So, I see that DND gets used a lot (on other forums including Discord) as a sort of 'setting generic' system. With how stripped down DND 5e is (the newest and most popular edition) that can be sort of true. But not really. The game assumes you're using a few magic systems (arcane, divine, etc), that you have these classes, feats, and so on. It assumes a lot, and for (what I see) no good reason. Recently i thought: what if dnd really WAS a setting generic system? obviously, it would still have to keep some axioms intact to guide design, like "this is an adventure fantasy system with magic".
DND could give the DM a guide to creating their own world, magic system (from low to high), how to make classes, and their progression (including some generic ones like 'guy who uses magic' or 'guy who does not use magic'), how to make monsters and just about anything needed. This, in my uneducated opinion, would allow an incredible diversity of games and cut down on source books needed- because all you really need is the corebook only if you want to make your own setting, or the setting book if you want to use a preexisting setting. That setting book would contain literally everything you need for running a game.
I know WOTC would never do this, I am not educated in TTRPG design (at all), but I'm just throwing things out there. What do you think of this?
Generic systems tend to lack flavour, I think there's a limit to how much you can genericise D&D and still keep it fun and attractive. 5e does actually have a lot of options in the DMG to tweak it towards different flavours, but it does give almost every class spells, which is inevitably a high magic feel. There have been OGL versions of 5e for other genres, like the Middle Earth version which is much lower magic, and the SF version Esper Genesis.
In terms of world building and campaign design, I've been looking through worlds without number recently and it has a lot of good information and resources there. I do agree with S'mon though. If everything is stripped down to mechanics it is likely to be a harder sell. Especially magic systems as those will have a dramatic effect on the narrative setting as well as play at the table.
Quote from: MeganovaStella on July 30, 2022, 01:11:40 AM
So, I see that DND gets used a lot (on other forums including Discord) as a sort of 'setting generic' system. With how stripped down DND 5e is (the newest and most popular edition) that can be sort of true. But not really. The game assumes you're using a few magic systems (arcane, divine, etc), that you have these classes, feats, and so on. It assumes a lot, and for (what I see) no good reason. Recently i thought: what if dnd really WAS a setting generic system? obviously, it would still have to keep some axioms intact to guide design, like "this is an adventure fantasy system with magic".
DND could give the DM a guide to creating their own world, magic system (from low to high), how to make classes, and their progression (including some generic ones like 'guy who uses magic' or 'guy who does not use magic'), how to make monsters and just about anything needed. This, in my uneducated opinion, would allow an incredible diversity of games and cut down on source books needed- because all you really need is the corebook only if you want to make your own setting, or the setting book if you want to use a preexisting setting. That setting book would contain literally everything you need for running a game.
I know WOTC would never do this, I am not educated in TTRPG design (at all), but I'm just throwing things out there. What do you think of this?
As S'Mon says generic systems can feel a bit lacking. My opinion on this is that different games rely on and emphasise different tropes and archetypes. Fot example a samurai game may emphasise the importance of honour on your mental state and the power of a katana. While in a Cosmic horror game your Sanity will be of particular focus.
Putting all these mechanics into a game will make it unwieldy, while dipping into all of them makes the game feel shallow.
In my opinion rpg games are generally genre pieces and the best lean into their genre.
Not sure I fully buy it, but I cannot discount out of hand the argument that part of the problem with 5E is that it strips out a lot of flavor towards the generic already. Now, in fairness, that's because the flavor it leaves in is the "D&D as its own genre" part, and the generic path it chases is towards that same goal. It's like you took the original flavor and ran it through a sieve.
Quote from: MeganovaStella on July 30, 2022, 01:11:40 AMwhat if dnd really WAS a setting generic system?
It is. Or AD&D1e is, anyway.
The description of "fighter" makes no mention of home culture or era. Is this a Saxon thane in the line against Viking invaders? The Viking invaders themselves? A lamellar-clad model for the terracotta warriors of Qin? French heavy infantry at Agincourt? A young squire daring to seek out and fight a werewolf? The girl fighting the jabberwocky? A bronze-clad warrior of Sparta? A daring Amazon of the Crimea, firing her bow from her horse at Greek invaders? An Iron Age warrior of Kush? A samurai?
It doesn't say. You fill in the blanks!
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on July 30, 2022, 08:27:14 AM
Not sure I fully buy it, but I cannot discount out of hand the argument that part of the problem with 5E is that it strips out a lot of flavor towards the generic already. Now, in fairness, that's because the flavor it leaves in is the "D&D as its own genre" part, and the generic path it chases is towards that same goal. It's like you took the original flavor and ran it through a sieve.
IDK, I think 5e is far more "D&D as its own (arbitrary) genre (that changes to the whims of whoever is designing the current edition)" than generic. The game is loaded with specialized classes that inevitably make their own genre assumptions and are made even more specialized and genre specific by every class having multiple subclasses you can (and
have to) pick.
The problem is that those genre assumptions are made in a vacuum while pretending to be setting agnostic generic fantasy so we end up with a bunch of specialized subclasses, like elemental monks or draconic sorcerers, that don't always quite fit into any setting and we have to sort of shoehorn in. And they all follow the designer's arbitrary take on what those classes or subclasses should be.
So we end up with warlocks that can't cast lightning bolt, cuz they have their own arbitrarily limited spell list based on their own arbitrary take on what warlocks should be. And sorcerers getting exclusive access to meta magic, cuz they don't know WTF to do with them now that they gave every caster class the ability to cast spontaneously, which used to be the sole province of sorcerers and the only reason they existed as a separate class from wizards. But they can't just get rid of them, cuz they've apparently become a sacred cow now, and they need to keep wizards, sorcerers and warlocks as separate classes, despite they all being variants of each other that are used as synonyms in normal language.
I think the game could far more generic than it currently is without losing the flavor. And the earlier, pre-WotC editions can attest to that, cuz they were all far more generic than 5e is. You could even fold all dedicated spellcasters into a single class and still keep the flavor by turning different types of magic into class options (maybe even feats), or maybe take a Spheres of Power approach to handling trappings and such.
They already have that, it's called Genesys. Or GURPS. Or (as much as it pains me to admit it) Mutants and Masterminds.
But honestly, in my experience the system that we managed to successfully run:
- cyberpunk with magic
- Fallout
- Wild West with magic
- CATastrophe
is Shadowrun 4e. It's got good gunplay, it's got good magic, it's got high tech stuff, and the rules are fairly easily modifiable. Anyway, D&D is shit and nobody should play it.
Quote from: MeganovaStella on July 30, 2022, 01:11:40 AM
Recently i thought: what if dnd really WAS a setting generic system? obviously, it would still have to keep some axioms intact to guide design, like "this is an adventure fantasy system with magic".
DND could give the DM a guide to creating their own world, magic system (from low to high), how to make classes, and their progression (including some generic ones like 'guy who uses magic' or 'guy who does not use magic'), how to make monsters and just about anything needed. This, in my uneducated opinion, would allow an incredible diversity of games and cut down on source books needed
I think the closest to that is True20, which is based on the 3rd edition D20 system.
https://greenroninstore.com/collections/true20
But while there is a niche for generic systems like GURPS and Savage Worlds, I think the strength of D&D is in its network effect. When one looks for players, it helps to have common understanding about what will be in the game. If playing D&D, players have certain expectations. Generic systems have a weaker network effect, because players have less idea about what they are in for when playing that system.
5e is setting agnostic, generic, or whatever term you want to use. Probably 1000 hours+ playing in different homebrew settings. You do not have to take any race, class, feats, spells, etc. The DMG outlines how to build your own world from scratch, modify the entire proficiency system, add/subtract stats, etc.
Quote from: MeganovaStella on July 30, 2022, 01:11:40 AMThat setting book would contain literally everything you need for running a game.
I think you've come to the same conclusion that I did. As the rulebook would be so barebones, rather than have a generic rulebook and a bunch of setting books, it would be more practical to instead have a series of compatible games each for a different genre; a classic (D&D) fantasy game, a sci-fi game, a sword and sorcery game, etc. and have each book be self contained and fully compatible with one another. And since they are compatible, you can mix and match races and classes from each book and even genre swap the party from one game world to another.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on July 30, 2022, 09:00:53 AMThe description of "fighter" makes no mention of home culture or era.
That's true for the fighter, but not the paladin, thief, cleric, ranger, bard, cavalier, etc. And the way elves and dwarves are described presumes a certain type of fantasy, the cleric presumes a certain type of religion, alignment presumes a certain cosmology, etc. There is very little in AD&D that is generic or useful for anything other than playing in a D&D-style world.
Generic 5e eh? So that gets me thinking. Obviously the attributes and core mechanic stay the same. We'd have to about double the number of skills to cover technology and stuff. Piloting, gunnery, computers, mechanic, science, that kind of stuff.
I think you'd want to have a single class template from which classes are built. There'd be tiers of class abilities and feats would be abilities that are not class related, possibly drawn from the same list. So at first level you'd get a first tier ability. At third level you'd get a second tier ability that requires a prerequisite. The prerequisite trees would work a lot like classes. Feats are at fourth eigth and twelveth level of course. It seems pretty doable. Spell casting becomes a tiered feat and would probably emulate different types of spell casting through the prerequisite tree choices.
Quote from: David Johansen on July 30, 2022, 05:24:51 PM
Generic 5e eh? So that gets me thinking. Obviously the attributes and core mechanic stay the same. We'd have to about double the number of skills to cover technology and stuff. Piloting, gunnery, computers, mechanic, science, that kind of stuff.
I think you'd want to have a single class template from which classes are built. There'd be tiers of class abilities and feats would be abilities that are not class related, possibly drawn from the same list. So at first level you'd get a first tier ability. At third level you'd get a second tier ability that requires a prerequisite. The prerequisite trees would work a lot like classes. Feats are at fourth eigth and twelveth level of course. It seems pretty doable. Spell casting becomes a tiered feat and would probably emulate different types of spell casting through the prerequisite tree choices.
I actually started doing something like this a few years ago, but ended up focusing my own system instead, partly cuz I wasn't sure how true to D&D/5e I could keep it without letting my own preferences get in the way and hack away from the system what I didn't like. But the focus was making a classless template, rather building a generic system.
Basically characters would get certain basic stuff like a base HD type (1d6), standard Proficiency Bonus progression, a base number Skills and Save proficiencies, etc. Then everything would be treated like a feat, and characters would start with a base number of feats to build their starting abilities, then get one feat per level or something. Increased HD type would be a feat, spell list access would be broken down into feats divided by schools of magic, and everyone would get the standard spell casting progression, but max spell level access would be broken down into feats (something like: 0-2 One Feat, 3-5 Two Feats, 6-7 Three Feats 8-9 Four Feats). All class features would be feats, with feature improvements (like increased Rage bonuses) treated as additional feats, etc.
The 5e DMG has sevedal chalters devoted to creating your own setting, classes, and some optjonal rules to make the game grittier, or even more super-heroic...if you can envision such a thing.
Now the best guide to creating your own setting that I have read, is the original AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, butI am told that Worlds Without Number by Kevin Crawford of Sine Nomine Publishing, is a truly groundbreaking book.
Spheres of Power goes a long way towards genericizing the magic system. Spheres of Might changes the martial classes so that rather than being based on specific fictional characters like Aragorn or Conan, it's more of a skill-based system but with levels. You can read about it here: http://spheres5e.wikidot.com/
Quote from: drayakir on July 30, 2022, 10:45:54 AM
They already have that, it's called Genesys. Or GURPS. Or (as much as it pains me to admit it) Mutants and Masterminds.
But honestly, in my experience the system that we managed to successfully run:
- cyberpunk with magic
- Fallout
- Wild West with magic
- CATastrophe
is Shadowrun 4e. It's got good gunplay, it's got good magic, it's got high tech stuff, and the rules are fairly easily modifiable. Anyway, D&D is shit and nobody should play it.
> dnd bad
> suggests shadowrun
okay, you do you
Can you define what you mean by "setting agnostic" here?
D&D is more-or-less setting agnostic if your setting is: Heroic European Fantasy (or Murder-Hobo Fantasy). There's a wide range of settings possible inside of that sphere.
What D&D isn't going to do well is... Modern day settings. Futuristic settings. Any setting with gritty realism, or a niche focus on something like stealth, diplomacy, etc.
The more generic your game rules, the less it becomes a game system and the more it becomes a tabletop negotiation system (like FATE or similar things).
I think 5E is pretty setting neutral if you think of the rules as a toolkit with all options (Races, Classes, Spells, Treasure, Monsters). You remove half the options and you have one type of setting, remove the other half and you have a very different setting, use them all and you have Forgotten Realms.
Now the Coastal Wizards apparently push for all options being available in any modules and the art does provide a certain Forgotten Realms view of things but the rules as written are pretty agnostic.
Quote from: Zelen on July 31, 2022, 02:49:08 PM
Can you define what you mean by "setting agnostic" here?
D&D is more-or-less setting agnostic if your setting is: Heroic European Fantasy (or Murder-Hobo Fantasy). There's a wide range of settings possible inside of that sphere.
What D&D isn't going to do well is... Modern day settings. Futuristic settings. Any setting with gritty realism, or a niche focus on something like stealth, diplomacy, etc.
The more generic your game rules, the less it becomes a game system and the more it becomes a tabletop negotiation system (like FATE or similar things).
works with any setting as long as it fits the premise of the game, whether that be 'dungeon crawling' or 'heroic fantasy adventuring'. with current dnd people keep pretending it works for other settings than what it is made for (i saw someone use it for modern earth with no magic)
Quote from: hedgehobbit on July 30, 2022, 12:29:22 PM
That's true for the fighter, but not the paladin, thief, cleric, ranger, bard, cavalier, etc.
Cavalier, yes. Bard, perhaps. The others are fairly generic in everything except their level titles.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on August 01, 2022, 03:53:08 AM
Quote from: hedgehobbit on July 30, 2022, 12:29:22 PM
That's true for the fighter, but not the paladin, thief, cleric, ranger, bard, cavalier, etc.
Cavalier, yes. Bard, perhaps. The others are fairly generic in everything except their level titles.
Only once you've internalized D&D enough to ignored its conceits. But the cleric is largely an invention of D&D that doesn't operate like almost any priest IRL or fantasy versions of them. There might be a few historical counterparts that kinda sorta look like the D&D cleric, but they're a very specific type of warrior-priest with elements of vampire hunters lashed onto them. The stereotypical priest that could serve as a template for priests from any culture or religious tradition doesn't wear armor, have combat abilities or look like a D&D cleric at all.
Paladins are just as setting specific as cavaliers, if not more, given their Christian-like religious trappings and "Arthurian with Templar elements" feel to them. The D&D ranger is a hodgepodge of a hunter, beast master and warrior-druid, with dual-wielding (because reasons), but no ranged weapon benefits (till 3e), that sucks at all of those roles, though, at least it's closer to being truly generic than the paladin. Thieves are the only class other than fighters or wizards that are arguably truly generic, and even then they have mixed elements of cat burglars (most thief skills), tomb raiders (read languages, find/remove traps) and assassins (backstab). But those elements make the thief a more viable adventurer, so I'm happy to ignore them.
Still, not as specific as later editions of D&D, which cranked the specialized classes up to 11 (12 if I'm being specific in the case of 5e). And RE everyone saying that 5e is setting agnostic: if you can't use it out of the box without having to hack out every other class, heavily modify them or make up new ones, but the game's default setting can be played as is, that ain't setting agnostic. That's a setting-specific game that can be adapted to play other settings, just like every other setting-specific game, including Shadowrun, which was brought up sort of off topic earlier.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on August 01, 2022, 03:53:08 AM
Quote from: hedgehobbit on July 30, 2022, 12:29:22 PM
That's true for the fighter, but not the paladin, thief, cleric, ranger, bard, cavalier, etc.
Cavalier, yes. Bard, perhaps. The others are fairly generic in everything except their level titles.
I saw that the 5e Iron Kingdoms tried to turn the Fellcaller into a Bard package. There is nothing about Fellcallers that indicates spellcasting, muchless a full 9 levels of spells.
Quote from: VisionStorm on August 01, 2022, 07:27:03 AM
RE everyone saying that 5e is setting agnostic: if you can't use it out of the box without having to hack out every other class, heavily modify them or make up new ones, but the game's default setting can be played as is, that ain't setting agnostic. That's a setting-specific game that can be adapted to play other settings, just like every other setting-specific game, including Shadowrun, which was brought up sort of off topic earlier.
Yeah, fanboys say this about every setting-specific game and it really grinds my gears. They clearly don't understand the amount of work involved. Whenever a non-D&D setting gets adapted to a D&D setting, the writers always have to basically reinvent the setting to fit the D&D rules unless they go to the effort of inventing entirely new classes to support setting specific stuff... particularly magic systems.
In fact, most D&D settings don't actually take into account the effect that D&D magic would have on the setting. No, not even Scarred Lands or Eberron which were specifically created with the D&D rules in mind. Go read some D&D fanfiction written by munchkins and you'll notice that an actually smart person using the magic system quickly causes the setting to deteriorate into a weird nightmarish setting more akin to
Transhuman Space or
Eclipse Phase with magic than anything resembling what official D&D writers write.
D&D is basically its own genre that apes fantasy conventions but can't actually emulate anything besides itself. If you use a house rule like E6 or something than you can reasonably pretend that it evokes [insert your favorite fantasy setting] but it's not ideal compared to a system intentionally designed to emulate [insert your favorite fantasy setting]. There's also tons of 3pp that you can use to enhance the illusion, I guess.
With other setting-specific games you run into worse problems because they don't even pretend to support other settings no matter how much fanboys like to claim. They don't have alternate campaign setting books like D&D and they don't have 3pp unless you can find fan conversions via google. You're better off using GURPS or even Risus. For some genres you might be able to find games designed to emulate that genre rather than a specific setting, but these are few and far between and they're generally not going to have a supplement treadmill.
EDIT: Furthermore, "fantasy" is too vague to create a single rpg that can reasonably emulate it. There are numerous kinds of fantasy that would need specific mechanics to evoke their atmosphere.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on July 30, 2022, 12:29:22 PM
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on July 30, 2022, 09:00:53 AMThe description of "fighter" makes no mention of home culture or era.
That's true for the fighter, but not the paladin, thief, cleric, ranger, bard, cavalier, etc. And the way elves and dwarves are described presumes a certain type of fantasy, the cleric presumes a certain type of religion, alignment presumes a certain cosmology, etc. There is very little in AD&D that is generic or useful for anything other than playing in a D&D-style world.
Level limits are also flavor.
Levels are just weird. They work as a gamist convention to illustrate PC growth and make players feel accomplished for playing, but level systems don't translate well into worldbuilding. Myths, fairy tales, and pre-D&D fiction didn't worldbuild in terms of levels, so you can't retroactively apply levels to those stories and expect them to make sense. (If you don't believe me, then look at stories like Hercules, Conan, Superman, the Lord of the Rings, etc, and tell me that the character's capabilities increased wildly over time like a D&D character. In general, fictional characters capabilities stayed pretty much the same throughout their stories until around the 80s or so when DBZ and D&D taught a generation of writers that characters must go from peasant to infinity. In fact, typical power fantasy anime start out with protagonists who are already god-like and never grow or change... because showing the power progression itself is boring I guess?)
Some post-D&D stories, or "GameLit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LitRPG#GameLit)" (see below), try to abstract it and integrate levels as an in-character abstract measurement of capability similar to karate belts, e.g. using medals to indicate an adventurer's overall skill.
And some stories go straight into the weird and make levels and experience points a literal part of the setting's physics. No, not in the parodic sense you see in Order of the Stick, the writers take this completely seriously. It's endemic in D&D-inspired anime and it's common enough in fiction to earn its own genre name "LitRPG (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LitRPG)". A spin-off genre, "GameLit," is used for settings that are inspired by rpg conventions but don't literally use game rules as laws of physics.
Anyway, in my opinion the fact that monsters also level up with the PCs negates the sense of progression to a degree. You have the illusion of progression because numbers go up and new spells are learned, but since the challenges also scale with your characters then it feels like the world is more or less stagnant aside from numbers and stakes going up (DBZ is a perfect example of this in anime form). Continuously raising the stakes into infinity is a problem with a lot of fiction that desensitizes audiences. Not to mention that, supposedly, most D&D campaigns never advance beyond around 10th level anyway so the high-level content is mostly a novelty thing.
Oh, what a world.