Morrus
Frazzled

... While I like 5E I (along with most of my group) are rather disappointed at the pace of rules production released in 5E. Mike Mearls mentioned that thereis a ton of new players and someone in this over twenty page thread made a statement saying that since 5E is doing so well it must mean that players in general don’t favor heavy rules customization. I take issue with that belief. I take issue with it because we really don’t fully know what Hasbro is counting as sales of D&D. Mike Mearls has said before that they don’t have to put out as many splat books because they can release games like Lords of Waterdeep, etcetera as income generators since the Hasbro merger. I am wondering if things like the numerous board games and additional niche products (Dice sets), etcetera are what is making a more significant portion D&D 5E sales now, whereas the RPG books like splat books were the main revenue generator in previous editions? I don’t know if there are any hard numbers on this (perhaps Morrus has some insight) but I would feel secure betting that besides the three core books (DMG, PHB, and MM) the biggest book sales of D&D 5E are probably the books that offer actual rules and option expansions like Xanathar’s Guide to Everything and Mordenkainen’s Guide, and also the SCAG (as the first book to really offer PC expansions despite how skimpy). I do know that there are a number of third party options but many people don’t use those because they like to use official products for a variety of reasons: 1) It creates consistency from campaign to campaign and between games 2) people may feel that official splat material has been better play tested, etc. What I think is that is that Mike Mearl’s statement is coming from two places. 1) His own personal philosophy and not that of ALL the designers because I know Jeremy Crawford had written much more crunch to the game that was not included and 2) it was pragmatic political statement. What I mean in regards to the latter is ...

I think you are misinterpreting the "fired" comment. He was just saying "Anybody who thinks it's your job to maintain an aura of eliteness by keeping out the 'unworthies'...please go away." He was also observing that there was a high correlation between that crowd and people who enjoy system complexity, probably because system complexity makes a nice barrier to entry for people who want to imagine they are part of an elite crowd. Unfortunately, a lot of people are interpreting it as, "People who like system complexity, please go find another game." EDIT: Overlapped with @Morrus. I'll refrain from further commentary on that aspect.

First of all, thanks Morrus for collecting this. I generally avoid Twitter because, frankly, it's full of a$$holes. That aside: this is an interesting way of looking at it, and underscores the difference in design philosophies between the WotC team and the Paizo team. There is a lot of room for both philosophies of design, and I don't think there is any reason for fans of one to be hostile to fans of the other, but those differences do matter. There are ways in which I like the prescriptive elements of 3.x era games (I like set skill difficulty lists, for example) but I tend to run by the seat of my pants and the effects of my beer, so a fast and loose and forgiving version like 5E really enables me running a game the way I like to.

Oh crap, I didn't know about this book at all! Pre-ordered! Thanks Morrus!

Thanks Morrus and Yunru for getting the posting problem sorted out, now I can take the barbarian guide off my bookmarks.

I have a theory, but I don't like the implications if it's right. It may be that it's simply too big of a post? EDIT: Nope, works fine in a new thread. Could you please sticky the new one and unsticky this one please Morrus?

Yeah I got nothing, need to wait for Morrus I guess.

Wonder why? Cuz Morrus wants it this way and doesn't need to explain to anyone why he changes things?

Even a sucker punch has a chance to be countered by someone with quick reflexes, and an attack action in D&D does not mean you strike once and that's it, but it is a time segment of around 6 seconds, during which you do all sorts of combat stuff but get #number of attacks chances to actually hit and do damage. Therefore, at first I did like Morrus thought, but the more I think about it, the normal initiative system is more balanced and fair.

Nice article and some interesting comments as well. Morrus, I have a fantasy coin generator too. It's based on the old Dragon Magazine article Coins in a Coffer. It was fun to make! https://www.findgamers.us/coins-in-a-coffer

Thanks to Morrus and BookBarbarian for the comments. I'll have to read the AiME books, and see how I feel... see whether I think low-magic can be done in 5e at all. High magic certainly does seem baked in by default, and that may be quite difficult to overcome for people who want "D&D". If it is as much about expectations as anything else, perhaps that is manageable. Otherwise, perhaps I'll look into TOR. I've learned from experience with Cypher System that getting a group into a whole new ruleset can be a lot more work than I may want to deal with, so I'd prefer 5e AiME if possible.

I just posted an in depth blog post on this topic: http://dicehaven.com/middle-earth/things-learned/ TLDR version: I love Adventures in Middle-earth but it does require a different approach to structuring game sessions and play. Very satisfying though! Thanks for this blog post! I picked up the Adventures in Middle-Earth Player's Guide and Loremaster book this weekend at Gencon on a whim, mostly because I want a strong low-magic setting and that seems impossible using the player's handbook (without disappointing nearly every player at the table). This seems to do that well, with a number of other neat systems. My friends loved the Journey system in The One Ring. (I do think he liked some of the mechanics in TOR better, but I'm definitely set on 5e for a few reasons.) Anyway, I greatly appreciate the post you linked. Morrus, did you ever get around to trying out Adventures in Middle Earth? If so, any comments on the experience?

Morrus

Morrus

Hi. I am only familiar with D&D as far back as AD&D 1st Edition and would very much like to learn about what the game was like before that - Races, Classes, Monsters, Cosmology, etc. Is there anything like a timeline listing when things appeared in the game? I seem to recall Morrus at one time had a pretty impressive timeline chart showing what was released when through all of D&D's history up to that time, but I'm not sure where he's hidden it or even if it's still on this site.

I've always felt that the Final Fantasy style of putting the PCs on one side and the monsters on the other, which was explicitly inspired by American football of all things, is a great reflection of the type of abstract combat that a lot of lazy DMs implement instead of actually tracking positions when using Theater of the Mind. That might well be, but I see the Final Fantasy screen as a division of the game table more than the battlefield. I really hope that FF players didn't see a 50-yard-line down the middle of their screens while fighting, despite the resemblance. Really? It's still more than the sorcerer gets. It's probably not fair, but I was comparing wizards to wizards. Maybe sorcerers don't need a lot of spells, but I was spoiled by D&D's wizards - limited only by the size of their spellbooks. For what it's worth, Morrus, I listened to the first half-hour of the podcast leading up to the end of this post, but still haven't heard about the Greatest D&D Video Game ever. Are there any plans to post podcast timestamps on the Podbean site?

Coding that information wouldn’t be too hard. What would be hard is all the data entry. It would take days of work to enter all the text of all the exploits etc. I haven’t even added the OLD, NOW, and 2000AD careers yet.Hey, Morrus, what does the php spreadsheet look like? I have a lot of the racial, career, and exploit data typed into an excel spreadsheet. Would you be able to use that easily?

Morrus Actually something just hit me. With your approach a person with six dice will have a higher chance of a critical failure than a person with five dice. Maybe a number of ones on two fewer dice than the total with an absolute minimum of two dice. This makes high dice pools almost impossible to critically fail but maybe that is okay for now. Your way isn't the end of the world. I like thinking about the probabiliities etc... Thanks again for the info.

Knightfall I don't see why not Morrus?

Hopefully. But you never know on the internet! It is a very knowing joke. The show was fairly progressive, and despite the absurdity of relationships between cartoon pigs and elephants, magic dogs and rainbow unicorns, etc...there was some "controversy": A small subset of conservative Americans complained to the network when a season 3 episode "What Was Missing" and related online short "Mathematical!" suggested lesbian subtext between a vampire-fiend and sentient candy. "Mathematical!" got pulled, an employee got fired, and denials were issued. The staff bided their time, and then in the season 10 series finale paired the vampire-fiend and sentient candy off with romantic dialogue and a kiss.

I can't quite parse what you're saying, but I really hope its not what I initially think it is. Judging by the half-dragon/half-donkey Shrek reference, he's joking.

This is pretty old news, and related to a comment by a designer about sexism in the community. Let’s not regurgitate that yet again; it’s in a enough threads. re. The FR — sure, valid discussion, if old; I think it’s time to accept that from a consolidation of multiple brands into one strong brand POV, FR is D&D now. There’s no FR logo any more, just a D&D logo. I mean, we’re getting at least two new settings with official support this year, so probably not so much. But the main main setting will remain FR, because it is vaguely traditional fantasy, covers a lot of bases, and has a high level of recognition. I wish they’d at least venture further away from the Sword Coast, but hey, I don’t need special rules to play in Rashemen. A Hathran subclass would be rad, but I don’t need it.

there are two kinds of argument being made here. The first is that both 3rd and 5th edition are heavy weight rule systems. The second is that they are of roughly even weight as such. Page count and rules density on a page is an indicator, but cannot be conclusive about weightiness in this sense. For instance, one could envision light weight rules, expressed verbosely. The two arguments can be sustained separately or together. In making this judgement, one has to think about where 5th edition D&D sits among contemporary RPGs. Then there is the question of, who for? RPGs that posters here might agree are light weight, could seem heavy weight to someone unfamiliar with the kind of manuals these boards address. I think the question of weightiness is rightly a relative one - is 5th edition D&D relatively heavier than Savage Worlds? - and is rightly measured from the perspective of the community of hobbyists who are familiar with them. Having DM'd 3rd edition and 5th edition, running weekly ses...

re. The FR — sure, valid discussion, if old; I think it’s time to accept that from a consolidation of multiple brands into one strong brand POV, FR is D&D now. There’s no FR logo any more, just a D&D logo. So you feel that Eberron was too different from standard DnD to remain the default setting or did 4E do too much harm to the setting? To me FR is both very generic and filled with way too much of two things. The first is just plain crap with all the very bad history used to explain and justify the various edition changes. The second is all the designer and writer Mary Sue's running around in the setting. Give me a 6E that has a whole new world I can discover and learn about instead of more books that rewrite the same old history of the Realms for the next edition of rules.

Don’t tell me. I’m having fun inventing this and don’t want to plagiarise. Okay, I won't. But you reminded me of the game with this idea. :lol: I just wish I remembered the name.

Just whiling away an hour or two before I appear on a podcast. So here's my initial idea, which I'm calling QUICKD6. Or maybe QUICK SIX. That sounds better. CORE MECHANICTo do anything you roll 3d6. On a 10 you succeed (unless it's opposed against another creature, in which case both roll 3d6 and the highest wins). Situational modifiers can add or remove a dice, as can awesome or poor tools. CHARACTER CREATIONYou have 3d6 (or a number of dice equal to your LEVEL if you are not LEVEL 3) to divide between a bunch of things you're good at. For example: 2d6 - fighting 1d6 - running These increase the 3d6 you normally roll. So when running, you roll 4d6 instead of 3d6. MAGIC (or PSIONICS), unlike other things, starts at 0d6. Because it's magic. It has a special rule: you can use it for anything (attack, lift a thing, etc.), but each time you use it it goes down by one die. When it reaches zero, you can't do any more magic. It restores after a full night's sleep. You also choose two things...

The ‘average person on the street’ would find all RPGs heavy. Compared to other RPGs, 5E is mid-light. And it’s waaaaay lighter than a lot of boardgames. Not sure what “in my experience” means. Are you saying you’ve surveyed average people in the street and asked them to rate the heaviness of 5E compared to other tabletop RPGs? That’s awfully industrious of you! :) Most of the people I know who play started with 5E: they tend to see it as complex and involved (though rewarding).

Love it!! The static damage, while simple, means that you can't take down a even a kobold in one hit, and the dragon deals as much damage as anyone else. What if we said that the damage you cause is equal to the number of 6's you rolled, if you win the combat roll? Yes, this means that sometimes no one would take any damage, and sometimes the loser might take a lot. Two solutions spring to mind: 1) You do one damage for every 10 or part thereof that the attack rolls beats the defense roll by. (Attack - defense)/2 round up. A bit of math's, but probably not too hard for mast gamers. I chose 10 because that's the "normal" DC, a more suitable number may come from some proper math's. 2) An attacker can split their dice pool to attack one opponent multiple times or multiple creatures one or more times each. eg. A dragon with 10d6 fighting can make; two attacks of 3d6 each at kolbold 1 and one attack of 4d6 at kobold 2. I'm trying to decide whether to have a list of skills or an open-ended k...

5E is a light-mid system. Indeed, Mearls describes it above as a storytelling system (which I think in general terminology implies it’s a bit lighter than it is). 3.x/Pathfinder is a mid-heavy system, Hero is a heavy system. Of all the things 5E is, it’s not a heavy system. That’s why it’s so popular with streamers. I’ve spoken to loads of streamers who switched from Pathfinder to 5E because it’s a light system, which is much easier to run for a show. On the relative scale to other editions of D&D, it is pretty middling in complexity. To the average personon the street, even a board game literate one, it is going to seem rather heavy in my experience.

Yup. Dragon 6d6 vs Bob's 3d6. Maybe next level, Bob decides to put another d6 in, say, bravery. Or resolve. Or something similar. As for what happens -- not too sure yet. I think there needs to be a single "condition" which can be described in different ways. -1d6 is a good idea (it could be fear, or a curse, or an injury, or whatever). I'm thinking something along the lines of D&D's advantage/disadvantage, but rolling two dice pools is too cumbersome. One idea is advantage lets you roll d8s while disadvantage means you roll d4s. That could be fun. Gotcha. I like the simplicity. As for the attributes, you planning on having an existing list, or leaving it up to the players and then applying them when they seem relevant? I like the idea of a simpler advantage/disadvantage type situation, and the change in dice type is cool, but does have the drawback of requiring more dice than d6es.

3.5 and 4 were very much driven by an anxiety about controlling the experience of the game, leaving as little as possible to chance. They aimed for consistency of play from campaign to campaign, and table to table. The fear was that an obnoxious player or DM would ruin the game, and that would drive people away from it. The thinking was that if we made things as procedural as possible, people would just follow the rules and have fun regardless of who they played with. The downside to this approach is that the rules became comprehensive to a fault. The game’s rules bloated, as they sought to resolve many if not all questions that arise in play with the game text. At the same time, 3.5 and 4 were driven by the idea that D&D players wanted as many character options as possible, presented in a modular framework meant to encourage the search for combinations that yielded characters who broke the power curve. These two aims play together in an extremely terrible way, at least from a design persp...

Guys, I'd like to make it clear that it's perfectly fine for people to express their wishes for the direction of D&D, even if those wishes are unlikely to be fulfilled. Let's not tell people it's wrong to do that, eh? I'm guessing (hoping?) that just happened to come right after my post, and was not directed at my post. But in case my intent was misunderstood, I was only responding to the "not welcome at the table" comment, and not trying to delegitimize the desires themselves. I find the discussion/debate around this topic interesting. It's when it veers into "WotC obviously hates us" territory that I roll my eyes. For the record, I also get my buttons pushed by tons of options and character complexity. I think all of us who are somewhere on the "spectrum" get a high from it. It's fun to just make characters. However, I find I tend to make more characters for the option-rich games, but I actually play the option-light games.

In terms of players, we focus much more on narrative and identity, rather than specific, mechanical advantages. Who you are is more important than what you do, This is a very rose colored way he has at looking at his own design, since the rules he has written is almost the opposite of what he claims his goals are. Just for example, take the assassin. In 1e it was a very themey character class requiring a lot of creativity from the DM where the player had to join a guild and eventually couldn't rise in level unless he killed an assassin of higher level. There was a procedure for the assassin to decide who he was going to kill, how he was going to kill them, and whether it was going to be a fast kill, slow death, instant poison or poison over many doses. All the player had to do was explain clearly how he was going to get into a position to attempt the murder. Theoretically the DM would then come back with an adventure where this might play out. There was a separate XP chart for the ...

I’m inclined to agree. For me, options speak to replayability. Dude, how many different D&D characters do you play in a year? Don't include one-shots at cons, because those don't really give you a full experience of playing a character. How many campaign characters do you play in a year? The 5e PHB has a full dozen character classes. Even if we leave out the various choices within each class, you get a dozen distinct campaign characters out of that. If a campaign runs something around a year... we have a decade of play there? But 5e is said to not have enough options? So, whatever your own proclivities, I don't see "replayablity" as the broad issue. I think is it far simpler. My wife crochets. A lot. She has a spinning wheel, and fiber to spin. She's got a large stash of yarn she's bought and yarn she's made, a fistful or two of hooks, and a library of patterns. Because when you are *making* a thing, you need options to make the thing you want, the way you want it - fo...

The topic of bloat (and by extension, release pace) is part of what Mearls was getting at. I was just sharing my personal experience that the pace of book releases has outstripped my responsible spending for the first time in 5e. The problem is I really really really want to buy $175 worth of D&D modules, sourcebooks, and art books. :( So its a good problem, like having too much starting pitching. I’m inclined to agree. For me, options speak to replayability. I veer more towards the 5E minimalism than PF crunchiness, but this strikes a chord with me. My daughters and I started playing Catan a few months ago; we've probably played half a dozen times, or slightly more. While we still very much enjoy it and there are subtle aspects still to be explored, I can see how we'll soon be ready for an expansion set to diversify play experience. So while I love the simplicity of 5E, I really don't see why they can't have optional "expansion sets" like Catan for those who want a crunchier, or at ...

...That tweet is a nicer way of saying: If you make a game for &$&%*(@, be ready, willing, and able to deal with &$&%*(@. It’s also why D&D got out of the business of trying to “fix” obnoxious people... ...They aimed for consistency of play from campaign to campaign, and table to table. The fear was that an obnoxious player or DM would ruin the game, and that would drive people away from it. The thinking was that if we made things as procedural as possible, people would just follow the rules and have fun regardless of who they played with... ...With 5th, we assumed that the DM was there to have a good time, put on an engaging performance, and keep the group interested, excited, and happy. It’s a huge change, because we no longer expect you to turn to the book for an answer. We expect the DM to do that... ...In terms of players, we focus much more on narrative and identity, rather than specific, mechanical advantages. Who you are is more important than what you do, to the point that your wh...

True words. I think it’s important to look at your DMing style, too, and see what kind of play style you are encouraging. I would say that controlling the experience of the game goes back even further to 1e. If you look at all the “punishment” items, and the idea of capricious and omnipresent death, I think there was very much a backbone of “having to keep the PCs in line” there, too. Just not necessarily through an overabundance of rules. As for not being able to fix obnoxious people, yeah. Either you put up with them for various reasons, or you let them go. D&D is big enough that there’s no reason to have a player just to have another PC at the table. It’s been hard for me, unlearning the old ways of needing every player you could find, regardless of fit for the table or quality. But I am learning. [hq]When designing a game, consider the personality traits and behaviors the game encourages in its player. Then ask yourself if you want to make a game for a community that embraces what yo...

At the link in the post you just quoted. ;)Sorry spoke too soon, just buying it off of Amazon

You can now pre-order this gorgeous-looking 448-page D&D art book. It contains art from the entire history of Dungeons & Dragons, dating back 40 years, and includes over 700 art pieces, from sketches and concepts through to finished art. Pre-ordering gets you a bonus art print. 101534 The above is by Keith Parkinson, and is from the 1985 Dragonlance Calendar. I think my favourite Dragonlance piece has to be the same artist's Lord Soth's Charge (which I hope is in the book!) There are two editions -- the regular edition and the special edition. The book was written by Michael Witwer, Sam Witwer, Kyle Newman, and Jon Peterson, and hits store shelves on October 23rd. 101536101537 "A deluxe, special edition with slipcase and ephemera of the illustrated guide to the history and evolution of the beloved role-playing game told through the paintings, sketches, and illustrations behind its creation, growth, and continued popularity. Dungeons and Dragons is the most iconic and pervasive gaming...