10-18-2011 Legends and Lore - Preserving the Past

Monte is discussing making sure to keep the old stuff in new games, particularly monsters but I am one for limiting the number of monsters that are core and preserving others primarily in setting books where they fit better.

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Preserving the Past)

In a recent thread by steeldragons, this was discussed at great length -

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/310279-beginners-monster-list.html

But let's have at it again in light of the new L&L article.

Hmm. A couple things struck me.

Monte Cook said:

In my new role at Wizards of the Coast, I am compelled to look over the entire run of the game, not just the most recent products. My job has little to do with quibbles over this edition or that, and everything to do with the big picture view of the game. That means almost 40 years of history—rules, classes, spells, adventures, and, of course, monsters.

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This makes me think that he's definitely working on 5e. I mean, if he was on board for 4e, wouldn't he be looking at the more recent products? No, ruminations about "preserving the past" and him looking not just at "the latest products" but the entire history... yes, that definitely strikes me as the strongest sign yet that he's looking to help craft a new edition. I know there's speculation, but this pushes it to about 90% for me.

Monte Cook said:

If preserving someone's favorite means having to do a little work to give a creature a niche or a slightly different appearance or mechanical take, well, that's a creative challenge.

And this isn't true of just monsters, of course. Spells and magic items, for example, are important legacies of the past. This is perhaps also true of something like feats, but I believe it's more relevant to monsters, races, spells, and items, because these things all carry story weight as well as mechanical weight.

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And this makes me think that +X weapons are sticking around. They've certainly got a ton of history with the game, and if "preserving the past" is important to his thought process, I don't see them disappearing. He might take it as a "creative challenge" to tweak them in some way -maybe they only deal damage, but don't add to attack bonus. I don't know. But I do think it's a sign that they'll stick around.

Overall, pretty interesting. I think old alignments will also make a resurgence, though maybe not as mechanically important as in the past (also, adding "unaligned" into the mix). I definitely think that this article spoke a lot to one of his major design goals, and that's enlightening and interesting.

Hopefully we can get more articles like this, or some new mechanical ideas. With these articles, design goals are more interesting than mechanics, and mechanics are more interesting than "reflections" ("what's D&D about?"). But, that's just me. As always, play what you like

History is important. If we don't know what the game was like 10, 20, or 30 years ago, we're refusing to learn from any of those years of design and play, and that's just short sighted. Plus, ignoring history is just going to cause us to trip over what we've already done

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This, I liked.

Understanding, the previous drivers on game evolution is a good idea. However, separating this from past/present market and cultural forces is possibly a different thing.

Suumary: How WoTC painted itself into this corner?

I am still sitting at 100% Mr Cook is working on 5e.

Based on this I think we could expect to see a slimmed down version for easier consumption by new players with area of growth as players experience and needs grow. Just my take on it.

Personally, I would like to see an article by Mr Cook on "How they plan to reach players who didn't switch to 4e". Not to say he will have an end all be all answer, just his perspective since as I said above I am 100% convinced he is working on 5e.

Edit
I wonder if we can find articles or comments Mr Cook gave regarding the process he went through for 3e, what steps he took? Something tells me him or someone else stated they did the same exact thing, looking over the history of the game.

I'm quite thrilled with the latest column, since I found the attitude and reasoning about why some monsters should be excluded back in the beginning of 4e to be distasteful.

Wow, this was a very encouraging article. I sure do like the cut of Monte's jib here.

One thing that I've always been HUGE on is- not backward-compatibility so much as continuity. I've run the same campaign world since the 80s, barring the end of the world and creation of a new one by an escapee (so it's really two 'chained' worlds), and things that change or rewrite the game's history annoy the heck out of me.

Though I might never use it, there should be room in 4e (or 5e, or 3e, or whatever) for thouls and tiraphegs and wolfspiders and duckbunnies. After all, someone somewhere has them as a major feature of his or her campaign.

I hate to see old adventures invalidated because of new-edition assumptions.

"It's important, I think, to acknowledge and preserve the game's roots. Even as we create new material for the latest product, we should be looking backward to see if there are lessons to be remembered or bits of the past to bring forward"

Kind of covers it there. If 5e is at the stage of adding and adapting the new that's to sit alongside the old they're still some distance from a playtested product.

JamesonCourage said:

Hmm. A couple things struck me.

This makes me think that he's definitely working on 5e. I mean, if he was on board for 4e, wouldn't he be looking at the more recent products? No, ruminations about "preserving the past" and him looking not just at "the latest products" but the entire history... yes, that definitely strikes me as the strongest sign yet that he's looking to help craft a new edition. I know there's speculation, but this pushes it to about 90% for me.

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In general I agree. But let me throw out one more possibility that I think isn't getting much consideration among the speculators:

Assume for a moment that the plan is not to come out with a new edition, but it's instead to revive all old editions, and support them all.

So for example all past editions (OD&D, BECMI, AD&D, 2e, 3e, 4e) would receive full support in DDI. All editions would see republication of their old books (perhaps in PDF or similar digital format), and all editions would see new products for their edition. Perhaps there will even be products intended for all editions at once, with story content applicable to all and crunch for each individual game version.

Now reconsider what Monte wrote in that context. It would fit, wouldn't it?

Mistwell said:

Now reconsider what Monte wrote in that context. It would fit, wouldn't it?

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Nah, it does not fit. Releasing the old stuff requires no thinking of the game's history, at least how Monte sounds in this article.

If they were thinking about what specific products to revive, I think the tone and focus would be a lot different.

This does look like, at the lest, a major reshift in 4E.

Modrons! Modrons! Modrons! Give me back Modrons!

Monsters are my favorite part of D&D. I expect they can move back to more fluff in monster books, 4E MM1 was horrible... from MM2 things were sligthly better.

Also hoping that some monster fluff which was improved on 4E (like fomorians) survive.