I’m talking specifically about the enjoyability of the gameplay mechanics not the problematic nature of D&D mechanics or settings. Fully aware that fun is subjective, I find the hard line some have drawn surprising. I went down a rabbit hole that led me to several articles criticizing the D&D system and I was surprised at how limiting other people found D&D. To me it feels incredibly adaptable and very easy to incorporate role-play into.
One article in particular made a comment that surprised me. Talking about how D&D’s roots were in war-gaming, the writer said a D&D session could easily just be a string of loosely connected combat encounters, but a session without a combat would be shallow. I had to go back and read it again, I was so confused, because I felt the exact opposite way. I enjoy combat but I find the time spent exploring just as entertaining. My group gets into all kinds of role-play shenanigans and there have been several sessions with no combat. They were a blast.
I’ll admit, I haven’t tried the systems I’ve seen recommended the most, like Dungeon World or Powered by the Apocolypse. I have played other RPGs, like Blades in the Dark and Call of Chthulu. Those are obviously not what people mean when they suggesting branching out and trying new systems, but I’ve had a hard enough time finding people who will play D&D. Part of me wonders if I should take the time to learn a new system and see if I enjoy it. My time is limited, but I sometimes wonder if I’m missing out.
I’m talking specifically about the enjoyability of the gameplay mechanics not the problematic nature of D&D mechanics or settings. Fully aware that fun is subjective, I find the hard line some have drawn surprising. I went down a rabbit hole that led me to several articles criticizing the D&D system and I was surprised at how limiting other people found D&D. To me it feels incredibly adaptable and very easy to incorporate role-play into.
One article in particular made a comment that surprised me. Talking about how D&D’s roots were in war-gaming, the writer said a D&D session could easily just be a string of loosely connected combat encounters, but a session without a combat would be shallow. I had to go back and read it again, I was so confused, because I felt the exact opposite way. I enjoy combat but I find the time spent exploring just as entertaining. My group gets into all kinds of role-play shenanigans and there have been several sessions with no combat. They were a blast.
I’ll admit, I haven’t tried the systems I’ve seen recommended the most, like Dungeon World or Powered by the Apocolypse. I have played other RPGs, like Blades in the Dark and Call of Chthulu. Those are obviously not what people mean when they suggesting branching out and trying new systems, but I’ve had a hard enough time finding people who will play D&D. Part of me wonders if I should take the time to learn a new system and see if I enjoy it. My time is limited, but I sometimes wonder if I’m missing out.
While I agree that D&D is a bit lacking in terms of social encounters and exploration, there are actually a decent amount of things you can do socially especially when you factor in spells, and having a ranger makes exploration so much safer and enjoyable. I think the writer just simply did not find the right GM or group they were looking for to experience those things.
I think the best way to try other systems is to simply port the mechanics from other systems into D&D, assuming it is not something too drastically different or incompatible. This way, you are not bending over backwards trying to find people while still being able to mix things up and try new things.
In my opinion, the only reason it gets hate is because a lot of people treat it like it’s the only RPG system in existence. D&D does fast-paced, combat-filled pulp fantasy really, really well. But it translates very badly to other tones or settings. Normally, that’s not a problem for an RPG, but because so many people refuse to try other systems, they try to do things with D&D that it isn’t built to do, and then complain when it goes badly.
And a no-combat session can be run in any system (or no system) and be fun. It’s hard to keep it fun in D&D though, because the lack of mechanics means there’s no stakes, no chance of failure. Plus, there are other RPGs that do this much better.
To be fair, the level and depth of tools provided by D&D for combat and for the other two pillars differs drastically. It doesn't have a COMPLETE lack of mechanics for social interaction and exploration, but the emphasis is abundantly clear. As opposed to something like Fate, where the system can be used to put just as much complexity and depth into a tense duel of wits and words as a brawl with swords drawn. I don't think D&D deserves any sort of hate for being what it is, but it should be recognized for what it is, which is a game with its roots in war gaming.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
That’s pretty much what I was thinking. Compared to other system I’ve played, I feel like D&D actually provides really good guidance in this area. I’ve played with a lot of people who’ve never played and used skill check/challenges to bring stakes to an RP scenario. And sometimes we’ve enjoyed just being our characters and playing out scenes.
Caveat, while many of my friends were/are not D&D players, we are heavily into the dramatic arts. But I also played with my family, who are not into theater, and they had a blast playing their characters. In both cases, I felt like the skill system was really useful in guiding them.
I’ll admit again I’ve never tried another system. In the spirit of learning more, what is a good system for roleplay?
Published opinions, especially on subjects that in the grander scheme of things aren't that meaningful, tend not to run into C+, B- grades. "It's okay; not great, not bad, really ok" is not much of a motivation to speak up, and isn't all that interesting to listen to (which in turn makes it even less appealing to publish). I don't think the hate D&D gets is all that bad. Sure, there's people who dislike it and they can have valid reasons for that, but on the whole 5E is fairly well received. Nobody cares to spend time conversing about "fairly well" though, so the opinions you find will talk about things that are considered either really good or really bad more than the things that are simply adequate.
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“And there is a school of thought that said separation should not even be bothered with, or that there is something wrong with having it. That everything social should be player skill rather than character skill.”
… What a terrible school of thought for an RPG. A “role” playing game is literally that - a role that you may not be able to normally able to play, up to the limits of your imagination. Playing a game where you’re yourself in fantastical worlds is just called VR.
I will say that the people complaining about a game not having enough “mechanics” around the social aspect of a game that has final consequences for the combat aspect (ie. bad social interactions can lead to character death), merely lack an understanding of how the game works.
Any RPG that has a DM/GM, has a social dynamic system at least as capable as they are. Adding mechanisms or dice rolls to social situations might add some tactile sensations, but at the end of the day your interaction with the DM is literally the only thing holding you back from a deep social interaction.
I can’t see how there is any other argument than DM/Player interaction that has a larger impact on a role-playing game system, or that could be “blamed” for dragging it down unless it had *too many* rules. Throwing too much random logic into a social setting seems entirely counterintuitive.
That’s pretty much what I was thinking. Compared to other system I’ve played, I feel like D&D actually provides really good guidance in this area. I’ve played with a lot of people who’ve never played and used skill check/challenges to bring stakes to an RP scenario. And sometimes we’ve enjoyed just being our characters and playing out scenes.
Caveat, while many of my friends were/are not D&D players, we are heavily into the dramatic arts. But I also played with my family, who are not into theater, and they had a blast playing their characters. In both cases, I felt like the skill system was really useful in guiding them.
I’ll admit again I’ve never tried another system. In the spirit of learning more, what is a good system for roleplay?
Just to be clear, combat is also roleplay. Anything your character does in an rpg is roleplaying to begin with, but on top of that combat is just as much of an opportunity to express the uniqueness of your character as things like exploration or social interaction. A lithe fencer is going to roleplay differently in combat than hulking grappler. But if you're asking what a good system for social interaction is there are plenty of them. The Fate system doesn't really emphasize physical actions over mental or social actions and it's main resolution system allows for dramatic scenes involving all kinds of different actions to be important and significant. The various Powered by the Apocalypse games usually have some very interesting social mechanics, although each game in that system emphasizes very different things. Monsterhearts, for example, portrays supernatural teen angst drama and since sex/romance and social pressure is very important in that genre those things take pride of place in the mechanics.
That is because combat is not something that requires much more elaborate mechanics. It is by nature much more technical. Should using a smithing tool, something that is a massive skill set IRL, have similar level of detail as combat does? It could, in theory. But is it as necessary for a functional game? Not really.
Is that "not" meant to be there? But no, I don't really agree with you. Giving more mechanics to combat is a choice, it isn't just a fact of reality. There are systems that give different weights to things like social skills, crafting, or freeform magic, etc .. than combat and do just fine. It is about how much emphasis a system puts on different aspects of roleplaying and D&D just happens to put a lot of emphasis on combat. It's not wrong, but it's also not how every game is made and not how every game has to be made. As an example, Fate Core uses the same system for physical conflicts as it does for social conflicts and it works just fine whether you're playing a combat heavy game or one where combat is completely nonexistent. And the system is there to help and guide play in either case, in equal measure rather than providing a lot of support for one and much much less for the other.
And even if there were no mechanics at all for social interactions, not even the skills that exist, complaining about a lack thereof is like saying 'But how do we communicate with each other in English unless the rules teach us the English language?' People know from RL how to talk, lie, intimidate, persuade, etc. The only reason there are mechanics are to separate character skills from player skills.
Uhh ... I mean, yes kinda? Any sort of skill or ability on the character sheet is something that is meant to simulate a character in the game world. These rules are guides and tools that a system provides for a player (including the referee player, the GM) to help them portray that character. The more tools and system in place for a particular aspect of roleplay, the more emphasis a system places on that aspect because it literally provides more tools and thought behind that aspect. It just so happens that D&D emphasizes combat, as evidenced by the amount of tools it gives for combat. In contrast, it has relatively few tools for exploration based play, and even fewer for social based play. Again, that's not wrong, but it is very clearly true.
The only reason there are mechanics are to separate character skills from player skills. And there is a school of thought that said separation should not even be bothered with, or that there is something wrong with having it. That everything social should be player skill rather than character skill.
Amazingly, that philosophy does not work particularly well for combat. Even if, here in 2021, the average player really was a master of melee weapons, which they simply are not, 'playing out' combats as players in the same way would mean drawing real blood and committing real murders. Even the SCA or other reenactment groups have simulated combat rules. And then there is the issue of magic. So clearly, there are obvious reasons why the combat mechanics are much more elaborate.
Yeah, I kinda think the people who say "everything social should be player skill rather than character skill" are kind of old school? That's just my impression, I could be wrong. Again this speaks to the roots of D&D as a war game, where the more elaborate rules are about combat because that's really all war games cared about. As time went on, people wanted to do more than just hack and slash so rules were added to give more depth and support to other aspects like social interaction or exploration, but D&D has never lost it's war game emphasis. The reasons that combat mechanics are more elaborate are because of the nature of D&D, not the base nature of roleplaying games. Like I said, there are plenty of games that put emphasis on other aspects of roleplaying than combat and work just fine.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
In my opinion, the only reason it gets hate is because a lot of people treat it like it’s the only RPG system in existence. D&D does fast-paced, combat-filled pulp fantasy really, really well. But it translates very badly to other tones or settings. Normally, that’s not a problem for an RPG, but because so many people refuse to try other systems, they try to do things with D&D that it isn’t built to do, and then complain when it goes badly.
And a no-combat session can be run in any system (or no system) and be fun. It’s hard to keep it fun in D&D though, because the lack of mechanics means there’s no stakes, no chance of failure. Plus, there are other RPGs that do this much better.
Skill checks? Consequences to skill checks? Time pressure, real or implied? Enemies that are too strong to directly fight, so need to be taken down by trick and/or diplomacy?
Not seeing the lack of mechanics.
Skill are notoriously half baked in 5e. You have an arbitrary +X bonus, then roll a dice. That’s it. The consequences, if any, are entirely up to the DM. Literally zero mechanics at all. As far as tricking/diplomacy, again maybe a skill check like persuasion or deception? That is the only actual “mechanic”.
I am seeing a lack of mechanics.
But again 99% of actual mechanics for D&D are for combat. Outside of combat the mechanics are extremely shallow.
That is why I highly recommend another system for anyone interested in something other than combat as the main course.
In my opinion, the only reason it gets hate is because a lot of people treat it like it’s the only RPG system in existence. D&D does fast-paced, combat-filled pulp fantasy really, really well. But it translates very badly to other tones or settings. Normally, that’s not a problem for an RPG, but because so many people refuse to try other systems, they try to do things with D&D that it isn’t built to do, and then complain when it goes badly.
And a no-combat session can be run in any system (or no system) and be fun. It’s hard to keep it fun in D&D though, because the lack of mechanics means there’s no stakes, no chance of failure. Plus, there are other RPGs that do this much better.
Skill checks? Consequences to skill checks? Time pressure, real or implied? Enemies that are too strong to directly fight, so need to be taken down by trick and/or diplomacy?
Not seeing the lack of mechanics.
Skill are notoriously half baked in 5e. You have an arbitrary +X bonus, then roll a dice. That’s it. The consequences, if any, are entirely up to the DM. Literally zero mechanics at all. As far as tricking/diplomacy, again maybe a skill check like persuasion or deception? That is the only actual “mechanic”.
I am seeing a lack of mechanics.
But again 99% of actual mechanics for D&D are for combat. Outside of combat the mechanics are extremely shallow.
That is why I highly recommend another system for anyone interested in something other than combat as the main course.
I would argue that all the numbers are arbitrary, since it is all just made up.
I looked over Powered by the Apocalypse and … I don’t know. PBtA seems very limiting to me. Granted I have not looked in depth, but after reading through a few descriptions, it just doesn‘t sound fun to play, which greatly reduces my desire to learn it. The scope seems very narrow, with the specific moves. As far as the more nuanced success-fail system, as a DM, I already do this. If a player just barely meets the DC, I’ll describe a more tense scenario. I also handle crit fails/misses by giving the Player a choice. As a quick example, either your great ax ends up stuck in the wall or you’re going to overbalance and go prone. Or if they crit fail on a thieves tools check, either your tool breaks, rendering the lock impossible to open or someone heard you.
I also give my players a lot of agency and narrative freedom. As in “tell me what you want to do, I’ll figure out the relevant skills and DC.” Maybe PBtA does have that freedom and I need to dig deeper. I’ll also check out the Fate system and see how that grabs me.
I looked over Powered by the Apocalypse and … I don’t know. PBtA seems very limiting to me. Granted I have not looked in depth, but after reading through a few descriptions, it just doesn‘t sound fun to play, which greatly reduces my desire to learn it. The scope seems very narrow, with the specific moves.
Oh yes, it is very narrow because each PbtA game is laser focused on a specific genre. The moves are built the way they are so that the only things you can do are things that fit the genre of the game you're playing, which is how each of those games maintains it's specific atmosphere. You kind of have to approach each particular game on it's own merit rather than trying to judge from just one. You really have to find the one that appeals to you:
Fate, on the other hand is a generic system that can be used for basically any genre. In terms of the newer games, it zigged where PbtA zagged. All the basic rules are available here: https://fate-srd.com/
I went down a rabbit hole that led me to several articles criticizing the D&D system and I was surprised at how limiting other people found D&D.
Keep in mind that the heart of "intent journalism" is controversy. A hot take like this generates a lot more clicks and discussion than "D&D is fun."
Skills and out-of-combat action adjudication are intentionally vague so as to be flexible and adaptable to different tastes. If you want a hard system that gives you 10 steps to follow in order to persuade the Duke to hand over the political prisoner - and that's the only way to do it - then another system might work better for you.
I went down a rabbit hole that led me to several articles criticizing the D&D system and I was surprised at how limiting other people found D&D.
Keep in mind that the heart of "intent journalism" is controversy. A hot take like this generates a lot more clicks and discussion than "D&D is fun."
Skills and out-of-combat action adjudication are intentionally vague so as to be flexible and adaptable to different tastes. If you want a hard system that gives you 10 steps to follow in order to persuade the Duke to hand over the political prisoner - and that's the only way to do it - then another system might work better for you.
Maybe this is the problem with my thought process. I actively don’t want a system like that. I want something much more open-ended and adaptable. I’m realizing people who struggle with non-combat play in D&D might be saying they actually want something more detailed out like what you’re describing.
People lambast D&D in large part because it's D&D. it's the 800-pound gorilla that chokes out every other RPG system in the market; everybody has played D&D, everybody has an opinion on it. Those "D&D is Terrible Because...!" titles are total clickbait designed to get you to read the piece and click on banner ads. Either they feed into your pre-existing assumption that D&D is an overgrown cancer consuming the entirety of the tabletop gaming market and it should die for its own good, or it offends your pre-existing assumption that D&D is the greatest role playing game ever made, it is perfect forever and there is absolutely nothing it cannot do.
In reality? D&D is good at combat, bad at skills, and leaves social gameplay largely up to the imaginations of the table. Systems like Fate, Overlight, and other Rules-Lite Narrative Experience(TM) games don't differentiate between combat and other forms of challenge - attacking an enemy uses the exact same action resolution system as the base game, and the game will usually state that in big, proud, bold letters and call it out as them being so much more open than D&D because fighting doesn't solve all problems. That tends to be true inasmuch as those games encourage noncombat solutions to problems, but that's because combat in those games tends to mostly suck and be a bad way to resolve problems. Including problems of "this large angry thing is trying to eat you; what do you do to stop it?" Thespians like it because they can narrate their flowery moves without a DM telling them to keep it short and snappy because there's twelve other turns in the initiative order and they don't have time for your thesis on the Florentine School's Six Flashing Edge Style's superior technique every frickin' turn, but there's also nothing saying you can't do that during a D&D game if your DM doesn't step on you.
As for social gameplay? People want rules and mechanics for that so they can figure out how to win. They want to know that when they go to have an audience with the King to implore him for aid - or to explain themselves for plundering the royal tombs - they can 'beat' the encounter. They want to know how their weapons work, and how much damage they can deal per round of a social encounter. They want to know how much social HP the King has, and whether the King can deal social damage back to them or whether it's a matter of exhausting the King's social HP before their weapons run out of ammunition. There's a reason many attempts to hack "social mechanics" into D&D end up looking like a bizarre, oddly bloodless diplomatic riff on the combat rules - because players want the same ability to know, ahead of time, exactly what their character is capable of socially so they can gauge the challenge level of any given social battle.
If that sounds ludicrous, it's because it kind of is. There's a reason other folks keep saying "there's no need for heavy-handed social rules because social encounters are about talking." The people who want to resolve social encounters without talking - by just rolling skill checks until either they succeed and "beat" the encounter or fail and go to jail - are people who aren't interested in social gameplay in the first place. You don't have to be an actor to run social encounters, but you do have to be willing to at least pretend to be social. As an example:
DM: "King Bamdizzle glares down at the party, seeking each of your gazes and locking eyes with you in turn. His fury is palpable - you're all still wearing the enchanted relics of his family line, taken from the royal tombs. Once he's taken your measure, he slams the butt of his staff of office down on the granite floor of his throne's dais. "I will give you miserable pack of bandits a single chance to explain to me why I shouldn't have you all hanged tomorrow", he says. What do you do?" Player A: "I try to persuade the King to let us go." A quick, silent beat. DM: "...I mean, I would hope so? How do you do so?" Player A: "Uhh...with a Persuasion check? Duh." DM: "Okay...what's the Persuasion check for? How do you try and persuade the King?" Player A: "Look, I'm not a social genius, okay? But my character has a +6 to Persuasion and that means I should get the chance to roll a dice and see if I can get us out of this mess!"
I could continue, but hopefully the point has been made. 'Player A', in this instance, is rejecting the encounter. They're trying to bypass it, to avoid having to deal with it for whichever reason. They're trying to turn it into a single, out-of-context die roll. That isn't a failure of the game system - that's a giant red flag to the DM that the player has disengaged with the game and isn't buying what you're selling. If your players are trying to impose the game's combat rules on social encounters, same thing - they're trying to turn social encounters into fights, and you may want to have a talk with them as to whether they want social encounters in their D&D at all or if they'd be happier running a monster-of-the-week bounty board game with very little outside of combat.
Trust me - if your players are bored after they've been hauled in front of the King to answer for crimes against the kingdom, the problem does not lie with D&D's lack of social encounter rules.
Please cite the system that has as much effort put into social interaction rules as combat rules. There are a couple I can think of that might, but they are exceptions. And no, crafting is not anything I would call social interaction.
If there are already some you can think of then you have your examples. My entire point was that a surplus of combat rules is not an RPG default, it's a D&D default. It doesn't matter if they are exceptions, their very existence proves my point. But as I have already mentioned above there are games like Monsterhearts, where humiliating someone in front of their crush is mechanically more of a blow than physically attacking them is or Fate, where the system of conflicts can handle actions of all sorts even handedly; physical, mental, or social.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Vampire the Masquerade might, but it has been a very long time since I have looked at any of the Mage the Ascension books
Never heard of Monsterhearts. Clearly though it is so superior and so successful in its model. If social skills are so much more effective there, though, why use combat?
Fate, IIRC, is a pure RP system. And again, never really caught on to any significant degree. If you want that freeform a system, why not simply play that?
I think you've mistaken me for someone who is attacking D&D. Like I've said repeatedly, there's nothing wrong with D&D. It has a mechanical emphasis on combat, that's just obvious, but as long as people know what they're getting it's a fine system. My whole point to you was that an overwhelming mechanical emphasis on combat and the deemphasis on other aspects of roleplay are not the defaults for all roleplaying, that's it.
I wasn't making comparisons and saying anything was superior to anything else, please don't imply that's what I was saying. I was just pointing out the obvious fact that D&D is combat oriented and that this is an artifact of it being D&D not that combat, by default, just needs all the mechanical bells and whistles. D&D combat has all the bells and whistles because D&D is a combat focused game, from it's war game roots to what people have come to expect of it now.
Player A: "Look, I'm not a social genius, okay? But my character has a +6 to Persuasion and that means I should get the chance to roll a dice and see if I can get us out of this mess!"
I could continue, but hopefully the point has been made. 'Player A', in this instance, is rejecting the encounter. They're trying to bypass it, to avoid having to deal with it for whichever reason. They're trying to turn it into a single, out-of-context die roll. That isn't a failure of the game system - that's a giant red flag to the DM that the player has disengaged with the game and isn't buying what you're selling.
I do think it's fair to blame the system a little bit here. D&D does not adequately address the blurry line between player craftiness/deduction and character Persuasion/Investigation/etc. It's entirely up to the DM whether persuading a guard requires a well-thought-out approach, a successful skill roll, or some combination of the two.
Since a good chunk of character options are devoted to skills it can be problematic to basically invalidate them by allowing anyone to sidestep those mechanics with roleplay, but on the other hand straight rolls with nothing to describe them is not ideal either.
D&D could do more to address this, even if only to acknowledge it's a thing and encourage tables to make a conscious decision about where they stand on this spectrum.
And yet you still insist that there is a deemphasis on RP. And your evidence seems to be that there are a small handful of much less successful systems that have very little if any emphasis on combat, or at least on combat mechanics.
The very existence of Fate proves that you do not need mechanics at all, really to RP.
Ok first of all, it's all roleplay. Combat is roleplay, social interaction is roleplay, exploration is roleplay. I believe I pointed that out before. Second, you're really not reading what I'm writing, are you? I wasn't trying to prove that D&D is combat focused, I think it's pretty obvious just on the face of it that D&D provides much more mechanical support for combat (one aspect of roleplay, still roleplay) than for any other aspects (social and exploration, other aspects of roleplay). You were the one who basically said "well obviously combat needs a more robust system" and I countered by saying that no, combat doesn't need a more robust system by default, it's just that D&D emphasizes combat, out of all the other aspects of roleplay, and that's why it provides a much more robust system for that than other things. It is a choice, not some law that combat, out of all the aspects of roleplay, must be detailed and robust.
I don't know what your point is about Fate not needing mechanics to roleplay, because Fate has mechanics.
The hostile tone is unnecessary, Kotath. The thread is for discussing why D&D gets the flak it does, and one of the most universal claims made against D&D is its over-emphasis on combat at the perceived expense of 'softer' parts of the game. D&D's success is also through no effort/fault of its own - 5e is as mega-successful (by TTRPG standards) as it is right now almost strictly because of Critical Role and the explosion of streaming shows CR spawned. It's only natural to discuss other systems' approach to roleplaying in such a thread; being so dismissive of other folks' experience with other games doesn't help anyone.
Monsterhearts is a specific game targeted at a specific play experience, which it accomplishes quite well. That experience is not as broadly applicable as Generic High Fantasy, so Monsterhearts is not as widespread as D&D is. Monsterhearts knows this and doesn't care. It's not trying to supplant D&D, it's simply trying to accomplish what it sets out to do and then let anyone who wants that experience get their book and play. Combat is generally not a good idea in Monsterhearts. If you go a'swingin' on somebody there will generally be Hell To Pay, because you just assaulted someone in a world where the rule of modern law is in force. If a physical fight goes beyond schoolyard scuffle, you're very likely to get arrested.
I have no personal experience or knowledge of Fate, but everybody's heard of it. Usually scornfully, all "Fate is so pointless and boring!" and such, but I'd posit that the fact that everybody's heard of Fate means it can't be as bad/unsuccessful as all that, hm? Perhaps rather than assaulting Ophidimancer's words, you could ask how Fate handles 'roleplaying'? because Ophi himself has stated in multiple places that combat is not separate from roleplaying, and anybody can 'role play' in any system regardless of rules-liteness or rules-heaviness. The fact that eighty percent of all D&D books deals with the combat rules is objective truth however, and that mechanical emphasis on the combat rules is all Ophi was pointing out.
I have no personal experience or knowledge of Fate, but everybody's heard of it. Usually scornfully, all "Fate is so pointless and boring!" and such, but I'd posit that the fact that everybody's heard of Fate means it can't be as bad/unsuccessful as all that, hm?
As an aside can I be the one voice you've heard that unequivocally likes Fate? It's actually my favorite system of all of them. I could talk about it all day. It's just hard to find people to play because, like you said, D&D is the giant in the room.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
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I’m talking specifically about the enjoyability of the gameplay mechanics not the problematic nature of D&D mechanics or settings. Fully aware that fun is subjective, I find the hard line some have drawn surprising. I went down a rabbit hole that led me to several articles criticizing the D&D system and I was surprised at how limiting other people found D&D. To me it feels incredibly adaptable and very easy to incorporate role-play into.
One article in particular made a comment that surprised me. Talking about how D&D’s roots were in war-gaming, the writer said a D&D session could easily just be a string of loosely connected combat encounters, but a session without a combat would be shallow. I had to go back and read it again, I was so confused, because I felt the exact opposite way. I enjoy combat but I find the time spent exploring just as entertaining. My group gets into all kinds of role-play shenanigans and there have been several sessions with no combat. They were a blast.
I’ll admit, I haven’t tried the systems I’ve seen recommended the most, like Dungeon World or Powered by the Apocolypse. I have played other RPGs, like Blades in the Dark and Call of Chthulu. Those are obviously not what people mean when they suggesting branching out and trying new systems, but I’ve had a hard enough time finding people who will play D&D. Part of me wonders if I should take the time to learn a new system and see if I enjoy it. My time is limited, but I sometimes wonder if I’m missing out.
While I agree that D&D is a bit lacking in terms of social encounters and exploration, there are actually a decent amount of things you can do socially especially when you factor in spells, and having a ranger makes exploration so much safer and enjoyable. I think the writer just simply did not find the right GM or group they were looking for to experience those things.
I think the best way to try other systems is to simply port the mechanics from other systems into D&D, assuming it is not something too drastically different or incompatible. This way, you are not bending over backwards trying to find people while still being able to mix things up and try new things.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/licenses >
Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
D&D with High School Students by Bill Allen; Season 1 Episode 1: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NJTUDokyk&t >
In my opinion, the only reason it gets hate is because a lot of people treat it like it’s the only RPG system in existence. D&D does fast-paced, combat-filled pulp fantasy really, really well. But it translates very badly to other tones or settings. Normally, that’s not a problem for an RPG, but because so many people refuse to try other systems, they try to do things with D&D that it isn’t built to do, and then complain when it goes badly.
And a no-combat session can be run in any system (or no system) and be fun. It’s hard to keep it fun in D&D though, because the lack of mechanics means there’s no stakes, no chance of failure. Plus, there are other RPGs that do this much better.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
To be fair, the level and depth of tools provided by D&D for combat and for the other two pillars differs drastically. It doesn't have a COMPLETE lack of mechanics for social interaction and exploration, but the emphasis is abundantly clear. As opposed to something like Fate, where the system can be used to put just as much complexity and depth into a tense duel of wits and words as a brawl with swords drawn. I don't think D&D deserves any sort of hate for being what it is, but it should be recognized for what it is, which is a game with its roots in war gaming.
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I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
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That’s pretty much what I was thinking. Compared to other system I’ve played, I feel like D&D actually provides really good guidance in this area. I’ve played with a lot of people who’ve never played and used skill check/challenges to bring stakes to an RP scenario. And sometimes we’ve enjoyed just being our characters and playing out scenes.
Caveat, while many of my friends were/are not D&D players, we are heavily into the dramatic arts. But I also played with my family, who are not into theater, and they had a blast playing their characters. In both cases, I felt like the skill system was really useful in guiding them.
I’ll admit again I’ve never tried another system. In the spirit of learning more, what is a good system for roleplay?
Published opinions, especially on subjects that in the grander scheme of things aren't that meaningful, tend not to run into C+, B- grades. "It's okay; not great, not bad, really ok" is not much of a motivation to speak up, and isn't all that interesting to listen to (which in turn makes it even less appealing to publish). I don't think the hate D&D gets is all that bad. Sure, there's people who dislike it and they can have valid reasons for that, but on the whole 5E is fairly well received. Nobody cares to spend time conversing about "fairly well" though, so the opinions you find will talk about things that are considered either really good or really bad more than the things that are simply adequate.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
“And there is a school of thought that said separation should not even be bothered with, or that there is something wrong with having it. That everything social should be player skill rather than character skill.”
… What a terrible school of thought for an RPG. A “role” playing game is literally that - a role that you may not be able to normally able to play, up to the limits of your imagination. Playing a game where you’re yourself in fantastical worlds is just called VR.
I will say that the people complaining about a game not having enough “mechanics” around the social aspect of a game that has final consequences for the combat aspect (ie. bad social interactions can lead to character death), merely lack an understanding of how the game works.
Any RPG that has a DM/GM, has a social dynamic system at least as capable as they are. Adding mechanisms or dice rolls to social situations might add some tactile sensations, but at the end of the day your interaction with the DM is literally the only thing holding you back from a deep social interaction.
I can’t see how there is any other argument than DM/Player interaction that has a larger impact on a role-playing game system, or that could be “blamed” for dragging it down unless it had *too many* rules. Throwing too much random logic into a social setting seems entirely counterintuitive.
Just to be clear, combat is also roleplay. Anything your character does in an rpg is roleplaying to begin with, but on top of that combat is just as much of an opportunity to express the uniqueness of your character as things like exploration or social interaction. A lithe fencer is going to roleplay differently in combat than hulking grappler. But if you're asking what a good system for social interaction is there are plenty of them. The Fate system doesn't really emphasize physical actions over mental or social actions and it's main resolution system allows for dramatic scenes involving all kinds of different actions to be important and significant. The various Powered by the Apocalypse games usually have some very interesting social mechanics, although each game in that system emphasizes very different things. Monsterhearts, for example, portrays supernatural teen angst drama and since sex/romance and social pressure is very important in that genre those things take pride of place in the mechanics.
Is that "not" meant to be there? But no, I don't really agree with you. Giving more mechanics to combat is a choice, it isn't just a fact of reality. There are systems that give different weights to things like social skills, crafting, or freeform magic, etc .. than combat and do just fine. It is about how much emphasis a system puts on different aspects of roleplaying and D&D just happens to put a lot of emphasis on combat. It's not wrong, but it's also not how every game is made and not how every game has to be made. As an example, Fate Core uses the same system for physical conflicts as it does for social conflicts and it works just fine whether you're playing a combat heavy game or one where combat is completely nonexistent. And the system is there to help and guide play in either case, in equal measure rather than providing a lot of support for one and much much less for the other.
Uhh ... I mean, yes kinda? Any sort of skill or ability on the character sheet is something that is meant to simulate a character in the game world. These rules are guides and tools that a system provides for a player (including the referee player, the GM) to help them portray that character. The more tools and system in place for a particular aspect of roleplay, the more emphasis a system places on that aspect because it literally provides more tools and thought behind that aspect. It just so happens that D&D emphasizes combat, as evidenced by the amount of tools it gives for combat. In contrast, it has relatively few tools for exploration based play, and even fewer for social based play. Again, that's not wrong, but it is very clearly true.
Yeah, I kinda think the people who say "everything social should be player skill rather than character skill" are kind of old school? That's just my impression, I could be wrong. Again this speaks to the roots of D&D as a war game, where the more elaborate rules are about combat because that's really all war games cared about. As time went on, people wanted to do more than just hack and slash so rules were added to give more depth and support to other aspects like social interaction or exploration, but D&D has never lost it's war game emphasis. The reasons that combat mechanics are more elaborate are because of the nature of D&D, not the base nature of roleplaying games. Like I said, there are plenty of games that put emphasis on other aspects of roleplaying than combat and work just fine.
Canto alla vita
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I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Skill are notoriously half baked in 5e. You have an arbitrary +X bonus, then roll a dice. That’s it. The consequences, if any, are entirely up to the DM. Literally zero mechanics at all. As far as tricking/diplomacy, again maybe a skill check like persuasion or deception? That is the only actual “mechanic”.
I am seeing a lack of mechanics.
But again 99% of actual mechanics for D&D are for combat. Outside of combat the mechanics are extremely shallow.
That is why I highly recommend another system for anyone interested in something other than combat as the main course.
I would argue that all the numbers are arbitrary, since it is all just made up.
I looked over Powered by the Apocalypse and … I don’t know. PBtA seems very limiting to me. Granted I have not looked in depth, but after reading through a few descriptions, it just doesn‘t sound fun to play, which greatly reduces my desire to learn it. The scope seems very narrow, with the specific moves. As far as the more nuanced success-fail system, as a DM, I already do this. If a player just barely meets the DC, I’ll describe a more tense scenario. I also handle crit fails/misses by giving the Player a choice. As a quick example, either your great ax ends up stuck in the wall or you’re going to overbalance and go prone. Or if they crit fail on a thieves tools check, either your tool breaks, rendering the lock impossible to open or someone heard you.
I also give my players a lot of agency and narrative freedom. As in “tell me what you want to do, I’ll figure out the relevant skills and DC.” Maybe PBtA does have that freedom and I need to dig deeper. I’ll also check out the Fate system and see how that grabs me.
Oh yes, it is very narrow because each PbtA game is laser focused on a specific genre. The moves are built the way they are so that the only things you can do are things that fit the genre of the game you're playing, which is how each of those games maintains it's specific atmosphere. You kind of have to approach each particular game on it's own merit rather than trying to judge from just one. You really have to find the one that appeals to you:
http://apocalypse-world.com/pbta/games/title/Monsterhearts - Is the aforementioned supernatural teen angst game.
https://magpiegames.com/masks/ - Is the superhero game.
https://www.evilhat.com/home/monster-of-the-week/ - Is the monster hunting game that can do anything from Supernatural to maybe even Scooby Doo.
http://apocalypse-world.com/pbta/games/title/Dungeon_World - Dungeon World is where they tried to boil D&D down to it's essential genre.
Fate, on the other hand is a generic system that can be used for basically any genre. In terms of the newer games, it zigged where PbtA zagged. All the basic rules are available here: https://fate-srd.com/
Canto alla vita
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ad ogni sua ferita
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I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Keep in mind that the heart of "intent journalism" is controversy. A hot take like this generates a lot more clicks and discussion than "D&D is fun."
Skills and out-of-combat action adjudication are intentionally vague so as to be flexible and adaptable to different tastes. If you want a hard system that gives you 10 steps to follow in order to persuade the Duke to hand over the political prisoner - and that's the only way to do it - then another system might work better for you.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Maybe this is the problem with my thought process. I actively don’t want a system like that. I want something much more open-ended and adaptable. I’m realizing people who struggle with non-combat play in D&D might be saying they actually want something more detailed out like what you’re describing.
People lambast D&D in large part because it's D&D. it's the 800-pound gorilla that chokes out every other RPG system in the market; everybody has played D&D, everybody has an opinion on it. Those "D&D is Terrible Because...!" titles are total clickbait designed to get you to read the piece and click on banner ads. Either they feed into your pre-existing assumption that D&D is an overgrown cancer consuming the entirety of the tabletop gaming market and it should die for its own good, or it offends your pre-existing assumption that D&D is the greatest role playing game ever made, it is perfect forever and there is absolutely nothing it cannot do.
In reality? D&D is good at combat, bad at skills, and leaves social gameplay largely up to the imaginations of the table. Systems like Fate, Overlight, and other Rules-Lite Narrative Experience(TM) games don't differentiate between combat and other forms of challenge - attacking an enemy uses the exact same action resolution system as the base game, and the game will usually state that in big, proud, bold letters and call it out as them being so much more open than D&D because fighting doesn't solve all problems. That tends to be true inasmuch as those games encourage noncombat solutions to problems, but that's because combat in those games tends to mostly suck and be a bad way to resolve problems. Including problems of "this large angry thing is trying to eat you; what do you do to stop it?" Thespians like it because they can narrate their flowery moves without a DM telling them to keep it short and snappy because there's twelve other turns in the initiative order and they don't have time for your thesis on the Florentine School's Six Flashing Edge Style's superior technique every frickin' turn, but there's also nothing saying you can't do that during a D&D game if your DM doesn't step on you.
As for social gameplay? People want rules and mechanics for that so they can figure out how to win. They want to know that when they go to have an audience with the King to implore him for aid - or to explain themselves for plundering the royal tombs - they can 'beat' the encounter. They want to know how their weapons work, and how much damage they can deal per round of a social encounter. They want to know how much social HP the King has, and whether the King can deal social damage back to them or whether it's a matter of exhausting the King's social HP before their weapons run out of ammunition. There's a reason many attempts to hack "social mechanics" into D&D end up looking like a bizarre, oddly bloodless diplomatic riff on the combat rules - because players want the same ability to know, ahead of time, exactly what their character is capable of socially so they can gauge the challenge level of any given social battle.
If that sounds ludicrous, it's because it kind of is. There's a reason other folks keep saying "there's no need for heavy-handed social rules because social encounters are about talking." The people who want to resolve social encounters without talking - by just rolling skill checks until either they succeed and "beat" the encounter or fail and go to jail - are people who aren't interested in social gameplay in the first place. You don't have to be an actor to run social encounters, but you do have to be willing to at least pretend to be social. As an example:
DM: "King Bamdizzle glares down at the party, seeking each of your gazes and locking eyes with you in turn. His fury is palpable - you're all still wearing the enchanted relics of his family line, taken from the royal tombs. Once he's taken your measure, he slams the butt of his staff of office down on the granite floor of his throne's dais. "I will give you miserable pack of bandits a single chance to explain to me why I shouldn't have you all hanged tomorrow", he says. What do you do?"
Player A: "I try to persuade the King to let us go."
A quick, silent beat.
DM: "...I mean, I would hope so? How do you do so?"
Player A: "Uhh...with a Persuasion check? Duh."
DM: "Okay...what's the Persuasion check for? How do you try and persuade the King?"
Player A: "Look, I'm not a social genius, okay? But my character has a +6 to Persuasion and that means I should get the chance to roll a dice and see if I can get us out of this mess!"
I could continue, but hopefully the point has been made. 'Player A', in this instance, is rejecting the encounter. They're trying to bypass it, to avoid having to deal with it for whichever reason. They're trying to turn it into a single, out-of-context die roll. That isn't a failure of the game system - that's a giant red flag to the DM that the player has disengaged with the game and isn't buying what you're selling. If your players are trying to impose the game's combat rules on social encounters, same thing - they're trying to turn social encounters into fights, and you may want to have a talk with them as to whether they want social encounters in their D&D at all or if they'd be happier running a monster-of-the-week bounty board game with very little outside of combat.
Trust me - if your players are bored after they've been hauled in front of the King to answer for crimes against the kingdom, the problem does not lie with D&D's lack of social encounter rules.
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If there are already some you can think of then you have your examples. My entire point was that a surplus of combat rules is not an RPG default, it's a D&D default. It doesn't matter if they are exceptions, their very existence proves my point. But as I have already mentioned above there are games like Monsterhearts, where humiliating someone in front of their crush is mechanically more of a blow than physically attacking them is or Fate, where the system of conflicts can handle actions of all sorts even handedly; physical, mental, or social.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I think you've mistaken me for someone who is attacking D&D. Like I've said repeatedly, there's nothing wrong with D&D. It has a mechanical emphasis on combat, that's just obvious, but as long as people know what they're getting it's a fine system. My whole point to you was that an overwhelming mechanical emphasis on combat and the deemphasis on other aspects of roleplay are not the defaults for all roleplaying, that's it.
I wasn't making comparisons and saying anything was superior to anything else, please don't imply that's what I was saying. I was just pointing out the obvious fact that D&D is combat oriented and that this is an artifact of it being D&D not that combat, by default, just needs all the mechanical bells and whistles. D&D combat has all the bells and whistles because D&D is a combat focused game, from it's war game roots to what people have come to expect of it now.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I do think it's fair to blame the system a little bit here. D&D does not adequately address the blurry line between player craftiness/deduction and character Persuasion/Investigation/etc. It's entirely up to the DM whether persuading a guard requires a well-thought-out approach, a successful skill roll, or some combination of the two.
Since a good chunk of character options are devoted to skills it can be problematic to basically invalidate them by allowing anyone to sidestep those mechanics with roleplay, but on the other hand straight rolls with nothing to describe them is not ideal either.
D&D could do more to address this, even if only to acknowledge it's a thing and encourage tables to make a conscious decision about where they stand on this spectrum.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Ok first of all, it's all roleplay. Combat is roleplay, social interaction is roleplay, exploration is roleplay. I believe I pointed that out before. Second, you're really not reading what I'm writing, are you? I wasn't trying to prove that D&D is combat focused, I think it's pretty obvious just on the face of it that D&D provides much more mechanical support for combat (one aspect of roleplay, still roleplay) than for any other aspects (social and exploration, other aspects of roleplay). You were the one who basically said "well obviously combat needs a more robust system" and I countered by saying that no, combat doesn't need a more robust system by default, it's just that D&D emphasizes combat, out of all the other aspects of roleplay, and that's why it provides a much more robust system for that than other things. It is a choice, not some law that combat, out of all the aspects of roleplay, must be detailed and robust.
I don't know what your point is about Fate not needing mechanics to roleplay, because Fate has mechanics.
Canto alla vita
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I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
The hostile tone is unnecessary, Kotath. The thread is for discussing why D&D gets the flak it does, and one of the most universal claims made against D&D is its over-emphasis on combat at the perceived expense of 'softer' parts of the game. D&D's success is also through no effort/fault of its own - 5e is as mega-successful (by TTRPG standards) as it is right now almost strictly because of Critical Role and the explosion of streaming shows CR spawned. It's only natural to discuss other systems' approach to roleplaying in such a thread; being so dismissive of other folks' experience with other games doesn't help anyone.
Monsterhearts is a specific game targeted at a specific play experience, which it accomplishes quite well. That experience is not as broadly applicable as Generic High Fantasy, so Monsterhearts is not as widespread as D&D is. Monsterhearts knows this and doesn't care. It's not trying to supplant D&D, it's simply trying to accomplish what it sets out to do and then let anyone who wants that experience get their book and play. Combat is generally not a good idea in Monsterhearts. If you go a'swingin' on somebody there will generally be Hell To Pay, because you just assaulted someone in a world where the rule of modern law is in force. If a physical fight goes beyond schoolyard scuffle, you're very likely to get arrested.
I have no personal experience or knowledge of Fate, but everybody's heard of it. Usually scornfully, all "Fate is so pointless and boring!" and such, but I'd posit that the fact that everybody's heard of Fate means it can't be as bad/unsuccessful as all that, hm? Perhaps rather than assaulting Ophidimancer's words, you could ask how Fate handles 'roleplaying'? because Ophi himself has stated in multiple places that combat is not separate from roleplaying, and anybody can 'role play' in any system regardless of rules-liteness or rules-heaviness. The fact that eighty percent of all D&D books deals with the combat rules is objective truth however, and that mechanical emphasis on the combat rules is all Ophi was pointing out.
Please do not contact or message me.
As an aside can I be the one voice you've heard that unequivocally likes Fate? It's actually my favorite system of all of them. I could talk about it all day. It's just hard to find people to play because, like you said, D&D is the giant in the room.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!