I’m curious to get a general feel of how many people on the server/how many guilds/groups use the 5e system of Dungeons and Dragons in their events.
I know there was one or two guilds who used 5e/a variation of it whenever they organized events for themselves. They aren’t around anymore, but I suspect it’s more of a close-knit set up for folks interested in that, as the set up seems to get cumbersome when scaled up with loads of players. And whenever it was used, it appeared to be modified or reduced for simplicity.
Ronin and basically all of the other PCU guilds I can think of use free-flowing RP most of the time.
Have always been of the mind that if I wanted to play D&D, I’d go and play it, not try and replicate it poorly in WoW RP.
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Poorly? All you need is a range addon. The abilities to roleplay and represent your character and environment visually is far better in a 3D medium.
But yeah it’s not gonna work for big groups.
In my opinion every time someone tried to use complex combat systems for their events, it all boiled down to one emote turn taking 15 minutes before DM manages to respond to everything. D&D doesn’t really translate well onto WoW and text-based communication.
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D&D rule sets can be far too complicated for most RPers to really get a grip on. I’ve only seen it actually work well with very small groups of 3-4 people, everyone was using voice chat instead of in-game communication, everyone had an average understanding of 4e (at the time), and the DM himself was not one of the characters played.
Plenty of guilds cherry pick D&D systems and change them to make them more WoW friendly and new member friendly. Last thing most folks want is having to join a new guild and get homework on how it functions.
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There is an addon called “Dicemaster” which is a variant of the DND system, we use it in our guild and to great lengths.
It really enhances the flavour of the campaigns, and creates a great system for the players.
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tbqh DnD 5e is arguably simpler and easier to use than most guild roll systems I’ve ever come across. 4e and earlier yeah it’s a lot to handle, but 5e is insanely simplistic by comparison. And there’s a wealth of online tools to assist in character building.
A lot of guilds have this problem of building up with a foundation but then based on feedback and very personalised requests, it grows wildly out of control as the GM desperately tries to warp it to suit about five hundred character concepts.
When I did a system of my own, with some help, we kept a narrow focus, and when someone wanted to do something extremely unusual we weren’t prepared for we’d just have to say “No, but we might include that if we ever tackled mounts/summons/whatever else”. They’d then leave in a huff but them’s the breaks.
Guild systems also tend to become overbloated by an excess of rules that would make Mathfinder (Pathfinder, 1e specifically) blush. At one point I realised our own system was approaching that so we tore it down and started over, utilising feedback and experience to make something more accessible but still allow people to represent their characters mechanically. We ended up with what was basically Pathfinder-lite (Which amusingly was pretty close to what 5e would become when that came out a few years later).
Since 5e came out however and as I’ve gotten to grips with it, plus it’s sheer popularity, honest to god I could just tweak a few things to suit WoW RP (Swapping meters for yards, etc) and you could represent damn near any character using 5e’s own classes and abilities, albeit with some reflavouring here and there, and it would still be far easier to get into than most RP guild roll systems. And due to aforementioned popularity there’s a growing chance every day, that if you showed a totally-not-5e system to a newbie , they’d be able to grasp the fundamentals on the spot.
That being said, from my experience there’s remarkably little crossover between RPers and TTRPGs, surprisingly if you even mention the word ‘roll’ to a potential recruit 50/50 they’ll run away screaming. There’s a popular opinion that any kind of roll system is either “Too much work” (Definitely the case for some I’ve been introduced to in the past) or “It stifles roleplay” (Which I just plain disagree with, I feel roll systems can actually enhance RP, and this opinion tends to come from those who want to be good at everything, but that’s another topic altogether).
I’ve yet to come across anyone just flat out using DnD 5e as-is in WoW RP, however I do know people that use fanmade modules to play in the Warcraft setting using 5e. I know there’s two such modules, which have the same goal of adding in WoW classes and races, but one overhauls a lot of how 5e works and the other keeps it true to the formula.
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Just /roll bro
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A group I am in does that. We use Roll 20 for our sheets, the DM uses voice and music bots on Discord and the rest of us type.
Screw the roll. Install NPCs.
I don’t know about full-on using 5e - it’s pretty quick to play with once you’re familiar with it so it wouldn’t be as slow as some people might expect. But a guild I was in on an alt a while ago used something similar - seperate AC for each player, abilities, initiative, but I remember combat taking a very long time, so I wasn’t a fan.
Ideally the best approach is to keep it as simple as possible. I wrote out a roll combat system a while back that was the standard roll to attack / defend, but with a few extra tweaks and “abilities” to better reflect your characters strengths rather than leaving everything to pure chance.
Ideally if you were using it with your guild and consulted with a DM regarding these rules, tweaks or abilities, I reckon it could be regulated, adjusted and balanced as necessary quite easily.
You could keep track of something like that pretty easily on a dedicated Discord text channel; simple bullet-pointed bonuses and penalties for your character that anyone could quickly look at mid-even. It’d look a little something like this for Zen.
Grandmaster Zen Yuo: (6HP) Pandaren Monk
Old Master: Starts a fight with +30 to attack / defence rolls. Loses -10 for each 1 HP lost.Abilities:
Heal - use Serpent Style Mistweaving to heal an ally or self for 1 health.
Crackling Jade Thunderstorm - A dangerous, forbidden monk technique. Force Chi lightning out at intense pressure all around you; all enemies and allies within melee range must make a defence roll above 70 or take 2 damage, and also costs you 1 HP.
It’s not like this stops Zen using plenty of other abilities and stuff in an RP fight, but these I think are the ones that would be significant enough to affect rolls which is why I picked them out. I’ve seen a few people with HP stats and stuff like that in their TRP so I imagine something like this is being done and used by people already. It might be that Dicemaster thing Phorys mentioned.
The only guild I’ve seen that tried to use a set roll system in recent years didn’t even (and far as I know continues to not) bother using it at all in reality. Which honestly tracks fairly well with every guild I’ve been in - be it dnd inspired or just a self invented system they seem to inveriably stop using it.
Can’t say I find that a problem honestly, just do a /roll with -50 bad + 50 good. Faster, simpler, easier and makes a heck lot less whining and whinging.
I use 5e rulesets for flavour and to have a vague idea for what’s reasonable for ones character to know and be able to to.
As soon as there is interest there will be actual D&D sessions.
I guess it shouldn’t surprise me since DnD is ideal for 4-6 people and most guilds want more than that but I expected at least a few groups/guilds to use it.
In my experience, there are a lot of roleplayers on WoW who have never tried any tabletop RPGs, let alone 5e, and prefer having a simple rule-set in-game that allows them creative freedom.
On a tangent: 5e has become incredibly popular, largely because it’s more accessible than its predecessors, but with that has come a fascination with using it for every conceivable RP, even when there are better fits – or, sometimes, even dedicated systems.
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I wouldn’t use DnD, it’s got a lot of fiddliness, even with 5e’s simplification compared to previous editions.
It straddles an awkward line between “rules light, DM makes calls on what’s needed” and “here’s a rule, follow it” which definitely doesn’t scale up well for groups beyond 5-6 people.
I’d recommend using Dungeon World over 5e if you’re looking to port a system into your guild.
GURPS might be okay too though I’m less familiar with it.
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For our system, it was completely self-made. I stayed up until about 5am writing it alongside another person in one night, then brainstorming, double checking, play-testing, FAQ scripting, everything we could do until ensuring it just worked. I think it all took about a week in total before it was event usable. And yes, even making something as simple as ours was a pain to make.
Skill systems, in my opinion, should only be used to help assist the RP - The RP should not inform the skill system, and with DnD, unless you’re a huge fan of it and it’s what people want, I don’t think it fits in most WoW RP events. A skill system in my opinion should only be there as an aid. It’s why we keep ours as simple as possible, so that in an event, the ones who have to keep track are the DM’s, and all people need to know is their bonuses. No complicated calculations (unless you count addition), nothing that you have to sit there for minutes working out.
Ours is literally D100 + whatever skill bonus you have. The more complicated bit is writing the sheet, but when that’s done, it’s easy as pie.
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Eh I figure a bit of mild 5e is pretty inobtrusive, system-wise. Stats don’t add much time. Just add whatever stat bonus to your roll. Get advantage/disadvantage or not.
Just adding stats and advantage/disadvantage based on characters strengths and weaknesses gives more depths to otherwise bland roll-a-thons.
You’ve never tried to get a raid group to remember to do /roll 20 over just /roll. I find “systems” tend to end up causing arguments about how x or y works. Just having an everyone roll with some brackets of effect (75+ crit, 50 - 75 hit, 25 - 50 miss, 0-25 opps). makes things run at an okay speed.
I just stole KotOR 2’s stats and then told everybody to make themselves fun custom traits in DiceMaster.
Seems to work juuust fine!