I recommend this video to look more into OSR philosophy regarding the rules: https://www.youtube.com/live/bCxZ3TivVUM?si=aZ-y2U_AVjn9a6Ua
5e has both too many rules and not enough rules.
It has very specific rules in some places. Item interactions, many spell specifics, grapple, holding your breath, etc.
It has very lackluster rules in other places. Social conflict, item and spell crafting, metagame stuff like making your own class or species.
I think a lot of people playing DND would be happier playing a different system. Just not the same system for everyone.
Exactly. It’s sort of an uncomfortable middle ground, but also just kind of messy.
And I’m tired, as someone who DMed it a bunch, hearing people act like broken or missing rules aren’t a problem, or somehow even a good thing, because the DM can just make something up. Yeah, not shit. I can do that in literally any game I run. It’s just unpleasant to do in 5e, yet I have to do it all the damn time to keep the game running smoothly. I’d rather have a game that either supports me as a GM, or is easier to improvise.
I think it was a different thread where I posted about how a guy in my dnd group straight face told us something like “the beauty of DND is we can just try out different rules. If we want to do a chase scene we can try it one way, and if it doesn’t work or we don’t like it we can try something else”.
I’m just like that’s not a unique property of DND. That’s just how playing make believe works. And I’d rather have a game that runs okay out of the box rather than keep playtesting as a DM, or deal with unchecked dm whims as a player.
That sounds familiar! Partly because I recall reading that, but also because it’s a frustratingly common scenario.
D&D is, for a ton of people, synonymous with tabletop RPGs. Often that means people think the things they like about playing tabletop RPGs are unique to D&D, even they aren’t.
What gets me are people who complain about Pathfinder 2e having more rules. You’re just as free to ignore them, and no one has to read much less memorize all the rules. Besides, is anyone under the illusion that players are learning all the rules to 5e?
This is why I’m switching to GURPS. It has rules for everything, but it’s very clear that you only need a handful of them, and the rest are options you can decide to use or not. I’m probably not going to use the rocket equations in the Space book to make space travel more realistic, but it’s nice that they’re there in case I wanted to.
Praise be to GURPs! It’s unfortunate that there seems to be a persistent sentiment that DMs should be making snap arbitration on a large variety of systems instead of having a rule-base that you can ignore when it gets in the way of your storytelling.
GURPS does this some much better because it does have rules for almost any genre and style you want, letting you have professionally crafted rules that have been playtested and matches to the genre they are designed for that you can use either way.
I like the middle ground where 5e is
DND writes its rules to be as quick to read and apply to basic situations, but then becomes unwieldy in many if the non-standard cases because they didn’t take the word count to fine tune the rules work as you necessarily would expect, and thus they become confusing.
Something like PF2E (while not perfect in clarity, but much better) has much more verbose rules, but they do a better job of making them apply to non-standard situations closer to how you expect more often.
It also suffers from not using consistent language and keywords in the rulings.
The more recent rewrites are better but there would be way fewer discussions on “what exactly does this mean” if there were consistent keywords for things.
…also I am currently writing a pile of homebrew to try and run a spelljammer game because those books they released inspired me to run a Treasure Planet campaign but didn’t give me nearly enough material.
Calling 5e and pf2e bloated with unnecessary rules, meanwhile Pathfinder and 3.5e are quite literally full of a couple decade’s worth of volumes and modules, in comparison to OSR?
I don’t know if you’re a boomer, a troll, or both
3.5 has a ton of splatbooks, sure, but they’re expansions. You go in one, if you want, at character creation to pull out a cool class you want to play. Not playing something out of that book? Then you never need to think about it. It’s not like you have to have encyclopedic knowledge of all the hundreds of splatbooks; all the rules are contained in the DMG and PHB, just like with 5e.
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Does the existence of a whale make it wrong to call an elephant big?
They’re not just calling it big, they’re calling an elephant big in comparison to a crude 8 year old’s drawing of said elephant (and of course the colouring is not inside the lines because it doesn’t have to conform to the consistent rules of an elephant). What purpose does that serve unless you’re the 8 year old trying to make your drawing sound impressive? See how small and unique my elephant is?
Meanwhile the whale sitting right next to the elephant is like wow that was a very specific callout on their size when I’m sitting right here. That kid must really hate that elephant.
It’s quite ridiculous. Wrong or right don’t factor into it.
PF2S is bloated with unnecessary rules. If that’s your thing, and I totally get the appeal of having a “wait let’s just see what nethys says abou — Oh apparently there are mechanics for this drug” moment; personally I find it really gets in the way of the session. Rule and move on with the story. Keep the mechanics to what they need. We’re ultimately dealing with a pretty simple underlying system: d20 roll high. All the subterfuge and wordy mechanics don’t really change that at the end of the day you need to roll a d20 and generally do better than a 12 or so to do what you want.
I feel like pf2e has just enough rules to empower the players to the level I like
The more DM fiat a game has, the more trust I need from my players for things to go smoothly.
That’s not a bad thing, necessarily, but for me structure is usually good as long as it doesn’t raise the skill floor too high.
Once I’ve got trust built and feel a bit more experimental, I like Dungeon World or even Universalis
Same I find it easy to gm and the players have enough of a grip of the system to be able to do something out of left field and I can find a way to make it work with the system so that play is smooth but consistent.
We’re ultimately dealing with a pretty simple underlying system: d20 roll high
I highly disagree with this sentiment. You do you, but this is not the general feeling of TTRPG players.
PF2e is a joke. It requires reading the whole rules and planning out a character for multiple levels before making your first character. It gatekeeps the hobby worse than FATAL.
Yeah, PF1 and 3.5e are bloated as hell. But you didn’t need to read all the feats for all the races before picking human fighter. Plus the people still playing those never used everything that was published.
Lmao, I think you confused pf1 and pf2. In pf1 you can build yourself into a corner and create useless characters with ease. In 2e the worst characters are still decent
Nope, I know both. They both suck because of the required over optimization. But pf1 at least didn’t have characters constantly at full hp, which is one of the biggest balance issues.
??? Have you ever played 2e? That shit is perfectly balanced. Just because fights are designed around having full hp doesn’t mean the players always are.
In pf1 you can ruin a character with an uninformed choice, in pf2 you can’t. The gap between minmaxxed or not has become reasonable in my opinion.
in pf2 you can’t.
I run pf2e and love it, but I really gotta call this out as bullshit. It’s actually one of the worst things new people can read about the game, imho. I read this a lot as I was learning the system and parroted it to my players. We’re all experienced with TTRPGs, for the record. Despite all the chat from pf2e players that you supposedly cannot ruin a character with bad choices, I assure you it is possible.
It happened to me once, and only because a player wanted to do some stupid shit. It was still an okayish character. The others played what sounded cool to them and had no issues. Relative to pf1 it’s night and day
You definitely can screw yourself a lot with uninformed choices, but they are less impactful per choice, and the base kit of classes are good enough that bad feat picks won’t make you useless.
The biggest exception here is spell selection, shit spell selection can feel really bad, and there are a decent amount of “trap” spells (not that the spells are bad, but it’s easy to misunderstand the intended purpose).
Yes, I’ve played it. And a lot of other games. PF2 balance is only okay and they had to do several annoying things to do it. Like how do you balance a mixed level party in pf2? The system really doesn’t like that, because of it’s number inflation.
Either you dislike the bloat of the system or don’t. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Did I say I still run these games? I hate 5e, pf2, pf1 and wouldn’t touch 3/3.5 again. I ran all of these in the past, except pf2 but I’ve played pf2 plenty to know I hate and will never run it.
I run Hackmaster and other systems (oWoD, Cthulhu, WFRP, …) which aren’t bloated messes. I just think pf1 is slightly better than pf2 because that was my experience. But that seems ridiculous to you, because you feel insulted or something. I really don’t care.
If you got to look up rules and nobody cares or wants to, skip it. Its my advice. Use rules only if its necessary and soemwhat contributing to a fun experience.
This is universal.
This. Our entire campaign is home-brewed using the 5e ruleset, but the application of those rules is selective when it needs to be.
For the most part, we’re following them, but if there’s a rule that results in a level of attention to detail that we simply don’t care to implement, or would have less fun trying to religiously adhere too, we just scrap it in favour of something a bit more light-touch and call it a house rule.
Rules provide a great framework to base your game on, but the ultimate aim is to create an enjoyable experience and have fun, so bend them and break them when and where you need to for the benefit of all involved.
One risk with this is when you have a new player join your group. They might expect raw and be surprised by a whole kettle of home brew.
I for one would be annoyed if I joined a group and found they were ignoring the rest rules. They may be having fun but I would have made different decisions if I’d known what they were actually playing.
Every change should be treated the same : you tell about them at character creation and you tell them during the game while allowing for their set of rules on the present session if you cannot think of them in advance. Homebrew, legal rules, anything should be the same. It’s not during a game that you tell the multiclass druid cleric that the steroid goodberries dont work in your game, as he’s trying to heal someone after a fight. This actually happened to me. Don’t fucking nerf the core of a character’s mechanics midgame.
Don’t fucking nerf the core of a character’s mechanics midgame
Happened to me once. Built a monk specifically for cool grapple movement interactions because I hate the standard “I attack. You attack me back.” attritional gameplay that DnD normally has.
Stunned a guy, used my 2nd attack as a grapple, started running up a wall, which both me and the grappled target will fall off at the end of the turn (but I have slow fall, he doesn’t). The GM says:
“You’re running up the wall with the guy still grappled?”
“Yes. Perfectly legal according to the rules”
“You’re grappling an orc fighter”
“Yes. And?”
“He’s pretty heavy… Roll me a strength check”
Cleared it up after the game, but come on man. I explained how my character would work in combat beforehand, don’t nerf me midgame.
Lol. “He’s pretty heavy”. In 5th its size that matters. If its medium its fine. Even if it doesnt make sense, perfect swimming in plate doesn’t either, but you dont just say to a player “oh btw in plate you die if you fall into water as you cant swim” while fighting around water for the first time.
Im glad you cleared it up after. In my case, I ended up leaving for other reasons but the nerf sticked. Mind you, if I knew at character creation it would be fine. But I didn’t.
This makes sense.
In my imagination there is a large set of players who “homebrew” stuff because they don’t know or understand the rules, and a very large subset of those players are also disorganized. A sizable subset also just don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.
So they’ll be like “oh we let the wizard attack and cast a spell on the same turn. Is that not the normal way?”
But for people who homebrew with intention and thought, yeah, what you said.
Yeah that’s fair. For the most part we’re sticking to 5e, and the consensus is always to check the rules first when we’re unsure about something and to try and implement it as intended, so we’re not losing any of what I’d consider to be core rules, like the way movement, actions and bonus actions work during combat, or spell slots and class-specific rules etc.
It’s more of our approach to more niche elements, such as the food and water needs relevant to each creature’s size as specified in the DM’s Handbook - no one has the inclination to track our food supply and consumption to the pound per character, so we instead stock up on provisions to last X number of days, and track our usage by the day. It’s just a bit quicker and easier to manage that way, and we can still implement the same effects in the event we run out of food.
5e isn’t just needlessly complex, it is an unreferencable mess that has very poor general rules with lots of exceptions and poor standardization. The rules for traveling are so misplaced that most players don’t know they exist, not that it’s possible to find them when needed. And when there are general rules, they tend to be unfun. Stuff like crafting has no depth in 5e, it’s just time + gold = item. It might “work”, but it’s just bookkeeping there is no hidden fun.
For fantasy, I prefer Hackmaster 5e, because it keeps the complexity and detail without dumping special case rules onto players. It’s not perfect, but it’s way more engaging and characters feel way more interesting. WFRP 4e is also nice, but not as deep (it does suffer from rules being scattered everywhere). I’ll likely end up playing OSE ot some point.
5e is pretty light though, and in most cases too light so the DM has no idea what to do and has to resort to “Rulings”.
PF2e on the otherhand is crunchy AF and its awesome like that. It doesn´t have extra rules for everything, its all based on the same framework, which is pretty awesome.
You see, OSR fans would argue both 5e and Pathfinder have broken core rules engine because if it was well designed, you could apply it to all situations and wouldn’t need separate rules for every minutia. By these standards 5e is crunch heavy with unnecessary things like “how to hold your breath”
At that point, you lose a lot of verisimilitude, and that’s pretty important to me.
But that’s valid criticism. Rules have to justify their existence
PF2 is certainly easier to run. But tell me when it becomes a RPG, it’s basically a video game system ported to tabletop. Everything is about the builds, not the characters.
The builds are an expression of character development tho.
Character development as characterization or character development as shonen protagonist?
PF2 is probably best game to play shonen protagonists, I’ll give it that.
Both, because it’s high fantasy. The way that pf2 is designed you can pick almost anything at every level. If your character trains with monks for some time, great level that! Your great grandfather was an orc, but you are a gnome? We got you covered. The bloat is in the freedom of expression. And complaining about the 3 action system is okay, but come on
What would it take to make it a RPG? Some characters are flawed in certain things while excel at others. But what you want your character to be, its in your hands due to how you build your character. That´s part of your character, same goes to the backstory you may have developed and inform your build.
Well they could stop gamifying RP and exploration so players actually get into character instead of just rolling dice. But that’s a pretty fundamental shift, so they won’t do it.
Are you one of the players who wants to “just talk out” social conflicts? That’s a totally valid way to play but I hate it. Or at least I hate it when the game has stats for like charisma and intelligence. I cannot be 20 charisma in real life do not try to make me.
No. I use different ways to resolve social conflicts based on what the situation is. Sometimes that’s rolling dice, sometimes it’s talking in character and sometimes it’s in-between stuff. Stop trying to shove me into some stereotype. Are you going to stereotype me as a Hackmaster gm? A Keeper? An ultraviolet? A storyteller?
I don’t expect pf2 players to understand my point of view, especially non-gamemasters.
But how does roling dice, when the outcome of a situation is uncertain, inhibit you from roleplaying your character?
It doesn’t. It just conditions players towards not doing it by replacing interacting with the world with interacting with rules and dice. Which doesn’t stop experienced players, but misleads new players in a video game mindset.
Okay, but what can a solid and crunchy RPG System do for new players that expect Skyrim on a table? And on the other hand, what can those player get out of a rules light game? They would be entirely lost. Which then would result in just make.believe, which doesn´t need rules to begin with.
Have you ever played with new players? I’ve ran non-dnd with new players several times. Including systems like Call of Cthulhu. Objectively speaking Cthulhu (BRP) is pretty rules light and my players had no trouble learning it. They just said what they wanted to do and I told them what to roll. They start to find the freedom in the system and get more creative. And a similar situation happens when I run more complex systems. I honestly have no clue what you are worried about. Players can learn how to play these games, they aren’t that hard.
To be clear, you’re mad that an RPG has too much G in its RP?
No, I dislike games like pf2 because the MDA framework they have designed is detrimental to the medium of roleplaying games. Because the mechanics encourage players to use PC in non-diegetic dynamics crippling the aesthetics of any setting or genre.
Let me get this straight: you don’t like crunchy rule sets, you don’t like character builds and progression and you don’t like rolling dice? Sounds to me like you don’t like TTRPGs.
I mean you can just read a story to your players or skip the whole tabletop part altogether and do an improv theatre session.
Where did I say I don’t like dice or crunch? I literally run Hackmaster. You don’t even know Hackmaster do you? Sure I don’t like bloated player options that cause power creep and slow the game down. But that doesn’t mean I do sloppy improv or storytell railroads like Critical Role or Dimension 20.
I’ve only been running rpgs 20 years. Has it occurred to you that you don’t like rpgs if you just play 5e or PF2. Are you even a gamemaster?
Maybe it’s just my imagination, but didn’t you comment multiple times that you want your players rather roleplay than rolling dice, play their characters and not the character builds they created and that systems like PF2e are too videogamey?
But to quench your thirst about my experiences: I am playing and DMing TTRPGs for about 10 years now. My groups are mostly running PF1e, Call of Cthulhu and Numenera, but for one shots we also like to try smaller systems like Dungeon Crawl Classics, Paranoia or Savage Worlds. I play with and DM for veterans and new players alike. I would say that I know one or two things about this matter, but who knows.
No matter what system we run, we never really have a problem with the rules and there is always room for fun and engaging RP. To me the overall critique in this thread sounds like a homemade problem on the DM side of things. You don’t have to know and use all the rules a system is offering you (looking at you, Pathfinder), but it’s really nice to know that there are rules for almost anything. And if you get the feeling that you have to fill the gaps with homebrew rules too often, then maybe the system isn’t the right one for what you are going for in your campaign or maybe you have to adjust your style of DMing.
This year for example I started a new PF1e campaign with people that never played a TTRPG before and they love it. I was afraid that this system could be too much for inexperienced players but they already get creative with the rules in combat and they engage in serious RP. They reached level 6 and can’t wait to develop the stories of their characters further.
But calling a watered down and noob friendly system like D&D5e being too complicated and rule heavy? Or calling a system like Pathfinder not a true RPG? Idk man. Maybe TTRPGs aren’t your thing if you really think that or maybe your approach at DMing is fundamentally flawed.
Yes, I want my players to roleplay. The issue I have with pf2 and 5e is that they require way more work to get into a decent balance between combat, roleplaying and exploration. Often ending up very combat heavy and characters that “excel” at non-combat encounters end up trivializing them instead.
These dice rolls end up replacing roleplaying instead of enhancing it. In addition because of the rules interactions, poor wording and power creep in these systems the ability for GMs to avoid burn out is low. I don’t like them because they are toxic to new gamemasters, I have no technical issue running them. I ran several long campaigns in 5e, 3.5 and pf1. I don’t have burn out issues with Hackmaster, WFRP, Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu, WoD, Ryuutama, … . It’s purely a problem with recent d20 player option focused systems and it will only get worse with more WotC and Paizo releases.
My GMing is fine. I make mistakes at times and don’t always follow my own best practices. But I run fun games in many systems easily. I don’t get why you are trying to gatekeep me out of the hobby. I don’t like two games because they suffer from fundamental flaws born out of ivory tower game design. If you can’t see those flaws, that’s you.
Maybe I should make my point clear. Players love 5e and PF2, GMs learn to hate them or quit. Because they are only noob friendly to players, not GMs. It’s why homebrew games are less common in them and typically only run by veteran GMs. I literally do not care how hard players have it to learn a system. Players always have a GM to support them, it’s trivial to teach a player. Teaching a new GM is frustrating when 5e and pf2 teach bad habits like everything is combat or a pass/fail roll.
But tell me when it becomes a RPG, it’s basically a video game system ported to tabletop
Uh… tabletop came before videogames…
Anyway, no. An RPG is a Role Playing Game, it’s a game where you take the role of someone, either created by you or given by the game (be it a videogame or not), and you experience the things that happens to that character.
Saying that TTRPGs are video games ported to TT is like saying that Lord of the Rings is a story written within the DnD lore. It’s completely wrong.
Why is everyone here so bad at reading? I specifically am calling out PF2 for being designed as if it was a video game. I am saying Paizo doesn’t understand the medium of RPGs, because they don’t.
Well, given their success as a release, I’d say that they do inderstand the medium, and that not all RPGs must be made in the same line. I’d hate to play a game where I rescind all power to the GM.
I know that GMs always have the final say in any system, but having an expectation of what is going to happen is crucial to me as a player, and as stated in another comment, GMs need to have fun too, and sometimes having a well defined system is what a GM needs to feel like all they need to do is design and let the game take reins for balance. I understand that there are different types of GMs, but that’s kind of the point.
Understanding the market is not understanding the medium. Why is everyone putting words in my mouth. I am not advocating for some crazy free form improv without rolls or some other ruleless non-sense.
I’m saying that 5e and PF2 are not well-defined systems. You can have a different opinion, of course you will. And specifically that GMs burn out in these systems because they are not fun for GMs longterm.
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Seriously. 5e is already a watered-down, anemic shadow of what 3.5 was… and this is too complex?
Being less complex than 3.5 isn’t indicator of being simple, that bar is on the floor.
I would say there are plenty of systems that fail at being less complex than 3.5. If I never have to do GURPS math again, for instance…
It’s not the complexity. It’s the bloat, terrible interactions and game dynamics. 3.5 didn’t suffer from gm burn out, but 5e does. Because 5e is a bigger mess.
Not on 3.5 per se, but I had years long GM burnout after running my first Pathfinder 1e campaign. Bad memories from it were what actually kept me from giving Pathfinder 2e a chance for a long time.
Depends on the game the group likes. More narrative driven game it can conflict and have issues
However, there is something nice about knowing a balanced way to do x or y across the board and at different tables.
A good gm should be able to make a note of something or make a quick call especially in pf2e case were generic difficulty dc per level is given
However, there is something nice about knowing a balanced way to do x or y across the board and at different tables.
I don’t agree with this argument. Balancing is the job of the GM. Unless the GM acts as a glorified screenreader who only reads a pre-made adventure to the players with no influence what happens. But if the GM decides what monsters you run into, the GM has more influence over the balancing than the game framework. So why not lean into it fully and make the GM responsible for the whole balancing?
I mean, pen&paper RPGs aren’t a players vs GM game, but instead the GM plays together with the players to create an interesting experience where everyone has fun. No need for the framework to do balancing, because a good GM will do that.
So why not lean into it fully and make the GM responsible for the whole balancing?
Because having things balanced properly in regard to the myriad options that are possible in people imaginations is hard, especially related to combat. Improper balacing leads to people having a bad time, while having an established, fair ruleset lets the DM and the players focus on other things.
No need for the framework to do balancing, because a good GM will do that.
But at this point why even have rules? A “good GM” can just entirely improvise a system.
But at this point why even have rules? A “good GM” can just entirely improvise a system. On the other hand,. if you’re the slave to rules, are you even still the GM or just a refferee? It’s a sliding scale people fall on, honestly. 5e tried to have it cake and eat it too, insert itself in the middle. You could argue it succeeded, but that makes people naturally drift away from it in either direction. I just think we tend to forget the scale goes both ways and there are more options than Pathfinder with rules for everything.
You sound like you’re trying to say that GMs who run modules by the book aren’t real GMs, and that’s some gatekeepy bullshit.
While GM decides what monsters to throw into players, they still need to know what they could use without it being either underwhelming or overwhelming. You dismiss this simply by saying: “just be a good DM”.
- New DM’s will want guidelines to start from.
- If combat is important having written rules help to use consistent ruling on same situation in different instances.
- Story focused DM might reduce amount of effort needed to plan combat, since there is no need to build it from scratch.
Disadvantage of having to look up rules then you don’t remember them could be mitigated by just saying: Look guys, I don’t remember ruling now, so not to break the flow, I will rule it this way, and look it up later.
So while for most players rule heavy systems are less accessible, they are actually more accessible for many DMs, and since mastering have much higher barrier of entry, such systems at least should not be dismissed outright.
Balancing is the job of the GM.
And some systems make that job easier for the GM than other systems. Winning all the time without challenge is boring. Getting TPKd every other session does not feel good. A good GM should hit somewhere in-between. So you either have a system that helps you do that or you really need to have a lot of experience.
Yes, the GM balances - they decide what type and how hard the encounters will be. But after that decision is made, it’s the job of the system to provide the GM with tools to build that encounter and help me balance things: How much skeletons provide the difficulty I want? Is a lich too much? Red dragon or white dragon?
In 5e, you don’t have the proper tools imo - the challenge rating is next to useless. In PF2, you have something akin to point buy for encounters - and if it says the encounter will be “moderate threat” - then you can trust that in 99% of the cases.
But at the end of the day, as a GM, if I want to provide my players with a hard, but fair fight, I don’t want to have to guess what will work and what won’t. Yes, with a lot of experience I will have an idea of that, but why would I pay for a system that just offloads the hard part of their game design to me? Good encounter-building tools don’t get in the way of your creativity.
5e has also undermined experience by constantly introducing powercreep. So even after years of running, 5e is frustrating to run.
So why not lean into it fully and make the GM responsible for the whole balancing
Because they should have fun too? Having to rule and improvise everything makes for a harder job for them, needing to keep track of everything to make it consistent, and it’s also bad for players too, since they don’t really know what to expect.
The framework helps the GM be able to do so, its another tool.
I mainly say that in such a way that if a character is thought to be a pusher the player would know that to push I have to be this close and cant push something thats x times bigger (or some other thing). A GM can (and should) adjust and change things if it would make it more fun for the table but the framework helps understand the world better. for some parts the GM is not directing but explaining what happened.
I push the rock off the edge of the cliff, bar something else, it should fall. The GM at that point is giving the results of that action, what is the result? the GM could simply say that it fell and hurt someone it landed on nearly killing them. the issue comes when the same situation comes up and the GM does something different because they think it should do differently (a different GM more then likely ) this breaks flow if things are different. (assuming all things are the same in both situations for simplicity of course). The Frame work put that a rock fall would deal X amount for how far it fell and the players would have the knowledge (while it would be slightly meta, it would be a “world” known if the rock would deal less damage then the pointy sword XP )
That’s what I meant by balance across areas, expectations are known on what some cause and effects are. Frameworks are great ways to help guide things through HOWEVER, a giving framework/gamesystem is not perfect nor a fit all for all game types and tables. A Group also shouldn’t need to “go into the weeds” constantly (or at all during a session), something made on the fly or close enough is good to keep things moving.
I mean, pen&paper RPGs aren’t a players vs GM game, but instead the GM plays together with the players to create an interesting experience where everyone has fun.
Full Agree, but the next part is that the Framework helps the GM do the balancing
But if you have the tools that tell you how to make differently balanced encounters, it makes the job of balancing the game waaaay easier.
Keep balance for computer games. If I’m playing an RPG I want to be able to do crazy things if I plan and execute it properly. And rules for stumble attacks of opportunity for holy clerics of the sun just get in the way of the good stuff.
This is entirely correct. Balance does not matter in most games, because most games have resources that are depleted over a long term. You don’t need balance when healing takes weeks or difficult to replace resources.
For games like 5e and pf2, where characters constantly are at full health, spells and equipment, combat needs to almost kill the party every time to be worth rolling dice.
Yes; or be an incredibly long boring slog because it needs to divorce the party from so many resources.
5e has too many rules? If anything it seems to be lacking rules. D&D in general has too many options, but 5e often has nothing if you want rules to handle specific non-combat situations,
When systems go even lighter, it stops even feeling like we are playing a Game, and it starts feeling like annotated improv, which is very much not what I want to play. It never feels right to me as a player to be making sweeping declarations without knowledge of what the GM and the other players are planning.
Okay, explain to me why do you need rules for holding your breath in 5e. Because that’s a good example of too many rules, in OSR you would use something already existing.
And you do you, but really the OSR tend to teach players to find ways to avoid rolling altogether by stacking deck in their favor before attempting something.
Frankly I could point it right back at you as the example of a good thing to have. If you need to dive underwater without equipment or cross smoke during a fire, it’s useful to have a reference of how long you can keep at it, how many rounds does that take, how much distance you can cross, what happens once you can’t keep at it anymore. We are talking about adventurers, it’s surprising that this is somehow thought of as an irrelevant edge case.
Are we expecting that the player should always have spells or some magic scuba for this?
I really don’t get what’s with OSR and not wanting to roll. I’m playing an RPG, I’m up for rolling. Though in this case, the rule does not even require rolling until you are already drowning.
Oooor, 1 con roll. It can be that easy
1 con roll for what? A turn? A minute? 10 meters of movement?
The value of more thorough rules is setting common expectations among everyone. If you’ll just keep making it up by vibes, you don’t need any system. You might not even need dice,
Per turn. We already have rules for difficult terrain and for movement. Adding more than that is completely unnecessary
As others have expressed pretty well, a game that fucks up its own core system is bad game design.
5e keeps on breaking its own core system. Pf2e tries to make everything work with the core system, that’s why its bloat is less confusing than 5es, but it’s still there for the sake of complex combat options
I wouldn’t call that a fuck up by any measure. This seems meaningfully distinct than just “difficult terrain”, since its a hazard in itself. It’s not a matter of just going slow, just staying there is dangerous. Not to mention it can compound with difficult terrain.
In practice, I’d still prefer the 5e rule where everyone has at least some time they can manage being in there as opposed to just rolling con and having your wizard drown immediately when they touch water like it is a video game.
There is a survival skill in the core of the system, right?
For the few times your players want to swim a lot underwater OR if you use monsters designed to drown them long term
Okay, explain to me why do you need rules for holding your breath in 5e.
Because water is generally everywhere and you might go in it? Surviving poisonous gases? Strangulation? If you wanted to point at rarely used rules there’s a plethora of better options to pick. This is more like asking why do you need rules for combat.
Except the rules are written in such way that they render holding breat irrelevant. You may as well write “unless in combat a character can hold their breath. When in combat, you must roll concentration at end of your turn or suffer level of exhaustion. DM may decide to treat particularly dangerous or prolonged situation as combat at their discression”. And done, you didn’t need to invent new rules just for it, you used an existing system. You could even simplyfy it further and just slap it under concentration rules.
Meh, don’t play it, then. Why turn everything into a competiton?
Because
editionsystem wars are fun?(in moderation)
I disagree for 5e about that. In fact many 5e players complain about the lack of specific rules (but IMO they merely want to play pf2e without admitting it).
To me, the problem of 5e is the community first, and lack of specialty second. 5e does a bot of everything. So when you’re looking for osr, you will miss many osr feature and many things are too specific or bloated. If you’re looking for rule heavy ruleset, it’ll be way too light and dm dependent.
they merely want to play pf2e without admitting it
In my case, I wanted to play pf2e without knowing it. I’ve been running a DnD curse of Strahd campaign, and I’ve been getting more and and more irritated at long rests, challenge ratings being meaningless, and martial vs spellcaster balance. Pf2e solves all those issues, and I didn’t even realize till I sat down to do prep for a campaign.
I don’t have a problem of caster vs martial in 5e. And I don’t have a problem of balance either. But I know all people who do are indeed a lot better with pf2e.
To me this is a question of finding the ruleset that fits your table.
If we simplify 5e any more it’s gonna turn into Snakes & Ladders. And clearly OSR already exists, so there’s no need to change other systems.
5e is actually on the high end of medium crunch. That’s not a bad thing though. The game mostly works and it is fun, but it does have its rough spots. I agree with you about not needing to change it though
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Simple rules that can describe almost every situation are also rules that over-generalize characters to the detriment of options (everyone’s noticing the same things, instead of perception allowing more observant characters to do what they could do), over-include the player’s capabilities in place of the character’s. (Players conversational skills failing to match with those of the character they intend to play), overly abstract what they describe (a monster’s “power” or a character’s actual abilities meaning something in adjudication but nothing consistent/concrete enough in-world), or demand a DM adjudicate without reinforcement or restriction (In the absence of rules every corner case ruling risks the danger of turning the table into a debate between PCs and the DM, inviting rapid ends and either producing embittered DMs or embittered players* - especially under the “pack it up” approach the video suggests - and helping to increase combative tables in the future.)
The games that OSR takes inspiration from did a lot right in their mortal power-level, reasonable growth, real risk of danger, and humanistic tones but if you’re trying to sell me that the growth of rules that followed aren’t a direct result of weaknesses in those games? I don’t think we’ll agree.
*The “Dorkness Rising” problem, for a slightly more light-hearted allusion.
I might be misunderstanding but what you’re talking about is basically just failures of a DM.
DMing osr style games requires being more than a simple automaton applying the rules. The systems are simple to allow you to spend your energy elsewhere. I’ll use OSE as an example as that’s what I’m currently DMing.
Let’s take perception. Firstly if something matters from a fun perspective it should be obvious. For example, if overcoming a trap is fun then the overcoming should involve play, not dice rolls which are there to abstract over tedious or uncertain play. For example a large magical fire blocking the corridor requires no perception but will involve a lot of experimentation to find a way past.
Or if we are wanting a perception roll like event: Lets say players are stuck and have no ideas for finding a secret door they think is likely there. Who are the characters? not their stats who are they? Ok someone was a farmer prior? huh ok. Give them a clue to follow like “hey Jake the farmer, you notice the air in this room smells familiar, there’s a maddening scent of petrichor which has no place on a dry stone chamber like this one” see what happens. Alternative if Jake asks for a clue ask Jake to describe some way in which who he is applies to the context and set an ability check for a true or false clue. Suddenly a lack of rules is freedom for players to build up their character mythos on the fly.
Likewise for player skill stuff. No reason a player needs to narrate a conversation anymore than swing an actual sword. If a player asks me if they can make an impassioned arguement based on legal precedent, a sense of justice, and the illegitimacy of a ruler who cannot protect their vassels to the King’s guard then they make such an argument as appropriate to their character’s level of skill.
Neiter you nor the person you’re replying to is wrong, but the way I see it you’re coming from different angles.
You’re coming from the view of an experienced GM, while the person before you worries about people getting in the game or struggle with their social skills.
Imho, both ruleset have their place and everything depends on the group, what they want, what their personalities are and how experienced they are.
I would never run a table because I don’t think I could handle it if one of the players got combative, and that danger is higher when you go rules light I would guess.
I’m not experienced at all! I’m dming my first campaign at the moment. I did play as a teenager in the 2000s but that was pathfinder which worked quite differently.
It does ask more of players, and it wont work with a group that doesn’t have the confidence to ask meta questions about the game but you can definitely foster that! when disputes come up there are multiple ways of handling things, I haven’t had any bad ones but 2 come to mind.
In one I didn’t adequately communicate to the players the threat of a foe and they felt frustrated, we just rewound time and tried again after a brief chat about non combat options. In another I just asked a player what they thought was fair and they ended up coming up with something reasonable.
I think there’s a harmful view that ttrpgs are like a meal the GM cooks and delivers to the players which they either enjoy or not rather than a collaboratory effort of mutual play. Players should add to scenes etc (e.g. “Is there/could there be a window we could jump from?”), be part of adjudication when it wont kill pacing or during tricky situations.
Like all play it requires trust, but that’s true in modern DnD too with all sorts of broken interpretations of rules and zany magic items etc. All games where players and DMs are adversaries break down.
You are just bringing examples where insecure people who struggle with social skills (hi, nice to meet you) would not be able to handle it.
You kinda completely blazed past my point while confirming it. Clearly for you rules light is great. I’m trying to tell you there’s people who are not you and who need more rules to even dare to try.
insecure people who struggle with social skills
Hi, also me. Nice to meet you.
This is why I run “rules-light” systems and why you won’t find me running (or playing, anymore) games like DND. The complexity of rules is just too much for me to remember and memorize. I don’t have it in me to argue and debate about applying a rule and would prefer not to interact with someone who is rules lawyering. I find that having those rules there is more intimidating to me than anything else. I feel like I have to work with rules first and then find ways to be an agent of my character within that.
Because of my own insecurities, I tend to lean on systems that require more collaboration, discussion and openness. I can’t really be wrong if we have collectively decided on a choice about our story. And even in that, calling it, our story carries so much power and lifts a huge weight off of my shoulders in terms of pressure for both playing and running a game. This is how I can skirt around my own insecurities and work with the kind of social skills that I have and prefer to use. I want collaborators rather than adversaries since that is socially much safer. Consequently, this also leads to very rich storytelling.
I envy you for having those kinds of people to play with!
It’s taken a while to find “my people.” I try to surround myself with good people both ocially and professionally. And the kind of people I like to be around tend to be good discussion partners and usually make great collaborators and storytellers. I hope you can find your people someday too! Keep looking, they are out there.
But I’m an insecure person. I speak maybe 100 words aloud a week outside of gaming.
It’s not easy to enforce rules without confience, much easier to build consensus than be a dictator
The easiest way is to say “this is the rules as written, deal with it, we don’t do homebrew here” for me. The people I met in game spaces where not the type to reach a consensus quickly. I guess I’ve just been unlucky.
I think there’s a harmful view that ttrpgs are like a meal the GM cooks and delivers to the players which they either enjoy or not rather than a collaboratory effort of mutual play.
This is beautifully said. The kind of adversarial approach we see so often, and I see it quite often with DND, is harmful. Of course this is not the only way things have to be, but the context seems to set it up like that more often than not.
Complexity of rules and mechanics tend to lead to adjudication because of the way it can be interpreted. I find that in other systems, particularly in OSR style stuff, you get a different kind of thing. It’s not a rule, but a tool. This is kind of what I have loved about games like Mork Borg lately. Rules are simple, easily applied, and when you start to look into the world of supplemental material, there’s thousands, if not tens of thousands of additional rules and tables, you can apply to any situation. Take them or leave them. Apply them or don’t. Use them once, never or every time.
Ultimately, you do what the situation calls for to make for an interesting story, and just like you said, that takes trust between you and the players to talk about and determine what that is.
I hereby grant everyone permission to make up whatever rules they want for their rule sets.
Having rules for more situations is a feature, not a bug. You can always choose not to look up the rule and make something up, but if you ever want something that a designer spent some time on instead of making it up on the fly, you have the option
On the other hand, if you had basic rules be flexible and understandable enough, you could by common sense apply them to most of situations and devs could focus on polishing the edges where you would need a specific rules, which should be few and far in-between.
Rule 1: The DM describes the environment.
Rule 2: The players describe what they want to do.
Rule 3: The DM narrates the results of the adventurers actions.
The rules on how to play are pretty basic and very flexible. You can easily play an entire game or campaign not going past those three rules or needing anything more in depth than that.
Some folks like crunch. Some folks like heavy crunch, some like light crunch. Some folks just want a mushy bowl of cereal. We’re all just playing make believe. What rules you use is up to your table and what kind of crunch they want.
Could you give an example in 5e or pf2e where that’s not the case? Because that sounds pretty much like skill checks (basic flexible rules with common sense) and then the specific scenarios.
In my opinion, pf2e does this very well. One instance that has come up for me (in 5e) is doing a chase. With the existing rules, you can just have them run with their base speed, or have them make an athletics or acrobatics check, and that’ll work just fine (and is what I did) but isn’t particularly fun. Pathfinder includes specific rules for chase sequences (https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1210) that is much more thought out and engaging. As a DM, you’re under no obligation to have to do these just because there’s a chase going on, if it’s spur of the moment base skill checks work in a pinch, but if it’s something I can plan for or I’m already familiar with those “rules” I can do something much more entertaining.
It really is crazy how hard new players defend 5e and pf2 when so many other games make GMing actually fun and easy.
5e is the worst of both worlds. It is both far too convoluted while offering almost nothing to play with.
Hah you wrote basically the same thing I did.
Me and OSR are a complete mismatch in execution. But we work in theory and design. Where we clash is where the meme is. Simple basic rules that are to be used in pretty much every situation. Where the GM is empowered to make those rulings. Where the GM is King.
I have tried running them and constantly kept asking myself “according to the rules what am I supposed to do?” as I want to run systems as they want to be ran. What is a failure? How does the outcome space look like? And when I get to play I feel I get to relinquish so much control to the GM that I feel almost powerless. The GMs rulings and fiat rules. Sure these are my experiences and I can love OSRs and their designs while not wanting to acctually play them.
