The (Unholy) Trinity of DnD Gameplay Pillars

[Mufn]

Seems to be that the basic understanding of how a DnD (and Mythras!) game plays is that theres Combat, Exploration, and Interaction/Talking, which lines up with how the average game ive played turns out. That said, many of the best games i've played in generally have swapped combat as a main focus (it was till present, ofc) with what id call Stealth for lack of a better term.

If you were to look at the 5e classes, you'd see that getting rid of Combat as a fundamental aspect of the gameplay loop changes things quite a bit: fighters disappear, classes like Paladins, Warlocks, and Barbarians are hamstrung quite a bit based on their class features, and the remaining spell lists would need quite a bit of tweaking if you were to replace their effects with those that interact with the remaining pillars more (or the current spells become more niche).

It would be interesting to see what kinds of class features would sprout up with many of the affected classes to make them more pillar-focused in general: Paladins Lay on Hands may become more important, or their speaking abilities becoming much more pronounced, Rangers get a buff in utility almost automatically, etc etc

 

[Fenris-77]

Well, there's a big difference between playing more with the two other pillars, Social Interaction specifically, than plain getting rid of combat (not that you said you were). On of the tweaks I've tries with 5e is to broaden the skill-stat matrix for SI stuff to give some of the combat classes more to do in SI type scenarios. For example, a fighter could use his animal handling, or whatever, to socialize with a group of soldiers. I also allow more in the stat-skill mixes for rolls that 5E normally does. Once you get past CHA being the only stat that matters for SI you open up a lot of doors. 5e as-is presents a really narrow toolbox for SI, and not much more for Exploration, so a little tinkering is probably in order to really make those pillars hum.

Generally speaking, the non-standard skill uses, and non-standard stat-skill combos will work, but not generally quite as well as the core mechanic. So the CHA character still gets to shine and everyone else still gets to participate. Exploration is an easier thing to deal with an lots of different D&D and OSR products have neat systems for travel and exploration that get the whole party more involved.

 

[Mufn]

I was saying to replace combat with Stealth for fair enough point. Combat would still be there ofc, but in the same way that mass battle, item creation, basebuilding, etc are non-pillar aspects of the game

 

[Fenris-77]

I was saying to replace combat with Stealth for fair enough point. Combat would still be there ofc, but in the same way that mass battle, item creation, basebuilding, etc are non-pillar aspects of the game

I'm with you. De-emphasizing combat opens up a lot of interesting character build space, for sure. The whole idea of optimized D&D characters really fades away at that point, because 'optimized' in D&D terms generally means 'optimized for DPR' or something like that.

From a different angle, one of the reasons I like what people tend to refer to as 'old school play' is the emphasis on creative problem solving rather than strictly combat. Games that balance encounters, as 5E does, only further cement combat as the only truly important pillar of game play because there is an expectation that combat is a reasonable solution to most encounters. (Obviously I'm generalizing to an extent).

 

[robertsconley]

(shrug) I just try to create a setting with interesting things to do and combat is just one of them. What fighter in a campaign with no combat? A fighter who not fighting at the time? What do they do? Well what did warrior do in history and legend when they were not fighting, exploring, or travelling?

I know I am using a phrase from my own book, but it is about imagining life outside of the dungeon. Why is it is interesting? Well let's look at soap operas some of the longest lasting entertainment out there. Regardless of the details or situation invariably they focus on people interacting with other people. That the trick I found to make my sandbox campaigns works. It isn't just about the nuts and bolts of dungeon crawling, exploring wilderness, etc. It about the people in the setting. That what make each campaign unique and different because the cast of character is different and what happening around those characters is different.

There is no set of magical mechanics to make this happen. It amount to make a list, drawing up the inter-connections, and tracking what happens as the campaign unfolds. Learning about fictional and real human relationship to make a particular setup plausible and interesting for a specific group. Because what works for one doesn't always for for another group.

So what happens to fighter, monks, magic-users is answer by first imagining what life it like for each of them. None of them are constantly adventuring, none started experience, all of them had a family or a relationship before the campaign started. One of the things I try to do in my stuff is to paint as complete picture as I can within the space I have. That way a referee using my stuff has some of the answers to the question poised by the OP.

 

[CRKrueger]

(shrug) I just try to create a setting with interesting things to do and combat is just one of them. What fighter in a campaign with no combat? A fighter who not fighting at the time? What do they do? Well what did warrior do in history and legend when they were not fighting, exploring, or travelling?

I know I am using a phrase from my own book, but it is about imagining life outside of the dungeon. Why is it is interesting? Well let's look at soap operas some of the longest lasting entertainment out there. Regardless of the details or situation invariably they focus on people interacting with other people. That the trick I found to make my sandbox campaigns works. It isn't just about the nuts and bolts of dungeon crawling, exploring wilderness, etc. It about the people in the setting. That what make each campaign unique and different because the cast of character is different and what happening around those characters is different.

There is no set of magical mechanics to make this happen. It amount to make a list, drawing up the inter-connections, and tracking what happens as the campaign unfolds. Learning about fictional and real human relationship to make a particular setup plausible and interesting for a specific group. Because what works for one doesn't always for for another group.

So what happens to fighter, monks, magic-users is answer by first imagining what life it like for each of them. None of them are constantly adventuring, none started experience, all of them had a family or a relationship before the campaign started. One of the things I try to do in my stuff is to paint as complete picture as I can within the space I have. That way a referee using my stuff has some of the answers to the question poised by the OP.

The Three Pillars thing was always bullshit, brought to you by the geniuses who thought up “20 minutes of fun in 4 hours”. So much handwringing, theory and meta-thinking to try and make games better. Here’s an idea, Play Pretend that your character is actually a living person on a world somewhere and JUST Roleplay that person. Take off the shackles the meta-perspective places on you and come have some fun Roleplaying.

 

[Spellslinging Sellsword]

<shrug> I never saw it as meta-thinking theoretical bullshit, just as a pretty good summary of typical campaign play for D&D. </shrug>

 

[Fenris-77]

<shrug> I never saw it as meta-thinking theoretical bullshit, just as a pretty good summary of typical campaign play for D&D. </shrug>

Yup, I'm with you. It's a useful way to talk about how much or little the rules set supports various kinds of play. CRKsMMV, naturally.

 

[Stevethulhu]

Seems to be that the basic understanding of how a DnD (and Mythras!) game plays is that theres Combat, Exploration, and Interaction/Talking, which lines up with how the average game ive played turns out

Isn't that how almost every RPG ever published plays out? There's different amount of emphasis on each aspect. And exploration might mean cultural as well as location based exploration.

But those three things are pretty close to the defining traits of what makes an RPG not like a more conventional board game.

 

[CRKrueger]

Isn't that how almost every RPG ever published plays out? There's different amount of emphasis on each aspect. And exploration might mean cultural as well as location based exploration.

But those three things are pretty close to the defining traits of what makes an RPG not like a more conventional board game.

There's boardgames with Combat, Exploration and Interaction. What they don't have is the premise that you're roleplaying someone in an alternate world and able to do anything that person could do within that world. That's why they're not roleplaying games.

 

[Bourbonjack]

The Three Pillars thing was always bullshit, brought to you by the geniuses who thought up “20 minutes of fun in 4 hours”. So much handwringing, theory and meta-thinking to try and make games better. Here’s an idea, Play Pretend that your character is actually a living person on a world somewhere and JUST Roleplay that person. Take off the shackles the meta-perspective places on you and come have some fun Roleplaying.

Yup, I'm with you. It's a useful way to talk about how much or little the rules set supports various kinds of play. CRKsMMV, naturally.

I’m in between. Three Pillars is a useful way to characterize general aspects of gameplay, but it does get overblown at times.

 

[Fenris-77]

There's boardgames with Combat, Exploration and Interaction. What they don't have is the premise that you're roleplaying someone in an alternate world and able to do anything that person could do within that world. That's why they're not roleplaying games.

The fact that a roleplaying game has mechanical support or systems for Social Interaction doesn't make a board game, no more than the fact it has a combat system makes it a board game. The roleplaying premise lies overtop of the mechanics in general, or not in the case of board game.

 

[CRKrueger]

<shrug> I never saw it as meta-thinking theoretical bullshit, just as a pretty good summary of typical campaign play for D&D. </shrug>

Yeah, but it's one of those facts that is better off just sitting there and have everyone go "And?", because once you start trying to use it for anything, then the meta-thinking theoretical bullshit starts.

You start getting into "How much or little the ruleset supports various kinds of play" which means here come the meta-mechanics because if you don't have a specific minigame for traveling your game no longer "supports" Exploration despite having two books devoted just to exploring.

You get people judging the suitability of pure skill systems to represent something based solely on the weight, or lack thereof, of combat systems to match "genre".

You get the classic brain death symptom "D&D can't do anything but Dungeoncrawling - It is known."

It's more than a shortcut to thinking, it's a game design deadend.

 

[CRKrueger]

The fact that a roleplaying game has mechanical support or systems for Social Interaction doesn't make a board game, no more than the fact it has a combat system makes it a board game. The roleplaying premise lies overtop of the mechanics in general, or not in the case of board game.

Right, which means the fact that certain RPGs play might be broadly placed under those titles means nothing, because so could some board games.

 

[Black Vulmea]

It's a useful way to talk about how much or little the rules set supports various kinds of play.

The core rules for 2e Boot Hill includes exactly one rule for social presence: a character with a 'reputation' - survived eight or more gunfights - adversely affects an opponent's morale. That's it. No Cha modifier, no Diplomacy skill ranks; in fact, the core rules don't even include a reaction table - that wouldn't appear until the first module, BH1 Mad Mesa, was released, and it's built entirely around what a character does, not who a character is.

But social interaction in the game, in my experience, may comprise a significant amount of actual play because socially outmaneuvering a rival may be preferable to facing him over the barrel of a gun. This is a consequence of how deadly the combat rules are: you might be surprised how courteous and witty everyone gets when considerable risk of getting one's brains blown out is on the table.

So does that mean the lethal combat rules 'support' social interaction? That way lies madness, in my opinion. Rather, I think it's an emergent property of playing the game that exists without much in the way of rules.

Now, with the Mad Mesa reaction table rules, you can start to talk about rule support for the social game, and how robust that support is. Emergent game-play is, to me, orthogonal to that conversation, though.

I kinda feel the same way about Mufn's Combat v Stealth. I don't think that necessarily comes from the rules, but rather, as CRKrueger and robertsconley note, an emergent property that comes from how the players and the referee treat the game-world. When I played a character in the Giants modules back in the day, we did everything we could to avoid a straight up fight - we prioritized discovering who was behind the depredations, not slaying giants and their minions. That was a decision we made as a party that had nothing to do with the rules and everything to do with the nature of the quest.

 

[Fenris-77]

Right, which means the fact that certain RPGs play might be broadly placed under those titles means nothing, because so could some board games.

Oh sure, I wasn't getting shirty about definitions. That said, I have issues with definitions of RPGs that seem to want to needlessly exclude a bunch of games based on, hmm, lets say dodgy criteria, usually based a narrow personal defintion of RPGs. I know that kinda sounds like I'm talking about you specifically, but I'm not, promise.

 

[Brock Savage]

I don't see anything wrong with the trinity of combat, exploration and interaction/exposition. It isn't etched in stone, it's just a convenient shorthand that is especially useful for newcomers to the hobby. Almost everyone at the Pub is deep into the hobby which means that sometime we fail to look at things from the perspective of newcomers and casual gamers.

 

[Voros]

Isn't that how almost every RPG ever published plays out? There's different amount of emphasis on each aspect. And exploration might mean cultural as well as location based exploration.

But those three things are pretty close to the defining traits of what makes an RPG not like a more conventional board game.

Yeah, it strikes me as a pretty standard way to approach most genre rpgs, some with more emphasis on one aspect than another.

 

[TJS]

I always though exploration as a D&D pillar was very badly defined and not understood, and really just muddies the water when it comes to actually trying to emphasise exploration in a game.

 

[TristramEvans]

Ryuutama is the only RPG I've come across that really does a good job emphasizing exploration

 

[David Johansen]

Well, dungeon crawling and hex crawling can both work as exploration but it takes a bit more structure to pull it off. Old school mapping helped to make the exploration meaningful because it made the map a concrete thing and the players were more aware of the continuity of place.

 

[TristramEvans]

Has anyone here played Wilderness Survival, the boadgame that, as I understand it, was an unnoficial part of OD&D?

 

[TJS]

Well, dungeon crawling and hex crawling can both work as exploration but it takes a bit more structure to pull it off. Old school mapping helped to make the exploration meaningful because it made the map a concrete thing and the players were more aware of the continuity of place.

Yes. Something like B/X does a good job of exploration.

Part of the issue is that exploration only happens when the characters have a motivation to do it. Breaking into a dungeon to stop the ritual in time, becaue the PCs are heroes and that's what heroes do doesn't really feel like exploration.

You may have to find the room with the ritual, but it's not really exploring. You're not going to open random doors and go down side passages to see what's there - you're going to get to the end goal as fast as you possibly can because everything else supports that.

You really have to strip away a lot of modern assumptions to get something that feels like exploration.

 

[ffilz]

Has anyone here played Wilderness Survival, the boadgame that, as I understand it, was an unnoficial part of OD&D?

I played it a couple times after I bought it on recommendation from OD&D. I don't remember too much about it other than maybe dying in the wilderness...

 

[Voros]

Well, dungeon crawling and hex crawling can both work as exploration but it takes a bit more structure to pull it off. Old school mapping helped to make the exploration meaningful because it made the map a concrete thing and the players were more aware of the continuity of place.

I think the one-two page location/dungeons by Michael Prescott are fine examples of dungeons that put more emphasis on exploration rather than combat.

 

[ffilz]

A good modern day application of D&D to exploration is a full on West Marches, for example, as described in Izirion's Enchiridion of the West Marches, or the original as described by Ben Robbins in his blog.

 

[robertsconley]

My view is that when folks started developing systems to play individual characters having adventures with a human referee adjudicating the flexibility is built in. The presence of the human referee allows a players to attempt anything their character can do within the setting or genre.

But that not the only part of the system. The other part of the systems are the lists. Lists of stuff that help a referee get going with a campaign within the time they have for a hobby. It doesn't mean other things are not impossible or even difficult. It just means that easier to do the things the lists provides.

In practice the lists (monsters, classes, spells, treasure) act a big shiny. Attracting the attention of most as to what the system could do. But at the same time most RPGs can do much much more by virtue of defining a character to played with the human referee handling anything that make sense but not covered by a specific rule or found on one of the lists.

Often it not even spinning something novel. The focus of RPG mechanics on handling what characters do means that general principles are incorporated that can be and are adapted for other similar things the players could do.

The times this is not true of an RPG when it is so narrowly focused on a singular situation or a limited set of actions that the work required of the referee to handle other thing is not worth it within the time one has for a hobby. When the mechanics are so abstracted from what a character does that it hard to extrapolate the mechanic to other things beyond what the text of the rule says.

 

[robertsconley]

Has anyone here played Wilderness Survival, the boadgame that, as I understand it, was an unnoficial part of OD&D?

I have it sucks ass as wargame. Great map though and the information the game contained can be useful.

 

[TristramEvans]

I have it sucks ass as wargame.

It was a wargame? I was always under the impression it was a boardgame about being lost in the woods or something

 

[robertsconley]

The issue with exploration, fighting creatures, etc. is that eventually players been there and done that. What make situation novel over the long haul novel are the characters who are involved. People are interested in what people do more than anything else. It what gives meaning to all the other activities mentioned here. I found memorable campaigns are often is one that able to successfully meld interesting characters (PCs or NPCs) a with a situation even if it is stereotypically.

It is why for the most part I stick to bog standard fantasy tropes. Because the main ingredient in my sauce are not the fantasy tropes but the characters living within the setting with those tropes.

 

[robertsconley]

It was a wargame? I was always under the impression it was a boardgame about being lost in the woods or something

What a boardgame? What a wargame? It was marketed and packaged by Avalon Hill like their other games. So growing up I considered it a wargame. It sucked ass because the mechanics were too simplistic and too random for what it does. But serviceable as the survival rules for an RPG. Like Diplomacy was serviceable enough to use to track grand strategy during Napoleonic campaigns.

A better game of survival and exploration was Source of the Nile. That had random terrain generation where you use dry erase on the gameboard mark up the maps as you explored Africa. The reason that was better, because it had slightly more things to manipulate and it wasn't so random in how things happened.

 

[Sean W]

When my group got fixated on playing OSR heists I gradually assembled a patchwork of subsystems for villainy using various rulesets (Gathox Vertical Slum, For Coin and Blood, Black 7, ACKS, B/X Gangbusters, among many) but whittled them away because they couldn't cover all the range of capers and ruses the crew carried out, or were too prescriptive. I opted for a clone variant that gave me a skill system as a basis for the characters to try whatever in the setting. I'm conscious the players then started playing the characters rather than the rules.

 

[Bourbonjack]

The issue with exploration, fighting creatures, etc. is that eventually players been there and done that. What make situation novel over the long haul novel are the characters who are involved. People are interested in what people do more than anything else. It what gives meaning to all the other activities mentioned here. I found memorable campaigns are often is one that able to successfully meld interesting characters (PCs or NPCs) a with a situation even if it is stereotypically.

It is why for the most part I stick to bog standard fantasy tropes. Because the main ingredient in my sauce are not the fantasy tropes but the characters living within the setting with those tropes.

I agree.

I view a war game as one where decisions are made through the eye of a general - cold, calculated moves that are aimed at producing a “win”.

I see RPGs as a game where decisions are influenced or even directed, by the “personality” that has been created for the characters.

Which is why I’d argue that some groups gather around a table to play what is, in fact, an elaborate wargame conducted on a micro-scale.

 

[CRKrueger]

I agree.

I view a war game as one where decisions are made through the eye of a general - cold, calculated moves that are aimed at producing a “win”.

I see RPGs as a game where decisions are influenced or even directed, by the “personality” that has been created for the characters.

Which is why I’d argue that sone groups gather around a table to play what is, in fact, an elaborate warfare conducted on a micro-scale.

Yep. Noone ever said you had to Roleplay during a Roleplaying Game. The odd thing is, the more you try to force it through mechanics the further away you get.

 

[Séadna]

Has anyone here played Wilderness Survival, the boadgame that, as I understand it, was an unnoficial part of OD&D?

Played it with my brothers about three years ago. It's fun for the historical side but really it's actually a very minimal game and I quickly found it boring. If anybody here ever gets it don't play scenario #1 which simulates a boy lost in the wilderness. You basically wander in a circle and die and have no real choices. The other scenarios like the fugitive on the run are a bit better.

"Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island" is a much better modern game in the same genre.

We got it to ultimately do an OD&D game with it and the Chainmail rules.

 

[robertsconley]

Yep. Noone ever said you had to Roleplay during a Roleplaying Game. The odd thing is, the more you try to force it through mechanics the further away you get.

Yeah I used to be in the 80s a bit of a roleplaying snob. But over the years I come to realize that many hobbyists just play a version of themselves with the abilities of the character. Almost an equal number will pick one or two different personality traits rather than come up a completely new personality.

I found that to make what I do work I just need the player to do first person roleplaying. Anything beyond that is optional.

Another thing I did in the 80s when I running AD&D was jettison XP for gold and magic items. Instead I creating a roleplaying reward. But like I mention above, I shifted the focus of the award to goals accomplished. And not my goal but the goals the players set out for the characters. Generally I don't do that formally, instead I pay attention to their chatter and listen for what individuals and the group want to accomplish. Then at the end of the session I calculate the award accordingly. It was more or less the milestone system found the 5e DMG.

Currently I just award monster xp, and milestones. I don't bother with the rest of the items on the below list like training or demi-human level limits. I still use the same basic formula of Base XP x Level x Rating; except rating is generally 3 for completing an intermediate goal, and 5 for a major goal.

circa 1985-86

 

[cranebump]

Seems to be that the basic understanding of how a DnD (and Mythras!) game plays is that theres Combat, Exploration, and Interaction/Talking, which lines up with how the average game ive played turns out. That said, many of the best games i've played in generally have swapped combat as a main focus (it was till present, ofc) with what id call Stealth for lack of a better term.

If you were to look at the 5e classes, you'd see that getting rid of Combat as a fundamental aspect of the gameplay loop changes things quite a bit: fighters disappear, classes like Paladins, Warlocks, and Barbarians are hamstrung quite a bit based on their class features, and the remaining spell lists would need quite a bit of tweaking if you were to replace their effects with those that interact with the remaining pillars more (or the current spells become more niche).

It would be interesting to see what kinds of class features would sprout up with many of the affected classes to make them more pillar-focused in general: Paladins Lay on Hands may become more important, or their speaking abilities becoming much more pronounced, Rangers get a buff in utility almost automatically, etc etc

I have to side with folks who say not to get too deep into tying mechanics into pillars. Pillars are nothing more than aspects of play that exist in a proportion determined by individual groups/GMs (though I would offer that an interesting campaign really should have elements of all 3 [well, IMHO]). Stealth, by the way, is a part of combat, too, isn't it? Since it's a form of maneuvering while denying your enemy meaningful intel?

As far as classes being hamstrung if taken out of their supposed element, I would say that's due to such things as players engaging in orthodox/min-maxed skill choices. If you never go "off book" because you're all about pumping up the mechanical side of the PC, then you don't end up with, say, the High CHA fighter who's REALLY into real estate (actual character I played, though the real estate thing was mainly part of his con man schtick).

But even that misses the point, which is this: Players need to think outside the box in a way that doesn't depend on features at all, but rather, the character concept. Because tying class features/skills into the Roleplaying aspect of the game doesn't enhance role playing. Playing the character the way you believe they'd actually act, based on the situation, their personality, their concerns, their previous experiences does that. You don't need class features to roleplay. You don't even need Stats. You just need a sense of what the PC is about. It's that simple, really.

 

[Brock Savage]

Which is why I’d argue that some groups gather around a table to play what is, in fact, an elaborate wargame conducted on a micro-scale.

Agree. My Carcosa game is akin to a wargame. My 5e D&D game is like an elaborate board game. I am okay with all of this. Few of my players roleplay much in character when in groups of 3+ but we have fun. I mean, they definitely act and make decisions in character and that's what counts right?

 

[EmperorNorton]

Ryuutama is the only RPG I've come across that really does a good job emphasizing exploration

I still pick up the book and read it occasionally and dream of the day I can play in a game or find players who would be interested in it. (also the condition check and how it fit into the exploration system was the part that always stuck out to me as really genius.).

 

[Spellslinging Sellsword]

If the majority of people play with a few quirks, but mostly are themselves with fantasy skills and powers who make choices in the game, then that is what baseline playing roleplaying games is. Asserting that most people who play roleplaying games aren't really playing roleplaying games because they don't do some method acting deep immersion imaginary holodeck is pretentious and off base.