What an horrendous argument and way to play the game to begin with. Why ? Because now I could play a character who is horrendous at something but because, me the player, am smart about it suddenly a character who is supposed to be a completely goof at the skill of your choice suddenly become competent. That is bad roleplay and there is no way around that qualification. We always abstract to some extent in a roleplaying game even when it is what you want to develop the most. Even if you make your game about creating a community and managing it you're not going to actually play every single interaction in details and even if you were to try to do that you're never going to reach the same depth as the real situation so, whether you like it or not, you did abstract it. As such the abstraction argument is moot at best and disingenuous at worst in the usage made there. The mechanics of the game are there to inform you on your options and while creativity is always welcome it is not always present nor should it be a requirement to play your game to begin with. As such if you want your game to be about something you NEED mechanics about it. Now if you make your mechanic as simple as "roll D + skill and be done with it" that's on you, the designer, for over simplifying the very thing you wanted to be explored. The more complex and precise your rules on something is the more your system (and your game) should be about that something. Now I am going to use the abstraction argument PROPERLY : If you do not want let's say combat to be a focus of your game then what you want is for combat to be abstracted as much as possible Meaning that you want to reduce everything about it to it's bare minimum(be it depth, dice rolls, time needed etc...) . Meaning that you, PRECISELY, do NOT have any combat mechanics you just throw a basic skill check and are done with it. So, does using a system having heavy combat mechanics in it serves that purpose ? NOT AT ALL. The rules you go by, dm's influence on those being accounted for, condition everything you do in the game period. There is no point having a complex set of rules on something if you want it to be secondary or absent of your games.

Well maybe ( im a game designer ) i get that when you leave voids in the ttrpg is cool so you to think about what you want and how you want certain things to be. But, as a designer i strongly disagree that the point of a game is in what is not in the game that makes no sense. If you want to leave the void write it in the book. "Look these _____ rules are here so you dont have to come up with a ruling for it, feel free to do _____ that we left it blank so you do make you own ruling. Here is a chapter of the book of tips and examples for you to look at". I know that self made ruling can be really cool and entertaining but striping the game from the core of the game in that way makes really hard for new players to hop in and play. In my eyes its too much responsability for a new GM and a GM ingeneral to spect to know what of these voids its the correct one. Well 5e doesnt have a detaile system for managing crops and bases is this a design void for us to fill up or just that dnd its simply not about managing crops and bases...

Big agree, I also think with lots of people's transition to d&d coming over from videogames. A lot of players are really used to *glowing signposts* instead of asking good questions and attempting to explore. Some of my players are like that atm and its a hard habit to break them out of.

A lot of the RPG community treats all RPGs just that way. The whole "well designed" meme is based on the assumption that if a mechanic doesn't exist, it's not what the game is 'about'.

I think people's pushback more comes from the legitimate problem that this "system doesn't matter" question begs a bunch of other unanswered questions, like "If the system doesn't really MATTER in that way, why not go with something lighter?" or "Why not go with something indie?" or, more directly: "Why choose 5e at all if this isn't all about what 5e DOES?" And we're left to assume that basically the answer is "Because it's what would make the show most popular," in which case we all sorta wish he would just come out and say THAT and stop pretending this is a philosophical question, when really it's just a matter of business-based pragmitism.

​@@Jack-gs6sdyeah. It's a lot of (poorly-formed) sophistry to explain away this base assumption. At its heart, it sidesteps the question entirely. Arguments about stoves would be more apt if he just admitted that it was about the stove's brand, not it's function.

I tried to do a fully narrative session once and results were mixed. Some of my players excelled at narrating combat and making it seem like a "fair" altercation while others quickly fell into the pittraps of powergaming and godmodding. As you would expect it was the narrative-focussed players that leaned into the storytelling of combat, what it means for their character, how they come out of it (one player even getting a grave wound because his character was careless about an enemy attack), while the more mechanically-focussed players wanted to beat the enemies as quickly and cleanly as possible. After I told them they were effectively cheating themselves out of a cool story they got a bit somber and reluctantly agreed. What they did was counter-intuitive. They just didn't "know better", so to speak.

And that is exactly my opinion as well. I've argued with people before who insist that if I like narrative games with lots of social interactions then I should be playing these games, with all these rules and mechanics around social interactions. And I'm like... but I don't want a bunch of rules and mechanics around social interactions. The occasional charisma check is more than enough for my liking.

This i completely disagree with this. if you have one player give this really articulate sentence very persuasive argument, and then another player do that without the heavy roleplay or articuation but they still bring up the same points. you should not let one roll be easier than the other. because you're creating a filter at your table of who can and cannot play the social person in the party. if tim the 5 foot nothing 100 pound soaking wet noodle of a human being can play gragnar the 6 -9 400 pound muscle barbarian and kill everything with his warhammer. then tina the socially awkward bad with talking to people and has a hard time speaking elquently. should be able to play pier the suave sexy bard. i want to convice the guard to let our friend go. is enough at my table.

It depends entirely on the group. I've played with groups that could definitely handle combat purely narratively, and I've played with groups where social situations really needed to be gamified, because a lot of people were wanting to play characters that have various traits that they as players, frankly, don't. There's no "one-size-fits-all"-system, even in the context of narratively focused campaigns. (Though D&D is certainly not the closest to being that anyway) D&D does gamify social interactions, it just does it poorly and with little nuance, in different ways in 5e than in earlier editions (not necessarily better or worse). So when people say it allows for more narrative freedom, that's just because they're ignoring what little *is* there as much as possible. There are many systems out there that does it far better, without sacrificing the narrative freedom. Because narrative freedom in 5e doesn't come from the system, but more despite it. And that's generally why people say that there are *better* systems for narrative focused campaigns. Again, that doesn't mean that you *can't* or *shouldn't* play narrative focused campaigns in D&D. There's just systems that support it better, without limiting creativity any more than D&D does.

Yeah. The only reason dice get involved with social interactions at all is to determine how successful it was IF IT ISN'T blatantly obvious through the RP that the NPC would be persuaded or intimidated etc.

It seems near-intentionally ripping it off to be honest.

I was so excited at the idea of brennan and the gang playing Worlds Without Number and spotlighting how cool that system is when that podcast got announced. only to be plummeted into despair at yet another D&D 5e podcast that hates combat.

Most DnD play podcasts want to showcase the talents of the players, and combat doesn't require much talent. It's usually adding up modifiers, rolling dice,... And that's it. There could be improvised combat descriptions, the combat itself isn't good theater.

Great system, by the way

@@matthewwhelehan5185 I mean. In 5e it doesn't.

Dont buy​ wotc stuff anyway theyre an awful company, dnd is a free game 🏴‍☠️

@@thecrabmaestro564 this circle jerk again? dude don't you have other things to do?

Personally I much prefer the Blades way of doing things, because 99% of times, the plan in a conventional RPG heist (like Shadowrun) ends up crumbling in the first 30 minutes of play and then it just turns into a failed playthrough of Hitman where you set off the alarm and now you just have to murder everyone. Part of this is because most players suck at planning and the other big part is I have yet to meet a GM who gives the PCs enough information to set up a complex plan from the start. Hell just getting a basic map of the place and guard layouts is like pulling teeth with most GMs. And even with decent intel, there's always a ton of things you won't know. The only reason you're able to do complex stealth missions in computer games like Hitman or Payday is because you've replayed the mission a tons of times over and get to learn all the possibilities. So you're prepared because you're operating with 100% knowledge. But on a first run, it's going to be a total disaster. And in a TTRPG it almost always is. Blades handles that in such a more natural way where you get to think up something cool on the fly as if the GM gave you a full binder of intel before the mission, without the GM actually having to do that (because he won't anyway). So you get the narrative feeling of being able to play a mastermind type character able to do a heist on the first try because it assumes your character spent way more time planning this out IC than the PCs did OOC, which honestly is a pretty reasonable assumption.

@@taragnor And this is a 100% completely fair point. I kind of like legwork and planning, but I've played with GMs who either knew how to give the needed information for good planning, or knew to run with the assumption that the competent PCs made their competent checks with the information the GM gave and stick to that (until things go off the rails.) At the same time, while I've never played Blades in the Dark, I *love* running it for just the reasons you stated. It lets people who really enjoy these fantasies get to really perform on them in ways that other games don't allow, because it has mechanics in place to support you being a competent and capable scoundrel. Everything from dice weighting to flashbacks to devil's bargains are there to help the player engage with the core idea of the game "I succeeded, but at what cost?"

@@taragnorPersonally I don’t think Blades actually does give you the feeling of being a mastermind. We went from CP Red to Blades. Both games are very heist focused. CP Red is great at giving the “failed Hitman mission” experience and I thought Blades would be a lot better, but I just didn’t find it very satisfying to actually play on the fly without pre-planning. It probably has more to do with how the GM runs the preparation stage of a typical mission than with the systems involved, and rewarding good planning with advantages during the heist rather than relying on dice rolls or flashbacks. But maybe that’s just me.

@@Pneumanon Yeah different people prefer different things. I think part of enjoying Blades has to be to embrace the style it's going for. Most conventional RPGs essentially want the player themselves to be the mastermind and thus the task of planning is left to the player, and your success is some mix of how much info the DM gives you and how smart you are as a player. Blades approaches things where it assumes the character is the mastermind and thus gives the player a series of useful tools to represent the ingenuity of his character without requiring the player to be a genius. But if you're used to conventional RPGs, the tools Blades gives you can feel like you're cheating, since you're effectively retroactively adding in details via a Flashback. From a narrative standpoint, this kind of stuff happens all the time in TV shows and movies, where the main character pulls out some contingency we never knew about earlier, and it's used to show the audience how smart of a planner he is. But if you look at it from a simulationist viewpoint, you're changing history, since OOC you know the explosive wasn't planted there until you used a flashback to decide it was.

Brennan was basically made in a lab to produce actual-play content. His opinion is always going to have the bias of someone is amongst the best of the world at something. It's like asking Michael Phelps how to swim faster and he just tells you you need to practice more carefully. Like yes, but also no.

Good point and tall order.

I mean teenagers have been describing all those activities in D&D games and having a great deal of fun doing so for decades. The idea that a system needs to be perfectly symmetrical with whatever narrative the _designers_ have in mind is an unnecessarily limiting design principle.

That’s sort of the point, though. Every table is going to be different, and every DM should be looking for a system that either has a “fruitful void” they mesh with well, or provides the experience they are looking to create in that session. Catering to a nebulous “general audience” isn’t always going to serve you well, in an industry still mostly dominated by a certain rule set. In our current context, it often seems better to aim for a more specific *target* audience, in order to find a niche that isn’t taken over already.

There’s a certain point where a GM just has to get good though. Players want 5e, so convincing them to learn a new system ‘for the story’ isn’t really that convincing

Meanwhile everyone in my group knows 5e and never want to switch over to different systems, no matter the campaign style.

In my experience, people will play what you prepare, especially if you’re willing to teach. If your players can’t put any effort into your campaign, that really sucks…

@@kevinibarra6131 My players all have full time jobs and put a lot of effort into their characters. My players and I like other systems, but when they want to play 5e I'm not going to make them play something else when it's really not hard to make 5e work for engaging narrative. A system can't make up for not being that good at improv. I've seen people complain about 5e not being narrative enough then seen their actual play streams where they can't engage with the simplest of 'yes and' improv techniques.

​@@mrosskne Would you suggest that painters should use cameras and drummers should use drum machines? They can, certainly, and might even find ways to combine it with their other tools and methods, but the more efficient and automatic tool is not necessarily the most flexible one and the one that allows for the most creativity. That depends on the user and what they bring to it, and what they find joy in doing. Printer paper is not designed for origami, but it's more useful to an origami artist than an airplane model kit, which is specifically designed to be made into a small airplane, or a 3D printer, which can produce almost any shape. The tool's ability to do those things in a specific way is not useful to a person who wants to do those things their own way. The tool, ideally, should complement the user, not rob them of the joy of doing the very thing they find joy in doing. That's why a drum machine is more useful to a guitarist, because it can complement their guitar playing with percussive rhythm. A drummer has less use for that than empty buckets.

Emigrating to PF2e precisely because of that. After reading the 2e rulebook, 5e looks like a skeleton. I'm really tired of stapling meat on it.

I have played 5 systems in the last few months, and I have found that I am more comfortable the more rules there are. The last game was so heavily dependent on the whims of the DM that I indeed "resented" it, so I agree with those players you mention. This is a highly situational opinion of course, but I still felt that annoyance that my character and my tactics had little to do with combat, while the scene and narrative was amazing.

While I think there needs to be a certain amount of rules to keep fiction bounded, I really dislike the idea that everything needs a rule "to make the GM's job easier". The resentment seems misplaced... the absence of rules doesn't inherently make running the game harder, it has more to do with what types of rules are absent. Which is almost always the procedural rules. B/X (or OSE) is significantly lighter and leaves far more gaps in the rules than 5e for instance, but if you ask anyone who switched from 5e to those games I'd wager 95% of people said running those games was much easier. It's the type of rules that are present and absent that more people should be focused on IMO not the completeness of rules, because this leads to a false dichotomy where the solution to "fixing the holes in the system" is perceived as just making more mechanics.

Starting? This was a huge part of the indie RPG revolution of the early 2000s. Arguably the most influential indie RPG ever published (Apocalypse World in 2012) made clear and explicit proceduralization the norm in most indie RPGs published after it, aside from those in the OSR camp. The outlier to that trend was new editions of trad games like D&D and Chronicles of Darkness, which while they occupy the largest percentage of players, are a minority in terms of published games.

I don't think the sentiment is growing, it's just always been there. If you love tactical combat or character optimization, you're going to want rules, and a lot of them. Your preferred playstyle literally won't work without them. If you aren't a fan of those two things, rules heavy games will feel like a bunch of added baggage you have to learn. From the GM side, if you're a tactical combat lover, then you may want rules too. But it really doesn't make the game easier, in fact, it makes it harder, but if you want tactical complexity, then you may think it makes the game more fun to run. It's a lot more work though and the more rules, the more linear it has to be, because coming up with statblocks for complex NPCs is tough. Generally though, rules lite is far easier for the DM. You can improvise on the fly, numbers are smaller so you have a better idea of how tough something is and so forth. 5E is the worst balance or rules for DMs, since there's just enough rules to curb your creativity and prevent you from running the game like a PbtA game like Dungeon World, but the lack of depth of monsters really prevents you from enjoying the tactical experience, since you get to control and track a bunch of dull melee grunts while the PCs get all the fun toys. Of course 5E's design philosophy is all about player empowerment, so obviously it's incredibly popular among players.

Agreed. I think a far stronger case is to have a core mechanism that can be applied even in non-explicitly covered situations. At the risk of being looked down on just like Brennan, D&D 5e's d20 and advantage works well for this. No explicit rule? Roll an ability check that matches with dis/advantage. You can still have those discussions to determine how to apply the mechanic but just leaving blank space like that can be very frustrating or just outright misleading. And on top of this, I think assuming more freeform=better is a trap. You can often far more easily ditch or streamline rules for stuff you'd rather make looser or more social than you can invent new ones for stuff that isn't there. I often feel this is an excuse for lazy game design. Or more charitably, a blind spot where a designer doesn't think about anyone playing the game who doesn't feel exactly the same as them about the void being left

@@gaz-l621 Playing games like Shadowdark, I actually find your last statement to not really ring true. The simplicity of the rules make it very easy to add on things, where in a crunchy game like say Pathfinder 2e, removing mechanics can have a ton of cascading effects that can be hard to predict. If the game has a good foundation, adding rules is much simpler than taking them away IME.

I don't think a game that's meant to emulate the science-fiction horror of the 80s, which was often about sneaking around a spooky spaceship or space station or mining colony trying to avoid getting got by an awful alien creepo, needs to necessarily tell players that they are allowed to sneak. I feel like it's somewhat implicit in the premise.

@@hozie6795 I think it’s less about telling them they’re allowed to sneak, (because players are typically allowed to try anything in an rpg,) and more about making it clear that it’s a big part of the game. We were all familiar with the source material, but the game simply didn’t lead us there. And we had a blast, but hearing the creator talk about how important it is to the game, and realizing that we all completely missed it, I think shows it’s very difficult to transmit an idea that you want to end up in the game without explicitly saying so. A single short paragraph saying “this game is about sneaking away from your opposition, but you won’t find any rules about it, because it is meant to be the most flexible part of the game.“ Would go along way.

Yes, it is pointless to say any RPG is oriented towards anything. All TTRPGs are playing pretend, the distinction between playing pretend and playing D&D is an arbitrary one created to give false legitimacy to TTRPGs. However playing pretend is legitimate on its own as it’s something all humans are naturally inclined toward since birth. Some people are still stuck in the past where playing D&D would get you ostracized from society either for being a satanic devil worshiper or a child who needs to grow up. Move on people, storytelling is sacred and if you want to play a TTRPG without shouldering the weight of creating a story then you need to play a video game instead. TTRPG is specifically about improvising otherwise there wouldn’t be dice involved in determining story direction. If you just want to play A GAME without improv play Monopoly.

I dont understand this. if you fall in a pit of spikes you cant "just tank it" cause the DM will say "you are impaled by the spikes and dying" and unless someone revives you thats pretty much it. The system doesn't matter as much as long as whatever the DM says, goes. As it should.

@@Zangelin We are talking strictly about system. DM workarounds have always existed, but their existence is at fault with the system. 5e has a hp problem, and this is known for years now. All this workarounds to make things more deadly are the system's problem not the DM.

This. System matters. But it only matters as much as it matters to a given group. If all you need for your game is the 5e ability check system and your entire group already knows this system and is happy to use it, then it doesn't even matter if they could have more fun with a different system. You have enough and you don't have to put any work at all into getting more. Some see it as, if you're spending 5 units of work for 5 units of fun, then you would rather spend 6 units of work for 10 units of fun. Others just see that they wanna spend at most 5 units of work to get at least 5 units of fun and that option A is therefore better than option B.

@@oOPPHOo I once went to the gas station, bought a soda, and was told an additional drink was only a small bit extra. I told them I was fine, I'd rather the cheaper option. The cashier looked at me and then tried to explain that her offer was cheaper. To which I told her, no it was indeed more expensive, just a better bang for buck, to which I wasn't really interested in. She never really understood the point, so I awkwardly and politely bid them a good day before leaving.

I think people often conflate structures/procedures with rules when defining what a game is and what a good RPG should provide (I think the former is typically more important than the later). I recently ran a murder mystery in a session and realized I really didn't need that many traditional rules to run it. I already knew the facts of the event and the motivations of the NPCs, so I could just have the players ask questions about the crime scene or talk "in character" to the suspects. I only really needed traditional rules and mechanics when they got some suspects angry and started a tavern fight. The players had a well defined goal (solve the murder), challenges and obstacles towards accomplishing that goal (having to gather details from the crime scene, identify and get information from suspects, and make logical deductions to put it all together), and a fail state (they don't solve the mystery) so I think this definitely still qualifies as a game and not just an improve exercise, but the moment-to-moment gameplay had little to no dice rolling or other "traditional" game mechanics. It was almost entirely back and forth dialogue that seemed to go well both with the more "theater kid types" in my group and the more "tactical types". That said, there is a reason I can't just hand you an empty box and say "It's my new murder mystery RPG!" In order to run this session so organically, I needed to think of the structure and procedure of the mystery ahead of time. I needed a number of interesting crime scenes with environmental clues, suspects with information on the crime and their own conflicting motivations, and most importantly I needed to think about how information flowed between these things so that the players had to make non-trivial inferences and interact with these environments/characters in interesting ways. A good RPG provides the GM with the tools to craft these scenarios and actionable tips/tools for steering the pace and flow of information so that the back and forth can become immersive gameplay and not "just dialogue". It doesn't necessarily need dice rolling, numerical abstractions, or even mechanical depth to do so. Sometimes it can be a well-thought out set of scenario components (suspects, clues, motivations, etc.), some tables to help generate these components, and then laying out the logical structure the GM uses to understand and run a compelling gameplay scenario with them. I think this, and not rules, are what aspiring GM's often find frustratingly lacking from a lot of RPGs.

Yep. "Live plays" are just that: plays. They are generally inauthentic as demonstrations of games being played since they exist to be consumed by outside viewers and make money.

huge agree. assuming a group of new players gets together for a game of dnd and they want it to be like Dimension 20 or Critical Roll, theyre just going to get disappointed because what the hypothetical players want is not given by the game the instructions or rules that would facilitate that sort of game just arent there and its going to be a wholesale worseoff experience than if they chose a system that is built for and teaches that type of game play. its not even that its a fundamentally different system, its a different type of experience entirely. its a bad cocktail of bad expectation and pointless lessons learned in bad sessions that could be better spent with something more fun. Not to mention the D&D monopoly of "you can play anything with it!" leaves so many good systems to collect dust.

I think your instincts are good. "I chose DND because its the most popular system that the most people (players and viewers) are going to be familiar with" is a great reason to choose DnD as the system, and its a much stronger reason than attacking the 'DnD as a wargame' logic.

It may have been picked simply because it's what Mulligan and his friends already know, it's what they're comfortable with. Audience familiarity probably plays a part, but player/cast familiarity is a huge factor.

I kind of agree with you. If you don't like combat, it's weird to play with a system that will be time consuming when it occurs. There are dozens of RPGs out there that have simplest combat rules, easier to manage for the DM. If really you're not interested in that aspect of the game, there is no point choosing 5E.

@@mrosskne It's a practical one, don't like D&D myself, play a bunch of different games. But if your DM and close only know/want to play D&D it's understandable to use it. I would prefer not to but it's understandable.

@@mrosskne If you can't see how it wouldn't be so, we cannot help you.

Form what I would guess the rules works together to craft the stealth part of the game.

This is a true effect, that having a "roll to do X" button the player smashes every time they need to do X, without thinking about it makes them engage with the world less. Which is why D&D with it's Charisma attribute, and roll to persuade/deceive/intimidate is horrible for a social game.

@@krkngd-wn6xj But a godsend to people who are too shy to role play. Also, I am not shy, but I am an awkward geek and would probably fail to convince the beautiful barmaid to go to bed with me, but the bard I play has the riz to make that happen.

@@trikepilot101 I have plenty of players who are not great at coming up with what their character says in real time, which is why I don't make anyone "speak in character". Hell, I rarely do it whether I am playing or running. But you do have to say the gist of what your character is saying more eloquently, so I have a baseline idea how possible it is within the fiction. I like to compare it to fighting: I don't need you to describe the exact sword fighting technique and blade alignment your character is using, but I do want more then "I attack him". At least name me the weapon you are using. For your example, I wouldn't want you to tell me the 2 hours of dialogue word for word your character is using to charm the barmaid. But I would expect something like "I'll use my boyish charm and good looks to woo her" or "I'll act all mysterious and brooding to pique her interest". That gives me something to work with in the fiction, maybe this barmaid wouldn't fall for your boyish good looks, but your mysterious brooding is just what she wants. "I roll persuasion" is the death of roleplay, it gives me nothing to interpret in the narrative space, and if I do try to narrate something, it will either fall flat, or you could rightfully complain your character wouldn't do that.

@@krkngd-wn6xj"Rolling persuasion" or morale checks in OD&D work for my group to facilitate roleplay fairly well. We still say what we are going to say in character but the roll gives a guide to interpreting how charitably the words will be taken in context. It's not a magic wand but it gives a guide to how to react to the character's words. My go to example of a botched social check is the "what do you mean I'm funny" bit from Goodfellas.

But, this is manifestly false. GMs have to worry a lot about rules. In fact they were called referees for a reason. Rules are their raison d'etre, they exist to arbitrate the rules first and foremost. When combat feats exist in the game the GM needs to know what they do and the players need to know how they work. If my players have a feat that says "you can jump 10 feet always without rolling" then I need to know that because my 10ft wide chasm is not a threatening conundrum for my heavy armour wearing fighter to deal with, where before it very much should have been. I can't just rule that doesn't work because it makes no sense (because it does make no sense) because it's stepping on their choice of feat. Rules pull double duty. They both simplify complex things and let us skip over them and let us dive in and deal with them in more detail. The mothership example is great, but D&D 5e has mostly combat mechanics and systems built around combat. Leveling up is about combat. The game is about combat. This also totally ignores that there are two types of rules. Mechanics and Procedures. Procedures being structure that can help organise a chaotic system and mechanics which are often used to omit pieces of the game we don't find interesting (like a diplomacy skill we can just roll, that's rules to skip over something the game doesn't care about). Where a system of turns and rounds with actions bonus actions movement actions etc sends a very clear message that this matters.

I strongly disagree with your assertion that DMs’ primary reason for existing is to arbitrate the rules. A DM’s primary job is to describe the world the PCs live in to the players. They describe the people, places, challenges, and opportunities the players can interact with via their characters. Different games have different rules for some of this, different abstractions for streamlining it. The AD&D I played in the 80’s was explicit that the DM was the ultimate authority on how the game world’s reality played out, regardless of what the book might say. Thus, if a player at my table told me their fighter wearing full plate armor had a feat that allowed them to always jump 10 feet without having to roll, I would deny them that feat, as it totally breaks immersion in the world’s reality and just plain makes the game less fun. @@katjalehtinen8101

I think a lot of this has to do with the diverging goals of a game for use in AP media versus a game intended to be fun to play. In the former, the only thing that matters is how good the resulting story is. In the latter, you also have to consider things from the perspective of the player, not just the external audience. One of the underlying ideas of Forge-style narrativism revolved around delineating the goal of "story now" from "story before/after", where with the latter the goal was to produce a story that could be consumed as media rather than letting the players feel the narrative tension firsthand. It's a subtle but important distinction. You can have play experiences where you tell a story that is technically well-crafted, even though everyone was bored and disengaged through the whole thing. On the other hand, great narrativist play experiences do not always produce good stories; they're often disjointed and unfocused, full of unnecessary details and dropped plot threads. The "story now" idea was about focusing design around emotionally-resonant play, not creating art at the table.

@@DistortedSemance This is a really interesting comment. I wasn't aware of the distinction between "story now" and "story before/after". It doesn't seem to come up in any of the RPG discussions I observe and sometimes participate in. And yet it seems very important, at this point in time when a lot of the discourse arises from comparisons between our own gameplay experiences at the table and the very popular professional performances of gameplay. There are some big differences in the incentive structures involved in these two kinds of gameplay, so maybe we'd be better off keeping those differences in mind.

@@vintagezebra5527And thus you will have made a ruling on what is and isn't real in the game. Yes maintaining the fiction is important. It's done primarily by making rulings that fall in line with that fiction.

It makes for tense fights if everything is on the line with a single roll. :)

I have noticed a lot of people love D&D 5E but don't care too much for the combat and a lot of people want to run it because its popular.

Yeah it's kind of the inverse of the Matt Colville question "What is your game about, and *how* is it about it?". Instead it becomes "What is your game not about, and *how* is it not about that?" If the particular way in which D&D is *not* about combat is slow and complex, then maybe it's not very good at not being about combat.

Yeah. Some people want to run narrative campaigns that don't feature much combat, but when combat does happen, they want it to be meaningful and involved. Story games tend to assume a player/GM that was narrative to be the focus and for combat to be over quick. The scenario I described doesn't seem to encourage many designs, oddly enough. I think Mythras is a good choice for that style, though. The combat is deadly serious, involved, and isn't about attrition. But Mythras isn't as popular as D&D.

A traditional RPG is not a single player experience. While he does not care for combat, his players might. His players might think a single roll system for combat is anti-climatic, meaning such a system would either force him to get into the weeds of combat himself or let down his players. Having a detailed combat system allows *him* to not focus on it. Also, I question your implication that a slow combat system inherently means a combat focused game. If anything, each individual battle encounter taking a long time would be more of potential problem in games with a lot of battles. Meanwhile you can absolutely have a combat focused game where each individual fight is quick and mechanically simple, see some of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks as an example, or old CRPGs like Telengrad. Furthermore a slower combat also can allow for plot/character-moments and roleplaying in-between the mechanical beats of the combat, and if combat is really rare it matters less that it takes that long. It can, potentially just become a system/framework you lay on top of what "you" actually want to do, improvisational-storytelling/RPing/etc. for a while.

I think everyone should try multiple systems. It really makes me sad when some players just get married to D&D because it's the big brand name.

Negotiation does give more responsibility to the player, but another word for that is agency. The challenge is that some players enjoy that agency, while others feel like that level of freedom is a burden.

You're right about that. The void in 5e is when it comes to rules for character development and story twists, which some storygame RPGs have mechanics for.

5E as written has more sophisticated advice than “roll for persuasion.” What you’re describing is a certain dominant subculture/playstyle.

That's a good point, but like Ben said, his great players are going to not make that a problem for him. They're all comedians, they're here to interact and riff

The idea that we don't roleplay and think around things but roll constantly Hurts my soul

@@grahamward7Roleplaying goes out the window when, during any encounter, a player or the DM can simply say “I roll for persuasion”. What’re you gonna do, deny them and force them to roleplay?

Informed by a healthy profit motive

​@@MisterWebb Nah, 5e just feels good if you have a competent GM and want a middle ground between obnoxious, naggy number-crunch and fluid, wishy-washy rulespace.

​@@dawalrusable There's also the fact that it's the most profitable system to use in content right now

@@MisterWebb you mean he wants to get paid for doing his job? THE SCOUNDREL

​@@mrossknewhy?

Why is a game not about X if people who are bad at X can't play? Doesn't every game that requires any skill leave certain people behind?

@@concibar4267 I think you're missing their point. Yes, games of skill require skill. But if I play Dark Souls, it's my ability to read animations and press buttons that's being tested, not my ability to swing a sword or cast pyromancy spells. D&D is a game that allows you to play out the fantasy of being something other than what you are. I am not a wizard, but I can play a character who is. I am not strong enough to lift a heavy portcullis, but I can play a character who can. The problem emerges when my real life abilities impinge on the fictional abilities of my character. Generally, my wizard's spellcasting isn't reduced in power because I can't really cast spells, but if social encounters are adjudicated primarily on the basis of roleplay, then my real social skills are impacting my character's fictional social skills. If I am playing a charismatic character who is a trained diplomat, I should be able to say "well I don't know how to convince the high priest not to have us burned at the stake for blasphemy after we disturbed the Holy Hatstand of Flarg, but my character probably does. I roll diplomacy/persuasion!"

@@Salsmachev I broadly agree, but it's worth acknowledging that it's a spectrum. If I want to play as a master tactician in D&D, no character build will tell me how to play my turn optimally.

@@Salsmachev The "I roll diplomacy/persuasion" thing whilst totally understandable, feels to me like it's diverging from an implicit strength of playing a social game. We don't need to abstract social challenges, so if we do we're losing a compelling aspect of "playing the game" in favor of genre emulation. Now I will say that someone's personal opinion on this largely has to do with what they think D&D is (or at least their favorite part of it). You say it's about being someone you're not... I say it's about overcoming challenge in a fantastical world. these two different ideas will lead to very different opinions regarding the depth gained or lost from abstracting mental skills or playing them out.

"If your game doesn't have rules that let people who aren't good at something play a character that is good at that thing, your game isn't about that thing" is a great quote. A chemist can make any game they play feature chemistry since they know all about it, but that doesn't mean D&D is a game about chemistry because someone can wedge in their personal expertise.

I've run a lot of Cypher System both for friends and demos at Gen Con. It's a fantastic balance of narrative and combat mechanics. I think you'll love it.

I've only played a little of Cypher so far, but I've enjoyed it! I'd say it's definitely a nice balance of gaminess while leaving room to improvise. The mechanics are abstract enough to apply to various situations, rather than just simulating combat or social conflict or some other thing specifically.

I was thinking the same regarding Mothership! With a lot of GMs, leaving stealth completely up to GM fiat would be a fairly uninteresting affair.

I'm almost of the opposite mind on the fruitful void argument. When running a stealth game, of course I don't want a stealth roll to solve the problem. I want rules on light, sound, the size of different space suits vs common hiding places, how long it takes to unscrew a vent, pick a lock or barricade a door. If I don't have that, it feels like we are doing nothing more then improv theatre. And neither me nor my players are skilled improv actors.

Exactly. Brennan says this because he is a Dungeon Master as a job. He gets all week to plan and his crew gets to the table all fresh and ready to improv. Meanwhile, the average DM has a job and has managed to find a space where they and their friends can let loose and the rules and framework are a HUGE help, specially on the things you are interested. You want combat in floating disks? You use dnd, because it covers most of it but you still just add whatever feels right for the floating disks. You want drama? Play a drama gama with a framework for that. Ignore it when it gets in the way of what you want, but otherwise it will help

Interestingly given it's ubiquity, what you're describing with World In Peril is the same issue I tend to find with almost every PbTA game, to the point that I'd argue it's baked into the system: it wants you to play a very specific archetype of a character and tell one very particular story and if you want to deviate or improvise on that? Too bad, all the toys are locked behind playing the way the designer has ordained

cut down monster's hitpoints (I cut them in half and then even swap them for "Hits" every 10 hp is a hit, round down) and increase their damage output and their initiative. And build multi-layered encounters where short rests are impossible. I have been experimenting with that, makes the game incredibly faster. Think of a Village under attack, many short, deadly encounters, a timer (a building on fire) bad guy running with a kidnapped NPC.

@@Recontramojado You see I already did all of that when I played 5e. That kind of advice has been with me for years thanks to folks like Matt Colleville and Seth Skorkowsky. It helps to a degree but 5e just has too many moving parts to make a pace consistent with my style. Changed system and that problem virtually disappeared. Worked for my group anyways.

@@TheTurtleinariverThe big one here is individual initiative which iirc Knave doesn't have. Side based is just so much faster it is mind blowing. I can finish a knave combat round in 5 minutes sometimes 7 if it's complex or one player got distracted with a phone. 50% less HP doesn't get rid of the 40 minute long combat rounds where each player takes about as much time a full combat in my homebrew system.

@@katjalehtinen8101 IKR? I love side based combat. Me and a lot of my friends are also fans of the Fire Emblem games so it was a super natural fit for our group.

Some of the things that you point out are why I prefer 13th Age over D&D for more structured fantasy RPG play. It's still a D20 game so the structure is familiar to D&D players (which is important to my group, as some don't like trying new things), but it abstracts out more of the crunchy bits (such as replacing big skill lists with background points that let the player use the character backstory to determine whether they're likely to be good at something for a bonus on the roll) and a combat ticker that speeds things up and makes it more cinematic as combat continues.

I feel this really depends on the players and game master more than the system to a large extent. Now I generally feel that for stuff outside of combat there are A LOT of systems so much better than 5e or its ilk. However a good DM/GM is capable to make most systems work for what a group want if they want the same thing. My experiences is that most 5e campaigns I have played quickly feel less "real and immersive" because so many things were possible outside of combat, whilst a 'real' world would have much more restrictions and rules to feel believable to me. D&D quickly feels like such a power fantasy game, which is fine, it is what the game is (unless the DM restricts that part or the players play it down). Whilst a lot of other game systems grounds the characters to a larger extent through its rules. But again, to me it very much depends on the DM/GM, the lack of rules and mechanics you mentioned really means to DM needs to do a good job to make it feel real and immersive. And without the rules and mechanics need to make it work without any assistance through mechanics. Which does require a decent DM to make it work without feeling hollow and 'unreal', have ran into several cases where it just feels like everything outside combat feels meaningless in D&D. EDIT: Just wanted to clarify some more. A lot of systems help with roleplaying to a larger extent through its rules, by forcing you to act in certain ways because of restrictions put on you. But for that to work, you need to want that experience. For example, in D&D you could essentially be beaten to within an inch of your life, maybe broken some bones, etc. But in its rules you would essentially be fine after 8 hours of rest, and be as good as new. Whilst other systems might have restrictions on how much health you regain, or that if you have a broken bone it takes 30+1d10 days to heal and can't really be used until then (a specific example) or lose enough teeth and your character is no longer capable of chewing food. These are things you can add to your D&D game if you want, and to me they help with roleplaying instead of being handwaved away with 'magic'. Though if they already exist in the rules they are more likely to be used. But again, it needs to be what the players want, if they want the power fantasy then having 'fragile' characters really isn't in tune with that.

genuinely that was the most convincing argument in brennan's favor that i've heard so far.

I think the “fruitful void” is real, but in my (very fun) sessions playing mothership, stealth was NOT the focus - I don’t think any players knew it was supposed to be. A hole without guidance, intentionality, knowledge or ability to make that void become fruitful… is just a hole.

It is the best argument, but it's not supporting Brennan's take. I agree, that fruitful voids can exist in games. "I roll my X skill to do X" does make players engage less with the world. Two problems: 1) Codifying rules about things like how much light is shed by lamps, how big of a locker you need to fit into with or without a suit, how long it takes to unscrew a vent would add to the game for many people. Then, it becomes players interacting with the puzzle of hiding from a monster, not just improv theatre until the GM says you win. 2) This argument would support NOT using D&D 5e, with its mind control spells, Charisma as an attribute, and roll to persuade/intimidate/deceive skills for a very social heavy game.

It's a bit misleading though. Having that level of complexity applied to something like hiding without rules is perfectly fine, if all player and the DM know it should run like that, but having say, a system of different skills tied to those actions, can enhance that. If you say I jump on the rafters and it just happens, well it's cool, but can you really do that? Wasn't your character a nerdy scientist? opposite way, I want to outrun the monster in a straight line and slide beneath a door. I, the player, run like shit, but Mike Chadston, ace of the track team in highschool, can totally outrun the necromorphs if there are no interruptions. Systems complement narrative. Narrative doesn't always need mechanics to support it but they help make the narrative work, not just having it be "whatever you say happens". Narrative can also be hurt by intrusive systems. I bloody hate Humanity in Vampire, for example, I think it's an obervearing and underdeveloped piece of paper saying how you should act and why if you don't act that way now you act a different way. It sucks, it's restrictive in a way I find unfun. A discerning gm or rpg designer absolutely should think about which aspects of his game need rules to support it and which ones can just be roleplayed.

Hahahaha!

In fact, if what the GM wants (as Brennan claims) is for the game system to handle the mechanics of combat in a gamist fashion, then 4e is the best version of D&D ever published.

Yeah, D&D 5E combat is just not very interesting to listen to because it's often just speaking numbers at people that mean nothing narratively. You take 15 damage. It either totally incapacitates you and knocks you down, or its purely superficial and doesn't impair you at all. It's only meaningful if you're number crunching the miniature chess game, but not very engaging to listen to as an audience member. There's no interesting injuries. No arrow to the knee, no broken bones, nobody's hand getting so badly burned its unusable, etc. It's just some number, and at worst it makes you downed and bleeding, where any amount of healing will instantly bring you back to fighting shape. Honestly I've always had trouble as a DM describing D&D combat because it's hard to constantly come up with exciting descriptions for grazing superficial hits with deadly weapons, because fundamentally the narrative just isn't very exciting. It's why the majority of D&D shows focus far more on the RP side than the combat side.

The irony of this is that it's not that 5e is bad because it has gamist combat, it's bad because it's gamist combat is bad gamism. It's watered down and a half way house, fundamentally untactical and filled with compromises. It's neither rulings based and streamlined like BECMI D&D was, nor is it the apotheosis of tactical and intricate D&D combat that 4e was, it's a poor bastard thing half way between both, neither fish nor fowl. Good highly complex, tactical, and gamist combat systems can be extremely enguaging and fun to play, with the caveat that this only applies if you have players that enjoy that tactical element. If not, go play somthing else, just don't play 5e. It's literally the worst of both worlds.

@@mrosskne Imagination gets stifled by the rules. You aren't given any interesting effects to describe. When a 20ft tall giant hits you with a massive club for 18 damage. That's it, just 18 damage. Just a number. You're not moved out of your square, you're not knocked prone. Your shield isn't crushed, your bones aren't broken, your sword doesn't fly from your hand. Even an indestructible hero like Superman takes a powerful hit and gets knocked back through a wall to add some kind of narrative weight to the attack.

@@mrosskne No not simple. Because that would require you being pushed, which not many monster attacks do. The rules by RAW do not allow the giant's club to knock you through a wall. You cannot move a target outside that 5 ft square unless the attack specifically says it can. D&D doesn't offer the DM any provision to add narratively cool effects like that.

@@mrosskne Sure, you can ignore the rules, but if you have to actively ignore the rules to make D&D's combat narratively interesting, then it only reinforces my point. What you're doing is house ruling in what narrative systems like Dungeon World already allow the DM to do in the RAW.

agreed. I really like dice heavy games, because to me its the rules of the world manifested. Don't get me wrong, I like RPing and planning things. But, I like complicated things to stack bonuses, modifiers, and special conditions to get advantages in certain areas. It also makes having a balanced party much more needed. If the DM just hand waves survival or foraging, then there is no need for a tracker/ranger. That character archetype is not needed. Thats a story not needed. In dnd i hate the spell pass without trace. It usually nullifies stealth. Same with goodberry it nullifies survival.

I agree, I want the mechanics to support the style of game I want to play. If there is to be lots of stealth and fleeing, there better be those rules in there, because I dont want to have to create the rules myself (what am I paying the designer for?). Brennan is the opposite - he purposefully doesnt want any rules to get in the way of the preplotted narrative - so 5e suits, because it has no real narrative rules.

I actually saw a player try to pull that kind of garbage before, hiding in a brightly lit room without cover and the DM just allowing it.

@@bigblue344 it can be difficult to deny a player their chosen action because in your view it is just not possible. If their understanding of the system is that they have a skill and according to the rules they may attempt it when they want, to be told "you can't do that" is akin to ignoring or breaking the rules. A GM might set an irrationally high difficulty, but is that accurate or just a way to force their interpretation of the system?

@@ericjome7284 In D&D terms, there is nothing wrong with telling a player that a skill that requires something (darkness, tools, whatever) can not successfully use the skill with out the required objects or conditions. No one is going to tell the fighter they don't need a sword. It's absurd.

Not reducing it to a roll is the point, isn't it? Maybe I've been lucky, but I can not imagine attending a table more than once that allowed the carpenter PC to build a table with no wood. It's just... crazy to me. I think I'm basically agreeing with you, I've just never met a single gamer or been at a table where some one would try to hide in plain sight or similar absurd thing. For me these hypotheticals have always been just that.

Even _if_ you let them roll for this --- their skills at being stealthy merely tell them that: "In this brightly lit room, there is no place to hide". So you don't tell them that they can't - their character's ability score/roll tells them that. If they persist then it can merely be translated as their character having a small panic attack about the fact that they cannot seem to find a space to hide. Time passes and they are discovered, in that moment of panic. At least that's how I'd run that.

My group of almost 10 years all come from a freeform roleplay background and all got interested in D&D because we, gasp, liked Critical Role. But its appeal was in adding some cool and useful rules/numbers to adjudicate the hard parts of the stuff we were already doing. We LIKED combat and still do. In freeform it can often feel wishy washy and there's no room for the unexpected because you have to just negotiate everything. There's so much less drama in that. "Having rules/dice for combat and none for social makes both our combat and our social more fun" is for some reason so hard to explain to people.

"Combat is the part I’m the least interested in simulating through improvisational storytelling. So I need a game to do that for me […]" In the quote from the article, Brennan doesn't say he's not interested in combat or violent conflict. He says he's not interested in improvising the results of combat action, so he wants rules for it. How is that unnuanced?

@@LeChaosRampant To be fair I was probably being hyperbolic and uncharitable cuz internet. Sry Brennan. I loves you. But it's unnuanced because it suggests a parity, as though there could easily be a bunch of people out there saying “emotions, relationships, and character progression are the parts I’m the least interested in simulating through improvisational storytelling. So I need a game to do that for me, while I take care of combat, because that shit is intuitive and I understand it well.” That's obviously wrong. People who feel less comfortable improvising deep emotional character development are absolutely NOT the ones reaching for story-based games. They play D&D. So, to take a stab at more nuance: 1 - Procedural questions like “who would win in a fight?” are much easier to represent with the kind of quantifying mechanics I described above than dramatic questions like “will I finally forgive my estranged brother?” 2 - Brennan and his players are professional actors who have studied and trained in a ‘game’ called improv theatre that is structured by a series of ‘rules’ that help you work together to create dramatic moments on the fly. There IS a game system there. We just don't see it. 3 - Story and drama-based TTRPGs are still more or less in their infancy. If Brennan hasn't found anything in them that seems useful enough to supplement his theatre training, I can hear that, but there's interesting design space to be explored. I'd love to hear him review Robin Laws’ Drama System. 4 - Our whole nerd pop culture space is built on procedural stories that represent conflict as violence. So of course D&D is fundamentally about combat. Of course Brennan’s stories all end in a climactic physical fight. But to ignore the fact that there are other kinds of stories and that other game systems might be better at supporting those stories is pretty narrow-minded. 5 - Being very familiar with a system counts for quite a lot in your ability to improvise within it. 6 - Playing a system that is many times more recognizeable than its closest competitor is a no-brainer when you're trying to attract viewers.

@@ogreboy8843 Your reason number 6 is like the meat of the actual logic behind choosing 5e, and everything else is done in service of making this choice seem more organic and less about making more money from a larger viewership.

@@ogreboy8843 Not sure how to say this right, but I hope my tone doesn't come off as overly accusatory or combative. English looses much of it's nuance once bound to text, and text is far slower to clarify than vocals or gestures. I love Brennan, but I think his response is more so a justification for his & his players' familiarity with D&D and it's overall recognizability. As far as I can tell(and based on the interpretations of others) he's more interested in the mechanics of D&D 5e for simulationist reasons, specifically combat. It strikes me as silly to say D&D 5e isn't combat-oriented, as that is were the bulk of its mechanics lie. It's like saying "an oven doesn't heat things up, it cooks food". Yeah, it cooks food by heating it up! (Also I'm going to be honest, I'm just reacting to a bit of scraps & don't know his full quote) Of course, its fine to use whatever system you're most comfortable with, but just say it. You don't need to justify it beyond "this is what I'm most familiar with" or "I just prefer using it". This is somewhat off topic: I find it a bit odd that many people say that story & drama-based TTRPGs are still in their infancy when such systems have been around since the 80's or at least since the 90s with the likes of Vampire: The Masquerade & Sorcerer. FATE emerged in 2003 & Apocalypse World in 2010. Heck, Robin Laws' Drama System is now over a decade old. It feels more like a dismissal on the legitimacy of such systems rather than accepting them as fully fledged systems that have been a part of the medium.

@@mightystu49 I don't know that that's fair... Of all the D&D KZfaq personalities, I think Brennan actually has the strongest and loudest anti-capitalist politics (okay... Maybe second to Ronald the Rules Lawyer.) But we all hafta make a living. I'd rather him be doing this than drilling for oil. That said, I'm surprised it isn't the first thing he said. (Maybe it was and it got left on the cutting room floor. Or maybe he just wasn't prepped for this question.) And I think it makes some sense even outside the profit motive: If you want to speak to an audience in a way that's easy for them to enjoy, choose a medium and a subject that they'll recognize and understand.

That and a lot of the mechanics in the game seems to actively dissuade prolonged role play problem solving because of just how magic and skills work. Everyone at the table needs to have self restraint.

@@bigblue344 Well it's tough because D&D came from a very gamist attitude at its roots. It's about overcoming the challenge of the dungeon and the monsters. You get XP for being effective, not for roleplaying. When you reward players for effectiveness, you'll generally get very strategic thinking and less narrative thinking. And this was actually Gygax's intent in the original versions of D&D. He wanted to challenge players to think intelligently, not for roleplaying an alternative personality.

Unironically, this would be hilarious

I appreciate this comment a lot because it puts into words a thought that I was having trouble explaining to myself out loud.

You get it! I'm using a hacked version of Solar Blades and Cosmic Spells for exactly the same mechanics needs.

I did actually add a Social skill, but I use it for degree of effect and some social intuition. Your pitch to the NPC either worked or didn't, and now your stats are either bailing you out, getting you a little extra on the side, changing nothing, or damning you, depending on the situation and roll. I like having a little accounting for the player skill and familiarity with the world vs. the character.

Except he does and always has does this stuff on his own at home with his group. You’re mistaking the set and trappings as what actually makes him able to do what he does. He has shown that he doesn’t need it. That Michelin chef? He can cook that rice better than you even on a camp stove in the wilderness because he *trained* and has *experience.* At that point the gear is tertiary at best. Your point is wrong. You are incorrect.

Musashi got so bored of dueling he began doing it with wooden swords. And never lost. The weapon doesn’t make the master. And people who think it does are the ones who get thousands of dollars of high-end stuff sold to them that doesn’t improve their performance at all. Golfers, I’m looking at you.

Wreked

@@Direwolf1771 Of course he could, I'm not saying Brennan is good because he has all of that, or that I could make better rice than him. There are probably tens of thousands of people who would hate my rice. But I have a table of 4 people who think my rice is better than his and that's all I give a fuck about. But I don't have to be capable of making better rice in order to be correct. I just phrased it that way because I think his metaphor is stupid. If you want another one, you *can* murder someone with a hammer, but most people would say "That's a tool for pounding nails" if you asked them what a hammer was for and not "Murder weapon." But that's still a bit abstract. So let's drop that and instead speak in simpler terms. Johnny Never-Played-a-TTRPG wants to give it a go. He goes out shopping and is looking at a couple of different games. He's looking for a game that can facilitate and provoke certain elements of storytelling from a group of people. Is he going to, and should he, buy Dungeon World or 5th Edition D&D? 5th edition, because of its (lack of) design, can fit any sort of game you want. If you put in minimal effort, it will do that badly. If you put in a modest effort, it will do that...okayish. And if you give yourself wholly to it, then it can do anything really well. Not everyone has the time or the skill or frankly the energy to reach that height though. So I simply advocate for picking the better tool, and just because you CAN use 5e for something doesn't mean you should, or that it's the best tool for the job.

And now that I have a little more time, as for your Musashi comment, I'm having trouble remembering the time in history that we all stopped using metal swords and switched to wooden ones because of how cool Musashi was with a wooden sword. Oh, it didn't happen? Because everyone collectively agreed that, while allegedly defeating opponents with a wooden sword is impressive, it would be asinine to fight life or death battles with a worse tool? Weird.

This is an interesting way of looking at it that I hadn't really seen articulated like that before. I think I fall on the opposite end because I prefer stories where the characters have the ability to affect the world positively, possibly due to this being something that feels alien to my everyday experience where competence feels largely disconnected from whether or not things change in the world for you. Basically I would rather feel like a hero while playing than being caught up in an otherwise powerless character's internal drama, even though I can often enjoy the latter in movies or books

Well said.

It's not just the DM a lot of it is based off the PCs too. The thing with Brennan is that his players are trying to make a cooperative story with him. They know they're putting on a show for an audience and they're not just thinking of "winning" like most PCs, but rather on putting on an entertaining performance.

D&D is not even the best choice for Brennan, his arguments support picking other systems better. It is clearly a marketing choice. I have no problem with that, I just wish he'd come out and say it.

Yeah it's annoying to see people go back and forth so harshly when every table has different needs at the end of the day. I play with a bunch of people who I used to do longform RP narrative with for years, we came from a system that literally had sub-zero narrative rules. We're all naturally good at navigating RP as a result. 5e is perfect for us because we have no need for narrative guidance, and in fact any would probably hinder more than facilitate narrative with the amount of homebrew we do. Mechanics is where my table struggles a bit, and I can shore that up by knowing 5e well enough to pilot the game world and guide them to what they want to do without needing to come up with ideas. They've improved massively in this way over time, and really come a long way as players and RPers. Couldn't be happier to play the system we do, and kind of tired of people trying to convince everyone that X indie TTRPG is gonna "solve" a table's "problems" when many are perfectly happy with the system they're playing and adding something into the mix would only serve to confuse everyone involved. If I run into a problem 5e can't solve I can literally do it myself, I'm a game designer lmao... Like idk feels condescending to tell someone that they should feel mediocre for working smarter not harder. TTRPG is a rube goldberg machine of a genre, there are an infinite amount of ways to approach it and so it feels closed minded of people to act like anyone who only plays 5e is just a casual or having a sub-optimal experience.

Did you not even watch the whole video? Did you miss the entre bit about wanting mechanics for the parts you care about the least? Were you so desperate to make a snarky comment you missed the entire argument?

@@zazander732 mostly did it to watch you cry

@@anthonybird546 embarrassing reply, 0/10

@@zazander732 🤣🤣🤣

@@anthonybird546 just take the L my dude, bad look trying this hard 😬

Also I can see this problem having a negative long term effect on the ttrpg in general. It creates "lazy" GMs unwilling to enter roleplay with the players. I have an example of this. In one of my last game with a gaming group I asked the GM if my high level character could shop for a flying mount in the greatest city of the realm. He explained to me (well it was one of the players but the GM was agreeing) that I couldn't do that because it would be game breaking the adventure. Being a GM of long date, their reaction made me laugh a little. I left the group not long after.

I think this is proceduralism. Which argues that procedures are the core of the game, but are almost always unsaid. Meaning that players often have to make it up which is why different groups can diverge so heavily. A good number of 5e campaigns I've played in are All Combat All the Time. Where more than half of the time playing was in combat rounds. You can see this in Baldur's Gate 3 too which does about the same amount of combat a combat heavy campaign of 5e would do. Sometimes less, honestly. This divergence is one of the great things about RPGs but it makes onboarding new players really really difficult since they have no context for most of what is in the rule books, and these procedures can be really helpful ways to begin thinking about it. Best example off the top of my head is Fronts from PBTA. It's a good way to start thinking about faction play, it's not my personal favourite way, but it's a good one. I think these can be good learning tools to get people in, and I'm absolutely positive he knows this, and uses these tools all the time or at least did to learn what he does. The thing is 5e draws a lot lot more views than any other system, so even if someone uses a lot of homebrew and steals from other systems constantly they will often stay 5e because it just... gets people watching.

I've GMed a few times and I confirm: the GM's human limitations are the ceiling of the game. Yes, technically you can do anything... as long as I manage to improv my way around it!

Roleplaying=/= talking in character

@@gaz-l621 neither is "i just say something to persuade"

Yea but in Brennan's case it's a game being performed as a story for an audience. The importance of those are flipped

May I suggest games from the Powered By the Apoloclypse genre? I specifically have had a lot of fun with Monster of the Week. Its the set of games ive found that most supports roleplay without getting in the way too much.,

This also applies to DnD 5e btw. My players and I don't really play 5e anymore, but if we did, they wouldn't just say "I roll for Persuasion", they would roleplay that interaction with me.

Calling the stealth mechanics in a game where every other system is driving you towards a particular play-pattern a "void" is an extremely poorly formed argument. If the rest of the system is scaffolding the interactions you want, then it's still a system.

Well... I think there's some interesting stuff to consider. For instance, a stealth skill is not a good thing to have in a game where you want everyone to try to hide and sneak. The reason for this is that when you introduce a skill, it means some people will be good at it and others not good at it. Notice how when you have a skill for disarming and finding traps, only the rogue actually tries disarming and finding traps? This is because having the skill exist creates a barrier to entry. Sometimes this can be a good thing, but if you want everyone in your RPG to utilize a given tactic, it's a bad idea. By not having a stealth skill, but letting people know stealth is an option, you now enable it as an option everyone can use. Kind of how anyone can use the dodge action in D&D 5E or drink a potion. It's just a universal part of everyone's tool box and occasionally everyone will indulge in this action. And it's different from something like shooting a bow where technically anyone can do it, but if you have a low dexterity and no proficiency, the game is basically telling you "never do this, you suck bad at it." That being said, I think Mothership should have some mechanics for stealth, not a skill strictly speaking, but probably something that would help determine what's a good hiding place. Maybe a set of keywords based on how the thing tracks you (scent, sight, hearing, etc), as well as how fast it is. So hiding under the bed might be good against something with relatively poor senses but it's fast, because it's quick to get under the bed. Hiding in a locker might be okay against smell, but bad versus hearing (since it hears you shut it). Since I think it's important to give players some basis on knowing what's a good hiding spot compared to a bad one, so it doesn't feel like a totally arbitrary choice.