I've had a lot of DND players, often people that exclusively play DND, tell me they like it that way.
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I’ve had a lot of DND players, often people that exclusively play DND, tell me they like it that way. They like that there’s basically no rules for conflict outside of combat. “Just talk it out” and “we’re here to role play stop looking at your sheet”.
Personally, not my taste. If we’re just going to “talk it out” I feel like we should write a book instead. That or actually rip out the stunted social rules in DND. That would help the annoying thing where the real life Sales Guy brings his whole personality into his 8 Cha Fighter.
But I also think a lot of those people have never really played anything else, and like dnd’s “barely any rules” better than whatever fantasy they’re imagining.
I like that games with working social rules can let someone who’s shy or quiet play someone socially powerful, just like a physically weak person can play a strong barbarian.
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I’ve had a lot of DND players, often people that exclusively play DND, tell me they like it that way. They like that there’s basically no rules for conflict outside of combat. “Just talk it out” and “we’re here to role play stop looking at your sheet”.
Personally, not my taste. If we’re just going to “talk it out” I feel like we should write a book instead. That or actually rip out the stunted social rules in DND. That would help the annoying thing where the real life Sales Guy brings his whole personality into his 8 Cha Fighter.
But I also think a lot of those people have never really played anything else, and like dnd’s “barely any rules” better than whatever fantasy they’re imagining.
I like that games with working social rules can let someone who’s shy or quiet play someone socially powerful, just like a physically weak person can play a strong barbarian.
A significant part of the culture that has formed around 5e is about “having it all”. And usually by ignoring the (admittedly weak) rules that do exist, rather than exploiting actual gaps. So, you can frankenstein together a caster that has martial proficiency in armour (or even melee weapons), with the only compromise being your capstone abilities (which often are very expendable). And then you can metagame away your shitty social abilities by “roleplaying”.
I’m not going to defend 5e – I genuinely think it’s a poorly made game, and place the blame for that entirely on the execuitives – but the reason why so many people refuse to try something else is because they like the exploits that they believe exist, even though they are totally socially constructed.
