The most Social heavy system I have played(other than diceless systems like Amber) was Vampire back in the 90s, but the reason it was more Social centric had more to do with the fact that White Wolf's combat rules were terrible. Social encounters were resolved in the exact same way as 5e. You RP out what your character says and does then roll dice hoping for the right amount of successes which was decided by the Storyteller. I can't say I really understand the need for complex rules to handle social encounters/RP.
First of all, regarding Fate, I could be thinking of a different game. However while the game I am thinking of does indeed have mechanics, they are only bare bones mechanics. And it is a diceless, pure RP system.
I never said combat was not roleplay, although to the extent it is mechanical, you seem to be arguing that it is not. Or that to the extent that it is mechanical that somehow inhibits RP or is at the cost of other aspects of RP or something.
However you do not need rules to RP. You simply do not. Every child growing up knows this. You do not need to roll a single die to tell a good story. Every good storyteller, regardless of medium knows this. If that is your point, well, is there really a point to it? Why all this talk of emphasis and deemphasis if you are not willing to discuss the why?
I have stated my point multiple times and you just do not seem to be reading it.
You: "Combat obviously needs more detailed mechanics than anything else because combat it just innately more detailed than the other aspects of roleplaying."
Me: "No, actually combat is not innately more detailed than other aspects of roleplaying, it's just that D&D is more focused on combat than the other aspects so it devotes more of it's system to it. This is not wrong, nor is it a detraction, it is just a very apparent fact."
The why is that D&D is rooted in it's war game past and a combat focused game is what a lot of people find fun. That's the why.
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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!
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.
PBtA and DW are very different kinds of games, similar to Ironsworn, which is derived from them. They rely more on "narrative beats" and less on mechanics. There is no guarantee you'll like it, but you never know unless you try.
I would say that absolutely, you should take the time to explore other systems besides D&D. There are dozens out there, some very different, including diceless games like Amber, the PBtA style games, which are more narrative, and OSR games like Stars Without Number. And of course ones like you have mentioned, such as Call of Cthulhu. You'll never know whether you might or might not like these games better than D&D unless you try them out.
Yup, time is limited. But you can read up on them or watch a few short videos before you buy a whole rulebook and read it.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
First of all, regarding Fate, I could be thinking of a different game. However while the game I am thinking of does indeed have mechanics, they are only bare bones mechanics. And it is a diceless, pure RP system.
I never said combat was not roleplay, although to the extent it is mechanical, you seem to be arguing that it is not. Or that to the extent that it is mechanical that somehow inhibits RP or is at the cost of other aspects of RP or something.
However you do not need rules to RP. You simply do not. Every child growing up knows this. You do not need to roll a single die to tell a good story. Every good storyteller, regardless of medium knows this. If that is your point, well, is there really a point to it? Why all this talk of emphasis and deemphasis if you are not willing to discuss the why?
I have stated my point multiple times and you just do not seem to be reading it.
You: "Combat obviously needs more detailed mechanics than anything else because combat it just innately more detailed than the other aspects of roleplaying."
Me: "No, actually combat is not innately more detailed than other aspects of roleplaying, it's just that D&D is more focused on combat than the other aspects so it devotes more of it's system to it. This is not wrong, nor is it a detraction, it is just a very apparent fact."
The why is that D&D is rooted in it's war game past and a combat focused game is what a lot of people find fun. That's the why.
It seems that games that don’t have those mechanics aren’t treating everything equally. Rather combat gets heavily de-emphasized in favor of social interaction or exploration. From what I’ve read, it doesn’t sound like the later two are getting any better treatment in other systems either. It’s different dice, and either a broader or more narrow system of names for various actions. But that’s surface level; below that it will depend on the Players and DM. Player roles a fail, the DM gives a succinct description of what happens and the game moves on VS Player RPs (describes the combat move they are going for, says something persuasive to the NPC, describes how they disarm the trap, etc) Player roles a fail, DM RPs/narrates why/how the attempt didn’t work and the consequences.
Either of those scenarios can and will happen in any RP system, and it doesn’t sound like there’s any system that inherently encourages more narrative leaning RP. Different RP certainly, and maybe more realistic RP in regards to worlds where violence is treated much like it is in reality. But I don’t consider that better or worse and now I’ve realized I’m not really missing anything by not playing these other systems. D&D has been working fine for me and my friends, so I’ll keep running with that.
Just to be clear, I'm talking about D&D as it is presented in written form. I'm not talking about the practice of D&D or how any particular DM or table may choose to do it. I'm just making the observation that, as written, D&D is very combat focused because of how much of the tools we are given to play this game revolve around combat, as opposed to the other aspects, such as social interaction or exploration. The amount of tools provided for one aspect (combat) shows how much emphasis they put on that aspect rather than other aspects, it shows the amount of thought and care went into that one particular aspect, and it also shows what they think the main playstyle of their intended audience is. Obviously anyone can roleplay without those tools and rules, after all any child can play pretend, but having the tools that have been put together by an entire team of people and polished through playtesting by however many thousands of people over however many decades can provide an experience that is richer in certain ways.
I came into this thread to support D&D and say that it doesn't deserve hate, but to also point out that yes it's obvious true that it focuses a lot of its resources on the combat aspect of roleplaying and not as much on other aspects. This is just fine, there is nothing wrong with that. No game is perfect, and no game can be all things for all people. This is just the niche that D&D fills. For some people this amount of focus on combat is just right and for others it is less so. For some it works to scratch that itch when they get it and they look for other games when they feel like something else.
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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!
D&D has been working fine for me and my friends, so I’ll keep running with that.
Cheers! I love it when someone finds a game that works for them or, as in this case, become affirmed that the game they're playing is truly the game for them. I wish you and your table great games and wonderful memories!
Every newer system I've encountered - and I mean EVERY newer system I've encountered - has put a strong emphasis on the Rules-Lite Narrative Experience(TM), Kotath. Overlight, Genesys, Cortex, Apocalypse, Savage Worlds, the latest print of Shadowrun - every single one of them tries to go lighter than 5e, and the very first place they attack is the combat system.
I've read dozens of random articles and watched dozens of random videos around the Web of people talking through system comparisons, and an underlying theme is always D&D's over-reliance on extremely technical, grid-based combat and what that does to groups that aren't as into that stuff. 5e's anemic, overly-rigid skill system de-emphasizes 'skilled but weak' characters since there's maybe eight skills in all of D&D that are actually useful and a DM is not allowed to swap or change skills, either. All of the eighteen skills are hard-coded onto the character sheet - they're right there in their big bar in the middle with their fixed, unchanging modifiers and their fixed, unchanging names and natures. You can't decide that Animal Handling and Nature have no real place or use in your crystalpunky Magitech Megacity game and replace them with Streetwise, whilst changing Survival to Urban Survival to remind players what they're doing. The character sheet doesn't let you do that without liberal application of whiteout, and DDB doesn't let you do it at all. The system doesn't allow you to change which skills your class or background grant (or at least DDB's doesn't - yes, there are workarounds, but they're annoying), and all of the published adventures act under the assumption that the eighteen Official Skills are the only possible things any character could ever do, ever. Compared to...basically every other system I've ever learned...5e's skill system is atrocious. Atrocious. People who play nothing but D&D don't tend to realize how choking and restrictive it is, or how much the ultra-rigid skill system forces DMs to conform to the assumptions D&D lays out no matter how cool their game ideas might otherwise be.
The class system in D&D also emphasizes combat over non-combat, since the overwhelming majority of your character's abilities come from their class, and every class is required by the game to be primarily combat-focused. Hell, when a class isn't combat-focused the playerbase screams in dismay - see PHB Rangers and everybody hating Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer for not being Good At Fyte. See the recent thread here about making the paladin's Divine Health ability more combat-focused. You cannot make a character in D&D that doesn't take levels in one of the PC classes, and all of the PC classes are designed to be combatants first, combatants second, combatants third, and 'roleplaying aids' somewhere down the list after six or seven.
The combination of strongly combat-focused classes, an anemic and unnecessarily restrictive skill system, and the bulk of the game's rules being focused on how to adjudicate fights and/or dealing with the aftermath of fights, produces a system with a powerful focus on combat. D&D prides itself on its chessmaster, tactical-RPG combat system; other systems actively pride themselves on doing away with chessmaster tactical-combat systems in favor of Exciting Narrative-Driven Fights. Or, in the case of games like Overlight, Genesys, or Cortex, in favor of avoiding combat entirely in favor of "more clever, more fun(!)" ways of solving problems.
It's a pattern that reveals itself over and over the more one learns about non-D&D RPG systems. Even GURPS - my own personal favorite, and why I totally get Ophidian's frustration with D&D taking over every group ever - devotes less space in its books to dealing with combat - and GURPS core is bigger than friggin' Pathfinder 2e. The difference is that in GURPS I can create a character who's exceptionally good at noncombat tasks but terrible in a fight, and the game not only allows that but ensures that my Skill Expert is as valuable to the team as the party's fighters. In D&D, you literally cannot create a character that is excellent at noncombat activities but bad in a fight. The game does not permit you to do that, with the sole exception of playing a wizard that actively avoids taking any sort of damaging or controlling spells. Which the game will also do its active best to prevent you from doing, and which your party will not thank you for because D&D WILL punish them for carrying you around.
In GURPS, or in Savage Worlds and Genesys (i.e. the other two I've played at least a little of), you can absolutely make a skilled specialist that doesn't contribute in a fight but brings value to the party otherwise. In 5e? Those are called 'NPCs' and players are strongly advised against making them.
Ok, to do combat well needs deeper mechanics. Is that easier for you?
If someone wants to play a game where combat plays a much more peripheral role, they can. But they do not need elaborate out of combat rules for that.
And this 'war game past' line. Were you even around when Chainmail was published? Have you even read it? Have you played anything even remotely similar? Because D&D hasn't been rooted in anything of the sort even as of 0e. Chainmail was large scale tactical. D&D even back then the game had dungeon crawls sure but had massive RP aspects. Read some of those 1e modules. Yes there have always been DM's and players who play nothing but hack and slash, but it is not the game rules that make that so. Never has been, still isn't.
Yeah I'll take this as me having proven my point that you finally took the time to actually read and comprehend and you moving the goalpost (or possibly No True Scotsmanning) and throwing in some gatekeeping for fun. Not taking the bait, and not responding to you anymore.
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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!
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.
First of all, regarding Fate, I could be thinking of a different game. However while the game I am thinking of does indeed have mechanics, they are only bare bones mechanics. And it is a diceless, pure RP system.
I never said combat was not roleplay, although to the extent it is mechanical, you seem to be arguing that it is not. Or that to the extent that it is mechanical that somehow inhibits RP or is at the cost of other aspects of RP or something.
However you do not need rules to RP. You simply do not. Every child growing up knows this. You do not need to roll a single die to tell a good story. Every good storyteller, regardless of medium knows this. If that is your point, well, is there really a point to it? Why all this talk of emphasis and deemphasis if you are not willing to discuss the why?
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.
With due respect, disagreement is not rudeness. I am curious where all these universal claims are coming from. Not heard any such. There are DM's that over-emphasize combat, IMO, but that is just my opinion, not something I am claiming any data backing it.
And I dispute that being a fault of the rules. Besides, as Ophid points out above, combat is also RP.
Thing is, obviously combat is role-play, but the majority of the critiques I’ve read actively discuss how D&D does combat well, but not RP. So clearly a lot of people have the strong sense that combat is not RP. Maybe the rules create that disconnect, but without them I can’t see combat being better. It seems like the choice is either way too open ended or way too narrow. Meanwhile, I find narrating/RPing combat fun. I give my players 30 seconds to describe what they’re going to do, role dice, and narrate the outcome. And in the meantime, they’re shouting advice at each other, making jokes, and RPing character moments.
I think combat is unique in RPGs because in reality violence is traumatic, physically and emotionally. Social interaction and exploration (just navigating the world) are part of everyday life, but what percentage of people have fought and killed another sapient being. Or even a sentient being. I can appreciate why someone would prefer a system that either heavily discouraged combat or glossed over it.
But I disagree that other systems inherently do social interaction and exploration better. It just depends on the DM and the players.
The main reason D&D gets so much hate is that it is the biggest TTrpg out there by a longshot and, to be honest, its size is somewhat stifling the market. This can easily be seen by asking DMs how many systems they've gotten to try versus how many they want to try. Some DMs have gotten to try a lot of systems and are quite happy with that and some DMs don't want to try other systems, but from what I've seen the majority of 5e DMs have trouble getting players to try out different systems. My best guess as to why it would be that way is that learning a new system requires time and effort and most people aren't willing to put in that time and effort again + D&D is the biggest and people associate that with being the best. I don't know for sure the reason, though. This isn't to say that 5es impact has been all bad because that's far from the truth; 5es popularity has lead to a boom in the market overall and I would say has been more beneficial than detrimental on average.
The other reason is that while 5e overall is a good system it has a few glaring issues that have yet to be adequately fixed (some have yet to be addressed at all). What I see the glaring issues to be are the balance between characters, the monsters, and the number of expected encounters per day. The balance between characters is not a huge deal for single class builds, though it is still a minor issue, the real issue comes in with multiclassing because if players multiclass you usually get a useless character or an overpowered character; granted this isn't an issue at tables without or entirely comprised of powergamers. The monsters in 5e are for the most part bags of hit points this leads to many combats feeling rote; in addition, CR isn't a great calculator for monsters and the encounter-building systems usually lead to fights being too easy or too hard and, in fact, at high levels most DMs advise that you don't use the encounter building systems. The last glaring issue (and what I consider to be the worst issue) is the number of encounters expected in the system, the system expects 6-8 encounters an adventuring day considering that encounters can take anywhere from half an hour to an hour and a half that's a minimum of 3 hours on combat every session if you follow the guidelines and if you don't follow the guidelines that causes issues because short rest classes will be extremely weak (especially warlock) and encounters will be laughably easy.
TLDR; 5e is a good system but it has some glaring issues and with it being the biggest TTrpg by far it's going to receive more criticism than other smaller systems.
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call me Anna or Kerns, (she/her), usually a DM, lgbtq+ friendly
Every newer system I've encountered - and I mean EVERY newer system I've encountered - has put a strong emphasis on the Rules-Lite Narrative Experience(TM), Kotath. Overlight, Genesys, Cortex, Apocalypse, Savage Worlds, the latest print of Shadowrun - every single one of them tries to go lighter than 5e, and the very first place they attack is the combat system.
I've read dozens of random articles and watched dozens of random videos around the Web of people talking through system comparisons, and an underlying theme is always D&D's over-reliance on extremely technical, grid-based combat and what that does to groups that aren't as into that stuff. 5e's anemic, overly-rigid skill system de-emphasizes 'skilled but weak' characters since there's maybe eight skills in all of D&D that are actually useful and a DM is not allowed to swap or change skills, either. All of the eighteen skills are hard-coded onto the character sheet - they're right there in their big bar in the middle with their fixed, unchanging modifiers and their fixed, unchanging names and natures. You can't decide that Animal Handling and Nature have no real place or use in your crystalpunky Magitech Megacity game and replace them with Streetwise, whilst changing Survival to Urban Survival to remind players what they're doing. The character sheet doesn't let you do that without liberal application of whiteout, and DDB doesn't let you do it at all. The system doesn't allow you to change which skills your class or background grant (or at least DDB's doesn't - yes, there are workarounds, but they're annoying), and all of the published adventures act under the assumption that the eighteen Official Skills are the only possible things any character could ever do, ever. Compared to...basically every other system I've ever learned...5e's skill system is atrocious. Atrocious. People who play nothing but D&D don't tend to realize how choking and restrictive it is, or how much the ultra-rigid skill system forces DMs to conform to the assumptions D&D lays out no matter how cool their game ideas might otherwise be.
The class system in D&D also emphasizes combat over non-combat, since the overwhelming majority of your character's abilities come from their class, and every class is required by the game to be primarily combat-focused. Hell, when a class isn't combat-focused the playerbase screams in dismay - see PHB Rangers and everybody hating Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer for not being Good At Fyte. See the recent thread here about making the paladin's Divine Health ability more combat-focused. You cannot make a character in D&D that doesn't take levels in one of the PC classes, and all of the PC classes are designed to be combatants first, combatants second, combatants third, and 'roleplaying aids' somewhere down the list after six or seven.
The combination of strongly combat-focused classes, an anemic and unnecessarily restrictive skill system, and the bulk of the game's rules being focused on how to adjudicate fights and/or dealing with the aftermath of fights, produces a system with a powerful focus on combat. D&D prides itself on its chessmaster, tactical-RPG combat system; other systems actively pride themselves on doing away with chessmaster tactical-combat systems in favor of Exciting Narrative-Driven Fights. Or, in the case of games like Overlight, Genesys, or Cortex, in favor of avoiding combat entirely in favor of "more clever, more fun(!)" ways of solving problems.
It's a pattern that reveals itself over and over the more one learns about non-D&D RPG systems. Even GURPS - my own personal favorite, and why I totally get Ophidian's frustration with D&D taking over every group ever - devotes less space in its books to dealing with combat - and GURPS core is bigger than friggin' Pathfinder 2e. The difference is that in GURPS I can create a character who's exceptionally good at noncombat tasks but terrible in a fight, and the game not only allows that but ensures that my Skill Expert is as valuable to the team as the party's fighters. In D&D, you literally cannot create a character that is excellent at noncombat activities but bad in a fight. The game does not permit you to do that, with the sole exception of playing a wizard that actively avoids taking any sort of damaging or controlling spells. Which the game will also do its active best to prevent you from doing, and which your party will not thank you for because D&D WILL punish them for carrying you around.
In GURPS, or in Savage Worlds and Genesys (i.e. the other two I've played at least a little of), you can absolutely make a skilled specialist that doesn't contribute in a fight but brings value to the party otherwise. In 5e? Those are called 'NPCs' and players are strongly advised against making them.
I’ll grant you that DnD Beyond severely limits flexibility. But I’ve never been beholden to DnD Beyond. When my friends and I played face to face, we adjusted our character sheets according to the skills we felt were most pertinent. We still do that now; I use roll20 for the virtual tabletop, but we don’t bother with the built in character sheets.
The main reason D&D gets so much hate is that it is the biggest TTrpg out there by a longshot and, to be honest, its size is somewhat stifling the market. This can easily be seen by asking DMs how many systems they've gotten to try versus how many they want to try. Some DMs have gotten to try a lot of systems and are quite happy with that and some DMs don't want to try other systems, but from what I've seen the majority of 5e DMs have trouble getting players to try out different systems. My best guess as to why it would be that way is that learning a new system requires time and effort and most people aren't willing to put in that time and effort again + D&D is the biggest and people associate that with being the best. I don't know for sure the reason, though. This isn't to say that 5es impact has been all bad because that's far from the truth; 5es popularity has lead to a boom in the market overall and I would say has been more beneficial than detrimental on average.
The other reason is that while 5e overall is a good system it has a few glaring issues that have yet to be adequately fixed (some have yet to be addressed at all). What I see the glaring issues to be are the balance between characters, the monsters, and the number of expected encounters per day. The balance between characters is not a huge deal for single class builds, though it is still a minor issue, the real issue comes in with multiclassing because if players multiclass you usually get a useless character or an overpowered character; granted this isn't an issue at tables without or entirely comprised of powergamers. The monsters in 5e are for the most part bags of hit points this leads to many combats feeling rote; in addition, CR isn't a great calculator for monsters and the encounter-building systems usually lead to fights being too easy or too hard and, in fact, at high levels most DMs advise that you don't use the encounter building systems. The last glaring issue (and what I consider to be the worst issue) is the number of encounters expected in the system, the system expects 6-8 encounters an adventuring day considering that encounters can take anywhere from half an hour to an hour and a half that's a minimum of 3 hours on combat every session if you follow the guidelines and if you don't follow the guidelines that causes issues because short rest classes will be extremely weak (especially warlock) and encounters will be laughably easy.
TLDR; 5e is a good system but it has some glaring issues and with it being the biggest TTrpg by far it's going to receive more criticism than other smaller systems.
This seems like a fair take as well....everyone will always compare you to the industry lead and if that has bigger issues it will come up more often for more people.
The main reason D&D gets so much hate is that it is the biggest TTrpg out there by a longshot and, to be honest, its size is somewhat stifling the market. This can easily be seen by asking DMs how many systems they've gotten to try versus how many they want to try. Some DMs have gotten to try a lot of systems and are quite happy with that and some DMs don't want to try other systems, but from what I've seen the majority of 5e DMs have trouble getting players to try out different systems. My best guess as to why it would be that way is that learning a new system requires time and effort and most people aren't willing to put in that time and effort again + D&D is the biggest and people associate that with being the best. I don't know for sure the reason, though. This isn't to say that 5es impact has been all bad because that's far from the truth; 5es popularity has lead to a boom in the market overall and I would say has been more beneficial than detrimental on average.
Going to echo this. I've bought into at least a dozen other systems the last few years, and most of them were far from established at the time (the Swedish guys and gals from the Free League have lightened my wallet considerably, and aside from Mörk Borg and the Mutant franchise I'm pretty sure they didn't lean on old IPs for their TTRPGs). D&D has made TTRPGs wildly popular, and relatively easy (and low-risk) crowdfunding options for publishing have opened that market up considerably.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
The binary success or failure mechanics of a single D20 roll against a DC is probably the weakest element of the game and personally I think the D20 system is the weakest of all roleplay systems. I much prefer the Storyteller approach taken by games such as Vampire, or the roll and keep approach by games such as L5R and 7th sea.
The benefit if these systems is that as a DM you can scale success and failure far better Making for a far better story telling experience. You don’t just hit and miss.
But in terms of story there is no story I can’t tell in DnD and I can work around the shortcomings of the D20 system by mentally using a sliding scale DC allowing for partial success and failure
You are calling out the 5e rules because you don't like the skill list?
5E's ability check system isn't great, although it's less bad now. When it first launched, tool proficiencies effectively didn't do anything in general. Now they do something, just not a whole lot. Yurei is simply wrong about backgrounds - you explicitly can change what ability check proficiencies a background grants - but Yurei is spot on about class proficiencies. That's the single biggest flaw of D&D in general - classes. Classes are a bad mechanic inimical to roleplay, and the game is worse for them. Part of that is classes limiting ability check proficiencies based on WOTC's vision of said classes. And your response - which was in the post I'm responding to, I just deleted it for brevity - of just homebrew isn't helpful. Why buy a rulebook if you're not going to use the rules? This thread is about D&D 5E, not a ruleset you wrote yourself, regardless of whether it was inspired by 5E or not.
Everyone, absolutely everyone, no exceptions, plays a ttrpg in order to play some role, by definition of roleplay. One way you can judge any ttrpg is by how well it lets you pick a role you want to play, and then play it. D&D's classes are antithetical to this - you have to conform the role you have in mind to the game's class list, no matter how much your vision differs from the developer's. That's potentially ok in a TTRPG so deeply tied to a specific setting that roles are deliberately limited, but D&D isn't and never has been, so that's no excuse.
The most Social heavy system I have played(other than diceless systems like Amber) was Vampire back in the 90s, but the reason it was more Social centric had more to do with the fact that White Wolf's combat rules were terrible. Social encounters were resolved in the exact same way as 5e. You RP out what your character says and does then roll dice hoping for the right amount of successes which was decided by the Storyteller. I can't say I really understand the need for complex rules to handle social encounters/RP.
There is a big difference between how that game handles it and D&D tho. Those games as you got better at the skill you got more and more d10s to roll and success was determined by how many passes you rolled. so needing say 2 passes and your really good at the skill and have 5 dice lends to a more even.. success fail rate vs DC 20, your really good so +9 which is still over a 50% failure rate..
D20 is way to swingy for something like social interaction as it's 1 roll to try and persuade or whatever. If you had lets say 5 dice and needed to roll a d10 above a 5 two times to succeed well than your being good at a skill has a much more even distribution chance. The story dice of FFGs star wars system where also a nice departure from the basic d20 as well.
A good example of this was missing a secret passage in a game we just played, dc 10 to spot it, I had +6 investigation but I still rolled a 1 so we missed it and that was that end of story move on and find another way through. For being so good at investigating at lvl 1 I really shouldn't of missed that but since we rely on a single die roll mechanics vs multi roll like other systems its just a lot of doot. It also lends to situations where untrained people that should be failing just roll a 20 and add their +1 to beat a 16 or 18 challenge which is just a lot of "whut.."
You are calling out the 5e rules because you don't like the skill list? You can make your own character sheets from scratch.
You can't make your own character sheets on D&D Beyond, though. That may be one of the issues. I think some folks here (on this forum) have only experienced playing D&D on a pre-built system like D&D Beyond or Roll 20, and on these platforms it may be hard, or impossible, to "mod" the game effectively. Or doing so may require a lot of work and know-how beyond just understanding the rules of D&D. For example, I know the game Champions backwards and forwards and can play it almost without needing to look at the rules even today, despite not having played it in 30 years (at least, 4th edition Champions, which is the one I played the most). But I would not be able to implement those rules as a Foundry module, without hundreds of man-hours of work learning to code all of that stuff into the engine. Similarly, a DM who may be good at writing some text re-configuring the skills of D&D, might have no idea how to implement such a mod in Foundry, and I don't even know if they'd allow you to do that in Roll 20 or how one would go about it, but it's probably just as hard there as in Foundry. And for some things here, you can homebrew them, and for many things, you just cannot (like skills or NON-magic items).
So, if you're using computerized systems for playing the game and those systems don't allow you to make modifications (or they make modifications unbearably difficult and time consuming to the point that hardly anyone would bother), then your impression of the whole game might be different from someone who has played the game mostly on pencil and paper and has therefore been able to tweak as needed without regard to what some devs on a website or devs of a VTT have set their system up to allow.
My point here is, although I don't dispute that D&D is combat-focused and always has been, *some* of the things I see people complaining about are *code implementation* issues, not issues with the actual rules-as-written.
The most Social heavy system I have played(other than diceless systems like Amber) was Vampire back in the 90s, but the reason it was more Social centric had more to do with the fact that White Wolf's combat rules were terrible. Social encounters were resolved in the exact same way as 5e. You RP out what your character says and does then roll dice hoping for the right amount of successes which was decided by the Storyteller. I can't say I really understand the need for complex rules to handle social encounters/RP.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Fate isn't diceless. Are you thinking Amber?
I have stated my point multiple times and you just do not seem to be reading it.
You: "Combat obviously needs more detailed mechanics than anything else because combat it just innately more detailed than the other aspects of roleplaying."
Me: "No, actually combat is not innately more detailed than other aspects of roleplaying, it's just that D&D is more focused on combat than the other aspects so it devotes more of it's system to it. This is not wrong, nor is it a detraction, it is just a very apparent fact."
The why is that D&D is rooted in it's war game past and a combat focused game is what a lot of people find fun. That's the why.
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!
PBtA and DW are very different kinds of games, similar to Ironsworn, which is derived from them. They rely more on "narrative beats" and less on mechanics. There is no guarantee you'll like it, but you never know unless you try.
I would say that absolutely, you should take the time to explore other systems besides D&D. There are dozens out there, some very different, including diceless games like Amber, the PBtA style games, which are more narrative, and OSR games like Stars Without Number. And of course ones like you have mentioned, such as Call of Cthulhu. You'll never know whether you might or might not like these games better than D&D unless you try them out.
Yup, time is limited. But you can read up on them or watch a few short videos before you buy a whole rulebook and read it.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
It seems that games that don’t have those mechanics aren’t treating everything equally. Rather combat gets heavily de-emphasized in favor of social interaction or exploration. From what I’ve read, it doesn’t sound like the later two are getting any better treatment in other systems either. It’s different dice, and either a broader or more narrow system of names for various actions. But that’s surface level; below that it will depend on the Players and DM. Player roles a fail, the DM gives a succinct description of what happens and the game moves on VS Player RPs (describes the combat move they are going for, says something persuasive to the NPC, describes how they disarm the trap, etc) Player roles a fail, DM RPs/narrates why/how the attempt didn’t work and the consequences.
Either of those scenarios can and will happen in any RP system, and it doesn’t sound like there’s any system that inherently encourages more narrative leaning RP. Different RP certainly, and maybe more realistic RP in regards to worlds where violence is treated much like it is in reality. But I don’t consider that better or worse and now I’ve realized I’m not really missing anything by not playing these other systems. D&D has been working fine for me and my friends, so I’ll keep running with that.
D&D would (probably) have much more complicated cooking rules if the game were written around characters having a bake-off...
Just to be clear, I'm talking about D&D as it is presented in written form. I'm not talking about the practice of D&D or how any particular DM or table may choose to do it. I'm just making the observation that, as written, D&D is very combat focused because of how much of the tools we are given to play this game revolve around combat, as opposed to the other aspects, such as social interaction or exploration. The amount of tools provided for one aspect (combat) shows how much emphasis they put on that aspect rather than other aspects, it shows the amount of thought and care went into that one particular aspect, and it also shows what they think the main playstyle of their intended audience is. Obviously anyone can roleplay without those tools and rules, after all any child can play pretend, but having the tools that have been put together by an entire team of people and polished through playtesting by however many thousands of people over however many decades can provide an experience that is richer in certain ways.
I came into this thread to support D&D and say that it doesn't deserve hate, but to also point out that yes it's obvious true that it focuses a lot of its resources on the combat aspect of roleplaying and not as much on other aspects. This is just fine, there is nothing wrong with that. No game is perfect, and no game can be all things for all people. This is just the niche that D&D fills. For some people this amount of focus on combat is just right and for others it is less so. For some it works to scratch that itch when they get it and they look for other games when they feel like something else.
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!
Cheers! I love it when someone finds a game that works for them or, as in this case, become affirmed that the game they're playing is truly the game for them. I wish you and your table great games and wonderful memories!
There's a Fate game for that!!!
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!
Every newer system I've encountered - and I mean EVERY newer system I've encountered - has put a strong emphasis on the Rules-Lite Narrative Experience(TM), Kotath. Overlight, Genesys, Cortex, Apocalypse, Savage Worlds, the latest print of Shadowrun - every single one of them tries to go lighter than 5e, and the very first place they attack is the combat system.
I've read dozens of random articles and watched dozens of random videos around the Web of people talking through system comparisons, and an underlying theme is always D&D's over-reliance on extremely technical, grid-based combat and what that does to groups that aren't as into that stuff. 5e's anemic, overly-rigid skill system de-emphasizes 'skilled but weak' characters since there's maybe eight skills in all of D&D that are actually useful and a DM is not allowed to swap or change skills, either. All of the eighteen skills are hard-coded onto the character sheet - they're right there in their big bar in the middle with their fixed, unchanging modifiers and their fixed, unchanging names and natures. You can't decide that Animal Handling and Nature have no real place or use in your crystalpunky Magitech Megacity game and replace them with Streetwise, whilst changing Survival to Urban Survival to remind players what they're doing. The character sheet doesn't let you do that without liberal application of whiteout, and DDB doesn't let you do it at all. The system doesn't allow you to change which skills your class or background grant (or at least DDB's doesn't - yes, there are workarounds, but they're annoying), and all of the published adventures act under the assumption that the eighteen Official Skills are the only possible things any character could ever do, ever. Compared to...basically every other system I've ever learned...5e's skill system is atrocious. Atrocious. People who play nothing but D&D don't tend to realize how choking and restrictive it is, or how much the ultra-rigid skill system forces DMs to conform to the assumptions D&D lays out no matter how cool their game ideas might otherwise be.
The class system in D&D also emphasizes combat over non-combat, since the overwhelming majority of your character's abilities come from their class, and every class is required by the game to be primarily combat-focused. Hell, when a class isn't combat-focused the playerbase screams in dismay - see PHB Rangers and everybody hating Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer for not being Good At Fyte. See the recent thread here about making the paladin's Divine Health ability more combat-focused. You cannot make a character in D&D that doesn't take levels in one of the PC classes, and all of the PC classes are designed to be combatants first, combatants second, combatants third, and 'roleplaying aids' somewhere down the list after six or seven.
The combination of strongly combat-focused classes, an anemic and unnecessarily restrictive skill system, and the bulk of the game's rules being focused on how to adjudicate fights and/or dealing with the aftermath of fights, produces a system with a powerful focus on combat. D&D prides itself on its chessmaster, tactical-RPG combat system; other systems actively pride themselves on doing away with chessmaster tactical-combat systems in favor of Exciting Narrative-Driven Fights. Or, in the case of games like Overlight, Genesys, or Cortex, in favor of avoiding combat entirely in favor of "more clever, more fun(!)" ways of solving problems.
It's a pattern that reveals itself over and over the more one learns about non-D&D RPG systems. Even GURPS - my own personal favorite, and why I totally get Ophidian's frustration with D&D taking over every group ever - devotes less space in its books to dealing with combat - and GURPS core is bigger than friggin' Pathfinder 2e. The difference is that in GURPS I can create a character who's exceptionally good at noncombat tasks but terrible in a fight, and the game not only allows that but ensures that my Skill Expert is as valuable to the team as the party's fighters. In D&D, you literally cannot create a character that is excellent at noncombat activities but bad in a fight. The game does not permit you to do that, with the sole exception of playing a wizard that actively avoids taking any sort of damaging or controlling spells. Which the game will also do its active best to prevent you from doing, and which your party will not thank you for because D&D WILL punish them for carrying you around.
In GURPS, or in Savage Worlds and Genesys (i.e. the other two I've played at least a little of), you can absolutely make a skilled specialist that doesn't contribute in a fight but brings value to the party otherwise. In 5e? Those are called 'NPCs' and players are strongly advised against making them.
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Yeah I'll take this as me having proven my point that you finally took the time to actually read and comprehend and you moving the goalpost (or possibly No True Scotsmanning) and throwing in some gatekeeping for fun. Not taking the bait, and not responding to you anymore.
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!
Thing is, obviously combat is role-play, but the majority of the critiques I’ve read actively discuss how D&D does combat well, but not RP. So clearly a lot of people have the strong sense that combat is not RP. Maybe the rules create that disconnect, but without them I can’t see combat being better. It seems like the choice is either way too open ended or way too narrow. Meanwhile, I find narrating/RPing combat fun. I give my players 30 seconds to describe what they’re going to do, role dice, and narrate the outcome. And in the meantime, they’re shouting advice at each other, making jokes, and RPing character moments.
I think combat is unique in RPGs because in reality violence is traumatic, physically and emotionally. Social interaction and exploration (just navigating the world) are part of everyday life, but what percentage of people have fought and killed another sapient being. Or even a sentient being. I can appreciate why someone would prefer a system that either heavily discouraged combat or glossed over it.
But I disagree that other systems inherently do social interaction and exploration better. It just depends on the DM and the players.
Combat doesn't need more mechanics.... As evidenced by the games that do it the same as social and exploring.
DnD has combat crunch because it always has....
Reading peoples experience with 1e gives you some perspective.
https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/baktqe/how_was_dd_played_back_in_1st_edition
2nd and 3rd edition added maps, grids and minis.
This is where it became a war game.... But that's still it's history.
Likely there are more players who remember DnD from 3rd on then from 1e on but that's just a guess from my perspective.
4e was super gamey and then 5e pulled it back but a good amount of the PHB is about combat.
Its just the reality... The game has a heavy dungeon crawl basis.
The main reason D&D gets so much hate is that it is the biggest TTrpg out there by a longshot and, to be honest, its size is somewhat stifling the market. This can easily be seen by asking DMs how many systems they've gotten to try versus how many they want to try. Some DMs have gotten to try a lot of systems and are quite happy with that and some DMs don't want to try other systems, but from what I've seen the majority of 5e DMs have trouble getting players to try out different systems. My best guess as to why it would be that way is that learning a new system requires time and effort and most people aren't willing to put in that time and effort again + D&D is the biggest and people associate that with being the best. I don't know for sure the reason, though. This isn't to say that 5es impact has been all bad because that's far from the truth; 5es popularity has lead to a boom in the market overall and I would say has been more beneficial than detrimental on average.
The other reason is that while 5e overall is a good system it has a few glaring issues that have yet to be adequately fixed (some have yet to be addressed at all). What I see the glaring issues to be are the balance between characters, the monsters, and the number of expected encounters per day. The balance between characters is not a huge deal for single class builds, though it is still a minor issue, the real issue comes in with multiclassing because if players multiclass you usually get a useless character or an overpowered character; granted this isn't an issue at tables without or entirely comprised of powergamers. The monsters in 5e are for the most part bags of hit points this leads to many combats feeling rote; in addition, CR isn't a great calculator for monsters and the encounter-building systems usually lead to fights being too easy or too hard and, in fact, at high levels most DMs advise that you don't use the encounter building systems. The last glaring issue (and what I consider to be the worst issue) is the number of encounters expected in the system, the system expects 6-8 encounters an adventuring day considering that encounters can take anywhere from half an hour to an hour and a half that's a minimum of 3 hours on combat every session if you follow the guidelines and if you don't follow the guidelines that causes issues because short rest classes will be extremely weak (especially warlock) and encounters will be laughably easy.
TLDR; 5e is a good system but it has some glaring issues and with it being the biggest TTrpg by far it's going to receive more criticism than other smaller systems.
call me Anna or Kerns, (she/her), usually a DM, lgbtq+ friendly
I’ll grant you that DnD Beyond severely limits flexibility. But I’ve never been beholden to DnD Beyond. When my friends and I played face to face, we adjusted our character sheets according to the skills we felt were most pertinent. We still do that now; I use roll20 for the virtual tabletop, but we don’t bother with the built in character sheets.
This seems like a fair take as well....everyone will always compare you to the industry lead and if that has bigger issues it will come up more often for more people.
Going to echo this. I've bought into at least a dozen other systems the last few years, and most of them were far from established at the time (the Swedish guys and gals from the Free League have lightened my wallet considerably, and aside from Mörk Borg and the Mutant franchise I'm pretty sure they didn't lean on old IPs for their TTRPGs). D&D has made TTRPGs wildly popular, and relatively easy (and low-risk) crowdfunding options for publishing have opened that market up considerably.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
The binary success or failure mechanics of a single D20 roll against a DC is probably the weakest element of the game and personally I think the D20 system is the weakest of all roleplay systems. I much prefer the Storyteller approach taken by games such as Vampire, or the roll and keep approach by games such as L5R and 7th sea.
The benefit if these systems is that as a DM you can scale success and failure far better Making for a far better story telling experience. You don’t just hit and miss.
But in terms of story there is no story I can’t tell in DnD and I can work around the shortcomings of the D20 system by mentally using a sliding scale DC allowing for partial success and failure
5E's ability check system isn't great, although it's less bad now. When it first launched, tool proficiencies effectively didn't do anything in general. Now they do something, just not a whole lot. Yurei is simply wrong about backgrounds - you explicitly can change what ability check proficiencies a background grants - but Yurei is spot on about class proficiencies. That's the single biggest flaw of D&D in general - classes. Classes are a bad mechanic inimical to roleplay, and the game is worse for them. Part of that is classes limiting ability check proficiencies based on WOTC's vision of said classes. And your response - which was in the post I'm responding to, I just deleted it for brevity - of just homebrew isn't helpful. Why buy a rulebook if you're not going to use the rules? This thread is about D&D 5E, not a ruleset you wrote yourself, regardless of whether it was inspired by 5E or not.
Everyone, absolutely everyone, no exceptions, plays a ttrpg in order to play some role, by definition of roleplay. One way you can judge any ttrpg is by how well it lets you pick a role you want to play, and then play it. D&D's classes are antithetical to this - you have to conform the role you have in mind to the game's class list, no matter how much your vision differs from the developer's. That's potentially ok in a TTRPG so deeply tied to a specific setting that roles are deliberately limited, but D&D isn't and never has been, so that's no excuse.
There is a big difference between how that game handles it and D&D tho. Those games as you got better at the skill you got more and more d10s to roll and success was determined by how many passes you rolled. so needing say 2 passes and your really good at the skill and have 5 dice lends to a more even.. success fail rate vs DC 20, your really good so +9 which is still over a 50% failure rate..
D20 is way to swingy for something like social interaction as it's 1 roll to try and persuade or whatever. If you had lets say 5 dice and needed to roll a d10 above a 5 two times to succeed well than your being good at a skill has a much more even distribution chance. The story dice of FFGs star wars system where also a nice departure from the basic d20 as well.
A good example of this was missing a secret passage in a game we just played, dc 10 to spot it, I had +6 investigation but I still rolled a 1 so we missed it and that was that end of story move on and find another way through. For being so good at investigating at lvl 1 I really shouldn't of missed that but since we rely on a single die roll mechanics vs multi roll like other systems its just a lot of doot. It also lends to situations where untrained people that should be failing just roll a 20 and add their +1 to beat a 16 or 18 challenge which is just a lot of "whut.."
It's funny how people get so frickin angry on the forums here on dndbeyond.
Altrazin Aghanes - Wizard/Fighter
Varpulis Windhowl - Fighter
Skolson Demjon - Cleric/Fighter
You can't make your own character sheets on D&D Beyond, though. That may be one of the issues. I think some folks here (on this forum) have only experienced playing D&D on a pre-built system like D&D Beyond or Roll 20, and on these platforms it may be hard, or impossible, to "mod" the game effectively. Or doing so may require a lot of work and know-how beyond just understanding the rules of D&D. For example, I know the game Champions backwards and forwards and can play it almost without needing to look at the rules even today, despite not having played it in 30 years (at least, 4th edition Champions, which is the one I played the most). But I would not be able to implement those rules as a Foundry module, without hundreds of man-hours of work learning to code all of that stuff into the engine. Similarly, a DM who may be good at writing some text re-configuring the skills of D&D, might have no idea how to implement such a mod in Foundry, and I don't even know if they'd allow you to do that in Roll 20 or how one would go about it, but it's probably just as hard there as in Foundry. And for some things here, you can homebrew them, and for many things, you just cannot (like skills or NON-magic items).
So, if you're using computerized systems for playing the game and those systems don't allow you to make modifications (or they make modifications unbearably difficult and time consuming to the point that hardly anyone would bother), then your impression of the whole game might be different from someone who has played the game mostly on pencil and paper and has therefore been able to tweak as needed without regard to what some devs on a website or devs of a VTT have set their system up to allow.
My point here is, although I don't dispute that D&D is combat-focused and always has been, *some* of the things I see people complaining about are *code implementation* issues, not issues with the actual rules-as-written.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.