all these arguments about how d&d is Good, Actually because system doesn't matter and everyone house rules everything anyway and it's encouraging you to think like a designer would hit if wotc wasn't asking you for one hundred and eighty american dollars for the privilege finishing their work - ThreadSky

beeftime.itch.io • 11 days ago

all these arguments about how d&d is Good, Actually because system doesn't matter and everyone house rules everything anyway and it's encouraging you to think like a designer would hit if wotc wasn't asking you for one hundred and eighty american dollars for the privilege finishing their work

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wurtztime.bsky.social•11 days ago

But how else would we get to experience the unrivaled game design insights of Jeremy "classes aren't system" Crawford?

brokshi.bsky.social•11 days ago

posts that make me wish i could repost a bunch of times in a row like tumblr

beeftime.itch.io•11 days ago

I just now noticed that I missed an "of" between "privilege" and "finishing" and am looking for a sword to fall on

brokshi.bsky.social•11 days ago

nah it's fine

tuxedocatfish.bsky.social•11 days ago

it always comes back to labor. nobody is really objecting to the idea of doing game design, they're objecting to the idea of spending $169.95 for really fucking bad game design in books your players aren't going to read

beeftime.itch.io•11 days ago

🎯

volteer133.bsky.social•11 days ago

It's the Fallout 76/Bethesda effect, now if only more people scrutinized it the same way.

odin032402.bsky.social•11 days ago

what gets me about D&D 5e is it was released half unfinished half deliberately bad. Encumbrance is unusable, there's no system to hook the overland travel rules into gameplay, the survival rules are in the DMG and bad, the social rules are in the DMG and okay but are supposed to be in the PHB 1/??

odin032402.bsky.social•11 days ago

the stealth rules were left in the beta but for some reason we still have the outline of them present on everyone's sheets, skills barely do anything anymore so why even have them, ranger's first two levels are sacrificed to a set of optional rules that release a month after the PHB 2/??

odin032402.bsky.social•11 days ago

tools are mandatory but don't do anything without a 50 dollar rules patch, magic items are optional but half the monster manual resists nonmagical attacks and 1/4th are outright immune, feats are optional but most of the games functions and customization are locked behind them 3/??

odin032402.bsky.social•11 days ago

and there's nothing to do with any of the loot the players get in their dungeon looting game because they can't RAW get anything more meaningful than a potion that heals 2d4+2 HP.

Charging the same price for this disgrace that they charged for a 3.0 PHB is nothing short of insane 4/5

odin032402.bsky.social•11 days ago

my 3.0 PHB is 60 pages shorter, has rules for literally everything included in the system IN the PHB, plus 15 pages of it are actually a sample of the monster manual and the DMG with magic items and enemies, with a tutorial on how to make your own dungeon to boot

And it has a character maker CD 5/5

odin032402.bsky.social•11 days ago

Also I apologize for rampantly nostalgiaposting for a corporate product but like come on man.

michaelsmindonline.bsky.social•11 days ago

Not defending 5e, but I am interested in hearing how 5e is more of a culprit of this than other TTRPGs. Outside of the CR system from 2014 being useless, there is no excuse for that.

beeftime.itch.io•11 days ago

in broad strokes I think table-created rules are a great thing and one of the things that makes TTRPGs so unique and incredible -- but -- shouldn't be a necessity to wrestle a bad game into playability. Also wouldn't matter at all if wotc wasn't asking you for a nearly $200 buy-in

beeftime.itch.io•11 days ago

I think it's pretty telling that from even long term players and GMs the refrain isn't "the game is actually fine RAW" it's "yes the game is bad but you can ignore almost all of it and just do your own thing" which, fine, but I can do that without spending all that money

michaelsmindonline.bsky.social•11 days ago

That is my confusion though, I don't see people who 5e say RAW is bad. I also don't see people pointing out WHAT is bad about it, which is my biggest question.

It's not a perfect game in any regard, I'm just not seeing a justification for it being called a worse game then any other TTRPG.

tuxedocatfish.bsky.social•11 days ago

Well, as a preamble, you're never going to get a consistent answer to this because the biggest problem with D&D is simply its status as the Popular Default that sucks all the air out of the room. Even the rare *well-designed* parts of D&D will grate on people who want different kind of game.

tuxedocatfish.bsky.social•11 days ago

The thing that annoys me personally is that I actually really love tactical combat TTRPGs. My ideal game makes the boundary between "skirmish wargame" and "TTRPG" almost non-existent. To make game requires very tightly balanced rules so that creative self-expression and system mastery can co-exist.

michaelsmindonline.bsky.social•11 days ago

I know everyone's gripe with 5e is going to be different. But if it is so broken it needs to be called out then point out what is inherently broken

Not trying to pick a fight btw. I am just trying to understand.

beeftime.itch.io•11 days ago

ah, sorry, misunderstood. There's a lot but in broad strokes in my opinion it presents itself as a do-everything fantasy world simulator and narrative engine but is mechanically a clunky and mostly unbalanced quasi-tactical combat game. All of the big problems I have with the system...

compliant-hornet.bsky.social•11 days ago

I also think it's very worth talking about what an rpg does out of the box without modification. If there's ever to be critique or discussion of a game, then you need to be very clear about the modifications you've made, no?

compliant-hornet.bsky.social•11 days ago

I think a lot about online recipe comments saying this recipe is bad because I made these substitutions; this game is good because I made these homerules.

beeftime.itch.io•11 days ago

this is really a perfect analogy. If you want do riff on a soup you might be better served with a soup recipe than hacking your way there from a shitty cake recipe that requires 200 bucks of ingredients, most of which never used

compliant-hornet.bsky.social•11 days ago

It was the closest thing I could think of for people trying to share a necessarily individual experience rendered from an infinite palette.

As an aside- if you _do_ hack it from a cake, that's great, honestly! But if you tell me you love cake and want to share it with me and give me soup...

yesthatkefke.bsky.social•11 days ago

Who the hell is still buying the books other than the PDF pirates?

beeftime.itch.io•11 days ago

from what data is available, a lot. I think 5e player's handbook has sold over 1.5m copies, a figure that doesn't include local shop or (apparently?) amazon sales

maiasgameroom.bsky.social•11 days ago

$180+ for a game you’re forced to fix is a rip-off tbh especially when there’s already a system out there that nails what you’re homebrewing 5e to do. why keep wrestling with something you have to bend and break just to make it work for you?

beeftime.itch.io•11 days ago

it's insane. why give that much money to an objectively awful corporation to beat their shitty system into submission when I could pay a fraction of that to small/independent creators with systems that help you do the exact thing you're trying to do and (correctly!) defending participating in

maiasgameroom.bsky.social•11 days ago

well it's partly familiarity, sunk cost fallacy, and unwilling to try something new, people will stick with something no matter how poorly designed if it's something they're used to - as a UX designer I have to research stuff like this all the time

beeftime.itch.io•11 days ago

I think the sunk cost thing is huge with D&D because it is such an unwieldy system. If you're taught through engagement with it that every TTRPG must be like this than you're going to start at the assumption that learning anything else is going to be a huge investment too

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