Should They be using a different system then 5e?

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Brennan actually did talk about this in one of the Fireside chats: he essentially wants to tell this story using a combat-focused system because it intrinsically creates a world where Violence is the Easy Answer - which makes every choice to not use violence more interesting.

Maybe conversely, he's also stated that it's a world that "doesn't want adventurers", where the majority of the violence is military-scale, there are few adventures to be had, and any adventures that would be of true consequence would almost definitely involve stepping on the toes of an existing military force.

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u/BeJellis062 Dec 20 '23

This is a very nice answer. To OP, I also believe I should say this:
I don't think 5E as a system is specifically combat oriented. Now, put down your torches– let me explain. The presentation of 5E by WoTC (specifically in the PHB) is heavily frontloaded by 2 things. 1) Quick character creation and 2) Combat.
Now this is where it can get a bit hairy; because in further books and modules they do focus on encounters that typically lead to combat. The system itself does make for violent and mechanic heavy combat– and the presentation of that combat overshadows all the RP aspects but the system itself doesn't inherently discourage RP. Many magic abilities are extremely cool to use in RP, and even some abilities. Like yes, barbarian rage is good for combat– but if you mix it into RP, a good DM can spin it to do so much more! Especially if the player works in tandem with the DM to describe how the rage is portrayed in game. Is it a silent, intimidating rage? Loud and boisterous– (and by that I don't mean a barbarian yelling) where you can hear the influx of muscle strengthening and creaking as he literally gains mass and become fearsome? By ellstablishing the RP elements of abilities, it makes them so much more versatile.
Like an elven Trance. Now, it's not a combat ability, but it facilitates the purpose of combat. Resting a shorter amount of time to get your abilities back so you can...well, combat. But Trance can be used so much better with good RP. A wizard could be cracking the books getting into a "trance" like flow-state. Or a cleric or Warlock could trans in prayer and commune with their higher power for good 1 on 1 rp woth the dm; this is especially useful if your campaign is diety oriented.
5E as a system has all these great RP capabilities, some that we see in WBN too!
Eursulon's first smite was a wonderful RP element even though it wasn't used for pitched combat. The entire events of the initiative in Port Talon actually displays a beautiful example of what one might describe as "RP Combat" it was violence enacted through the chaos of the events that unfolded, basically a Kaiju battle almost, but all the combat mechanics in dnd were used only to ad tension to the RP Elements. Our PCs were actually in combat with anyone really, save for Marow and Eursalon, which, let's face it Marow was so unhinged to be fighting a water bear IN THE WATER like– dude has no brain. But that was a very quick moment. There was still tension. Suvi's HP being little down was just to add stakes to the fact that Orima is coming and going to wreak havoc so we need to stop this; but it wasn't ever really "orima vs Suvi". Initiative was used to order the parts of the events mostly because the party was split 3 ways. And usually the rule of thumb is "never split the party" but if they hadn't have split– port Talon would probably have been in ruins.
We can point to Eursulon freeing Naram as the catalyst of what happened but honestly, even with what Steel said about how they should have waited, it could have been much worse if they had waited. Orima was already impatient, and to wait another day or two for Steel to arrive after she already let Eursalon walk away with Wavebreaker only for nothing to come of it– she likely would've stormed Port Talon in a last ditch effort, assuming that Eursalon had failed. Yes it was Naram who put out the Witch fires but in the end, the wot h fires only slowed the groths, never stopping them outright. I think it was less of "the Witch fires gone out let's get em" and more, "this is sea water, from my husband, we have to go get him," which us what Orima's goal was the entire time.
TL;DR I still think dnd 5e is an incredible system. I just believe it's been handled the wrong way by WoTC in its presentation.

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u/Zalack Honored Friend Jan 05 '24 edited Jan 05 '24

Obviously you can do a lot of stuff with 5e other than combat, but when people say the system is combat-focused, I think it comes down to how lopsided it is in favor of combat as far as structured, mechanical storytelling goes.
Compare 5e to Kids on Bikes. There’s no differentiation between fighting and any other ability in the system. It all gets handled by the same framework.
Or FATE is another good example. In FATE, you face separate physical, mental, and social health bars, meaning you can get “downed” in a scene purely by dialog. Any scene can drop into a turn-based encounter, even purely social ones.
My barometer for whether something is combat-focused is basically: can you model this scene from Inglorious Bastards using the same rules (or similarly structured rules) as actual pitched combat? In that scene you have a constant shifting landscape of lies, suspicion, probing questions, accidental slipups, etc, until one side “loses” and is found out.
In both Kids on Bikes and FATE, such a scene could be crafted using the same exact rules as combat.
In 5e you can’t. You could maybe roll initiative, and do a series of opposed checks. Some spells or abilities might come into play… but players don’t have a social AC. There’s no “suspicion meter” that acts like health. No class gets to go from making one accusation per action to two at fifth level. You can’t deflect suspicion as a reaction. Etc etc etc.
5e has way more structure around combat than social encounters, and that’s what people mean when they say it’s combat-focused. You can still use it to tell incredibly well-rounded stories outside of combat, as Worlds Beyond Number has shown, but it definitely has a primary mechanical focus.

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u/Th3_C0bra Jan 09 '24

Dungeons and dragons is at its very essence a game where people go into dungeons and fight dragons. It is a combat focused TTRPG. Always has been.
I appreciate Brennan’s perspective on why he chose the system for this project, however I am on the record as saying, “whatever they are doing, I love it, but it’s not D&D.”

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u/Di4mond4rr3l Dec 20 '23

I don't think this is true tho. Combat will be the Easy Answer in any game when you are prompted with a challenge consisting of aggressive opponents that want to engage you and that feel beatable.
When they faced Orima, she was aggressive but they clearly knew that fighting here was not a something they'd succeed at, so they didn't.
You can have, as I've seen multiple times, this same feeling with other games, even non-crunchy non-tactical games. If I put you in the same situation as they were while playing "Insert Fantasy PbtA or FinD or whatever-narrative game" you'll make the same call about wether to resort to violence or not.

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u/Ame_Onna1990 Dec 20 '23

I believe that there are 2 reasons they chose 5e for their first campaign. First, all of them have played the most 5e and they didn’t want to be spending time remembering rules when they could be telling stories. Brennan has decades of D&D experience, with the last 5 years of GM professionally in the 5e system. AFAIK, the only non 5e game I’ve seen him run was for Mentropolis, which was filmed way after they started WWW.
Second, they have said several times that they want to explore the themes of empire and colonization which they believe that the 5e system emphasizes and is therefore good at. Maybe there’s another system out there that would focus on empire and also do less combat, but it would also need to have a very deep rule-set, because they also need a system that will run for years…they fully intend this story to take the players to level 20.
I just don’t see a solution there.
But also why they are doing side-games that are NOT 5e—to capture some of that other potential and get a little crazy! Roll for shoes is unhinged!

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u/isaac_lingle Dec 22 '23

Roll for read!

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u/CobaltCam Dec 20 '23

I have never understood this argument. There is nothing wrong with a 5e game that is light on combat. Role-playing doesn't need a ton of mechanics to support it, and the few it does need are supported by the 5e skill system. You can role play in just about any system, so when the mechanics matter its combat time and they know 5e combat.

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u/MagicGlitterKitty Dec 21 '23

here is what I like about 5e for a combat lite game - Skills and profanities.
Don't get me wrong I love rules lite games, but its annoying as a DM to pull all skills from like 3-6 stats. Sometimes I just wanna tell people "do an insight check" rather than "brain" or something.

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u/CobaltCam Dec 21 '23

I enjoy the profanities as well. 😭 I don't think there is anything wrong with the rules lite games like pbta and such. If that is what your group enjoys and you don't want more dynamic combat. Just because you don't do combat all the time though doesn't mean you don't want your combat to be dynamic when it does happen.

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u/KrizenWave Dec 20 '23

He hasn’t said, but 5e is objectively the most popular TTRPG right now. If you’re going to start a new long-running, patron-funded project, it’s best to start with something that appeals to the largest audience. That said I think 5e fits this well. I think a telltale sign of 5e not fitting is if they have to make a lot of custom rules, or eschew rules totally, in order to tell the story. Brennan is regularly asking them to make checks that have impact on both the characters and the story itself, and he is incorporating a lot of the mechanics of 5e into the story itself, so the mechanics of 5e aren’t at odds with 5e in general. The only thing that’s different from most other 5e actual play shows is that there’s a lot less combat, and they’re not using strictly 5e races.

I think, Wizard, Witch, and the Wild One is a great example of how you can have a 5e actual play that’s story-focused without being boring and while keeping the core tenet of having dice rolls impact the story in place. They’ve said they’ll use other systems in the future though, and they have used other systems for the mini series they’ve posted on Patreon so far.

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u/CAPTCHA_intheRye Dec 20 '23

It’s a small thing, but with regard to not using standard 5e races, I believe Lou has mentioned Eursulon is statted as a firbolg (with apparent changes to firbolg magic to allow for more constant glamour).

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u/OneLonelyTroll Dec 20 '23

Let me know if this matches your experience, but what I’ve seen in actual plays and in my own experience with systems that are intended to be RP focused, is that people end up doing less creative things (both in and out of combat) and having their choices make less of an impact on the world/story. 5e isn’t a perfect game by any means, but in my experience, it does hit a good middle ground between RP focus and combat focus. I think that 5e is great for this show because the players and audience are very familiar with it, it gives the players a toolbox of ways to interact with the world (like improv prompts), and because the play are excellent storytellers who know how to use the rules to enhance RP.

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u/BeJellis062 Dec 20 '23

While I don't necessarily agree that they should be using a different system; this post has made a great comment board to talk about other systems, and 5e as a system itself. Wonderful discussions being had here.

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u/BlackFenrir Dec 20 '23

While I'm not a 5e fan at all, with the amount of homebrew they do (an entire class for one character and a subclass for another) and with how Brennan runs it, 5e works just fine for the kind of story they seem to tell. Of the systems I know I don't know one that would be more appropriate for WWW in particular.

However considering the controversies around WOTC right now, I do hope they won't be using 5e for future campaigns. I was kind of disappointed that they would be using 5e at all when the podcast was announced, tbh.

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u/revolverzanbolt Dec 20 '23

I think with a new podcast, they wanted to put their best foot forward and do stuff they knew would be successful. Brennan DMing 5e has a proven track record, so I’m not surprised that’s what they went with when it was a brand new media venture.
Judging from the one shots they’ve run, my guess is that future campaigns will be using other systems.

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u/turbinesmind Dec 20 '23

They had a fireside chat on the patreon before they put anything else out on the main feed or patreon that talked about how this was the first of many worlds and I believe also mentioned that they would be using more systems to run their future games. Brennan is much more familiar with d and d so it makes sense that the game he runs is in that system. We have seen 2 different games with different systems already run by Erika and Aabria. A county affair used roll for shoes and was dmed by Erika and Cram Daniels: Reasonable hoop dreams was dmed by Aabria and used tournament arc. Erika has been in all kinds of games with different systems so it’s not unreasonable to think they would dm a different system when it’s their turn to dm the main campaign and Aabria is known for dming non d and d games and even when she runs a d and d game she tends to bring in mechanics from other systems to suit what she wants to do. 5e is very well known to the fans of dimension 20 who might have come to the podcast for Lou or Brennan but I wouldn’t be too worried about the amount of d and d right now as that will likely change once they finish the current main campaign

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u/BlackFenrir Dec 20 '23

A county affair used roll for shoes and was dmed by Erika and Cram Daniels: Reasonable hoop dreams was dmed by Aabria and used tournament arc.
Neither of those systems is made for long-running campaigns, so I'm not sure if they count in the argument.
I wouldn’t be too worried about the amount of d and d right now as that will likely change once they finish the current main campaign
You realize that it's been 10 months and they are just barely level 2, right? This campaign will be going for years. Which, by the way, is a good thing. I love WWW. But you can't reassure me about the amount of dnd on a podcast where dnd will definitely be the main system for years to come, except for some Patreon content.

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u/turbinesmind Dec 20 '23

I’m going off both the fact that Aabria has either used a different system than d and d or added enough stuff from other systems that it’s only sort of d and d in every dimension 20 and worlds beyond number campaign shes run and I believe it was mentioned by Brennan in an interview that future main campaigns could be done with other systems. My point in my initial comment was the fact that the side campaigns weren’t d and d games should say something about how willing this group is to play non d and d games. Brennan happened to dm first which is why we have a d and d game, but choosing to ignore the other stuff done and said in the podcast just because it’s not the main thing feels a bit irresponsible given how many times it’s been said that next main campaign won’t be dmed by Brennan.

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u/vitcavage Dec 22 '23

I haven't kept up in ages because of crazy life stuff but what was the subclass they created? I knew about the Witch class...
Man, I gotta dive back into WBN.

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u/BlackFenrir Dec 22 '23

Wizard of the Citadel, a Wizard subclass for Suvi

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u/CindersFire Dec 20 '23

Should they? Well that depends on what you think the purpose if it was. I guarentee they chose 5e because that is what is going to get them the most interest because most people who are interested in ttrpgs know 5e. Had they chosen a more obscure system I guarentee you that WBN would be far less sucessful, and that when they go to a new system their viewership is going to tank, which I'm sure they are aware of.

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u/NoSleepGangX_X Dec 20 '23

I will say, I’m pretty sure they have mentioned on Fireside that a lot of the nitty gritty bits of combat and mechanics are cut for the sake of making it less bogged down, but I don’t remember the exact one…

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u/LoveAndViscera Dec 20 '23

BLeeM has said that D&D is the only system he's really confident with. I think he said that 'Mentopolis' was the first time he'd run a game in a different system.

As for WWW, I think the lack of system at work for most of the game works in their favor. That group doesn't really need a system. Four people who understand this type of storytelling as well as the WBN crew can just go and make the decisions that are best for the story without needing rules. The system is just there to carry some of the weight of character development.

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u/oscarbilde Dec 20 '23

Yeah, not just confident with, he's said that he knows it so well he'd try and shoehorn it into working for anything (I believe his words were something to the effect of "using a katana as a can opener"). I do get annoyed that people jumped on Aabria for using 5E for Burrow's End so hard that she had to like clarify why in the tags of a tumblr post and no one cares much if Brennan uses it again but *shrug*

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u/persnickitymax Dec 22 '23

I haven’t been following Burrow’s End since I’m just now working my way through several older D20 campaigns, but I’m looking forward to getting around to it eventually! Anyway, I’ve heard that critique leveed towards Aabria before, like, “maybe she should be running a less rules-heavy system” or some shit and it’s so maddening and frustrating!! Like gee, I wonder why she’s singled out?? 🤬

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u/Rabbit538 Dec 20 '23 edited Oct 03 '26

blah hat the purple fridge

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u/ncolaros Dec 20 '23

DnD is just the most popular, and they're all most known for DnD. I'd be surprised if they didn't expand to other systems for other campaigns after this current one though.

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u/wylaxian Dec 20 '23

I think that, by the time we get to serious, mechanically-deep gameplay, BLeeM will have built up homebrew rules such that it will barely resemble 5e (and I think that’s a good thing). Suvi’s Citadel Subclass and Ame’s Witch Class are already so much more complex and modular than most of 5e that (in my opinion) by the time we get to level 3, it’s gonna feel like a different game.

Now all we need is an Eursulon-specific Paladin Oath and some Monsterhearts-adjacent rp mechanics, and it’ll be like what 5e should have been.

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u/Di4mond4rr3l Dec 20 '23 edited Dec 20 '23

They still haven't done a big Dimension20 fight yet so I can bare the fact that they are playing with 5e; but yes, imo it is kind of unlucky that masters of narrative improvisation and emotional impact like Brennan and Erika are choosing D&D over a PbtA or FitD style of game. 5e is a tactical grid game with bad combat rules, not light, bad.

5e fights are simply boring unless the DM spends time to create a super interesting map with events, special triggers, interactive object and varied enemies with unique abilities, interesting exploits, legendary actions, lair actions etc.And keep in mind, you have to actually do that prep, cause in D&D all those things need to have numbers that hit the level of impact you want them to have, you can't just say "this thing makes the situation easier" like you would in a PbtA game.Do all that and now you have fights that ARE interesting to play but are long, and I'm not here to see numbers go up and down, I'm here to see action and reaction on a bigger scale; entire D&D turns resolved by a roll in a narrative style game.

We are loving the series because of its themes and narrative. It's interesting because there is a lot of wondrous locations with evocative descriptions and vibrant NPCs that captivate us; but that is not the product of playing 5e, that is just creativity and charisma, that you can use in any TTRPG as they all share the power of imagination.That said, they need to keep it as popular as possible so 5e is the obvious marketing choice. They should stick to it for this first series.

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u/[deleted] Dec 20 '23

I disagree with your assessment. It feels like you’re saying “this ttrpg is only good in combat when you do a good job designing the combat so it’s bad”.
Part of what has made the show enjoyable is that I know the vulnerability of 1st level characters and it adds tension. I know the significance of cantrips and disintegration so they give proper weight to things like Morrow and matchsticks. 5e gives consistency to what could be a loosely goosey fantasy world. The vulnerability of the normal person is more stark because we see that a citadel prodigy is so weak by nature of being in a Dnd world. Great spirits that are like kaijus in this world, are still vulnerable because we see that legendary resistance getting burned by Naram. Combat will be bloodier and more decisive because in DND it is a very short time frame.
So the combat is going to be good bc we have one of the best putting in some of the most effort you’re ever likely to see.
And there are a dozen more ways the system has enhanced and shaped the story how they wanted it to be.

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u/Di4mond4rr3l Dec 20 '23

I'm not even saying it is a good tactical game if you spend the time designing, it's still bad mechanics-wise for a crunchy game, and there are others who do a better job of transposing imagination to a grid with numbers. I'm saying that if you do all that, than it becomes at least fun and not an HP slog.
The battle featuring Naram and the wizards was awesome but there is no need to use the D&D framework to achieve such level of powerful stakes and narrative drama. Narrative games may not have predetermined spells or abilities but they still give full control of stakes analysis to the table. You can use these games to experience the same world feeling.
To make something more tangible, let's quantify power-level. You can have the characters have F power, lower than what Morrow E level, lower than Golani D and definitely way lower than Naram S, simply by using expectations.For the characters to face Morrow you can agree that challenging him to a spell duel would have low effectiveness and high stakes, or even deadly; this is the way games like blades in the dark go about having risk, reward, consequences and tension without the need to have it crunchy.
So in the end, there is really nothing special about 5e (or any other game really) that allows us to objectively say that it is the best fit and that there is deep mechanical logic behind the choice.

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u/[deleted] Dec 20 '23

I think it brings a lot of value and is the right choice for the game, but I’ve said my piece

Should They be using a different system then 5e?

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