jtrek comments on The monopoly in the minds

[–] jtrek@startrek.website 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

However, rolling a D20 is a lot of fun, which makes me not want to replace it with something like 3d6.

Fun is subjective, but I personally really enjoy rolling a big dice pool. 4 fire firearms, 3 for dex, 2 for equipment bonus, 4 for the fate blessing, 4 for the gun being magically perfected, 3 for aiming, that's approximately Get Fucked dice to throw on the table.

it has a lot of assumptions deeply baked into the rules. You need the adventuring day, to rewrite all the powers, or sharply limit party composition, or it falls apart.

The adventuring day is a big one. TBH I’ve never seen a ttrpg without it.

Any whitewolf rpg. Fate. Gurps. Don't rest your head. Unknown armies. Countless indie RPGs. Many games that aren't close relatives of D&D don't have a central model of "you have a limited amount of resources to get through the day".

I recently started a game of Vampire: The Requiem. One of the guys had only played D&D before, and it kind of blew his mind that he can just do his iconic stuff whenever he wants. He was going to punch a bouncer and we were like "Why don't you just use your mesmerize?", and he was like "I forgot I don't have to save that"

There are massive amounts of fan content for DnD out there and easy to find, if you don’t want to write your own. There are whole ttrpgs that are practically modded DnD but tweaked for a specific setting.

You can also use an actual generic system like Fate or GURPS. Both of those have a ton of fan content as well. This is not a unique strength of D&D.

Hard disagree on social conflict. DnD is full of mechanics for that.

Please share. From what I recall, the system is limited to something like "Roll persuasion vs a DC, and that determines how big of a favor they'll do for you", or similar for intimidation.

Imagine a scenario where the players encounter a group of goons blocking the road. If they want to get in a fight, D&D has a ton of rules. Movement, to-hit and damage, armor, saves. If they want to talk through it, the rules are comparably thread-bare. There's no social HP.

Other systems give you more. I'm pretty sure a lot of PbtA games have social moves. There's also Monster Hearts, which I never played because you need a particular kind of group for that one.

Side note: because of how D&D's stats work, you end up with a lot of characters are mechanically bad at socializing, or underperform at their prescribed roles. You have to work against the system to get some concepts. The whole idea of "multiple ability dependent" is a D&D-ism that's just not in every system. If you want to play a wise cracking dashing axe-man in Fate, for example, you can just do that. You don't need to worry about how you can get both strength and charisma, nor about if you can just reflavor Hexblade because you don't really want the rest of Warlock.

Meta game currency is something DMs usually add in from my experience, although DnD does have inspiration points as a kinda weak form. Succeed at a cost is something I usually see DMs add in, but I have seen other ttrpgs with that more baked into the rules.

Inspiration is kind of store-brand fate points, yes. You can easily add more to it, as well as bring succeed-at-a-cost into D&D. But the argument is more about how D&D provides little.

You pick from a list. If you want to play a game about creating your own spells, it’s going to provide little guidance. Yeah that’s fair. If you have an example of a game with a good “make your own spells” system I’m curious.

Mage: The Awakening (2e) is the crunchy one that I know. The book provides a ton of examples, but even those are flexible. You add or lose dice based on adjusting the spell details, and potentially create a pool of fuck-up dice in exchange for more dramatic changes.

Unknown Armies is an old classic that has "random magick" as a thing any duke can pull off.

Fate is a generic system, so it really depends on which splatbook you're using, or what your table decides on. One game I ran had a "choose one: slow, dangerous, expensive" model for magic. The player can't picking "dangerous" and things got really exciting.

Also, most of the spells are about combat, with a handful about movement. Hard, hard disagree there. Off the top of my head: prestidigitation, minor illusion, friends, zone of truth, tiny hut, message, command, good berry, that one that lets you ask god a question…

I was curious so I'm looking at a spell list on a dnd wiki. A majority of spells are for combat, followed by spells that also have exploration uses (eg: fly, alarm), and then there's everything else. But you can't deny that a large chunk of the spells are explicitly about doing damage, or helping you do damage.

I spent too long on this post. Hopefully it was worth it! "People should play more RPGs, even if just to steal stuff to port into D&D" is one of my bugbears.

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[–] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago (1 child)

Thanks for the recs, I do plan to look into them, but I also want to point out the main reason I stick to using DnD and ttrpgs that are very similar (e.g. pathfinder) as a framework is it lets your group get right into the game instead of spending a lot of time getting used to an unfamiliar system.

Imagine a scenario where the players encounter a group of goons blocking the road. If they want to get in a fight, D&D has a ton of rules. Movement, to-hit and damage, armor, saves. If they want to talk through it, the rules are comparably thread-bare. There's no social HP.

This would be mostly RP’d discussion, punctuated with rolls to represent luck and stats to represent how the character and player might differ.

It would be something like the player asking the goons to move, the goons saying no, the player asking why, the goons giving some answer, the player rolling insight and then deciding a follow up question, probably ending with a persuasion or intimidation check with a DC dependent on how well the rest of the discussion went, with the possibility for other shenanigans to influence as well (like maybe the party mage used minor illusion to fake a badge to pretend to be cops).

I honestly don’t think something like “social HP” would be better than RP and shenanigans, but idk, I would be curious to try.

Side note: because of how D&D's stats work, you end up with a lot of characters are mechanically bad at socializing, or underperform at their prescribed roles.

This is definitely a weakness of DnD. It helps if your party is more into the RP aspects than absolutely optimizing their characters for combat. Another thing I’ve done as DM is to give players a choice, like jumping across a gap could be acrobatics or athletics, so they can use the stats they are good at.

I was curious so I'm looking at a spell list on a dnd wiki. A majority of spells are for combat, followed by spells that also have exploration uses (eg: fly, alarm), and then there's everything else.

I think the issue with combat oriented spells is you have spells at each level that do “vaguely this level’s worth of damage” for every damage type so you get a nice progression curve. Out-of-combat spells are not so easily quantifiable. What is the level 4 version of minor illusion? (There are some answers to that tbh). There also are damaging spells that explicitly have non-combat purposes (one of the main ones I can think of is Phantasmal Force), as well as ones that may not explicitly say so but no DM would deny, like using fire bolt to light something on fire at a distance.

Also I’m not sure what you have against exploration and movement type spells because those are very useful in an intrigue heavy campaign.

Anyway, DnD does have a lot of combat mechanics, but it has plenty of non-combat mechanics too. The combat is more regimented and structured, but I don’t see that as a weakness, just the difference between combat and intrigue.

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[–] jtrek@startrek.website 2 points 1 day ago

I also want to point out the main reason I stick to using DnD and ttrpgs that are very similar (e.g. pathfinder) as a framework is it lets your group get right into the game instead of spending a lot of time getting used to an unfamiliar system.

That does have some value, but sunk cost is not always a great justification. Also, a lot of systems are way easier to learn than DND. I think people think it's going to be as hard as memorizing all the DND jank - stat to bonus mappings, attack bonus by level, spell slots, a hundred different unique spells - but many systems aren't like that. (Quick, can you Sacred Flame and object? Smite with a thrown spear?)

I've been playing Vampire and the guy that's only played DND before has had no trouble picking up the rules. Fate is maybe easier, though more creatively demanding. Lot of tyranny of the blank page potential there.

It would be something like the player asking the goons to move, the goons saying no, the player asking why, the goons giving some answer, the player rolling insight and then deciding a follow up question, probably ending with a persuasion or intimidation check with a DC dependent on how well the rest of the discussion went, with the possibility for other shenanigans to influence as well (like maybe the party mage used minor illusion to fake a badge to pretend to be cops).

That's how DND would typically play it out, but some things worth noting.

One, where armor class, saves, and HP are very codified, the DC for persuasion or intimidation is very loosey-goosey in DND.

Fate, by contrast, has a stress track (like hit points) for physical and mental harm. So when your character pulls a knife and says "I'm gonna cut your fingers off one at a time and make you eat them", and you roll, there's mechanical oomph to it. You roll +7, and they're either out of the scene of suffering a consequence. DND is just DM whims.

I honestly don’t think something like “social HP” would be better than RP and shenanigans, but idk, I would be curious to try.

I like how Fate does it. You're not limited so much by your personal ability to act and the GM's mode. You roll high on Provoke and it mechanically hits.

Oh, another subsystem from Fate I'd recommend importing: Concede. Solves all those "omg I wiped the party" problems.

I think the issue with combat oriented spells is you have spells at each level that do “vaguely this level’s worth of damage” for every damage type so you get a nice progression curve.

This is almost certainly a root cause. I think you could build a neat system where you don't have two dozen variations of "do damage" spells, but you rather have rules for how much damage and other effects can go into a spell slot. Which is kind of how Mage works, actually.

But then casters would be having all sorts of fun and fighters would be left out again. Which, come to think of it, is a common problem in DND.

Also I’m not sure what you have against exploration and movement type spells because those are very useful in an intrigue heavy campaign.

Nothing against them. I just meant the majority of spells are combat.

Anyway, DnD does have a lot of combat mechanics, but it has plenty of non-combat mechanics too. The combat is more regimented and structured, but I don’t see that as a weakness, just the difference between combat and intrigue.

And sometimes that's fine. But it's not the only way for a game to be. If your game has little physical conflict and a lot of social conflict, DND is probably the wrong engine. Be like wearing a winter jacket on a summer beach trip.

Anyway. Like I said this is one of my bugbears so I can go on. Thanks for reading

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