this is part 3 of a series that began with ‘goblin dice’.
okay. you got me. there’s a reason why i care so much about this, and it’s not that the dice are weird sometimes, and it’s not that the rules describe too many spells whose effects boil down to ‘kill things using a different damage type’.
sometimes, i don’t feel like dungeoning and dragoning.
this one’s really simple. it doesn’t have to do with the rules. it has to do with the fact that if i sit down to play D&D, i’m playing a draconic sorcerer elf or something, and i have a specific, predetermined set of spells and powers. there will certainly be fighting in this game, and there will certainly be malevolent magic that creates fantastical problems for a small group of badass vigilantes to solve with spells and swords.
but what if i want to be a cyborg hacker? what if i just watched Ocean’s Eleven and i want that? what if i just finished binging Vinland Saga, and i want Vinland Saga?
D&D can’t do it. and if I want it, and I want a tabletop RPG—my favourite kind of social and gaming experience—D&D can’t synthesize those two things for me.
some of you will be thinking: you can do that in D&D. you just have to house rule it.
you’re right. you can do that in D&D, and you do just have to house rule it. but that ‘just’ is Atlas carrying the sky. making your own system is hard. i know. i’ve done it. changing a system that doesn’t want to be Ocean’s Eleven to be Ocean’s Eleven is even harder, because you don’t just have to Frankenstein it together; you have to pull out all the stuff that doesn’t feel Ocean’s Eleven first. in D&D, that’s a lot of stuff.
for me, designing my own game is less fun, less rewarding, and much, much harder than having a game that does exactly what i want out of the box. and what i want is a specific, special cool experience—it doesn’t matter which one—that is not, and can’t be approximated by, D&D’s specific, limited brand of fantasy adventure.
there are a lot of games that give me those special, not-D&D experiences. when i want to play an rpg, i usually don’t want to play a combat-heavy fantasy adventure, and so i reach for one of them.
that’s the real reason i don’t play D&D. it’s not even that i don’t like D&D. it’s that there’s a whole world out there and i like exploring it.
this series of posts isn’t an argument. this isn’t me saying ‘don’t play D&D.’ but it is a few of the reasons i don’t play it.
you may be thinking that this is bullshit, and that i am presenting a problem without providing a solution. therefore, i am adding nothing but negativity to the discussion. you would be right! here are some games i like and the problems they solve:
“I want to be a cyborg hacker” — play Hard Wired Island. the future is neon, capital is the enemy, and you can, indeed, defeat nihilism and oppression by being simply sick as fuck.
“I just watched Ocean’s Eleven” — play Blades in the Dark or one of its modern-day spin-offs. declare that you already solved the problem in front of you forty-five minutes ago in a flashback sequence, and it happens.
“I just binged Vinland Saga and I want Vinland Saga” — play Ironsworn, which is free. cut the supernatural elements, and make sure there are lots of settlements with the resources to kill each other. envision ambition and trauma. wax philosophical. make your vows obviously self-destructive or at odds with the world around you. there. Vinland Saga. now the challenge is writing as well as Makoto Yukimura. good luck on that one. i actually have no advice there.
red-headed android 