Unpopular D&D Opinions

[KorvinStarmast]

Didn't 0e measure spell ranges in inches? As in real world inches, which explicitly varied in what they represented with scale.

Yes. One inch was 10 feet underground and 10 yards above ground.

[Telok]

Technically true but a pedantic and worthless statement. Established units like feet and metres are ones people actually use and can understand. If I...

I think we actually agree and just lost tone or context somewhere. The map & squares fetish has done some jankey things, like certain interpretations of line effect rules letting you hit people behind full cover.

Didn't 0e measure spell ranges in inches? As in real world inches, which explicitly varied in what they represented with scale.

Specifically it was something like 1" = 10' indoors and 1" = 10 yards outdoors. Probably a holdover from wargame archery where arrows were considered to arc outdoors but didn't have ceiling room to do so indoors. Yeah, got weird with things like spells and thrown daggers.

Unpopular opinion: 4e did a great job of making every class and powers from different classes feel pretty wildly different, despite the shared framework.

I object. Warlock, bard, cleric, and druid all felt very similar to me in play despite the druid being all beast powers* and the bard having to do juggling in combat**. Combat was simply: check for a good daily use, check for a good encounter use, choose which at-will, check movement, roll attack & damage plus maybe move an enemy a square or two or apply a zero-to-two turn duration minor condition. It was literally the same gameplay every single combat.

* problem was I ran out of powers to take, nothing else was appropriate to the character, there were no good paragon classes for the character, and the DM didn't homebrew.

** early character, made the mistake of picking powers by name & fluff without first drilling down into the rules. Had melee ranged, and magic attacks that required swapping through 3 different tools plus a shield.

[KorvinStarmast]

Unpopular opinion: every D&D book requested since the Rules Cyclopaedia has been part of a steady decrease in quality, as well as an attempt to sell everybody six copies of the player's handbook.

Heh, I think it started a bit before that.

But if you also have access to other crunchy traditional fantasy systems like TDE or Splittermond, D&D will do every single one of these alternative themes/arcs significantly worse.

How are they selling? High skill quotient games have their appeal, certainly, and they also run into a market limitation. (Ah, Chivalry and Sorcery, what could have been ...)
As to high level play, current edition D&D can do it but I will observe that, from my limited experience with Tier 4 play (mostly 1 shots to date) Tier 4 play isn't 5e's sweet spot.

Additionally (and this is an unpopular opinion) I like classes. In fact, I dislike skill-based games (for many reasons). I want strong archetypes--in fact, I think that D&D would do better if all the archetypes/classes were as strong as, say, the monk or druid or paladin. Classes-as-abstract-bundles-of-mechanics are just doing point-buy, badly.

Classes work. I will say that the variation on that theme, the various playbooks in the Dungeon World game I played, have fewer moving parts which I found to be a nice change of pace.

Edit: my current world is a pastiche of 4e's cosmology, blended with influences from all over. I've actually run 4e characters as NPCs directly in my 5e game (with little bits of translation). And it worked fine. I'm not tied to anyone's ideas--I can grab ideas from all editions and make them work without substantial pain. Except 3e (mechanically), because 3e is obnoxious and annoying

That didn't need colored text.

[PhoenixPhyre]

That didn't need colored text.

There should be a standard color for "honestly held opinion stated in slightly outrageous language on purpose".

[Anonymouswizard]

Heh, I think it started a bit before that.

I was listing the last book I thought was a hearty improvement, and it's one I'll be asking for in print for Christmas (only owning a pdf copy at the moment). Not the last book before the decline started.


Although the next fantasy game I'm going to run will probably use All for One: Régime Diabolique as it's base as I'm more interested in swashbuckling than dungeon crawling. Not 100% sure if I'll keep it in 17th century France or go for a fantasy world, but the system seems pretty solid without making ministries a necessity.

[Luccan]

I'm not sure disliking D&D is really that unpopular an opinion. It's been at least a significant minority opinion in the TTRPG space for a long time

[Quertus]

2e isn't point buy until Player's Options, and I don't know anybody who uses it. Then there's the issue about having to go through twenty million kits to find the one that fits your concept (and unit people who played it back in the day I don't know which book has which kit). And if I ignore all that I'm left with a class system that, while better than 3.X's and 5e's, is still incredibly lacklustre.

Honestly if you're going to have classes both 4e (with many specific roles) or BD&D (with it's broad archetypes) are better. Which reminds me, I need to pick up s physical copy of the Rules Cyclopaedia.

Correct, 2e isn't point buy until just over a quarter of a century ago (unless you count the DMG, in which case it was point buy from the beginning). So, if you develop a Time Machine, come pick me up, and I'll help you make sure not to go back too far. I might even help you find a table, since every 2e table I've seen since it came out has allowed S&P. As an added bonus, I'll get to take a clue-by-four to my younger self.

You are also correct that finding a kit for the first time is quite a chore… kinda like tracking down particular abilities in GURPS, or any other similarly expansive system, IME. I'll admit, it works better the other way around, for the kit to give you a character idea, rather than trying to shoehorn an Avariel 2e Wild Mage (complete with restrictions on how they learn new spells) with a Wand of Misplaced Objects, a lightsaber, a Holtzman shield, and a "body made of gold" mutation into GURPS.

Wow, these replies are going back a lot of pages. Things got busy for me.

OK, I assume by AI you are trying to say someone with no biases (no preferences or strong experiences that would change their view, which does not describe AIs, current ones have to be trained with fake experiences and told what they are supposed to think about those) but I'm saying they wouldn't be able to answer the question based off your definition. Because without experiences, how do we know what helps someone role-play or not?

On the other hand I have only guess work about what do you mean by the character vs. player. Is that important?

… I am far too senile to know.

Let's take a look at what I said…

…huh. That was back a few pages.

Best as I can figure, the "AI" is the character, not the player. Or… perhaps it'd make the most sense if I said that the player is a computer, and the character is a program that they run, an emulator perhaps, or an AI. By default, one (presumably / in my example) loads it with a basic understanding of this world, then adds experiences to make it unique.

Say you want to play Batman.

Batman doesn't use guns. Why? What experience do you need to hand the "Batman" AI to make it so?

{His parents were gunned down in front of him} + {reaction thereunto}

Why is he dressed up in a stupid bat costume?

{Wants to instill fear in criminals (why?)} + {Traumatic experience with bats -> thinks bats are scary}

These are the experiences you need to load into the AI to make it perform like Batman. Well, kinda (and only kinda, in both directions). But hopefully you can see the general shape of this piece of the elephant.

So, the question is, if you look very critically (which most people can't do, IME) at when you're in character, running the AI, vs when you're playing the game, the question is, what experiences would you need to feed the AI in order to make its behavior line up with yours?

I gave an example for 5e, of the "reverse education center", where the teacher asks the students questions in order to learn the answers. That's an example of the types of experiences you would need to feed the AI in order to remain in character in 5e.

So, how "pants-on-head" the "default" AI is in the system, how often, and how difficult the code you need to write in order to make the AI perform correctly with what degree of fidelity sound like a good first pass at listing the key components in whether or not something is an RPG (by my definition).

More to the point, when a group of veteran AI coders come up blank on how one would write such code, then it's reasonable for them to declare something "not an RPG" until proven otherwise.

And, IIRC, I shared with you the beginnings of the kind of code necessary to make "only the one with the best bonus rolls" be an IC reaction. It wasn't pretty.

-----

As far as "system for one's first game"…

Spoiler: stuff other people said about "1st game"

Show

I can actually see a pretty good argument for why the more freeform method would be good as an entry-point. I could also see an argument for a light but also pretty open ended system, but the opposite extreme of focused role-playing rules probably would not a good entry point. Although, that is partially because the role-playing rules tend to work on very focused systems which I have argued is not a great entry-point anyways.

I haven't been trying to do that this entire thread. I generally don't try to talk people out of D&D here because by the time you are a regular on Giant in the Playground you are probably not up the wrong creak. They might also enjoy some other systems as well. Branching out can actually be tricky. I want watched someone who obviously only played Dungeons & Dragons before, couldn't get out of that mindset and the result was not pretty.

If your campaign is a kitchen sink fantasy game about going though a hostile environment, AKA a dungeon, to fight some big bad in physical combat, AKA a dragon, then Dungeons & Dragons will do fine.

As someone who
a) runs D&D 5e (and 4e before that)
b) almost exclusively with new players, most of whom are new to the idea of role-play in a game (ie not even players of CRPGs)
c) doesn't do many dungeons and has had just as many BBEGs defeated by talking as by swords over the years
d) has seen many of my players go on to be DMs themselves, sometimes starting their first campaign after 1-2 sessions

I disagree. I find that rules-light, free-form systems require more effort to learn and get comfortable with for brand new players. And less focused means there's less scaffolding to fall back on when you're not sure. This is especially true for new DMs.

Rules are scaffolding (in the instructional design sense). I've said that before, but I'm going to keep saying it. And scaffolding is a double-edged tool. Pure free-form has limitless possibilities, but that very lack of limits means that you run into the blank-page "writer's block" problem. Restrictions and focus actually help people figure out what they want to do.

The other big thing is that D&D (5e particularly) is actually a whole lot more flexible than people give it credit for. Sure, it expects that there will be combat. So if you want to do a campaign with little or no combat, there are probably better ones out there. And it expects magic and generally larger-than-life heroes, so if you want a "grounded" or "realistic" game, there are better ones out there. But most of the time (in my experience)? Those are acquired tastes. New people often don't want that sort of thing (again, in my experience working with new people)

High Fantasy Adventure is enduringly popular because (IMO)
a) it's a power fantasy, letting people pretend to be stronger than they are
b) the goals and themes are nearly universally accessible--the clash between good and evil, monsters, powers, etc. It's easy to understand "There's a threat, we can remove the threat with fire and sword"; esoteric or philosophical debates...not so much.
c) it's not real life. A lot of people play this sort of game to escape from reality. In many ways. The shy, tiny 8th grader wants to play something big and fierce. The bullied teen wants to play the hero. The kid who feels he has no control over his life, who feels locked in a cage of other people's wills wants to play the wanderer, able to go anywhere and see anything[1]. They don't have to worry about real-world moral codes or offending real-life people. Nuance and thorny moral debates can receed...as much as the party wants. There actually can be clear-cut villains and monsters. And those monsters can be defeated. It's much harder to slay real-life "demons" of whatever shape they may take.

[1] Note: these are drawn directly from real experiences playing in a high-school club environment. Being able to escape the here and now was a huge reason the club was popular. Being able to play someone else, who doesn't have your limits, in a world and setting where hitting back or standing up for the innocent (or whatever) is actually rewarded was a major draw. Having an escape from the stresses of parental and social pressure, from having to worry about what people thought was a blessed relief. And the same goes for the adults I've played with.

I agree with all of this.

I'll second third this notion that rules and structures are good for one's first RPG.

Most people are familiar with freeform imagination ("bang you're dead" "no I'm not"). Most people are familiar with board games. A system where it's perfectly viable to play the game completely as either is optimal. That way, no matter what their previous experience, no matter how they conceptualize an RPG, they're not wrong. They can approach it whatever way they're comfortable with, and possibly expand their horizons watching other people succeed differently.

Also… yes, many people are much more comfortable being able to "fall back on" the structure of the rules.

"D&D shouldn't have to include combat", I think I might agree.

But with current rulesets from the various edition, if you're planning on not having combat, I don't see why you would ever chose to play D&D rather than free-form or rule-light systems. The non-combat rules for D&D are either broken, inexistent, or "barely working if you have a GM good enough to compensate for them".

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, is already in D&D. If he hosts a huge party, should I switch to some hypothetical "balloons & ballrooms" to run that?

So… "sunk cost" seems a good first guess for reasons one might want to simply roll their own, or, at most, simply import a few structures or ideas from "balloons and ballrooms" into their D&D games.

Orcs are Orcs are Orcs.
Dwarves are Dwarves are Dwarves.
Elves are Elves are Elves.
Goblins are Goblins are Goblins.
Centaurs are Centaurs are Centaurs.
Drow are Drow are Drow.
Gnomes are Gnomes are Gnomes.

If you look at a fictional race and see a real-world demographic under a coat of paint, that's not "Coding", that's "Projection". And I think it says a bit more about you then it does about whoever came up with the race in the medium you're observing.

I'm guessing you haven't read the early monster manuals.

In general, though, I agree - Orcs should be able to just be Orcs .

[Telok]

I'm not sure disliking D&D is really that unpopular an opinion. It's been at least a significant minority opinion in the TTRPG space for a long time

I'd split it into "dislike d&d", "dislike current/last couple editions", and "dislike d&d's elephant-in-the-room effects on the hobby".

I love d&d, I grew up on it and met some great friends through it. Just that after 3.5e it stopped being fun for me unless you had a super good dm. And super good dms are both rare (don't always dm/not always on their a-game) & can make any system they like fun. So I feel like something has been lost, the game itself is diminished or unhealthy somehow. It makes me sad to see the game I grew up loving slowly turning into a random mash of regurgitated autocannibalism driven by sloppy popularity polls.

[Easy e]

There should be a standard color for "honestly held opinion stated in slightly outrageous language on purpose".

I would use that color a lot.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm not sure disliking D&D is really that unpopular an opinion. It's been at least a significant minority opinion in the TTRPG space for a long time

I think, especially with the recent D&D boom, active dislike is unpopular, whereas having a different preference is just a minority. Plus there's also the issue of people disliking it's popularity rather than it's rules.

There's also a related issues in D&D's sheer popularity causing it to get tested as more generic then it is (although from what little I've seen the designers don't actively do so these days). I want to run a swashbuckling musketeers game, but if I went to a random group of roleplayers there's a decent chance I'll be asked why I'm not running it with 5e (because 5e is not designed for this).

[kyoryu]

D&D 3.x is my anti-game.

It is also my least favorite version of D&D.

(Note: 2e is my least useful version of D&D)

[Xervous]

I think, especially with the recent D&D boom, active dislike is unpopular, whereas having a different preference is just a minority. Plus there's also the issue of people disliking it's popularity rather than it's rules.

Put me in the category of “harmless unless provoked” when it comes to 5e. Some parts are fully the realm of opinion, but when you utter a stupid (on the internet), duty calls.

[BRC]

I think, especially with the recent D&D boom, active dislike is unpopular, whereas having a different preference is just a minority. Plus there's also the issue of people disliking it's popularity rather than it's rules.

There's also a related issues in D&D's sheer popularity causing it to get tested as more generic then it is (although from what little I've seen the designers don't actively do so these days). I want to run a swashbuckling musketeers game, but if I went to a random group of roleplayers there's a decent chance I'll be asked why I'm not running it with 5e (because 5e is not designed for this).

D&D Is less "Generic" than it is "Iconic", and while you can do quite a lot in it, well, it depends on what you want out of the game. It doesn't do everything, but so much of what people think of when they think of RPG's is defined by D&D that it's easy to think that D&D does 90% of the RPG stuff you can think of, and everything else if the exclusive realm of weird niche games for one-shots.


You could run a Swashbuckling Musketeers D&D game by having your PC's all be Battlemaster Fighters or Swashbuckler Rogues, and run adventures that fit the genre you're going for, and yes, you would have an RPG about a bunch of swashbuckling musketeers getting into sword fights.

And if that's all you want, D&D isn't a terrible system for such a thing.

But it's not going to have much in the way of mechanics to represent concluding a fight against a hated rival by disarming them and saying "I would slay you here, but that would get your vile blood on my sword, and unlike some, I don't need to taint my steel with poison."

And, yes, you can DO that in D&D, but in D&D that's a simple disarming strike, not the climactic end to a hard-fought duel.


D&D can model quite a lot, especially with some minor reskinning and homebrew, but that doesn't mean it is going to be good at capturing the feel of something, especially if there is a specific genre you're trying to replicate.

You CAN run a Swashbuckler game in D&D, and it will be functional, but it's not really going to Pop.

It's the difference between a game simulating Events, and simulating a Sensation.

Consider that climactic duel: Two hated rivals with swords drawn meet on the wall of a crumbling seaside castle. Their swords clash until our Hero disarms his foe.

D&D is perfectly capable of modeling that, it can handle swords and disarming strikes, but it's not designed for this sort of duel, so the mechanics are not going to properly grasp what the group might want out of this duel.

A more specialized system might have more in-depth mechanics for swordplay, with each fighter declaring specific patterns of attack and defense which interact with each other. Disarming a foe might not be as simple as making them fail a save, you might need to have broken through their defenses first, won a few rounds of back-and-forth before you can go for the Victory, so something like a Disarm is a proper finishing move, in line with a thrust through the heart, rather than just a minor tactical move.

That line at the end might not just be a good bit of RP, it might be a crucial part of the system. Winning the Duel by showing them mercy while still crushing their spirit may be mechanically represented as far more significant than simply stabbing them and kicking them off the cliff.

The Duelists may have mechanically different fighting styles, rather than just rolling D20+Stat at each other to hit for D8+Stat, so you can have a 4-person group of Swashbuckling Musketeers who all play completely differently, because the game is about being Swashbucklers, so it goes out of it's way to provide distinct play styles that all fall under "Swashbuckler".


The difference between a system being able to model something and a system being ABOUT something is really hard to grasp if you're only familiar with one system. It's like being shown a room you've never seen before and being asked what is missing from it.

[Anonymouswizard]

Something else that D&D doesn't do well, but is somewhat important for swashbuckling is mechanically different styles with the same sword. It's weapon rules are very broad, which is great for dungeon crawling but not great when two characters with rapiers (or sabres) are dueling. (Oh, and the firearms times are pretty terrible).

Plus All for One realises that dueling can be just as much about the social side as the physical side. It doesn't do it amazingly, but at least it has a social dueling system

D&D just fails at running anything that I'd think of as a swashbuckling game. Honestly Exalted does it better.

[BRC]

Something else that D&D doesn't do well, but is somewhat important for swashbuckling is mechanically different styles with the same sword. It's weapon rules are very broad, which is great for dungeon crawling but not great when two characters with rapiers (or sabres) are dueling. (Oh, and the firearms times are pretty terrible).

Plus All for One realises that dueling can be just as much about the social side as the physical side. It doesn't do it amazingly, but at least it has a social dueling system

D&D just fails at running anything that I'd think of as a swashbuckling game. Honestly Exalted does it better.

Right.
In D&D you can play a Swashbuckler, but it's not a game about Swashbuckling.

In D&D you can play a Thief, but it's not a game about Theft. I've run Heists in D&D, but I wouldn't use it for a campaign about heists.


Some could even argue that D&D as it is today isn't really "About" dungeon crawling. A more specialized game could have more focused mechanics on disarming traps, or different mechanics for fighting in narrow tunnels, rather than neat 5-foot cubes.

[dafrca]

Right.
Some could even argue that D&D as it is today isn't really "About" dungeon crawling. A more specialized game could have more focused mechanics on disarming traps, or different mechanics for fighting in narrow tunnels, rather than neat 5-foot cubes.

Isn't there already a few games making that claim?

Sometimes I feel D&D is like a pair of real old Levi's. I keep it not because it is the best but because it is something I have grown comfortable with and it mostly fits.

[KorvinStarmast]

I'm not sure disliking D&D is really that unpopular an opinion. It's been at least a significant minority opinion in the TTRPG space for a long time

Top Secret never did replace it ... ... you'd think that with how popular James Bond movies are/were that would have had a chance.

I'd split it into "dislike d&d", "dislike current/last couple editions", and "dislike d&d's elephant-in-the-room effects on the hobby".

I've observed the pretentious tone of a lot of that latter - it can be quite off putting.

It makes me sad to see the game I grew up loving slowly turning into a random mash of regurgitated autocannibalism driven by sloppy popularity polls.

That was a sentence I'd never expected to see written.

Plus there's also the issue of people disliking it's popularity rather than it's rules.

And in at least one space on the web that leads to a DND-hate pattern of behavior. Disappointing when encountered. (And almost Forgian in its tone ...)

[Mordar]

It's very much an Explicit Rules vs Non-Explicit Rules kind of thing.

Consider the following system:

All characters have the following three stats:
Body: All physical tasks
Brain: All mental tasks
Speech: All Social tasks
Allocate a total of 25 points between the three stats to build a character.[SNIP]

It's possible to build a system capable of modeling this and more by explicitly outlining rules for every potential action, but a highly generalized system like the one above does so by Default.

I agree - but you can have a crunchy system that identifies an array of inputs to given actions, a broad number of sub categories of stats/skills...and still fit the hyper-specific action into the game without "Staking a vampire in combat" being a predefined skill or explicitly modeled activity.

To whit: I am attacking the creature with my sharpened stake, using my 1-hand-piercing skill (+47%). I'll take advantage of the distraction from outnumbering the target (+10%), my Quick Strike background (+5%), and will use All-or-Nothing attack to sacrifice 30% of my defense for an additional +15% to hit. The Vampire's defense is 25%, and the called shot - tiny modifier is 20%. That means I have a (47+10+5+15 =) 77 - (25 + 20) 45, so a 32% chance to hit.

Lots of pretend crunch, still able to model the need to stake in a fight without a specific stake-in-a-fight subsytem.

Didn't 0e measure spell ranges in inches? As in real world inches, which explicitly varied in what they represented with scale.

It was supposed to be real world inches on the map, and that meant radically different ranges for inside than it did outside.

Top Secret never did replace it ... ... you'd think that with how popular James Bond movies are/were that would have had a chance.

I think the problem was that it is a lot harder to concoct and run a good spy game (and play a good spy in a spy game) than it is to throw a dungeon together and set off with a party of 4 or 5 trope heavy cliches that can work together effectively. This is further complicated by the fact that most spy movie stuff is 1 spy versus a situation, or at best a serial chain of one spy versus situations, than a party of spies sharing spotlight. No body wants to play a four hour game where 3:20 of that game is listening to the GM play with one other person at a time.

- M

[Telok]

That was a sentence I'd never expected to see written.

I admit that "random" might be a bit hyperbolic. But I stand by the shoddy public opinion polls driving development.

[Witty Username]

I think unified mechanics are over used in RPG systems. Unified mechanics frequently make a game simpler to learn overall, but there overuse leads to rules that lack nuance and spot changes and house rules get harder to implement. Abilities checks in 5e are an example, because of how it creates a strange dependency on your ability scores being the most important part of your character and can choke out other mechanics.

Secondly, lack of Rules doesn't make a game easier to run. It makes prep take longer and ad hoc rulings more difficult as you need to create a framework for yourself.

I also don't like the natural talent magic of the sorcerer and the intense study of magic of wizard being two separate things. I would prefer wizard encompassing both as needed.

[Pex]

I agree with this.

The only things that were "samey" were that every power had at least some minor damage component, and the fact that the build chassis and resource management were the same.

But I also feel like for a lot of people the build chassis and resource management is the game. Like, how different are sorcerors and wizards in 3x? I could make an argument for "barely" and "hugely", depending on how I wanted to look at it.

Yes, but in 3E wizards were different from paladins were different from monks were different from binders. In 4E the build chassis and resource management being the same for everyone is the whole point of everyone being samey, in addition to most powers being [X] damage of type color plus condition (save ends if harmful) or someone moves. Wizard does have a few not following this formula.

I'm guessing you haven't read the early monster manuals.

In general, though, I agree - Orcs should be able to just be Orcs .

Devils and Demons were renamed Baatezu and Tannari due to outside influences. The same thing is happening again, the only difference being who the outside influence is.

[Satinavian]

Heh, I think it started a bit before that.
How are they selling? High skill quotient games have their appeal, certainly, and they also run into a market limitation.

TDE has been the most popular RPG in Germany for several decades. The current edition is a bit weak so that D&D5 can compete a bit. But it never managed to really get a foothold in the English market. Splittermond is smaller as it is a rather new game but as it came at a time when TDE had troubles it could establish itself reasonably well. I would say it beats the likes of Shadowrun, Cthuluh and WHFRP but can't do much more. It also beats AW or Fate in popularity by far.

I also won't say that TDE is a particularly good game. It isn't. It has at least as many holy cows and baggage as D&D, the older editions have many problems that make them seem inferior to what the modern market offers and the 5th is some uninspired mess of bad compromises. I am only stating that it beats every edition of D&D at everthing that isn't combat. Not because it is so good but because D&D is so weak here. It is just a good point of comparison because those games try to achieve such similar things and are both rather crunchy

Splittermond however is a pretty good system imho. It is also quite modern, doesn't have any baggage from older editions, has a unified resolution mechanics and building characters is rather straightforward. While still crunchy, i am struggling to call it "High skill quotient game".

Both of the ones you mentioned are hard-fixed in a single setting, and one (TDE) has heavy meta-plot and is mostly run via published adventures. Hard pass. Because that's something D&D does that those don't, and it's something critical for me. D&D isn't nearly as coupled with its content. And it's actually quite flexible (5e) and modular--I can add additional subsystems that I happen to want without really messing with the core, and I can change the setting almost entirely[1] and keep the mechanics basically the same. It's not totally flexible in that regard.

TDE is married to its 4 settings but only one of those has any metaplot. The others are all big sandboxes. And while many published adventures exist, they don't dominate actual play.
Splittermond, while having only one big setting, has not any more connection between rules and setting than D&D. It is trivial to change the setting and keep the rules here. In fact, if i take an existing fantasy setting that has no connection with either one, i could probably easier make it work with a Splittermond hack.

Additionally (and this is an unpopular opinion) I like classes. In fact, I dislike skill-based games (for many reasons). I want strong archetypes--in fact, I think that D&D would do better if all the archetypes/classes were as strong as, say, the monk or druid or paladin. Classes-as-abstract-bundles-of-mechanics are just doing point-buy, badly.

Now that is indeed a strong argument. I feel quite the opposite about both points.

I also think D&D only having a bad exscuse of a skill system instead of something that actually works is the main reason it is so inferior for everything that is not combat and therefore gets rightfully pigeonholed into combat simulator.
Also classes are needlessly restrictive. You can easily provide strong archetypes as an option without actually forcing people to play one.

[Telok]

Now that is indeed a strong argument. I feel quite the opposite about both points.

I also think D&D only having a bad exscuse of a skill system instead of something that actually works is the main reason it is so inferior for everything that is not combat and therefore gets rightfully pigeonholed into combat simulator.

Now I have a, perhaps odd, opinion on class based games. Its basically "go big or go home", you should avoid half measures.

If you have classes for "knight in shining armor" and "smart educated magic user" then they need to bloody well cover the tropes. That knight in shining armor needs to have the armor matter, the elite skill at arms matter, the social status of being a knight should matter. And it needs to be mechanically represented in the class in order to be useful in anyone's/everyone's games. If you aren't doing that then people need the freedom to create and play their character as envisioned by the player.

D&D just sort of half asses it these days. The knight in shining armor and magic user end up with similar armor values, they're roughly equal in combat (in different ways), in various checks the d20 is more important than the knight's brawn or the mage's intellect, and there's zero mechanical difference in game between heir to the throne PC and a filthy street urchin pickpocket PC. You can't really play a decent, say, smart heavy armor fighter using enchantment spells or archer priest. Not without a lot of system mastery to avoid terrible pitfalls or ending up with "take one level of fighter to get 80% of the non-caster chassis". Sure the DM can "rule zero" all the problems away with homebrew or just fiat that having proficency in all the knowledge skills is more important than rolling high on the d20, but they shouldn't need to make up stuff to make a character's class tropes work.

[Bohandas]

Devils and Demons were renamed Baatezu and Tannari due to outside influences. The same thing is happening again, the only difference being who the outside influence is.

No, it's worse this time because at least the demons and devils were demons and devils. It wasn't a matter of projection, just of paranoia. That was making a mountain out of a molehill, this current situation is full on tilting at windmills

[Lord Raziere]

Now I have a, perhaps odd, opinion on class based games. Its basically "go big or go home", you should avoid half measures.

If you have classes for "knight in shining armor" and "smart educated magic user" then they need to bloody well cover the tropes. That knight in shining armor needs to have the armor matter, the elite skill at arms matter, the social status of being a knight should matter. And it needs to be mechanically represented in the class in order to be useful in anyone's/everyone's games. If you aren't doing that then people need the freedom to create and play their character as envisioned by the player.

D&D just sort of half asses it these days. The knight in shining armor and magic user end up with similar armor values, they're roughly equal in combat (in different ways), in various checks the d20 is more important than the knight's brawn or the mage's intellect, and there's zero mechanical difference in game between heir to the throne PC and a filthy street urchin pickpocket PC. You can't really play a decent, say, smart heavy armor fighter using enchantment spells or archer priest. Not without a lot of system mastery to avoid terrible pitfalls or ending up with "take one level of fighter to get 80% of the non-caster chassis". Sure the DM can "rule zero" all the problems away with homebrew or just fiat that having proficency in all the knowledge skills is more important than rolling high on the d20, but they shouldn't need to make up stuff to make a character's class tropes work.

I can agree with this.

if I wanted to play a knight, it better well be knightly. I'm fine with Wh40k classes in like the fantasy flight games or Wrath and Glory because those are so ingrained into the setting that its hard to think of using them for anything else. they define their archetype and their progression so well and so thoroughly that I know exactly what they offer just from reading it. like that knight better have a horse, plate armor, bonuses to social skills through rank, an ability to run over people with charging on the mount, be able to leverage more resources to get the magic items I need because I'm a noble and thus can pull strings like that, that thief better have like connections to a thieves guild and thus know where the black market is anywhere they go, expand their features for criminality beyond just having a thieves cant, give them further bonuses to certain kinds of crimes or actions involving crimes,

Top Secret never did replace it ... ... you'd think that with how popular James Bond movies are/were that would have had a chance.
I've observed the pretentious tone of a lot of that latter - it can be quite off putting. That was a sentence I'd never expected to see written.
And in at least one space on the web that leads to a DND-hate pattern of behavior. Disappointing when encountered. (And almost Forgian in its tone ...)

Well too bad, the fact of the matter is that some of us are sick of doing the same thing and don't want the hobby to be defined by one possibility. You can talk about how adaptable DnD is, or how much you houserule it all you want, or how its a system that works for you and lot of people, and so on and so forth, but none of that will fix the problem.

Indeed, such arguments are part of the problem, because its insisting on stretching DnD as far as possible rather than trying new things and see what works, when most systems that aren't universal strictly do one setting and do one setting well. DnD is a setting-based system it shouldn't be special and get to somehow be stretched into being a pseudo-universal system that everyone insists on using for everything. Is it any wonder why the classes and races are all watered down, why the fluff is so shallow and incoherent, and thus why you can't have alien well built races? You want a better built setting and fluff, you have to sacrifice DnD's ability to pseudo-universal itself for all the people who don't want to learn new systems. you want to truly use DnD for everything, you have to throw out whatever fluff it has and focus purely making those mechanics apply to everything as much as possible. go big (one way or another) or go home.

[Anonymouswizard]

Honestly, to somebody like me TDE's holy cows are refreshing compared to D&D. I'm still not sure I'd ever run it though.

For an actual D&D related opinion, I wouldn't want to play in any group that banned the Artificer. Any fantasy where I can't be a mad scientist with no indoor voice is one I don't want to be part of.

[Willie the Duck]

I'm not sure disliking D&D is really that unpopular an opinion. It's been at least a significant minority opinion in the TTRPG space for a long time

I'll say it again -- every time we have an 'voice an unpopular opinion' style thread, about 75%+ of the opinions voiced are, if not majority (on board) opinions, certainly exceedingly well represented within the forum base. It happens.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'll say it again -- every time we have an 'voice an unpopular opinion' style thread, about 75%+ of the opinions voiced are, if not majority (on board) opinions, certainly exceedingly well represented within the forum base. It happens.

To fair, this forum base is also a relatively small part of the people who pay D&D. Popular opinions here (e.g. the Ranger sucks) aren't necessarily representative of the majority off players.

Plus these boards have a pretty big TO focus, which also skews our perception. Bare in mind how many guides on here test getting a bonus to your primary stat as the most important thing a race can do, and how many people not on these boards are probably fine playing Tiefling Druids.

[truemane]

Metamagic Mod: strong warning for everyone to proactively stray far, far, far away from highly politicized topics (you know what they are). Any further discussion down that road and the thread will be closed and Infractions will be issued.

[Xervous]

The game should label the beginner classes as such if there was explicit design intent to make them beginner classes. I’m looking at you 5e