honestly. being real. ive looked into a lot of various indie ttrpgs that haven't spoken to me, and i end up just coming back to D&D over and over. and i think i finally fully understand why that is.
D&D is very heavy on rules for what can happen in combat, but fairly light on rules for when it comes to story structure and roleplay. as a result, roleplay scenes feel a bit more natural and flowing, with the only mechanical aspect being the occasional skill check for like, intimidation / deception / persuasion / etc. but then, unlike the roleplay, the things that can be achieved in combat are pretty strictly regulated. this is fun for how i like to roleplay, as someone who used to do a lot of freeform RP--the problem with freeform RP style combat sometimes is that if you're RPing combat with someone who gets really wound up about making their characters always win, it can be really fucking hard to counteract the shit they have their characters pull out of their back pocket. having a VERY clearly defined and strict set of rules for specifically combat makes it so that when combat DOES happen, people can't just Say Shit about what they have their characters do--they have a limited character framework to work in and a limited set of tools that they can work with, and enjoyable combats come from using those tools in that framework creatively, effectively, and excitingly. this makes combat feel like it has genuine stakes, and when done right can be very intense and exciting. and then when you do actual like, character interaction and story building? there's just not a lot of strictly defined rules for what can and can't be done in those realms, both for a player and the DM. there aren't any constraints on the structure of the narrative that the DM presents, which means it's fairly easy to rip out the pre-packaged D&D lore, re-fluff a few things that heavily reference that lore, and just homebrew your own story structure and lore and world and characters and pantheons and the like.
my problem with a lot of indie TTRPGs is that a lot of them are married to either a very specific story structure that the system mandates that you follow, or a very specific pre-made world that the system is mechanically built to form around, and that level of pre-determination doesn't interest me either as a player OR as a GM. like these are fundamental rules in these systems that would gut it if you tore them out and replaced them with something else, which means that if you tried to go against those premade structures/settings, you would basically have to homebrew the entire goddamn thing from scratch anyway. D&D's relative rules-heaviness of combat and rules-lightness of roleplay makes it easier for D&D to provide me the kinds of stories that i actually want to participate in, even if people insist it's not as "flexible" as many people think it is. like. yes. don't run a regency romance game in D&D, obviously. but if ur running a high fantasy type of game focused on adventuring, D&D can be adapted pretty well to a homebrew setting and world with minimal effort.
and tbh, i really think that's why it has the cultural dominance that it does, and why i personally keep engaging with it as a ttrpg even as people yell from all sides to play something else. "just do freeform RP!" ive done freeform RP. it's good for character building and dialogue and intrigue and sex but it fucking sucks when characters have to fight. i fucking hate it when im trying to RP fighting in freeform RP and whatever person im fighting against just keeps fucking kicking my ass no matter what i have my character do because my RP partner is so invested in forcing me to lose or give up that they just pull whatever the hell they can think of out of their back pocket to beat my character into submission. at least with an incredibly well-defined set of rules for how combat works, your opponents are also working in a limited framework with limited tools, so even if they do fucking kick your ass, it doesn't feel completely stupid and arbitrary, and since opponents' attacks are governed by dice rolls almost as much as players' attacks are, the amount of arbitrariness in the combat is not wholly stacked against you unless you're fighting against something that's WAY out of your party's league--and even then, those creatures and people are still going to be bound by their dice rolls as much as you are, they might just have better bonuses and/or fewer penalties to make things a bit more favorable for them. that horrifying fucking monster you're fighting may have an insane bonus to attack, but it could still roll a critical fail when it tries to attack you, just as much as you might roll a critical fail to attack it in turn. everyone operates under the same rules and will have similar limitations placed on them by those rules, and participants have much less leeway to make their characters' combat prowess be whatever the hell they want whenever anything even mildly threatening happens.
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Thinking about Rukkhadevata’s design again in Genshin and how fucking bleak it is. It makes me upset because after Nahida was leaked, I thought the ORIGINAL Dendro Archon was going to look completely different and take actual inspiration from SWANA, because to me she was the TRUE Dendro Archon. I was looking forward to her so much, only to be dismayed when I realised Nahida is the actual Archon, and especially broken up about how Rukkhadevata looked. She is just… nothing. She’s beautiful, sure. But she’s just. Nothing.
She didn’t even have to be that pale!! Nahida/Kusanali (can’t remember which name) is said to be very pale in mythology which, okay fine, make her pale, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ORIGINAL AND HER PREDECESSOR? SHE DIDN’T NEED TO LOOK LIKE A GROWN VERSION OF HER OMG.
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