The Gaming Den

Yesterday driving home from work I reflected that... I think while I prefer to play (3.x) D&D, I think most of the stories I want to tell as an MC are just... not D&D stories? Like, broadly, I could make them work. Like, I could do a D&D adventure based on the Axeman of New Orleans, but it just feels like it would work better in a system that isn't for a game heavily predicated on high heroic fantasy that mostly involves roaming around dungeons. An SCP/Warehouse 13/Federal Bureau of Control-inspired D&D adventure/campaign might actually work out ok, but even then, things would be kind of weird (...including the fact that most of the W13 artifacts and a lot of Control OOPs are just... not that impressive as D&D magic items).

And just... I feel like when I'm MC, I'll do dungeoncrawls in D&D because it's easier to just go with the system, but most of the stories I want to do are less dungeon-crawl and more, well, story-based.

But as a player, while there are plenty of systems I enjoy, there is something about the... well, the dungeonpunk-ness of 3.x and beyond D&D that I really particularly enjoy, and so have a specific desire to play more 3.x D&D, in addition to just generally wanting to play more ttrpgs.

I'm just curious if others have this sort split between their tastes as a player and as MC. Or, hell, if I'm being too limited in my view of what kind of stories D&D supports.

Isn't this more of a play/imagine dichotomy? You don't run the things you imagine wanting to run, either, right?

Yeah I think the "single author fiction" idea Frank used to harp on a bunch was dancing around this issue... TTRPGs are so close to emulating TV shows or other such story formats that it's tantalizing to try to emulate a genre you haven't done lately, but the game mechanics needed to support that genre in a way that's a fun creative expression and problem solving experience for everyone may not have been made with the right compromises yet.

I wouldn't say it's a play/imagine dichotomy, precisely, because I still often try to make these ideas work in D&D and basically "fall back" to dungeoncrawls because "I've got five days before the session and this isn't ready, so I guess I better put together a dungeoncrawl because that can happen in four days and the thing I have in mind won't."

Honestly, I'd much rather play D&D than run it, but at least with the people I know, if I want to be part of a 3.5 game, I have to run it.

Prak wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 14, 2021 11:08 pm

An SCP/Warehouse 13/Federal Bureau of Control-inspired D&D adventure/campaign might actually work out ok, but even then, things would be kind of weird (...including the fact that most of the W13 artifacts and a lot of Control OOPs are just... not that impressive as D&D magic items).
...
I'm just curious if others have this sort split between their tastes as a player and as MC. Or, hell, if I'm being too limited in my view of what kind of stories D&D supports.

I agree with you, but I also have trouble articulating what "is not a D&D game" to people because "handwaive it" does work at the table a lot of times. Things that stand out as D&Disms that don't apply to everything are...

1) D&D magic being very specific is definitely a thing. It's not Dragon Ball Ki, it's not Naruto Chakra... but I can still make a Hexblade Shadow Sorcerer that 'feels enough' like a ninja in the world of D&D and that's fine most of the time

2) Hit Points. I figure any story where a dagger is suppose to assassinate someone important when wielded by anyone and not a Level Appropriate Assassinman will suffer from using D&D

3) Mystery investigation, social combat? This part is often hand waived after a die roll makes some noise as the GM and players do what they wanted to happen.

4) Open Ended MacGuyvering: This is solved by GM fiat, but I was recently in a game where someone new to roleplaying wanted to 'make gunpowder bombs' 'throw flour and set it on fire' 'train a dog', 'calm the raging beast', but didn't have the understanding of the bunches of different classes and feats (or what skills exactly do) to actually build their character and wound up as a guy dealing 1d4 flame damage throwing a bottle instead of x6 more with class feature stuff.

Yeah, it's weird.

One of the things I love about 3.x D&D is that... I can make pretty much any character my heart desires given access to enough books. I've actually outlined on my RPG tumblr how to make Spinel from Steven Universe and Naota/Conti from FLCL in D&D. I've recently been thinking about how I would make Riddick from the eponymous movies (probably a rogue with some unarmed ability and some extra durability, maybe some kind of rogue/barbarian/ranger thing). But just because it can pretty well represent any kind of set of of character abilities doesn't mean it's going to handle every story well.

And, sure, you can handwave investigations and such, but... if the point of the story is the investigation, and your players are not the kind of people who have some idea of how to handle an investigation (at least a fictional one), a game that says "just roll a die and handwave it" is not going to be a good fit for it.

For the Axeman of New Orleans example- basically, if I were going to do a story inspired by it, you'd have PCs in either 1910s New Orleans or a fictional city based thereon, and the point would be to 1. Survive the axeman, and an optional 2. Find the axeman and 3. Stop the axeman. So, the entire point of the story would be the investigation, talking to people, going places where a homicidal jazz connoisseur might frequent when not killing, and so on. If the players don't know how to go from "we need to find this person and all we know is he likes jazz and murder" to actually getting leads, let alone getting through the obfuscations and protestations of someone who knows something but doesn't want to talk about it, then in D&D they're just going to say "I roll Gather Information" and maybe ask to do some intimidation/diplomacy/bluff rolls, and what was supposed to be the actual play experience gets distilled down to rolling dice a few times.

And yes, part of the issue there is matching story to players as much as story to game, but if you get the right game, those players can look at what the game does and sort of have a guide for how they should go about the investigation.

What's the ideal investigation play experience structure for you? How does it deal with failure

That's definitely one of the big problems, and I'm honestly not sure. I haven't gotten to play investigation at a table, but I think the ideal way of handling investigation is that you always get something when you try to investigate. Success means you get the thing you were looking for, a near miss means you get something related to/associated with or that will lead you to what you were looking for (possibly letting you retry with a bonus). Failure means you don't find what you were looking for, but you find something else. Maybe it's a false lead, but maybe you stumbled onto key evidence. I think great success could mean finding a piece of key evidence, or getting more information than normal about what you were looking for. I think it's also important to have multiple investigation skills (which is another reason D&D doesn't do investigation well). So you can have the hacker who can use computer skill in investigation, the thief can maybe examine locks and any kind of entrance into a room, you've got a person whose form of investigation is talking to people, and so on. If you're running an investigation based game, you want everyone in the team to be able to contribute to that investigation. Hell, maybe there isn't an actual investigation skill, and you say that multiple existing skills can be used to investigate, which would make D&D work better for investigation. The wizard can use Kn.Arcana (or spellcraft if you haven't combined them yet) to do magical investigation, the fighter can use, iunno, their BAB to find clues based on the way mooks fight, the rogue can use stealth or disable device to look at objects that might have been tampered with, and so on.

Maybe the investigation mini-game basically incentivizes actually having what amounts to a conspiracy wall, and you're trying to get the right pieces of evidence and make the right links between them.

I was thinking about this a little bit the other day. The standard way to do this is the MC knows the plot and then tries to leave breadcrumb clues for the PCs to find, put together, and solve the scenario; but that leaves you with a lot of MC mind-reading and skill check failure derailment points, as well as Prak's issue of players just rattling a few dice rolls at the mystery.

I wonder if you could make some sort of procedurally generated mystery work, where nobody knows who the culprit is until the end? It has the advantage of leaving things open enough that you could even do a story later where the person from the previous mystery turned out to be framed, and now the PCs need to decide to support the cover-up or expose the truth. This idea takes some inspiration from Clue, in the sense that you need to set up the parameters in the initial investigation phase (here are the 6 people that might have murdered the duke, and a 7th "person" to represent any other random possibility like a night demon, medical condition, or whatever). As you play the game, each suspect accrues suspicion tokens of some kind until there's enough to make an accusation. Different people could need different amounts--like the scullery maid only needs to accrue 3 tokens, but the Duke's brother might need 10--to represent the ease of making people of lower social standing take the fall for crimes of the elite.

Along these lines, I was also thinking investigations skills shouldn't be checked in a pass/fail manner, but should rather represent a degree of confidence in one's assessment. So, a Sense Motive check result of 23 means you're really confident the person was lying (irrespective of the truth). Gather Information result of 4 means you are not confident in the rumor that the Duke's wife is a cultist. You'd have to take notes on this through the game, sort of like recording gear on your character sheet. e.g. "Intimidate 17, the innkeeper told me he saw the blacksmith talking to the duke's wife, but I'm not sure if that's what he thought I wanted to hear."

Anyway, this is just rambling ideas, maybe it'll spark some better ones.

Sounds to me like you may want to give something like D20 Modern or Shadowrun a go?
Those are pretty versatile in application.

Stahlseele wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 17, 2021 3:44 pm

Sounds to me like you may want to give something like D20 Modern or Shadowrun a go?
Those are pretty versatile in application.

Do either of those let me cast Detect Thoughts when the mystery gets boring?

The Adventurer's Almanac wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 17, 2021 3:47 pm

Stahlseele wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 17, 2021 3:44 pm

Sounds to me like you may want to give something like D20 Modern or Shadowrun a go?
Those are pretty versatile in application.

Do either of those let me cast Detect Thoughts when the mystery gets boring?

Exactly. My idea was also intended to allow the PCs to say "Fuck it, let's just pin this on the Elf suspect and move on with our lives" when they get bored with the scenario, rather than having to flounder around until they reach the "correct" outcome. If the MC only sets up the crime and the suspects, but not who actually did it or why, it should hopefully remove the [you're doing the investigation wrong] aspect of these sorts of scenarios.

I'd want people to "solve" they mystery and have everyone say, "Huh, it looks like the scullery maid did do it, out of some insane belief that the duke's son would marry her once he inherited the position. I was sure it was going to be his brother, like the Lion King." The important part of such a system would be that you could set up all the pieces again and arrive at a totally different, yet still valid, outcome.

I have no real idea how you'd do this though.

Shadowrun has mind control spells at least.
Pretty hard to do correctly, but otherwise it would be kinda problematic.

Quantum-perpetrator mysteries are just an elaborate CYOA flowchart. You have a bunch of booleans regarding suspects, motives, means, and opportunities; and the players set the state of each through play until there's only one possibility left. Actually implementing that seems like a lot of work, but it's doable.

As far as investigation-failure mechanics go, I like the Gumshoe concept of a minimum-but-still-useful result, which is relevant but requires follow-up with another person/place to be really useful. e.g. Having to visit the coroner for the cause-of-death rather than figuring it out yourself on the spot. Following the minimum-result leads will eventually solve the mystery, but takes time and/or resources that lead to a worse ending; taking too long means the killer may get away or kill again.

Sounds like you're rather comfy in your comfort zone. If you really want something else, you should give it a try at putting in the work with the respective systems. Even if the game doesn't turn out the way you imagined it would, you'll still be rewarded with knowing how far away from your comfort zone you can move.

Dogbert wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 18, 2021 3:43 am

Sounds like you're rather comfy in your comfort zone. If you really want something else, you should give it a try at putting in the work with the respective systems. Even if the game doesn't turn out the way you imagined it would, you'll still be rewarded with knowing how far away from your comfort zone you can move.

What very-different-from-dnd tabletop RPG's do you suggest for mystery and similar

Gumshoe

https://gumshoe-srd.com/3-TheGUMSHOE%20Rules%20System/

Dogbert wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 18, 2021 3:43 am

Sounds like you're rather comfy in your comfort zone. If you really want something else, you should give it a try at putting in the work with the respective systems. Even if the game doesn't turn out the way you imagined it would, you'll still be rewarded with knowing how far away from your comfort zone you can move.

Yeah, thinking about it, there's definitely a comfort component. D&D is what I know how to run, even if it's just "give the PC's a plot hook that gets them into the dungeon." I wouldn't say that's the only reason I run D&D. It's a system I and my players know, and my usual player friends mostly consist of "I don't want to learn another system if I already know one that works for [GENRE]" and "I know D&D! Sort of... I'd be interested in learning another system, but I know D&D!" people. Like, the former, it's like pulling goddamned teeth to get to try something else, and the latter... I don't want to confuse them when they just barely understand D&D's system.

And then there's just... well, I could hypothetically run, say, V5, but... then I have to learn how to run a game that doesn't necessarily involve "get the players into a dungeon, and then let it run."

You can do that in any game.
Depending on your definition of Dungeon.

OgreBattle wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 18, 2021 8:21 am

What very-different-from-dnd tabletop RPG's do you suggest for mystery and similar

Gumshoe indeed.

Prak wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 14, 2021 11:08 pm

I think most of the stories I want to tell as an MC are just... not D&D stories?

For myself, the type of stories I'd be interested in writing would have some kind of unusual twist to them, but the type of D&D campaigns I like to play in are relatively straightforward.

The "fun for the GM" vs. "fun for the player" dichotomy is what I was playing off of in my thread Things That Give The GM A Boner (which has apparently vanished?).