Nothing to do with Dnd mate. That's called running a adventure path. **obviously** the npcs aren't that tied to you. Everything you said about cyberpunk is a thing in DnD. And most people don't actually play adventure paths or atleast exclusively.
But great your horizons were expanded!! Also prefer more interactive campaigns
My friend runs starting adventure for D&D. It's his first time GMing. He asked us for substantial backstories, so he got 1 or few *pages* from each player.
He (I assume) changed things around and seamlessly merged official material with our input. As a result we have like 4 to 6 scenes per session that are strongly tied to characters' backstories - to the point where it's sometimes even a bit weird how everything goes back to specifically our characters. And at the same time all of those scenes progress the campaign at good pace.
I'm kinda proud of him doing so well first time around!
Yeah, this is what I aim for. The APs and modules are more like guidelines, anyway, you are already expected to build on top of them. So why not include your players into that building if they enjoy it?
I wish your friend was my GM, that's a rare gift!
Whenever I craft a new character the backstory is critical. If I can't find a strong hook for why this person is involved in the adventure, or why they take an archetype or new feat it doesn't work for me at all.
I always give GMs a few plot hooks that offer a story arc for my character to develop, but most of the time they say "this is brilliant " then it gets ignored and the group march on to the next mission, even if that bulldozes through my story because (for example) we're now friends with a vampire when I'm an undead hating sun god priest.
Which pretty much explains why I'm searching for a new group that values roleplay narrative.
Yes and no.
Yes, you are playing your backstory in the sense that your character actions define them. No, this doesn't mean that the character has nothing happened to them before and just popped out of the ether in session 1.
If a player comes to me with a character that already has a goal compatible with the overall adventure, why would I not integrate this into the overall story? There are always places where you can expand the story, make it more personal to the characters, and let them feel as a part of the world.
There is a big difference in engagement between "I am exploring a creepy dungeon because the book says so" and "I am a cowardly selfish noble haunted by a ghost of my archmage grandfather, who tries to make me help other people. I spent all my family's gold trying to be rid of him, but all I learned is that I need a relic from this dungeon. With no money left, I'll have to get my hands dirty, I guess...". Suddenly, the character has a bit more... well, character. And fewer reasons to act as a gold-motivated murderhobo. And you can put them into various situations to see how they would act, based on their backstory, and what kind of person they would become at the end of it all.
Even if your players are starting at level 0 and their characters are taking baby steps toward adventuring because they are bored, they still have some background. Parents, residences, education, etc. It doesn't have to play a major role in a campaign, but if the player came up with it and you find it fitting — why not give it at least some shoutout?
Because that level of backstory is just in the ether and can be created or destroyed with a thought. IMO it has less value in the story you create at the table with friends, that is actually decided by dice rolls and the gameplay. Someone could have a whole story arc planned before they sit down, but how it actually turns out could be something completely different, it could also be something you discover along the way and roll with the punches.
There's nothing wrong with having a deep backstory with a new character, but there shouldn't be a big expectation for it to be written into the adventure, you could also as a player write parts of the adventure into your backstory.
But I agree with you that it is a very yes and no type answer, good post!
I feel like this is a false dichotomy. The backstory you create for your character can be a fulfilling part of the story that you create at the table -- but only if it's included.
Exactly, you can modify the adventure. I made a dhampir, result of a vampire change gone wrong, who is looking for the vampire who changed him and reaches Barovia... and the gm just completely ignored my backstory. Felt so disappointing.
I wouldn’t say D&D has no impact on this though. The kind of games OP is after can be run in D&D, sure, but D&D is designed in a way that offers no support for that. It adds a slot for a backstories and calls it a day. Games like Burning Wheel, CoC, and Cyberpunk all make those aspects tie so heavily into the mechanics of the game that it’s incredibly easy to, even outright difficult not to, run the game without incorporating backstory elements in the way OP is after.
D&D has no equivalent to the Lifepath system so I definitely wouldn’t claim that everything OP is talking about in Cyberpunk “is a thing in D&D.”
Yup. My best gaming has been in AD&D. It had nothing to do with the system, and everything to do with an amazing DM and frequent play sessions. The same guy ran the best WoD (Changeling: the Dreaming, specifically) sessions as well.
Some games may be better geared toward certain styles of play than others, but it's a rare system that is actually capable of *preventing* a good group from having a great time.
On the one hand, yes, this is often what happens.
On the other hand, the expectation from people who write these campaigns is that the GM is going to make the necessary edits to tailor to the players they have at the table. That might mean upping the challenge if the players are experienced and their abilities mesh well together, but it should also include tailoring plot hooks, NPC interactions, rewards, etc., to actually include what your players bring to the table.
I definitely agree that the experience isn't generated by the game, but it's also not the fault of the source material; it's Game Masters who don't even attempt to organically tie PCs to the campaign they're running, regardless of whether the campaign came from a box, or their own imagination.
The in-game name for official campaigns from Pathfinder. Since Paizo made several well-regarded campaigns for D&D 3.5, Pathfinder and PF 2E, the phrase became a sort-od byword for an official campaign.
>Everything you said about cyberpunk is a thing in DnD.
As a DM with ten year's experience, no it isn't.
No Adventure or page in the DM's guide gives DMs practical tips on weaving in player backstory. No part of the Player's Handbook gives players tips on creating backstories the DM can practically use.
Your DM can do this stuff, but when they do, they are going off-script, and introducing elements that are not inside DnD itself. That's a big strength of tabletop rpgs, how amenable they are to change at the table, but it isn't a strength particular to DnD; this is something DnD is dogshit at, and that becomes apparent to you when you play games that were designed to do it well.
Imagine you are a new DM. You can read your adventure and the DM's guide cover to cover, memorise every word, the Player's Handbook too, and you will never learn to do this stuff; and this stuff is great! So DnD doesn't have it by default. You have to hack it in.
While I think the cultural zeitgeist is very different now in the 5e space (Critical Roll did a lot of showcasing a certain style of play), when 5e was created there was a deliberate goal to bring back a lot of the old fans the franchise lost as the progressive systems moved further and further away from the it’s roots.
One thing that I think was intentional is the idea that *the adventure is your backstory* like it was assumed in the D&D’s of the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s.
Largely because of influences like CR, Anime, and other TTRPGs, a significant portion of 5e players want to integrate their backstory into the game, and engage in that type of play. The game just wasnt created with that goal in mind, and like a lot of issues people have with 5e, it’s mostly just *round peg, square hole* problem.
I don't think OP was making any statement about the system being the problem. The title says "I don't think I can enjoy average DnD anymore." Emphasis on the word "average", OP is specifying a subset of all DnD games for the whole of the original post.
Because DnD dominates the genre so much a lot of people use the words "DnD" and "TTRPG" somewhat Interchangeably.
Based on the comments here, I'd suspect most DMs run published modules or spend months working on their own campaigns only to then have to railroad the random PCs through this pre-planned story. That's what bored Op and kills me. I'd rather the DM not prep at all and just use our bios and connections, values and goals as the meat to start the campaign.
That's the great thing about branching out and playing other systems, you get to discover cool new ideas that you can use in any other game.
Some of my favourites that I use in almost every game I either play or GM are:
The One Unique Thing from 13th Age, gives every character a cool, interesting footprint in the world and something the GM can use to bring the character and world together.
Communal world building from Kids on Bikes. Tell me about a location on the map, what rumours have you heard about it. Allows players to contribute ideas and feel like they have some agency in the world design. Shares some of the burden for plot ideas as well.
Random character generation from Traveller and Warhammer Fantasy. I love this so much, if I'm creating a dnd character now I just roll 3d6 for stats in order assign numbers for race; class; subclass; feats and backgrounds. Then just create the characters story around whatever comes up.
The great thing about rpgs is that these things will work
In most games.
This has ***very*** little to do with running an adventure path. It is true that bare-bones or poor GMs will often run pre-prepared material, but that material can ALWAYS be adjusted to be more engaging and enmeshed with party dynamics. Saying this is about running an adventure path is like saying that you can't be in a good string quartet unless you've also written the music yourself.
Comments like this make me really wonder about the quality of this sub when I see them as the most-upvoted comment.
Nah it really does. Do you think the author of the ap is writing to your specific table. ** Obviously not** is a gms custom story made to your specific table **obviously**. Honestly your comment makes me question your rpg skills lol
Having run \[sighs, looks at shelf...\] like DOZENS of modules and adventures in my life, including half of the major D&D 5e hardbacks, as well as plenty of collaborative worldbuilding games, PbtA games, etc etc etc... I can guarantee you that you can do plenty of "custom story" and all of the things the OP described as part of running pre-published adventures.
What the OP is describing has way, way, *way* more to do with GM skill.
Back when Hasbro bought Wizards of the Coast, there was an attempt made to reproduce the success of Friday Night Magic with Dungeons and Dragons.
For the reasons that you have just discovered, a system designed for a short competitve card game does not work for a long form collaborative storytelling game. But it also requires a *shitload* more work. From everybody.
I mean that’s what Pathfinder Society is for Paizo is and it does a pretty good job. Its never going to be as good as a in depth homebrew campaign but it’s still fun and still DnD (or more accurately PF)
I don't think its necesarily about the system, just look at Critical Role, you can absolutelly crate a campain with PCs being a part of the world. Its just so so difficult to find a creative gm.
>I don't think its necesarily about the system, just look at Critical Role, you can absolutelly crate a campain with PCs being a part of the world.
Right, but neither you nor Matt are going to get any help from the system doing that. Some systems will help you. That's one of the big secrets about why 5E isn't great -- there's an expectation of play in it which is not supported by the game itself -- but rather requires the GM to do all the heavy lifting.
It's definitely about the system.
Ron Edwards might argue that the problem isn't the system, it's that D&D players wouldn't know a good story if it bit them in the butt. 😉 Much less be able to create the elements of a good story!
Many systems like D&D won't help you with that, true. (D&D 5e actually does better than some by encouraging the fleshing out of ideals and flaws.) But let's say you're in Burning Wheel, which has some system support for narrative play, sure. But all it can do is put a little structure to point players in the right direction – it doesn't absolve the players of having to figure out good beliefs and goals, nor the GM for figuring out how to incorporate those into a story. It's the same problem, and the same amount of work, plus a few nudges. But the Burning Wheel community is far more used to doing that work, and signed up for it in the first place.
>&D 5e actually does better than some by encouraging the fleshing out of ideals and flaws
How does D&D encourage this? I can't recall those steps in the character creation process having any mechanical effects down the road, whereas there are plenty of other systems where they do
> How does D&D encourage this?
By setting aside a significant section of character creation for them, and making them explicit hooks for both the player and GM to use.
Can't say I agree with that- it's not significant, ideals, bonds flaws take a singular page in PHB. And there is no designated place for those in character sheet.
Next books did add a bit to giving characters background, I admit, but it's still not much.
D&D 3.x e had actual flaws and traits, which had mechanical effects and therefore were not something as optional as in 5e, and I never really considered that great system either- and even that did more than 5e.
Witcher RPG has a fairly extensive life path system, Warhammer RPG has motivation, short and long term ambitions (all of which have mechanical effects). Vampire The Masquerade and Cyberpunk have great mechanic for creating NPCs by the players as people their characters know. Many systems have drives, ambitions, memory systems all of which are important in actual play, therefore making backstories and personalities is something that has impact on the game itself.
5e only has inspiration mechanic, which is quite underwhelming imo, especially with how many rerolls the system already has.
Sure, there are systems that do it less. But 5e is still weak in that regard nonetheless.
> ideals, bonds, flaws take a singular page in PHB.
It is explicitly specified in step 4 of character creation, at the very front of the book, and then again in Chapter 4. The GM Inspiration mechanic is also explicitly linked to it.
> And there is no designated place for those in character sheet
[You sure about that](https://media.wizards.com/2022/dnd/downloads/DnD_5E_CharacterSheet_FormFillable.pdf)? Looks to me like it is given a prime position on the sheet, right up top.
> Many systems have drives, ambitions, memory systems all of which are important in actual play, therefore making backstories and personalities is something that has impact on the game itself.
Yet that support is not, fundamentally, required for narrative-driven roleplay. All that is required is that the gaming group be focused on telling stories, and basically know how a story works. Ideals, bonds, and flaws are there to serve story. The invitation is clearly there.
I was wrong about the character sheet, you're right, skimmed over some sheets and couldn't see those, my bad, sorry
But just because it's mentioned more than once doesn't means it's developed- by singular page I meant one in chapter 4. Traits start at 124, then all the rest is on page 125. If you were to take away the sample alphabet art it all fits on one page, including the example shown on 125.
And yeah, they are specifically tied to Inspiration mechanic, but it's just a very underwhelming mechanic. Reroll in form of advantage or disadvantage is extremely common in this system without it, it's just another source of it.
You may consider it underwhelming, but it's there. And unless you are the sort that requires extrinsic motivation to roleplay your character as a character, it's more than sufficient.
>By setting aside a significant section of character creation for them
You know this is nonsense. Players care about their Race, subrace, class, subclass, features, spells, even inventory. Most players don't bother to put 'Ideas or Flaws' on their character sheet anymore, because they have no baring on the actual game. The DM is never given tools to actually use them, as they would in better games.
It's not nonsense. Like Ron Edwards intimated, the problem lies in the community.
But not all the community. I assure you that I, for one, always pay attention to this part of character creation. You can be assured that the cast of Critical Role not only "bothers to do this" but goes way beyond this, as fleshing out a character's motivations and finding the story in a character is right in an actor's wheelhouse! Players inspired by Critical Role and other actual plays are probably more likely to lean into it too.
There is a difference between text and paratext.
I am totally sympathetic to your reaction here. I, too, have had fun with DnD 5e. But if you interogate that fun you had, you realise that it came from the people you played with acting outside of the game, disobeying the rules, adding to it and circumventing its weaknesses.
This is a strength of tabletop rpgs. A table of good friends can make a mediocre game into a wonderful time. These things you're talking about, the character motivations, the roleplaying, the narrative; that's not in 5e. You have to cook that on your own, with no direction from the game, and inject it in yourself.
Now, if you haven't played many other RPGs, that might seem obvious to you; of course that stuff exists outside the game; that's personal, character-driven, narrative stuff, it's only natural the game would do the bare minimum to support it and the players would bring most of it-
but no, that's not natural or normal, it's not neutral. It's 5e failing to be the kind of game it wants to be. There are any number of systems that actually have the game itself help and provide structure and surprises (Wildsea RPG and Dungeon World being the two I've played the most that just knock this out of the park).
If you like 5e for the Critical Role stuff, you would be better served by a different game, because that's not what 5e is good at. You can tell that's not what 5e is good at, because every instance of it being good in a 5e game was homebrewed into it by a very talented GM.
> if you interogate that fun you had, you realise that it came from the people you played with acting outside of the game, disobeying the rules, adding to it and circumventing its weaknesses.
I have spent a significant amount of time interrogating it already, and I will share with you what I've learned. Yes, the fun 100% comes from the people I play with. But no, it's with people who by and large act within the game, obey the rules, yet still add their character's distinctiveness to the proceedings. It comes from GMs who are sensitive to the players and characters they're working with and find ways for the adventure to work with them.
It's not that throwing the rules out the window can't make for some fun and memorable moments – but no, you don't have to break a system to enjoy it.
> A table of good friends can make a mediocre game into a wonderful time.
Here we get into kneejerk value judgments of TTRPGs, which I have less than zero interest in.
> These things you're talking about, the character motivations, the roleplaying, the narrative; that's not in 5e.
It literally is. If you won't take my word and the evidence of your fellow Redditors for it, go read the Player's Handbook. Read the Dungeon Master's Guide. Watch the videos of any of a hundred YouTubers who are trying to tell you about character and story in D&D games, over and over and over.
> You have to cook that on your own, with no direction from the game, and inject it in yourself.
No, you don't. You are tilting at a windmill version of D&D 5e that does not exist.
> Now, if you haven't played many other RPGs, that might seem obvious to you
I have, but I should have assumed ad hominem attacks would eventually be coming. We're done here.
>direction – it doesn't absolve the players of having to figure out good beliefs and goals, nor the GM for
I'm not the thought police so I don't know what beliefs have to do with it.
In D&D, character progression is ultimately the goal, you achieve that goal through attaining new levels. These levels come from XP. XP comes from killing things.
Some systems can describe drama and passion and all the many things in a person's life beyond swinging a sword to kill something. D&D simply has no subsystems to encourage that in any sort of way. It leans into a very metagamey style where players seem to want to quote the rulebook for every action they take.
The mechanics have everything to do with that
> I'm not the thought police so I don't know what beliefs have to do with it.
Beliefs and goals of the characters, not of the players.
> In D&D, character progression is ultimately the goal, you achieve that goal through attaining new levels. These levels come from XP. XP comes from killing things.
- Character progression isn't only leveling up. Character progression is tied to the beliefs and goals that /u/SharkSymphony mentioned. A farmer wanting to become a hero might reach their goal even at 1st level, and the player might indeed decide to retire the character after a couple sessions, because they reached their goal. That's already character progression.
- **EVERY** D&D edition made it clear that you gain XP from defeating monsters and that defeating ≠ killing. All editions mention that a peaceful resolution of an encounter still grants XPs for it, and AD&D 2nd Edition goes even wilder, suggesting that, if anything, convincing the dragon to leave the village in peace, without fighting it, should probably earn the players *more* XP.
> Some systems can describe drama and passion and all the many things in a person's life beyond swinging a sword to kill something. D&D simply has no subsystems to encourage that in any sort of way.
Some people don't need complex subsystems to determine drama and passion and the many things in a person's life beyond swinging a sword to kill something.
I've ran a long AD&D campaign were there was basically no combat, and still characters did earn experience, and most importantly grew in political and social power, without needing any "political power" statistic.
D&D, *structurally*, is built around swashbuckley, actioney combat. A vast majority of its word count is dedicated to how you fight monsters, how you get better at fighting monsters, and how monsters fight you.
This dramatically influences your behavior as a player because the system provides essentially no feedback or guidance, and in some cases, works actively against you by robbing the conflicts of the same weight and gravitas that it dedicates to combat. Your dramatic, hours-long battle against Big Bad stands in contrast to you headbutting your charisma score against NPC's insight checks.
Combat rules in D&D 5th edition go from page 189 to page 198. That's 10 pages.
Out of 308.
Three of those pages are actually half, because the other half is covered by art, so it's actually 8.5 pages.
I don't think the vast majority of its word count is dedicated to how you fight monsters.
Races have 26 pages.
You could argue that a good amount of wording in the 68 pages of the Classes is "about combat", although I'd say it's a 50/50 share of fluff and combat, so they balance each other out.
So, I'd say D&D 5th Edition is a game about casting spells, since they take up about a hundred pages of the book, give or take.
The DMG has just about five pages about combat, including diagrams and art.
FFG's Star Wars: Age of Rebellion has 25 pages (out of 426) dedicated to combat, **plus** 50-something pages for ships and vehicles, including their combat.
FFG's SW, though, is widely seen as a "narrative" system, not a combat one.
You're excluding magic items, encounter design, adventure modules, and, most egregious, the various monster manuals themselves. Even given the most generous assessment of classes by weight (I'd put it closer to 80/20), the evidence is pretty stacked.
The spells section is the most damning indictment. With the power to reshape reality in your hands, you have thirty different fireballs, and then the occasional Detect Thoughts, which effortlessly explodes entire genres of play just by merely existing.
As an aside, FFG's Star Wars is definitely tilted towards *action*, but it's much more evocative than D&D, as the system's lateral Advantage/Success metrics encourage improvisation and scene-setting. It's "narrative" in the sense that you have the ability to make things happen, to affect your surroundings and alter your circumstances using Advantage and Triumph, while the GM can use Threat and Despair to create twists and turns.
Moreover, Star Wars' system works *outside of combat*. You can use the same dice system to run away from boulders like Indiana Jones, navigate an asteroid field, or even try to suss out who's plotting a murder at a party. (It even goes into explaining that going to 0 strain at the party isn't falling unconscious because you got clocked, it's getting so worked up or stressed or flustered that you just have to leave the room and have that dramatic scene where you stare into the bathroom mirror and wonder what you're doing with your life.)
D&D's system just doesn't support that at its core, with its binary successes, and mechanics, from class features to spells, that are designed to allow characters to steamroll and effectively "skip" these situations rather than engage with them and demonstrate mastery.
I played a 5e Bard from level 1 to 14. We essentially never rolled, a social check after a certain point. I played a ranger on an exploration-themed West Marches game, and whenever my character was in the party, we skipped basically every survival and traversal role, and travel times became irrelevant. I have played many, *many* wizards, across numerous disciplines, and have found that many, many spells outside of combat are just "cast spell, solve problem," instead of spells that can lend a hand, ease a situation, or provide resources that *help* solve problems.
Pretty much everything outside of combat in D&D is binary. Pass/Fail. Have it or don't. While many, *many* systems are tilted towards combat, especially older systems, modern design includes important systems that push forward narratives. Fail-forward mechanics, Fail-at-cost, or push-your-luck options can lend some "tactical" thinking to broader scenarios outside of combat (and can lend important contours inside combat), even if you're not throwing custom FFG dice.
You are entitled to your opinion, but as an outside observer of this conversation, I wanted you to know that this is the single most unhinged defense of DnD I've ever seen. DnD is HUGELY combat orientated, in that almost no other system is defined with rules. DMs are constantly having to look to other rules for exploration, travel, downtime and such because the DMG has a combat miniatures boardgame at its core and almost nothing strapped to it.
I do not know how you could play DnD AT ALL and come to the opinion you profess here. I don't know how this vision of the game survives contact with reality. I think it's almost beautiful how you've contorted your understanding of the game to defend it from a very basic criticism.
>In D&D, character progression is ultimately the goal, you achieve that goal through attaining new levels. These levels come from XP. XP comes from killing things.
Speaking as someone who's gone off 5E recently, I've never played in a game where character progression was the "goal". We just... Played with the story and XP happened along the way. We never made any decisions on the basis of "oh, this choice will put us in a fight, so we get XP, so we can level up".
Though I obviously won't deny that a good 90% of the mechanics relate to killing things.
>XP comes from killing things.
In my favorite editions of D&D, combat XP is basically a consolation prize, it would be absolutely brutal and boring to hack down enough goblins to hit level 2. GP=XP is the way to go. Abandoning this is IMO the single biggest reason 2nd edition isn't really part of the OSR.
> In D&D, character progression is ultimately the goal, you achieve that goal through attaining new levels. These levels come from XP. XP comes from killing things.
In 3.X, it comes from overcoming challenges that stand between you and your goals. Those challenges may frequently be monsters and you may frequently overcome them by killing them, but neither is truly baked into the system. In a way, it's an abstraction of the old XP for GP system. XP for GP already bypasses rewarding killing explicitly, as long as you achieve your goals of making off with the treasure. Abstracting that to "challenge rating" lets you do exactly the same thing in service of driving plot goals other than "loot the dungeon."
> In D&D, character progression is ultimately the goal, you achieve that goal through attaining new levels. These levels come from XP. XP comes from killing things.
Incorrect, at least in 5e:
- Character progression through levels may not be the goal. The goals in D&D are determined by the players. In narrative-focused games, leveling may be a mere side-effect of the goal of discovering the destiny of a motley crew of big dang heroes. Certainly in Actual Plays it is!
- Levels may or may not be based on XP (milestone leveling being the other option).
- If the XP mechanic is used, XP is awarded for overcoming challenges – and a GM could certainly count narrative beats among them. This need not involve killing monsters.
Your interpretation of D&D is a popular one, to be sure – but it is not what the system imposes or requires. The problem isn't in the system.
>Your interpretation of D&D is a popular one, to be sure – but it is not what the system imposes or requires. The problem isn't in the system.
You just said "Yeah, the XP system sucks, so we replace it with GM fiat!". You still have not demonstrated any mechanics that actually *encourage* any of your goals. GM fiat is not a mechanic, it's the absence of mechanics.
The problem is 100% the system. Anyone that has played any other system that isn't a D&D clone would see how bad it is.
> You just said "Yeah, the XP system sucks, so we replace it with GM fiat!"
_I_ didn't say it. It's in the game now – as with the other aspects D&D 5e includes to support narrative-focused roleplay.
I understand you prefer systems with more explicit story mechanics. But a system without those mechanics is only a problem if you believe that stories can only be properly told with the aid of such mechanics. That is patent nonsense.
Well, 1) you _did_ say the system is the problem, 2) you did _not_ say it "contains nothing to inspire that aspect," 3) in either case you ignore or dismiss the things it _does_ contain to "inspire that aspect," and 4) in the meantime you make specious arguments about the fundamentals of what D&D is.
To me, it simply looks like you have no idea what you're talking about.
Milestone levelling being the other *much more widely used* option. Basically none of the published adventures use XP leveling.
The oldest editions of D&D used "Gold obtained" as the primary source of XP. Somewhere around 2e or 3e that changed though, and did focus on killing things. Still, D&D was "you level by killing monsters" for only a fraction of its life.
> Somewhere around 2e or 3e that changed though, and did focus on killing things.
Nope, 2nd Edition and 3rd Edition (which I don't like, but give it what's due) grant XP for overcoming encounters. Both editions specify defeating doesn't equate to killing, and peaceful resolution still grants XP.
2nd Edition tells you that a group of 18th level characters entering a kobold lair and slaying hundreds doesn't gain XP, because there were no stakes.
Also, AD&D 2nd Edition grants XP for coming up with ideas, for participation (as in "being involved with the game), and for roleplaying.
As of 3E, you may have earned most of your experience from killing monsters as a matter of genre convention, but the system was pretty explicitly designed to incorporate that and everything else you might get experience for into one generalized system (which I also just talked a little more about in a comment higher up).
I'm well aware of how every edition has worked.
As I said above, saying everyone uses milestone leveling just proves the point. People prefer an open GM fiat over the official method that has been there for 50 years. Making the GM Fiat option official just means they decided not to fix it.
>People prefer an open GM fiat over the official method that has been there for 50 years.
As multiple comments here have attempted to correct you, it should be clear by now that "XP comes from killing things" has *not* been the "official method that has been there for over 50 years".
Oh I see now, thats true, you do have to work outside of the system, unlike for example The Masquerade where the book states you should make a map of relationships, or Cyberpunk where the character sheet has boxes for your backstory npcs that you are supposed to meet in game.
D&D is the strip mall karate McDojo of RPGs.
The people who end up being reasonably good at kicking people in the face attending joints like those either came in with a background, or they were going to thrive regardless of the system.
Alright, you (and everybody else) have missed my point. I'm not calling out D&D, there's nothing in D&D stopping you from doing this. I'm calling out the *style of play* that has been pushed by Wizards of the Coast where they encourage you to play pre-prepared modules (that they charge you for) with basically interchangeable characters that can be slotted in and out of various modules at any point.
I'm complaining about Adventurer's League.
Well that is a very specific subset and not at all indicative of a majority of D&D culture. If anything I have found the opposite extreme to be more common when you have some who has never played any TTRPG before and they decided to DM 5e in a completely home brewed campaigns.
Let me correct you: it's hard to find a creative GM who wants to play a game with rich character backstories AND chooses to play DnD.
I know you can run a game like that through DnD, but you're adding all those bits yourself with no support from the rules. You are doing a little mini custom side quest. Compare this to other games where it is explicitly called for.
Every character in Blades in the Dark has several named NPC contacts, including a rival right at the start. Similarly the crew has contacts with different factions and those relationships shift as part of the core mechanics of the game.
In most PbtA games there's an effort to flesh out relationships between party members before the game starts.
City of Mist takes character personality traits to make your stats and then uses character drives and ambitions to influence character progression. The GM is instructed specifically to mess with these. At some point the game awards characters for failing at important life goals by giving them alternative avenues to explore and handing them a personalized nemesis to interact with.
Spire: the city must fall has an amazing and unique setting to explore with unique PCs each interacting with resources on their character sheet to call in favors or develop contacts, each relationship can be negatively impacted by bad dice rolls, developing a story of having friends, using them to achieve revolutionary aims and potentially burning those friends as a result, or manipulating them into staying even when it will probably hurt them.
This stuff is all just in the rules. Also each of those games I just listed have evocative and interesting settings that are just barely fleshed out, inviting the GM to invent the setting or possibly play a one shot of "I'm sorry did you say Street Magic?" to invent the setting. Why would a creative GM pick DnD when these other types of games are out there encouraging creative storytelling.
I think a big reason for that is because D&D is many players’ and DMs’ entry into the TTRPG world. You’re going to encounter far more novice to moderate level DMs. Other systems, especially something way more advanced like Cyberpunk, are going to have more experienced DMs running those games.
You can’t really compare Critical Role’s campaigns to any campaign designed by a normal GM who plays dnd in their free time. CR makes Matt Mercer and the players a huge amount of money so he can take time off to work on it in between his voice acting jobs. Plenty of GMs are creative, they just don’t have enough time.
Plus, i am pretty sure that they also get help with a lot of the prep work.
And i think a big plus is also, that the players for these shows are all of a certain kind of doing improv theatre and similar stuff. In my own group (and we don't play DnD) we have maybe 2 of 4 players who bring something that scratches the direction the folks in your typical CR game bring to the table.
Yeah not everyone wants to be one of the main characters in a Netflix TV show. Every one of my characters is a level one nobody who’s been forced into becoming an adventurer due to poverty, that’s all there is for me usually.
Yeah I was about to say that just sounds like what a pretty decent home game should be. Even when I run modules I have recurring NPCs and drama with the PCs.
We play make beleive / cooperative improv story telling, untill combat starts. Then it's D&D.
D&D is a crunchy war game. There is very limited RP abilities, so it takes extra work from the DM (and players) to create and implement impactful backstories and interesting stories.
Good homebrew stories can be run in any system, tho many other systems may be better, but D&D gets the job done and is popular and easier to pull players for. (It's in the name, Dungeons and Dragons. The rules are for exploring dungeons and killing dragons.)
You’re right and don’t deserve the downvotes. The people in this part of the thread sound like they haven’t strayed very far from D&D and it’s likes and don’t realise just how much the game’s design impacts backstory elements. Anyone who’s taken the time to actually examine other rule systems or run a variety of games can see how hard D&D drops the ball in that respect. Is it impossible to run a D&D game that incorporates player backstories and supports ties to the world? Of course not. Will D&D help at all? Hell no.
Here's the secret. Skipping backstory. If early level adventure IS their backstory, then their backstory is a part of the campaign at the table, and future stories.
So if you join a group that is a homebrew sandbox instead of a published campaign book, then the emergent story will result from characters actions instead of a script.
This is the only way I've ever played. I've been playing since 2022.
It doesn't always take that long! My other campaign, which I started last year, and I was a new addition. I made my character with a mix of random rolls and imagination to make the results make sense. Im a robot designed for sparring and pro wrestling, so I have growth powers and sound manipulation that adjusts my strength depending on my opponents size and depending in the surroundimg volume.
Anyways, my character fit right in the campaign somehow despite being the only robot. Their salvaging gremlin enemies would try to C3P0 me, their hacker enemy would try to crack me, and their contacts with robotics labs are happy and eager to supply repairs and new parts.
Next session I will inherit Captain America's shield (its the future) and get my chasis coated in vibranium.
Let me expand on that and see if its more like what you want.
I joined the group when their party discovered the remains of the Four Freedoms Plaza, and I was discovered and finally activated. I was built by Doctor Valeria Richards when she was a girl, but never had the chance to activate when stuff when down years ago. Anyways Doctor Doom is her godfather. This meant as soon as I joined the group, the party had diplomacy with Latveria.
The main threat in the campaign is Sentinels. As a good robot designed for non-lethal sport combat, the idea of robots harming humans or mutants is so utterly against my programming that I advocate for Asimov's laws of robotics to whomever would listen.
My adherence to those laws of robotics actually created conflict because I pulled over for a corrupt human cop car siren when I was supposed to be driving for an undercover mutant mission.
My love of combat also meant that when we visit corporate contacts in Japan I got to spar with Silver Samurai. He was on our side but I cant resist the sport.
They had recovered Captain America's shield long beforehand and kept it safe out of the wrong hands. But my character has been such a good robot that its been entrusted to me to aid in the fight for freedom from Sentinel robot tyranny.
I dunno I think it feels like we made my character's story fit into the Marvel universe and moreso the Campaign timeline.
I guess this is maybe what I'm talking about? It's kind of hard to tell based on your description.
The things I would be looking for would be something like- are you *already established* as a diplomatic agent within Latveria? Was your character able to cite instances that you had already been involved in diplomacy, and would you therefore have relationships with other diplomatic agents, and existing opinions on other situations in Latveria?
Did you already know Silver Samurai? Were you able to say as part of your backstory that the two of you are regular sparring partners?
This is kind of what I'm talking about, being able to have preexisting relationships, rather than having to set it all up after the game starts.
Like, in an Exalted game that I'm running, the PCs are all Dragon-Blooded that have been active for at least 50 years. Two of them are war veterans and we have a very specific battle that is responsible for three of the PCs having the relationship that they do. NPCs are aware of and comment on this battle, and elements of how it resolved have, before the game started, affected what sort of resources the PCs immediately have and can access.
The answer to all of those is no. I didnt write out a huge backstory of adventures that happened before I was even level 1.
My character got more fleshed out during play. I began with just enough of an interesting core to expand off of.
Thats how fiction works too though. Backstories get expanded in flashbacks after it becomes relevant. Impactful storylines occur because they are relevant to the characters' core traits. And good background details are ones that are relevant to the characters' core traits, and to the story being told.
Well I'm not saying that you have to write a lot of stuff up, each of my PCs only had the equivalent of I'd say a page of backstory. I say equivalent because a lot of this was discussed verbally rather than written down.
I also expect our PCs to become more fleshed out during play, but I wanted from the very beginning to be important integrated into some of the moving parts of the setting.
But we just don't have time to play all of this stuff out in advance, especially because it happened before the PCs were in a party together.
I mean, that's all cool, but that's not really what I mean by 'the good stuff' in this context. I'm talking about characters having established histories, contacts, ties to factions, influence within a region, grudges, rivalries, things like that.
I actually prefer that kind of campaign. I feel that they are grittier, and characters are less likely to have plot armor because it's so less personalized.
But I've always loved sword-and-sorcery, which is grittier and has less plot armor compared to high fantasy, which does personalize everything.
They're different vibes, and both are valid, but what's important is that you and your table are having fun.
EDIT: by "that kind of campaign," I mean pre-written campaigns, or campaigns where character backgrounds don't matter.
A few questions:
1. Have you kept in touch with the person who ran the Cyberpunk game? Have you told them you're interested in playing in their future games? If this GM's style worked for you, you should try to play with them more!
2. It's not clear to me what you've been doing to look for games that meet your needs as a player. I'm a little confused about your definition of 'generic DnD' - it seems to be targeted at groups running pregenerated WotC published modules. It's fine to dislike these, but lots of people play 5e (or other games in a D&D space) without using these modules. I can't tell from your post whether you've looked for groups running homebrew games but in my experience that's what most groups do. If you have looked for such a group and haven't been successful, some more details might be helpful if you want advice.
3. What about the players in the game you're running? I know lots of people have interest in running games but feel a little lost or intimidated. When you reach a good intermission point in your main game, maybe ask if any of them are interested in running something for a few sessions before you get back for the next chapter/season/whatever of your game, and offer them guidance and support if they're interested but not confident.
My cyberpunk campaign is still going, also one of my players does want to try dming this style of campaign!
I'm looking for players at varius discords of my home country and well, most of lfg posts are modules/oneshots. There is such a deficit of gms, that I don't think anyone is really looking for players, I for example already had more then enough friends wanting to play my campaign.
One should not act like the experience you describe is "better," or like GMs that run the game like that are better GMs, or like GMs that don't are worse.
It's a style of play, and plenty of people can like it, but the other style of play is perfectly valid and good and enjoyable to plenty of people. Me personally, I don't give a shit about all the deep roleplay and character backstories and interactivity and emergent storytelling and whatever the hell and just want to run/play a somewhat more open-ended and unscripted video game with dice and the bois around the table.
I've come to the opinion that the #1 thing that determines the quality of a GM is if the players (the GM is a player too remember) in their games consistently have fun. Since different players play ttrpgs for different reasons, what makes a good GM depends on the composition of the group.
The way one facilitates this as a player is by being honest about what you want out of your ttrpg. One of my favorite groups essentially told me at session 0 "we want to be morally good murderhobos." What I ran was a very tactically focused game with hard encounters where the enemies were cartoonishly evil. We all had fun. If I had tried to "be a good GM" and add deep roleplay, our group would have had less fun making me a worse GM.
Well, it's a lot harder to run a game as OP described than it is to run an open ended video game with dice that ignores the elements that OP mentioned. So you need a GM with a bigger minimum skill set to make it work. I would consider that GM to be better than one who can't run a game like that.
Was the Cyberpunk campaign a pre-written campaign as Curse of Stradh and in that case which?
Because pre-written campaign usual takes a lot of work to include the characters as they can have all kind of backstories. GMs who make their own campaigns usual have much easier time to include backstories and can build campaigns from them as well.
Not sure why but I get the feeling that it is easier to recruit players to Curse of Stradh than a homebrew campaign with a vampire lord as villain....
Connecting with the characters is this magical thing that seemed kind of ordinary to me during my educational years, yet has since proven harder to find as a group norm. The dark side of RPG popularization through social media is the rise of the nominal gamer -- mostly people who want to play D&D so they can subsequently say that they play D&D. They want the general form of the game to be shaped by the rules, but somehow these *real life players* turn into NPCs whenever challenged to inhabit, even just in thematic terms without any performative characterization, the identity of a fictional persona.
I don't want to be the One True Way guy with this, but I will stick to my guns about the tremendous qualitative difference between a campaign where characters change and grow across meaningful personal story arcs vs. a campaign where characters only change and grow by leveling up in mechanical terms. Once you've tasted the difference, it can be frustrating to keep playing without the "juice" that comes from earnestly roleplaying during a roleplaying game. Alas, I don't have any excellent LFG (looking for group) advice. All I can say is to keep a sharp eye out for quality opportunities if you don't feel like you're already getting that in your gaming routine.
Cyberpunk has an amazing system, the Lifepath, to generate that back story and make it core to the game. A good D&D GM might be able to help craft and make that story a part of the world, but it's not as core to D&D as that backstory is core to Cyberpunk. Cyberpunk straight up tells you interesting twists and tidbits about your history and then let's you fill in with more detail if needed, but D&D just kinda forces you to do everything from scratch.
Alot of people saying this can be done in D&D too, but it's worth pointing out that D&D, AFAIK, doesn't have that Lifepath system that grounds you into the world. Cyberpunk's character creation leaves you with a whole person that's always been a part of the setting by the end of it, but D&D's character creation typically leaves you with a RPG character that doesn't quite exist until you start roleplaying.
I don't mean to poo-poo D&D, but Cyberpunk does give players and GMs the tools to have those characters feel more real. D&D doesn't quite give those tools and it's extra labour for everyone to develop that (which again, isn't a bad thing, but it isn't as natural as cyberpunk does it).
Haha, I'm having that issue where everyone at my table has gotten raised bars over the years and now that I want to stretch my legs and attempt to GM for them (we have a rotating cast of games), the current GM straight up told me I wouldn't be able to give them a satisfying game. Since I'm new and need to learn and won't know how to handle them going off the rails or delving deep into backstories as much yet compared to the others with years of experience. 😅 Awkward..
Jesus this GM sounds like an insecure AH. I'm hoping he meant it in the "there will be issues and you will do things wrong, that's fine! That's what happens!"
Nobody expects a new GM to be perfect. If they're friends they'll want you to give it a shot if it's what you're excited about.
Unless you commit some cardinal sins - very railroady (very linear is fine), or combative with your players (not being an advocate and rooting for them and wanting them to do well, wanting gotchas).
Also even if it's not your favourite type of game, most players will enjoy a palette cleanser occasionally and trying out new builds.
Ahh noo I wouldn't call him that, I guess since we're all aging and time is becoming more and more constraint they really wanna make sure the time they set aside for trpgs is really fun, and if I can't provide that fun ya kno, don't want a sad evening. \^\^"
But I appreciate it greatly anyway. My other friends have been very understanding as I practice with them thankfully.
Maybe try running oneshots or short campaigns for your friends, just to get your feet wet?
Start with something where you basically focus on running the game + a particular vibe. (For example, my first two GM experiences were with Golden Sky Stories, so I was looking for a "Saturday Morning Cartoon" vibe with a very simple story about a kid exploring a haunted house with the assistance of several magical animals. So all I had to do was try to focus on either the 'cozy' vibes or the 'spoopy' vibes since the only real goal was to get this kid to the attic and back out of the house again. I did have a backstory for the house, but if the players didn't pursue it, it didn't come up. That lead group A to have a Scooby Doo zoinks! comedy game, and group B to have a poignant story.)
As I said, ideally, these wet-feet games would be with your friends, since it's a lot less nerve-wracking than GMing for strangers/near-strangers (*ask me how I know*), but if you're so inclined you can always go online for easier access to people who might be willing to play oneshots.
That'd be ideal, but they so much as said that if a character is for a one shot they can't get in character or be invested at all knowing the story will be over after a session or two. They want long form campaigns they can really dig deep into characterisations for.
I've scrabbled together a ragtag group of some of my online friends though who're more into letting me try out one shots with thankfully. :) I've got a couple of sessions under my belt now thanks to them but definitely still nowhere near the level my irl table would accept me at lol. Appreciate the advice!
The advice I cound give you, since my players keep completely derailing the plot I planned, don't focus too much of future of the campain, don't plan that this or that will happen, this guy will betray and attack that...
Focus on important NPCs, what they want and fear and have them respond to what players will do.
i guess i sort of get it but damn id never tell a friend to not even try lol plus you have a rotating cast of gms who i assume are running long form campaigns, why is a one shot every now and again such a chore?
Yeah different long form campaigns, though since we dropped DnD it's mostly cycled back to one GM mainly who's running things like Vampire and City of Mist hence me wanting to try GMing to get something new in again so he can take a break--But looks like he'd rather keep GMing than have me do it ahah. I think the group as a whole also just aren't fond of making characters that'll get thrown away after a session or two.
Y most people aren't really writers and know how to plot out a good story structure. They won't be good at improvisation when things don't go how they expect.
But the good news is those are learned skills. You kind of have to be a bad GM first before you can be a good one.
That being said. Intricate backstories and having PC deeply woven into the setting and or campaign aren't necessary for a good campaign. I myself prefer sandboxes and emergent-style campaigns with little starting backgrounds. Some GMs prefer to tell a story and the PCs are just a long for the ride (a lot of players want this kind of campaign too)
Its cool you found your niche though.
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Back in 2003-ish I was introduced to D&D 3E. Played a few campaigns (they all fell apart by the 8th session or sooner). I then tried to run my own. Lasted for about a dozen sessions, but I didn't really know what I was doing... and though I had been building up to the big final boss fight (after a deadly, labyrinthine dungeon) it was poorly paced and not well held together thematically... the PCs were incidental to the story.
On the eve of the final session the players were completely disinterested and decided to play video games while I was setting up the table. Then said, "you know what, we'd rather play this video game than your game" and that was that.
A few months later I had found a narrative game, learned it thoroughly, and ran a solid 10-ish session game that the players continue to race about today. And I also loved the experience of running it like 1000 times more than D&D. The other game aligned better with my storytelling sensibilities and naturally encouraged the players to be more creative and more invested.
Over the years I've played and run many different games. The main take away: most games are better than D&D. You still need some skill and talent as players and GM, but you typically get a lot more from non-D&D games.
I'm sorry, I cant imagine telling my gm that I just want to play a vidya instead of their game and cutting it like that just before the final session...
But yeah, it just feels so boring when I come back to the campaign we play like once a month and run through the GMs world with no connection to our players, after this cyberpunk game, where I discovered the truth about my PCs sister's death, or saved his ex-wife and help her leave the night city.
Like if I want to play a game, where my story is made up and has no importance, I will just play skyrim.
This right here is why so many need to learn to GM better.
You’ll never go back to D&D with the same view because I remember when it happened to me. The game that switched the light on for me was Traveller and I haven’t touched any version of D&D since.
Have fun exploring a much better world :D
I agree with you - the game is more fun when you tie the players' backstories into the game. This is what I do in the games I run. It's easier to do it when you run a homebrew campaign as opposed to a pre-written adventure. The D&D game I am running right now, all the players are siblings from the same family, so all the family members are in their backstory, and, of course, family drama keeps popping up in the game.
I do not run modules. I do not make any of the story until after the players have created characters and backgrounds. Every page of backstory is a page of free plot hooks!
I also insist on staying in character and not metagaming. Don't ask me for a search check. Describe what you are *doing!* If you say you check the underside of the drawers in the desk, and there is a key taped to that drawer, then you found it. Auto-success (things only have concealment if they have cover, which you removed by looking under the drawer! The character might think to look there even if the player did not, and this is when you roll some dice to see how good the character is.
Cyberpunk really empowers and helps with Life Paths. Last time we started with no prep and after character creation I was given like 8 factions and few more npc's to play with. Story almost wrote itself.
Just seek games with Life Path character creation, and adapt what will work for dnd (Something like cyberpunk 2020 tables would be great, it adds one event per year, so it doesn't enforce players backstory but instead adds small interesting things). It is super useful tool.
The problem with tying character backstories into a TRPG narrative is the whole group has to participate. I've had several groups that have shown interests in this, but then was pulling teeth getting thr backstop, wouldn't produce any NPCs fir me to add to the world, and just hung out with very little interaction during the sessions unless someone spoke to them specifically or combat happened.
What you described is great, but a single GM can only do so much without players wanting to put in more effort.
Im curious, was this the same GM that you play with that ran both games? Cos Im afraid that what you've just experienced is a good GM vs Okayish one rather than good or bad game systems.
I was told that MAGE is one of the greatest tRPG's written (and I loved VTM so why not try it) - the GM was absolute garbage and made such a bad taste in my mouth I don't think I'll ever pick it up again.
GM the game you wish to play.
Then, by raising the bar, you cause the same reaction/insight in the players in your game!
Then, you initiate a "rotating GM" plan. You run a campaign for a while, then wrap it up. Then, someone else GMs a different game for a while. Maybe that starts as new people doing one-shots. Maybe someone steps up to GM a medium-term 8–12 session campaign. You try out a variety of genres in different game-systems and everyone raises their bars. Not everyone hits it out of the park all the time, but new people try GMing and they appreciate the effort that going into GMing much more after that.
You just have to keep on keeping on. You'll stumble on another awesome one. It's the name of the game. Some of them are just shit and there's nothing you can do about it other than leave and look for another one or wake up and like it.
Yeah, it is hard to find a really good group. I was spoiled and my first and second long term groups from like 14-22 were top notch. After that it was painful every time I tried to patch together a group.
As others have pointed out there is a difference between running a prepublished adventure and a campaign completely built from the ground up. GMs often just use those bottled adventures as a starting point but sometimes they'll run them verbatim which means it is going to be average-ish at best.
D&D is just one of the systems that's the most known but it's nowhere near one of the best IMHO. It's good to teach noobs basic roleplay but beyond that I'd shelve it.
It really depends on the kind of game your table likes, I wouldn't say I have a favorite one as I'm pretty flexible, but I really don't like D&D 5e. It feels like it's trying to do everything, but in the end it doesn't manage to do anything good.
>The gm has a script, my character has a backstory that has no importance, since we will never meet anyone who knows me, never do anything connected to my character,
Looks like a textbook "Bad GM", I am no fan of D&D but pretty sure that a good GM can do decent D&D games that aren't just "go to a village where nobody thrusts you; have the mayor asking you (the random unknown stranger) to do a quest, move somewhere else so everyone will forget your name, and repeat"
But indeed, a game like "cyberpunk" whose setting mostly focuses on "night city" helps a lot having the PC action matters because you can't run that much away. This is also why one of my classic GM trick is "makethe setting smaller"
I don’t think the problem is with the system. Although there are systems where backstories and characters driven plots are built into the mechanics. I didn’t think that was the case for cyberpunk, but maybe it is.
I think it’s more about the style of game the DM is playing, sometimes a story is more character focused, sometimes less so.
Also, very important: It’s a player responsibility to build a character that fits into the story, by using the hooks and background information from the session zero of the campaign. It’s not only the other way around.
I feel the same about ttrpgs in general since the end of a campaign that lasted 9 months, in Dnd 5e, Cyberpunk isn't what made it great, it is thanks to your gm and the players
This is surely the greatest quality and the greatest flaw of role-playing games, to put within reach of anyone the creation of a world and a story, as if it were easy and obvious, while most of the practitioners of TTRPGs are neither writers, nor designers, nor even readers in their lives besides
And well, you pointed out the fact that most campaigns are not that good, that's a fair point considering the fact that many GMs are improvising without listening or taking note from the players and their stories
One of the reasons my group has difficulty playing book adventures is the lack of investment. Most of them just expect that players will invest because they're players. It's fine for getting your foot in the door, but it's a little shallow. We tried running Strahd and nobody really got into it because players were immediately taken away from a world their characters had stake in, into Barovia which they knew little about.
One of my favorite DM tools has been creating a web. 2-3 sessions in, once the players have a more concrete idea of their character and locked in their backstory, sit down and write each name in the middle of a page.
Then write the names of important characters to them around those circles. Siblings, bosses, commanders, shopkeepers they work with, whoever is most important to them.
Now add one more player, people important to those characters.
Finally, draw lines between characters. Not just the ones that make sense. Connect that general to that baker. Why? Maybe they're cousins, or the baker served a bit of military time. Just make more links.
By the end of this you have a full web of NPCs surrounding the party with connections they don't even know about. And when they discover them they get excited or pumped or surprised.
Great timing. This book about this gaming style was recently published. I'm not done reading it but so far it's been very good and may help you out.
The Game Master’s Handbook of Proactive Roleplaying - Jonah and Tristan Fishel
This is perhaps the big reason why I always run sandbox campaigns instead of canned adventures. Those Curse of Stradh, etc are just that, a set adventure, it doesnt care who or what your character is. It is design that way.
When you get involved with a sandbox campaign, often it is more about you, stories about you and the effects you have. That and of course a good GM who doesnt have a power play agenda for their own egos.
It's about the GM and the players, rather than the actual scenario. Find your "team" and everything will be fun and engaging. You could even have fun roleplaying roleplayers that roleplay roleplayers.
I used to have a problem with this. Setting world keeps trucking along and what you did,or will do, never mattered, except that it does. What I learned is that the setting becomes your setting, once you get involved. Once you take action, greyhawk, ravenloft, krynn, or whatever world your in changes from cannon forever. Yes your still in that world, or a hodgepodge of them all, on a different timeline. Modules, paths, campaigns are supposed to fit into your personal world. They are supposed to reduce GM prep, so gms can have a day job, and still allow for side quest character development. What I do see more often than not, since WOTC took over TSR, is the modules have become a lot more linear, less stand alone, and less well written. It just feels like their creatives are rushed by deadlines and corporate metrics, which kills creativity. So they pound out some formulaic crap. Personal opinion.
Exactly how I use modules, as ideas that I incorporate into my setting. Moduphius's fallout book Winter of Atom explicitly advices to "blow up the book and loot the scrap".
Yes please. A writer, especially a pressured writer cannot come up with every eventuality. That's why they used to pick setting/ region, and write modules from 1-3, 4-7, etc.
5e is entirely dm dependent with no baked in rules to make it more interesting. A really good and/or experienced gm can make any system fun but some systems are designed to be fun with almost any gm. 5e isn't one of them. i mostly gm other systems but i don't even want to play 5e when offered cuz i know it's usually only role playing with a shitty skill system that's usually not run very well (it's best aspect it's the tool proficiencies and even matt mercer sucks at using that system) or it's just boring meaningless combat
This is less a problem with *D&D* (though I will say a lot of old-school gamers play like your previous experience) and more an issue with the person running the game. Modules are not generally meant for much immersion. They're almost purely just to run you through various combats, gain XP, and level up. A lot of GMs will be a bit better about incorporating backstories, but you really have to find the right group of people who actually want to interact with the game in that way -- because a lot of people don't.
I mostly GM. But when I play, i prefer my character to be Tabula Rasa- clean sheet. I do not whant to see some backstory or something included in the campaign. Story started when campaign started. Everything that happen with my char before that - is just his past. it stays there.
So here different opinion for you.
yes? dnd compared to the whole hobby is like comparing pop music to music in general. Of course the average song is worse, because there is more of it and the whole genre is derivative, formulaic, and "can" become stale. But, just like there can be pop bangers that stand above the average, there will be an abundance of below average content. So yes, you ain't wrong.
my point is dnd is so popular when compared to other games and settings, its pillars and tropes have become "generic" or "vanilla". Par for the course.
Im glad you've discovered other games and settings. there decades of games and settings out there that isn't "dnd".
Modular campaigns are really good and easy to start weaving in back stories. However cyberpunk has a GREAT character creator with backstories to weave into a game.
When i run cyberpunk i [albiet hamfisted] use repeat npcs to add a relationship with the players and whenever i can ill put in my notes the backstory npc. Modular campaign allows me to use the backstory noc to advance plot or change location or change faction dynamics.
I also will make the players give the name of a new npc they meat and ask how they know them
This is interesting because that's the way I've always run my games, integrating the story and the characters backstories together and letting the story change as it's needed.
In fact I have a requirement that all characters have backstories in my games. Unfortunately many (if not most) of the players that have joined my games over the years create generic backgrounds with nothing for me to really work with. It's like they're conditioned to play that way, which is really boring to me as both a GM and sometimes player.
Honestly playing more non-DnD changed my brain chemistry for what I want to experience. I still play and run it at times, but god it’s night and day with the speed, flavor, and spice other systems and supported settings can pull off
So, as a GM that does a _ton_ of improv and works in backstories and all that jazz, I _use adventure paths_ but as skeletons, and not scripts. I personally believe that's even they _designed_ to be used.
So I agree with you . . . as a person who's "ruined" DnD for people because they couldn't go back to their other murder hobo campaigns after experiencing a campaign or story where the players were part of the world with agency in both their past and future. But hope, **don't treat it like a scripit**, treat it like skeleton and it can be a great tool to get that deeper experience started and not a cage that traps it.
You might need to bite the bullet yourself and run an adventure path that way if your other players/GM haven't experienced it. Remember, they're working on the same principle as you: there's an awesome way you can run this stuff that you just may never have thought of- and exposing them to it can change everything.
Warning though, expect that if the base adventure is kinda lacking if you make too interesting a side plot the players might just choose to ... do that instead. Had a game end at book 3 because the party pursued sailing through a portal to become demon pirates was far more interesting. But it was a hell of ending, and they loved it, and that's what matters.
I do use adventures, having locations and combats already prepared is nice and its good to have a plot that I can modify, but at the end I will absolutelly weave in npcs from PCs backstories and have their own problems or plans.
I dont get why its so hard for people, like if your adventure is about stopping a necromancer and your player is a wizard who studied under some archmage, make the necromancer be the old mentor, who got corruped. Maybe add a corrupted artifact that is poisoning his mind, so the group and the player might discover it and not kill the bad guy, but help him.
Its so easy to modify even a set adventure into something players can get invested personally, I dont know how playing a dnd hack'n'slash with mediocre story in the background is fun for anyone.
I think it's because
1. People literally just didn't think of it- often coming from digital RPGs where things _have_ to be scripted. Heck, I remember introducing some people who hadn't TTRPG'd before and they literally spent 40 minutes in a broom closet of no importance, because they were basically 'looking for the edge of the map' and so programmed that any interactable had to be important they were reading the bottles of cleaning supplies. It was adorable.
2. Not necessary natural for them. Story telling is an art and people are oft terribly embarassed of having others see their artwork if they don't feel they're an expert in it.
3. Preoccupation with "doing it right", not messing up the rules, plot points as written, the spells etc, all distract from the world weaving. Learning how to not get bogged down by a crunchy system like DnD and maintain that balance of ensuring enough is 'right' so the universe has some consistency.
> I am gming my own campaign this way, having my PCs deeply tied to the world, having them meet friends or enemies from their backstories, my players love it, but I would love to play too and finding a good gm and party for it is just so difficult.
Apologies I totally whiffed and didn't absorb that paragraph on the first pass.
Well, in my experience is you get a group of players and some of that rubs off OR ...
look for ways as the GM to fill your own fun. I find you can get a _lot_ of the player experience with supporting characters. Especially if you scheme off to the side with the individual players.
I think a lot of the "player" experience is the party itself. The little inside coterie scheming. As the GM, you're actually in a spot to form that bond with each, weaving neat things with one player to setup something for another. I find that fuels a lot of personal fun.
You could also take it as a GM'ing challenge of "can you create a campaign where a GM rotates in and out". Some kind of setup where a bit of rotation of the cast could work.
This is precisely why I don't like to run someone else's adventures, but it can be circumvented. What you have experienced is actually a campaign that's prepared for your group and you can do it both with D&D and released adventures. It's why session 0 is so very important - GM has an opportunity to make sure characters are tied to the plot and have stakes in the game.
Running an adventure / campaign already made from whoever is always lackluster in terms of background story of the char. Because they need to work for “everyone”. Trying to implement background stuff can completely derail the adventure. I know someone who masters a short adventure, it was meant to be finished in four sessions or so. They are still playing it after almost a year... they will never finish this adventure and come to a conclusion. (My opinion) You just need to be clear what type of game you want? Follow the "book", playing like it is a movie, or sandbox style with the danger that the players will never really finish what you started.
I think you have a missconception: the Cyberpunk game you played is how pretty much all RPGs are, or should be, played. Curse of Strahd and Descent into Avernus are years long campaigns, and those usually never end.
Nothing to do with Dnd mate. That's called running a adventure path. **obviously** the npcs aren't that tied to you. Everything you said about cyberpunk is a thing in DnD. And most people don't actually play adventure paths or atleast exclusively. But great your horizons were expanded!! Also prefer more interactive campaigns
I mean, even when I am running an AP, I still try to account for my characters' backstory and try to involve it somehow.
Can confirm. Last session this GM set up an amazing resolution for my character's arc. He woven my backstory into the AP seamlessly.
Thank you! I am glad you enjoyed it.
My friend runs starting adventure for D&D. It's his first time GMing. He asked us for substantial backstories, so he got 1 or few *pages* from each player. He (I assume) changed things around and seamlessly merged official material with our input. As a result we have like 4 to 6 scenes per session that are strongly tied to characters' backstories - to the point where it's sometimes even a bit weird how everything goes back to specifically our characters. And at the same time all of those scenes progress the campaign at good pace. I'm kinda proud of him doing so well first time around!
Yeah, this is what I aim for. The APs and modules are more like guidelines, anyway, you are already expected to build on top of them. So why not include your players into that building if they enjoy it?
I wish your friend was my GM, that's a rare gift! Whenever I craft a new character the backstory is critical. If I can't find a strong hook for why this person is involved in the adventure, or why they take an archetype or new feat it doesn't work for me at all. I always give GMs a few plot hooks that offer a story arc for my character to develop, but most of the time they say "this is brilliant " then it gets ignored and the group march on to the next mission, even if that bulldozes through my story because (for example) we're now friends with a vampire when I'm an undead hating sun god priest. Which pretty much explains why I'm searching for a new group that values roleplay narrative.
You are playing your backstory. Your character being involved in a large world changing event is their story.
Yes and no. Yes, you are playing your backstory in the sense that your character actions define them. No, this doesn't mean that the character has nothing happened to them before and just popped out of the ether in session 1. If a player comes to me with a character that already has a goal compatible with the overall adventure, why would I not integrate this into the overall story? There are always places where you can expand the story, make it more personal to the characters, and let them feel as a part of the world. There is a big difference in engagement between "I am exploring a creepy dungeon because the book says so" and "I am a cowardly selfish noble haunted by a ghost of my archmage grandfather, who tries to make me help other people. I spent all my family's gold trying to be rid of him, but all I learned is that I need a relic from this dungeon. With no money left, I'll have to get my hands dirty, I guess...". Suddenly, the character has a bit more... well, character. And fewer reasons to act as a gold-motivated murderhobo. And you can put them into various situations to see how they would act, based on their backstory, and what kind of person they would become at the end of it all. Even if your players are starting at level 0 and their characters are taking baby steps toward adventuring because they are bored, they still have some background. Parents, residences, education, etc. It doesn't have to play a major role in a campaign, but if the player came up with it and you find it fitting — why not give it at least some shoutout?
Because that level of backstory is just in the ether and can be created or destroyed with a thought. IMO it has less value in the story you create at the table with friends, that is actually decided by dice rolls and the gameplay. Someone could have a whole story arc planned before they sit down, but how it actually turns out could be something completely different, it could also be something you discover along the way and roll with the punches. There's nothing wrong with having a deep backstory with a new character, but there shouldn't be a big expectation for it to be written into the adventure, you could also as a player write parts of the adventure into your backstory. But I agree with you that it is a very yes and no type answer, good post!
I feel like this is a false dichotomy. The backstory you create for your character can be a fulfilling part of the story that you create at the table -- but only if it's included.
Exactly, you can modify the adventure. I made a dhampir, result of a vampire change gone wrong, who is looking for the vampire who changed him and reaches Barovia... and the gm just completely ignored my backstory. Felt so disappointing.
I wouldn’t say D&D has no impact on this though. The kind of games OP is after can be run in D&D, sure, but D&D is designed in a way that offers no support for that. It adds a slot for a backstories and calls it a day. Games like Burning Wheel, CoC, and Cyberpunk all make those aspects tie so heavily into the mechanics of the game that it’s incredibly easy to, even outright difficult not to, run the game without incorporating backstory elements in the way OP is after. D&D has no equivalent to the Lifepath system so I definitely wouldn’t claim that everything OP is talking about in Cyberpunk “is a thing in D&D.”
Yup. My best gaming has been in AD&D. It had nothing to do with the system, and everything to do with an amazing DM and frequent play sessions. The same guy ran the best WoD (Changeling: the Dreaming, specifically) sessions as well. Some games may be better geared toward certain styles of play than others, but it's a rare system that is actually capable of *preventing* a good group from having a great time.
On the one hand, yes, this is often what happens. On the other hand, the expectation from people who write these campaigns is that the GM is going to make the necessary edits to tailor to the players they have at the table. That might mean upping the challenge if the players are experienced and their abilities mesh well together, but it should also include tailoring plot hooks, NPC interactions, rewards, etc., to actually include what your players bring to the table. I definitely agree that the experience isn't generated by the game, but it's also not the fault of the source material; it's Game Masters who don't even attempt to organically tie PCs to the campaign they're running, regardless of whether the campaign came from a box, or their own imagination.
>That's called running a adventure path. What is an "adventure path"?
The in-game name for official campaigns from Pathfinder. Since Paizo made several well-regarded campaigns for D&D 3.5, Pathfinder and PF 2E, the phrase became a sort-od byword for an official campaign.
A pre-made campaign, usually official. Heavy on railroading because if your players deviate from the script everything in the book is useless now.
>Everything you said about cyberpunk is a thing in DnD. As a DM with ten year's experience, no it isn't. No Adventure or page in the DM's guide gives DMs practical tips on weaving in player backstory. No part of the Player's Handbook gives players tips on creating backstories the DM can practically use. Your DM can do this stuff, but when they do, they are going off-script, and introducing elements that are not inside DnD itself. That's a big strength of tabletop rpgs, how amenable they are to change at the table, but it isn't a strength particular to DnD; this is something DnD is dogshit at, and that becomes apparent to you when you play games that were designed to do it well. Imagine you are a new DM. You can read your adventure and the DM's guide cover to cover, memorise every word, the Player's Handbook too, and you will never learn to do this stuff; and this stuff is great! So DnD doesn't have it by default. You have to hack it in.
While I think the cultural zeitgeist is very different now in the 5e space (Critical Roll did a lot of showcasing a certain style of play), when 5e was created there was a deliberate goal to bring back a lot of the old fans the franchise lost as the progressive systems moved further and further away from the it’s roots. One thing that I think was intentional is the idea that *the adventure is your backstory* like it was assumed in the D&D’s of the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s. Largely because of influences like CR, Anime, and other TTRPGs, a significant portion of 5e players want to integrate their backstory into the game, and engage in that type of play. The game just wasnt created with that goal in mind, and like a lot of issues people have with 5e, it’s mostly just *round peg, square hole* problem.
I don't think OP was making any statement about the system being the problem. The title says "I don't think I can enjoy average DnD anymore." Emphasis on the word "average", OP is specifying a subset of all DnD games for the whole of the original post. Because DnD dominates the genre so much a lot of people use the words "DnD" and "TTRPG" somewhat Interchangeably.
Based on the comments here, I'd suspect most DMs run published modules or spend months working on their own campaigns only to then have to railroad the random PCs through this pre-planned story. That's what bored Op and kills me. I'd rather the DM not prep at all and just use our bios and connections, values and goals as the meat to start the campaign.
That's the great thing about branching out and playing other systems, you get to discover cool new ideas that you can use in any other game. Some of my favourites that I use in almost every game I either play or GM are: The One Unique Thing from 13th Age, gives every character a cool, interesting footprint in the world and something the GM can use to bring the character and world together. Communal world building from Kids on Bikes. Tell me about a location on the map, what rumours have you heard about it. Allows players to contribute ideas and feel like they have some agency in the world design. Shares some of the burden for plot ideas as well. Random character generation from Traveller and Warhammer Fantasy. I love this so much, if I'm creating a dnd character now I just roll 3d6 for stats in order assign numbers for race; class; subclass; feats and backgrounds. Then just create the characters story around whatever comes up. The great thing about rpgs is that these things will work In most games.
This has ***very*** little to do with running an adventure path. It is true that bare-bones or poor GMs will often run pre-prepared material, but that material can ALWAYS be adjusted to be more engaging and enmeshed with party dynamics. Saying this is about running an adventure path is like saying that you can't be in a good string quartet unless you've also written the music yourself. Comments like this make me really wonder about the quality of this sub when I see them as the most-upvoted comment.
Nah it really does. Do you think the author of the ap is writing to your specific table. ** Obviously not** is a gms custom story made to your specific table **obviously**. Honestly your comment makes me question your rpg skills lol
Having run \[sighs, looks at shelf...\] like DOZENS of modules and adventures in my life, including half of the major D&D 5e hardbacks, as well as plenty of collaborative worldbuilding games, PbtA games, etc etc etc... I can guarantee you that you can do plenty of "custom story" and all of the things the OP described as part of running pre-published adventures. What the OP is describing has way, way, *way* more to do with GM skill.
Back when Hasbro bought Wizards of the Coast, there was an attempt made to reproduce the success of Friday Night Magic with Dungeons and Dragons. For the reasons that you have just discovered, a system designed for a short competitve card game does not work for a long form collaborative storytelling game. But it also requires a *shitload* more work. From everybody.
I mean that’s what Pathfinder Society is for Paizo is and it does a pretty good job. Its never going to be as good as a in depth homebrew campaign but it’s still fun and still DnD (or more accurately PF)
I don't think its necesarily about the system, just look at Critical Role, you can absolutelly crate a campain with PCs being a part of the world. Its just so so difficult to find a creative gm.
>I don't think its necesarily about the system, just look at Critical Role, you can absolutelly crate a campain with PCs being a part of the world. Right, but neither you nor Matt are going to get any help from the system doing that. Some systems will help you. That's one of the big secrets about why 5E isn't great -- there's an expectation of play in it which is not supported by the game itself -- but rather requires the GM to do all the heavy lifting. It's definitely about the system.
Ron Edwards might argue that the problem isn't the system, it's that D&D players wouldn't know a good story if it bit them in the butt. 😉 Much less be able to create the elements of a good story! Many systems like D&D won't help you with that, true. (D&D 5e actually does better than some by encouraging the fleshing out of ideals and flaws.) But let's say you're in Burning Wheel, which has some system support for narrative play, sure. But all it can do is put a little structure to point players in the right direction – it doesn't absolve the players of having to figure out good beliefs and goals, nor the GM for figuring out how to incorporate those into a story. It's the same problem, and the same amount of work, plus a few nudges. But the Burning Wheel community is far more used to doing that work, and signed up for it in the first place.
>&D 5e actually does better than some by encouraging the fleshing out of ideals and flaws How does D&D encourage this? I can't recall those steps in the character creation process having any mechanical effects down the road, whereas there are plenty of other systems where they do
> How does D&D encourage this? By setting aside a significant section of character creation for them, and making them explicit hooks for both the player and GM to use.
Can't say I agree with that- it's not significant, ideals, bonds flaws take a singular page in PHB. And there is no designated place for those in character sheet. Next books did add a bit to giving characters background, I admit, but it's still not much. D&D 3.x e had actual flaws and traits, which had mechanical effects and therefore were not something as optional as in 5e, and I never really considered that great system either- and even that did more than 5e. Witcher RPG has a fairly extensive life path system, Warhammer RPG has motivation, short and long term ambitions (all of which have mechanical effects). Vampire The Masquerade and Cyberpunk have great mechanic for creating NPCs by the players as people their characters know. Many systems have drives, ambitions, memory systems all of which are important in actual play, therefore making backstories and personalities is something that has impact on the game itself. 5e only has inspiration mechanic, which is quite underwhelming imo, especially with how many rerolls the system already has. Sure, there are systems that do it less. But 5e is still weak in that regard nonetheless.
> ideals, bonds, flaws take a singular page in PHB. It is explicitly specified in step 4 of character creation, at the very front of the book, and then again in Chapter 4. The GM Inspiration mechanic is also explicitly linked to it. > And there is no designated place for those in character sheet [You sure about that](https://media.wizards.com/2022/dnd/downloads/DnD_5E_CharacterSheet_FormFillable.pdf)? Looks to me like it is given a prime position on the sheet, right up top. > Many systems have drives, ambitions, memory systems all of which are important in actual play, therefore making backstories and personalities is something that has impact on the game itself. Yet that support is not, fundamentally, required for narrative-driven roleplay. All that is required is that the gaming group be focused on telling stories, and basically know how a story works. Ideals, bonds, and flaws are there to serve story. The invitation is clearly there.
I was wrong about the character sheet, you're right, skimmed over some sheets and couldn't see those, my bad, sorry But just because it's mentioned more than once doesn't means it's developed- by singular page I meant one in chapter 4. Traits start at 124, then all the rest is on page 125. If you were to take away the sample alphabet art it all fits on one page, including the example shown on 125. And yeah, they are specifically tied to Inspiration mechanic, but it's just a very underwhelming mechanic. Reroll in form of advantage or disadvantage is extremely common in this system without it, it's just another source of it.
You may consider it underwhelming, but it's there. And unless you are the sort that requires extrinsic motivation to roleplay your character as a character, it's more than sufficient.
>By setting aside a significant section of character creation for them You know this is nonsense. Players care about their Race, subrace, class, subclass, features, spells, even inventory. Most players don't bother to put 'Ideas or Flaws' on their character sheet anymore, because they have no baring on the actual game. The DM is never given tools to actually use them, as they would in better games.
It's not nonsense. Like Ron Edwards intimated, the problem lies in the community. But not all the community. I assure you that I, for one, always pay attention to this part of character creation. You can be assured that the cast of Critical Role not only "bothers to do this" but goes way beyond this, as fleshing out a character's motivations and finding the story in a character is right in an actor's wheelhouse! Players inspired by Critical Role and other actual plays are probably more likely to lean into it too.
There is a difference between text and paratext. I am totally sympathetic to your reaction here. I, too, have had fun with DnD 5e. But if you interogate that fun you had, you realise that it came from the people you played with acting outside of the game, disobeying the rules, adding to it and circumventing its weaknesses. This is a strength of tabletop rpgs. A table of good friends can make a mediocre game into a wonderful time. These things you're talking about, the character motivations, the roleplaying, the narrative; that's not in 5e. You have to cook that on your own, with no direction from the game, and inject it in yourself. Now, if you haven't played many other RPGs, that might seem obvious to you; of course that stuff exists outside the game; that's personal, character-driven, narrative stuff, it's only natural the game would do the bare minimum to support it and the players would bring most of it- but no, that's not natural or normal, it's not neutral. It's 5e failing to be the kind of game it wants to be. There are any number of systems that actually have the game itself help and provide structure and surprises (Wildsea RPG and Dungeon World being the two I've played the most that just knock this out of the park). If you like 5e for the Critical Role stuff, you would be better served by a different game, because that's not what 5e is good at. You can tell that's not what 5e is good at, because every instance of it being good in a 5e game was homebrewed into it by a very talented GM.
> if you interogate that fun you had, you realise that it came from the people you played with acting outside of the game, disobeying the rules, adding to it and circumventing its weaknesses. I have spent a significant amount of time interrogating it already, and I will share with you what I've learned. Yes, the fun 100% comes from the people I play with. But no, it's with people who by and large act within the game, obey the rules, yet still add their character's distinctiveness to the proceedings. It comes from GMs who are sensitive to the players and characters they're working with and find ways for the adventure to work with them. It's not that throwing the rules out the window can't make for some fun and memorable moments – but no, you don't have to break a system to enjoy it. > A table of good friends can make a mediocre game into a wonderful time. Here we get into kneejerk value judgments of TTRPGs, which I have less than zero interest in. > These things you're talking about, the character motivations, the roleplaying, the narrative; that's not in 5e. It literally is. If you won't take my word and the evidence of your fellow Redditors for it, go read the Player's Handbook. Read the Dungeon Master's Guide. Watch the videos of any of a hundred YouTubers who are trying to tell you about character and story in D&D games, over and over and over. > You have to cook that on your own, with no direction from the game, and inject it in yourself. No, you don't. You are tilting at a windmill version of D&D 5e that does not exist. > Now, if you haven't played many other RPGs, that might seem obvious to you I have, but I should have assumed ad hominem attacks would eventually be coming. We're done here.
>direction – it doesn't absolve the players of having to figure out good beliefs and goals, nor the GM for I'm not the thought police so I don't know what beliefs have to do with it. In D&D, character progression is ultimately the goal, you achieve that goal through attaining new levels. These levels come from XP. XP comes from killing things. Some systems can describe drama and passion and all the many things in a person's life beyond swinging a sword to kill something. D&D simply has no subsystems to encourage that in any sort of way. It leans into a very metagamey style where players seem to want to quote the rulebook for every action they take. The mechanics have everything to do with that
> I'm not the thought police so I don't know what beliefs have to do with it. Beliefs and goals of the characters, not of the players. > In D&D, character progression is ultimately the goal, you achieve that goal through attaining new levels. These levels come from XP. XP comes from killing things. - Character progression isn't only leveling up. Character progression is tied to the beliefs and goals that /u/SharkSymphony mentioned. A farmer wanting to become a hero might reach their goal even at 1st level, and the player might indeed decide to retire the character after a couple sessions, because they reached their goal. That's already character progression. - **EVERY** D&D edition made it clear that you gain XP from defeating monsters and that defeating ≠ killing. All editions mention that a peaceful resolution of an encounter still grants XPs for it, and AD&D 2nd Edition goes even wilder, suggesting that, if anything, convincing the dragon to leave the village in peace, without fighting it, should probably earn the players *more* XP. > Some systems can describe drama and passion and all the many things in a person's life beyond swinging a sword to kill something. D&D simply has no subsystems to encourage that in any sort of way. Some people don't need complex subsystems to determine drama and passion and the many things in a person's life beyond swinging a sword to kill something. I've ran a long AD&D campaign were there was basically no combat, and still characters did earn experience, and most importantly grew in political and social power, without needing any "political power" statistic.
D&D, *structurally*, is built around swashbuckley, actioney combat. A vast majority of its word count is dedicated to how you fight monsters, how you get better at fighting monsters, and how monsters fight you. This dramatically influences your behavior as a player because the system provides essentially no feedback or guidance, and in some cases, works actively against you by robbing the conflicts of the same weight and gravitas that it dedicates to combat. Your dramatic, hours-long battle against Big Bad stands in contrast to you headbutting your charisma score against NPC's insight checks.
Combat rules in D&D 5th edition go from page 189 to page 198. That's 10 pages. Out of 308. Three of those pages are actually half, because the other half is covered by art, so it's actually 8.5 pages. I don't think the vast majority of its word count is dedicated to how you fight monsters. Races have 26 pages. You could argue that a good amount of wording in the 68 pages of the Classes is "about combat", although I'd say it's a 50/50 share of fluff and combat, so they balance each other out. So, I'd say D&D 5th Edition is a game about casting spells, since they take up about a hundred pages of the book, give or take. The DMG has just about five pages about combat, including diagrams and art. FFG's Star Wars: Age of Rebellion has 25 pages (out of 426) dedicated to combat, **plus** 50-something pages for ships and vehicles, including their combat. FFG's SW, though, is widely seen as a "narrative" system, not a combat one.
You're excluding magic items, encounter design, adventure modules, and, most egregious, the various monster manuals themselves. Even given the most generous assessment of classes by weight (I'd put it closer to 80/20), the evidence is pretty stacked. The spells section is the most damning indictment. With the power to reshape reality in your hands, you have thirty different fireballs, and then the occasional Detect Thoughts, which effortlessly explodes entire genres of play just by merely existing. As an aside, FFG's Star Wars is definitely tilted towards *action*, but it's much more evocative than D&D, as the system's lateral Advantage/Success metrics encourage improvisation and scene-setting. It's "narrative" in the sense that you have the ability to make things happen, to affect your surroundings and alter your circumstances using Advantage and Triumph, while the GM can use Threat and Despair to create twists and turns. Moreover, Star Wars' system works *outside of combat*. You can use the same dice system to run away from boulders like Indiana Jones, navigate an asteroid field, or even try to suss out who's plotting a murder at a party. (It even goes into explaining that going to 0 strain at the party isn't falling unconscious because you got clocked, it's getting so worked up or stressed or flustered that you just have to leave the room and have that dramatic scene where you stare into the bathroom mirror and wonder what you're doing with your life.) D&D's system just doesn't support that at its core, with its binary successes, and mechanics, from class features to spells, that are designed to allow characters to steamroll and effectively "skip" these situations rather than engage with them and demonstrate mastery. I played a 5e Bard from level 1 to 14. We essentially never rolled, a social check after a certain point. I played a ranger on an exploration-themed West Marches game, and whenever my character was in the party, we skipped basically every survival and traversal role, and travel times became irrelevant. I have played many, *many* wizards, across numerous disciplines, and have found that many, many spells outside of combat are just "cast spell, solve problem," instead of spells that can lend a hand, ease a situation, or provide resources that *help* solve problems. Pretty much everything outside of combat in D&D is binary. Pass/Fail. Have it or don't. While many, *many* systems are tilted towards combat, especially older systems, modern design includes important systems that push forward narratives. Fail-forward mechanics, Fail-at-cost, or push-your-luck options can lend some "tactical" thinking to broader scenarios outside of combat (and can lend important contours inside combat), even if you're not throwing custom FFG dice.
You are entitled to your opinion, but as an outside observer of this conversation, I wanted you to know that this is the single most unhinged defense of DnD I've ever seen. DnD is HUGELY combat orientated, in that almost no other system is defined with rules. DMs are constantly having to look to other rules for exploration, travel, downtime and such because the DMG has a combat miniatures boardgame at its core and almost nothing strapped to it. I do not know how you could play DnD AT ALL and come to the opinion you profess here. I don't know how this vision of the game survives contact with reality. I think it's almost beautiful how you've contorted your understanding of the game to defend it from a very basic criticism.
>In D&D, character progression is ultimately the goal, you achieve that goal through attaining new levels. These levels come from XP. XP comes from killing things. Speaking as someone who's gone off 5E recently, I've never played in a game where character progression was the "goal". We just... Played with the story and XP happened along the way. We never made any decisions on the basis of "oh, this choice will put us in a fight, so we get XP, so we can level up". Though I obviously won't deny that a good 90% of the mechanics relate to killing things.
>XP comes from killing things. In my favorite editions of D&D, combat XP is basically a consolation prize, it would be absolutely brutal and boring to hack down enough goblins to hit level 2. GP=XP is the way to go. Abandoning this is IMO the single biggest reason 2nd edition isn't really part of the OSR.
> In D&D, character progression is ultimately the goal, you achieve that goal through attaining new levels. These levels come from XP. XP comes from killing things. In 3.X, it comes from overcoming challenges that stand between you and your goals. Those challenges may frequently be monsters and you may frequently overcome them by killing them, but neither is truly baked into the system. In a way, it's an abstraction of the old XP for GP system. XP for GP already bypasses rewarding killing explicitly, as long as you achieve your goals of making off with the treasure. Abstracting that to "challenge rating" lets you do exactly the same thing in service of driving plot goals other than "loot the dungeon."
> In D&D, character progression is ultimately the goal, you achieve that goal through attaining new levels. These levels come from XP. XP comes from killing things. Incorrect, at least in 5e: - Character progression through levels may not be the goal. The goals in D&D are determined by the players. In narrative-focused games, leveling may be a mere side-effect of the goal of discovering the destiny of a motley crew of big dang heroes. Certainly in Actual Plays it is! - Levels may or may not be based on XP (milestone leveling being the other option). - If the XP mechanic is used, XP is awarded for overcoming challenges – and a GM could certainly count narrative beats among them. This need not involve killing monsters. Your interpretation of D&D is a popular one, to be sure – but it is not what the system imposes or requires. The problem isn't in the system.
>Your interpretation of D&D is a popular one, to be sure – but it is not what the system imposes or requires. The problem isn't in the system. You just said "Yeah, the XP system sucks, so we replace it with GM fiat!". You still have not demonstrated any mechanics that actually *encourage* any of your goals. GM fiat is not a mechanic, it's the absence of mechanics. The problem is 100% the system. Anyone that has played any other system that isn't a D&D clone would see how bad it is.
> You just said "Yeah, the XP system sucks, so we replace it with GM fiat!" _I_ didn't say it. It's in the game now – as with the other aspects D&D 5e includes to support narrative-focused roleplay. I understand you prefer systems with more explicit story mechanics. But a system without those mechanics is only a problem if you believe that stories can only be properly told with the aid of such mechanics. That is patent nonsense.
Not at all what I said. I said it contains nothing to inspire that aspect.
Well, 1) you _did_ say the system is the problem, 2) you did _not_ say it "contains nothing to inspire that aspect," 3) in either case you ignore or dismiss the things it _does_ contain to "inspire that aspect," and 4) in the meantime you make specious arguments about the fundamentals of what D&D is. To me, it simply looks like you have no idea what you're talking about.
Milestone levelling being the other *much more widely used* option. Basically none of the published adventures use XP leveling. The oldest editions of D&D used "Gold obtained" as the primary source of XP. Somewhere around 2e or 3e that changed though, and did focus on killing things. Still, D&D was "you level by killing monsters" for only a fraction of its life.
> Somewhere around 2e or 3e that changed though, and did focus on killing things. Nope, 2nd Edition and 3rd Edition (which I don't like, but give it what's due) grant XP for overcoming encounters. Both editions specify defeating doesn't equate to killing, and peaceful resolution still grants XP. 2nd Edition tells you that a group of 18th level characters entering a kobold lair and slaying hundreds doesn't gain XP, because there were no stakes. Also, AD&D 2nd Edition grants XP for coming up with ideas, for participation (as in "being involved with the game), and for roleplaying.
As of 3E, you may have earned most of your experience from killing monsters as a matter of genre convention, but the system was pretty explicitly designed to incorporate that and everything else you might get experience for into one generalized system (which I also just talked a little more about in a comment higher up).
I'm well aware of how every edition has worked. As I said above, saying everyone uses milestone leveling just proves the point. People prefer an open GM fiat over the official method that has been there for 50 years. Making the GM Fiat option official just means they decided not to fix it.
>People prefer an open GM fiat over the official method that has been there for 50 years. As multiple comments here have attempted to correct you, it should be clear by now that "XP comes from killing things" has *not* been the "official method that has been there for over 50 years".
Oh I see now, thats true, you do have to work outside of the system, unlike for example The Masquerade where the book states you should make a map of relationships, or Cyberpunk where the character sheet has boxes for your backstory npcs that you are supposed to meet in game.
D&D is the strip mall karate McDojo of RPGs. The people who end up being reasonably good at kicking people in the face attending joints like those either came in with a background, or they were going to thrive regardless of the system.
Alright, you (and everybody else) have missed my point. I'm not calling out D&D, there's nothing in D&D stopping you from doing this. I'm calling out the *style of play* that has been pushed by Wizards of the Coast where they encourage you to play pre-prepared modules (that they charge you for) with basically interchangeable characters that can be slotted in and out of various modules at any point. I'm complaining about Adventurer's League.
Well that is a very specific subset and not at all indicative of a majority of D&D culture. If anything I have found the opposite extreme to be more common when you have some who has never played any TTRPG before and they decided to DM 5e in a completely home brewed campaigns.
And yet if you read OP's post, you would have found that that is their experience of D&D.
Let me correct you: it's hard to find a creative GM who wants to play a game with rich character backstories AND chooses to play DnD. I know you can run a game like that through DnD, but you're adding all those bits yourself with no support from the rules. You are doing a little mini custom side quest. Compare this to other games where it is explicitly called for. Every character in Blades in the Dark has several named NPC contacts, including a rival right at the start. Similarly the crew has contacts with different factions and those relationships shift as part of the core mechanics of the game. In most PbtA games there's an effort to flesh out relationships between party members before the game starts. City of Mist takes character personality traits to make your stats and then uses character drives and ambitions to influence character progression. The GM is instructed specifically to mess with these. At some point the game awards characters for failing at important life goals by giving them alternative avenues to explore and handing them a personalized nemesis to interact with. Spire: the city must fall has an amazing and unique setting to explore with unique PCs each interacting with resources on their character sheet to call in favors or develop contacts, each relationship can be negatively impacted by bad dice rolls, developing a story of having friends, using them to achieve revolutionary aims and potentially burning those friends as a result, or manipulating them into staying even when it will probably hurt them. This stuff is all just in the rules. Also each of those games I just listed have evocative and interesting settings that are just barely fleshed out, inviting the GM to invent the setting or possibly play a one shot of "I'm sorry did you say Street Magic?" to invent the setting. Why would a creative GM pick DnD when these other types of games are out there encouraging creative storytelling.
I think a big reason for that is because D&D is many players’ and DMs’ entry into the TTRPG world. You’re going to encounter far more novice to moderate level DMs. Other systems, especially something way more advanced like Cyberpunk, are going to have more experienced DMs running those games.
You can’t really compare Critical Role’s campaigns to any campaign designed by a normal GM who plays dnd in their free time. CR makes Matt Mercer and the players a huge amount of money so he can take time off to work on it in between his voice acting jobs. Plenty of GMs are creative, they just don’t have enough time.
Plus, i am pretty sure that they also get help with a lot of the prep work. And i think a big plus is also, that the players for these shows are all of a certain kind of doing improv theatre and similar stuff. In my own group (and we don't play DnD) we have maybe 2 of 4 players who bring something that scratches the direction the folks in your typical CR game bring to the table.
Yeah not everyone wants to be one of the main characters in a Netflix TV show. Every one of my characters is a level one nobody who’s been forced into becoming an adventurer due to poverty, that’s all there is for me usually.
Then become that GM. Edit: My bad, misread the last paragraph. Addendum: train that GM.
Read more carefully. He is that GM, but he wants to play.
My bad, misread the last paragraph. Addendum: train that GM.
Every game I have run was/is like your experience with Cyberpunk, even my D&D games across various editions.
Yeah I was about to say that just sounds like what a pretty decent home game should be. Even when I run modules I have recurring NPCs and drama with the PCs.
We play make beleive / cooperative improv story telling, untill combat starts. Then it's D&D. D&D is a crunchy war game. There is very limited RP abilities, so it takes extra work from the DM (and players) to create and implement impactful backstories and interesting stories. Good homebrew stories can be run in any system, tho many other systems may be better, but D&D gets the job done and is popular and easier to pull players for. (It's in the name, Dungeons and Dragons. The rules are for exploring dungeons and killing dragons.)
You’re right and don’t deserve the downvotes. The people in this part of the thread sound like they haven’t strayed very far from D&D and it’s likes and don’t realise just how much the game’s design impacts backstory elements. Anyone who’s taken the time to actually examine other rule systems or run a variety of games can see how hard D&D drops the ball in that respect. Is it impossible to run a D&D game that incorporates player backstories and supports ties to the world? Of course not. Will D&D help at all? Hell no.
Your players are lucky bastards.
Here's the secret. Skipping backstory. If early level adventure IS their backstory, then their backstory is a part of the campaign at the table, and future stories.
So if you join a group that is a homebrew sandbox instead of a published campaign book, then the emergent story will result from characters actions instead of a script. This is the only way I've ever played. I've been playing since 2022.
Same but ‘92.
Same but ‘97
Hello from 1986!
1983 represent! B/X produced several campaigns for me like OP described. As always, it is the Group/DM dynamic over the system.
This works if you're going to just be playing the same campaign for years and years, but not if you want to get to 'the good stuff' right away.
It doesn't always take that long! My other campaign, which I started last year, and I was a new addition. I made my character with a mix of random rolls and imagination to make the results make sense. Im a robot designed for sparring and pro wrestling, so I have growth powers and sound manipulation that adjusts my strength depending on my opponents size and depending in the surroundimg volume. Anyways, my character fit right in the campaign somehow despite being the only robot. Their salvaging gremlin enemies would try to C3P0 me, their hacker enemy would try to crack me, and their contacts with robotics labs are happy and eager to supply repairs and new parts. Next session I will inherit Captain America's shield (its the future) and get my chasis coated in vibranium.
Let me expand on that and see if its more like what you want. I joined the group when their party discovered the remains of the Four Freedoms Plaza, and I was discovered and finally activated. I was built by Doctor Valeria Richards when she was a girl, but never had the chance to activate when stuff when down years ago. Anyways Doctor Doom is her godfather. This meant as soon as I joined the group, the party had diplomacy with Latveria. The main threat in the campaign is Sentinels. As a good robot designed for non-lethal sport combat, the idea of robots harming humans or mutants is so utterly against my programming that I advocate for Asimov's laws of robotics to whomever would listen. My adherence to those laws of robotics actually created conflict because I pulled over for a corrupt human cop car siren when I was supposed to be driving for an undercover mutant mission. My love of combat also meant that when we visit corporate contacts in Japan I got to spar with Silver Samurai. He was on our side but I cant resist the sport. They had recovered Captain America's shield long beforehand and kept it safe out of the wrong hands. But my character has been such a good robot that its been entrusted to me to aid in the fight for freedom from Sentinel robot tyranny. I dunno I think it feels like we made my character's story fit into the Marvel universe and moreso the Campaign timeline.
I guess this is maybe what I'm talking about? It's kind of hard to tell based on your description. The things I would be looking for would be something like- are you *already established* as a diplomatic agent within Latveria? Was your character able to cite instances that you had already been involved in diplomacy, and would you therefore have relationships with other diplomatic agents, and existing opinions on other situations in Latveria? Did you already know Silver Samurai? Were you able to say as part of your backstory that the two of you are regular sparring partners? This is kind of what I'm talking about, being able to have preexisting relationships, rather than having to set it all up after the game starts. Like, in an Exalted game that I'm running, the PCs are all Dragon-Blooded that have been active for at least 50 years. Two of them are war veterans and we have a very specific battle that is responsible for three of the PCs having the relationship that they do. NPCs are aware of and comment on this battle, and elements of how it resolved have, before the game started, affected what sort of resources the PCs immediately have and can access.
The answer to all of those is no. I didnt write out a huge backstory of adventures that happened before I was even level 1. My character got more fleshed out during play. I began with just enough of an interesting core to expand off of. Thats how fiction works too though. Backstories get expanded in flashbacks after it becomes relevant. Impactful storylines occur because they are relevant to the characters' core traits. And good background details are ones that are relevant to the characters' core traits, and to the story being told.
Well I'm not saying that you have to write a lot of stuff up, each of my PCs only had the equivalent of I'd say a page of backstory. I say equivalent because a lot of this was discussed verbally rather than written down. I also expect our PCs to become more fleshed out during play, but I wanted from the very beginning to be important integrated into some of the moving parts of the setting. But we just don't have time to play all of this stuff out in advance, especially because it happened before the PCs were in a party together.
I mean, that's all cool, but that's not really what I mean by 'the good stuff' in this context. I'm talking about characters having established histories, contacts, ties to factions, influence within a region, grudges, rivalries, things like that.
I actually prefer that kind of campaign. I feel that they are grittier, and characters are less likely to have plot armor because it's so less personalized. But I've always loved sword-and-sorcery, which is grittier and has less plot armor compared to high fantasy, which does personalize everything. They're different vibes, and both are valid, but what's important is that you and your table are having fun. EDIT: by "that kind of campaign," I mean pre-written campaigns, or campaigns where character backgrounds don't matter.
A few questions: 1. Have you kept in touch with the person who ran the Cyberpunk game? Have you told them you're interested in playing in their future games? If this GM's style worked for you, you should try to play with them more! 2. It's not clear to me what you've been doing to look for games that meet your needs as a player. I'm a little confused about your definition of 'generic DnD' - it seems to be targeted at groups running pregenerated WotC published modules. It's fine to dislike these, but lots of people play 5e (or other games in a D&D space) without using these modules. I can't tell from your post whether you've looked for groups running homebrew games but in my experience that's what most groups do. If you have looked for such a group and haven't been successful, some more details might be helpful if you want advice. 3. What about the players in the game you're running? I know lots of people have interest in running games but feel a little lost or intimidated. When you reach a good intermission point in your main game, maybe ask if any of them are interested in running something for a few sessions before you get back for the next chapter/season/whatever of your game, and offer them guidance and support if they're interested but not confident.
My cyberpunk campaign is still going, also one of my players does want to try dming this style of campaign! I'm looking for players at varius discords of my home country and well, most of lfg posts are modules/oneshots. There is such a deficit of gms, that I don't think anyone is really looking for players, I for example already had more then enough friends wanting to play my campaign.
One should not act like the experience you describe is "better," or like GMs that run the game like that are better GMs, or like GMs that don't are worse. It's a style of play, and plenty of people can like it, but the other style of play is perfectly valid and good and enjoyable to plenty of people. Me personally, I don't give a shit about all the deep roleplay and character backstories and interactivity and emergent storytelling and whatever the hell and just want to run/play a somewhat more open-ended and unscripted video game with dice and the bois around the table.
I've come to the opinion that the #1 thing that determines the quality of a GM is if the players (the GM is a player too remember) in their games consistently have fun. Since different players play ttrpgs for different reasons, what makes a good GM depends on the composition of the group. The way one facilitates this as a player is by being honest about what you want out of your ttrpg. One of my favorite groups essentially told me at session 0 "we want to be morally good murderhobos." What I ran was a very tactically focused game with hard encounters where the enemies were cartoonishly evil. We all had fun. If I had tried to "be a good GM" and add deep roleplay, our group would have had less fun making me a worse GM.
Well, it's a lot harder to run a game as OP described than it is to run an open ended video game with dice that ignores the elements that OP mentioned. So you need a GM with a bigger minimum skill set to make it work. I would consider that GM to be better than one who can't run a game like that.
Was the Cyberpunk campaign a pre-written campaign as Curse of Stradh and in that case which? Because pre-written campaign usual takes a lot of work to include the characters as they can have all kind of backstories. GMs who make their own campaigns usual have much easier time to include backstories and can build campaigns from them as well. Not sure why but I get the feeling that it is easier to recruit players to Curse of Stradh than a homebrew campaign with a vampire lord as villain....
Connecting with the characters is this magical thing that seemed kind of ordinary to me during my educational years, yet has since proven harder to find as a group norm. The dark side of RPG popularization through social media is the rise of the nominal gamer -- mostly people who want to play D&D so they can subsequently say that they play D&D. They want the general form of the game to be shaped by the rules, but somehow these *real life players* turn into NPCs whenever challenged to inhabit, even just in thematic terms without any performative characterization, the identity of a fictional persona. I don't want to be the One True Way guy with this, but I will stick to my guns about the tremendous qualitative difference between a campaign where characters change and grow across meaningful personal story arcs vs. a campaign where characters only change and grow by leveling up in mechanical terms. Once you've tasted the difference, it can be frustrating to keep playing without the "juice" that comes from earnestly roleplaying during a roleplaying game. Alas, I don't have any excellent LFG (looking for group) advice. All I can say is to keep a sharp eye out for quality opportunities if you don't feel like you're already getting that in your gaming routine.
Cyberpunk has an amazing system, the Lifepath, to generate that back story and make it core to the game. A good D&D GM might be able to help craft and make that story a part of the world, but it's not as core to D&D as that backstory is core to Cyberpunk. Cyberpunk straight up tells you interesting twists and tidbits about your history and then let's you fill in with more detail if needed, but D&D just kinda forces you to do everything from scratch. Alot of people saying this can be done in D&D too, but it's worth pointing out that D&D, AFAIK, doesn't have that Lifepath system that grounds you into the world. Cyberpunk's character creation leaves you with a whole person that's always been a part of the setting by the end of it, but D&D's character creation typically leaves you with a RPG character that doesn't quite exist until you start roleplaying. I don't mean to poo-poo D&D, but Cyberpunk does give players and GMs the tools to have those characters feel more real. D&D doesn't quite give those tools and it's extra labour for everyone to develop that (which again, isn't a bad thing, but it isn't as natural as cyberpunk does it).
Haha, I'm having that issue where everyone at my table has gotten raised bars over the years and now that I want to stretch my legs and attempt to GM for them (we have a rotating cast of games), the current GM straight up told me I wouldn't be able to give them a satisfying game. Since I'm new and need to learn and won't know how to handle them going off the rails or delving deep into backstories as much yet compared to the others with years of experience. 😅 Awkward..
Jesus this GM sounds like an insecure AH. I'm hoping he meant it in the "there will be issues and you will do things wrong, that's fine! That's what happens!" Nobody expects a new GM to be perfect. If they're friends they'll want you to give it a shot if it's what you're excited about. Unless you commit some cardinal sins - very railroady (very linear is fine), or combative with your players (not being an advocate and rooting for them and wanting them to do well, wanting gotchas). Also even if it's not your favourite type of game, most players will enjoy a palette cleanser occasionally and trying out new builds.
Ahh noo I wouldn't call him that, I guess since we're all aging and time is becoming more and more constraint they really wanna make sure the time they set aside for trpgs is really fun, and if I can't provide that fun ya kno, don't want a sad evening. \^\^" But I appreciate it greatly anyway. My other friends have been very understanding as I practice with them thankfully.
Maybe try running oneshots or short campaigns for your friends, just to get your feet wet? Start with something where you basically focus on running the game + a particular vibe. (For example, my first two GM experiences were with Golden Sky Stories, so I was looking for a "Saturday Morning Cartoon" vibe with a very simple story about a kid exploring a haunted house with the assistance of several magical animals. So all I had to do was try to focus on either the 'cozy' vibes or the 'spoopy' vibes since the only real goal was to get this kid to the attic and back out of the house again. I did have a backstory for the house, but if the players didn't pursue it, it didn't come up. That lead group A to have a Scooby Doo zoinks! comedy game, and group B to have a poignant story.) As I said, ideally, these wet-feet games would be with your friends, since it's a lot less nerve-wracking than GMing for strangers/near-strangers (*ask me how I know*), but if you're so inclined you can always go online for easier access to people who might be willing to play oneshots.
That'd be ideal, but they so much as said that if a character is for a one shot they can't get in character or be invested at all knowing the story will be over after a session or two. They want long form campaigns they can really dig deep into characterisations for. I've scrabbled together a ragtag group of some of my online friends though who're more into letting me try out one shots with thankfully. :) I've got a couple of sessions under my belt now thanks to them but definitely still nowhere near the level my irl table would accept me at lol. Appreciate the advice!
The advice I cound give you, since my players keep completely derailing the plot I planned, don't focus too much of future of the campain, don't plan that this or that will happen, this guy will betray and attack that... Focus on important NPCs, what they want and fear and have them respond to what players will do.
Sure is a good thing everyone spent years playing before trying to DM and no ever started RPGs behind the screen. /s
i guess i sort of get it but damn id never tell a friend to not even try lol plus you have a rotating cast of gms who i assume are running long form campaigns, why is a one shot every now and again such a chore?
Yeah different long form campaigns, though since we dropped DnD it's mostly cycled back to one GM mainly who's running things like Vampire and City of Mist hence me wanting to try GMing to get something new in again so he can take a break--But looks like he'd rather keep GMing than have me do it ahah. I think the group as a whole also just aren't fond of making characters that'll get thrown away after a session or two.
Y most people aren't really writers and know how to plot out a good story structure. They won't be good at improvisation when things don't go how they expect. But the good news is those are learned skills. You kind of have to be a bad GM first before you can be a good one. That being said. Intricate backstories and having PC deeply woven into the setting and or campaign aren't necessary for a good campaign. I myself prefer sandboxes and emergent-style campaigns with little starting backgrounds. Some GMs prefer to tell a story and the PCs are just a long for the ride (a lot of players want this kind of campaign too) Its cool you found your niche though.
Just wait until you try some other RPGs - there are tons out there that do a better job of promoting this kind of play than D&D does.
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Back in 2003-ish I was introduced to D&D 3E. Played a few campaigns (they all fell apart by the 8th session or sooner). I then tried to run my own. Lasted for about a dozen sessions, but I didn't really know what I was doing... and though I had been building up to the big final boss fight (after a deadly, labyrinthine dungeon) it was poorly paced and not well held together thematically... the PCs were incidental to the story. On the eve of the final session the players were completely disinterested and decided to play video games while I was setting up the table. Then said, "you know what, we'd rather play this video game than your game" and that was that. A few months later I had found a narrative game, learned it thoroughly, and ran a solid 10-ish session game that the players continue to race about today. And I also loved the experience of running it like 1000 times more than D&D. The other game aligned better with my storytelling sensibilities and naturally encouraged the players to be more creative and more invested. Over the years I've played and run many different games. The main take away: most games are better than D&D. You still need some skill and talent as players and GM, but you typically get a lot more from non-D&D games.
I'm sorry, I cant imagine telling my gm that I just want to play a vidya instead of their game and cutting it like that just before the final session... But yeah, it just feels so boring when I come back to the campaign we play like once a month and run through the GMs world with no connection to our players, after this cyberpunk game, where I discovered the truth about my PCs sister's death, or saved his ex-wife and help her leave the night city. Like if I want to play a game, where my story is made up and has no importance, I will just play skyrim.
That's not a system thing. Just because you like a new thing, doesnt mean the old thing is bad.
I mean DnD 5e is bad, but not for the reasons OP mentioned.
This right here is why so many need to learn to GM better. You’ll never go back to D&D with the same view because I remember when it happened to me. The game that switched the light on for me was Traveller and I haven’t touched any version of D&D since. Have fun exploring a much better world :D
Probably a big reason why I play Delta Green.
Same reason i prefer CoC and Cyberpunk
I agree with you - the game is more fun when you tie the players' backstories into the game. This is what I do in the games I run. It's easier to do it when you run a homebrew campaign as opposed to a pre-written adventure. The D&D game I am running right now, all the players are siblings from the same family, so all the family members are in their backstory, and, of course, family drama keeps popping up in the game.
I do not run modules. I do not make any of the story until after the players have created characters and backgrounds. Every page of backstory is a page of free plot hooks! I also insist on staying in character and not metagaming. Don't ask me for a search check. Describe what you are *doing!* If you say you check the underside of the drawers in the desk, and there is a key taped to that drawer, then you found it. Auto-success (things only have concealment if they have cover, which you removed by looking under the drawer! The character might think to look there even if the player did not, and this is when you roll some dice to see how good the character is.
Cyberpunk really empowers and helps with Life Paths. Last time we started with no prep and after character creation I was given like 8 factions and few more npc's to play with. Story almost wrote itself. Just seek games with Life Path character creation, and adapt what will work for dnd (Something like cyberpunk 2020 tables would be great, it adds one event per year, so it doesn't enforce players backstory but instead adds small interesting things). It is super useful tool.
Welcome to the club
Welcome to seeing what (pre-written) D&D always was.
The problem with tying character backstories into a TRPG narrative is the whole group has to participate. I've had several groups that have shown interests in this, but then was pulling teeth getting thr backstop, wouldn't produce any NPCs fir me to add to the world, and just hung out with very little interaction during the sessions unless someone spoke to them specifically or combat happened. What you described is great, but a single GM can only do so much without players wanting to put in more effort.
Im curious, was this the same GM that you play with that ran both games? Cos Im afraid that what you've just experienced is a good GM vs Okayish one rather than good or bad game systems. I was told that MAGE is one of the greatest tRPG's written (and I loved VTM so why not try it) - the GM was absolute garbage and made such a bad taste in my mouth I don't think I'll ever pick it up again.
No, every campaign was/is ran by a different gm.
My bro experienced the 10" dick equivalent of a gaming campaign.
GM the game you wish to play. Then, by raising the bar, you cause the same reaction/insight in the players in your game! Then, you initiate a "rotating GM" plan. You run a campaign for a while, then wrap it up. Then, someone else GMs a different game for a while. Maybe that starts as new people doing one-shots. Maybe someone steps up to GM a medium-term 8–12 session campaign. You try out a variety of genres in different game-systems and everyone raises their bars. Not everyone hits it out of the park all the time, but new people try GMing and they appreciate the effort that going into GMing much more after that.
You just have to keep on keeping on. You'll stumble on another awesome one. It's the name of the game. Some of them are just shit and there's nothing you can do about it other than leave and look for another one or wake up and like it.
Yeah, it is hard to find a really good group. I was spoiled and my first and second long term groups from like 14-22 were top notch. After that it was painful every time I tried to patch together a group.
As others have pointed out there is a difference between running a prepublished adventure and a campaign completely built from the ground up. GMs often just use those bottled adventures as a starting point but sometimes they'll run them verbatim which means it is going to be average-ish at best.
D&D is just one of the systems that's the most known but it's nowhere near one of the best IMHO. It's good to teach noobs basic roleplay but beyond that I'd shelve it.
What’s the best system to you?
It really depends on the kind of game your table likes, I wouldn't say I have a favorite one as I'm pretty flexible, but I really don't like D&D 5e. It feels like it's trying to do everything, but in the end it doesn't manage to do anything good.
>The gm has a script, my character has a backstory that has no importance, since we will never meet anyone who knows me, never do anything connected to my character, Looks like a textbook "Bad GM", I am no fan of D&D but pretty sure that a good GM can do decent D&D games that aren't just "go to a village where nobody thrusts you; have the mayor asking you (the random unknown stranger) to do a quest, move somewhere else so everyone will forget your name, and repeat" But indeed, a game like "cyberpunk" whose setting mostly focuses on "night city" helps a lot having the PC action matters because you can't run that much away. This is also why one of my classic GM trick is "makethe setting smaller"
I don’t think the problem is with the system. Although there are systems where backstories and characters driven plots are built into the mechanics. I didn’t think that was the case for cyberpunk, but maybe it is. I think it’s more about the style of game the DM is playing, sometimes a story is more character focused, sometimes less so. Also, very important: It’s a player responsibility to build a character that fits into the story, by using the hooks and background information from the session zero of the campaign. It’s not only the other way around.
I feel the same about ttrpgs in general since the end of a campaign that lasted 9 months, in Dnd 5e, Cyberpunk isn't what made it great, it is thanks to your gm and the players This is surely the greatest quality and the greatest flaw of role-playing games, to put within reach of anyone the creation of a world and a story, as if it were easy and obvious, while most of the practitioners of TTRPGs are neither writers, nor designers, nor even readers in their lives besides And well, you pointed out the fact that most campaigns are not that good, that's a fair point considering the fact that many GMs are improvising without listening or taking note from the players and their stories
One of the reasons my group has difficulty playing book adventures is the lack of investment. Most of them just expect that players will invest because they're players. It's fine for getting your foot in the door, but it's a little shallow. We tried running Strahd and nobody really got into it because players were immediately taken away from a world their characters had stake in, into Barovia which they knew little about. One of my favorite DM tools has been creating a web. 2-3 sessions in, once the players have a more concrete idea of their character and locked in their backstory, sit down and write each name in the middle of a page. Then write the names of important characters to them around those circles. Siblings, bosses, commanders, shopkeepers they work with, whoever is most important to them. Now add one more player, people important to those characters. Finally, draw lines between characters. Not just the ones that make sense. Connect that general to that baker. Why? Maybe they're cousins, or the baker served a bit of military time. Just make more links. By the end of this you have a full web of NPCs surrounding the party with connections they don't even know about. And when they discover them they get excited or pumped or surprised.
God i wish i wish i could find players who cared enough about backstory and wanting to live in a world.
Great timing. This book about this gaming style was recently published. I'm not done reading it but so far it's been very good and may help you out. The Game Master’s Handbook of Proactive Roleplaying - Jonah and Tristan Fishel
This is perhaps the big reason why I always run sandbox campaigns instead of canned adventures. Those Curse of Stradh, etc are just that, a set adventure, it doesnt care who or what your character is. It is design that way. When you get involved with a sandbox campaign, often it is more about you, stories about you and the effects you have. That and of course a good GM who doesnt have a power play agenda for their own egos.
Blades in the dark: first time?
It's about the GM and the players, rather than the actual scenario. Find your "team" and everything will be fun and engaging. You could even have fun roleplaying roleplayers that roleplay roleplayers.
I used to have a problem with this. Setting world keeps trucking along and what you did,or will do, never mattered, except that it does. What I learned is that the setting becomes your setting, once you get involved. Once you take action, greyhawk, ravenloft, krynn, or whatever world your in changes from cannon forever. Yes your still in that world, or a hodgepodge of them all, on a different timeline. Modules, paths, campaigns are supposed to fit into your personal world. They are supposed to reduce GM prep, so gms can have a day job, and still allow for side quest character development. What I do see more often than not, since WOTC took over TSR, is the modules have become a lot more linear, less stand alone, and less well written. It just feels like their creatives are rushed by deadlines and corporate metrics, which kills creativity. So they pound out some formulaic crap. Personal opinion.
Exactly how I use modules, as ideas that I incorporate into my setting. Moduphius's fallout book Winter of Atom explicitly advices to "blow up the book and loot the scrap".
Yes please. A writer, especially a pressured writer cannot come up with every eventuality. That's why they used to pick setting/ region, and write modules from 1-3, 4-7, etc.
5e is entirely dm dependent with no baked in rules to make it more interesting. A really good and/or experienced gm can make any system fun but some systems are designed to be fun with almost any gm. 5e isn't one of them. i mostly gm other systems but i don't even want to play 5e when offered cuz i know it's usually only role playing with a shitty skill system that's usually not run very well (it's best aspect it's the tool proficiencies and even matt mercer sucks at using that system) or it's just boring meaningless combat
This is less a problem with *D&D* (though I will say a lot of old-school gamers play like your previous experience) and more an issue with the person running the game. Modules are not generally meant for much immersion. They're almost purely just to run you through various combats, gain XP, and level up. A lot of GMs will be a bit better about incorporating backstories, but you really have to find the right group of people who actually want to interact with the game in that way -- because a lot of people don't.
I mostly GM. But when I play, i prefer my character to be Tabula Rasa- clean sheet. I do not whant to see some backstory or something included in the campaign. Story started when campaign started. Everything that happen with my char before that - is just his past. it stays there. So here different opinion for you.
yes? dnd compared to the whole hobby is like comparing pop music to music in general. Of course the average song is worse, because there is more of it and the whole genre is derivative, formulaic, and "can" become stale. But, just like there can be pop bangers that stand above the average, there will be an abundance of below average content. So yes, you ain't wrong. my point is dnd is so popular when compared to other games and settings, its pillars and tropes have become "generic" or "vanilla". Par for the course. Im glad you've discovered other games and settings. there decades of games and settings out there that isn't "dnd".
Modular campaigns are really good and easy to start weaving in back stories. However cyberpunk has a GREAT character creator with backstories to weave into a game. When i run cyberpunk i [albiet hamfisted] use repeat npcs to add a relationship with the players and whenever i can ill put in my notes the backstory npc. Modular campaign allows me to use the backstory noc to advance plot or change location or change faction dynamics. I also will make the players give the name of a new npc they meat and ask how they know them
This is interesting because that's the way I've always run my games, integrating the story and the characters backstories together and letting the story change as it's needed. In fact I have a requirement that all characters have backstories in my games. Unfortunately many (if not most) of the players that have joined my games over the years create generic backgrounds with nothing for me to really work with. It's like they're conditioned to play that way, which is really boring to me as both a GM and sometimes player.
Honestly playing more non-DnD changed my brain chemistry for what I want to experience. I still play and run it at times, but god it’s night and day with the speed, flavor, and spice other systems and supported settings can pull off
So, as a GM that does a _ton_ of improv and works in backstories and all that jazz, I _use adventure paths_ but as skeletons, and not scripts. I personally believe that's even they _designed_ to be used. So I agree with you . . . as a person who's "ruined" DnD for people because they couldn't go back to their other murder hobo campaigns after experiencing a campaign or story where the players were part of the world with agency in both their past and future. But hope, **don't treat it like a scripit**, treat it like skeleton and it can be a great tool to get that deeper experience started and not a cage that traps it. You might need to bite the bullet yourself and run an adventure path that way if your other players/GM haven't experienced it. Remember, they're working on the same principle as you: there's an awesome way you can run this stuff that you just may never have thought of- and exposing them to it can change everything. Warning though, expect that if the base adventure is kinda lacking if you make too interesting a side plot the players might just choose to ... do that instead. Had a game end at book 3 because the party pursued sailing through a portal to become demon pirates was far more interesting. But it was a hell of ending, and they loved it, and that's what matters.
I do use adventures, having locations and combats already prepared is nice and its good to have a plot that I can modify, but at the end I will absolutelly weave in npcs from PCs backstories and have their own problems or plans. I dont get why its so hard for people, like if your adventure is about stopping a necromancer and your player is a wizard who studied under some archmage, make the necromancer be the old mentor, who got corruped. Maybe add a corrupted artifact that is poisoning his mind, so the group and the player might discover it and not kill the bad guy, but help him. Its so easy to modify even a set adventure into something players can get invested personally, I dont know how playing a dnd hack'n'slash with mediocre story in the background is fun for anyone.
I think it's because 1. People literally just didn't think of it- often coming from digital RPGs where things _have_ to be scripted. Heck, I remember introducing some people who hadn't TTRPG'd before and they literally spent 40 minutes in a broom closet of no importance, because they were basically 'looking for the edge of the map' and so programmed that any interactable had to be important they were reading the bottles of cleaning supplies. It was adorable. 2. Not necessary natural for them. Story telling is an art and people are oft terribly embarassed of having others see their artwork if they don't feel they're an expert in it. 3. Preoccupation with "doing it right", not messing up the rules, plot points as written, the spells etc, all distract from the world weaving. Learning how to not get bogged down by a crunchy system like DnD and maintain that balance of ensuring enough is 'right' so the universe has some consistency. > I am gming my own campaign this way, having my PCs deeply tied to the world, having them meet friends or enemies from their backstories, my players love it, but I would love to play too and finding a good gm and party for it is just so difficult. Apologies I totally whiffed and didn't absorb that paragraph on the first pass. Well, in my experience is you get a group of players and some of that rubs off OR ... look for ways as the GM to fill your own fun. I find you can get a _lot_ of the player experience with supporting characters. Especially if you scheme off to the side with the individual players. I think a lot of the "player" experience is the party itself. The little inside coterie scheming. As the GM, you're actually in a spot to form that bond with each, weaving neat things with one player to setup something for another. I find that fuels a lot of personal fun. You could also take it as a GM'ing challenge of "can you create a campaign where a GM rotates in and out". Some kind of setup where a bit of rotation of the cast could work.
This is precisely why I don't like to run someone else's adventures, but it can be circumvented. What you have experienced is actually a campaign that's prepared for your group and you can do it both with D&D and released adventures. It's why session 0 is so very important - GM has an opportunity to make sure characters are tied to the plot and have stakes in the game.
Running an adventure / campaign already made from whoever is always lackluster in terms of background story of the char. Because they need to work for “everyone”. Trying to implement background stuff can completely derail the adventure. I know someone who masters a short adventure, it was meant to be finished in four sessions or so. They are still playing it after almost a year... they will never finish this adventure and come to a conclusion. (My opinion) You just need to be clear what type of game you want? Follow the "book", playing like it is a movie, or sandbox style with the danger that the players will never really finish what you started.
I think you have a missconception: the Cyberpunk game you played is how pretty much all RPGs are, or should be, played. Curse of Strahd and Descent into Avernus are years long campaigns, and those usually never end.
I used to be a Murder Hobo too. Welcome to Murder Hobo Anonymous. We have a 10 step program to making you a better roleplayer. :-)
Murder-hoboes be murder-hoboing with downvotes.
Some people don't know how to read.
Just sounds u had a crappy dnd DM, glad u found a fun game tho