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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.
This is a great discussion on it. I think it's also really important to remember that Brennan isn't some new DM who learned the game with 5e. He's been playing for decades. He's been running for decades. He's *still* running a 3rd ed game last I heard from the various shows. On top of that he's a professional actor, improv actor, and - now - story teller/DM and comedian. So it makes sense that he has a level of expertise with D&D that he can just use it to handle things he wants, and work around the rest. And it makes sense that he can manage an entire social game without mechanical support. He has those skill sets. Which also goes back to the mechanics and what they represent. D&D mechanics support combat heavy games, because it has a lot of mechanics for combat. D&D 5e mechanics do not support wilderness survival games, because it has a lot of mechanics that nullify key aspects of wilderness survival. You can make a D&D game about anything - and people do - but the less you lean on what the game has mechanical support for the more work you have to do. Shadowrun & Blades in the Dark is another great example. Both games involve groups of outlaws doing jobs. Blades in the Dark has mechanical support for doing the job, and this means the players themselves don't have to engage with the planning, research, and legwork of a heist. You just make an engagement roll and go. However, a lot of Shadowrun players (I'm stereotyping from the groups I played with) really like that legwork stuff, and so they balk at how simplistic Blades makes it, because it's "doing the job on easy mode." And I see this a lot with other people. I've been so disappointed with so many so called "Rogue Players" I've met because they're not good at playing rogues. They're good at min-maxing D&D dice mechanics to do a lot of Backstab damage. But when it comes time to solve a problem in a non-straightforward method they're lost. Meanwhile the Shadowrun player tells the GM they're going to poison the captain of the guards with bleach, and yes they've had a bottle of bleach on their character sheet for *months* just in case a bleach solvable problem came up and everyone looks at them like they're a crazy person.
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.
"Worlds Beyond Number" being the name of a podcast always confused me, because I immediately think it's talking about Sine Nomine's Worlds Without Number
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.
Thinking about the "DnD is not a game, it's games," article you discussed a few weeks ago, one could look at 5e, or any ruleset for that matter, as describing some of the games you could be playing, but not all. I think the best systems get you and your friends into play quickly and allow you the room to intuit your own additional games rules.
In the fireside chat they made all made a couple good points but the biggest thing I appreciate is them talking about how 5e is one of the better 'physics engines' of the nitty gritty actual combat mechanics and skill checks. Brennan and Co are fantastic improv actors and don't need help in the game system on that front and infact find that those RP mechanics can detract from the story they want to tell. The only thing he wanted more of in 5e was features and spells that were more out of combat oriented but if he home brewed a whole class for one of his players I'm sure he could customize that for them as well.
As a simulationist combat engine 5e is awful. It's also terrible at being fun engaging wargame. What it is, is familair. That's the only real advantage. In this sense, I think the system Brennan should actually be using is one with pretty minimal RP rules and a good comprehensive and fun combat system that can hook into the narrative without getting in the way. In this sense I think Lancer and Icon would actually be perfect if you get over the familiarity hurdle.
@@INTCUWUSIUA I mean if it truly as terrible as you say it is then people would have gone to pathfinder or fantasy age. Like people abandoned ship during 4e. It doesn't do anything *fantastic* but it has easy solutions that make combat fast and fun overall and allows for improvising of the mechanics to fit the needs of the table. More are either not in depth enough or too mored to have that flexibility
@@RomanNardone You need to consider the role that marketing and branding play. 5e is succesfull because it's very well marketed, and DnD as a whole continues to be successful because of its legacy. Take those away and no one would care. Also the perception of 4e is pretty skewed by time. Though it did lose a lot of players to Pathfinder, it still handily outsold Pathfinder for most of its lifespan, with Pathfinder only overtaking it for a brief time near the end of its life when WotC stopped making books for it. Even 4e benefitted from marketing and branding, even if the amount by which they changed the game jeapordised the "tradition" aspect of their marketing strategy.
@@RomanNardone In no reality is 5e combat fast and fun. It doesn't offer easy solutions either. But people have enough familiarity with the system that they can kinda bodge their way to a solution. What most people play isn't 5e, it's a homebrew game they call 5e, but I guarantee you they would have a much better time if they used a game that was actually well designed as their starting point.
@@RomanNardone you're being absurd. People did go to Pathfinder. It is why Pathfinder is the number two TTRPG and has been since it first launched. 5e is a successful marketing push and that is it. it doesn't nothing best, but it does lots of things good enough for most people to latch onto and run with.
I loved the call-out to the 'fruitful void". From a designer's standpoint though, we mustn't assume the GM will be a professional improv actor, an experienced fencer, a spelunker, or any such. The goal of game design is to provide the tools and guidance needed for *anyone* to reliably recreate a particular kind of play experience for any arbitrary group of players. Certain players may or may not like that play experience, but if the game design doesn't lead them to the target experience, it has failed IMHO.
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.
In the podcast Brennan goes on to explain that there’s nothing wrong with DMs needing narrative gameplay tools. In the kitchen metaphor, he basically explains that not everyone is a pro chef and some people need meal packs, frozen dinners, or fast food. He’s simply saying that HE personally doesn’t need it and people shouldn’t be attacked for using 5e to run narrative campaigns, he’s not saying that everyone ought to do it
I personally agree with Brennan. Combat inherently needs to be gamified because it isn’t like your players are going to pull out a sword and duel you to determine the outcome. You have to have rules to keep it balanced, interesting, and feasible. Social situations don’t need to be gamified. You’re sitting at a table, doing improv, and if a player says something convincing, or intimidating, or seductive in character, then the natural consequences will follow.
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.
I love mothership, but the 4-5 sessions I’ve played of it, no one ever really tried to use stealth, because it was left in the negative space. If a game designer wants to intentionally use negative space this way, it needs to be made clear to all the players that this is the intent - because otherwise, if it’s silent on the matter, how in the world are players supposed to know it’s actually a focus of the game? The difference between negative space and fruitful void whether or not the players know the intent, and have the ability (or guidance) to be able to take advantage of it.
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.
@@duseylicious That's what the "Warden's Manual" does several times, as excellent guide to become a DM and lead a session/campaign. It's rife with this philosophy and misses no chance to hammer that in. Even the Player's Guide heavily discourages facing off strong foes, essentially telling the players that combat is often a lose-lose kinda deal.
There is a growing resentment among TTRPG players, over games that push the burden of making everything up on the Game Master. Which is part of the reason why people are starting to speak out against games without rules.
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.
Brennan and Co are all extremely skilled storytellers and I have no doubt that they could use any system to tell any story. But most GMs do not have the time or skill to do what Brennan and Co do. For the vast majority of people, a game system that caters to the kind of story they want to tell is tremendously better.
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
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.
Positive space (what is there) and negative space (what is not there) can both matter. We are usually inclined to positive things first. Thus, it can be hard to teach a player that "they can do anything" because that is the negative space of rules. No rules for that? I guess we're going to negotiate it ad hoc.
My problem with the argument is that, for someone who doesn't care about combat and wants it abstracted, 5e specifically takes a really long time to resolve combat. If you don't care about the combat and want it to be abstracted away, why pick a system that has you dive deeper into the combat and spend a lot of time on it, rather than a system that abstracts it away and makes it come down to a single roll instead. You don't even need to have a failed roll equal losing the fight. You could have a system of attrition, just like 5e is, but resolving the outcome in one or two rolls, and having that determine how many resources (stamina, health, mana, whatever) you expend during the fight. That way, you can deep dive on the aspects you like and care about, but without having to waste precious session time on unnecessary combat. Unless, of course, you DO care about the combat, and the way it interacts with the narrative tension of your game.
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.
system definitely matters but... it's a show not a dnd game. These are actors/writers who like Brennan basically said really don't need roleplaying tools. let's be real here worlds beyond number could work with no system at all. It's basically 3 actors and a narrator doing improv for 2 hours. In episode 1 I'm pretty sure Lou's character doesn't even speak in like the last half of the episode because his character isn't "in that scene". I don't know about you guys but when i play dnd i rarely sit silently for 45 minutes. They're not playing a game like us they're doing an improv show and the only real thing they need is the framework of a DM and players, and some way to define character's abilities. So when picking a system why not just take the one everyone knows and is familiar with since they aren't really gonna pay attention to the system anyway. Also I'm pretty sure Brennan mentions in the trailer that they intend to use other systems in the future. So i assume that picking 5e as a starting point is just marketing and a way to ease in fans to other systems. Marketing your new show as a 5e actual play podcast is sadly just better for business. This industry is dominated by dnd 5e and using another system is shooting yourself in the foot. So yes for us system matters but it really doesn't for them.
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 really like the point about the games mechanics defining what you as a GM don't have to care about, rather than what you do. Functionally, the dimension 20 cast could (and often do) barely use dice in telling their stories - they lean on their skills as storytellers and improvisers. In a way, them playing Dnd without combat is more like them not playing any system at all, which certainly gives them a lot of freedom with their narrative. Still, I think Brennan's point does ignore that playing a narrative focused game doesn't inherently to hamper your roleplay - it can often enhance it. Seeing game rules as purely restrictions ignores the work they do in giving structure and guiding the emergence of interesting and unexpected outcomes. There's a reason this isn't freeform make-believe, and that reason isn't simply a lack of storytelling skill on the average players' parts. Dnd's void of narrative rules does give a lot of space to breathe, but that doesn't mean a game with more guiding mechanics in that direction wouldn't have its own benefits. Like, do 5e's elaborate combat rules restrict what stories they're able to tell in combat? Undoubtably, yes - Dimension 20's combat could be resolved purely with imagination, improv, and theatre of the mind, and they would have a lot more freedom to use their strong improv skills to guide the stories of the battles to satisfying conclusions. But there's a reason they use rules, dice, and elaborate battle boards. A lot of cool moments and opportunities for roleplay come out playing within the structure of 5e's combat system. We love it when a surprise crit or bout of bad luck throws an unexpected wrench into the story. And at the end of the day, one of the primary appeals of actual play ttrpg shows is seeing how the players roll (pun intended) with the narrative effects of the game's mechanics. I think implying that rules can only ever hold you back is ignoring this critical factor.
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.
I still think 5e is an odd choice and I'm more inclined to believe it was chosen for it's recognition and market reach... but, this is a very interesting plate of food for thought. The rules can be what the game is not about, or the rules can be what the game is about, but in either case the rules certainly matter in so far as they are a means to an end or a tool to accomplish a task.
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.
So strange about Mothership... I never noticed this. I just assumed Stealth mechanics were wrapped up in the "Military Training" skill. But I definitely noticed that without a skill called "stealth" on the character sheet, it encouraged way more dialogue.
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.
One of my writing mentors told me something I'll never forget. He said that telling good stories is all about knowing how to delay. For me, there are mechanism, like Gearing says, that speed up stuff (knowing how to delay is also knowing when not too), but other abstractions are meant to slow things down. I'm thinking in the 4-5 result for Blades for example, or how in D&D combat you need to answer questions about what's your weapon, your armor, where are you, who's pointing their weapons at you. That very much sparks the conversation, the same way an oven is not food, but helps you cook it. Slowing down in combat, or making it deadly, makes it dramatic and when things are dramatic they are usually fun, be it games, sports or stories.
I think the issue is 5e doesn't have the rules void for roleplaying and speaking with others. It has super simplified rolls that seem designed to avoid needing to have back and forth discussion. "I roll persuasion" is the death of role play.
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.
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
@@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?
Very insightful and interesting. I think it does matter, and D&D isn’t what I would choose in Brendan’s place, but I would also say the guy knows what he’s doing. Brennan has run narrative games (like the modified Kids on Bikes for Mentopolis) so it’s not like he doesn’t know they are out there. D&D was an informed choice by a competent professional.
@@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.
Ultimately my issue with what Brennan said is that he's not responding to the claim he says he's responding to. The claim he says he's responding to is "D&D is a combat-focused game", but the claim he then proceeds to actually respond to is "D&D is 100% combat all the time and noncombat is impossible in D&D". To torture his analogy a little bit, if 5e had actual socializing/social interaction mechanics, it would be like if your stove came with a recipe book. You can obviously still improvise that element if you have that skill outside of the game in real life, but also for the people who don't, having that recipe book can be the thing that lets them do it at all, and then they can develop their skills and maybe reach the point of being able to improvise. My stance mostly is "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". Games budget what they'll use rules on to explain all the time, just be honest about what kind of game you're making.
@@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'm definitely with Brennan on this. The combat portion is what I need rules for. I don't want detailed systems for narrative because filling in those blanks is where I find my fun as a DM. It's an interesting discussion though
You're example of Mothership play gave me a mechanical idea for hiding: the difficulty of the stealth is the number of questions you get to ask before the entity that will notice you arrives.
Based on the polygon article I think Brennan and I are of a similar mind. However, I do not play DnD for one very simple reason. All aspects of table top rpgs boil down to time management, be it scheduling so the group can meet or determining how much time is given over to each aspect of a game. In DnD's case (and especially 5e) I find that the mechanics are too crunchy and my group gets lost in the minutia of figuring out what to do each round. I prefer rules light games (like Knave) since combat can be quick and brutal (which works for the tone of my games) and not occupy hours and hours of our limited play time. That way more time can be given over to the narrative aspects Brennan talks about. Perhaps this is a failing on my part as GM but I think the issue is consistent enough across more than a decade of gaming that I can safely say I am not interested in 5e.
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.
In choosing to run a 5e for my narrative heavy campaign it came down to one thing: familiarity. I want my characters to focus on their characters and their adventures in the world I've made. As an improviser and writer, I need my characters to be allowed to focus on engaging with that narrative rather than engaging with the rulebooks.
I get where Brennan is trying to go with the stove analogy, the most important part of the stove (the food) isn't there and a very shallow understanding of the stove will miss that connection. However, I don't think a deep understanding of 5e reveals it was about narrative all along. When you follow the iron and gas and workings of 5e what you get isn't a system for narrative preparation, but an attrition-based system for exploring dungeons. Obviously many people have made it work for other purposes, Brennan included, but I too have stood on an office chair to reach something instead of grabbing a stepladder and our skillful balance doesn't mean the chair was intended for that purpose or using it that way was the best idea.
I had a discussion recently about Player-GM Negotiation/Conversation versus a Skill or Mechanic just telling you what you can do. Fundamentally different GM approaches. This person felt the negotiation slowed the game down and put responsibility on the player, where mechanics let the GM tell the player what to roll putting it back on the GM. I don't adhere to it, but we switch GM responsibility so as grown adults we do things we don't always like for our friends so they can have a good time.
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.
I'm thrilled with this video and its representation of what sort of player I have found myself to be after a few months of playing 5 systems, from 5e to DCC, to Shadowdark, Into the Odd, and finally Blades in the Dark.
As important as it is that BLM is an improv actor, let's not gloss over the fact that most of the time the people he is gaming with (his players) are ALSO fairly accomplished improv actors. It's like watching the Olympics or sitcoms and trying to reproduce it with your friends: yeah, you can have fun doing it at home, but it's probably not going to hit at 100% all of the time.
I think the negative response to Brennan's statement is in part because there's no clearly defined point where "playing D&D" ends and "playing pretend" begins when you've shown up for a session of D&D. Brennan seems to view that entire spectrum as still being within the scope of "playing D&D", which then reasonably makes it meaningless to define D&D as a "combat-oriented game" since it will contain whatever he imagines. But then it becomes meaningless to define any RPG as being oriented towards anything at all. I think this comes down to the different approaches to RPGs. If your end goal is to tell a story, your improvisation is what it's "about" and the rules used are just a way to get from point A to point B without disrupting the intent of the improvisation. If your end goal is to play a game, the rules used are what it's "about" and improvisations are just a way to get from point A to point B without disrupting the intent of the rules.
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.
@LDIndustries This is exactly right, there IS NO line to be drawn between playing pretend and playing D&D. This is all made up, the only thing that matters is the tangible feeling of playing with your friends. Period.
@@LDIndustries I don't think your comparison to Monopoly shows a clear distinction. Is the direction of Monopoly's emergent story of capitalistic competition not determined by the rolling of dice and players improvising the business decisions of the landlord they are roleplaying as? I think an important distinction of TTRPGs is that they specifically designate that players can overcome their characters' challenges purely through the use of improvised plain language. That process inherently allows for any action imaginable (not prohibited by the rules or moderator), which is something that simply cannot exist within the bounds of video games. I think that is a clear reason to play TTRPGs and in no way does it require shouldering the weight of creating a story. Storytelling _is_ sacred and has been a documented element of shared human culture for thousands of years. But the exact same can be said about playing games. It is not a culturally lesser activity of the human experience. Just because TTRPGs contain the potential to tell rich and immersive stories, that does not make it any form of objectively superior way to engage with them. If I want to play D&D, I don't approach it with a story to tell. I approach it with the intent to make decisions which allow my fantasy hero to succeed in combat, complete their objectives, and level up. If I want to do something else, I'll play a different TTRPG. And if I _do_ want to tell a story, I'll play a TTRPG like Lady Blackbird, where the rules exist specifically to facilitate the telling of a story. My sessions are clearly defined by the confines of the TTRPG I am using, so there is a clear point to identifying what they are oriented towards (i.e. what rules it exists within). If I was primarily playing pretend for the purpose of a shared storytelling experience and merely using a TTRPG's rules as situational guidelines, those boundaries would become a lot fuzzier and defining the "purpose" of the rules I was pulling from would lose its meaning. But that doesn't cover the whole spectrum of how the game can be approached.
@@lukekline9513 The line drawn between playing D&D and playing pretend is specifically the rules that define D&D. If you are playing D&D by the rules, you have agreed that you can no longer pretend that you can proficiently use certain weapons, perform certain magical feats, speak certain languages, etc. without first unlocking them through limiting your character to a specific archetype and earning a specific amount of meta-currency. Likewise, you have also agreed that your imagined avatar _must_ be proficient in armed conflict, _must_ have clearly defined faculties of avoiding and surviving physical assault, _must_ be experienced in skills relevant to fantasy adventuring, etc. If you choose to pretend that your avatar is attacking someone, you have agreed to first concretely determine how many 5ft increments away they are in the imagined world, keep track of how many 5ft increments you're allowed to imagine your avatar traveling in a pretend "turn", follow a specific procedure to determine when your pretend "turn" falls in order with every other combat-equipped imaginary character, abide by the number and methods of attempts to invoke "damage points" you are allowed by the meta-level you have attained for your chosen archetype, etc. And if you invoke enough "damage points" to surpass your target's damage threshold, you will earn meta-currency which you are responsible for tracking outside of the pretend world. The list goes on, but you get the point. That's not to say there's anything wrong with seeing "playing D&D" as just playing pretend with your friends in whichever way is fun to everyone, using D&D's rules as guidelines when it's felt to be necessary. You can forego every single element that I mentioned above and still have the shared understanding with your friends that you're "playing D&D". But I think speaking generally as though there is no discernible line between "playing D&D" and "playing pretend" in the first place is simply false. It diminishes the design and intentions behind D&D, as well as the significance of TTRPGs in general. "D&D" is a framework of restrictions and procedures placed upon playing pretend, for the intended purpose of directing that pretend play to create fantasy adventures where heroes engage in epic battles with monsters and become more heroic as their reputation grows. If the restrictions and procedures included in the game are eschewed, "D&D" is not being played, it's just being used as a utility.
It's important to remember that shows like Critical Role, Worlds by Number and especially L.A by Night are shows not real games. Their number one priority is to provide an engaging story for the viewers not a fun game for the players. Mechanics that take narrative control away from the players like panic or hunger in VTM, or detailed injury systems offer add choices and oppertunaty for the players to work off of, it helps engage with and create the narrative. None of this is good for a show that's built around knowing in part where the story is going and guiding it to that point for the satisfaction of the viewerbase. For 99% of games system absolutely matters, with rules and restrictions breeding further creativity. 5e works for a shows format because having no rules means that the GM can force the story into the direction they want it to go
We always say rules are guidelines. Most rulebooks do. I don't disagree that you can do anything in 5th edition D&D. I think the problem is that people who only play one system, lack the experiences of another style of play to bring that to D&D. Brennan has almost certainly played Fate or a World of Darkness game or Call of Cthulhu, and knows how to translate those experiences into other games. I think most people cannot do that. The fact that D&D is mostly combat mechanics encourages non experienced players to think in terms of combat mechanics.
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.
This is one of those topics where my knee-jerk gut reaction is to disagree with Brennan, but as you were talking I thought about how the 2 best campaigns I've ever run were both narrative-focused with incredibly little combat. One was AD&D and the other Cyberpunk2020, both of which being very combat-focused systems, but we simply pushed our attention toward everything else, and it worked great (though if I could do that first one again, we'd go with a classless game system, as character classes was the main drag). So yeah, I gotta agree. While system does matter, it's hardly the only thing at does. Many of our great gaming memories we have trouble even remembering which system or edition it was, meaning a good story isn't restricted by the system. Great video, man. Gave me a lot to think about.
The quote from 2:51 tickles me fancy because Brennan would be a GURPS stan if that was the first RPG they ever touched instead of DND of all things. It is the logic of a simulationist.
Here's the thing: Brennan Lee Mulligan is the patron saint of improv and has years and years of experience doing this sort of thing. Don't look at Brennan and say "oh well he's doing it, so can I!" It's like saying "Oh, Gordon Ramsey doesn't need a recipe, so I don't either!" (We're not going to talk about the grilled cheese. One bad dish does not make a bad chef.) MOST GMS DO NOT HAVE THE EXPERIENCE, THE TALENT, OR THE TIME TO MAKE WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR. If you, reading this right now, want a narrative campaign, do NOT use DnD. There are loads of systems out there that do a lot of the heavy lifting for the GM, so they don't have to work their entire ass off for you to play. Oh and for that matter, if you ARE going to use DnD, then learn the fucking system, coward. This is a COLLABORATIVE hobby. The GM is not your game engine slave. Signed, A GM who DOES have the time to write a narrative campaign in DnD, uses that time to make up for the lack of experience and talent, and loves it. A.K.A. a unicorn.
This way of thinking about systems makes me even more psyched to try out the Cypher system, as it seems its mechanics rely heavily on design by subtraction-instead of rules for many things the DM has to keep track of, the tiers of rolling are player-driven and the rewards for play are given when players willingly allow rolls to fail for narrative purposes.
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.
What’s missing from the conversation is the role and powers of the GM. Both trad GMs (like BLM) and OSR GMs agree that the GM has ultimate authority over the rules and content of the game. This means they rely on their own intuition and experience to do whatever they want to. Narrative focused games often explicitly constrain the GM and empower players. Heart for example gives the players options to meet specific goals which the GM MUST give them opportunities for. I’ve found that good GMs who go for narrative play just recreate these rules in an arbitrary, opaque way. In my experience, making these rules explicit has Always produced better games and I have Never had a GM succeed as well relying on their own intuition. GMs are rarely good as they think! Constraints breed creativity!
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!
this still feels like a bad argument. if you're running a campaign with a low focus on combat, you dont have to "fill in the void" with a bunch of combat rules. you can just... not emphasize combat. instead of a game with hundreds of pages of rules and mechanics about combat, play something where combat is shorter, less in-depth, and over quickly, so you can get back to the roleplaying that you _actually_ want to do. you don't have to intuit the way an arrow moves through the air, you can just play a system where combat is a handful of dice rolls that'll be over in five minutes. systems are defined by the rules they _have,_ not the ones they don't. if you give a player four different kinds of attacks and a dozen weapons to pick from, but conversations are one persuasion roll, they're going to gravitate towards combat. if you give a player one basic attack and that's it, they're not going to view it as the central mechanic of the game.
I fully agree with what Brennan said about D&D for how he runs it and the people he plays with. But for a general audience, I think the idea of the thing you don't have rules for being the most important doesn't tend to pan out. You need a table with a GM and players who are all already skilled at that aspect like Brennan and the many comedians he GMs for are with improv to have this sort of thing work. In practice with your average group of TTRPG players/DMs you end up having the things that there aren't rules for being largely ignored/unexplored/forgotten or you end up floundering through them with poorly conceived house rules. I think giving the advice to most people that D&D isn't great for roleplay makes sense, because many groups need systems that actively encourage roleplay through the mechanics. That said, systems that attempt to do that poorly can often make matters worse. I've been GMing a campaign in World In Peril, which is a superhero system using Powered by the Apocolypse for it's core gameplay. One of the quirks of this system is that the main way you progress you character is through roleplay, but it mandates certain very odly specific roleplay actions that you need to do to unlock certain abilities, which requires both the GM and the entire table to focus on achieving those things during play. In practice I found my players didn't want to shoehorn specific roleplay beats into the story and I largely replaced that system with an improvised fail forward mechanic. So yeah that was a case of roleplay rules getting in the way. But other systems have rules that are more freeform and make more sense to encrouage roleplay from those who might be less inclinded towards it naturally.
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
It seems to me that Brennan's point is more that he doesn't need a ttrpg to give him storyteller rules because he already has a set of storyteller rules that he is using, those derived from his professional experience. Rules are how you adjudicate situations, so he still needs a set of rules, it's just that he's able to reduce the storytelling rules to a minimal set of improv principles that he has honed through the years. We all do this same thing in areas where we have special knowledge, especially if it's shared by others at the table, it just happens his in in a major area of ttrpg games. The basic principle is that rules can provide structure for you to resolve situations, but if they are in the way (because your own adjudication system is fairer, faster, or more fun) then ditch them.
The Mothership example is a straw man argument. He's not arguing against games that have a stealth roll mechanic in them; he's arguing against a particular play/GMing style that can happen in ANY game -- using rolls instead of roleplaying. Savage Worlds has explicit stealth mechanics (a Stealth skill). But I would have the SAME conversation with my players before a roll... where are you hiding, how dark is it, etc. Because as a GM, once they tell me what they are trying to do in the space, I will then give them a bonus or penalty based on what they are RPing that they are doing. Their roll is thus modified based on their description, so it's not "just a roll." I do this in every game, not just SWADE, and my friends and I have been doing this since 1982 basic/expert. You always had to tell the GM what you're doing, before making a roll, because penalties, advantage, etc., might apply based on what you are saying.
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.
Counter argument: Some systems have mechanics that spill on other categories. 5e's HP and damage is so bloated that out of combat risks (falling, traps, natural disasters) are trivialized to the point that they block fun emergent narrative gameplay. It also stealthy encourages metagaming (i.e "yeah I can tank this") and encourages artificially bloating damage to create interesting narrative risks. System matters
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.
Ok, so I was going to say something about Brennan but after seeing what this 5:24 game developer had to say, this makes Brennan completely normal and I'll let it slide. 5:24 I think this is awful coming from a game designer. You pay for a product about running and hiding and there's no rules or good guidance for it? Are you serious? Instead, you as a customer who is not a game developer btw needs to make the rules for the game yourself instead of the actual game developer who made the game. Do you know how easy it is to fight about these things? This is not going to open up narrative freedom at all, this is a gateway to frustration and clunky awful game play. I honestly think this is worse than Bethesda. I don't understand why you would pay for a product like this.
@@QuestingBeastI’m inclined to agree. Mothership very effectively encourages players to think creatively about hiding on a scene by scene basis precisely because it doesn’t provide a rigid mechanical procedure for players to default to every time.
@packtactics Respectfully, if one of your chief concerns with a rules light flexible framework like Mothership’s is that players are going to fight and argue instead of engaging with the scenario and allowing their GM to make a scene appropriate ruling, I feel like that says more about the group than the game. No system, no matter how thorough, solves jerks.
@@QuestingBeast Ok. So do you think Dnd 5e hiding rules are good then? There's barely any rules for that and people argue about it all the time because it's badly written. Does that mean 5e is just as good as Mothership when it comes to hiding? Because the difference there is Mothership has no rules. If I want a stealth game, I'll buy a stealth game with actual mechanical choices to enhance me and my players experiences with stealth. If my only experience with stealth mechanics in ttrpgs is dnd 5e or pathfinder for example and the stealth game has no mechanics or proper guidance for stealth, then it clearly doesn't work. I've wasted my time learning a new system and have to try and fix the game and it will most likely just be reverted back to 5e or pathfinder because that's all I know. Whats more productive instead of brewing is just find a new system and that's not a problem if you and your players are use to playing different systems. If rules are well written then the players will collectively agree that those are the rules of the game without needing to make things up much. Then the game flows better. Role playing games should have mechanics for what they're trying to achieve and yes, I'm absolutely for roleplay mechanics in general. If I pay for a horror game for example and it says nothing about how dying works, then the horror game fall apart. That should be self evident.
@@hodgepodgesyntaxia2112 I don't have a problem with rules light. Rules light is fine. If there's mechanics and the mechanics are good and useful to achieve the gameplay I want to experience in the rules light then it's insanely good I would say. What the mothership guy said didn't sound like rules light and if it is then I apologize and will delete my comments. I totally messed up. I was misinformed by his tweet. He said his game had no rules on running and hiding. He didn't say rules light. And yes, I agree that groups shouldn't fight about rules. That's why we need good rules in the game so we don't argue about how hiding works every single time in the hiding game. Arguing while playing the game sucks. Let's play a game like a rules light game where we all agree how stealth works from just naturally reading the book. That's why there's a book to begin with.
It's not just that D&D has a focus on combat, but that it has very "gamist" combat. It's very drawn out, strategic, and rewards system mastery. It's not simply simulating how an arrow flies through a battlefield. It's influenced by whether you're a fighter with action surge, the archery fighting style, extra attack, and the sharpshooter feat. There are objectively strong and weak ways to make an archer, often unaccounted for by the narrative. The system does bend and you can add narrative influence to it without breaking it, but that's not what it is at its core. The narrative is essentially handing over control to a game of chess, and the outcome becomes at least partially defined by your skill at chess. For an otherwise narrative-focused game, that can be some jarring dissonance for the audience. Personally speaking, I also generally don't find long combats that fun to listen to. Brennan Lee Mulligan seems better than most at keeping it lively from my limited exposure to his shows, but not enough to keep me on the hook long after initiative was rolled.
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.
For me, the perfect rules system is the one I'm familiar with. It takes a lot of time to learn a new system, and the more systems I have bouncing around in my head, the more likely I am to cross contaminate and remember how something worked in the wrong system. I still jumble rules from 3.5 and pathfinder with 5e because I was introduced to those systems as a new player, while I actively worked to read and learn as much about 5e as possible. Hell, even the differences between 5e & BG3 get messed up in my mind, though that's mostly because BG3 made a lot of improvements to 5e. After the OGL debacle, my group has been effectively sunsetting 5e with a series of one-shots, but I know it'll take a long time to hammer in 2e once we get around to diving into it.
What I love about your channel is that you are willing to investigate a lot of perceived wisdom about the hobby, even perceived wisdom that might mesh with what you already believe. That's a really great quality, and it makes your videos some of the best TTRPG-focused ones on the internet.
This makes a lot of sense to me, especially because when I have tried more narrative focussed games, that is exactly the issue I ran into... *somehow* I tended to find the narrative part too restricted, too "gamey" and less real and immersive than when playing 5e or OSR etc. where that part was mostly free of rules and mechanics that get in the way.
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.
I'm a big fan of just not engaging with chronically online drama mobs. Brennan can do what he wants, safely ignoring the 0.0001% of the gaming population that decided to criticize his decision on social media sites and comment sections with weak arguments about things that are simply a matter of personal taste.
The funny thing is that as a DM, I agree with him. I have no problem running a combat heavy system for my narrative games because I just need to know the basics then let the system work for combat. But as a player, I disagree. As a player, most of my character building decisions relate to the mechanics of the game, and if said mechanics are all combat based, that leaves me focusing on combat more than I want to. This approach leaves me in the position where I am willing to run most any system, but I am much more picky about what systems I play.
I think that bit about abstraction is important. I'm very, VERY new to DMing and I think sometimes rolling for things while my PCs are deep into their role to be incredibly cumbersome especially in conversations.
Monopoly the board game isn't about moving pieces around board trying to make the most money using the methods allowed in the rules. It's actually the most immersive, narrative forward, player facing roleplaying setting in existence. What's important is the characters you make for the player tokens, their voices, how they interact with each other as they pass each other on the board, visit each other in prison, and (god-forbid) spend the night together in the same motel room on the Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois... (Of course, you can do whatever you like. There really is no "wrong" way to play except what isn't fun for the group in question.)
"System matters' is definitely an aspect but I think to have the mindset that "yes, we have those tools so i don't have to worry about it" softly expresses the mastery/knowledge you have of those tools. They understand the crunch and are now looking beyond it to worry about the more unknown territory. I think it speaks more to moving out of the comfort zone of the books in order to grow beyond them. A new DM looks at all those same rules and says, "There's so much to learn" after all
Games as interesting decisions is a useful framework here. Every cool interaction in the Mothership example is the GM creating an interesting decision-point for the player on the fly: Where will you hide? Will you risk taking off your vacc-suit to fit in the locker? Will you risk taking the time to unscrew the grate to hide in the ventilation shaft? These decision-points are interesting because the player can't just deduce the right choice. They are trying to make risk-reward calculations based on incomplete information, and ultimately they have to decide what they are willing to risk and for what reward. TTRPG mechanics don't just abstract. 1) They quantify. They allow some choices to be measurably more or less risky (reduce your armour class, make a speed check) and to offer measurably better or worse rewards (This is where the stealth mechanic would usually come in... Depending on where you hid, you get a bonus or penalty to your stealth check.) 2) They randomize results in real time. If the GM just decides that the risky thing you did pays off in spades, it doesn't feel like you took a real risk and happened to get lucky. So the GM allows the dice to decide the results, but based on the risk-reward scenario that the player decided to accept. I am surprised at such an unnuanced take from Brennan. The idea that Dimension 20 has chosen to play primarily 5e because Brennan isn't interested in telling stories about violent conflict is... like... lizard-people-conspiracy-level nonsense.
"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 TH-cam 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.
But here is what neither of you have considered. The main issue with using DnD for narrative combat light games is not that it's primarily a combat game or that most of its rules adjudicate combat, or that it lacks mechanisms for other kinds of challenges. The MAIN hindrance is the nature of how the PCs/character classes are designed. Because of the presumption that DnD adventures will have combat, all of the character classes assume you must be able to hold your own in a combat. If you look at ALL the character classes, they are ALL just "different ways to kill people". Every. Single. One. It's just about whether you kill people with a sword, kill them with magic, or kill them with stealth. And as you progress, you inevitably MUST get better at combat. The very build of a DnD character (HP, AC, Saves, Base Attack Bonus, etc) and its levels are different kinds of progressively more powerful "combating machine". And THAT is the problem. In other systems, like for example the d100 system used in Call of Cthulhu, or GURPS, etc. - in those, it is possible to make a scientist who is 'high level' in the sense of being very good at science, but completely defenseless. And the very PRESENCE of those kinds of characters as PCs forces the narrative into finding other solutions than combat. The only way to achieve that in DnD is to make the bad guy way overpowered so the PCs have to investigate to find a story-based way to win. But that then forces the entire party into that and it's a very clumbsy way to do it. Bottom line, it would be completely foolish to use d20 DnD style system to run a Sherlock Holmes game, or a Political game, or a Victorian-era Romance game - because your PCs should not just INEVITABLY get better and better at combat as they grow in experience.
4e had rules to facilitate roleplaying; the skill challenge system was way more accessible for DMs than what we've to to work with what we have to work with nowadays. Sure, it had a lot of combat specific stuff, but so does 5e. The challenge was getting your players to a balance where they are aware of their powers, but want their persona to evolve also. It is much like the contention about the 5e rules covering the aspects of the world the DM cannot improvise; it was the same with 4e, people critical of its RP potential could never see past all the bells and whistles on the character sheet.
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.
What you are describing is narrativitic vs simulationist style gameplay. Rules that abstract are narrative, rules that are attempting to simulate a scenario and can be adjusted for circumstances are simulationist. D&D's rules used to be simulationist because Gary Gygax liked that style of rules.
I think what Brennen says is viable FOR HIM. As you said: he is a professional Improviser and does stuff like this for a living. Most GMs don't. So concluding something FOR US from what he said is mostly useless, because most of us don't have this expertise. Most normale Groups don't need rules to cover what they are not interested in but to support the Stuff they are interested in. Most GMs need Rules for what they can't do themselves. Not everyone is great at improvising social Encounters or Intrigue or complex Relationships and if that is the Case complex rules for these Things can ease someone into trying it. This is basically like using training Wheels until you can drive on your own. And there is no shame in needing support in Things you can't do (yet) as a GM. For me Preperation and Rules are always about easing the Players and GM into the Game. They support them into what they are supposed to do and rewards them for doing them. So if a normal Group wants to play a narrative Campaign they absolutely should choose a narrative-focused System at first to learn the important parts by playing it. If you choose DnD for that the Game won't help you! That is fundamentally it. You wan't help with that? Choose another System. Are you comfortable without Rules for that? Choose whatever feels best for you. And if that is DnD for one Reason or another thats totally cool. This is why this Debate is so weird. Because it completely depends on your own competence if DnD is enough for you and your Group. This might not be true for everyone!
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.
On the plushand all this discourse made me think about negative design space which is a cool concept. I hope people remember the context so it doesn't become "not having a system is good actually" when people point out the lack of rules for sth. I'd think people's pushback is because they (rightfully or wrongly) assume he plays 5E because it's popular and gets views. And what he says sounds more like a post-hoc justification in order to not come out and say that (even if he is serious).
I think, sure. And as lots of people have pointed out, that works great for Brennan who obviously has years of experience, is a professional improve actor, etc. He sees a fruitful void, he wants to to work within that space. He'll bring the food. All for it. But when I think of games that lean into mechanics that support roleplay or narration, I don't think of that as overly gameifying or forcing people to be less creative--rather, the best ones operate in the same way a formal poem would. Sure, free verse is all fun and good, but have you tried to write a sonnet? An ode? God, a sestina? Putting limitations, frames, and borders around areas can do wonders for creativity. It shows people a set of picked blank spaces and lets them dance within them, rather than throwing them a blank canvas and saying "go crazy." Additionally, as many have pointed out, not all players (or GMs for that matter) are great at roleplaying. They want to be, but it's a skill that takes time to develop. Giving them leads, prompts, and systems to help attach their narrative decisions to can help everyone get on the same playing field, as well as generate some of the most interesting and surprising interactions from players that would otherwise have a hard time coming up with ideas on-the-spot (especially from quieter players, or folks who are generally shy when it comes to character/narrative). I don't disagree with Brennan, it's awesome that it works for him, but there are so many other amazing systems out there that can help folks--and again, folks who aren't famous improv actors--tell wonderful stories that I still want to bury D&D 5e as the "every system" and de-emphasize its perceived narrative potential.
I don’t disagree with the prospect of using a combat-oriented system as a way to handle the abstraction of combat, but I disagree with the idea of saying a system is not combat-oriented because it’s not being used to enjoy the complexity of combat. Like, to me, roleplaying is system irrelevant. You can roleplay Monopoly if you felt like it. But whatever game you use matters in what you want to motivate your players to do and how you want encounters to resolve. D&D incentivizes players to fight monsters, leveling up gives you more features for fighting monsters, you can tell a story in the system where the point isn’t to fight monsters, but at some point one of your players is going to try to fight a monster, because that is what the system asks of them, and they can do that because D&D has rules for resolving the act of fighting monsters. Another flashpoint that Brennan’s quote might’ve made is that a number of players in the ttrpg space are getting frustrated with D&D’s hegemony over the space and the community’s lack of interest in other systems, even if other systems would provide better ways to abstract stuff like combat without spending an hour resolving it like D&D does.
If people made this complaint about pathfinder 1e I could empathize because pathfinder is very much a wargamer’s tabletop, if you LOVE combat and minmaxing characters and hate everything else about other roleplaying tabletops it’s probably what you’d enjoy more. Dnd 5e though is a mix of everything and accommodates every kind of player adequately, even Brennens.
"D&D is a game about tax collecting because there arent any forms about tax collecting in it." Willingly ignoring ludonarrative to avoid making a positive case for this system isn't a crime. They don't need to change their system for anyone. But pretending its not the same tired excuse of name recognition, familiarity, and 5e's reputation for being extremely permissive is absurd. Do what you and your players like, but don't piss on my leg and tell me its raining.
Perfectly put. I'm a firm believer in "not my table, not my business". if you and your group are using honey heist to tell an alternate history WWII horror story, i think that's fuckin' weird and probably not the best system to choose. But if it works for you and your group, it works. I might recommend a better game, but it's not my place to tell you you're having fun wrong. But for brennan it absolutely is about brand recognition and familiarity. Brennan is an old-school D&D gamer. From what i've heard from him speaking candidly on podcasts, he just doesn't seem that interested in other games. And he knows that non-5e games pull way less viewership. I think what really bothered me about this quote was that it comes off more like rationalizing a weak argument rather than owning up to the reality of the actual play podcast space.
I agree that those are absolutely reasons for Brennan to continue using the system, probably the primary reasons. But there is a point to be made that D&D is being used here only for the parts of the experience that Brennan wants / needs to be structured. Even if that structure kinda sucks compared to plenty of other options out there - that’s where the other reasons to use D&D come in. At most, I could see Brennan switching to another combat-centric system that actually did its one job better - but then he still wouldn’t want / need rules for the narrative side of the experience. He’s got that covered. Nonetheless, I concede that D&D is all too often shoehorned into any and every form of game / story without any consideration for other options. I’m sure there are *literal hundreds* of systems that would suit Brennan’s desired experiences better. Unfortunately, those systems aren’t D&D (TM).
A great example of a narrative game having a lot of combat mechanics is actually the pre-V5 versions of Vampire: the Masquerade.... It's very much a narrative game that is focused on politics and horror... but the largest page count and detail in the corr of the system is still combat.
I feel like this boils down to whether someone likes mechanics or not. Or maybe a simpler way to say it - how much do you want to gamify your RPG experience? I recently had a session where we made a single dice roll in 4 hours - it was a lot of planning, plotting and personal storyline development. The group loved this session (I think) because it was just a collaborative storytelling exercise. Speaking only for myself here, it was not a satisfying experience. I did not enjoy this session. For me personally, the mechanics have to support the game I want to run. Adding a random dice element IMO is vital for my enjoyment because it brings complications into the story that wouldn't otherwise be there. I can appreciate not wanting to have clunky rules invading the narrative to the point of ruining immersion - I get that - but that's why I have come to prefer lighter/simpler systems over crunchier ones. If I play 5E, I want to play a combat heavy game - I made a gloom stalker, let me use my gloom stalker. But if I am wanting to tell a different kind of story - character driven, political intrigue, whatever - I am running as far away from 5E as I can possibly get. It's not that you can't run a political intrigue game in 5E, it's that you are making characters which are hammers and you have to be playing with people who are going to treat everything like a screw instead of a nail. I really think that only works on TH-cam, where the object of these campaigns is to entertain an audience, not play a game with friends.
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.
Similar point: If you like the idea survival and exploration (in 5E), the worst thing you can do is have a ranger in your party. It's very hard to make exploration/survival interesting when you can never get lost (in the favored terrain), and you never run out of food (goodberry).
I have slowly converted a group of mindless battle goblins into a group that can RP with me not even in the room. If you think 5e isn't for narrative you're missing half of the game lol
I use Old School Essentials for my narrative heavy games because it suits my needs for combat; it's quick and brutal. Most "narrative heavy RPG" have mechanics that, at least to me, don't work for for what they are intended for.
I fully agree with Brennan’s take. During D20 Mentopolis, they used the Kids on Bikes system and that was great for story and RP. Combat was brought up, briefly discussed, and decided on between the DM and players *during* the episode where there’s some combat where they take actual damage. Not having to think about how combat will work and having everyone already understand how it will work *IF* it happens is brilliant. No one likes combat mechanic disagreements at the table.
That is one of the great things about RPG's. If its a table that loves high combat and little to no RP they can do it and have a great time. If a table hashes the rules to death but has a great time then its right for them. If the table is high RP and low rules they can do that. As long as people have fun I don't think it matters
"Monster of the Week" is an ttrpg that is based on improv acting. It's meant the feel like a weekly supernatural show. It gives the players tools to improv their way through the session. While a professional improv actor won't need those systems, I love it. The improv acting is the part I like least about D&D, but I love to engage in the game mechanics presented in Monster of the Week.
Your last point is what kills this argument for me. He's a professional improv actor, so just because he doesn't need systems in place to tell narrative stories doesn't mean that this is some sort of universal rule. There are exceptions to everything, and I don't think 99% of people would be able to follow this exception and carry it over to their own games. It works for him, that doesn't mean it's good advice for everyone. Most people are picking a system because it has a unique purpose that they want to take advantage of. Roleplaying happens in every system, even in casual wargames, so saying "I'm using 5e because it gives me the freedom to RP how I want" is a moot point. And let's be totally honest, he is a professional actor, the real reason he's probably using 5e is because it has the biggest audience.
Brennan's argument would support picking something like Knave or FATE better than it supports picking 5e. It is blatantly a marketing decision. That is fine, I just hate that he pretends it's anything else.
He's not trying to claim that every table interested in narrative games should play 5e. He's specifically speaking for himself and only for himself. Just like everyone else is. The decision about what system to use at YOUR table is YOUR decision.
@@krkngd-wn6xjI dont see it as a marketing decision. I see it as, that system being what his players and audience know well and changing the system impairs the story as everyone learns the new game and its boundaries.
Am of a similar opinion to Brennan. At first I found DnD restrictive. I wanted character, exploration, and combat that's more loose and creative, as opposed to super-specific and resource-dependent. But then I looked at other TTRPGs that claimed to be more roleplay-oriented. And I found that most of them tried to gamify roleplay, which made things anything but intuitive. I don't wanna flip through a book for mechanics on how to act and talk in-character, or roll dice to determine how drama and character development evolves, It just breaks immersion IMO since your mind is more focused on the rulebook than on the scene you're in.
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.,
Interesting. I think this is the kind of thing Prof. DM is talking about when he talks about rules-lite systems for his games: Because he can improvise combat stuff, he prefers less rules with combat, so he can focus more on narrative description when in combat. Super interesting!
A game is about whatever the game allows you to do. It’s cool and great if your character has a deep history and relationship with the stakes to motivate them, but at the end of the day, they’re a 7th level wizard because you decided it would be sick as shit to be able to throw fireballs around, and odds are that’s how you’re going to settle things. It amazes me that this argument is still being had in a post PBTA world. We know what games with robust narrative mechanics can look like; I have no idea where or why they all went.
An important aspect of this that I think gets overlooked is the purpose of dice and rule systems. They are impartial (though not necessarily fair) judges as to the results of actions. Without them, situations that invested parties aren't all in a position to accurately judge can easily devolve into childish quibbling. "Assassin stabs Hero." "Hero dodges." "Assassin moved too fast for you to dodge." "But Hero is faster!" "No Assassin is faster!" etc . . . Using dice, with a supporting set of rules so things make a bit more sense help a lot in avoiding these kinds of situations. I like 5e because it has rules and dice rolls in almost all of the situations where this could be a problem. We're not always obligated to use the dice or the rules, but if there is any uncertainty or possibility of disagreement, then we have an easy way out. We're not trying to skip the combat, we like it, we just need an organized system for it so there is little room for conflict. Of course it helps that me and mine like wargames and fantasy.
Brennan is already an amazing storyteller. He does not need a system that does that for him. He needs a system to help keep track of who's dying and who's not
I think part of this argument fails because it asserts that abstractions are loss of detail. That's not true, rather they are flexible interpretation of detail. If one rolls an attack roll, it's not just an attack, it's, to an extent, what the player wants the attack to be. It could be a low cut to the leg, a flying knee kick, it could be lots of things. Abstractions aren't removing detail, they are leaving that to the player. The greater logic at play fails because it can assert absurd things like, d&d has no rules about tanks, therefore it's about tank play. So one could assert many ideas not covered by the rules are what d&d is actually about. Yet all cannot be true at once. So arguments like this can be quickly dismissed. There are different aspects at play that determine the focus of the game. However, what the rules support will be related to that at the end of the day. So w/e 5e is, it is designed around doing combat in some way or where combat leads. And w/e way that is, based on the mechanics, it's more immersion based, not narrative. Brennen can make it work, cool, that doesn't make it ideal. That also doesn't mean the ideal game for what Brennen wants to do exists, but that doesn't mean that 5e is therefore ideal for what Brennen wants to do. Brennen could easily grab a game that does narrative based combat, still do everything he wants to do outside of the combat, and that would probably suit what he wants to do better. His response, ultimately doesn't really address this point.
I agree only to a point. I feel there's a fallacy on the "combat is solved by the game and let's me focus on narrative" idea: if that's the goal by picking this system, then shouldn't it be efficient and concise? Shouldn't it resolve these encounters fast and fluently? If you want to actually create a narrative, shouldn't your character creation provide space for diversity of characters? I think it is usually the habit that talks in these cases where people defend a choice. You don't have to try and defend your choice since we all have a system we prefer and it is just as the food we like and the culture we grew up in: We just know this better. People that play dnd will stick to it and make homebrew stuff and all kinds of things to expand the game they know instead of trying something else precisely because it is what they know and are comfortable with. What rules make is that the narrator loses control of things when there are rules, and Brennan runs shows, so he NEEDS to be in full control of the narrative.
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?
I enjoy his "CEO of X" videos but by gawd that had to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard about 5e. "I don't want to have to think about combat mechanics". 5e is notorious for stopping the flow of the game to look up all the many rules. I mean, I guess technically you don't have to think because it's all written down for you, but that's the problem. And to say it's intuitive? Absolutely not. The only people saying that are the ones that have been playing for years. Show it to a new person and see how much trouble they have adapting and getting used to it. Even if you ignore the combat side of it, the abilities players get are absolute narrative killers. From Goodberry all the way up to Wish. Just absolute nonsense. If he didn't want to think about combat mechanics he should be playing EZD6 or Tricube. Not the one that's loaded with combat mechanics. What an odd argument.
Also, most of the skills are "deal XdY damage", which kind of doesn't happen in the show? They're literally using a hammer without using a hammer. I suppose 5e is just there to gather audience, nothing more. 5e crowd would not watch a non-5e campaign.
I find it extraordinarily bizarre that "people are annoyed" about how other people are playing a game somewhere else in the world not involving said annoyed people. What the fuck could they possibly be annoyed about? Actively seeking out and watching people play that game so that they can then critique or claim "They're doing it wrong?" WHAT?? Frankly, I'm pretty certain it's not anyone's place to arbitrate what a game 'is or isn't", even the creators of that game. How people enjoy utilizing it is their own business, and, supposing it weren't designed to have any kind of engaging narrative, then why would it include such a vast and open source means of creating and publishing whatever you want to create for that game system? I'm pretty sure egomaniacs and self important people who talk about limiting imagination and story, and talk about D&D the way a newly graduated, entitled, self important journalist and political columnist talks about whatever scandal, war, or Election they're covering. Its gossip. Grown folks don't give a $h!t, so shut the f*(# up, thanks. Engaging narrative is the only kind of narrative worth engaging, that's what telling a story is supposed to be, engaging. You want to tell a bad story? or a boring one? Go for it! Sorry people are losing their players to the booming popularity of online gaming when they found out their only DM they'd ever had really sucks at telling stories, but runs a great combat, and they leave for something more satisfying on a fictive, and interpersonal level. Be better at it or find people that lie your stories that are just about fighting all the time. ||When I was 14 I moved on from D&D to Vampire the Masquerade and White Wolfs countless great games in the 90s, at 14, already tired of combat heavy games with no RP, no deep RP and nothing really bringing me to that table at all. But i didn't sit around and claim injury from all the GM's out there in the world runnnig uninteresting min max, murder hobo goblin evisceration games. Nope, I just moved on to the thing that I like once my taste had matured. I noticed, the more interactive on a story level, ,the more engaging. Every D&D campaign I've ever run I've strived to achieve serious immersion and emotional stakes in, and while there are beer and pretzel D&D gamers that could give a shit, and there are elitist snobby pricks who prattle on and on about it seem more engaged in it than anyone! Pro Tip: If something is annoying you, stop watching it, or playing it. You're a big grown up person now, remember? And you CHANGE THE CHANNEL. You can even go watch things you like to watch instead of the annoying bad person who says dumb stuff! ISN"T THAT AMAZING? Planescapes: Torment, The first few Icewindale and all The Baldur's Gate video games were engaging deep narratives. . BG3 was an absolute masterpiece of emotionally engaging and deeply comprehensive narrative. Now while the argument can be made that those are video game-ified versions of D&D, then that is to say, even a limited version of this game, and it's unalterable stories, are even capable of delivering that which this grievously annoyed and injured party Larian's success is well deserved, which must be reeeeeeeeeally annoying to whiny self victimizing, narcissists who spend all their time covering what Brennan Lee Mulligan said last week that made them feel inadequate and made them transparent to anyone with a modicum of experience around insecure men. Looks like tis time for you all to go back to masturbating in the mirror, after smashing that subscribe button, sucking off the notification bell, and dropppin a like and your take on things in the comments section! Time to get back to checking your lighting, and shooting more content, better stare at you for 21 hours of your day. Shoot more content, keep calling art and creative endeavor "content", check yourself out again, edit your content of you, posting that content of you on your multiple social media YOU platforms, because YOU are absolutely someone that the world needs so much more of at all times, how dare YOU deprive us of a moment of YOU! YOU MUST RECORD EVERY MOMENT OF YOUR IMPORTANT WORDS. SHITPOST COMPLETE.
To embrace his metaphor, Brennan is a Michelin chef spending $10000 on ingredients, $1000 on a fancy pan and utensils, importing spring water from the Himalayas, all to cook rice on a stove. Not only that, Brennan's been growing his own rice all his life. So of course his response to "Should you buy a rice cooker if you like rice?" is "No, the stove is perfectly fine for making rice. I do it all the time."
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.
@@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 was a very interesting topic. I had never thought about the lack of mechanics around a certain theme actually placing more emphasis on said theme. That will definitely make me reconsider how I think about certain games where they have “holes” in their systems.
The wildest part about his take is how little those mechanics he claims to be using actually see use in the show. The majority of what they do is engage with skill rolls and often feels they have combat in Dimension 20 purely _because_ of said system in use, whereas in comparison to Mentopolis (using a mildly modified Kids On Bikes), they solved most conflicts without combat or fights. I do somewhat understand the approach (its nothing new to me by a long shot) but I find it a harder stance to be fully behind when the person saying it has both evidence illustrating they're incorrect _and_ a lack of knowledge regarding the wider design space. There are even games with conflict resolution in them that are more willing to get out of the way and/or operate faster, as well as more fitting to their conversational yet showy playstyle.
One of the things that made D&D 4e more a combat game was the fact that it included rules for almost any interaction. Every conversation could be resolved with a die roll. Just like 3.x's system of "roll to persuade/perform/profession," 4e's use of Skill Challenges and Page 42 meant that it could resolve anything using mechanics. The most interesting mechanics were the game mechanics, so the game became more about combat for many people.
The first campaign i played in was very narrative focused. We would maybe have one combat a session and maybe even go multiple seesions without any combat. There would even be sessions where no one even made a skill check. It was all us just having long conversations in character while occasionally going to different objectives and maybe having a challenge to overcome. I absolutely loved this campaign. And as someone who's only experience with dnd at the time was seeing miscellaneous clips of critical role, i assumed this is how all tables were. The thing that separated me from the rest of the table was that i absolutely loved the combat any time we would have it. The reason was because i found combat to be an extremely effective vehicle for intense, high stakes roleplay. Many of my favorite roleplay moments were during combat. So naturally, i got really into optimizing so i could make this experience even more enjoyable since i was, more often than not, getting my ass kicked. So imagine my surprise when i realized...most players don't roleplay during combat. Or they at least tone it down significantly. Imagine my even greater surprise when i hopped into an lgs game and started speaking in character and they said they don't really roleplay at that table (they were nice about it tho, they said i could still do it if i wanted). Imagine my surprise when i didn't go back to that table because playing dnd strictly as a game is... pretty boring. I still love theory crafting of course. But not because i wanna make the most mathematically efficient character possible. I'll play my polearm battle master with sentinel and two levels of barbarian, not because he kills people quickly, but because he feels like a character who's never on the back foot, is always looking for the slightest opportunity to get a hit in, and will protect his allies to the bitter end. Mechanics are simply the means to the end of telling a better story. This balance is exactly why emily axford is such a great player. She plays this style to a tee.
I love keeping the roleplay up during fights too! I think it's cool to strike a balance between "what would my character do in this situation?" and "what can I do to help the party effectively win against the opponent?" Some of our most intense D&D moments came from fights and the resolutions that came after! Definitely a great way to get the most out of 5e's battle system and roleplay.
The key here is actually the relationship between the Dungeon Master and the system. Is the system the game, with the GM keeping it running? Or is the GM the machine of the game, w the system one of their tools?
People: “DnD is a combat game only, you shouldn’t use it for your story!” Brennan: “I find a rules light approach to roleplay and crunchy combat fits my storytelling better. It is possible for a game to be about things it does not systematize” People: “So you HATE games that have roleplay mechanics!? You monster! You sophist fake! You probably just like it for the branding that you don’t use!”
Total disagreement with Brennan's stance. He could be a little more honest and say that 5e is the most popular system and so using 5e grants him the best chance of developing a large audience. His current argument is that "the system doesn't fight me when I'm trying to craft a rich narrative". But what others are trying to say is that a better system would not only not fight you, but actively aid you in the crafting of that narrative. I'm running a game of FATE right now and the whole group's eyes have been opened to the narrative possibilities and drama that have blossomed just by using its mechanics. If he truly thinks of 5e as a good stove for cooking narratives, then he is missing out on a world of better stoves.
Especially since he's making up dice rolls or random checks on a spot or has them prepared beforehand and those rolls have nothing to do with 5e ruleset. They're playing kind-of-maybe-dnd but not really.
@@SirWhorshoeMcGee Exactly! I honestly believe that they'd have a better experience if they ditched 5e and just used a single d6, with results adjudicated by Brennan on the fly. And from there they could look at systems like Freeform Universal to spice up their narratives. 5e is mostly dead weight for a narrative-heavy game.
Check out Surviving Strangehollow on Kickstarter! www.kickstarter.com/projects/jasonward/surviving-strangehollow-for-5e
Patreon: bit.ly/QBPatreon
Old-School DnD newsletter: bit.ly/TheGlatisant
The Polygon article: www.polygon.com/24105875/worlds-beyond-number-narrative-style-adventure
Luke Gearing: lukegearing.blot.im/mechanisms-as-abstraction
Sean McCoy: twitter.com/seanmccoy/status/1145172287785787392
The Fruitful Void: lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/119
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.
I wonder if some of the pushback to Brennan comes from people's experience with video games, where everything has to be systems or it doesn't exist.
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.
This is a great discussion on it. I think it's also really important to remember that Brennan isn't some new DM who learned the game with 5e. He's been playing for decades. He's been running for decades. He's *still* running a 3rd ed game last I heard from the various shows. On top of that he's a professional actor, improv actor, and - now - story teller/DM and comedian. So it makes sense that he has a level of expertise with D&D that he can just use it to handle things he wants, and work around the rest. And it makes sense that he can manage an entire social game without mechanical support. He has those skill sets.
Which also goes back to the mechanics and what they represent. D&D mechanics support combat heavy games, because it has a lot of mechanics for combat. D&D 5e mechanics do not support wilderness survival games, because it has a lot of mechanics that nullify key aspects of wilderness survival. You can make a D&D game about anything - and people do - but the less you lean on what the game has mechanical support for the more work you have to do.
Shadowrun & Blades in the Dark is another great example. Both games involve groups of outlaws doing jobs. Blades in the Dark has mechanical support for doing the job, and this means the players themselves don't have to engage with the planning, research, and legwork of a heist. You just make an engagement roll and go. However, a lot of Shadowrun players (I'm stereotyping from the groups I played with) really like that legwork stuff, and so they balk at how simplistic Blades makes it, because it's "doing the job on easy mode." And I see this a lot with other people. I've been so disappointed with so many so called "Rogue Players" I've met because they're not good at playing rogues. They're good at min-maxing D&D dice mechanics to do a lot of Backstab damage. But when it comes time to solve a problem in a non-straightforward method they're lost. Meanwhile the Shadowrun player tells the GM they're going to poison the captain of the guards with bleach, and yes they've had a bottle of bleach on their character sheet for *months* just in case a bleach solvable problem came up and everyone looks at them like they're a crazy person.
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.
"Worlds Beyond Number" being the name of a podcast always confused me, because I immediately think it's talking about Sine Nomine's Worlds Without Number
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.
Thinking about the "DnD is not a game, it's games," article you discussed a few weeks ago, one could look at 5e, or any ruleset for that matter, as describing some of the games you could be playing, but not all. I think the best systems get you and your friends into play quickly and allow you the room to intuit your own additional games rules.
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?
In the fireside chat they made all made a couple good points but the biggest thing I appreciate is them talking about how 5e is one of the better 'physics engines' of the nitty gritty actual combat mechanics and skill checks.
Brennan and Co are fantastic improv actors and don't need help in the game system on that front and infact find that those RP mechanics can detract from the story they want to tell.
The only thing he wanted more of in 5e was features and spells that were more out of combat oriented but if he home brewed a whole class for one of his players I'm sure he could customize that for them as well.
As a simulationist combat engine 5e is awful. It's also terrible at being fun engaging wargame. What it is, is familair. That's the only real advantage.
In this sense, I think the system Brennan should actually be using is one with pretty minimal RP rules and a good comprehensive and fun combat system that can hook into the narrative without getting in the way. In this sense I think Lancer and Icon would actually be perfect if you get over the familiarity hurdle.
@@INTCUWUSIUA I mean if it truly as terrible as you say it is then people would have gone to pathfinder or fantasy age. Like people abandoned ship during 4e.
It doesn't do anything *fantastic* but it has easy solutions that make combat fast and fun overall and allows for improvising of the mechanics to fit the needs of the table. More are either not in depth enough or too mored to have that flexibility
@@RomanNardone You need to consider the role that marketing and branding play. 5e is succesfull because it's very well marketed, and DnD as a whole continues to be successful because of its legacy. Take those away and no one would care.
Also the perception of 4e is pretty skewed by time. Though it did lose a lot of players to Pathfinder, it still handily outsold Pathfinder for most of its lifespan, with Pathfinder only overtaking it for a brief time near the end of its life when WotC stopped making books for it.
Even 4e benefitted from marketing and branding, even if the amount by which they changed the game jeapordised the "tradition" aspect of their marketing strategy.
@@RomanNardone In no reality is 5e combat fast and fun. It doesn't offer easy solutions either. But people have enough familiarity with the system that they can kinda bodge their way to a solution. What most people play isn't 5e, it's a homebrew game they call 5e, but I guarantee you they would have a much better time if they used a game that was actually well designed as their starting point.
@@RomanNardone you're being absurd. People did go to Pathfinder. It is why Pathfinder is the number two TTRPG and has been since it first launched.
5e is a successful marketing push and that is it. it doesn't nothing best, but it does lots of things good enough for most people to latch onto and run with.
I loved the call-out to the 'fruitful void". From a designer's standpoint though, we mustn't assume the GM will be a professional improv actor, an experienced fencer, a spelunker, or any such. The goal of game design is to provide the tools and guidance needed for *anyone* to reliably recreate a particular kind of play experience for any arbitrary group of players. Certain players may or may not like that play experience, but if the game design doesn't lead them to the target experience, it has failed IMHO.
Good point and tall order.
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.
In the podcast Brennan goes on to explain that there’s nothing wrong with DMs needing narrative gameplay tools. In the kitchen metaphor, he basically explains that not everyone is a pro chef and some people need meal packs, frozen dinners, or fast food.
He’s simply saying that HE personally doesn’t need it and people shouldn’t be attacked for using 5e to run narrative campaigns, he’s not saying that everyone ought to do it
@@andrewcabrera505 The given examples all sound a bit condescending though :P
@@andrewcabrera505 If he doesn't use any of the 5e mechanics to run 5e, is he really even running 5e?
I personally agree with Brennan. Combat inherently needs to be gamified because it isn’t like your players are going to pull out a sword and duel you to determine the outcome. You have to have rules to keep it balanced, interesting, and feasible.
Social situations don’t need to be gamified. You’re sitting at a table, doing improv, and if a player says something convincing, or intimidating, or seductive in character, then the natural consequences will follow.
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.
I love mothership, but the 4-5 sessions I’ve played of it, no one ever really tried to use stealth, because it was left in the negative space. If a game designer wants to intentionally use negative space this way, it needs to be made clear to all the players that this is the intent - because otherwise, if it’s silent on the matter, how in the world are players supposed to know it’s actually a focus of the game? The difference between negative space and fruitful void whether or not the players know the intent, and have the ability (or guidance) to be able to take advantage of it.
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.
@@duseylicious That's what the "Warden's Manual" does several times, as excellent guide to become a DM and lead a session/campaign. It's rife with this philosophy and misses no chance to hammer that in. Even the Player's Guide heavily discourages facing off strong foes, essentially telling the players that combat is often a lose-lose kinda deal.
There is a growing resentment among TTRPG players, over games that push the burden of making everything up on the Game Master. Which is part of the reason why people are starting to speak out against games without rules.
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.
Brennan and Co are all extremely skilled storytellers and I have no doubt that they could use any system to tell any story. But most GMs do not have the time or skill to do what Brennan and Co do. For the vast majority of people, a game system that caters to the kind of story they want to tell is tremendously better.
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.
Positive space (what is there) and negative space (what is not there) can both matter. We are usually inclined to positive things first. Thus, it can be hard to teach a player that "they can do anything" because that is the negative space of rules. No rules for that? I guess we're going to negotiate it ad hoc.
My problem with the argument is that, for someone who doesn't care about combat and wants it abstracted, 5e specifically takes a really long time to resolve combat. If you don't care about the combat and want it to be abstracted away, why pick a system that has you dive deeper into the combat and spend a lot of time on it, rather than a system that abstracts it away and makes it come down to a single roll instead.
You don't even need to have a failed roll equal losing the fight. You could have a system of attrition, just like 5e is, but resolving the outcome in one or two rolls, and having that determine how many resources (stamina, health, mana, whatever) you expend during the fight.
That way, you can deep dive on the aspects you like and care about, but without having to waste precious session time on unnecessary combat.
Unless, of course, you DO care about the combat, and the way it interacts with the narrative tension of your game.
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.
system definitely matters but... it's a show not a dnd game. These are actors/writers who like Brennan basically said really don't need roleplaying tools.
let's be real here worlds beyond number could work with no system at all. It's basically 3 actors and a narrator doing improv for 2 hours. In episode 1 I'm pretty sure Lou's character doesn't even speak in like the last half of the episode because his character isn't "in that scene". I don't know about you guys but when i play dnd i rarely sit silently for 45 minutes.
They're not playing a game like us they're doing an improv show and the only real thing they need is the framework of a DM and players, and some way to define character's abilities. So when picking a system why not just take the one everyone knows and is familiar with since they aren't really gonna pay attention to the system anyway.
Also I'm pretty sure Brennan mentions in the trailer that they intend to use other systems in the future. So i assume that picking 5e as a starting point is just marketing and a way to ease in fans to other systems. Marketing your new show as a 5e actual play podcast is sadly just better for business. This industry is dominated by dnd 5e and using another system is shooting yourself in the foot.
So yes for us system matters but it really doesn't for them.
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 really like the point about the games mechanics defining what you as a GM don't have to care about, rather than what you do. Functionally, the dimension 20 cast could (and often do) barely use dice in telling their stories - they lean on their skills as storytellers and improvisers. In a way, them playing Dnd without combat is more like them not playing any system at all, which certainly gives them a lot of freedom with their narrative.
Still, I think Brennan's point does ignore that playing a narrative focused game doesn't inherently to hamper your roleplay - it can often enhance it. Seeing game rules as purely restrictions ignores the work they do in giving structure and guiding the emergence of interesting and unexpected outcomes. There's a reason this isn't freeform make-believe, and that reason isn't simply a lack of storytelling skill on the average players' parts. Dnd's void of narrative rules does give a lot of space to breathe, but that doesn't mean a game with more guiding mechanics in that direction wouldn't have its own benefits.
Like, do 5e's elaborate combat rules restrict what stories they're able to tell in combat? Undoubtably, yes - Dimension 20's combat could be resolved purely with imagination, improv, and theatre of the mind, and they would have a lot more freedom to use their strong improv skills to guide the stories of the battles to satisfying conclusions. But there's a reason they use rules, dice, and elaborate battle boards. A lot of cool moments and opportunities for roleplay come out playing within the structure of 5e's combat system. We love it when a surprise crit or bout of bad luck throws an unexpected wrench into the story. And at the end of the day, one of the primary appeals of actual play ttrpg shows is seeing how the players roll (pun intended) with the narrative effects of the game's mechanics. I think implying that rules can only ever hold you back is ignoring this critical factor.
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.
I still think 5e is an odd choice and I'm more inclined to believe it was chosen for it's recognition and market reach... but, this is a very interesting plate of food for thought. The rules can be what the game is not about, or the rules can be what the game is about, but in either case the rules certainly matter in so far as they are a means to an end or a tool to accomplish a task.
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.
So strange about Mothership... I never noticed this. I just assumed Stealth mechanics were wrapped up in the "Military Training" skill.
But I definitely noticed that without a skill called "stealth" on the character sheet, it encouraged way more dialogue.
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.
One of my writing mentors told me something I'll never forget. He said that telling good stories is all about knowing how to delay. For me, there are mechanism, like Gearing says, that speed up stuff (knowing how to delay is also knowing when not too), but other abstractions are meant to slow things down. I'm thinking in the 4-5 result for Blades for example, or how in D&D combat you need to answer questions about what's your weapon, your armor, where are you, who's pointing their weapons at you. That very much sparks the conversation, the same way an oven is not food, but helps you cook it. Slowing down in combat, or making it deadly, makes it dramatic and when things are dramatic they are usually fun, be it games, sports or stories.
I think the issue is 5e doesn't have the rules void for roleplaying and speaking with others. It has super simplified rolls that seem designed to avoid needing to have back and forth discussion.
"I roll persuasion" is the death of role play.
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?
Very insightful and interesting. I think it does matter, and D&D isn’t what I would choose in Brendan’s place, but I would also say the guy knows what he’s doing. Brennan has run narrative games (like the modified Kids on Bikes for Mentopolis) so it’s not like he doesn’t know they are out there. D&D was an informed choice by a competent professional.
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.
@@MisterWebb you mean he wants to get paid for doing his job? THE SCOUNDREL
@@mrossknewhy?
Ultimately my issue with what Brennan said is that he's not responding to the claim he says he's responding to. The claim he says he's responding to is "D&D is a combat-focused game", but the claim he then proceeds to actually respond to is "D&D is 100% combat all the time and noncombat is impossible in D&D". To torture his analogy a little bit, if 5e had actual socializing/social interaction mechanics, it would be like if your stove came with a recipe book. You can obviously still improvise that element if you have that skill outside of the game in real life, but also for the people who don't, having that recipe book can be the thing that lets them do it at all, and then they can develop their skills and maybe reach the point of being able to improvise.
My stance mostly is "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". Games budget what they'll use rules on to explain all the time, just be honest about what kind of game you're making.
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'm definitely with Brennan on this. The combat portion is what I need rules for. I don't want detailed systems for narrative because filling in those blanks is where I find my fun as a DM. It's an interesting discussion though
All painting is a dialogue with negative space, every stroke of the brush only ever changes the negative space but never creates or destroys it.
You're example of Mothership play gave me a mechanical idea for hiding: the difficulty of the stealth is the number of questions you get to ask before the entity that will notice you arrives.
Old comment but damn that's good!
Based on the polygon article I think Brennan and I are of a similar mind. However, I do not play DnD for one very simple reason. All aspects of table top rpgs boil down to time management, be it scheduling so the group can meet or determining how much time is given over to each aspect of a game. In DnD's case (and especially 5e) I find that the mechanics are too crunchy and my group gets lost in the minutia of figuring out what to do each round. I prefer rules light games (like Knave) since combat can be quick and brutal (which works for the tone of my games) and not occupy hours and hours of our limited play time. That way more time can be given over to the narrative aspects Brennan talks about. Perhaps this is a failing on my part as GM but I think the issue is consistent enough across more than a decade of gaming that I can safely say I am not interested in 5e.
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.
In choosing to run a 5e for my narrative heavy campaign it came down to one thing: familiarity.
I want my characters to focus on their characters and their adventures in the world I've made. As an improviser and writer, I need my characters to be allowed to focus on engaging with that narrative rather than engaging with the rulebooks.
Wouldn't just playing freeform without using any system at all achieve the same results with even less need to consult rulebooks, though?
I get where Brennan is trying to go with the stove analogy, the most important part of the stove (the food) isn't there and a very shallow understanding of the stove will miss that connection.
However, I don't think a deep understanding of 5e reveals it was about narrative all along. When you follow the iron and gas and workings of 5e what you get isn't a system for narrative preparation, but an attrition-based system for exploring dungeons. Obviously many people have made it work for other purposes, Brennan included, but I too have stood on an office chair to reach something instead of grabbing a stepladder and our skillful balance doesn't mean the chair was intended for that purpose or using it that way was the best idea.
I had a discussion recently about Player-GM Negotiation/Conversation versus a Skill or Mechanic just telling you what you can do. Fundamentally different GM approaches. This person felt the negotiation slowed the game down and put responsibility on the player, where mechanics let the GM tell the player what to roll putting it back on the GM.
I don't adhere to it, but we switch GM responsibility so as grown adults we do things we don't always like for our friends so they can have a good time.
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.
I'm thrilled with this video and its representation of what sort of player I have found myself to be after a few months of playing 5 systems, from 5e to DCC, to Shadowdark, Into the Odd, and finally Blades in the Dark.
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.
As important as it is that BLM is an improv actor, let's not gloss over the fact that most of the time the people he is gaming with (his players) are ALSO fairly accomplished improv actors. It's like watching the Olympics or sitcoms and trying to reproduce it with your friends: yeah, you can have fun doing it at home, but it's probably not going to hit at 100% all of the time.
I think the negative response to Brennan's statement is in part because there's no clearly defined point where "playing D&D" ends and "playing pretend" begins when you've shown up for a session of D&D. Brennan seems to view that entire spectrum as still being within the scope of "playing D&D", which then reasonably makes it meaningless to define D&D as a "combat-oriented game" since it will contain whatever he imagines. But then it becomes meaningless to define any RPG as being oriented towards anything at all.
I think this comes down to the different approaches to RPGs. If your end goal is to tell a story, your improvisation is what it's "about" and the rules used are just a way to get from point A to point B without disrupting the intent of the improvisation. If your end goal is to play a game, the rules used are what it's "about" and improvisations are just a way to get from point A to point B without disrupting the intent of the rules.
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.
@LDIndustries This is exactly right, there IS NO line to be drawn between playing pretend and playing D&D. This is all made up, the only thing that matters is the tangible feeling of playing with your friends. Period.
@@LDIndustries I don't think your comparison to Monopoly shows a clear distinction. Is the direction of Monopoly's emergent story of capitalistic competition not determined by the rolling of dice and players improvising the business decisions of the landlord they are roleplaying as?
I think an important distinction of TTRPGs is that they specifically designate that players can overcome their characters' challenges purely through the use of improvised plain language. That process inherently allows for any action imaginable (not prohibited by the rules or moderator), which is something that simply cannot exist within the bounds of video games. I think that is a clear reason to play TTRPGs and in no way does it require shouldering the weight of creating a story.
Storytelling _is_ sacred and has been a documented element of shared human culture for thousands of years. But the exact same can be said about playing games. It is not a culturally lesser activity of the human experience. Just because TTRPGs contain the potential to tell rich and immersive stories, that does not make it any form of objectively superior way to engage with them.
If I want to play D&D, I don't approach it with a story to tell. I approach it with the intent to make decisions which allow my fantasy hero to succeed in combat, complete their objectives, and level up. If I want to do something else, I'll play a different TTRPG. And if I _do_ want to tell a story, I'll play a TTRPG like Lady Blackbird, where the rules exist specifically to facilitate the telling of a story. My sessions are clearly defined by the confines of the TTRPG I am using, so there is a clear point to identifying what they are oriented towards (i.e. what rules it exists within). If I was primarily playing pretend for the purpose of a shared storytelling experience and merely using a TTRPG's rules as situational guidelines, those boundaries would become a lot fuzzier and defining the "purpose" of the rules I was pulling from would lose its meaning. But that doesn't cover the whole spectrum of how the game can be approached.
@@lukekline9513 The line drawn between playing D&D and playing pretend is specifically the rules that define D&D.
If you are playing D&D by the rules, you have agreed that you can no longer pretend that you can proficiently use certain weapons, perform certain magical feats, speak certain languages, etc. without first unlocking them through limiting your character to a specific archetype and earning a specific amount of meta-currency. Likewise, you have also agreed that your imagined avatar _must_ be proficient in armed conflict, _must_ have clearly defined faculties of avoiding and surviving physical assault, _must_ be experienced in skills relevant to fantasy adventuring, etc. If you choose to pretend that your avatar is attacking someone, you have agreed to first concretely determine how many 5ft increments away they are in the imagined world, keep track of how many 5ft increments you're allowed to imagine your avatar traveling in a pretend "turn", follow a specific procedure to determine when your pretend "turn" falls in order with every other combat-equipped imaginary character, abide by the number and methods of attempts to invoke "damage points" you are allowed by the meta-level you have attained for your chosen archetype, etc. And if you invoke enough "damage points" to surpass your target's damage threshold, you will earn meta-currency which you are responsible for tracking outside of the pretend world. The list goes on, but you get the point.
That's not to say there's anything wrong with seeing "playing D&D" as just playing pretend with your friends in whichever way is fun to everyone, using D&D's rules as guidelines when it's felt to be necessary. You can forego every single element that I mentioned above and still have the shared understanding with your friends that you're "playing D&D".
But I think speaking generally as though there is no discernible line between "playing D&D" and "playing pretend" in the first place is simply false. It diminishes the design and intentions behind D&D, as well as the significance of TTRPGs in general. "D&D" is a framework of restrictions and procedures placed upon playing pretend, for the intended purpose of directing that pretend play to create fantasy adventures where heroes engage in epic battles with monsters and become more heroic as their reputation grows. If the restrictions and procedures included in the game are eschewed, "D&D" is not being played, it's just being used as a utility.
It's important to remember that shows like Critical Role, Worlds by Number and especially L.A by Night are shows not real games. Their number one priority is to provide an engaging story for the viewers not a fun game for the players. Mechanics that take narrative control away from the players like panic or hunger in VTM, or detailed injury systems offer add choices and oppertunaty for the players to work off of, it helps engage with and create the narrative. None of this is good for a show that's built around knowing in part where the story is going and guiding it to that point for the satisfaction of the viewerbase.
For 99% of games system absolutely matters, with rules and restrictions breeding further creativity. 5e works for a shows format because having no rules means that the GM can force the story into the direction they want it to go
Always helpful.
Thank you for the ongoing content!
We always say rules are guidelines. Most rulebooks do. I don't disagree that you can do anything in 5th edition D&D. I think the problem is that people who only play one system, lack the experiences of another style of play to bring that to D&D. Brennan has almost certainly played Fate or a World of Darkness game or Call of Cthulhu, and knows how to translate those experiences into other games. I think most people cannot do that. The fact that D&D is mostly combat mechanics encourages non experienced players to think in terms of combat mechanics.
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.
This is one of those topics where my knee-jerk gut reaction is to disagree with Brennan, but as you were talking I thought about how the 2 best campaigns I've ever run were both narrative-focused with incredibly little combat. One was AD&D and the other Cyberpunk2020, both of which being very combat-focused systems, but we simply pushed our attention toward everything else, and it worked great (though if I could do that first one again, we'd go with a classless game system, as character classes was the main drag). So yeah, I gotta agree. While system does matter, it's hardly the only thing at does. Many of our great gaming memories we have trouble even remembering which system or edition it was, meaning a good story isn't restricted by the system.
Great video, man. Gave me a lot to think about.
Yeah, I played a couple of games at Gary Cohn that ended up having virtually no combat, and they were my favorite
The quote from 2:51 tickles me fancy because Brennan would be a GURPS stan if that was the first RPG they ever touched instead of DND of all things. It is the logic of a simulationist.
Here's the thing: Brennan Lee Mulligan is the patron saint of improv and has years and years of experience doing this sort of thing. Don't look at Brennan and say "oh well he's doing it, so can I!" It's like saying "Oh, Gordon Ramsey doesn't need a recipe, so I don't either!" (We're not going to talk about the grilled cheese. One bad dish does not make a bad chef.)
MOST GMS DO NOT HAVE THE EXPERIENCE, THE TALENT, OR THE TIME TO MAKE WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR.
If you, reading this right now, want a narrative campaign, do NOT use DnD. There are loads of systems out there that do a lot of the heavy lifting for the GM, so they don't have to work their entire ass off for you to play.
Oh and for that matter, if you ARE going to use DnD, then learn the fucking system, coward. This is a COLLABORATIVE hobby. The GM is not your game engine slave.
Signed,
A GM who DOES have the time to write a narrative campaign in DnD, uses that time to make up for the lack of experience and talent, and loves it. A.K.A. a unicorn.
This way of thinking about systems makes me even more psyched to try out the Cypher system, as it seems its mechanics rely heavily on design by subtraction-instead of rules for many things the DM has to keep track of, the tiers of rolling are player-driven and the rewards for play are given when players willingly allow rolls to fail for narrative purposes.
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.
What’s missing from the conversation is the role and powers of the GM. Both trad GMs (like BLM) and OSR GMs agree that the GM has ultimate authority over the rules and content of the game. This means they rely on their own intuition and experience to do whatever they want to.
Narrative focused games often explicitly constrain the GM and empower players. Heart for example gives the players options to meet specific goals which the GM MUST give them opportunities for. I’ve found that good GMs who go for narrative play just recreate these rules in an arbitrary, opaque way. In my experience, making these rules explicit has Always produced better games and I have Never had a GM succeed as well relying on their own intuition.
GMs are rarely good as they think! Constraints breed creativity!
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!
this still feels like a bad argument. if you're running a campaign with a low focus on combat, you dont have to "fill in the void" with a bunch of combat rules. you can just... not emphasize combat. instead of a game with hundreds of pages of rules and mechanics about combat, play something where combat is shorter, less in-depth, and over quickly, so you can get back to the roleplaying that you _actually_ want to do. you don't have to intuit the way an arrow moves through the air, you can just play a system where combat is a handful of dice rolls that'll be over in five minutes.
systems are defined by the rules they _have,_ not the ones they don't. if you give a player four different kinds of attacks and a dozen weapons to pick from, but conversations are one persuasion roll, they're going to gravitate towards combat. if you give a player one basic attack and that's it, they're not going to view it as the central mechanic of the game.
I fully agree with what Brennan said about D&D for how he runs it and the people he plays with. But for a general audience, I think the idea of the thing you don't have rules for being the most important doesn't tend to pan out. You need a table with a GM and players who are all already skilled at that aspect like Brennan and the many comedians he GMs for are with improv to have this sort of thing work. In practice with your average group of TTRPG players/DMs you end up having the things that there aren't rules for being largely ignored/unexplored/forgotten or you end up floundering through them with poorly conceived house rules.
I think giving the advice to most people that D&D isn't great for roleplay makes sense, because many groups need systems that actively encourage roleplay through the mechanics. That said, systems that attempt to do that poorly can often make matters worse. I've been GMing a campaign in World In Peril, which is a superhero system using Powered by the Apocolypse for it's core gameplay. One of the quirks of this system is that the main way you progress you character is through roleplay, but it mandates certain very odly specific roleplay actions that you need to do to unlock certain abilities, which requires both the GM and the entire table to focus on achieving those things during play. In practice I found my players didn't want to shoehorn specific roleplay beats into the story and I largely replaced that system with an improvised fail forward mechanic. So yeah that was a case of roleplay rules getting in the way. But other systems have rules that are more freeform and make more sense to encrouage roleplay from those who might be less inclinded towards it naturally.
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
I mean... 5e has Inspiration dice. That's legit an incentive to roleplay to your character.
It seems to me that Brennan's point is more that he doesn't need a ttrpg to give him storyteller rules because he already has a set of storyteller rules that he is using, those derived from his professional experience. Rules are how you adjudicate situations, so he still needs a set of rules, it's just that he's able to reduce the storytelling rules to a minimal set of improv principles that he has honed through the years. We all do this same thing in areas where we have special knowledge, especially if it's shared by others at the table, it just happens his in in a major area of ttrpg games. The basic principle is that rules can provide structure for you to resolve situations, but if they are in the way (because your own adjudication system is fairer, faster, or more fun) then ditch them.
The Mothership example is a straw man argument. He's not arguing against games that have a stealth roll mechanic in them; he's arguing against a particular play/GMing style that can happen in ANY game -- using rolls instead of roleplaying. Savage Worlds has explicit stealth mechanics (a Stealth skill). But I would have the SAME conversation with my players before a roll... where are you hiding, how dark is it, etc. Because as a GM, once they tell me what they are trying to do in the space, I will then give them a bonus or penalty based on what they are RPing that they are doing. Their roll is thus modified based on their description, so it's not "just a roll." I do this in every game, not just SWADE, and my friends and I have been doing this since 1982 basic/expert. You always had to tell the GM what you're doing, before making a roll, because penalties, advantage, etc., might apply based on what you are saying.
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.
Running Hot Springs Island with Into the Odd is quite different from using Mork Borg.
Hahahaha!
Counter argument: Some systems have mechanics that spill on other categories. 5e's HP and damage is so bloated that out of combat risks (falling, traps, natural disasters) are trivialized to the point that they block fun emergent narrative gameplay.
It also stealthy encourages metagaming (i.e "yeah I can tank this") and encourages artificially bloating damage to create interesting narrative risks. System matters
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.
Ok, so I was going to say something about Brennan but after seeing what this 5:24 game developer had to say, this makes Brennan completely normal and I'll let it slide.
5:24 I think this is awful coming from a game designer. You pay for a product about running and hiding and there's no rules or good guidance for it? Are you serious? Instead, you as a customer who is not a game developer btw needs to make the rules for the game yourself instead of the actual game developer who made the game. Do you know how easy it is to fight about these things? This is not going to open up narrative freedom at all, this is a gateway to frustration and clunky awful game play. I honestly think this is worse than Bethesda. I don't understand why you would pay for a product like this.
No, it works really well in the Mothership games I've played.
@@QuestingBeastI’m inclined to agree. Mothership very effectively encourages players to think creatively about hiding on a scene by scene basis precisely because it doesn’t provide a rigid mechanical procedure for players to default to every time.
@packtactics Respectfully, if one of your chief concerns with a rules light flexible framework like Mothership’s is that players are going to fight and argue instead of engaging with the scenario and allowing their GM to make a scene appropriate ruling, I feel like that says more about the group than the game.
No system, no matter how thorough, solves jerks.
@@QuestingBeast Ok. So do you think Dnd 5e hiding rules are good then? There's barely any rules for that and people argue about it all the time because it's badly written. Does that mean 5e is just as good as Mothership when it comes to hiding? Because the difference there is Mothership has no rules.
If I want a stealth game, I'll buy a stealth game with actual mechanical choices to enhance me and my players experiences with stealth. If my only experience with stealth mechanics in ttrpgs is dnd 5e or pathfinder for example and the stealth game has no mechanics or proper guidance for stealth, then it clearly doesn't work. I've wasted my time learning a new system and have to try and fix the game and it will most likely just be reverted back to 5e or pathfinder because that's all I know. Whats more productive instead of brewing is just find a new system and that's not a problem if you and your players are use to playing different systems.
If rules are well written then the players will collectively agree that those are the rules of the game without needing to make things up much. Then the game flows better. Role playing games should have mechanics for what they're trying to achieve and yes, I'm absolutely for roleplay mechanics in general.
If I pay for a horror game for example and it says nothing about how dying works, then the horror game fall apart. That should be self evident.
@@hodgepodgesyntaxia2112 I don't have a problem with rules light. Rules light is fine. If there's mechanics and the mechanics are good and useful to achieve the gameplay I want to experience in the rules light then it's insanely good I would say. What the mothership guy said didn't sound like rules light and if it is then I apologize and will delete my comments. I totally messed up. I was misinformed by his tweet. He said his game had no rules on running and hiding. He didn't say rules light.
And yes, I agree that groups shouldn't fight about rules. That's why we need good rules in the game so we don't argue about how hiding works every single time in the hiding game. Arguing while playing the game sucks. Let's play a game like a rules light game where we all agree how stealth works from just naturally reading the book. That's why there's a book to begin with.
It's not just that D&D has a focus on combat, but that it has very "gamist" combat. It's very drawn out, strategic, and rewards system mastery. It's not simply simulating how an arrow flies through a battlefield. It's influenced by whether you're a fighter with action surge, the archery fighting style, extra attack, and the sharpshooter feat. There are objectively strong and weak ways to make an archer, often unaccounted for by the narrative. The system does bend and you can add narrative influence to it without breaking it, but that's not what it is at its core. The narrative is essentially handing over control to a game of chess, and the outcome becomes at least partially defined by your skill at chess. For an otherwise narrative-focused game, that can be some jarring dissonance for the audience.
Personally speaking, I also generally don't find long combats that fun to listen to. Brennan Lee Mulligan seems better than most at keeping it lively from my limited exposure to his shows, but not enough to keep me on the hook long after initiative was rolled.
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.
For me, the perfect rules system is the one I'm familiar with. It takes a lot of time to learn a new system, and the more systems I have bouncing around in my head, the more likely I am to cross contaminate and remember how something worked in the wrong system. I still jumble rules from 3.5 and pathfinder with 5e because I was introduced to those systems as a new player, while I actively worked to read and learn as much about 5e as possible. Hell, even the differences between 5e & BG3 get messed up in my mind, though that's mostly because BG3 made a lot of improvements to 5e. After the OGL debacle, my group has been effectively sunsetting 5e with a series of one-shots, but I know it'll take a long time to hammer in 2e once we get around to diving into it.
Point: you polled on your own community.
What I love about your channel is that you are willing to investigate a lot of perceived wisdom about the hobby, even perceived wisdom that might mesh with what you already believe. That's a really great quality, and it makes your videos some of the best TTRPG-focused ones on the internet.
This makes a lot of sense to me, especially because when I have tried more narrative focussed games, that is exactly the issue I ran into... *somehow* I tended to find the narrative part too restricted, too "gamey" and less real and immersive than when playing 5e or OSR etc. where that part was mostly free of rules and mechanics that get in the way.
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.
I'm a big fan of just not engaging with chronically online drama mobs. Brennan can do what he wants, safely ignoring the 0.0001% of the gaming population that decided to criticize his decision on social media sites and comment sections with weak arguments about things that are simply a matter of personal taste.
The funny thing is that as a DM, I agree with him. I have no problem running a combat heavy system for my narrative games because I just need to know the basics then let the system work for combat. But as a player, I disagree. As a player, most of my character building decisions relate to the mechanics of the game, and if said mechanics are all combat based, that leaves me focusing on combat more than I want to. This approach leaves me in the position where I am willing to run most any system, but I am much more picky about what systems I play.
I think that bit about abstraction is important. I'm very, VERY new to DMing and I think sometimes rolling for things while my PCs are deep into their role to be incredibly cumbersome especially in conversations.
Monopoly the board game isn't about moving pieces around board trying to make the most money using the methods allowed in the rules. It's actually the most immersive, narrative forward, player facing roleplaying setting in existence. What's important is the characters you make for the player tokens, their voices, how they interact with each other as they pass each other on the board, visit each other in prison, and (god-forbid) spend the night together in the same motel room on the Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois...
(Of course, you can do whatever you like. There really is no "wrong" way to play except what isn't fun for the group in question.)
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.
"System matters' is definitely an aspect but I think to have the mindset that "yes, we have those tools so i don't have to worry about it" softly expresses the mastery/knowledge you have of those tools. They understand the crunch and are now looking beyond it to worry about the more unknown territory. I think it speaks more to moving out of the comfort zone of the books in order to grow beyond them.
A new DM looks at all those same rules and says, "There's so much to learn" after all
Games as interesting decisions is a useful framework here.
Every cool interaction in the Mothership example is the GM creating an interesting decision-point for the player on the fly: Where will you hide? Will you risk taking off your vacc-suit to fit in the locker? Will you risk taking the time to unscrew the grate to hide in the ventilation shaft?
These decision-points are interesting because the player can't just deduce the right choice. They are trying to make risk-reward calculations based on incomplete information, and ultimately they have to decide what they are willing to risk and for what reward.
TTRPG mechanics don't just abstract. 1) They quantify. They allow some choices to be measurably more or less risky (reduce your armour class, make a speed check) and to offer measurably better or worse rewards (This is where the stealth mechanic would usually come in... Depending on where you hid, you get a bonus or penalty to your stealth check.)
2) They randomize results in real time. If the GM just decides that the risky thing you did pays off in spades, it doesn't feel like you took a real risk and happened to get lucky. So the GM allows the dice to decide the results, but based on the risk-reward scenario that the player decided to accept.
I am surprised at such an unnuanced take from Brennan. The idea that Dimension 20 has chosen to play primarily 5e because Brennan isn't interested in telling stories about violent conflict is... like... lizard-people-conspiracy-level nonsense.
"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 TH-cam 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.
But here is what neither of you have considered. The main issue with using DnD for narrative combat light games is not that it's primarily a combat game or that most of its rules adjudicate combat, or that it lacks mechanisms for other kinds of challenges. The MAIN hindrance is the nature of how the PCs/character classes are designed. Because of the presumption that DnD adventures will have combat, all of the character classes assume you must be able to hold your own in a combat. If you look at ALL the character classes, they are ALL just "different ways to kill people". Every. Single. One. It's just about whether you kill people with a sword, kill them with magic, or kill them with stealth. And as you progress, you inevitably MUST get better at combat. The very build of a DnD character (HP, AC, Saves, Base Attack Bonus, etc) and its levels are different kinds of progressively more powerful "combating machine".
And THAT is the problem. In other systems, like for example the d100 system used in Call of Cthulhu, or GURPS, etc. - in those, it is possible to make a scientist who is 'high level' in the sense of being very good at science, but completely defenseless. And the very PRESENCE of those kinds of characters as PCs forces the narrative into finding other solutions than combat. The only way to achieve that in DnD is to make the bad guy way overpowered so the PCs have to investigate to find a story-based way to win. But that then forces the entire party into that and it's a very clumbsy way to do it.
Bottom line, it would be completely foolish to use d20 DnD style system to run a Sherlock Holmes game, or a Political game, or a Victorian-era Romance game - because your PCs should not just INEVITABLY get better and better at combat as they grow in experience.
4e had rules to facilitate roleplaying; the skill challenge system was way more accessible for DMs than what we've to to work with what we have to work with nowadays. Sure, it had a lot of combat specific stuff, but so does 5e. The challenge was getting your players to a balance where they are aware of their powers, but want their persona to evolve also. It is much like the contention about the 5e rules covering the aspects of the world the DM cannot improvise; it was the same with 4e, people critical of its RP potential could never see past all the bells and whistles on the character sheet.
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.
What you are describing is narrativitic vs simulationist style gameplay. Rules that abstract are narrative, rules that are attempting to simulate a scenario and can be adjusted for circumstances are simulationist. D&D's rules used to be simulationist because Gary Gygax liked that style of rules.
I think what Brennen says is viable FOR HIM. As you said: he is a professional Improviser and does stuff like this for a living. Most GMs don't.
So concluding something FOR US from what he said is mostly useless, because most of us don't have this expertise.
Most normale Groups don't need rules to cover what they are not interested in but to support the Stuff they are interested in.
Most GMs need Rules for what they can't do themselves. Not everyone is great at improvising social Encounters or Intrigue or complex Relationships and if that is the Case complex rules for these Things can ease someone into trying it. This is basically like using training Wheels until you can drive on your own. And there is no shame in needing support in Things you can't do (yet) as a GM.
For me Preperation and Rules are always about easing the Players and GM into the Game. They support them into what they are supposed to do and rewards them for doing them.
So if a normal Group wants to play a narrative Campaign they absolutely should choose a narrative-focused System at first to learn the important parts by playing it.
If you choose DnD for that the Game won't help you! That is fundamentally it.
You wan't help with that? Choose another System.
Are you comfortable without Rules for that? Choose whatever feels best for you. And if that is DnD for one Reason or another thats totally cool.
This is why this Debate is so weird. Because it completely depends on your own competence if DnD is enough for you and your Group. This might not be true for everyone!
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.
The fact that you steered your away from controversy and instead had a discussion about how games are made and played earned a sub from me.
On the plushand all this discourse made me think about negative design space which is a cool concept.
I hope people remember the context so it doesn't become "not having a system is good actually" when people point out the lack of rules for sth.
I'd think people's pushback is because they (rightfully or wrongly) assume he plays 5E because it's popular and gets views.
And what he says sounds more like a post-hoc justification in order to not come out and say that (even if he is serious).
I think, sure. And as lots of people have pointed out, that works great for Brennan who obviously has years of experience, is a professional improve actor, etc. He sees a fruitful void, he wants to to work within that space. He'll bring the food. All for it.
But when I think of games that lean into mechanics that support roleplay or narration, I don't think of that as overly gameifying or forcing people to be less creative--rather, the best ones operate in the same way a formal poem would. Sure, free verse is all fun and good, but have you tried to write a sonnet? An ode? God, a sestina? Putting limitations, frames, and borders around areas can do wonders for creativity. It shows people a set of picked blank spaces and lets them dance within them, rather than throwing them a blank canvas and saying "go crazy."
Additionally, as many have pointed out, not all players (or GMs for that matter) are great at roleplaying. They want to be, but it's a skill that takes time to develop. Giving them leads, prompts, and systems to help attach their narrative decisions to can help everyone get on the same playing field, as well as generate some of the most interesting and surprising interactions from players that would otherwise have a hard time coming up with ideas on-the-spot (especially from quieter players, or folks who are generally shy when it comes to character/narrative).
I don't disagree with Brennan, it's awesome that it works for him, but there are so many other amazing systems out there that can help folks--and again, folks who aren't famous improv actors--tell wonderful stories that I still want to bury D&D 5e as the "every system" and de-emphasize its perceived narrative potential.
I don’t disagree with the prospect of using a combat-oriented system as a way to handle the abstraction of combat, but I disagree with the idea of saying a system is not combat-oriented because it’s not being used to enjoy the complexity of combat.
Like, to me, roleplaying is system irrelevant. You can roleplay Monopoly if you felt like it. But whatever game you use matters in what you want to motivate your players to do and how you want encounters to resolve.
D&D incentivizes players to fight monsters, leveling up gives you more features for fighting monsters, you can tell a story in the system where the point isn’t to fight monsters, but at some point one of your players is going to try to fight a monster, because that is what the system asks of them, and they can do that because D&D has rules for resolving the act of fighting monsters.
Another flashpoint that Brennan’s quote might’ve made is that a number of players in the ttrpg space are getting frustrated with D&D’s hegemony over the space and the community’s lack of interest in other systems, even if other systems would provide better ways to abstract stuff like combat without spending an hour resolving it like D&D does.
If people made this complaint about pathfinder 1e I could empathize because pathfinder is very much a wargamer’s tabletop, if you LOVE combat and minmaxing characters and hate everything else about other roleplaying tabletops it’s probably what you’d enjoy more. Dnd 5e though is a mix of everything and accommodates every kind of player adequately, even Brennens.
"D&D is a game about tax collecting because there arent any forms about tax collecting in it."
Willingly ignoring ludonarrative to avoid making a positive case for this system isn't a crime. They don't need to change their system for anyone. But pretending its not the same tired excuse of name recognition, familiarity, and 5e's reputation for being extremely permissive is absurd. Do what you and your players like, but don't piss on my leg and tell me its raining.
Perfectly put. I'm a firm believer in "not my table, not my business". if you and your group are using honey heist to tell an alternate history WWII horror story, i think that's fuckin' weird and probably not the best system to choose. But if it works for you and your group, it works. I might recommend a better game, but it's not my place to tell you you're having fun wrong.
But for brennan it absolutely is about brand recognition and familiarity. Brennan is an old-school D&D gamer. From what i've heard from him speaking candidly on podcasts, he just doesn't seem that interested in other games. And he knows that non-5e games pull way less viewership. I think what really bothered me about this quote was that it comes off more like rationalizing a weak argument rather than owning up to the reality of the actual play podcast space.
I agree that those are absolutely reasons for Brennan to continue using the system, probably the primary reasons. But there is a point to be made that D&D is being used here only for the parts of the experience that Brennan wants / needs to be structured. Even if that structure kinda sucks compared to plenty of other options out there - that’s where the other reasons to use D&D come in.
At most, I could see Brennan switching to another combat-centric system that actually did its one job better - but then he still wouldn’t want / need rules for the narrative side of the experience. He’s got that covered.
Nonetheless, I concede that D&D is all too often shoehorned into any and every form of game / story without any consideration for other options. I’m sure there are *literal hundreds* of systems that would suit Brennan’s desired experiences better.
Unfortunately, those systems aren’t D&D (TM).
A great example of a narrative game having a lot of combat mechanics is actually the pre-V5 versions of Vampire: the Masquerade.... It's very much a narrative game that is focused on politics and horror... but the largest page count and detail in the corr of the system is still combat.
And people wonder why so often Pre-V5 vampires quickly turned into superheroes/supervillains with fangs.
I feel like this boils down to whether someone likes mechanics or not. Or maybe a simpler way to say it - how much do you want to gamify your RPG experience? I recently had a session where we made a single dice roll in 4 hours - it was a lot of planning, plotting and personal storyline development. The group loved this session (I think) because it was just a collaborative storytelling exercise. Speaking only for myself here, it was not a satisfying experience. I did not enjoy this session.
For me personally, the mechanics have to support the game I want to run. Adding a random dice element IMO is vital for my enjoyment because it brings complications into the story that wouldn't otherwise be there.
I can appreciate not wanting to have clunky rules invading the narrative to the point of ruining immersion - I get that - but that's why I have come to prefer lighter/simpler systems over crunchier ones. If I play 5E, I want to play a combat heavy game - I made a gloom stalker, let me use my gloom stalker. But if I am wanting to tell a different kind of story - character driven, political intrigue, whatever - I am running as far away from 5E as I can possibly get. It's not that you can't run a political intrigue game in 5E, it's that you are making characters which are hammers and you have to be playing with people who are going to treat everything like a screw instead of a nail. I really think that only works on TH-cam, where the object of these campaigns is to entertain an audience, not play a game with friends.
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.
Similar point: If you like the idea survival and exploration (in 5E), the worst thing you can do is have a ranger in your party. It's very hard to make exploration/survival interesting when you can never get lost (in the favored terrain), and you never run out of food (goodberry).
I have slowly converted a group of mindless battle goblins into a group that can RP with me not even in the room. If you think 5e isn't for narrative you're missing half of the game lol
I use Old School Essentials for my narrative heavy games because it suits my needs for combat; it's quick and brutal. Most "narrative heavy RPG" have mechanics that, at least to me, don't work for for what they are intended for.
I fully agree with Brennan’s take. During D20 Mentopolis, they used the Kids on Bikes system and that was great for story and RP. Combat was brought up, briefly discussed, and decided on between the DM and players *during* the episode where there’s some combat where they take actual damage. Not having to think about how combat will work and having everyone already understand how it will work *IF* it happens is brilliant. No one likes combat mechanic disagreements at the table.
That is one of the great things about RPG's. If its a table that loves high combat and little to no RP they can do it and have a great time. If a table hashes the rules to death but has a great time then its right for them. If the table is high RP and low rules they can do that. As long as people have fun I don't think it matters
Awesome. I'll look to handle Stealth like that in my 5e Game whenever it makes narrative sense.
"Monster of the Week" is an ttrpg that is based on improv acting. It's meant the feel like a weekly supernatural show. It gives the players tools to improv their way through the session. While a professional improv actor won't need those systems, I love it. The improv acting is the part I like least about D&D, but I love to engage in the game mechanics presented in Monster of the Week.
Your last point is what kills this argument for me. He's a professional improv actor, so just because he doesn't need systems in place to tell narrative stories doesn't mean that this is some sort of universal rule. There are exceptions to everything, and I don't think 99% of people would be able to follow this exception and carry it over to their own games. It works for him, that doesn't mean it's good advice for everyone. Most people are picking a system because it has a unique purpose that they want to take advantage of. Roleplaying happens in every system, even in casual wargames, so saying "I'm using 5e because it gives me the freedom to RP how I want" is a moot point. And let's be totally honest, he is a professional actor, the real reason he's probably using 5e is because it has the biggest audience.
Yeah, without a doubt. Honestly there's a ton of DMs, not just the famous ones, that get stuck running 5E because it's popular.
Brennan's argument would support picking something like Knave or FATE better than it supports picking 5e.
It is blatantly a marketing decision. That is fine, I just hate that he pretends it's anything else.
@@taragnorI refuse to run it, doesn't look fun to run for me. I do enjoy playing it weekly though.
He's not trying to claim that every table interested in narrative games should play 5e. He's specifically speaking for himself and only for himself. Just like everyone else is. The decision about what system to use at YOUR table is YOUR decision.
@@krkngd-wn6xjI dont see it as a marketing decision. I see it as, that system being what his players and audience know well and changing the system impairs the story as everyone learns the new game and its boundaries.
Id still make the case that people playing narrative games they should play 13th age not 5E.
Yeah 13A doesn't get enough exposure. It's really a great game for people that want D&D, but want to dump the tactical combat.
Am of a similar opinion to Brennan. At first I found DnD restrictive. I wanted character, exploration, and combat that's more loose and creative, as opposed to super-specific and resource-dependent. But then I looked at other TTRPGs that claimed to be more roleplay-oriented. And I found that most of them tried to gamify roleplay, which made things anything but intuitive. I don't wanna flip through a book for mechanics on how to act and talk in-character, or roll dice to determine how drama and character development evolves, It just breaks immersion IMO since your mind is more focused on the rulebook than on the scene you're in.
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.,
Interesting. I think this is the kind of thing Prof. DM is talking about when he talks about rules-lite systems for his games: Because he can improvise combat stuff, he prefers less rules with combat, so he can focus more on narrative description when in combat. Super interesting!
A game is about whatever the game allows you to do. It’s cool and great if your character has a deep history and relationship with the stakes to motivate them, but at the end of the day, they’re a 7th level wizard because you decided it would be sick as shit to be able to throw fireballs around, and odds are that’s how you’re going to settle things.
It amazes me that this argument is still being had in a post PBTA world. We know what games with robust narrative mechanics can look like; I have no idea where or why they all went.
Yea but in Brennan's case it's a game being performed as a story for an audience. The importance of those are flipped
An important aspect of this that I think gets overlooked is the purpose of dice and rule systems. They are impartial (though not necessarily fair) judges as to the results of actions. Without them, situations that invested parties aren't all in a position to accurately judge can easily devolve into childish quibbling.
"Assassin stabs Hero."
"Hero dodges."
"Assassin moved too fast for you to dodge."
"But Hero is faster!"
"No Assassin is faster!"
etc . . .
Using dice, with a supporting set of rules so things make a bit more sense help a lot in avoiding these kinds of situations. I like 5e because it has rules and dice rolls in almost all of the situations where this could be a problem. We're not always obligated to use the dice or the rules, but if there is any uncertainty or possibility of disagreement, then we have an easy way out. We're not trying to skip the combat, we like it, we just need an organized system for it so there is little room for conflict. Of course it helps that me and mine like wargames and fantasy.
I think part of the backlash to this feels like it's another arrow in the quiver of the people who refuse to try anything but 5e.
Brennan is already an amazing storyteller. He does not need a system that does that for him. He needs a system to help keep track of who's dying and who's not
I think part of this argument fails because it asserts that abstractions are loss of detail. That's not true, rather they are flexible interpretation of detail. If one rolls an attack roll, it's not just an attack, it's, to an extent, what the player wants the attack to be. It could be a low cut to the leg, a flying knee kick, it could be lots of things. Abstractions aren't removing detail, they are leaving that to the player.
The greater logic at play fails because it can assert absurd things like, d&d has no rules about tanks, therefore it's about tank play. So one could assert many ideas not covered by the rules are what d&d is actually about. Yet all cannot be true at once. So arguments like this can be quickly dismissed. There are different aspects at play that determine the focus of the game. However, what the rules support will be related to that at the end of the day. So w/e 5e is, it is designed around doing combat in some way or where combat leads. And w/e way that is, based on the mechanics, it's more immersion based, not narrative. Brennen can make it work, cool, that doesn't make it ideal. That also doesn't mean the ideal game for what Brennen wants to do exists, but that doesn't mean that 5e is therefore ideal for what Brennen wants to do.
Brennen could easily grab a game that does narrative based combat, still do everything he wants to do outside of the combat, and that would probably suit what he wants to do better. His response, ultimately doesn't really address this point.
I agree only to a point. I feel there's a fallacy on the "combat is solved by the game and let's me focus on narrative" idea: if that's the goal by picking this system, then shouldn't it be efficient and concise? Shouldn't it resolve these encounters fast and fluently? If you want to actually create a narrative, shouldn't your character creation provide space for diversity of characters? I think it is usually the habit that talks in these cases where people defend a choice. You don't have to try and defend your choice since we all have a system we prefer and it is just as the food we like and the culture we grew up in: We just know this better. People that play dnd will stick to it and make homebrew stuff and all kinds of things to expand the game they know instead of trying something else precisely because it is what they know and are comfortable with. What rules make is that the narrator loses control of things when there are rules, and Brennan runs shows, so he NEEDS to be in full control of the narrative.
I mean, he needed to mention that the kitchen takes up like 90% of the house
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 😬
“Rules are what the game is not about” makes so much sense, I can’t believe I haven’t had this thought before!
I enjoy his "CEO of X" videos but by gawd that had to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard about 5e. "I don't want to have to think about combat mechanics". 5e is notorious for stopping the flow of the game to look up all the many rules. I mean, I guess technically you don't have to think because it's all written down for you, but that's the problem. And to say it's intuitive? Absolutely not. The only people saying that are the ones that have been playing for years. Show it to a new person and see how much trouble they have adapting and getting used to it.
Even if you ignore the combat side of it, the abilities players get are absolute narrative killers. From Goodberry all the way up to Wish. Just absolute nonsense. If he didn't want to think about combat mechanics he should be playing EZD6 or Tricube. Not the one that's loaded with combat mechanics. What an odd argument.
Also, most of the skills are "deal XdY damage", which kind of doesn't happen in the show? They're literally using a hammer without using a hammer. I suppose 5e is just there to gather audience, nothing more. 5e crowd would not watch a non-5e campaign.
I find it extraordinarily bizarre that "people are annoyed" about how other people are playing a game somewhere else in the world not involving said annoyed people. What the fuck could they possibly be annoyed about? Actively seeking out and watching people play that game so that they can then critique or claim "They're doing it wrong?"
WHAT??
Frankly, I'm pretty certain it's not anyone's place to arbitrate what a game 'is or isn't", even the creators of that game. How people enjoy utilizing it is their own business, and, supposing it weren't designed to have any kind of engaging narrative, then why would it include such a vast and open source means of creating and publishing whatever you want to create for that game system? I'm pretty sure egomaniacs and self important people who talk about limiting imagination and story, and talk about D&D the way a newly graduated, entitled, self important journalist and political columnist talks about whatever scandal, war, or Election they're covering. Its gossip. Grown folks don't give a $h!t, so shut the f*(# up, thanks.
Engaging narrative is the only kind of narrative worth engaging, that's what telling a story is supposed to be, engaging. You want to tell a bad story? or a boring one? Go for it! Sorry people are losing their players to the booming popularity of online gaming when they found out their only DM they'd ever had really sucks at telling stories, but runs a great combat, and they leave for something more satisfying on a fictive, and interpersonal level. Be better at it or find people that lie your stories that are just about fighting all the time. ||When I was 14 I moved on from D&D to Vampire the Masquerade and White Wolfs countless great games in the 90s, at 14, already tired of combat heavy games with no RP, no deep RP and nothing really bringing me to that table at all. But i didn't sit around and claim injury from all the GM's out there in the world runnnig uninteresting min max, murder hobo goblin evisceration games. Nope, I just moved on to the thing that I like once my taste had matured. I noticed, the more interactive on a story level, ,the more engaging. Every D&D campaign I've ever run I've strived to achieve serious immersion and emotional stakes in, and while there are beer and pretzel D&D gamers that could give a shit, and there are elitist snobby pricks who prattle on and on about it seem more engaged in it than anyone!
Pro Tip:
If something is annoying you, stop watching it, or playing it. You're a big grown up person now, remember? And you CHANGE THE CHANNEL. You can even go watch things you like to watch instead of the annoying bad person who says dumb stuff! ISN"T THAT AMAZING?
Planescapes: Torment, The first few Icewindale and all The Baldur's Gate video games were engaging deep narratives. . BG3 was an absolute masterpiece of emotionally engaging and deeply comprehensive narrative. Now while the argument can be made that those are video game-ified versions of D&D, then that is to say, even a limited version of this game, and it's unalterable stories, are even capable of delivering that which this grievously annoyed and injured party Larian's success is well deserved, which must be reeeeeeeeeally annoying to whiny self victimizing, narcissists who spend all their time covering what Brennan Lee Mulligan said last week that made them feel inadequate and made them transparent to anyone with a modicum of experience around insecure men. Looks like tis time for you all to go back to masturbating in the mirror, after smashing that subscribe button, sucking off the notification bell, and dropppin a like and your take on things in the comments section! Time to get back to checking your lighting, and shooting more content, better stare at you for 21 hours of your day. Shoot more content, keep calling art and creative endeavor "content", check yourself out again, edit your content of you, posting that content of you on your multiple social media YOU platforms, because YOU are absolutely someone that the world needs so much more of at all times, how dare YOU deprive us of a moment of YOU! YOU MUST RECORD EVERY MOMENT OF YOUR IMPORTANT WORDS.
SHITPOST COMPLETE.
To embrace his metaphor, Brennan is a Michelin chef spending $10000 on ingredients, $1000 on a fancy pan and utensils, importing spring water from the Himalayas, all to cook rice on a stove. Not only that, Brennan's been growing his own rice all his life. So of course his response to "Should you buy a rice cooker if you like rice?" is "No, the stove is perfectly fine for making rice. I do it all the time."
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 was a very interesting topic. I had never thought about the lack of mechanics around a certain theme actually placing more emphasis on said theme. That will definitely make me reconsider how I think about certain games where they have “holes” in their systems.
The wildest part about his take is how little those mechanics he claims to be using actually see use in the show. The majority of what they do is engage with skill rolls and often feels they have combat in Dimension 20 purely _because_ of said system in use, whereas in comparison to Mentopolis (using a mildly modified Kids On Bikes), they solved most conflicts without combat or fights.
I do somewhat understand the approach (its nothing new to me by a long shot) but I find it a harder stance to be fully behind when the person saying it has both evidence illustrating they're incorrect _and_ a lack of knowledge regarding the wider design space. There are even games with conflict resolution in them that are more willing to get out of the way and/or operate faster, as well as more fitting to their conversational yet showy playstyle.
One of the things that made D&D 4e more a combat game was the fact that it included rules for almost any interaction. Every conversation could be resolved with a die roll. Just like 3.x's system of "roll to persuade/perform/profession," 4e's use of Skill Challenges and Page 42 meant that it could resolve anything using mechanics. The most interesting mechanics were the game mechanics, so the game became more about combat for many people.
The first campaign i played in was very narrative focused. We would maybe have one combat a session and maybe even go multiple seesions without any combat. There would even be sessions where no one even made a skill check. It was all us just having long conversations in character while occasionally going to different objectives and maybe having a challenge to overcome. I absolutely loved this campaign. And as someone who's only experience with dnd at the time was seeing miscellaneous clips of critical role, i assumed this is how all tables were.
The thing that separated me from the rest of the table was that i absolutely loved the combat any time we would have it. The reason was because i found combat to be an extremely effective vehicle for intense, high stakes roleplay. Many of my favorite roleplay moments were during combat. So naturally, i got really into optimizing so i could make this experience even more enjoyable since i was, more often than not, getting my ass kicked. So imagine my surprise when i realized...most players don't roleplay during combat. Or they at least tone it down significantly. Imagine my even greater surprise when i hopped into an lgs game and started speaking in character and they said they don't really roleplay at that table (they were nice about it tho, they said i could still do it if i wanted). Imagine my surprise when i didn't go back to that table because playing dnd strictly as a game is... pretty boring.
I still love theory crafting of course. But not because i wanna make the most mathematically efficient character possible. I'll play my polearm battle master with sentinel and two levels of barbarian, not because he kills people quickly, but because he feels like a character who's never on the back foot, is always looking for the slightest opportunity to get a hit in, and will protect his allies to the bitter end. Mechanics are simply the means to the end of telling a better story. This balance is exactly why emily axford is such a great player. She plays this style to a tee.
I love keeping the roleplay up during fights too! I think it's cool to strike a balance between "what would my character do in this situation?" and "what can I do to help the party effectively win against the opponent?" Some of our most intense D&D moments came from fights and the resolutions that came after! Definitely a great way to get the most out of 5e's battle system and roleplay.
The key here is actually the relationship between the Dungeon Master and the system. Is the system the game, with the GM keeping it running? Or is the GM the machine of the game, w the system one of their tools?
People: “DnD is a combat game only, you shouldn’t use it for your story!”
Brennan: “I find a rules light approach to roleplay and crunchy combat fits my storytelling better. It is possible for a game to be about things it does not systematize”
People: “So you HATE games that have roleplay mechanics!? You monster! You sophist fake! You probably just like it for the branding that you don’t use!”
This conversation reminds me of discussions about freedom. One thought about freedom is, you cannot truly be free without a structured society.
Total disagreement with Brennan's stance. He could be a little more honest and say that 5e is the most popular system and so using 5e grants him the best chance of developing a large audience.
His current argument is that "the system doesn't fight me when I'm trying to craft a rich narrative". But what others are trying to say is that a better system would not only not fight you, but actively aid you in the crafting of that narrative.
I'm running a game of FATE right now and the whole group's eyes have been opened to the narrative possibilities and drama that have blossomed just by using its mechanics.
If he truly thinks of 5e as a good stove for cooking narratives, then he is missing out on a world of better stoves.
Especially since he's making up dice rolls or random checks on a spot or has them prepared beforehand and those rolls have nothing to do with 5e ruleset. They're playing kind-of-maybe-dnd but not really.
@@SirWhorshoeMcGee Exactly! I honestly believe that they'd have a better experience if they ditched 5e and just used a single d6, with results adjudicated by Brennan on the fly.
And from there they could look at systems like Freeform Universal to spice up their narratives. 5e is mostly dead weight for a narrative-heavy game.
Well said! This puts into words some thoughts that I've been groping toward for a long time.