Sunbear Games

Making 3rd-party content for D&D 5e, and working to help bears around the world. Find us on twitter @Sunbear_Games or at our site sunbeargames.net

[eatyourdamnpears]

I’ve been in such a funk since the concert. I’m not even sure I enjoyed myself that much. maybe I did. I don’t know

[painsandconfusion]

Hey hi hello! I got a potential answer for you.

After ANY thrilling and/or happy experience, it's very possible for your brain to quite literally run out of the proteins and vitamins you need to make more happy chemical. People get dopamine crashes anywhere from a couple hours to a couple weeks after abormal but exciting events - whether it's a really good day, they did a lot of socializing, had a lot of fun hyperfocusing on a project, had an intense sexy time experience, a huge performance they were excited for, a date, a day at a theme part, etc etc etc.

Your brain goes into overdrive coming up with !!!!!!!! chemicals to keep up with your environment, then -especially if that was an abnormal experience or if you don't have the !!!!!! chemicals in excess very often- then you just run out for a while.

You can remedy this by finding other things that will be good, but not expect the !!!!! along with it. Instead of something you really really like doing, find something simple and calm and comforting. Snuggle with a friend and watch a movie, pet a cat, write a letter, etc.

Definitely get some vitamin d, chocolate if you can / like it, and take a multivitamin. Protein is important for regrowth and restocking, so get plenty of that too to bounce back quickly!

Love you much, I hope this passes very soon 🫂

[bloodsweatandpotato]

WAIT WAIT THATS A THING???

LIKE….

THATS WHY AFTER THE EXCITEMENT WEARS OFF FROM ME DOING LITERALLY ANYTHING THAT MAGKES ME “!!!!” I JUST FEEL BLEH AND IMMEDIATELY CRAVE *THING* AGAIN

SO IM NOT JUST BROKEN

ME AFTER MY FRICKING GAY BOOKCLUB WHERE I SEE ALL MY FRIENDS ONCE A MONTH

OR AFTER WATCHING AN EPISODE OF THE SHOW IM HYPERFIXATED ON

WHAT

[painsandconfusion]

Yes!! It can also be extra bad for different types of neurospicy bitches. My adhd brain has directly proportional drops every day. If I had a meh morning I’ll have a good evening (if no other factors interfere). If I have a FANTASTIC morning I’m sure to have a mental breakdown that night. I don’t regulate those chemicals well at ALL, and have extremely predictable emotional crashes as a result of that.

[voidlingghost]

I see and experience this phenomenon often when I actually do things. First hear about it in a LARP group - they called it drop, and I hear that term in theatre sometimes too. (This is why everyone goes to eat at a restaurant right after the event is over.) Point is, I'm glad there's like Science Reason backing up that emotional dead zone after an event. And now I'm gonna start meal planning for events.

[ckret2]

There's a fandom term called Post-Con Depression for the emotional slump (and sometimes physical exhaustion) you feel after getting home from a fun convention. After squeezing out all the happiness you can produce for several days straight, you run out of happiness for a few days. This is a known phenomenon!

[sunbeargames]

You can get this as a GM too, after running games. You might hear people reference DM drop. While my last campaign was going I'd predictably crash after sessions and the living room wouldn't get put back to normal until the next day.

One thing I found helps is trying to come down slowly. In this context, it often helps to have at least 1 player stick around and talk about the session, rather than trying to immediately reverse gears and go back to normal activities.

With running games it's also worse bc I'm making tons of decisions the entire time and that's mentally taxing, and I don't each much while I'm running the game because I need to be able to talk and not have my mouth full.

Sit down, have something to eat, and chill out for a while. Your brain needs to recover from high activity just like your body.

[sunbeargames]

Google has done many things wrong but right now the one that bothers me the most is that Google docs doesn't support small caps.

[shymagnolia]

so I got into grad school today with my shitty 2.8 gpa and the moral of the story is reblog those good luck posts for the love of god

[shymagnolia]

okay so i just got my dream job??? a week after applying to it?? and now i’m thinking….maybe this is the good luck post

[flagellant]

…..not even six hours later i got an offer of a well paying full time long-term job with free room and board in queens in nyc, allowing me independence and a way to escape an abusive situation and an unhealthy environment

likes charge reblogs cast, folks, this is the good luck post

[coffee-or-hot-cocoa]

i need all the help i can get for finals

[finnglas]

Hey so

the last time I reblogged this post right before I got a great job, in a permanent work-from-home position, with benefits, retirement, and a salary literally 3x what I was making before, doing something I really like. 

So you know. 

This might be the real one, y’all.

[azaraspirit]

what the hell? i could use some luck *hits reblog*

[worldheritageposts-official]

World Heritage Post

[monsoonsosoon]

reblogging again… need it bad lol 

[imsobadatnicknames2]

The thing about D&D being The Most Accesible TTRPG is that most of the ways in which D&D IS accesible are more due to having a large community, numerous third-party tools, and sheer force of cultural osmosis rather than due to anything about the actual design, mechanics, or contents of the system, but there's still a lot of people who act like accesibility is an inherent feature of D&D.

[avalynramsaygames]

D&D (read Hasbro) wants everyone to believe that it can be all things to all people, but it can't, and its nature discourages people from trying other games.

It has 3 mandatory rulebooks, each a couple hundred pages and totalling $100+ USD (last I checked). It takes a while to get familiar with the rules because it covers a lot of things in trying to cater to this Big Tent idea of welcoming fans new and old for every variety of fantasy. Once players become invested in D&D they often are disinclined to try other games because they believe that most if not all other TTRPGs will require a similar investment of money, time, and effort.

This is the BIGGEST issue IMO with D&D's market share.

Matt Colville put out a video recently that was not about this, but it made a very good case for why people should try games other than D&D. If you're having fun with it, good on you there's nothing inherently wrong with the rules, but if you are using it to play things it wasn't meant for, chances are there's another TTRPG out there that would better suit what you want to do (and a lot of them are MUCH cheaper than $100 USD).

[stinkyopossum]

listen, i’m not one to add to others’ posts, but i have some feelings about both of the above statements

yeah, D&D is not perfect nor is it the pinnacle of accessible TTRPGs, but it also has a lot of great aspects, plus this is a really fabulous point:

[Image ID: comment from user lansy22 that says “D&D is accessible as your DM lets it be.]

i’ve had some really great D&D experiences, and some really shitty ones (it was brought up above that D&D kind of makes people not want to try other TTRPGs, and that is a valid statement, and once i’ve been subject to myself), but a lot of D&D is about how your DM treats you and your party

some tips for making your D&D experience more enjoyable:

-all rulebooks are available for free somewhere online. just google “Player’s Handbook Dnd 5e pdf free” and something will come up. hell, you can even do that with written campaigns like the Curse of Strahd or Princes of the Apocalypse. i have spent exactly $0.00 on D&D sourcebooks and i’ve been playing for several years. google is your best friend here. found a paywall online? just search the specific thing you’re trying to lookup and find another site.

-if you haven’t played before, try to start a group with at least one person who has played before. it’s significantly easier to learn that way and pretty easy to teach someone how to play. i personally learned from listening to the adventure zone podcast, so podcasts are a good resource to learn to play

-regardless of what anyone says, there’s no right or wrong way to play. is there a rulebook? yeah. but there’s also even canon versions of D&D that deviate from these rules. what matters most is that you’re having fun

-and lastly, in reference to the posted image of a comment, if your DM is not taking into consideration you and your fellow players’ feelings about the campaign, find a new fucking DM. it’s not fun to have a DM who purposely tries to kill your characters or throws your backstories in your faces or makes battles way above your ability after you asked them to be less challenging. if your DM is telling you that you need to memorize and follow every single D&D rule (or purchase anything), find a new DM. D&D is as accessible as your DM lets it be. is this a lot of pressure on your DM? not really. just don’t be an asshole.

TLDR: overall, D&D does not need to be played perfectly and you can find free resources pretty easily if you just type in what you’re looking for into google. it’s not the most accessible TTRPG, but saying it’s the least accessible one is also inaccurate. you do not need to follow every single one of its million rules, you just need to be having fun. if your DM is not allowing you and your party to have a fun, accessible experience, find a new DM

[imsobadatnicknames2]

I don't disagree with anything you're saying, and they're very good points, but I think you're missing some crucial context here (and it's not your fault, the context of this post is kind of obtuse unless you're are aware of the kinda posts I tend to make).

At least until the question of the price came up in that reblog, this post wasn't really concerned with the idea that D&D is *inaccessible*. I don't think it is, but even if it was, it wouldn't really matter tbh. It's more about the fact that D&D's system isn't in any way inherently *more* accessible than the vast majority of other RPGs, but there's a lot of people who believe that and a lot of newcomers come into the hobby with that preconception.

And, more specifically, it's about the fact that if you're a GM who wants to run anything other than D&D, one of the most common arguments you'll hear when you get blown off is "dude just do it in 5e, it's more accessible". Even if what you're looking to run is a 16-page RPG with simplified mechanics and a smoother learning curve that's available for free on itch.io, you're bound to run into the "let's just play D&D, it's more accessible" argument at some point, and a lot of the time the people making that argument don't realize that the reason D&D was accessible for them was not because it's actually an easier system to learn, but because due to a mix of different factors (such as d&d's popularity, its presence in pop culture, WotC's enormous market share in the TTRPG industry, the way retailers are dedicating increasingly little shelf space to other systems to make room for more d&d, and many others) it's easier to find tons of people who are already familiar with D&D and willing to walk you through it than it is with any other system, and that other systems could be just as easy to learn if they were willing to spend a while interacting with their community.

(Like I said, this context is pretty obtuse if you're viewing this as an isolated post divorced from the kind of musings I tend to post about D&D's current place in the industry)

So, while statements like the fact that D&D's books are easy to pirate, that there's no obligation to follow the rulebooks to the letter and you can ignore as many rules as you want as long as you're having fun, and that you should find a GM who makes the game accomodating and accesible to you ARE true and they ARE good advice to make getting into D&D easier, they fall pretty beside the point for me because the problem I had in mind when I made this post wasn't really "D&D is super inaccesible because it costs hundreds of dollars and has a million rules", but more "There is a common set of misconceptions surrounding D&D's accessibility that often mislead people into believing that other systems are inherently harder to learn than D&D even when they're actually not"

[imsobadatnicknames2]

You know. With almost two years of hindsight I can confidently say I think I should have been WAY meaner here.

I don't entertain this kind of "If following the rules as written results in an unfun experience the that's actually your DM's fault because expecting the rules to work and be fun out of the box makes you a Bad DM, and not the game's fault for having rules that suck in the first place" nonsense anymore.

[sunbeargames]

Moreover, Indestructoboy made a video recently about the lack of accessibility in the books themselves. As in, how easy it is to navigate the physical book to find the information you need.

There are a lot of features that are very easy to add in InDesign (a pretty much industry standard layout program by Adobe) that even the new books just... Don't have.

The big one he talks about in this video is page numbers for references. If a given rule or ability references another rule or ability, it doesn't provide the page number for the thing it's referencing. You'd have to go to either the table or contents or the glossary to try to figure out where the information you need is, then flip to that page. Adding a page number reference that updates automatically even as things move around during layout design is. Really easy.

Another thing that's always bothered me is the spell descriptions being in alphabetical order. As opposed to being sorted by spell level, so if you want to look at all the 1st level spells available to you, you might have to flip through that entire section. They added information about which classes get access to the spell in the descriptions, but that doesn't really help you find them.

Accessibility has a lot of meanings, but as someone who cares a lot about layout design this one bothers me. The bigger a physical rulebook is, the more important it is to make it easy to find the information you need. There's nothing inherently wrong with a game having a lot of rules, but there IS a problem with not bothering to make it easy to find those rules when you need them at the table.

[cryptotheism]

Dude you have to listen to this DnD podcast the party has an edgy mean lesbian AND a melodramatic twink AND a muscle mommy AND a joke character. And get this: it's not good.

[cryptotheism]

And oh my god get this: exactly one of the characters is fat or disabled in a weirdly tokenized way.

[cryptotheism]

[qsycomplainsalot]

DnD campaigns make for shit storytelling for anyone but the few people who were actually playing it.

[sunbeargames]

I was thinking about this a while ago with regard to a previous campaign, that if I were to write out the events as a book it would be mid at best, if I worked really hard to edit it into shape.

But we still had a blast! I think this is part of the disconnect when people talk about storytelling with TTRPGs, and topics like railroading.

As a GM, while it may be tempting, you really don't need to worry about the campaign being good as a story in a traditional sense. Because it won't be! No matter how hard you try to squeeze your sessions into the mold of a 3 act structure or whatever, once you step back and look at the events as they actually played out it will look like a bit of a mess.

But that's fine, because the fun is in TELLING the story, not being told the story. Making up the narrative as you go along is fun in and of itself, so long as you aren't worried about the "final product" being "good".

In a similar vein, things that might seem cliche or overdone in traditional storytelling mediums are awesome to play out at the table. The most cliche adventure of rescuing a princess from a tower guarded by a dragon or whatever is a blast to play because hey! Look at us! We're fantasy heroes going on a quest to slay a dragon! And sure you could add in a twist like the princess and the dragon actually being friends or something like that, and that might make the story more interesting to tell to someone else, but you don't need to do that for a TTRPG.

Of course this isn't to say you shouldn't try to make the course of the game cohesive or that you can't add in fun twists, just that some of the tools we use when WRITING a story are not nearly as crucial when RUNNING a story.

I think this is also part of why people dismiss "rollplaying" games and dungeon crawlers. Five idiots going into a hole and dying is a pretty underwhelming plot for a book, but that has no bearing on whether it was fun to be one of those idiots, face the dangers, or try to escape alive.

[sunbeargames]

The free Preview Packet is here!

This free 52-page PDF contains levels 1-3 of the Oracle and Shapechanger classes, as well as 90 spells of 0-2nd level from Uvoir's Assemblage of Arcane Might.

You can find it on our store, and if you're interested in the full versions of the designs shown here you can of course purchase those as well, or get them as complimentary PDFs by joining our Patreon.

[maximumzombiecreator]

Since @thydungeongal is going through it with the "combat isn't roleplaying" people, I feel like it's worth pointing out that if you're playing a game system with a lot of combat and your big roleplaying moments are happening almost exclusively out of combat, that's a big storytelling problem that's happening.

Here are some classic story beats that most combat-heavy TTRPGs are easily capable of creating with their game mechanics:

The characters are fighting an overwhelming tide of enemies. One of them calls for a retreat, and the characters flee, only to realize that one of them stayed behind, sacrificing themselves to secure their escape.

A character is holding a single use weapon --a pistol with one shot, a scroll, a magical arrow-- and the situation is getting desperate, but that weapon has a hated foe's name on it. Do they use it now to save their friends and give up their one shot?

A character is fleeing from an enemy that has proven overwhelming in the past. Suddenly, they stop, and turn to fight. They are beginning to believe.

Two characters who have been separated for ages are finally fighting together again. They know exactly what to expect from one another, their abilities synergize perfectly, they fit one another. The carnal metaphor is obvious and goes unmentioned, but not unnoticed.

A character is dropped in a fight by an overwhelming foe who doesn't kill them, but tells them to stay down. They know if they get up, they'll die. They get up anyway.

The characters who bicker constantly and seem to hate each other outside of a fight are constantly upping the ante on who can put themselves in more danger for the other in a fight. When death is on the line, true feelings show through.

Filled with rage, one character in a fight is going too far, is being too reckless, is risking too much collateral damage. An ally steps between them and the target. If their bloodlust is truly out of control, then they'll face their friend next.

If you are experiencing a disconnect between combat and roleplaying in your combat roleplaying game, please consider whether you're telling the stories the system is equipped to tell. Because even the less great combat TTRPGs can create stories that rule.

[highly-invested]

The gang from stormlight have to start a band it'd be so good for their mental health. Adolin frontman guitar. Kaladin bass. Lift drums. Is this thing on hello

[jochi-the-veristithaylen-baker]

Shallan vocals. She can do the choir too. Renarin on keys. Jasnah is the band manager and responsible for PR. Zahel somehow shows up (most of the time) and plays rhythm guitar, and once in a blue moon he goes all out in a 20-minute solo that leaves the others speechless and unable to finish whatever song they were playing. Hoid gets a feature on one of the songs, but is never there when they play live, so Pattern does his flute parts as playback.

[highly-invested]

Shallan vocals but also Shallan pyrotechnics! Crazy lightweaving special effects!! Renarin on keys for sure no notes there

[sunbeargames]

Shardguitar.

[keplercryptids]

i don't "date" and i don't "chill" and i don't "hang out." i make pacts. i swear oaths. i forge unbreakable bonds. this makes me a cool breezy person to take on road trips et cetera

[thydungeongal]

Greenflame blade, a spell introduced into D&D in 4e as a Spellsword at-will, is a really interesting microcosm of how D&D 5e's rules have lots of little interactions that really don't want to cooperate with those types of spells.

The spell effectively allows the caster to make an attack with a melee weapon they are holding that deals fire damage and that also deals fire damage to a secondary target next to the primary target.

Now, of course, in D&D 4e expressing this was simple. All powers, whether martial attacks or arcane spells, used the same formula. You would know that the spell required a weapon due to the Weapon keyword and the fact that the spell had 1[W] in its damage entry.

Fast-forward to D&D 5e and we need to communicate that this spell needs a weapon so it can be cast. If a character were to be holding a weapon, that would mean that they would need their other hand free for making the somatic components of the spell, unless they had an arcane focus in their hand. Could the sword somehow be made to count as an arcane focus? Well, sadly, no, because the types of items a character can use as a spellcasting focus is already prescribed by their class.

Now, it would be possible to introduce a new class that had a bit of text that they could use melee weapons as arcane focuses. Some kind of Swords Mage. But we can't have that. That sounds strange. Instead we need to make this spell work for already established classes somehow.

So the weapon was instead made a material component of the spell.

Now the problem, of course, is that a character with a material component pouch or a spellcasting focus didn't actually need a weapon to cast it now.

A character can use a component pouch or a spellcasting focus (found in “Equipment”) in place of the components specified for a spell.

By a strict reading, a character could whack enemies on the head with their greenflame pouch or focus in lieu of using a weapon.

Which is why they later corrected the spell to state that it requires a weapon of at least 1 sp in value to cast. Because if a price is given for a material component, then it can't be replaced with a spellcasting focus or a material component pouch.

Which is one of the most roundabout ways of having to go about creating a spell that requires a weapon to cast and where the caster can make an attack with said weapon as part of casting the spells. But it's basically because 4e and 5e are pretty much written in completely different languages.

[maximumzombiecreator]

This is such an excellent example of how 5e seems unwilling to actually take advantage of its "natural language" rules policy. It'll let that policy introduce all kinds of ambiguities and verbosity that keywords would resolve easily, but a spell like this still has to be written as though it's got to stand up in court against a hostile lawyer instead of just saying, "you cast this without a free hand if you're holding the weapon you use to strike."

[sunbeargames]

It's a bit tangential, but this is also a good example of how the game's "natural language" ends up being really confusing to anyone who isn't used to its not-keywords.

The green flame blade cantrip is a spell that requires you to make an attack roll. But it's not a spell attack roll, it's a weapon attack roll. You can't use your spell attack modifier for the roll. No it's a melee weapon attack roll, so you have to use strength or dexterity for the roll. But the damage to the second target uses your spellcasting ability modifier.

Also, you're making an attack, but it's not part of the Attack action, so you can't use Extra Attack if you have it (apart from a few subclass features).

Oh and don't forget, the War Caster feat lets you cast a spell instead of making an opportunity attack when a creature moves out of your reach. Except, green flame blade has a range of "Self (5-foot radius) and War Caster says a spell needs to target only the fleeing creature, so it doesn't work.

And since the cantrip needs a melee weapon with a 1 silver piece cost, any non-physical weapons (like those created by the shadow blade or flame blade spells, or he psionic blades of the Soul knife rogue) aren't eligible. You can't use Flame Blade to cast Green Flame Blade.

(and this is only one spell that wasn't even in the PHB, don't get me started on making an attack, taking the Attack action, making an attack with a melee weapon, making a melee weapon attack, and making a melee attack roll. Those all mean slightly different things)

I think this is a good example of how 5e rules can be a real mess, and this is the kind of thing that puts a lot of players off trying to learn the rules. I remember being really confused by spell slots vs prepared spells when I was first learning the game, and I've had multiple players get confused by the way subclass expanded spell lists work (character level vs spell level, and how you might get 1st level spells at 1st level, but 2nd level spells aren't granted until 3rd level).

I can kind of understand looking at this mess and thinking the rules are too much trouble and it would be easier to just make things up as we go.

Moreover, since 5e is so dominant and a lot of this language has had time to become understandable to us, it's easy to forget how confusing it can be for a new player. The cultural landscape around 5e perpetuates the "you don't need to learn the rules" mindset, but the rules themselves are where that idea originates, by being obtuse and misleading in an attempt to appear approachable.

[britneyparallax]

One table top campaign I'd love to run or play in one day would be a Blades in the Dark game set in Menzoberranzan. Use the faction clocks to advance the plots of the various NPC noble houses. Meanwhile the players pull off heists and assassinations to pull their own house up the city's ranking of power and divine favor.

Uncovering Illithid plots or Duergar war plans in between the ruthless internal power struggles. Could be fun.

Would probably use Wicked Ones to run it, come to think. That's an excellent Forged in the Dark game that has playbooks that can easily map to/portray the Priestesses, Wizards etc. of the drow.

[sunbeargames]

This actually makes me want to run a BitD game set in the Nine Hells of my setting. Like the drow, scheming devils and the complex territories of the hells might make for a good drama-rich backdrop for a campaign.

[thydungeongal]

Someone shared your "modern dnd assumes players keep on winning" post on the fansofcriticalrole subreddit and the responses are what you'd expect.

A lot of pissing on the poor there (like people assuming that I think D&D needs to be played as a linear narrative instead of something largely player-driven where the issues pointed at in that post largely become non-issues) but I'm glad a few people have actually understood what I meant.

[thydungeongal]

Also a lot of people saying "these are DM issues" which is perverse and just another indication of the way D&D culture makes the DM shoulder a lot of responsibility in spite of the rulebooks providing almost zero support. Like, I personally am not happy about the fact that D&D provides almost zero support in the rules for the sort of play people want out of it, which is why I did mention in the very post that there are some games that support those stakes mechanically straight out of the box. And it's perverse to expect the DM to fix that issue so you can have your conventionally shaped narrative.

[thydungeongal]

And like, ironically, older editions of D&D (the ones mythologized as nothing but meat grinders in dungeons with no real "roleplaying") had actual mechanical support for alternate outcomes of encounters besides combat, including clear procedures for evasion and retreat. I know it's possible to retreat in modern D&D but the actual shape of the rules makes it much harder, where in earlier editions it was a simple group choice.

Added to that the idea that, imo, a game very much is about what it has rules for: D&D 5e has formalized procedures for building fair combat encounters that take party level into account (and according to conventional wisdom those guidelines result in encounters skewed in favor of the player characters) but it doesn't have formalized procedures for retreat, surrender, or breaking enemy morale. While it is a self-evident truth that the GM can make shit up, that doesn't change the text of the game, does it? The text of the game is about fights to the death which player characters can be generally expected to win unless they overextend themselves.

And as I keep saying, it runs fine as a dungeon crawler (and dungeon crawlers actually kick ass) and played as such it can actually be a great source of emergent narrative. But trying to bend the system to produce conventional heroic narratives is where you start seeing problems, unless, as a lot of people in that discussion have said, you force the GM to do a lot of extra work.

[sunbeargames]

To add to this, it's not just that the players are generally expected to win due to the math of encounters, it's also that losing pretty much only looks like a TPK. Which means that the DM then also has the challenge of having to provide safety nets for the players, lest the adventure end prematurely.

In the vast majority of encounters in 5e, if the encounter goes badly for the players it'll result in one or more character deaths. That's fine if you're running a meat grinder dungeon, because those players can roll up a new character and hop back in. It's not so great if you're trying to run a heroic narrative with a focus on those characters in particular.

So as a DM, if you notice the players are starting to struggle in a fight, you have two options.

1. Let it play out. Keep running the monsters as you would, and leave the party's fate up to the dice.

2. Steer the encounter towards a win for the party. Have the monsters act less tactically, or fudge rolls to the party's benefit, or provide some kind of deus ex machina to save the day.

Option 1 leaves you open to the risk of a TPK, in which the adventure pretty much ends. Sure there are ways you can salvage the campaign but this is far from ideal.

Option 2 lets the adventure continue, but can feel bad as a DM. You worry your encounter design wasn't good, or that you were dishonest with your players, or whatever.

Neither of those options is great, and as such you'll find a ton of advice online for how to avoid a TPK.

Now let's assume you have some rules for retreating, surrender, or turning a fight into a negotiation. Clear rules for how the party can live through an encounter that's going poorly. In some ways these are safety nets for the players, because they make it easier to survive otherwise fatal mistakes.

In other ways, these rules are a safety net for the DM! Now if you accidentally make an encounter too hard or whatever, the rules can provide the players a way out and you don't have to. In fact, it opens up a ton of new kinds of encounters!

Now you can have fights where, for example, the players are facing a monster they aren't strong enough to beat, but their actual goal is to fulfill some plot related task in the area and then get out. Their abilities are still useful for distracting the monster and holding it off, but they aren't expecting to win via incredible violence alone.

By having rules for letting encounters end before one side is a pile of corpses, the DM is freed from a lot of the burden of protecting the players. If they're losing, they can run! You don't have to wonder when to start pulling punches.

And I do think retreating especially requires clear rules, and I wouldn't be satisfied with it simply being a decision the party has to make. What if someone is grappled or restrained or slowed and will be left behind if the rest of the party runs? What happens if the enemies are blocking the escape route? What if a player is charmed or otherwise unable to agree to flee? These questions need answers, even if it's a simple checklist.

Moreover, the players kind of know this situation, in the back of their minds. They know the DM wouldn't cackle with glee at a TPK, they'd be just as sad as the party. And so to a certain extent it can be hard to avoid the game logic of "this fight must be winnable, otherwise the DM wouldn't have put these enemies here".

By having other ways for fights to end, players then have to really weigh whether to commit to encounters. They can no longer rest assured that every fight is skewed in their favor, because the DM is no longer the one responsible for keeping the party alive. That's the party's job.

[thydungeongal]

Roleplaying games are probably the only games-related hobby where there's people who flaunt their ignorance of the rules and actually think knowing the rules/playing in a way that the rules encourage is bad

[thydungeongal]

Incidentally this is why a lot of the time when I hear someone talking about RPGs and their point suddenly turns to "metagaming bad" I often just make a mental note of "oh! This person has nothing of value to say," and tune out. Like, the few times someone may have had a good point when bringing up "metagaming" or "metagame thinking" are vastly outnumbered by really obtuse people implicitly saying stuff like "knowing the rules is bad" or "acting according to incentive structures set up by the game is bad" or even "checking up on another player before doing something in game that you know might shock them is bad".

At this point the whole term belongs in the garbage imo

[sevilemar]

I mean, it is very frustrating when a player constantly let's their character act on knowledge they shouldn't have, because it means their character is always one step ahead of everyone else's character, always just a little bit better. It gets old really fast, because this way, nobody else can have a cool moment.

That is what metagaming means to me, and I think it's also the original definition as well.

Knowing the rules, or following incentives, and especially checking up on people is about as far from that as can be, isn't it?

(From what I've seen so far, a lot of these discussions seem to suffer from a general misunderstanding of what words mean to each party. It feels like everyone thinks they're using the same language, but really don't. I don't really know what to do with it, tbh.)

[thydungeongal]

I mean, that's the thing: "players letting characters act on knowledge they shouldn't have" is uselessly broad as a definition and doesn't even match the original definition of the term as it was introduced into TTRPG discussions, and arguments hinging on that definition almost as a rule don't result in good gameplay.

I think we can agree that in the context of a pretty rules heavy game about overcoming challenges players demonstrating system mastery so their characters may better overcome challenges is good, right? But monster stats are rules knowledge. A player demonstrating that they know that a troll regenerates damage unless they are damaged with fire or acid is good gameplay, but based on an overly broad and useless application of the term metagaming it is often brought up as an example of undesirable gameplay. There is no quicker way to hurt player engagement than forcing them to refrain from demonstrating system mastery and expecting them to basically pretend to not know things until the GM gives their character the privilege of knowing "fire hurts trolls."

The term is overly broad and the way it is thrown around does it no favors. There are better ways to talk about players using out-of-character knowledge without using such a useless term, and even then that discussion should always take into account questions of genre, desire outcomes from play, and especially whether that discussion is even useful in the context of a given game (for an example: D&D very much being a vehicle for players to develop and demonstrate system mastery, punishing players for demonstrating system mastery runs counter to the game itself).

[sunbeargames]

To me, metagaming seems more about taking advantage of the fact that the game is a game, rather than any specific rules knowledge.

There was an example in another post of the player knowing that if the encounter contains a troll, then it very likely contains fire, because the DM or the adventure writer wouldn't put that enemy there without a way to take advantage of its weaknesses. I wouldn't say that knowing "trolls is weak to fire" is metagaming, and I wouldn't even say "holy shit a troll, distract it while I look for something to set it on fire" is metagaming. But "oh a troll, don't worry there must be a source of fire damage in this area" probably is.

Similarly, in a long-running D&D campaign, the players kind of know that the DM doesn't actually want to TPK them. That usually means an end to the adventure, and while 5e might be most effective as a "weirdos go into a pit of danger and maybe die" game, a lot of people want to tell long-running plot-driven stories that focus on the characters. Therefore, the DM has an incentive to steer encounters away from a TPK if one seems imminent. A player taking stupid risks or choosing not to engage with an encounter because they expect the DM to save them from their own choices might be metagaming.

Let's call that "type 1" metagaming for the purposes of this discussion, which involves making decisions based on the overall design and structure of the game being played, rather than any specific mechanics. At this point, you're not so much engaging with the game as you are trying to outhink the designers or take advantage of your DM. Unfortunately, we're usually aware of these factors on some level while we play, so as long as you're not relying on them I think it's fine.

Type 2 metagaming might be something like reading ahead in an adventure or looking up the stats of a monster you're fighting. The goal of type 2 metagaming is to gain prior knowledge of events or challenges in search of a tactical advantage. If you already know trolls are weak to fire, fine whatever. But looking up the requirements for killing Strahd instead of playing out the adventure in search of that knowledge? I'd call that metagaming. In many cases, information is the reward your characters are seeking, so when you try to get that information from an outside source you're just... skipping the fun part? The part where you actually play the game?

Type 3 metagaming then would be using general system mastery to your advantage, and at this point I no longer really consider it "metagaming" as something to be avoided. This is just playing effectively. Picking options that synergize with your abilities, using your features to their fullest, and making decisions based on what will be most effective according to the rules is just playing the game. My fighter character doesn't know what an attack roll is, but that doesn't mean I can't use Action Surge when the boss is prone. I think people sometimes object when the decision your character would make clashes with the mechanically better option (for example ditching your family's heirloom sword when you find a +1 sword), but I don't think that's a useful lens to look at things with.

Type 4 metagaming would be following the game's incentive structure and taking actions that are rewarded by the rules. Doing the thing the game gives you XP for. The game wants you to do that thing, and yes your character has no idea what XP is but again that's fine. Stalling out the game because "my character doesn't want to go adventuring" and claiming you're avoiding metagaming gets you kicked from my table.

So type 1 and type 2 I'd consider actual issues. Taking advantage of the fact that it's a game and relying on the DM to bail you out to avoid prematurely ending the campaign, or using outside resources to gain knowledge (mechanical or otherwise) that you were supposed to find out through play.

Type 3 and 4 I don't consider real problems, the issue is people being so afraid of metagaming that they worsen the experience for others or nitpick people for playing the game as the designers intended.

Anyways metagaming is only one of a variety of ways you can be a nuisance at the table. Its not the root problem at all, it's just one way that problematic behavior can manifest. Avoiding metagaming doesn't mean you're free of the capacity to cause issues.

[level2janitor]

whenever someone complaints abt a ttrpg being 'gamey' the standard response is "well what did you expect?? you're playing a game, dipshit". but i think by 'gamey' the actual criticism being made is that it feels artificial

5e's always felt gamey to me because of the annoying obligation to balance encounters and an adventuring day. you need to have enough encounters to drain the wizard's resources, they need to walk a tightrope between challenging the PCs and not TPK-ing them, etc etc.

and everyone talks about how hard this is on the GM with the limited tools 5e gives you (which it is) but it also has the unrelated effect of feeling extremely forced from a player-side. the illusion of a consistent world starts to slip because what the PCs encounter has to revolve around the PCs for the game to work.

also i've been seeing a lot of 4e defending on my dash lately and like, yes it's a good game that's very good at the thing it chooses to do. but the criticism that 4e feels gamey (read: artificial) is extremely valid; the strict separation between combat and non-combat results in all flavor basically being only flavor

there's a 4e paragon path you can take called the Entrancing Mystic, whose powers have flavor text describing how you bewitch and ensnare the minds of your enemies. what do the powers actually do? some forced movement in the combat boardgame. what happens if you use them out of combat? who knows! they certainly weren't designed to be used that way, because their actual effect is measured only in terms of the combat boardgame

obviously there's a lot of aspects of non-4e D&D and similar games that are unrealistic. hit points are not how being stabbed works. but certain gamisms bother me more bc they create a clear disconnect between the fiction and the mechanics in a more tangible way.

like, 13th age's resting system (great game but i wanna pick on it here) has you fully heal every 3 or 4 encounters. only had one encounter? no full heal-up, even if you're resting. you have had four encounters? you get a full heal-up. there's a halfhearted sidebar about how the GM should contrive a reason for the heal-up to happen.

as a game balance mechanic, it's great! but i despise it because it's so disconnected from the reality of the game world. HP and fully healing on a rest isn't realistic, but it's an abstract representation of something that happens in the fiction. take a rest -> fully heal is unrealistic but internally consistent with the game world. 13th age healing is not - the in-universe characters can never acknowledge it as it makes no in-world sense.

anyway the reason i'm grumpy abt this lately is the MCDM game has a taunt mechanic that's just straight-up called taunting and it irks me so so bad. again, great game, super fun, but taunting leads to so many situations where an NPC does stuff they wouldn't do

y'know, like a videogame! where the dialogue and personality is just a skin over a set of game mechanics. and when NPCs start behaving out of character with no in-world justification (cause taunts aren't mind control ofc, it's just a guy... taunting you) they feel gamey. artificial.

i like all of the games i brought up (except probably 5e) but i had to get that out of my system thanks for coming to my ted talk

[mydnd]

but i think by 'gamey' the actual criticism being made is that it feels artificial

Could you list any ttrpgs that don't have mechanics that feel artificial? id say Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, or Ironsworn, but even they have them even though they are fiction first games.

there's a 4e paragon path you can take called the Entrancing Mystic, whose powers have flavor text describing how you bewitch and ensnare the minds of your enemies. what do the powers actually do? some forced movement in the combat boardgame. what happens if you use them out of combat? who knows! they certainly weren't designed to be used that way, because their actual effect is measured only in terms of the combat boardgame

I am pretty sure youre talking about this power:

what happens in combat is exactly what happens outside of combat; you deal psychic damage and you move the target a number of squares. What are squares? 5 feet of movement per square. I prefer this approach because it's clearer and more concise. Instead of reading through two paragraphs to understand that the spell deals damage and moves the creature in any direction I choose, I get straight to the point. After all, as a player, I'm the one interpreting the rules, not my character.

but certain gamisms bother me more bc they create a clear disconnect between the fiction and the mechanics in a more tangible way.

I don't see a disconnect from the flavor text and what the power actually does. The information is just not burying game mechanics in fluff to appease some false sense that you are not playing a game. It tells you upfront what this power looks like in the fiction and then it presents the game mechanics associated with what's happening. The 13th Age mechanics are weird though, i'll give you that.

anyway the reason i'm grumpy abt this lately is the MCDM game has a taunt mechanic that's just straight-up called taunting and it irks me so so bad. again, great game, super fun, but taunting leads to so many situations where an NPC does stuff they wouldn't do y'know, like a videogame! where the dialogue and personality is just a skin over a set of game mechanics. and when NPCs start behaving out of character with no in-world justification (cause taunts aren't mind control ofc, it's just a guy... taunting you) they feel gamey. artificial.

I get where you're coming from, but I think taunting can be a valid mechanic if it's handled well. Sure, it's not mind control, but in real life, taunting can mess with someone's head, make them act rashly, or get under their skin. We see it all the time in sports, where players trash talk to throw off their opponents' focus, or in debates where one side uses insults to provoke an emotional reaction. Even in a street fight, someone might use taunting to make their opponent lose their cool and make a mistake.

[sunbeargames]

I think it's also important to consider how a mechanic that feels "gamey" in one genre might be more appropriate in another.

Continuing the MCDM rpg example, the taunted condition (which imposes a heavy penalty on attacks that don't target the taunter, but doesn't actually force enemies to target you) doesn't make much sense if you're fighting enemies with complex motivations and rich inner lives. In any kind of real combat, somebody shouting insults or challenges at you isn't going to get you to ignore a downed target you're about to finish off.

But the game explicitly bills itself as "tactical cinematic heroic fantasy" and for that, I think the taunted condition makes more sense. It's the moment one of the heroes says some cheesy line to the effect of "pick on someone your own size" or whatever, and the monster leaves whoever it was terrorizing and switches it's focus to the taunter. The mechanic works well in service of the heroic themes (calling attention to yourself to save an ally) and the cinematic aims (using your action to change the course of the fight in a meaningful way, and is easily visualized).

So it's not so much that taunting lacks an in-world justification, it's that it has an in-genre justification. The combat is about creating cinematic action sequences, and that takes priority over enemies always acting strictly in-character. Taunting isn't mind control, it's the player bending the narrative a bit to support a cool scene.

[thydungeongal]

You might like The Elusive Shift by Jon Peterson. It's about the early history of TTRPGs and how the genre and the surrounding cultures of play came to be.

It specifically talks a lot about the "roleplay vs rollplay" false dichotomy and how that argument has been going on literally since day 1. TTRPG fans have been arguing over whether this or that "counts" as roleplaying from the very beginning.

We're just rehashing age-old arguments baybeeee

But yeah I should check it out, thanks for the recommendation! :)

[thydungeongal]

So like D&D isn't great for producing a conventionally satisfying narrative because in modern Western storytelling stories of the action genre (where D&D is firmly planted in) don't generally feature the main characters having an unbroken streak of victories against their opposition (a feature of modern D&D) but feature defeats and setbacks. When D&D is the most highly opinionated about combat and rules as written death is the main consequence of losing in combat and what you want is characters being able to suffer meaningful losses while not always being at the risk of death, you have tension between the needs of the narrative and the game mechanics.

But more than that, when a group does patch the rules to be more conducive to that and fudges the rules and manages to somehow force the game into producing a conventionally satisfying narrative, given that a lot of that was done in spite of D&D it feels like it would be giving credit where none is due to attribute that story to the game and not the group's efforts in spite of the game.

None of that is to say that D&D played on its own terms can't produce good narratives. In fact, I think the best stories related to D&D are not the sort of stuff you see in actual plays, but the sort of perfect alignment of system, fiction, and chance that can only happen in a medium that utilizes those three things. "A player figured out how to utilize the rules of the game in a way that made perfect sense in the fiction and produced an unpredictable outcome that significantly altered the course of events" is a much cooler story in the context of D&D than "The GM funneled the party into an encounter with the bad guy and the bad guy had an epic speech prepared."

And this applies to pretty much any RPG, to be fair. Even the weirdest, most obtuse RPG can produce lots of really cool unique narratives if taken at its own word. What that sometimes means is reconsidering what kinds of stories you think are good, and instead of forcing a game to produce the exact types of narratives you want letting the game take the driver's seat.

[sunbeargames]

I've been thinking about this issue a lot in the context of MCDM's Draw Steel, which is still in playtesting.

Draw Steel has a resource called Victories, which you earn when the party overcomes a significant challenge (either through combat, negotiation, subterfuge, etc). Victories make your characters a bit stronger by empowering some abilities and giving you more of your Heroic Resource to work with in fights, and then when you take a respite between adventures they get converted to XP. I like this as an incentive to keep going during an adventure instead of resting at every opportunity.

Victories can also be awarded for secondary objectives. For instance, in the opening encounter of the Fall of Blackbottom adventure included in the playtest, the heroes are in a collapsing inn that is being attacked by demons. If they save a certain number of civilians before the inn completely collapses, they can earn a bonus Victory.

I think it could also be possible to extend this idea and say that you could "win" a combat encounter but still earn no victories because you weren't heroic enough. In the above example, if you let a certain number of civilians die to the demons or the fire, you don't earn a Victory even if you defeat the demons and escape.

And conversely, you might be able to earn one or more Victories even without "winning" the fight because you did the heroic thing and achieved your goals, even if you had to retreat.

I'm liking Draw Steel so far because it seems like it will be better suited to the kinds of stories people have been trying to tell with D&D lately. I'm still waiting to see how they implement more rules for non-TPK fail states, because the players characters are still very hard to kill. I think if it can facilitate the party being defeated well without needing them to die, it will be really great for telling stories that are more true to the kinds of heroic narratives we love in fiction. Meaningful setbacks and losses are really important, and in a game that's still so combat-focused it'll be nice to be able to engage fully with those mechanics.

There were a lot of points when I was running 5e where I felt like I should have presented a more dangerous encounter, but doing so would have run the risk of ending the adventure prematurely. I think in a game that supports a wider variety of fail states, it'll be easier to truly challenge the party and tell more complex stories.

[sunbeargames]

Got to run the playtest of Draw Steel for my players. It's the new "tactical cinematic heroic fantasy" TTRPG from MCDM.

As a combat engine, it's a huge improvement from 5e. Better resource economy and better class design.

Everyone has a "heroic resource" to manage that goes up during each fight and can be spent on cool abilities. Rather than spamming Fireball at the start of each encounter, your cool moves are what you use to actually turn the tide of the fight or finish off the enemies.

Your turn is never wasted on missing. The Power Roll has a 3-tier result system, and on most abilities even getting a tier 1 result still does something good. You are always making progress, and so you never have the issue of waiting for your turn and then accomplishing nothing because you rolled a 1.

Initiative works by swapping back and forth between the heroes and the Director. The players pick one person to go, then I have a monster (or small group of monsters) act, then another player goes. The players decide the order they act in, which promotes a lot of teamwork.

The Director has a resource called Villain Points they can gain and spend like the Heroic Resources, so I can pull out cooler abilities as the fight goes on.

All that stuff is really flashy and cool, and was surprisingly easy to run. It was a little rocky like learning a new system always is, but we got the hang of things pretty fast.

I think ultimately Draw Steel still has to prove it can support the person running the game better than 5e did (a low bar, admittedly).

Currently, I'm waiting to see how it handles fail states other than dying. The heroes are hard to kill, which I like, but that means there needs to be ways for them to lose without the adventure ending, otherwise the stakes kind of just disappear because I'd have an incentive to pull my punches and not have things end in an anticlimactic fashion.

Rules for things like retreating, chase scenes, heroes being captured, and generally making it easy to help the party fail forward are going to be really important.