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
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.
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.
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
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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.
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
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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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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.
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.
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.
It really is crazy how hard new players defend 5e and pf2 when so many other games make GMing actually fun and easy.
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.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you can try games Powered by the Apocalypse!
Played in few one-shots, wish I could get into a longer game but I’m busy between running 5e, playing Vampire and trying to get second campaign in fate or BitD going.
I’m really looking forward to ‘Project: Black Flag’ aka ‘Tales of the Valiant’ aka ‘CORE Ruleset’, which a like-like to 5e (compatible in regard to power-scaling and adventures) that’s in development right now. My community plans to switch to it as soon as it’s out as they are cleaning up a lot of rules and pushing for a world-agnostic system that feels a lot better from both a player and a DM.
Hello! So I’m not trying to stir the pot or anything.
Have you looked at Shadowdark?
https://www.enworld.org/threads/plenty-of-time-to-die-a-shadowdark-review.697134/
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/413713
It was very highly anticipated, had a very successful Kickstarter, and he’s been very well reviewed.
The author has written several well reviewed fifth edition adventures.
Shorthand way to describe it I’ve seen is, modern rules, old school style.
I’m throwing this out there, because it has been described as an old-school variant of fifth edition.
It is so old school that you have to do three d6 down the line.
Also, there is a very interesting real Times Torch mechanic.
A lot of Osr games, put attention on things like scarcity and time this phone put a lot of attention on light.
I haven’t read it so I don’t know for sure but to me that sounds like possibly inspired by dark dungeons. Although I know that wasn’t the first game to have a very prominent darkness mechanic either.
Just wanted to throw this out here I never want anybody to change game systems. I just thought it might be interesting for people who hadn’t heard of it.
I think 5e is simple enough the issue is that its become ridiculously sprawling as WotC endlessly add more and more classes to the point that its eroding balance pretty badly.
They’ve only added one class
Presumably you’re talking about subclasses? If so, I disagree to an extent- a lot of the subclasses have a valid reason to be included, since they fit more specific archetypes that people might want to play, for instance the conquest paladin fills a niche that doesn’t really have any strong alternatives. The issue I have is power creep- it feels like Strixhaven, for instance, throws the balance right out of whack with Silvery Barbs, while Tasha’s Cauldron gives us the Twilight Domain cleric with all it’s issues. If the new subclasses were balanced well, I’d be fine with having more of them, since players only need to remember the rules for the one they’re playing at the table, if that makes sense.
This is why I play Shadowdark. It’s amazing. All the best bits of 5e design, none of the cruft. Ruleslite is the way to go.
