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Comment by _a_a_a_ | Hacker News Reader

> with its slow pace and focus on narrative

am curious, could you elaborate a touch on these? TIA

There are plenty of valid ways to play D&D, and they might not all have a slow pace. But it's very easy for D&D to end up pretty slow.

In a combat scene with 4 party members and 4 enemies, 7/8 of the time it's not your turn. And if you're playing a simple character that just hits with a sword, while other players are wizards with dozens of spells to choose between their turns will naturally take longer.

Computer games are much faster paced.

Yes, this is exactly what I meant. TTRPGs typically have more time spent not doing anything compared to computer games (and board and card games too, to a lesser extent) simply by involving a group of people and being largely 'single-threaded'.

As for what I mean by narrative, much of the appeal of D&D seems to lie in crafting the story and adventure, being a part of the plot. If the setting and narrative were completely removed, and the game was reduced down to the most basic mechanical actions - go to location x,y and do foo to bar, etc., it would be a very different game.

Not to say the mechanical aspects don't make up part of the appeal of D&D and other TTRPGs too, but they're not a focus as much as in, say, a computer strategy game, or even something like an action platformer, where that is the game, and story/characters/etc. make up little (if any) of the gameplay.

> As for what I mean by narrative, much of the appeal of D&D seems to lie in crafting the story and adventure, being a part of the plot

That's what I was after. I know some people play in a much more involved way but when I played so many years ago I love the plot and setting, but really worked the mechanics. It may have been you got a DM or group that was just not suited to you.

You can still do things even if your character isn't. A big draw of D&D is the social aspect, you can still roleplay reacting to being hit or seeing an ally do something.

If you want to exercise your brain while waiting on your turn do like high-level chess players and think during other people's turns, I find that fun. Think how the recent decisions or rolls modify the state of the battlefield or your chances of victory.

But that's the problem with D&D in 2024. Role-playing games have moved far away from the constraints of old school levelling and fighting simulators. I am glad people enjoy D&D but role playing games have so much more to bring in term of narratology and experience than in ludology. It's getting drowned but it's still there. Move away from excel in disguise.

I must have played a different D&D, the group I used to play very much favored Hack & Slash. When we wanted something more narrative we used a different system (GURPS was a good one)

That's interesting, I find the combat in GURPS to be FAR more satisfying and less restrictive than D&D. It's definitely more number crunching and more complex, but it's an internally consistent system so once you know it things flow pretty well. The leaky abstractions from D&D feel too much like it's trying to replicate a video game and doing so poorly.

Ironically it's closer to the other way around: Most video game RPGs are mechanically either based on D&D, based on another tabletop RPG that came about in the same era (Runequest, etc), or based on a tabletop RPG that was in-turn based on D&D.

Yes and no. There are some major issues in my mind like Armor Class which fortunately video games don’t really mess with. I started playing D&D back in the Skills and Powers days. You had a lot more character creation options and more granular systems than what D&D has simplified into. It’s really the latest versions of D&D that I feel like are a bad video game abstractions. Probably because of their streamlining efforts for the D20 system.

As someone whose first RPG was AD&D 2e, I get where you're coming from. IMO 3e/3.5e/PF1e didn't simplify it all that much, moreso they formalized the existing skills/powers systems that were there and added a buttload of additional classes and prestige classes for deeper customization options.

It's really 4e and 5e that simplified the game in huge ways. 5e kinda-sorta added some complexity back to it, but got rid of a lot of smaller numerical bonuses in favor of the advantage/disadvantage system.

But yeah, I definitely get where you're coming from with respect to the latest editions feeling more video-gamey. AD&D 2e and earlier had this distinctly simulationist feeling, where the intent was that you were in a world where you had to survive first and foremost and could maybe get some gold and glory if you were lucky, whereas 3e and later definitely drifted more into a "your party is/contains the main character(s) of this world" type paradigm which probably led to a lot of the more recent mechanical decisions.

It's a bit like the difference between a traditional roguelike vs a modern roguelike. One is a world simulation and you're on your own, the other is a game where you will win if you keep trying.

I prefer GURPS myself (although I prefer a "point-free" variant; you can put whatever advantages, disadvantages, skills, etc that you want to without worrying about the points or whether or not the modifier you want has been published in any book).

However, I think that GURPS can be OK for combat as well as narrative and other stuff. If you use many expansions books as well, then more options are possible. GURPS combat also has many options, and also I like the rules better than D&D in many ways. (Still, I think there are some problems with GURPS, and had tried to make up SciRPS to be better (in my opinion). Although GURPS has many skills, I think too many things are often combined in one skill; e.g. Brawling skill involves all unarmed combat (by punch, kick, claws, bite, horns, etc), but if you are skilled at only biting but not punch/kick, then it doesn't do that; skill of Morse code is the same skill as operating the communications devices to use it and are not separated; etc. "Point-free" helps a bit with this, but I think that it could be improved further, which is what I intended with SciRPS.)

To me, the RPG is that you can have many things together, including combat, magic spells, narrative, strategy/tactics, etc. This is what makes it what it is, rather than a computer game which is a different kind of game.

Although you might have plans (and the GM might have plans), many things will happen unexpectedly, due to what others are doing, due to the results of dice, etc, so that is another thing that RPG is.

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