plastic dinosaur with wings.



...imbalance, can be disruptive...

Sorry...:smalleek:

Warder
2021-10-07, 03:46 PM
Sorry...:smalleek:

Haha! Hey, the rest of my post was basically a great big condemnation of your mortal enemy, Balance!

Lord Torath
2021-10-07, 03:47 PM
Sorry...:smalleek:As well you should be! :smallwink:

On topic:

2nd Edition Psionics (Complete Psionics Handbook version with support from Dragon Kings and The Will and the Way) is the best version of Psionics to date.

Ability score checks should be made using the "The Price is RightTM" method: Roll as high as possible without going over. Highest successful roll in an opposed check wins.

OldTrees1
2021-10-07, 04:42 PM
Serious suggestion here: Have a look at Magic of Incarnum, it's a 3.5e book. Pathfinder 1e has a similar system in akashic magic.

Basically, instead of preparing "one and done" spells like wizards, sorcerers, clerics, etc., these classes form temporary magic items, and can thereafter use their abilities all day. For instance, in MoI there's an ability called Dissolving Spittle, which lets you spit acid. You can do this all day and you never 'run out' of uses. Other abilities grant you bonuses to various skills, a couple let you fly, one even lets you teleport short distances, some grant you bonus HP or bonuses on your attack or damage rolls or saving throws, and lots of other things.

Sorta unrelated, but in the game I'm currently running I've reflavored the incarnate and totemist classes as various (Eastern-style) monastic traditions, to create ki-user classes that I honestly think do it way better than the PHB monk.

Suggestion accepted. I want the non casting mage to be more of a mage than Magic of Incarnum represents. The theme of Magic of Incarnum was more about hybrid Mage/Warrior classes. It was/is one of my favorite subsystems and helped convince me that non casting mages could be possible. I need to learn more about the Pathfinder Vizier, it looks very promising.

Telok
2021-10-07, 04:50 PM
Exhibits A and B: Hey now, I have a couple hundred mini backlog to paint (on hold due to time & presence required family stuff). I printed & painted an otter with power sword, bolter, & grenade belt for someone else. Minis are cool, but once you have your painting & modding technique down there isn't much to talk about. Show off, maybe, but not much to talk about.



2nd Edition Psionics (Complete Psionics Handbook version with support from Dragon Kings and The Will and the Way) is the best version of Psionics to date.

Ability score checks should be made using the "The Price is RightTM" method: Roll as high as possible without going over. Highest successful roll in an opposed check wins.

There were issues with 2e psi. Not unfixable, but some definite issues. It would however be a decent base for skill/stat based csasting.

Never going to happen of course. WotC is so married to "d20+mod >= dc" that they're blind to any other dice rolls. I'm waiting for them to rewrite random encounter & loot tables that way.

Mordar
2021-10-07, 05:10 PM
The standard reaction to this is that "the game is played by human beings, it's only natural to standardize everything to human level".

There is so much fear of the diverse and the implications of diversity that, rather than learning to accept and value what would be diverse, the default solution is to make every race a reskin of Humans.

Really? Fear is the reason that games written by and for humans use a known quantity as a starting point?

Unpopular opinion 1: New era games are only capable of incremental gains (and not even always that) over the beardy old games. Something about standing on the shoulders of giants.


D&D Combat is really boring. Traps are boring.

Player agency is over-rated. Railroading is a valuable tool when used sparingly and appropriately.

An RPG only needs rules to determine if characters' pass/fail a test. Everything else is window dressing.

People value the strategic choices in D&D more than actually playing the game.

Disagree, agree.

Really really really really agree...*especially* when I am a player. There is a time and place for primary player agency, but not nearly as often as some people think. There is nothing wrong (and much right) with Quantum Ogres and Schrodingers Dungeons.

Not sure I understand.

Some people, definitely.

Unpopular (but maybe not anymore?) opinion 2: Games are best played in their native system, not ported to Savage Worlds, PBTA, GURPS or any other "generic" system.

Have others, but tied to non-fantasy RPGs, so maybe too specific for this thead?

- M

YoungestGruff
2021-10-07, 05:17 PM
Spell DCs should scale with Character Level as well. (I like Pathfinder's DCs for class abilities, which is 10 + 1/2 class level + Ability modifier)
I mean, they do. Just via the Proficiency Bonus.

EDIT:


It seems like two or three monster races get totally rewritten every edition at random and for no reason. Just wait, someday the dart will hit the board on something like trolls and they'll turn into misunderstood pacifist bioweapons from the last halfling vs elf genocide war.
Unrealted, who wants to hear my totally metal rewrite of troll lore?

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-07, 05:25 PM
I mean, they do. Just via the Proficiency Bonus.

I think that was meant to be a 'in 3.X', where they scale with spell level. One of the things that makes multiclassing as a caster annoying.


Barebones Fantasy does D&D better than D&D did, desire being a significantly smaller book (and therefore cheaper). This is due to both it's simplicity and 'profession as skill' system.

icefractal
2021-10-07, 05:32 PM
4e is only despised because it kicked out a lot of golden cows and laid bare that D&D has never been anything more than a wargame with a roleplaying paint job.Not the same opinion, but this made me think of it -

Much of the hate on 4E (especially related to 'characters are too powerful / superhero-like') was because it stopped hiding behind vagueness and tried to define what being higher level meant. A 15th level character isn't just skilled and lucky but basically normal, they're a "Paragon" and can have superhuman abilities. A 25th level character is even less normal and might be a "Demigod".

Which was already the case in 3E, if you went by the mechanics. But it never actually said that. It never directly said "Your 20th level Fighter is not just the ordinary tough guy at the tavern, he's goddamn superhuman."

And it turned out that many people, having not played high-level games (or only low-op ones), had a different head-canon, a head-canon where characters could get to 20th or 100th or 1000th level without ever ceasing to be a normal person who gets nervous when some bandits with crossbows surround them. And they did not appreciate being told that was wrong.

So, empirically unpopular opinion - they were wrong. :smalltongue:

Quertus
2021-10-07, 07:01 PM
I'm only in the first page, but this is an awesome read so far!

Should I be concerned that I agree with most of the "unpopular" opinions posited by the first few posters?

I guess my "unpopular" opinions are include…

Alignment is the worst thing to happen to role-playing in the history of RPGs.

"Acting" is what happens when you start with the script, and work backwards towards the classic actor question of "what's my motivation?"; "Role-playing" is what happens when you start at (the foundations for) the motivations, and work your way forward to the other classic actor question, "what's my line?".

4e D&D is not an RPG. And neither are so-called "CRPGs".

"Balance" is not a synonym for "fun".

3e D&D has the best balance I've seen in an RPG; 2e D&D the best character creation.

It's fine if people don't want to engage all parts of the game, if that's what they find fun. It is not fine for them to intentionally "disengage" others.

There is a copy of the game world inside each participant's head. Each participant holds "the truth" for their piece. As the GM holds by far the most pieces, they are uniquely situated, and have the greatest responsibility for clear communication, issue resolution, and ensuring the fidelity of the game world copies inside everyone else's head. And that is the only responsibility unique to their position; anything else can be offloaded. Or, as I usually say it, "the GM is the eyes and ears of the PCs".

The optimal game generally involves "calibration sessions", where players and GMs display their range, before the participants make an informed decision regarding what they want.

Rails form first in the GM's mind. GMs having conflicts of interest between "their plans" and "the group's fun" (or, as I used to word it, "GMs wanting something") is where things start to go wrong.

Angry is the best mind in gaming. And, despite that, he's always wrong.

-----

A few things I'd like to see more about:



Things being "off the RNG" is not inherently a problem and can in fact be desirable.

"Use the environment, not your character sheet" is sometimes just code for "Don't pay attention to that stupid crap you made (the character), pay attention to this awesome stuff I made (the scene description).".


there needs to be more mundane classes than fighter and rogue.


D&D shouldn't be the iconic role-playing game. I don't think it is a good first role-playing game.


Cantrips should scale with class not character.

Warlocks are close to the best designed class after paladin.

(I've tried to limit myself to ones where I don't already have a strong opinion.)

Tanarii
2021-10-07, 07:14 PM
3e D&D has the best balance I've seen in an RPG;
This statement made my eyes pop out in disbelief.

KineticDiplomat
2021-10-07, 07:38 PM
I've established it pretty well elsewhere, but I really dislike D&D for being an overall mediocre RPG that eats player share, leads to some obnoxious convnetions being copied in designs, and seems to (based on an admittedly not statistically powerful sample of personal observations) attract far more of the man-children than others.

Shpadoinkle
2021-10-07, 07:43 PM
Suggestion accepted. I want the non casting mage to be more of a mage than Magic of Incarnum represents.

I don't know what this means. Can you elaborate? What are the incarnate and totemist missing that you think this "non-casting mage" should be able to do?

icefractal
2021-10-07, 08:05 PM
A few things I'd like to see more about:
For being off the RNG, take Acrobatics in Pathfinder for example.
"Run at full speed on icy ground" is DC 10. It's pretty easy for a character to have +9 or more, so they don't even have to roll for that. They're off the RNG.

It's also possible for one character to have +29 (run across a 2" wide beam during an earthquake, no roll needed) while another character in the same party has -1 (slowly moving along an 11" wide beam in calm conditions is a coin flip). Anything that's even a little challenging for the former is impossible for the latter.

To some people, that's a big problem. To me, it's not - the characters simply have different abilities. Like if one of them could fly and the other couldn't. Or if one is a high-ranking noble of the kingdom they're in, and another is a wanted criminal there. Or one is a particularly strong Half-Ogre who can lift an elephant and the other is an anemic Gnome. They're not going to face the same challenges.

And some systems I've seen use "the modifiers don't vary that much, but the GM should interpret the results differently based on the character's background" ... which seems like reinventing larger modifiers but less objective and more work on the spot.


For the other one, it's purely a suspicion. But I have noticed that sometimes when people describe what the good/roleplaying solution is, it involves listening very closely to the GM and then invoking elements they mentioned to prove you were listening. Where-as the bad/rollplaying solution involves the use of things that the player, rather than the GM, chose.

TBF, listening to the GM is a good thing, and there are plenty of situations where taking advantage of situational scene elements makes sense as the best idea. It's not an "always" thing.


And to ask about one of yours in turn:
4e D&D is not an RPG. And neither are so-called "CRPGs".Which of the following would you consider RPGs?
* Hero (I'm not going to call it HERO, it's not an acronym :smalltongue:)
* Fate
* PbtA (let's say Masks, if the specific one matters)
* D&D 5E
* Exalted 3E

Cluedrew
2021-10-07, 08:53 PM
Should I be concerned that I agree with most of the "unpopular" opinions posited by the first few posters?No, not really. I've seen enough different opinions on many matters that I am pretty sure that the popular opinion has crept in several times. Perhaps a better thread title for how the thread has gone might have been "Controversial or Unusual RPG Opinions" (reading the first post, that might have even been the intent). I was actually expecting to see something about your extreme in-character views but that didn't come up.

But generally speaking whether something is the popular opinion, an unpopular opinion, a trivially true fact someone thinks needs more attention or a factually incorrect statement that- well, yes, I think a few factually incorrect statements have appeared. But digging into them in the depth required would probably derail the thread so I shall let them pass.

On the other hand:
A few things I'd like to see more about:


Is D&D shouldn't be the iconic role-playing game. I don't think it is a good first role-playing game.Pretty simple, it came from some comment about how if D&D lost its place as the iconic system then another would take its place. I mean considering every other entertainment medium, I'm not sure that's true (although trading card games is pretty close, Wizards of the Coast is doing a good job at that) but even if it is, could there be a "better" iconic role-playing game system?

I think there could be and picked out some features for it:
Generic System: Ideally a tool-box system with a solid set of defaults. The defaults are for people picking it up for the first time and then the tool-box (which is to say, it is designed to be easy to modify) allows people to adjust tone or setting. Although focused systems built from the ground up have a place, I don't think the iconic system should be one of them. Basically if all you can find is a game of the iconic system then you can still branch out to different types of campaigns.
Rules-Light(er): I don't really have a threshold on this other than to explain why I think it needs to be true: The system needs to be approachable*. I have had people refuse role-playing on grounds that they think it is all about these rules-heavy systems. It's too much for some people and that's a problem for the most visible system.
There are other things, like no fixed progression or reducing combat focus, that may or may not help. But those two are the ones I am confident would improve the hobby as a whole. And I don't even like generic systems as much, but I do think they would make a better standard.

* Any to anyone who thinks D&D is "approachable": I would like to point out you are a Giant in the Playground poster.

Telok
2021-10-07, 09:37 PM
This statement made my eyes pop out in disbelief.

Well it depends on what you think "balance" means and what flaws or compromises you're willing to put up with in exchange for that golden moo.

Pex
2021-10-07, 09:37 PM
The Tier System of 3E is bunk. It is the author's personal opinion and has no authority to dictate how anyone should the play the game. It is not valid evidence in a debate about any 3E subject.

5E would have been better served if there were example DC tables for skill use.

zzzzzzzz414
2021-10-08, 12:04 AM
Not certain whether to file under "unpopular" or just "controversial", but:

Racial Alignment was a massive, massive mistake, not just due to certain unfortunate implications but also from a worldbuilding and character-building perspective, especially in the way it tends to encourage and create flat stereotypes and monocultures. Ideally it would be removed from the game entirely. (Maybe, maybe with exception for certain cosmic beings/outsiders whose forms are literally platonic embodiments of certain ideas of "good" or "evil" or "chaos", but most definitely not for any mortal species.)

I also really question the utility of the Alignment system as a whole but my views on that are a tad softer.

Talakeal
2021-10-08, 01:10 AM
Railroading is better than demanding the players railroad themselves.

Hey! Nice to see someone else in my neck of the woods!

I am not quite sure what this means, but if I had to venture I guess, I would say it is something like "I will be running Storm King's Thunder. Please make appropriate characters who are motivated to go along with the module so that I don't have to keep trying to wrangle you back on track."


Not the same opinion, but this made me think of it -

Much of the hate on 4E (especially related to 'characters are too powerful / superhero-like') was because it stopped hiding behind vagueness and tried to define what being higher level meant. A 15th level character isn't just skilled and lucky but basically normal, they're a "Paragon" and can have superhuman abilities. A 25th level character is even less normal and might be a "Demigod".

Which was already the case in 3E, if you went by the mechanics. But it never actually said that. It never directly said "Your 20th level Fighter is not just the ordinary tough guy at the tavern, he's goddamn superhuman."

And it turned out that many people, having not played high-level games (or only low-op ones), had a different head-canon, a head-canon where characters could get to 20th or 100th or 1000th level without ever ceasing to be a normal person who gets nervous when some bandits with crossbows surround them. And they did not appreciate being told that was wrong.

So, empirically unpopular opinion - they were wrong. :smalltongue:

I suppose this works if you limit "super-human" to a being really tough, really accurate, and being reasonably good at a couple of skills.

Lacco
2021-10-08, 02:37 AM
This is extremely accurate. 3.5 and 5E are fun despite their combat, not because of it. Our current DM sometimes wants big battles and we all seek to avoid them, because the otherwise fun settings get bogged down in 3 hours of blankly fighting ennui.

Same here: D&D 3.5 was my first GM experience of "how the hell do I make this combat interesting...???".

So another unpopular opinion: if you want to play classic fantasy game, avoid DnD 3+. If you want to play a warrior/fighter/mundane and have fun, avoid DnD 3+.


The way my group likes to play is fine for us, and the way your group likes to play is fine for your group.

Almost missed this jewel... which I absolutely agree with. "It's not better, it's better for you and your group". Thumbs up.


I like Vancian casting.

I like the idea of Vancian casting, but I have not seen it portrayed anywhere. I wanted to like the DnD casting system...


Unpopular (but maybe not anymore?) opinion 2: Games are best played in their native system, not ported to Savage Worlds, PBTA, GURPS or any other "generic" system.

And the other side around: if you like a game, do not port it into DnD. Play the other game.

In addition: When you have a great character that worked in DnD, do not assume it will work in other systems.



Overall, I'd like to commend all the commenters on this thread. The level of civility you all are able to keep around this topic is astonishing and inspiring.

Theoboldi
2021-10-08, 03:09 AM
Super unpopular opinion: If you like a setting or the basic premise of a game, but aren't hot on the mechanics or don't want to learn a completely different system that may require a completely different playstyle, there is no shame whatsoever in adapting it to your system of choice.

Plain bizarre opinion: D&D does not require Epic Levels above 20th, nor any sort of mechanical advancement beyond that point. Level 10 and upwards already work perfectly fine for those kinds of superpowered games where you're fighting demon lords and house-sized dragons, and have magic powerful enough to teleport across the world and create your own pocket dimensions. The kind of effort that goes into creating post 20th level boons should instead go into properly creating a level 10 to 20 epic experience.

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-08, 03:54 AM
This statement made my eyes pop out in disbelief.

Remember that Quertus falls heavily on the side of the magic users, and wants them to be casting magic all the time.

Me? I'm off the opinion that wizards should not be casting many spellz.


Hey! I suppose this works if you limit "super-human" to a being really tough, really accurate, and being reasonably good at a couple of skills.

An average human who teaches 20th level as a Fighter has 115 hp (rounding to the nearest five). A fall from orbit desks 20d6 damage. On average a fully rested 20th level Fighter has a less than 1% chance of dying from it (in fact the chance I do small anydice doesn't give it). If we understand that >90% of PC Fighters will have 14+ CON we can add another 40 hp and have a good chance at surviving it twice. Or surviving if we try to model the heart from sir compression.

I'd call that superhuman.

I'm afb at the moment (kind of got rid of my 3.X years ago), but I'm sure if we run the numbers we'll find their damage lets them cut through adamantine or something.

Talakeal
2021-10-08, 04:05 AM
An average human who teaches 20th level as a Fighter has 115 hp (rounding to the nearest five). A fall from orbit desks 20d6 damage. On average a fully rested 20th level Fighter has a less than 1% chance of dying from it (in fact the chance I do small anydice doesn't give it). If we understand that >90% of PC Fighters will have 14+ CON we can add another 40 hp and have a good chance at surviving it twice. Or surviving if we try to model the heart from sir compression.

I'd call that superhuman.

I'm afb at the moment (kind of got rid of my 3.X years ago), but I'm sure if we run the numbers we'll find their damage lets them cut through adamantine or something.

Or just a weird artifact of the super abstract damage system, after all any mundane animal larger than a bear can also reliably survive a fall from orbit.

But no, my point was that high level mundane characters get lots of HP, lots of BaB, and jack else, which makes them the most boring superheroes ever. Even The Tick could do cooler stuff and his whole shtick is walking brick.

Morgaln
2021-10-08, 04:14 AM
Or just a weird artifact of the super abstract damage system, after all any mundane animal larger than a bear can also reliably survive a fall from orbit.

But no, my point was that high level mundane characters get lots of HP, lots of BaB, and jack else, which makes them the most boring superheroes ever. Even The Tick could do cooler stuff and his whole shtick is walking brick.

It's not actually a problem of the damage system. The problem is that falling from orbit is handled through the damage system instead of just saying "if you hit the ground from that height, you're dead"

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-08, 04:20 AM
Or just a weird artifact of the super abstract damage system, after all any mundane animal larger than a bear can also reliably survive a fall from orbit.

Yeah, in the real world it's the smaller animals that are air droppable multiple times.

But still, that just makes those animals superhuman, even if only in a small way (and highlights a flat with scaling hp and linear fall damage).


But no, my point was that high level mundane characters get lots of HP, lots of BaB, and jack else, which makes them the most boring superheroes ever. Even The Tick could do cooler stuff and his whole shtick is walking brick.

Yes, Fighters are boring and need a few more buttons to push.

To be fair, I suspect a lot of issues with the Fighter would be solved of the porky named Monk was merged into it and high level Fighters become Wuxia heroes. As it is, much of the time if I'm invited to a 5e group I wouldn't look twice at the Fighter (with my top three picks being Artificer, Warlock, and Monk). Yes there's space for a simple class', but I honestly think that the D&D Barbarian does that better than the Fighter.

But on the other hand if I wanted to play a normal dude I'd play Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. The fact that so many of the classes are mundane professions is a nice touch, even if it means you're going to have to fight very dirty.

In other words, I'd rather be playing WFRP.

Chronic
2021-10-08, 05:03 AM
I think the wizard class should go away. It's an awfully unbalanced chassis, period. I think sorcerers makes way more interesting spellcasters at the end of the day, because they have to make choices. Wizard however have an absurd spell list and an absurb number of spell prepared per day.

Vahnavoi
2021-10-08, 05:18 AM
5th edition alignment was created by people who hated 3rd edition alignment, for people who hated 3rd edition alignment. It's barely there, mostly for product identity reasons. For understanding what alignment is and how it's supposed to work, a person's better off getting their hands on 1st edition AD&D books. Heck, they are probably better off playing Shin Megami Tensei or Ancient Domains of Mystery and seeing how those non-D&D games do it.

---

We've had computer games that count as proper roleplaying games since early 90s at latest, probably earlier. The idea of tabletop games being all that different comes from repeatedly overselling what human game masters are able and willing to do, while repeatedly underestimating what computers can do. Once you put your boots on the ground and look at what actually happens in human-run tabletop games, you'll find they are limited, and often limited in the exact same ways as computer games.

Related, if majority of your real tabletop playtime, say, hour or two per four hour session, is spent resolving tactical combat that's dominated by algorithmic rules and models just a few minutes of action, yet you still think you're doing it better than a computer... you are fooling yourself.

Also related, if you are decrying some D&D element as "videogamey", there's better than even chance that videogames stole that element from D&D first. You associate those things with videogames because videogames became more succesful and popular than D&D.

---

That D&D has dice doesn't mean dice are vital component for roleplaying - a game doesn't need to include dice at all to be a roleplaying game. If it's the physical action of rolling dice that keeps you invested in a game, you'd be better off playing Yathzee or going to a casino than playing any type of roleplaying game. On a second thought, don't go to a casino, you're tripping flags for the kind of person who'd develop a gambling addiction.

There are games which aren't recognized as roleplaying games by the wider public and aren't marketed as such, yet are. There also games which are recognized as such by the public and marketed to them as such, yet aren't. The simple reason for this is that people use language sloppily and can be wrong about this. Yes, this applies even to people who play roleplaying games. Ask a person who's only played D&D to give you a general definition of a roleplaying game, and more often than not they'll just describe a game of D&D, with all its idiosyncracies.

---

Whoever told you that roleplaying games are about creating stories was wrong. You can tell a story of any activity, and in that sense any activity can be said to create stories, but that doesn't mean all those activities are "about" that. Roleplaying games are about assuming the viewpoint of a character in a staged situation and deciding what to do, how to do it, and why. The people who moan and complain about stories, more often than not, are just upset that roleplaying games do not reliably produce good stories, and want to muck about with a game's rules so that they output stories closer to their ideas of a "good story".

Related, same applies to saying roleplaying games are "about" fun. Fun is one reason out of many to play games, and roleplaying games are one type of thing out of many to have fun. "Fun" is not what defines those things nor delineates between them.

Also related, whoever told you creating a good story equates to having a fun game, didn't know what they're talking about. Doing anything well is "1% inspiration, 99% perspiration". It's work. People who can do that have great capacity for delayed gratification, they can push through the hard and boring parts of the work because they can see the outcome, the promise of something that does not yet exist in their mind's eye. If you can't see it, or worse, if you can see the outcome isn't realistically attainable, learn to play games in a way that's fun in the moment. That way, you'll be happy even if you never complete a story or if the story turns out to be kind of bad.

---

If you have 4 classes and 4 species, you get 4^2=16 different character combinations. If you then have nine different alig... sorry, let's call them "life philosophies", you get 4^2*9=144 different combinations. If you tried playing each combination for one game session lasting for 4 hours, you'd have enough game for 576 hours. At rate of one session per week, you'd be playing for 2 and 3/4 years. If you'd try taking every combination from level 1 to, oh, level 9, at rate of 1 level per session, assuming no setbacks, character deaths or retries, you'd be playing for nearly 25 years. If you played for work, 8 hours per day, 280 days per year, you could squeeze it to 2 and 1/4 years.

If you can look at the above math and understand it, yet still go "D&D is too restrictive because it doesn't allow me to make the one particular and weird character I already have in my head!", maybe the issue isn't with the game lacking options. Maybe the issue is with you never really wanting to play anything the game offers. Or, worse: maybe your fixation on that one particular and weird character only serves to mask that you couldn't, even if you tried, imagine and play all those 144 characters in relevantly different ways.

OldTrees1
2021-10-08, 05:33 AM
I don't know what this means. Can you elaborate? What are the incarnate and totemist missing that you think this "non-casting mage" should be able to do?

Incarnate ends up being "I am a fighter equipped with a decent collection of magic items"
Totemist ends up being "I am a mythical beast and I will claw your eyes out"

Neither sounds like a mage/magician/magus/magi/etc to me. If I interpreted the Totemist as a non casting Druid then I would also expect non casting magic that would have continuous passive effects on the land around the Druid. I would expect some continuous controllable effects (cost actions to control) on the weather around the Druid. I would expect a collection of animal friends the Druid maintains a connection with and control over. In the Druid's case I would also expect the Druid to be able to take time to permanently alter sections of the land (create magical groves/glades for example)

Xervous
2021-10-08, 06:37 AM
Exhibits A and B:

Sorry...:smalleek:

Re: expensive miniatures. I 3D print my own, or at least I used to when there were prospects of local games.

The quip about the 500yo dragon strays towards banned topics so if you got the joke, great.

DigoDragon
2021-10-08, 06:51 AM
The Fighter is an NPC class that exists to give NPCs a feat and extra HP. Should NEVER be used by a PC.

Paladins aren't religious. They are the big damn hero archetype. Yes, go read the PHB for 3.X. Paladins didn't have to serve a deity.

The fighter class is the best dipping sauce for 3.x builds though. A couple levels and you get two feats and BAB increases. :3

I agree with the paladin part. I've been trying to play my 5e paladin this way. Though the neat thing that has developed is that my character picked up a patron's notice, so it's almost like a warlock's pact going on in the background. It's pretty interesting.



Same here: D&D 3.5 was my first GM experience of "how the hell do I make this combat interesting...???"

My opinion, after decades of trying many different systems, is that no system makes combat interesting. The real work is on the GM and the players to make it interesting.

Willie the Duck
2021-10-08, 08:25 AM
Racial Alignment was a massive, massive mistake, not just due to certain unfortunate implications but also from a worldbuilding and character-building perspective, especially in the way it tends to encourage and create flat stereotypes and monocultures. Ideally it would be removed from the game entirely. (Maybe, maybe with exception for certain cosmic beings/outsiders whose forms are literally platonic embodiments of certain ideas of "good" or "evil" or "chaos", but most definitely not for any mortal species.)

Oh, that brings up one of mine!:

D&D's trying desperately to have it both ways as to whether it is a generic fantasy gaming system or it has an implied default setting (not Greyhawk or the Known World or Forgotten Realms, just 'the world implied by the existing races and monsters and social dynamics and such'), has hamstrung it from the very beginning. The unfortunate implications of racial alignment being an obvious example (if they could just say, "in the default world, nearly all orcs the PCs will meet are murderous mercenary goons in the service of the dark lord* Whatevertheirnameis," most of the issue goes away), but there are plenty of dissonant things that could be addressed by this. All the 'let's think through the logical ramifications of the game rules' (such as the Tippyverse for 3e) issues people bring up could have actual answers (ex: "castles in most of the game world are built mostly like real-world castles where defense against massed armies of humanoids are the main threat because giants and dragons and earth elementals are pretty rare except for regions X, Y, and Z, where the castles do have sizable anti-monster defenses"). And, of course, that the books can't describe Elves or Dwarves much except in broad strokes (since you can't fit them into world dynamics of a default setting you don't acknowledge existing) have greatly reinforced the flat stereotypes and monocultures.
*of course, that D&D can't acknowledge that a lot of their material is serial-numbers-filed-off versions of other peoples' IPs is another hamstringing issue.

Berenger
2021-10-08, 10:19 AM
Darkvision and Low-Light Vision are overdone and tacking one, the other or both on every single Edgy New Race (tm) was a mistake.

Luccan
2021-10-08, 10:39 AM
+1 to everyone saying D&D isn't a generic system, though I disagree with "it's actually super narrow and unplayable outside dungeon-crawling" that I sometimes see thrown in with that.


Darkvision and Low-Light Vision are overdone and tacking one, the other or both on every single Edgy New Race (tm) was a mistake.

Agree with most of this, though it's really just almost every new race, not just the edgy ones. Darkvision is so common now that despite there being a spell that gives it to you no one casts it because most tables just ignore if anyone is missing darkvision.

Also, merging the two vision modes was unnecessary. Dwarves could see in total darkness because they lived underground and elves could see better in low-light because they tested for shorter periods of time, meaning they're often awake at night. And Drow specifically got darkvision, not low-light, because they also lived underground. I feel like the light rules in 5e are simple enough it wouldn't have been an issue to keep them separate.

Mastikator
2021-10-08, 11:08 AM
They could've just made darkvision 30ft for the nocturnal races, 60ft for mostly subterranean and 120ft for permanently subterranean. However I think merging was the right thing to do, the fewer systems the better. A single system that can just be scaled by a single number is good design.

Tanarii
2021-10-08, 11:37 AM
+1 to everyone saying D&D isn't a generic system, though I disagree with "it's actually super narrow and unplayable outside dungeon-crawling" that I sometimes see thrown in with that.
Given that modern D&D (at least since WotC took over) doesn't contain the necessary game structures to be good at dungeon-crawling, it's a particular weird thing to throw in.

kyoryu
2021-10-08, 11:53 AM
+1 to everyone saying D&D isn't a generic system, though I disagree with "it's actually super narrow and unplayable outside dungeon-crawling" that I sometimes see thrown in with that.

Yeah, I don't think that's really its niche. It was, but that started being phased out with 2e.


Given that modern D&D (at least since WotC took over) doesn't contain the necessary game structures to be good at dungeon-crawling, it's a particular weird thing to throw in.

Yeah, this. Modern D&D seems more like an Adventure-Path-Playing-Engine than anything, with very specific constraints (zero-to-superhero, etc etc etc)

Enixon
2021-10-08, 01:50 PM
from my experience, both in actual play and reading forums, at least half of people's problems with alignment boil down to "I want to deal with even the slightest of inconveniences by committing utter atrocities, but I don't want to write "Evil" on my sheet, pulling homeless people's fingernails off to gather information makes my character "deep" and "multilayered"."

Bacon Elemental
2021-10-08, 01:53 PM
Most people are permanently affixed to the edition of D&D they started with, and are only content to heap scorn on other editions because it's different to how they like it, one way or another.

Batcathat
2021-10-08, 03:09 PM
from my experience, both in actual play and reading forums, at least half of people's problems with alignment boil down to "I want to deal with even the slightest of inconveniences by committing utter atrocities, but I don't want to write "Evil" on my sheet, pulling homeless people's fingernails off to gather information makes my character "deep" and "multilayered"."

That's interesting. In my experience the people who want to engage in grimdark super villainy typically have little problem with alignment (whether the concept in general or writing Evil on the sheet). Who needs motivation (or an actual personality) when you're Chaotic Evil?

(I'm not saying you're misrepresenting your experiences or anything. It's mostly just an observation about people behaving differently).

Mastikator
2021-10-08, 03:18 PM
Given that modern D&D (at least since WotC took over) doesn't contain the necessary game structures to be good at dungeon-crawling, it's a particular weird thing to throw in.

I'd say it's a different kind of dungeon crawler, more like a dungeon crasher. An arena fighter a la Doom Eternal style that just so happens to take place in a dungeon.

icefractal
2021-10-08, 03:27 PM
Opinion about alignment, and a reason I don't like it personally:
No offense to GMs, but I've never played with one who I'd consider a RL moral/ethical authority. So the entire concept of "We're going to say there's objective good and evil, and the GM decides where a given action falls on that" seems somewhat nonsensical to me. When everyone is in agreement it's fine, but as soon as they're not, it gets weird.

Opinion about opinions - when I see a thread about "This time we're really going to fix the alignment system and create an objective standard that everyone agrees on!" - I don't get my hopes up. Philosophers have been trying to do that for millennia now, and no agreed answer yet.

kyoryu
2021-10-08, 03:39 PM
Opinion about alignment, and a reason I don't like it personally:
No offense to GMs, but I've never played with one who I'd consider a RL moral/ethical authority. So the entire concept of "We're going to say there's objective good and evil, and the GM decides where a given action falls on that" seems somewhat nonsensical to me. When everyone is in agreement it's fine, but as soon as they're not, it gets weird.

Opinion about opinions - when I see a thread about "This time we're really going to fix the alignment system and create an objective standard that everyone agrees on!" - I don't get my hopes up. Philosophers have been trying to do that for millennia now, and no agreed answer yet.

Yeah, the only thing that makes sense is for the GM of any particular game to say "this is how alignment works in my game. You don't have to agree with it, but these are the definitions I use."

Tanarii
2021-10-08, 03:45 PM
Opinion about alignment, and a reason I don't like it personally:
No offense to GMs, but I've never played with one who I'd consider a RL moral/ethical authority. So the entire concept of "We're going to say there's objective good and evil, and the GM decides where a given action falls on that" seems somewhat nonsensical to me. When everyone is in agreement it's fine, but as soon as they're not, it gets weird.
Which is the main reason 5e alignment is so refreshing. The DM isn't the final authority and it's not based on individual actions.

It's also designed to integrate with other personality traits, and forms a very broad basis for overall behavior. So it doesn't create straight jackets or one dimensional characters by default.

Talakeal
2021-10-08, 03:47 PM
from my experience, both in actual play and reading forums, at least half of people's problems with alignment boil down to "I want to deal with even the slightest of inconveniences by committing utter atrocities, but I don't want to write "Evil" on my sheet, pulling homeless people's fingernails off to gather information makes my character "deep" and "multilayered"."

Imo most people agree that torture is evil.

I dont like having to put evil on my sheet for doing things that I feel are the right thing to do by my irl morality such as tranquilizing my enemies, casting death watch for triage, animating a mindless skeleton to save people labor, working with my enemies against a greater evil, showing mercy to evil creatures, etc.

Fortunately 5E has mellowed out about a lot of the always evil actions.


Darkvision and Low-Light Vision are overdone and tacking one, the other or both on every single Edgy New Race (tm) was a mistake.

Earlier someone mentioned that they don’t like humanity as the default. This might actually be one of the few instances where that isn’t true as irl most every animal has better night vision than we do.

Quertus
2021-10-08, 04:11 PM
I like Vancian casting.


I love Vancian casting, think it's superior to many other magic systems in RPGs and will go on at length when asked about this. For several pages, if necessary.

I also think that D&D never has done Vancian magic that well.

What about Vancian do you like?


Never going to happen of course. WotC is so married to "d20+mod >= dc" that they're blind to any other dice rolls. I'm waiting for them to rewrite random encounter & loot tables that way.

That would be… cool?


This statement made my eyes pop out in disbelief.

Glad you were able to get them back in!


Remember that Quertus falls heavily on the side of the magic users, and wants them to be casting magic all the time.

Me? I'm off the opinion that wizards should not be casting many spellz.

I play Wizards; I'm more "falls on the side of the muggle supremacists", tbh.

That said, I think the description given by oldtrees1 is much closer than "casting magic all the time" to describing my position on the "what I want magical beings to do" front (which, obviously, is unrelated to my position in my first post regarding balance).


For being off the RNG,

Ah. Gotcha. I'm onboard with having skill matter more than chance, and with challenges like "walking" and "chewing solid food" be things that get outgrown by most.


For the other one, it's purely a suspicion. But I have noticed that sometimes when people describe what the good/roleplaying solution is, it involves listening very closely to the GM and then invoking elements they mentioned to prove you were listening. Where-as the bad/rollplaying solution involves the use of things that the player, rather than the GM, chose.

TBF, listening to the GM is a good thing, and there are plenty of situations where taking advantage of situational scene elements makes sense as the best idea. It's not an "always" thing.

Eh, I'm not sure if I'm following. That is, one could invoke mechanics with or without listening ("I hit AC 42, dealing 69 damage to… whatever"), even incoherently ("but it's 500' away… hovering over the middle of the grand canyon… and you're wielding a sword…"), just as one could go off-sheet with out without listening, and even incoherently.

But, what you were trying to convey was, you believe, sometimes, people mistake "not paying attention" for "playing the sheet"?

Am I close?


And to ask about one of yours in turn:Which of the following would you consider RPGs?
* Hero (I'm not going to call it HERO, it's not an acronym :smalltongue:)
* Fate
* PbtA (let's say Masks, if the specific one matters)
* D&D 5E
* Exalted 3E

… well, my answer is gonna be weird.

To me, "role-playing" means giving answers as the character (close enough? You know what I mean, right?), answering "WWQD?".

In 5e D&D, the RNG is generally far more a factor than skill. Usually, a group of buffoons will do better than the trained professional.

So, in a reality that uses 5e, when a teacher asks a class, "why do we have governments?", it's highly likely that a student will give a better answer than what the teacher knows. The flow of knowledge is from the many to the one.

I can envision a society that follows this humorously inverted logic, and build a character who grew up in that society. So that, when it comes to sobbing problems in a 5e universe, I don't have to break character to suggest throwing more bodies at the problem, to know that "crowd-sourcing" is the tech of choice.

A system fails to be an RPG when you are forced to make decisions for the character that the character could not make. When you cannot construct a reality that logically produces the mindset in which the game is played.

That's how 4e fails to be an RPG.

When you *can* answer the question WWQD, but doing so is not just suboptimal but impossible, when you cannot act upon the roleplay answer, when you are constantly forced to metagame limit yourself to an unrealistically constrained list of options, it is also not an RPG, by my definitions.

This is how CRPGs fail to be RPGs.

So, to answer your question, well, I can't answer your question, because I don't know any of those systems well enough. You'll have to answer your question for yourself.

When you make decisions in those games, are you role-playing the character? Could a character in those systems have come to the answer you did? If so, if you can actually play the game in "actor stance" without needing to access metagame knowledge of "the more people helping, the quicker we'll accumulate failures -> only the person with the best modifiers should ever touch the dice", then it can be a role-playing game.

When the mechanics force you out of actor stance, because what's obvious to everyone at the table as the correct/best answer is impossible to achieve as a reasonable, trained response in character, when you cannot build a setting that makes sense of the rules, then it's not an RPG.

When the system explicitly prohibits you from taking actions that would be in character to take ("but… there aren't rules for…"), and this occurs too often / for too many important choices / forces too great a deviation from WWQD, then it's not an RPG.

So… are those RPGs? If I set the original SSI gold box series in them, could I try to burn down the slums? Could I say arbitrary things to whomever I choose, and get back reasonable responses? Could I try to steal someone's cow? Open a shop? Build a ship? Become mayor?

If I'm role-playing my character with no concept of what system I'm in, will my actions make sense, or will they seem pants-on-head? If the latter, can I (you) build a background based on the system such that you can then play strictly in character, and have them make reasonable decisions?

Or does the system force you to stop role-playing, and play the system?

Answer that, and you'll know my answer to whether or not those are RPGs.


I was actually expecting to see something about your extreme in-character views but that didn't come up.

I'm sure I'll add more entries over time (senility willing).


On the other hand:Pretty simple, it came from some comment about how if D&D lost its place as the iconic system then another would take its place. I mean considering every other entertainment medium, I'm not sure that's true (although trading card games is pretty close, Wizards of the Coast is doing a good job at that) but even if it is, could there be a "better" iconic role-playing game system?

I think there could be and picked out some features for it:
Generic System: Ideally a tool-box system with a solid set of defaults. The defaults are for people picking it up for the first time and then the tool-box (which is to say, it is designed to be easy to modify) allows people to adjust tone or setting. Although focused systems built from the ground up have a place, I don't think the iconic system should be one of them. Basically if all you can find is a game of the iconic system then you can still branch out to different types of campaigns.
Rules-Light(er): I don't really have a threshold on this other than to explain why I think it needs to be true: The system needs to be approachable*. I have had people refuse role-playing on grounds that they think it is all about these rules-heavy systems. It's too much for some people and that's a problem for the most visible system.
There are other things, like no fixed progression or reducing combat focus, that may or may not help. But those two are the ones I am confident would improve the hobby as a whole. And I don't even like generic systems as much, but I do think they would make a better standard.

* Any to anyone who thinks D&D is "approachable": I would like to point out you are a Giant in the Playground poster.

Hmmm… does ShadowRun count for "toolbox + defaults"? (I'm only familiar with really old editions, but… "point buy" of race / funds / skills / stats / magical aptitude priority… then WoD level "bad at math" (ish) optimizer's paradise of "starting costs have no relationship to upgrade costs"within those priorities (something I'm not personally terribly concerned about either way)… with pre-built "troll street samurai" / combat Mage / street shaman / decker / etc)

IME, the biggest… Hmmm… "boon" to "approachable" I've found for new players is, very sadly, having the GM make the characters for the players. "What do you want… OK, here's how this system says what I think you're saying."

The worst thing I've found for "approachable" is "what do I roll, and do I want high or low (or "highest without going over", or…).

Merging two ideas: do those who don't want to engage with "rules heavy" actually engage with the fiction? Will they try to serve steak to the vegetarian? What's your experience there?

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-08, 04:36 PM
from my experience, both in actual play and reading forums, at least half of people's problems with alignment boil down to "I want to deal with even the slightest of inconveniences by committing utter atrocities, but I don't want to write "Evil" on my sheet, pulling homeless people's fingernails off to gather information makes my character "deep" and "multilayered"."

Eh, I have two other issues. The first, which I haven't seen, is that it puts people in a relatively small number of boxes (nine), and sadly has historically stated that certain mortal races (so not Outsiders or Abberations) tend towards one box or another. And don't PC races tend towards 'good' is as bad as saying 'monster races' tend towards 'evil'.

The second, which I've seen in every single D&D games I've played in, is that alignment rarely matters. It's too broad to easily determine how it influences character actions, and the vast majority of abilities don't interact with it (and this was my experience in third edition as well as fifth). It's pretty meaningless, about on the level of 'what colour is my character's body hair', and yet I'm prompted to write it down. Plus like body hair you probably aren't going to know what somebody's alignment is unless you actively check.

I've played many games without any kind of alignment, and none have suffered for it. It's not even impacted Paladin archetypes, mostly added a sentence or two to their code of conduct if anything.

Batcathat
2021-10-08, 04:51 PM
I've played many games without any kind of alignment, and none have suffered for it. It's not even impacted Paladin archetypes, mostly added a sentence or two to their code of conduct if anything.

While I have a lot of issues with alignment, this is my major one. Even if someone manages to avoid all the possible pitfalls of using them... they don't really gain any benefit from it that I've ever seen.

BRC
2021-10-08, 05:18 PM
While I have a lot of issues with alignment, this is my major one. Even if someone manages to avoid all the possible pitfalls of using them... they don't really gain any benefit from it that I've ever seen.
I think there's an interesting take on Alignment by treating it as a Cultural thing, rather than a universal constant.


Like, for example, Imagine two civilizations, one of which believes that Law comes from the Divine Right of Kingship, the other of which believes that Law must stem from some democratic process.

And then have fun exploring how magic that detects a "Lawful" alignment from those two cultures might clash.

I also wouldn't call this "Using Alignment" but...To groups that are familiar with the concept, it's a decent enough shorthand way to provide details on a group.

If I refer to the Xendorian Empire as a "Lawful Evil Expansionist Empire", or the Red Coast Corsairs as "a loose coalition of pirates, generally Chaotic Neutral", it's a nice way to communicate the nature of these groups without necessarily seeking to split the world into nine absolute categories that define everybody's behavior.


Which is to say, I don't think we should make people pick one of nine personality types to put on their character sheet, then hold them to the strictures of that behavior, but the concept can be useful.

Tanarii
2021-10-08, 05:32 PM
While I have a lot of issues with alignment, this is my major one. Even if someone manages to avoid all the possible pitfalls of using them... they don't really gain any benefit from it that I've ever seen.
The benefit is from treating it as one of several clearly stated motivations (personality traits) across different categories as an RP aide. To list things that are your characters motivations but not your own, so you can glance at them occasionally and be reminded of the kind of situations in which you might make decisions for the character in the fantasy environment differently from if you were there yourself.

It's not very helpful if it's the only one, or it's too tightly defined/restrictive. That's how you end up with one dimensional or straight jackets. But if it moral/social attitudes, and combines with e.g. 5e's Personality Trait, Ideal, Bond and Flaw, it's quite useful.

Compare and contrast to Backstory, which is usually a mishmash story of history and not very clearly stated motivations that result from them, and this is a clear improvement.

Is it necessary? Nope. Not even for all games of D&D. But many games of D&D are enhanced when players include one of their motivations covering parts of their general behavior that is influenced by their moral/social attitudes.

Luccan
2021-10-08, 05:32 PM
While I have a lot of issues with alignment, this is my major one. Even if someone manages to avoid all the possible pitfalls of using them... they don't really gain any benefit from it that I've ever seen.

This is the alignment argument I've agreed with most. While I don't think alignment is bad and I'm happy to keep it, the fact it has mechanically most often been used to penalize PCs is an issue. If you include penalties, there should be benefits. But the main benefits of alignment so far have been "you get to keep your class" and "if you never change as a person you get more XP", which mostly reads as coercion. Which is why I'm ok with 5e's take: no penalty, no benefit*, just a potential roleplay aid.

*outside specific situations like magic items or optional planar travel rules

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-08, 05:44 PM
While I have a lot of issues with alignment, this is my major one. Even if someone manages to avoid all the possible pitfalls of using them... they don't really gain any benefit from it that I've ever seen.

Yep.

Now I also own a couple of games which do a lot more with alignment than D&D does. Victoriana not only has it affect how easy it is for you to use magic and technology but also has it affect how Fate Points work. Move yourself towards Order and spending a Fate Point gets you extra successes, move towards Entropy and it gets you extra dice (3 per cog). It's much more central to the system, but does drive technologists away from Entropy and Magicians away from Order.

But even then it's not central. Could be though, I've got a very roughly outline of a game on my hard drive where characters have Creative and Subversive ratings witch affect dice rolls, it could be easy to switch that to something more like alignment.

Faily
2021-10-08, 07:06 PM
What about Vancian do you like?


Speaking only for myself, and only about the "Vancian" type of casting that is in D&D/PF1...

The short story of it is just that I like it.

The longer story is that I like the choices, and I like that choices matter. Just as much as it matters for the spontaneous casters which spells they learn (which can be more unforgiving if you make really bad choices), it matters what spells you choose to prepare. Every day you open up your toolbox and consider what you should prepare against, depending on how much or little you know might be ahead of you that day. In the similar vein of choices, I'm more the type of player who likes to cast a few well-placed spells in a combat compared to slinging magic left and right... and that follows up to the next thing I like about it which is resource-management.

I know it's not for everyone, and I totally get it, but I like the resource management approach of it. Should I use this Fireball now, or save it for later when the situation will be better suited for it? With the kind of games I've played a lot with some of my groups, it gives me an exciting thrill to plan my actions while waiting for my turn as I see the battlefield change, and then be able to make reasonably quick decisions when it is my turn to use the "right spell for the job".

When I was introduced to D&D, my only experience with magic systems from videogames and such was mana points, but it still made complete sense to me how spell slots worked. I like to imagine sometimes that each spell is like preparing an intricate knot in your mind, which takes time and there's a limit to how many of these knots you can concentrate on for a day (but with practice you learn to keep concentration on more of them and even make them more complicated), and when you cast the spell it's like you pull on one end and unravel/unleash the magic that the knot had worked up. I don't know why specifically, but imagining it like that just seemed very interesting to me.

NovenFromTheSun
2021-10-08, 07:13 PM
What does this mean? I can't parse this in a way that makes sense.

Edit: It's mostly that I don't know what "demanding players railroad themselves" is supposed to mean. I can make several guesses, but I've never heard anyone talk about players railroading themselves before and I certainly don't see the meaningful difference with any of my guesses between that and regular railroading

My apologies, I didn’t notice your post! What I basically mean is GMs expecting the players to read their minds: when they actually have a clear expectation of how the campaign should go but don’t provide any guidance toward that point then are bothered when the players don’t do what he or she never told them to do. I hope that’s more clear.

HumanFighter
2021-10-08, 07:13 PM
This opinion probably isn't that unpopular, but still: alignments is a sacred cow that should've been slaughtered and eaten long ago. They have lots of potential downsides and I've yet to see a single upside that can't be attained some other way.


4th edition was good.

Not very D&D-like, but for what it set out to do, it was good. And it was also fun to play, which is more important.

Couldn't Agree More.

Jay R
2021-10-08, 08:26 PM
Actual question, what was 0e marketed as? I wouldn't be surprised if it was presented as more of a wargame.

The cover of the original product said:

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS
Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames
Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil
and Miniature Figures

Having said that, you're assuming distinctions that didn't exist yet. A "wargame" was pretty much any simulation game that was published by a wargame company. Scrimmage was a wargame of American football. Russian Civil War was a wargame of politics. Conquistador was a wargame of exploration. Outdoor Survival was a wargame of wilderness survival. The Plot to Assassinate Hitler was a politics / assassination wargame.

When D&D came out, the term "role-playing game" did not yet exist. We just called it D&D. [You don't need a category name until the category has more than one member.]

I just looked through the first three-pamphlet D&D game, for references to role playing, or roles at all. This was not an exhaustive search, but I think it is illustrative. Here is a list of all uses of the word "role" I could find in a quick look through the first D&D pamphlet, Men & Magic.


P. 6 Before they begin, players must decide what roles they will play, human or nonhuman, fighter, magic-user, or cleric.

P. 9 Before the game begins it is not only necessary to select a role, but it is also necessary to determine what stance the character will take - Law, Neutrality, or Chaos.

P. 10 Prior to the character selection by players it is necessary for the referee to roll three six-sided dice in order to rate each as to various abilities, and thus aid them in selecting a role. Categories of ability are: Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, Dexterity, and Charisma. Each player notes his appropriate scores, obtains a similar roll of three dice to determine the number of Gold Pieces (Dice score x 10) he starts with, and then opts for a role.

P. 11 Players will, in all probability, seek to hire Fighting-Men, Magic-Users, and/or Clerics in order to strengthen their roles in the campaign.

The only use of the word "role" I found in the second pamphlet, Monsters and Treasure, referred to a magic sword's role in combat. In the third pamphlet, The Underground and Wilderness Campaign, there are three references -- to the roles of three NPC hireling specialists -- assassin, sage, and ship captain.

And unless I missed one or two, that's it. So "role" mostly meant race and class, not characterization.

Cluedrew
2021-10-08, 08:32 PM
… well, my answer is gonna be weird. [I will give my definition of role-playing game and you can figure out how it applies to the listed systems.]I reject any definition of role-playing games that removes all editions of D&D as role-playing games. I do think it is important to remember "words are defined by use" (or more accurately, averages in the association engine that is the human brain). So, if the common systems that everyone is used to referring to as role-playing games aren't role-playing games, then a mistake was made in that definition.
Everything I said is true but there is a joke here. I want to see who notices it.

Hmmm… does ShadowRun count for "toolbox + defaults"? [...] IME, the biggest… Hmmm… "boon" to "approachable" I've found for new players is, very sadly, having the GM make the characters for the players.No, it is locked to cyberpunk crime. It isn't a toolbox system that can easily be modify to fix different tones, campaigns and settings. Also, first time players often not being able to make their own characters is a sign that the system is not approachable.

Actually the closest system I know is actually Fate. I know it has some things in it that can get some real negative reactions but luckily those aren't actually the parts that make it a better iconic system, so we are going to ignore those. First, it is a toolbox with defaults, the core book uses a pretty generic low fantasy kind of setting but I think even the main skill list has a note to replace ride with drive in a modern setting. In fact their "DMG" equivalent is the Fate System Toolkit (PHB equivalent being Fate Core), which contains several magic systems, advice on how to adjust the health system for superheroes and how to add weapons and armour. I haven't read it in a while, point is there is a lot and the game is structured to be modular so it is relatively easy to do. Second, it is more approachable. I mean definitely know more approachable systems, but as best as I can try to quantify how hard it is to learn by amount of rules and what you need to know to start playing Fate is still an improvement over D&D.

Both may be new unpopular opinions for the thread.

RandomPeasant
2021-10-08, 08:54 PM
+1 to everyone saying D&D isn't a generic system, though I disagree with "it's actually super narrow and unplayable outside dungeon-crawling" that I sometimes see thrown in with that.

D&D is a kitchen sink system. That often gets confused "generic" because people don't understand terminology properly. D&D does a very wide range of things within the "epic fantasy" genre, having monsters from every sort of mythology you can name and supporting characters that do everything from "priest of the dark gods" to "ninja pirate". But it doesn't do anything outside the genre particularly well.


No offense to GMs, but I've never played with one who I'd consider a RL moral/ethical authority. So the entire concept of "We're going to say there's objective good and evil, and the GM decides where a given action falls on that" seems somewhat nonsensical to me.

The worst part of D&D alignment is definitely the labels. If you just had nine alignments that were called things like "Hedonism" or "Utilitarianism" that would be fine, because people can agree what those mean. Similarly, if you had nine alignments that were called totally arbitrary things like "Purple" and "Yellow", that would also be fine, because your made up definitions won't offend anyone. The issue is using terms that people have external definitions for, but for which people don't agree. That's a combination that's practically optimized to cause conflict.


I think there's an interesting take on Alignment by treating it as a Cultural thing, rather than a universal constant.

That's not really alignment. There are plenty of alignment-like systems that would be reasonable. You could even call them "alignment". The issue is entirely down to how D&D approaches it.


But if it moral/social attitudes, and combines with e.g. 5e's Personality Trait, Ideal, Bond and Flaw, it's quite useful.

Or just give people multiple personality traits. You don't need five different versions of "this is my character's motivation". You need one. And you can let people pick multiple if that is for some reason important to them.


I know it's not for everyone, and I totally get it, but I like the resource management approach of it.

Vancian is fine. The issue is that the game uses almost exclusively Vancian resource management, even when it doesn't make sense. Which makes the way a lot of people go "having Vancian as the one true resource management system is bad, we just need to replace it with my idea for a one true resource management system" seem quite bizarre to me. The solution is pluralism. Vancian casting for people who like that, other things for people who like other things.

Tanarii
2021-10-08, 09:48 PM
P. 10 Prior to the character selection by players it is necessary for the referee to roll three six-sided dice in order to rate each as to various abilities, and thus aid them in selecting a role. Categories of ability are: Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, Dexterity, and Charisma. Each player notes his appropriate scores, obtains a similar roll of three dice to determine the number of Gold Pieces (Dice score x 10) he starts with, and then opts for a role.
I just love that the DM (sorry, referee) is supposed to roll the ability scores. :smallamused:

Kymme
2021-10-08, 10:45 PM
Skill systems are lame. I want people to describe how they overcome challenges. What do you say to the guard to convince him to let you through? How do you disable the trap? That is much more interesting than rolling some dice.

In a somewhat inverted opinion, I think combat systems are lame. I want people to describe how they overcome challenges. How do you exploit the troll's weak eyesight to land a telling blow? How do you find an opening to put an arrow through the knight's visor? That is much more interesting than rolling some dice.

Kymme
2021-10-08, 10:54 PM
4e is only despised because it kicked out a lot of golden cows and laid bare that D&D has never been anything more than a wargame with a roleplaying paint job.

You're completely correct and you should keep saying this. 4e is the edition of D&D that was the worst at lying. Every edition of D&D has tried to sell itself on the masquerade that they are games about heroic adventure fantasy while doing nothing to support that model of play. 4e tried to do that too, but its mechanics weren't able to maintain the illusion, and that's why people call it 'game-y' or 'like an MMO.' When people are just looking at the engine and not the chassis around it, it's much easier to see how it works and what it does.

For the record, 3.5, 4e, and 5e aren't bad games. They do the thing they're built to do, tactical skirmishing wargaming with robust character creation, very well. I don't use them for my heroic adventure fantasy for the same reason I don't use a hammer to cut down trees - it's not what they're for.

dafrca
2021-10-08, 10:57 PM
Most people are permanently affixed to the edition of D&D they started with, and are only content to heap scorn on other editions because it's different to how they like it, one way or another.

Hum, I wonder how true this is. I know for me, I am speaking just for me, I started with the White Box and have never wanted to go back to it or felt it was the "best edition". It was fun and opened the door for what became a lifetime hobby/interest for me, but I would never ever say it was the best edition.

For me, and this is just for me, I would say my link to a particular edition has more to do with the edition I was using in the campaign I had the most fun with. The set of rules we used for that campaign always makes me reflect on the fun I had for over a year playing.

But you make me wonder how many folks do link back to their first set. :smallsmile:

zzzzzzzz414
2021-10-08, 11:46 PM
Or just give people multiple personality traits. You don't need five different versions of "this is my character's motivation". You need one. And you can let people pick multiple if that is for some reason important to them.


This, essentially. If other people find it helpful, good on them, but I never have. Unlike bonds, ideals, flaws or goals, the alignment categories are just too vague and loaded to be of much use to me without further explanation and description - and by the time I've done that, the alignment label itself is just redundant. People say it's helpful for newbies but if anything I think it's the opposite - encouraging people unskilled in roleplay to think in terms of "what's the lawful/good/chaotic/evil thing to do here", rather than "what's the thing to do here that fits with my character's personality and motives".

The only thing I really get out of alignment as a player is during the early character concept and personality-sketch phases. When I'm still figuring out what I'd like my character's personality and history to be, phrases like "a tad north of chaotic neutral" or "friendly neutral evil" can be something to latch onto, building on and unwinding them until I've got an actual character. But once you actually have two pages of backstory and description for "Aryanna Skyfeather, soldier of fortune with a leased-out heart of gold" or "Denya Vox, the bubbliest mob enforcer you've ever met", the labels "Chaotic Neutral" or "Neutral Evil" are unnecessary artifacts at best, active distractions at worst.

Lucas Yew
2021-10-08, 11:52 PM
Some immediate thoughts salvaged from oblivion:

The less (and weaker) spells you may cast, the more (and expertised) skills you should acquire (I'm looking at you, Fighter).
Branching off that, the bland Fighter and Rogue classes should be "gestalted" permanently to be one Ultimate Mundane Whatever class, which specializes in being better in all things which all other classes can at least mechanically attempt to do by default (like weapon attack rolls, trained skill checks, etc., but not spellcasting, rage, or sneak attack).
And this new class shall be the true "class for newbies" as it helps learn the basics of the system better than the current fighter (in any post-3.X edition).

5E spellcaster specific:
Prepared casters should prepare much less spells than a equal level spontaneous caster to compensate for being able to rebuild their arsenal each day; probably like casting mod + half level spells (rounded down, minimum 1).
Meanwhile, spontaneous casters should have at least a number of permanent spells equal to their level, plus quite more automatic additions depending on their subclasses.

Tanarii
2021-10-09, 12:48 AM
Or just give people multiple personality traits. You don't need five different versions of "this is my character's motivation". You need one. And you can let people pick multiple if that is for some reason important to them.
That's how you end up with a one dimensional character. Either that, or you play an avatar with just one thing different from you, the player.

Multiple motivations in multiple different categories of kinds of motivations distinguish how your character is different from you as a player and give the character depth.

Of course, I mean "multiple personality traits" when I say motivations. Its just that the best ones affect decisions. Because how you make decisions for your character in the fantasy environment is Roleplaying.

"I have a verbal tick" or "I have a strange accent" are somewhat motivational, since they may affect your decision on whether or not your character speaks. "I have a verbal tick when I lie" or "My feigned noble accent slips when I talk to commoners" are very motivational, since they'll affect your decisions to lie or speak to commoners when it'll give you away.

Pex
2021-10-09, 01:39 AM
The high level power of D&D is fine. It is perfectly acceptable and appropriate that PCs can "rewrite reality" so to speak and do awesome powerful things. Such power does not need to be nerfed nor removed from the game. If the campaign you envision cannot exist with such power perhaps end the campaign before the level of the power that ruins it for you or maybe another game system is more suitable. If you still want to play D&D you are not wrong to remove or alter the power that bugs you, but D&D is not wrong to have had the power in the first place and is undeserving of scorn because such power exists.

ventoAureo
2021-10-09, 03:38 AM
Narrowly defined "martial maneuvers" are bad. They constrain a character's ability to trip, move opponents around, disable them in all sorts of ways, and engage in interesting combat actions by turning them into just another ability. DCC's Mighty Deeds system (simple framework that allows for quick thinking and all sorts of possibilities depending on character, environment, and circumstance) is a much better way to allow for martial characters to do things besides hitting the enemy with a weapon when it comes to combat.

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-09, 03:57 AM
The cover of the original product said:

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS
Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames
Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil
and Miniature Figures

Having said that, you're assuming distinctions that didn't exist yet. A "wargame" was pretty much any simulation game that was published by a wargame company. Scrimmage was a wargame of American football. Russian Civil War was a wargame of politics. Conquistador was a wargame of exploration. Outdoor Survival was a wargame of wilderness survival. The Plot to Assassinate Hitler was a politics / assassination wargame.

I'm presuming that role playing existed in other contexts, particularly medical, and was interested to see if D&D used it to define itself (whether or not it used the term wargame).



Two characters with shields stood next to each other should get defensive bonuses. Make it such that if the enemy didn't possess area attacks players will want to create a shield wall.

Quertus
2021-10-09, 05:10 AM
I reject any definition of role-playing games that removes all editions of D&D as role-playing games. I do think it is important to remember "words are defined by use" (or more accurately, averages in the association engine that is the human brain). So, if the common systems that everyone is used to referring to as role-playing games aren't role-playing games, then a mistake was made in that definition.

That sounds to me like a good reason to encourage people not to use the term "role-playing game" to describe things that don't involve role-playing. (Of which, as I define the terms, only 4e, not the entire D&D line, has issue with, IME)

That said, I'm pretty sure, even if people started using "quark" to describe atoms, or "atom" to describe molecules, or "human" to describe uplifted dogs and AI piloting man-shaped meat-suits, that the word would also retain a stricter definition that excluded those additions. "RPG" should do likewise.

Faily
2021-10-09, 09:59 AM
The high level power of D&D is fine. It is perfectly acceptable and appropriate that PCs can "rewrite reality" so to speak and do awesome powerful things. Such power does not need to be nerfed nor removed from the game. If the campaign you envision cannot exist with such power perhaps end the campaign before the level of the power that ruins it for you or maybe another game system is more suitable. If you still want to play D&D you are not wrong to remove or alter the power that bugs you, but D&D is not wrong to have had the power in the first place and is undeserving of scorn because such power exists.

+1 to this!

Gods how I hate the "teleport breaks the game" kind of rants. xD

JNAProductions
2021-10-09, 10:09 AM
+1 to this!

Gods how I hate the "teleport breaks the game" kind of rants. xD

Teleport (long-range, not tactical) breaks SOME kinds of games.

It's not unreasonable for a DM to want travel to be part of the game. But, if a DM does want travel to be a part of the game, it's on them to either keep the game low-level enough that long-range teleports are rare, or to work with the players to keep their characters within the bounds of people for whom travel applies to. And both of these require player buy-in.

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-09, 10:16 AM
Teleport (long-range, not tactical) breaks SOME kinds of games.

It's not unreasonable for a DM to want travel to be part of the game. But, if a DM does want travel to be a part of the game, it's on them to either keep the game low-level enough that long-range teleports are rare, or to work with the players to keep their characters within the bounds of people for whom travel applies to. And both of these require player buy-in.

Or just run a system that doesn't have long ranged teleportation. There's a great many out there. I recommend Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, it's n not as complex as Anima: Beyond Fantasy but still fairly crunchy.

JNAProductions
2021-10-09, 10:18 AM
Or just run a system that doesn't have long ranged teleportation. There's a great many out there. I recommend Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, it's n not as complex as Anima: Beyond Fantasy but still fairly crunchy.

Also true. There's a lot of systems.

Notably, games set in the modern day don't do travel plots well, usually. Planes and cars kinda wreck that. :P

Cluedrew
2021-10-09, 10:49 AM
That sounds to me like a good reason to encourage people not to use the term "role-playing game" to describe things that don't involve role-playing. (Of which, as I define the terms, only 4e, not the entire D&D line, has issue with, IME)The real problem with your definition is that it uses a subjective quality judgement as its core. Essentially it is confusing "ice cream flavours I like" with "ice cream". Ice cream is the objective category and then we can discuss subjective things about it. Or even objective things, but even if we could prove that 4th is a bad role-playing game by an objective measure that wouldn't make it not a role-playing game.

So if you want to argue that D&D 4e is not a role-playing game, your definition should refer to something fundamental about the game. Not your experience with it. Because if your experience with D&D 4e is enough to disqualify it from being a role-playing game, than my experience with D&D 3.5e and D&D 5e should be enough to disqualify them as role-playing games. You know what the most helpful thing any edition has done for my role playing: added nine (or six depending how you count) new descriptive terms to my lexicon to describe characters. Yes I am referring to the alignment system, and also the extent I use it (what can I say, if I describe a character as "Lawful Neutral" people know what I mean). Otherwise it has pretty much just gotten in the way or left me to my own devices; a state of affairs so bad I understand why some people thing "not getting in the way" is the best a role-playing game can do. Even though its not.


Gods how I hate the "teleport breaks the game" kind of rants. xDI remember having a bigger discussion about this and the problem is basically a combination of the (kinda) forced shift in scope and the fact that not everyone gets to participate. Teleport can kind of sideline the ranger's entire character concept.

Tanarii
2021-10-09, 10:53 AM
The high level power of D&D is fine. It is perfectly acceptable and appropriate that PCs can "rewrite reality" so to speak and do awesome powerful things. Such power does not need to be nerfed nor removed from the game. If the campaign you envision cannot exist with such power perhaps end the campaign before the level of the power that ruins it for you or maybe another game system is more suitable. If you still want to play D&D you are not wrong to remove or alter the power that bugs you, but D&D is not wrong to have had the power in the first place and is undeserving of scorn because such power exists.
The problem isn't high level power, it's when high level power is unbalanced internally with the system. Or if you're trying to run anything other than Dragonball Z-like anime as your campaign. And for Wotc D&D, the blindingly fast leveling speed.

Not so much a problem if you don't care about any kind of simulation or movie/book campaign of course. If you're trying to run Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars trilogy over 6 months, getting to level 11 in that time and wrapping up the campaign works fine. If you're trying to run an internally consistent open table multiple party campaign, capping levels at 11 by retirement with occasional special adventures for retires is fine.

But if you want to play anime heroes /demigods following an adventure path of heroic saving the world-ness, the wotc 1-20 fast leveling (1-30 in 4e) is perfect.

Faily
2021-10-09, 11:12 AM
I remember having a bigger discussion about this and the problem is basically a combination of the (kinda) forced shift in scope and the fact that not everyone gets to participate. Teleport can kind of sideline the ranger's entire character concept.

Not... really?

Ok, it means the Ranger won't get to roll his Survival checks whenever you're travelling back home or to other familiar locations. But the Ranger (and other survival-type characters) will still get to flex when you don't know where you're going. If you don't know where the bandit hide-out is, you can't teleport there and you rely on the outdoorsfolk to find the tracks (or you got clues to where it was from other means, like questioning NPCs, gathering information, communing, etc).

For Teleport in most editions, you need to have some idea of where you're teleporting to, and you need to get to 7th level spells (Greater Teleport/Teleport Without Error) to do it without any mishaps.

Theoboldi
2021-10-09, 11:30 AM
Otherwise it has pretty much just gotten in the way or left me to my own devices; a state of affairs so bad I understand why some people thing "not getting in the way" is the best a role-playing game can do. Even though its not.


As someone who thinks that there is genuine value in roleplaying games that 'do not get in the way', I want to point out that this is a reactionary accusation at best, and at worst just hurtful. This is the exact kind of thinking that leads to accusations of brain damage over such petty things as roleplaying game preferences. :smallannoyed:

I don't go around claiming people who enjoy a more genre-emulating experience (probably not the best term for what I'm referring to, but I can't think of a better one) want the game to roleplay for them because they suck at it either, so I genuinely I don't get this sentiment of needing to discredit other preferences. Even within an argument.

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-09, 11:43 AM
Also true. There's a lot of systems.

Notably, games set in the modern day don't do travel plots well, usually. Planes and cars kinda wreck that. :P

Planes mostly, cars partially. You can plan a travel based adventure around the players having access to modern vehicles, but you do have to take it into considering. The important part is that the players are still traveling, they can just do it faster.

Theoboldi
2021-10-09, 12:01 PM
Planes mostly, cars partially. You can plan a travel based adventure around the players having access to modern vehicles, but you do have to take it into considering. The important part is that the players are still traveling, they can just do it faster.

Something to also keep in mind is that modern travel methods suffer from many of the problems that Faily pointed out for magical ones. You can't exactly land a plane without an airfield, and cars will struggle in heavily forested areas, or places without roads.

And like she said, travel that has a focus on exploration and searching tends to be easier to implement in a gameable manner than travel that is just meant to get the PCs somewhere.

Cluedrew
2021-10-09, 01:00 PM
As someone who thinks that there is genuine value in roleplaying games that 'do not get in the way', [...]That's true, let me put this a different way: It's not that the genre-emulating* system are better than freeform*, it's that freeform is not better than genre-emulating. Having almost no constraints on character personality or decision making is nice, but it comes at the cost of not really having any guides or supports. It is a trade-off like many other things and it may be worth it or not in different contexts**, but across the entire hobby neither should be considered superior to the other.

So that is my position on the matter. I brought it up because of the extreme position of: Any rules relating to character personality or decision making is inherently bad for role-playing. I disagree but I'm not really arguing against here. I just think that one of the causes of that belief*** is that D&D (the most popular system in the hobby) has a real checked past with providing rules for personality and decisions. So someone with similar experiences as mine with D&D, working around the rules more often than with them, but hasn't played other systems that have done a better job with those rules, may very well believe that getting out of the way is strictly the best way a system can approach role-playing. And I already went over how I feel about that.

* I don't have great words for this either, hopefully the result of the post explains what I mean.
** I've found the more focused the game is the more chance they have of getting personality/decision rules right.
*** There are others, including "I like it", which, if you do, is true.

To Faily: Forgot to quote you, I just zeroed in on the person to seemed hurt. Yes, it isn't going to do it every time on its own. Although, I would be shocked if there weren't spells that let a wizard be a better tracker than a ranger too. Still, what would you describe as the ranger's "tier-up" ability opposite teleport? I actually don't know if there is one, is there an ability that pushes the scope of the ranger's abilities out like teleport and other spells of its level does for the wizard and comes online around the same time?

King of Nowhere
2021-10-09, 01:05 PM
That's how you end up with a one dimensional character. Either that, or you play an avatar with just one thing different from you, the player.

Multiple motivations in multiple different categories of kinds of motivations distinguish how your character is different from you as a player and give the character depth.


few people can come up with a well rounded character immediately. i generally pick a one dimensional character, and let it grow more complex as i play it

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-09, 02:28 PM
Something to also keep in mind is that modern travel methods suffer from many of the problems that Faily pointed out for magical ones. You can't exactly land a plane without an airfield, and cars will struggle in heavily forested areas, or places without roads.

And like she said, travel that has a focus on exploration and searching tends to be easier to implement in a gameable manner than travel that is just meant to get the PCs somewhere.

Okay, got you. Although I suspect you can still manage it just be picking the right address and vehicle (which admittedly is not work then you should need).


few people can come up with a well rounded character immediately. i generally pick a one dimensional character, and let it grow more complex as i play it

Yeah, but I find that being ahead to consider several angles of your personality heroes. Even if it's just 'what makes you angry, what makes you afraid, and what makes you act like a better person'.

Faily
2021-10-09, 02:31 PM
Also, regarding travel in "modern settings", Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders would like a word with you. Looking away from the silliness that is Jojo, the first half of Stardust Crusaders does a good job of making travel difficult for the protagonists.

And yes, as Theoboldi said, lots of modern modes of transportation just can't go all-terrain. And then you need to enter in problems like fuel and maintance too.



To Faily: Forgot to quote you, I just zeroed in on the person to seemed hurt. Yes, it isn't going to do it every time on its own. Although, I would be shocked if there weren't spells that let a wizard be a better tracker than a ranger too. Still, what would you describe as the ranger's "tier-up" ability opposite teleport? I actually don't know if there is one, is there an ability that pushes the scope of the ranger's abilities out like teleport and other spells of its level does for the wizard and comes online around the same time?


Maybe, but that means the Wizard is using spell-slots for tracking and not for other things that they might need it for (which goes back to my previous post about why I like Vancian magic and the resource-management of it).

I don't agree that Teleport pushes the Ranger or other outdoors-folks out. Teleport is a great resource for the party to get safely and quickly to familiar locations - it's not an exploration spell.

JNAProductions
2021-10-09, 02:44 PM
Also, regarding travel in "modern settings", Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders would like a word with you. Looking away from the silliness that is Jojo, the first half of Stardust Crusaders does a good job of making travel difficult for the protagonists.

And yes, as Theoboldi said, lots of modern modes of transportation just can't go all-terrain. And then you need to enter in problems like fuel and maintance too.

Fair. It's different, but not obviated entirely. Depending on setting and theme and all that, but you can say the same for fantasy games, so... Point taken. :)

RandomPeasant
2021-10-09, 04:05 PM
One thing I will say about teleport is that while it's not broken in absolute terms, I do think it's fair to say that it's positioned in a way that crowds out other fast travel abilities. It's pretty trivial to come up with an adventure that stands up to teleport (for example: any intrigue, exploration, or bug hunt adventure). But it is harder to come up with a non-teleport travel power someone could have (like shadow walk or PGtE's Fae Gates) that are competitive with teleport. So there is a reasonable argument for moving things around so that teleport comes online fairly late, making a progression from "mundane travel" to "limited magical travel" to "easy magical travel".


Multiple motivations in multiple different categories of kinds of motivations distinguish how your character is different from you as a player and give the character depth.

I genuinely do not understand how having motivations come from different lists adds anything that simply having multiple motivations does not. Just have a list of character traits that includes everything from "short tempered" to "strict utilitarian" to "wracked by guilt for a personal failure" and let people pick from or roll on it as many times as is appropriate. Having a "Bond" and a "Trait" and a "Background" and an "Alignment" is just making things more complicated for no reason.


The high level power of D&D is fine. It is perfectly acceptable and appropriate that PCs can "rewrite reality" so to speak and do awesome powerful things. Such power does not need to be nerfed nor removed from the game. If the campaign you envision cannot exist with such power perhaps end the campaign before the level of the power that ruins it for you or maybe another game system is more suitable. If you still want to play D&D you are not wrong to remove or alter the power that bugs you, but D&D is not wrong to have had the power in the first place and is undeserving of scorn because such power exists.

Agreed. And I would add that the people who claim that D&D has never promised this sort of power are speaking out of simple historical ignorance. If anything, the level of power and influence high level characters have has declined since D&D first launched.


Teleport (long-range, not tactical) breaks SOME kinds of games.

Sure, but so does everything. teleport is not special in this regard and framing it that way gives an unreasonable level of charity to people whose argument is nothing more than "things I don't like shouldn't be in the game because I don't like them". teleport is pretty easy to plot around, and something like half the game doesn't have it at all. The people complaining about it don't really have a leg to stand on.


And for Wotc D&D, the blindingly fast leveling speed.

The problem is the idea of a single leveling speed. If you look at the rest of the fantasy genre, there is not anything like a consistent speed of power progression. Different stories have different progression speeds, different power ceilings, and happen over different timeframes. The game needs to be more upfront about the fact that characters change over the course of the power progression, and to provide a framework for limiting power progression. Which means burying XP in a hole in the ground and moving to milestone leveling, and providing a framework for incremental non-level progression so people don't feel compelled to keep leveling up their characters and end up demanding that their mundane warrior be allowed to play at 20th level.

Telok
2021-10-09, 04:37 PM
I would note that d&d teleportation generally comes on line at about the same time planar travel options do.

Its the point at which "Baron von NaughtyPants with skeleton armies who is 1500 miles away" goes from being an epic trek and infiltration mission to "we'll pants him tomorrow morning and come home in time for supper". At that point the game is mechanically saying (without of course telling a new dm or anything) that he and his army are an easy encounter of which you can handle more than one each day.

The game gives that level of party the tools to hunt down a lich in its private demi-plane, directly attack arch-demons in the Abyss, rescue the demigod of luck from Mechanus, and take on githyanki fortresses in the Astral. You're expected to change the nature of the adventures from mundane riding around on horses and sailing ships beating up mundane enemies into using fantastic trasportation abilities to beat up magical enemies. The fact that lots of people don't get the message is a failure of the books to accurately tell you what the game expects you to do.

King of Nowhere
2021-10-09, 04:50 PM
The high level power of D&D is fine. It is perfectly acceptable and appropriate that PCs can "rewrite reality" so to speak and do awesome powerful things. Such power does not need to be nerfed nor removed from the game. If the campaign you envision cannot exist with such power perhaps end the campaign before the level of the power that ruins it for you or maybe another game system is more suitable. If you still want to play D&D you are not wrong to remove or alter the power that bugs you, but D&D is not wrong to have had the power in the first place and is undeserving of scorn because such power exists.

I'll expand this by claiming that D&D 3.5 is fine as it is and it does not need any kind of fix; none of its content is broken.

the reason is, of course, that most of its content is not supposed to be used together, and you should not use it together.
you can play d&d with sword-and-board fighters and healbot clerics, or you can play it with god wizards and codzillas. You can play E6, or you can play epic. You can even play with the book of erotic fantasy. the difference in power level is a plus, it lets you use the same framework to play different games with the same general rules. you only have a problem if you play with inconsistent parts.

which brings to the second part of my unpopular d&d opinion, which is that bans are not only good, but desirable. Bans are to be used to ensure that the campaign setting is consistent. the power, the themes. sometimes you ban an ability because it's broken for the power level you're aiming at, but just as often you ban stuff because you want a specific system with specific limitations instead of the common generic fantasy mix-mash, and sometimes even for the practical reason that some abilities entail more book-keeping than they're worth.
bans work when they are not the tool of a tyrannical dm using them to curtail any spell that the players could use to get off the rails. Bans work when they are discussed and agreed upon to provide a consistent framework to play with. Some people prefer to call them in some other way, they say that in this case it's not "ban" but "gentlemen agreement", but really, if nobody - neither player nor npc - can use a certain spell or feat, than that thing is banned.

I have two main limitations established:

1) you can't create something out of nothing without paying some sort of equivalent price.
This is a worldbuilding requirement, and not discussed with the players.
It basically curtails most ways to break an economy - indeed, it explains why there is an economy in the first place and it's not self-resetting traps of create food and fabricate everywhere. It also stops infinite loops. if an item or spell or anything breaks this principle, then it's either banned, or altered appropriately. For example, wall of iron was given a duration of day/level.

2) nothing level appropriate can screw you up too badly without allowing some sort of defence or counterplay
this is a power balance guideline, and it was agreed upon with the players. We discuss case by case what's acceptable and what isn't. For example, the last instance when it was called was for solid fog; solid fog completely negates ranged attacks, and so a 7th level wizard casting it can become completely immune to a 20th level ranged build. which is particularly relevant for my world because there are guns and they are pretty good for rogues. I argued that if the party rogue had solid fog cast on him, he'd be screwed and he could do nothing; nor are there any level-appropriate items that could help him. we argued for a bit, and a majority of us agreed that the spell was bad for the game we wanted. I asked if changing it to "applies 1 range increment for every 1.5 meters" and "movement is reduced to 1/4th" would be acceptable nerfs, but some players argued it would be then too weak, and we eventually settled for 2 range increments/1.5 meters.

The point is that bans and nerfs do not come out of the blue. We agree that we want to play a certain type of game with certain mechanics, and then we remove what would break those mechanics. But those mechanics are not broken, because other tables with different preferences may use them. The game is better if it includes both. The single gaming table would be worse if it included both

Tanarii
2021-10-09, 04:53 PM
few people can come up with a well rounded character immediately. i generally pick a one dimensional character, and let it grow more complex as i play it
Fair enough. My post came across as more judgmental against avatars and one dimensional characters than intended. But if you want to encourage complex characters, especially among new to roleplaying players but also even with experienced players, suggesting a couple of categories of motivations/personality traits as starting places to think about, and encouraging explicitly listing them as opposed to burying them in a backstory, can be useful.

And depending on the game, general moral/social attitudes and commonly resulting broad but not required associated behaviors can be a good category.

That said, obviously Alignment is mostly a sacred cow. Personally I liked it more when as "Team pro-civilization", "Team anti-civilization", and those in between.

JNAProductions
2021-10-09, 04:56 PM
I'll expand this by claiming that D&D 3.5 is fine as it is and it does not need any kind of fix; none of its content is broken.

the reason is, of course, that most of its content is not supposed to be used together, and you should not use it together.
you can play d&d with sword-and-board fighters and healbot clerics, or you can play it with god wizards and codzillas. You can play E6, or you can play epic. You can even play with the book of erotic fantasy. the difference in power level is a plus, it lets you use the same framework to play different games with the same general rules. you only have a problem if you play with inconsistent parts.

which brings to the second part of my unpopular d&d opinion, which is that bans are not only good, but desirable. Bans are to be used to ensure that the campaign setting is consistent. the power, the themes. sometimes you ban an ability because it's broken for the power level you're aiming at, but just as often you ban stuff because you want a specific system with specific limitations instead of the common generic fantasy mix-mash, and sometimes even for the practical reason that some abilities entail more book-keeping than they're worth.
bans work when they are not the tool of a tyrannical dm using them to curtail any spell that the players could use to get off the rails. Bans work when they are discussed and agreed upon to provide a consistent framework to play with. Some people prefer to call them in some other way, they say that in this case it's not "ban" but "gentlemen agreement", but really, if nobody - neither player nor npc - can use a certain spell or feat, than that thing is banned.

I have two main limitations established:

1) you can't create something out of nothing without paying some sort of equivalent price.
This is a worldbuilding requirement, and not discussed with the players.
It basically curtails most ways to break an economy - indeed, it explains why there is an economy in the first place and it's not self-resetting traps of create food and fabricate everywhere. It also stops infinite loops. if an item or spell or anything breaks this principle, then it's either banned, or altered appropriately. For example, wall of iron was given a duration of day/level.

2) nothing level appropriate can screw you up too badly without allowing some sort of defence or counterplay
this is a power balance guideline, and it was agreed upon with the players. We discuss case by case what's acceptable and what isn't. For example, the last instance when it was called was for solid fog; solid fog completely negates ranged attacks, and so a 7th level wizard casting it can become completely immune to a 20th level ranged build. which is particularly relevant for my world because there are guns and they are pretty good for rogues. I argued that if the party rogue had solid fog cast on him, he'd be screwed and he could do nothing; nor are there any level-appropriate items that could help him. we argued for a bit, and a majority of us agreed that the spell was bad for the game we wanted. I asked if changing it to "applies 1 range increment for every 1.5 meters" and "movement is reduced to 1/4th" would be acceptable nerfs, but some players argued it would be then too weak, and we eventually settled for 2 range increments/1.5 meters.

The point is that bans and nerfs do not come out of the blue. We agree that we want to play a certain type of game with certain mechanics, and then we remove what would break those mechanics. But those mechanics are not broken, because other tables with different preferences may use them. The game is better if it includes both. The single gaming table would be worse if it included both

And I would argue that, when two players who simply pick what sounds interesting from the core rulebooks can end up with a Tough Monk and McBearlord the Druid... There's an issue.

I would agree that, given the kind of people who still play 3.5, it's not really an issue in practice, but it's certainly not something to emulate.

StragaSevera
2021-10-09, 05:06 PM
A very unpopular opinion that may get me flamed, but which I hold dearly:
In 2021, there is no reason to play 3.5 instead of Pathfinder 1, other than for empty nostalgia.

*ducks*

Batcathat
2021-10-09, 05:30 PM
Fair enough. My post came across as more judgmental against avatars and one dimensional characters than intended. But if you want to encourage complex characters, especially among new to roleplaying players but also even with experienced players, suggesting a couple of categories of motivations/personality traits as starting places to think about, and encouraging explicitly listing them as opposed to burying them in a backstory, can be useful.

I get that it supposed to work like that and maybe sometimes it even does work, but it really seems a lot of potential problems with little advantages. I think "write down a couple of words that describe your character" is almost as fast and much less potentially problematic than "pick one of these nine categories that manages to somehow be both too vague and too confining".

That said, having like a list with suggestions for motivations or personality traits could probably be kind of useful for some people. It's the idea of turning them into distinct groups and making them an objective reality of the setting that bothers me.

King of Nowhere
2021-10-09, 06:04 PM
And I would argue that, when two players who simply pick what sounds interesting from the core rulebooks can end up with a Tough Monk and McBearlord the Druid... There's an issue.

When I was a new player, I picked what sounded cool from the rule books. I made a monk with a repeating crossbow.
and yet, i never felt useless compared to the party. no, i have no idea what stuff they had, that they couldn't even overpower me.

aside from that, I can agree in principle... but if you want to fix this issue, you'd lose all the variety to play at different power levels.
Sure, you could just have D&D be a more constrained game, and play different games when you want to simulate different things. some people in this forum advocate that, one different game for every different need.
but then, instead of having to learn and master one single complicated game, you'd have to learn dozens of simpler games. how is that any better? Once i got a decent mechanical mastery of d&d, I could use it well enough to craft the setting and the type of adventure I want. And I can improvise rulings and homebrew stuff to fix any problem I spot. I could not do this if i didn't have deep knowledge of this one game. Nor could I do this if D&D didn't allow as much freedom as it does.

D&D is not a game. D&D is a workshop to custom-create your own game.
The only real issue is that it's not marketed as such.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-10-09, 06:41 PM
I'll say that for me, personally, as DM, teleport isn't an issue. But neither is it all that it's cracked up to be. In large measure that's because "travel as logistics challenge" has never appealed to me. Heck, my setting has permanent teleport gates in select locations (basically linking the big cities of one play area) that players can access for a fee starting at about level 3.

Unpopular opinion--the Caster/martial divide in 5e specifically really only becomes bad when a few things happen:
1. The DM leans hard into the "realism except for magic" idea, that the rules of the world and thus people's capabilities are limited to their (flawed) understanding of what's possible on earth. Except magic. Magic is allowed to break the rules. Including its own rules. This leads to reading non-spell abilities narrowly (setting high DCs, denying possibilities, etc) while reading spells much more broadly than their own text (often marketed as "being clever"...which really means looking up some exploit online that relies on questionable readings and nonsense "real-world physics" applied selectively plus a lot of special pleading).
2. The table chases difficulty and "challenge" as the primary goal/source of fun. Which leads to a spiraling arms race.
3. (optional, but often associated, the table believes that only boss fights matter), the table tends to do one fight per day, usually against either a solo several CRs higher than their average level OR against a boss-type monster and minions. Here it's the lack of variation that really matters.

Lord Raziere
2021-10-09, 06:49 PM
but then, instead of having to learn and master one single complicated game, you'd have to learn dozens of simpler games. how is that any better?

Well for one, you already have to do that for anything outside of the DnD fantasy sphere. if your definition of roleplaying ends at people going around dungeons in vaguely medieval worlds killing things then sure its all you need.

But no matter how much you rework and master it, its still DnD. your still fixing all your problems with a hammer.

the way it is right now, you have to learn one complicated system that everyone assumes is one game when its not and a bunch of smaller system to cover everything it isn't. now you can adapt your DnD for other things, but your never going to have a good social influence system for example unless you make it yourself and if you have no experience with other rpgs that have already done that your either reinventing the wheel or making a bad system for it because you don't have any examples of good ones to work from. a common criticism of many DnD heartbreakers is that they break off try to make their own rpg....and just end up making DnD with one or two changes then get forgotten.

your never going to have a good non-combative game from DnD either, because you need more than just "roll for investigation" for an investigation focused game for example. in both of these cases you basically have to hope that the DM knows what they are doing when you roll in social or investigative encounters and if they don't, well your screwed and the system can't help you unless you use vancian magic, where not all settings will allow you to use magic.

furthermore....DnD needs competition. I look at all the opinions about it and honestly its being pulled in a million different directions- that can't last forever. this DnD balloon may be large, but sooner or later its gonna pop, and your going to end up with a bunch of smaller games anyways catering to more focused things that individually does a part of DnD better without having to deal with people thinking they're playing another part getting in the way. sure you can talk all you want about session zeros, but thats all a patch job. eventually it won't be enough, because people will be tired of the session zeroes that consist of "we're not doing what you want to do, deal with it".

RandomPeasant
2021-10-09, 06:55 PM
Its the point at which "Baron von NaughtyPants with skeleton armies who is 1500 miles away" goes from being an epic trek and infiltration mission to "we'll pants him tomorrow morning and come home in time for supper". At that point the game is mechanically saying (without of course telling a new dm or anything) that he and his army are an easy encounter of which you can handle more than one each day.

It's worth noting that (in 3e) teleport also comes on line at roughly the point where "an army of regular dudes" is supposed to stop being a significant challenge. The back half of the game is really supposed to be a very different beast from the front, and for good reason. If 20th level and 1st level are basically the same, the function of those levels is just to force you to spend time playing without most of your character's toolkit.


The fact that lots of people don't get the message is a failure of the books to accurately tell you what the game expects you to do.

Also the failure of the assumption that defeating adventures should automatically cause you to advance to higher level adventures. That's not the wrong way to play, but all the demands to be allowed to play a totally mundane warrior guy at 20th level demonstrate that there's a chunk of people who want advancement to be more like Spiderman or Conan: maybe you get a prize from winning the adventure, but your character remains a similar level of overall capability throughout his career.

Kymme
2021-10-09, 07:32 PM
A very unpopular opinion that may get me flamed, but which I hold dearly:
In 2021, there is no reason to play 3.5 instead of Pathfinder 1, other than for empty nostalgia.

*ducks*

Pathfinder 1e doesn't have the Teramach, so it remains the inferior choice.

Fel Temp
2021-10-09, 10:48 PM
In 5e, the sorcerer and wizard function so similarly that it feels pointless to make them two classes. I'd drop wizard entirely and make artificer the way to engage with magic through intelligence. That would mean that learning magic on your own, getting magic naturally, and making a contract with a powerful being for magic all are mechanically distinct. I'd probably revise bard to make it more distinct from sorcerer as well, though not sure exactly how off the top of my head.

Ability scores more often act as a minigame to show how much you understand the system mechanics than something that makes your character unique. The game would be more friendly to new players if they were dropped entirely, and it wouldn't meaningfully change the in game experience.

D&D is most interesting when you let it get weird, particularly in character creation. Like if I were designing a new edition, core race selection would be something like bugbear, pixie, displacer beast, hengeyokai, shardmind, and horse. Core classes might be swordmage, warlord (with a note specifying that they can indeed literally reattach someone's hand with a good pep talk), artificer, runepriest, and psion. If you want to be a human fighter, wait for a couple expansions.

While I feel like 4e solved the "boring fighter" problem, there's another tactic 5e could have taken: make the default "non-magical guy with swords and armor" class the warlord. Heck, they could still call it a "fighter," and I feel like most tables wouldn't notice anything wrong if this class just happened to be able to give buffs and order others to attack.

Tying healing to a floor of 1/4 of a character's HP was one of the smartest things 4e did. It insured that healing someone who's still standing is almost always useful. In 5e, it often feels like it's more useful to just let someone drop, then cast a healing word to bring them back up than to keep them standing. Otherwise you risk the chance of say bringing someone from 1 to 15 HP when they're fighting a monster that can easily do 20 damage to them per turn.

Lemmy
2021-10-10, 02:54 AM
There's nothing wrong with racial attributes and penalties. And nothing wrong with racial alignment either. Neither is necessary, but both are perfectly fine tools for character creation.

It's perfectly fine for the minds of non-human species to work differently from the minds of humans. specially in a world with magic, divine intervention and all sorts of unnatural phenomena.

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-10, 04:14 AM
D&D is not a game. D&D is a workshop to custom-create your own game.
The only real issue is that it's not marketed as such.

[Giant laughing emoji]

As somebody who owns and heavily enjoys Fate, D&D is not a toolbox. It gives you a lot of implied fluff just from your mechanical options, and is limited to a very small number of settings.

You want a toolkit, you pick up Fudge. Witch I've been wanting to do in print for ages, but have never got around to. If you want a less flexible tomorrow you pick up GURPS or Fate

NichG
2021-10-10, 04:34 AM
[Giant laughing emoji]

As somebody who owns and heavily enjoys Fate, D&D is not a toolbox. It gives you a lot of implied fluff just from your mechanical options, and is limited to a very small number of settings.

You want a toolkit, you pick up Fudge. Witch I've been wanting to do in print for ages, but have never got around to. If you want a less flexible tomorrow you pick up GURPS or Fate

There's a difference between a toolbox and a framework though. One of the things that universal systems have trouble with is having a lot of detailed structure on which to hang various things such that those things will seem instantly meaningful to the player in diverse ways. Stuff like AC, concealment and miss chance, saves, skills, attributes, attack sequences, DR, size categories, energy types and resistances, movement modalities, etc establish a bunch of hooks that customized mechanics can modify - adding damage versus adding extra attacks versus modifying an ability score vs ... all have distinctions in their consequences, so you can throw stuff into that and it becomes kind of non-trivial how it's all going to interact and combine and apply to each player's character, but in a way people can figure out as they play.

With Fudge and Fate, there's basically a single default bottleneck through which all effects flow - the dice roll. So while that's easy to understand, it also means you have to do a lot of hard work if you want to create mechanically diverse choices. Basically, you need to write subsystems.

It's actually quite hard to write something with as much combo potential as D&D comes with. I've tried. The instinct is to separate things cleanly and make them modular, which reduces the degree of interactions. But five+ editions of history means that a bunch of people stuck things on in random places and produced a lot of different grips and handles whose interactions are messy and uncontrolled.

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-10, 05:34 AM
If you're going to insist on one tool to fix the job then you might as well pick a versatile one.

Plus it isn't like D&D doesn't boil everything it can down to d20+modifiers.

Lord Raziere
2021-10-10, 05:48 AM
If you're going to insist on one tool to fix the job then you might as well pick a versatile one.

Plus it isn't like D&D doesn't boil everything it can down to d20+modifiers.

and vancian magic is just having 4-36 fate points with a lot of restrictions on what you can spend points on.

NichG
2021-10-10, 05:58 AM
If you're going to insist on one tool to fix the job then you might as well pick a versatile one.

Plus it isn't like D&D doesn't boil everything it can down to d20+modifiers.

Positioning, ranges, immunities, areas and relationships between areas (including threatened areas, cover, line of effect, emanations vs spreads), things which outright modify game state without a roll (wall spells, polymorph any object, make whole, minor creation, teleport, divinations...), status conditions and their transitions (e.g. prone to standing provokes an AoO, various kinds of ability damage and drain and stuff like petrification)...

It's the sort of thing where if I were doing sci-fi I could say e.g. 'Robotic Spinal Mount: lets you make an attack with a one-handed ranged weapon as a Swift action' and it'd interact in interesting ways with a drug that let's you borrow next round's swift action, or a weapon augment that miniaturizes it, reducing the size category by 1, or... I can have things like 'the maximum number of implants a character can have is equal to their Con mod' and the like, because there are enough various things going on already that one can usually find something to pin things on.

Silly Name
2021-10-10, 06:04 AM
Alignment is part of D&D's identity. It's ok for it to not be the fundamental aspect of a character, but the struggle of Law and Chaos, Good and Evil is a fundamental building block of the game's lore, and it's the only system under which some creatures make sense (why do Demons and Devils hate each other? Why do Angels tolerate the existence of Devils? etc)

Paladins should be Good. Not necessarily Lawful Good, but the Neutral or Evil paladin doesn't make a lick of sense. We already have "evil Paladins", they're called Blackguards. Likewise, a Chaotic Evil cleric of a Lawful Good deity is just a counter-intuitive idea, and most everyone who plays a cleric will conformo to their deity's alignment anyways because it makes sense.

The Sorcerer class was a bad idea, and being designed as "Wizards for noobs" didn't help.

I like kenders.

Bacon Elemental
2021-10-10, 07:07 AM
Alignment is part of D&D's identity. It's ok for it to not be the fundamental aspect of a character, but the struggle of Law and Chaos, Good and Evil is a fundamental building block of the game's lore, and it's the only system under which some creatures make sense (why do Demons and Devils hate each other? Why do Angels tolerate the existence of Devils? etc)

Paladins should be Good. Not necessarily Lawful Good, but the Neutral or Evil paladin doesn't make a lick of sense. We already have "evil Paladins", they're called Blackguards. Likewise, a Chaotic Evil cleric of a Lawful Good deity is just a counter-intuitive idea, and most everyone who plays a cleric will conformo to their deity's alignment anyways because it makes sense.

The Sorcerer class was a bad idea, and being designed as "Wizards for noobs" didn't help.

I like kenders.

Personally I think the Lawful Neutral paladin works fine, but the Chaotic Good one does not.

Millstone85
2021-10-10, 07:50 AM
Paladins should be Good. Not necessarily Lawful Good, but the Neutral or Evil paladin doesn't make a lick of sense. We already have "evil Paladins", they're called Blackguards.That's the problem. Whether they are called blackguards, antipaladins, oathbreakers, hellknights, or whatever, they can hardly be described as anything but evil paladins.

RandomPeasant
2021-10-10, 08:16 AM
and it's the only system under which some creatures make sense (why do Demons and Devils hate each other? Why do Angels tolerate the existence of Devils? etc)

Why do the Fused hate the humans of Roshar? It's not because the Fused have an Odium alignment and the humans have an Honor alignment. It's because there is a legitimate grievance between the two sides. The fact that having a Team Red and a Team Blue lets you preserve a status quo that is based entirely on there being a Team Red and a Team Blue is not an argument for having those teams, it is an argument for reworking the setting so that conflicts have a coherent basis instead of stemming from what sort of hat the sides wear.


The Sorcerer class was a bad idea, and being designed as "Wizards for noobs" didn't help.

The Sorcerer class was a bad idea because the correct implementation of that idea is the Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, and Warmage.


Personally I think the Lawful Neutral paladin works fine, but the Chaotic Good one does not.

The Knights Radiant are all Paladins, and I think you would be hard-pressed to come up with an alignment that suits the Willshapers better than Chaotic Good (though, of course, the best alignment for Willshapers to have is "Willshaper").


That's the problem. Whether they are called blackguards, antipaladins, oathbreakers, hellknights, or whatever, they can hardly be described as anything but evil paladins.

Exactly. "Guy who wears heavy armor and has defensive abilities" is a concept that can show up on any alignment. Demanding that we write separate classes for Good Paladins and Neutral Knights and Evil Blackguards is just wasting pages. If you want to call them something different, you can just do that.

Batcathat
2021-10-10, 08:32 AM
Alignment is part of D&D's identity. It's ok for it to not be the fundamental aspect of a character, but the struggle of Law and Chaos, Good and Evil is a fundamental building block of the game's lore, and it's the only system under which some creatures make sense (why do Demons and Devils hate each other? Why do Angels tolerate the existence of Devils? etc)

Are you saying that groups with (violently) philosophical disagreements and the idea of "the enemy of my enemy is my ally" can only exist if alignments does? Because there are plentiful examples of both in both fiction and reality.

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-10, 08:53 AM
Why do the Fused hate the humans of Roshar? It's not because the Fused have an Odium alignment and the humans have an Honor alignment. It's because there is a legitimate grievance between the two sides. The fact that having a Team Red and a Team Blue lets you preserve a status quo that is based entirely on there being a Team Red and a Team Blue is not an argument for having those teams, it is an argument for reworking the setting so that conflicts have a coherent basis instead of stemming from what sort of hat the sides wear.

Yeah, while I've not read the third book yet I've heard about the apparent beginning of the conflict, and it makes complete sense. Far more than most of D&D's conflicts.


The Knights Radiant are all Paladins, and I think you would be hard-pressed to come up with an alignment that suits the Willshapers better than Chaotic Good (though, of course, the best alignment for Willshapers to have is "Willshaper").

To be fair can you fit any of the characters nearly into an assignment.

The alternative of course it's too rename the Chad the Champion or something.


Exactly. "Guy who wears heavy armor and has defensive abilities" is a concept that can show up on any alignment. Demanding that we write separate classes for Good Paladins and Neutral Knights and Evil Blackguards is just wasting pages. If you want to call them something different, you can just do that.

Hey, look, I remember BD&D, Knights got a completely separate set of benefits to Paladins and Crusaders. Although to be fair they were all just Fighter options you could pick at 9th level.

Honestly, in the current edition I'd just make them subclasses of Fighter. We already have a knight themed subclass (and a Samurai), a couple of divine champions with some shared and some differing abilities shouldn't be too problematic.

Draconi Redfir
2021-10-10, 10:06 AM
I really only play Pathfinder, so a majority of these options will only be relevant to such


Sorcerer bloodlines should be available for all classes through some method at level 1. Maybe Sorcerers are the only ones who get the benefit of the bonus spells and bonus feats, and / or get something else extra. But i feel like there should be some method of other classes gaining an entire Bloodline without needing to blow half their feats on eldritch heritage, which doesn't even provide the benefit of the bloodline arcana.

Power attack should be just a universal ability rather then a feat.

Finesse weapon should be a weapon option, not a feat.

A viable Bard / Sorcerer hybrid class needs to exist.

Cluedrew
2021-10-10, 10:18 AM
To Faily: I read your response, I think regular travel is still kind of ranger thing but other than that I think I would have to go full subtopic to explain things.


and vancian magic is just having 4-36 fate points with a lot of restrictions on what you can spend points on.That refresh differently, are stored different, are counted separately instead of being in one giant pool... OK, other than "a resource in a game that is spent to make something happen" what do vancian magic and Fate points have in common? I would describe it more like stunts actually. Which is probably a point for Fate's flexibility if it can (roughly) mimic D&D's mechanics. I don't think the opposite is true.


Exactly. "Guy who wears heavy armor and has defensive abilities" is a concept that can show up on any alignment. Demanding that we write separate classes for Good Paladins and Neutral Knights and Evil Blackguards is just wasting pages. If you want to call them something different, you can just do that.Another popular opinion: D&D's class system is badly designed and is inconsistent about what each class represents and how it represents it. The Paladin is very focused on a single heroic archetype while the wizard seems to be a combination of every magic user that ever lived (except those that cast healing spells) and then some. I suppose it is not inherently a problem but I don't think it has been handled well. Although I think sub-classes might be a step towards fixing that.

Tanarii
2021-10-10, 11:23 AM
As somebody who owns and heavily enjoys Fate,
That's an unpopular opinion right there! :smallamused:

Quertus
2021-10-10, 11:34 AM
The real problem with your definition is that it uses a subjective quality judgement as its core.

Ah, so that's where the disconnect is.

No, it's not subjective. So I need to reword… strike that. I could try, but still fail, because, while I know what the disconnect is, I don't know where the disconnect is.

So, instead, I'll ask you: what part of my definition sounds subjective to you? Be as exact and specific as possible.

Who knows, maybe I'm just being dumb, and there is an angle at which my definition fails objectivity. But… from my (singular, biased) position, I don't see it. So my bet's on "miscommunication".


So if you want to argue that D&D 4e is not a role-playing game, your definition should refer to something fundamental about the game. Not your experience with it. Because if your experience with D&D 4e is enough to disqualify it from being a role-playing game, than my experience with D&D 3.5e and D&D 5e should be enough to disqualify them as role-playing games.

Hmmm… this part is also backwards. So maybe this is where the issue lies? Probably at least part of the issue, so I'll put up a little plaster, and see if anything takes shape (bad metaphor is bad).

(Note: what I'm about to describe is really easy / simple. If you don't look at it, realize it's obvious truth, and facepalm at how bad my description is, assume I've failed to communicate the concept.)

If someone says, "all pencils are yellow", it only takes one person showing a counterexample, "no, this pencil is blue" to disprove that statement.

If someone says, "no pencils are yellow", it only takes one person showing a counterexample, "no, this pencil is yellow" to disprove that statement.

But not all arguments are in that form.

And which direction the singular example proof / falsify goes can vary.

"Some pencils can be yellow." "Really?" "Yes, this pencil is yellow."

Make sense?

So, as to "is RPG Y/N?"…

It's not that "an experience disqualifies it".

If anything (meaning, weasel words, I haven't thought this through, and reserve the right to retract and disavow any connection to this concept), it's a "single instance qualifies" scenario.

More likely, though, it's a "licensed practitioner" scenario.

That is, Other editions of D&D have been vetted by the board as role-playing games, and have received their certification. 4e had not yet passed its certification.

So, if that's the correct parallel, when I say "4e is not an RPG", I mean that it hasn't passed its certification (and, implied, I suspect it never will).

"Is a licensed doctor" is not a subjective measure, now is it?


It's actually quite hard to write something with as much combo potential as D&D comes with. I've tried. The instinct is to separate things cleanly and make them modular, which reduces the degree of interactions. But five+ editions of history means that a bunch of people stuck things on in random places and produced a lot of different grips and handles whose interactions are messy and uncontrolled.

I don't know whether to respond with "agreed" "disagree" or "challenge accepted".

Can you give me a simple "sniff test", a "chicken / not chicken" for "combo potential" vs "modular / reduced interaction", that I can use on some of games my friends have designed?


and vancian magic is just having 4-36 fate points with a lot of restrictions on what you can spend points on.

It's hilarious (and occasionally enlightening) when you look at the world through such perspectives, isn't it? :smallbiggrin:

zzzzzzzz414
2021-10-10, 11:37 AM
It's perfectly fine for the minds of non-human species to work differently from the minds of humans. specially in a world with magic, divine intervention and all sorts of unnatural phenomena.

...the issue is that they really don't work differently, though. Something like the WH40K Orks can at least try to lay claim to the "totally alien mindset" thing, what with them being actual weird fungus aliens with totally different physiologies. I've never seen any DnD setting, official or otherwise, where the orcs were anything but green humans, doing things that humans have done in real life for thousands of years (just arbitrarily projected onto one species, which for whatever reason is called a "race"). Because, ultimately, humans don't really have a frame of reference beyond "other humans" when designing supposedly alien intelligences.

If it walks like a human, talks like a human, acts like a human, and builds civilizational and social structures nigh-identical to humans', it's going to be a bit of a broken suspension of disbelief moment when you tell me these people are all biologically predisposed to one of the arbitrary and limiting Alignment moralities, and have accordingly sorted themselves into homogenous Kingdoms of Hats regardless of wildly varying material circumstances and history. The idea of uniform "Dwarf Culture" or "Orc Culture" does not make any more sense to me than describing a uniform "Human Culture" irl would.

OldTrees1
2021-10-10, 12:04 PM
More likely, though, it's a "licensed practitioner" scenario.

That is, Other editions of D&D have been vetted by the board as role-playing games, and have received their certification. 4e had not yet passed its certification.

So, if that's the correct parallel, when I say "4e is not an RPG", I mean that it hasn't passed its certification (and, implied, I suspect it never will).

"Is a licensed doctor" is not a subjective measure, now is it?

1)
"Is a licensed doctor" is an objective measurement of a specific subjective measurement. We are measuring the subjective judgement of a licensing board that was granted authority by a subjective judgement of a governing body.

I like pasta is a subjective judgement?
If you say Oldtrees likes pasta, is that a subjective measure?

2)
Where does the authority for the judgement come from?

A Medical license was an invention of a law. So the governing body that controls that law is the source of authority for that licensing. However why would I care? Why would I grant that license merit? I grant it merit based on a subjective judgement that the licensing standards map close enough to my expectation of what my judgement would be IF I were informed enough to make one based on how they map when I am not informed enough to make a judgement but still do so anyways.

So we have 2 sources of authority. We have an arbitrary governing authority and we have everyone's individual subjective judgement contributing to the authority granted to the license.

3)
How does your conclusion about 4E RE RPG map to a licensing process? Is it a licensing process others would trust or reject?

PS:
I am not mentioning my opinion RE that topic because whether or not I evaluate 4E as an RPG feels off topic at the moment.

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-10, 01:43 PM
That's an unpopular opinion right there! :smallamused:

Hey! Only in the portion of the RPG fanbase that exclusively plays D&D.

So 98% of the RPG fanbase.

georgie_leech
2021-10-10, 02:13 PM
The alternative of course it's too rename the Chad the Champion or something.


That is, in fact, exactly what Pathfinder 2e did. Paladin's are the Lawful Good subset, but there are unique codes for each of the Good/Evil alignments: Redeemers, Liberators, Tyrants, Desecrators, Antipaladins. For whatever reason, pure Law and Chaos apparently don't have Champions yet. Maybe they're hard to write :smalltongue:

Tanarii
2021-10-10, 02:33 PM
I've never seen any DnD setting, official or otherwise, where the orcs were anything but green humans, doing things that humans have done in real life for thousands of years (just arbitrarily projected onto one species, which for whatever reason is called a "race").
Humans don't have the malign influence of an evil deity working on their personality from birth.

Edit: by default lore that is. Certainly campaign specific lore may differ, for both humans and Orcs.


Hey! Only in the portion of the RPG fanbase that exclusively plays D&D.

So 98% of the RPG fanbase.Yup. Being unpopular opinion doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means it's not commonly agreed with.

Quertus
2021-10-10, 02:35 PM
@OldTrees1,

Touché, and (senility willing) I'll have to think about that.

(And I knew I shouldn't have tried to address the question until I knew what the question was.)

I think we're at risk of getting lost in the weeds of the… line… "parallel", the example, the metaphor.

I detailed the process by which one could evaluate - at least at "sniff test" level, and arguably completely - how well something matches my terms. Senility willing (senility willing, I'll edit this post, and paste that into this reply). Seems to me that picking that apart would be more valuable than evaluating my metaphor?

Granted, demonstrating the weakness of my metaphor does… Hmmm… help demonstrate the likely vectors in which the actual "product" might fail. So… sure, it's valuable as *one* source of test cases (but we should not limit ourselves to *just* seeing if it falls apart in the same way).

Do I sound completely insane, or did any of that make sense? (My mind isn't working well today, so I'm honestly not sure how much sense I'm making)

Lemmy
2021-10-10, 02:37 PM
...the issue is that they really don't work differently, though. Something like the WH40K Orks can at least try to lay claim to the "totally alien mindset" thing, what with them being actual weird fungus aliens with totally different physiologies. I've never seen any DnD setting, official or otherwise, where the orcs were anything but green humans, doing things that humans have done in real life for thousands of years (just arbitrarily projected onto one species, which for whatever reason is called a "race"). Because, ultimately, humans don't really have a frame of reference beyond "other humans" when designing supposedly alien intelligences.

If it walks like a human, talks like a human, acts like a human, and builds civilizational and social structures nigh-identical to humans', it's going to be a bit of a broken suspension of disbelief moment when you tell me these people are all biologically predisposed to one of the arbitrary and limiting Alignment moralities, and have accordingly sorted themselves into homogenous Kingdoms of Hats regardless of wildly varying material circumstances and history. The idea of uniform "Dwarf Culture" or "Orc Culture" does not make any more sense to me than describing a uniform "Human Culture" irl would.
It doesn't have to be "totally alien" to be different from humans.

In the same way that IRL there are animal species with similar levels of intelligence, but quite different behavioral patterns and dispositions, it makes perfect sense for the same thing to happen to different humanoid species.

I agree that having an homogeneous culture or language for a whole race is usually dumb, (unless the near entirety of said race is located in a very small region). But certain races being much more prone to certain psychological traits, and having said traits influence their culture makes perfect sense and is completely fine.

Now, sure. Having human-like intellect helps in identifying and if necessary, toning down certain behaviors. But at the end of the day, It's absurd (and kinda boring, from a world-building and story-telling perspective) to say that every race is equally capable at everything and/or have the same ease (or difficulty) adopting or discarding certain behaviors.

e.g.: Sure, orcs can be as civilized as any humans, but on average, they'll still have a harder time controlling their aggressiveness. An elf, OTOH, might struggle to adapt to the fast-paced rhythm of human society, and so on.

And in extreme cases, adaptation might be downright impossible except in rare anomalies or under the influence of major external forces. e.g.: A race that is corrupted by demon blood or something, could be basically unable to be legitimately "Good".

Does that mean this should always be the case or even be present in every setting? No. Of course not. But it's a completely valid and perfectly fine concept to incorporate into fiction of any kind. Specially fantasy.

Batcathat
2021-10-10, 02:50 PM
Do I sound completely insane, or did any of that make sense? (My mind isn't working well today, so I'm honestly not sure how much sense I'm making)

I think the main issue is that whether or not your qualifiers are objective, your definition of an RPG is still subjective in that it doesn't match how other people define the term. Which is fine, of course, but it does make it harder to communicate effectively.

Telok
2021-10-10, 03:18 PM
...the issue is that they really don't work differently, though. Something like the WH40K Orks can at least try to lay claim to the "totally alien mindset" thing, what with them being actual weird fungus aliens with totally different physiologies. I've never seen any DnD setting, official or otherwise, where the orcs were anything but green humans, doing things that humans have done in real life for thousands of years ....

If it walks like a human, talks like a human, acts like a human, and builds civilizational and social structures nigh-identical to humans...

So the original Traveller system had an interesting solution to this (not completely implemented across all playable species of course, darn '80s). Humans had a 'social rank' stat, but the Vargyr (pack oriented not-dog people) had a different stat with different rules. AFB so spelling and details are from memory.

It meant that (assuming the player followed rules and wanted to play a non-human species instead of a human in makeup) the character would at times act in ways that wouldn't make any sense to someone who only knew the human social stat rules. It was mostly limited to a 'who is the team leader' subset of social interactions, but it could set up interactions where a mixed party got the "thats not a human style decision" reaction. Th DM could also use it to determine how the leader of a vagyr group could react to PCs in ways that a human wouldn't.

But no, D&D can't manage that. Its too married to the "human with funny ears/forehead" model of things.

NichG
2021-10-10, 03:20 PM
I don't know whether to respond with "agreed" "disagree" or "challenge accepted".

Can you give me a simple "sniff test", a "chicken / not chicken" for "combo potential" vs "modular / reduced interaction", that I can use on some of games my friends have designed?


I don't think it's simple though. I could say 'give the rules to an online community, and see if they're still discovering new interactions after 10 years?' but...

How much does the effect of one mechanical choice hinge critically on other mechanical choices, and how many such hinges are there? How easy would it be to overturn the meta of the game by adding a new thing and how small could that thing be on it's own?

If you had to design a bunch of new unique (purely mechanical) item enchantments, how many different ones could you make which would all be a hard choice to pick between for the same character?

dafrca
2021-10-10, 03:45 PM
You want a toolkit, you pick up Fudge. Witch I've been wanting to do in print for ages, but have never got around to.
I tried Fudge as part of a group and really didn't like it. Maybe it was just us, but we gave up on it after trying it for a few games. But to be honest, I do know a few folks who swear by Fate/Fudge and use it exclusively. :smallsmile:

OldTrees1
2021-10-10, 04:02 PM
@OldTrees1,

Touché, and (senility willing) I'll have to think about that.

(And I knew I shouldn't have tried to address the question until I knew what the question was.)

I think we're at risk of getting lost in the weeds of the… line… "parallel", the example, the metaphor.

I detailed the process by which one could evaluate - at least at "sniff test" level, and arguably completely - how well something matches my terms. Senility willing (senility willing, I'll edit this post, and paste that into this reply). Seems to me that picking that apart would be more valuable than evaluating my metaphor?

Granted, demonstrating the weakness of my metaphor does… Hmmm… help demonstrate the likely vectors in which the actual "product" might fail. So… sure, it's valuable as *one* source of test cases (but we should not limit ourselves to *just* seeing if it falls apart in the same way).

Do I sound completely insane, or did any of that make sense? (My mind isn't working well today, so I'm honestly not sure how much sense I'm making)

I hope your mind feels better.

I feel like you did inject a subjective judgement. I think it is fine to have opinions based on subjective judgements. It is rather hard to have opinions that exclude all subjective judgement or that adequately take account of everyone's subjective judgements. So pointing out the subjective element is not something we need to get defensive about, even if it can trigger that response.

I am rolling back the subthread to a quote you made 2 days ago. That might help avoid some "weeds" by following the metaphor.

However first, you mentioned me in that quote. Let's celebrate shared interests before we discuss.


I play Wizards; I'm more "falls on the side of the muggle supremacists", tbh.

That said, I think the description given by oldtrees1 is much closer than "casting magic all the time" to describing my position on the "what I want magical beings to do" front (which, obviously, is unrelated to my position in my first post regarding balance).


I feel you. I like the feeling that a mage can do, or even be magic rather than the feeling of them being a delivery system for a finite amount of magic.

On the other hand, almost every suggestion I have is about how to make the non mages have level appropriate features.


… well, my answer is gonna be weird.

To me, "role-playing" means giving answers as the character (close enough? You know what I mean, right?), answering "WWQD?".

A sensible start. It is perfectly okay that this is not a universal position. This sets your arbitrary criteria.


In 5e D&D, the RNG is generally far more a factor than skill. Usually, a group of buffoons will do better than the trained professional.

So, in a reality that uses 5e, when a teacher asks a class, "why do we have governments?", it's highly likely that a student will give a better answer than what the teacher knows. The flow of knowledge is from the many to the one.

I can envision a society that follows this humorously inverted logic, and build a character who grew up in that society. So that, when it comes to solving problems in a 5e universe, I don't have to break character to suggest throwing more bodies at the problem, to know that "crowd-sourcing" is the tech of choice.

A system fails to be an RPG when you are forced to make decisions for the character that the character could not make. When you cannot construct a reality that logically produces the mindset in which the game is played.

That's how 4e fails to be an RPG.

When you *can* answer the question WWQD, but doing so is not just suboptimal but impossible, when you cannot act upon the roleplay answer, when you are constantly forced to metagame limit yourself to an unrealistically constrained list of options, it is also not an RPG, by my definitions.

This is how CRPGs fail to be RPGs.

The underlying idea here makes sense. You ask what your character would do, and then you do it.

However it feels like it is applied inconsistently. There are some parts of the rules that you let inform you about the world and other parts you don't. When you run into a conflict with a rule that you did not let inform you about the world then you have judged that rule as making WWQD impossible.

If we assume some hidden metric between which rules are permitted to inform, and which rules are not, then your concern about RPGs boils down to how prevalent and intrusive are the rules that are not permitted to inform.

You describe the existence of the two types later and give a clue as to how they are divided.


When the mechanics force you out of actor stance, because what's obvious to everyone at the table as the correct/best answer is impossible to achieve as a reasonable, trained response in character, when you cannot build a setting that makes sense of the rules, then it's not an RPG.

When the system explicitly prohibits you from taking actions that would be in character to take ("but… there aren't rules for…"), and this occurs too often / for too many important choices / forces too great a deviation from WWQD, then it's not an RPG.

It seems the division between the rules Quertus allows to inform VS the rules Quertus does not allow to inform depend on whether Quertus can incorporate them into the verisimilitude of the campaign world. You did this in 5E by incorporating crowd sourcing as a technique the characters would naturally use in their world given the 1d20 is big compared to the modifier.

At this point we have a subjective opinion about an objective standard that talks about a subjective effect. I don't think Cluedrew's objection comes in yet.

It feels like the next thing you do is elevate your own subjective experience "4E pulls Quertus out of the actor stance" and then draw the conclusion that "4E pulls players out of the actor stance" which would then lead to your conclusion that 4E is not an RPG by this definition/standard.

What if I informed you that "There exist some players, where 4E does not pull them out of the actor stance.", would that change your logic at this step?

Now I am not one of those players. Even 3E can pull me out of the actor stance on occasion. However I think you made an unsupported inuitive leap that because 4E reliably pulls you out of the actor stance, therefore it has that impact on enough other players that 4E does not register as an RPG by your metric under your estimation.

Unsupported intuitive leaps are fine. Many opinions are based on them. They do make those opinions less conniving to others, but I don't think this thread is about convincing others.

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-10, 06:30 PM
Yup. Being unpopular opinion doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means it's not commonly agreed with.

Totally. I don't submit that most of the unpopular opinions I hold come from the equally uncommon opinion that 'D&D is the worst game on the market'. I mean not the worst game ever, but certainly the worst over played. Although scarily even The Game Which Must Not Be Named might have been surpassed from a rules standpoint.


I tried Fudge as part of a group and really didn't like it. Maybe it was just us, but we gave up on it after trying it for a few games. But to be honest, I do know a few folks who swear by Fate/Fudge and use it exclusively. :smallsmile:

Eh, not every game is for everybody :smallwink:

Seriously, there's more problems with refusing to try than with just honestly disliking it.

Tanarii
2021-10-10, 06:36 PM
Totally. I don't submit that most of the unpopular opinions I hold come from the equally uncommon opinion that 'D&D is the worst game on the market'. I mean not the worst game ever, but certainly the worst over played.
Conversely, I find Fate to be one of the least interesting of RPGs I've read but would never want to play. The target style of play just don't hold any appeal in the first place. But if I did want to engage with it, I'd probably try PbtA first, preferably Blades in the Dark.

Pex
2021-10-10, 07:45 PM
Yup. Being unpopular opinion doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means it's not commonly agreed with.

I'll remember this next time if, you know.

Shpadoinkle
2021-10-10, 07:46 PM
Power attack should be just a universal ability rather then a feat.

Finesse weapon should be a weapon option, not a feat.

Check out the 'Elephant in the room' (https://michaeliantorno.com/feat-taxes-in-pathfinder/) article, it address stuff like this.

Tanarii
2021-10-10, 09:03 PM
I'll remember this next time if, you know.
I'll just reclassify my opinion as fact.

Cluedrew
2021-10-10, 09:11 PM
No, it's not subjective. So I need to reword... strike that. I could try, but still fail, because, while I know what the disconnect is, I don't know where the disconnect is. [...] Who knows, maybe I'm just being dumb, and there is an angle at which my definition fails objectivity. But... from my (singular, biased) position, I don't see it. So my bet's on "miscommunication".Cluedrew's Razor*: "Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence. Never attribute to incompetence what can be attributed to miscommunication."

In other words: yup. In fact I skipped over some other interesting posts because this one is going to require a lot of thinking.

Also I am skipping over the second part because OldTrees1 said a lot of what I would say about to say it. I would like to add that quite literally licensed doctor can be subjective as you can be a licensed doctor in one country and not allowed to practice in another. And most people call 4e an- You know what I do have things to say about second part but its basically: That metaphor is not helping. So I'm just going to go back to where I think subjectivity creeps into your definition.



A system fails to be an RPG when you are forced to make decisions for the character that the character could not make. When you cannot construct a reality that logically produces the mindset in which the game is played.

That's how 4e fails to be an RPG.

When you *can* answer the question WWQD, but doing so is not just suboptimal but impossible, when you cannot act upon the roleplay answer, when you are constantly forced to metagame limit yourself to an unrealistically constrained list of options, it is also not an RPG, by my definitions.

This is how CRPGs fail to be RPGs.This here is the core of it.** Actually both of them really come down to: are things that effect the decisions a character makes objective? Not really no. In fact last time this came up I rattled off a couple of things found in all (many?) editions of D&D that I found negatively effected my ability to role-play my character. You had no issue with them. The obstacles you listed in regards to 4e never really came up for me. So can you objectively prove I shouldn't be jolted out-of-character by weird HP scaling but skill modifiers only being whatever apart should? I mean even if that is the norm it will not be true for everybody.

As an add on there is also the matter of matching the system. A lot of the systems that I know that have good personality/decision-making rules are only good in the context of that system. And other systems that are designed for the same kinds of characters facing the same kind of experience. Complaining that it doesn't handle characters outside of that is like complaining that D&D doesn't have good farm management. Why would it?

So whether something is helpful, harmful or neutral depends on both the player and the rest of the system. And maybe some other things.


I don't know whether to respond with "agreed" "disagree" or "challenge accepted".This line is great. Just on its own. I have nothing else to add.

* or Hanlon's Extended Razor, I did create the second part but I wouldn't be surprised if someone else has said similar things already.
** Thanks for the formatting trick too. Separates references from responses.

AlexanderML
2021-10-10, 11:40 PM
I prefer it when there is less races and wild species to choose from. After a while it makes each individual non-human more annoying and less interesting. When DMing I tend to just give the bonuses non-humans would have to different ethnic groups in my settings when possible, leaving things like dwarves and elves to be npcs for the most part.

I like my wizards to be able to fly invisibly over the enemy shooting down fireballs. (I do like warriors being able to do cool things without magic, but I don't think that's unpopular.)

I like alignments in d&d... though only in games set in the Great Wheel.

Draconi Redfir
2021-10-11, 01:15 AM
Check out the 'Elephant in the room' (https://michaeliantorno.com/feat-taxes-in-pathfinder/) article, it address stuff like this.

yeah i read that a few weeks back.

unfortunately DM isn't interested in implementing those changes. ahwell.:smallsigh:

Satinavian
2021-10-11, 01:35 AM
- D&Ds skill systems are utter garbage for every single edition. The game would really benefit from ditching it and adding a proper one that is more than some afterthought.

- D&D has too much focus on combat. Autors just can't decide whether it should be a skirmish tabletop or a roleplaying game. Making combat central again and every possible PC a combatant formost was a bad idea to solve screentime issues.

- For all those species it has, humans play way to an important role in every single setting. We really need some official ones where they either don't exist or are at least rare and exotic.

- The "magic user" class that morphed into wizard should be abolishished in favor of forced specialisation (and new classes). We don't need a class that is about all kinds of magic at once anymore.

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-11, 02:02 AM
Conversely, I find Fate to be one of the least interesting of RPGs I've read but would never want to play. The target style of play just don't hold any appeal in the first place. But if I did want to engage with it, I'd probably try PbtA first, preferably Blades in the Dark.

It's totally fair. I like it, and I can't imagine running a game with some kind of game freedom to make sure everybody's on the same page.

Do want to try training a Forged in the Dark game though. Probably Scum & Villainy, as it's the one I own.

Xervous
2021-10-11, 06:59 AM
I'll just reclassify my opinion as fact.

Looks like you’re ready for politics!


Also: level 1, slay 5 rats/goblins (but not any with nasty weapons)/lame dogs starts are a sacred cow that needs to be minced into hamburger. The GM can put you in over your head at any time, give me a Ninja Gaiden tutorial over an MMO house cleaning intro. One of the things 4e got right was level 1 characters felt competent and whole.

HidesHisEyes
2021-10-11, 07:46 AM
My unpopular opinion: D&D is best when there’s lots of combat. (I mean modern D&D, I’d say 3rd edition onward. I’m told the TSR editions were very different).

kyoryu
2021-10-11, 08:30 AM
My unpopular opinion: D&D is best when there’s lots of combat. (I mean modern D&D, I’d say 3rd edition onward. I’m told the TSR editions were very different).

Yes, and yes.

When you use the best parts of the game, you get the best games.

KineticDiplomat
2021-10-11, 08:42 AM
1. I agree with Hides that D&D is best with combat. It's just that even then it's pretty blah. "We do many things very poorly and combat mediocrely"

2. D&D was built around a very Tolkien perspective (not in of itself a bad thing), and whenever it deviates from that base perspective- in power, worldview, etc - it starts to fall apart

Lord Raziere
2021-10-11, 09:06 AM
1. I agree with Hides that D&D is best with combat. It's just that even then it's pretty blah. "We do many things very poorly and combat mediocrely"


Yeah, DnD combat is like cheap beer: a lot of people drink it, but the moment you can get something better, you go for that instead. DnD however benefits from the "second place" effect where because no one can agree on their favorite/first choice, they end up compromising to play what everyone knows.

Tanarii
2021-10-11, 11:49 AM
1. I agree with Hides that D&D is best with combat. It's just that even then it's pretty blah. "We do many things very poorly and combat mediocrely"
Curious what systems you find that do it better.

It's not that I doubt they exist. It's just that I'm not really familiar with any.

Certainly warhammer, Shadowrun, palladium, anything white Wolf, anything PbtA, torchbearer/Crane games, godbound ... not an improvement. I do like Fria Liga (Mutant Zero / Forbidden Lands) because it's more deadly, but I don't think it's superior overall.

Draconi Redfir
2021-10-11, 11:50 AM
I'll agree with some other posters here and say that D&D has too many intelligent races in general.

personally i think i'd set it so the only major players would be Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Gnomes, Halflings, Goblins, Hobgoblins, and Bugbears.

Things like Ifrit, Sylph, Undine, and Oread could just be templates added onto humans

Drow, Wood/high elves and other Elven subtypes could be templates added to Elves

any other intelligent race like Tortle, Centaur, Gnoll, or Kobold i could maybe see as only existing in one small settlement or area, but being mostly unheard of otherwise. or maybe they're closer to feral or stone-age levels of intelligence, with the odd PC being a rare exception due to magic or the like.

Gnolls and Kobolds i could definitely see as being more feral then intelligent.



on that note, Dragons should be feral beasts rather then hyper-intelligent beings. Feel they'd be more interesting that way.

DigoDragon
2021-10-11, 11:55 AM
Most people are permanently affixed to the edition of D&D they started with, and are only content to heap scorn on other editions because it's different to how they like it, one way or another.

Based on the two current groups I'm on, the rate is about 50%. I started back in AD&D 2e, then moved up to 3.5 and now 5e is my jam. I know two players who can do THAC0 calcs in their head like nobody's business.




D&D is most interesting when you let it get weird, particularly in character creation. Like if I were designing a new edition, core race selection would be something like bugbear, pixie, displacer beast, hengeyokai, shardmind, and horse. Core classes might be swordmage, warlord (with a note specifying that they can indeed literally reattach someone's hand with a good pep talk), artificer, runepriest, and psion. If you want to be a human fighter, wait for a couple expansions.


Are we talking ordinary earth-like horses, or smaller pastel-colored magical ones? Asking for a build. ;)

I do agree that weirdness makes D&D more fun. I think that's why all these D&D movies just don't land right. Too generic and ordinary. I have some of the old 2e modules and they got really creative with things/settings. I mean like... Spelljammer. Just day the name and you can find a group nod in appreciation.

kyoryu
2021-10-11, 12:49 PM
Curious what systems you find that do it better.

It's not that I doubt they exist. It's just that I'm not really familiar with any.

Certainly warhammer, Shadowrun, palladium, anything white Wolf, anything PbtA, torchbearer/Crane games, godbound ... not an improvement. I do like Fria Liga (Mutant Zero / Forbidden Lands) because it's more deadly, but I don't think it's superior overall.

Well if you mean combat, it depends on how you define better.

Actually that applies to most things.

I'm not a fan of D&D combat in general. 5e combat hits a weird spot of "takes a lot of time, but most of the decisions are fairly obvious" that doesn't really work for me. 4e was good, but sloooow. 3.x seems more of an optimization game than anything.

AW combat is at least fast and gets to the point. Fate combat allows a lot of freedom in "non-hit-it-with-a-stick-or-explosion" stuff. Crane games could be fun if I wanted to spend the time to really really get into the combat system (but I don't so they too fall flat). Savage Worlds seems to have a good balance on tactical and speed, but I'd need to play it more.

(note: this is all to me. I'm sure D&D of various editions hits a lot of peoples' sweet spots.)

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-11, 02:20 PM
Honestly, I'm moving towards combat that is as fast as possible, because I see it as getting in the way of the interesting stuff (it's partially why I like Unknown Armies so much, combat is discouraged). I'm perfectly fine with systems like Forged in the Dark which potentially reduce combat to one roll.

JNAProductions
2021-10-11, 02:22 PM
Honestly, I'm moving towards combat that is gay as ideas, because I see it as getting in the way of the interesting stuff (it's partially why I like Unknown Armies so much, combat is discouraged). I'm perfectly fine with systems like Forged in the Dark which potentially reduce combat to one roll.

Autocorrect get you there? Because that first bit makes not much sense :P

RustyArcana
2021-10-11, 04:11 PM
Most people are permanently affixed to the edition of D&D they started with, and are only content to heap scorn on other editions because it's different to how they like it, one way or another.

Started with 3.5, happily play 3.5, 4E and 5E.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-10-11, 06:47 PM
Here's a really unpopular opinion (or so I believe):

4e's basic cosmology (the World Axis IIRC) was much much better than the Great Wheel of 2e/3e. Heck, a random bundle of planes thrown together without care would be better than the Great Wheel.

Another (related) unpopular opinion:

Planescape was mostly an exercise in esoteric mumbo-jumbo with a side of box-checking/symmetry-obsession[1]. Shoehorning everything into the alignment strait-jacket and making sure you had the right boxes checked for each alignment made it bloated; filling it with pseudo-philosophical jargon just made it impenetrable. Using it as the basic model was a mistake.

[1] And that's coming from someone who struggles to not draw perfect circles and squares, preferring right angles and pure symmetry everywhere, so that's an argument against interest.

Kymme
2021-10-11, 07:47 PM
Honestly, I'm moving towards combat that is as fast as possible, because I see it as getting in the way of the interesting stuff (it's partially why I like Unknown Armies so much, combat is discouraged). I'm perfectly fine with systems like Forged in the Dark which potentially reduce combat to one roll.

There's really no feeling like having an exciting and dynamic set piece involving the whole party (that would have been like 3 hours of a D&D session) take like 40 minutes, and then afterwards have like four or five more of those before the session is over. Stripping out the unnecessary busywork involved with combat and focusing in purely on the action, the drama, and the stakes is something I never thought possible until I started branching out from D&D.

Tanarii
2021-10-11, 08:16 PM
There's really no feeling like having an exciting and dynamic set piece involving the whole party (that would have been like 3 hours of a D&D session) take like 40 minutes, and then afterwards have like four or five more of those before the session is over. Stripping out the unnecessary busywork involved with combat and focusing in purely on the action, the drama, and the stakes is something I never thought possible until I started branching out from D&D.
40 minutes is a long time for a D&D 5e combat. AD&D was fast too.

4e was very slow though. It was a struggle to get through a 4-combat official play adventure night in a single 4 hour sitting. 3e is somewhere in between.

oxybe
2021-10-11, 10:32 PM
40min for a 5e fight sounds about right IMO, esp once you hit the double digit levels.

Admittingly 2 of our 5 players can be rather slow, with one being the "i haven't done my character math on my sheet so i must do it every round" type and seems to forget his abilities every other round while the other just seems to have information go in one ear and out the other so must be re-explained things frequently. me and the other 2 guys take our turns pretty quick.

The problem, outside of the 2 slow players, is that monsters tend to be... spongey.

I dunno if it's the module we're playing but every other fight seems to just be a resource drain and exercise in wading through a largely uninteresting muck of hp. When the mooks thrown at you are more interesting and engaging then the "boss" there is a design problem somewhere.

The mooks in question were kamikaze "dies when touched by a light breeze" who did an AoE "save or take a level of exhaustion" when killed. it forced us to remember that non-lethal damage existed.

The boss was a "scary demon" who's gimmick was multi-attack, a ton of HP and an at-will teleport, but had no reason to use the latter except to get stuck into melee combat or escape with an un-counterspellable teleport you couldn't OA when it blipped out of danger. I think our barbarian ended up taking 200+ damage that fight, and that's not even accounting for the fact it chewed through my ward and the barbarian's damage reducing aura thing trying to protect the warlock from being sashimi'd.

Quertus
2021-10-12, 12:14 AM
I don't think it's simple though. I could say 'give the rules to an online community, and see if they're still discovering new interactions after 10 years?' but...

Lol. Gotcha (I think). In that case… I've seen both.

I suspect it's more… author inclination, like GMs that struggle to think beyond, "the only way to…" vs actual physics, based on the distribution by author from my sample. I'd be more sure if anything I've personally written actually had adequate… line… "volume of content" to measure along such vectors.

But, yeah, most people don't write that way innately! Humans tend to oversimplify as a matter of course, and the issue you've observed is simply a logical extension of this all too human behavior.


I hope your mind feels better.

Better, but not good, thanks. I still look at anything, say, you or NichG write, and have to bite my tongue (figuratively, not literally) to not ask, "can you dumb that down for me?", and, anytime I post, have to cross my fingers (literally and figuratively) that I'm making sense. Gimme a couple days, and I should be back within RNG.


A sensible start. It is perfectly okay that this is not a universal position. This sets your arbitrary criteria..

"Arbitrary" is… line… what I thought maybe people actually meant when they said… line… "subjective".


However it feels like it is applied inconsistently. There are some parts of the rules that you let inform you about the world and other parts you don't. When you run into a conflict with a rule that you did not let inform you about the world then you have judged that rule as making WWQD impossible.

If we assume some hidden metric between which rules are permitted to inform, and which rules are not, then your concern about RPGs boils down to how prevalent and intrusive are the rules that are not permitted to inform..

I'm… not able to evaluate this yet. But I'm keeping it a) to circle back to later, and b) because I have, on my own, detected an inconsistency in my thought process (regarding "territory" vs "map"). It'll be funny if they're… related.




You describe the existence of the two types later and give a clue as to how they are divided.



It seems the division between the rules Quertus allows to inform VS the rules Quertus does not allow to inform depend on whether Quertus can incorporate them into the verisimilitude of the campaign world. You did this in 5E by incorporating crowd sourcing as a technique the characters would naturally use in their world given the 1d20 is big compared to the modifier.

At this point we have a subjective opinion about an objective standard that talks about a subjective effect. I don't think Cluedrew's objection comes in yet.

It feels like the next thing you do is elevate your own subjective experience "4E pulls Quertus out of the actor stance" and then draw the conclusion that "4E pulls players out of the actor stance" which would then lead to your conclusion that 4E is not an RPG by this definition/standard.

What if I informed you that "There exist some players, where 4E does not pull them out of the actor stance.", would that change your logic at this step?.

Close? Kinda?

It's not about the… uh… experiences of a single player. It's about… the ability to program an AI. Or… to reprogram an AI that has already been loaded with "this world".

It's… not an absolute (although I show my inner Sith and often word it that way) of "has this", but a… how quickly, how often, how different, how much effort to fix.

Like… if I told you to change this post from personal (I / you) to impersonal (one / a player), vs if one were asked to reword this post such that the letter 'e' was not used… it'd be a noticeably different undertaking, no?


Now I am not one of those players. Even 3E can pull me out of the actor stance on occasion. However I think you made an unsupported inuitive leap that because 4E reliably pulls you out of the actor stance, therefore it has that impact on enough other players that 4E does not register as an RPG by your metric under your estimation.

Unsupported intuitive leaps are fine. Many opinions are based on them. They do make those opinions less conniving to others, but I don't think this thread is about convincing others.

1) I have my own personal local echo chamber of how bad 4e is in this (and other) regards. So it's not just me. (Not that it being just me would stop me, mind, I'm just pointing out how the idea is pre-vetted, rather than singular personal experience)

2) long ago, when challenged about "HPs can't…", I rose to that challenge and pointed out how they could (even though they didn't need to) for the base case, and numerous additions, until it hit edge cases beyond my (granted, comparatively stunted) comprehension. Contrariwise, I have yet to see, even from the Playground, a satisfactory response to even the most rudimentary of versimilitudinal failings of 4e.

So, to circle back, unless someone can provide a "patch" to the 4e thought process, I cannot call it an RPG. Of course, if I cannot resolve my territory/map inconsistency dilemma, I may be forced to reevaluate that status for other games, as well.


Cluedrew's Razor*: "Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence. Never attribute to incompetence what can be attributed to miscommunication."

In other words: yup. In fact I skipped over some other interesting posts because this one is going to require a lot of thinking.

Oh no! And here my brain is on vacation!

I hope you don't miss out on good conversations / learning experiences.


That metaphor is not helping.

I was afraid of that (wasn't I? (Darn senility)).


are things that effect the decisions a character makes objective? Not really no. In fact last time this came up I rattled off a couple of things found in all (many?) editions of D&D that I found negatively effected my ability to role-play my character. You had no issue with them. The obstacles you listed in regards to 4e never really came up for me. So can you objectively prove I shouldn't be jolted out-of-character by weird HP scaling but skill modifiers only being whatever apart should? I mean even if that is the norm it will not be true for everybody.

It's not… "you" or "me", it's… well, it's "how would I program an AI to parse this?". It's the character, not the player.

Thus its relationship to my definition of role-playing involving working forwards from first principles.


As an add on there is also the matter of matching the system. A lot of the systems that I know that have good personality/decision-making rules are only good in the context of that system. And other systems that are designed for the same kinds of characters facing the same kind of experience. Complaining that it doesn't handle characters outside of that is like complaining that D&D doesn't have good farm management. Why would it?

So whether something is helpful, harmful or neutral depends on both the player and the rest of the system. And maybe some other things.

I feel this is important, but cannot process it. :smallfrown:


This line is great. Just on its own. I have nothing else to add.

Glad you enjoyed it! I do try to not exclusively post in the dry tone of my signature academia mage.


** Thanks for the formatting trick too. Separates references from responses.

I thought it added clarity. Sadly, I've no recollection of where / from whom I got the idea.

Pex
2021-10-12, 12:31 AM
For some people how long a combat takes matters, but for others and me it doesn't. What's important is it be fun to play. There's no harm in trying to speed up play where one can. Players should pay attention, know what their character can do, and apply that knowledge on their turn. However, I have no problem whatsoever with a player trying to optimize his turn. Tactics are important. Defeat the bad guys in as few rounds as possible. Do not harm party members in the process unless permission granted to take one for the team. Analysis paralysis is a thing, but it's in the players' interest to take the time to figure out where to place effects whether it be your character's position or a power. The bad guys have the advantage of working together at the speed of DM thought. Players are entitled to have the time to coordinate.

Kymme
2021-10-12, 02:16 AM
40 minutes is a long time for a D&D 5e combat. AD&D was fast too.

4e was very slow though. It was a struggle to get through a 4-combat official play adventure night in a single 4 hour sitting. 3e is somewhere in between.

Keep in mind that I didn't say 'combat,' I said 'an exciting and dynamic set-piece.' I'm not talking about boring, inconsequential beatdowns against 2d8 orcs in a 40ft by 40ft stone room, or the level-appropriate X-encounters-per-day that you find crammed throughout the pages of Adventure Paths and 5e modules. I'm talking the big stuff, sprawling, spiraling encounters with high drama, the kinds of things that show up at the end of an adventure path installment, where there are big bosses with unique squads of minibosses with their own identities and fighting styles. Huge stuff, the kinds of combats that stick with you - those encounters don't eat entire sessions in D&D, which is something I discovered is far from universal once I started branching out.

Ironsworn, for instance, is a game that gets straight to the action and creates exciting and fun encounters that don't waste your time. It's also the epitome of playing to find out. There's tons of random rolling and it's often hard to predict what could happen next.

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-12, 03:55 AM
Here's a really unpopular opinion (or so I believe):

4e's basic cosmology (the World Axis IIRC) was much much better than the Great Wheel of 2e/3e. Heck, a random bundle of planes thrown together without care would be better than the Great Wheel.

While I don't think it's inherently better, I do think it's a fine cosmology. Plus in my experience most adventurers don't get ***** the ethereal,lshadow planes anyway, do simplifying the inner and outer planes into two Mages everything simpler.


There's really no feeling like having an exciting and dynamic set piece involving the whole party (that would have been like 3 hours of a D&D session) take like 40 minutes, and then afterwards have like four or five more of those before the session is over. Stripping out the unnecessary busywork involved with combat and focusing in purely on the action, the drama, and the stakes is something I never thought possible until I started branching out from D&D.

Yes, skittish I'll note that an exciting day piece doesn't need to take 40 minutes. My groups also normally had the build up to the action, but that's different from busywork.

Another thing I've noticed is that combat becomes more interesting when there is less of it. One combat a session seems to be about the limit for me, which makes D&D interesting when most groups I've played in have gone for s full refresh between sessions. Plus there has to be a reason for combat, 2d8 orcs in a 20ft square room is o lord interesting then 'right, we've got the guns, so now it's time to take the supreme pumpkin from that street gang'.

Theoboldi
2021-10-12, 04:19 AM
So that is my position on the matter. I brought it up because of the extreme position of: Any rules relating to character personality or decision making is inherently bad for role-playing. I disagree but I'm not really arguing against here. I just think that one of the causes of that belief*** is that D&D (the most popular system in the hobby) has a real checked past with providing rules for personality and decisions. So someone with similar experiences as mine with D&D, working around the rules more often than with them, but hasn't played other systems that have done a better job with those rules, may very well believe that getting out of the way is strictly the best way a system can approach role-playing. And I already went over how I feel about that.

* I don't have great words for this either, hopefully the result of the post explains what I mean.
** I've found the more focused the game is the more chance they have of getting personality/decision rules right.
*** There are others, including "I like it", which, if you do, is true.


So, late answer, but I do think that this is far more reasonable. With D&D being THE entrypoint into the hobby for so many people, its the one that colours expectations, as any other starting place would. And considering how heavily different games can diverge from one another, assumptions gained from one's starting point will just really not track in with other systems.

I will say that I am not convinced that the people who disliked such roleplaying restrictions in D&D will necessarily be happy with something like, let's say, Masks. Some will, certainly, and I've seen that happen, but just as many will be even more put off by it. Even more probably won't care either way and will be indefferent to the change. It's going to be hard to differentiate between dislike of the quality and dislike of the concept of restrictions, even for the people experiencing them.

To convince people to try these other systems, I believe, focusing too heavily on the already formed ideas will only make them double down. It's best to instead point out how they do things differently, and how that improves the RP restrictions. For instance, by being more focused, either by genre or setting or thematics. It always helps to look at these other systems as something different one can also enjoy, rather than "here's what we should be playing instead." And that's not what you're saying, despite the quotation marks, but rather the instinctual feeling people tend to get in my experience.




Ironsworn, for instance, is a game that gets straight to the action and creates exciting and fun encounters that don't waste your time. It's also the epitome of playing to find out. There's tons of random rolling and it's often hard to predict what could happen next.

That's a weird claim to me, because I always thought combat was the absolute worst part of Ironsworn. It's not bad, so to say, but it's very swingy and creatively exhausting, with battles often way outstaying their welcome or just utterly wrecking your resources past the point of being reasonable. I love the system, but combat's always been really rough compared to the basic but straightforward and functional tactics game of D&D combat.

(I ended up having to homebrew it for my games to do anything other than just use the Battle move for every violent encounter. Getting initiative back on a weak hit with a Face Danger makes things far more diverse and FAR less tedious.)

It does nail the improvised play, though. One of the best games on the market for it.

Tanarii
2021-10-12, 05:12 AM
Another thing I've noticed is that combat becomes more interesting when there is less of it. One combat a session seems to be about the limit for me, which makes D&D interesting when most groups I've played in have gone for s full refresh between sessions. Plus there has to be a reason for combat, 2d8 orcs in a 20ft square room is o lord interesting then 'right, we've got the guns, so now it's time to take the supreme pumpkin from that street gang'.
While I'm perfectly happy running and playing a straight adventuring site crawl full of tricks and traps and combat, i totally get that might not be everyone's gig. And yeah, I'd certainly recommend to any group interested in spending a huge amount of session time on everything but those things branch out into other systems. Modern D&D especially doesn't have game structures in place for much beyond combat. It has universal action resolution rules, but that's not the same thing as game structures.

That's one of my favorite things about Forbidden Lands. It has game structures for exploration and stronghold building / defense, which I miss in modern D&D. Other game systems have game structures for other activities that make them strong for playing games focused on those activities.

So ... apparently unpopular opinion in the general public but not really on this board:
not every kind of game you might want to play is best done with D&D

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-12, 06:02 AM
While I'm perfectly happy running and playing a straight adventuring site crawl full of tricks and traps and combat, i totally get that might not be everyone's gig. And yeah, I'd certainly recommend to any group interested in spending a huge amount of session time on everything but those things branch out into other systems. Modern D&D especially doesn't have game structures in place for much beyond combat. It has universal action resolution rules, but that's not the same thing as game structures.

Honestly, I suspect I might enjoy a dungeon crawl in older editions of D&D they had replied to make it about more than combat.


That's one of my favorite things about Forbidden Lands. It has game structures for exploration and stronghold building / defense, which I miss in modern D&D. Other game systems have game structures for other activities that make them strong for playing games focused on those activities.

Interesting. Not my kind of thing, but I might be willing to play it.


So ... apparently unpopular opinion in the general public but not really on this board:
not every kind of game you might want to play is best done with D&D

Totally. There's a reason that must of the games I own claim to run one thing. Although I'm interested in picking up more Ubiquity games, maybe One for All.

Telwar
2021-10-12, 08:31 AM
40 minutes is a long time for a D&D 5e combat. AD&D was fast too.

4e was very slow though. It was a struggle to get through a 4-combat official play adventure night in a single 4 hour sitting. 3e is somewhere in between.

I never understood the "4e combat takes too long" thing. Not after coming from high-level 3.5 combats that were two hours long, with exactly one hour per round. If nothing else, getting a lot more turns in a 4e game was a lot more fun.

Also, once you got used to it, play went a lot faster, as happens with basically any system. I think my longest turn in 4e, in our final campaign, was ~ 15 minutes, and that involved three* standard action AoE attacks on 7-8 monsters with free action attacks included from critical hits, an opportunity attack or two, and rolling twice on all attacks. The specific attack I was using was a little complex since it had floating damage that could be allocated around as desired. And that only took 15 minutes.

* Strictly speaking one of those standard action attacks took place right before my turn on the bard's turn, and that didn't have advantage yet since I didn't have my turn to use the daily minor action ability is get advantage.

Kymme
2021-10-12, 10:12 AM
That's a weird claim to me, because I always thought combat was the absolute worst part of Ironsworn. It's not bad, so to say, but it's very swingy and creatively exhausting, with battles often way outstaying their welcome or just utterly wrecking your resources past the point of being reasonable. I love the system, but combat's always been really rough compared to the basic but straightforward and functional tactics game of D&D combat.

(I ended up having to homebrew it for my games to do anything other than just use the Battle move for every violent encounter. Getting initiative back on a weak hit with a Face Danger makes things far more diverse and FAR less tedious.)

It does nail the improvised play, though. One of the best games on the market for it.

I appreciate your insight! I've only played about... 13-15 hours of Ironsworn and only had 3 fights, one of which was more of a running battle I handled with the Battle move. Fights moved fast, but they were pretty consequential. Right now I don't particularly like or dislike that trait, but I can definitely see it becoming tiresome with enough repetition, or when an exploration sequence gets interrupted by several combats in a row. I might try out your Face Danger rule - only getting Initiative back on a strong hit means that it can be very hard to escape being on the back foot - but only after I've had like... 3-4 more fights using the normal rules.

Masks has my favorite dramatic conflict system from any PbtA game, because its rules give you a ton of freedom to take different actions. In D&D choosing actions in combat is pretty much a game of 'pick most effective spell for the situation' or 'move towards enemy and attack' or 'full attack an adjacent enemy.' But in Masks, dramatic situations never settle into a stasis, and there isn't always a 'most effective option' every time the spotlight comes back to you. I say that because, while Directly Engage a Threat is typically how you shut down and defeat foes, it's never the only option and, depending on your fictional positioning, might not be an option at all.

Easy e
2021-10-12, 10:15 AM
Imo most people agree that torture is evil.

In the US, we have a very large, unresolved debate on this very subject. So, I guess it is not so black and white as one would think.



On topic:
D&D style game play leads to a ton of unique RPG habits that do not apply at all to most other games.

kyoryu
2021-10-12, 11:02 AM
I never understood the "4e combat takes too long" thing. Not after coming from high-level 3.5 combats that were two hours long, with exactly one hour per round. If nothing else, getting a lot more turns in a 4e game was a lot more fun.

High level 3.5 combat may take longer, but 4e was still long. I ran a lot of 4e. I played a lot of 4e. I like 4e.

A lot of 4e moves were very positioning-dependent. And positioning tended to change enough that you couldn't pre-prep very far in advance. And so, with larger groups especially, people started tuning out, making it take even longer for their turn (since wathcing 4e turns wasn't very exciting).

These factors all combined together to make for long combat. With people really good at the game, especially with fairly small groups, I believe it could be a lot faster, but in practice it bogged down pretty hard.

Quertus
2021-10-12, 11:41 AM
A lot of 4e moves were very positioning-dependent. And positioning tended to change enough that you couldn't pre-prep very far in advance. And so, with larger groups especially, people started tuning out, making it take even longer for their turn (since wathcing 4e turns wasn't very exciting).

These factors all combined together to make for long combat. With people really good at the game, especially with fairly small groups, I believe it could be a lot faster, but in practice it bogged down pretty hard.

"The <combatant> whose turn came just before mine completely invalidated my plan for my action. All the time and effort I spent planning my turn out was wasted - I may as well have spent the past 40 minutes on my phone! In fact… I think that's what I'll do from now on."

What can one do to design a system to be resistant to such… line… "devolution" of play?