8 ms·

Oh yeah, I realise that my opinion is far from universally valid and that I both don’t play much tabletop roleplaying and came to it from an improv background w

Oh yeah, I realise that my opinion is far from universally valid and that I both don’t play much tabletop roleplaying and came to it from an improv background which means I’m not necessarily looking for the same things that other players are. Still I’m firmly in the camp of those thinking D&D focus a lot of attention to the insanely boring and uninteresting part of role playing - aka how a sword interacts with a magic shield in excruciatingly tedious mathematical details - and very little attention to what’s actually fun which is, well, playing a role. I think its rules, its prevalence and the fact it’s mostly played in somewhat bland heroic fantasy settings have been a major turndown for a lot of people who would actually enjoy roleplaying so in a way I guess I should celebrate anything making it less popular.

dragontamer 4y ago
As a lot of my friends like to say, the two players are roleplayers and rollplayers. Roleplayers are here for the improv / acting. Rollplayers are here for the combat. D&D absolutely is combat focused. ----------- Lets take an example: When a Wizard casts Disintegrate, and a friendly Druid casts "Wall of Stone" to block it, what should happen? Are you interested in debating / improvising the result? Do you want it to be defined? Improv players want this to be ill-defined. They want to make something up, depending on the current situation / feel of the game. If its a big boss fight and the Wizard is the evil big bad guy, maybe the Disintegrate goes through and hits the players. If its just some mook, maybe its a "weaker disintegrate" and gets blocked by the stone wall. ---------- This is terrible for combat / tacticians. A tactician wants to know that Disintegrate _always_ makes exactly a "one 10-foot cube" hole in the stone structure (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/disintegrate.htm https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/disintegrate.htm), and always counters-and-dispels Force effects. Because the tactics + interactions have been agreed upon ahead of time, it means that the tactics of the game are focused. Its a battle closer to chess, or perhaps war-simulators / war-gaming, where you need to know what interacts with what, and how, to proceed. You can't just make stuff up in a war-simulator. They need to have pre-defined actions. Knowing that this level 5 spell (Wall of Stone) can effectively counter a level 6 Disintegrate is an oddity in the hierarchy of magic (usually, you need an equal, or higher-level spell to counter other magic). But taking advantage of resource-management (they spend level 6 spell, you spend level 5 spell, so you have more resources left over afterwards) is just part of the game.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  To give you an idea of how wide the gap is, my issue is not that I want the interaction to be ill-defined. I never ever want to have to think about the interactions between named spells in a fight. That’s a narratively uninteresting part of the situation. If there is to be a fight between people with fantastical powers, I want the rules to solve the thing quickly without unnecessary fuss so we can get back to what matters. Your two last paragraphs are just tedium from my point of view which is why I dislike D&D so much I guess.
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    > I never ever want to have to think about the interactions between named spells in a fight. Alas, that's not how games work. Someone casts "Insanity", can it be removed with Dispel Magic? What about Antimagic Field? What happens if you kill the person, then resurrect them, do they come back with the insanity effect? The story must go on. You either decide that you want it ill specified (ie: whoever improvs the best gets the decision), or you have a rulebook that carefully lays out the interactions. You don't have to know the interactions. Simply knowledge that millions of other players have come across this game, and have likely already come across this situation and have analyzed the rules + made a decision is enough. No person wants to memorize rulebooks. But we dungeon masters do so to ensure fairness in our decisions. If someone doesn't like the ruling, i can always point out the rulebook (or if not the rules, then an online discussion of a similar situation) that will settle the debate. ----------- Because if you know a thing about players, they will try everything to "Just for flavor, have that +5 Magic Sword on their Gorilla because its awesome" (when they really just want to roll more damage than everyone else in the party). If I let the Druid effectively have twice the magic items of everyone and letting his pet-gorilla play a Fighter, then everyone else loses (because there's no way they can keep up with the damage output of a Gorilla using weapons locked to martial class). Martial weapons are locked to martial classes for a reason: those classes lose spellcasting but gain more damage to gain another role (the damage-dealing role) to play in this game. In effect: the 1d8 fists of a Gorilla are there and balanced against the needs of everyone else. The Druid + Pet-Gorilla already play with two turns per... turn. They're already considered quite strong in the game, I as the dungeon master, need to know where "too much damage" starts to seep in and where "Improv rulebreaking" can start making the Druid stupidly overpowered. ---------- I've played with lots of "Improv" people. Even with their best interests at heart, the game innately becomes a "Lemme bullshit my own powers to be better than everyone else's, so that I'm the star of this show". Maybe you don't do it, but *someone* in the group always tries to do this. You need to cut them down and restrict them so that their power level remains roughly on the same level as everyone else in the party. Knowing the limitations of spells, as well as the limitations of weapons, is a good starting point to ensuring fairness at the table. ------ Going back to the top. Insanity is 7th level and is explicitly stated that only 7th level spells and above (like Limited Wish) can remove it. Trying to bullshit a 3rd level spell (Dispel Magic) into removing Insanity means that the Wizards / Sorcerers become overpowered, relative to the abilities of everyone else. You have to make them spend a 7th level slot to heal this particular curse.
the_af 4y ago
I think there's a third position, the one I hold: I've zero interest in LARP'ing or "acting" my role, but also zero interest in crunchy stats-heavy combat. I prefer light adventures with fast paced combat where not every fart is regulated by a chart. A Frostgrave level of complexity is about right for me; or Risus. I do find narrative experimental games such as Trophy Dark appealing, but they may require too much from players.

dragontamer 4y ago

As a lot of my friends like to say, the two players are roleplayers and rollplayers. Roleplayers are here for the improv / acting. Rollplayers are here for the combat. D&D absolutely is combat focused. ----------- Lets take an example: When a Wizard casts Disintegrate, and a friendly Druid casts "Wall of Stone" to block it, what should happen? Are you interested in debating / improvising the result? Do you want it to be defined? Improv players want this to be ill-defined. They want to make something up, depending on the current situation / feel of the game. If its a big boss fight and the Wizard is the evil big bad guy, maybe the Disintegrate goes through and hits the players. If its just some mook, maybe its a "weaker disintegrate" and gets blocked by the stone wall. ---------- This is terrible for combat / tacticians. A tactician wants to know that Disintegrate _always_ makes exactly a "one 10-foot cube" hole in the stone structure (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/disintegrate.htm https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/disintegrate.htm), and always counters-and-dispels Force effects. Because the tactics + interactions have been agreed upon ahead of time, it means that the tactics of the game are focused. Its a battle closer to chess, or perhaps war-simulators / war-gaming, where you need to know what interacts with what, and how, to proceed. You can't just make stuff up in a war-simulator. They need to have pre-defined actions. Knowing that this level 5 spell (Wall of Stone) can effectively counter a level 6 Disintegrate is an oddity in the hierarchy of magic (usually, you need an equal, or higher-level spell to counter other magic). But taking advantage of resource-management (they spend level 6 spell, you spend level 5 spell, so you have more resources left over afterwards) is just part of the game.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago
To give you an idea of how wide the gap is, my issue is not that I want the interaction to be ill-defined. I never ever want to have to think about the interactions between named spells in a fight. That’s a narratively uninteresting part of the situation. If there is to be a fight between people with fantastical powers, I want the rules to solve the thing quickly without unnecessary fuss so we can get back to what matters. Your two last paragraphs are just tedium from my point of view which is why I dislike D&D so much I guess.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  > I never ever want to have to think about the interactions between named spells in a fight. Alas, that's not how games work. Someone casts "Insanity", can it be removed with Dispel Magic? What about Antimagic Field? What happens if you kill the person, then resurrect them, do they come back with the insanity effect? The story must go on. You either decide that you want it ill specified (ie: whoever improvs the best gets the decision), or you have a rulebook that carefully lays out the interactions. You don't have to know the interactions. Simply knowledge that millions of other players have come across this game, and have likely already come across this situation and have analyzed the rules + made a decision is enough. No person wants to memorize rulebooks. But we dungeon masters do so to ensure fairness in our decisions. If someone doesn't like the ruling, i can always point out the rulebook (or if not the rules, then an online discussion of a similar situation) that will settle the debate. ----------- Because if you know a thing about players, they will try everything to "Just for flavor, have that +5 Magic Sword on their Gorilla because its awesome" (when they really just want to roll more damage than everyone else in the party). If I let the Druid effectively have twice the magic items of everyone and letting his pet-gorilla play a Fighter, then everyone else loses (because there's no way they can keep up with the damage output of a Gorilla using weapons locked to martial class). Martial weapons are locked to martial classes for a reason: those classes lose spellcasting but gain more damage to gain another role (the damage-dealing role) to play in this game. In effect: the 1d8 fists of a Gorilla are there and balanced against the needs of everyone else. The Druid + Pet-Gorilla already play with two turns per... turn. They're already considered quite strong in the game, I as the dungeon master, need to know where "too much damage" starts to seep in and where "Improv rulebreaking" can start making the Druid stupidly overpowered. ---------- I've played with lots of "Improv" people. Even with their best interests at heart, the game innately becomes a "Lemme bullshit my own powers to be better than everyone else's, so that I'm the star of this show". Maybe you don't do it, but *someone* in the group always tries to do this. You need to cut them down and restrict them so that their power level remains roughly on the same level as everyone else in the party. Knowing the limitations of spells, as well as the limitations of weapons, is a good starting point to ensuring fairness at the table. ------ Going back to the top. Insanity is 7th level and is explicitly stated that only 7th level spells and above (like Limited Wish) can remove it. Trying to bullshit a 3rd level spell (Dispel Magic) into removing Insanity means that the Wizards / Sorcerers become overpowered, relative to the abilities of everyone else. You have to make them spend a 7th level slot to heal this particular curse.

the_af 4y ago

I think there's a third position, the one I hold: I've zero interest in LARP'ing or "acting" my role, but also zero interest in crunchy stats-heavy combat. I prefer light adventures with fast paced combat where not every fart is regulated by a chart. A Frostgrave level of complexity is about right for me; or Risus. I do find narrative experimental games such as Trophy Dark appealing, but they may require too much from players.