#d&d 2024

[biggs-regretti]

Marmalade "Dandy" Amberberry Halfling, Bard of Dance

[aureachaos]

Scar: Can Mister Wizard use a slight of hand to steal something from the dead man?

Grian: You don't need to! He can't- he's not gonna fight back!

Pix: You can go up and take whatever the skeleton had, but what he has is just...bones? Right now? And you already, if I'm remembering correctly, have some bones

Gem: Can you guys investigate something useful?

[agentnoun]

So, Why is D&D 5e/Modern D&D So Hard to DM, Anyway?

As I'm working on my own TTRPG system (my first attempt at it!) I've been reading a lot about game design producing stories. (Shout out to @anim-ttrpgs, @imsobadatnicknames2, and @thydungeongal for some especially interesting posts on the topic!)

That all got me thinking about Dungeons & Dragons, specifically modern D&D, and how it's designed. Despite having played/run quite a bit of D&D, across multiple editions, and having played/run a pile of other systems I like a lot more than D&D, I don't often sit down and actually think about D&D's game design in detail.

It's common to talk about how D&D 5e (and, by extension, its 2024 revision) is especially hard on DMs, and it's true. It's one of the systems most prone to lead DMs to burnout and it helps to propagate the narrative that DMing (and GMing in general) is a laborious process. But why is that? What exactly about the system makes it so tough for DMs to run?

The first and most obvious is that it's a system that wants you to care about competitive game balance (both PC vs. NPC and also comparing PCs to one another), but the tools it offers to achieve that are completely broken. But everybody knows that part. And while D&D is more complex than it presents itself, I don't actually think that's the major factor in it being especially difficult to run. There are plenty of reasonably-complex or crunchy systems that are easier to run, and simpler systems that are harder to run. Complexity isn't the real culprit here, either.

Instead, I think the problem is about storytelling.

"D&D Is About Storytelling"

D&D presents itself as an engine for stories. Let's take a look at an excerpt from the introduction of the Player's Handbook for the 5th edition (I don't have the 2024 edition myself):

The Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game is about storytelling in worlds of swords and sorcery. It shares elements with childhood games of make-believe. Like those games, D&D is driven by imagination. It's about picturing the towering castle beneath the stormy night sky and imagining how a fantasy adventurer might react to the challenges that scene presents. . . . In the Dungeons & Dragons game, each player creates an adventurer (also called a character) and teams up with other adventurers (played by friends). Working together, the group might explore a dark dungeon, a ruined city, a haunted castle, a lost temple deep in a jungle, or a lava-filled cavern beneath a mysterious mountain. The adventurers can solve puzzles, talk with other characters, battle fantastic monsters, and discover fabulous magic items and other treasure.

Yeah, I'd say that fits the popular conception of what D&D is. It certainly fits the play culture around it. But I'd argue it doesn't actually describe the game you hold in your hand. The rules of the game don't actually support the majority of what that promises.

The rules do support the "battle fantastic monsters" part, though. If that paragraph described D&D as a game about powerful fantasy adventurers fighting monsters, I'd say that's pretty accurate. That isn't the game most people are picking up modern D&D to play. They've been promised epic adventures, treks across dangerous wilderness, deep dungeons, puzzles, and drama. D&D certainly offers rules to cover some of those, but they're threadbare.

And for others, it's all on the DM. The game presents "puzzles" as something that it's about, but you won't find puzzles, or rules to design puzzles, anywhere in the actual game. If a group wants a good dungeon crawl, sure, the Dungeon Master's Guide gives some basic instruction on drawing a map and populating the dungeon, but it has almost nothing for how to run a dungeon, how to make it into gameplay.

What that means is that it's fully incumbent on DMs to provide almost all of what the game actually promises. The system will hold up its end of the deal when a fight breaks out (sort of, see the "game balance" note above), but until then, it's all on the DM.

That's one reason why D&D groups so often skip over traveling long distances, despite that travel often being where a lot of adventure occurs in much of D&D's source material: the game just doesn't really give you good rules for travel. I can open up Mythic Bastionland and see, on just one page, a system that turns travel into play, but D&D doesn't offer that.

Similarly, D&D doesn't really give you actual structures for creating, running, or playing dungeons, despite that being the first word of its title. How many boring, tedious dungeon crawls have you sat through as a DM tries to invent dungeon crawling all on their own? How many modern D&D groups do you know that just don't bother with actual dungeons at all because of that? Sometimes a DM pulls it off anyway (a 5e game I'm currently in just had a really fun heist of a dungeon crawl), but when that happens, it takes a huge amount of skill and work from the DM because the system doesn't provide any scaffolding for it. That fun heist I got to play happened because of the DM's heavy lifting. Not many DMs can do that, and they shouldn't have to. For many people, Dungeons & Dragons isn't about dungeons at all, not because dungeons are inherently boring, but because the game doesn't offer any rules for playing a dungeon.

Doing It Right

By contrast, let's take a look at Delta Green. Let's see what Delta Green promises players and Handlers up front:

Delta Green is not about guns. Delta Green is not about a bug hunt. Delta Green is not about understanding. Delta Green is about the end. The end of everything. Your family, everyone you know, your country, all life on Earth. It’s about the end of everything and your place in it. Because you’ll end, too. That’s what the fear is about. That’s what the game is about. It’s not about winning and it’s not about advancement and it’s not about the best weapon or the most clever plan. Delta Green is about the end of everything—and how much of it you’ll live to see. Welcome.

Damn, heavy stuff, and some big promises. But here's the cool thing: it fulfills those promises.

Delta Green agents are presented as competent, and so the rules support that, with a skill system that allows you to skip rolling entirely on a regular basis because your character's just that good.

But at the same time, those agents are in way over their head, and we're told that their efforts to keep the unnatural from devouring their world will inevitably destroy their life, break their mind, kill them, or, more likely, all three. Wouldn't you know it, that's also what the rules do. Agents are competent, but human, with human capabilities and fragility. In the face of unnatural monsters, your agent is extremely vulnerable; even in the face of a totally natural human with a gun, your agent is extremely vulnerable. Death is always just around the corner for an agent of Delta Green. But even if you don't die, the Sanity system works together with the Bonds system to produce your agent's inevitable, yet extremely personal, downward spiral.

You want an emotional character arc in your trad game? You'll get one in Delta Green just by playing the rules as written. And if the Handler somehow runs out of great operations to run, the Handler's Guide has clear, helpful advice on creating and running your own.

D&D... doesn't do that. It promises a type of game that it's reliant on DMs to provide. Delta Green, along with many other well-designed TTRPGs, actually provides the game they say they do, and that means it's much easier for a game master to deliver on that promise.

D&D will provide the combat, and promises a story that it actually expects the DM to provide all on their own. Combine that with a general lack of quality official adventures or campaigns to run and that's how you get a play culture where the DM is part author, part game designer, part film director, part improv actor, and part tactical wargame player and referee.

Side Effects

All of this would be just trivia if D&D was just one of many popular TTRPGs, but it's by far the most popular among English-speaking players. It's so popular that it functionally defines the entire hobby for most people who engage with TTRPGs at all.

That leads to an interesting situation with critiques like the one I wrote above, which is that, to someone whose primary (or only) TTRPG experience is with modern D&D, everything I wrote above looks absurd. I know this, because that used to be me, not even that long ago. At the time, reading things about how D&D's rules don't support certain kinds of storytelling hit me sort of like, "Well, okay, but isn't that the players' and DM's job anyway? What would rules to support that even look like?" I'd think to Powered by the Apocalypse games like Dungeon World and, while I liked those, that's not what I wanted in my D&D. It seemed to me that people critiquing D&D's rules from this angle were just barking up the wrong tree.

This is one reason why TTRPG nerds like me are so insistent that people should try games other than D&D, even if you like D&D, even if you have no complaints about it. Many people in this hobby--again, speaking from personal experience having been in that very position--don't have the context to conceive of what else a TTRPG can be, and what game design can accomplish.

The more concerning side effect, to me, is the perception that all TTRPGs are difficult to learn and to run. It adds a gravitational pull to D&D: if someone like me is suggesting a different system, you would very reasonably think that other system is at least as complex as D&D, and it's going to take a lot of convincing to get you to put in all that effort again for a system you don't even know if you'll like. It leads to people who very well might adore another system sticking with D&D because D&D itself has made the concept of learning to run another system intimidating.

And no, Pathfinder doesn't fix this.

[cannonball5]

Some decisions I made after watching episode 5 if I made Dunk into a D&D character build (using 5e2024 mechanics):

His highest stat is Constitution

His dump stat is Charisma

His starting feats are Tough and Tavern Brawler

He’s the Fighter Class (I know people will say Paladin but he’s not)

He’s currently using Unarmed Fighting as his fighting style

He’s using the Samurai subclass (cares about Honor, wants to serve, gets Temp HP)

He might have a level or two in Barbarian

For the people in this Venn diagram, thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[stick-or-treat]

"Hit Points represent durability and the will to live. Creatures with more Hit Points are more difficult to kill."

Quoted from the 2024 Free Ruleset, actually a really good explanation of Hit Points; it's not that dudes with lots of hit points somehow have more blood in their bodies, it's that they're gonna put up way more of a fight before they go down.

That also explains shit like Temp HP, which isn't like... Extra life points, it's you feeling emboldened to continue fighting a little longer. Same with stuff like Relentless Endurance, it's not that you magically get healed one hit point for no reason, it's that you are SO DETERMINED TO NOT DIE that you can't be taken to 0 that easily.

Feels less like a videogame mechanic and more like a thematic element of a story, which I am 100% here for

[rpgtoons]

A simple guide to using the new and old Player's Handbook for D&D 5e. Let me know if I missed anything, I'll update the reference with any good tips!

[d-thorin]

Vistani Species for D&D5e

Created by D. and Chuck

This is a take on the Vistani, written for use in a modern Ravenloft campaign. The goal was to keep what makes the Vistani distinct while updating their presentation and mechanics for today’s tables.

This version focuses on keeping the mystery and independence of Vistani culture without forcing on older stereotypes. I’ve made every effort to stay consistent with Ravenloft lore across editions, while keeping any already established 5e rules relating to the Vistani people.

Feedback on both the writing and the mechanics would be appreciated.

[jupitermelichios]

I don't play D&D but I know a bit amount about it, and i like worldbuilding and coming up with characters, so here's a character concept I have no use for, going free to a good home

so because of the way they've reworked subclasses for the 2024 PHB, everyone gets their specialisations at level three for all classes, meaning if you stick strictly to the rules, warlocks don't know who their patron is until level 3. Obviously that's now how people are going to actually play it 99% of the time, but i do think it's an interesting concept to play around with.

also people tend to forget this, because it's super weird and very specific but the hexblade's patron is a sword. a sword from the shadowfell, but still just a sword, not a person. also very interesting.

so my concept is this: hexblade warlock who thinks they're a paladin. they made an oath on their family sword to hunt down the villains who killed their family and burned their home. they are fully convinced it is this oath which caused them to develop magical powers, because what the hell else could it be? they didn't sign a pact with any demon or extraplanar entity, as far as they know. they're not religious and there's no history of sorcery or even wizardry in their family, therefore, must be a paladin. makes perfect sense.

in reality, their ancestral sword is very magic, and if not sentient, at least possesses some degree of will. it's been biding its time, waiting for a weilder who might actually be able to fulfil its esoteric purpose, and the oath this character swore was exactly that, the way in it's been looking for. acess to a mind it can influence to its purposes

what does the sword want? is it truly alive or simply enchanted? does it serve some greater master the warlock is now also bound to? how will the character react when they learn the truth? will they accept it, or go into denial? that's for you to decide if you like this concept! Whatever you pick, it's yours for the low low cost of nothing at all. Enjoy!