Letters from "Readers": Dungeons & Dragons 5e vs Baldur's Gate 3

Teaching the Joy of Brutal Gamemastery

Letters from “Readers” is a series where I pretend to be an agony aunt to random shit I find on the internet. There is no guarantee that any of these people read my crap.

I was recently sent this on the RPG Theory Discord server, which has Eero and the Finnish Fanatics. It’s a great bunch of lads, very welcoming.

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Letter: Baldur’s Gate 3

So, I’ve been playing Baldur’s Gate 3 for a while now and I’m not enjoying it. But not for the reasons you might think.

Let’s be clear, it’s a brilliant, immersive game that represents a sea-change in online RPG adventuring. The amount of detail, variety and creativity put into this game is breathtaking. And that I think, is a big part of my problem. See, BG3 is ruining regular D&D for me.

What it comes down to is that the video game is able to do so much more than the tabletop (or Virtual tabletop) version. And it can do it far better to boot. Playing BG3 makes me acutely aware of how poorly we are playing in our regular campaign.

I’ve long complained that 5e is a bit of everything for everyone. Simplified (sort of) rules that allow you to drape whatever curtains you want onto it to create the kind of game/look you want (as Sarah put it). It doesn’t do any one thing particularly well, but does enough of everything to appeal to most people.

But online, it’s immersive. It’s expansive. You don’t just play the game…you experience it all the time. It’s a far more realistic imagining of an adventure and I’m constantly reminded of how different play is with my friends in BG3 and those same friends in Roll20. (No criticisms, this isn’t a personal review, but a game system analysis).

Let me describe some of the scenes from our most recent foray below the Blighted Village in BG3. I need to stress first however, that BG3 visually depicts your environment, in full living colour. When you go anywhere, you can see and hear it all in full detail. Not because someone is reading it to you, but because you are moving your avatar around yourself to experience it. When you enter a “lab” the entire space is packed with strange machinery, racks of bottles, sheafs of papers, piles of books, boxes, crates, tabletops, notebooks…and you can interact with ALL OF IT. You can open things and examine things and read the journals and click on the stuffed animals to determine (if you succeed on a nature check) that the stuffed bear was actually just a juvenile animal, despite it being 8’ tall.

There is just…so much to do. And we each go off exploring around the room, checking out different things. It takes us several minutes in real time and I still don’t feel like I’ve examined anything. I haven’t looked where Kroog and Lae’zel have been exploring, trusting that they found anything of interest there. I hope so. Because I’m busy reading a notebook on a benchtop and BOOM! “Ack!” cries Kroog. He set off a trap and got an explosion direct to his face. He’s actually on fire, there’s flames all around him and his hit points have gone down, with his character portrait flashing red.

Just like that.

It’s not like we were being overly reckless. But bang, we got hit by a trap. It surprised us. And it was FAST.

Two things from this. First, “we search the room” is NOT a 1 minute activity as it is on Roll20. Not a room with this much in it at least. And certainly not, if you’re going to be careful about it. Yes, we can search, but not in great detail. Second, when things happen, they happen quickly, without warning, even if you think you’re ready for it. The tabletop version let’s you make checks on EVERYTHING. And you know if you fail. Realistically, you can open a book and get fire to your face. Because it was trapped. And you didn’t notice. And you didn’t realize you “failed” your die roll. But at the table, you’ll spend 10 minutes arguing with the DM on why you shouldn’t have had the trap go off, or what you did do to protect yourself or…whatever. But in BG3? It feels more real. There’s no one to argue with and if you do something stupid…you suffer the consequences. And if are being smart, but roll poorly…you still suffer the consequences. Because that’s the life of an adventurer poking their nose in places they probably shouldn’t!

Which leads me to a second, similar scenario.

We’re exploring this underground cave/cellar area. And unlike at the table, we are NOT coordinated. We’re split up, each exploring in our own direction, pursuing whatever looks interesting, checking boxes and rotting bags. “Hey, there’s this blue thing on the floor here. Do you guys see it?” Nope, because I’m in the previous entry area, looking at the wall carving, trying to see if there’s a pattern there. We are NOT sticking together. We are NOT coordinated and strategic. That just is NEVER happening in our game. But at the table, everything is a plan and a team effort. In this more real environment, no.

A notification flashes across my screen. “Entering turn based mode!”

“Hey, what’s…” I start to ask
“You are surprised!” flashes across the screen.
“…going on?”

“Oh shit oh shit oh shit!” cries Lae’zel.

They are up ahead, around a corner and I can’t see what the hell is going on. I quickly pan my camera forward to see some rotting undead bursting out of the ground. Our group is surprised…we can’t take any actions.

The few creatures rush forward and burst open more coffins raising even more of them. The new ones rush up and start pummelling Kroog. We finally get a chance to act and I dash ahead. By then, even more monsters have burst forth and we’re surrounded. But they’re not just sitting around mindlessly waiting for us to swing at them.

They’ve scattered all around the cave, hiding behind pillars, climbing up on ledges. The archers are firing at us, the melee blocking the path to the archers. Even with our melee in front, threatening them, they’re picking on our squishies at the back. It was fucking scary. It was fast. It wasn’t something we planned for and we played POORLY, each of us scrambling to stay alive, protect our friends and take out the threat. It was a dynamic, realistic situation that was a challenge right from the start. We could have strategized better. We could have been smarter. We weren’t. Because in the moment we were reacting.

That’s something that doesn’t happen at a table. It can take 30 minutes for a couple of rounds of combat. We did not have 12 minutes between our turns to watch what’s going on and plan what we’re going to do. We’ve got a bag full of about 30 scrolls and almost as many potions. But who has time to find something useful amidst all that chaos???

Granted online, we can take our turns simultaneously. But in person, that’s just not possible for a human to manage well. We take turns because that’s the best way to gamify a chaotic fight and ensure everyone can act. But if it were real? We would not have made level 2, I can assure you of that!

And all the combats are like this. As Morrie put it recently:

“…the game uses environment to make combat encounters interesting, strategic, challenging and varied.  Our most recent one, with the risen corpses, was interesting because it had wooden and rocky raised platforms, large pillars that made it difficult to get around, and was large so enemies could spread out enough to not all succumb to one AoE ability like Turn Undead. One thing in common is that the encounter area is generally absolutely massive compared to what we'd be used to with pen and paper or roll20.

Each environment has been unique and presented opportunities to be more strategic than just pew-pew to try and save yourself a few hits.  On top of that in pen and paper D&D and roll20 there is a huge incentive to stay on the map, but in BG3 you can go really far, like we did with the minotaurs.”

Paper or VTT simply can’t recreate the scale, scope or complexity that can be presented in the game. And 3D fights with varying heights and ledges is clunky and complex in person. With the AI handling all this behind the scenes, the immersion is so much stronger than anything we can create in person.

And to that last point, I will bring up one more example from our most recent play through. (Well, 2, but they’re related). We encountered a mirror, that blocked passage forward. I won’t reveal what happened with this mirror, but it was brilliant. I tried to game the system and it blew up in my face. I tried to meta game and there were consequences. This mirror proved a fascinating and difficult challenge and the results of my actions were meaningful and worthwhile. And yes, deadly. You get 2 short rests per day and you can’t just keep short resting because Taman was a moron and got blown up for giving a stupid answer to a gorram mirror.

When we finally progressed, we found a room (the lab I mentioned above) and Lae’zel succeeded on a perception check, identifying a trapped pressure plate in front of the door. I disarmed it. Inside, multiple more perception check were rolled…and failed. I froze. I was likely surrounded by traps, but could not see them.

The others edged closer, seeing if they could find the traps. We cast bonuses on ourselves and eventually found 2 traps. I disarmed them. But there was at least 1 more. There was also an orange (meaning quest item) book on the table.

And it looked HORRIFIC. There is a big difference between seeing the above image, in a cut scene, with a narrator, versus having someone read a description to you. You had options on what to do with the book. And (no real spoilers here), when we figured out how to open it, we were informed that the reader was having their mind assaulted, with strange glyphs and languages calling out to us…and something answering. The reader had the choice of putting the book down or making a saving throw to turn the page!

It was FREAKY. It was SCARY. Half of us DID NOT WANT TO PURSUE THIS.

It was all kinds of wrong and everything about this scene screamed “get out!” I can’t remember the last time I felt that kind of tension and danger in Roll20. I mean there are good scenes, don’t get me wrong. But this felt visceral. It’s just a game, but it made me wonder if I really wanted to put myself in this kind of danger.

We pushed on, the reader succeeding on the save.

The next page required an even tougher save to continue. We used up our last 2 inspiration rerolls to go on. After some additional choices, we now had only 2 options

1. Roll a save to turn the page
2. Roll a save to put the book down!

The stakes ramped up to the point where we could not even get out if we wanted to, without having to roll for it! We chose to push the boundaries, to pursue a knowledge we knew in our bones was wrong. And now…SOMETHING was going to happen and it was unlikely to be good. Or..was it???

If you’ve played the game, maybe you know what happens here. Maybe you took the wiser approach and left well enough alone. But this scene is such a good example of the game creating a situation that really engages you. I’d love for our regular games to feel like this all the time. But I really don’t think that’s possible.

BG3 is massive. It’s immersive. It’s complex and it reacts to you. It shows you that how you’ve been playing your table top version is NOT how you would actually behave in the situation if it were more real. It takes the “game mechanics” out of the equation and taps right into your choices and interactions with your environment. And I can’t help but wonder how much longer my heart can take this kind of tension.

Can “regular” D&D ever compare, now that I know I would NEVER actually play like that?

That was a long one!

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Response: The Failures of 5e Play Culture

There’s a lot to unpick in this one. There’s so much to unpick that it made me want to make this format!

The first thing is that there’s no shame in preferring video RPGs over tabletop games. They are different hobbies. I do both. I think they both give me very different things, especially since I’m a forever gamemaster and a fucking horrible player. Some people might struggle with the visualisation elements in tabletop games.

I think, from reading through this, that this may be partially the case with yourself.

This is fine. Anyone who gives you shit for this is a moron and their opinion should be discarded.

Close your eyes and imagine an apple.

The second part is that this is a complete failure of 5e play culture and, if I’m honest non-reader, your group’s culture too.

Here’s the main problems:

• Virtual tabletops are being used as crutches, rather than supports.

• D&D 5e’s combat is a boring slog.

• You are in an adversarial relationship with your gamemaster.

• Baldur’s Gate 3 play is genuine, your group’s play is not.

• You’re not really understanding the joy of tabletop.

There are other elements about quality of play that I could comment on, but a lot of them can be solved through time and experience and getting advice off good gamemasters.

Virtual Tabletops are Used as Crutches

One thing in common is that the encounter area is generally absolutely massive compared to what we'd be used to with pen and paper or roll20.

Each environment has been unique and presented opportunities to be more strategic than just pew-pew to try and save yourself a few hits.  On top of that in pen and paper D&D and roll20 there is a huge incentive to stay on the map, but in BG3 you can go really far, like we did with the minotaurs.

…

Paper or VTT simply can’t recreate the scale, scope or complexity that can be presented in the game. And 3D fights with varying heights and ledges is clunky and complex in person. With the AI handling all this behind the scenes, the immersion is so much stronger than anything we can create in person.

Your commentary on virtual tabletops suggests to me that your group’s presentation and play style is map heavy. You are probably in the habit of expecting a battle map for every scenario.

This is a lot of work. Even if your gamemaster only has to buy maps online and even if they are available with walls and doors and shadow blocks available for Roll20, then your gamemaster is probably taking about half an hour per map. That is at minimum. I have made maps for VTTs in the past and they have taken me two or more hours.

I play in person now and it takes me less time because I expect the players to draw the maps as I describe them. There are other reasons to do this, but those are for a future article.

This is one of the ways people use VTTs as a crutch. It allows them to support a playstyle that would not be readily available at an in-person table, but there is a very large time cost on the gamemaster. It also causes problems with gamemasters bringing in less visually impressive content.

This is added on to by the fact that you bring up verticality of movement. Baldur’s Gate 3 does this very, very well. There is verticality available that is much more difficult to achieve in tabletop. A gamemaster has to make a conscious decision to bring it in.

Again, this is made worse by using VTTs as crutches. I’m not aware of any VTTs other than tabletop simulator that offer any vertical movement beyond switching scenes.

D&D 5e’s Combat is a Boring Slog… on Purpose

They are up ahead, around a corner and I can’t see what the hell is going on. I quickly pan my camera forward to see some rotting undead bursting out of the ground. Our group is surprised…we can’t take any actions.

…

That’s something that doesn’t happen at a table. It can take 30 minutes for a couple of rounds of combat. We did not have 12 minutes between our turns to watch what’s going on and plan what we’re going to do. We’ve got a bag full of about 30 scrolls and almost as many potions. But who has time to find something useful amidst all that chaos???

D&D 5e’s combat is garbage for various reasons.

First, as soon as you progress beyond 5th level, the option paralysis kicks in and the amount of combinations available grows beyond what you will actually be able to comprehend.

From the gamemaster perspective, it quickly grows into an array of unstoppable potential choices against whatever is placed against the players. It becomes very difficult to comprehend the possible outcomes of any single encounter, unless you completely rely on the bounded accuracy guardrails.

This means that everyone starts taking more time to do stuff.

Secondly, just resolving stuff takes a long time.

A 5th level Fighter suddenly gets two attacks per round which you would assume just slightly increases the amount of time it takes to resolve their turn.

This is not the case.

Taking an example round:

• Fighter moves 20ft and hits and kills a goblin. (At 4th level, their turn is over.)

• The Fighter asks the gamemaster if he can hit an ogre 15ft away.

• They now have a conversation about reach weapons, whether the Fighter has any, whether the Fighter can switch to his reach weapon in this turn.

• The Fighter can, but then they realise he’d received an attack of opportunity from another goblin.

• The Fighter mulls over whether this would be a good choice.

• He decides it’s not.

• The Fighter kills another goblin instead.

This is going to be a consistent problem.

And a 5th level Fighter is the simplest fucking example I could think of.

This example doesn’t include buffs, conditional bonuses for damaging or killing enemies, quick actions, any of the other million things available.

Finally, hit point inflation.

One of the principles of 5e is bounded accuracy. This means that all the bonuses and shit have been stripped down from earlier editions, so that a GM should sort of know what is available to his players.

This also applies to hit points. Hit points in 5e are blown to fuck compared to the early editions of the game.

There’s a few reasons this is the case. Hit point dice haven’t really changed since AD&D 1e. The methods of using those hit point dice have. The amount of hit point bonuses characters get has changed. The way stats are decided has also changed. These all feed into a slow bump in HP:

• A 5th-level Fighter in 1e probably has around 30 HP.

• A 5th-level Fighter in 5e will almost certainly have a minimum of 42 HP, and likely more.

• A Dragon, Red in 1e has an average HP of 45.

• An Adult Red Dragon in 5e has an average HP of 256!

5e characters and monsters are designed to be damage sponges. This “evens out” the combat experience so it is consistent. Early editions tend to be swingy, which makes them exciting.

All of these combine into a boring slog shit show.

Essentially, stop playing 5e, it’s shit.

Stop Arguing With Your Gamemaster

The tabletop version let’s you make checks on EVERYTHING. And you know if you fail. Realistically, you can open a book and get fire to your face. Because it was trapped. And you didn’t notice. And you didn’t realize you “failed” your die roll. But at the table, you’ll spend 10 minutes arguing with the DM on why you shouldn’t have had the trap go off, or what you did do to protect yourself or…whatever. But in BG3? It feels more real. There’s no one to argue with and if you do something stupid…you suffer the consequences. And if are being smart, but roll poorly…you still suffer the consequences.

There is a lot wrong here.

I do not know how experienced your gamemaster is, but as time goes on you develop calluses against players trying to litigate the rules with you. If they start actually arguing with you, then you say that their noise is attracting monsters and start rolling random encounters. That soon sorts itself out.

But this is primarily an example of the gamemaster being treated in an adversarial way.

The gamemaster, in my opinion, should be as neutral an arbiter as possible. I (almost always) want my players to succeed. Despite this, I will put them through fire and flame so that they deserve it. Their poor choices are punished, the enemies are prepared for them, and they will be hurt if they fuck up.

All of that is done within the framework of the rules.

My players know that my goal is to act as an intermediary between them, their characters, the rules and the game world. This is one of the reasons that I enjoy rules heavy systems, because they allow me to act as brutally as possible without being perceived as arbitrary or vindictive.

There’s a reason it was called the “Judge’s Guild”.

I would assume your gamemaster isn’t being treated this way. They are not being treated as an intermediary with the rules, they are being treated as the rules.

Stop arguing with your gamemaster.

The Genuineness of Baldur’s Gate 3

We encountered a mirror, that blocked passage forward. I won’t reveal what happened with this mirror, but it was brilliant. I tried to game the system and it blew up in my face. I tried to meta game and there were consequences. This mirror proved a fascinating and difficult challenge and the results of my actions were meaningful and worthwhile. And yes, deadly.

…

When we finally progressed, we found a room (the lab I mentioned above) and Lae’zel succeeded on a perception check, identifying a trapped pressure plate in front of the door. I disarmed it. Inside, multiple more perception check were rolled…and failed. I froze. I was likely surrounded by traps, but could not see them.

…

The next page required an even tougher save to continue. We used up our last 2 inspiration rerolls to go on. After some additional choices, we now had only 2 options

1. Roll a save to turn the page

2. Roll a save to put the book down!

The stakes ramped up to the point where we could not even get out if we wanted to, without having to roll for it! We chose to push the boundaries, to pursue a knowledge we knew in our bones was wrong. And now…SOMETHING was going to happen and it was unlikely to be good. Or..was it???

A consistent message throughout this is how BG3 will spank you for bad decisions or rolls.

BG3 is genuine. It is treating the rules as an immutable facet of the game world. There is no one for you to argue or plead or cajole. It rolls the dice in front of you and says, “If you didn’t like it, you shouldn’t be making stupid choices.”

Your gamemaster is not doing this. He is probably a good friend of your’s. I would assume that he doesn’t want to punish you for poor decisions.

This is making your gameplay fake as fuck.

The worst part is that you can tell it’s fake.

I don’t know how you treat it at the game table. Maybe you take it all very lightly, like a tourist wandering around a new city. Maybe you pretend to be immersed into the game, but you still have the awareness that your gamemaster will pull the punches before they actually land. Maybe you all make jokes at the expense of everything set up.

I find most player groups fall into one of these traps.

In the first campaign I play with them, I break them of it.

Let me tell you the story of one of my campaigns from long ago:

We had played for eight months every single week. The players were 6th level, and had repeatedly had lucky escapes. I think, at this point, they thought I was pulling punches. They were slightly wounded, had used some spells, and were delving into the ruins of an ancient dwarven city.

During a break, I rolled up a random encounter. Two ancient monstrosities from the depths, crab-like creatures with underslung maws and acid spit. They were ambush predators with a bonus to surprise rolls.

It was probably too dangerous for the players, but that is part of the joy of the game.

The players stumbled into it. The first creature dropped down, had a surprise round. It wounded one of them and knocked him unconscious.

They were confident anyway. One monster versus a full group? There’s ways to beat that easily.

And then the other one dropped down.

Two rounds and a flurry of good rolls from the crab beasts and we slowly counted through the players and their HP…

All dead. I described the feeling of being lifted into an underslung mouth, the slow crush and crunch. The burning of the acid.

They were devastated. I was devastated. Eight months of play, of work, gone in a series of rolls.

In that moment, though, it was fucking real. The pain, the suffering, the loss.

One of my players quit playing for six months. He came back, energised, for my next campaign. The rest stuck it out, but you could tell that it scarred them. They knew that they could lose it all, and that turned them into much better players.

It was genuine.

Treating the rules as a true aspect of the game world, not as something to be ignored for the sake of fairness or story, is crucial to making it genuine.

Genuineness, reality, cannot be faked. Just by its nature. You need to embrace that.

The Joy of Tabletop

My last point really takes into account everything from this.

BG3 does not meet the same needs as tabletop does. It gets really fucking close. The amount of work put into it pushes its nose right next to the line.

Nonetheless, BG3 is not as reactive as gamemaster is. The game’s reality and rules are still prescriptive and not descriptive. A gamemaster can paint outside of the lines in response to a player’s actions. The game cannot.

There is no option for a sandbox game. BG3 is, from start to finish, a somewhat linear game. Sure, it lets you make the choices, but the constraints are there to lead you from act to act.

Now, if Larian built out something similar to the old Neverwinter Nights persistent worlds then that might change very suddenly. The beauty of that was the modelling of the rules and the ability to have a gamemaster react to player actions.

But in the modern age that is just a very complicated and specific VTT.

That is probably enough for most people.

It’s not for me. I think there is still something more to the joy of playing tabletop.

Call for Letters from “Readers”

If there’s anything you’ve found interesting to read or want me to comment against, please drop it below. These articles will pop up whenever something twizzles my brain enough.