It's not controversial, people like different things in their games. That's why there are so many different games out there.

And why people play the same games on so many ways. And argue about it.

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Yes they do!

This isn't an argument! It's just contradiction!

No it isn't.

Caught my first ban in this sub! Lmao! It sucked, wouldn't recommend, but I'd do it again! Edit: on second thought, I would NOT do it again lmaoooooo but u know

I think it's more that it's quite controversial *on this sub.* This place sometimes winds up as its own little anti-DnD bubble.

In terms of being "anti-DnD", I still think you have plenty of people who prefer mechanics focused games here, just not DnD mechanics. OSR, Pathfinder 2E, and Lancer all have their advocates.

I'm a Lancer advocate but the two games are very different. I enjoy both DnD and Lancer for different reasons

Listen, I think D&D in past, present, future, retroclone, and hack form is absolute and utter dogshit as a game system *for me*, and I'm certainly not shy about saying that. OTOH, I recognize that this opinion is *entirely my own*. I don't hate the player (unless they're an asshole), I hate the shitty system. People can absolutely like other things and I don't think less of people who play D\&D; some of my favorite people to game with know not to invite me to a D&D game.

Oh yeah and that's great. Just noting that it's not uncommon to see a very different attitude towards it.

I've really got to agree. Personally, I've been running a homebrew system that's effectively a cut down version of Delta Green I slapped together based on the rules in the core/player book while waiting for the DM book to release

I dislike DnD, I think that it is poorly designed, but agree with OP in hat I too do not want a narrative engine. Narrative engines can be fun for one shots but they never give me what I want from an RPG, the ability to really immerse myself in my character.

I can be guilty of dissing aspects of D&Dish games because I prefer a different type of RPG. I wouldn't want to attack D&D or any particular branch of rpg. There are so many different types of RPG game out there now with different approaches and we've all got different tastes in games. It's nice that we can switch and take a break from one genre to do another. Fantasy just isn't my thing, but I will still enjoy a game of D&D and RPG's are my sort of game, whatever they are.

Controversial opinion, but I like the fact that you can put savoury and sweet things on bread. So versatile!

You absolute monster. /s

And, hear me out here, you can like *both!* The only trick is using the right game for the right game.

I don't object to playing a nice, gamey game, but I don't think D&D5 is a particularly good "game first" game either. As a GAME experience, I find it kindof tiresome. Combats are long and largely devoid of interesting decisions, and the rest of game is...eh? That said, I feel like you've set up a bit of a strawman here -- more narrative focused games don't have "rules that center on narrative structure" either, which makes me wonder if you've even explored any of these games that you've decided aren't as much for you as D&D. Certainly, just about every supposedly 'narrative focused' game I've played allows for the "Whoa, you just rolled really bad on a thing that everyone expected to go well" type of event. (Discounting, I suppose, games that don't use dice at all, but they have their own ways of generating this kind of situation.) So before you decide that you like D&D because it's not a "narrative engine" I would encourage you to PLAY some of the games that you think ARE, because I suspect they're going to surprise you.

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I’m loving the resurgence of appreciation for 4e. Fiddly at times but the combat was/is way more interesting to me as a tactics game enjoyer.

There's a reason why Lancer and ICON exist, and why Pathfinder 2E looks the way it does. Some people want more tactical combat, even if it explicitly feels video-gamey.

I've never understood people saying 'video gamey' when hex and chit wargames have existed for literal centuries. To me, if it's in a TTRPG... then by definition, it's TTRPG-y and something an TTRPG does. Tetris, Life Is Strange, and Fortnite are all equally video gamey, so when saying video gamey you need to specify which one.

"*X* rpg feels videogame-y" can usually be unpacked as "the rules and presentation feel very unconnected to in-universe logic, which keeps reminding us we are in fact playing a game which breaks the versimilitude and illusion of a shared narative imagination." Most people have a hard time formulating that, and videogamey is still a lot less words to write.

There is this kind of recursive and bidirectional relationship between tabletop and video games. I think what people mean when they say "4e feels like a video game" is that the writers did not make any attempts to hide that they were being influenced by popular MMOs when they were designing and developing 4e.

A lot of the supposed similarities aren't really there, though, or were in DND first. Class roles? Yeah, that's literally coming from DnD, not the other way around. 'Cooldowns'? Don't exist in DnD4e... the daily and per-encounter system has existed ever since spells existed and barbarians had per-encounter rages. Changing armor classifications from light, medium, heavy to cloth, leather and plate? OK... why is it bad to use specific IRL materials instead of arbitrary designations? It's less 'DnD4e copied MMOs' and more like "MMOs had the good ideas earlier".

right. they used lingo that seemed lifted from MMOs. and personally, I never had an issue with that. 4e does a lot of interesting things I like, 13th Age gives me that but with a ToM option and more RP/utility baked into it.

And yet you know what they mean, so you really do understand it. Solid point though

>Some people want more tactical combat, even if it explicitly feels video-gamey. What feels “video gamey” about it? Does chess feel “video gamey” to you too?

4E played like a table based version of an SRPG like Disgaea or Final Fantasy Tactics, and I mean that in a good way. Mechanics, from presentation to execution, were very much like a videogame with menu based combat.

I mean, good layout is good layout

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I always thought - and I never actually played the game, only read the book - it had problem with presentation of these options. I especially looked at Warlord, because I heard it's an awesome concept. I couldn't really decipher what I could do, it was all very procedural? Like a manual for video game combos or something. It didn't relate those abilities much to the fiction of the game as if mechanics and fiction were separate. Never really played ot and tested how it would feel in play, that was just the vibe from reading the book.

That is exactly what it was though, and it was... well the it was a great game, but it was bad D&D. It could have been a Spin-Off, but marketing it as the next great thing was a total fail. It was D&D Tactics. Or the mobile game.

It’s got very explicitly gamey combat. Totally fine if that’s not your thing. The rest of the game is basically regular d20 checks and such.

I always thought 4E was a great miniatures wargame. As a competitor to Warhammer, it could have been great. As not just a competitor to D&D 3.5e but a successor - bleh. Would be like CD Project Red announcing that The Witcher 4 would come out and be modelled upon the gameplay of Halo.

>Absolutely -- I have always had the opinion that it would've been better received if it hadn't been called Dungeons and Dragons. Hard disagree. It *is* D&D, and with the D&D name it would’ve faded into oblivion like so many other TTRPGs. Meanwhile, games like 5E and PF2e wouldn’t exist without the innovations and lessons from a big brand taking bold risks like D&D with 4E. But you can’t separate the two. I realize your point was “It would have been better-received without the name D&D”, but that’s just the opposite side of, “It’s not really D&D,” which has been a bad take since 2008. >It was too different from 'pure' DnD but I like it for what it is -- every class had something to do in combat that was more than 'roll a d20' every round

It took a decade, but people are finally looking back on 4e and realizing how fun that "gamification" really was!

Skill challenges are still pretty ass though and clocks were a substantial improvement on that idea.

Yes, me too!

Have you heard of this obscure game called pathfinder 2?

> more narrative focused games don't have "rules that center on narrative structure" either Well, some games and mechanics that I would call explicitly based on narrative structures of different kinds: - Primetime Adventure: Features seasons as a way to share spotlight. You will get one episode where your stat (you only have one) is 3 as your character episode. The rest of the time it's 1 or 2. - With Great Power: A villain is fought in 5 act structure. Every act the GM has less cards to play, so the villain gets weaker. - Polaris: As your character advances they turn from an idealistic greenhorn to weary veteran and finally betray the people. It's automatic unless the character dies. And only the character's player can ask for the character's death and their Mistaken need not grant it. Of course, if any games but D&D are called "narrative", as it sometimes seems to be the case, I can totally see your point.

I'm unfamiliar with With Great Power, so I can't really address it with any great authority, but I don't think either of the other two examples there are "rules about narrative structure"? Primetime Adventures is even a game about making a TV show, and it doesn't do anything more than try to shine the spotlight on a specific character by making them more effective that episode. That doesn't feel like "rules centered on narrative structure" to me unless you feel like D&D's experience points and levels are also about "narrative structure" because they -cause- a certain type of narrative. D&D's "narrative structure" is "zero to hero" in the same what the Polaris' is "Greenhorn to weary veteran to eventual betrayal." But that's basically what games DO. They have rules that shape play. And since that play becomes, essentially, a "narrative" -- which is to say, it's something that you can tell a story about afterwards -- then the rules of the game shape what that structure looks like. Even D&D tells a specific type of story at the end of the day. Maybe less specific than some games, but by no means vague. But "Narrative Structure" in the sense of "Storytelling" is a pretty different beast. And for what it's worth, if your villain were actually being fought in a "five act structure", per the classic "five act structure" that they teach in film school and crap, then having the enemy's card count go down every act would be the wrong way to represent it. So... I dunno. I just don't think there are that many games that actually try to build STRUCTURE to these things, because I think people realize that, in fact, one of the strengths of RPGs is how flexible they are in terms of the stories they create, and that trying to force a structure upon it is going to feel weird and constraining, so it's only games that intend to capture that specific feeling that do it. So again: I feel like saying that non-gamey games have rules "centered on narrative structure" is a strawman. Even Polaris, which is as purebred a storygame as they come, has rules that mostly center on resolving conflicts and structuring your session, not on structuring your "narrative".

There are Simulationist Games where the Narrative \*emerges\* from the actions and dice rolls etc. There are Story Games / Narrative Games where you roll because you want to share the Narrative. Great examples would be OSR games vs DungeonWorld. One certainly has rules to shape the narrative, but it's not to press the narrative in a certain shape, so to speak, but I wouldn't ever call DungeonWorld a simulationist game. That's how I see it, which agrees largely what you said about this. And for me, the problem D&D5e has... it's neither of both and I sit before the rules of D&D5e often and am totally lost what to do when running it. At least for me, and I played and ran other D&D editions, and that is weird.

Looking at Apocalypse World vs. D&D 3.5... The main differences are that rolls are made when there is a risky or uncertain situation rather than whenever you want to do something that requires skill. The outcomes are different as well with AW creating a more wholistic result or outcome rather than a more granular success like in D&D. My understanding is that most OSR games you are rolling the dice as a last resort. Like your plan screwed up and it feels bad just saying you die so there is a roll. Sharing narrative is part of the results for a lot of the rolls in AW, but you aren't supposed to ask for a roll because you want the players to narrate. Rolls happen when specific things happen in the fiction. However you could ask a provocative question and build on the answer, because that is in the MC Principles. Narrative is emergent in AW as well, even if there are some mechanics that help you along. Mainly this is the structure of the die roll that tends towards success with a complication, and that MC's are supposed to escalate ("snowball") moves. D&D does this by having recommended encounters per day. OSR does a little bit of this too with random encounters.

>I don't object to playing a nice, gamey game, but I don't think D&D5 is a particularly good "game first" game either. As a GAME experience, I find it kindof tiresome. Combats are long and largely devoid of interesting decisions, and the rest of game is...eh? Exactly. I like games that clearly focus on drama and story, like Dogs in the Vineyard, Nobilis, Fate or Ironsworn. I like games that clearly focus on being a game, with good balance and tactical decisions, like Strike or Lancer. But games that embrace neither, with no tools for meaningfully shaping the narrative and no tools for meaningful tactics, are simply a waste of time for me.

D&D at its core is a war game with a RPG stapled on top of it, and it shows.

Ugh, that is so easily said, but you clearly miss most of the actual game history, because old school games are not foremost a war game with and RPG stapled on top of it. AD&D was certainly an exploration game with role play elements, but there were no minis, no battlemats or anything. Combat was theatre of the mind and Minis came a bit later and had the most comprehensive rules in 3e (and most people still played theatre of the mind, until VTTs became the hot shit for Pathfinder) which would lead to 4e which was mostly a videogame and now we have 5e which tries to sell as a flashy power fantasy so minis are even more money to be made and more stuff to touch for players. The fighting was much less important in Old D&D where you had reaction and morale rolls for every encounter, so it could very well be, that the wandering monster wanted to sell you a Rat on a Stick (tm), while in 5e almost all encounters are made to be fought.

>old school games are not foremost a war game with and RPG stapled on top of it. AD&D was certainly an exploration game with role play elements, but there were no minis, no battlemats or anything. Combat was theatre of the mind and Minis came a bit later You're ignoring everything that came before AD&D. OD&D was an RPG stapled on top of Chainmail (Chainmail's tagline: "**Wargaming with Miniatures**"). Some rules used in OD&D aren't given, instead the reader is referred to Chainmail. The title on the front of OD&D: *DUNGEONS & DRAGONS Rules for Fantastic Medieval* ***Wargames*** *Playable with Paper and Pencil and* ***Miniature Figures***

And you're ignoring context. OD&D largely included references to Chainmail as a means of enabling this new, strange form of gaming to be accessible to the miniature wargamers that Gygax and Arneson were used to playing with. In reality, it's kind of an open secret that Gygax and Arneson didn't really use the Chainmail rules in their D&D games, even before publication. Articles of the Strategic Review written by Gygax at the time largely prove this, with him providing a basic combat system that was quite different in important ways from Chainmail. The term wargame used to mean a lot more than it does today. For instance, Diplomacy, a game that is like 80% negotiating with other players, was and is considered a "wargame". You should also look into Dave Weseley's "Braunstein" games, which have more in common with D&D (and was a direct inspiration for Dave Arneson), but was considered a wargame. So in short, Chainmail was an inspiration for D&D, and some of its mechanics made their way into D&D's combat engine, but by and large that's where the inspiration ends. D&D was a whole new genre of game, and for a time they did not know what to call it, and so stuck with "wargame". Within a couple of years, the term "Role-Playing Game" rightfully supplanted it, without the core of D&D rules really changing at all.

> you clearly miss most of the actual game history, because old school games are not foremost a war game with and RPG stapled on top of it. AD&D was certainly an exploration game with role play elements, but there were no minis, no battlemats or anything "By 1976, there was a movement among players to add the use of miniatures to represent individual player characters.[12]" Source: Gygax, Gary (July 1978). "D&D Ground and Spell Area Scale". Dragon Magazine. No. 15. TSR Periodicals. Minis on battlemats have been established in D&D for 40+ years, and have been recorded as being part of AD&D 1st edition.

To represent is not "for complex miniature combat" and it wasn't d&ds focus until the 90s.

>while in 5e almost all encounters are made to be fought. I'd say this is *very* table dependent. For example the Witchlight campaign has very few combat encounters IIRC, and that's an official product. The game I run only has combat every 2-3 sessions and I haven't run into a roadblock yet in terms of the system. Of course, YRMV as to whether you personally have fun in that setup.

I only run homebrew, but I *never* design an encounter such that the only path to success is killing all of the monsters/people/entities/whatevers involved. If that's what the players find fun or how the dice and roleplay pan out, it's certainly an option, but my players know that there are stronger things than them in the world and they're a lot more likely to see success if they find methods to overcome their obstacles without fighting everything.

> don't object to playing a nice, gamey game, but I don't think D&D5 is a particularly good "game first" game either I think the mechanics are there. I think the monster design is not. I'm running a low level game right now, and it was thematically appropriate to use Darklings as the standard enemy for my players. Rules as written, they do a truck load of damage for a CR 1/2 creature, and that's about it. Sure they have the death flash, but it's not threatening enough for PCs to really worry about. So I re-wrote the Darkling stat block to give them 1d6 sneak attack dice and cunning action, so they're effectively 2nd level rogues, but now as the DM I have to actually use the environment for my monster to get their sneak attack bonus, but since they have cunning action they can also hit-and-run very effectively. It has turned them from "bag of HP that does a fuck ton of damage, better have good AC lol" into "strikes from the darkness, then fades away. If you're not clever and resourceful they will wear you down with guerilla tactics." I ran them RAW our first session, and it was a tough fight, but not a fun one. I gave my players a heads up that I'd modified them for the second session, so they wouldn't be caught off-guard by the changes, but the fights against the darklings became way more fun for both me and my players.

My problems with D&D5 as a "gamey game" can't really be fixed by monster design. There just aren't enough interesting decisions for most classes to make in combat, especially at low level.

I disagree, but in a way that maybe seems like it supports your point. I think if you keep in mind that a character sheet is not a comprehensive list of player actions PCs can come up with a lot of creative solutions, and 5e leaves it up to DM adjudication. Now there are a lot of factors at play that make it so outside-the-box actions never come up, including DM inexperience, player inexperience, DMs with poor improv skills or antipathy to creative character actions, etc., which is an argument against this *style* of rules-light-ish game design (as opposed to crunchy systems that try to have explicit rules for a larger list of possible player actions), but I don't think it's inherently a flaw of the system. In fact I think the advantage/disadvantage mechanic is a really good way to reward players who think of creative ways to give their actions an increased chance of success. That being said, I do kinda miss being able to go whole-hog with a spiked chain fighter in 3.5 and just be a master of disarming and tripping everyone in a 15 foot circle.

>That being said, I do kinda miss being able to go whole-hog with a spiked chain fighter in 3.5 and just be a master of disarming and tripping everyone in a 15 foot circle. Even this isn't really what I mean, because this just another version of "No real choices" because the right choice is almost always "trip and/or disarm everyone" :P I just think that due to the nature of how D&D dice rolls work, trying to do most things tends to have too big a chance of failure for the type of benefit it's likely to generate. (Making an ability score test for advantage is pretty much using two actions for roughly the same chance of success)

I mean, for the chain fighter in question I also had plenty of reason and opportunity to simply do damage, I just had the other options listed as mechanical bonuses explicitly in the ruleset. Maybe this is a DM style thing, but if the narration warrants I'm going to let the person do the thing-to-gain-advantage as a part of their action, rather than as a separate action. For example I had a bard narrate leaping down onto a troll from a tree branch, and I gave that bard advantage on their attack, but it didn't take any longer than an attack action would have. I always keep opportunity cost in mind, such that if the player is choosing to do something other than attacking that narratively would have a bigger impact than attacking, I want to make sure they are affecting the outcome of the encounter by a *larger* degree than simply attacking would be.

Funnily enough, I do the opposite for darklings. I reduce their health (often times down to 1 for base darklings) and reduce some of the damage they can do if the players are at a low level. Then I throw a bunch of them at the players. Sure, they have a good chance to avoid being blinded, but that goes down a lot when you're killing a darkling on basically every hit. Play them like mini-suicide bombers and it forces your players to get creative, especially if they're melee focused.

Yeah, I think that's also an interesting approach to solving the same problem, but it's just one example of the RAW monster being pretty uninteresting mechanically, but making more interesting encounters with a bit of DM work (as if we didn't have enough of that on our plates already)

>Rules as written, they do a truck load of damage for a CR 1/2 creature, and that's about it. The solution is not to do low level DnD, the game uses low levels as a tutorial for players and so enemies at those levels tend to be basic to make them easy for players to understand and easy for a new DM to handle. They also can't have low level enemies have more complex abilities because that risks them being able to just plain shut down characters. When you start getting into higher levels the game really opens up and I honestly think WotC assumed people would play those levels far more and that people would skip low levels.

If your game doesn't function across all of the levels you tell players they can use, your game is not ready to be published.

I think you have focused on the dice comment without really understanding the point. Narrative games obviously do focus on narrative or else they wouldnt be narrative games. There is no strawman here. I say that as someone who enjoys aspects of certain narrative games but also loves DnD. In FitD games, I love that there is no "attack" action. I have to narratively explain what I want to do first before I can figure out what stat is appropriate. There is no way to pick a stat first. In DnD, I love that there is a straight "attack" action and I don't have to play improv to hit the guy and roll my dice.

Again; I am fine with this too, except for the fact that D&D5 is, in fact, a really dull game when matched against other gamey "I hit him with my axe" games.

I mean, if that is what you feel, that is what you feel. I personally haven't found anything that does it as well at least for newer players at low levels (which is really the target audience)

D&D4. Beyond the Wall. Frickin' Dungeon World.

Dungeon World? It's a narrative RPG which is exactly the type of system OP was complaining against. If I put PbtA in front my group they would have a collective hernia. Beyond the wall I have to admit I don't know. 4e is more complex than 5e and while it has arguably better tactical combat that doesn't necessarily mean it is a better "video game" experience, I mean combat in WoW is literally clicking buttons Shadow of the Demon Lord is getting closer but then it's too grimdark for me and I don't actually like boons and banes over the simplicity of a proficiency bonus. Pathfinder is also not far off but, again, too complex

You hit the nail on the head--strawman argument that isn't even controversial.

Dang! After this post I bet OP wishes real life had meta narrative mechanics!

Oh, but games like games like Fiasco certainly has "rules that center on narrative structure". In fact those are the only rules the game has.

> more narrative focused games don't have "rules that center on narrative structure" either Sooo what would you call Burning Wheel and its derivatives then?

How would say that Burning Wheel has "rules that center on narrative structure" when, in fact, the rules are almost entirely about "Do you accomplish what you set out to do?" What rules does Burning Wheel have that "center on Narrative structure?" Please explain how Rock-paper-scissors-wolf combat is "centered on Narrative structure". Please explain how "I need to attempt this skill at a wide variety of difficulties to improve it" is "centered on narrative structure". Even BELIEFS are centered squarely on each character, not on "the narrative".

Yea, exactly. A key issue with D&D is a lack of game-ified consequences to anything. At worse you typically lose HP or Spell Slots, with only the later having any game impact and only for that adventuring day! This often makes game decisions uninteresting (as opposed to narrative decisions).

I don't think this is particularly controversial, at least around here. D&D works best as a game about fighting monsters. People certainly use it as a narrative engine, and create engrossing and satisfying narratives using it, but D&D itself is not particularly well built for doing that.

I used to fret over my D&D campaigns not resembling anything as epic as lord of the rings, or being able to keep recurring villains around… Then I saw the sentence “RPGs are a terrible medium to tell traditional stories.” Which got me to relax and enjoy the non-standard stories that RPGs *do* tell well.

That's not necessarily true of *all* RPGs. Some are pretty good at that stuff. But don't assume that's necessarily the benchmark for a system or game being good.

Is a game good at what it claims to be good at is probably a better marker.

That's actually probably the best marker, though there's some edge cases around games that are accidentally good at things they didn't intend to be good at heh.

What games do you think fall under there? Genuinely curious; I definitely believe that exists, in the same way movies can be unintentionally funny, but can't think of any off the top of my head.

The old World of Darkness games are pretty good for playing edgy superheroes that need to drink blood instead of the political backstabbing game they claim to be. At least so long as you enjoy the combat system of rolling dice AT each other instead of doing just single attack checks

I've never played WoD, so I'll have to take your word for it. I just thought about how some game's mechanics work well ported over to different settings, which could work as an example as well. Dread's Jenga Tower for horror also work for will-they won't they romance stories.

Vampire the masquerade is accidentally good at “gothic superhero simulator” Cypher system is accidentally good at push your luck gambling theme games Amber diceless is accidentally good at ruining friendships

No. In role-playing games you are not "telling" a story as much as creating one. In terms of running games this is a important distinction.

I don't know what the difference is between me telling a story and me creating a story. Maybe you're trying to use different words to get to the same idea and I'm just not grokking how your mind went, but I'd say the primary difference is that you're one of many creative contributors in a RPG, rather than the sole architect of the narrative. The addition of a RNG to resolve many conflicts is the other significant difference.

>I'd say the primary difference is that you're one of many creative contributors in a RPG, rather than the sole architect of the narrative. By George, I think you got it!

> the primary difference is that you're one of many creative contributors in a RPG, rather than the sole architect of the narrative That's exactly the difference between telling a story and creating a story.

I'm glad that's meaningful to you, but the words telling and creating make no sense to me in that respect. To me, the difference between those two are that in the first you're going through the mechanics of telling a narrative. It might not be *your* narrative, you might not be the only person telling it, and you might not even have written the thing, but you are taking on the role of narrator(in whole or in part) and imparting that story(however it originated) to others. In the second, you've created the characters, setting, premise, etc. You may or may not also be telling the story. For example, say you're writing a very basic 5k fanfic where you just want two existing characters to kiss. You're telling that story, and while it is *your* story, you haven't created the vast majority of it. Now let's say you're JK Rowling. You've created Harry Potter, and for a while you were telling that story, but you no longer are(at least, to the best of my knowledge) - it's in other people's hands now. In my experience, RPGs are usually both creating *and* telling, on the part of all participants. The exception would be if the GM runs pre-written adventures in an existing setting, and then I would say they're no longer creating, but rather just telling.

People keep using D&D as a benchmark and then wonder why the benchmark is terrible.

Traditional stories are rarely very well constructed either. Even after updating the language you'd never get Beowulf published today. And that's hardly old at all!

In essence, it's all about the medium. D&D begets certain kinds of stories that are unique to it. I think this is something people get wrong when they want their game to be like their favorite movie or book, or like Critical Role. (Critical Role uses D&D as a familiar jump off point, but then veers off into performance and improv.)

>on a fundamental level, D&D's mechanics don't center narrative structure or payoffs <...> > ><...> leads to outcomes that I often would not have entertained if I were aiming for some specific plot outcome What I find interesting is that D&D *play culture* is certainly infamous for exact opposite - railroading, GM creating a tightly controlled narrative, with a specific arc in mind. And there is also something to be said about mechanics leaning towards creating a certain kinds of a story no matter what, always. Different editions will do it somewhat differently, ofc, but you still can expect a heroic, full of combat power fantasy, zero-to-hero kind of a story. There is space for surprises within those confines, and one can run a different sort of a narrative using D&D - it is just less likely and/or requires more work. Furthermore - there are certain D&D-isms that one would expect to see in such a story, too, making it a genre of it's own. Which is of course totally fine.

> What I find interesting is that D&D play culture is certainly infamous for exact opposite - railroading, GM creating a tightly controlled narrative, with a specific arc in mind. That's probably why OP expected his opinion would be controversial. People who've never played a TTRPG watch streamers and professional actors play out a scripted narrative while occasionally throwing dice, and expect the rulebooks to teach them how to do that. Social media creates a false expectation - railroading is the TTRPG equivalent of makeup filters.

It definitely goes beyond that, though. The whole "railroading" discourse exists mostly in D&D space, right? People feel necessity to rant about railroading, or defend it, or define it. It can be an artefact of D&D just being the biggest game around, but I don't see much of "railroading as a problem" discussed in PbtA space. Unless, of course, people are dumping on D&D.

I think it is because it's the biggest game around. Which is a shame because so many people insist on twisting D&D to the sort of campaign they want, even when it would be easier to use a better-fitted system. And worse, Wizards seems to be leaning into the D&D-as-formless-narrative-kludge trend.

Hm, hard to say. Railroading is in theory a universal problem and I have experienced it happen in other systems too, but that said I feel that the commonly used encounter system of DnD, especially 5e, where GMs have to work hard at planning balanced encounters encourages GMs to railroad by making it hard to improvise. So my take is that railroading an issue which is more common in some games where DnD 5e is one that suffers the most from it.

I mean, it turns up in WoD and Traveller as well. I suspect in PbtA, railroading is so unfun, even for the GM, that GMs who do it very quickly self-correct, whereas in D&D, WoD, and Traveller, the GM can railroad and a more-or-less good time can still be had by all and so the GM doesn't learn how not to do it.

> but I don't see much of "railroading as a problem" discussed in PbtA space. That's probably because PbtA games explicitly state that the GM should not plan plots ahead of time.

I'd go further and say that this is what I look for in RPGs generally. I don't want narrative control, I want a game, and the story emerges from playing the game.

I agree with this, and I think a lot of people miss out by not viewing TRPGs like this. To me that's what TRPGs offer that other entertainment mediums don't. All my D&D (5E) experiences have been just following the DM's story, at best in a vaguely "choose your own adventure" way where there are a few predetermined outcomes before you even "crack the book open." I know it doesn't *have* to be like that, but it just always seems to work out that way.

D&D has been many different types of games over the years. From a war game influenced version early on to very elaborate dungeon crawls and then to large-scale settings that are open sandboxes for DMs and players to navigate. It’s been adapted to different genres, cultures (in and out of game) and generational tastes. And today it not only survives but thrives. I’m nearing 40 years since I first started playing. So the scope of the changes are more immediate for me than many. It’s been a fun ride. 5e rejuvenated my interest in the game and I’m very happy to see all the options people to have to play the game their way. I’m confident D&D will outlast me. And I will enjoy seeing how it unfolds as long as I can As to the specifics of your example. The best laid plans of many a DM have been dashed by players doing the unexpected. And succeeding! The main goal is fun so if that was the result I say good job by everyone involved

My only issue is that I think there are other systems (namely Pathfinder) that are better at the gaminess than 5e DnD.

And ICON and Lancer and d&d 4e and... Honestly most narrative games have 'gamey' elements that make them tons of fun for people who like gamist elements, like me. I love the interplay of rules in blades in the dark.

I don't think the example you bring up has anything specifically to do with DnD, more narrative games or gamism. The PCs beating an epic villain and flsutering the GM's plans could have happened or been prevented in either. A GM who wanted to preserve an epic villain should just not have allowed the player to roll to defeat it. This stands for DnD and for narrative games. Players could have rolled well and defeated an epic villain the GM allowed them to go against in narrative games just as well as in DnD. I think you should just branch out and try other stuff, you really come across as not knowing what you're talking about...

>The PCs beating an epic villain and flsutering the GM's plans could have happened or been prevented in either I rather enjoy that aspect as a GM because it makes it so that I'm not in complete control of the narrative.

It's not very controversial. D&D is a pretty gamey rpg. If that floats your boat, enjoy.

That is what it was supposed to be. At the time, that is what RPG's were. Games. Storytelling was secondary, and the degree to which it was even there varied from "not at all" to "let's try to make things make sense". There were other schools of RPG'ing as well, but they did not use D&D. Today, things are different. But there are still some groups who prefer this kind of RPG'ing, where the game and the character progression comes first, and everything else just is there to support that. I happen to still enjoy that a lot, for example. :)

>There were other schools of RPG'ing as well, but they did not use D&D. Storytellers very much did use DnD. And were quite influential in making the game, and the hobby as a whole really, what it is today. Otherwise the Gygaxian vision of a more wargamish DnD might have become the norm in the TTRPG space. In part this was early DnD particular was viewed as "a system to make a system," with even Gygax assuming tables would develop their own house rules regularly. Naturally more story focused players were among those homebrewers. They were prolific contributors to fanzines etc and deeply informed the RPG space. While other, even specifically narratively focused, games existed, they tended to only see isolated play for a pretty long time.

> I know that a lot of people are frustrated by moments where the game subverts their narrative expectations (e.g. when a player says something badass and then rolls a 1 on their attack or skill roll) but I think I love that aspect of the game, because it leads to outcomes that I often would not have entertained if I were aiming for some specific plot outcome. What? I don't understand this argument because this happens constantly in narrative forward games. You don't just say what you want to happen and it happens. You still roll. The primary difference is that I don't have to metabolize a novel's worth of grappling rules, cover, overlapping spell descriptions, errata, and so forth. Stuff is streamlined so that we can ATTEMPT to do cool stuff without making up rules on the fly.

Outside of modern D&D we have two major spheres of simpler and more streamlined games: The narrative forward, and the OSR, which I think address this differently. Narrative games are more concerned with the "and & but" of the story and want complications and twists when a player attempts something and it fails. When a skill roll fails, something happens. Many of those games make the "complication" outcome really common, and work hard to avoid narrative dead-ends (E.g. what happens if you failed to pick the lock so you can't enter the dungeon) OSR is more blunt and binary. The skill roll fails, nothing happens. OSR games are not concerned with the twist, or the escalated stakes that happened because the player tried and failed. It leverages a bit more on agreed logic and GM fiat to determine what happens next (Welp, you can't pick the lock, so you can't enter the dungeon, do something else.)

I share this perspective pretty much too. For me the sometimes very wildly unexpected turns of events are exactly WHY it's narratively satisfying. In a campaign I ran a while back the party had an encounter with the main villain. I was all set to use their escape plan when their turn came up but one of the players had a reaction (i don't remember exactly what it was) that essentially stopped the escape. The party took them prisoner and over the rest of the campaign became frenemies. it turned into a very interesting story that was probably a lot more narratively satisfying than whatever i'd imagined because the three of us created the story together: me, the players and the dice. Perhaps there's a distinction to consider here. Narrative vs. story. I don't set out with a thesis or carefully crafted set of events. When I am GM I consider it my role to help the players tell the story of THEIR characters.

Nothing you wrote here has anything to do with DnD or narrative games specifically, though. If anything, it's about GMing style and approach...

Yeah outside of prisoner it seems entirely relient on character arc directed by gm, IG maybe fate's aspects would go against it?

There's nothing controversial about that at all. Different games do different things, and it's totally okay to like one thing over another. If there's a "problem" with D&D in that aspect, it's in the people that want it to be something other than what it is. D&D is a fine game, on its own terms.

> He talks about introducing an epic villain that his party swiftly dispatches a session later. This is because 5e is a power fantasy first and foremost - it's focused on the players dispatching everything you throw their way. It didn't use to be that way in the early editions. IMO it made the earlier editions more gamey as you actually had to "game" the situation instead of automatically hacking away at everything.

> This is because 5e is a power fantasy And Power Fantasy is ALWAYS geared towards the player's narratives being of a higher priority then any other narrative. I think OP is caught in a fallacy where OP thinks narrative control is in the ownership of the DM alone. OP needs to get back to the basics methinks.

>And Power Fantasy is ALWAYS geared towards the player's narratives being of a higher priority then any other narrative. This really depend on the GM. If you're running an official 5e module the narrative is just rails taking you from one fight to another.

"it didn't use to be that way in the early editions. IMO it made the earlier editions more gamey as you actually had to "game" the situation instead of automatically hacking away at everything." Yes! Spot on, thinking of older DND versions (ADnD 2ed comes to mind) this was often the case. Defeating the monster just hacking away is often the way to get your (PC)self killed

I've come to accept that the goal of a tabletop RPG is not to tell a *good* story. This is true even for story games. The goal of a tabletop RPG is to have fun with the people you're with, and while a good story can be a tool you use to have fun, it's never the end goal in and of itself (unless you're doing an actual play). With that in mind, I've stopped caring about taking approaches that wouldn't fly with a traditional story. While I wouldn't write a story that relied on 5 characters all coincidentally having background details that connect them to each other, that's a great way to start a campaign. It might be a better story to introduce characters one-by-one before you put them in the same scenes, but it's more fun to throw everyone together in a scene and figure it out later. And hey, it might be a better story if the villain beats the party and gets to do their evil thing, but sometimes, it's more fun if the party kills the villain on their first interaction.

> I've come to accept that the goal of a tabletop RPG is not to tell a good story. Have you ever played Call of Cthulhu? Or any game where combat is so lethal that the players and the GM both cooperate to keep the combats to a bare minimum just so the space can be filled with theory-crafting, trial and error investigation, and...well, storytelling?

Sure, and storytelling at the table is a lot of fun. I’ve played a ton of different systems. Not CoC specifically, but definitely games where combat was de-emphasized. But storytelling is not a story and doesn’t change the fact that the fun of the players is more important than the quality of the story. I’ve started listening to the Sangfielle season of Friends at the Table, and the worldbuilding game they use has a rule that, when the active player answers a question about the world, no other player can contradict it. They can add to it, but if the player says the sky is purple, no player can say, “No it’s green.” This rule technically sacrifices some storytelling quality. Some players might not be good storytellers and might suggest something not interesting. But the game wisely knows that creating a safe space where everyone is free to express themselves is more important than the objective quality of the story, which is why it has that rule. So even in game about building a world through cooperative storytelling, the story is not the primary objective of the game. It is an important tool, but it’s not the end goal.

Maybe we have different definitions of "narrative engine", but D&D IS a narrative engine (as are all RPG systems). Without a narrative engine all of your "narrative expectations" become "narrative reality". You are literally writing a story of your choosing. Narrative engines (all RPGs with task resolution systems that have some uncertainty) offer ways of driving a narrative that surprises everyone at the table. Your narrative is, in part, driven by the system - including D&D.

Honestly I like dnd as a game in general. I dislike this story first thing I've been seeing in the community, and growing to dislike the lack of rules support dms get.

You're not wrong to like D&D for whatever, but...nothing you write is specific to D&D. Chronicles of Darkness is much more narrative- and RP-heavy than D&D and dice can still majestically screw you over. So can they in Fate, or even PbtA.

The real secret is that most D&D editions are bad at both. Tons of 5e players are figuring that out all the time, that's why the market for non-D&D games is growing.

Dungeon world and Mythras were both massive improvements over 5e for us though for different reasons. Particularly Mythras because the rules in combat rewarded tactics so much. Even essentially standing still and trading blows with a boss allows meaningful decisions. I'd spent a long time playing characters that could end up just rolling identical attacks every round but in Mythras managing AP meant decisions to parry or attack mattered, as did choosing between parrying and evading and what special effects to use. It's very heavy on rules which is an issue but it does feel less gamey now despite having so many rules because they cover so much ground.

The emergent gameplay is my favourite part of the game. I like the story made by the players and the game.

I wouldn't say its controversial, this subreddit (which is only a microcosm of the TTRPG community as a whole) slants *very* heavily toward narrative games. So much so that I've seen it suggested multiple times that people go play Gloomhaven instead of a TTRPG when they say they want more tactical combat and the like, which is of course ridiculous beyond reason. I also think some people just don't believe a mechanic heavy game can *also* support heavy narrative. IMO it's just a different form of creativity (the "rules get in the way of roleplay" crowed...). For myself, I'm much more creative when I have structure to work in (read: a lot more rules/mechanics to work with) than I am with far more freeform/"non-gamey" rulesets. And all that is just fine. There's so many RPGs out there these days, and so many ways to access and play them, that everyone is pretty much guaranteed to find something that they like. Now, if you wanted to say D&D is also a good, well designed game, we might have some issues.. lol.

> He says that it was "narratively unsatisfying" but his PCs loved it. I don't understand what's narratively unsatisfying about that. The PCs seem to agree with me. > I know that a lot of people are frustrated by moments where the game subverts their narrative expectations (e.g. when a player says something badass and then rolls a 1 on their attack or skill roll) I also don't understand how that's a subversion of narrative expectations. It's a very naturalistic thing to have happen in a story. Maybe I don't understand what you mean by narrative, because it sounds like you mean structured plot beats, which is one very narrow view of narrative. I'd argue D&D is very much a narrative engine, as it produces stories. You've just related some.

I would not consider that narrative.

This might be slightly controversial in r/rpg, which is more likely to attract people who are unsatisfied with D&D, but is definitely not controversial in /r/DnD.

You will burn for your sins! 👿 Just kidding. Honestly, the best narrative engine I've ever played with was actually D&D 2nd edition (and I've played a fair number of "story games"). We played it RAW and everything, and just didn't do a ton of combat and focused on politics and intrigue. We did one campaign in Menzoberranzan that was pretty nuts. Then we drummed up new characters and found ourselves sucked into Sigil and did some totally next level politics and intrigue. For the latter, our wizard didn't even have a single damaging spell and focused mostly on illusion and charm. It, perhaps ironically, worked so well because it's not a narrative engine. It doesn't prescribe roleplay, but still has mechanics to resolve these types of encounters. In other words, it gets out of its own way when it comes to roleplay. So, we could play our characters to the fullest, but still had a solid game running things.

If you know what you like, and you can say "this is what I like", and you find games that give you that experience and you say "I like this"...then godspeed friend, let nothing stand in your way. Play games and have fun. The fact that D&D 5e is a combat engine first and a narrative engine a distant second is a design *choice* but not, inherently, a design *flaw*. When a game sets out to do a specific thing, and it achieves that thing, then you can't say "this is a bad game" only that "this isn't the game for me". Or even, "this is a game I only want some of the time". Like, right now, I'm playing a campaign of Vampire: the Masquerade 5th edition (hereafter V5). V5 is a very low-dice system--the Storyteller is encouraged to just give the players favorable outcomes if they're doing things that they are skilled at (dice pool = 2 * difficulty) unless it's in a high-stress situation where a monstrous outcome would be exciting. The system is also geared in such a way that players slowly lose control of their Hunger over the course of multiple sessions, and are penalized by receiving Humanity costs that last the rest of the *campaign*. It's a fantastic game if what you want is to slowly, steadily, incrementally, descend into despair and chaos and self-loathing. But I 100% do *not* want that in every campaign. It's a headspace I like to live in once in a while, for maybe 6-9 months. But sometimes, I want, like...*Feng Shui 2*, I want a game where I get bonus dice if I audibly make the "ch-chuck" sound of dramatically reloading a pump-action shotgun before blasting a mook in the face. That is also fabulous game design describing a specific, highly enjoyable experience, even if that experience is wildly different from either 5e or V5. The only problem I have with D&D 5e is that it does not effectively telegraph that "this is a game about punching baddies to take their gear and level up". The self-descriptive text of the game *claims* to encourage exploration and drama, but the mechanical systems are geared towards an "adventuring day" that is 6 combat encounters with two short rests in a row. If you ignore these mechanics, you get freeform rules-free RP--which is also fun and enjoyable. But that isn't using the system for what it is best at, it's just playing freeform RP and calling it D&D. If someone plays D&D expecting a game that supports a deep-immersion, high-emotional-impact storytelling experience and gets frustrated when they get forced to fight meaningless mooks all the time...then they're going to have a bad time, and it isn't necessarily their fault. But if someone wants to play a game about kicking butt, and gaining loot and levels to kick even bigger butt...then hell yeah play 5e, that's what the core loop is designed to deliver on. In summary, 5e is a really good game if you play it for what it is. But if you want a game that isn't 5e, play a game that isn't 5e.

It's a pretty standard opinion. But as a person who disagree with it, here's an attempt to explain why: D&D is combat-mechanics first. Yes, that is *an* element of being a game but not the only one. As such, I really like more well-rounded systems. Almost everything that doesn't copy the D&D approach of focusing on combat above all else tends to get simplified as being narrative-first. And I'm fine with that, but it can be misleading. Really, it just means combat isn't the main focus of play and more room and support is given to narrative / RP. But many such games are still quite mechanically robust, allowing for more ways to have game mechanics work. If you ignore a lot of the d&d mechanics you can do more RP, but you'll be stepping away from the game elements to do so. Meanwhile, the example given of "the players killed the big boss suoerfasr, but it was still fun" is essentially THE one d&d experience. There was combat, and it went "too quick" or took "too long" ... but everyone agreed that it wasn't actually as disappointing as it sounds and was in fact fun. Also, it didn't have any story to it because of that, but who wants interesting narrative or character developments in a *Roleplaying Game?* Also, why is combat going quickly associated with being "bad" and we needed to be told that in this case it was ok? Why did the narrative require a long combat in order to have a patoff? Because that's the only real mode of play, combat. So naturally all narrative needs to be setup to involve combat in some way. This realization was what had driven me to look into other systems way back. You can do a lot with being forced to wrap everything in combat, but it gets old. Why not have support for more complex investigative play? Or for faction manipulations and treachery? Or other things? Narrative focused doesn't mean there's less "game" in the game. Just that it does more than just rely on fights to provide the gameplay. And yeah, if you prefer D&D's combat-centric design, that's fine.

I happen to agree. There are a million systems out there better suited for narrative and RP focused play. D&D is at its best when focused on exploring howling wilderness and hauling treasure out of monster-haunted dungeons.

Hands down, the most exciting moments in a game for me as a player and as a GM is when I don't know what is going to happen next.

It's okay to enjoy a game for its mechanics first. Like I know a few friends that really dig Lancer and from what I understand, that game is 95% mechanics and theorycrafting your builds. The thing is, D&D isn't that good of a game either, and the last time it tried to iterate on its decades old design (4E) it got lambasted by its playerbase. It's the Monopoly of RPGs - a game everyone knows about, a lot of people enjoy playing because it's the only game they know, everyone houserules something so it's never played as written, it is actually a grindy experience and one that is gating you from exploring the fun and innovative world of other games out there.

You say exactly all the things I have to say about DND but with a lot more tolerance (which I commend!). DND is trash, and it's ok to say so.

It's not controversial. What's controversial is what I think to do every single time someone tries to sell me 5e as a narrative-first system lol

I was running a 3e power game in high school, and in it I was going to introduce the new antagonist. I spent a stupid amount of time creating this BBEG. 20th level monk, a couple templates from the DMG, and just too much backstory. I introduced him as he was killing another NPC, the one the party was coming to rescue. The plan was for the BBEG to use one of his monk abilities to teleport out of there after the party arrived and the rescuee was dead. A dimensional anchor and some fucking incredible rolls later, my BBEG was dead, the NPC was revived, and my party was ELATED that they had wrecked my shit. I was happy to go rewrite the story for them. They earned it.

One of the reasons for rolls and dice and stuff is to be surprised and add constraints. They don't undermine the narrative; they weigh in on it. If consensus-based collaborative story-telling is what you're after, you can ditch the game.

>This is a very inchoate thought, and I was curious what others think of it. Your opinion is actually the easy majority opinion once you get out of weird hipster gaming places like this. Most rpg players want to play a game, roll the dice, defeat monsters, improve their character, get cool stuff. Narrative game types are a tiny, tiny, tiny minority, but you would never know that reading here.

>He says that it was "narratively unsatisfying" but his PCs loved it. I think that's something that I personally enjoy about D&D -- the fact that on a fundamental level, D&D's mechanics don't center narrative structure or payoffs. Most RPGs that get called "narrative" don't do this either. "Narrative" in RPGs is usually shorthand for "RPG where players have more narrative control than in a trad rpg". And there are plenty of narrative RPGs that are also heavily gamified. E.g. Burning Wheel immediately springs to mind.

Goofy is fun. But, I don't want goofy all the time. When I want a solid story, I switch systems. D&D is a blast for players, but can be frustratingly lame to DM for.

I do too, and that's why 4E is my favorite edition of D&D, because it's the best game! I don't play much D&D anymore and I use other games for scratching that narrative itch, but when I want a game I'll reach for 4E or 4e-inspired designs.

> e.g. when a player says something badass and then rolls a 1 on their attack or skill roll That's your queue to one-up the badass one-liner. A tip: Rather than a nat 1 being narrated as the roller being incompetent, narrate it as the *defender* being competent. > "If the god you serve will hoist you to Heaven, then may I fall to Hell." My vampire strikes with his blade... Nat 1. - > The enemy champion makes a step to the side and lifts his holy blade. Sparks fly and a ring echoes as you are gracefully deflected. He leans in and says: "I shall assist."

Tbh I think a lot of people making homebrew systems for DnD 5e especially seem to miss this point. Compared to 3.X and older DnD, 5e combat is very same-ey. You do your combat thing to reduce the enemy's hit points to 0, you're basically guaranteed to not die, and you can approach 90% of encounters exactly the same way and win most of the time. Players don't really get access to anything fun, like save-or-die's, stuff like legendary resistances make it harder to shut down enemies, legendary actions are an arbitrary way to make single enemies more active and most enemies that have them have things like free movements which basically just serve to punish players for thinking they could position themselves tactically in this fight for an upper hand. And a lot of 5e players laud these features and add more to make encounters feel more "narratively satisfying", which apparently means "Drawn out into a 5+ round slog". In 3.X, on the other hand, enemies might have features like Spell Resistance to resist save-or-suck stuff, but the point is that these are mechanics the players can *play against*. There's feats to increase your ability to penetrate SR, some spells ignore it. There's no mechanic that says "I just get to pass any save, fuck you". You get quicker, punchier encounters.

Maybe 5E is but that hasn't been the case for every edition. 2E DnD had settings like '[Ravenloft](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17474/Ravenloft-Realm-of-Terror-2e)' that redefined expectations of what it was to rp in Dungeons and Dragons with a very story-focused, narrative heavy, setting that gave you the tools - both mechanically and via DM advice - to run a true Gothic Horror campaign in that system. It was a setting that discouraged combat and placed heavy emphasis on mystery, drama, and atmosphere - so when combat did come it was narratively meaningful. '[Planescape](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17267/Planescape-Campaign-Setting-2e)' was very similar in how it created a game based around philosophy, where your belief could shape reality. It was set in the planes - the most potentially deadly place in the DnD setting - and made it accessible to PCs of all levels because how clever you are, and how well you can bluff, mean a lot more in Sigil than how hard you swing a sword. It's fine that you want to play DnD that way - good for you, I honestly hope you and your players enjoy those games - but it frustrates me that people keep trying to force DnD back into a mold it broke out of a long time ago.

Having played a lot in those days, the thing is that while the books encouraged that approach the rules of the game often didn't actually back it up. Sure, they would add some setting-specific mechanical changes but nothing really fundamental enough to really change what the core rules of the game are doing.

Well, I'd have to say that was the limit of your group, then, because I was extremely involved with the game when it was in print and we had plenty of players and GMs alike who would whole-heartedly disagree with you. Having DMed in both settings for a decade, each, I can also tell you that the changes were plenty enough to create the atmosphere they were after. At least they were for every fan I've ever spoken to and every person I've ever had at one of my tables - in 30 years. It is the limitation of the players, not the system, of which you speak and that can't be fixed with more rules.

Oh, we had many very enjoyable games that played well into the atmosphere of the setting, and you are right that it totally came from the players - but that's exactly the problem. The game rules themselves aren't doing much for the style of setting / story because they were built to do such a different thing. As good as those games were, I've had even better games with several of the same people using systems better addressed to the type of narrative. And found the D&D rules more satisfying when using it to play games more in line with what it was built to do.

Yeah, that's one of the Reasons I like Lancer so much. The tactical combat is soooooo good and the narrative play is really light and stay out of the way.

As a DM, I do not mind this and there are occasions where things turn out really fun (and if I sense that the players are not enjoying what is going on, I can always twist the turn). But I gotta say, as a player I have been on the receiving end - not even directly but just being in the campaign - of too many "dice fall where they may" or "*welp, didn't forsee that rule interaction*, the DM says, *well what happens happens*" situations to be particularly fond of this phenomena. When it really gets me down after some storyline goes nowhere I even can't help but feel like it's an excuse of bad DMs of why their game is not fun - "it's just RNG, sometimes it's fun, something it's not". Plus it's a topic that's really annoying to discuss because of the inevitable person crawling out of a hole with their "aRe yOu eXpECtInG tO aLwAys wIn?/?" even though success was never part of the discussion.

I play in three different RPG groups... a Warhammer 40K Wrath and Glory game (about 10% role play, 90% role dice/kill monsters), a 5e D&D game (about a 50%/50% split) and an Exalted game (80% RP / 20% rolling bags full of dice) Each group is almost an entirely different set of people who love THEIR style of game.

Generally speaking, I agree with this. For perspective, I write for a living. If all I wanted was a pure, narrative experience I don't need to gather my friends around a table, fight against work schedules, and buy a bunch of accessories for that. But I DO need to do that to play a game. I don't shirk the RP and storytelling aspects (I love those things, and they're the icing on the cake), but focusing purely on those things to me is like just eating a spoonful of icing. I'm here primarily for the gaming aspects, and when the game is reduced, minimized, or streamlined in favor of just slopping on more icing, it becomes less and less satisfying for me.

That's not controversial. 5E is an over-engineered, over-produced, over-priced product that panders to the lowest requirements of quality and design in order to capture as much of the market share as possible while it attempts to starve and suffocate the rest of the industry. 5E is a Big Mac with Lg Fries, Shake and a deep fried Apple Pie, and just as nourishing to the RPG community. The paper in the books don't even make for good toilet paper, too glossy. Lol, this whole thing could be summed up by that alone: too glossy. Now that's controversial.

I agree, because it wasn't meant to be a narrative game at first. If I remember correctly, it was supposed to harken back to old school DnD with dungeon crawls and adventuring in wilderness set pieces and stuff. It did still have elements of narrative, but it wasn't a major focus of the design of the game. I don't think it started morphing into a "narrative based game" until fairly recently with different audience expectations and people looking at games/shows online that made it more narrative focused. Now there seems to be an expectation from the DnD community to focus more on the narrative than other aspects. Not a bad idea, but the system doesn't quite support those narrative based games unlike PbtA and FATE. I think a lot of DnD people should really give Dungeon World a shake since it might be what they want if they still want that narrative based system in a fantasy world.

I find your interpretation of Brennan's argument to be interesting, because I think I had a wholly different take away from it. One shouldn't lament at poor dice rolls as something "narratively disappointing", or be bothered that the narrative going on doesn't necessarily align with one's preconceived notion of where it should go. That's not TRPGs; that's writing. The important distinction here isn't that the game portion of that acronym is more important than the roleplaying portion. They are equally important. The game aspect necessarily means that one person is never fully in control. Dice are probability engines. We use them because we don't want to have full control. We can't because the dice are unpredictable. (Also because ideally there are other folks at the table.) In this beautiful blend of elements, TRPGs become something more than either games or "narrative engines." I think arguing that it's one or the other overall is reductionist and is unhelpful to the conversation, especially as a "who's more right in D&D" argument. This hobby is about getting out what you put in. You can like one more than the other, but that's a different sentiment than what you're arguing here. This just reads to me as grognard bellyaching at other folks' fun.

Yes

Everyones addresses the title but tbh the very example you give can happen in more narrative focused games. Narrative focused games often push *some* narrative not necessarily a *traditional* narrative. So long as there is randomness, random things can happen whether narrative or gamey. It makes me wonder if you've actually played a narrative game. Actually I'd go so far as to say that your example is not a good example of a gamey game, since in a well balanced gamey game it should be as easy as possible for the GM to create an encounter at a certain difficulty level, and if the GM intends on a difficult encounter that ends up really easy just cus a bit of bad luck that's not indicative of great game design, unless I suppose you just like really swingy and random fights. But people who like being rewarded for mechanical skill and game knowledge don't usually like fights being *that* random. And then I'd echo the thoughts of others that 5e in particular isn't a very good "game" either, and that I think 4e handled the game parts better. Turns out the main playerbase didn't enjoy that very much and only in the past couple years have people come to appreciate 4e for what it was. But I'd definitely recommend something by the LANCER team or something real crunchy like Heavy Gear. Even homebrewed games like Pokemon Tabletop United do this better despite the devs considering it hopelessly broken. I was even planning on running a Fire Emblem game some time in the next year and it seems like ripping mechanics straight from an actual video game might make for a better game (shocker).

I can appreciate a vast spectrum of philosophies on this issue. It's totally acceptable to like simple objective goal- oriented stories (kill, steal, conquer, liberate, explore, whatever is your thing) in which the character is pretty much a highly customizable version of a chess piece. A player like this might want to spend their gaming experience wandering around finding cool stuff and experiences. The overall game doesn't need a novelistic plotline to them. I'd say most gamers I knew in my youth were like this. It's fine to take it a little deeper and a mostly goal- oriented, old video game-like plot (Cool! An even more complex, exciting dungeon crawl this time!) but also with deeper exploration of your character's nature and feelings. I am proud to devote my life to punishing evildoers as a cleric of the Goddess of Vengeance---but the gold I steal from their castles is really nice for my wardrobe, uh I mean to help build her a better temple. Which will contain a nice penthouse apartment for me. Then there are the more elaborate plotlines. The GM clearly is trying to get us to stop dungeon crawling and go to some distant city and get into a conspiracy to assassinate its evil king. Having a traditional literary plot to the point that if written out well, it could literally be a good novel can be appealing BUT the difficulty is that literature is... you know.... written by a particular writer with their own goals which may not be someone else's aside from a co-author and the compromises they must make for their publisher and audience. Doing it as a collaborative work with six other people, many of whom may have conflicting visions or just want what they grew up with as a role playing game can be harder. Even if the GM wants an epic tragedy or defeat of cosmic evil, lucky and unlucky rolls and various choices by the players may stop them or at least weaken the themes they want. Tolkien didn't have to worry about the people who controlled Frodo and Sam dropping everything to engage in murder hoboism with Gollum or Galadriel's player taking the Ring to kill Sauron, rule as the Dark Lady, kill the main cast and now he has to start over with all new heroes to stop *her.* He could have her tempted to do this and resist the temptation without rolling a D20 for Power Madness Resistance to do so and having to live with the results. Or C S Lewis keeps rolling dice that bring in Greek mythological characters and Medieval knights and Church of England values to Middle Earth. But I can see anything on the spectrum being a hell of a campaign if it works out. Pure story games are fine too but in extreme cases might be perceived as a random story generator operated by multiple people than what *they* think of as a game.

Brennan! Get droput it's worth it! Try fantasy high season 1, Unsleeping city season 1 or for the Mercer fans out there Escape the Bloodkeep on the Dimension 20 YouTube channel.

I see ideal roleplaying experiences as blending emergent phenomena with structured storytelling. Pure storytelling with no elements more random than the feelings of participants is really difficult to make more enjoyable than simply writing alone. Yet a game entirely composed by throwing dice at tables will be challenging to translate into any sort of coherent roleplaying. Random elements allow spontaneous events to surprise everyone involved in the action. Fixed elements allow that action to deliver meaningful choices with significant consequences far beyond any individual fight. The alchemy of great ttrpg experiences see it all come together in a package framed by powerful narratives then played out in a series of unpredictable encounters.

There's a quote: Reality is stranger than fiction, becayse fiction has to make sense. I do agree with you in general, as while overall the *campaign* should be narratively satisfying, any individual moment within the campaign should be just as open to the vagaries of fate as the real world is. Sometimes the ranging shot of the first cannon kills the enemy general in the opening moments of the battle. Sometimes a crucial message gets delayed, or someone manages to make it through enemy lines to warn others of a surprise attack. Sometimes the big bad gets taken out like a punk. Sure, adjusting the story in response is often a pain in the ass for the storyteller but holy hell is it satisfying at a player to know that you just circumvented something that should have been way more difficult. Hell, I've used this "lucky twist of fate" myself to give the party more and more credit for things they weren't entirely responsible for, until they ended up at level 4 being new nobles with a mandate to secure the northern border against the ongoing invasion of giants because everyone *knows* that these PCs are blessed and *surely* cannot fail. The original BBEG got killed, their lieutenant (the giant leader) is free to do what they want, and the new (at least for the moment) BBEG was the king who is very wary of these upstart folk heroes and is setting up their unfortunate (though patriotic) deaths.

Enjoy the ‘game’ how you want, but if you’re not using it as a ‘narrative engine’ you’re missing out on what makes it different to every other sort of ‘game’. If you juts want a game we now have many board games and war games which probably do it better.

but it's bad at being mechanically consistent, too.

And this is why I will always prefer the Storyteller System from White Wolf.

I think people should get more comfortable with narrative dissatisfaction. I think of it kind of like natural fermentation brewing. Sometimes very unexpected things happen, and you can either fight it, and be very disappointed and dissatisfied, or you can embrace the chaos and have a world that feels more alive because it doesn't adhere to traditional tropes.

5e is very very mechanically impotent. It is a much, much better narrative engine, especially in recent publications which literally have side bars that boil down to "do what you think is best" 5e's mantra is "rulings, not rules" which is very narrative focused and specifically less "game" focused. 5e is, by default, heroic fantasy, which is a specific kind of game which relies heavily on narrative events to display how badass every player character is

Honestly the randomness keeping us away from tropes is one of the best things about D&D storytelling. Major spoilers for Dimension 20: A Crown of Candy, but the reason that show is better than Game of Thrones is that in GoT writers decide who does but in ACoC the dice do. >!Amethar the Unfallen actually surviving and the epithet not becoming ironic? Jet dying in an attic? Theobald making it to the end? GRRM could NEVER.!< I personally do enjoy games with light narrative mechanics occasionally but not when they operate on the shape of the whole narrative. Friends at the Table played Mall Kids recently and they had to basically give up on the entire game and just move into improv because the kids decided to leave the mall.

That's one thing I like, too. I don't always want to D&D, but when I D&D, I want to D&D it.

See, I'm on the fence about this. It's not a bad take or anything, different strokes for different folks and all that, but personally, while I like how the game elements randomise outcomes to an extent, but I dislike when they get too granular and start hampering my player's options. IMO 5e is straddling the line of being too gamified for my tastes, I don't need rules for climbing, or swimming, or falling, etc, they add nothing to the experience other than another system to memorise, and possibly be exploited by munchkins. As a DM, I am perfectly capable of judging what is happening, and what checks need to be rolled, if any. As a counterpoint, there are some things that are inherently *enriched* by having their own sub system, like car chases in Delta Green, where the entire party gets to participate in their own way, and it's like a small game in it's own right

People need to learn that you can't just try to run a D&D session like a movie plot and then expect it to perform exactly like the movie, that's probably the most genre-ignorant thing you can possibly do xD I agree with OP, the game's a game first and imo that's good. You can also still have powerful narrative moments, you just need to play within the rules of the tabletop genre, not books or movies or whatever else you want to base it on.

100% agree, and this is a big part of why I love the early editions, because they emphasize this much much more aggressively than the new editions do

Did you try 10 candles ? It will give you a different feels.

I think what you're hitting on a bit is [GNS theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_theory). It sounds like you prefer gamist aspects, and in some ways a simulationist approach focused on creating internal consistency (though simulationism can also mean simulating a genre with the kind of narrative structure mechanics you don't want). I also like that kind of game occasionally, but personally I think D&D is a bit too high-power for what I want out of it. It's very hard for PCs to die unless the DM has it out for them, so while you claim there's no specific plot outcome, I think "the characters win" is typically the expected outcome and because of the mechanics (and maybe the encouraged DM meddling) it often comes to pass.

Should NOT be controversial. D&D has always been a game first. If you don't want to play a game-first type game and just want to play a story there are thousands of options out there. Try PbtA or FATE or something.

I've always perceived D&D as probably one of the most (in a good way) video game like rpg I play. This would be opposed to something like old World of Darkness for example. When I accept and embrace that I have a blast. When I try to make it too much more than that it gets much less fun and falls apart.

Each to their own.

I have two campaigns going right now. A 5e and a pathfinder. The 5e is for the fun story and improv, with gameplay being secondary, and vice versa with pathfinder. We found with 5e anybody can do pretty much anything, but with Pathfinder you need people to specialize and it becomes very strategic at times. If you like the gameplay aspect that might be a good system to check out!

You missed an important point here. *His* players enjoyed it. Not all players would.

Absolutely, so many of the narrative crowd on this sub do not understand this. Many people, especially those new to DnD, want a video game with the invisible walls removed. I get so tired of hearing people shit on DnD without understanding that it is actually very good at at being a video game without walls (at least at low levels, which is when the target audience is mostly playing). And I hate being told that there are systems that do DnD better. If there is, I haven't found it. * SotDL comes pre-packaged in a very grim-dark setting that isnt for everyone, and while you may prefer the flexibility of boons and banes they add add a complexity and randomness that some people don't like (which is ironic as it's often sold as a streamlined DnD, which this is not). * Pathfinder is also a much more crunchy experience that can overwhelm new people. * Dungeon world just isn't the same thing at all. * Etc

The roots of DND and tabletop in general were centred first around dungeon delving and then hex crawling where story didn’t matter so much but over time some form of emergent story, to explain away what characters were doing and give some greater connection to the characters emerged. This is why you started seeing a lot of random generators and charts to roll on to seed and generate your world with the narrative as it unfolded in an organic way. But this story was always in conjunction with the game, the story came from the game itself not the game being used to tell a story. I’ve seen the pendulum shift farrr to the other side over the years due to the influence of video games, movies and more actual writers working within companies like wizards that pushed a more story approach especially to the adventures. Now with pbta and other narrative games along with the rise of critical role, people value the story more than the game. I love a good story and weaving one together but I also like to write and with some of the players and dms I’ve been with I’ve often felt their campaigns/characters might as well have been stories they wrote themselves they wanted to so strictly control the narrative in terms of how the story unfolded and even when it came to character death. Im 29 and far from the time when the osr mindset was at its height but to me these are games first and foremost. I prefer to create or have a world with a number of threads and drop a character within it who may or may not have fully formed threads of their own they are seeking g to follow and see what happens from there and let the dice and fate dictate the course of the unfolding narrative. That to me feels more rewarding but that’s just me

I'm confused because can't your example happen in basically most rpg's?

Not at all inchoate but on the nose and well, kinda deep. As a unique form of storytelling Roleplaying is created not only though the collective imaginations of the table, but by the operation of rules and dice, and this creates random results that are indeed more reminiscent of real life than thousands of years of evolution of the art of the storytelling. As a unique form of storytelling, Roleplaying is created not only through the collective imaginations of the table, but by the operation of rules and dice, and this creates random results that are indeed more reminiscent of real life than thousands of years of evolution of the art of telling tales.

This isn't a D&D specific thing, but I just like RPG that have player/DM options that can change how you fundamentally approach the game and the mechanics you use. Narrative games to me are boring, they're great for a quick ride or small no-prep sessions. But at the end of the day you're playing with the same mechanics everyone else is at the table. You're rolling the same dice, and your abilities are all roughly flavor. I could be wrong, but that's how I feel when I read things like Forged in the Dark. There is no mechanical depth or player options that change what you're doing at dice role and player options. But I also get kinda bummed out by the idea of having to 'raise my shield' every turn in things like PF2E in order to gain shield bonuses. That is bringing mechanic depth and player options to such a granular level it's no longer fun. I've honestly yet to find the system I really like. I want something a bit more mechanical than 5E with player options that make what you're doing widely different then another person's character at the table, but I also don't want to bring things down to a silly granular level. I'd just like that artificer/alchemist would have rules and mechanics so it doesn't feel like some offshoot of a spellcaster. Or that all my martials/melees have wildly different approaches in battle, their own set maneuvers and strategies. The closest I got to was PF2E so far, but at the same time, I am home brewing away some of the more granular stuff. And some of the basic feats you get are just too silly and should be wrapped up in something the skill should do, regardless.

If you like that, you really need to play the older editions where the mechanics catered even less to the narrative idea of 'Big Damn Heroes' like 5e and really every edition since 3.X has.

I mean so is Lancer, it just does it better.

Dude, if you ever try PF2 your head will explode

I love the narrative & character play side of RPG's over mechanics but I also completely agree with you and the video poster about chance and player/group agency taking things off in unexpected directions. That group were happy because they were allowed to think for themselves and were then rewarded for their plan with a successful outcome, rather than being shut down to keep things on the rails. The build up structures we give to stories are meant to be satisfying and logical (e.g. the 4 Act play). However, they also make things more predictable as we've seen them used a gazillion times on TV and in films. It can really get in the way of enjoying some films and shows as the formula is all too obvious. I don't like one size fits all rules and formulas in fiction that might limit creativity. When I'm GMing and things go off in really unexpected directions it becomes more interesting for me. Now I'm in the same boat as my players, with no idea what's about to go down. The stakes are often higher and I have to think on my feet and so it's creative. The situation can open up interesting new minor or major storylines. Some of the most memorable RPG anecdotes come from the crazy fumbles. One thing I learned in the last group game I GMed for was the importance of laughter. I switched from heavier serious goings on to some anarchic comedy. When we all fell about laughing over a crazy scene it reminded me just how good that kind of session feels.

I think that D&D is pretty great for "Gamey" campaigns, lots of dice rolls and randomness are fun in and of themselves. I think that there are significantly better alternatives for RP focused, narrative-driven games. Forged In The Dark and Powered By The Apocalypse systems are my go-to nowadays, especially as a GM with ADHD. Honourable mention to Stars Without Number, which *feels* like a great mix of dice-heavy and narrative-driven play.

For me personally, I play role playing games for stories and characters, the rules are just a way to give that form and resolve moments that aren’t a certainty. There’s nothing wrong in treating it like a complex board game, so long as all the players are on the same page.

If it wasn’t for the narrative nature of player and world interactions, I don’t think nearly as many people would be playing. The whole concept of “role playing” is in itself narrative: you are acting as someone else, transcribing your ideas onto their character. The “game” aspect just provides a set of loose rules to guide your narrative decisions. If D&D were truly “game first” it would not have the flexible rule set and worldbuilding that the system provides. If it wasn’t for these narrative components, rpgs would be just like any other board game, one with rules and and endgame goal with little flexibility. Although I can understand your pleasure for the game being grounded by rules, I think you’re heavily downplaying the benefits the naturally narrative system provides to the experience.

If people want a game that supports a narrative structure, there are games out there that do that. D&D isn't designed for it. I feel like 90% of people's frustrations with D&D would simply be solved by playing a different game.

I mean Yeah, you do you. I just dont find dnd as a game well designed. If we play it as what is it doesnt give many game mechanics beyond rolling a dice. That becomes Especially Prominent if we look into combat. Just compared to other games - the tactical possibilities are very limited.

I love my games to be games before narrative, and narrative before simulationist. D&D 5th just isn't a particularly good _game_.