Play Something Else (If You Want)

Some of my blog is directed at people like me who exist in the indie dev or OSR scenes, but I want to address Dungeons & Dragons for a bit. This is Part 1 of the Play Something Else (If You Want) series.

You there. O noble DM of Barrows & Beasts, Crypts & Cryptids, whatever it's called. C'mere. I wanna talk to you.

I hope you've been having a lot of fun with D&D. I'm so glad you found this hobby. It's queer, it's imaginative, it’s subversive, it's funny, it's social, it's super duper neurodivergent. It's a great game and hobby and community, and it's so much better for having you in it.

However… Today I would like to make a pitch to you that you should Play Something Else. If you'll indulge me for a few paragraphs. There are definitely out-of-game reasons why DMs sometimes choose to venture outside of the D&D bubble (Pinkertons, Hasbro, and licensing issues spring to mind), but I'd like to side-step all of that and focus in particular on how systems shape player expectations, why those expectations matter, and how different rulesets allow you to experiment with genre. Basically, let’s talk about how different rulesets allow you to tell different kinds of stories.

Let it be said that of course you can tell any story using D&D rules, at least with a bit of (or a lot of) fiddling. And maybe you’re content with the kinds of stories D&D is designed to tell. Let no one yuck your yum, life is short, go have fun. 

But can 5e play every game well?

Well, no. So let's consider first what D&D is, and the expectations embedded within it, then look at some other kinds of stories - or genres of stories - that you might want to play out that D&D's rules either don't support or actively hinder.

To start off with a disclaimer: most systems are not as long-winded as D&D. I don't know how recently you started playing or if you remember learning the rules of D&D, but it can be pretty intimidating for new players! The 5th Edition Player's Handbook is nearly 400 pages, and the first time a table creates characters it usually takes at least two hours. It can feel intimidating or exhausting learning a new system after putting hours and hours and hours into learning D&D well enough to run it.

It's almost like learning a second language. It took your whole childhood to be able to write and speak confidently and competently in your native tongue. And you've probably found yourself a group of players who speak the same language or were at least willing to learn it. To then turn around as an adult and decide to learn, say, Portuguese or Nahautl or Telugu, can feel a bit odd, especially if no one around you is interested in those languages.

But I'm here to tell you that not all of the languages out there are as complex as your mother tongue, and in fact, a lot of them are much simpler. And even if you just try other systems out once or twice, you'll already have a completely different understanding of the hobby and what it's capable of, the same way that learning even a little bit of additional languages opens up entire other cultural worlds to you.

In fact, one of the best things about exploring a new language is getting loan words to bring back to your mother tongue. "Tzotchke", for example, allows you to say something different; faction rules, for example, allow you to play something different. And you can just graft your favorite rules from other systems into your home D&D game! It's great! I do it all the time! 

And just like that, you're sliding down the slippery slope into the nasty wetland morass that is game design. 

Ha ha. Tricked you.

But anyway. Back to your mother tongue, D&D.

It's a very specific system, with a focus on combat that comes from its wargaming roots. It's almost two different games spliced together: there's loose - but effective - scaffolding for non-combat encounters/general roleplay and then rich(ly debated) combat rules that are tested to be somewhat balanced for fair fights. Most classes’ abilities are designed for use in combat, and non-player entities always come with stat blocks, also for use in combat, regardless of how hostile the NPC is. This creates certain assumptions about the use of violence that I'll perhaps talk about in a different post.

That's the essence of the system. But what are some of its other system-driven characteristics? Are any of these innate to roleplaying as a hobby, or could they be different in other games? And again, this is looking at default D&D, not your fancy homebrewed-to-high-hell home game.

Perhaps it might go under the radar, but there are DM and player meta-roles. This is not a solo game, and there is not an equal division of labor or in-game control between the DM and the players.

You're rolling (mostly) one 20-sided die, succeeding about 2/3rds of the time. In combat, you're succeeding - or failing - dramatically 5% of the time. So generally you're winning, and there are rare moments of big drama.

There's power scaling up the wazoo. You all will level up, and more or less equally grow in power as you level up. Threats will likely become more serious or more manageable in response, and you will likely be rewarded for engaging with the world through magic items or currency or XP. Whether or not you are more capable than a regular non-magical Joe Schmoe NPC at level 1, you certainly already are by level 3. This is the fantasy version of playing superheroes, especially.

The technology level among in-game items is medieval (although occasionally creeping into the golden age of piracy or steampunk depending on if you play with the Artificer class). 

Magic exists. The D&D magic system is, in the nerd parlance, Vancian. This means spells are pre-existing, discrete, and resource-limited. They're level-scaled, with relatively set parameters of use, and pre-taxonomied into categories such as Abjuration or Conjuration.

The classes are, except for Monk, inspired by European fantasy archetypes. (And you could certainly make the case that the Monk class is drawn from the European and American Orientalization of Asian martial arts and spiritual traditions and thus is just as European as the rest.) For example, D&D divides their religious casters into two classes, druid and cleric, following archetypes of natural or non-human magics versus divine or civilizational magics. This very clearly echoes the pagan-Christian divide of Europe starting in a Christianized Roman Empire and reflects a human-nature dichotomy that plenty of cultures do not innately have.

The ruleset supports you in mostly playing on land, rather than in the air, under the earth, or in or on the sea. 

And finally, by virtue of statting out many fantasy races/species/peoples for players to pick from for their characters, D&D creates the expectation of a (bio)diverse setting built around a core set of Tolkien-inspired races/species/peoples, as well as a few fun new ones.

Aha. Finally there's that word, expectation. The topic that the very first part of this blog post was supposed to be about.

But I'm tired now. So let's check out Part 2 for that.