My 5 Stages of Grief: “Dungeons and Dragons is a Wargame”

I preferred a Ranger when I played Dungeons and Dragons in high school and college.

It was hard back then. This was the AD&D 2nd Edition—one reason it was hard was calculating THAC0 but by far the biggest reason was that D&D was still very underground—even more so in a small town. He plays Dungeons and Dragons was a dismissive punchline. Geek culture was not purchasable at the mall.

There were 5 people who played D&D at my high school.

We didn’t have a “proper DM” and complex adventures were hard to come by, but we visited Ravenloft in my friend Victor’s bonus room as often as possible.

In college my circle of players fizzled out.

I didn’t play D&D again until almost twenty years later, after Fifth Edition had been in the market for a few years, when with the help of some friends I rediscovered what I loved about the game:

• playing pretend with my friends

• exploring characters I could fully inhabit

• uncovering mysteries

• co-creating stories that no one knows the end of

The new 5E ruleset was refreshing—THAC0 was too clever by a half—but in other ways the 5E ruleset and culture was curious:

• Progression in 2nd Edition was laborious, in 5th Edition it verges on doping

• Feats are interesting but they’re so combat focused

• Damage is serious but healing is trivial

• The game wants characters to have super powers

When I talked to my friend and co-editor Andy about getting reconnected to the game and processing some of my observations leaping from 2nd Edition to 5th Edition he said—in his provocative fashion:

Fifth Edition is a war game

It should have been a clue that my immediate response was in my chest, not in my head.

“No! No it is not!”

Stage One: Denial

Dungeons and Dragons is a game. Games are defined by their rules. Rules create the stakes that make games fun.

Baseball is a game. If on a hit, instead of running to first base the batter ran to the pitcher’s mound and insisted to the stunned umpire that it was worth 4 runs…well that’s not a game. Or at least, that’s not the game called baseball.

Dungeons and Dragons needs rules and it is a game of fantasy that takes place in worlds almost, but not quite, entirely unlike our own. Giants and dragons roam. Magic can bend reality. Gods grant their most devout followers marvelous powers. The laws of nature are different there.

We have a frame of reference for how far one can throw a baseball. We have no frame of reference for how far someone can throw a ball of fire or how dangerous that ball of fire is.

It makes sense that we need lots of rules that explain how such things work to play a game in that world. The rules in Dungeons and Dragons have to focus on the differences between our worlds. It makes sense.

But…

There are so many rules about how to kill and be killed. There are so few rules or very unsophisticated rules about much else. Like how to charm. To convince or remain unconvinced. To deceive, or detect deceit.

Take, for example, Charm and Zone of Truth. Want to convince someone to help? Charisma check or cast Charm. Easy! If we, in our real world, are charmed by someone with powerful personal charisma it might take months or years to recover from their influence. In D&D? Saving throw. Unless of course the caster harms you physically, immediately ending the effect…which is combat. And in our world—even that isn’t always a given.

In our world we have no ability to detect deceit beyond any doubt so we prize our judgement in seeing through lies and feel vindicated when we do. In D&D? Simple, cast a spell. Done. What a relief!

Is it unfair to say that baseball is a game about hitting a ball and running from base to base until you get back to home plate in order to score points? The rules revolve around that idea.

If most of the rules of Dungeons and Dragons revolve around resolving combat, damage, and death is it unfair to say it's a wargame?

Stage Two: Anger

It is. It is a wargame. Dungeons and Dragons is a wargame! How did this happen?

Combat can be part of high-stakes fantasy adventure, sure, but combat alone doesn’t make the game fun.

The 5th Edition rules want characters to be superpowered juggernauts!

The rules aggressively pump up characters’ ability to take and doll out damage in combat. The rules have clearly been heavily influenced by “role playing” games like Diablo and the Elder Scrolls. That’s why. And those aren’t even role playing games! They’re first person shooters in a fantasy setting!

So now, characters get pumped up with more hit points, more magical equipment, and more powerful abilities and spells. Not to make them more interesting or to make the world more challenging. The opposite!

Rules about gaining XP to level up are almost entirely combat driven! Does a wizard get better at casting a spell by practicing it over and over, like we would if we were practicing—say—public speaking? Nope. Wizards gain XP defeating enemies.

The 5th Edition Player’s Handbook defines characteristics of “tiers of play” by the access characters have to damage-dealing actions: more attacks per round, more powerful damage-dealing spells.

Their ability scores even increase! Is it possible to get wiser “in real life”? It's possible to get more experienced—but wiser? Hard to say. Is it possible to get more intelligent? Debatable. What about more dexterous? Tough one. Increasing physical strength—the simplest ability score—requires dedicated physical training to improve significantly, but it's available to characters regularly when they level up with no investment. Why?

So they can be superpowered badasses in combat!

The rules make the game. The 5th Edition rules focus on combat. That’s all there is to it.

Stage Three: Bargaining

But I still want to play.

I enjoy playing pretend with my friends. Inhabiting characters. Uncovering mysteries. Co-creating totally new stories. Fifth Edition is obsessed with combat, but I still want to play the game. I want some combat in my game play, but that’s not why I’m at the table.

How can I? How can this work?

Maybe we—the players in the group—can all agree to limit combat in the narrative. We could agree to violence as a last resort. But then again, there are some players at the table that really enjoy combat. They enjoy other aspects of the game too but they really enjoy combat.

Instead of charging into the dungeon to attack the undead within maybe they would be open to…uh…negotiating with them?

That’s not going to work, especially if the DM isn’t onboard and keeps preparing combat scenarios we refuse to participate in.

Every D&D blog and video out there tells DMs to find out what kind of game your players want to play. So we talk to the DM about it.

We enjoy the game, you’re doing a great job. Could we just fight less? Like what if half of the challenges could be combat oriented?

Ugh. That doesn’t come off well. And even if it did, then we’d just be checklisting combat and non-combat encounters and trying to figure out which is which instead of playing the narrative.

Okay, new idea. House rules. We’ll use house rules.

For example, we could say Zone of Truth doesn’t allow Yes or No questions, making it harder to interpret responses. That would make the game more complex and more interesting. Then again, it's actually limiting non-combat interactions, not enhancing them.

We could create new proficiencies, spells or abilities that augment non-combat capabilities. Proficiency in “Seeing Through Falsehoods”? No, that’s covered by an Insight Check—and the problem with these complexities is that they shouldn’t be resolved with a die roll—like scoring a hit in combat is.

And anyway, now we have to markup the entire PHB and DMG with house rules for every spell, action, and ability? Just for rules that this group can agree on? House rules work when they focus on a very few aspects of a game that make it more fun for the group. Not on changing the entire nature of the game.

So that’s not going to work.

How about instead of coming up with or rewriting rules, we just strikethrough some of the combat-focused rules so we can focus on things other than combat?

What combat rules can we ignore? There are a lot of combat resolution rules. We can’t really eliminate rules about dealing damage. We do need to know how to resolve combat, that’s not the problem. It's the prominence of combat.

The superpower tendency is baked into character progression so we would have to carefully and severely edit every aspect of character classes to steer them away from combat emphasis. Disallow feats? That’s a major contributor to the superpower tendency. But there are a few non-combat feats we would keep. Disallow certain feats? That seems capricious.

How about we de-emphasize combat by raising the stakes? No Death Saves! Or—here’s another house rule idea—use death rules more like 2nd Edition: hit points go negative and you slowly die unless you are healed. If you go all the way to -10 HP, you die. After all, a character bitten by a dragon or taking a sword through the gut at 1 HP should be at high risk of death.

So that would definitely make combat more risky. If death wasn’t so hard to accomplish, players would be more cautious. It would impact lower level players more—and rightly so, a character's first few combats should be high stakes—it's dangerous.

That still doesn’t balance out the lack of rules or depth of the rules in non-combat areas. That’s just a spiteful limitation of combat. It doesn’t give depth to the rest of the game.

And ignoring rules or making up your own rules to change the game is just running to the pitcher’s mound on a hit and claiming that’s worth 4 runs. That may be a game, but it's not the game called D&D.

Stage Four: Depression

I still want to play pretend with my friends. I still want to conjure and explore new characters. I still want to uncover mysteries and co-create totally new stories.

Can I?

Is Dungeons and Dragons…not the place for that?

Rules define the game and make preparation easier for the DM. Can I really ask the DM to step outside the rules? Try to adjudicate everything based on—what—intuition?

Dungeons and Dragons is the most popular RPG system in the world. Surely 95% of RPG players play 1 system and that system is D&D. Am I going to learn a new system? One with even fewer local players than AD&D had at my high school?

What can I do?

Can I even play tabletop role playing games anymore?

Stage Five: Acceptance

When I play board games with friends I am—of course—willing to play a game that everyone at the table wants to play even if it isn’t one of my favorite games. And when I do, I don’t try to change the rules of the game.

I accept the game for what it is. I play the game that is on the table. I enjoy the time with my friends. Dungeons and Dragons can’t be different than that.

I love role playing. I love co-creating a story. I love playing to find out what happens and its okay if sometimes that is “we get powerful enough to defeat a monstrous foe in combat” but I hope that isn’t all that happens. I also hope that isn’t every story’s climax.

And it's not that combat in D&D isn’t fun. It's the role playing and narrative that brings tension. That gives the combat meaning. That gives the combat stakes.

And combat does the same for the role playing and narrative.

So maybe it's not fair to say D&D is wargame—there is more depth and texture. But that depth is created by the features of play that aren’t combat.

And maybe to enjoy D&D, I have to play other tabletop or theatre of the mind RPGs—to exercise that kind of play but also to appreciate D&D for what it is. And to bring some of that back to the table when I play D&D.

To enjoy D&D I have to live—and play—in that tension.