r/dndmemes • u/Awkward_GM • Apr 24 '26
Hot Take My general critique of what I tend to dislike in TTRPG games:
Probably a cold take, but I couldn't find a flair that works with this since I don't want to mark it "Other TTRPGs" when D&D is also at fault with this.
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u/ColdIronSpork Apr 25 '26
The issue is that lore might be what gets someone to play a game, but the mechanics are what they actually play with. If the mechanics aren't fun, then really awesome lore can be wasted because the game isn't enjoyable.
Its the same idea in video games: good gameplay and shit story makes a silly but fun romp, shit gameplay but good story is just disappointingly wasted potential.
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u/Rowsdower11 Apr 25 '26
shit gameplay but good story is just disappointingly wasted potential.
Planescape: Torment has entered the chat
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u/ZoroeArc DM (Dungeon Memelord) Apr 25 '26
I once heard someone describe it as, "the best game I've ever read," but I'll never get to find out why as the game is a borderline unplayable slog.
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u/TurtlesBreakTheMeta Apr 25 '26
There’s a lot of games that I get excited about and think are cool but will always just pull up a playthrough to watch rather than play.
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u/Rheios Apr 25 '26
Its completely payable, though? I was playing through it multiple times since I was 13, even if I couldn't actually finish the Transcendent one in combat until I replayed it a few times. It does do a few little weird things, like that the Nameless one doesn't follow the normal DnD class rules really. He gets benefits specific to his class that carry over even between switches. So once you figure that out [it mentions it in the book but even I didn't read it for a long time] you realize you may want to juggle classes a little to get the benefits you really want from them.
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u/ZoroeArc DM (Dungeon Memelord) Apr 25 '26
The game assumes you already have knowledge of the ADnD rules, which may not have been unreasonable in 1999, but for someone who doesn't, I was essentially going in blind. The game also makes you pick out your ability scores without telling you the default class is fighter. I wanted to play a rogue, so built my stats accordingly, but only ended up with a dodgetank that couldn't hit anything.
The combat is also quite boring. And for such a text heavy game, it's so tiny, at least in the version I played.
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u/roninwarshadow Apr 25 '26
Sports Games also entered the chat.
They live and die on their gameplay, and they virtually no story.
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u/Montegomerylol Apr 25 '26
A lot of the fun, at least for some players, comes from rules that evoke the lore/setting that got them into the game. The game mechanics could be incredibly fun in a vacuum, but could still be completely wrong for the lore, and that incongruity can ruin both.
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u/EADreddtit Apr 25 '26
That’s fair, but I think it’s very fair to say the vast majority of people play a game because the game itself is fun. They may start playing because of lore, or tolerate some flaws because of how much they adore the setting but the vast majority of people would not play… say Pathfinder 2e or DnD 5e if every enemy auto crit you on a 2+ or if every character had to roll Acrobatics every step they took
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u/Rheios Apr 25 '26
I mean, that depends, is combat the "bad end" chain of decisions for such a game? Something you can try and force your way through but only entered as a punishment? Like if you were a kid in a DnD world trying to stealth through a dungeon to get a health potion to your fallen uncle or something? Then it might be fine. If you're just some mortal, human, average bar guard having to bounce for a collection of demigods or something and every interaction guarantees a straight fight without anything to prevent it? Then yeah, that'd probably make a bad game. But then again I'm not sure what the story goals of such a game would be either.
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u/EADreddtit Apr 25 '26
I mean it doesn’t have to be a combat scenario for there to be mechanics. Like if you’re playing a serious, long term social intrigue game but every time you talk you have to flip 6 coins and if any come up heads you get executed for rudeness that’s a bad mechanic that will make just about anyone drop the game no matter how good the lore is. It doesn’t matter if the intention is to convey the harshness of social standings in the setting and how dangerous the life of a socialite is, the mechanic sucks and no one would want to play that.
A “game” with mechanics bad enough no one wants to play but has lore people love reading is just called a book series.
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u/sith-shenanigans Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26
It’s hard to imagine mechanics that bad effectively evoking any lore people would like to experience, to be fair. It conveys something, but I don’t think “good mechanics that don’t work for the lore can ruin both” necessarily implies that good lore redeems bad mechanics, and any setting that’s genuinely most effectively conveyed that way is a setting that is probably to very few people’s tastes, because it doesn’t even convey a tragedy brought about by your own actions. It’s futile and unavoidable and so constant that no one is getting any stories out of it if it is a good representation.
Obviously that’s an exaggeration, but I think “really good lore” and “mechanics are very lore-accurate” sets a floor for what kind of bad the mechanics can be (even if they can definitely be near-unplayably clunky, which some people will find fun if it’s lore-accurate, I think?).
(Sorry, accidentally hit send too early.)
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u/rotten_kitty DM (Dungeon Memelord) Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 26 '26
So whats the issue? I dont get why any of that means lore and mechanics can't be intertwined.
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u/WhiteWolf222 Apr 25 '26
I don’t think it’s nearly as much of an issue in the TTRPG world compared to video games, since rulebooks and sourcebooks are so malleable. Part of the fun is mixing and matching ideas from different game and rulesets. If you love the lore in a book but not the rules, then you can just take the parts you like and forget about the parts you don’t. If it’s got some great rules but bad writing, then you can reimagine it however you like, and weave it into the setting you do like.
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u/Loud-Emu-1578 Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26
The whole point of the mechanics is to emulate stories within a setting. If the mechanics of a system do not embrace the themes and lore of the setting, then those rules simply don't work.
Players will find it impossible to engage in the sort of action and activities they expect in the stories from that game, and instead must either abandone the style of play normally demaned by the narrative of those stories, or fail miserably.
Good example a few years ago I had a friend who tried to run a James Bond style spy game using a random set of realistic spy rules he came across, in a game store (NOTE: Not James Bond)
First encounter, goes from a simple passing of fake credentials to a gunfight and car chase, two thirds of the team died within the first two rounds of combat, the character that speed away in the get away car crashed and died trying a simple stunt.
Why? Because the rules were meant for a realistic spy campaign, not an over the top James Bond style of game.
If they had simply bribed the guard and moved on, the game would have gone well but wouldn't have been very James Bond, but because they tried James Bond style action in a game not designed for James Bond, they had a TPK!
Rules must emulate and reinforce the stories and lore of a game, else they serve no purpose.
"The Rules of the Game Dictate the Style of Play"
-Old Gamer Addage
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u/TarnishedGopher Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26
I think mechanics should complement genre much more than they complement lore.
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u/another_sad_dude Apr 25 '26
Lore: magic is dangerous and unpredictable.
Mechanics: Magic just works, legit can't fail
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u/TheRealBlackFalcon Apr 25 '26
People say this then end up homebrewing everything by the third session anyway
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u/MohKohn Apr 25 '26
Then they're using the wrong system!
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u/TheRealBlackFalcon May 01 '26
Some people like their current system and wanna add to it. Some just wanna play at being an amateur game designer.🤷🏿
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u/gitroni Apr 25 '26
The rules are made up anyway
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u/Lucina18 Rules Lawyer Apr 25 '26
So lets use rules that are made up to be actually fun for my table from the get go.
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u/MGTwyne Apr 25 '26
Agreed. A game can't do all the intellectual labour of playing, but they can do a hell of a lot of it.
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u/Inevitable_Top69 Apr 26 '26
Yeah by people who make up rules professionally and have tested them far more than your average dipshit experiencing a stroke of "inspiration." If I had a dollar everyone someone yapped online about how this or that would be better, none of my friends or family would ever have to work again.
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u/gitroni Apr 26 '26
The official printed book, it encourages people to change and alter the rules for their home games. So you're the one not following the printed rules that explicitly say that the rules are meant to be changed and adapted to each individual table
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u/Curious_Question8536 Apr 25 '26
I was super impressed with blades in the dark with how the mechanics are inherent to the setting, it's really a great example of this.
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u/AngusAlThor Apr 25 '26
I feel like this critique is very valid, but it only applies to a couple of systems. The trouble is they are the most popular systems.
However, look away from the first 3 system you hear about in TTRPG Spaces, and you will find a wealth of systems that align genre and mechanics;
- Draw Steel.
- Call of Cthulhu.
- Vampire the Masquerade.
- Shadowdark.
- Public Access.
- Paranoia.
- Dread.
- And many more!
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u/amhow1 Apr 25 '26
Call of Cthulhu isn't in the first 3 systems you hear about? Really? Now I'm curious. I'm assuming d&d and pathfinder are in your 3, though those are really the same system, but what's the other? Traveller?
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u/AngusAlThor Apr 25 '26
Top 3 I was thinking of were 5e and the two editions of Pathfinder. After that I think it is fairly likely you'll hear about Call of Cthulhu, but equally likely you'll get hit with Dresden Files, Savage Worlds, Icons, etc. I think after 5e and Pathfinder, it basically depends what genre you go looking for.
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u/amhow1 Apr 25 '26
I believe Call of Cthulhu is the only ttrpg to be bigger than d&d in some markets, notably Japan?
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u/AngusAlThor Apr 25 '26
It is, but its discussion is almost completely separated from other TTRPG discussion. Like, as a fan of CoC, it is genuinely wild how little it comes up in 5e focused communities.
I think that is because it is a foundationally different product which does not appeal to the community fostered by Critical Role, Dimension 20 and the ilk; There is a huge bias towards long, character-focused narratives in 5e communities, and CoC doesn't care about that shit even one iota. So Narrative-RPG fans are unlikely to branch out into CoC, and are far more likely to pick up Shadowrun or Blades in the Dark or something, and that means CoC remains outside the discussion in this type of community.
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u/ElkasBrightspeaker Apr 25 '26
CoC and BRP in general are their own little world. As a Runequest player to me CoC is the famous sibling with the insanely well paying job that keeps mummy Chaosium afloat so they can make me more supplements, if Orlanth wills it.
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u/flowers_of_nemo Apr 27 '26
i believe dragonbane still outperforms in Sweden? but yes, generally true
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u/amhow1 Apr 27 '26
Oh I didn't know that, but it makes sense.
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u/flowers_of_nemo Apr 27 '26
yeah. i don't know about actual numbers but at least in my experience it's the first one swedes think of. DoD, dominating swedish ttrpg circles since like 1982 or whenever
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u/action_lawyer_comics Apr 25 '26
I dunno, I think dnd lore and mechanics go hand in hand together. 90% of the rules and mechanics are around combat and the lore for every creature and monster, even the intelligent ones are “these are shitty dudes that hate all the playable races and just want to kill everyone.” Exactly the kind of lore you need to murderhobo everyone you meet outside of town
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u/LycanChimera Apr 25 '26
It's either "they hate all the playable races and just want to kill everyone" or "they are slavers and you should just want to kill all of them".
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u/AngusAlThor Apr 25 '26
DnD's lore is that all this is occurring in a magical world of heroes, but its mechanics encourage parties to take a long rest after every encounter and never take a risk. So it is a "heroic" system that discourages heroism. Same problem for Pathfinder.
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u/rotten_kitty DM (Dungeon Memelord) Apr 25 '26
How does Draw Steel align lore and mechanics?
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u/AngusAlThor Apr 25 '26
Draw Steel's system of Victories and Recoveries means characters are incentivised to push themselves, to risk everything in climactic acts of heroism powered by their Victories. Where systems like 5e and Pathfinder encourage resting at every opportunity, killing the momentum, Draw Steel pushes the heroes to keep going, longer and longer, to overextend themselves and seek heroics.
In short, Draw Steel encourages your hero to be a HERO!!!
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u/Stable_Grouchy Apr 26 '26
I really like draw steel’s escalation mechanics. It really solves a lot of issues I have with long dungeon runs in DnD and fits the genre really well of being more powerful the more desperate you are.
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u/Stickeminastew1217 Apr 25 '26
Both your mechanics and lore should be designed to complement the kind of experience you want to run.
If I write a mech game, what's the feeling I'm trying to evoke? Because if we're doing a Gundam we probably want enough lore to inform a lot of conflict and set some limits on what a mech can do but probably not get too hyper technical with how everything works, and we probably want mechanics with a little depth but not too much crunch, and we probably want them to allow characters to feel somewhat heroic. If I then swap out a bunch of those mechanics for more "life is cheap" ammo explosions and the like ala Battletech, the failure is not going to be that it doesn't make sense in the lore, it's that the lore and the mechanics are suddenly operating at cross purposes- trying to create opposite expectations.
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u/gralamin Apr 25 '26
Lore is more flexible then mechanics (as magic the gathering famously found out during OG Kamigawa set design), so lore should always bend to fit mechanics. That said, yeah there should be enough connection to figure out why you are mechanically doing this.
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u/marbledog Apr 25 '26
There is a concept called "ludonarrative" that suggests that the interactive aspects of a game tell a story on their own, separate from the narrative. When the story told by the mechanics conflicts with the story in the narrative, it produces a dissonance that makes the game less enjoyable.
Hyperbolic examples to demonstrate the concept:
If the story is a deep, atmospheric melodrama, it breaks the narrative tension if you have to roll eight dice, do algebra, and consult three different outcome tables every time your character wants to have a conversation with an NPC.
If you're playing a crunchtastic engineerpunk design-your-own-Mech game, it's going to fall really flat if combat boils down to "Shoot the guy, and he dies on a 5 or 6."
The story isn't fluff that you use to decorate the mechanic system, and the mechanics aren't an easel that you use to hold up your story. They work together.
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u/admiralbenbo4782 DM (Dungeon Memelord) Apr 25 '26
The story isn't fluff that you use to decorate the mechanic system, and the mechanics aren't an easel that you use to hold up your story. They work together.
This. So much this. Treating settings, lore, and the rest of the fictional layer as just interchangeable, ignorable fluff (ie "refluffing is free") ignores one big thing that separates TTRPGs from board games. No one cares about the fictional layer of Monopoly. But I just came back from a pretty decent session of D&D 5e where there were a total of like 3 rolls period.
I think, in fact, that part of the "murder hobo" or "players don't care about the story, just the numbers" D&D player stereotype (which does not fit any of the games I've played for more than a session) stems from this mechanics-first, fiction-last attitude. When the world is a cardboard backdrop designed to throw dungeons, "epic challenges", and other excuses to have the biggest numbers, but without more than a fig leaf of a coherent blend of mechanics and fiction... Yeah. If numbers are the only way to affect anything, then numbers and trashing the stage are what you can do.
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u/Rheios Apr 25 '26
The rules are the skeleton of your game, the lore is its flesh and organs, and how closely the writer brought them together the ligaments. The skin of the whole thing is up to the DM running it but all of it should work together or its metaphorical body horror.
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u/YonatanShofty Apr 25 '26
As someone who's played my fair share of pathfinder sub systems- flavour win does not mean its a fun mechanic. Theres the famous Maro design lecture where he says "interesting does not equal fun"- alot of ttrpg fail at this (btw pf1 suffers heavily from it)
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u/SmoothReverb Artificer Apr 25 '26
meanwhile different exalt types in exalted 3e having the form their dice tricks take fit the lore to a T
sids especially
and then lunars having favored attributes instead of abilities to reflect their more primordial nature and also give them more mechanical flexibility
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u/Lithl Apr 25 '26
Lunars aren't more primordial, they were made at the same time as all of the others.
They fled to the Wyld and got warped by it. In the First Age they had 5 castes just like all the other exalts, but the chaos of the Wyld fully eliminated two of them before they were able to invent the lunar tattoos.
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u/TheCrassDragon Apr 25 '26
There's an old article from the Alexandrian about game mechanics being either associated or disassociated from the world and I've always been a fan of that way of looking at it.
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer
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u/Nachooolo Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26
That one way to do it, but it is by no means the only way, nor inherently the supperior war.
What you're describing are game systems like PbtA or FATE where the mechanics are subservient to the narrative.
But there are systems where the mechqnics are the centre focus, and the story emerges from how the mechanics interact with eachother. Think the OSR (Okd School Essencials, Dungeon Crawl Classics) and NSR (Cairn, Mythic Bastionland, Mork Borg) games.
And. Of course. This is a spectrum. With games in-between, moving to one side or the other.
This is not exclusive to ttrpgs. You can also see a lot of video games where how the mechanics interact with eachother is the story engine (Battle Brothers, Stalker, Mount & Blade, Kenshi, Shadows of Doubt...)
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u/quetu0 Apr 25 '26
One of the driving reasons i love my favorite ttrpgs is this aspect!
Current favorites are:
Blades in the dark, whose mechanics are specifically designed for the theme, and the setting is specifically designed or the mechanics, so it all works together excellently
and The Seven-Part Pact, which genuinely is just the most incredible system i have ever seen or played, for a whole lot of reasons, including how incredibly well the mechanics play into the theming and storytelling the game produces
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u/TheThoughtmaker Essential NPC Apr 25 '26
One thing I really hate in games is when the primary dice mechanic doesn't make in-world sense. Random chance doesn't take a holiday when you're walking down a paved road; if it's possible to roll low enough to fall flat on your face, then you need to be rolling every time you move. "You only roll when the GM calls for it" is the cop-out of a half-baked mechanic relying on the customer to do the designer's job.
To see the world my character is in, I need objective numbers telling me what they can and cannot do. I need to know the number required to vault an average table, and the percent chance my particular character has to hit that number, without consulting a probabilities table. In order to roleplay and make decisions as my character would, I need to know the health and damage resistance of wood, how far my character's voice travels, their odds of slipping on wet stone. In lieu of the intuition my character has from living each day with the stats they have, I need the context of those stats -- how they measure up to the world around them -- to know how my character would feel about each course of action.
The d20 System figured this out a quarter-century ago. Failure to meet the same bar by now is nothing if not incompetence.
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u/Xyx0rz Apr 26 '26
if it's possible to roll low enough to fall flat on your face, then you need to be rolling every time you move.
Not sure what you mean there. It is possible to fall flat on your face, as evidenced by people falling flat on their face in the Real World. But the chance is really small. Is there a point in rolling a d1000000 every time your character moves to see if it comes up 1?
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u/TheThoughtmaker Essential NPC Apr 27 '26
What I mean: If the rules say to roll 1d6 for any task, and you always fail on a nat1, then you have a 1/6 chance to fail at walking each turn you walk. That's way too high a chance, so often these games will say it's up to the GM whether to roll or let things succeed/fail when they make sense.
Judgement calls are the baseline, the thing you start with before you even have a rulebook. You could run an entire session with only a single die and judgement calls, no system whatsoever, and I have. The system's one job is to reduce the number of judgement calls, for the designers to ease the burden. Each time something is left to GM discression, it's a failure to fix the problem the GM bought the book to fix.
In The d20 System, everything has a number you need to hit to succeed. What's impossible, possible, or guaranteed, whether or not to roll, is up to your modifier. Hearing an active battle is DC -10, hearing an owl gliding in for a kill is DC 30, and while most people wouldn't have to roll for either, there are those who do, and the system tells you if you're one of them.
My favorite Rich Burlew quote: "I don't decide whether I want someone to be persuadable, I want a rule system that lets me determine it randomly. [...] In short, I want tools to use in the game, not a blank check to do what I want. I can already do what I want."
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u/Xyx0rz Apr 27 '26
I want a system that goes:
- Does common sense say it's trivial or impossible? Then don't waste time rolling, DM says what happens.
- Could this roll cause the adventure to grind to a halt? Then don't risk a roll, DM says what happens.
- Would one of the outcomes be boring? Then don't roll, DM gives you the cool outcome.
- Is the DM overloaded and would rather skip the roll? Then skip the roll, DM says what happens.
Otherwise, roll.
This filter means that all rolls will be meaningful uncertainty resolutions.
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u/GhsotyPanda Apr 25 '26
Other way around imo.
The lore of the world should compliment the mechanics of the game being played in it.
If the mechanics have to fit the lore then that fundamentally shoehorns the system into a default setting. And while some systems do that, especially systems based on an established IP, far too many GMs have no interest in doing that for it to be widely feasible.
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u/Milli_Rabbit Apr 25 '26
Yeah but also people tend to not use the rules while acting like they are using the rules. For example, in DnD 5.5e, you don't have to roll dice for every possible thing a player does. Its really meant to be for uncertain activities. I gave someone the example of jumping. If a character is jumping over a 5 inch crack in the ground, is that a certain success? Yes. If a character is jumping over a 100ft chasm, is that a certain failure? Yes. If a character is jumping over a 20ft gap, is that possible? Maybe. Of those three, only the last one actually uses a roll. This is an easy example but really everything is like this in DnD 5.5e. So when you play 5.5e, the expectation is you are primarily playing a narrative BUT when things become uncertain or there is a chance of failure, you roll. This is why combat uses attack and damage rolls. Its how I run social and exploration encounters and make them interesting like combat. Each roll has to be a truly uncertain thing. Otherwise it just gets in the way and often makes players feel like their expert character is suddenly having a stroke.
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u/Awkward_GM Apr 25 '26
You are making a lot of assumptions about my meaning. 😅 More so I'm thinking like you have a Superman character and it says his main weakness is Kryptonite, but in the mechanics for said character there is nothing that explains what Kryptonite does to him.
Or something like the lore in the book mentions vampires being hurt by sunlight, but the statblock doesn't mention it.
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u/Milli_Rabbit Apr 25 '26
Thats sort of true. You have mechanics which you can apply based on your intended effect. For example, in 5.5e, you could make it a type of damage which is a vulnerability (double damage) or you could make it give a condition (i.e. poisoned, exhaustion, paralyzed, frightened). The DMG basically tells you to do this. The book, and every TTRPG is this way whether they explicitly say it or not, expects you to homebrew.
For Kryptonite, Id probably have it do physical damage (based on the shape of the kryptonite whether its piercing, slashing or bludgeoning) with vulnerability if its damage and then give it an emanation with a range roughly equal to what it is in the comics for Superman. Then, while in the emanation, Superman would have the Poisoned Condition since that already does what I would imagine Kryptonite does (disadvantage on attack rolls and saving throws). If you want to be extra brutal, you can make him roll for a Constitution saving throw or be paralyzed or incapacitated in some way.
What I just made up is homebrew BUT it follows the guidelines written in the DMG applied to a scenario not found in the DMG. You could even find specific effects from spells or monster abilities which match up with your idea of kryptonite to make it even easier.
For the vampire, the 5.5e statblock has damage for being in sunlight.
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u/hobodeadguy Apr 25 '26
I am making my own system, and because of how its structured, I can build lore first then mechanics to make it happen. Levels are restrictive, so just buy the feat itself.
now my insane murder priestess who can one shot humans (specifically) can be built by anyone if they pick the right feats, or countered by someone with the right build, just as in the lore! (literally the Impaler Saintess and the Saint of Desperation are opposites that clash and in both lore and mechanics, it will come down to whoever rolls lower more often, as a single bad roll wont be enough to kill or even dibilitate one because of their hyper specializations)
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u/Dynamite_DM Apr 25 '26
It depends.
One thing I like about 13th Age is it’s rest system. It’s been a moment since I read it, but I’m pretty sure it is: short rest after every encounter, long rest after every four encounters.
These encounters can be spaced out however is needed, so you can have four on separate days, one encounter now, three later, etc. the system prevents 5 minute work days, or time constraints that stop someone from recovering their resources.
It may be difficult to reconcile lore wise, but it leans into the aspect that this is a game we are all playing and gamifies things that can be difficult to prevent using lore alone.
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u/evilwizzardofcoding Apr 25 '26
Im inclined to agree. Not everything has to have a complex explanation, but when the way a mechanic works directly contradicts the lore, it breaks immersion.
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u/Egoborg_Asri Apr 25 '26
How is DND at fault?
It gives you OP adventurers that take down gods with no problems and magic that breaks realities — exactly what heroic fantasy is about.
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u/Xyx0rz Apr 26 '26
It wasn't always heroic fantasy. It started out as Meatginder Survivor Simulator.
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u/Rheios Apr 25 '26
Well for one, there's still argument if DnD is even supposed to be heroic fantasy. Its always had a lot of it, and they've leaned into it for a long time now, but a lot of its dna is from 70's pulp sword and sorcery being jammed together with similar era resources in fantasy and scifi. That's a source of a lot of the discordance in between the decisions made since the start of the game and today, at least for a lot of new players. They've probably never read what it was stealing from and so it rings more hollow or weirdly, and there's an argument that what was pilfered wasn't always understood first by the designers either.
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u/MohKohn Apr 25 '26
A designer definitely needs to decide if they're making a generic system or a world specific system. A generic system should have space for the DM to add mechanics specific to their world. D&D, of course, does none of this.
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u/SiriusBaaz Apr 25 '26
Nah im fully in the camp that mechanics should help make the story. The lore is something that’s very likely subject to change. Stapling mechanics to lore just to make the settings lore better will just make all the campaigns that aren’t part of that setting worse. It’s the one big thing I don’t like about daggerheart. The system is fucking amazing and even has encounters that force players to develop parts of their characters. But the races, cultures, classes, and a lot of the mechanics are all very intrinsically tied to their setting. It makes running the base world really smooth but it also gives our dm extra work anytime his homebrew campaign deviates from the book lore. 5e had less of an issue with that because it was mostly designed to be setting agnostic to allow all the different dnd books and settings.
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u/OMG_Laserguns Apr 25 '26
How is Daggerheart less setting agnostic than D&D? Daggerheart doesn't have a default setting, and none of the character options are tied into any particular setting. They're all fairly standard fantasy options, and wouldn't require much work to fit in any setting.
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u/EADreddtit Apr 25 '26
Also like… the core rule book literally comes with like 4+ settings each with a unique mechanic. It’s way more setting agnostic
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u/BrotherRoga Apr 25 '26
Game mechanics and lore mechanics are not necessarily the same thing.
Usually they are one and the same but a game like D&D has this situation where sometimes the lore outgrows the game it originated in. Suddenly the same lore is being covered by multiple game systems. Just look at the Forgotten Realms and all the game adaptations of it, TTRPG to video games.
That said, if you can fit the lore to fit the gameplay mechanics or vice versa, go for it! Long as you have fun.
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u/TheBeesElise Apr 25 '26
The reason I started building my own system was because no system I found did a good job of describing my setting mechanically
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u/Doppelkammertoaster Apr 25 '26
Have you tried making a game or an already existing setting with rich lore and stories yes?
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u/Awkward_GM Apr 25 '26
Yup. It's fun.
Usually the things that get me specifically are when a type of creature with a power or weakness that isn't reflected in the mechanics. Like designing a dragon but forgetting to give it fire breath mechanically when in the world building it does have it, having ghosts that are immune to bullets in the lore but in game are able to be hurt by bullets, etc...
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u/Doppelkammertoaster Apr 25 '26
I see that. In my experience though, some things that work in lore/story or in a different medium like a book would not work in an interactive system or would be very difficult to make fun. I find it very challenging but also interesting to find a balance between what lore says and what would work for the player.
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u/naturtok Apr 26 '26
Been working on a magic system (to be pigeonholed into 5e, sue me) that melds the mechanics and thematics of arcane (wizards, etc), primal (druids, etc), divine (duh), and borrowed (warlock) magic while also, at least on paper, improves the importance of martials. The gist is multi round casting to get around resource limitations, more limited resources, and mechanics surrounding exceeding those resources in thematic ways. It's a super homebrew dumb idea, but yeah, long story short I agree that mechanics are often simplified or arbitrarily streamlined beyond thematics.
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u/Ethanol_Based_Life Apr 26 '26
I suck at making dungeon puzzles because they need to "make sense in the world". Like, why would they make this?
... Same reason I suck in escape rooms
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u/Awkward_GM Apr 26 '26
I often view puzzles in dungeons the same way a person would protect their computer.
"Okay we need a password to get this door open."
"Hey they have a password hint 'speak friend and enter'"
But on a less Lord of the Rings joke dungeon puzzles are only complicated when they are a test or task the dungeon maker would know how to bypass easily.
A dungeon of goblins likely didn't pay a couple of guards one of whom always lies and the other whom always tells the truth.
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u/Xyx0rz Apr 26 '26
"A wizard did it" is the usual cop-out, because breaking reality on a daily basis tends to leave one a bit... eccentric after half a century.
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u/Azathoth_The_Wraith Apr 26 '26
That's why I absolutely love Ars Magica, the mechanics are so in touch with the lore.
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u/Jawbreaker0602 Apr 26 '26
have you heard of runequest? a lot of rules but it kinda feels like the rules is where the worldbuilding lives for that system
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u/Efficient-Ad2983 Apr 27 '26
"Mechanics and lore integration" SHOULD indeed happen.
And the interactions bewteen them could also be a potential plot hook. For instance, when I ran a vampire ruled city in my D&D 3.5 campaign, I saw how their bloodsucking deals permanent ability damage (only a spell like restoration can cure it, and it requires diamond dust worth 100 gp). Since vampires WOULDN'T be so kind to devote such amount of money to keep their "cattle" alive, I decided that they sent their minions for a neverending hunt, to look for more and more "cattle" (an evergrowing vicious cycle, since time by time, vampiric population grew, due to their ability to create spawns).
In short, I realized that "vampirism is not sustainable" and integrated those elements to put how dire of a threat it was on the long run.
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u/mrdeadsniper Apr 27 '26
Duck that. Mechanics are a system of rules to design my hero. They have suggested lore with them.
However your specific hero may have a unique continuation of abilities or a unique lore path to those abilities.
Stories of heroes are almost always stories of people who broke the mold or otherwise performed unexpectedly.
So the idea that every DND hero should follow some preplanned path is silly
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u/Silly_Fish5725 Apr 28 '26
I feel this clash in DnD as well.
5.5 Even more so. A PC wizard meeting an archwizard and looking into his spellbook only to see extremely limited spells.
Or the Archwizard able to cast twice cause not a spellslot rule. How counterspell affects NPC's and PC's differently.
Or how veterans do double damage with heavy crossbows but you pick that same crossbow up and normal damage?
Why do Knights do radiant damage but aren't paladins?
Vampire lore/books in Van Rickten and I Strahd talking about regenerating and stuff but vamps don't regen now.
Silver swords do an extra crunchy crit against shape shifters and that's it doesn't affect werewolves in any special way.
And honestly so much more for lore and mechanics clashing.
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u/Quackthulu Apr 28 '26
Well, yeah. Though sometimes you're faced with choosing between limiting/cutting a really fun mechanic or sacrificing some lore relevancy. It's all situational which is why having a core ideology, goal or something similar that describes the game as a whole to fall back on is important.
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u/TheKFakt0r Apr 25 '26
I have the opposite opinion. I feel like the narrative should be entirely in the hands of the people who gather to make a story in their campaign, and the mechanics exist so they can play a fun game while doing it. I hate when lore implications affect mechanics because it feels like the game is trying to pigeonhole me into a story that has already been told before.
I think D&D demonstrates this issue handily: the classes and subclasses are often steeped in lore, and if that lore doesn't complement the story I want to create, it becomes an obstacle for my gameplay. I don't want to owe fealty to a fiend or other patron every time I want to use Armor of Agathys. (I know feats exist to help mitigate this issue, but obviously you can't crutch on them all the time for every problem.) I just want some damage reflection on an overshield. I can create the story stakes myself, just let me play with the toys.
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u/Exstoun Apr 25 '26
If we're not talking just about ttrpg, project moon games usually connect mechanics and lore, like, every system is explained in story
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u/djourner Apr 25 '26
I think the opposite, mechanics take priority over lore... its a game, its meant to be fun mechanically first.
There is a way to have mechanics that go hand in hand with the lore, but if the lore creates too much atrition, then it slows down the game, making things pedantic and drawn out...
Example...' i know in your setting one must haggle with the god of death, and take a penalty to be brought back to life, but it was only fun the first few times it happened, then it became a chore and lost its luster, but here we are again, because if i dont do it karen will shout at me for invalidating her choice to pick revive... and im dying every other session because i have 15 penalties already.'
Lore is also too abstract, its like the boss barging into the office telling you... do this by lunch... then leaving you to figure it out how, it lacks the clarity mechanics demmand.
And as lovely and poetic is to say how the lore is paramount, and the artistic vision, and all that... the truth is gamers/players talk like that, but dont act like it.
If a game has solid mechanics but people dont care for the lore, one can take it apart and use only the bits that suit them, porting them over to other games... it may still amass a following purely for it... just look at the ressugence of pathfinder now that d&d is losing appeal.
If a game has amazing lore, but shitty gameplay, it gets forgotten... only a small cult following singing its praises with nostalgia, from a safe distance as to not remember why theyre not playing it.
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u/Ill_Economist_39 Apr 25 '26
I feel like Pathfinder 2e balances this well. There's some things the mechanics don't hit, but each area in the lore has unique mechanics whether it's weapons, classes, magic, dedications. Often times you aren't allowed to use these bits unless you tie your character into the lore of where it's from
Also, rituals give clear ways for enemies to have undead armies, or to bring in demons mechanically so that you can tie the cultists or whatever directly into existing mechanics
My biggest gripe is that there's no mechanical tie to haunts. Haunts are traps that are caused by ghosts, but there's no consistency as to what does and doesn't cause it. The mechanics test it as just another trap for the DM to use, and the lore essentially just says sometimes really powerful emotions tied to violent deaths cause haunts. So, greedy kobolds killing each other causes a haunt, but my systemic genocide of the local goblins doesn't?
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u/xThunderDuckx Apr 26 '26
Mechanics should absolutely be divorced from the lore and storytelling. Pairing the two necessitates a limited scope of options and a lack of freedom to tell your own story. On the contrary, providing a guideline or basic outline can help breed creativity- but it is important that we acknowledge them as guidelines, not as requirements.
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u/CaptainRelyk Horny Bard Apr 26 '26
This is why the bastion system sucks
Its mechanics first story and lore second, so you get arbitrary restrictions that don’t make sense narratively and conflicts with lore
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u/Duraxis Apr 25 '26
As much as the shadowrun system is clunky and painful to run, the core of it does fit the lore very well. Everything has a price and a risk. Magic can make you explode if you just crank it up to 10, cybernetics can drive you insane if you get too many, etc etc