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Reply To: Dumbing Down RPG's

May 27, 2019 at 2:45 pm #1395485

kiranamida

5791xp

@limburger No, no. I actually agree with you on that point. D&D is a fantasy system and even arguably a low fantasy one at that, especially the way the magic system is proscribed to the spell slot system and how a character either knows a spell or doesn’t and that spell does just one thing. I was meaning more that you can run any similar fantasy system using the D&D system as it’s designed for that and still make it interesting with good storytelling.

The full version of that phrase is “Jack of all trades but master of none, better than a master of one” which I sometimes think is a little idealistic. There is still an art in picking the correct system to run you own world in certainly and often times you do get the people trying to match systems that don’t have good mechanics to represent them (Ctulluh D20 being a prime example as you mentioned).

I think the point I was trying to make actually sort of exists within the D&D family already with thinks like the SpellJammer and Dark Sun campaigns settings and how DMs can create their own versions of worlds within these frameworks. I completely agree that the mechanics should always support the fluff, not the other way around. I just mean that if you have supporting mechanics and you game is still boring, more complex mechanics aren’t going to fix that, better story telling and role playing is.