I just watched the recent interview with Adam Koebel on the Nerdarchy YouTube channel. In it he made an interesting comment that got me thinking about the role of the rules within role playing games in general and D&D in particular:
"I have a pet peeve: when people tell me stories like 'the best session of D&D I ever had we played for six hours and we never even rolled any dice' and I'm like 'why are you playing D&D then? Why even use that system?' Because if the game isn't helping you, if the game isn't there kicking the action along making things exciting and fun then you're not playing that game." -- Adam Koebel
Adam is a designer, so it's natural for him to look at it from a design perspective. But my answer to his rhetorical question would be that the ultimate purpose of D&D (as a player at least) is to play out the role you have created for yourself. And that, I think, is the ultimate goal of any role playing game. Why D&D? Why not? It's simple, popular, and it's flexible enough to get out of your way when necessary.
Can't all role playing games do that? In addition to D&D, I'm currently playing in a game of the Burning Wheel. There's a game that doesn't let up! I have almost had fun playing it a couple of times, but there's always some rule to spoil it in the name of kicking the action along. It may be a great game design, but it's not a fun role playing experience as far as I'm concerned.
What do you think: are the rules the core of the role playing experience, or are they merely the means to that end?
I think if you're not interested in dice and rules, D&D isn't the game for you. But it's popular so it's what people know and people use. There are just better systems to use if you're into more story driven and story oriented role playing. Even in a 6 hour story driven session, there is probably room for dice rolling that is either just overlooked or hand waved away. I just recently had a big role play session to wrap up a story arc and there was still cause for die rolls.
I think one of the reasons D&D is so popular is because this balance of the rules is about right; not too many, not too little. There are a lot of other games that tip the balance too far one way or the other. And I find those games interesting to study, but not fun to play. I think Adam feels that when the rules get out of the way of playing the game, it's a measure of the system's failure. Whereas his anecdotal opponents, myself included, see it as a measure of the system's success.
That's not to say that D&D is the perfect game system. I think it does overdo it with its rules in some areas and lacks rules in others.
The rules are good, But the point thats not getting noticed is, are they helping people to play better. Maybe a game setup to reward people who follow the rules good and maybe throw extra challenges to people who arent up to snuff would encourage people who are both experts and not so expert to apply themselves to playing their best. But how to utilize dndbeyond to make such a game would probably take the skills of someone familiar with dnd 5.0 and with how dndbeyond works. The main detail to pay attention to would be that rules are there for a reason but when someone breaks them there is a punishment, since its a dnd game punishments should be fun like a goblin's club slaps you on the wrist for 5 damage when you try to roll with advantage when your really suppose to have disadvantage. It seems like to make a more realistic game it should be more like the real world and then not only would there need to be punishments for people who break the rules but also there needs to be a way to amend the rules.
What do you think: are the rules the core of the role playing experience, or are they merely the means to that end?
The rules of a game should set the tone of play by establishing odds of success for characters at various activities (that's things like how survivable combat is for a character of particular resource level, to how likely it is you pull off something that has been established as 'unlikely', and even stuff like how the game approaches hostile environments like the interior of a volcano) - but they should not be so ever-present and unavoidable as to not let players have the impression of a session going by without the rules getting brought up.
For most games, that is easily delivered by a single passage of text telling the people playing the game when to not roll dice. D&D, as an example, uses that approach of having the rules slide harmlessly out of notice despite their being followed because the DM is doing nothing more than not calling for rolls because the outcome of actions as declared by the players aren't uncertain - and there are no "rewards" attached to engaging the mechanics that would force there to be a roll even though it seems entirely acceptable that the action not have a chance of whichever outcome doesn't make sense given circumstances (such as with a game system where a skill can only be improved if used successfully, wherein not having every thing that could be a roll end up being a roll is directly decreasing the player's character improvement - akin to not getting XP in D&D because you overcame a challenge with a clever idea, rather than through dice rolls).
And a thing that I have always found interesting about the issue of what rules do or don't "support role-playing", is that I heard frequently and vehemently things along the lines of "Vampire: the Masquerade is a role-playing game, that D&D stuff only allows you to roll play," (Using that game as a specific example, but its far from the only one I've heard the same claim about). Why that is interesting to me is that D&D, in the era when these remarks started, used vaguely defined Charisma checks and the Reaction Roll chart as the primary means of determining NPC reaction to PCs interacting with them, and required the people playing the game to be filling in the gaps by role-playing out the interactions (i.e. the party had to establish that they were acting friendly in order for the DM to roll the NPC reaction to friendly behavior)... all while the "role-playing game" contained within its pages a section detailing the system for seducing another character, which consisted of three die rolls, and if all were successful resulted in seduction. So the game that specifically had a "roll these dice and your character gets laid" mechanic was being claimed as more supportive of role-play than the game that was saying "there aren't any mechanics for that, so you'll have to role-play and see what the DM decides to do", and no one making the claim saw the irony of that situation.
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I just watched the recent interview with Adam Koebel on the Nerdarchy YouTube channel. In it he made an interesting comment that got me thinking about the role of the rules within role playing games in general and D&D in particular:
Adam is a designer, so it's natural for him to look at it from a design perspective. But my answer to his rhetorical question would be that the ultimate purpose of D&D (as a player at least) is to play out the role you have created for yourself. And that, I think, is the ultimate goal of any role playing game. Why D&D? Why not? It's simple, popular, and it's flexible enough to get out of your way when necessary.
Can't all role playing games do that? In addition to D&D, I'm currently playing in a game of the Burning Wheel. There's a game that doesn't let up! I have almost had fun playing it a couple of times, but there's always some rule to spoil it in the name of kicking the action along. It may be a great game design, but it's not a fun role playing experience as far as I'm concerned.
What do you think: are the rules the core of the role playing experience, or are they merely the means to that end?
I think if you're not interested in dice and rules, D&D isn't the game for you. But it's popular so it's what people know and people use. There are just better systems to use if you're into more story driven and story oriented role playing. Even in a 6 hour story driven session, there is probably room for dice rolling that is either just overlooked or hand waved away. I just recently had a big role play session to wrap up a story arc and there was still cause for die rolls.
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Where five friends sit around the table and record themselves playing Dungeons and Dragons
I think one of the reasons D&D is so popular is because this balance of the rules is about right; not too many, not too little. There are a lot of other games that tip the balance too far one way or the other. And I find those games interesting to study, but not fun to play. I think Adam feels that when the rules get out of the way of playing the game, it's a measure of the system's failure. Whereas his anecdotal opponents, myself included, see it as a measure of the system's success.
That's not to say that D&D is the perfect game system. I think it does overdo it with its rules in some areas and lacks rules in others.
The rules are good, But the point thats not getting noticed is, are they helping people to play better. Maybe a game setup to reward people who follow the rules good and maybe throw extra challenges to people who arent up to snuff would encourage people who are both experts and not so expert to apply themselves to playing their best. But how to utilize dndbeyond to make such a game would probably take the skills of someone familiar with dnd 5.0 and with how dndbeyond works. The main detail to pay attention to would be that rules are there for a reason but when someone breaks them there is a punishment, since its a dnd game punishments should be fun like a goblin's club slaps you on the wrist for 5 damage when you try to roll with advantage when your really suppose to have disadvantage. It seems like to make a more realistic game it should be more like the real world and then not only would there need to be punishments for people who break the rules but also there needs to be a way to amend the rules.