FIFTH EDITION ISNT FLEXIBLE IT ISNT DO-WHAT-YOU-WANT IT MAKES VERY SPECIFIC GENRE ASSUMPTIONS YOUR HOMEBREW IS DOING BARELY LESS WORK THAN JUST PICKING UP A NEW GAME AND IT PLAYS LIKE SHIT AAAAAAAAA
The work is learning a brand new rules system. It’s the same reason that Xbox and Playstation have the same controller buttons, or why FPS games have same control scheme (LT to aim, RT to shoot, A to hop etc.). 5e has the rules people are familiar with, and it takes less work mapping something onto it than it does learning or creating a new ruleset from scratch. If you don’t like 5e that’s fine but you come off as the same elitist you seem to be trying to call out, just standing on the other side of the fence.
hello, sorry stranger! this is very long. but I am a game designer and the comparison to video games gave me some big thoughts.
I don’t believe controller buttons and control schemes are great analogs for how tabletop game systems apply to the game itself.
buttons and control schemes make better analogs for tabletop game interfaces—like randomization mechanics.
the reason Xbox and PlayStation controllers are so similar is after decades of design standards, players have come to expect that a button on a game controller placed in a certain location will perform an expected function, regardless of the specific game (like how playstation’s cross button and Xbox’s A button are almost always “activate” and “confirm”). when a game subverts that expectation (for example, by deciding to program cross/A to mean “cancel” and “exit”), it’ll cause some confusion before the player adapts.
somewhat similarly, ttrpgs have a few popular randomization mechanics. obviously the most well-known is d20 roll over—roll a single 20-sided die, with the goal of meeting or exceeding a target number. press x to confirm.
but there is also 2d6, where you sum the results of two six-sided dice with the goal of meeting or exceeding a target number. And d6 pool with highest result, where you roll multiple six-sided dice (the more the better) with the goal of rolling at least one, hopefully two 6s. And d10 pool, where you roll multiple ten-sided dice, counting each die that shows a 7 or higher as a success, with the goal of rolling as many successes as possible. all of these are modified by character skill, situational conditions, etc.
all pretty different, sure, but we are still using dice to generate random numbers (pushing buttons on a controller) and want those random numbers to be big (similar control schemes).
frankly I think the systems of ttrpgs are 1:1 with the systems of video games. how you progress your character, the decisions the game expects you to make, and the sort of actions you can take (including your cool abilities/moves/feats) are the game systems.
for example, Days Gone and Horizon Zero Dawn/Forbidden West are both third-person, action-adventure, story-driven, open world games with a post-apocalyptic setting and a static (can’t be customized) main character. they have similar control schemes. they both have skill trees. they both love stealth.
but look any deeper than this and you find they have very different systems. As examples, Days Gone features gritty action where Horizon is more fantastic; Days Gone has vehicle customization, Horizon has monster taming (in the form of hacking big robots); Days Gone has more crafting recipes but Horizon’s crafting allows you to modify your weapons and armor.
if someone tried to mod Days Gone to add machine hijacking, add weapon and outfit mods, remove the grittier aspects (like a dude getting his arm burned to shit), and turn the main character into a red-headed woman, people would rightly ask why someone was doing that work when the game they seem to want to play already exists and is called Horizon Forbidden West.
sometimes the answer is “because I like game design and I like THIS game.” so, understandable. have a nice day.
but it seems the most common answer is “because I don’t know how to play Horizon and I already know how to play Days Gone.” however, it would require little time and energy to learn the other game’s systems—especially compared to the time and energy it takes to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, by modding the first game.
and this is the least baffling of scenarios. turning Days Gone into a Horizon-alike wouldn’t be as difficult as turning Days Gone into something wildly different, like a farming sim. but when the only game someone will play is Days Gone, and they feel like playing a romantic farming sim, they seem to assume the best course of action is to build that sim themselves out of Days Gone parts, instead of playing Stardew Valley.
it’s frustrating for people who are fans of the game that would be perfect for you. it’s frustrating for game devs when people refuse to engage with the ideas behind a game’s design (it’s a lot more thoughtful than deciding which dice to use and what stats characters have). most of all, it’s frustrating for people who love ttrpgs.
if you’re still with me, I’d like to explain why “please play something else” is a desperate sob and not a derisive sneer. most of us are not being elitist (deliberately)! if anything, we are sad, and a little nervous.
imagine a video game industry where there is one game that dominates more than 50% of the entire video game industry year after year. more than half the streams on Twitch are this one game. more than half the merch at conventions are this one game. more than half the gamers you know play this game and only this game. it prints money. it keeps making sequels. when you say you play games, more than half the people who hear assume you mean this game.
remember how big World of Warcraft was? how for decades there were so few games that could convince even a sliver of that playerbase to try something else, only to inevitably fail—Marvel Heroes, The Matrix Online, WildStar, freaking Warhammer? how the MMO market was for so long lousy, stagnant, and full of cash grabs? how it took us a decade to get a viable WoW competitor? how one game wrote the rules of success for the entire online gaming industry for 20+ years?
Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons & Dragons, 5th edition, is taking a bigger chunk of all ttrpgs than WoW took out of MMOs. outside of a few solid publishers—Chaosium and Paizo, specifically—it’s not hyperbole to claim WotC is eating everyone else’s lunch.
it’s frustrating to see the consequences of that—the unsustainable prices no other publishers can properly compete with, the legacy of racist design we are only now unpacking, the inertia of its outdated systems bogging down the chance at broader innovation in ttrpg design just in general. it’s frustrating to see the entire ttrpg industry essentially held hostage by Wizards and D&D5e.
if you love ttrpgs, as a type of entertainment, as a concept, please read more of them. we’re not asking you to like every game. or even play the ones you read!! but please read more of them. you will learn new tricks to bring back to your favorite game. you will learn new ways to randomize outcomes, new ways to support the stories you want your games to tell, new takes on familiar settings and rules and systems. reading games that aren’t D&D will make you better at D&D and it will help the countless designers and writers who aren’t lucky enough to work for the only game in town.
Rai W Cole 