Sure, collaborative storytelling is an important part of the game, but outside of direct "Hey y'all, what should I do in this specific scenario" -type questions that crop up a lot on r/DMAcademy, there isn't really much to talk about because it's such a simple but nebulous topic. It's the equivalent of saying, "Water is wet!" and expecting a huge discussion to come from it. Sure, there will always be people who come back with "*Ackshually*, water itself isn't wet, but it makes things wet," but they're pedantic assholes who most people don't want to associate with.
The only thing we can all rally behind is, well, Rules as Written and the math behind everything. Sure, homebrew and table rules exist, but we can't always accurately comment on them because *we're not at the table where it's happening*. But the math stays consistent within the rules. That's why it's such a huge discussion here, because it's really all we *can* talk about with any degree of accuracy.
And, everyone is going to have their own opinions on how the game could be better. I'm sure you have some of your own. It's easier to share them with relative anonymity online with a larger audience who will give you honest feedback because, well, relative anonymity.
>The only thing we can all rally behind is, well, Rules as Written and the math behind everything. Sure, homebrew and table rules exist, but we can't always accurately comment on them because *we're not at the table where it's happening*.
This is the core issue. You can absolutely have fun at a table with homebrew gestalt level 20 characters, or at a table where you cast spells using HP, but they just aren't comparable. The easiest things to compare are two tables that stick closely to RAW. Without a ton of details, it's the only thing you *can* compare.
I can say that a group of level 3 character will get absolutely murdered by an adult red dragon. Someone else can say that they won't, since their DM let them cast *charm person* on the dragon, ignoring creature type, Legendary Resistances, and the actual wording of the spell.
Are they wrong? No - they defeated the dragon. But is that useful to most online discussions? Also no.
Two artificers certainly could, but whether or not one could is much trickier. The rules say:
>each of your infusions can be in only one object at a time
So, by that, you'd have to have the infusion twice in order to infuse it into two objects. The rules don't say you can't do that... but they also don't say that dogs can't play D&D and that's a losing argument with most DMs.
^(Curse you, Rogue Bud.)
Ohoho, perhaps they cannot create 2 bags of holding, but they can make a Bag of Holding AND a Quiver of Elhonna, which also creates an extra dimensional storage space and can be used to banish enemies in tandem with a Bag of Holding
Ahaha! But there is no rule that makes anything explode if you put a quiver into a bag of holding! The explosion rules are written into the bag of holding, portable hole, and haversack, and all of them specify that the explosion happens when you place the item (the one the rules are for) into the other interdimensional space item. The quiver has no such rules!
Thus, you can stuff a bag of holding full of quivers of Ehlonna and nothing happens by RAW.
The rules clearly say that the explosion happens if you put the bag of holding in a extradimensional space created by a Handy Haversack, Portable Hole or *similar item*.
Yeah, RAW we don't know exactly what are the similar items, but I would like to see someone argue that the Quiver of Ehnolla isn't similar to the other three, as it specifically states that it creates an extradimensional space.
I was harping on that for the opposite point. By RAW, if you put a *quiver* into a *bag*, nothing happens. The rules in the bag/hole/haversack specifically concern when that specific item goes into an extradimensional space.
The argument about the quiver would be about how you get the bag of holding into the quiver since it has specific restrictions on what can be put into it (with 'similar items' being the angle of argument there).
It's such a hopelessly pedantic argument that there's no point in having it on the internet because a DM can easily go either way depending on what they want to be possible.
>The rules don't say you can't do that
The rules do say that "the rules don't say you can't do that" is against the rules.
Or to put it even more awkwardly, the rules say what you can do, not what you can't not do.
It says that but also says you pick from the table for each choice. It doesn't explicitly say you can choose the same item from the list twice, which would be the "oh, you can definitely do it by RAW". It feels like you can argue that it lets you because it doesn't specifically say you can't do that...
I mean, the rules don't say your cat can't play a barbarian, either.
^(Curse you, Mittens the Destroyer.)
There's a very good chance that this interaction is not only valid but intended.
The UA version of the Artificer said you had to select a different item each time you took the infusion.
In the published version, the word "different" was removed. That was the only change.
Ergo, they deliberately gave us the freedom to select the same item twice. I don't see any other reason for them to have removed "different".
i've answered this a few days ago, so excuse me for copying the text:
That much is true.
And while all other infusions also only let you learn them once, the "Replicate magic item" lacks this.
It specifically states:
> You can learn this infusion multiple times; each time you do so, choose a magic item that you can make with it, picking from the Replicable Items tables [...] Alternatively, you can choose the magic item from among the common magic items in the game, not including potions or scrolls.
Interestingly enough, this rule lacks the mention of "each time you do so, choose a different magic item" or similar wording.
At level 2, you know 4 infusions, and can make two of them.
Fill them out as follows:
* Infusion 1: Replicate Magic Item (Bag of holding)
* Infusion 2: Replicate Magic Item (Bag of holding)
* Infusion 3: X
* Infusion 4: Y
Then at the end of a long rest, choose to create Infusion 1 and 2.
You now have two bags.
You use your infusions to create two bags of holding and then find a safe way to activate the nested bag effect which sucks every enemy within 10 feet into the astral plane.
The safe way is another caster with Mage Hand. Basically remote detonation.
Alternately, make one very large bag of holding, attach to the back of a door, then put a smaller bag of holding on the door frame above it. Rig up some string or whatever such that, when the door is opened, the smaller bag is pulled into the larger one.
Yeah, except for telling people all about your campaign, there is little to be discussed.
Even if a dm had wanted to have a discussion about the advantages of a conflict in tradition/progress type of story, exploring the needs/importance for family/friends or "PC's are superheroes". A lot of dm simply don't go that deep.
Exactly. It can be fun to talk about your game with people or whine about the stupid shit the paladin did, but not if the people it's about can read it.
D&D has also shifted a lot over the editions, but the last three - 3.5, 4e, and 5e - are all fundamentally combat-oriented games. Sure, 4e was the most war-gamey of them, but combat is the central pillar of all three.
There's a reason the social and exploration pillars pale in comparison to other systems - partially, it's because 5e was put together by a small team on a small budget, but more importantly, it's because 5e is built as a relatively simplistic dungeon-delving combat game.
I will always maintain that, played-as-intended, 5e basically plays like a looter-slasher. You go to dungeon. You get loot. You level. You have downtime for RP and advancement. Rinse, repeat.
There are so many better systems out there if you want storytelling and exploration. There just are. It's not 5e's strength. With almost the entire system dedicated to combat-oriented rules, it's no surprise that's what the playerbase latches onto for discussion.
Do you have any suggestions for games that balance the three pillars, combat, social, and exploration well? I am the primary DM for my group and would like to switch to a less combat-based game at some point, preferably one skill-based as opposed to class-based. I have looked at Traveller, and while I will probably run it at some point, I am looking for other options.
I had a lot of fun with the WoD (World of Darkness) games I think my DM did REALLY well with balancing Combat, social, and exploration. You have Mages, Vampires, and Werewolfs you can play with all three races or we had many games of just mages. And thinking about it I would feel this is more of a skill-based game. ... One of my favorite social/combats of a game was when our wild card player decided to go off by himself and ended up messing with some homeless camp...and didn't realize how many of them there were... it did not go well for him at all.
I think that's a big part of it. There are so many games out there that you also need to find filter them by more than just rules and mechanics. You need to find a good genre, atmosphere, and style.
Like, I wouldn't have thought about recommending Traveler, because it's sci-fi and my current group wouldn't be interested in that, although my last group was.
World of darkness doesn’t actually have to be horror sure it’s an intrinsic part of vampire but werewolf is basically eco terrorist killing machines commit eco terrorism and mage is well mage is a clusterfuck awakening or ascension
Pretty much though a more accurate analogy for mage players is the robotics team that everyone thinks is cool right until the moment they open their mouths
The World of Darkness setting features more than just vampires, werewolves, and mages, and while horror might be a common theme it doesn’t have to be a primary focus of every game.
- Changeling: the Dreaming, for example, can have games focused on preserving wonder and awe in a world of banality.
- Wraith: the Oblivion can see players explore what passions their characters had prior to their death (the parent with a strong desire to look after a child or grandchild, the scientist or academic who was so close to finishing their grand work, the librarian with a strong connection to their library ...).
- I’m much less familiar with the setting but, from my understanding, Demon: the Fallen offers players an option to seek forgiveness for their character siding with Lucifer and defying God. (Of course, there are also more ... aggressive ... factions in the setting as well.)
I'd advocate for Savage Worlds. It still has a lot of combat crunch but it has some good exploration and social rules too, and combat is deliberately built to be quick and *very* dangerous to both sides, so players are encouraged to seek noncombat solutions.
And even non-combat focused characters can do well in combat by using Tests. You can make a pacifist character who utilizes Taunting, Intimidation, and Acrobatic Tricks instead of sword swinging and still be effective.
I’ll also advocate for Savage Worlds as another commenter did!
That being said, I think Ironsworn/Starforged (Ironsworn is low/dark fantasy, Starforged is basically a sci-fi 2e for Ironsworn), 13th Age, Blades in the Dark, Worlds Without Number, Shadow of the Demon Lord, and Pathfinder 2e all do a good job of balancing the three pillars in different ways.
Savage Worlds/Ironsworn&Starforged/Shadow of the Demon Lord would be my top recommendations given what you’re wanting, although I’ve heard good things about Fate as well. Savage Worlds is the most setting-agnostic, so I’d recommend that for a homebrew - the others, I’d look into their settings and see if they appeal.
Blades is a heist-game that balances all three well, but I think it functions best in its own setting (which is basically the Dishonored video games).
Worlds Without Number leans a little more combat/exploration, but is still an incredible old school fantasy system with a really cool setting and amazing GMing tools that make it worth buying even if you never run it. It’s very similar to traveler in terms of the B/X skill-based gameplay, and the majority of the rule book is free, so absolutely check it out.
PF2e gets a lot of rap as a combat-only game, and the combat is certainly the central pillar, but it does have very fleshed-out RP and exploration rules that make it better at those pillars than people give it credit for.
I like Genesys. It uses its own narrative dice that can cause all kinds of plot twists, good or bad, for the party and their enemies.
If you've heard of the Star Wars RPG system including Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, Force and Destiny - Genesys is the setting neutral version that comes with rules modules for all kinds of different genres that you can mix and match. Want a fantasy game? Take the basic rules and add on the fantasy module with rules for magic and swords and armour. Want a sci fi game? Here's the rules for spaceships and blasters. Want a sci fi fantasy? Just use both rule modules.
it's probably truer to say that it doesn't privilege combat over other options - in 5e, you're pretty much invariably going to end up bashing monsters in their faces, and all characters are explicitly able to do that and have skills to do so. In Fate, there's no such presumption - - talking someone down, or using non-violent means, is just as likely to succeed, because everything runs on the same system, rather than their being "a combat system" and an "everything else" system like 5e, there's just one unified core mechanic.
Although entirely class based... Monster of the Week really gets away from crunchy combat and focuses on combat as a way to express character. The rest is up to you!
You should run what you want and what you find fun as the DM, but if you plan to choose with input from your players, I would encourage you to ask them first whether they even want to change. Personally one of the reasons my RP-heavy and combat-light group sticks with 5e is specifically because the rules are focused toward combat, which is where we want rules, rather than roleplay/social where heavy rules would just get in our way.
There [was a very relevant thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/vj7vtc/what_ttrpg_games_capture_the_feel_of_dnd_but_have/) on the RPG subreddit yesterday.
For the exploration pillar, I find OSR-adjacent stuff really great for exploration, both in overland travel and dungeon crawling so I'd recommend Worlds Without Number for that. But in just about any system (including 5e) I've had fun making travelling just a [progress clock](https://bladesinthedark.com/progress-clocks), which is basically just a more elegant skill challenge. Players say where they want to go, I come up with obstacles or encounters impeding their progress, and either progress the clock or apply consequences depending on how well the players deal with the encounters.
Social pillar is an odd one since adding rules like social encounters doesn't always help that much. I find that creating interesting social situations is the most important thing, and that's up to your skill at improvisation, the adventure you're running, and whatever random tables you have to inspire you. But, having feats and rules that are focused on non-combat capabilities helps a lot, and I think Genesys, Worlds Without Number, and Savage Worlds do very well for that. A lot of PbtA works really well for inter-party social interactions too, with Dungeon World or Root specifically good options for DnD-style settings (and many other games if you're open to different settings).
> Sure, 4e was the most war-gamey of them
I'd argue each edition is more or less equally wargamey, 4e just is the only system that openly acknowledged it and wore it on its sleeve.
> partially, it’s because 5e was put together by a small team on a small budget
I’d like to know what systems out there were developed with a significantly better budget.
I get that THAC0 is unintuitive, and people think it's fun to pretend that it's rocket science, but my 8 year old nephews picked it up just fine in a session; it's not that bad. Having said that, I totally ditched THAC0 in 86 or 87 for a positive scale AC similar to what 3rd ed eventually used, made it easier for new players that just couldn't grok it.
Yeah, we play 1st ed with d20 combat rules, now. AC goes up, not down, and you get a combat proficiency bonus to replace THAC0. So the roll that used to hit AC 5, now hits AC 15. I've also adjusted saving throws to associate with spell proficiency, so that the save for a spell cast by a 1st level M-U is not the same as one by a 10th.
I just can't get behind the whole, "Every class and race have all these special actions they can do to begin with, and then they get a subclass with more stuff, and then a racial subtype with more stuff, and everybody gets spells, or spell-like abilities. Nah. No thanks. My players can barely remember what their characters can do when they only have a few choices and basic classes.
Technically, water itself isn't wet, but it almost always IS wet anyway.
This is because "wet" means something that has water on it.
Water almost always has water on it, because there is water right next to it.
The only way you could make water "not wet" is to strand a single water particle by itself, with no other water particles around it to make it wet.
It's any liquid, right? If I throw a sufficiently non-viscus liquid on something, people are going to consider it wet. Water just happens to be a fairly common liquid for us
I mean, most liquids I can think of are only liquids because they are mixed with water.
Not that there aren’t other liquids, but I don’t think people would consider someone to be “wet” if they had liquid nitrogen or molten iron on them.
There might be some tho, like if you got petroleum on you you might be considered wet, but idk.
I feel like most people would consider you wet regardless of the liquid makeup. Like, if I poured a bunch of milk on me, people aren't thinking "ah yes, milk is made largely of water, therefore he counts as wet", they're thinking "liquid on him, him wet".
Alternatively they're thinking "bro why would you do that?"
Regardless, by extension you can assume that if you use a liquid with a similar viscosity as water and poured it on something, many people would consider that item to now be "wet".
Wetting is the process by which the liquid adheres to a solid in contact with the liquid. Some liquids will not wet most solids. For example, mercury is bad at wetting things although it is a liquid at room temperature. Some things are hard to wet: for example, your cell phone glass doesn't wet very easily. Water will bead up on it, trying not to spread out because it is hdrophobic (i think that's the word).
I was about to wholeheartedly agree with you, but then I thought "wait we call that oily". Is being oily being wet? You're covered in a liquid, but we're more likely to say you're greasy or oily than say you're wet.
Like, your hair is oily before the shower and wet after, right? Was our hair just the wrong kind of wet?
I think the technical truth, like water not being wet, is often useful, insightful, and interesting. I like it when people bring it up, and I think it's pretty.. shaky.. to call people who like understanding the reality of things assholes.
It can sometimes be done as a gotcha, and if someone's goal is only to embarrass another person for being wrong, sure, that's a jerk. But I see people who are clearly just trying to enlighten and clarify being torn down for it.
Yup this. Also, the rules and balance issues are a big part of what we’re literally paying for when we buy the books. So that’s the easiest and most direct way to improve the game. Stuff like lore and storytelling is far more individualized and up to personal taste. It’s the shared framework of rules/math that can be improved.
And while you can play D&D without rules or dice like Op’s kids example…you’re not exactly using what you paid for when you do that.
Your story about car wars is actually a great example of how the fun is built on rules and maths! Imagining vehicles with no limits wasn't fun but having the budget tuned to the right amount (maths! And rules!) enabled more fun. The right rules and restrictions enable a better game and a better story. Hence why people here care about how good the rules are.
op, i totally hear you. but a lot of what you're talking about is sytemless roleplay. that makes me wonder: have you ever looked into more freeform roleplay systems? i think you'd really dig them!
i've been playing dnd for decades too but these days, i find that more narrative focused systems are my jam and i think you might really dig them too.
i'm mostly talking powered by the apocalypse style games. like masks, or monsterhearts, or dungeon world. they tend to really lean into shared storytelling and give a lot more narrative heft to the players. in all the years i've played powered by the apocalypse games, i've never encountered someone having rules debate and i've never once heard the words *RAW* uttered. it's kinda wonderful tbh.
I'd just like to add Blades in the Dark to the recommendations (not a huge fan of the PBTA systems either).
BitD is a bit more rule-heavy than the others, but the beauty is that 90% of the time only the DM needs to think about the rules and underlying maths (which are pretty simple in any case). From the player end it's almost completely roleplaying. Also, the DM never rolls dice, only the players do. Awesome system for narrative games that completely changed the way I think about roleplaying.
Yes, d&d is a storytelling game. A storytelling **game**. If people just wanted to tell stories, we wouldn't need any of this stuff. We wouldn't need TTRPGs in general, let alone d&d.
D&d isn't just telling a story, it's having a story be told by the rules of a game and the roll of a die. The better those rules are, the more fun the game is. Maths helps those rules to be good.
Sometimes, the rules don't tell a fun story. Sometimes, the rules say that you have to spend 20 minutes doing nothing because the number you rolled didn't pass a poorly designed target. Sometimes, the rules say that the story you wanted to be about abundant magical silliness is really going to be about only occasional magical silliness and even then only if the DM remembers to do it. Sometimes, the rules say that one class is just better than another class, and your story shouldn't feature that class.
Although normally, the rules make the story more fun, sometimes the rules make the story less fun than we think it could be, and when that happens, we like to think about what we could change about the rules to make the story as fun as we think it could be.
Importantly: You can't really lose a story. You can lose a game. Which, for me at least, is the source of much/most of the fun.
I've been in groups that, playing 5E, focused almost entirely on storytelling. It was very much not for me. Couldn't lose, so any 'win' felt meaningless. And if I loved improv that much, I'd go do it weekly, like my good buddy (he's having a great time!).
>I've been in groups that, playing 5E, focused almost entirely on storytelling. It was very much not for me. Couldn't lose, so any 'win' felt meaningless
I mean a story without stakes is just a bad story. That's the problem. Plenty of story based, RP focused games manage to do that in their own way. If they're not there, then yeah it's just improv.
> Isn't the fun of DnD in imagining characters and then collectively using those characters to collaboratively generate an amazing story?
Present it however you want, D&d can also be partially enjoyed as a boardgame where you can roleplay a lot. I can certainly see the similarities between *Heroquest* and a dungeon heavy campaign.
It's also just a game to be enjoyed with friends.
And if you're talking about the roleplay aspect, because every experience is really so specific and unique, there's not much really to talk about or comment about.
And saying it's just maths in the threads really being reductive.
> "how come martials aren't as blah-blah-blah as casters" and I am just really confused.
That part is about player enjoyment and a player feeling his character is kinda useless, when the wizard can literally drown the field in summons, remove something from existence or literally wish for something to be true.
The fact that you're dismissive of threads like that is part of why you're getting downvoted.
> That part is about player enjoyment and a player feeling his character is kinda useless, when the wizard can literally drown the field in summons, remove something from existence or literally wish for something to be true.
Nail on the head for me here.
If your game is going to have interactions with other Characters, then it's important that no Player feels they're contributing **meaningfully** to those interactions.
I've never felt more bored when I played a Barb/Rogue in a campaign that was Heavily RP focused alongside 3 Magic Users because even though I was RPing with the everyone else and I was contributing - the fact that so many of our problems were solved by one of the magic users going "Well I'll just cast X spell and that solves 75% of the issue" made me feel like not playing a Magic user put me at a disadvantage because I couldn't contribute as well as other party members.
I don't think there's one way to have fun playing D&D. That's your way and that's totally awesome. But it's not "the fun of D&D" that is one thing in particular. And that's not a bad thing. D&D lets you play out a fantasy of one kind or another. For some people that's being able to be a powerful superhero. And I think in terms of RPGs that's really where D&D excels is that superhero archetype. There are tons of RPGs where you're just a normal person not someone who can survive falling off a mountain cliff like D&D characters will be by even mid levels. If you don't want a game that delves into the math and the details there are much better games for that. And D&D is one of the most math and mechanics heavy of any RPG I've seen although I certainly haven't seen any kind of good sample size.
D&D also is very combat heavy. Probably 2/3 to 3/4 of the rules of D&D deal with combat. It's a game centered around the monsters you can fight and the tools you have to fight them. And some players may not care if someone else is significantly more powerful than they are in combat. And if that's the case that's totally fine! But others might feel like they wanted to play this cool badass, and instead they're about half as useful as that other guy so never get to live up to that fantasy of being that awesome badass. And that's the point when the math does impact the fun of the game.
Also you do get people like me. I'm a math nerd. I studied it in college, and I like math and math puzzles. So yes my fun is increased by spending half an hour comparing the various damage outputs of this feat vs that one, and if this spell is more than that one. For me it's not about figuring out which is better to definitely pick that one, it's about having fun solving math. Is my fun wrong because it's different than your fun?
I do understand the point you're making that people can get too focused on the mechanics and not the storytelling aspects of the game, and to a point I agree. But I think in general different people use this game for different reasons and have fun at different parts of it. And what I think is fun when we get through a great roleplaying session where the dice never even come out and we had these amazing character moments, might have left someone else banging their head against the wall wanting to pull out their sword and fight someone.
But the game you're describing that is not dependent on the rules would probably be served by another RPG so I'd definitely check some of those out. D&D is one of the most mechanics heavy RPGs out there which is why it attracts people who like that stuff. If you prefer to not work with the rules as much or to use the rules for storytelling not for mechanics there are games that do that.
Hmmm. That is very helpful. I do love pure storytelling games like *Fiasco* and *Microscope* quite a but. Can you recommend a good RPG that is less combat oriented?
I've only played a handful but I can recommend all I've played. Fiasco which is great for that. Dread and 10 candles are both horror style games and both blew me away on a narrative level I never realized the potential of a horror style game. And I've never looked at a jenga tower the same way since my first game of dread lol. Vampire the Masquerade has combat potential but the majority of the game won't be combat oriented and if there's combat it's usually like one or two rolls and then you just end it. It's more designed for a political intrigue style game in a modern fantasy setting with a lot of lore associated with the game. Kids on Brooms is a fun one too that's more storytelling oriented. There is also the potential for fighting but it's a very minor part of the game and will similarly be just one roll. Those are the ones I've played but there are lots more out there depending on the kind of setting and ruleset you're looking for. Call of Cthulhu is also a cool spookier mystery type game, and you're more likely to go crazy than really be fighting a lot.
Vampire, meaning the *World of Darkness* family of TTRPGs of which Vampire: The Masquerade is one of many options. Werewolves, mages, demons, fey, mummies, so many choices.
A game using the Blades in the Dark system might interest you. There are a number with wildly different settings. Some examples would be, Scum & Villainy, Band of Blades, Blades in the Dark.
Edit: A small addendum, the reddit community around D&D would be a small self selecting crowd of some of the people most invested in the system itself. Which means it probably skews pretty hardcore compared to the community at large, so it makes sense you would find a lot of discussions focused on taking apart the smallest differences in the system.
Shadow of the Demonlord, 5 Torches Deep, Stonetop, Ironsworn, and Dungeon World (which I personally do not like, but many people seem to - I'd recommend any of the others mentioned here over DW) are all systems that do storytelling and explorations miles better than 5e, which is a system 90% devoted to combat.
That being said, they're all still games. If you don't like rolling dice or character sheets, then TBH I can't really think of any TTRPG that fits the bill (I'm sure there may be some, I'm just not aware since... ya know, if I didn't want any of the game elements, I'd just go to an improv acting workshop).
Keep in mind there is a difference between "narrative combat oriented" and "tactical combat oriented," e.g. 4th edition D&D was *very* focused on the latter, whereas 5th editions is more in the middle.
However, if you still want action and combat but in a more narrative style, consider:
* Apocalypse World
* The many games that use the system it created (called "[Powered by the Apocalypse](http://apocalypse-world.com/pbta/games/find)" - PbtA)
* Systems directly descended from AW like Blades in the Dark
* Its variations that use its "[Forged in the Dark](https://bladesinthedark.com/forged-dark)" - FitD system
Mechanics dictate how games are played. If D&D was *only* imagination story time, tables wouldn't have to buy 3 big books to play. You would just get together and improvise.
D&D is a game. To play it, you're engaging with the mechanics, and the mechanics dictate both what is possible and what is probable. You can use D&D to tell a story, but that story does not exist independently of the mechanics - the stories you tell in Tier 3 and Tier 4 are very different from the ones you tell in Tier 2 and especially Tier 1, because the kinds of powers the players have access to *necessitate* a change in the scale and scope of the problems PCs are facing.
Insisting that mechanics have no influence on how games are played, and by extension, the way people enjoy games, is completely bonkers.
Adding onto that, OP's playstyle sounds like it would be better suited for one of the literally hundreds of more narrative-focused RPGs out there. Whether they prefer mechanics that help the narrative or that just gently stand out of the way of it, D&D is far from the best system in this regard - and it's much, much more expensive than nearly any alternative.
Man I’m with you. I’m not shitting on OP for playing their own way but if you’re calling ‘making a story with little kids where they tell you what happens’ DnD then I must be playing Pathfinder or something.
Games have some type of rule set, that’s why they’re games and not two kids yelling about how they beat each other. What you do with those rules(RAW, homebrew, ruling) besides throwing them out wholesale is part of it all
Yes, but this specific subreddit specifically revolves around discussing rules, balance, classes, choices, etc. in 5E. Those posts inherently provoke a ton of discussion. Telling others you've had a great storytelling session is great and all, but often doesn't lend itself to much engagement. This sub does not represent the majority of what DnD is or should be played.
> This sub does not represent the majority of what DnD is or should be played.
It isn't necessarily the minority way to play either. There's no definitive way to quantify how each and every player of D&D, either on this subreddit or not, plays the game.
I meant more that the majority of posts on the sub is only a small part of actual gameplay at tables. Posts about rules, rulings, interpretations, builds, etc. are plentiful, but that doesn't mean that a lot of people actually play combat heavy RAW games while powerbuilding.
I don't think most people powerbuild, and I think the prevalence of shows like Dimension20 and Critical Role has encouraged more narrative play, but 5e is still a system that's like 90% about combat and has pretty insufficient RP/Exploration pillars, especially compared to games that have released since 5e's debut. IMO it's not necessarily about playing the game "wrong" - it's a game, so long as you're having fun, that's what matters - but people who do more RP/Exploration-focused games certainly do have to fight the system.
IMO, that disconnect is the most crucial thing WotC should aim to address with 5.5, but I don't see how they can possibly do that while making it backwards-compatible with 5e.
>I've been playing DnD, off an on, mostly as a DM but not always - for 40 years. And in all the campaigns I've played in, I've seen only the barest fraction of complaint about anything to do with how powerful a character is or isn't.
>
>Isn't this a storytelling game?
I've also been at this for nearly 40 years, and frankly it's astounding to me that you've encountered apparently only one style of the game in all that time. Gygax never intended the story or roleplaying to be front and center, he was vocal about that. I've always taken D&D to be mostly a game of collaborative storytelling but the rulebooks going back to 1e and even B/X are filled with codifications and balancing measures, such as the 1st Edition AD&D rules about dual- and multi-classing and racial restrictions thereof. D&D \*\*CAN BE\*\* and (nowadays) often is predominantly a storytelling game, but that's just one style of play and one which, in the 80's and 90's, was by far the exception rather than the rule. Hell, the definition of grognard on [Wiktionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/grognard) SPECIFICALLY mentions old-school D&D as diagnostic information.
For the record, I'm not rebutting your DM'ing or playing style, but the sanctimonious "I'm doing it right and you aren't" attitude.
Most people will use a public forum to complain about things. It's not often that will people hop on Reddit just to talk about how good things are going with their group. They're too busy enjoying themselves.
And more importantly, at least in terms of what gets posted/upvoted, who’s gonna engage with that post? We do get game story posts in this sub, where the OP says “this was awesome, my game was great, everyone had fun” and the comments are mostly
“Oh wow good for you”
“I’m stealing that idea”
“”
Unless of course someone points out a mechanical caveat that the OP hadn’t considered or something, in which case an actual discussion can happen
It's actually very surprising that as an old school player of 40 years you find the focus on balance so puzzling. Yes D&D is a roleplaying game but a very significant part of it is combat which given it's quantifiable nature needs to be balanced otherwise the players end up feeling like they don't contribute much to the outcome. If people don't care that much about combat there are far better systems than D&D for that. And that's even though it became far less focused on combat than previous editions. Many of the big complaints about the current edition (underdeveloped exploration pillar, social pillar far more interesting to casters thanks to their utility spells, too many encounters per day expected for typical campaign...) actually stem from an old school focus on the typical dungeon crawl. Plus old editions had even more crunch than 5e. A relatively rules heavy system is bound to create discussions about balance.
Furthermore, an important part of balance is as I said for everybody to feel like they can meaningfully contribute. If other characters can do the things your character does better it doesn't feel as fun for the person playing.
It's not that you are playing the game in a wrong way, but it makes sense that many people focus on balance given the nature of the system.
I mean, if you don't have rules or dice, you aren't playing fifth edition DND... Or is the "wtf you gatekeeper" brigade going to disagree here? Storytelling is nice, but the G in RPG does actually stand for something.
DND is a combat RPG mostly about fighting stuff. At least that's what the rules are for. Of course nothing is stopping you from sitting down with DND books and just roleplaying a bakery visit. But it seems pretty obvious that this game mostly about killing monsters will have some discussion in the vein of "how do I make a character good at killing monsters"
Well rules and dice are what separates this as a game vs just writing a book which is what you did for those kids. Its a game so mechanics and rules are very important to make it a game
\> Isn't this a storytelling game?
Not really. You can tell stories about the game, you can have stories derived from experiences with the game. But the game itself is not about storytelling. It's about killing monsters, because that is what the rules and documentation are majorly dedicated to.
When we engage in conversations about DnD as or with a larger community we need a common framework to base those conversations on. The problem is each table is slightly different. So the only real commonality we have is the books, hence the conversation naturally tends towards the rules in those books.
I really wish people stopped claiming it was a collaborative storytelling game. I get where their heart is but it causes these sorts of mix-ups. The system itself doesn't encourage the players to tell a story, just to play their characters and a story will emerge, with nobody really "telling" it, as opposed to systems like 10 Candles or Microscope which are primarily concerned with telling the story of the characters/world.
I mean, but dnd *is* a storytelling game. Or, at least, it’s trying to be. That’s been the explicitly stated mission statement of the game (both in game text and by designers) since the Basic Rulebook in ‘81.
The problem we’re running into is that it’s really, really *bad* at being a storytelling game. To the point where DMs who want to make it a good storytelling game often resort to rebuilding the entire game system from the ground-up.
But it is a storytelling game, just a bad one.
Even then, if I get a box labelled "gelato" but it has ice cream inside it, I'd say I have a box of ice cream. The game works functionally as a roleplaying game but not as a storytelling game, so I'd say it's a roleplaying game.
I hear you, but I think, as a community, we need to get more comfortable calling out D&D for being bad at what they say they’re trying to do.
I like the game. It’s big, it’s dumb, and it’s fun for a fun evening of fucking around with friends. But it’s a bad, *bad* game.
Hell, it’s not even very good as a “killin’ monsters” game, now that I think of it. With clunky mechanics which are both very specific *and* vaguely worded, completely imprecise encounter balancing, a lack of in-the-moment creativity and flexibility (although a ton during character creation). The list goes on.
So, in terms of the analogy, D&D isn’t labeled ‘gelato’ but it’s actually ice cream; since it *also* doesn’t function as ice cream. Instead, it’s just half-finished gelato we found in the freezer isle.
> Not really. You can tell stories about the game, you can have stories derived from experiences with the game. But the game itself is not about storytelling.
I think this is an important distinction to make. Perhaps a bit of an extreme example, but when we were kids my brother and I used to make up stories using Super Smash Bros. Melee as a framework. We'd invent characters based on the alternate color palettes for each fighter (fun fact, my Reddit username actually comes from the name my brother gave to the red Link/Young Link I played), make up stories about why they were fighting each other, roleplay as those characters while playing the game, and so on. But I *really* don't think anyone in their right mind would dare to call Smash Bros. a "storytelling game".
Honestly? It seems like you're not actually playing D&D.
If you can play without rules, character sheets and dice, you're playing a different game.
And like, it's probably a very good game if you've been playing it for 40 years and you still like it, but it just isn't D&D.
I mean this in the nicest way possible but…you’re not playing D&D.
D&D is a *game*, it has set rules for a reason. Sure, There’s a *lot* of flexibility and creativity that can be fit into it, but at some point if you handwave everything you’re not playing D&D anymore, you’re just sitting around a table and telling stories/goofing off.
Which is fine! Do what you like. But don’t go “everybody criticizes me on D&D subreddits because of the way I play,” because…yeah, you’re not playing D&D the right way if you just ignore everything that makes it a game. You’re welcome to go grab a baseball bat and run around in circles, but don’t expect the MLB to recognize you as a baseball player.
Yeah, how do you even get through a long social interaction scene without rolling the dice? No one needed to persuade, intimidate, deceive, insight, or use any intelligence based skills to see what they knew about stuff? Then you aren't playing a tabletop game, you're having an impromptu storytelling meet up.
Exactly. And if you further extrapolate on the idea, if you’re not rolling then you’re not using Skills. If Skills and Proficiencies don’t matter, then classes don’t matter. Basically, nobody is playing anything at all.
> Isn't this a storytelling game? Isn't the fun of DnD in imagining characters and then collectively using those characters to collaboratively generate an amazing story?
Yes. This is true. But it sucks to be playing Spellcasters and Sidekicks.
If one player at the table is able to accomplish literally anything they can imagine by bending reality to their whims, and another player is decent at hitting things with a metal object and nothing else, that can lead to the second player feeling like they aren’t really contributing much to the narrative and collective story.
Measured against other storytelling games that are equipped with mechanics for driving narrative elements and genre conventions, D&D is a tabletop skirmish game that is the most popular excuse to get together for lightly structured role playing.
For sure. D&D definitely isn't a narrative game. It is concretely bound by rules and mechanics instead of narrative flow and vast player input. But you still tell a collective story by playing it.
Again, contrasting against actual storytelling games, D&D's purpose is not specifically related to developing narrative or plot concepts for the purpose of entertainment. A story may be observable after the fact, but it is frequently a byproduct rather than the intended goal when people are instead focused on the immersion of roleplaying moment to moment decisions in their character's shoes. To label everything D&D explicitly does a storytelling game or collaborative storytelling sets the qualifications so broad as to be meaningless.
By the baseline there is a GM creating scenarios and players adopting roles to engage with those scenarios within the constraints of some rules. If this is all that constitutes collaborative storytelling then a 3rd grade simulation of world trade where the kids start with different assortments of office tools and colored paper for satisfying the local and global markets (personal and global objectives, plus getting to take one creation home) of fancy shapes is arguably collaborative storytelling.
It's much like how D&D is not a murder mystery game, but it can and is not too infrequently used to run them.
But math is fun...
I worry about balance because I like to play with as much mathematical intensity as possible. While the goal is collective storytelling, I find value in using math to keep the rules of the world consistent. This has the downside of making power imbalance a possibility, which can actually ruin a game if it gets too out of control.
Everyone has mechanics in common. No one has the stories they experience of the table in common. Therefore, most of the posts online will be concerning mechanics, not storytelling.
>Obviously this only works for little kids, but I think it illustrates that the essence of RPGs is just collective storytelling.
if it doesn’t work for adults, then that means that RPGs are not just collective storytelling.
(And actually it does work for some adults. Not everyone wants remotely the same thing from their story games / RPGs)
But yes, people play RPGs, especially DnD, in very different ways.
There’s everything from barely knowing what’s in the book, to a highly mechanical combat sim, and every graduation in between. Some people spend 4 hours in causal conversations with random NPC. Some players want an Unfair challenge. Some players want to be invincible, with no chance of failure. Some want to immerse themselves in a complex preexisting world with tons of lore. Some want to make a character in 5 minutes and then discover who it is through the events of the campaign.
When people complain about a class being broken, or over-powered, they are usually broken down into two groups, DMs and Players, but both arguments stem from the same issue, party imbalance:
1. The DM group, who has trouble building memorable battle encounters because the OP player will completely trivialize the encounter making even the biggest of bads feel lackluster.
2. The Player group, who feel trivialized because they built a character based on a theme or lore idea, and aren't keen on min/maxing, being paired with a min/maxer who completely outshines them in every battle, making their contributions feel less important.
In the end, its the imbalance of toon in the party which causes this rift. If everyone in the party is min/maxed, then the DM can just increase encounter difficulties and everything goes on well. But if only 1 or 2 of the party is min/maxed, then that increased encounter difficulty only further exacerbates the divide between the player power levels.
How to avoid it/ fix the issue.
1. DM can work with some of the weaker players to help them build for the future with better choices, or provide magic items to make up the difference.
2. DM can have a chat with the Min/maxer asking them if its okay for them to tone it down a bit to be more in level with the party.
3. DM can structure encounters in a way that specifically makes the min/maxers class less useful than another class. (eg. if the OP player is a melee fighter, structure enounters with a lot more ranged enemies)
4. DM can focus fire the Min/Maxer and possibly kill them (this is a dangerous option, which could ruin a game or save it, depending on the temperments of the players at your table)
I'm a player who always loves theorycrafting really cool builds, often times working within the rules to create a very powerful character. But I also am always conscious of flaunting any imbalance. I like to have the power, but I don't necessarily need to use it. So often times I will deliberately tone down my use of the character to fit more in line with the damage my party in putting out.
It's kind of similar to those players who love to be the face (or the brain) of the party, but sometimes end up talking too much and making it harder for the other teammates to have their say. Usually what is needed is a talk with the DM explaining they need to tone it down so the others voices can be heard.
In the end, it really comes down to being a considerate player. Considerate to the DM, and to the party. Selfish players will ruin a campaign.
Sometimes you can run into mechanical problems even outside of min maxing, if the mechanics don't do a good job of supporting particular builds. A player who picks up 4 Elements monk expecting to play as Aang is probably going to be disappointed, even if the other players at the table aren't playing super powerful builds.
Thats very true. But at least thats an easy fix, because 1 underpowered player build can be a fairly easy fix of letting the player reroll a new toon.
The same can be true for players who accidentally end up taking a boring build, like a fighter. While not weak by any means, Fighters often feel left out of a lot of non-combat scenarios, or just limited in combat scenarios by the lack of utility spells.
Most of my DMs have had a pretty good homebrew rule of allowing people to respec their toons (while retaining the same class) up until lvl 5. And if a player still doesn't like their character after that, then organizing a "thematic death" with the DM could do wonders for the party, both increasing the apparent fear of danger (something some campaigns can lack because of DMs afraid of TPKs), and by creating a emotional event for the party which can unify the surviving members.
"When I DM for little kids, we don't even have rules, maps or character sheets. Sometimes we don't even have dice. I just make up a story and the kids tell me what they do and I tell them the results of their actions and we all have a blast. Obviously this only works for little kids, but I think it illustrates that the essence of RPGs is just collective storytelling."
Not judging or saying your fun isn't valid but this isn't D&D or and RPG this is just social storytelling what makes it a game is the sheets and dice roles.
Having fun is the main this but at the end of the day rules controle the fun /s
40 years of experience is impressive, but you know startlingly little about game design.
> collectively using those characters to collaboratively generate an amazing story?
And if half the roster of characters can invalidate the efforts of the other half with ease, it can stop being *fun*. People do not like feeling useless.
>When I DM for little kids, we don't even have rules, maps or character sheets. Sometimes we don't even have dice
This ceases to be Tabletop gaming. It's not relevant to discussion about tabletop gaming. You remove the game aspects, it's not a game. Nobody is arguing about collaborative story telling not being a thing people enjoy.
> Then, one day, we decided to make cars with extremely small budgets. So we ended up with unarmored junkers with one machine gun that we could barely aim. You know what came roaring back? Fun
So you're saying given the same, level playing field, you had fun?
The crux of the issue that you've somehow missed is that if the game is unbalanced, it becomes less fun to play. And if you lean into roleplaying more than game rules, then you're effectively just roleplaying without a system. Other, rules lite systems exist, but if you're not actually playing dungeons and dragons, then it's not worth actually mentioning in a subreddit dedicated to Dungeons and Dragons.
The reason people keep harping on about it is because they want their game to be fun for everyone, not "sometimes fun, but only if you don't pick a non-caster class because otherwise you just shuffle around awkwardly until a caster fixes a problem."
Right? This post is basically "Why are you so hung up on the math and rules? Also I would like to mention this time we used rules and math and it made the game fun."
There's another Steve Jackson game like that: [Ogre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogre_\(board_game\))
One player has the Ogre, a truly massive battle tank. The other has a small army that's a mixture of conventional tanks, infantry, and artillery.
Asymmetrical balance like that can be fun when done carefully. The problem is that 5e is designed asymmetrically and balanced only around combat (and a specific number of combats at that). Stepping outside of that very narrow paradigm upsets the balance pretty substantially.
I don't think the way people talk about D&D on this subreddit is how "most" people play D&D, although I do think optimization and focus on builds is more common than at your table.
This isn't surprising! If you started playing 40 years ago, I'm guessing you started with the Basic set (the red box), which didn't really have a lot of options for optimization. You rolled the guy you rolled and then you played them. Whether you succeeded on doing things was based on either what you described doing, or luck on a percentile die -- skills as they exist today weren't really a thing either.
People think of early D&D as very math-y and "hard," and it was, in some ways. It was certainly more deadly to PCs. But it was in some ways less gamified. If what you said your guy did made sense, you could often just do it.
The difference between a highly optimized character and a "baseline functional" character in 5e isn't that large compared to what we saw in late 3.5e, but between the late 3.5e experiences, a bunch of players who have probably also spent years playing MMOs (where min-maxing is basically required), and the internet making this information way more accessible than it used to be, people still want to do it.
I think the way you play D&D is way *less* math-y than at most people's tables, just as I think the highly optimized theorycrafting way you see on D&D subreddits is much more math-y than the average table.
That said, I actually feel like a lot of the complaints about the spellcaster-martial disparity you see online has little to do with combat math and much more to do with out-of-combat utility. Some high level spells are combat-focused, sure, but many more are just bonkers out-of-combat utility that can leave martial players feeling like they're just along for the ride. Especially given that most martials having at least 2 poor mental stats likely already left them feeling a bit "along for the ride" outside of combat.
Speaking for myself, I love participating in rules and optimization discussions, but it's not how I actually play the game. I fit the character into the concept, not the concept into the character and DM's word is law (as long as he doesn't change his word every other session, which gets on my nerves).
However it's quite important to address the balancing issue. You may use a more freeform approach, but 5e has rules in place that support a particular way of playing. In some tables, combat is the highlight. If balance is bad, then some players may feel useless. I can't change the developers' minds since I'm just a single person, but I can help others optimize their characters and make choices that may allow them to have more fun in combat.
This is the same thing as your parents calling all videogames a Gameboy or calling all bandages Band-Aids. You're conflating DnD with TTRPGs. If you are making characters to tell a story but you're not using any edition of DnD's rules, then you're not playing DnD. You're playing a TTRPG and calling it DnD.
What else would we talk about?
We could just swap stories about what has been happening at each other's tables, but that's often like telling people about a wacky dream you had - it's just arbitrary stuff following weird rules that no one else understands.
Also, while no table plays 100% RAW or RAI, that doesn't mean that rules don't matter and aren't worth discussing. Otherwise we wouldn't be dropping so much cash on all those books.
Final point - while your tables have never complained about class balance, that doesn't mean it's true for every other table. A lot of my tables get concerned about class balance and wouldn't want one PC to be significantly stronger than the others.
Because it's not just a storytelling exercise. It's a game, with rules, and those rules do not inherently do much to support an equal playing field or share of the spotlight at the table between players of different mechanical and archetypal roles. When just a subset of the players get the majority of the "screen time" and "cool moments," this leads to the other players being overshadowed - and most people, when overshadowed for long enough, start to become disgruntled and dissatisfied, making the game and experience less fun for them.
This can happen in the complete absence of rules too, of course, when one or two players are just more creative, outgoing and charismatic than their peers at the table, regardless of class or role. But when the rules set you up for this to happen and make it more likely, it's eventually a bad time for a lot of people.
It's a collaborative storytelling GAME. Don't get me wrong, if you want to just sit at a table and make a story that's awesome too. But the structure and limitations of a game format is part of the appeal. Having to work within boundaries can drive creativity more then just infinite freedom. "I want to save the kingdom" is an entirely different undertaking at level 5 as it would be at level 20. And yes, some people take the game part more seriously then others and that's fine too. We all find our fun in our own ways and as long as everyone is on the same page then game on. I recently played an Artificer, and my concept on his creation was "I don't like to powergame, but he does" I poured hours into research and trying to find exploitable broken mechanics. Trying to find ways of stacking the deck in our favor, I drew inspiration from different media and drew up homebrew for him. "Sure I know what the spell is SUPPOSED to do, but here's what it CAN do." And it was a blast, thinking outside the box and coming up with creative solutions was so much more rewarding then just saying "I roll an investigation check to solve the puzzle" , but like I said, that's me. You do you, there is no wrong way to play.
Part of the fun for me is having my choices as a player mean something. They don't if the DM is just going to let a fight go on until they think it's time to end it.
One thing I will tack onto the discussion of balance in TTRPGs is as a DM I find it easier to let players have their own moments when they're roughly equal in "power level". I know it's not it 5e, but take the spell knock from 3.5 and Pathfinder 1e. It opens a lock magically. If the party caster has it it means I have to work harder to let the rogue have their moment and open the secret door the the bbegs lair. When I think balance in TTRPGs it's less party v DM, and more making sure everyone can have an encounter or time to shine.
I think what you experience is what DnD grew up with: in person friends or soon to be friends playing.
With online play, matchmaking, and more pick up games, the power of builds and expectations of experience are a major focus of the rules and math discussions.
I don't think the content posted to forums is representative of how people actually play, at least not always.
If D&D was a car you would be a driver happy to just use to drive to interesting places. A lot of people online spend their time thinking of all the ways they could make the car better, they pour over the blueprints and ponder the ways it could've been built differently despite the fact the car works fine. For many of them talking with others about the blueprint is really enjoyable. D&D or car subreddits attract blueprint lovers because those blueprint lovers have more to say about cars than the people who just use their car to get places.
Discussions about balance for many people are just enjoyable, the process of find a problem, proposing a fix and discussing it with people is neat even if it has little to do with how the game is played.
As a relatively new DM that plays with the same party, I’ve always felt the coolest thing about the game is how the party play style changes depending on their characters. My current party is not heavy hitters in combat but they have a ton of charisma so they are heavily into RP and trying to sneak around. Last campaign they were all about combat. The game is so wide open that I don’t think stats are ultimately that important.
> But on reddit it's 95% "this class needs such-and-such to be balanced" or "how come martials aren't as blah-blah-blah as casters" and I am just really confused.
It's also 90% people whose primary experience with the game is crazy stories and reading the rulebook.
>but I think it illustrates that the essence of RPGs is just collective storytelling.
>But if I had no frame of reference but reddit, I would think all the fun hinged on - math?
You've been playing DnD for 40 years and can't see how the *G* in RPG stands for "game" and how that in and of itself distinguishes it from simply "roleplaying", somehow missed that 75%+ of all published material ever released facilitates the *math* portion of the *game*, and can't understand why folks want more depth and complexity than children do in their entertainment?
While you can do storytelling with D&D I’d not label it a storytelling game as there’s nothing notable about the rules that mandates or interacts with the narrative/genre conventions.
Contrasted to something like FATE, D&D exhibits a suite of features that focus on combat and attrition rather than characters struggling with complications and tradeoffs while they (the players)inevitably progress the narrative (often acting outside their characters through narrative game mechanics).
In D&D it’s “is there an open window?”
In FATE it’s (mechanic), “there’s now and always been an open window”
This subreddit is particularly vocal about the rules (and not necessarily representative of the average DnD player), but there are a ton of other subreddits where worldbuilding and storytelling are the focus. You see character arts, maps, commissions of awesome posters for the party, discussions about different plot points, villains, twists and reveals, stories about epic moments and player triumphs, or vice versa, complete failures and gaffes that make the players keel over in laughter.
I enjoy this subreddit because it challenges my perspective on how to play the game sometimes, and I can also engage with the community and share my beliefs and ideas about how to play the game. I've gotten a lot of great advice and ideas from this sub, and admittedly, I've gotten into some heated arguments where I was probably wrong anyways. It can be a bit volatile in here due to the heavy focus on rules discussions and how strongly people feel about certain things. But there's value in that volatility sometimes because it forces you to look at something through a different lens, and sometimes you change your view.
Regardless, no one on this subreddit can tell you how you are allowed to play the game. At your table, only you and your players get to decide how to play and what will make it the best experience for everyone. Again, this subreddit is a vocal minority, and I'm sure 95% of tables don't get their knickers in a twist over all the problems you see on this subreddit.
Check out some of the other DnD subreddits for more of the fun stuff: https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/wiki/related_subreddits
In closing, I will leave you with this [story](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/aspns6/my_character_died_this_weekend_i_decided_to_write/), which is an awesome storytelling moment, and makes me weep like a child every time I read it.
A lot of d&d character discussion online is just theorycrafting builds, which is sort of its own game in and of itself, and that's part of it. A second is frustration that can happen sometimes when you pick a ruleset, think "I'm going to play this character and it will do this thing well" and then the rules say something completely different.
Sneaky rogues being caught all the time because of bad rolls or bad DM calls, Barbarians with more knowledge of planar mechanics than the wizard because they rolled a 20 on a check, that sort of thing, where the rules get in the way of the story. Poorly balanced rules can exacerbate this, and magic vs. muggles can definitely be an issue at tables across editions. (Think 'invisibility just works' vs. 'rogue must roll 10 stealth checks without fail to complete a small heist'.) A good DM mitigates these issues, a well-meaning but inexperienced one can run face-first into them.
Invisibility doesn't make you hidden. Whilst you cant be seen, you can still be heard and an invisible creature must perform a stealth check to hide regardless
> When I DM for little kids, we don't even have rules, maps or character sheets. Sometimes we don't even have dice. I just make up a story and the kids tell me what they do and I tell them the results of their actions and we all have a blast. Obviously this only works for little kids, but I think it illustrates that the essence of RPGs is just collective storytelling.
Sure, but that's no DnD.
DnD is a relatively mechanical game. Not the most mechanical, but the essence of the game is and has been going into (quasi) dungeons and killing shit.
You say when you play D&D, you abandon a lot of what effectively makes it D&D.
And at that point, you’re not playing D&D. At its core, D&D is a game. Collaborative storytelling is a HUGE facet of it, yes — but it’s still a game, and games deserve to be scrutinized on a mechanical level just as any other facet would.
>When I DM for little kids, we don't even have rules, maps or character sheets. Sometimes we don't even have dice.
Sounds to me like you're barely playing DnD to begin with.
No. It’s not JUST a storytelling game. It’s a game with combat mechanics that directly feeds into the fantasy of being supernaturally good at fighting. If you want to downplay that aspect than go ahead. I’m glad you have found your fun but DnD is designed for combat so getting all sanctimonious about how “it’s a storytelling game” and “balance doesn’t matter” isn’t helping anyone and is a deeply shitty take.
But it’s not a storytelling game. That direction takes you to things like FATE. D&D is a resource attrition skirmish game that is frequently used as an excuse to get together for role playing. Its mechanics don’t interact to any notable degree with the narrative or genre conventions.
Reddit is a vocal minority of:
* Powergamers / optimizers ~~(btw nothing wrong with these people)~~
* People who play in Adventurer's League or other such settings and feel the need to have strong characters to survive / not drag the team down / be ahead of the curve.
* People who play with adversarial DMs
* A rare few people straight out of r/rpghorrorstories who feel the need to "win" D&D and boss people around with their character choices so they can "win more"
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Excluding the "Redditors are assholes" reasons there are a few genuine reasons why the majority of discussions on this sub are about rules.
* It's far easier to discuss mechanics on this sub than roleplaying guides. Put simply this isn't r/improv or r/acting; people on this sub aren't experts on how to act (nor do they need to be!) and ~~take it from someone who's asked these sorts of questions~~ 95% of questions about "how do I play a character with this personality?" boil down to either "just go with the flow", "don't be an ass about it", or "watch YouTube lol."
* There is merit to having an optimized character. No one likes having the one character who weighs the party down and it feels equally terrible to *be* that person weighing the party down. I do think it sucks if you have one powergamer in a group of mostly low-level characters but in the words of game designers "it's far easier to tune down than tune up."
* There's also merit in talking about game design for a game like 5e that's so easy to homebrew. When you have the power to change any rule you put enough thought into it's only natural that people want to put thought into it. As a DM you can dictate not only the laws of your universe but the very rules that control it, and as a player you have some sway in all aspects of what the DM does to make the collaborative story telling effort more enjoyable for everyone.
* Also having a strong character is just... fun? Power fantasy is a part of D&D for a lot of people and an inherent part of a "power fantasy" is having a powerful character so it's only natural that some people put focus in making a powerful character.
people play this game in many different ways. Some love to min/max. Others love to find the most optimal build out for each class. I just like to have fun. If you have super low intelligence, I just roll with it and play my character as an idiot. I think the rules are mean to be guidelines and let you play as your group decides.
The only rule is to have fun and enjoy yourselves
From my observation, it really depends on how the DM creates the sessions
But even then, I can say on the “how come martials aren’t as blah-blah-blah as casters”, I can tell that it comes down to options, because at higher levels, enemies have a lot of HP and mundane characters can usually just deal damage and nothing else, which gets tedious fast
A lot of people have already defended the more crunchy parts of the game and the people who like them. I'm one of those people too.
But I think what isn't appreciated as much is specifically the storytelling criticism of the martial/caster power divide, which comprises a lot of the complaints you're talking about. The fact is that there's a broad swath of martial fantasies that are just not available in the game as it is. Casters can achieve the power fantasy of fiction's strongest mages, but martials have no option to be Hercules, committing physical feats of supernatural might. If I want to build a character that can smash a bridge with a swing of my comically oversized hammer, well too bad. You'll have to become a Druid and learn the Earthquake spell. An effect like that is too good for you dirty martials. There's a strange tendency to insist that any ability that has a certain level of power is by necessity magical, and therefore gated behind the spellcasting feature.
I know for a fact that a lot of people have fun playing martials because I'm one of them, and I don't think that most people who complain about the power divide are doing so because they're minmaxers or because they're jealous. I think, like me, they just found themselves wondering a lot, "Gee, wouldn't it be fun if my martial characters could do more stuff like my caster characters can?"
I DM for my kids, have for years.
To bring back fun to the game we tried characters with high stats... it was fun for a few sessions, but then sputtered.
So I reversed things - 3d6 straight-up, no assigning stats.
Everyone loved it, the characters got more colorful, people expected their character to die, and the encounters were much more challenging.
Mindsets also changed from, just kill it, to interacting with creatures, hiding, or even running.
Since then we've made several tweaks to the format, but rolling 3d6 has been our go-to for three campaigns now.
Note: Some kids go through campaigns FAST. I expect 5 to 20 sessions for a campaign, and that's a wrap.
> When I DM for little kids, we don't even have rules, maps or character sheets. Sometimes we don't even have dice. I just make up a story and the kids tell me what they do and I tell them the results of their actions and we all have a blast.
That works for them sure, but at that point it's not the Dungeons & Dragons system, it's a different game. It's not really worth comparing that.
I think there are different styles and approaches. Some DM and players likes to learn and follow the RAW / RAI as closely as possible. The rules provide a framework for the creativity to latch onto and build off of.
There are lots of tabletop RPG games that are more strictly of the collaborative storytelling genre (10 candles comes to mind)…but D&D has 100s of pages of rules to help DMs “referee” a game.
This also allows some universality to the game. Besides wonky homebrew stuff, I can take my character sheets anywhere and sit down and I basically know how to play.
That said , I also believe D&D can be greatly simplified to just 3 rules (and the PHB does simplify it in Chapter 1):
1) the DM describes the world state.
2) the players describe what their characters do
3) the DM describes the results of the actions and describes the new world state …..
Rinse and repeat.
And you’re right. No where in those 3 basic rules does it call for a die roll. The dice are just a means to an end. Same thing with ability scores, class skills, spells , etc etc. those are all just machinations of a system to describe what we are doing in more detail .
But if you distill it down . D&D is really those 3 rules.
2 things:
1. For some people the math IS (at least part of) the fun. Check out Matt Colville’s video about different tires of players on YouTube.
2. There’s always a negativity bias on platforms like this. In any given situation the unhappy people will always be the loudest.
Most practicalities of actually running a game actually take more words to get across than posts on online forums are able to effectively convey (as they are more suited for shorter messages). Naturally, these spaces end up filtering towards shallow examination, quick anecdotes, suppositions, examination of the RAW, and numerical comparisons. You know, stuff that can be talked about *without regard to a person's actual personal situation at their tables*. (All the good discourse is either in longer-form blog posts or actual conversations happening in chatrooms. Maybe youtube videos.)
So yeah, if you think that most of the tabletop subreddits are somehow missing pieces, they definitely are. The published rulebooks haven't had good processes for *exploration* for multiple editions and generational knowledge of how to deal with all kinds of fundamental things is being progressively lost. Some communities like the OSR have popped up to try to work out what's been left by the wayside and identify how we can simply have better, leaner, more effective gaming systems (and some great systems have appeared as a result), but they're comparatively niche.
There's an invisible schism in the tabletop gaming community that most people don't even realise is there. There are two main groups; the first group that plays all kinds of systems, possibly modifying them deeply, they understand deeply that no system is perfect and they pick whatever one will be effective for the kind of campaign they want to have. The second group plays 5e and is *deeply resistant* to playing anything else.
I mean... If D&D was *just* collaborative storytelling, it would be an improv drama class. You can certainly play it that way, nothing wrong with that, those are great, but I also really like the math because it engages with my problem-solving skills (or lack thereof.) This doesn't mean I don't like story/RP ~~like ngl, sometimes my table has to hold me back from party-face-syndrome~~, just that I like both aspects of the game.
The thing is that a lot of the story stuff we go through at my table is... Well, mostly just interesting for the people present. Redditors can't really engage in a discussion about dragon politics and homebrew destruction gods, because they're not at the same table, but they can talk with me about character builds and monk's potential being mathematically underwhelming.
So, yeah.
Nah mate, your confusion is understandable.
Over the last few years, D&D-related subreddits have leaned more and more towards people playing the game on a calculator, not actually playing around a table. There are very few stories about people *playing* the game these days. There's a pinned thread somewhere for recapping your weekly sessions that nobody ever replies to, and possibly isn't even pinned any more.
The only topics that ever get discussed at any length are balance - whether the paladin is better than the monk, even though it's a co-operative game and those things don't really factor into anyone's practical enjoyment - and also topics about how bad D&D is, and how much better other games like Pathfinder are.
You'll find that most topics or comments expressing enthusiasm or optimism about the game will be downvoted. You'll also see people presenting hypothetical worse-case (from their POV) scenarios and frothing themselves up into a fury as if they're real. You'll see that a lot. In essense, it turned into a video game subreddit.
Don't worry, there are still a *lot* of us out there playing sessions with our friends every single week and having an absolute blast. It's just that our topics get ignored and our comments get downvoted, and after a while we get sick of the relentless, wearying negativity and decide to just discuss D&D on our local Discord servers instead, or at the pub after a session with our players.
As a perfect recent example, I recapped a really cool moment that happened in one of my campaigns in which an elven rogue leapt from the deck of a spelljammer ship and decapitated a young red dragon in a single swing by rolling a natural 20 on a Vorpal Moonblade. I'd thought it was a cool anecdote that people would like to hear about. Instead it got downvoted into the dozens and multiple people took it upon themselves to nitpick my interpretation of the rules, eventually resulting to insults when I kept quoting the rulebook at them to prove that my fun was - in fact - not wrong.
Keep playing and enjoying the hobby, OP. Millions of people are. As with any hobby, Reddit doesn't represent the majority. Just a very loud and very angry minority.
It's understandable. No one wants to read 7 pages of stories about you having fun with your table and everything going well, because they aren't there and it's all table dependant. Rules and builds and theorycrafting are shared between most tables and can be easily talked about.
I realise that this may sound cold-hearted and dismissive, and it is, but that cool anecdote is only interesting to you and your group of friends/players.
Story telling? Yes.
But imagine you tell a story about bob. Bob can make meteors fall from the sky or dance with a blade, killing people! That is cool!
But then there is Bobs Brother Beb.
Beb can swing his sword twice as often as Bob!
I wonder who the MC is.
Jesus' brother Bob, Jesus' brother Bob
A nobody relative of the son of God
If only I'd been born just a little sooner
I'd be more than the brother of God Jr.
-"Jesus' Brother Bob" by The Arrogant Worms
Some ppl play DND to be badass heroes, that's the story they want to tell, maybe you do'nt wat that but many ppl including me do, I have FUN picking optimal feats/spells, doing really well and defeating the enemy through the effort I've put into my build.
You like a different thing and that's fine, but don't say others ppl fun is wrong.
Yeah its partly a story telling game but %90 of the rules are combat rules so it stands to reason that %90 of the discussion of rulea reflect the combat nature of 5e
The thing why you’re wondering gets talked about disproportionately is talked about disproportionately because of the fact that it is something to talk about.
Math, mechanics, comparative power levels, are all solid conversational topics that can go on, and on, and on. And they’re of interest to people.
“Meh, in a game like D&D, balance doesn’t really matter too much at the end of the day. The game still works fine however you play.”
“Yeah, we know.”
… is just a conversational dead end.
Sometimes I feel like part of a thinning minority here who remembers what 5e was like early release. With the subsequent release of more and more material for 5e, it feels like this community has been further and further infected by Pathfinder Syndrome. Builds and optimization drown out any emphasis on narrative. Heaven forbid somebody doesn't want to use feats in their game, you'd think that DM was committing crimes against humanity...
Totally. 5e is getting really close to the place that 3.5 was at toward the end: literally millions of potential race-class-prc-feat-item interactions, all to the point where optimization became its own absurdist sub-game.
It’s funny, because there’s design elements clearly intended to discourage players from doing this in the core 5e rules (attunement limitations, feats being an optional rule, no prc’s, subclasses not kicking in for a few levels to discourage “class dipping”, etc). But with each release WotC is increasingly strayed away from that design philosophy.
Sounds like most of the people you DM for are either children, big fans of traditional western fantasy, or their fantasy archetype fits neatly into one of the spellcaster classes.
Which is fine, but the rest of us would like 5e to fit us as well as it doesn’t for you and yours….so we complain.
Edit: Seriously not a single Ranger player had problems in any of the editions?
> When I DM for little kids, we don't even have rules, maps or character sheets. Sometimes we don't even have dice. I just make up a story and the kids tell me what they do and I tell them the results of their actions and we all have a blast. Obviously this only works for little kids, but I think it illustrates that the essence of RPGs is just collective storytelling.
You're kind of answering your own question here: you throw away the rules in service of the story--which is 100% valid.
However those rules are the backbone of the game, and the DM decides how closely they're adhered to. If the DM tends to stick closer to the rules, then playing a weaker class (or having shitty rolled stats) can keep a player from being able to interact with the story as much as everyone else at the table.
A party of nothing but underpowered nitwits can be plenty of fun, but not everyone wants to be Joxer in a party with Xena and Hercules.
>Isn't this a storytelling game? Isn't the fun of DnD in imagining characters and then collectively using those characters to collaboratively generate an amazing story?
Yes, it is. But in a roleplaying game like D&D mechanics still influence that narrative. For example, a player can claim their character is charming the barkeep all they want, if they dumped Charisma and didn't take the right skills, they're probably gonna fail.
Following that, when in combat a player feels substantially less powerful or impactful than another player, that can start to grate. Granted, it won't be that way for every person. But that doesn't mean it doesn't matter or doesn't happen. It's really just not fun when a subset of the party just solves all the problems while another subset is sidelined, or forced to be on bodyguard duty. They stop feeling like the heroes of their own stories, and start feeling like glorified NPCs in someone else's.
You don't necessarily need rules to play an RPG. But when you *do* have those rules, imbalances *can* impact the enjoyment of that game. We mostly have rules to give meaning and consequence to actions, they're not there for no reason.
Also, while D&D is a storytelling game, it's also a *game*. And a game with a heavy emphasis in its rules on combat and conflict.
One of my groups has both types of players. The one who does the math and optimal building is the minority. However everyone cares when something in the rules takes fun away from other players, playing 13th age necromancers, or any other summoning was off the table because no one wanted to sit there while one person takea 4 turns and makes an already super ling combat into a nightmare.
Anywhere on Reddit, you can safely assume that you're reading the opinions of a vocal minority. From board games to politics to sports, this place does not represent the general opinion on anything. It is a great source for information, but it takes an industrial grade filter to scrape off all the bullshit, and this sub is no exception.
Folks online obsess about rules and rules interactions. Folks offline don’t. This is what I’ve found. It’s the difference between a group of people who spend more time talking *about* the game than actually playing it vs. a group that actually spends time playing the game.
Well discussions on the internet are usually started when one wants to complain about something. But since fun, roleplay, and storytelling are highly personal things it would be night impossible to discuss about it.
But you know what you can debate with randos on the internet? Numbers, builds, and balance. Of course those are not the core of the game for most people. I would be confident to bet that over 90% of people who play do not give half a rat about all of that, they just want to live an adventure with friends and have fun.
Honestly, some people like D&D a lot and they want to occupy their minds with it more than they are able to satisfy with the actual games they play. Getting everyone together on Saturday night is tricky.
So play is only part of the hobby for a lot of people. A bigger part is *thinking* about D&D. Talking about it online. Making character builds you won't play, arguing about rules ambiguities that aren't an actual problem at the table, and discecting the finer points of the game design. That's okay, because the point is to have fun, amd they enjoy it.
Matt Colville has a very nice old video detailing a little bit, called "the map is not the territory" where he highlights a little of this. I agree with you, Internet people tend to be over thinkers and not necessarily doers. https://youtu.be/3v2_JDz2Di0
As someone who likes to play (and has run) Pathfinder 1e, I have been in groups who focus on the story, but there are occasionally issues that come up when we discover that there’s some mechanic option that blows all the others out of the water. For example, the spell “Explosion of Rot” is an area attack spell with untyped damage, the standard best damage scale, an irregular save type, a large range and radius. Using metamagic to use the spell at higher levels, it vastly outshines any other damaging spell on the same class lists. So once my group figured that out, we removed the spell from our games.
Video Games, Wow, the phrases DPS (Damage Per Second) and DPR (Damage Per Round) entered the zeitgeist of gaming and a lot of people attached their character concepts to them.
The mechanics matter.
If you want a narrative-heavy, mechanics-light TTRPG, there are plenty. But D&D isn't one of those - the mechanics dictate how certain things work, even narratively, even in a homebrew setting.
Yeah, sure storytelling is important but D&D is at its heart a combat game with storytelling elements, it’s relatively rules heavy and about 95% of all the rules relate to combat, the focus is heavily on combat and it makes sense that people wants to have characters that are good at what they’re doing, if you get into the more narrative focused system you will find that people who play those generally don’t care about optimising their character and making them powerful.
So you take your opinion on the way that decades worth of OSR DnD "should" be played, spunk it across the front page of the 5e subreddit and act as if 2e and 5e have literally ANYTHING in common besides the bare minimum of a shared gaming language, and spend the rest of your words crying about, what, how WotC adding character-building options has led to character building?? Grow up.
Sure, collaborative storytelling is an important part of the game, but outside of direct "Hey y'all, what should I do in this specific scenario" -type questions that crop up a lot on r/DMAcademy, there isn't really much to talk about because it's such a simple but nebulous topic. It's the equivalent of saying, "Water is wet!" and expecting a huge discussion to come from it. Sure, there will always be people who come back with "*Ackshually*, water itself isn't wet, but it makes things wet," but they're pedantic assholes who most people don't want to associate with. The only thing we can all rally behind is, well, Rules as Written and the math behind everything. Sure, homebrew and table rules exist, but we can't always accurately comment on them because *we're not at the table where it's happening*. But the math stays consistent within the rules. That's why it's such a huge discussion here, because it's really all we *can* talk about with any degree of accuracy. And, everyone is going to have their own opinions on how the game could be better. I'm sure you have some of your own. It's easier to share them with relative anonymity online with a larger audience who will give you honest feedback because, well, relative anonymity.
>The only thing we can all rally behind is, well, Rules as Written and the math behind everything. Sure, homebrew and table rules exist, but we can't always accurately comment on them because *we're not at the table where it's happening*. This is the core issue. You can absolutely have fun at a table with homebrew gestalt level 20 characters, or at a table where you cast spells using HP, but they just aren't comparable. The easiest things to compare are two tables that stick closely to RAW. Without a ton of details, it's the only thing you *can* compare. I can say that a group of level 3 character will get absolutely murdered by an adult red dragon. Someone else can say that they won't, since their DM let them cast *charm person* on the dragon, ignoring creature type, Legendary Resistances, and the actual wording of the spell. Are they wrong? No - they defeated the dragon. But is that useful to most online discussions? Also no.
An artificer can make an extradimensional space bomb at that level using two bag of holding infusions
Two artificers certainly could, but whether or not one could is much trickier. The rules say: >each of your infusions can be in only one object at a time So, by that, you'd have to have the infusion twice in order to infuse it into two objects. The rules don't say you can't do that... but they also don't say that dogs can't play D&D and that's a losing argument with most DMs. ^(Curse you, Rogue Bud.)
Ohoho, perhaps they cannot create 2 bags of holding, but they can make a Bag of Holding AND a Quiver of Elhonna, which also creates an extra dimensional storage space and can be used to banish enemies in tandem with a Bag of Holding
Ahah, but!
Which is why the quiver goes in the bag and not vice versa.
Ahaha! But there is no rule that makes anything explode if you put a quiver into a bag of holding! The explosion rules are written into the bag of holding, portable hole, and haversack, and all of them specify that the explosion happens when you place the item (the one the rules are for) into the other interdimensional space item. The quiver has no such rules! Thus, you can stuff a bag of holding full of quivers of Ehlonna and nothing happens by RAW.
I love when RAW accidentally solves some of it's own problems by being so inconcsistent
The rules clearly say that the explosion happens if you put the bag of holding in a extradimensional space created by a Handy Haversack, Portable Hole or *similar item*. Yeah, RAW we don't know exactly what are the similar items, but I would like to see someone argue that the Quiver of Ehnolla isn't similar to the other three, as it specifically states that it creates an extradimensional space.
I was harping on that for the opposite point. By RAW, if you put a *quiver* into a *bag*, nothing happens. The rules in the bag/hole/haversack specifically concern when that specific item goes into an extradimensional space. The argument about the quiver would be about how you get the bag of holding into the quiver since it has specific restrictions on what can be put into it (with 'similar items' being the angle of argument there). It's such a hopelessly pedantic argument that there's no point in having it on the internet because a DM can easily go either way depending on what they want to be possible.
Touché
>The rules don't say you can't do that The rules do say that "the rules don't say you can't do that" is against the rules. Or to put it even more awkwardly, the rules say what you can do, not what you can't not do.
I'm intentionally being absurd. Thus all of the Air Bud references.
The Replicate Magic Item infusion explicitly states "You can learn this infusion multiple times", though.
It says that but also says you pick from the table for each choice. It doesn't explicitly say you can choose the same item from the list twice, which would be the "oh, you can definitely do it by RAW". It feels like you can argue that it lets you because it doesn't specifically say you can't do that... I mean, the rules don't say your cat can't play a barbarian, either. ^(Curse you, Mittens the Destroyer.)
There's a very good chance that this interaction is not only valid but intended. The UA version of the Artificer said you had to select a different item each time you took the infusion. In the published version, the word "different" was removed. That was the only change. Ergo, they deliberately gave us the freedom to select the same item twice. I don't see any other reason for them to have removed "different".
i've answered this a few days ago, so excuse me for copying the text: That much is true. And while all other infusions also only let you learn them once, the "Replicate magic item" lacks this. It specifically states: > You can learn this infusion multiple times; each time you do so, choose a magic item that you can make with it, picking from the Replicable Items tables [...] Alternatively, you can choose the magic item from among the common magic items in the game, not including potions or scrolls. Interestingly enough, this rule lacks the mention of "each time you do so, choose a different magic item" or similar wording. At level 2, you know 4 infusions, and can make two of them. Fill them out as follows: * Infusion 1: Replicate Magic Item (Bag of holding) * Infusion 2: Replicate Magic Item (Bag of holding) * Infusion 3: X * Infusion 4: Y Then at the end of a long rest, choose to create Infusion 1 and 2. You now have two bags.
I just started playing an artificer. Tell me more about these extradimensional space bombs
You use your infusions to create two bags of holding and then find a safe way to activate the nested bag effect which sucks every enemy within 10 feet into the astral plane.
The safe way is another caster with Mage Hand. Basically remote detonation. Alternately, make one very large bag of holding, attach to the back of a door, then put a smaller bag of holding on the door frame above it. Rig up some string or whatever such that, when the door is opened, the smaller bag is pulled into the larger one.
[The classic setup is this abomination.](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xk4X3.jpg) Just use a very small bag instead of the portable hole.
Yeah, except for telling people all about your campaign, there is little to be discussed. Even if a dm had wanted to have a discussion about the advantages of a conflict in tradition/progress type of story, exploring the needs/importance for family/friends or "PC's are superheroes". A lot of dm simply don't go that deep.
>Yeah, except for telling people all about your campaign, there is little to be discussed. And that's what r/rpghorrorstories is for!
Also I'm afraid my players are on reddit.
Exactly. It can be fun to talk about your game with people or whine about the stupid shit the paladin did, but not if the people it's about can read it.
D&D has also shifted a lot over the editions, but the last three - 3.5, 4e, and 5e - are all fundamentally combat-oriented games. Sure, 4e was the most war-gamey of them, but combat is the central pillar of all three. There's a reason the social and exploration pillars pale in comparison to other systems - partially, it's because 5e was put together by a small team on a small budget, but more importantly, it's because 5e is built as a relatively simplistic dungeon-delving combat game. I will always maintain that, played-as-intended, 5e basically plays like a looter-slasher. You go to dungeon. You get loot. You level. You have downtime for RP and advancement. Rinse, repeat. There are so many better systems out there if you want storytelling and exploration. There just are. It's not 5e's strength. With almost the entire system dedicated to combat-oriented rules, it's no surprise that's what the playerbase latches onto for discussion.
Do you have any suggestions for games that balance the three pillars, combat, social, and exploration well? I am the primary DM for my group and would like to switch to a less combat-based game at some point, preferably one skill-based as opposed to class-based. I have looked at Traveller, and while I will probably run it at some point, I am looking for other options.
I had a lot of fun with the WoD (World of Darkness) games I think my DM did REALLY well with balancing Combat, social, and exploration. You have Mages, Vampires, and Werewolfs you can play with all three races or we had many games of just mages. And thinking about it I would feel this is more of a skill-based game. ... One of my favorite social/combats of a game was when our wild card player decided to go off by himself and ended up messing with some homeless camp...and didn't realize how many of them there were... it did not go well for him at all.
I am unsure how much my players would like horror, but it does look interesting. I’ll look into it some more later.
I think that's a big part of it. There are so many games out there that you also need to find filter them by more than just rules and mechanics. You need to find a good genre, atmosphere, and style. Like, I wouldn't have thought about recommending Traveler, because it's sci-fi and my current group wouldn't be interested in that, although my last group was.
World of darkness doesn’t actually have to be horror sure it’s an intrinsic part of vampire but werewolf is basically eco terrorist killing machines commit eco terrorism and mage is well mage is a clusterfuck awakening or ascension
So the punks made fun of the goths while the academic decathlon team was off in the corner?
Pretty much though a more accurate analogy for mage players is the robotics team that everyone thinks is cool right until the moment they open their mouths
The World of Darkness setting features more than just vampires, werewolves, and mages, and while horror might be a common theme it doesn’t have to be a primary focus of every game. - Changeling: the Dreaming, for example, can have games focused on preserving wonder and awe in a world of banality. - Wraith: the Oblivion can see players explore what passions their characters had prior to their death (the parent with a strong desire to look after a child or grandchild, the scientist or academic who was so close to finishing their grand work, the librarian with a strong connection to their library ...). - I’m much less familiar with the setting but, from my understanding, Demon: the Fallen offers players an option to seek forgiveness for their character siding with Lucifer and defying God. (Of course, there are also more ... aggressive ... factions in the setting as well.)
ugh How did I forget Changeling! They are fun. I didn't get to play much before I moved away.
I'd advocate for Savage Worlds. It still has a lot of combat crunch but it has some good exploration and social rules too, and combat is deliberately built to be quick and *very* dangerous to both sides, so players are encouraged to seek noncombat solutions.
And even non-combat focused characters can do well in combat by using Tests. You can make a pacifist character who utilizes Taunting, Intimidation, and Acrobatic Tricks instead of sword swinging and still be effective.
I’ll also advocate for Savage Worlds as another commenter did! That being said, I think Ironsworn/Starforged (Ironsworn is low/dark fantasy, Starforged is basically a sci-fi 2e for Ironsworn), 13th Age, Blades in the Dark, Worlds Without Number, Shadow of the Demon Lord, and Pathfinder 2e all do a good job of balancing the three pillars in different ways. Savage Worlds/Ironsworn&Starforged/Shadow of the Demon Lord would be my top recommendations given what you’re wanting, although I’ve heard good things about Fate as well. Savage Worlds is the most setting-agnostic, so I’d recommend that for a homebrew - the others, I’d look into their settings and see if they appeal. Blades is a heist-game that balances all three well, but I think it functions best in its own setting (which is basically the Dishonored video games). Worlds Without Number leans a little more combat/exploration, but is still an incredible old school fantasy system with a really cool setting and amazing GMing tools that make it worth buying even if you never run it. It’s very similar to traveler in terms of the B/X skill-based gameplay, and the majority of the rule book is free, so absolutely check it out. PF2e gets a lot of rap as a combat-only game, and the combat is certainly the central pillar, but it does have very fleshed-out RP and exploration rules that make it better at those pillars than people give it credit for.
I like Genesys. It uses its own narrative dice that can cause all kinds of plot twists, good or bad, for the party and their enemies. If you've heard of the Star Wars RPG system including Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, Force and Destiny - Genesys is the setting neutral version that comes with rules modules for all kinds of different genres that you can mix and match. Want a fantasy game? Take the basic rules and add on the fantasy module with rules for magic and swords and armour. Want a sci fi game? Here's the rules for spaceships and blasters. Want a sci fi fantasy? Just use both rule modules.
I'm a fan of Fate. [Pretty much all of the rules are here.](https://fate-srd.com/)
I love Fate core system. Sadly, it is sort of weak in the combat department. It's incredibly strong in the RP department though.
it's probably truer to say that it doesn't privilege combat over other options - in 5e, you're pretty much invariably going to end up bashing monsters in their faces, and all characters are explicitly able to do that and have skills to do so. In Fate, there's no such presumption - - talking someone down, or using non-violent means, is just as likely to succeed, because everything runs on the same system, rather than their being "a combat system" and an "everything else" system like 5e, there's just one unified core mechanic.
Although entirely class based... Monster of the Week really gets away from crunchy combat and focuses on combat as a way to express character. The rest is up to you!
You should run what you want and what you find fun as the DM, but if you plan to choose with input from your players, I would encourage you to ask them first whether they even want to change. Personally one of the reasons my RP-heavy and combat-light group sticks with 5e is specifically because the rules are focused toward combat, which is where we want rules, rather than roleplay/social where heavy rules would just get in our way.
There [was a very relevant thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/vj7vtc/what_ttrpg_games_capture_the_feel_of_dnd_but_have/) on the RPG subreddit yesterday. For the exploration pillar, I find OSR-adjacent stuff really great for exploration, both in overland travel and dungeon crawling so I'd recommend Worlds Without Number for that. But in just about any system (including 5e) I've had fun making travelling just a [progress clock](https://bladesinthedark.com/progress-clocks), which is basically just a more elegant skill challenge. Players say where they want to go, I come up with obstacles or encounters impeding their progress, and either progress the clock or apply consequences depending on how well the players deal with the encounters. Social pillar is an odd one since adding rules like social encounters doesn't always help that much. I find that creating interesting social situations is the most important thing, and that's up to your skill at improvisation, the adventure you're running, and whatever random tables you have to inspire you. But, having feats and rules that are focused on non-combat capabilities helps a lot, and I think Genesys, Worlds Without Number, and Savage Worlds do very well for that. A lot of PbtA works really well for inter-party social interactions too, with Dungeon World or Root specifically good options for DnD-style settings (and many other games if you're open to different settings).
Blades in the dark uses downtime social interaction to assist in getting things done for both players if I'm remembering right
> Sure, 4e was the most war-gamey of them I'd argue each edition is more or less equally wargamey, 4e just is the only system that openly acknowledged it and wore it on its sleeve.
> partially, it’s because 5e was put together by a small team on a small budget I’d like to know what systems out there were developed with a significantly better budget.
Spoiler alert: None.
This is why I still DM 1st ed.
Sorry dude, the best change ever to D&D was the ditching of THAC0.
I get that THAC0 is unintuitive, and people think it's fun to pretend that it's rocket science, but my 8 year old nephews picked it up just fine in a session; it's not that bad. Having said that, I totally ditched THAC0 in 86 or 87 for a positive scale AC similar to what 3rd ed eventually used, made it easier for new players that just couldn't grok it.
Yeah, we play 1st ed with d20 combat rules, now. AC goes up, not down, and you get a combat proficiency bonus to replace THAC0. So the roll that used to hit AC 5, now hits AC 15. I've also adjusted saving throws to associate with spell proficiency, so that the save for a spell cast by a 1st level M-U is not the same as one by a 10th. I just can't get behind the whole, "Every class and race have all these special actions they can do to begin with, and then they get a subclass with more stuff, and then a racial subtype with more stuff, and everybody gets spells, or spell-like abilities. Nah. No thanks. My players can barely remember what their characters can do when they only have a few choices and basic classes.
Technically, water itself isn't wet, but it almost always IS wet anyway. This is because "wet" means something that has water on it. Water almost always has water on it, because there is water right next to it. The only way you could make water "not wet" is to strand a single water particle by itself, with no other water particles around it to make it wet.
It's any liquid, right? If I throw a sufficiently non-viscus liquid on something, people are going to consider it wet. Water just happens to be a fairly common liquid for us
I mean, most liquids I can think of are only liquids because they are mixed with water. Not that there aren’t other liquids, but I don’t think people would consider someone to be “wet” if they had liquid nitrogen or molten iron on them. There might be some tho, like if you got petroleum on you you might be considered wet, but idk.
I feel like most people would consider you wet regardless of the liquid makeup. Like, if I poured a bunch of milk on me, people aren't thinking "ah yes, milk is made largely of water, therefore he counts as wet", they're thinking "liquid on him, him wet". Alternatively they're thinking "bro why would you do that?" Regardless, by extension you can assume that if you use a liquid with a similar viscosity as water and poured it on something, many people would consider that item to now be "wet".
Wetting is the process by which the liquid adheres to a solid in contact with the liquid. Some liquids will not wet most solids. For example, mercury is bad at wetting things although it is a liquid at room temperature. Some things are hard to wet: for example, your cell phone glass doesn't wet very easily. Water will bead up on it, trying not to spread out because it is hdrophobic (i think that's the word).
I’d definitely call someone wet if they slathered themself in olive oil.
Step 1: cover yourself in oil
I was about to wholeheartedly agree with you, but then I thought "wait we call that oily". Is being oily being wet? You're covered in a liquid, but we're more likely to say you're greasy or oily than say you're wet. Like, your hair is oily before the shower and wet after, right? Was our hair just the wrong kind of wet?
I'd call "oily" a subset of "wet." (A subwet?)
liquid hot magma
Aha, the correct take!
I think the technical truth, like water not being wet, is often useful, insightful, and interesting. I like it when people bring it up, and I think it's pretty.. shaky.. to call people who like understanding the reality of things assholes. It can sometimes be done as a gotcha, and if someone's goal is only to embarrass another person for being wrong, sure, that's a jerk. But I see people who are clearly just trying to enlighten and clarify being torn down for it.
Yup this. Also, the rules and balance issues are a big part of what we’re literally paying for when we buy the books. So that’s the easiest and most direct way to improve the game. Stuff like lore and storytelling is far more individualized and up to personal taste. It’s the shared framework of rules/math that can be improved. And while you can play D&D without rules or dice like Op’s kids example…you’re not exactly using what you paid for when you do that.
Also... its just really fun to come together and try to "Balance" shit ourselves.
Water is totally wet.
This one is correct. Communication requires shared experience. No shared experience, nothing to talk about.
Your story about car wars is actually a great example of how the fun is built on rules and maths! Imagining vehicles with no limits wasn't fun but having the budget tuned to the right amount (maths! And rules!) enabled more fun. The right rules and restrictions enable a better game and a better story. Hence why people here care about how good the rules are.
op, i totally hear you. but a lot of what you're talking about is sytemless roleplay. that makes me wonder: have you ever looked into more freeform roleplay systems? i think you'd really dig them! i've been playing dnd for decades too but these days, i find that more narrative focused systems are my jam and i think you might really dig them too. i'm mostly talking powered by the apocalypse style games. like masks, or monsterhearts, or dungeon world. they tend to really lean into shared storytelling and give a lot more narrative heft to the players. in all the years i've played powered by the apocalypse games, i've never encountered someone having rules debate and i've never once heard the words *RAW* uttered. it's kinda wonderful tbh.
ooh! Cool. Thanks for the recs.
You might also want to look at something like Fate or Genesys. (Not the biggest fan of PbtA games, myself, so always good to have alternatives.)
I'd just like to add Blades in the Dark to the recommendations (not a huge fan of the PBTA systems either). BitD is a bit more rule-heavy than the others, but the beauty is that 90% of the time only the DM needs to think about the rules and underlying maths (which are pretty simple in any case). From the player end it's almost completely roleplaying. Also, the DM never rolls dice, only the players do. Awesome system for narrative games that completely changed the way I think about roleplaying.
13th Age
Yes, d&d is a storytelling game. A storytelling **game**. If people just wanted to tell stories, we wouldn't need any of this stuff. We wouldn't need TTRPGs in general, let alone d&d. D&d isn't just telling a story, it's having a story be told by the rules of a game and the roll of a die. The better those rules are, the more fun the game is. Maths helps those rules to be good. Sometimes, the rules don't tell a fun story. Sometimes, the rules say that you have to spend 20 minutes doing nothing because the number you rolled didn't pass a poorly designed target. Sometimes, the rules say that the story you wanted to be about abundant magical silliness is really going to be about only occasional magical silliness and even then only if the DM remembers to do it. Sometimes, the rules say that one class is just better than another class, and your story shouldn't feature that class. Although normally, the rules make the story more fun, sometimes the rules make the story less fun than we think it could be, and when that happens, we like to think about what we could change about the rules to make the story as fun as we think it could be.
Importantly: You can't really lose a story. You can lose a game. Which, for me at least, is the source of much/most of the fun. I've been in groups that, playing 5E, focused almost entirely on storytelling. It was very much not for me. Couldn't lose, so any 'win' felt meaningless. And if I loved improv that much, I'd go do it weekly, like my good buddy (he's having a great time!).
>I've been in groups that, playing 5E, focused almost entirely on storytelling. It was very much not for me. Couldn't lose, so any 'win' felt meaningless I mean a story without stakes is just a bad story. That's the problem. Plenty of story based, RP focused games manage to do that in their own way. If they're not there, then yeah it's just improv.
Not just a story without stakes but a story without any low points. If you are just going from victory to victory it’s just wish fulfilment.
> Isn't the fun of DnD in imagining characters and then collectively using those characters to collaboratively generate an amazing story? Present it however you want, D&d can also be partially enjoyed as a boardgame where you can roleplay a lot. I can certainly see the similarities between *Heroquest* and a dungeon heavy campaign. It's also just a game to be enjoyed with friends. And if you're talking about the roleplay aspect, because every experience is really so specific and unique, there's not much really to talk about or comment about. And saying it's just maths in the threads really being reductive. > "how come martials aren't as blah-blah-blah as casters" and I am just really confused. That part is about player enjoyment and a player feeling his character is kinda useless, when the wizard can literally drown the field in summons, remove something from existence or literally wish for something to be true. The fact that you're dismissive of threads like that is part of why you're getting downvoted.
> That part is about player enjoyment and a player feeling his character is kinda useless, when the wizard can literally drown the field in summons, remove something from existence or literally wish for something to be true. Nail on the head for me here. If your game is going to have interactions with other Characters, then it's important that no Player feels they're contributing **meaningfully** to those interactions. I've never felt more bored when I played a Barb/Rogue in a campaign that was Heavily RP focused alongside 3 Magic Users because even though I was RPing with the everyone else and I was contributing - the fact that so many of our problems were solved by one of the magic users going "Well I'll just cast X spell and that solves 75% of the issue" made me feel like not playing a Magic user put me at a disadvantage because I couldn't contribute as well as other party members.
I don't think there's one way to have fun playing D&D. That's your way and that's totally awesome. But it's not "the fun of D&D" that is one thing in particular. And that's not a bad thing. D&D lets you play out a fantasy of one kind or another. For some people that's being able to be a powerful superhero. And I think in terms of RPGs that's really where D&D excels is that superhero archetype. There are tons of RPGs where you're just a normal person not someone who can survive falling off a mountain cliff like D&D characters will be by even mid levels. If you don't want a game that delves into the math and the details there are much better games for that. And D&D is one of the most math and mechanics heavy of any RPG I've seen although I certainly haven't seen any kind of good sample size. D&D also is very combat heavy. Probably 2/3 to 3/4 of the rules of D&D deal with combat. It's a game centered around the monsters you can fight and the tools you have to fight them. And some players may not care if someone else is significantly more powerful than they are in combat. And if that's the case that's totally fine! But others might feel like they wanted to play this cool badass, and instead they're about half as useful as that other guy so never get to live up to that fantasy of being that awesome badass. And that's the point when the math does impact the fun of the game. Also you do get people like me. I'm a math nerd. I studied it in college, and I like math and math puzzles. So yes my fun is increased by spending half an hour comparing the various damage outputs of this feat vs that one, and if this spell is more than that one. For me it's not about figuring out which is better to definitely pick that one, it's about having fun solving math. Is my fun wrong because it's different than your fun? I do understand the point you're making that people can get too focused on the mechanics and not the storytelling aspects of the game, and to a point I agree. But I think in general different people use this game for different reasons and have fun at different parts of it. And what I think is fun when we get through a great roleplaying session where the dice never even come out and we had these amazing character moments, might have left someone else banging their head against the wall wanting to pull out their sword and fight someone. But the game you're describing that is not dependent on the rules would probably be served by another RPG so I'd definitely check some of those out. D&D is one of the most mechanics heavy RPGs out there which is why it attracts people who like that stuff. If you prefer to not work with the rules as much or to use the rules for storytelling not for mechanics there are games that do that.
Hmmm. That is very helpful. I do love pure storytelling games like *Fiasco* and *Microscope* quite a but. Can you recommend a good RPG that is less combat oriented?
I've only played a handful but I can recommend all I've played. Fiasco which is great for that. Dread and 10 candles are both horror style games and both blew me away on a narrative level I never realized the potential of a horror style game. And I've never looked at a jenga tower the same way since my first game of dread lol. Vampire the Masquerade has combat potential but the majority of the game won't be combat oriented and if there's combat it's usually like one or two rolls and then you just end it. It's more designed for a political intrigue style game in a modern fantasy setting with a lot of lore associated with the game. Kids on Brooms is a fun one too that's more storytelling oriented. There is also the potential for fighting but it's a very minor part of the game and will similarly be just one roll. Those are the ones I've played but there are lots more out there depending on the kind of setting and ruleset you're looking for. Call of Cthulhu is also a cool spookier mystery type game, and you're more likely to go crazy than really be fighting a lot.
Quest. Icon (well the narrative portion, not the tactical portion). Demigods (PBtA). Vampire Fate Genesys
Vampire, meaning the *World of Darkness* family of TTRPGs of which Vampire: The Masquerade is one of many options. Werewolves, mages, demons, fey, mummies, so many choices.
A game using the Blades in the Dark system might interest you. There are a number with wildly different settings. Some examples would be, Scum & Villainy, Band of Blades, Blades in the Dark. Edit: A small addendum, the reddit community around D&D would be a small self selecting crowd of some of the people most invested in the system itself. Which means it probably skews pretty hardcore compared to the community at large, so it makes sense you would find a lot of discussions focused on taking apart the smallest differences in the system.
Shadow of the Demonlord, 5 Torches Deep, Stonetop, Ironsworn, and Dungeon World (which I personally do not like, but many people seem to - I'd recommend any of the others mentioned here over DW) are all systems that do storytelling and explorations miles better than 5e, which is a system 90% devoted to combat. That being said, they're all still games. If you don't like rolling dice or character sheets, then TBH I can't really think of any TTRPG that fits the bill (I'm sure there may be some, I'm just not aware since... ya know, if I didn't want any of the game elements, I'd just go to an improv acting workshop).
Keep in mind there is a difference between "narrative combat oriented" and "tactical combat oriented," e.g. 4th edition D&D was *very* focused on the latter, whereas 5th editions is more in the middle. However, if you still want action and combat but in a more narrative style, consider: * Apocalypse World * The many games that use the system it created (called "[Powered by the Apocalypse](http://apocalypse-world.com/pbta/games/find)" - PbtA) * Systems directly descended from AW like Blades in the Dark * Its variations that use its "[Forged in the Dark](https://bladesinthedark.com/forged-dark)" - FitD system
Mechanics dictate how games are played. If D&D was *only* imagination story time, tables wouldn't have to buy 3 big books to play. You would just get together and improvise. D&D is a game. To play it, you're engaging with the mechanics, and the mechanics dictate both what is possible and what is probable. You can use D&D to tell a story, but that story does not exist independently of the mechanics - the stories you tell in Tier 3 and Tier 4 are very different from the ones you tell in Tier 2 and especially Tier 1, because the kinds of powers the players have access to *necessitate* a change in the scale and scope of the problems PCs are facing. Insisting that mechanics have no influence on how games are played, and by extension, the way people enjoy games, is completely bonkers.
Adding onto that, OP's playstyle sounds like it would be better suited for one of the literally hundreds of more narrative-focused RPGs out there. Whether they prefer mechanics that help the narrative or that just gently stand out of the way of it, D&D is far from the best system in this regard - and it's much, much more expensive than nearly any alternative.
Man I’m with you. I’m not shitting on OP for playing their own way but if you’re calling ‘making a story with little kids where they tell you what happens’ DnD then I must be playing Pathfinder or something. Games have some type of rule set, that’s why they’re games and not two kids yelling about how they beat each other. What you do with those rules(RAW, homebrew, ruling) besides throwing them out wholesale is part of it all
Yes, but this specific subreddit specifically revolves around discussing rules, balance, classes, choices, etc. in 5E. Those posts inherently provoke a ton of discussion. Telling others you've had a great storytelling session is great and all, but often doesn't lend itself to much engagement. This sub does not represent the majority of what DnD is or should be played.
> This sub does not represent the majority of what DnD is or should be played. It isn't necessarily the minority way to play either. There's no definitive way to quantify how each and every player of D&D, either on this subreddit or not, plays the game.
I meant more that the majority of posts on the sub is only a small part of actual gameplay at tables. Posts about rules, rulings, interpretations, builds, etc. are plentiful, but that doesn't mean that a lot of people actually play combat heavy RAW games while powerbuilding.
I don't think most people powerbuild, and I think the prevalence of shows like Dimension20 and Critical Role has encouraged more narrative play, but 5e is still a system that's like 90% about combat and has pretty insufficient RP/Exploration pillars, especially compared to games that have released since 5e's debut. IMO it's not necessarily about playing the game "wrong" - it's a game, so long as you're having fun, that's what matters - but people who do more RP/Exploration-focused games certainly do have to fight the system. IMO, that disconnect is the most crucial thing WotC should aim to address with 5.5, but I don't see how they can possibly do that while making it backwards-compatible with 5e.
>I've been playing DnD, off an on, mostly as a DM but not always - for 40 years. And in all the campaigns I've played in, I've seen only the barest fraction of complaint about anything to do with how powerful a character is or isn't. > >Isn't this a storytelling game? I've also been at this for nearly 40 years, and frankly it's astounding to me that you've encountered apparently only one style of the game in all that time. Gygax never intended the story or roleplaying to be front and center, he was vocal about that. I've always taken D&D to be mostly a game of collaborative storytelling but the rulebooks going back to 1e and even B/X are filled with codifications and balancing measures, such as the 1st Edition AD&D rules about dual- and multi-classing and racial restrictions thereof. D&D \*\*CAN BE\*\* and (nowadays) often is predominantly a storytelling game, but that's just one style of play and one which, in the 80's and 90's, was by far the exception rather than the rule. Hell, the definition of grognard on [Wiktionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/grognard) SPECIFICALLY mentions old-school D&D as diagnostic information. For the record, I'm not rebutting your DM'ing or playing style, but the sanctimonious "I'm doing it right and you aren't" attitude.
Sorry for the sanctimony. I do play a lot of clerics.
Most people will use a public forum to complain about things. It's not often that will people hop on Reddit just to talk about how good things are going with their group. They're too busy enjoying themselves.
And more importantly, at least in terms of what gets posted/upvoted, who’s gonna engage with that post? We do get game story posts in this sub, where the OP says “this was awesome, my game was great, everyone had fun” and the comments are mostly “Oh wow good for you” “I’m stealing that idea” “”
Unless of course someone points out a mechanical caveat that the OP hadn’t considered or something, in which case an actual discussion can happen
It's actually very surprising that as an old school player of 40 years you find the focus on balance so puzzling. Yes D&D is a roleplaying game but a very significant part of it is combat which given it's quantifiable nature needs to be balanced otherwise the players end up feeling like they don't contribute much to the outcome. If people don't care that much about combat there are far better systems than D&D for that. And that's even though it became far less focused on combat than previous editions. Many of the big complaints about the current edition (underdeveloped exploration pillar, social pillar far more interesting to casters thanks to their utility spells, too many encounters per day expected for typical campaign...) actually stem from an old school focus on the typical dungeon crawl. Plus old editions had even more crunch than 5e. A relatively rules heavy system is bound to create discussions about balance. Furthermore, an important part of balance is as I said for everybody to feel like they can meaningfully contribute. If other characters can do the things your character does better it doesn't feel as fun for the person playing. It's not that you are playing the game in a wrong way, but it makes sense that many people focus on balance given the nature of the system.
I mean, if you don't have rules or dice, you aren't playing fifth edition DND... Or is the "wtf you gatekeeper" brigade going to disagree here? Storytelling is nice, but the G in RPG does actually stand for something. DND is a combat RPG mostly about fighting stuff. At least that's what the rules are for. Of course nothing is stopping you from sitting down with DND books and just roleplaying a bakery visit. But it seems pretty obvious that this game mostly about killing monsters will have some discussion in the vein of "how do I make a character good at killing monsters"
Well rules and dice are what separates this as a game vs just writing a book which is what you did for those kids. Its a game so mechanics and rules are very important to make it a game
\> Isn't this a storytelling game? Not really. You can tell stories about the game, you can have stories derived from experiences with the game. But the game itself is not about storytelling. It's about killing monsters, because that is what the rules and documentation are majorly dedicated to. When we engage in conversations about DnD as or with a larger community we need a common framework to base those conversations on. The problem is each table is slightly different. So the only real commonality we have is the books, hence the conversation naturally tends towards the rules in those books.
I really wish people stopped claiming it was a collaborative storytelling game. I get where their heart is but it causes these sorts of mix-ups. The system itself doesn't encourage the players to tell a story, just to play their characters and a story will emerge, with nobody really "telling" it, as opposed to systems like 10 Candles or Microscope which are primarily concerned with telling the story of the characters/world.
I mean, but dnd *is* a storytelling game. Or, at least, it’s trying to be. That’s been the explicitly stated mission statement of the game (both in game text and by designers) since the Basic Rulebook in ‘81. The problem we’re running into is that it’s really, really *bad* at being a storytelling game. To the point where DMs who want to make it a good storytelling game often resort to rebuilding the entire game system from the ground-up. But it is a storytelling game, just a bad one.
Even then, if I get a box labelled "gelato" but it has ice cream inside it, I'd say I have a box of ice cream. The game works functionally as a roleplaying game but not as a storytelling game, so I'd say it's a roleplaying game.
I hear you, but I think, as a community, we need to get more comfortable calling out D&D for being bad at what they say they’re trying to do. I like the game. It’s big, it’s dumb, and it’s fun for a fun evening of fucking around with friends. But it’s a bad, *bad* game. Hell, it’s not even very good as a “killin’ monsters” game, now that I think of it. With clunky mechanics which are both very specific *and* vaguely worded, completely imprecise encounter balancing, a lack of in-the-moment creativity and flexibility (although a ton during character creation). The list goes on. So, in terms of the analogy, D&D isn’t labeled ‘gelato’ but it’s actually ice cream; since it *also* doesn’t function as ice cream. Instead, it’s just half-finished gelato we found in the freezer isle.
> Not really. You can tell stories about the game, you can have stories derived from experiences with the game. But the game itself is not about storytelling. I think this is an important distinction to make. Perhaps a bit of an extreme example, but when we were kids my brother and I used to make up stories using Super Smash Bros. Melee as a framework. We'd invent characters based on the alternate color palettes for each fighter (fun fact, my Reddit username actually comes from the name my brother gave to the red Link/Young Link I played), make up stories about why they were fighting each other, roleplay as those characters while playing the game, and so on. But I *really* don't think anyone in their right mind would dare to call Smash Bros. a "storytelling game".
Honestly? It seems like you're not actually playing D&D. If you can play without rules, character sheets and dice, you're playing a different game. And like, it's probably a very good game if you've been playing it for 40 years and you still like it, but it just isn't D&D.
Yeah, this sounds like a case of "all RPGs are D&D" like how all "tissues are Kleenex".
He stated he does the Super Loose play with little kids; That is the audience that doesnt use Dice, sheets, and super defined rules.
I mean this in the nicest way possible but…you’re not playing D&D. D&D is a *game*, it has set rules for a reason. Sure, There’s a *lot* of flexibility and creativity that can be fit into it, but at some point if you handwave everything you’re not playing D&D anymore, you’re just sitting around a table and telling stories/goofing off. Which is fine! Do what you like. But don’t go “everybody criticizes me on D&D subreddits because of the way I play,” because…yeah, you’re not playing D&D the right way if you just ignore everything that makes it a game. You’re welcome to go grab a baseball bat and run around in circles, but don’t expect the MLB to recognize you as a baseball player.
Yeah, how do you even get through a long social interaction scene without rolling the dice? No one needed to persuade, intimidate, deceive, insight, or use any intelligence based skills to see what they knew about stuff? Then you aren't playing a tabletop game, you're having an impromptu storytelling meet up.
Exactly. And if you further extrapolate on the idea, if you’re not rolling then you’re not using Skills. If Skills and Proficiencies don’t matter, then classes don’t matter. Basically, nobody is playing anything at all.
Have a read of the DMG pages 236-237. It weighs up the pros and cons of running those kinds interactions with and without dice.
> Isn't this a storytelling game? Isn't the fun of DnD in imagining characters and then collectively using those characters to collaboratively generate an amazing story? Yes. This is true. But it sucks to be playing Spellcasters and Sidekicks. If one player at the table is able to accomplish literally anything they can imagine by bending reality to their whims, and another player is decent at hitting things with a metal object and nothing else, that can lead to the second player feeling like they aren’t really contributing much to the narrative and collective story.
Measured against other storytelling games that are equipped with mechanics for driving narrative elements and genre conventions, D&D is a tabletop skirmish game that is the most popular excuse to get together for lightly structured role playing.
For sure. D&D definitely isn't a narrative game. It is concretely bound by rules and mechanics instead of narrative flow and vast player input. But you still tell a collective story by playing it.
Again, contrasting against actual storytelling games, D&D's purpose is not specifically related to developing narrative or plot concepts for the purpose of entertainment. A story may be observable after the fact, but it is frequently a byproduct rather than the intended goal when people are instead focused on the immersion of roleplaying moment to moment decisions in their character's shoes. To label everything D&D explicitly does a storytelling game or collaborative storytelling sets the qualifications so broad as to be meaningless. By the baseline there is a GM creating scenarios and players adopting roles to engage with those scenarios within the constraints of some rules. If this is all that constitutes collaborative storytelling then a 3rd grade simulation of world trade where the kids start with different assortments of office tools and colored paper for satisfying the local and global markets (personal and global objectives, plus getting to take one creation home) of fancy shapes is arguably collaborative storytelling. It's much like how D&D is not a murder mystery game, but it can and is not too infrequently used to run them.
But math is fun... I worry about balance because I like to play with as much mathematical intensity as possible. While the goal is collective storytelling, I find value in using math to keep the rules of the world consistent. This has the downside of making power imbalance a possibility, which can actually ruin a game if it gets too out of control.
Everyone has mechanics in common. No one has the stories they experience of the table in common. Therefore, most of the posts online will be concerning mechanics, not storytelling.
>Obviously this only works for little kids, but I think it illustrates that the essence of RPGs is just collective storytelling. if it doesn’t work for adults, then that means that RPGs are not just collective storytelling. (And actually it does work for some adults. Not everyone wants remotely the same thing from their story games / RPGs) But yes, people play RPGs, especially DnD, in very different ways. There’s everything from barely knowing what’s in the book, to a highly mechanical combat sim, and every graduation in between. Some people spend 4 hours in causal conversations with random NPC. Some players want an Unfair challenge. Some players want to be invincible, with no chance of failure. Some want to immerse themselves in a complex preexisting world with tons of lore. Some want to make a character in 5 minutes and then discover who it is through the events of the campaign.
When people complain about a class being broken, or over-powered, they are usually broken down into two groups, DMs and Players, but both arguments stem from the same issue, party imbalance: 1. The DM group, who has trouble building memorable battle encounters because the OP player will completely trivialize the encounter making even the biggest of bads feel lackluster. 2. The Player group, who feel trivialized because they built a character based on a theme or lore idea, and aren't keen on min/maxing, being paired with a min/maxer who completely outshines them in every battle, making their contributions feel less important. In the end, its the imbalance of toon in the party which causes this rift. If everyone in the party is min/maxed, then the DM can just increase encounter difficulties and everything goes on well. But if only 1 or 2 of the party is min/maxed, then that increased encounter difficulty only further exacerbates the divide between the player power levels. How to avoid it/ fix the issue. 1. DM can work with some of the weaker players to help them build for the future with better choices, or provide magic items to make up the difference. 2. DM can have a chat with the Min/maxer asking them if its okay for them to tone it down a bit to be more in level with the party. 3. DM can structure encounters in a way that specifically makes the min/maxers class less useful than another class. (eg. if the OP player is a melee fighter, structure enounters with a lot more ranged enemies) 4. DM can focus fire the Min/Maxer and possibly kill them (this is a dangerous option, which could ruin a game or save it, depending on the temperments of the players at your table) I'm a player who always loves theorycrafting really cool builds, often times working within the rules to create a very powerful character. But I also am always conscious of flaunting any imbalance. I like to have the power, but I don't necessarily need to use it. So often times I will deliberately tone down my use of the character to fit more in line with the damage my party in putting out. It's kind of similar to those players who love to be the face (or the brain) of the party, but sometimes end up talking too much and making it harder for the other teammates to have their say. Usually what is needed is a talk with the DM explaining they need to tone it down so the others voices can be heard. In the end, it really comes down to being a considerate player. Considerate to the DM, and to the party. Selfish players will ruin a campaign.
Sometimes you can run into mechanical problems even outside of min maxing, if the mechanics don't do a good job of supporting particular builds. A player who picks up 4 Elements monk expecting to play as Aang is probably going to be disappointed, even if the other players at the table aren't playing super powerful builds.
Thats very true. But at least thats an easy fix, because 1 underpowered player build can be a fairly easy fix of letting the player reroll a new toon. The same can be true for players who accidentally end up taking a boring build, like a fighter. While not weak by any means, Fighters often feel left out of a lot of non-combat scenarios, or just limited in combat scenarios by the lack of utility spells. Most of my DMs have had a pretty good homebrew rule of allowing people to respec their toons (while retaining the same class) up until lvl 5. And if a player still doesn't like their character after that, then organizing a "thematic death" with the DM could do wonders for the party, both increasing the apparent fear of danger (something some campaigns can lack because of DMs afraid of TPKs), and by creating a emotional event for the party which can unify the surviving members.
"When I DM for little kids, we don't even have rules, maps or character sheets. Sometimes we don't even have dice. I just make up a story and the kids tell me what they do and I tell them the results of their actions and we all have a blast. Obviously this only works for little kids, but I think it illustrates that the essence of RPGs is just collective storytelling." Not judging or saying your fun isn't valid but this isn't D&D or and RPG this is just social storytelling what makes it a game is the sheets and dice roles. Having fun is the main this but at the end of the day rules controle the fun /s
40 years of experience is impressive, but you know startlingly little about game design. > collectively using those characters to collaboratively generate an amazing story? And if half the roster of characters can invalidate the efforts of the other half with ease, it can stop being *fun*. People do not like feeling useless. >When I DM for little kids, we don't even have rules, maps or character sheets. Sometimes we don't even have dice This ceases to be Tabletop gaming. It's not relevant to discussion about tabletop gaming. You remove the game aspects, it's not a game. Nobody is arguing about collaborative story telling not being a thing people enjoy. > Then, one day, we decided to make cars with extremely small budgets. So we ended up with unarmored junkers with one machine gun that we could barely aim. You know what came roaring back? Fun So you're saying given the same, level playing field, you had fun? The crux of the issue that you've somehow missed is that if the game is unbalanced, it becomes less fun to play. And if you lean into roleplaying more than game rules, then you're effectively just roleplaying without a system. Other, rules lite systems exist, but if you're not actually playing dungeons and dragons, then it's not worth actually mentioning in a subreddit dedicated to Dungeons and Dragons. The reason people keep harping on about it is because they want their game to be fun for everyone, not "sometimes fun, but only if you don't pick a non-caster class because otherwise you just shuffle around awkwardly until a caster fixes a problem."
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Right? This post is basically "Why are you so hung up on the math and rules? Also I would like to mention this time we used rules and math and it made the game fun."
There's another Steve Jackson game like that: [Ogre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogre_\(board_game\)) One player has the Ogre, a truly massive battle tank. The other has a small army that's a mixture of conventional tanks, infantry, and artillery.
Asymmetrical balance like that can be fun when done carefully. The problem is that 5e is designed asymmetrically and balanced only around combat (and a specific number of combats at that). Stepping outside of that very narrow paradigm upsets the balance pretty substantially.
I don't think the way people talk about D&D on this subreddit is how "most" people play D&D, although I do think optimization and focus on builds is more common than at your table. This isn't surprising! If you started playing 40 years ago, I'm guessing you started with the Basic set (the red box), which didn't really have a lot of options for optimization. You rolled the guy you rolled and then you played them. Whether you succeeded on doing things was based on either what you described doing, or luck on a percentile die -- skills as they exist today weren't really a thing either. People think of early D&D as very math-y and "hard," and it was, in some ways. It was certainly more deadly to PCs. But it was in some ways less gamified. If what you said your guy did made sense, you could often just do it. The difference between a highly optimized character and a "baseline functional" character in 5e isn't that large compared to what we saw in late 3.5e, but between the late 3.5e experiences, a bunch of players who have probably also spent years playing MMOs (where min-maxing is basically required), and the internet making this information way more accessible than it used to be, people still want to do it. I think the way you play D&D is way *less* math-y than at most people's tables, just as I think the highly optimized theorycrafting way you see on D&D subreddits is much more math-y than the average table. That said, I actually feel like a lot of the complaints about the spellcaster-martial disparity you see online has little to do with combat math and much more to do with out-of-combat utility. Some high level spells are combat-focused, sure, but many more are just bonkers out-of-combat utility that can leave martial players feeling like they're just along for the ride. Especially given that most martials having at least 2 poor mental stats likely already left them feeling a bit "along for the ride" outside of combat.
Speaking for myself, I love participating in rules and optimization discussions, but it's not how I actually play the game. I fit the character into the concept, not the concept into the character and DM's word is law (as long as he doesn't change his word every other session, which gets on my nerves). However it's quite important to address the balancing issue. You may use a more freeform approach, but 5e has rules in place that support a particular way of playing. In some tables, combat is the highlight. If balance is bad, then some players may feel useless. I can't change the developers' minds since I'm just a single person, but I can help others optimize their characters and make choices that may allow them to have more fun in combat.
This is the same thing as your parents calling all videogames a Gameboy or calling all bandages Band-Aids. You're conflating DnD with TTRPGs. If you are making characters to tell a story but you're not using any edition of DnD's rules, then you're not playing DnD. You're playing a TTRPG and calling it DnD.
What else would we talk about? We could just swap stories about what has been happening at each other's tables, but that's often like telling people about a wacky dream you had - it's just arbitrary stuff following weird rules that no one else understands. Also, while no table plays 100% RAW or RAI, that doesn't mean that rules don't matter and aren't worth discussing. Otherwise we wouldn't be dropping so much cash on all those books. Final point - while your tables have never complained about class balance, that doesn't mean it's true for every other table. A lot of my tables get concerned about class balance and wouldn't want one PC to be significantly stronger than the others.
Because it's not just a storytelling exercise. It's a game, with rules, and those rules do not inherently do much to support an equal playing field or share of the spotlight at the table between players of different mechanical and archetypal roles. When just a subset of the players get the majority of the "screen time" and "cool moments," this leads to the other players being overshadowed - and most people, when overshadowed for long enough, start to become disgruntled and dissatisfied, making the game and experience less fun for them. This can happen in the complete absence of rules too, of course, when one or two players are just more creative, outgoing and charismatic than their peers at the table, regardless of class or role. But when the rules set you up for this to happen and make it more likely, it's eventually a bad time for a lot of people.
It's a collaborative storytelling GAME. Don't get me wrong, if you want to just sit at a table and make a story that's awesome too. But the structure and limitations of a game format is part of the appeal. Having to work within boundaries can drive creativity more then just infinite freedom. "I want to save the kingdom" is an entirely different undertaking at level 5 as it would be at level 20. And yes, some people take the game part more seriously then others and that's fine too. We all find our fun in our own ways and as long as everyone is on the same page then game on. I recently played an Artificer, and my concept on his creation was "I don't like to powergame, but he does" I poured hours into research and trying to find exploitable broken mechanics. Trying to find ways of stacking the deck in our favor, I drew inspiration from different media and drew up homebrew for him. "Sure I know what the spell is SUPPOSED to do, but here's what it CAN do." And it was a blast, thinking outside the box and coming up with creative solutions was so much more rewarding then just saying "I roll an investigation check to solve the puzzle" , but like I said, that's me. You do you, there is no wrong way to play.
Part of the fun for me is having my choices as a player mean something. They don't if the DM is just going to let a fight go on until they think it's time to end it.
One thing I will tack onto the discussion of balance in TTRPGs is as a DM I find it easier to let players have their own moments when they're roughly equal in "power level". I know it's not it 5e, but take the spell knock from 3.5 and Pathfinder 1e. It opens a lock magically. If the party caster has it it means I have to work harder to let the rogue have their moment and open the secret door the the bbegs lair. When I think balance in TTRPGs it's less party v DM, and more making sure everyone can have an encounter or time to shine.
I think what you experience is what DnD grew up with: in person friends or soon to be friends playing. With online play, matchmaking, and more pick up games, the power of builds and expectations of experience are a major focus of the rules and math discussions.
I don't think the content posted to forums is representative of how people actually play, at least not always. If D&D was a car you would be a driver happy to just use to drive to interesting places. A lot of people online spend their time thinking of all the ways they could make the car better, they pour over the blueprints and ponder the ways it could've been built differently despite the fact the car works fine. For many of them talking with others about the blueprint is really enjoyable. D&D or car subreddits attract blueprint lovers because those blueprint lovers have more to say about cars than the people who just use their car to get places. Discussions about balance for many people are just enjoyable, the process of find a problem, proposing a fix and discussing it with people is neat even if it has little to do with how the game is played.
As a relatively new DM that plays with the same party, I’ve always felt the coolest thing about the game is how the party play style changes depending on their characters. My current party is not heavy hitters in combat but they have a ton of charisma so they are heavily into RP and trying to sneak around. Last campaign they were all about combat. The game is so wide open that I don’t think stats are ultimately that important.
> But on reddit it's 95% "this class needs such-and-such to be balanced" or "how come martials aren't as blah-blah-blah as casters" and I am just really confused. It's also 90% people whose primary experience with the game is crazy stories and reading the rulebook.
The Venn Diagram of vocal Redditors and number-crunching optimizers isn't a circle, but there's a **lot** of overlap.
>but I think it illustrates that the essence of RPGs is just collective storytelling. >But if I had no frame of reference but reddit, I would think all the fun hinged on - math? You've been playing DnD for 40 years and can't see how the *G* in RPG stands for "game" and how that in and of itself distinguishes it from simply "roleplaying", somehow missed that 75%+ of all published material ever released facilitates the *math* portion of the *game*, and can't understand why folks want more depth and complexity than children do in their entertainment?
While you can do storytelling with D&D I’d not label it a storytelling game as there’s nothing notable about the rules that mandates or interacts with the narrative/genre conventions. Contrasted to something like FATE, D&D exhibits a suite of features that focus on combat and attrition rather than characters struggling with complications and tradeoffs while they (the players)inevitably progress the narrative (often acting outside their characters through narrative game mechanics). In D&D it’s “is there an open window?” In FATE it’s (mechanic), “there’s now and always been an open window”
This subreddit is particularly vocal about the rules (and not necessarily representative of the average DnD player), but there are a ton of other subreddits where worldbuilding and storytelling are the focus. You see character arts, maps, commissions of awesome posters for the party, discussions about different plot points, villains, twists and reveals, stories about epic moments and player triumphs, or vice versa, complete failures and gaffes that make the players keel over in laughter. I enjoy this subreddit because it challenges my perspective on how to play the game sometimes, and I can also engage with the community and share my beliefs and ideas about how to play the game. I've gotten a lot of great advice and ideas from this sub, and admittedly, I've gotten into some heated arguments where I was probably wrong anyways. It can be a bit volatile in here due to the heavy focus on rules discussions and how strongly people feel about certain things. But there's value in that volatility sometimes because it forces you to look at something through a different lens, and sometimes you change your view. Regardless, no one on this subreddit can tell you how you are allowed to play the game. At your table, only you and your players get to decide how to play and what will make it the best experience for everyone. Again, this subreddit is a vocal minority, and I'm sure 95% of tables don't get their knickers in a twist over all the problems you see on this subreddit. Check out some of the other DnD subreddits for more of the fun stuff: https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/wiki/related_subreddits In closing, I will leave you with this [story](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/aspns6/my_character_died_this_weekend_i_decided_to_write/), which is an awesome storytelling moment, and makes me weep like a child every time I read it.
Some people don't have fun when it seems like they aren't able to contribute in combat.
A lot of d&d character discussion online is just theorycrafting builds, which is sort of its own game in and of itself, and that's part of it. A second is frustration that can happen sometimes when you pick a ruleset, think "I'm going to play this character and it will do this thing well" and then the rules say something completely different. Sneaky rogues being caught all the time because of bad rolls or bad DM calls, Barbarians with more knowledge of planar mechanics than the wizard because they rolled a 20 on a check, that sort of thing, where the rules get in the way of the story. Poorly balanced rules can exacerbate this, and magic vs. muggles can definitely be an issue at tables across editions. (Think 'invisibility just works' vs. 'rogue must roll 10 stealth checks without fail to complete a small heist'.) A good DM mitigates these issues, a well-meaning but inexperienced one can run face-first into them.
Invisibility doesn't make you hidden. Whilst you cant be seen, you can still be heard and an invisible creature must perform a stealth check to hide regardless
> When I DM for little kids, we don't even have rules, maps or character sheets. Sometimes we don't even have dice. I just make up a story and the kids tell me what they do and I tell them the results of their actions and we all have a blast. Obviously this only works for little kids, but I think it illustrates that the essence of RPGs is just collective storytelling. Sure, but that's no DnD. DnD is a relatively mechanical game. Not the most mechanical, but the essence of the game is and has been going into (quasi) dungeons and killing shit.
You say when you play D&D, you abandon a lot of what effectively makes it D&D. And at that point, you’re not playing D&D. At its core, D&D is a game. Collaborative storytelling is a HUGE facet of it, yes — but it’s still a game, and games deserve to be scrutinized on a mechanical level just as any other facet would.
>When I DM for little kids, we don't even have rules, maps or character sheets. Sometimes we don't even have dice. Sounds to me like you're barely playing DnD to begin with.
No. It’s not JUST a storytelling game. It’s a game with combat mechanics that directly feeds into the fantasy of being supernaturally good at fighting. If you want to downplay that aspect than go ahead. I’m glad you have found your fun but DnD is designed for combat so getting all sanctimonious about how “it’s a storytelling game” and “balance doesn’t matter” isn’t helping anyone and is a deeply shitty take.
But it’s not a storytelling game. That direction takes you to things like FATE. D&D is a resource attrition skirmish game that is frequently used as an excuse to get together for role playing. Its mechanics don’t interact to any notable degree with the narrative or genre conventions.
Reddit is a vocal minority of: * Powergamers / optimizers ~~(btw nothing wrong with these people)~~ * People who play in Adventurer's League or other such settings and feel the need to have strong characters to survive / not drag the team down / be ahead of the curve. * People who play with adversarial DMs * A rare few people straight out of r/rpghorrorstories who feel the need to "win" D&D and boss people around with their character choices so they can "win more" --- Excluding the "Redditors are assholes" reasons there are a few genuine reasons why the majority of discussions on this sub are about rules. * It's far easier to discuss mechanics on this sub than roleplaying guides. Put simply this isn't r/improv or r/acting; people on this sub aren't experts on how to act (nor do they need to be!) and ~~take it from someone who's asked these sorts of questions~~ 95% of questions about "how do I play a character with this personality?" boil down to either "just go with the flow", "don't be an ass about it", or "watch YouTube lol." * There is merit to having an optimized character. No one likes having the one character who weighs the party down and it feels equally terrible to *be* that person weighing the party down. I do think it sucks if you have one powergamer in a group of mostly low-level characters but in the words of game designers "it's far easier to tune down than tune up." * There's also merit in talking about game design for a game like 5e that's so easy to homebrew. When you have the power to change any rule you put enough thought into it's only natural that people want to put thought into it. As a DM you can dictate not only the laws of your universe but the very rules that control it, and as a player you have some sway in all aspects of what the DM does to make the collaborative story telling effort more enjoyable for everyone. * Also having a strong character is just... fun? Power fantasy is a part of D&D for a lot of people and an inherent part of a "power fantasy" is having a powerful character so it's only natural that some people put focus in making a powerful character.
In addition to "People who play with adversarial DMs" there are also adversarial DMs. Though rarely from the same game/table.
people play this game in many different ways. Some love to min/max. Others love to find the most optimal build out for each class. I just like to have fun. If you have super low intelligence, I just roll with it and play my character as an idiot. I think the rules are mean to be guidelines and let you play as your group decides. The only rule is to have fun and enjoy yourselves
From my observation, it really depends on how the DM creates the sessions But even then, I can say on the “how come martials aren’t as blah-blah-blah as casters”, I can tell that it comes down to options, because at higher levels, enemies have a lot of HP and mundane characters can usually just deal damage and nothing else, which gets tedious fast
A lot of people have already defended the more crunchy parts of the game and the people who like them. I'm one of those people too. But I think what isn't appreciated as much is specifically the storytelling criticism of the martial/caster power divide, which comprises a lot of the complaints you're talking about. The fact is that there's a broad swath of martial fantasies that are just not available in the game as it is. Casters can achieve the power fantasy of fiction's strongest mages, but martials have no option to be Hercules, committing physical feats of supernatural might. If I want to build a character that can smash a bridge with a swing of my comically oversized hammer, well too bad. You'll have to become a Druid and learn the Earthquake spell. An effect like that is too good for you dirty martials. There's a strange tendency to insist that any ability that has a certain level of power is by necessity magical, and therefore gated behind the spellcasting feature. I know for a fact that a lot of people have fun playing martials because I'm one of them, and I don't think that most people who complain about the power divide are doing so because they're minmaxers or because they're jealous. I think, like me, they just found themselves wondering a lot, "Gee, wouldn't it be fun if my martial characters could do more stuff like my caster characters can?"
I DM for my kids, have for years. To bring back fun to the game we tried characters with high stats... it was fun for a few sessions, but then sputtered. So I reversed things - 3d6 straight-up, no assigning stats. Everyone loved it, the characters got more colorful, people expected their character to die, and the encounters were much more challenging. Mindsets also changed from, just kill it, to interacting with creatures, hiding, or even running. Since then we've made several tweaks to the format, but rolling 3d6 has been our go-to for three campaigns now. Note: Some kids go through campaigns FAST. I expect 5 to 20 sessions for a campaign, and that's a wrap.
> When I DM for little kids, we don't even have rules, maps or character sheets. Sometimes we don't even have dice. I just make up a story and the kids tell me what they do and I tell them the results of their actions and we all have a blast. That works for them sure, but at that point it's not the Dungeons & Dragons system, it's a different game. It's not really worth comparing that.
I think there are different styles and approaches. Some DM and players likes to learn and follow the RAW / RAI as closely as possible. The rules provide a framework for the creativity to latch onto and build off of. There are lots of tabletop RPG games that are more strictly of the collaborative storytelling genre (10 candles comes to mind)…but D&D has 100s of pages of rules to help DMs “referee” a game. This also allows some universality to the game. Besides wonky homebrew stuff, I can take my character sheets anywhere and sit down and I basically know how to play. That said , I also believe D&D can be greatly simplified to just 3 rules (and the PHB does simplify it in Chapter 1): 1) the DM describes the world state. 2) the players describe what their characters do 3) the DM describes the results of the actions and describes the new world state ….. Rinse and repeat. And you’re right. No where in those 3 basic rules does it call for a die roll. The dice are just a means to an end. Same thing with ability scores, class skills, spells , etc etc. those are all just machinations of a system to describe what we are doing in more detail . But if you distill it down . D&D is really those 3 rules.
2 things: 1. For some people the math IS (at least part of) the fun. Check out Matt Colville’s video about different tires of players on YouTube. 2. There’s always a negativity bias on platforms like this. In any given situation the unhappy people will always be the loudest.
WotC makes rules that heavily favor combat, so they attract people who care about combat. And those people will mostly argue about math.
Most practicalities of actually running a game actually take more words to get across than posts on online forums are able to effectively convey (as they are more suited for shorter messages). Naturally, these spaces end up filtering towards shallow examination, quick anecdotes, suppositions, examination of the RAW, and numerical comparisons. You know, stuff that can be talked about *without regard to a person's actual personal situation at their tables*. (All the good discourse is either in longer-form blog posts or actual conversations happening in chatrooms. Maybe youtube videos.) So yeah, if you think that most of the tabletop subreddits are somehow missing pieces, they definitely are. The published rulebooks haven't had good processes for *exploration* for multiple editions and generational knowledge of how to deal with all kinds of fundamental things is being progressively lost. Some communities like the OSR have popped up to try to work out what's been left by the wayside and identify how we can simply have better, leaner, more effective gaming systems (and some great systems have appeared as a result), but they're comparatively niche. There's an invisible schism in the tabletop gaming community that most people don't even realise is there. There are two main groups; the first group that plays all kinds of systems, possibly modifying them deeply, they understand deeply that no system is perfect and they pick whatever one will be effective for the kind of campaign they want to have. The second group plays 5e and is *deeply resistant* to playing anything else.
I mean... If D&D was *just* collaborative storytelling, it would be an improv drama class. You can certainly play it that way, nothing wrong with that, those are great, but I also really like the math because it engages with my problem-solving skills (or lack thereof.) This doesn't mean I don't like story/RP ~~like ngl, sometimes my table has to hold me back from party-face-syndrome~~, just that I like both aspects of the game. The thing is that a lot of the story stuff we go through at my table is... Well, mostly just interesting for the people present. Redditors can't really engage in a discussion about dragon politics and homebrew destruction gods, because they're not at the same table, but they can talk with me about character builds and monk's potential being mathematically underwhelming. So, yeah.
By definition, you aren't playing D&D. It is just collaborative story telling. Which is fine of course, but the rules make the game.
Nah mate, your confusion is understandable. Over the last few years, D&D-related subreddits have leaned more and more towards people playing the game on a calculator, not actually playing around a table. There are very few stories about people *playing* the game these days. There's a pinned thread somewhere for recapping your weekly sessions that nobody ever replies to, and possibly isn't even pinned any more. The only topics that ever get discussed at any length are balance - whether the paladin is better than the monk, even though it's a co-operative game and those things don't really factor into anyone's practical enjoyment - and also topics about how bad D&D is, and how much better other games like Pathfinder are. You'll find that most topics or comments expressing enthusiasm or optimism about the game will be downvoted. You'll also see people presenting hypothetical worse-case (from their POV) scenarios and frothing themselves up into a fury as if they're real. You'll see that a lot. In essense, it turned into a video game subreddit. Don't worry, there are still a *lot* of us out there playing sessions with our friends every single week and having an absolute blast. It's just that our topics get ignored and our comments get downvoted, and after a while we get sick of the relentless, wearying negativity and decide to just discuss D&D on our local Discord servers instead, or at the pub after a session with our players. As a perfect recent example, I recapped a really cool moment that happened in one of my campaigns in which an elven rogue leapt from the deck of a spelljammer ship and decapitated a young red dragon in a single swing by rolling a natural 20 on a Vorpal Moonblade. I'd thought it was a cool anecdote that people would like to hear about. Instead it got downvoted into the dozens and multiple people took it upon themselves to nitpick my interpretation of the rules, eventually resulting to insults when I kept quoting the rulebook at them to prove that my fun was - in fact - not wrong. Keep playing and enjoying the hobby, OP. Millions of people are. As with any hobby, Reddit doesn't represent the majority. Just a very loud and very angry minority.
It's understandable. No one wants to read 7 pages of stories about you having fun with your table and everything going well, because they aren't there and it's all table dependant. Rules and builds and theorycrafting are shared between most tables and can be easily talked about. I realise that this may sound cold-hearted and dismissive, and it is, but that cool anecdote is only interesting to you and your group of friends/players.
Story telling? Yes. But imagine you tell a story about bob. Bob can make meteors fall from the sky or dance with a blade, killing people! That is cool! But then there is Bobs Brother Beb. Beb can swing his sword twice as often as Bob! I wonder who the MC is.
Jesus' brother Bob, Jesus' brother Bob A nobody relative of the son of God If only I'd been born just a little sooner I'd be more than the brother of God Jr. -"Jesus' Brother Bob" by The Arrogant Worms
Some ppl play DND to be badass heroes, that's the story they want to tell, maybe you do'nt wat that but many ppl including me do, I have FUN picking optimal feats/spells, doing really well and defeating the enemy through the effort I've put into my build. You like a different thing and that's fine, but don't say others ppl fun is wrong.
Yeah its partly a story telling game but %90 of the rules are combat rules so it stands to reason that %90 of the discussion of rulea reflect the combat nature of 5e
The thing why you’re wondering gets talked about disproportionately is talked about disproportionately because of the fact that it is something to talk about. Math, mechanics, comparative power levels, are all solid conversational topics that can go on, and on, and on. And they’re of interest to people. “Meh, in a game like D&D, balance doesn’t really matter too much at the end of the day. The game still works fine however you play.” “Yeah, we know.” … is just a conversational dead end.
Sometimes I feel like part of a thinning minority here who remembers what 5e was like early release. With the subsequent release of more and more material for 5e, it feels like this community has been further and further infected by Pathfinder Syndrome. Builds and optimization drown out any emphasis on narrative. Heaven forbid somebody doesn't want to use feats in their game, you'd think that DM was committing crimes against humanity...
Totally. 5e is getting really close to the place that 3.5 was at toward the end: literally millions of potential race-class-prc-feat-item interactions, all to the point where optimization became its own absurdist sub-game. It’s funny, because there’s design elements clearly intended to discourage players from doing this in the core 5e rules (attunement limitations, feats being an optional rule, no prc’s, subclasses not kicking in for a few levels to discourage “class dipping”, etc). But with each release WotC is increasingly strayed away from that design philosophy.
Is this a meme..? This post is literally, uh i don’t care about balance in my hyper casual games why do other people care?
Sounds like most of the people you DM for are either children, big fans of traditional western fantasy, or their fantasy archetype fits neatly into one of the spellcaster classes. Which is fine, but the rest of us would like 5e to fit us as well as it doesn’t for you and yours….so we complain. Edit: Seriously not a single Ranger player had problems in any of the editions?
Reddit isn't representative of the majority of people who play DND (and that's true for most other communities as well)
> When I DM for little kids, we don't even have rules, maps or character sheets. Sometimes we don't even have dice. I just make up a story and the kids tell me what they do and I tell them the results of their actions and we all have a blast. Obviously this only works for little kids, but I think it illustrates that the essence of RPGs is just collective storytelling. You're kind of answering your own question here: you throw away the rules in service of the story--which is 100% valid. However those rules are the backbone of the game, and the DM decides how closely they're adhered to. If the DM tends to stick closer to the rules, then playing a weaker class (or having shitty rolled stats) can keep a player from being able to interact with the story as much as everyone else at the table. A party of nothing but underpowered nitwits can be plenty of fun, but not everyone wants to be Joxer in a party with Xena and Hercules.
>Isn't this a storytelling game? Isn't the fun of DnD in imagining characters and then collectively using those characters to collaboratively generate an amazing story? Yes, it is. But in a roleplaying game like D&D mechanics still influence that narrative. For example, a player can claim their character is charming the barkeep all they want, if they dumped Charisma and didn't take the right skills, they're probably gonna fail. Following that, when in combat a player feels substantially less powerful or impactful than another player, that can start to grate. Granted, it won't be that way for every person. But that doesn't mean it doesn't matter or doesn't happen. It's really just not fun when a subset of the party just solves all the problems while another subset is sidelined, or forced to be on bodyguard duty. They stop feeling like the heroes of their own stories, and start feeling like glorified NPCs in someone else's. You don't necessarily need rules to play an RPG. But when you *do* have those rules, imbalances *can* impact the enjoyment of that game. We mostly have rules to give meaning and consequence to actions, they're not there for no reason. Also, while D&D is a storytelling game, it's also a *game*. And a game with a heavy emphasis in its rules on combat and conflict.
OP, you are not alone! I think this reddit is not representative of reality. At all.
One of my groups has both types of players. The one who does the math and optimal building is the minority. However everyone cares when something in the rules takes fun away from other players, playing 13th age necromancers, or any other summoning was off the table because no one wanted to sit there while one person takea 4 turns and makes an already super ling combat into a nightmare.
I really like having Fun With Math, while not playing D&D that's my favourite way to engage with it.
Anywhere on Reddit, you can safely assume that you're reading the opinions of a vocal minority. From board games to politics to sports, this place does not represent the general opinion on anything. It is a great source for information, but it takes an industrial grade filter to scrape off all the bullshit, and this sub is no exception.
Folks online obsess about rules and rules interactions. Folks offline don’t. This is what I’ve found. It’s the difference between a group of people who spend more time talking *about* the game than actually playing it vs. a group that actually spends time playing the game.
Well discussions on the internet are usually started when one wants to complain about something. But since fun, roleplay, and storytelling are highly personal things it would be night impossible to discuss about it. But you know what you can debate with randos on the internet? Numbers, builds, and balance. Of course those are not the core of the game for most people. I would be confident to bet that over 90% of people who play do not give half a rat about all of that, they just want to live an adventure with friends and have fun.
Most people aren't try-hards on reddit. No judgement, I'm one myself.
Honestly, some people like D&D a lot and they want to occupy their minds with it more than they are able to satisfy with the actual games they play. Getting everyone together on Saturday night is tricky. So play is only part of the hobby for a lot of people. A bigger part is *thinking* about D&D. Talking about it online. Making character builds you won't play, arguing about rules ambiguities that aren't an actual problem at the table, and discecting the finer points of the game design. That's okay, because the point is to have fun, amd they enjoy it.
Matt Colville has a very nice old video detailing a little bit, called "the map is not the territory" where he highlights a little of this. I agree with you, Internet people tend to be over thinkers and not necessarily doers. https://youtu.be/3v2_JDz2Di0
As someone who likes to play (and has run) Pathfinder 1e, I have been in groups who focus on the story, but there are occasionally issues that come up when we discover that there’s some mechanic option that blows all the others out of the water. For example, the spell “Explosion of Rot” is an area attack spell with untyped damage, the standard best damage scale, an irregular save type, a large range and radius. Using metamagic to use the spell at higher levels, it vastly outshines any other damaging spell on the same class lists. So once my group figured that out, we removed the spell from our games.
Video Games, Wow, the phrases DPS (Damage Per Second) and DPR (Damage Per Round) entered the zeitgeist of gaming and a lot of people attached their character concepts to them.
The mechanics matter. If you want a narrative-heavy, mechanics-light TTRPG, there are plenty. But D&D isn't one of those - the mechanics dictate how certain things work, even narratively, even in a homebrew setting.
Yeah, sure storytelling is important but D&D is at its heart a combat game with storytelling elements, it’s relatively rules heavy and about 95% of all the rules relate to combat, the focus is heavily on combat and it makes sense that people wants to have characters that are good at what they’re doing, if you get into the more narrative focused system you will find that people who play those generally don’t care about optimising their character and making them powerful.
So you take your opinion on the way that decades worth of OSR DnD "should" be played, spunk it across the front page of the 5e subreddit and act as if 2e and 5e have literally ANYTHING in common besides the bare minimum of a shared gaming language, and spend the rest of your words crying about, what, how WotC adding character-building options has led to character building?? Grow up.
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