I am slowly making my peace with the idea that D&D’s incoherence is one of its strongest features, and is a reason why so many attempts to “fix” D&D fail long before the size of the business even enters the picture.
D&D is, ultimately, just enough of an excuse for an infinite toy box of wild bullshit. The imaginary toys are the point, and that’s glorious.
But it’s also super frustrating if you want it to make any kind of sense. Which is too bad, but not enough to stop the fun.
Brand_R
in reply to rdonoghue • • •rdonoghue
in reply to rdonoghue • • •Suppose you run across a cool idea somewhere. Can you use it in your game?
Boring Answer: check if it fits the setting and genre as well as the sensibilities of my table.
D&D answer: FUCK YES YOU CAN!
—-
I worry this sounds flip, but I’m very serious.
rdonoghue
in reply to rdonoghue • • •“But”, says some rational part of my brain, “D&D will probably do a TERRIBLE job mechanically representing the things that made the idea interesting in the first place.”
And that’s super, duper true. D&D is probably going to suck at making it anything but a pile of hit points or some damage dice.
But…who cares? It will be a brief moment of a shiny, exciting thing, and then we’ll be onto the next one.
rdonoghue
in reply to rdonoghue • • •This is REALLY FUCKING HARD for me to stare down, because I like and value coherence. So much so that the flaws of D&D seem painfully self evident to me.
But I’m also old and boring, and i have had the pleasure of watching people far younger than me play and love the game, and there is no value in my just deciding they’re doing it wrong.
Hell. I think a lot of the magic is that there isn’t a wrong way. Not in the bullshit way we say it while silently judging, but in a real way.
rdonoghue
in reply to rdonoghue • • •Also, to be clear, I still like what I like, and a lot of what I like is built on decades of my own responses to hitting limits in D&D that were unsatisfying to me and trying to find ways to find that satisfaction. That has accrued into my personal tastes and interests, and I enjoy them a lot.
But it can also be humbling an alienation to recognize them as an edifice I’ve constructed, not some kind of abstractly “better” version of gaming.
rdonoghue
in reply to rdonoghue • • •rdonoghue
in reply to rdonoghue • • •The hilarious thing is that this was less of a big deal when D&D was *more* dominant than it is today.
When everything was D&D, it created a certain amount of space for not-D&D, which was weirdly liberating. You aren’t really competing with anyone else when you’re all too small to matter.
I miss that, but I wouldn’t go back to it. The world is richer and full of more games than anyone can know, by people we would have never heard of, and that’s fucking AWESOME.
Alexander_Anotherskip_Davis
in reply to rdonoghue • • •silverwizard
in reply to rdonoghue • •@rdonoghue I played a four year long Spelljammer game where we just took everything in D&D 100% seriously. If it made the world incoherent, we just embraced it.
It was rollicking and weird, hundreds of memorable moments, and so many things in the toolbox. It was wonderful and glorious and fun as hell. D&D is wonderful for that.
I have no insight to add except - yes! It's great!
AlexanderVI
in reply to rdonoghue • • •this goes way back to the Tactical Studies Rules days, and I think the approach that there isn't a specific game mechanical way to represent every possible play idea, and DMs should find a way to make cool stuff work (or at least be attempted) in the moment, is usually best.
OTOH I also feel a little bit of "anything goes" fatigue with so many playable races, classes, subclasses, etc that seem to exist to give maximum player freedom, but end up adding piles of rules for new stuff.
Brian Ashford
in reply to rdonoghue • • •Cocaine Owlbear
in reply to rdonoghue • • •dude. There are coherent and well designed rules that allow for this. Try #Strike!
Hell, once you understand how the math works, you can do this in Pathfinder 2e without difficulty. There's no reason to put up with a badly designed system just because the holes are big enough to drive your fantasy truck through.
George PR
in reply to rdonoghue • • •