Is 5E Becoming a Cargo Cult?

Yesterday I was catching up with my blog roll, and Feedly, and some synergistic posts revealed themselves.  I came across Justin Alexander's discussion, The Decline and Fall of D&D Adventures, shortly followed by the Wandering Gamist's (final) review post of "Five Torches Deep", a rules set that tries to port "OSR styles" into 5E.  Justin's post about the Decline of Dungeons is signaling that 5E never really provided a strong tutorial on how to build or run a good dungeon adventure, and now he's seeing published attempts that wildly miss the mark on what's required in terms of information and presentation.  John at Wandering Gamist points out that as Five Torches Deep over-indexes on elements around resource management, they ignore the most important elements of an OSR style of dungeoneering - actually building a good dungeon and having strong procedures to manage dungeon exploration.

So let's get this cargo cult question out of the way.  The idea of a cargo cult goes back to World War 2; pre-industrialized people encountered modern technology when airfields were built on remote islands during the Pacific campaign.  They saw that airfields and airplanes and radio towers meant awesome stuff coming onto the island via cargo boxes.  When the armies moved on, the people built wooden mock-ups of the planes and towers hoping the good stuff in the boxes would come back some time.  I've seen the term used in the corporate world - people that go through the motion of following old processes or procedures, no one even knows why they exist any more, but we keep doing it hoping for our cargo - a box of K-rations or something.  Our office spaces are full of this mindset.

Both my blogging colleagues are touching on instances where they've encountered modern gamers attempting to follow older styles of play, but missing the mark by pursuing form over function.  Doing things without understanding them - how to actually draw and key a dungeon, and why, or how the point of planning and resource management isn't for the resource part of the game to be the primary challenge, it's to support the actual goal - dungeon exploration balancing time and resources.  In both cases you don't have a good game without high quality dungeon - plus a well made map, a good dungeon key with compelling story, and sound procedures for managing the exploration by the players.

I had no idea procedural dungeon exploration was even a gap in the 5E PHB!  There's a loose discussion about time intervals and movement, but the book never puts it all together into a coherent example for the new players.  Nor is there any sample dungeon in the DMG or an example of actual play.  Those were prominent components in those older rule books! The Tower of Zenopus, Koriszegy Keep in Moldvay BX, Bartle's dungeon in the Mentzer Red Box, even the monastery dungeon in the 1E DMG were all prominently featured to transmit how play works.  Who can forget Black Dougal's death scene?  Those actual play examples demonstrate how the Q&A interaction between the referee and players advance the game state, how a mapper or caller fits into exploration, when do you roll for wander monsters, that kind of stuff.  I had no idea any of that was missing in the Fifth.  I just carried along working procedures from the old games into 5E and kept trucking.  Upon my fresh reading, I did see that the PHB allows characters to explore in a single minute more than older editions would let the players cover in an entire turn (10 minutes).  Apparently none of my players read the PHB and caught that, either. 

Why would WOTC omit sample dungeons and examples of play?  Maybe they figured 5E players are already players from older editions, or new folks would join existing groups and receive institutional knowledge from their surroundings.  Maybe they expected new players to head out to YouTube or Twitch and learn how to run a game there.  YouTube is my go-to for learning simple home repairs - repairing drywall, or fixing a leaking faucet.  Why not how to build or run a dungeon?  Possibly WOTC didn't think it's that important in the modern age - lots of people seem to have eschewed dungeons for scene-based adventures.

I would imagine everyone who checks out my blog would have started gaming before 5E, and already have a good grasp on building and running dungeons (or at least exploring them as a player) from an older edition.  (If you are that one new person who never played D&D before 5E and happens to see this place, please drop a hello in the comments - and welcome!)  But I also see evidence there are segments of newer gamers that don't understand how to finesse the site-based or dungeon exploration format.  For instance, referees either love or hate Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage, a 23 level megadungeon for 5E.  The haters see a giant dungeon, no scenes, no overarching plots, and they're not sure what to do with it.  Hard pass - I'm moving on to the next Adventure Path.  And no wonder - neither 5E (or the adventure itself) has fully prepared them.  Dungeons, especially megadungeons, require more and different from the referee.

Anyway, while I'm waxing on old knowledge, here's one that cracked me up - I came across a group of "grognards" who started playing in the old days - you know, during 4th edition!  Or maybe 3rd.  Out here in the real world, grognard means 1970's D&D, accept no substitutes.  (Except the real grognards, the ones that painted the Napoleonic miniatures in the 60's and 70's and used sandtables for their war games, would poke some fun at we roleplayers, I'm sure).  Don't take yourself too seriously, I guess is the message.

A Turning Point with 5th Edition

I've been dubious about 5E.  I do not see eye to eye with modern adventure design and the expectations of modern players (post TSR players).  The story of my blog has become a search for a middle ground - running the system my friends all prefer (the 5th) while running a game that satisfies my own expecations, too.  However, I finally think we're getting there.

If you've read my game reports on Tomb of Annihilation (TOA) you know TOA is one of 5E's adventures I praise liberally.  It's flaws are modest, it's virtues are many.  It thrusts the players into an old school style hex crawl, requiring that they plan and manage resources.  The story isn't about an author's scene-based plot to follow, it's an emergent story built over time based on player actions.  Tomb of Annihilation checks off some good boxes.

We are in the capstone dungeon of the campaign, a grim place called the Tomb of the Nine Gods (the erstwhile Tomb of Annihilation itself, the namesake).  It means what it says on the cover.  Death lurks around every corner.

I've noticed a big change in the players.  Everyone has been leaning in a little more at the table.  They take their time discussing spell choices and preparations for the adventuring day.  Planning matters.  There's a nervous energy as I describe the next room. It's palpable.  The threat of instant death has a way of sharpening the mind.

It brings to mind a Flannery O'Connor quote, from a "A Good Man is Hard to Find":  "She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

5E feels the most like D&D when there are real consequences behind every player choice.  Many of the hardback books are too "balanced" and forgiving.  I'm starting to see what it takes to deliver a good game of 5E (my definition of a good game, at least).

The Tomb of the Nine Gods is not unfair, and I'm not an adversarial DM.  Sure there are save-or-die effects, and massive damage traps, and literal death rooms that can kill the whole party.  It's an homage to Tomb of Horrors!  But there are clues, and high level characters are not without resources.  Mostly though, the players are surviving because they are planning well, making smart choices, and sometimes getting a little lucky.  They've cheered each other and high-fived each other and relished their hard won successes.  It's been real fun on both sides of the screen.  It's been D&D.

I wasn't sure how this bare-knuckled style was going to play out in a Fifth Edition setting, and it's going quite well.  My 5E "training period" is coming to a close.

PS:
Mandatory Corona-vacation will shift us online for our next game session - I'll come back with a report on what tools we used and how it went.  And I'll get a game report posted with some details of these "player victories" in the Tomb.

Character versus Campaign

I'm still trying to get comfortable with the difference between old school characters and the latest edition.  Let's talk generalities - old school characters are quick to generate, somewhat disposable, and they become interesting over time due to emergent stories.  There's not a lot of mechanical difference between various 1st level fighters.  It's the adventures they survive that make them interesting.  Because the characters are disposable, the campaign becomes the constant at the table.  Campaign transcends character.

5E is another animal.  Players come to the table with deeply thought out level 1 characters, taking great care to select race, class, backgrounds, character options, and considering a mechanical arc for the character.  In addition to the player's handbook core rules, there are several other books that expand character options.

I know these topics have been litigated ad nauseum since 3E.  The argument goes there are way more players than game masters, so economically, market forces dictate the company makes lots of player options because it sells books.  Wizards has been fairly disciplined with their publishing schedule, so the market isn't flooded with too many 5E player options like the 3rd or 4th editions, but there's still a good amount out there.

However, I think it's more interesting to reflect on how 5E's approach to the player character affects gameplay.  I've been part of convention games, and running a good amount of Adventurer's League games as a "public DM" for one of my friends (plus a weekly home game).  Every week it's (potentially) a different set of players with different characters.  The public games are single-serving fun-size episodes.  The story and the campaign doesn't provide the continuity for the players, it's the character itself that's the one constant.  (Wherever you go, there you are, or something like it).

The positive for this approach is the amount of creativity manifested in the players.  Character story still emerges through play, the way God and Gary intended, but players show up having given a lot more thought to how they want to portray the character when their time at the table is a single-serving instance.  No one at a public game table wants to hear someone's five page backstory, but the players that get it are very good at using their turns to add some flourish and tell their character's story through brief action choices, mannerisms, or maybe a funny accent or turn of phrase. I'm sure the ever-presence of Twitch gaming and celebrity-table D&D is contributing to player theatrics and a heavier focus on roleplaying through table presence.  (The Matt Mercer effect).  I don't live in a particularly large town, one of many suburbs north of Philadelphia, but it boasts two nights per week of these "Adventurer Leagues", at different stores, running 4-5 full tables of players.  I don't know if Dungeons & Dragon has ever been more popular.  I'm not going to complain.

There are some ramifications to 5E's character emphasis I still don't like.  The characters are extremely powerful, very hard to kill, and all of the game effects that should be permanent and horrifying are typically only temporary (an example would be petrification).  I'm not a killer DM, but the lack of lethality undermines drama at the table - combat is sport instead of war, as we say.  I usually have to discard any game balance "guidelines" and be willing to throw anything and everything at the players to generate a credible threat.  (This is much easier in a home game than the public Adventurer's League setting where you're constrained by an author).  For campaign building, I don't like the limitations high-powered, high-magic characters create for the world at large.  5E D&D doesn't emulate genres well; it's created its own genre of fantasy; at best you can import flavors from other genres and nudge the default 5E assumptions towards the style you want to mirror.

Despite these cranky "get off my lawn with your 5th edition" complaints, I'm having fun.  I appreciate the player creativity I'm seeing.  Running Adventurer's League is meh, but I'm helping a friend out due to the high demand in the area.  Apparently one can run the published hardcover campaigns in lieu of their Adventurer's League modules, so I'm going to try that soon - most of the hardback campaigns are well done, and I've run enough home brew megadungeons to handle a drop in/drop out episodic public game.  The biggest dissonance I have is re-calibrating my expectations of world building, which arcs towards low magic, pseudo-historical settings with a side of horror.  I don't naturally embrace the wahoo high-magic eclectic mash-up embodied by 5E.  Getting there is a work in progress; thus I haven't tried my hand at a homebrew setting in a while.  I'm all ears for advice on how you've done it.

Mustard or Ketchup with that Dungeon?

Choice is a funny thing in games.  We expect our choices to be meaningful, but the types and amount of choices the players should expect is contextual.  If you're signing up to play in your referee's adventure path game, you already know the campaign is going to take you from scene A to scene B to scene C as you follow the story. Plotted horror scenarios are similar.   But you're expecting that as you encounter the various scenes, there will be a range of potential outcomes and consequences based on how well everyone is playing.  Choosing to abandon the story to go do something random, like joining the traveling circus (the first random thing that came to mind), is probably not an option.  It's against the ground rules.

I like dungeons and hex crawls because they provide a degree of player freedom within a limited geographic scope.  Dungeons in particular are good at reducing options to various binary choices - go forward or go back, turn left or turn right.

One thing I'm ruminating about - what's a good number of plot hooks to float to the players at any given time in a sandbox style game?  Imagine you're kicking off a new fantasy game and you want to build a simple hex crawl with a series of lairs and adventure sites scattered about.  You need at least one adventure site ready to go for that first game.  Do you usually prepare a couple of sites in advance and float some options?

A sandbox game with a bunch of plot hooks is easier to keep going once the game is rolling.  Just ask the players at the end of each session what they want to do next week.  Your detailed preparation is limited by adopting a 'just in time' approach between games.  But kicking the game off and getting started is another matter.

When preparing some of the megadungeons I've ran in the past, I never worried about "overdeveloping" the dungeon or building in too many choices - and risking developing areas the players never choose to visit.  Now that I'm thinking through how 5E campaign development might look, I find myself worried about doing too much up front.  It's a weird mental block I need to get past.  (Maybe I've psyched myself out due to fast advancement!  Blargh.)

To answer my own question, though - I usually like to have two or three distinct plot hooks before the players.  If you put too many out there, you risk a bit of "analysis paralysis"; a beer and pretzels group of gamers can quickly decide between a couple of options.  But here's one thing I stand by - the choices do need to be distinct.  None of this 'all plot looks lead to the same thing' type of tomfoolery.   "You're getting a hot dog no matter what you ask for, but whether you want sauerkraut, mustard, or ketchup is up to you" - that works with my kids.  In an RPG, all roads shouldn't actually lead to Rome.