This video made me think about an encounter I had with an independently-written sci-fi horror module for 5e. I was looking for something along the taglines of "spooky, scary, alien" for my players' next dungeon, and I wound up with a module called "Solace in Silence." The very first sentence of the description brazenly says, "This adventure will kill your party." The primary hook is that the players end up infected with an alien disease, and have to struggle to the top of a mountain in search of their only hope for a cure. On the surface level, it seemed like exactly what I was going for: it cut the characters off with very little resources in an unfamiliar environment peppered with apparitions and the tabletop equivalent of jumpscares. And as we started playing, this is exactly what we got. My players were less confident than usual, having no idea where they were and disturbed by the increasing symptoms of their illness. I followed the module to the letter, and it was working. My players were increasingly getting freaked out! I'd never ran horror in DnD before, and I was excited, because this module was knocking it out of the park! ...But as we continued on, a change happened. After a certain point in the module, my players were no longer engaged. It wasn't that the horror tropes were repetitive or that my players simply got used to it... quite the opposite. The dread and fear that the module had generated was *too* effective. They fell into actual, real-life dread, no longer motivated by the fear but simply going through the motions, awaiting what they now believed to be an inevitable outcome. And that was the problem with the module. It *was* an inevitable outcome. The module was so effective at horror because it used narrative structure to achieve it, foregoing player agency for the sake of atmosphere. Every encounter in the module had one solution (save for the ending, which had two) -- literally, the module was meticulously structured so that any deviation from the path was met with instant punishment. I didn't realize this until I was going through the act of playing it, seeing the script in motion rather than just reading it. On the one hand, it was an example of tabletop horror that worked. On the other hand, it treated the players as little more than set pieces baring witness to its spooky majesty. Systems *can* tell stories. But only by removing the players. And then it's not really a system anymore, is it?
Glad I got around to reading this whole thing, I'm honestly fascinated enough by the module that I might grab a copy of it to see for myself. 😳 Wholeheartedly agree with your comment's last line tho. I don't jive well with games (and adventures) that play around with how much they can remove the players from the equation.
@@collabswithoutpermission I would check it out! It's an interesting module to study because there's so much in it that is genuinely innovative and interesting, but it's used in a generally problematic way. Thanks for taking the time to read!
Came here from the Root video and absolutely adored this! I'm so happy to see someone bring the framework of the conversation about indie games away from the idea some systems are "incapable" of providing certain experiences. I know a Call of Cthulhu GM who runs her game as a long form urban fantasy story without horror elements beyond the aesthetic- her players love the material, but don't want to engage in something swingy, high stakes, or especially lethal. I've never played CoC myself, but reading the book I always thought approaching it like that would be entirely against the spirit of play. But this is a game this group loves and has fun with, and for them it's a completely real, authentic TTRPG experience. I've come to have very conflicted (and often very negative) feelings about D&D 5e and the IP-ification of D&D as a whole. I'm a firm believer in playing other games (or at least looking at them to see if there's something you might like), but I've never liked this response to 5e that insisted that 5e was only capable of telling specific stories and that experiences which lay outside whatever narrowly prescribed band a critic had for those stories were inauthentic or illegitimate in their play. It's absolutely not the way that 5e players, who are often new to the hobby, feel about the stories they've poured all their hearts into, and insisting that they must systematize their RP in certain ways for it to "count" feels like a cynical and unfair take on all TTRPGs. Furthermore, as you pointed out, it makes it sound as if non-D&D games are only capable of delivering narrowly defined experiences, when that just isn't true. Indie TTRPGs are also creative, imaginative spaces, and it's less about finding the one true tool that always gives correct outputs regardless of player input and more about finding what feels fun and what inspires. About getting playful, or just finding another way to tell the familiar stories (when my group dropped 5e for good we went to Pathfinder 2e for our main game- not at all an indie and hardly a step away in intent and scope of game! we just missed 3.5). And the corporate dragon of Hasbro is also a good reason to just explore and touch other shit. But any approach that condescends to players, that tells them they simply aren't playing right and don't understand what they've experienced or been touched by, is fundamentally a disservice to our whole community. Thank you for this video. It's nuanced, thoughtful, and has really made me feel a lot of faith in the community that I genuinely haven't felt in a while with the kind of TTRPG discourse that tends to cross my lap. I'd really like to find some time for Feedback now. It sounds like a great experience. At any rate, thanks again, and I look forward to seeing what you do in the future! And for myself, continuing to play Other Games.
As someone who's working on a D&D 5e Sci-Fi homebrew, I really enjoyed this. Good video, good editing, good pacing, good stuff all around! You got a new fan my dude
Finally got time to watch all of this. Just wanted to say that this video is such a triumph, maybe your best video so far (although the Mothership review is really amazing too so it's hard to choose). All-in-all, love the discussion, love the video! Also, given how it's kinda tangentially related to this topic, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on Ten Candles someday. I think you might like that game.
It's wild, I've known about Dread for years (thanks for reminding me that I found it through the Wil Wheaton show). I only ever took the tower and questionnaire from the game, so it's funny just how overwritten it is. I never realized just how weird that first story was either. Thinking of trying new games makes me think when my high school friends and I tried d20modern. Everyone was so nervous cause it wasn't fantasy, and they almost never played it again after an unceremonious TPK. It's funny now thinking about how in our comfort zone that game was mechanics wise.
I also have never read DnD5e. I only watched videos and heard Podcasts and that's what I went off of. I only started to look into the books when I started running out of my own ideas and needed new viewpoints and inspiration
This is such a good video. I'm surprised you haven't gotten more hits. I tagged my friends to come watch too. I'm hopelessly attached to 5e for a lot of probably the wrong reasons. 2 out of 3 games I'd play would probably be 5e if I had the choice. But I love indie creators. I love seeing their work. I love supporting them anyway. a) Because if i buy their stuff I can shamelessly cannibalise it into my d&d stuff, b) any person creating TTRPG content deserves so much love.
Late reply, but unfortunately yes, the referenced video was either about the "Be Gay, Do Crime" zine (excerpts from Queer Ultraviolence), or "Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture" which... I think were mostly just summaries? I deleted like 60 old videos last summer, it's a bummer but it's what it is. Those are fun publications though, I'd recommend checking them out.
Philosophytube who? Never heard of her. This was so good! Holy crap. My friend sent me the first tanfaradd tiktok I had ever seen where she talked about this video. Nuance at every turn. You can’t just change my outlook on ttrpgs like that! I just met you. But stay off twitter… it’s a cesspool
Another aspect to the "Is D&D 5e bad at horror" thingy is that...not all horror is desperate and powerless? Like Aliens is horror, but the aliens get their asses kicked quite a few times. I don't think 5e is particularly good at horror, or particularly bad. You can do horror in 5e perpendicularly to the system, not much supports or prevents it. You can't really make long-term horror in HERO System 6th edition when playing superheroes, at least not very easily: the whole system is about making cool stuff. I still pull it off at least once every three sessions. System matters, but system isn't everything.
