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S.J. posted:There is literally no version of D&D that will help you out here, mechanically. But you could put this backdrop into any version of D&D. Yeah, thats absolutely a setting you could create apart from the mechanics of the game. Nothing can actually stop you or another from creating this story and trying to adapt D&D's less than stellar skill system and whatnot to use it. Is it really that difficult to play out some story building, like say, a diplomatic meeting between two cities, without super codified rules for what steps you have to follow to not accidentally start a war by loving up your passionate speech about money or whatever? ascendance posted:To which I'm going to add, literally reshaping the world is what makes RPGs awesome. Oh, well okay then
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Sep 20, 2014 05:11
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ascendance posted:also, 5e is the level of complexity I'm willing to work with. So you're willing to work with the complexity of trying to juggle balance between hugely disparate party members, which gets even worse with your focus on out of combat ideas that render irrelevant some classes way more than others, dealing with mages who can literally reshape reality, trying to come up with endless judgment calls where Mearls forgot a rule or seven and chalked it up to the DM's responsibility, and squeezing political drama into a system with a vestigial at best social conflict resolution system. But a far more streamlined and easy to manipulate system with powers is where you draw the line. I don't get it.
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Sep 20, 2014 05:15
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Frankly, if someone had put out a computer game where you could optimize and take a 4e D&D party through 1 to 30 levels worth of procedurally generated encounters with a loose framing story, I'd still be playing 4e. But i definitely felt like i attended some LFR sessions which were 20 minutes of fun in 4 hours.
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Sep 20, 2014 05:17
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ascendance posted:This is true. I should really be running this in OpenQuest, except trying to mash in the framework of D&D 5 has given me lots of ideas. Or ACKS, which is entirely about simulating fantasy economies. Why are you complaining about D&D not fitting this idea for a campaign that doesn't match D&D at all? You are literally the problem. Also an idiot.
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Sep 20, 2014 05:19
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Honestly I cannot imagine what the appeal of LFR is. Everything you've talked about re: having an impact on the world is immediately undone by playing your RPGs in a format specifically engineered for drop-in-drop-out play. No poo poo LFR is boring, that seems more like a problem with the format then the game though.
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Sep 20, 2014 05:21
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Arivia posted:Or ACKS, which is entirely about simulating fantasy economies. Why are you complaining about D&D not fitting this idea for a campaign that doesn't match D&D at all? You are literally the problem. Also an idiot. Edit: also, I dont like actual OSR games.
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Sep 20, 2014 05:24
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I'm not sure how I'm the idiot where I'm pretty happy with my choice to run my really, not particularly traditional D&D game in 5e. To the point where I've written up something like 12 pages of assorted background and additional character generation information. I guess I'm obviously having too much badwrongfun. I do thank you guys for the ACKS suggestion, though. I needed to churn put a bunch of procedurally generated neighbouring sandjaks.
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Sep 20, 2014 05:32
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Because you are whining about D&D not fitting your special snowflake game when you are being a special snowflake. You are so dull it's blinding.
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Sep 20, 2014 05:37
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ascendance posted:But that ends up being focus of the game. And right now, I want to play a game where the central focus is on the political economy of a Gilded Age Ottoman empire, undergoing severe disruption due to the accumulation of capital. Then why the gently caress are you playing D&D? Why not play a game that has actual mechanics associated with both political and capital economies? Why hammer these square pegs into round holes they were never intended to fit?
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Sep 20, 2014 05:39
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Bassetking posted:Then why the gently caress are you playing D&D? Why not play a game that has actual mechanics associated with both political and capital economies? Why hammer these square pegs into round holes they were never intended to fit? Why cant I play D&D however I want? And umm, I'd be interested in hearing about some of these alleged games with amazing, well thought out economic systems.
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Sep 20, 2014 05:44
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ascendance posted:Why cant I play D&D however I want? And umm, I'd be interested in hearing about some of these alleged games with amazing, well thought out economic systems. holy poo poo we JUST told you. ACKS. REIGN. gently caress off. Don't use your idiot ideas as criticisms of what D&D isn't or should be.
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Sep 20, 2014 05:56
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ascendance posted:Why cant I play D&D however I want? Because it doesn't let you and it never will The game you want to play is not D&D, and never will be, sorry
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Sep 20, 2014 06:01
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ascendance posted:To which I'm going to add, literally reshaping the world is what makes RPGs awesome. This is true and it's why 4e didn't gate that ability behind spells which are only available to a few classes and instead required actual player creativity to do it. EDIT: Also 4e doesn't have halflings that look like they are made of potato.
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Sep 20, 2014 06:01
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S.J. posted:Because it doesn't let you and it never will It's like voluntarily giving yourself Stockholm Syndrome, complete with loving d20s more than they're worth.
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Sep 20, 2014 06:04
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Arivia posted:It's like voluntarily giving yourself Stockholm Syndrome, complete with loving d20s more than they're worth. I have this conversation (well, these sorts of conversations) in person way too often. Every version of D&D ever made and that will ever be made has a particular way that it is made to be played, even when the designers don't realize what they're making or how! And that's okay! But the sooner we stop pretending like D&D is capable of being every kind of RPG the better! 4e was a good step on that path but nooooooooooo, can't have realistic expectations and design goals in my verisimilitudinous (rounded to the nearest 5%) simulation engine! e: Seriously, dude, ascendance: go take your 12 pages of background and design documents and turn them into a FATE, Dungeon World, or hell even a 13th Age campaign where each of the different icons are various forms of currency, economic hegemony, business-states, etc, because any of those games will do what you want to do better than any version of D&D S.J. fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Sep 20, 2014 |
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Sep 20, 2014 06:09
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Woah... My 4E FR campaign (that started at release) has been solely dealing with the party rebuilding the political, social and economic fabric of Impiltur, which faired poorly in the transition to 4E. I was unaware that all this time my group had been cheating, by not playing within the non-existent mechanical constraints that 4E system (and every other edition of the game) had placed upon us. I will be having stern words with my DM tomorrow. Stern words indeed. Letting us reshape the world through the application of a 4E game... The nerve. Or you have brain damage, I dunno. 3.x did cause a lot of it.
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Sep 20, 2014 06:12
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You don't understand. The system your using has some flaws (that anyone actually playing would find very minor and easy to work with) and isn't specifically designed for what you're doing, so you can't use it to do anything and it sucks! And you're an rear end in a top hat for wishing they had a little more support for social situations! They don't tell you to throw out the baby with the bath water for no reason, after all! I am angry about people who use the word verisimilitude!
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Sep 20, 2014 06:19
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Dairy Power posted:You don't understand. The system your using has some flaws (that anyone actually playing would find very minor and easy to work with) and isn't specifically designed for what you're doing, so you can't use it to do anything and it sucks! And you're an rear end in a top hat for wishing they had a little more support for social situations! They don't tell you to throw out the baby with the bath water for no reason, after all! I am angry about people who use the word verisimilitude! It's mostly that when you find yourself spending more time fighting against a system than working with it, you may have a system that isn't a good fit for what you want to run. I've run into this while DMing, this happens! It happens especially often with 3.5, and 5e looks to have basically similar problems.
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Sep 20, 2014 06:23
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Dairy Power posted:You don't understand. The system your using has some flaws (that anyone actually playing would find very minor and easy to work with) and isn't specifically designed for what you're doing, so you can't use it to do anything and it sucks! And you're an rear end in a top hat for wishing they had a little more support for social situations! They don't tell you to throw out the baby with the bath water for no reason, after all! I am angry about people who use the word verisimilitude! My cleric also roleplays as the Medic from Team Fortress 2 while using life stream, so you don't know the half of it.
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Sep 20, 2014 06:28
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Night10194 posted:It's mostly that when you find yourself spending more time fighting against a system than working with it, you may have a system that isn't a good fit for what you want to run. I've run into this while DMing, this happens! It happens especially often with 3.5, and 5e looks to have basically similar problems. I completely agree, but it seems pretty clear that the guy likes D&D overall and just has a few issues he's trying to work around, rather than fighting the system more often than not. ocrumsprug posted:My cleric also roleplays as the Medic from Team Fortress 2 while using life stream, so you don't know the half of it. I'm sorry man, but now you've even reached my limit of badwrongfun. Despicable! 
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Sep 20, 2014 06:33
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Well, group playing the Hoard of the Dragon Queen just finished up our first session. DM had a couple of houserules, simple stuff like short rests not being a bloody hour and everyone starts with one feat. We were down a man so it was just three of us, Druid, Warlock and Paladin. We had a bunch of tense moments, me and the warlock almost went down a couple of times, kobalds and there stupid slings! Paladin was a rock though, he chose Heavy Armor Master for his feat and that 3 DR really kept his rear end out of the fire. We made it to the keep and through the underground area before we called it for the night. That was a crazy fight in and of itself since the paladin decided that letting me lockpick the door wasn't as fun as crushing it with his 20str and alerting a bunch of mobs to our presence! Still, even with the near deaths it was a ton of fun and I can't wait to play again next week. Especially since we leveled and I get to go bear mode on some suckers! And we'll have our full party so hopefully things won't be so crazy. Cainer fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Sep 20, 2014 |
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Sep 20, 2014 06:44
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Playing an economic/social based game using D&D is like using a wrench as a hammer. You can do it, and it sort of works, but it's totally not what it's designed for and there are actual hammers out there you could use instead. D&D is and always has been based on a combat-focused dungeon crawler, and the further you get away from that the less well it works.
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Sep 20, 2014 07:36
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Yeah, but if you can only take one with you and you've got a loose nut and some hammering to do, then I'd rather take a wrench over a hammer. Harder to screw the nut than beat the nail, ya know.
Dairy Power fucked around with this message at 07:47 on Sep 20, 2014 |
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Sep 20, 2014 07:40
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And that's where the analogy falls apart 
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Sep 20, 2014 07:45
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Dairy Power posted:Yeah, but if you can only take one with you I think I've identified the crux of the problem here.
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Sep 20, 2014 07:50
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Nonono it works. You enjoy D&D (the wrench) for being D&D, with it's combat, classes, and whatnot (the nut), but you'd also like get some sweet nail banging (the diplomacy and political intrigue) in there as well. Sure, a hammer (ACKS) would pound that nail better, but it'd leave the nut unsatisfied. Perfectly clear. Edit: Kai Tave posted:I think I've identified the crux of the problem here. Wait, are you saying to make a hammerwrench or?
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Sep 20, 2014 07:52
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This whole wrench and hammer metaphor implies that there are things 5e can do that other systems don't already do better. I think the tool you're thinking of is not a wrench, it is a brick. Use a system for what it is designed for and it will treat you well. Use a system for something other than what it is designed for and it will not treat you as well. Is this "I can only use one system for everything" thought common? Looking to the future, are we looking at another situation where a d20-based system eventually attempts to cover literally every single genre possible? What are our chances of Urban Arcana: Revengeance? I'm not sure how I feel about that.
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Sep 20, 2014 08:08
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EscortMission posted:Is this "I can only use one system for everything" thought common? I mean, I only use one system for a single campaign. Anything else seems to be rather cumbersome. Dairy Power fucked around with this message at 08:47 on Sep 20, 2014 |
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Sep 20, 2014 08:20
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EscortMission posted:Is this "I can only use one system for everything" thought common? People have been trying to twist D&D into knots since D&D existed. Even actual for-real D&D writers have done this, for example Planescape, a campaign setting inspired by D&D's nine-point alignment that's almost poetically unsuited to actually being played using D&D's rules which care far more about killing things with swords than they do political intrigue or the power of personal belief. Inertia is a hell of a thing. A lot of groups play D&D and seem to only ever want to play D&D, period. Want to run something else? Better find a way to cram it into a d20 framework then. Anyway the point is that Next is no better at letting you change the world, play out your game of Byzantium politics, or creating a stirring epic tale for all time than any other given edition of D&D. It offers nothing new, innovative, or exciting on that front which leaves it to stand on the merits of its D&Dness which also aren't that good. Other D&Ds do D&D better than Next, so even if your criteria is "must play D&D no matter what" you still have other, better options at your disposal. Even if every other RPG but D&D vanished tomorrow Next would still be in competition with like five or six other games.
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Sep 20, 2014 08:20
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Kai Tave posted:People have been trying to twist D&D into knots since D&D existed. Even actual for-real D&D writers have done this, for example Planescape, a campaign setting inspired by D&D's nine-point alignment that's almost poetically unsuited to actually being played using D&D's rules which care far more about killing things with swords than they do political intrigue or the power of personal belief. Ravenloft comes to mind when talking about bafflingly unfitting material. Yes this medieval power fantasy game definitely could use a setting based around helplessness. There are just so much D&D as a tradition does poorly that its hard to not look for alternatives. I don't think there's a single edition that abstracts a political debate as anything more than an adjusted pass or fail charisma roll. Its just not something you can ask of D&D as a tradition, let alone a single system. Its a game about professional mercenaries going into dangerous places, avoiding security systems, and exterminating the guardians within to get at wealth beyond human imagining. ...And now I want to find that old Leverage hack for dungeon crawling, great.
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Sep 20, 2014 08:48
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I wonder if Next could have worked as Salvage Edition, going back and pulling things players enjoyed from each edition in a meaningful way. Ie: fighters fight like 4e dudes, get followers like 2e champs. Then you dip into FATE or 13A for the skills and world building. Oh poo poo, I just pitched a game that unites the editions and isn't mechanically destined to suck. If D&D players really have the kind of brain damage that only lets them D&D, then use the best D&D for the job. It's a shame they had such an axe to grind against 4e. The Essentials line was proof-of-concept that ideas from previous editions could be ported to 4th. They looked barebones next to it. But it had a clean core system, and could easily accommodate previous concepts. It didn't happen because the people who could have done it were too busy screeching about Real D&D, didn't have a blessed clue about 4e, and were too busy burning the books to read them.
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Sep 20, 2014 10:51
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Every time I talk about D&D literally damaging people I get crazy looks. This thread is going to be my loving thesis statement. Props to ascendance who claimed 4e Epic Destinies were all just combat modifiers, got proven wrong, had it pointed out that 5e is literally exactly what they complained about, and then stated their own complaint doesn't count when directed at 5e.
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Sep 20, 2014 10:58
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Dairy Power posted:I mean, I only use one system for a single campaign. Anything else seems to be rather cumbersome. I asked you a few questions last page and pointed out that Avengers don't have an at-will with a teleport, which is one of the things you've said you have a problem with. It would be cool if you could please answer them.
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Sep 20, 2014 11:13
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Right. Because there is one exceptional Epic Destiny about letting you kill poo poo, and let you steal something intangible from them, it means Epic Destinies are really chock full of awesome epic powers. holy poo poo, go read Exalted sometime for some actual epic powers.
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Sep 20, 2014 12:25
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Dairy Power posted:Nonono it works. You enjoy D&D (the wrench) for being D&D, with it's combat, classes, and whatnot (the nut), but you'd also like get some sweet nail banging (the diplomacy and political intrigue) in there as well. Sure, a hammer (ACKS) would pound that nail better, but it'd leave the nut unsatisfied. Perfectly clear. Totally making a hammerwrench here. No, seriously, porting over all the domain management and enchanting rules.
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Sep 20, 2014 12:28
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I can sort of understand wanting to use D&D for whatever fantasy scenario you can imagine in terms of opportunity cost: most players are already familiar with D&D, so if you say "Hey, I want to run a Game of Thrones style D&D campaign" then people at the very least will already know the system and you won't have to learn an entirely new system to run or play that game with. However, there's an even greater cost in doing so, because you're using a system ill suited to that style of game. If you want to play a Game of Thrones type of game, there are a number of systems out there that support that style of play better than D&D, and by insisting on running it with D&D you're bringing in a lot of D&D baggage that doesn't chime with that style of play. When I was still more active with my silly D&D blog I'd often get people sending me questions in my askbox to the effect of "Hey, I'd like to run something more like Game of Thrones in D&D, which supplements would you recommend?" and my default answer was "I'd actually recommend you look into systems besides D&D, because all editions of D&D are absolute poo poo for modeling courtly intrigue and social scheming." I'd often recommend Reign and Burning Wheel, but with Vincent Baker's Dark Ages coming up that might also start popping up in my recommendations. Thing is, D&D is very much it's own genre of fantasy (or more like a collection of different genres, because since 2e the assumed genre of D&D has moved away from murderhoboing towards big world-changing events and huge stories) and it's really terrible at emulating genres beyond its own. That's not a bad thing. Treating D&D as a universal fantasy gaming system when it's got so much genre baggage of its own is terrible though.
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Sep 20, 2014 12:40
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I want to run D&D because i am having a poo poo ton of fun deconstructing the implicit assumptions in D&D.
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Sep 20, 2014 12:46
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ascendance posted:I want to run D&D because i am having a poo poo ton of fun deconstructing the implicit assumptions in D&D. Great, go whine somewhere else. No one here gives a gently caress about your masturbation session. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Sep 20, 2014 12:55
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Arivia posted:Great, go whine somewhere else. No one here gives a gently caress about your masturbation session. I'm not even whining about anything other than how people are just showing up in this thread to poo poo on 5e.
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Sep 20, 2014 13:00
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ascendance posted:I'm not even whining about anything other than how people are just showing up in this thread to poo poo on 5e. "It's not bad once you figure out which rules you have to ignore" is not much of a defense, and it's the best anybody here can come up with. I just wonder why they keep at it so desperately. It's okay to admit that D&D is lovely now. That's not a betrayal of your childhood self or whatever.
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