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Obligatory 5E D&D Thread

Started by Xeviat, January 09, 2012, 07:16:06 PM

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sparkletwist

No. It needs one set of rules that is well-tested, well-defined, and easy for players to get into. I agree with you about the emphasis on exploration and such needing to come back to the front, because reducing D&D to a simplistic board game or computer game pretty much ruins the point of playing a traditional tabletop RPG. However, that said, that should be where they take the game, then. No messing around and trying to please everyone all the time or whatever a mess of optional rules is supposed to accomplish. One rule set is already a monumental enough task. Looking at the number of complaints, errata, and such from 4e, I'd argue they've got their hands full trying to do that-- and yet, you somehow expect them to be able to put out not one, but essentially three rulesets with interlocking optional components that can be added or removed at-will.

You can casually dismiss splatbooks with anecdotal evidence all you want, but the fact is, they are getting published. Things like D&D Insider also serve as a flow of supplemental material, containing much of the same kind of material. When splatbooks (or articles in Dragon magazine, or whatever) for a modular edition or whatever this is are published, the issue I raised is going to come up and is going to have to be resolved-- and I don't see a good way to do so.

LordVreeg

Quote from: sparkletwist
No. It needs one set of rules that is well-tested, well-defined, and easy for players to get into. I agree with you about the emphasis on exploration and such needing to come back to the front, because reducing D&D to a simplistic board game or computer game pretty much ruins the point of playing a traditional tabletop RPG. However, that said, that should be where they take the game, then. No messing around and trying to please everyone all the time or whatever a mess of optional rules is supposed to accomplish. One rule set is already a monumental enough task. Looking at the number of complaints, errata, and such from 4e, I'd argue they've got their hands full trying to do that-- and yet, you somehow expect them to be able to put out not one, but essentially three rulesets with interlocking optional components that can be added or removed at-will.

You can casually dismiss splatbooks with anecdotal evidence all you want, but the fact is, they are getting published. Things like D&D Insider also serve as a flow of supplemental material, containing much of the same kind of material. When splatbooks (or articles in Dragon magazine, or whatever) for a modular edition or whatever this is are published, the issue I raised is going to come up and is going to have to be resolved-- and I don't see a good way to do so.
What optional rules and modularity acccomplish is to allow the game to attract a new, more inexperienced gamer as well as be interesting for the grognards as well as speaking to the tinkerers as well as allowing the game to grow with the players as well as allowing the rules to apply to a larger amount of settings and gamestyles.  That is what it would accomplish, not supposedly.  This is D&D, not some little game.  
One set of rules will fit one or two of these catagories, which is fine for the scope of most new games, not for the flagship brand of the industry.

And my comment was not about what I expected them to do; it was what I would do.  You may be right in what they will do...I say go big or go home.  I agree with starting basic and carefully directed...but to quickly build on that .
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Matt Larkin (author)

When I first saw the thread title, I thought this was a joke...I had lost track, what with not playing as often--didn't realize almost four years had passed since 4e came out.

My 2cp on the most recent topic, is that every group I've ever played in all the players have owned multiple splat books. Some players owned almost all of them. All were purchased almost entirely for crunch. At least on that level, having regular D&D and advanced D&D could potentially exacerbate the issues that crunch splatbooks create now. That is, every splatbook has to account (or may wish to account) for the additional rules introduced in successive PHBs (at least 4e seemed to mostly limit new rules to main PHBs, but even that was an issue).

Anyway, I'm sure I'll wind up buying whatever 5e winds up being. D&D isn't my favorite RPG out there, but it has player-base going for it, and some other advantages.
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Elemental_Elf

The latest from Monte Cook:

Quote from: Legends & Lore ArticleThis new approach comes out of a single idea. At its heart, D&D isn't about rules. It's about participating in an exciting fantasy adventure. The rules are just the means to enable that to happen. They're not an end unto themselves. The reason most of us play is for the story that arises out of our games. We talk about the green devil mouth in the Tomb of Horrors. The diabolical plans of Strahd in Ravenloft. The cowardly kobold Meepo in Sunless Citadel. These stories bring us together. As D&D players, we shouldn't allow rule preferences to separate us. In the end, we have a lot more in common than we have differences, even if some of us prefer the simple-yet-wahoo style of old school Basic D&D and others the carefully balanced elegance of 4th edition—or anything in between.

So if this new endeavor is just like your favorite prior version of the game, why play this one? First, we hope you're going to enjoy the distillation of the things that make D&D the game we all love into a single, unified package, with the ability to pick and choose other options as you desire.

Second—and this sounds so crazy that you probably won't believe it right now—we're designing the game so that not every player has to choose from the same set of options. Again, imagine a game where one player has a simple character sheet that has just a few things noted on it, and the player next to him has all sorts of skills, feats, and special abilities. And yet they can still play the game together and everything remains relatively balanced. Your 1E-loving friend can play in your 3E-style game and not have to deal with all the options he or she doesn't want or need. Or vice versa. It's all up to you to decide.

What I'm drawing from this is that WotC wants to make D&D more modular and allow individual players and DM's more liberty to custom craft the game they want to play. They already have this, in a way, via the original 4E and the Essentials line. One is very complex while the other simple. Both product lines can be played simultaneously at the same table with little to no effort to maintain such a duality.

I see 5E pulling this schtick again but taking it to the next level.


Xeviat

I'm really hoping the modularity on the player side is with subsystems that can be added and removed with little consequence. I could see basic characters getting +2 to all skill checks, while advanced characters instead choose skills to be trained in (worse at the untrained, better at the trained). I don't see how to make feats modular, though.

Modular rules on the DM side of the screen are far easier to address. Does your game have grim and gritty rules for injury? Does your game use other rules that make the game more "realistic"? Does your game run fast and action packed? Does your game focus on adventuring and exploration or does your game focus on combat?

If advanced rules make a character better, and not just more focused, then every rules lawyer is going to want to play the better character. I fundamentally believe that everyone at the table needs to be on the same level.

I am deeply worried about 5E from what I've heard so far. On the contrary, I was ecstatic (that word really doesn't have an "x" in it?) with 4E from the very first day it was revealed. I really need to hear some news about crunch, otherwise all this pie in the sky dream telling is going to make me double down on some sort of 4E distillation.
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Elemental_Elf

I've DMed and played quite a bit of 4E and had my share players who used Essentials classes. They aren't as potent as a finely tuned PHB-based characters but they are easily on par with above average and below PHB builds, most especially in the all important Heroic tier.

If 5E is going for modular, I could see them having a modualr system then I worry about balance. I'd hate to see An Essentials Wizard try to compete with a 3.5 Style Wizard.

Superfluous Crow

#51
Their approach to modularity doesn't sound too bad so far. If I understood it correctly, you just pick a level of choice granularity for your character based on your preferences and the game you are playing. I think they will all essentially be based on the same system (the "finest" granularity where the player has ultimate freedom and can mess around with the tiniest details of his character within the limits set up by the rules), but the players choosing simpler sheets will make fewer, more significant choices, e.g. instead of picking Cleave, longsword proficiency, a fighter level, weapon focus, skill levels in profession: fencing or whatever they just pick a bundle called e.g. Swordsman and through that they achieve regular and static bonusses.
That is, either you make a bunch of choices with little impact or a few choices with a big impact.

I do agree with Sparkle's point that system optionality is an issue and, to a degree, an evil. A system engineered to do everything often ends up being unnecessarily complex and strangely unevocative. Most players and DMs need some fixed points to get the creative juices running, just like we often need a map, a time period, or a premise before we can build a setting. We don't want Kitchen Sink game systems like we don't want Kitchen Sink game settings.

EDIT: based solely on the evidence from the above blog post I do not believe D&D is at risk of "overoptionalizing", though. Yet.
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sparkletwist

Quote from: Superfluous Crowbased solely on the evidence from the above blog post I do not believe D&D is at risk of "overoptionalizing", though.
Do you mean the blog post where Monte Cook says that not only are there a bunch of optional rules that can be inserted and removed at-will but different players in what is supposedly the same game can all be playing with different versions of the rules? I'm really not sure how you can say it isn't at risk of "overoptionalizing" after reading that.

Quote from: LordVreegWhat optional rules and modularity acccomplish is to allow the game to attract a new, more inexperienced gamer as well as be interesting for the grognards as well as speaking to the tinkerers as well as allowing the game to grow with the players as well as allowing the rules to apply to a larger amount of settings and gamestyles.  That is what it would accomplish, not supposedly.
Optional rules and modularity do not accomplish these objectives on their own. That's what they would accomplish if the designers can design the rules to appeal to both groups and if they can make the two (or three, or however many) levels of rules interlock in a functional way with mechanics that play right and if WotC can successfully market it. Based on the previous track record of D&D (and that of the RPG industry in general) those are some pretty big ifs. Until and unless whoever is behind 5e can meet those conditions, it's all still just a "supposedly." Remember the Segway? There was lots of talk about what it would accomplish, too. But the preconditions to its revolution were not met and it fell into the realm of "supposedly."

Going back to splatbooks, Phoenix's experience is closer to my own. There are lots of the things out there, and companies are eager to print more. I have no idea how they think they're going to support multiple levels of play in any satisfactory way in a splatbook full of crunch, especially when the levels of play are so widely divergent between a fast and loose 1e game and a super-crunchy 3e featfest.

Xeviat

If crow's idea is the way they're going, I could see it working. Rather than picking skills, a basic ruleset has pre-chosen skills for each class. Rather than picking feats, a player chooses a style and gets bonuses based on that. Or maybe feats could be separated into basic and advanced feats, with basic feats as always on bonuses that just change a number on your sheet and advanced feats being things you have to actively pay attention for.

And Beejazz, this is the blog post in question.
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Superfluous Crow

There is definitely a risk, but I think it will take more than what he is alluding to there.

And I don't think they are making more than one set of rules, is what I'm saying. You can just look at the rules at different "scales" if you will. Players will be most comfortable with different degrees of control, and 5e simply tries to acknowledge this. I think.

It's an ambitious goal, but not completely implausible. It might help renew D&D while keeping it true to its origins with the added bonus of adding something unique, something no other system can do.
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Steerpike

Quote from: XeviatI'm not sure how tiefling and dragonborn were WoWie, but perhaps that sentence is more compound than I'm reading it. Many settings, from Elder Scrolls to Everquest, have races outside of the traditional mammalian standard bearers.
Just wanted to respond to this earlier point.  Both of your examples - Everquest and Elder Scrolls - are computer games.  I think what Leetz was saying (correct me if I'm wrong, Leetz) wasn't that the dragonborn and tieflings were actual WoW ripoffs but that they felt like imports from the computer gaming world.  It seems to me that a lot of 4E has computer games in mind.  The problem is that that's totally and utterly backwards.  Computer roleplaying games should be trying to mimic the story, immersiveness, detail, and dynamism that come from pen & paper roleplaying, except with graphics and sound and stuff.  Instead, because computer games are successful, the trend is, absurdly, to make the pen & paper game imitate computer games.  More specifically, it seems to me that 4E imitated computer games in all the worst ways, in the ways that computer rgs tend to degenerate into mindless clickfests of character optimization and loot gathering, i.e. World of Warcraft.  4E's emphasis on anal-retentive levels of character balance, powers, tactics, etc all have a certain whiff of the MMORPG about them.

Lmns Crn

QuoteJust wanted to respond to this earlier point.  Both of your examples - Everquest and Elder Scrolls - are computer games.  I think what Leetz was saying (correct me if I'm wrong, Leetz) wasn't that the dragonborn and tieflings were actual WoW ripoffs but that they felt like imports from the computer gaming world.  It seems to me that a lot of 4E has computer games in mind.
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Steerpike

Sure, there's nothing intrinsically "computery" about tieflings and dragonborn, it's just that currently (one might say coincidentally) a lot of computer games in the MMORPG genre seem to have a thing for races along those lines.  My point is that I don't think WotC included dragonborn and tieflings for essentially creative reasons.  I think they included them to round out the pantheon of playable races to make it more closely resemble a present-day MMORPG's roster.  Does that make sense?  Not so much about essentializing races to a given medium so much as about imitating what's hot right now.

O Senhor Leetz

#59
Quote from: Steerpike
Sure, there's nothing intrinsically "computery" about tieflings and dragonborn, it's just that currently (one might say coincidentally) a lot of computer games in the MMORPG genre seem to have a thing for races along those lines.  My point is that I don't think WotC included dragonborn and tieflings for essentially creative reasons.  I think they included them to round out the pantheon of playable races to make it more closely resemble a present-day MMORPG's roster.  Does that make sense?  Not so much about essentializing races to a given medium so much as about imitating what's hot right now.

Agreed, it's nothing up front and blatant. Now that I have to write this it is hard to put into the words, but D&D, at least to me (I was around for the end of 2E but really cut my teeth on 3E. 4E never interested me at all for reasons I've said) has this certain feel to it, the Gygaxian-Tolkien vibe I suppose. Up to 4E, all the races seemed to form a perfect circle, nothing seemed strangely out of place, nothing was too exotic, everything was on the same wavelength. The same goes for classes too.*

To me 4E seemed like it wanted to make D&D "cool and edgy", and anytime anyone tries to make anything "cool and edgy", it will fail 100% of the time.

*I realize that there are about 2,000 races and classes for 3E alone through supplements and add-ons. But that's where options should come from. The core game should be generic and balanced, both in crunch and fluff.

EDIT: Back to the dragonborn and tiefling, I think the problem with them is that the core rules assume that your campaign will have both dragons (I know its in the name, but humor me) and demons and that they both got down with the humans of the setting. The other core races make no such assumptions at all about your campaign world besides the most basic crunch and fluff. I suppose the same argument could be put towards half-orcs as well, which were not, IIRC, a core part of 2E, but 3E.
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