Peasant Railgun

I hadn't heard of this until it was called out in a paragraph in the new DND 2024 rules explaining that the game is an abstraction and not a physics textbook.

I think games this are most fun when you play within the bounds of the rules (as written) and not consider them reality simulators (...magic...). Then you can approach the rules as merely constraints in which to optimize solutions to problems.

Of course as games like DnD are also a social affair, it's worth making sure everyone is having fun with something like this, otherwise what's the point?

I never could get into DnD because of the roleplaying. To me games are a set of rules which I view as a puzzle.

For what it's worth, there are plenty of tables that focus a lot less on plot & roleplaying, and more on the combat & puzzle aspect. There are even whole RPGs that are effectively dungeon crawls, where your characters don't need much of a personality, and are often explicitly disposable.

D&D may not be for you, but I bet there's a RPG out there that is!

I personally haven't found much luck with finding tables that focus less on plot and roleplaying. Ever since Critical Role became very popular, the hobby has skewed heavily towards Roleplay and it's really disappointing

I don't know why people bother to play a game with rules when they don't actually want to engage with the rules ever

I'm heavy into roleplay, and that's how I prefer to play D&D.

And I think you're probably right.

D&D is barely the right fit for the kind of game I like to play. But D&D is wildly popular, and it's much easier to find people who'll play D&D with a heavy emphasis on roleplay, than it is to find people who'll play Heart, or Wildsea, or things that are even further way from the "roll-play" aspect.

For what it's worth, we still engage in combat, we use our various abilities outside of combat, etc. Most of the rules are about combat. Even the magic section is framed around using magic in actions. But exploration, etc., is still a part of the game; it's just that those rules are jotted down on like 5 pages out of the 200.

> But D&D is wildly popular, and it's much easier to find people who'll play D&D with a heavy emphasis on roleplay,

Yes, to my dismay.

I like classic D&D, dungeon crawling and what people so derisively call "rollplaying". I find amateur theater improv quite tedious and uninteresting

I haven't been able to find other players like me at all for ages. Everyone I meet "Just got into the game because of Critical Role"

I feel quite strongly that my lifelong hobby has been warped away from me. I try hard not to be resentful but it sucks I can't find groups to play with that want the same kind of game I do

I strongly believe that the influence of Critical Role has been detrimental to D&D. So many people believe that the "acting" style (for lack of a better term) is the right way to play, and that others are invalid, because their introduction was from that show. Moreover, a lot of DMs stress out putting pressure on themselves to try to run sessions on par with what these shows have. I wish people would embrace just hanging out with friends and rolling dice more.