Exploration and social - the two pillars that have no mechanics

[Mastikator]

TL;DR: is it a good thing that exploration and social encounters have not been gamified in D&D 5e?
I think yes.

Long thread; reading anyway:

This topic is often brough up in many threads on this forum. The social pillar and the exploration pillar are very underdeveloped in D&D 5e, so any class or subclass that gets features in those areas are somewhere between worthless, ribbon and some other words.

Like if you grab the skill expert feat and take expertise in survival, or religion, or persuasion you've kinda wasted the feat, right? Why not take expertise in athletics so you can grapple, or perception so you can detect hidden enemies? Those seem like objectively superior options in a tactical wargame like D&D5e.

Ok so here's where I start quoting a bunch of people who are smarter than me and have thought about this more than me (and thus persuaded me).


Mechanisms abstract the thing they describe or simulate.
This can be done to speed up play, or to make something complex more easily grasped.

The number of factors that go into a fight are too many to simulate or describe - so we abstract.
Buying many individual items takes time which isn’t always going to be fun - so we abstract.
Abstraction requires the loss of detail.

The things you don’t abstract are the meat of the game.
This is why games* aren’t about what their mechanisms are about - or, if you insist, don’t have to be. Leaving the gap for something to be approached in more detail and nuance gives that thing more primacy.

*In truth, this is talking about game books - the game, the thing that happens up to the table, is an entirely different thing which encapsulates and supersedes the book.
- https://lukegearing.blot.im/mechanisms-as-abstraction


Great thread. For my part a big thing that we didn’t design for in #mothershipRPG was stealth mechanics. But the game is also about running and hiding. We don’t have fleeing rules either.
[etc]
I wanted this moment:

"I want to hide"
"Okay where are you hiding"
"Crap what's around me?"
"Gear lockers, surgical bed, ventilation shaft."
"Crap"
"It's coming."
"Okay, the lockers"
"You won't fit with your vacauit on, do you take it off?"
"No, I need the armor. The ventilation shaft."
"Alright, you have to unscrew it."
"Is there time?"
"You can make a speed check."
"No screw it. I hide under the bed"

- https://twitter.com/seanmccoy/status/1145172287785787392

[Calling D&D a combat-oriented game] would sort of be like looking at a stove and being like, This has nothing to do with food. You can’t eat metal. Clearly this contraption is for moving gas around and having a clock on it. If it was about food, there would be some food here. [...] What you should get is a machine that is either made of food, or has food in it. [...]

I’m going to bring the food. The food is my favorite part. [People say that] because D&D has so many combat mechanics, you are destined to tell combat stories. I fundamentally disagree. Combat is the part I’m the least interested in simulating through improvisational storytelling. So I need a game to do that for me, while I take care of emotions, relationships, character progression, because that **** is intuitive and I understand it well. I don’t intuitively understand how an arrow moves through a fictional airspace.
- https://www.polygon.com/24105875/worlds-beyond-number-narrative-style-adventure

There was one thing that really irked me in the 1D&D playtest, the social rules. It suggested that the players handbook would contain rules for how to make NPCs improve their disposition towards a PC, and make them do things for them.

This is the exact opposite of what I want in an RPG. No way in hell will I let the rules gamify social encounters. When I run social encounters there are many ways I can handle it, I can ask the player to speak in character to the NPC, or I can ask them what they want out of the encounter and then abstract it. But no way am I ever accepting a situation where the player says "I want to roll persuasion to make this NPC like me more, then I want to roll deception to make them do me a favor". NO, TALK TO THEM!!!

In many situations I've seen this also be a problem for stealth checks. I've seen players say "I want to hide" while in plain sight. Where are you hiding? This isn't Skyrim where you can just crouch and become unseen! In fact, it's not a video game. In a video game anything that isn't gamified isn't a part of the game. This is an RPG, if something isn't in the rules you can just do it. I may ask for a skill check.
You may extrapolate the same logic for the exploration pillar, which luckily didn't get the same treatment in the UA.

I don't want rules for social encounters. I don't want rules for exploration. Rulings not rules is a strength of 5e. How does social work? You talk to people! How does exploration work? You use your 5 senses and move around, prodding things!

[NichG]

Some rules tell you how to resolve things - that establishes the context in which things make sense. Other rules give you stuff to play with.

The second is good for these pillars, while the first is bad for social and good for exploration to some degree (but not to the exclusion of unknowns) IMO.

For example, social mechanics that give you information but don't direct resolution, like being able to ask 'who in this room hates each other based on body language?' are extra toys to play with without forcing resolution when it wouldn't make sense or would exclude desired nuance. Social mechanics surrounding, say, the mechanics of peerage could be good - having X rank lets you declare a duel against someone of Y rank without evidence, at Z rank it's illegal of someone of W rank to directly speak poorly of you, etc.

Doesn't mean someone won't do it, but it defines a very relevant system within which social interaction takes place. It's a stove, not the meal.

For exploration, stuff like 'how fast can we travel in jungle, how much supplies does that consume, what happens if we don't have them' is useful for planning. That's stuff where some standardization of resolution is good - you can still have encounters and maybe the cart gets lost or weevils infest the supplies or someone finds game to hunt.

Stuff that says what treasure a CR 8 5-room ruin should have, that should be DM suggestions not player-facing rules.

As far as exploration toys, stuff that lets you build paths, bridges, scout with animals or spells, etc all exists and is good for exploration mechanics. You could easily add more, in a 'exploration toy' rather than 'resolution mechanic' way and I think it would be good. Let dwarves track mechanisms through the floor or walls. Let rangers create lures and repellants to create monster-free corridors. Let fighters get a roll to prevent casualties for large groups going through dangerous marches, etc.

[NecessaryWeevil]

I agree that I don't want - even as a player - a game where I simply throw some dice and shout "I persuade them!"

However - and I'm sure this has been brought up in response frequently also - RPGs are also about being and doing things we can't (or think we can't) in real life.
If I can't open my mouth without boring or alienating people in real life, I might dream about playing Joe (Jane) Cool in a game: someone who can talk their way out of most situations.
If I can't invest character building resources in meaningful social advantages, then that possibility would seem to be closed off to me.
The kind of thing NichG points to might be helpful in that direction.

[stoutstien]

I agree that I don't want - even as a player - a game where I simply throw some dice and shout "I persuade them!"

However - and I'm sure this has been brought up in response frequently also - RPGs are also about being and doing things we can't (or think we can't) in real life.
If I can't open my mouth without boring or alienating people in real life, I might dream about playing Joe (Jane) Cool in a game: someone who can talk their way out of most situations.
If I can't invest character building resources in meaningful social advantages, then that possibility would seem to be closed off to me.
The kind of thing NichG points to might be helpful in that direction.

You don't need to be able to do it in real life.

you just have to accurately be able to describe the intent of your actions.

Would like to think that role-playing is how you speak or even how you control the character in reality all role-playing is internalized so everybody else just sees the outcome of that rather than the actual thing.

[DarknessEternal]

I agree that I don't want - even as a player - a game where I simply throw some dice and shout "I persuade them!"


Ok, but unless you can throw a fireball in real life, you can't in the game either. Fair?

Sarcasm aside, characters already can do what players cannot. Why would you want to gatekeep the game away from people.

[JNAProductions]

Ok, but unless you can throw a fireball in real life, you can't in the game either. Fair?

Sarcasm aside, characters already can do what players cannot. Why would you want to gatekeep the game away from people.

That’s a really uncharitable take on their post.

I’ll echo NichG, as they put good thoughts down well. One could add more rules to 5E’s exploration and social pillars without reducing the fun.

[Kane0]

If I can't open my mouth without boring or alienating people in real life, I might dream about playing Joe (Jane) Cool in a game: someone who can talk their way out of most situations.
If I can't invest character building resources in meaningful social advantages, then that possibility would seem to be closed off to me.


Even worse if its the DM that is that sort of person, then the entire table is facing those challenges. Some extra tools to handle things mechanically can be equally used to assist the DM as well as the players, just as they can be abused to tale away fun from the experience.

Edit: and it goes for exploration too. Most people have come across DMs that play the 'guess what im thinking' game which i wager is not a terribly great experience for most

[NecessaryWeevil]

My meaning doesn't seem to be coming across. I'm not trying to gatekeep anything. Let me try again.
If I envision my character as a great swordsman, there are (to some extent) build decisions that I can take to make my character a dangerous melee threat and one of the best hand-to-hand combatants in the party. The mechanics will support that fantasy.
However, I understand the OP as saying there shouldn't be any mechanics governing social interactions, which I take to also mean that there is no way to play a character who is one of the most persuasive people in the party. That there should be no mechanics supporting that fantasy.

EDIT: Kane0 and JNAP seem to get what I'm trying to say.

[stoutstien]

My meaning doesn't seem to be coming across. I'm not trying to gatekeep anything. Let me try again.
If I envision my character as a great swordsman, there are (to some extent) build decisions that I can take to make my character a dangerous melee threat and one of the best hand-to-hand combatants in the party. The mechanics will support that fantasy.
However, I understand the OP as saying there shouldn't be any mechanics governing social interactions, which I take to also mean that there is no way to play a character who is one of the most persuasive people in the party. That there should be no mechanics supporting that fantasy.

I don't anyone has argued that there needs to be no mechanical backing it's just you don't want to over invest in that because it distracts from the actual goal.
Like in your example you don't need a bunch of fiddly bonuses to be the most person you could simply have a feature that says:

Creatures will believe any reasonable thing you tell them until proven otherwise. Additionally you have advantage on any charisma checks to influence others as long as you have not performed a hostile action versus them or their allies.

Not only does this support the idea of approaching things from an in-game perspective rather than smashing a social attack button it also prevents the mindset that you can roll some obscene high number and talk a lord to hand over their holdings

[NecessaryWeevil]

I don't want rules for social encounters. I don't want rules for exploration. Rulings not rules is a strength of 5e. How does social work? You talk to people! How does exploration work? You use your 5 senses and move around, prodding things!

This seemed pretty clear to me, but perhaps I took it too literally. Your suggestion seems reasonable.

[KorvinStarmast]

TL;DR: is it a good thing that exploration and social encounters have not been gamified in D&D 5e?
I think yes.
Likewise, and I have nothing further to say. :smallsmile:
Except:
If they'd just take alignment back to L/N/C they would undo some damage from self inflicted wounds. :smallcool:

[Skrum]

I gotta disagree. There's just too much space between "no rules, just vibes!" and removing all humanity via mechanics and rolls to conclude that trying to codify any of it is a bad idea.

I've heard people say this kind of stuff before, as like a pitch for rules-lite games. "There's no rules, ergo you can do anything!" Ehhh maybe? Thing is, I don't think mechanics are on the opposite end of spontaneity or creativity. Well-written rules make a framework that can facilitate play; inform the player of what they can do, how they can react...create a context for how to think about the game.

I will say, this case is better made about social interactions than exploration. While I do wish 5e had a little more guidance about how persuasion and the like work, I agree that the nuances of conversation make that really really hard. In a kind of best of bad options, keeping persuasion/intimidate/deception as super simple, "roleplay at the table and then make a simple roll to see how effective it is" is probably fine.

Exploration though...yeah hard disagree. Navigating a wilderness, tracking, finding food, finding shelter, getting un-lost, all of these should be codified and given much more explicit guidance. I don't need to roleplay looking for berries, I just need to know how good my character is at finding them - and what happens when I fail.

[Mastikator]

Some rules tell you how to resolve things - that establishes the context in which things make sense. Other rules give you stuff to play with.

The second is good for these pillars, while the first is bad for social and good for exploration to some degree (but not to the exclusion of unknowns) IMO.

For example, social mechanics that give you information but don't direct resolution, like being able to ask 'who in this room hates each other based on body language?' are extra toys to play with without forcing resolution when it wouldn't make sense or would exclude desired nuance. Social mechanics surrounding, say, the mechanics of peerage could be good - having X rank lets you declare a duel against someone of Y rank without evidence, at Z rank it's illegal of someone of W rank to directly speak poorly of you, etc.

Doesn't mean someone won't do it, but it defines a very relevant system within which social interaction takes place. It's a stove, not the meal.

For exploration, stuff like 'how fast can we travel in jungle, how much supplies does that consume, what happens if we don't have them' is useful for planning. That's stuff where some standardization of resolution is good - you can still have encounters and maybe the cart gets lost or weevils infest the supplies or someone finds game to hunt.

Stuff that says what treasure a CR 8 5-room ruin should have, that should be DM suggestions not player-facing rules.

As far as exploration toys, stuff that lets you build paths, bridges, scout with animals or spells, etc all exists and is good for exploration mechanics. You could easily add more, in a 'exploration toy' rather than 'resolution mechanic' way and I think it would be good. Let dwarves track mechanisms through the floor or walls. Let rangers create lures and repellants to create monster-free corridors. Let fighters get a roll to prevent casualties for large groups going through dangerous marches, etc.
IMO the jungle example gets to the heart of it. No two jungles are alike, you may have one jungle with enormous trees that block off light and has little undergrowth, so travel is relatively easy but celestial navigation is impossible. You may have another jungle with dense undergrowth that either require you to constantly hack with a machete; slowing your travel to a noisy crawl. A jungle may have beasts, fey or monstrosities, there may be humanoids living there that build roads or traps. The water may be drinkable or infested with parasites so you need to boil it, or poisoned and can't be purified without magic. The land may be enchanted or cursed.

All these add up to this (IMO) salient point: you can't have a standardized gamified ruleset for traversing jungles. Each jungle needs their own rules. It's up to the module and DM to decide what it takes to traverse a jungle. Maybe it's just a survival check to make sure you don't get lost. Maybe you need someone to make perception checks to avoid getting ambushed. Maybe you can make arcana or nature checks to benefit from the enchantment. One jungle may have wolves and tigers that will leave the players alone, in another the DM rolls on a random encounter list that puts the players against a hydra.

If the players want to hunt for food they should be able to say that, but I don't want any kind of standardized point system or table.




My meaning doesn't seem to be coming across. I'm not trying to gatekeep anything. Let me try again.
If I envision my character as a great swordsman, there are (to some extent) build decisions that I can take to make my character a dangerous melee threat and one of the best hand-to-hand combatants in the party. The mechanics will support that fantasy.
However, I understand the OP as saying there shouldn't be any mechanics governing social interactions, which I take to also mean that there is no way to play a character who is one of the most persuasive people in the party. That there should be no mechanics supporting that fantasy.

EDIT: Kane0 and JNAP seem to get what I'm trying to say.

There are mechanics for being a persuasive character, you can be proficient and even have expertise in the skill persuasion. Same for deception, intimidation and insight. You can also take the inspiring leader feat. That is all fine.

What I don't want is to have the social encounter be gamified. In the UA there were options for "improve NPC attitude", that is already too much. That should only serve as advice for the DM, not suggestions for the player.

-

I've seen many people in multiple threads complain that many skills are useless because there are no systems that engage with those skills. There is no gamified system of nature, so therefore the nature skill is irrelevant. The scout's expertise in nature is nothing more than a ribbon.
But is it though? Is it possible to use that skill to find natural poisons, or find caves, or figure out what kind of creatures live in a wilderness based on the local flora or trails?

[GloatingSwine]

IMO the jungle example gets to the heart of it. No two jungles are alike, you may have one jungle with enormous trees that block off light and has little undergrowth, so travel is relatively easy but celestial navigation is impossible. You may have another jungle with dense undergrowth that either require you to constantly hack with a machete; slowing your travel to a noisy crawl. A jungle may have beasts, fey or monstrosities, there may be humanoids living there that build roads or traps. The water may be drinkable or infested with parasites so you need to boil it, or poisoned and can't be purified without magic. The land may be enchanted or cursed.

Man, sure sounds like this is the sort of place where a set of abstractions would be helpful to let players know how they might be able to interact with different sorts of jungles in a broad and easily graspable manner.


If the players want to hunt for food they should be able to say that, but I don't want any kind of standardized point system or table.

How will the players predict the outcome of doing this, how will their predictions change based on their chosen classes and investments?


There are mechanics for being a persuasive character, you can be proficient and even have expertise in the skill persuasion. Same for deception, intimidation and insight. You can also take the inspiring leader feat. That is all fine.

What I don't want is to have the social encounter be gamified. In the UA there were options for "improve NPC attitude", that is already too much. That should only serve as advice for the DM, not suggestions for the player.

How do the players predict their characters' ability to persuade other people in general, in order to make a baseline for their ability in a specific situation? It rather sounded in the OP like you didn't want to use the persuasion related skills at all, you even got all shouty about it.

[claypigeons]

I'm not a charismatic person, without charisma skills and speech mechanics, I could never accurately portray such a character.

It's a dice based game. If you don't want to play with dice, don't. Or play a different game. The system isn't the problem.

Player wishes to persuade, they inform the dm. DM asks them the gist of what they say, DM can assign a bonuses or advantage as they see fit, and then the player rolls.

A player running a bard shouldn't have to prepare motivational speeches and sick roasts ahead of every session for each inspiration and intimidation.

[Kurald Galain]

TL;DR: is it a good thing that exploration and social encounters have not been gamified in D&D 5e?
There is a wide gap between "having no mechanics" (which is a bad thing) and "being gamified" (which is also a bad thing). It strikes me that your thread title is about one extreme but your top post is actually about the other extreme.

In other words, it's quite reasonable to conclude (in fact, I'd say this is probably a majority opinion) that 3E has too many rules for out-of-combat situations, while at the same time 5E has too few rules (or as your thread title suggests, none at all) for out-of-combat situations.

[stoutstien]

I've been pondering on this aspect for my WIP.

When you talk about players interacting with the environment or NPCs it's not necessarily about the quantity or the extensiveness of the mechanics you use. It's about having mechanics that are usable but not required because the players actions are two open-ended otherwise.

So when you're talking about influencing an NPC's actions (splitting things like intimidation persuasion into different things is silly because you don't care what they think you only care about how they act) you never want to get to a point where one mechanic is necessary to resolve it.

For example if you're going to use a morale system to check if a faction is going to stick around and keep fighting that's fine but you don't want to integrate so much into it where you can't ignore it when it doesn't make any sense.

[Sorinth]

I'm of the opinion that we don't need highly structured game mechanics/systems for exploration/social pillars. I don't have an issue with players wanting to simply press that persuasion/deception button during an social interaction, but what a successful roll actually means shouldn't be defined by the players or a rulebook it's something that needs to be defined by the DM.

So you want to talk your way past some guards, you can talk in character for the whole thing or just say I want to try to talk my way past the guards. Though the later I would ask a few questions about method, are you trying to be get them to like you so they do you a favour, are you trying to pretend like you actually have the proper authority/permission, etc... What I don't want to see is the book/rules saying if a player rolls a 20+ on Persuasion they can change an NPCs attitude from Wary to Friendly, and the Friendly Attitude rule says that they will perform a Moderate Favour, and then a sample list of what Moderate Favours look like. The DM should be the one deciding what success looks like, is success let them pass, is it let them pass but one guard provides an escort to where they claim they were going, is it turned away with directions to the public area but no alarm raised, is it turned away and escorted to the public area but at least they aren't arresting you. All those could be appropriate success states depending on the details of the encounter, the guards finding you very close to a public area vs outside the king's chambers are going to greatly influence what success and failure look like.


For exploration my definition is more about player choice, the party exploring a dungeon and come to a T junction and having to decide left or right is the exploration pillar. If done badly the players have no information about either direction and it's basically random, done properly they will have/had opportunities to gain information about what each direction will entail and can make a more informed decision where they balance risk/reward.

[Sorinth]

I've been pondering on this aspect for my WIP.

When you talk about players interacting with the environment or NPCs it's not necessarily about the quantity or the extensiveness of the mechanics you use. It's about having mechanics that are usable but not required because the players actions are two open-ended otherwise.

So when you're talking about influencing an NPC's actions (splitting things like intimidation persuasion into different things is silly because you don't care what they think you only care about how they act) you never want to get to a point where one mechanic is necessary to resolve it.

For example if you're going to use a morale system to check if a faction is going to stick around and keep fighting that's fine but you don't want to integrate so much into it where you can't ignore it when it doesn't make any sense.

I could see merging Persuasion/Deception into a single skill, but Intimidation seems very different. And although for one off encounters it's true don't care what they think only how they act for NPCs you will encounter more then once then it very much matters what they think.

[NichG]

IMO the jungle example gets to the heart of it. No two jungles are alike, you may have one jungle with enormous trees that block off light and has little undergrowth, so travel is relatively easy but celestial navigation is impossible. You may have another jungle with dense undergrowth that either require you to constantly hack with a machete; slowing your travel to a noisy crawl. A jungle may have beasts, fey or monstrosities, there may be humanoids living there that build roads or traps. The water may be drinkable or infested with parasites so you need to boil it, or poisoned and can't be purified without magic. The land may be enchanted or cursed.

All these add up to this (IMO) salient point: you can't have a standardized gamified ruleset for traversing jungles. Each jungle needs their own rules. It's up to the module and DM to decide what it takes to traverse a jungle. Maybe it's just a survival check to make sure you don't get lost. Maybe you need someone to make perception checks to avoid getting ambushed. Maybe you can make arcana or nature checks to benefit from the enchantment. One jungle may have wolves and tigers that will leave the players alone, in another the DM rolls on a random encounter list that puts the players against a hydra.

If the players want to hunt for food they should be able to say that, but I don't want any kind of standardized point system or table.


But what are you actually gaining here, that you couldn't have otherwise?

If you really want everything to be totally unique to the fullest extent possible, you could run a jungle exploration game in 6 second intervals on a giant battlemap, so every bush, rock, bit of pathway, etc is resolved in its full glory. But that's pointless detail - it would be getting in the way of the game, rather than contributing. Even if, strictly speaking, that is the true diversity of jungle environments - every foot of it is a different foot than every other foot of it. This foot has a spiderweb, that foot has a casava plant, that foot over there has a bit of squelchy mud and a steeper incline, etc. But you don't actually need that level of detail to make it feel unique - even without mechanics you're surely going to abstract away miles of jungle as 'okay, you bushwhack your way for 8 hours or so and make a mile of progress before you start to get exhausted'.

It's also easy enough to make a system of mechanics that has open ports for the DM to introduce variation - new terrain types, new modifiers, caravan-level status conditions, weather, custom encounter tables, specific set-piece location-based encounters, etc. So having some mechanical resolution for the dungeon doesn't exclude you making each jungle unique in ways you feel are important to convey, it just means you'll be conveying at least part of that uniqueness within a framework that makes those differences concretely meaningful as to their consequences. E.g. not just 'this is a really dense jungle' but 'this is a really dense jungle as jungles go, so you only move at half of the speed you would in other jungle terrain you've seen in your career'. Or, not just 'this jungle is clear at ground level but extremely dense at the canopy' but 'because this jungle has clear forest floor and dense canopy, you don't take bushwhacking penalties for travel on foot, but modes of flight and vertical travel have to bushwhack whenever they try to cross the canopy line'.

It forces you to say what details matter to the level of abstraction that will be used for resolution. Which isn't a bad thing, IMO.

For a game that involves long-distance exploration of wilderness environments, planning is really part of real-world processes that made such adventures viable. The more uncertain your information (or the more variable the chance aspects are), the shorter plans can be before they're basically nonsense. So in a game where the DM is resistant to setting expectations on the basis of wanting there to be unique surprises, the flip side is that generally speaking the game has to either be following the DM's plan or player-made plans have to be pretty short. A day trip across a wilderness with some camping supplies just in case, to get to a nearby fort? Sure. A three-month long expedition to the south pole, when you don't know if you can realistically make 4 miles or 8 miles or 16 miles a day? It's just not going to happen unless the players assume that the DM will fiddle with things to make it viable-but-challenging.

So being able to predict things like 'can we hunt for our own food?' or 'how much in the way of supplies should we pack for this route?' are, IMO, important to the actual interesting game-play - which is to make plans that are viable for exploring challenging environments, and then adapt those plans due to specific changes in circumstance or events which occur. 'Hey, we heard of treasure 50 miles off of our route, can we afford to change it?' or 'Hey, our plans looked fine but then half our supplies spoiled, how can we still make it back?' are interesting. 'Hey, we had 12 days of supply but now we have 6 days; but we don't really know how long it would take to go anywhere, so I guess we just go and hope the DM doesn't TPK us from starvation' is not so interesting. Nor, honestly, is playing a guessing game of trying various actions to feel out the DM's hidden mental model of the effectiveness of those things in this particular environment.

The DM can provide this information in response to specific questions during a planning phase of course, but as I see it, providing information in advance about how something is going to be resolved is just writing mechanics. If you're going to write mechanics anyhow, might as well be thinking in terms of a consistent framework. There's of course the 'do I trust WotC to write it?' issue, but I think that's a totally separate issue as to whether or not having mechanics could be beneficial if they were the right sort of mechanics.

...

Now, as for social stuff, I think its a very different issue. Part of the issue with social mechanics for resolution has to do with reinforcing a really bad mental model that already exists in a lot of players - that social interaction basically boils down to 'forcing people to do what I want with words', e.g. that its primarily about conflict resolution in the first place. Adding a resolution mechanic for something like persuasion reinforces that misconception, and tends to lead to social interactions being more and more like 'combat' than about finding mutually beneficial solutions for conflicting interests.

That is to say, for me at least, the primary gameplay in a social situation isn't 'who has the wittier comebacks', it's 'how well can you understand the needs of the various participants' and 'given an understanding of the needs of the participants (in the context of the rest of the game state), can you come up with paths that are better for everyone than a breakdown in communication'. A character's 'skill at Persuasion' doesn't even belong in this model, honestly - it encourages overriding the needs of others in the scenario rather than finding out where they're better cooperatively met.

But this is exactly where I think having social 'toys' can be useful. That may be my mental model, but a player's mental model might be 'what really matters is how eloquent I am, and a really charismatic bastard should just be able to roll over anyone and treat them like objects rather than like agents'. So by explicitly writing mechanics that work within my mental model but don't do anything within the 'hit the enemy with my words' model, I can communicate what sort of things I expect a socially effective character to actually be doing. That's why I'll have a bunch of things for gathering information and maybe some things for swaying crowds or abstracted systems (like getting paperwork through a bureaucracy), but I never put something that is of the form 'roll to make them think a certain way'. Not for friendliness, not for lying, not for negotiation, not for persuasion.

Instead, its always 'you can use your abilities to get me as GM to promise concretely something about how the NPC would react' rather than to 'make the NPC react'. That is to say, a social character could extract an OOC promise 'if you offer at least a 250gp bribe, this particular guard will accept it and not report you' or 'that guard over there will do it for 100gp' or to find out in advance 'this other guard will immediately turn hostile at any suggestion of a bribe, no matter how much'. So the mechanics become a vehicle for me to introduce those differences, rather than a way for those differences to be erased.

But no, you cannot play a character who is 'so charismatic that people just do what they say' in my games unless you're using actual stuff marked as mind control. And anything that lets a character do that, whether its an epic skill check or a spell or whatever, would be considered as a use of forceful compulsion by societies capable of understanding what the character did - e.g. its a hostile act, violent or even lethal self-defense against it is usually justified, the victim is not responsible for actions they take under that control, etc. I don't have a problem with characters having mind control powers, I specifically have a problem with social interaction reducing to 'socially acceptable mind control'. That's not what it's for - if that's what you want to do, play a caster with Charm Person and Dominate Person.

On the other hand, if you actually do embrace the cooperative social model, then its possible to leverage that to power way outside of what your level should normally allow. A Lv1 character with no skills dropping the right information in the ear of the Lv20 godking can get the godking to act on their behalf - not because they can beat the godking in a roll-off, but because they picked the information where it's just in the godking's best interest to act in a way that also happens to help them. Will the Lv1 guy just happen to have that information? Well, usually not. But if they do actually get such information and realize its relevance, the godking isn't going to hold the idiot ball of 'I'll ignore it because the character flubbed their roll'.

The mechanics then that the player can access would then for example help them identify that important information and its value, e.g. 'because you rolled a 18 on this check, you realize that the thing that came up briefly in the last conversation about figures in silver cloaks flying across the Trenton river would actually be really important information to the local lord; you can negotiate a favor out of him - at minimum, something like 500gp of cash, but more value if its in directions the local lord finds convenient to pay back at no real cost such as granting temporary privileges or rights within his territory; its shy of getting you a knighthood or anything permanent though'.

Note that in my case, once you've gotten the info, it still doesn't depend on 'how good of a public speaker the player is'. Once you have the thing of value, the skill says OOC 'all you have to do is hand this over and ask for something within its price range, and it will work' (and also note, you can do this without succeeding in the skill check and it would still work; but you don't get the guarantee, or the explicit knowledge of what particular information is relevant and valuable). But what it doesn't let you do is go up and offer nothing at all and rely just on the numbers on the character sheet to get you through. The gameplay is finding what the lord needs, fears, desires, etc; getting some leverage over those things; and then using that leverage to construct a deal that is (or appears) mutually beneficial. I don't want mechanics that encourage players to pay character resources in exchange for being able to skip that. But mechanics which make it more clear what the players do need to do, and which cut through uncertainties in trying to read my mind about whether a given approach will work? That's constructive.

[stoutstien]

I could see merging Persuasion/Deception into a single skill, but Intimidation seems very different. And although for one off encounters it's true don't care what they think only how they act for NPCs you will encounter more then once then it very much matters what they think.

It does matter what they think but your <skill> approach is largely irrelevant as it's your choices that make the difference. How one NPC reacts to bribes or threats of physical force is a in game factor rather than something you can point at on your sheet.

So while intimidation and persuasion differ it's not on the PCs/players side that determines which is which.

[Sorinth]

It does matter what they think but your <skill> approach is largely irrelevant as it's your choices that make the difference. How one NPC reacts to bribes or threats of physical force is a in game factor rather than something you can point at on your sheet.

So while intimidation and persuasion differ it's not on the PCs/players side that determines which is which.

So you think every person is going to be equally good at intimidating people as they are at befriending people? I don't buy that at all, plenty of people would be poor at making friends but can be very intimidating and vice versa.

[stoutstien]

So you think every person is going to be equally good at intimidating people as they are at befriending people? I don't buy that at all, plenty of people would be poor at making friends but can be very intimidating and vice versa.

No but nobody is also equally as good at intimidating everybody regardless of the situation.

Now if it said something like you are better at threatening people with physical harm then that is a more put together statement because it apply that it affects things that are affected by physical harm rather than just vague scary power. In the same vein somebody who's good at threatening somebody with financial ruin is probably going to talk and act very differently but they're both using some kind of coercion.

By mapping in the way they do now is exactly where you ended the point where a 3-ft tall gnome is somehow more intimidating than an 8 ft half orc with a bloody axe.

[Sorinth]

No but nobody is also equally as good at intimidating everybody regardless of the situation.

Now if it said something like you are better at threatening people with physical harm then that is a more put together statement because it apply that it affects things that are affected by physical harm rather than just vague scary power. In the same vein somebody who's good at threatening somebody with financial ruin is probably going to talk and act very differently but they're both using some kind of coercion.

By mapping in the way they do now is exactly where you ended the point where a 3-ft tall gnome is somehow more intimidating than an 8 ft half orc with a bloody axe.

You've lost me, some people are better at physically intimidating then others right? That means if it comes down to a check that they should either get a higher bonus to the roll or they face a lower DC right? I can't figure out what you actually think this should be resolved.

[stoutstien]

You've lost me, some people are better at physically intimidating then others right? That means if it comes down to a check that they should either get a higher bonus to the roll or they face a lower DC right? I can't figure out what you actually think this should be resolved.

The problem is the same skill/ability governs being physically intimidating is also for other form of coercion.

At the same time you could rationalize any social interaction to fall under any of the other ones so they're all just kind of wishy-washy anyways. It's restrictive in ways it isn't helpful but also not providing enough guidelines otherwise.

This means you end up at a point where where if that is something you want to be good at you are also equally good at all the other stuff so it kind of feels meh.

I get why they broke it up or else charisma would be even more loaded than it is but it didn't actually fix anything by doing it this way.

[Blatant Beast]

Exploration though...yeah hard disagree. Navigating a wilderness, tracking, finding food, finding shelter, getting un-lost, all of these should be codified and given much more explicit guidance. I don't need to roleplay looking for berries, I just need to know how good my character is at finding them - and what happens when I fail.

There are rules for this. The focus of those rules is abstracting Overland travel issues into D20 Dice rolls, and not Roleplaying the day.

If your timescale is less than this, then just use the ability check mechanic. The Traveller RPG and 3e had a similiar issue; both systems abounded with overly complicated resolution systems for situations that did not require it.

Finding berries is just a matter of time and the availability if berries. You don't need to even roll dice, let alone have a complicated resolution formula to resolve it.

You find berries if berries are to be found.

[Kane0]

If anyone does know of some well made exploration mechanics I have a seafaring game coming up in the sometime-future that would appreciate them

[Aimeryan]

TL;DR: is it a good thing that exploration and social encounters have not been gamified in D&D 5e?
I think yes.

Hard disagree: the point of a game is to provide rules. Rules are tools that DMs and Players alike can use to craft their adventures. A lack of tools does not prevent this, but it can make it more difficult. The presence of tools do not force you to use them. Therefore, it is always advantageous to have tools and not use them than to not have tools and lack for doing so.

If you are capable of handcrafting two pillars of the game without the rules, then you can probably do the same for another pillar - in which case, why are you buying the books?

[Sorinth]

Exploration though...yeah hard disagree. Navigating a wilderness, tracking, finding food, finding shelter, getting un-lost, all of these should be codified and given much more explicit guidance. I don't need to roleplay looking for berries, I just need to know how good my character is at finding them - and what happens when I fail.

There are codified rules for all those things except finding shelter since they decided shelter isn't relevant to resting (A big miss in my view). But the rest all have been codified, navigating a wilderness, tracking, finding food, getting lost, it's all there and pretty straightforward without needing the DM to make "rulings".

Honestly the problem is those things just aren't very interesting so if that's what you consider the meat of what the exploration pillar should be it's going to be lacking. If they were to make a complex/immersive survival system for travel that's probably going to turn off a lot of tables which makes it a hard sell and is why the exploration pillar needs to be about more then just travel & food.

[Blatant Beast]

If you are capable of handcrafting two pillars of the game without the rules, then you can probably do the same for another pillar - in which case, why are you buying the books?

I find this a remarkably bad take.
Firstly, the DMG has a dense section on adjusting Attitudes, so the game does have tables that handle the social sphere.

Have those that say 5e lacks X rule, even read the DMG? Are you reading the Overland travel section of the PHB, or like most people did you skip over it?

Ultimately, these matters reduce down to a matter of taste. Those that do not like the Ability Check Resolution system inherent to 5e seemingly are the same ones that want more Social/Exploration rules.

I'm sure third party products have exactly what you want, barring that Mongoose's Traveller version has all the rules you would ever want, give it a try.

[Aimeryan]

I find this a remarkably bad take.
Firstly, the DMG has a dense section on adjusting Attitudes, so the game does have tables that handle the social sphere.

Have those that say 5e lacks X rule, even read the DMG? Are you reading the Overland travel section of the PHB, or like most people did you skip over it?

Ultimately, these matters reduce down to a matter of taste. Those that do not like the Ability Check Resolution system inherent to 5e seemingly are the same ones that want more Social/Exploration rules.

I'm sure third party products have exactly what you want, barring that Mongoose's Traveller version has all the rules you would ever want, give it a try.

I'm not commenting on whether 5e has rules, I am commenting on whether rules should exist. As the rules are ignorable, yet are extremely relevant for those who use them, the answer is always going to be yes - especially because you are literally paying money for that exact purpose. Now, I could see that people buy the modules for ideas and the story, so rules don't have to exist in those. Likewise, I could see an MM with pictures and descriptions of exotic creatures for the purpose of sparking the imagination - here be dragons. However, a Player's Handbook should have rules.

[Snowbluff]

I think I generally agree, I find gamified social aspects overbearing to the point it affects roleplay (PbtA to me feels like this), or easily exploitable as it become a numbers game (DnD 3.5). I much rather be thinking what it is my character is wanting rather than what score it is being targeted by a social attack. A lot of my favorite roleplay has been off of the cuff rather than something entirely dictated by game rules.


I do think that not everyone agrees with this, but at the same time there would be a lot of complaints if the default was a super gamey system as well. Having optional guidelines to set a standard for certain tables can be a good thing, in my opinion. I think a big problem is when an inexperienced group doesn't understand how an abstraction or improvisation works engaging with systems that are based on that.


A lot of the exploration pillar ends up coming from how the adventures and modules are run. I don't remember there being a lot for how to make some yourself, but there is a lot of variety in prewritten material.

[Mastikator]

I'm not commenting on whether 5e has rules, I am commenting on whether rules should exist. As the rules are ignorable, yet are extremely relevant for those who use them, the answer is always going to be yes - especially because you are literally paying money for that exact purpose. Now, I could see that people buy the modules for ideas and the story, so rules don't have to exist in those. Likewise, I could see an MM with pictures and descriptions of exotic creatures for the purpose of sparking the imagination - here be dragons. However, a Player's Handbook should have rules.

Yeah but whether rules for social and exploration should exist is not what the thread is about. The TLDR section you replied to is " is it a good thing that exploration and social encounters have not been gamified in D&D 5e?"

As in, is it a good or bad thing that the rules for social and exploration in D&D 5e are as sparse and open as they are. It's not whether even what little rules there are should be exist. Their existence as a bare minimum is not called into question in this thread, you're defending a hill that is not under attack.

In combat you have highly regimented rules for action, bonus action, reaction and move, tons of class features that interact with combat rules in very precise ways. Combat presents you with a control board with buttons, and lets you add buttons. It finally has a button that says "improv" and so improvised actions are legit 100% RAW. But nobody ever seems to use it even though it gives absolute freedom.

Exploration and social operates mostly under the same improv rules. It may seem like a player can't figure out what to do without a strict framework telling them what they can do, but I think this is gamer-brain syndrome. Every time you step out of the front door and every time you talk to a person you are engaging in this exact improv.
It's not about "what can you do". To quote the shadows "What do you want?"

[Aimeryan]

Yeah but whether rules for social and exploration should exist is not what the thread is about. The TLDR section you replied to is " is it a good thing that exploration and social encounters have not been gamified in D&D 5e?"

As in, is it a good or bad thing that the rules for social and exploration in D&D 5e are as sparse and open as they are. It's not whether even what little rules there are should be exist. Their existence as a bare minimum is not called into question in this thread, you're defending a hill that is not under attack.

In combat you have highly regimented rules for action, bonus action, reaction and move, tons of class features that interact with combat rules in very precise ways. Combat presents you with a control board with buttons, and lets you add buttons. It finally has a button that says "improv" and so improvised actions are legit 100% RAW. But nobody ever seems to use it even though it gives absolute freedom.

Exploration and social operates mostly under the same improv rules. It may seem like a player can't figure out what to do without a strict framework telling them what they can do, but I think this is gamer-brain syndrome. Every time you step out of the front door and every time you talk to a person you are engaging in this exact improv.
It's not about "what can you do". To quote the shadows "What do you want?"

Fewer rules are generally disfavourable. If you wish to ignore rules, well unless Crawford is standing behind you with a shotgun, you can ignore them. I promise.
Meanwhile, those that like to play with rules as scaffolding on which to climb ever higher in their expansive creations do need rules to do that.
Lastly, the point of paying someone to provide you with rules is to... get rules. Like, you don't have to pay someone to not use rules.
So, 'should the ruleset you paying for present you with [more than just nominal] rules'? Yes... yes it should.

[GloatingSwine]

Finding berries is just a matter of time and the availability if berries. You don't need to even roll dice, let alone have a complicated resolution formula to resolve it.

You find berries if berries are to be found.

Finding berries is also a matter of knowing which ones are nutritious and which ones are poisonous. Same with other foodstuffs, you have to know which ones you can eat and players need to be able to predict how good their character is going to be at that in advance, same with knowing where to find clean water. There is play milage in different characters and groups of characters being differently good at that and having to make different decisions because of it.


By mapping in the way they do now is exactly where you ended the point where a 3-ft tall gnome is somehow more intimidating than an 8 ft half orc with a bloody axe.

Someone needs to watch some more Joe Pesci movies :P

(Intimidation doesn't even need to be immediate threat of physical harm, just a true threat of consequences if the target doesn't follow through on a demand. Blackmail is just as much intimidation as "You tall folk often forget how much you rely on your knees, want to experience a life without them?")

A lot of the problems identifiable with proficiencies in the social pillar is that there's only one social attribute and it has to pull all the weight by itself because the rules and official guidance don't also say "Charisma is the default for this but you could use other attributes for the check if you think it's appropriate for what your player told you they're trying to do and the situation".

For example a wizard browbeating a conclave of other wizards with his obviously superior arcane knowledge instead of making a persuasive argument about the thing he wants them to believe could be an Intimidate check with Int as its attribute. But the books are silent on that matter.

[TrueAlphaGamer]

A lot of the problems identifiable with proficiencies in the social pillar is that there's only one social attribute and it has to pull all the weight by itself because the rules and official guidance don't also say "Charisma is the default for this but you could use other attributes for the check if you think it's appropriate for what your player told you they're trying to do and the situation".

For example a wizard browbeating a conclave of other wizards with his obviously superior arcane knowledge instead of making a persuasive argument about the thing he wants them to believe could be an Intimidate check with Int as its attribute. But the books are silent on that matter.

I'm not sure what you meant by this. The DMG does give guidance on this, though I suppose not too much:



Skills

As described in the Player's Handbook, a skill proficiency represents a character's focus on one aspect of an ability. Among all the things a character's Dexterity score describes, the character might be particularly skilled at sneaking around, reflected in proficiency in the Stealth skill. When that skill is used for an ability check, it is usually used with Dexterity.

Under certain circumstances, you can decide a character's proficiency in a skill can be applied to a different ability check. For example, you might decide that a character forced to swim from an island to the mainland must succeed on a Constitution check (as opposed to a Strength check) because of the distance involved. The character is proficient in the Athletics skill, which covers swimming, so you allow the character's proficiency bonus to apply to this ability check. In effect, you're asking for a Constitution (Athletics) check, instead of a Strength (Athletics) check.

Often, players ask whether they can apply a skill proficiency to an ability check. If a player can provide a good justification for why a character's training and aptitude in a skill should apply to the check, go ahead and allow it, rewarding the player's creative thinking.

You can make the case that this is quite brief and easily missed, but then again it might have been seen as an exercise in pedantry had they devoted a whole section to examples of alternate ability/skill combinations.

[Pex]

Rules are needed. How complex, how they work are ripe for discussion, but that they should exist at all is necessary. Without them then everything becomes stroke the DM's ego. If the DM likes it you can do it. If the DM doesn't like it you can't do it. That is not a game. The rules existing does not take away DM adjudication. At the extremes the DM is right to tell you the king will not give you his throne because you asked and rolled a 20 at the same time the DM won't be asking when your character needs to use the little adventurer's room. The DM does not get to tell players what they do or how they do it. That's the players' agency. That is them playing the game. Dice are used as the neutral arbiter for success, failure, and degree of progress depending on the situation.

In the more cynical level of extremes, rules are needed so that the socially awkward player can play the bard to wow the audience, and the 100 lb lanky player can play the buff He-Man and lift the fallen small boulder off his party member. In the talky talky bits, rules are needed to determine when a PC succeeds or not in influencing an NPC in some matter rather than how impressed the DM is by the player's real life eloquence of verbiage. The PC needs to convince the NPC, not the player needing to convince the DM. In exploration players can only perceive the world as the DM tells them. Without rules the players are characters in the DM's novel. Rules are needed so that players can manipulate their environment as their characters can.

The rules are the game. It's not all of the game in a roleplaying game, but they are integral. What they are, their complexity, the mathematics, the definitions, are as varied as there are different game systems and the imaginations of people. Which ones people like are a matter of personal taste.

[Sorinth]

Someone needs to watch some more Joe Pesci movies :P

(Intimidation doesn't even need to be immediate threat of physical harm, just a true threat of consequences if the target doesn't follow through on a demand. Blackmail is just as much intimidation as "You tall folk often forget how much you rely on your knees, want to experience a life without them?")

A lot of the problems identifiable with proficiencies in the social pillar is that there's only one social attribute and it has to pull all the weight by itself because the rules and official guidance don't also say "Charisma is the default for this but you could use other attributes for the check if you think it's appropriate for what your player told you they're trying to do and the situation".

For example a wizard browbeating a conclave of other wizards with his obviously superior arcane knowledge instead of making a persuasive argument about the thing he wants them to believe could be an Intimidate check with Int as its attribute. But the books are silent on that matter.

The books aren't silent on the matter. They explicitly mention it as a variant rule on page 175 on the PHB and again on pg 239 of the DMG.

And I'd argue if Insight and Investigation isn't "pulling weight" in your social pillar then that's a choice the DM has made (Intentionally or not) and not something the rules actually push on the game.

[Schwann145]

I think the answer to the question, "is D&D a good system to use to run a totally combat-free game" is rather telling to the overall topic at hand.

I would say the answer to the question is decidedly, "no."
I'd be interested to hear from those who would say, "yes."

[Sorinth]

I think the answer to the question, "is D&D a good system to use to run a totally combat-free game" is rather telling to the overall topic at hand.

I would say the answer to the question is decidedly, "no."
I'd be interested to hear from those who would say, "yes."

I would say yes D&D is a good but not great system to run a non-combat game. And that goes for most styles of games, D&D isn't the best at any one style but does most of them good enough. So if you want variety D&D ends up as the best system overall even though for every style there's probably a better system. It's the jack of all trades but master of none situation.

So for example, if my gaming group wanted to spend a game night doing a murder mystery (And needing to learn a new systems wasn't an issue) then no I wouldn't choose D&D, but if during a regular campaign I wanted to throw together 1 or 2 session no or low combat murder mystery then D&D works fine and it will be an enjoyable game.

[Skrum]

I would say yes D&D is a good but not great system to run a non-combat game. And that goes for most styles of games, D&D isn't the best at any one style but does most of them good enough. So if you want variety D&D ends up as the best system overall even though for every style there's probably a better system. It's the jack of all trades but master of none situation.

So for example, if my gaming group wanted to spend a game night doing a murder mystery (And needing to learn a new systems wasn't an issue) then no I wouldn't choose D&D, but if during a regular campaign I wanted to throw together 1 or 2 session no or low combat murder mystery then D&D works fine and it will be an enjoyable game.

What system would you recommend for a powergaming, kick in the door tactical combat-fest? I've heard good things about PF2 in this regard, but I've heard very little in terms of other options.

I agree about DND being the jack of all trades game - as intended, as far as I can tell. It wants to be all things to all people.

[NichG]

I think the answer to the question, "is D&D a good system to use to run a totally combat-free game" is rather telling to the overall topic at hand.

I would say the answer to the question is decidedly, "no."
I'd be interested to hear from those who would say, "yes."

I'd say AD&D, 2e, and 3.5e are at least acceptable for an exploration focused game, or things like settlement building/frontier development/etc. Not because of any core mechanic, but because there's a lot of diversity within the materials that exist to pull from for inspiration both on the DM side and on the player side. Even doing like a pure tricks and traps game can be interesting within that context but more so with older editions - Tomb of Horrors with strictly Lv1 characters is an interesting exercise in AD&D but it doesn't work in the 3.5e rewrite, for example. I think they're decent if you wanted to do an investigative or mystery campaign as well, though in that case keeping it to at most Lv5 is probably advisable. The more modern the edition, the more strongly I'd tell players 'you want to be a caster for this campaign'.

Add homebrew and these go from acceptable to 'actually pretty good'. I generally homebrew significantly for any campaign I run no matter what, so 'how well does it take to homebrew' is a factor here even if the system as-is wouldn't be great for a certain thing. D&D (at least 3.5e) has lots of contact points where you can add new things, lots of stuff for things to hook into and influence, etc, so this is actually a point in its favor.

5e for these things, well, its hard for me to say. It still shares a lot with 3.5e, but I sort of feel like it moved a bit in a direction that makes it less good for that kind of thing - but probably not so much as to make it pointless. Homebrew could easily reverse those trends though, except perhaps that bounded accuracy and rulings-not-rules as the expectation for setting DCs makes some things harder that I'd want to do in pure non-combat game.

For a social/intrigue focused game, I don't think I'd use D&D, but I probably wouldn't use anything with social 'resolution' mechanics at all - instead I'd be looking for a system and setting that have a lot of depth in how the politics, power structures, organizations, etc are all described and how they intertwine. Something like 7th Sea or perhaps L5R, again not because of the mechanics, but because the context around which intrigue exists. I wouldn't personally use World of Darkness and its setting here even if its a popular game for that sort of thing, just because I find it a bit too stagnant due to trying hard to reinforce the genre conventions and mythological associations.

[Mastikator]

I think the answer to the question, "is D&D a good system to use to run a totally combat-free game" is rather telling to the overall topic at hand.

I would say the answer to the question is decidedly, "no."
I'd be interested to hear from those who would say, "yes."

Can't speak for "totally combat free game", never seen an RPG like that either mechanically or at a table. A single combat free session is the closest approximation I've seen.

That said, Brennan Lee Mulligan specifically chose D&D 5e for a narrative and social heavy campaign precisely because D&D 5e has such sparse rules on narrative and social encounters. I've posted a quote and linked an article in the OP.

[Schwann145]

That said, Brennan Lee Mulligan specifically chose D&D 5e for a narrative and social heavy campaign precisely because D&D 5e has such sparse rules on narrative and social encounters. I've posted a quote and linked an article in the OP.

I love Brennan Lee Mulligan, he's one of my favorite people, I'd kill to play at his table...
But he's a professional improv actor/comedian that doesn't need *any* ruleset to roleplay. I have to take his opinion on the topic with various grains of salt.

[Kurald Galain]

I think the answer to the question, "is D&D a good system to use to run a totally combat-free game"
No, it's really not. 5E is at the same time too rules-heavy (with its long lists of classes and feats and spells) and too rules-sparse for dealing with non-combat situations (relying too much on "roll a skill and make something up). Frankly this applies to other versions of D&D as well; I'd say almost every non-D&D system does combat-free better than D&D does. I'd suggest World of Darkness, or maybe Call of Chthulhu (which has combat, but it is so lethal that PCs will try really hard to avoid it!)



What system would you recommend for a powergaming, kick in the door tactical combat-fest? I've heard good things about PF2 in this regard, but I've heard very little in terms of other options.
I'm surprised to hear that; PF2 isn't very tactical, doesn't do kick-in-the-door all that well because of how vulnerable characters are, and doesn't really allow for powergaming since its math is so tight.

I'd say 3E (at low-to-mid level) and 4E are a good fit for kick-in-the-door tactics; or if you want to go outside of D&D, something like HeroQuest or Descent: Journeys In The Dark.

[Vahnavoi]

If you are capable of handcrafting two pillars of the game without the rules, then you can probably do the same for another pillar - in which case, why are you buying the books?

I posit there is no good reason to think that ability for crafting one pillar well leads to the ability to craft any other pillar well. As a corollary, I posit that contemporary D&D is lacking in two-out-of-three pillars because the designers aren't as good at crafting those pillars. As a second corollary, I posit contemporary D&D has most value for people who are sort of bad at crafting a tactical combat game, and least value for people who are good at crafting tactical combat games but are bad at crafting social or exploration-based games.

To criticize your argument from another angle: you are pretty solidly assuming that bad rules cannot have any detrimental effects over having no rules. This is, shall we say, a naive assumption. At minimum, such assumptions should always be examined through empirical cross-examination between systems that have rules for a thing, and systems that do not have rules for a thing.

[Aimeryan]

I posit there is no good reason to think that ability for crafting one pillar well leads to the ability to craft any other pillar well. As a corollary, I posit that contemporary D&D is lacking in two-out-of-three pillars because the designers aren't as good at crafting those pillars. As a second corollary, I posit contemporary D&D has most value for people who are sort of bad at crafting a tactical combat game, and least value for people who are good at crafting tactical combat games but are bad at crafting social or exploration-based games.

To criticize your argument from another angle: you are pretty solidly assuming that bad rules cannot have any detrimental effects over having no rules. This is, shall we say, a naive assumption. At minimum, such assumptions should always be examined through empirical cross-examination between systems that have rules for a thing, and systems that do not have rules for a thing.

On your first paragraph, I would say there is a very good reason - however, I will concede a point by saying that it is entirely possible that you could be better than the professional outfit with the time and resources thereby associated at coming up with rulings than they do at coming up with rules in two of the pillars, and yet fall so completely flat at another pillar that you need the rules from that outfit. I don't think its likely, but it is possible.

That said, perhaps the books could be sold separately with rules for each pillar - in which case you buy the ones you want. They would presumably each be at a lower price than one book that is supposedly doing all three, naturally.

On your second paragraph, bad rules are subjective. If you subjectively feel the rule is bad, then you can objectively ignore it and do your own thing (which presumably you will be able to do since you know the rule is bad). You could even choose to not buy a product again from that source if you feel it is rife with such rules. However, if the rule does not exist in the first place then we have literally no choice but to do our thing, no matter if we desire such a thing, when we paid to not do that. This is not a boon.

[TrueAlphaGamer]

I love Brennan Lee Mulligan, he's one of my favorite people, I'd kill to play at his table...
But he's a professional improv actor/comedian that doesn't need *any* ruleset to roleplay. I have to take his opinion on the topic with various grains of salt.

You don't need to be a master of improvisation or acting to roleplay. You know how to play pretend intuitively. It just requires some knowledge of the overall concept you're trying to imitate, and logic to fill in the rest. Especially in a group, you're not going to be always "on the spot", so there's more than enough time to think about what your character might say or do before they do it. Forum roleplays (play-by-post or chat RP) capitalize on this pretty well.

There's a reason people play TTRPGs instead of just war games or board games. I heard it described somewhere that roleplayers are essentially chasing that high of being fully immersed into their characters, and I think that encapsulates things well. The fun doesn't really come from rolling dice (okay maybe sometimes dice are fun) or using skill checks or analyzing tables or maps - the fun comes from being someone else, someone new, from diving straight into this unique and strange world. A system isn't even required, it just fills in the gaps.

[Skrum]

There's a reason people play TTRPGs instead of just war games or board games. I heard it described somewhere that roleplayers are essentially chasing that high of being fully immersed into their characters, and I think that encapsulates things well. The fun doesn't really come from rolling dice (okay maybe sometimes dice are fun) or using skill checks or analyzing tables or maps - the fun comes from being someone else, someone new, from diving straight into this unique and strange world. A system isn't even required, it just fills in the gaps.

I disagree somewhat. If I was just interested in inhabiting a character, I would be better served by joining an improv group or writing short stories. But that's not all I'm after; I also want to play a game. And that means rules, objectives, and even "winning."

When I think of the best DND has to offer me as a player, I think of these elements:
1) create a character concept
2) build that concept
3) play that character in an immersive world full of believable NPCs and interesting stakes
4) live out the fantasy of the character concept via combat and other challenges
5) possibly win the day, but dying a glorious death can also be great

2, 4, and 5 can't really happen in satisfying ways without rules. I could make up a character concept of The Most Interesting Guy in the World and then make up all kinds of crazy things he's done that show he's The Most Interesting Guy in the World, but that's just sketch comedy. That's not a game.

One can nitpick 5e combat if they choose, but on the whole it's a great system that does A LOT of things right. There's tons of variance, tons of tactics, it can be simple, it can be complex, and there's a way to resolve almost any situation in satisfying ways. For that kind of system to be put along side the social pillar's "make it up and possibly make a single roll," it's just jarring and disappointing.

[Snowbluff]

I'm surprised to hear that; PF2 isn't very tactical, doesn't do kick-in-the-door all that well because of how vulnerable characters are, and doesn't really allow for powergaming since its math is so tight.

I'd say 3E (at low-to-mid level) and 4E are a good fit for kick-in-the-door tactics; or if you want to go outside of D&D, something like HeroQuest or Descent: Journeys In The Dark.

Very much this. PF2 is tactically pretty shallow. It tries to work through what 4e had going on through a PF1 lens, but the result is pretty lacking as mechanics are pulled taut in the two very different direction. I really wish it didn't demand so much effort and attention in character building and then basically discard that work when it came to combat.


Of course, I don't think we should be surprised that people consider it tactical. Compared to 5e it's more obviously or apparently tactical because it spells out the options as discrete actions, rather than relying on default actions and rider type effects. A lot of people who argue the merits of PF2 seem to do so solely from the perspective of 5e, but I think a lot of the points made apply more truthfully and flatteringly to 3.5, 4e, and PF1.

[Sorinth]

What system would you recommend for a powergaming, kick in the door tactical combat-fest? I've heard good things about PF2 in this regard, but I've heard very little in terms of other options.

I agree about DND being the jack of all trades game - as intended, as far as I can tell. It wants to be all things to all people.

I'm far from an expert on the other systems as I've only played a few and not for very long. I'm sure others can provide better recommendations.

[Skrum]

Very much this. PF2 is tactically pretty shallow. It tries to work through what 4e had going on through a PF1 lens, but the result is pretty lacking as mechanics are pulled taut in the two very different direction. I really wish it didn't demand so much effort and attention in character building and then basically discard that work when it came to combat.

I haven't actually played PF2 myself. I actually don't even know anyone who has. It's just little bits and references made to it, I assumed it was the technical, tactical game (compared to 5e).



Of course, I don't think we should be surprised that people consider it tactical. Compared to 5e it's more obviously or apparently tactical because it spells out the options as discrete actions, rather than relying on default actions and rider type effects. A lot of people who argue the merits of PF2 seem to do so solely from the perspective of 5e, but I think a lot of the points made apply more truthfully and flatteringly to 3.5, 4e, and PF1.

In my heart of hearts I wish I was still playing 3e. What a beautiful disaster that game is.

Ideally, 3e's character building options does the fusion dance with 5e's turn structure and action econ and we have the Perfect Game.

[schm0]

Chiming in here to point out that there are indeed mechanics for social and exploration, it's just that most people are unaware, forget they exist, or choose to ignore them. And to be fair, some of these sections are less heavy on the rules and mechanics side, and lean more on the guidance side.

We have social mechanics:


Alignment (PHB 122)
Traits, Flaws, Bonds, and Ideals (PHB 123-4)
Social Interaction Rules (PHB 185-6, DMG 244-6)
Factions and Organizations (DMG 21-22)
Renown and Piety (DMG 22-23)
Intrigue and Influence (DMG 78)
Moral Quandries (DMG 79)
Loyalty (DMG 93)
Contacts and Patrons (DMG 93-4)
Various Downtime Activities (DMG 128-131, XG 125-134)
Roleplaying (DMG 245-6)
Madness (258-9)
Honor and Sanity (DMG 264-5)
Fear and Horror (DMG 266)
Morale (DMG 273)
Rivals (XG 123-5)
Group Patrons (TCE 83-103)
Sidekicks (TCE 142-147)
Parleying with Monsters (148-9)
Fear and Stress (VRGtR 195-6)
Survivors (VRGtR 198-200)


Notably this is the least rules-heavy of the three pillars, and for good reason: social interaction is often fluid and improvisational in nature. Too much structure can be seen as limiting.

(There are more social options found in Treasury of Dragons and Glory of the Giants for dealing specifically with those creatures, having them act as patrons or guidance on how to roleplay them. Similarly, there is setting-specific guidance found for all manner of NPCs, organizations patrons that can be found in books like Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica, Mythic Odyssey of Theros, Strixhaven and adventures like Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. There are likely more I have neglected to include as well.)

We also have exploration mechanics:


Dungeons (DMG p. 99)
Random Dungeons (DMG p. 290)
Wilderness (DMG p. 106)
Settlements (DMG p. 112)
Unusual Environments (DMG p. 116)
Underwater (DMG p. 116)
The Sea (DMG p. 117)
The Sky (DMG p. 119)
Airborne and Waterborne Vehicles (DMG p. 119)
Airship (example) (SKT p.132)
Airship Travel (SKT p.68)
Underdark Travel (OotA p. 18-21)

Travel Pace
Encounter Setup
Noticing Threats
Navigating
Mapping
Foraging
Time-Keeping
Faerzress

Of Ships and the Sea (GoS p. 186-228)

Ships
Officers and Crew
Superior Ship Upgrades
Ships in Combat
Travel at Sea
Hazards
Crew Conflicts
Fire
Fog
Infestation
Storm
Ocean Environs
Mysterious Islands
Underwater Locations

Exploration (DMG p. 242)

Using a Map
Special Travel Pace
Visibility Outdoors
Noticing Other Creatures
Tracking

Activity While Traveling (PHB p. 182)

Marching Order
Stealth
Noticing Threats
Other Activities

Adventuring Gear (PHB p. 148)
Tools (PHB p. 154)
Tool Components, Skills and Special Uses (XG p. 79-85)
Mounts and Vehicles (PHB p. 155)
Time (PHB p. 181)
Movement (PHB p. 181)
Falling/Suffocating (PHB p. 183)
Falling (XG p. 77)
Vision and Light (PHB p. 183)
Food and Water (PHB p. 185)
Resting (PHB p. 186)
Sleep (XG p. 77-8)

Waking Someone
Sleeping in Armor
Going Without a Long Rest

Tying Knots (XG p. 78)
Creating Encounters (DMG p. 81)
Urban Encounters (DMG p. 114)
Encounter Building (XG p. 88)
Random Encounters (DMG p. 85)
Mapping a Dungeon (DMG p. 102)
Mapping a Wilderness (DMG p.108)
Wilderness Features (DMG p. 108)
Wilderness Survival (DMG p. 109)
Weather (DMG p. 109)
Wilderness Hazards (DMG p. 110)
Foraging (DMG p. 111)

Foraging DCs
Food and Water Needs

Becoming Lost (DMG p. 111)
Traps (DMG p. 120)
Traps Revisited (XG p. 113-23)



(I have omitted all the various encounter tables found in various source books and adventures, as well, which easily number in the dozens. There are additional mechanics that can be found in various adventures that are setting specific, such as exploring Chult in Tomb of Annihilation, or exploring the Nine Hells in Descent into Avernus, which could arguably be adapted to any campaign.)

The bottom line is that rules, mechanics and guidance for these pillars do exist. Whether you choose to use them/care to enjoy them or not is another matter altogether.

I say pick and choose as you see fit, create or alter what you feel is lacking, but don't lament their absence.

[Pex]

You don't need to be a master of improvisation or acting to roleplay. You know how to play pretend intuitively. It just requires some knowledge of the overall concept you're trying to imitate, and logic to fill in the rest. Especially in a group, you're not going to be always "on the spot", so there's more than enough time to think about what your character might say or do before they do it. Forum roleplays (play-by-post or chat RP) capitalize on this pretty well.

There's a reason people play TTRPGs instead of just war games or board games. I heard it described somewhere that roleplayers are essentially chasing that high of being fully immersed into their characters, and I think that encapsulates things well. The fun doesn't really come from rolling dice (okay maybe sometimes dice are fun) or using skill checks or analyzing tables or maps - the fun comes from being someone else, someone new, from diving straight into this unique and strange world. A system isn't even required, it just fills in the gaps.

No. Everything is roleplaying. The talky talky, the looky looky, and the stabby stabby. Individual players may prefer one over the others. Some people enjoying talking in character, saying "I" instead of character name, with or without speaking in a different accent, engaging in conversations with NPCs. Other people want to see what's over the next hill. They want to find out more about the game world. They care about geography, history, and politics. Still more want to play glorified chess. They're excited about terrain features, tactical placement of miniatures, line of site, the mathematics of dice and probabilities.

If everyone in the gaming group prefers the same thing, great. That game can emphasize that thing. However, the more usual case is you get a mix. Some players like two of three. Some players like all three. Different players can prefer a different one thing. The successful game will encompass all three, not necessarily in one session. BBEG combats tend to be the whole session. The aftermath next session tend to be all social interaction. Exploration sessions are when you arrive in a new area, maybe a skirmish fight with mooks. When most sessions have all three all players are happy.

[Skrum]

Chiming in here to point out that there are indeed mechanics for social and exploration, it's just that most people are unaware, forget they exist, or choose to ignore them. And to be fair, some of these sections are less heavy on the rules and mechanics side, and lean more on the guidance side.

We have social mechanics:


Alignment (PHB 122)
Traits, Flaws, Bonds, and Ideals (PHB 123-4)
Social Interaction Rules (PHB 185-6, DMG 244-6)
Factions and Organizations (DMG 21-22)
Renown and Piety (DMG 22-23)
Intrigue and Influence (DMG 78)
Moral Quandries (DMG 79)
Loyalty (DMG 93)
Contacts and Patrons (DMG 93-4)
Various Downtime Activities (DMG 128-131, XG 125-134)
Roleplaying (DMG 245-6)
Madness (258-9)
Honor and Sanity (DMG 264-5)
Fear and Horror (DMG 266)
Morale (DMG 273)
Rivals (XG 123-5)
Group Patrons (TCE 83-103)
Sidekicks (TCE 142-147)
Parleying with Monsters (148-9)
Fear and Stress (VRGtR 195-6)
Survivors (VRGtR 198-200)


Notably this is the least rules-heavy of the three pillars, and for good reason: social interaction is often fluid and improvisational in nature. Too much structure can be seen as limiting.

(There are more social options found in Treasury of Dragons and Glory of the Giants for dealing specifically with those creatures, having them act as patrons or guidance on how to roleplay them. Similarly, there is setting-specific guidance found for all manner of NPCs, organizations patrons that can be found in books like Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica, Mythic Odyssey of Theros, Strixhaven and adventures like Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. There are likely more I have neglected to include as well.)

We also have exploration mechanics:


Dungeons (DMG p. 99)
Random Dungeons (DMG p. 290)
Wilderness (DMG p. 106)
Settlements (DMG p. 112)
Unusual Environments (DMG p. 116)
Underwater (DMG p. 116)
The Sea (DMG p. 117)
The Sky (DMG p. 119)
Airborne and Waterborne Vehicles (DMG p. 119)
Airship (example) (SKT p.132)
Airship Travel (SKT p.68)
Underdark Travel (OotA p. 18-21)

Travel Pace
Encounter Setup
Noticing Threats
Navigating
Mapping
Foraging
Time-Keeping
Faerzress

Of Ships and the Sea (GoS p. 186-228)

Ships
Officers and Crew
Superior Ship Upgrades
Ships in Combat
Travel at Sea
Hazards
Crew Conflicts
Fire
Fog
Infestation
Storm
Ocean Environs
Mysterious Islands
Underwater Locations

Exploration (DMG p. 242)

Using a Map
Special Travel Pace
Visibility Outdoors
Noticing Other Creatures
Tracking

Activity While Traveling (PHB p. 182)

Marching Order
Stealth
Noticing Threats
Other Activities

Adventuring Gear (PHB p. 148)
Tools (PHB p. 154)
Tool Components, Skills and Special Uses (XG p. 79-85)
Mounts and Vehicles (PHB p. 155)
Time (PHB p. 181)
Movement (PHB p. 181)
Falling/Suffocating (PHB p. 183)
Falling (XG p. 77)
Vision and Light (PHB p. 183)
Food and Water (PHB p. 185)
Resting (PHB p. 186)
Sleep (XG p. 77-8)

Waking Someone
Sleeping in Armor
Going Without a Long Rest

Tying Knots (XG p. 78)
Creating Encounters (DMG p. 81)
Urban Encounters (DMG p. 114)
Encounter Building (XG p. 88)
Random Encounters (DMG p. 85)
Mapping a Dungeon (DMG p. 102)
Mapping a Wilderness (DMG p.108)
Wilderness Features (DMG p. 108)
Wilderness Survival (DMG p. 109)
Weather (DMG p. 109)
Wilderness Hazards (DMG p. 110)
Foraging (DMG p. 111)

Foraging DCs
Food and Water Needs

Becoming Lost (DMG p. 111)
Traps (DMG p. 120)
Traps Revisited (XG p. 113-23)



(I have omitted all the various encounter tables found in various source books and adventures, as well, which easily number in the dozens. There are additional mechanics that can be found in various adventures that are setting specific, such as exploring Chult in Tomb of Annihilation, or exploring the Nine Hells in Descent into Avernus, which could arguably be adapted to any campaign.)

The bottom line is that rules, mechanics and guidance for these pillars do exist. Whether you choose to use them/care to enjoy them or not is another matter altogether.

I say pick and choose as you see fit, create or alter what you feel is lacking, but don't lament their absence.

Yeah, I'm gonna pick on it anyway. Badly presented rules are almost as bad as none; the user is still left piecing things together and filling in a lot of blanks.

Take this for instance, from the intro paragraph on ability checks -
The DM calls for an ability check when a character or monster attempts an action (other than an attack) that has a chance of failure. When the outcome is uncertain, the dice determine the results.

A reoccurring complaint about ability checks is the influence the d20 has on the roll. While a 20 in a stat is highly coveted and implies extreme levels of talent, gifts, whatever, the associated +5 isn't that much better than +0 or +1, when it comes to likelihood of success. This leads to weird outcomes where a druid doesn't know relatively basic information about local wildlife, or a rogue fails a stealth check while the armored paladin somehow slips by.

Well, one could argue that the system's answer for this is contained in that first paragraph: The DM calls for an ability check when a character or monster attempts an action (other than an attack) that has a chance of failure. Maybe the implication is the druid shouldn't even be asked to make a roll at all. Maybe the slim chance that the paladin can succeed (despite their armor and presumed lack of stealth training) implies that the highly skilled rogue shouldn't even roll. But we don't know! Because while there's that two sentence description of what ability checks are and when to use them, there's no examples, no guidance, and no further explanation on what it means.

This largely defines 5e's approach to skills and ability checks (and by extension exploration and social interactions). Here's an absolutely bare-bones d20 + 1-2 modifiers resolution system, and here's a list of vague, incomplete ideas about ways to use that roll...spread across a ton of pages and books, in no particular order.

If this many players are missing that these rules exist...it's not the players who are at fault.

[Mastikator]

Yeah, I'm gonna pick on it anyway. Badly presented rules are almost as bad as none; the user is still left piecing things together and filling in a lot of blanks.

Take this for instance, from the intro paragraph on ability checks -
The DM calls for an ability check when a character or monster attempts an action (other than an attack) that has a chance of failure. When the outcome is uncertain, the dice determine the results.

A reoccurring complaint about ability checks is the influence the d20 has on the roll. While a 20 in a stat is highly coveted and implies extreme levels of talent, gifts, whatever, the associated +5 isn't that much better than +0 or +1, when it comes to likelihood of success. This leads to weird outcomes where a druid doesn't know relatively basic information about local wildlife, or a rogue fails a stealth check while the armored paladin somehow slips by.

Well, one could argue that the system's answer for this is contained in that first paragraph: The DM calls for an ability check when a character or monster attempts an action (other than an attack) that has a chance of failure. Maybe the implication is the druid shouldn't even be asked to make a roll at all. Maybe the slim chance that the paladin can succeed (despite their armor and presumed lack of stealth training) implies that the highly skilled rogue shouldn't even roll. But we don't know! Because while there's that two sentence description of what ability checks are and when to use them, there's no examples, no guidance, and no further explanation on what it means.

This largely defines 5e's approach to skills and ability checks (and by extension exploration and social interactions). Here's an absolutely bare-bones d20 + 1-2 modifiers resolution system, and here's a list of vague, incomplete ideas about ways to use that roll...spread across a ton of pages and books, in no particular order.

If this many players are missing that these rules exist...it's not the players who are at fault.

Rolling a d20 is not an exploration or social encounter rule.

Here's an actual exploration rule: heavy snowfall imposes disadvantage on wisdom (perception) checks that rely on sight. Is that a bad rule? Do you just not like rolling dice to determine outcomes?

Here's another exploration rule: you can forage for food and water if you travel at a slow or medium pace, you need to make a wisdom (survival) check. The DC depends on the scarcity. Is that a bad rule?

I suspect (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that what you want is levers to pull as far as exploration is concerned. Gamified rules that are within the ballpark of how combat works. The problem here is for that to be possible the environment needs to be as stated out as the monster you fight. Do we really need 5 different statblocks for forests, jungles, swamps, marshlands, bogs, plains, grasslands, deserts, tundra, boreal forests, mountains, hills, cliffs, shores, beaches, etc etc etc, each? We have several books for monsters, do we really want a book for terrain exploration? Or is it enough that a module contains the information about the terrain in the module?

If you want that for social encounters then I suggest you look at Burning Wheel and discover why it's a bad idea. A rock paper scissor minigame for talking to people? Oh god please no.

[Skrum]

Rolling a d20 is not an exploration or social encounter rule.

Here's an actual exploration rule: heavy snowfall imposes disadvantage on wisdom (perception) checks that rely on sight. Is that a bad rule? Do you just not like rolling dice to determine outcomes?

Here's another exploration rule: you can forage for food and water if you travel at a slow or medium pace, you need to make a wisdom (survival) check. The DC depends on the scarcity. Is that a bad rule?

I suspect (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that what you want is levers to pull as far as exploration is concerned. Gamified rules that are within the ballpark of how combat works. The problem here is for that to be possible the environment needs to be as stated out as the monster you fight. Do we really need 5 different statblocks for forests, jungles, swamps, marshlands, bogs, plains, grasslands, deserts, tundra, boreal forests, mountains, hills, cliffs, shores, beaches, etc etc etc, each? We have several books for monsters, do we really want a book for terrain exploration? Or is it enough that a module contains the information about the terrain in the module?

If you want that for social encounters then I suggest you look at Burning Wheel and discover why it's a bad idea. A rock paper scissor minigame for talking to people? Oh god please no.

I've run several hexcrawl-style games, which take place on a hexmap with each hex representing a few square miles of wilderness. I made up the following rules (for context, each of these games centered around the players following a trail of somesort).

1) Each day, the players may make 2 travel rolls, with each roll moving the party one hex. This takes 2 forms
1) a) following the trail. If the characters are aware of the trail, they may follow it to the adjacent hex with a Survival roll vs DC 9 + 1d6. Success, you the party moves to the adjacent hex and keeps the trail
1) b) cardinal direction. The party may pick a direction and move to the adjacent hex by making a Survival roll vs DC 12. Using this method moves the party, but they must re-find the trail

Failing the Survival roll for navigation cause the party to move to a random adjacent hex and lose the trail

The party may opt to make a 3rd navigation roll, but doing so incurs a DC 10 Constitution check or everyone gains a level of exhaustion

Many hexes have encounters in them of one sort or another. If the party entered a hex intentionally (that is, succeeded on their Survival roll to get there), they will have forewarning of the encounter and may opt to immediately navigate out of the hex to avoid the encounter. If they wandered into the hex, they do not get a chance to avoid the encounter.

Once per day per hex, the party may search for the trial by making a Survival, Perception, or Investigation check vs DC 9 + 1d6. Failure may be because they rolled too low or because the hex does not contain the trail (I do not specify which).

2) At the end of each day (after the party has made 2 travel rolls and an optional 3rd), they must look for shelter. This may be done by making a Survival, Perception, or Investigation check vs DC 10+1d6. Succeed, and the party finds a suitable encampment and may short rest. Fail, and the party is exposed to the elements, taking 5d8 damage distributed as they want and do no get a rest.

---------

This is the kind of rules I wish the game had more of. Yes there's disparate list of modifiers, conditions, and special circumstances (spread across many locations I might add). But there's no core framework for what wilderness travel looks like. "Make a survival check" is not a framework. Some absolutely basic questions like

- DC's for navigating various types of terrain (like, lush forest = DC 8. Dense jungle = DC 17. Artic tundra = DC 15. Or, just split it up by difficulty - easy terrain = 5, moderate = 8, hard = 11, very hard = 14. Something!!)
- Getting lost
- Getting unlost
- Finding food (with a similar list of DCs like navigation does)

[schm0]

But we don't know! Because while there's that two sentence description of what ability checks are and when to use them, there's no examples, no guidance, and no further explanation on what it means.

I'm not quite sure I'm reading this correctly. You don't actually expect the game to provide a list of infinite, potentially contextual answers for the DM to reference, do you? That seems like an unfair expectation, to say the least.

The steps of the game are quite clear: the DM describes the environment, the players describe what they want to do, and the DM narrates the results of those actions (sometimes calling for a roll). Those outcomes are entirely circumstantial and, in many cases, entirely improvised. Regardless, the character either succeeds or fails at the attempted action. How they do so is up to the DM and the context of the situation.

To expect the rules to provide the DM with the answer of "how" seems entirely impractical and restrictive.


....here's a list of vague, incomplete ideas about ways to use that roll...spread across a ton of pages and books, in no particular order.

If this many players are missing that these rules exist...it's not the players who are at fault.


While I agree better organization would be helpful (and is a stated design goal of the 1D&D PHB/DMG), to say that there are no mechanics is unfair. That was the point of my post.


But there's no core framework for what wilderness travel looks like. "Make a survival check" is not a framework. Some absolutely basic questions like

- DC's for navigating various types of terrain (like, lush forest = DC 8. Dense jungle = DC 17. Artic tundra = DC 15. Or, just split it up by difficulty - easy terrain = 5, moderate = 8, hard = 11, very hard = 14. Something!!)
- Getting lost
- Getting unlost
- Finding food (with a similar list of DCs like navigation does)

There are more robust rules for wilderness travel, but they were released in the form of the Into the Wild UA (https://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/UA_IntoTheWild.pdf), and later as part of an official ruleset in the wilderness kit (https://dnd.wizards.com/products/wilderness-kit).

There are also bare-bones rules and guidelines for running hexcrawls in the DMG (on page 14, and again on page 108 and 242) and within adventures that contain an actual hex crawl (see Tomb of Annihilation, page 38.)

[Xervous]

That whole stove analogy is a cute little setup for the false dichotomy. 5e is not unavoidably a game of tactical combat, nor is it unavoidably a game of narrative structures. The detailed answer is that 5e is a SpongeBob imagination box that puts in only so much effort as to kindle nostalgia without alienating potential customers by defining things too rigidly. Its design reflects an awareness of D&D’s value as the market leader, the name often being synonymous with TTRPG for many people. It promises to be something for everyone, and its main strength is in its ubiquity.

Gloomhaven is unavoidably a game of tactical combat, FATE and burning wheel are unavoidably games built on narrative drives. Ten sessions of no combat in D&D easily remains D&D that’s progressing all fine and happy. Ten sessions of no narrative queries being forced or addressed also sees D&D remaining D&D.

[NichG]

The problem here is for that to be possible the environment needs to be as stated out as the monster you fight. Do we really need 5 different statblocks for forests, jungles, swamps, marshlands, bogs, plains, grasslands, deserts, tundra, boreal forests, mountains, hills, cliffs, shores, beaches, etc etc etc, each? We have several books for monsters, do we really want a book for terrain exploration? Or is it enough that a module contains the information about the terrain in the module?


This just seems to be an odd thing to resist, like, why is it better to have 5 books of monsters and no books describing things like exotic fantasy and sci-fi environments, versus 4 books of monsters and a book of environments?

I mean like, IRL I hike and snowshoe as a hobby. And yeah every time I go out the door there are unknowns, but I roughly know that I can hike 8 miles on flat ground without it being a problem at all, and that it will take me about 3-4 hours to do so, and that if I'm going beyond that point I'll start to slow down significantly and get fatigued. And if I'm doing the same thing with hills no steeper than 300 ft vertical per mile, it'll be more like 4-5 hours and I'll be feeling it after 4 miles and need to take breaks. And if I'm snowshoeing, its twice as exhausting. And if I'm going in terrain I should have snowshoes for but I'm just going in boots, make that four times as exhausting. So like, in the middle of the winter if there's some hike to a hotspring and back that's an 8 mile round trip in the mountains with the possibility of deep snow, I'm going to look at that and say 'no, that's not a reasonable thing for me to try to execute'. And being able to make that judgment is a huge part of actually being able to tackle longer hikes that push the boundary without getting myself injured or killed. It's not like someone told me 'this is the math of these things' - I discovered that by measuring my own condition over a few dozen hikes - but for a character in a fantasy world who does this kind of thing for a living, surely they'd know their limits and abilities to at least the same degree as someone who hikes once a month as a hobby.

Especially if they're going to do some bigger venture, like say the equivalent of a Lewis and Clarke expedition, or an expedition to the south pole, or heck even 'I'm going to walk the Pacific Crest Trail' or something where you need to synchronize mountains and deserts with the seasons so you're not trying to make it past Mt. Adams in the winter or trying to cross a desert in California in the summer.

That sort of rule of thumb obviously doesn't cover if, e.g., there happens to be a landslide or if the trail conditions are different than I expected or whatever. But its a context in which those sorts of deviations can be interpreted to make and adjust plans and think strategically.

Why is having those sorts of things be predictable a bad thing? Why is having examples of those sorts of factors less important than knowing the stats of a Flumph?

[Vahnavoi]

On your second paragraph, bad rules are subjective. If you subjectively feel the rule is bad, then you can objectively ignore it and do your own thing (which presumably you will be able to do since you know the rule is bad). You could even choose to not buy a product again from that source if you feel it is rife with such rules. However, if the rule does not exist in the first place then we have literally no choice but to do our thing, no matter if we desire such a thing, when we paid to not do that. This is not a boon.

You are looking at this from quite a narrow, individualist viewpoint.

In actual reality, game rules are subject to logical and mathematical scrutiny. Even if you, for some reason, want to maintain that failure on logical-mathematical grounds is not "objective", it nonetheless stands that vast groups of people are capable of following the same methods to arrive at the same subjective conclusions. But arriving at such conclusions isn't necessarily trivial - it is not, in fact, safe to presume anyone will know a rule is bad, before playing with those rules. The simple corollary is that most of the initial players will learn a rule is bad through experiencing bad effects.

What kind of bad effects? Well, tabletop games aren't typically a physical exercise, so injuries are rare. Social and creative difficulties, on the other hand, are common: arguments over ambiguous rules, time wasted on convoluted mechanics, lost interest because the game does not live up to its narrative promises, etc.. These have undesireable second order effects, most common of these combining negativity bias (the tendency of people to remember and give weight to perceived bad experiences over perceived good ones) with basic inductive logic to arrive at an unfortunate conclusion: "all past instances of X in a game have been bad, therefore, X is bad for gaming". It can be something as simple as mathematically shoddy psionics rules souring the idea of psionics for an entire generation of players, which arguably really did happen in D&D history. The ramifications of bad rules are not limited to "people will ignore these rules or this game". It can be as strong as "people will ignore any game with rules on this topic" or "people will actively ignore developing better rules for this topic out of the belief that it can't be done".

If the above is too obscure, consider: a car sold with no tires is safer than a car sold with defective tires. In the former case, you can see what is missing and can act accordingly. In the latter case, you might not realize anything is amiss before the thing literally blows on your face. So be careful with this odd line of reasoning "because I paid to have a thing, therefore, any thing isbbetter than no thing". It wouldn't be wise to apply it to physical devices, it doesn't become wise in context of games even if physical injury isn't on the table.

[Sorinth]

I've run several hexcrawl-style games, which take place on a hexmap with each hex representing a few square miles of wilderness. I made up the following rules (for context, each of these games centered around the players following a trail of somesort).

1) Each day, the players may make 2 travel rolls, with each roll moving the party one hex. This takes 2 forms
1) a) following the trail. If the characters are aware of the trail, they may follow it to the adjacent hex with a Survival roll vs DC 9 + 1d6. Success, you the party moves to the adjacent hex and keeps the trail
1) b) cardinal direction. The party may pick a direction and move to the adjacent hex by making a Survival roll vs DC 12. Using this method moves the party, but they must re-find the trail

Failing the Survival roll for navigation cause the party to move to a random adjacent hex and lose the trail

The party may opt to make a 3rd navigation roll, but doing so incurs a DC 10 Constitution check or everyone gains a level of exhaustion

Many hexes have encounters in them of one sort or another. If the party entered a hex intentionally (that is, succeeded on their Survival roll to get there), they will have forewarning of the encounter and may opt to immediately navigate out of the hex to avoid the encounter. If they wandered into the hex, they do not get a chance to avoid the encounter.

Once per day per hex, the party may search for the trial by making a Survival, Perception, or Investigation check vs DC 9 + 1d6. Failure may be because they rolled too low or because the hex does not contain the trail (I do not specify which).

2) At the end of each day (after the party has made 2 travel rolls and an optional 3rd), they must look for shelter. This may be done by making a Survival, Perception, or Investigation check vs DC 10+1d6. Succeed, and the party finds a suitable encampment and may short rest. Fail, and the party is exposed to the elements, taking 5d8 damage distributed as they want and do no get a rest.

---------

This is the kind of rules I wish the game had more of. Yes there's disparate list of modifiers, conditions, and special circumstances (spread across many locations I might add). But there's no core framework for what wilderness travel looks like. "Make a survival check" is not a framework. Some absolutely basic questions like

- DC's for navigating various types of terrain (like, lush forest = DC 8. Dense jungle = DC 17. Artic tundra = DC 15. Or, just split it up by difficulty - easy terrain = 5, moderate = 8, hard = 11, very hard = 14. Something!!)
- Getting lost
- Getting unlost
- Finding food (with a similar list of DCs like navigation does)

I don't understand, they have all those things in the DMG Foraging for Food with a DC list is on page 111, becoming lost and how to resolve it is on page 111-112, navigation DC table is on page 112. There's even a bunch of stuff about creating a hex map starting on page 14 and which gets referenced in travel pace sections even though the default assumption is theatre of the mind.

[Schwann145]

Do we really need 5 different statblocks for forests, jungles, swamps, marshlands, bogs, plains, grasslands, deserts, tundra, boreal forests, mountains, hills, cliffs, shores, beaches, etc etc etc, each? We have several books for monsters, do we really want a book for terrain exploration? Or is it enough that a module contains the information about the terrain in the module?
I, for one, would love to see something like that. There's a reason that terrain tends to get overlooked by the vast majority of games, and that's because there is nothing to interact with.
It's boring and overlooked gameplay because it's overlooked game design.
Give it some teeth, some handles and levers to pull, and it might just stop being so boring!


If you want that for social encounters then I suggest you look at Burning Wheel and discover why it's a bad idea. A rock paper scissor minigame for talking to people? Oh god please no.
I'm a particular fan of both the Green Ronin Song of Ice and Fire social rules, and the FFG Legend of the Five Rings social rules. Not all social rules are poorly designed or bad to use.

[Skrum]

I don't understand, they have all those things in the DMG Foraging for Food with a DC list is on page 111, becoming lost and how to resolve it is on page 111-112, navigation DC table is on page 112. There's even a bunch of stuff about creating a hex map starting on page 14 and which gets referenced in travel pace sections even though the default assumption is theatre of the mind.

I suppose. It would be churlish of me to continue to bang the same drum, but idk, these rules are pretty underwhelming. Maybe I don't know exactly what would satisfy, but this ain't it.

[Aimeryan]

What kind of bad effects? Well, tabletop games aren't typically a physical exercise, so injuries are rare. Social and creative difficulties, on the other hand, are common: arguments over ambiguous rules, time wasted on convoluted mechanics, lost interest because the game does not live up to its narrative promises, etc...

Rules can be badly presented, schu as sthi entsnece. If you find that the writing is poorly constructed, and therefore the rules are difficult to parse and use, then you should probably avoid the product. What you shouldn't do is demand the sentences be removed or never written for everyone. Again, if you find any rules problematic to understand, for whatever reason, just ignore them and do your own thing* - which is literally what you would do without the rule being written. It would be like you got what you wanted. For everyone else, they can use the rule.

*Feel free to provide feedback to the developers when possible in order to prompt them to clear up the wording, of course.

[Kane0]

So would open ocean count as clear terrain? I assume you'd be using navigators tools instead of the usual survival checks to stay on-course, but there isnt much food to be gathered besides the odd chance to do some fishing. Besides getting blown off course I'd wager ship travel would be the counting-arrows problem writ large with the odd random encounter thrown in.

[Blatant Beast]

I suppose. It would be churlish of me to continue to bang the same drum, but idk, these rules are pretty underwhelming. Maybe I don't know exactly what would satisfy, but this ain't it.

This would only strike me as churlish if you were to continue to deny that Exploration and Social rules did not exist, especially after schm0’s excellent Post #53.

Acknowledging that the game indeed does have Exploration and Social rules, but you find those rules lacking, that is just offering a churl-free opinion. 😀

[NichG]

So would open ocean count as clear terrain? I assume you'd be using navigators tools instead of the usual survival checks to stay on-course, but there isnt much food to be gathered besides the odd chance to do some fishing. Besides getting blown off course I'd wager ship travel would be the counting-arrows problem writ large with the odd random encounter thrown in.

Writing rules from scratch for something like ship travel in a semi-realistic age of discovery setting (e.g. no motors or ships powered primarily by magic), I'd probably have things be on a 2-week or even monthly interval on open ocean, with the major hazards being weather events and possibly stuff based on condition bands at different latitudes. E.g. each month there might be a weather event, a possibility of a random encounter of some kind, a quick evaluation of 'what's going on with the crew?' (mostly nothing, unless morale is in a danger zone) and 'what's going on with the ships?' (possible equipment breakages/etc), and a general 'okay, mark off a month of supplies and adjust morale modulo consequences and decisions involved with the previous things'. Navigation would mostly be about whether you can find favorable winds or currents without going too far out of your way, with 'are you on-course?' being mostly things that would come up due to specific weather results (persistent fogs, very violent storms).

Close to shore, I'd perhaps use a 1 week interval, with extreme weather events having their odds reduced by 1/4 per roll (so equivalent overall probability) but other kinds of random encounters becoming significantly more common. Navigation would also be more relevant there especially if you're not traversing a known route but you're specifically looking for things - signs of civilization, major rivers, places with resources, whatever.

So like, Columbus' first voyage, the jaunt to the Canary islands would be one 'round', the entire Atlantic crossing would also be say two 'rounds', then local exploration (from October to January) would be like 12 'rounds', and then finally something like a 2-4 round return home.

[Merlecory]

I suppose. It would be churlish of me to continue to bang the same drum, but idk, these rules are pretty underwhelming. Maybe I don't know exactly what would satisfy, but this ain't it.

Just bring someone with an outlander background, and avoid the scavanging rules entirely. Or a ranger. Or a Druid with goodberry. Or a 5th level cleric. Really, what I am trying to say is, who's hungry?

More seriously, the rules are discordant and scattered. Looking through these, I get the sense that several people wrote these rules, mostly seperatly of each other, with no clear shared vision.

Actually looking at the rules here, Page 111 of the DMG will give you some DCs for foraging, how much food you find, and how much creatures need. You'll need to go to PHB 185, which will also tell you how much you need to eat, to find out that 3+CON mod days without food causes a level of exhaustion.

There's a hunter's trap in the PHB, though that doesn't have rules related to helping a hunter, you know, trap food. Same with the fishing tackle. There are rations that don't expire though!

DMG 111 has rules for navigation, although this is probably much easier than the designer may have intended. PHB 183 says that any character can map the path they have taken, and it explicitly says that no ability check is required. You'll have to look at XGtE 80 to see that cartographer's tools let you make a map.

There are no rules for finding/making shelter outdoors that I can find, so roughing it is as good a night's sleep as a bed in your own home.

I also don't see anything about setting up any sort of hunting camp, although I kind of hope that the Bastion system coming in 5.5 might be useable in this way.

[Skrum]

This would only strike me as churlish if you, were to continue to deny that Exploration and Social rules did not exist, especially after schm0’s excellent Post #53.

Acknowledging that the game indeed does have Exploration and Social rules, but you find those rules lacking, that is just offering a churl-free opinion. 😀

The existing rules just really remind me of the "we have that home" meme. I'm just entirely unimpressed, and unimpressed generally with how light the rules for skills are.

But yes, they exist. Apparently lol.

And also yes, Schm0's post was excellent. Impressive bit of cataloguing

[Pex]

I've run several hexcrawl-style games, which take place on a hexmap with each hex representing a few square miles of wilderness. I made up the following rules (for context, each of these games centered around the players following a trail of somesort).

1) Each day, the players may make 2 travel rolls, with each roll moving the party one hex. This takes 2 forms
1) a) following the trail. If the characters are aware of the trail, they may follow it to the adjacent hex with a Survival roll vs DC 9 + 1d6. Success, you the party moves to the adjacent hex and keeps the trail
1) b) cardinal direction. The party may pick a direction and move to the adjacent hex by making a Survival roll vs DC 12. Using this method moves the party, but they must re-find the trail

Failing the Survival roll for navigation cause the party to move to a random adjacent hex and lose the trail

The party may opt to make a 3rd navigation roll, but doing so incurs a DC 10 Constitution check or everyone gains a level of exhaustion

Many hexes have encounters in them of one sort or another. If the party entered a hex intentionally (that is, succeeded on their Survival roll to get there), they will have forewarning of the encounter and may opt to immediately navigate out of the hex to avoid the encounter. If they wandered into the hex, they do not get a chance to avoid the encounter.

Once per day per hex, the party may search for the trial by making a Survival, Perception, or Investigation check vs DC 9 + 1d6. Failure may be because they rolled too low or because the hex does not contain the trail (I do not specify which).

2) At the end of each day (after the party has made 2 travel rolls and an optional 3rd), they must look for shelter. This may be done by making a Survival, Perception, or Investigation check vs DC 10+1d6. Succeed, and the party finds a suitable encampment and may short rest. Fail, and the party is exposed to the elements, taking 5d8 damage distributed as they want and do no get a rest.

---------

This is the kind of rules I wish the game had more of. Yes there's disparate list of modifiers, conditions, and special circumstances (spread across many locations I might add). But there's no core framework for what wilderness travel looks like. "Make a survival check" is not a framework. Some absolutely basic questions like

- DC's for navigating various types of terrain (like, lush forest = DC 8. Dense jungle = DC 17. Artic tundra = DC 15. Or, just split it up by difficulty - easy terrain = 5, moderate = 8, hard = 11, very hard = 14. Something!!)
- Getting lost
- Getting unlost
- Finding food (with a similar list of DCs like navigation does)

Careful. Asking for defined DCs of things is considered anathema by some. They enjoy making everything up to mold the game world in their image. Anyone who disagrees with their interpretation of how something works is playing the game wrong. Any DM who needs defined rules should instead get good. I've been told this many times. Lack of consistency is a wonderful feature in their eyes, not a frustrating bug.

Many argue the rules do give guidance - DC 5 for very easy, 10 for easy, 15 of medium etc. Of course that is not enough because there is no guidance on what makes something easy or hard. What is easy for one DM is hard for another, and they think that's hunky dory or the DM who disagrees with their interpretation of the difficulty of a thing is playing the game wrong, depending on the person. In the hypocritical view, they think it's horrendous for two trees in different campaigns should have the same climb DC by a given example in a climb table but have no issue with all non-magical plate mail in every campaign everywhere is AC 18.

To 5E's credit there are defined DCs for things. The problem is they're not in a conveniently located place and easily overlooked in the DMG - NPC reactions, object AC hardness and hit points, sample DCs for traps, tracking DC based on surface. DCs for tool use are in a separate splat book. Except perhaps for traps I doubt the casual DM even knows the others exist and make stuff up anyway. As a player I've had occasions to tell the DM there are rules for object hardness and tracking as their relevance came up in games.

I remember way back when before Xanathar was published people were adamantly opposed to the idea of a given formula to identify a spell being cast. It was an infringement on DM power. With Xanathar now an official DC formula exists, DC = 10 + spell level which was the same thing proposed as a house rule at the time people vehemently refused to accept as worthy of consideration. Xanathar made it a Reaction to avoid Counterspell abuse. Now the rule exists. DMs have not lost their adjudication powers.

[TrueAlphaGamer]

I disagree somewhat. If I was just interested in inhabiting a character, I would be better served by joining an improv group or writing short stories. But that's not all I'm after; I also want to play a game. And that means rules, objectives, and even "winning."

When I think of the best DND has to offer me as a player, I think of these elements:
1) create a character concept
2) build that concept
3) play that character in an immersive world full of believable NPCs and interesting stakes
4) live out the fantasy of the character concept via combat and other challenges
5) possibly win the day, but dying a glorious death can also be great

2, 4, and 5 can't really happen in satisfying ways without rules. I could make up a character concept of The Most Interesting Guy in the World and then make up all kinds of crazy things he's done that show he's The Most Interesting Guy in the World, but that's just sketch comedy. That's not a game.

That's why I said that the system fills in the gaps. You don't need rules for any of that, but we ascribe rules to create an abstraction of certain things to make it easier or faster or more dramatic or more random or whatever else. Without a system the rules just become reason, intuition, and good manners. The objective is the story, whatever that is. If you genuinely cannot conceptualize a fulfilling and interesting character who does novel and heroic things without being boxed in by a set of rules then I don't know what to say - maybe just that I feel bad for you.


No. Everything is roleplaying. The talky talky, the looky looky, and the stabby stabby. Individual players may prefer one over the others. Some people enjoying talking in character, saying "I" instead of character name, with or without speaking in a different accent, engaging in conversations with NPCs. Other people want to see what's over the next hill. They want to find out more about the game world. They care about geography, history, and politics. Still more want to play glorified chess. They're excited about terrain features, tactical placement of miniatures, line of site, the mathematics of dice and probabilities.

I think it's a bit inefficient to play a ttrpg if you desire a war game, or vice versa. My point is more that the mechanics are secondary to the experience of being a character.

[Vahnavoi]

Rules can be badly presented, schu as sthi entsnece. If you find that the writing is poorly constructed, and therefore the rules are difficult to parse and use, then you should probably avoid the product. What you shouldn't do is demand the sentences be removed or never written for everyone. Again, if you find any rules problematic to understand, for whatever reason, just ignore them and do your own thing* - which is literally what you would do without the rule being written. It would be like you got what you wanted. For everyone else, they can use the rule.

*Feel free to provide feedback to the developers when possible in order to prompt them to clear up the wording, of course.

You rather neatly left the larger point entirely unaddressed. Leaving it unaddressed means your advice to me ends up being self-contradictory: "you should remove this sentence" is everyday feedback to game designers, on the grounds that a wrong sentence in a wrong place is detrimental to goals of the game designer and their players. It is, in principle, no different from telling a car salesman they should remove defective tires from a car. Why shouldn't I do it? Again, your line of argument ends up assuming a bad rule cannot be worse than no rule.

That's different from arguing something should be never written. It's rather relevant to my criticism that we don't have a way to always determine if a rule is bad before the fact - the corollary being that there is no good standard for which kind of rules should never be written. But after the fact is different - after the fact, after trial and error, it is possible we can deem the rule was worse than useless. But you cannot test a rule by "just ignoring it". Our ability to find out if rules are bad is heavily reliant on someone playing with those rules and suffering the consequences.

---



More seriously, the rules are discordant and scattered. Looking through these, I get the sense that several people wrote these rules, mostly seperatly of each other, with no clear shared vision.

That's because they were written in that exact way.

More generally, people who clamor for more rules often have a bogus ideas of what professionalism means in context of tabletop roleplaying games. They effectively think that WotC (or some other company) has a dwarf in their basement with no other job than to fine tune target numbers... sorry, DCs... so they are just right for simulating whatever the game is about. This is pretty much never the case. They're thinking of Dwarf Fortress or Unreal World or some other single-author or two-author passion project. D&D hasn't been that since it left the hands of Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.

[Kane0]

Chiming in here to point out that there are indeed mechanics for social and exploration, it's just that most people are unaware, forget they exist, or choose to ignore them. And to be fair, some of these sections are less heavy on the rules and mechanics side, and lean more on the guidance side.

-Snip-

The bottom line is that rules, mechanics and guidance for these pillars do exist. Whether you choose to use them/care to enjoy them or not is another matter altogether.

I say pick and choose as you see fit, create or alter what you feel is lacking, but don't lament their absence.

Most excellent good sir.

Now let's hope that the coming revised DMG has all this consolidated and well presented.

[Skrum]

That's why I said that the system fills in the gaps. You don't need rules for any of that, but we ascribe rules to create an abstraction of certain things to make it easier or faster or more dramatic or more random or whatever else. Without a system the rules just become reason, intuition, and good manners. The objective is the story, whatever that is. If you genuinely cannot conceptualize a fulfilling and interesting character who does novel and heroic things without being boxed in by a set of rules then I don't know what to say - maybe just that I feel bad for you.


I'm going to reiterate again my desire to NOT simply write a short story, or daydream about a cool character and the wild things they could get up to. I want to make a character that has "real" hurdles to overcome in the form of objectively-decided outcomes. Think of the difference between writing a story about Kratos and playing God of War. Or, writing a story about Astarion, Shadowheart, Karlach, and Minthara, and playing BG3. Playing the game comes with success and failure that aren't simply my personal whims or the whims of the DM. If I succeed, I want it to be because I was clever about the mechanics governing the game, and if I fail I want it to be because the challenge proved too hard to overcome and in that failure, maybe my character becomes heroic.

[Sorinth]

I suppose. It would be churlish of me to continue to bang the same drum, but idk, these rules are pretty underwhelming. Maybe I don't know exactly what would satisfy, but this ain't it.

Which is fair, but at the same time I don't really fault them either since my expectations are that the adventure at hand is supposed to do a lot of the heavy lifting in making things interesting. Like for sure the rules for getting lost are pretty mild, in many travel sequences it's basically meaningless. However if you're escorting the princess across some wilderness while being hunted by a BBEG then those rolls for getting lost do take on importance and meaning, and choosing the travel pace becomes a real choice because there's actual tradeoffs that matter, even things like whether it's a clear day or an overcast day start to have an influence on the decisions.

Now having said all that I 100% agree that the DMG should do a better job in the advice that it gives. Especially in regards to wilderness exploration it's mostly here's a bunch of rules for things that will come up and very little how to use those rules to get the style of game that I want. I don't want the system to force or even default a specific style of play, but if it's going to support multiple styles it would be really helpful it gave advice on how to get the most out of it, what pitfalls to avoid, etc...

[KorvinStarmast]

That whole stove analogy is a cute little setup for the false dichotomy. 5e is not unavoidably a game of tactical combat, nor is it unavoidably a game of narrative structures. {snip} Gloomhaven is unavoidably a game of tactical combat, FATE and burning wheel are unavoidably games built on narrative drives. Ten sessions of no combat in D&D easily remains D&D that’s progressing all fine and happy. Ten sessions of no narrative queries being forced or addressed also sees D&D remaining D&D. That covers it well.

Now let's hope that the coming revised DMG has all this consolidated and well presented.
At this point the Beach Boys sing "Wouldn't it be Nice..."

[Aimeryan]

Why shouldn't I do it? Again, your line of argument ends up assuming a bad rule cannot be worse than no rule.

The analogy doesn't fit; you must acquit.
Tires can be objectively defective, and cause actual danger by being so. Rules are subjective and no one is losing life nor limb for them being found wanting. You can also ignore a rule you don't like by just breathing out - literally, you just say 'no' to the rule. Replacing tires that fail while you are on a journey, even if without injury from which, is considerably more inconvenient and costly.

[sandmote]

Probably the place where I would have preferred no rule to having a rule the most would be 4e's table for improvised damage. In that situation I would have vastly preferred something in the following ballpark:


Figure out if the improvised action works most like an At-Will, Encounter, or Daily Power and give it comparable effects to one of the those for the party's level. If performing the action requires a skill check in addition to the attack roll, increase the damage to compensate the additional risk. If the players find a way to use some improvised attack consistently, consider if it is causing a balance or tone problem. If so, talk to the players about your concern and see if you can change future uses of this improvised attack's effects to something both you and they find comfortable.

Out of what I recall at the moment, that's the only case where I can recall having preferring no rule to a bad rule.

Often, even a bad rule lets me ask a more detailed question of the situation in the game than having no rule, allowing me to make a functional decision faster.

If I say "I want to find food," I'm going to have a much harder time figuring out what my character is improving than if I say "I want to catch fish." So I homebrewed rules for fishing. And sports. And herbalism. If a player at my table doesn't want to interact with them, no harm to me. Having rules for these shrinks the scope of where the "Improve" button is required, so it is easier and faster to do this stuff at the table, but it doesn't get rid of the button.


The scout's expertise in nature is nothing more than a ribbon.
But is it though? Is it possible to use that skill to find natural poisons, or find caves, or figure out what kind of creatures live in a wilderness based on the local flora or trails? Often no, the nature skill isn't possible to use for those things. With experienced and/or skilled DMs it should be available, but a list of things the skill could theoretically be used for isn't automatically a list of things the table can figure out during play.

The point of having pre-prepared rules is to reduce the rate at which the DM needs to figure things out on the fly. If I have to ask myself at a table I'm DMing "could a player find natural poisons or not," there's insufficient rules, at least compared to 5e's combat system. "Which of the poisons listed could be found in this environment" would be a much better question to ask, because answering it will give me all the information of the previous question and more information on top of that. But to answer the second question, the DM needs an idea of the following:

What sorts of poisons exist?
Where would you find them?
Does that include anywhere in traveling distance?

The 3rd portion can only be answered by the DM, but the more detail the rules give on the first two, the faster the DM can answer the 3rd. Poison rules show up on pages 257 & 258 of the DMG, and the provided rules for obtaining poisons yourself consist of a single paragraph which gives the time and DC to milk venomous creatures.


But nobody ever seems to use it even though it gives absolute freedom. Setting up situations where the surrounding environment makes doing something clever a viable option for a player takes work from the DM's side, and I've never had a harder time doing so in rules-light systems than ones with detailed rules. But I've often had it the other way around, where the system giving me basic principles and a few examples lets me hit the ground running in setting up a better encounter. It doesn't always work out (especially if I need a PC to fail at something to reveal it) but its much faster to set up.


If the above is too obscure, consider: a car sold with no tires is safer than a car sold with defective tires.
Which car is safer and which car is better are two different considerations. There are situations where the safer car is also the worse option. If you're doing the in-game equivalent of borrowing the car for 5 minutes, a car with defective tires might be able to get you where you need to go and a car with no tires definitely can't.


So would open ocean count as clear terrain? I assume you'd be using navigators tools instead of the usual survival checks to stay on-course, but there isnt much food to be gathered besides the odd chance to do some fishing. Besides getting blown off course I'd wager ship travel would be the counting-arrows problem writ large with the odd random encounter thrown in. More to show something as a positive example than to claim any knowledge of Skrum's system (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=26011408&postcount=57) or complaints, but Ghosts of Saltmarsh details ideas for events the party needs to deal with while sailing from pages 200 through 208, then gives ideas for random encounters (at varying levels of detail) through page 229. The passage has the limitations inherent to making random tables (they can't fit for every area), but I like them and I they give DMs a solid footing to work off of when the party goes to sea.

[Vahnavoi]

The analogy doesn't fit; you must acquit.
Tires can be objectively defective, and cause actual danger by being so. Rules are subjective and no one is losing life nor limb for them being found wanting. You can also ignore a rule you don't like by just breathing out - literally, you just say 'no' to the rule. Replacing tires that fail while you are on a journey, even if without injury from which, is considerably more inconvenient and costly.

The analogy isn't necessary to the point, it only exist to make the point easier to understand. Rules can be objectively defective in the same way as car tires, even if their defectiveness poses no risk of physical injury - you are confusing degree of risk with objectivity of risk.

Your insistence that "you can just ignore a rule" continues to be fallacious for reasons already explained. You have not, at any point, actually addressed my criticism - you go right back to making the same suspect assumptions. Right here, right now, you are assuming that having to adjust a dysfunctional rule cannot be more difficult, more time consuming, etc.. than having to invent a new rule. You are assuming being exposed to a dysfunctional rule has no effect over being exposed to no rules. That's not how any of this works.

Consider trying to program the dysfunctional rule to a computer. Failure on logical-mathematical grounds can mean the whole computer crashes, or does something unwanted. Just because human brains don't fail the same way as a computer would when facing these things, does not make the failure itself less objective.

---



Which car is safer and which car is better are two different considerations. There are situations where the safer car is also the worse option. If you're doing the in-game equivalent of borrowing the car for 5 minutes, a car with defective tires might be able to get you where you need to go and a car with no tires definitely can't.

Nitpicking the analogy is pointless. Safer is better in enough common scenarios to establish the point that it's unwise to assume something cannot be worse than nothing. If you want to dismantle my criticism, deal with the non-analogous versio.

Meanwhile, your extension of my analogy only establishes that sometimes, rules that will fail in the long term can be serviceable in the short term. That is neat and correct, but it does not rebuke my arguments nor does it strenghten Aimeryan's. Why? Because when you make a statement such as "this rule might get you where you want", you are making a prediction and proposing a test. The results of the test - namely playing with the rule - can reveal that you never really had a chance to get where you wanted and you wasted time figuring this out over another method. This determination is no less objective than showing a method for pursuing a solution to logic or math problem is a dead end.

[sandmote]

The results of the test - namely playing with the rule - can reveal that you never really had a chance to get where you wanted and you wasted time figuring this out over another method. This determination is no less objective than showing a method for pursuing a solution to logic or math problem is a dead end. Both your analogy and the point the analogy was supposed to support consist only of checking whether downsides to having a rule can exist. The full comparison needs to include four categories:

The downsides of having a rule provided.
The upsides of having no rule.
The downsides of having no rule.
The upsides of having a rule provided.

While it is possible for any (or all) of these four categories to be a null set, exclusively looking at the first one isn't enough to reach any conclusion on which is going to work out better as a general principle. Neither is noting that items in the first category exist enough to conclude its the worse option. At an absolute minimum you can have the situation where one option in such a comparison between two options has all of the downsides of one and more on top of that.

Even if you only want to consider degree of risk, the situation of having no rule has a 100% chance of failing to provide a given table with a useable rule. A bad rule that fails to work for 99% of tables is still going to have a higher success rate than no rule at all.

Two corollaries to that:

Somewhere past the point you have enough detail in your rules for them to stand on their own, the benefits of adding details can become outweighed by the unforeseen interactions created (where it gats "gamey").
Adding rules takes up space in both the rulebook and in the amount of material the players need to track. If the rules get too detailed more effort needs to be spent on organization and the additional effort of making and organizing these rules takes up limited resources.

You're specifically comparing having rules to having no rules, so I don't consider either of these relevant to your previously stated conclusion, but I want them stated in general.


Because when you make a statement such as "this rule might get you where you want", you are making a prediction and proposing a test. The same applies when you make a statement such as "you wasted time figuring this out over another method." That starting with nothing will get you to a conclusion faster than starting with a bad rule is a prediction, and you are assuming a particular outcome to that prediction. At minimum, such assumptions should always be examined through empirical cross-examination. More practically, making a bad rule is fundamentally the first step to make a workable rule in a TTRPG.

It reminds me of the "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work," quote I've always seen attributed to Thomas Edison. Sure, trying carbonized paper as the filament in lightbulbs first would have been faster than what was actually done. That doesn't mean it would have been faster for no one to have tried making any kind of lightbulb before trying them with carbon filament. There is no mythological "Edison" who could show up and design a long lasting, affordable bulb ex nihilo. Even the historical Edison's team didn't manage that. The false starts and failed attempts are an inherent part of the process to getting something that works. Taking these steps is inherently going to get you better results than not taking them. Not in every individual instance, but very much so when treated as the rule.

[Aimeryan]

The analogy isn't necessary to the point, it only exist to make the point easier to understand. Rules can be objectively defective in the same way as car tires...

In common English we would use 'defective' to mean objectively prone to failure, and we would use 'bad' to mean subjectively poor in quality. Nethertheless, I do take the point that defective (and bad) can be used for both; we would then need to add objective/subjective to distinguish between the meanings. Thus, lets proceed as such.

Rules can only be deemed objectively defective if the developer states the rule is meant to do X and it does not do X. I do find WotC to be really bad at fixing rules that don't do what WotC say they should do (usually in the Sage Advice Compendium, unless you deem JC tweets reliable), but that is a whole different topic. Meanwhile, if the developer ships a rule that you deem subjectively defective (aka, bad) then you can ignore the rule and bridge the gap with a ruling, if necessary*. Alternatively, if this is a frequent issue in the product then you should consider whether you want to purchase further products from that source (and pursue a refund if possible).


...even if their defectiveness poses no risk of physical injury - you are confusing degree of risk with objectivity of risk.

There are (at least) two failure points with the analogy:

The objective vs subjective distinction made above. WotC don't usually add comments to rules saying what they are meant to do, so we don't usually know the rule is objectively defective.
5e rules do not present actual danger by being non-functional. Defective tires (whereby, defective here means to prone to failure under standard conditions, possibly due to wear and tear) on the other hand very much do.

Therefore, 5e rule discussions need not worry about defective tires on cars.


*This is another topic, but tangential; some rules when removed/not presented leave a gap that needs to bridged over with a ruling, while some just leave less playable space without a ruling to fill in. While 5e makes sure the former rules are present for combat, and a number of the latter too, it does not do so for Exploration and Social - leaving rulings compulsory if those pillars are not completely avoided, and arguably (for we are doing so) made lesser by consequence.



Your insistence that "you can just ignore a rule" continues to be fallacious for reasons already explained.
Your insistence of my insistence continues to be fallacious for reasons already explained.

What reasons? You literally can ignore a rule, unless someone is forcing you against your will. These are not national laws with potential legal consequences if you don't follow them.

[greenstone]

I think "pillars" is a bad way to think about the game. I prefer the term "encounters".

An encounter is an obstacle or barrier to the forward motion of the characters, something stopping them from achieving a goal.

It could be an ogre trying to kill them. It could be a trap on a tresure chest. It could be a massive chasm with a river at the bottom halting their travel. It could be a toady court funcionary refusing to grant them an audience with the empress. It could be 100km of nasty jungle or 1000km of unexplored ocean.

In every case, the game should treat it the same way: Here is an obstancle. Players, which of your characters abilities and/or gear are you going to use to overcome it?

This way, using some social activities (persuasion, bribery, deception, whatever) on the court functionary is no different to using some sneaky activites (lockpicks, mage hand, "10 foot pole lockpicking", whatever) on the trapped chest or using some travel activities (rope bridge, climb, fly, teleport, whatever) on the chasm or using some fighting activites (melee, ranged, magic, crowd control, whatever) on the ogre. No "pillars" needed.

[Goobahfish]

Ok, maybe I will try an interesting take here.

Consider combat. When in doubt, the rules of combat are pretty fixed. That is to say, I attack, they lose HP. I cast spell X, they are affected by condition Y.

But combat in D&D isn't always that simple.

"I knock over the table."
"I push a barrel full of oil off a balcony."

Now the DM is in "DM-ing" territory.

"The table counts as half-cover and requires an Athletics check to 'vault'."
"The guard must make a Dexterity saving throw."

This is Combat++. I will refer to it as this from now on. You have Combat++ and Combat. These are separate ideas.

D&D, has:
Exploration++ and Social++.

It doesn't actually have much Exploration or Social.

When designing a character, you interact with Combat, Exploration and Social. You don't interact with Combat++, Exploration++ or Social++.

Having Combat does not preclude Combat++. Likewise Exploration does not preclude Exploration++. The big problem with D&D, is that when there is no Exploration, you either need an experienced DM (and an 'on-board' party) or it just evaporates into unsatisfying skill checks.

That said, I think there is a strong argument to be made for having 'Social' be an optional rule and Social++ being the default. For Exploration, I am far less convinced.

[Aimeryan]

This is Combat++. I will refer to it as this from now on. You have Combat++ and Combat. These are separate ideas.

D&D, has:
Exploration++ and Social++.

It doesn't actually have much Exploration or Social.


Good take, although the ++ side does not need to be ruling only. There is naturally only so much the book could physically cover, and probably for fatigue's sake should cover - so anything else would have to be rulings. I would probably refer to this myself as Core and Peripheral, or Skeleton and Flesh. The Core/Skeleton provides necessary rules for making the pillar functional in a meaningful way, while the Peripheral/Flesh provides rules (and rulings) to makes them more complete.

I deem 5e low value in this respect even for Combat, with it only having a little flesh on the skeleton - being enough to be meaningfully functional but left quite basic. More so for martials, since Spells at least are somewhat fleshed out (Wizards of the Coast indeed). You can, of course, add to this - but that isn't exactly value on 5e's part, is it?

Exploration and Social, meanwhile, are sort of puddles of vague flesh on the ground that DMs have to stitch together to make something of, as well as add wholesale to on their own time and efforts - or avoid. The lack of support here is very noticeable.

[Goobahfish]

Good take, although the ++ side does not need to be ruling only. There is naturally only so much the book could physically cover, and probably for fatigue's sake should cover - so anything else would have to be rulings. I would probably refer to this myself as Core and Peripheral, or Skeleton and Flesh. The Core/Skeleton provides necessary rules for making the pillar functional in a meaningful way, while the Peripheral/Flesh provides rules (and rulings) to makes them more complete.

I deem 5e low value in this respect even for Combat, with it only having a little flesh on the skeleton - being enough to be meaningfully functional but left quite basic. More so for martials, since Spells at least are somewhat fleshed out (Wizards of the Coast indeed). You can, of course, add to this - but that isn't exactly value on 5e's part, is it?

Exploration and Social, meanwhile, are sort of puddles of vague flesh on the ground that DMs have to stitch together to make something of, as well as add wholesale to on their own time and efforts - or avoid. The lack of support here is very noticeable.

This analogy I like. 5e social and exploration do feel like 'blobs of flesh writhing on the ground'. The only bone is 'make a check'. Spellbooks are filled with a few de-facto bones which can be used in combat or exploration/social circumstances.

The thing I found (having built my own system from scratch) that unless there is a pseudo-mechanical interaction with exploration/social, players basically can't build those kinds of characters. They can build those kinds of 'personalities', but not actual 'characters' so to speak. This has a kind of vicious feedback cycle where players start thinking of actions in terms of 'in character' and the character sheet really doesn't... have anything on it (or at least any tools).

[Sorinth]

Ok, maybe I will try an interesting take here.

Consider combat. When in doubt, the rules of combat are pretty fixed. That is to say, I attack, they lose HP. I cast spell X, they are affected by condition Y.

But combat in D&D isn't always that simple.

"I knock over the table."
"I push a barrel full of oil off a balcony."

Now the DM is in "DM-ing" territory.

"The table counts as half-cover and requires an Athletics check to 'vault'."
"The guard must make a Dexterity saving throw."

This is Combat++. I will refer to it as this from now on. You have Combat++ and Combat. These are separate ideas.

D&D, has:
Exploration++ and Social++.

It doesn't actually have much Exploration or Social.

When designing a character, you interact with Combat, Exploration and Social. You don't interact with Combat++, Exploration++ or Social++.

Having Combat does not preclude Combat++. Likewise Exploration does not preclude Exploration++. The big problem with D&D, is that when there is no Exploration, you either need an experienced DM (and an 'on-board' party) or it just evaporates into unsatisfying skill checks.

That said, I think there is a strong argument to be made for having 'Social' be an optional rule and Social++ being the default. For Exploration, I am far less convinced.

I can completely agree with the idea that exploration can easily end up being a series of unsatisfying skill checks, but I'm not sure what kind of defined Exploration vs Exploration++ things you'd actually want to see in the rulebooks.

There's actually quite a lot clearly defined exploration/travel rules, but I feel the satisfaction in using them comes from the plot/adventure and not the rules themselves. Which incidentally is true for combat as well, combat from random encounters is often seen as being unsatisfying because it's not the combat rules that make it satisfying it's the impact/progress on the plot. And that's where I feel exploration gets hurt, a lot of times the exploration related choices don't advance/impact the plot in any meaningful way, and even when they do you might not know/understand how.

[NichG]

I can completely agree with the idea that exploration can easily end up being a series of unsatisfying skill checks, but I'm not sure what kind of defined Exploration vs Exploration++ things you'd actually want to see in the rulebooks.

There's actually quite a lot clearly defined exploration/travel rules, but I feel the satisfaction in using them comes from the plot/adventure and not the rules themselves. Which incidentally is true for combat as well, combat from random encounters is often seen as being unsatisfying because it's not the combat rules that make it satisfying it's the impact/progress on the plot. And that's where I feel exploration gets hurt, a lot of times the exploration related choices don't advance/impact the plot in any meaningful way, and even when they do you might not know/understand how.

For a general campaign I think its a bit tricky, but for specific kinds of campaigns it seems easier to design for. Like, if your campaign is a hexcrawl into a true wilderness aiming to capture things like the journeys of historical explorers, I can think of all sorts of stuff involving the ability to blaze trails, build roads and outposts, engage the local governments to create supply lines, etc that would directly translate into 'because we played this minigame well and cleverly, we can make it to the temple we've been seeking or whatever'.

For a very military game with armies and their movements and logistics (even from a character-level viewpoint) where its not just about you going in with your elite skirmish squad and assassinating the enemy, but you really do need to do things like hold territory or perform sieges or whatever, it also seems straightforward to understand what the rules need to provide and how they'd be engaged with.

Or in a game that is very dungeon-crawl centered, it doesn't seem hard to imagine sophisticated dungeon environment/tricks and traps sorts of rules along with things that help characters deal with them in smaller chunks than 'I roll to detect traps'. Or even in a heist game, which is kind of similar.

But in general I think exploration works best when 'the plot' comes from the players and what things they know or believe they can or cannot do from their current position'. When you have that, then having rules that tell you how to figure out on your own 'what would you need to first achieve before you can complete your ultimate goal' are useful.

[schm0]

I'm of two minds:


Exploration encounters don't necessarily need to tie in the plot or the adventure. The wilderness is simply another obstacle that you can put in the players way. Maybe there's just a road to the dungeon. That's fine, too. But if not, well, the treasure that's buried in that crypt is a few days journey away, and to get there you have to travel through the haunted forest/barren tundra/desert of despair. The encounters in the wilderness should be tied to the environment, not necessarily the adventure. The wilderness is the obstacle, and overcoming it should be part of your quest. It's not "find the dungeon and complete the objective" it's "survive the wilderness, find the dungeon, complete the objective, and survive the trip back".

That being said, if you prefer to tie them to the adventure, you are free to do so. Maybe when the party gets closer to the dungeon many of the humanoid creatures you face are wearing stone jewelry from the ancient civilization that built the crypt, or maybe someone in the crypt is controlling some monstrous beasts that protect the surrounding land, or you stumble across stirges feasting on a previous party that was looking for the same thing, you find captured humanoids that can give you more information about the crypt if you set them free, etc.


I think the larger problem, which has been exacerbated by the scattered and lackluster support for the exploration pillar in all but a handful of adventures, is that modern players are spoiled by CRPGs, specifically "fast travel" mechanics. (There's even official guidance for a "travel montage" approach listed out in the DMG, which seems strange considering the PHB Ranger existed at the time.) Attention spans are low because expectations are set by traditional CRPGs. The players end up focused on the end goal of where they want to go, and not the journey to those goals, so they want to get there and get it over with as soon as possible.

Other problems are largely solvable by the DM.*

We can fix mechanics we don't like.

We can re-assemble scattered mechanics to be more cohesive.

We can add mechanics we feel are missing.

But skipping them altogether, either because an adventure is written that way, or the players/DM expect them to be, is a fundamental problem in and of itself that can only be addressed by the designers.

* - Many here may lament having to provide these solutions, or endlessly debate the subjectivity of their value/implementation; nonetheless, solutions they remain.

[Sorinth]

For a general campaign I think its a bit tricky, but for specific kinds of campaigns it seems easier to design for. Like, if your campaign is a hexcrawl into a true wilderness aiming to capture things like the journeys of historical explorers, I can think of all sorts of stuff involving the ability to blaze trails, build roads and outposts, engage the local governments to create supply lines, etc that would directly translate into 'because we played this minigame well and cleverly, we can make it to the temple we've been seeking or whatever'.

For a very military game with armies and their movements and logistics (even from a character-level viewpoint) where its not just about you going in with your elite skirmish squad and assassinating the enemy, but you really do need to do things like hold territory or perform sieges or whatever, it also seems straightforward to understand what the rules need to provide and how they'd be engaged with.

Or in a game that is very dungeon-crawl centered, it doesn't seem hard to imagine sophisticated dungeon environment/tricks and traps sorts of rules along with things that help characters deal with them in smaller chunks than 'I roll to detect traps'. Or even in a heist game, which is kind of similar.

But in general I think exploration works best when 'the plot' comes from the players and what things they know or believe they can or cannot do from their current position'. When you have that, then having rules that tell you how to figure out on your own 'what would you need to first achieve before you can complete your ultimate goal' are useful.

There's plenty of stuff about how to make/engage with a hexcrawl to capture the journey through uncharted wilderness. Things like blazing trails, building roads/outposts, establishing supply lines sound like downtime activities, and incidentally building an outpost is already listed there in Downtime activities in the DMG. To build an outpost it costs 15K gold and takes 100 days or if it's more of a trading post in style/type then 5K gold and 60 days. So sure add a line in the table for what 1 mile of road costs in gold/time, and maybe a line or two about how construction time/cost for everything should increase for remote locations but I'm not seeing this as exploration pillar stuff, it sounds like background stuff that costs time/money but if anyone decides to pay that cost simply gets done with maybe a complication or two that come up like with all downtime activities.

Being the general of an army where you are controlling/moving troops and fight at the battlefield level even if being described by the DM at the character level just doesn't sound like D&D, and more to the point would be some combat pillar variant/offshoot and not exploration pillar related.

For dungeon tricks do you mean things like presenting a locked door with a secret way through. Like say there's a locked door that can't be opened by picking the lock because there's no visible lock to pick, but there's a nearby pool that if they explore they find a passageway that leads to the other side of the door where a lever can be used to open the door. But obviously written/presented in a nicer manner, with good descriptions and maybe a map.

Because I would note if that's the kind of thing your thinking of it doesn't add any new exploration rules for anyone to interact with, it's just using the existing rules for swimming, maybe holding your breath, maybe a skill check if the water isn't still. Those rules all exist and are dubbed boring/uninteresting components of the exploration pillar which they basically are when looked at in a vacuum, it's the context around them that makes them interesting. So I'm all in favour of some predefined exploration challenges like that where you can just take them and drop them in wherever you want much like the traps already do or the puzzles section in Tasha's. And I'd also like to see guidance on creating your own sorts of exploration challenges/puzzles and how to handle players coming up with unexpected solutions, or what to do if they're stuck and how to avoid it by having multiple pathways to success and treating skill check failures as success with a cost. But at the end of the day we probably aren't talking about any new rules being added to the exploration pillar.

[NichG]

There's plenty of stuff about how to make/engage with a hexcrawl to capture the journey through uncharted wilderness. Things like blazing trails, building roads/outposts, establishing supply lines sound like downtime activities, and incidentally building an outpost is already listed there in Downtime activities in the DMG. To build an outpost it costs 15K gold and takes 100 days or if it's more of a trading post in style/type then 5K gold and 60 days. So sure add a line in the table for what 1 mile of road costs in gold/time, and maybe a line or two about how construction time/cost for everything should increase for remote locations but I'm not seeing this as exploration pillar stuff, it sounds like background stuff that costs time/money but if anyone decides to pay that cost simply gets done with maybe a complication or two that come up like with all downtime activities.

To be clear, my stakes in this conversation are not about the question 'does 5e D&D already have exploration rules'. I'm invested in the original question of whether it's a good thing or not to have exploration rules, and what kinds of exploration rules are helpful to have for what kinds of gameplay. I'm not making any claim about the presence or absence of those rules or rules like them in 5e D&D.

Here my point was, in the context of a campaign like 'we must go to this specific location and kill this specific enemy and get this specific MacGuffin as soon as possible', exploration rules are going to be a distraction because the players already know what they must do - and there's nothing for it but to go and do that thing. But in the context of a hexcrawl, knowing that your current carry capacity and skills and spells only lets you range 3 days from civilization before turning back, but there's an interesting site 5 days away becomes a problem to work through. So there its useful to have those things somewhat formalized because then you get emergent subgoals for free.



Being the general of an army where you are controlling/moving troops and fight at the battlefield level even if being described by the DM at the character level just doesn't sound like D&D, and more to the point would be some combat pillar variant/offshoot and not exploration pillar related.


Not really? The battles might be, but getting troops where they need to be when they need to be and supporting them would all be world-level logistics and infrastructure stuff. No reason you can't do that in a D&D campaign - it was kind of central to play in older editions at least. In AD&D even if you weren't general of an army, there were rules for hiring NPC porters and torchbearers and support archers and so on, and engaging with those rules was sort of necessary for low levels not to be ridiculously lethal to PCs. That sort of play became less common around 2e with a transition to more story-driven campaigns, but even in 3e there are bits and pieces of it scattered around - Stronghold Builder's Guide, Heroes of Battle, etc. Also in 3pp stuff like the Black Company d20 books, with better or worse approaches.

A good rules framework can help flesh out those possibilities and make it easier to see how it could be part of what characters in a D&D campaign are involved in, rather than just 'some NPC takes care of those details' or 'armies are obsolete, 4-6 person squads of high level demigods are where its at'.



For dungeon tricks do you mean things like presenting a locked door with a secret way through. Like say there's a locked door that can't be opened by picking the lock because there's no visible lock to pick, but there's a nearby pool that if they explore they find a passageway that leads to the other side of the door where a lever can be used to open the door. But obviously written/presented in a nicer manner, with good descriptions and maybe a map.


Sort of, except more like there not being the design of 'this door is locked, they must find the secret way through' but instead things like, here is a structure with all sorts of infrastructure that is part of it - chimneys for air and smoke, places where water has eroded its way through, collapsed sections, places where roots have grown in, maybe the walls or floors are thin in particular places and can be broken, etc. Different characters will have different ways of engaging with those details, based in part on what's on their sheet.

A character might be able to turn into a gas and use the chimneys to 'skip' large portions of the dungeon, access certain areas in advance of the progression of the group, etc. Or they might be able to scry on all things connected to a body of water or talk to plants and get advanced notice of different parts of the dungeon layout. Or maybe they can play music that lures any sentient dungeon inhabitants to their location wherever it can be heard, resulting in the goblins or kobolds or whatever unlocking the way and revealing secret doors. Or at higher level, maybe a character can teleport to anywhere within 20ft they can see; but with a magic item that lets someone see through walls, now they can skip around between nearby adjacent rooms without going through, but they still need to find passages to disconnected rooms further away. Or they're a druid and can treewalk their way along the roots of the giant tree that has broken through various places in the dungeon. Maybe they're a monster tamer and can bait creatures with Burrow speeds that live around the dungeon to get them to dig extra tunnels for the party to go through.

Go even more abstract and you could have things like a scholar figuring out the layout of a dungeon by looking at how the builders must have used it and cross-referencing cultural construction practices from that time. Like 'oh, the Vainon Elves who built this had a form of geomancy based on directions to the three nearby elemental nodes - the kitchen is always built as a curved room closest to the Fire node, and the master bedroom always built on the opposite side of the complex'. Similarly, getting advance knowledge of likely guard patrol patterns, what sort of dungeon life might be around (and perhaps how to avoid it or quell it without fights), etc.

And with dungeons that are more in the form of 'facilities' intended to actually 'do things' rather than just be dangerous, different characters might have different abilities with regards to bringing the facility back online, engaging in its remote functions, etc. Maybe the ancient dwarven factory has sluice gates that would flood certain sections with lava where the orc army is currently camping; or if not that, perhaps by fiddling around with things you can use the dwarven mechanical drop-hammers to craft adamantine gear.

Again, not making a statement '5e doesn't have these things', but giving an example of the sorts of richer exploration mechanics can flesh out play and also inform how to build such things to engage with a variety of choices and build options and so on. Like, knowing that 'dungeon radar range' is a thing some characters have might make you think 'aha, I can have room layouts such that where you stand is going to matter with regards to radar range, so now finding spurs that go out into the heart of unmapped regions is actually a kind of reward'.

[Sorinth]

To be clear, my stakes in this conversation are not about the question 'does 5e D&D already have exploration rules'. I'm invested in the original question of whether it's a good thing or not to have exploration rules, and what kinds of exploration rules are helpful to have for what kinds of gameplay. I'm not making any claim about the presence or absence of those rules or rules like them in 5e D&D.

Here my point was, in the context of a campaign like 'we must go to this specific location and kill this specific enemy and get this specific MacGuffin as soon as possible', exploration rules are going to be a distraction because the players already know what they must do - and there's nothing for it but to go and do that thing. But in the context of a hexcrawl, knowing that your current carry capacity and skills and spells only lets you range 3 days from civilization before turning back, but there's an interesting site 5 days away becomes a problem to work through. So there its useful to have those things somewhat formalized because then you get emergent subgoals for free.

Fair enough but the question of does 5e have exploration rules is important for a shared understanding, because it's perfectly valid to not like the way 5e handles something, but if 5e does have rules for handling that situation then the complaint shouldn't be that 5e doesn't support it. There must be a different reason driving that complaint, and figuring out the real cause is how the debate can move forward.


Not really? The battles might be, but getting troops where they need to be when they need to be and supporting them would all be world-level logistics and infrastructure stuff. No reason you can't do that in a D&D campaign - it was kind of central to play in older editions at least. In AD&D even if you weren't general of an army, there were rules for hiring NPC porters and torchbearers and support archers and so on, and engaging with those rules was sort of necessary for low levels not to be ridiculously lethal to PCs. That sort of play became less common around 2e with a transition to more story-driven campaigns, but even in 3e there are bits and pieces of it scattered around - Stronghold Builder's Guide, Heroes of Battle, etc. Also in 3pp stuff like the Black Company d20 books, with better or worse approaches.

A good rules framework can help flesh out those possibilities and make it easier to see how it could be part of what characters in a D&D campaign are involved in, rather than just 'some NPC takes care of those details' or 'armies are obsolete, 4-6 person squads of high level demigods are where its at'.

Getting troops where they need to be by escorting them or clearing the way for their arrival seems like it would be fully supported without any additional rules. I'm guessing what your looking for would be rules for how that impacts who wins/loses the battle, if so then sure I can understand that being defined as a lacking rules but at the same time it's not something that I think should be in the core rules, it should be 3rd party and/or splat books.

And the talk of hirelings relates to the first point above since the hiring of hirelings like porters and mercenaries are covered in the 5e rules. So if your unhappy with how 5e handles the hiring of porters, which is perfectly valid criticism because you're 100% right that we've lost that old school feel of needing to hire porters to carry all the loot you got from clearing out a dungeon like you did in older editions. But the problem isn't that 5e doesn't support it or doesn't have rules to engage with, because they are there in 5e, you're not getting that old school feel due to something else. Figuring out what that something is would help with the debate if continuing with that example.


Sort of, except more like there not being the design of 'this door is locked, they must find the secret way through' but instead things like, here is a structure with all sorts of infrastructure that is part of it - chimneys for air and smoke, places where water has eroded its way through, collapsed sections, places where roots have grown in, maybe the walls or floors are thin in particular places and can be broken, etc. Different characters will have different ways of engaging with those details, based in part on what's on their sheet.

A character might be able to turn into a gas and use the chimneys to 'skip' large portions of the dungeon, access certain areas in advance of the progression of the group, etc. Or they might be able to scry on all things connected to a body of water or talk to plants and get advanced notice of different parts of the dungeon layout. Or maybe they can play music that lures any sentient dungeon inhabitants to their location wherever it can be heard, resulting in the goblins or kobolds or whatever unlocking the way and revealing secret doors. Or at higher level, maybe a character can teleport to anywhere within 20ft they can see; but with a magic item that lets someone see through walls, now they can skip around between nearby adjacent rooms without going through, but they still need to find passages to disconnected rooms further away. Or they're a druid and can treewalk their way along the roots of the giant tree that has broken through various places in the dungeon. Maybe they're a monster tamer and can bait creatures with Burrow speeds that live around the dungeon to get them to dig extra tunnels for the party to go through.

Go even more abstract and you could have things like a scholar figuring out the layout of a dungeon by looking at how the builders must have used it and cross-referencing cultural construction practices from that time. Like 'oh, the Vainon Elves who built this had a form of geomancy based on directions to the three nearby elemental nodes - the kitchen is always built as a curved room closest to the Fire node, and the master bedroom always built on the opposite side of the complex'. Similarly, getting advance knowledge of likely guard patrol patterns, what sort of dungeon life might be around (and perhaps how to avoid it or quell it without fights), etc.

And with dungeons that are more in the form of 'facilities' intended to actually 'do things' rather than just be dangerous, different characters might have different abilities with regards to bringing the facility back online, engaging in its remote functions, etc. Maybe the ancient dwarven factory has sluice gates that would flood certain sections with lava where the orc army is currently camping; or if not that, perhaps by fiddling around with things you can use the dwarven mechanical drop-hammers to craft adamantine gear.

Again, not making a statement '5e doesn't have these things', but giving an example of the sorts of richer exploration mechanics can flesh out play and also inform how to build such things to engage with a variety of choices and build options and so on. Like, knowing that 'dungeon radar range' is a thing some characters have might make you think 'aha, I can have room layouts such that where you stand is going to matter with regards to radar range, so now finding spurs that go out into the heart of unmapped regions is actually a kind of reward'.

But what does this actually look like in context of say the DMG? Do we need these for lack of a better term "dungeon features" like a chimney defined with explicit rules for what size characters can fit, or thin walls with an explicit strength check to break through? They sort of do it already for some stuff like portcullis, secret doors, webs, slimes/molds, so sure adding a few others might make sense, and adding some more fantastical examples like a giant dwarven hammer used for adamantine forging like BG3 could be worthwhile but I think this is somewhat where the core of the debate should be. Do we want a catalogue of examples that the DM can take from and drop into their dungeon, or do we want advice on how the DM should go about building their own unique/custom ones. I'm personally on the side of better advice for how to make your own.

And for the record I love ideas like getting a burrowing creature(s) to create your own passageway through a dungeon, but I don't like the idea of this being an explicit feature of a monster tamer subclass or feat. To me that doesn't provide a richer exploration pillar, because it's the player creativity that is providing the richer experience and not having a variety of buttons to press. I do think the DMG could/should give better advice about how to handle creative player ideas because let's face it, there will be some great ideas but there will also be a bunch of stinkers. How the DM handles those things go a long way to setting the tone of the campaign as well as encouraging/discouraging those creative solutions. And that's true for all pillars of play, look at Improvising an Action in the Combat pillar, if those improvised actions often end up worse then a regular attack action then players will stop trying to be creative and improvising their actions and press the "I Attack" button until over and over again until combat is over. Whereas if they are more powerful then a normal action then players will always be on the lookout for that stuff.

[Snowbluff]

Many argue the rules do give guidance - DC 5 for very easy, 10 for easy, 15 of medium etc. Of course that is not enough because there is no guidance on what makes something easy or hard. What is easy for one DM is hard for another, and they think that's hunky dory or the DM who disagrees with their interpretation of the difficulty of a thing is playing the game wrong, depending on the person. In the hypocritical view, they think it's horrendous for two trees in different campaigns should have the same climb DC by a given example in a climb table but have no issue with all non-magical plate mail in every campaign everywhere is AC 18.

This unqualified strawman doesn't do anything to prove that subjective difficulty is a bad thing. Even if you disagree that there should be fixed DCs for everything, a variant for difficulty or rules for situational bonuses for different universes would be needed. What is hard to one DM in their game world is simply not going to be hard to every GM. Sometimes, convincing the king that Ratly the Sinister is in fact an evil advisor is going to be a 10 to one person in their trope heavy and meta-joke ridden narrative, or a 25 in another GMs tragedy about the abuses of power. An overly gamified and inflexible system would cause more problems and arguments about which of these 2 is correct.

[Sindeloke]

Do we want a catalogue of examples that the DM can take from and drop into their dungeon, or do we want advice on how the DM should go about building their own unique/custom ones. I'm personally on the side of better advice for how to make your own.

Why not both?

There's a core book and multiple supplements with monsters in them, that you can take from and drop into your dungeon. There's also advice in several places about how a DM should generate their own. There's a core book full of spells and multiple supplements full of even more, and there's also advice on how a DM should balance custom spells that they might create. There's a core book with races and multiple supplements with more, and also advice on how a DM can create new ones.

But if you do have to pick, I think the examples are better, because in every single one of those cases I just listed, the advice given on building your own is pretty limited and bad... but the community actually has a bunch of very good resources on how to do it. Because as long as a large suite of examples exists, there will on average be enough good ones that they can, and will, be reverse-engineered. But if there's only advice, it has to be complete, and detailed, which you can't guarantee. IOW you can get advice from examples even if the examples are shaky, but it doesn't work the other way.

Also, advice-only will always require prep work from the DM, while examples can save time for a quick one-shot, which is the reason people buy, eg, monster supplements; they want to have something they can just use.

[NichG]

Fair enough but the question of does 5e have exploration rules is important for a shared understanding, because it's perfectly valid to not like the way 5e handles something, but if 5e does have rules for handling that situation then the complaint shouldn't be that 5e doesn't support it. There must be a different reason driving that complaint, and figuring out the real cause is how the debate can move forward.

Getting troops where they need to be by escorting them or clearing the way for their arrival seems like it would be fully supported without any additional rules. I'm guessing what your looking for would be rules for how that impacts who wins/loses the battle, if so then sure I can understand that being defined as a lacking rules but at the same time it's not something that I think should be in the core rules, it should be 3rd party and/or splat books.

And the talk of hirelings relates to the first point above since the hiring of hirelings like porters and mercenaries are covered in the 5e rules. So if your unhappy with how 5e handles the hiring of porters, which is perfectly valid criticism because you're 100% right that we've lost that old school feel of needing to hire porters to carry all the loot you got from clearing out a dungeon like you did in older editions. But the problem isn't that 5e doesn't support it or doesn't have rules to engage with, because they are there in 5e, you're not getting that old school feel due to something else. Figuring out what that something is would help with the debate if continuing with that example.


Well as I said, I have no stake in whether 5e has something or not, and I don't think it actually needs to be discussed in order to talk about whether in a broad sense it's desirable to have certain kinds of mechanics or not. It can be evidence in the form of '5e has this, I played with it, it was good' or '5e has this, I played with it, it sucked', but outside of that I consider it a digression, and I wasn't responding or making claims within the context of that digression.

Every game is effectively a homebrew game, and people will use or not use, add or not add, any number of rules. The thing I think is relevant here is the question - 'Should you include rules of this kind, when, and why?'. Whether you include them by realizing they already exist somewhere and just use them, or by writing a house rules document, or even just saying out loud as a DM at the table 'this is how I will handle things', it doesn't really matter to what I'm trying to get at here.



But what does this actually look like in context of say the DMG? Do we need these for lack of a better term "dungeon features" like a chimney defined with explicit rules for what size characters can fit, or thin walls with an explicit strength check to break through? They sort of do it already for some stuff like portcullis, secret doors, webs, slimes/molds, so sure adding a few others might make sense, and adding some more fantastical examples like a giant dwarven hammer used for adamantine forging like BG3 could be worthwhile but I think this is somewhat where the core of the debate should be. Do we want a catalogue of examples that the DM can take from and drop into their dungeon, or do we want advice on how the DM should go about building their own unique/custom ones. I'm personally on the side of better advice for how to make your own.

And for the record I love ideas like getting a burrowing creature(s) to create your own passageway through a dungeon, but I don't like the idea of this being an explicit feature of a monster tamer subclass or feat. To me that doesn't provide a richer exploration pillar, because it's the player creativity that is providing the richer experience and not having a variety of buttons to press. I do think the DMG could/should give better advice about how to handle creative player ideas because let's face it, there will be some great ideas but there will also be a bunch of stinkers. How the DM handles those things go a long way to setting the tone of the campaign as well as encouraging/discouraging those creative solutions. And that's true for all pillars of play, look at Improvising an Action in the Combat pillar, if those improvised actions often end up worse then a regular attack action then players will stop trying to be creative and improvising their actions and press the "I Attack" button until over and over again until combat is over. Whereas if they are more powerful then a normal action then players will always be on the lookout for that stuff.

So I'll go back to the thing I said about resolution mechanics versus toys.

Gaseous Form is an exploration toy. Making Gaseous Form available to a party changes the way in which certain architectural or geological features like chimneys and lava tubes become relevant. The 'exploration mechanic' being introduced when I talk about chimneys in dungeon design is the existence of a spell like Gaseous Form that lets something that would normally be a conduit for just air also be a traversable space. That doesn't have to be in the form of a DMG entry saying 'you can have chimneys that are passable by gaseous form!' to the DM. You can of course also have that - it doesn't change the player-facing mechanics or the resolution in that case, because its sort of obvious.

So do I want Gaseous Form to be explicitly in rules text somewhere? Yeah - its a toy for the players, it opens up exploration abilities in exchange for investment of build resources, and all the decisions about it are in the players' hands. So its good at creating traction with exploration aspects of gameplay - the existence of this button will get players thinking 'oh hey, I could sneak in through the flue!' and such rather than just 'lets kill the inhabitants room by room', which I want. And because this is specifically something in the players' hands, I want it to be recorded in text somewhere for them to access and manipulate. If, say, I introduced some ability like this during a campaign as homebrew, like a magic item that lets you turn into a liquid but you can only move downwards, or a power that lets you jump from fire to fire, I would either write that myself in a rules document or I'd want the player who discovered or received it to make an explicit record themselves in a shared campaign document, because once I've given out a toy I'm going to clear out my own headspace of those details - its not a promise about how things will be resolved, so as the DM I only need to be tangentially aware it exists and not constantly working it into my own game flow.

From the view of Gaseous Form, a chimney is not a resolution mechanic because there's not going to be something saying e.g. 'all dungeon rooms inhabited by living creatures will be connected to outside air by a chimney within at least 3 rooms distance'. But, you could have such a thing I suppose. If you had such a thing, it would enable players to plan around the guaranteed existence of chimneys (and do things like conclude 'oh, if we block a chimney and there's no other one within 3 rooms, then that will make a dungeon room uninhabitable'. That would be the benefit of saying it explicitly as a rule, rather than just suggestions and ideas. If that specific example is good or not depends on what you're trying to achieve with your campaign - on the plus side, it enables planning; on the minus side, it might be over-formulaic to the point where the details of 'this particular dungeon' don't matter because there's always a chimney and we can always just find them and block them to clear the dungeon.

Should we have such a rule? To answer that, what are the benefits and downsides? The benefit of a resolution mechanic is generally that it can be planned around - players could know that it makes sense to search the exterior of a dungeon for all the air holes, or come up with a plan to defeat the dungeon inhabitants by blocking the air holes and waiting for them to come out to fix them or just suffocate. The downside is that this particular phrasing will make all dungeons a bit more samey, and there's a risk of a single plan becoming standard operating procedure that is applied blindly without looking at the particular dungeon that is being dealt with - 'whenever we find a dungeon, plug the airholes'.

That probably doesn't add much to the game, so I personally wouldn't make a resolution mechanic out of chimneys like that. But I might resolve the downside somewhat by *generalizing* this to something like saying at the table OOC (but not in a rules document): "My dungeons all should take into account the air supply, and you can safely assume that there are reasons why particular underground spaces stay habitable and plan around it. It won't always be the same thing or the same way, but if you discover I've forgotten this then I've made an error." in which case I get the planning benefits but still allow each dungeon to be its own thing and maybe require a different approach.

What I'm arguing for is this sort of approach to thinking about whether you want to have a certain rule or not. Basically, to explicitly value the ability of players to make plans and to understand the way in which sections of the game are fleshed out by having points of contact (be they buttons or explicit promises about how things work) that the players can reason about and guarantee that they are mentally on the same page as the DM.

So e.g. if we're talking about troop movements, there's a difference between 'Logistics matters, and I will penalize you if your logistics get disrupted' and 'Moving more than 500 foot or 100 cavalry across open farmland makes that farmland non-productive for a year; do this to more than 20% of the farms around a population center and that population center will have starvation this year, and will suffer -2 Loyalty to your leadership and reign. Locales with negative loyalty have a 10% chance per point of negative Loyalty to join revolutions against you, and a 25% chance per negative Loyalty to contribute to plots against you'.

[GloatingSwine]

This unqualified strawman doesn't do anything to prove that subjective difficulty is a bad thing. Even if you disagree that there should be fixed DCs for everything, a variant for difficulty or rules for situational bonuses for different universes would be needed. What is hard to one DM in their game world is simply not going to be hard to every GM. Sometimes, convincing the king that Ratly the Sinister is in fact an evil advisor is going to be a 10 to one person in their trope heavy and meta-joke ridden narrative, or a 25 in another GMs tragedy about the abuses of power. An overly gamified and inflexible system would cause more problems and arguments about which of these 2 is correct.

That seems more like a sign that D&D doesn't actually support a huge range of themes terribly well, if it leads to players simply having no reasonable expectations of the possibilities of their characters within the system purely from the material accessible to them in the PHB.

There are two elements in play in this argument. DMs need flexibility to build the possibilities and impossibilities of a given scenario, which tables of opinion and what each one means in terms of what an NPC will give or do mesh poorly with (even if they're still vague like they were in older D&D editions, they just become both restrictive and vague which is the worst of both worlds) but players also need consistency in what to expect their characters to be able to achieve in the world. If they're taking proficiency in Persuasion they need to have a decent idea what they're buying.

[Snowbluff]

That seems more like a sign that D&D doesn't actually support a huge range of themes terribly well, if it leads to players simply having no reasonable expectations of the possibilities of their characters within the system purely from the material accessible to them in the PHB.

There are two elements in play in this argument. DMs need flexibility to build the possibilities and impossibilities of a given scenario, which tables of opinion and what each one means in terms of what an NPC will give or do mesh poorly with (even if they're still vague like they were in older D&D editions, they just become both restrictive and vague which is the worst of both worlds) but players also need consistency in what to expect their characters to be able to achieve in the world. If they're taking proficiency in Persuasion they need to have a decent idea what they're buying.

I don't see how. Theming isn't required to be a game structure. Demanding everyone to play the same kind of narrative is simply just lopping off large portions of the audience for no benefit. By letting the DC 10 and DC 25 DMs determine how they want the narrative to work, they can both coexist.

I think it is quite obvious that the expectations on how a narrative should be handles is up to the campaign that they are playing, be it created by the DM or within a campaign book. In fact, it's common piece of advice that you should set your expectations with your players in any game of any systems. It's a core tenet of roleplaying as a whole. Attend your session zero, or fill out your questionnaire, or just ask a question on how the DM wants it run.

[Yakk]

So there is a lot of talk about simulationism and fixed mechanics. "All jungles are different", "I don't want PCs to be able to roll dice to make someone friendly".

You don't need 100% simulationist mechanics to have rules for exploration and social.

Suppose we had a card adventuring game. One way to approach "explore a jungle" would be to have a difficulty rating on jungles, and you'd roll (using your modifiers) to see if something bad happens. The bad thing that happens would be fixed and based off your roll.

A different approach would be that being in a jungle causes a complication. That complication is random, like a card drawn from a deck of cards. The random complication has to be overcome and has consequences if not.

That model suddenly supports "not all jungles are the same". Even in a conversation, the fact that the complication isn't something the player chooses means that they cannot go "I use my charisma to make them friendly, then deception to have them give me all their money" is the option they always have.

Now in a TTRPG, the players have less structure and more freedom to act. But we can hang mechanics that aren't uniform on both social interactions and on environmental things, especially if we make the interactive bits be features of the environment and not just DCs.

...

For environments, having the idea of complications - things getting in your way, problems - that have to be overcome. Now you aren't making a survival roll to travel through jungle - some concrete problem occurs, and you can engage with it. DCs can be specific to the complication and even the approach taken.

Knowledge skills can apply; a trained nature check gives you more information about the complication.

A DMG can provide piles of such complications for each environment, each being a little set piece.

...

For NPCs, players already have bonds and ideals and goals. NPCs can have similar. You can make a system based on detecting what the bonds/
ideals and goals of an NPCs are; sometimes they might be unreachable in a single interaction. The NPCs overall goals and their immediate goals can differ, as well as their motivation for each of these goals.

Social mechanics can be about determining what the NPCs immediate goals are, how motivated they are, etc. Also, knowledge of social context and expectations (is this a situation where a bribe/tip is expected and normal, likely to be accepted, probably going to be rejected with prejudice, or something that would trigger hostility?)

Similar to environments, the PCs can set up a goal, and the DM can provide complications. The path from "goal" to "success" might be "you can't get there from here in this conversation", and finding *that* out can have mechanics, where failure has consequences.

Positive social interactions with someone can build trust, and that trust can be leveraged. Getting someone to be your friend from one interaction isn't very plausible unless their goals align with becoming your friend, but doing so after months of interaction is another thing entirely.

None of this is mind control. It can be shortcuts for the DM to note NPCs attitudes towards PC (count of slights and positive interactions), mechanics to track NPC personalities (goals, bonds, etc), and mechanics for the DM to produce for social complications.

Befriending an NPC might require determining their social bonds, doing things for those social bonds, helping them achieve their goals, doing so aligned with their motivations, etc. How well your attempts at doing so actually build trust might involve mechanics and checks; your high-charisma PC might get more trust (on average) out of helping an NPC's sister than the lower-charisma PC.

We have mechanics here, but we don't have mind control; this is a framework to track extended social interaction of a PC and NPC, where the NPC gradually starts to trust (or hate) a given PC (or the party).

You could even have rules on how an NPCs social status and influence can lead to a general change in attitude towards the PCs.

As a note, much of this also generates plot hooks: if you want to influence an NPC, you now have to find out what the NPC wants, and do stuff - which can involve adventure. And plot hooks are better than mind control DCs any day.

[GloatingSwine]

I don't see how. Theming isn't required to be a game structure. Demanding everyone to play the same kind of narrative is simply just lopping off large portions of the audience for no benefit. By letting the DC 10 and DC 25 DMs determine how they want the narrative to work, they can both coexist.

I think it is quite obvious that the expectations on how a narrative should be handles is up to the campaign that they are playing, be it created by the DM or within a campaign book. In fact, it's common piece of advice that you should set your expectations with your players in any game of any systems. It's a core tenet of roleplaying as a whole. Attend your session zero, or fill out your questionnaire, or just ask a question on how the DM wants it run.

Trouble is, sometimes playing the same kind of narrative is inevitable due to what the other rules say. Doesn't matter what kind of theme you're playing, on average a level 10 fighter can take a 200' fall, faceplant at the end of it, and get up like nothing happened (for all that he'll appreciate a healing spell or potion, he'll just walk it off).

And the same systems are supposed to apply to social scenes, D&D rules are for simulating a specific kind of heroic adventurer doing stuff (the kind that can do a 200' faceplant and get up again, once they've been around the block a few times). Sometimes it renders acknowledging that unavoidable and the more you wrench the bits where it isn't unavoidable away from the same sort of heroic adventuring theme the more jarring it is. Especially because when it comes to building the people they want to be in the world the players will often be making direct choices between those things, in a system that assumes they are all valued equally.

[Snowbluff]

Trouble is, sometimes playing the same kind of narrative is inevitable due to what the other rules say. Doesn't matter what kind of theme you're playing, on average a level 10 fighter can take a 200' fall, faceplant at the end of it, and get up like nothing happened (for all that he'll appreciate a healing spell or potion, he'll just walk it off).


To illustrate my point, that is an on average 70 point damaging fall. A fighter has 10 + 6 * (level-1) HP by default, or 64. That's a fatal fall, for starters. Surviving would mean he actually put some effort into optimizing his character by having a good con score.

Now him getting up and saying Ratly is evil will have different consequences. In DC 25 GM land he's dragged away screaming his futile warning, too injured to fight back, while Ratly gives his evil smile and waves as he is KOed. In DC 10 land everyone goes "Wow!" and arrests Ratly. It turns when you jumped off of that airship to deliver the warning to the court, the themes of the result can still be carried through.

Which is to say, I am genuinely confused at the idea that powerful, heroic characters aren't allowed to have different kinds of narrative them in their stories. Hell, even Superman, a person with largely the same power set across most of his comics and stories, has different stories to tell about his nature and role. Past that you have takes like Invincible and The Boys that have superheroic characters but take a different spin on them. Rorschach yelling at Dr. Manhattan still had meaning at the end of Watchmen, even if (or because) his actions were in vain.

[GloatingSwine]

To illustrate my point, that is an on average 70 point damaging fall. A fighter has 10 + 6 * (level-1) HP by default, or 64. That's a fatal fall, for starters. Surviving would mean he actually put some effort into optimizing his character by having a good con score.


You're so close to getting it!

The point is that if the Fighter player does spend character build resources (attribute distribution and ASIs) on surviving that 200' faceplant he gets exactly the same return on that investment in every game of D&D played according to the rules in the book. Doesn't matter what your theme is, the fighter buys the same extra fall distance with the same ASI every time.

If he spent exactly the same amount of resources on the social features of his character, he should get the the same feeling that he has bought success where failure used to exist. And skill checks are really bad at that in D&D, so fiddling DCs to make some things hard or easy checks according to theme is a really bad idea with this ruleset.

DCs and the outcomes of skills should be appropriate to the sort of things D&D characters can reliably do where the rules are firm about them.

[Snowbluff]

You're so close to getting it!

The point is that if the Fighter player does spend character build resources (attribute distribution and ASIs) on surviving that 200' faceplant he gets exactly the same return on that investment in every game of D&D played according to the rules in the book. Doesn't matter what your theme is, the fighter buys the same extra fall distance with the same ASI every time.

If he spent exactly the same amount of resources on the social features of his character, he should get the the same feeling that he has bought success where failure used to exist. And skill checks are really bad at that in D&D, so fiddling DCs to make some things hard or easy checks according to theme is a really bad idea with this ruleset.

DCs and the outcomes of skills should be appropriate to the sort of things D&D characters can reliably do where the rules are firm about them.

This is like a new form of the Stormwind Fallacy. Character optimization exists ergo only one kind of story can be told.


This unqualified strawman doesn't do anything to prove that subjective difficulty is a bad thing. Even if you disagree that there should be fixed DCs for everything, a variant for difficulty or rules for situational bonuses for different universes would be needed. What is hard to one DM in their game world is simply not going to be hard to every GM. Sometimes, convincing the king that Ratly the Sinister is in fact an evil advisor is going to be a 10 to one person in their trope heavy and meta-joke ridden narrative, or a 25 in another GMs tragedy about the abuses of power. An overly gamified and inflexible system would cause more problems and arguments about which of these 2 is correct.

And my post already had answered the claim in itself. You should be able to change the DC for your game. Every variant of DnD has made accommodations for it for good reason. 5e just does it more with the subjective DC difficulty where as 3.5 used more conditional modifiers. Understanding expectations is an important aspect of roleplaying even before making considerations for this.

[Sorinth]

Why not both?

There's a core book and multiple supplements with monsters in them, that you can take from and drop into your dungeon. There's also advice in several places about how a DM should generate their own. There's a core book full of spells and multiple supplements full of even more, and there's also advice on how a DM should balance custom spells that they might create. There's a core book with races and multiple supplements with more, and also advice on how a DM can create new ones.

But if you do have to pick, I think the examples are better, because in every single one of those cases I just listed, the advice given on building your own is pretty limited and bad... but the community actually has a bunch of very good resources on how to do it. Because as long as a large suite of examples exists, there will on average be enough good ones that they can, and will, be reverse-engineered. But if there's only advice, it has to be complete, and detailed, which you can't guarantee. IOW you can get advice from examples even if the examples are shaky, but it doesn't work the other way.

Also, advice-only will always require prep work from the DM, while examples can save time for a quick one-shot, which is the reason people buy, eg, monster supplements; they want to have something they can just use.

Just to be clear when saying I prefer the advice it doesn't mean that I don't want any pre-made examples, having a few is good but I wouldn't want to see the DMG filled with examples. I don't know what the perfect amount would be but the DMG has essentially 7 dungeon features, 4 dungeon hazards, and 11 traps which seems fine but having a little more would also be fine. But space is at a premium and I'd rather not have 20 pages of stuff.

And I don't really agree that it requires more prep work, if I'm building a dungeon and want to put a climbable wall that brings you to a spot overlooking the next room and is a great ambush spot for the creatures in that room. If I have an image of what the wall looks like in my head of a all with lots of loose stones I can easily come up with a description and the associated skill check for climbing in this case DC 15 with failure being that you succeed in climbing but knock some of those loose stones which fall and make a loud noise alerting the creatures in the next room. However if there's a catalogue of wall types then I have to cross-reference the image I have in my head with what's in the catalogue, and then there's probably a discrepancy with what climbing it looks like, maybe the book says it's a DC 10 to climb. So I either have to break with what the book says this wall should be or change my image of the wall. And yeah as DM I can do what I want and I don't have to use what the book says a wall of loose stones should be but doing that does lead to friction when a player who knows the book says it's a DC 10 to climb and they rolled a 12 so should have succeeded.

[Yakk]

Just to be clear when saying I prefer the advice it doesn't mean that I don't want any pre-made examples, having a few is good but I wouldn't want to see the DMG filled with examples. I don't know what the perfect amount would be but the DMG has essentially 7 dungeon features, 4 dungeon hazards, and 11 traps which seems fine but having a little more would also be fine. But space is at a premium and I'd rather not have 20 pages of stuff.

And I don't really agree that it requires more prep work, if I'm building a dungeon and want to put a climbable wall that brings you to a spot overlooking the next room and is a great ambush spot for the creatures in that room. If I have an image of what the wall looks like in my head of a all with lots of loose stones I can easily come up with a description and the associated skill check for climbing in this case DC 15 with failure being that you succeed in climbing but knock some of those loose stones which fall and make a loud noise alerting the creatures in the next room. However if there's a catalogue of wall types then I have to cross-reference the image I have in my head with what's in the catalogue, and then there's probably a discrepancy with what climbing it looks like, maybe the book says it's a DC 10 to climb. So I either have to break with what the book says this wall should be or change my image of the wall. And yeah as DM I can do what I want and I don't have to use what the book says a wall of loose stones should be but doing that does lead to friction when a player who knows the book says it's a DC 10 to climb and they rolled a 12 so should have succeeded.
Now lets do this from the player perspective.

You describe a wall that a player might want to climb. The player either (a) has no idea how hard this wall is to climb if descriptions are not tied to DCs, or (b) knows how hard it is to climb roughly, based on its description, if DCs are determined by descriptions.

If you describe a wall that is easy to climb - that the player can clearly understand that he, as a 12 year old kid, could have climbed - and then a player rolls a 12, and you tell them "you fall, make a noise, and take enough damage to kill a 12 year old kid", that player is stuck with a "WTF" moment.

That wall was obviously easy to climb and not a death-defying feat for himself, in the real world, as a 12 year old kid. That this level 10 adventurer with superhuman strength failed based on a 1/10 failure chance (+10 modifier, rolled a 2) seems ridiculous.

Either (a) the DMs description of the world is not reliable, because an easy to climb wall morphed into one that requires heroic skill (DC 15), or (b) the heroic PC is reduced in competency to that of a bumbling fool (it takes a DC 15 check to pull off simple, mundane activity).

So you end up with DMs having to code their DCs orthogonal to their actual real-world content, or players practicing how to read the DMs mind.

Currently here is our guiding table:

Task Difficulty DC
Very easy 5
Easy 10
Medium 15
Hard 20
Very hard 25
Nearly impossible 30

[Sindeloke]

And yeah as DM I can do what I want and I don't have to use what the book says a wall of loose stones should be but doing that does lead to friction when a player who knows the book says it's a DC 10 to climb and they rolled a 12 so should have succeeded.

A few things come to mind for me, with this example.

#1, you actually didn't deviate from the theoretical guidance at all. If the DC is a 10 to climb, and your player rolled a 12 and climbed the wall successfully, then they performed as they expected to. Because you didn't actually set a DC for climbing at all - you decided climbing would always succeed. You set a DC for climbing silently. Your player failed a stealth check, which might well be set by that same guidance at 15 ("moving silently over loose, slippery terrain that can easily be dislodged: medium difficulty").

#2, even if you had deviated, single discrete deviations don't cause an issue, in my experience. If I'm winging it and I throw a "goblin" at my players, without looking up what a goblin is, but I accidentally give it 20 AC, my players aren't going to get mad at me and insist that the book says goblins have 15 AC. They'll assume they misunderstood when I described their armor, or that there's something special about these goblins. And I will go "oh, yes, right, obviously, there's something special about these particular goblins" and that can turn into useful worldbuilding or plot hooks if I want it to. Other tables might play it so that the player goes "don't goblins have 15 AC?" and the DM says "oh, right, sorry, yeah, your attack hits." Depends on your resolution style. But I expect that anyone playing a TTPRG has a good resolution style that the whole table can agree on, just as a baseline for playing, no matter what the rules are. Both the DM and the players will make mistakes; if that can't happen without causing a fight, the problem isn't with the game.

#3, That said, I'm actually really unlikely to ever accidentally give a goblin AC 20. Because I know that "goblin" falls into a particular category of difficulty - things under CR 1 - and I've run enough monsters of CR < 1 that I know an AC of 12-15 is appropriate and an AC of 20 is not. By the same token, if there were a lot of relatively easy to climb walls with DC 8, and the game encouraged you to use them regularly by making them as much a feature of a dungeon as the monsters in it, you would probably not accidentally make a loose stone wall DC 15 either. You'd just know from experience, without having to look it up, that 6-10 is the correct range.

#4, You want your player to feel confident that he can hit a given monster with a roll of [x] or more. This lets him make important choices about whether to use GWM, whether he should spend an action trying to get advantage, whether this foe is too easy to waste real resources on or too dangerous to fight at all. What makes the game fun is the ability to make informed choices, to exercise agency over your character's life. To not get blindsided by something. It's considered really poor form to put players in a combat situation they can't succeed with no warning. They should have that same informed choice, that same agency, when they decide how to approach a rocky slope that has something interesting at the top. That's the whole argument.

Now, some DMs like to hide AC from their players, but most people would still agree that a question like "does his armor look particularly sturdy?" would be reasonable and deserve a fair answer. And you get many attacks in a combat encounter, so it doesn't take long to get a good sense of what will hit. But with an ability check, you only get the one roll, there's no testing. So being able to accurately telegraph the target number is even more important. You and your player need to be on the same page over whether this is a DC 5, DC 12, DC 30.

So I can see what you're concerned about - you think a miscommunication is more likely, because your player is more likely to have a preconception that doesn't match yours. An that's certainly a possibility that wouldn't exist if there's no guidance for "loose stones" anywhere. But the problem is, without the player having that knowledge, there isn't any automatic communication at all. There isn't any system by which they can try a few times for minimal consequence until they figure out how dangerous it is. There isn't a way for them to intuitively know what you, personally, think is difficult. And there isn't a preexisting number. That preexisting number allows communication, because you and the player could both have the shared reference point. If you don't have a shared reference point, that's like not telling the players their target AC; it's fine if they don't have any preconceptions, but you have to be willing to tell them "it looks like a Medium challenge" and they have to know that means 13-17, or whatever.

[Telonius]

My perspective (as somebody who started off with 3.5): it's a delicate balance.

3.5 had a much more explicit description of DCs and social mechanics. Attitude changes with diplomacy checks were set values. If the target started off as indifferent (or hostile, or helpful), there was a set Diplomacy check you had to hit to alter that. Even back then, there were arguments about whether that was a good or a bad thing. Similar points on both sides. A high-diplomacy character could use their "diplomacy button" to trivialize encounters without actually roleplaying (various Diplomancer builds enabled this). Having a roleplaying game without expecting the players to play their roles, seems a little silly. On the other hand, expecting somebody to completely RP out a high-level Bard trying to persuade a target would be as unrealistic and unfair as expecting the Barbarian's player to bench-press a car when making a strength check. Some players just are not naturally charismatic, and telling them they can't live out that fantasy seems unfair.

Finding that balance - where a player still has agency, but it doesn't break verisimilitude - can be tough. 3.5 never really hit it right. While 5e's skill system is a lot more streamlined, it doesn't really resolve the balance. Because there aren't really any listed DCs, it just makes it the DM's problem to adjudicate. There are some good points to that; there's something to be said for making the person who knows what the table would expect or accept responsible for it. But it also feels like a bit of a cop-out for the rules to just shrug it off with not much guidance.

[KorvinStarmast]

This is like a new form of the Stormwind Fallacy. Character optimization exists ergo only one kind of story can be told. I think I'll keep this thought handy.

General comment:

As to the "push button get candy" approach, it seems to me to be an artifact of players who are afraid of temporary failure within a game.

If we look at the bounded accuracy progression (based on some gross averages) the combat system leans toward a roughly 1/3 failure rate and a 2/3 success rate that stays about the same as the Tiers progress. (Saving throws are a different story, unless you are a monk).

If you fail at 1/3 of the locks you try to pick, is that something that will make you rage quit the game?
If you succeed at 2/3 of your persuasion checks, and fail at the other third, do you consider that success or failure?

Back to "exploration"

I prefer to call it "discovery" of which exploration is a subset. Part of the fun of a an FRPG is discovering the imaginary world.

[Aimeryan]

A high-diplomacy character could use their "diplomacy button" to trivialize encounters without actually roleplaying (various Diplomancer builds enabled this).

This sounds like a numerical issue, though, not a mechanical one. A similar argument could be make for the Attack action and Initiative - if you make it possible for a character to do a 1000 damage at will and have a minimum Initiative result of 50 then 99% of combat encounters might as well not even be mentioned. The solution there is to keep the numbers in check and to require resources to manage to keep things interesting - i.e., balance.


Because there aren't really any listed DCs, it just makes it the DM's problem to adjudicate... But it also feels like a bit of a cop-out for the rules to just shrug it off with not much guidance.

Yup. Especially since rules can be ignored if they don't fit your desires, where as no rules means the DM is FORCED to adjudicate, despite paying for the exact priviledge of having rules to not do that. This is the Emperor's New Clothes.

[Blatant Beast]

3.5 had a much more explicit description of DCs and social mechanics. Attitude changes with diplomacy checks were set values. If the target started off as indifferent (or hostile, or helpful), there was a set Diplomacy check you had to hit to alter that.

The DMG has that chart still in 5e.

One issue with D&D Social Encounters is that there are a number of different ways to handle them, as a matter of practice.

I've used the general rule that when conversation starts, if you say something that is not a meta-question or about mechanics, your character says it.

Even with that rule in mind, often times, I will make an exception. In one game, one of my friends is a very quick witted professional comedian/actor, with a PC with a low Charisma.

The player will crack us up, with the funny things he says to NPCs, and then we make him roll his actual check, and when that goes poorly, the player cracks the group up again, by mangling what they initially said.

In that same game, is a friend of mine that is neurodivergent on the autism spectrum, and extemporaneous speaking is not a strength of theirs, and they are playing a Bard.

In their case, I let them just describe what they would say, and let the die roll determine the degree of success.

Sometimes, applying the rules equally, can be unfair.

[Sorinth]

A few things come to mind for me, with this example.

#1, you actually didn't deviate from the theoretical guidance at all. If the DC is a 10 to climb, and your player rolled a 12 and climbed the wall successfully, then they performed as they expected to. Because you didn't actually set a DC for climbing at all - you decided climbing would always succeed. You set a DC for climbing silently. Your player failed a stealth check, which might well be set by that same guidance at 15 ("moving silently over loose, slippery terrain that can easily be dislodged: medium difficulty").

#2, even if you had deviated, single discrete deviations don't cause an issue, in my experience. If I'm winging it and I throw a "goblin" at my players, without looking up what a goblin is, but I accidentally give it 20 AC, my players aren't going to get mad at me and insist that the book says goblins have 15 AC. They'll assume they misunderstood when I described their armor, or that there's something special about these goblins. And I will go "oh, yes, right, obviously, there's something special about these particular goblins" and that can turn into useful worldbuilding or plot hooks if I want it to. Other tables might play it so that the player goes "don't goblins have 15 AC?" and the DM says "oh, right, sorry, yeah, your attack hits." Depends on your resolution style. But I expect that anyone playing a TTPRG has a good resolution style that the whole table can agree on, just as a baseline for playing, no matter what the rules are. Both the DM and the players will make mistakes; if that can't happen without causing a fight, the problem isn't with the game.

#3, That said, I'm actually really unlikely to ever accidentally give a goblin AC 20. Because I know that "goblin" falls into a particular category of difficulty - things under CR 1 - and I've run enough monsters of CR < 1 that I know an AC of 12-15 is appropriate and an AC of 20 is not. By the same token, if there were a lot of relatively easy to climb walls with DC 8, and the game encouraged you to use them regularly by making them as much a feature of a dungeon as the monsters in it, you would probably not accidentally make a loose stone wall DC 15 either. You'd just know from experience, without having to look it up, that 6-10 is the correct range.

#4, You want your player to feel confident that he can hit a given monster with a roll of [x] or more. This lets him make important choices about whether to use GWM, whether he should spend an action trying to get advantage, whether this foe is too easy to waste real resources on or too dangerous to fight at all. What makes the game fun is the ability to make informed choices, to exercise agency over your character's life. To not get blindsided by something. It's considered really poor form to put players in a combat situation they can't succeed with no warning. They should have that same informed choice, that same agency, when they decide how to approach a rocky slope that has something interesting at the top. That's the whole argument.

Now, some DMs like to hide AC from their players, but most people would still agree that a question like "does his armor look particularly sturdy?" would be reasonable and deserve a fair answer. And you get many attacks in a combat encounter, so it doesn't take long to get a good sense of what will hit. But with an ability check, you only get the one roll, there's no testing. So being able to accurately telegraph the target number is even more important. You and your player need to be on the same page over whether this is a DC 5, DC 12, DC 30.

So I can see what you're concerned about - you think a miscommunication is more likely, because your player is more likely to have a preconception that doesn't match yours. An that's certainly a possibility that wouldn't exist if there's no guidance for "loose stones" anywhere. But the problem is, without the player having that knowledge, there isn't any automatic communication at all. There isn't any system by which they can try a few times for minimal consequence until they figure out how dangerous it is. There isn't a way for them to intuitively know what you, personally, think is difficult. And there isn't a preexisting number. That preexisting number allows communication, because you and the player could both have the shared reference point. If you don't have a shared reference point, that's like not telling the players their target AC; it's fine if they don't have any preconceptions, but you have to be willing to tell them "it looks like a Medium challenge" and they have to know that means 13-17, or whatever.

Well first off, the point of the example was your claim that having pre-made features to drop in means less prep work, and that's simply not true. I can very quickly come up with a description of the feature and any relevant skill checks needed. When there's a big book of dungeon features that I don't want to ignore because it can cause friction then it's a lot more prep work to check if the feature exists, possibly change the description I had in mind so that I get a DC that matches what I want, etc... it can easily end up as more prep-time.

And sure if one time the DC doesn't match the description it's not going to be a problem for 99% of players, but if it consistently doesn't match because I've chosen to ignore the book of dungeon stuff then it will surely upset a much larger % of players. And in every thread about skill checks you'll see people who if there were set DCs that the DM ignored would not want to play with that DM.

Finally I would add if there is no set DC for climbing loose stones then there's no miscommunication, they can just ask how hard it looks to do, whereas if there was a set DC in a book then there's more chance of a miscommunication because they don't think they have to ask because they think they already know what it should be.


Now lets do this from the player perspective.

You describe a wall that a player might want to climb. The player either (a) has no idea how hard this wall is to climb if descriptions are not tied to DCs, or (b) knows how hard it is to climb roughly, based on its description, if DCs are determined by descriptions.

If you describe a wall that is easy to climb - that the player can clearly understand that he, as a 12 year old kid, could have climbed - and then a player rolls a 12, and you tell them "you fall, make a noise, and take enough damage to kill a 12 year old kid", that player is stuck with a "WTF" moment.

If I describe a wall as Easy to climb then I would use the Easy DC simple as that.

[InvisibleBison]

If I describe a wall as Easy to climb then I would use the Easy DC simple as that.

In that case, why bother describing how difficult the wall is to climb at all? If your descriptions are just a proxy for the DC, using fixed keywords to represent each level of DC, why not just discard the obfuscation and tell the players the DC directly?

[GloatingSwine]

This is like a new form of the Stormwind Fallacy. Character optimization exists ergo only one kind of story can be told.


Who was talking about character optimisation? Not me, that's for sure.

I was talking about how the hard and fast rules written in the book allow players to have firm expectations about what their characters can and can't do, and how the choices they can make which interact with those hard and fast rules also interact with the much looser rules using the same resources and giving them the same weights and values.

That means that if you try and use skill checks and DCs to generate a theme you are fundamentally misunderstanding how D&D is intended to model player interaction with the world to the detriment of the players if they make the "wrong" choices.

This isn't even anything about roleplaying, calling it the "Stormwind Fallacy" isn't even a straw man of my argument, it's misrepresenting it completely in every particular.

If narratively important persuade checks are so high you can't form a reliable strategy for success using your build resources because the DM didn't want you to win that way because of "theme" but wanted to watch you fail at trying so set a dumb DC for the task, spend all your build resources on killing power based on black letter rules and roleplay whatever you feel like irrespective of the precious theme because your social build choices didn't matter anyway, you couldn't use them to reliably succeed if you tried.

[schm0]

Is it just me, or does it seem many of the threads on this forum devolve into the same old argument: gamists vs narrativists. Gamists want clear objectives so they can calculate the odds and win, narrativists want the freedom to set the objective to be whatever the story dictates at the time. Gamists laud the depth of combat mechanics, while narrativists point to the flexibility of the DC system, etc.

The bottom line is that there is no such thing as a perfect game that will make everyone happy. That's why the designers make it very clear that your table should adjust the game to meet your own personal preferences. And before someone yells "Oberoni!!!" I'd like for you to imagine making a game for millions of people and see if you could make all of them equally happy. It's an impossible task. The designers know this. You should know this. It's why they gave you the permission to change it. It's clay. If you don't want a lump of clay to play with, change it. Make a stick man, a pancake or a little pile of poo, whatever your heart desires. The game is never going to give you everything you want.

IMHO, 5e gives you a good, solid framework to build on. Despite the suggestion of the original post, there are rules that we can lean on. There are exploration rules. There are social rules. They may not be to your liking. Or they may work just fine. But the answer to what will work best for you and your table falls somewhere between a 24 volume encyclopedia set of mechanics and potential outcomes and, well, calvinball. If you want to keep playing 5e/1D&D, you need to decide where you sit on that spectrum, and what you intend to do to address it. Because the rules will be the rules, and whether you like them or not, we are meant to mold them as we see fit.

[Snowbluff]

The bottom line is that there is no such thing as a perfect game that will make everyone happy. That's why the designers make it very clear that your table should adjust the game to meet your own personal preferences. And before someone yells "Oberoni!!!" I'd like for you to imagine making a game for millions of people and see if you could make all of them equally happy. It's an impossible task. The designers know this. You should know this. It's why they gave you the permission to change it. It's clay. If you don't want a lump of clay to play with, change it. Make a stick man, a pancake or a little pile of poo, whatever your heart desires. The game is never going to give you everything you want.


Indeed. I think it needs to be stated that the Oberoni Fallacy definitely does not apply to the GM having to make rulings. Ruling is one of the reasons the DM is there in the game. The DM orchestrating the experience is part of the job.

Furthermore, I will reiterate my point that you have to talk to your table about the kinds of expectations there will be for the game. If you are worried that taking Actor wouldn't work at the table, ask your DM about it. Get their opinion on what they consider valuable and how the game's narrative will work. In any game, not just DnD, you have to set expectations with your group or it will have issues going forward.

[Witty Username]

If you fail at 1/3 of the locks you try to pick, is that something that will make you rage quit the game?
If you succeed at 2/3 of your persuasion checks, and fail at the other third, do you consider that success or failure?


I don't know about you but 99% chance of success has definitely been enough for me to rage quit Excom.

The consequences of failure matter a lot. It failure is 1d8 damage, we are used to that every day. If it is fall of a cliff and die, that can get frustrating even if it only happens 5-10% of the time.

[Xervous]

Is it just me, or does it seem many of the threads on this forum devolve into the same old argument: gamists vs narrativists. Gamists want clear objectives so they can calculate the odds and win, narrativists want the freedom to set the objective to be whatever the story dictates at the time. Gamists laud the depth of combat mechanics, while narrativists point to the flexibility of the DC system, etc.



Acknowledging forgeisms as overly generalized junk, these are not wholly reflective of the actual positions espoused in this or any recent discussion.

At no point has D&D seriously pursued anything resembling a storytelling focused rule set. All rolls the player performs are tied to actions and events experienced by the character in the moment. At no point does the game confront the player with a robust system that encourages actions that further the intended literary themes, said system doing so in a fashion that has no visible presence in the fiction.

The conflict is just over the balance of structured and free form play. For generating fun the structured portions offer a reliable reference point while the free form areas give the game some stretch to accommodate different tastes.

This topic keeps popping up because some character types are nearly entirely in the free form area for a system with low practical granularity in success rate and range of outcomes. Some people are fine with that in a vacuum. Some people are fine with that if they have an agreeable GM, but would prefer guidance nudging GMs and players towards a shared understanding. And others dislike it entirely on principle.

[Blatant Beast]

At no point has D&D seriously pursued anything resembling a storytelling focused rule set.

A game does not need the rules from White Wolf nor from Ars Magicka, in order to focus on story.
Notion, rejected.

[schm0]

Acknowledging forgeisms as overly generalized junk, these are not wholly reflective of the actual positions espoused in this or any recent discussion.

I could not find a definition for "forgeism". Is this a typo, or some cultural phenomena that I am not familiar with? As for whether or not my argument reflects what is being discussed here and at least three other threads on this forum, we'll just have to disagree there. :smallsmile:


At no point has D&D seriously pursued anything resembling a storytelling focused rule set. All rolls the player performs are tied to actions and events experienced by the character in the moment. At no point does the game confront the player with a robust system that encourages actions that further the intended literary themes, said system doing so in a fashion that has no visible presence in the fiction.

Again, we'll have to disagree there. The three step process that runs the entire game is indisputably a storytelling mechanic. You describe the environment, the players tell you what they want to do, and you narrate the outcomes. That mechanic results in literal story-telling.


The conflict is just over the balance of structured and free form play. For generating fun the structured portions offer a reliable reference point while the free form areas give the game some stretch to accommodate different tastes.

Sounds to me like we're in agreement here, at least. This lines up pretty well with my summation, just using different words IMHO.

[NichG]

I could not find a definition for "forgeism". Is this a typo, or some cultural phenomena that I am not familiar with? As for whether or not my argument reflects what is being discussed here and at least three other threads on this forum, we'll just have to disagree there. :smallsmile:

It comes from GNS theory being associated with an online community called The Forge. Thus 'forgeism'.

[Xervous]

A game does not need the rules from White Wolf nor from Ars Magicka, in order to focus on story.
Notion, rejected.

It was not my intention to invoke notions of such a horribly constructed system as some of the offending white wolf offerings. It’s simply an observation that while D&D can be and frequently is used to produce fun via storytelling, engaging with D&D does not necessarily mean the player is pursuing or deriving fun from storytelling. The GM and players have the choice of whether or not to make storytelling a focus of the fun, and they’re not striking down any rules to decide in either direction.



Again, we'll have to disagree there. The three step process that runs the entire game is indisputably a storytelling mechanic. You describe the environment, the players tell you what they want to do, and you narrate the outcomes. That mechanic results in literal story-telling.

If this structure is all that’s required for a storytelling system then you’ve drawn a broad categorization to include things like practical war gaming (such as kriegspiel) or a doctor walking medical students through a hypothetical patient diagnosis and treatment. The intent of the activity is what’s needed to filter out the war game and the medical hypothetical, as neither of those activities are performed for the purpose of telling or producing stories. D&D does not necessitate the intent and focus of creating and telling stories. While it is frequently used for such, the scope of a game like D&D is broader than simply just storytelling, and there are plenty of use cases for D&D that are not storytelling.



Forgeism…

Sounds to me like we're in agreement here, at least. This lines up pretty well with my summation, just using different words IMHO.

It’s mostly a matter of framing and implications. Gamism/narrativism/simulationism is a flawed sorting system that misses a lot of the specific desires and fun that a system can address or a player can crave. GNS and The Forge have baggage and an unflattering past. Please accept my apologies for confusing your unawareness for implicit praise of them.

[schm0]

If this structure is all that’s required for a storytelling system then you’ve drawn a broad categorization to include things like practical war gaming (such as kriegspiel) or a doctor walking medical students through a hypothetical patient diagnosis and treatment. The intent of the activity is what’s needed to filter out the war game and the medical hypothetical, as neither of those activities are performed for the purpose of telling or producing stories. D&D does not necessitate the intent and focus of creating and telling stories. While it is frequently used for such, the scope of a game like D&D is broader than simply just storytelling, and there are plenty of use cases for D&D that are not storytelling.

The core mechanic of the game is literally used for storytelling. Don't take my word for it. Just read the very first sentence of the PHB:


The Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game is about storytelling in worlds of swords and sorcery.

Let's just say we disagree on this point. :)


It’s mostly a matter of framing and implications. Gamism/narrativism/simulationism is a flawed sorting system that misses a lot of the specific desires and fun that a system can address or a player can crave. GNS and The Forge have baggage and an unflattering past. Please accept my apologies for confusing your unawareness for implicit praise of them.

I'm not sure what "praise" it is that you think I gave? I have seen GNS theory bantered around over dozens of forums and discord channels over the years, and its terms are relatively well-defined and understandable. All I did was use those terms to describe the opposing sides and approaches of a debate that is being discussed here and in many other threads on this forum. It was not meant to offer commentary on whatever "baggage" you are referring to. If there is some controversy you are referring to, I am both unaware and uninterested in discussing it.

[Vahnavoi]

@schm0: you maybe should be a bit more interested about the theories you are misappropriating.

The Forge has been down for years; Ron Edwards, the guy behind the Forge and GNS, has moved on, noted both are obsolete. GNS was subsumed in its follow-up, the Big Model, which itself has been largely abandoned. To quote myself from another thread, discussing this same thing:


From the Wikipedia article concerning GNS theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_theory):

"On December 2, 2005, [Ron] Edwards closed the forums on the Forge about GNS theory, saying that they had outlived their usefulness."

It was never a good theory. It was internet forum posts level, built on earlier internet forum posts level musings. Its successor, the Big Model theory of roleplaying games, did not fare much better. Here is what RPG museum has to say on the topic: (https://rpgmuseum.fandom.com/wiki/Big_Model)

"The Big Model has been significantly criticised and is no longer widely used, even by many of the people who liked it when it was new and current. For example, Vincent Baker has said that, while it was a useful tool to diversify thought around what role-playing games could be (i.e. that there was more than a single type of RPG that could be played), the attempt to categorise all RPGs and all players (e.g. using the GNS creative agendas) do not hold up, and furthermore RPG design has moved on and left the Big Model behind."

The only lasting legacy these theories had was the use of certain phrases, such as the words "gamism", "simulationism" and "narrativism", by people who happened to be part of early 2000s internet hobby discussion. Majority of people who use those words, use them wrong, with no significant relationship to their special definitions in these theories. Outside of these theories, there isn't enough settled common usage for them to even net their own dictionary definitions.

[schm0]

@schm0: you maybe should be a bit more interested about the theories you are misappropriating.

Fair enough. My point stands regardless: there is a common divide found in this thread and in others, between those who wish to play the game with more perfect information (i.e. "structure") and those that prefer the freedom to change mechanics or difficulties as the story dictates (i.e. "free-form game play"). The argument is often framed in various contexts: rulings vs. rules, subjective DCs, advantage and disadvantage, skill descriptions, etc. but the underlying divide is usually made apparent after a page or two, with those on either side chiming in as they do. It's quite pervasive, so much that I found it interesting to point out, is all.

[Aimeryan]

Fair enough. My point stands regardless: there is a common divide found in this thread and in others, between those who wish to play the game with more perfect information (i.e. "structure") and those that prefer the freedom to change mechanics or difficulties as the story dictates (i.e. "free-form game play"). The argument is often framed in various contexts: rulings vs. rules, subjective DCs, advantage and disadvantage, skill descriptions, etc. but the underlying divide is usually made apparent after a page or two, with those on either side chiming in as they do. It's quite pervasive, so much that I found it interesting to point out, is all.

If rules were locked in, like an online MMO, then I would have a different tune to sing. As it is, both those that wish to use rules as much as possible and those that wish to use rules as little as possible can be simultaneously catered to by having rules (they can be ignored), while both cannot be simultaneously catered to by not having rules. As such, and especially since we pay for rules as a major part of the purchase of the PHB and DMG (there is also some lore, artwork, and advice), the idea that we should push for the developers to not have rules (in two pillars no less!) seems either incredibly selfish or just plain daft. I just don't get it.

[Blatant Beast]

I do not want to be forced to purchase 700 pages of products, (when page count impacts product price), if I am only going to use 200 pages of the products.

One of my personal favorite D&D books of all time, is the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide from 1e.
That book, however, did not sell very well.

Releasing, optional products, with optional rules is fine, but we do not need a lot of rules bloat in the main game. We also should be mindful that their might not be enough of a marketplace to make it economically viable for WotC to make the type of rules you want with the production value their books typically have.

That is, presumably, one reason why there is an OGL that allows Third Party Publishers to publish. The type of rules you want do not have to be published by WotC, they could be published by Green Ronin, or anybody else.

This way, WotC books won't be full of stuff, that some of us would never use.

[Sorinth]

If rules were locked in, like an online MMO, then I would have a different tune to sing. As it is, both those that wish to use rules as much as possible and those that wish to use rules as little as possible can be simultaneously catered to by having rules (they can be ignored), while both cannot be simultaneously catered to by not having rules. As such, and especially since we pay for rules as a major part of the purchase of the PHB and DMG (there is also some lore, artwork, and advice), the idea that we should push for the developers to not have rules (in two pillars no less!) seems either incredibly selfish or just plain daft. I just don't get it.

What exploration related task doesn't have any rules? Want to travel somewhere there's rules for how long it will take and what you can do while travelling, want to know how long you can hold your breath, there's rules for that, want to know what happens in a blizzard or extreme heat/cold, there's rules for that, how to handle the party getting lost there's rules for that too. I can understand not liking the rules or finding them boring, but to say that they don't have rules in the exploration pillar just isn't true.

[Sorinth]

I do not want to be forced to purchase 700 pages of products, (when page count impacts product price), if I am only going to use 200 pages of the products.

One of my personal favorite D&D books of all time, is the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide from 1e.
That book, however, did not sell very well.

Releasing, optional products, with optional rules is fine, but we do not need a lot of rules bloat in the main game. We also should be mindful that their might not be enough of a marketplace to make it economically viable for WotC to make the type of rules you want with the production value their books typically have.

That is, presumably, one reason why there is an OGL that allows Third Party Publishers to publish. The type of rules you want do not have to be published by WotC, they could be published by Green Ronin, or anybody else.

This way, WotC books won't be full of stuff, that some of us would never use.

Completely agree, and I would also point out that there was/is probably a plan that they would introduce some of that more niche stuff via adventures instead of splatbook. So you want rules for sailing/ships you don't have buy a splat book for it you have Ghosts of Saltmarsh that expands/explores that particular niche.

[schm0]

As it is, both those that wish to use rules as much as possible and those that wish to use rules as little as possible can be simultaneously catered to by having rules (they can be ignored), while both cannot be simultaneously catered to by not having rules.

I don't really agree here. Having rules that you choose to ignore creates a source of conflict between the source material and the rulings at the table. This won't bother the DM, since they have the final say, but it sure will piss off the player when they pull out the table in their rulebooks and ask why their roll of 15 didn't beat the DC. With no such table to point to, the DM is free to rule however they want and the players are just mildly disappointed they didn't make the check.

Now on the other hand you can have a DM who rules too heavily in favor/against the players, because they are granted that freedom to arbitrate on the fly, but I find that to be an issue of experience rather than one of design. A DM who has their players stomp everything they throw at them or TPK on the regular is going to learn a few things about how to balance their rulings.

As it pertains to exploration and social pillars, I think there's just enough to satisfy most DMs of either persuasion. There's enough there to lean on if you want, and plenty more to expand upon what's there. The real problem in my mind is the lack of cohesion and support in all but a handful of official adventures. (And on a side note, I blame the failure of the PHB Ranger squarely on the lack of support for it in official adventures.) If you're going to build a class around excelling in the wilderness, you better have some wilderness to explore and challenge the party in every adventure.

[Aimeryan]

I don't really agree here. Having rules that you choose to ignore creates a source of conflict between the source material and the rulings at the table. This won't bother the DM, since they have the final say, but it sure will piss off the player when they pull out the table in their rulebooks and ask why their roll of 15 didn't beat the DC. With no such table to point to, the DM is free to rule however they want and the players are just mildly disappointed they didn't make the check.

Will such a player? I know personally I do not feel that way. Whether the DC is made by the DM or is made by a rule, I want consistency. If something is described as X, I want to know it will be the same DC as previous thing described as X. I would not be happy with a DM that just pulled numbers out of various unsavioury places. What is important is that I know the rule or ruling so that I can plan appropriately, otherwise I might as well go watch a film.

Now, if the DM comes up with a ruling I really did not care for, that would remain the case whether or not a rule exists already. It appears to me that there are DMs out there that think that as long as there are no rules then everyone will like what they come up with, while if there are rules everyone will hate what they come up with. In reality, people will like/dislike what the DM comes up with on its own basis.

---


I do not want to be forced to purchase 700 pages of products, (when page count impacts product price), if I am only going to use 200 pages of the products.

So, there are two things to unpack here.

The first is that I have not seen any evidence that 5e being rules-lite has made it also be price-lite. I would agree that if your primary product component is rules and you go rule-lite then you should also go price-lite. This does not make the product better, or as good as it could have been, however it does make the value proposition stronger.

The second is that having more rules necessarily results in an encyclopedia. This is a slippery slope fallacy and I will call it out. There already exists some rules, even in the social and exploration pillars - disparate, pocket-change, token rules, but nevertheless. Yet, the book has not became a hefty tome. A few more will not suddenly do so.

[schm0]

Will such a player? I know personally I do not feel that way. Whether the DC is made by the DM or is made by a rule, I want consistency. If something is described as X, I want to know it will be the same DC as previous thing described as X. I would not be happy with a DM that just pulled numbers out of various unsavioury places. What is important is that I know the rule or ruling so that I can plan appropriately, otherwise I might as well go watch a film.

Now, if the DM comes up with a ruling I really did not care for, that would remain the case whether or not a rule exists already. It appears to me that there are DMs out there that think that as long as there are no rules then everyone will like what they come up with, while if there are rules everyone will hate what they come up with. In reality, people will like/dislike what the DM comes up with on its own basis.


Why wouldn't such a player? If there were tables of DCs for every skill, for example, then I'd absolutely expect players to assume that those tables apply to the games they play at. The game is providing the expectation for those rules by giving them to players. So any deviation from those rules creates a potential for conflict.

As far as consistency is concerned, as a player you'd really have no idea what the DCs are behind the screen anyways, so I'm not sure how you could possibly measure whether or not a given DC for a certain check is consistent over time (let alone the odds that the exact same check occurring frequently enough to measure such a thing). But ultimately I think what you are referring to above is consistency in fairness, and that we can agree on.

IMHO, the most ideal game is the one where the player's choices aren't primarily focused on optimizing for the rules or determining the exact probability of success, but instead one that is focused on what their characters want to do narratively. And in my mind, the more tables and rules that exist, the more players tend to focus on them. It's fine to optimize and calculate risk, don't get me wrong, but it should always be secondary to the game experience.

My only issue with exploration or social interaction isn't the quality or quantity of rules, but the uneven presentation and application of those rules. I'd pay decent money to have a quality book dedicated entirely to wilderness exploration, for example.

[Sindeloke]

Why wouldn't such a player? If there were tables of DCs for every skill, for example, then I'd absolutely expect players to assume that those tables apply to the games they play at. The game is providing the expectation for those rules by giving them to players. So any deviation from those rules creates a potential for conflict.

My homebrew world has no elves, dwarves, orcs, harregon, or literally any other existing player race other than human. Instead, it has a small handful of setting-specific homebrew races.

My players are not concerned that the PHB has races that are implied to be universal that are not available to them in my particular game. No one has ever come up to me and said "why the hell don't you have elves, the game says I can play elves, I want to play an elf." There's just literally never been even ten seconds of conflict about it. No one cares. They accept that this is what makes the game fun for me, and that my fun matters; they believe that I am a skilled worldbuilder and therefore trust that what I have provided for them as a replacement for that aspect of the game will be fun for them as well; they go into it with a collaborative attitude and we all have a good time.

Now, certainly, there are players who would not want to play in my game, because they couldn't be the cool warforged monk they've been dreaming about. I've been fortunate to have a group of friends who I'm very compatible with in this way, and if I didn't have them, I might have had to do some searching to find people who were interested in the same game I was. And, likewise, if there were detailed DC tables for every skill, and you as a DM told people up front "we won't be using those, I prefer to wing it," that you would have players who say "this game isn't for me, sorry," and who do not play with you, and you might have to do some searching to find players who were interested in your game.

But that would be a good thing. It would mean that the players who do choose to play in your game are guaranteed to be ones who will appreciate your DMing; ie, the playstyle and interests of the entire table align in an important way, and everyone is having fun during the portion of the game that involves that playstyle preference.


My only issue with exploration or social interaction isn't the quality or quantity of rules, but the uneven presentation and application of those rules. I'd pay decent money to have a quality book dedicated entirely to wilderness exploration, for example.

Honestly, I complain about this game in a lot of different ways, but my real, core frustration with 5e is actually just this - the promised "modularity" from the original marketing never actually appeared. "Here's a book about wilderness exploration; it's literally everything you could possibly need for a mechanically vigorous, challenging hexcrawl, so you can get this book out when you're hexcrawling and need only it, or not even buy it at all if your party will never leave the dungeon" is exactly what I was hoping for with this edition. But unfortunately "not every player will want or need to buy this" isn't compatible with Hasbro's business model, and so none of the support for extra play modes will ever exist, now or in DnDone.

[schm0]

My homebrew world has no elves, dwarves, orcs, harregon, or literally any other existing player race other than human. Instead, it has a small handful of setting-specific homebrew races.

My players are not concerned that the PHB has races that are implied to be universal that are not available to them in my particular game. No one has ever come up to me and said "why the hell don't you have elves, the game says I can play elves, I want to play an elf." There's just literally never been even ten seconds of conflict about it. No one cares.

Now, certainly, there are players who would not want to play in my game, because they couldn't be the cool warforged monk they've been dreaming about. I've been fortunate to have a group of friends who I'm very compatible with in this way, and if I didn't have them, I might have had to do some searching to find people who were interested in the same game I was. And, likewise, if there were detailed DC tables for every skill, and you as a DM told people up front "we won't be using those, I prefer to wing it," that you would have players who say "this game isn't for me, sorry," and who do not play with you, and you might have to do some searching to find players who were interested in your game.

But that would be a good thing. It would mean that the players who do choose to play in your game are guaranteed to be ones who will appreciate your DMing; ie, the playstyle and interests of the entire table align in an important way, and everyone is having fun during the portion of the game that involves that playstyle preference.

Making decisions restricting elements of character creation based on your setting is not really comparable to more universal rules such as skill descriptions or DCs, IMHO. It's much more palatable to say "these species don't exist in my world, so you can't play them" than it is to say "I don't use these rules because I don't really care for them." It' is expected that not every world in the multiverse has elves.

Furthermore, as you point out, it is also different because the restriction only applies once and at the beginning of a campaign, unlike universal rules that apply to running the game as a whole, beyond just the character creation stage. And while it is true that players can self-select by opting out of the game, the problem is evident: there will be players who see those decisions as a source of conflict, some to the point of passing over your game entirely.

[KorvinStarmast]

If rules were locked in, like an online MMO, then I would have a different tune to sing. As it is, both those that wish to use rules as much as possible and those that wish to use rules as little as possible can be simultaneously catered to by having rules (they can be ignored), while both cannot be simultaneously catered to by not having rules. As such, and especially since we pay for rules as a major part of the purchase of the PHB and DMG (there is also some lore, artwork, and advice), the idea that we should push for the developers to not have rules (in two pillars no less!) seems either incredibly selfish or just plain daft. I just don't get it. Who is pushing for the devs to not have rules? Nobody. How much and how many (there are but some are in the DMG rather than in the PHB, deal with it) is a matter of taste.

I can understand not liking the rules or finding them boring, but to say that they don't have rules in the exploration pillar just isn't true. Correct.

So you want rules for sailing/ships you don't have buy a splat book for it you have Ghosts of Saltmarsh that expands/explores that particular niche. It's a good book. There is also a meme running about that adventures on the water are a bad things since people in armor drown, etc. But that's as much tongue in cheek as anything else.

With no such table to point to, the DM is free to rule however they want and the players are just mildly disappointed they didn't make the check. And play continues.

If you're going to build a class around excelling in the wilderness, you better have some wilderness to explore and challenge the party in every adventure. Tomb of Annihilation is a good module for Rangers. :smallsmile:

Will such a player? I know personally I do not feel that way. Whether the DC is made by the DM or is made by a rule, I want consistency. If something is described as X, I want to know it will be the same DC as previous thing described as X. You are looking at the DC in isolation as though it is a thing in itself. It is not.
No two situations are identical, so no two skill DCs are necessarily identical. What you prefer/suggest is massively limiting to the game. As I mentioned elsewhere, each lock is its own problem to pick with thieves tools. DCs for lock picking run the gamut, from 12 to 25, in the published adventures that I have. And as I pointed out to Pex: there is no tree.


---

So, there are two things to unpack here.

The first is that I have not seen any evidence that 5e being rules-lite has made it also be price-lite.
It isn't rules light, but it is rules lighter than 3.x.


I would agree that if your primary product component is rules and you go rule-lite then you should also go price-lite. This does not make the product better, or as good as it could have been, however it does make the value proposition stronger. More isn't better. Blades in the Dark is sort of a case in point. It's a very good game but it takes a lot of referring to the rule book to get untracked. (There's a running joke about "and once I've read this densely written rule book 83 times I'll finally be able to run the game" on reddit somewhere. But what BitD is, IMO, is rules coherent, and the rules are well bound to the setting. The rules fit the game experience that they are trying to create pretty darned well.

The second is that having more rules necessarily results in an encyclopedia. The key is in excellent writing. Not volume. D&D 5e rules have some good, concise bits, and some 'filler heavy' bits, almost as though the same writer weren't involved in the writing of them. And that means that the editors were asleep on the job, in terms of getting a consistent style and voice.

As far as consistency is concerned, as a player you'd really have no idea what the DCs are behind the screen anyways, so I'm not sure how you could possibly measure whether or not a given DC for a certain check is consistent over time That too. "I am a player, but I want control over the game world" is the appeal that I think is being made.
Fear of the unknown.

My only issue with exploration or social interaction isn't the quality or quantity of rules, but the uneven presentation and application of those rules. I'd pay decent money to have a quality book dedicated entirely to wilderness exploration, for example. The "underwater" rules in PHB are a good case of "they seemed to go a bit lighter than I expected on this one" insofar as my critique of the editing bit.

But that would be a good thing. It would mean that the players who do choose to play in your game are guaranteed to be ones who will appreciate your DMing; ie, the playstyle and interests of the entire table align in an important way, and everyone is having fun during the portion of the game that involves that playstyle preference. Which is a key point: there isn't a universal experience, nor a universal expectation for D&D play.

But unfortunately "not every player will want or need to buy this" isn't compatible with Hasbro's business model, and so none of the support for extra play modes will ever exist, now or in DnDone. THey dumped about 4/5 of the team who put the game together once the last of the three core books was completed. The uneven quality of the supplements seems to me another case of "we do not speak with one voice" again.

Furthermore, as you point out, it is also different because the restriction only applies once and at the beginning of a campaign, unlike universal rules that apply to running the game as a whole, beyond just the character creation stage. And while it is true that players can self-select by opting out of the game, the problem is evident: there will be players who see those decisions as a source of conflict, some to the point of passing over your game entirely. Good point.

[Aimeryan]

Who is pushing for the devs to not have rules?

The OP?


TL;DR: is it a good thing that exploration and social encounters have not been gamified in D&D 5e?
I think yes.

--


You are looking at the DC in isolation as though it is a thing in itself. It is not.
No two situations are identical, so no two skill DCs are necessarily identical. What you prefer/suggest is massively limiting to the game. As I mentioned elsewhere, each lock is its own problem to pick with thieves tools. DCs for lock picking run the gamut, from 12 to 25, in the published adventures that I have. And as I pointed out to Pex: there is no tree.

That is your choice. It is not my choice. When a similar situation occurs in the game I want to be able to predict and plan for the DC. Different locks may be different DCs, but the same lock used on various XYZ Compendium's Strongboxes should have the same DC. Likewise, if the type of lock (https://www.lockpickworld.com/pages/lockpicking-guides-types-of-locks-and-how-to-pick-them) is described I would expect to know the DC for that before getting there - a kink in the plan then may present when the info was wrong, but that is part of the plot then. That builds a rule. If the book had a list of locks and DCs, describing the types and how they look, that would be value added for myself and likely many others. It would not subtract value for you though - if you don't like them, don't use them.

--


More isn't better.

If provided with X and then X + Y, as long as Y is at all positive then X + Y does provide more value. What you are doing here is saying F has more than X but does not provide more value. Sure, because you are comparing apples to oranges. But X + Y would, and that is what we are talking about.

[KorvinStarmast]

Schm0 has demonstrated that the "lack of rules" is a false premise.

but the same lock used on various XYZ Compendium's Strongboxes
OK, you are making stuff up now, or maybe engaging in a hypothetical that is at odds with how the game is structured, and how the DCs for published adventures are arrived at.
The term "lock" is not computer code for identical items in stored or random memory. And for that matter, organizations use varying qualities of lock for varying purposes. (One example from my time in the Navy: we had different qualities of locks on certain file cabinets and doors based on what was stored in/behind them).

You appear to be approaching this as though the players are in control of the game world.
They are not. Games like that are made, but this one isn't it. Your demand to "plan for that" is at odds with the discovery phase of the game.

The worldbuilder is the DM.
Your agency is the measure of how your PC responds to and interacts with the imaginary world. What's in the game world isn't driven by that, although your PC is a catalyst for changes in the game world via the choices made....with a little luck thrown in. Uncertainty is baked in, on purpose. You seem to be demanding certainty.

If the book had a list of locks and DCs, describing the types and how they look, that would be value added for myself and likely many others.
You know that the range for DCs is 5-30.

As schm0 points out: you don't know what's going on behind that screen. That is a feature, not a bug.

[Blatant Beast]

The first is that I have not seen any evidence that 5e being rules-lite has made it also be price-lite. I would agree that if your primary product component is rules and you go rule-lite then you should also go price-lite. This does not make the product better, or as good as it could have been, however it does make the value proposition stronger.

Hasbro is a financially desperate company, at a time in which the corporate zeitgeist exemplifies extreme rent seeking behavior. If you think the books are expensive now, of course WotC will charge more if they start printing larger books. WotC might charge more, even when they print less pages, and include things like slipcovers and small trinkets.

The rules you seek might be out there with 3pp. WotC does not need to be involved in your quest for the particular rules and guidance you seek.


The second is that having more rules necessarily results in an encyclopedia. This is a slippery slope fallacy and I will call it out. There already exists some rules, even in the social and exploration pillars - disparate, pocket-change, token rules, but nevertheless. Yet, the book has not became a hefty tome. A few more will not suddenly do so.

I did not mention anything about encyclopedias, as I recall, but alas history refutes on that front, as well. Companies, I suspect, would love making Encyclopedias/Reprints....very little new design goes into the books, so the cost of making the intellectual property has likely already been paid for in past production costs.

Let me introduce the D&D Compendium club membership, (that I remember):
The Big Book of Artifacts says "Yo"
The Monstrous Compendium from 2e says: "Hello"
The Spell Compendium from 3e says: "Heya"
Mordenkainen Presents Monster of the Multiverse from 5e says" "How are you doing?"

If you start factoring in reprinted material, then 5e does that frequently already, and 2024 Edition is likely going to continue the process. The Gazetteer sections of Princes of the Apocalypse, and Dragon Heist are largely lifted straight from 1e Forgotten Realms books, for example.

The Renown, Faith, and Horror based point systems that appear in Ravnica, Theros, and Ravenloft are largely the same system. 5e's support for character or campaign Role playing aids, has largely been making pretty lack luster charts. Why do I want to pay for lists of names, when libraries offer books of names, for free?

WotC, printing more rules, is no guarantee that the rules will be good or useful. WotC printing more rules, is not even a guarantee that the rules will be new. More is not necessarily, better.

Similarly to what Pex has stated, it seems your drive to have all these rules created, is that you want set DCs to exist from game to game. I understand how unpleasant anxiety can be, but it strikes me as a bit extreme to usher in a fundamental change to the most popular edition of D&D, for the comfort of an unknown percentage of the gaming community.

From an utilitarian perspective, we would really need to know the numbers on the percentage of players that feel the same as you and Pex, to make an informed decision.

[Aimeryan]

Schm0 has demonstrated that the "lack of rules" is a false premise.

No such thing has been demonstrated. Another person adequately rebutted it, so I did not weigh in. However, the idea that something existing in the books means that it must appear in any one DM's campaign is ludicrous. If a player does not like a ruling the DM has came up with enough that they are complaining it is a sign they are not content with the DM's ruling - not that they will throw a tantrum because a rule hasn't been followed.

If a DM does have a player that insists on all the rules being followed or else, and the DM wishes to do their own thing, then those two people are simply not compatible. Nothing will change that.

---


WotC does not need to be involved in your quest for the particular rules and guidance you seek.

Every customer/service relationship is built upon what is desired. Of course they have no obligation, I am simply stating what I desire from this - which is the point of a forum.

[Blatant Beast]

which is the point of a forum.

I do not believe anything has been stated asking you not to write about want you want.
You want things, that some of us do not want.

The things that you want, however, do not need to result in whole scale system changes. If you want set DCs for certain activities, if such a thing would make your play experience more enjoyable, then you could ask your DM to accommodate you.

Altering the game at the point of your play sessions, strikes me as the most measured way to get what you want, without impacting the entire 5e play community with changes that might prevent others from having the play experience they want.

One of my friends is claustrophobic, to the point that very detailed descriptions of tight spaces can sometimes make them feel uncomfortable. Should D&D not have squeezing rules and tight space to accommodate the segment of the marketplace that is claustrophobic?

That strike me as extreme action, especially given the fact, that accommodating action can be best accomplished at the level of the play group.

I myself would have no problem with having a larger DMG that costs more if there is a great section write-up on how to accommodate the needs and wants of playgroups. Monte Cook products often have a section like this, and often use the common convention of X-cards.

This is teaching people how to fish, and I am willing to pay for that.
I am not willing to pay for canned tuna, aka ubiquitous set DCs, (especially as the guidance for running a game only using three DCs for Easy, Moderate, and Hard tasks already exists).

TBF, I generally play with friends, (and acquaintances often quickly become friends when playing D&D together), I am not as familiar with the Tinder D&D mode in which you go to FLGS or Discord, etc, and play with randos. I imagine it might be difficult to ask a DM you have never met, and were just introduced, to only use the set DC that you want. Of course, there might already be DMs out there that run their game in a manner that would align with what you want Aimeryan.

[schm0]

No such thing has been demonstrated. Another person adequately rebutted it, so I did not weigh in.

I'm not sure how one can rebut a compilation of rules that do, objectively and irrefutably, exist. :)

[Tanarii]

5e has plenty of mechanics for exploration and social.

It even has a game structure for social: DMG p244-245

What it doesn't really have is a game structure for exploration. Or palette of frameworks to select from. Common examples are dungeon crawl, hex crawl, and point crawl.

Edit: For folks interest in game structures, The Alexandrian has a good series on them: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/15126/roleplaying-games/game-structures

[KorvinStarmast]

What it doesn't really have is a game structure for exploration. Or palette of frameworks to select from. Common examples are dungeon crawl, hex crawl, and point crawl. Play examples in the DMG, like in AD&D 1e DMG or in the Vol 3 of the little brown books, or in Holmes, would IMO go a long way to helping with that: particularly for beginning players and beginning DMs.
FWIW: I find "discovery" to be a better way to frame that aspect of the game, with Exploring being a sub set of it.

For folks interest in game structures, The Alexandrian has a good series on them: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/15126/roleplaying-games/game-structures Glad to see you break lurk again, hadn't 'seen' much of you for a while.

[Witty Username]

More isn't better. Blades in the Dark is sort of a case in point. It's a very good game but it takes a lot of referring to the rule book to get untracked. (There's a running joke about "and once I've read this densely written rule book 83 times I'll finally be able to run the game" on reddit somewhere. But what BitD is, IMO, is rules coherent, and the rules are well bound to the setting. The rules fit the game experience that they are trying to create pretty darned well.


This weirds me out some, Blades in the Dark at least feels significantly lighter on rules than 5e, I recall watching the Oxventure Blades in the Dark series before I got/read the book and found it pretty easy to follow what was going on mechanically. And stuff like the Flashback stuff should just be in RPGs generally in all honesty.

Meanwhile I have DMed both 3.5 and 5e and still feel like I don't actually grok most of 5e's DMG. As well as a lot of bloat and nothing statements for rules to hide in.

[Tanarii]

This weirds me out some, Blades in the Dark at least feels significantly lighter on rules than 5e, I recall watching the Oxventure Blades in the Dark series before I got/read the book and found it pretty easy to follow what was going on mechanically. And stuff like the Flashback stuff should just be in RPGs generally in all honesty.

Meanwhile I have DMed both 3.5 and 5e and still feel like I don't actually grok most of 5e's DMG. As well as a lot of bloat and nothing statements for rules to hide in.
Blades in the dark is only rules lighter if you count count the bajillion spells D&D has. And maybe class features.

And its organization is just terrible. Imagine if the PHB and DMG were one book with the DMGs organization.

That said, the biggest barrier to understanding the rules seems to be thinking like a typical D&D DM/Player. It's not designed to be run or played the same way.

[Schwann145]

It was not my intention to invoke notions of such a horribly constructed system as some of the offending white wolf offerings.

I got a genuine laugh out of this, considering how similar White Wolf/Paradox games and D&D are when it comes to the fundamentals.
Vampire: "In most situations that require a roll, you pick an Ability and an Attribute that best match the intended action and you roll for success. Combat has it's own more complex system because it requires more than a simple roll for verisimilitude."
D&D: "In most situations that require a roll, you pick an Ability Score and a relevant Skill Proficiency that best match the intended action and you roll for success. Combat has it's own more complex system because it requires more than a simple roll for verisimilitude."

:smalltongue:

[Vahnavoi]

@Schwann145: their basic mechanics being so similar is part of why White Wolf games were horribly constructed. You have to look outside what those games say about rolling dice, and at what they say about how to create stories and what the relationship of rolling dice has to that.

Or, in case you don't want to go through WoD books, let me explain using much simpler games to illustrate the principle:

Among the simplest storytelling games, is story dice: you have some number of dice. Each has some nice, evocative pictures on it. A player rolls the dice, sees what symbols they get, and then their task is to tell a story based on them. Success is based on how entertaining other players find the result.

Among the simplest roleplaying games, is a mimicry guessing game: there are cues for different roles that have to be portrayed within some restriction (typically, not making sound). The player's task, upon receiving the cue, is to change their behaviour to match the role. Success is based on how recognizable their performance is.

A mimicry guessing game might use dice (even the same dice) to pick roles for players as a story dice game, but what the player is expected to do is different. You can call mimicry a type of storytelling too, but only the mimicry game posits the player has to play a role.

In comparison to these simple games, a more complex game such as D&D or a Vampire LARP can ask players to do both at various times, to various degrees. The question I want you to ask and answer, is this: if you want players to focus on the mimicry aspect (changing their behaviour to match a role), does it make sense to emphasize rolling dice and calling your system a storytelling system?