Chebucto Regional Softball Club

There's a spectrum of play that runs from strict rules-as-written to complete calvinball. Calvinball can be fun, but it's not really a transferrable game. It's very particular to that moment and that group. Sometimes people post wacky calvinball moments (eg: rolling damage against the floor, a free action to eat tiles, a +2 bonus to hit) as if that's baseline RAW DND. It is not. Many tables would be like "wtf, that's not how this game works". So it can be kind of weird when it's presented as obvious, as if it's raw, when it's just make pretend. Imagine if the post was "we were playing basketball and I missed the shot, so I got in my car and drove up close so I could jump off the roof and dunk". Like, wacky story but not how you're supposed to play the game. Furthermore, DND *specifically* is kind of bad at creativity. It's very precariously balanced, with specific rules in odd places and no rules in others. Compare with, for example, Fate, which has "this thing in the scene works to my advantage" rules built in. DND is almost entirely in the hands of the DM.

Never thought about it before, but the two systems I like most don't do that. In chronicles of darkness, you get penalties when any of your last 3 health boxes (out of 6-10) are marked. In fate, you start getting Consequences, and those both adversely affect you and provide bonuses for your opponents. I think some people don't like this because it can cause a death spiral, where whoever gets injured first is likely to get more injured from the penalties. But, that makes sense for a lot of genres. I routinely found it extremely irritating in BG3 when I'd do a sneak attack critical, and then the enemy would have like 3 HP left, and then they'd turn around and attack just as hard as if i'd done nothing. Unsatisfying.

I don't need to know their exact stats, but I like (for example) having a system where you know a human's health ranges from 6 to 10, and a gun does at least 3 damage, so you can be _pretty sure_ if you shoot him four times he's down. None of this, "Well, he's a 12th level accountant so he has 78 hp". Maybe I mostly just dislike how vague HP is in D&D. But it was probably mostly a GM issue. > I’m here to roleplay, not be told immediately whether or not I can take the dude. I find it hard to roleplay when I don't know what is in the world. Things that are very different (high level stuff, low level stuff) getting basically the same description is distracting. In real life, you get a lot of information looking at someone. Maybe I'm still just annoyed at that game where we were all 10th level and so were the basic ass soldiers.

One of the things I realized I don't like about DND (and close relatives) is it's kind of hard to reason about the rules and risks. The narrative and numbers are too disjointed. You might say the knight is hulking and looming ominously, but does that mean 20 AC, 50 HP, one attack at +6 for 1d8+4... Or does that mean 24 AC, 500 HP, three attacks at 1d8+8 (slashing) +1d4 (negative energy)? Could be either! The range of possibilities is largely unbound and arbitrary. Compare with another system that like, constrains the numbers. Strength is rated 1-5. Melee is rated 1-5. This guy is pretty buff looking so he's probably got a total of six. That guy's a demigod and probably throws ten. Cool I can reason from that who I can take in a fight.

There are dozens of us who preferred Vampire: The Requiem 2nd edition. Dozens!

This whole problem is such an archaic D&D-ism. Most other games provide strong guidance or even explicit rules about how to make a party that works. Fate has the "phase trio" where you go around and make up as a group how your characters have a past together. None of this "everyone makes their dude in isolation" nonsense.

If you want DND with working rules, Pathfinder 2e is what people recommend. Not first edition. I'm not a huge fan since it's still basically DND. If you want a lightweight system that's mostly about narrative, I'm a fan of Fate. But Fate is absolutely not a crunchy system, and it's largely up to the group to agree on what makes sense. Like, if you want character differentiation you can lean on "aspects as permission" and it's right there. (That is, stuff that's true about your character permits you to try stuff. The barbarian can't even try to decipher the runes, because nothing about his character implies he could do that. You can't just blindly roll something. The wizard can try, because of course wizards know runes) The core rules are free, but you can find books with more specifics. I think there's a Dresden files book people like? They don't provide a complex magic system in the core books, but it has some ideas and the toolkit book has more. I also liked the chronicles of darkness games, but they're generally all modern day occult. You can take the core rules and move them to fantasy, if you wanted. It's pretty light and I like it more than DND in all the ways I care about.

Yeah, but have you tried to convince people of anything? They don't care. They just want to do the thing with their friends. Any sort of "here's a better game" is going to smash into "did i make a bad choice? i spent all this time and money on D&D and they're saying it's bad? now i feel bad. this other person is making me feel bad. they're wrong and stupid" Some people might on their own decide to try other games. A lot of them are just going to enjoy hanging out with their friends. (Have you talked to casual D&D players? The kind that don't post on obscure websites. Their house rules are bizarre) I would love for D&D to be a niche game that focused on retro dungeon crawling instead of the most popular RPG. I don't think it's going to happen.

It also bothers me when someone's character has like 7 charisma, but the player still acts like the sales guy he is in real life. I was playing a max charisma warlock and the wizard with his whole 13 charisma kept trying to lead all the conversations. Irritating. Personally, I think D&D's social skills are so bad they should just rip charisma out of the game. I'd rather they no-ass it than half-ass it.

One of the reasons I like Fate is it has tooling to avoid that kind of anti-climax without it feeling like an asspull. The BBEG is sitting in his office and the players, through hard work and planning, get the jump on him. Their first attack roll is net +8 stress. That's enough to kill almost anything! I as GM decide the BBEG is going to take a consequence ("Covered in Acid Burns" or whatever), and then *[concede](https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/conceding-conflict)*. Conceding is at the player level, not the character level. This is where you as a group decide on how the BBEG survives, but loses this scene. Maybe he teleports away, but leaves his computer unlocked. Maybe he drains the life force of his favorite second in command to save himself, damaging morale and loyalty. It's up to the group. Some people _hate_ this style of play, and want to be told a story rather then tell one as a group. That's fine. But it's hard for me to take off the GM hat, so I like when players also have a lot of say in the story.

Ring of protection. Grants everyone around you protection in a fairly large radius. Might be useful for long range combat, maybe. Might also be useful to navigating certain environmental hazards. Boots of Flying. They can fly, but only have a carry weight of a few pounds. If you're more than say ten pounds, the little wings flap but gain no altitude. They are not autonomous. Might be useful in condunction with other magics to reduce weight. Gauntlets of Ogre Might. Do not affect strength. They do tell you the odds of nearby ogres taking particular actions. They might do this, they might do that, and so on. Hammer of Striking. Social bonuses when organizing labor. Combat bonuses only when near many allies. Boots of Haste. Gain extra actions but large penalties to all checks. Haste makes waste. May be useful if combined with large bonuses or fixed outcomes (eg: DND diviner wizard).

> Expendable resources is pretty core to the identity of D&D I think. I think this is true to an extent. For new players, or people who just know about D&D without playing it much, I don't think spells-per-day would be in their list of core features. If I asked my non-rpg friends what they think is core to D&D, they'd probably say like "pretending to be an elf or dwarf", "fantasy worlds with kings and dungeons and dragons", and maybe "you roll a d20 and if it comes up 20 that's a crit!". Few to none of them would say "You can cast cool spells, but only twice and then you have to go to bed". They likely expect a wizard to do wizardy stuff *on the regular*, which is contrary to D&D's model of "a few times, and then you're spent". I really, truly, do not think spells-per-day is on a casual player's wish list. For more enthusiast players, probably. But as discussed, a lot of them don't actually like it. There's the posts on reddit trying to fix the issue are pretty common, as you said. There are some players who probably like D&D for what it is, rather than what they're forcing it to be, but I don't think they're the majority. And yet, for many of those players who don't like this thing that is arguably core to D&D's identity, they refuse to play another game. That's what always drives me crazy. Like, if you want an easy narrative game, PbtA and Fate are just right there. PF2e I'm told is good if you want D&D but the rules work. But people keep playing D&D and keep having the same problems. (Also people who take D&D and try to turn it into a modern day game about secret vampires doing political intrigue: I cannot be friends with them. Vampire is _right there_! come on!)

Hm you're right I do remember some of that. I remember a lot of people calling for the "gritty realism" variant, which I feel like is just making the problem worse. If I recall that one changes long rests into a week (in a safe place) and short rest into a day. I don't think I ever saw anyone advocate for the heroic variant, that changes short rests to like a minute and long rests to an hour. That's more like how players actually want to play, I think. Neither of those actually change the core problem. Personally I'd get rid of the whole per rest idea. Like, make wizard spells sequences- each round you channel more varied and powerful options open up. Sorcerer spells are risky, and if you flub the check you get a misfire. Warlocks spend stats to cast, and recover with a patron appropriate ritual. Just off the top of my head. There are so many more options than "check off the spell slot and the spell works".

I don't have any studies to back it up so I might be wrong. I wonder if anyone's done any rigorous investigation into this. An old DND group never agreed with me when I'd bring up the topic, but they might have been more "it is what it is stop rocking the boat" than an active support for the concept. I'm pretty sure if you went into a DND space and suggested rebalancing the game so it's not resting on (pun intended) powers per day, you'd get a lof of push back. Maybe I'll go post a poll somewhere later. I've also met a few players who have somehow never considered any other way things could be. I had a friend in college I tried to get to play a world of darkness game. Powers in those games are either unlimited use, or bound by a renewable resource like blood. He was like "this sounds totally broken yo".

> There is also a flip side to this, DMs that let their players rest too often. I used to play in a group where we rotated who was DM'ing every couple weeks. Two of the DMs were very generous with their rests. I didn't really like it, because that doesn't feel like D&D to me. Also as a short rest class (Warlock), it's irritating that I get my two whole spells, maybe four if we short rest, but the wizard blows his load on two fights instead of the recommended 5. When it was my turn, and I threw them in a longer dungeon without easy resting options, there was weeping. > As a DM if you’ve miscalculated, double that monsters HP. Or if you’re about to overrun them, cut it in half. I know people do this, but I kind of don't like it. I don't really like the HP and other stats shifting around based on gut feel. Feels like we should just write a book if we're going to fudge it. I prefer systems with more transparency, anyway. D&D is wacky about "how much HP does this knight have? Could be 20. Could be 200." When I was playing a nWoD game, it was nice to know that any human is probably going to have about 7 health levels.

> What they don't acknowledge is that the long rest problem is something of a self-inflicted wound. No shit. Players don't actually enjoy holding onto their powers all day. They want to use their cool powers. Some small, vocal, minority of players really enjoy the resource management game. Most people want to do cool shit every turn, not use a hand crossbow or shoot a cantrip. Spells-per-day has sucked the entire time I've played D&D, which admittedly is only 3.0 onwards. It has always caused pacing problems. > Back when D&D 5e was being playtested, its early designs openly said that the recommended number of encounters between long rests was four - or as few as two if you throw some particularly challenging fights in there. They fucked up changing that. There are also many other ways powers and abilities could work that aren't based on spells-per-day. D&D probably won't adopt them. The population of people in the hobby also has a survivorship bias- most people enter through D&D, so the people who stick around are mostly people who find its quirks acceptable. Who knows how many players bounced off because they looked at this system and saw "I can cast my cool spells twice? That's it?"

I'm not a product manager and certainly don't work at larian. I have no insight into the level of effort required with their tooling and skill sets. I don't know what they prototyped already. I can't answer that question meaningfully. You also didn't really engage with anything else I wrote.

I think that's a lot of interesting stuff you could explore, but the odds of doing that when the GM is running on unexamined defaults are slim.

I didn't use the word realistic. I called it unsatisfying. Also, it's kind of tired to be like "oh you want rEaLiSm in your game about elf magic??". You know what people mean when they say that. Given the premises presented, nothing is contradictory enough to break suspension of disbelief. People use "realistic" as a shorthand. Sometimes people use "Verisimilitude" for this. Having NPCs react reasonably in some cases (eg: scripted encounters, some law breaking) and not in others is *jarring*. You see the NPCs standing around the tavern having a chat and you go, "That's a reasonable scene. I can imagine this." Then you explode one of them, and they all run around in a panic. Still pretty reasonable. Follows from the premises given. But then you run away and come back, and all of them are back to drinking and chatting. All of them except the one you exploded, who's still a bloody mess on the floor. For some people, such as myself, this is too much. It's too high a contrast, and it foregrounds the limits of the game too much to easily suspend disbelief. > I don’t know what to say. Are you trying to say it clashes with the design? Are you saying every game should have every feature and ‘StarCraft’ should have the nemesis system from the ‘shadow of’ games? I don’t get it. I don't feel like you tried very hard to "get it". The game has a stealth and murder system you're encouraged to use. I'd like for them to have gone a little further with it. The NPCs sometimes look for you if you fire from stealth, but it's janky. The rest of the game is generally pretty immersive-sim, but the wheels fall off if you play one of the main playstyles. Unsatisfying. I'm not a game developer and I expect you aren't either, so I don't know how complex it would be to make the responses to stealth more robust. Maybe add a "There's been a murder!" state to scenes. But they did a lot of other stuff to cover more niche scenarios, so it wouldn't be out of character.

I'm still kind of disappointed and irritated about an old D&D group. The guy ran a game that was literally patriarchy. There was a king who died. He had a daughter, who was ruling competently presently. But he also had an infant son. Now a civil war is brewing because some people want the son on the throne, because that's the male heir. And he just played it straight and seemed to expect us to be like "Oh, obviously the son has a legitimate claim to the throne. and also absolute monarchy is unremarkable". To his credit he did let us decide which faction to support, but it was kind of exhausting getting a constant stream of "no, absolute male hereditary rule is good and normal". It was a pretty fleshed out setting in terms of details and subfactions, but the core of it was just so very basic and unexamined. No one else seemed to give a shit, though. I did not gel with that group. Meanwhile, some time before that I'd had a blast running a game. The players came upon an anarchist collective that had overthrown the old despot, but now there are counter-revolutionaries lurking that want to return the now undead tyrant to the throne. Also the neighboring state is rattling their sabers because they ideologically do not approve of a state without a king. So I guess the lesson is games are better when you vibe with the group?