Let's see what your flavor of Dungeons and Dragons is. There are 3 "pillars" that this game is founded on, that being combat, exploration, and social interaction. Games can be built in different ways where they are supported more so by certain pillars and less by others. Here is a diagram:
Games that are "on" a pillar have 1 major beneficial property, that being the pillar they are built on and 2 minor detrimental properties being the other 2 pillars.
Games that are "between" pillars have 2 minor beneficial properties, that being the pillars they rest between and 1 major detrimental property, that being the opposite pillar.
So which is your favorite? Let me know in the polls and/or post a comment about it. You can answer either as a player in the sense of these are the games you like to play in, or a dungeon master in the sense that these are the games you like to run or some mix of the two. https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/[Imgur](https:/imgur.com/3HynBO3)" alt="">
Hmmm, I'm in 3 campaigns, spelljammer (story driven/sandbox/combat), witchlight (story driven), Strixhaven (story driven), but I've done a lor of dungeon crawls too, including one shots.
Let's see what your flavor of Dungeons and Dragons is. There are 3 "pillars" that this game is founded on, that being combat, exploration, and social interaction. Games can be built in different ways where they are supported more so by certain pillars and less by others. Here is a diagram:
Games that are "on" a pillar have 1 major beneficial property, that being the pillar they are built on and 2 minor detrimental properties being the other 2 pillars.
Games that are "between" pillars have 2 minor beneficial properties, that being the pillars they rest between and 1 major detrimental property, that being the opposite pillar.
So which is your favorite? Let me know in the polls and/or post a comment about it. You can answer either as a player in the sense of these are the games you like to play in, or a dungeon master in the sense that these are the games you like to run or some mix of the two. https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/[Imgur](https:/imgur.com/3HynBO3)" alt="">
I question your source of your initial statement that D&D is "founded" on 3 pillars. Can you please provide the source of that statement.
I question your source of your initial statement that D&D is "founded" on 3 pillars. Can you please provide the source of that statement.
In the Dungeon Master’s guide, Chapter 3 a few paragraphs in it says: Creating an adventure involves blending scenes of exploration, social interaction, and combat into a unified whole that meets the needs of your players and your campaign.
I question your source of your initial statement that D&D is "founded" on 3 pillars. Can you please provide the source of that statement.
In the Dungeon Master’s guide, Chapter 3 a few paragraphs in it says: Creating an adventure involves blending scenes of exploration, social interaction, and combat into a unified whole that meets the needs of your players and your campaign.
Blend != pillar. There are quite literally 1000's of pages of material in the 5e universe, let alone the entire D&D patheon. A tiny fraction are based on "how to do social interaction", while the vast vast majority are based around stat blocks, maps, setups for encounters. If you want to say "social interaction" = talking to an NPC, that is fine, but that is not required in the game. The word "theatrical" is an interesting word. The game can be played by handwaving away the purchase of weapons and gear in seconds by consulting the charts in the PHB and DMG, forgoing any time at the table negotiating prices with an NPC blacksmith, or a PC saying goodbye to his family as he leaves on an epic quest. It CANNOT be played without monsters and places to explore.
Now, if you want to define a module as "story-driven", that is reasonable. A module typically has a beginning, and an end, and is run in some kind of sequence. Not all of course, but most. Those are also called a railroad. One of the most famous is the utterly boring original Dragon Lance series of modules.
Gygax came from a war-gaming background, and that is what he founded the game on. I can pull down all kinds of books off my shelf that are 50 years old that back that up. Now, if you want to say 5e has morphed into something built around a number of people involved in the activity of actually acting, putting on funny voices, at a table, I am sure many will say that is true. But the game was never founded on that.
The three Pillars of Adventure are codified in the Players Handbook (page 8 in the physical book).
This pertains to 5th edition D&D, not the prior versions. 5e D&D absolutely embraced the three pillars at the core for designing more than good old hack and slash D&D. DM's can walk away from that any time they want, but the source is solid.
My group definitely goes Episodic/Story Driven. We don't focus on exploration much... Any time the characters have a skill or feature that contributes to exploration, it's used more just as something that allows us to skip the exploration step, rather than engage in it more deeply.
The three Pillars of Adventure are codified in the Players Handbook (page 8 in the physical book).
This pertains to 5th edition D&D, not the prior versions. 5e D&D absolutely embraced the three pillars at the core for designing more than good old hack and slash D&D. DM's can walk away from that any time they want, but the source is solid.
The original post says D&D is founded on these things. Not 5e. D&D existed long before 5e came along.
Further, page 8 of the 5e PHB states that social interaction is primarily dealt with in chapters 7 and 8. Chapter 7 is 6 pages long, and the only part of that chapter that can be interpreted in any manner to deal with social interaction would be the mechanics of the game under the Charisma Check section. In Chapter 8, starting on page 185, less than a page is devoted to the section labelled as "Social Interaction". By quantity of pages, that is NOT what anyone can define as a "pillar" of the game, other than the blurb on page 8. Are there all kinds of entries through the various classes and subclasses that deal with the MECHANICS of Charisma based rolls? Of course. But that is NOT "How to act with the DM and other players and their PC's."
I reiterate: The game can be played with zero "social interaction" other than listening to the DM and relaying rolls and actions taken by the PC's based on information provided by the DM. The game cannot be played without monsters, encounters, locations for said encounters, and the mechanics defined in the rules.
I tend not to be overly fond of charts of this nature. Charts like this tend to imply a level of static play which does not really exist in how the game works.
A campaign might be a story-driven political thriller when the players are in a city trying to accomplish some end... and then change to an overworld exploration tone as they seek out a ruin... and then change again to a hard-core combat-focused dungeon crawl once they get to that ruin. A great campaign is not at a static point on the spectrum--it is a blend of different elements where the proper mix of elements is being used at the proper time--itt should dance around the chart, sometimes remaining in one place for a while; other times bouncing at the frenetic pace of the players' whims.
Gygax came from a war-gaming background, and that is what he founded the game on. I can pull down all kinds of books off my shelf that are 50 years old that back that up. Now, if you want to say 5e has morphed into something built around a number of people involved in the activity of actually acting, putting on funny voices, at a table, I am sure many will say that is true. But the game was never founded on that.
The first proto-D&D session started with them doing a puzzle and having to talk to some NPCs--the game was very, very firmly rooted in the social interaction side of things. It is why Gygax realized he and Arneson were on to something potentially big--there were a lot of wargames out there, had been since the 1800s. But there was nothing that had the same story and social interaction component as the game Arneson DMed for Gygax and some others. One could fairly easily make the argument that, not only is social interaction a pillar of the game--the game very well might not exist without it, lost among the sea of other wargames. The social side of the game is what set it apart from everything else on the market and turned it into the juggernaut it ultimately became.
And, here is the thing--every game is going to have some kind of social interaction, because this is a team-based game. Even the most combat-heavy dungeon-crawl is going to have a small, small touch of social interaction--tactical commands like "hey, I need healing!", "let us focus fire the big scary one!", "I just checked out this door, and it has a trap on it' are still social interactions, even if they exist only to further the combat and exploration elements of the game.
Thank you for the replies everyone. To be clear, this diagram is intended to highlight extremes and know that the vast majority of campaigns reside somewhere in the center. It wouldn't have made for a very interesting poll to add an option for that, however. The idea is for people to "pick a side" to a certain extent.
Anyways, based on the results so far, here is roughly where the community stands:
That region on the spectrum is what I would refer to as the "forking storyline" style. You are still doing an episodic story, but making some effort to be adaptable to the decisions of the players and give them some stake in the game. So instead of saying: "Frodo, you MUST take the ring to the fires of Mount Doom and cast it it"... Which would be a classic story driven railroad with very little chance at actual meaningful exploration, you are instead saying: "Frodo, we must destroy this ring, perhaps we could cast it in the fires of Mount Doom or perhaps we could do [this instead]." You are giving Frodo a chance to take a fork in the road, and adapting your plot accordingly.
Interesting graphic! Now I wonder what a campaign in the dead center / equal mix of all three will be called.
Dead center would be what I call the "Skyrim" style. There is a clear "Main quest" going on, but the players are free to interact with it to whatever degree they care to or not at all and the DM adapts from there. The world is fairly open, with dungeons, cities, politics, and NPCs and you end up getting a good dose of everything.
Now in theory this sounds like the perfect game of D&D, but the problem is that it puts a tremendous amount of strain on the Dungeon Master trying to manage all of that. I just wouldn't recommend it unless you are a highly experienced and skilled DM, in particular when it comes to improv. If you aren't, instead of doing a whole lot of everything, you will end up doing a whole lot of nothing.
Sandbox != Exploration. Most sandbox games do have an element of exploration, but the key feature of a sandbox is that you can build whatever you have the skills to build, it's completely possible to have a social sandbox and most combat scenarios are functionally sandboxes.
Theatrical != Social Interaction. Theatrical is mostly about how actions are resolved: if the DM is making judgment calls based on what would be cool it's theatrical, if he's making judgment calls based on plausibility it generally isn't.
Wargaming != Combat (though it's closer than the other two). You can have wargames with an exploration element (though it's rare outside of computer games such as 4X games) and wargames with 3+ factions often involve substantial social interaction, as winning may have less to do with actual rules expertise than with convincing the other players to do what you want.
I question your source of your initial statement that D&D is "founded" on 3 pillars. Can you please provide the source of that statement.
In the Dungeon Master’s guide, Chapter 3 a few paragraphs in it says: Creating an adventure involves blending scenes of exploration, social interaction, and combat into a unified whole that meets the needs of your players and your campaign.
True, but I disagree that those are the “pillars” of TTRPGing.
Let's see what your flavor of Dungeons and Dragons is. There are 3 "pillars" that this game is founded on, that being combat, exploration, and social interaction. Games can be built in different ways where they are supported more so by certain pillars and less by others. Here is a diagram:
Games that are "on" a pillar have 1 major beneficial property, that being the pillar they are built on and 2 minor detrimental properties being the other 2 pillars.
Games that are "between" pillars have 2 minor beneficial properties, that being the pillars they rest between and 1 major detrimental property, that being the opposite pillar.
So which is your favorite? Let me know in the polls and/or post a comment about it. You can answer either as a player in the sense of these are the games you like to play in, or a dungeon master in the sense that these are the games you like to run or some mix of the two.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/[Imgur](https:/imgur.com/3HynBO3)" alt="">
Hmmm, I'm in 3 campaigns, spelljammer (story driven/sandbox/combat), witchlight (story driven), Strixhaven (story driven), but I've done a lor of dungeon crawls too, including one shots.
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
Interesting graphic! Now I wonder what a campaign in the dead center / equal mix of all three will be called.
That's my D&D, right there, not actually on the map :D
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Yeah same
I question your source of your initial statement that D&D is "founded" on 3 pillars. Can you please provide the source of that statement.
In the Dungeon Master’s guide, Chapter 3 a few paragraphs in it says: Creating an adventure involves blending scenes of exploration, social interaction, and combat into a unified whole that meets the needs of your players and your campaign.
Blend != pillar. There are quite literally 1000's of pages of material in the 5e universe, let alone the entire D&D patheon. A tiny fraction are based on "how to do social interaction", while the vast vast majority are based around stat blocks, maps, setups for encounters. If you want to say "social interaction" = talking to an NPC, that is fine, but that is not required in the game. The word "theatrical" is an interesting word. The game can be played by handwaving away the purchase of weapons and gear in seconds by consulting the charts in the PHB and DMG, forgoing any time at the table negotiating prices with an NPC blacksmith, or a PC saying goodbye to his family as he leaves on an epic quest. It CANNOT be played without monsters and places to explore.
Now, if you want to define a module as "story-driven", that is reasonable. A module typically has a beginning, and an end, and is run in some kind of sequence. Not all of course, but most. Those are also called a railroad. One of the most famous is the utterly boring original Dragon Lance series of modules.
Gygax came from a war-gaming background, and that is what he founded the game on. I can pull down all kinds of books off my shelf that are 50 years old that back that up. Now, if you want to say 5e has morphed into something built around a number of people involved in the activity of actually acting, putting on funny voices, at a table, I am sure many will say that is true. But the game was never founded on that.
The three Pillars of Adventure are codified in the Players Handbook (page 8 in the physical book).
This pertains to 5th edition D&D, not the prior versions. 5e D&D absolutely embraced the three pillars at the core for designing more than good old hack and slash D&D. DM's can walk away from that any time they want, but the source is solid.
My group definitely goes Episodic/Story Driven. We don't focus on exploration much... Any time the characters have a skill or feature that contributes to exploration, it's used more just as something that allows us to skip the exploration step, rather than engage in it more deeply.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
Political thriller. I swear my DM would forgo combat entirely if us players didn’t get antsy after a couple of sessions without any.
The original post says D&D is founded on these things. Not 5e. D&D existed long before 5e came along.
Further, page 8 of the 5e PHB states that social interaction is primarily dealt with in chapters 7 and 8. Chapter 7 is 6 pages long, and the only part of that chapter that can be interpreted in any manner to deal with social interaction would be the mechanics of the game under the Charisma Check section. In Chapter 8, starting on page 185, less than a page is devoted to the section labelled as "Social Interaction". By quantity of pages, that is NOT what anyone can define as a "pillar" of the game, other than the blurb on page 8. Are there all kinds of entries through the various classes and subclasses that deal with the MECHANICS of Charisma based rolls? Of course. But that is NOT "How to act with the DM and other players and their PC's."
I reiterate: The game can be played with zero "social interaction" other than listening to the DM and relaying rolls and actions taken by the PC's based on information provided by the DM. The game cannot be played without monsters, encounters, locations for said encounters, and the mechanics defined in the rules.
I tend not to be overly fond of charts of this nature. Charts like this tend to imply a level of static play which does not really exist in how the game works.
A campaign might be a story-driven political thriller when the players are in a city trying to accomplish some end... and then change to an overworld exploration tone as they seek out a ruin... and then change again to a hard-core combat-focused dungeon crawl once they get to that ruin. A great campaign is not at a static point on the spectrum--it is a blend of different elements where the proper mix of elements is being used at the proper time--itt should dance around the chart, sometimes remaining in one place for a while; other times bouncing at the frenetic pace of the players' whims.
The first proto-D&D session started with them doing a puzzle and having to talk to some NPCs--the game was very, very firmly rooted in the social interaction side of things. It is why Gygax realized he and Arneson were on to something potentially big--there were a lot of wargames out there, had been since the 1800s. But there was nothing that had the same story and social interaction component as the game Arneson DMed for Gygax and some others. One could fairly easily make the argument that, not only is social interaction a pillar of the game--the game very well might not exist without it, lost among the sea of other wargames. The social side of the game is what set it apart from everything else on the market and turned it into the juggernaut it ultimately became.
And, here is the thing--every game is going to have some kind of social interaction, because this is a team-based game. Even the most combat-heavy dungeon-crawl is going to have a small, small touch of social interaction--tactical commands like "hey, I need healing!", "let us focus fire the big scary one!", "I just checked out this door, and it has a trap on it' are still social interactions, even if they exist only to further the combat and exploration elements of the game.
Thank you for the replies everyone. To be clear, this diagram is intended to highlight extremes and know that the vast majority of campaigns reside somewhere in the center. It wouldn't have made for a very interesting poll to add an option for that, however. The idea is for people to "pick a side" to a certain extent.
Anyways, based on the results so far, here is roughly where the community stands:
That region on the spectrum is what I would refer to as the "forking storyline" style. You are still doing an episodic story, but making some effort to be adaptable to the decisions of the players and give them some stake in the game. So instead of saying: "Frodo, you MUST take the ring to the fires of Mount Doom and cast it it"... Which would be a classic story driven railroad with very little chance at actual meaningful exploration, you are instead saying: "Frodo, we must destroy this ring, perhaps we could cast it in the fires of Mount Doom or perhaps we could do [this instead]." You are giving Frodo a chance to take a fork in the road, and adapting your plot accordingly.
Dead center would be what I call the "Skyrim" style. There is a clear "Main quest" going on, but the players are free to interact with it to whatever degree they care to or not at all and the DM adapts from there. The world is fairly open, with dungeons, cities, politics, and NPCs and you end up getting a good dose of everything.
Now in theory this sounds like the perfect game of D&D, but the problem is that it puts a tremendous amount of strain on the Dungeon Master trying to manage all of that. I just wouldn't recommend it unless you are a highly experienced and skilled DM, in particular when it comes to improv. If you aren't, instead of doing a whole lot of everything, you will end up doing a whole lot of nothing.
My favorite, Spumoni, generous with the amaretto.
Seriously, based on the provided diagram, centered, but bracing against the Social Interaction leg.
I would dispute your classification.
Vanilla Peanut Butter Ripple with grape jelly swirls.
I kid.
Theatrical I suppose? I like playing various characters and interacting with NPCs, but I do love me a good dungeon crawl….
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
True, but I disagree that those are the “pillars” of TTRPGing.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Great thanks, now you guys have me craving ice cream. Since we are on the topic, Gold Medal Ribbon from Baskin Robins. Try it and tell me I’m wrong.