this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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Baldur's Gate 3
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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)
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I've been thinking about this a lot because I have two weekly games, and both have at least one player who just doesn't really master the rules.
They're not stupid people. But they don't pick up the rules. Ten weeks in and I'm still reminding them about opportunity attacks. One group isn't playing DND and one player has similar problems.
I don't know what to do.
Some people are just never going to learn them.
Different values. That's normal. Some people game to win, some people game to explore, some people play to socialice and some people play to unwind. Ask them what is the most important thing about playing for them.
What other game is the second group playing?
I found that the idea of "D&D" doesn't match with the reality of D&D® (or adjacent like Pathfinder and Shadow of the Demon Lord). Like most people think of grand stories with climactic moments and character growth and the modern D&D offers more of a "square - counting, binary pass/fail roll slog, abstract resource management with little character choice after 3rd level, and almost zero risk" experience. Which is great in a video game, but boring at the table.
I've ran D&D® (or adjacent) for numerous groups for over 30 years now across multiple editions and the most success in the D&D® framework I had was B/X, but I think the game that comes closest to realizing "D&D" as a concept is Dungeon World. No overwhelming player facing textbooks, and it constantly pushes the narrative forward no matter what the outcome of a roll is. It's also free.
There's thousands of different games out there from more complex than D&D to single word RPGs. Find the right one for you and your group 😄
The other game is Mage: The Awakening (2e). It's very, very, different than D&D. It's one of my big game crushes that I've rarely been able to play.
But the player decision space is pretty huge, and the players have a lot of tools at hand. I don't really want to remind them every time like "You can use Web Weaver to make the connection easier to work with" or "You can ritually cast instead of instant cast to get more dice and reaches"
It's perfectly fine to not be a stickler about rules, the real trick is finding a DM who is cool as shit and not all caught up with their own self importance as the controlling power of the game. Play to have fun and roll with it. As long as the group as a whole and the one player is still having fun, that's all that matters.