The One Hour D&D Game

TarionzCousin · Mar 20, 2012

Bingo, man. Bingo. Seven Minute Abs!

GM Dave · Mar 20, 2012

Did people notice the 'Race' 'Class' combos?

This is standard thinking now but for 1981 rules the dwarf would not need to be the fighter or the halfling be the thief. They were closely associated with these roles but they were separate race and classes.

This would show some of the modeling that has occurred with the generation rules to make sure 1st level is a selection of a race separate from class.

Lanefan · Mar 20, 2012

A "budget" for how much XP an adventure will be worth is, to me, way too much pre-planning. XP should only come from what the characters actually do, both in terms of challenges defeated (or avoided, in some cases) and missions accomplished...and going in to any adventure - unless it's an absolute railroad - there is no way of knowing what the characters will do with it, whether they'll explore everything or not, and so on.

As for the one-hour game, while it sounds nice in principle I hope this is all merely the designers' way of saying "the game will play faster", as I want the game to be able to support multi-year campaigns and long adventures within same. In other words, if it plays faster I can get 80 adventures into a 10-year campaign instead of 60.

Lan-"4 years and counting on the current one"-efan

Kynn · Mar 20, 2012

I must be weird or something, because I don't see one-hour adventures as desirable in any way.

Caster · Mar 20, 2012

Kynn said:
I must be weird or something, because I don't see one-hour adventures as desirable in any way.

I really just think this is a wording issue - and I agree that they can come up with a better term for what they are hoping to achieve. But, as I understand it, what they mean by 'Adventure' is NOT a complete campaign or even, say, a complete old-school 'module' but a building block, a design concept, that includes the Three Pillars (Combats, Exploration, and (NPC) Interaction.)

So, if they get the ruleset tweaked right, it should be possible to complete a single Adventure Block in about an hour (grain of salt there). However, if you should like it to play slower for you and your group then that is fine also.

It's a design goal and a guideline but not the law as it were.

A single gaming session may consist of players running through two, three, or even four or five Adventure Blocks. Each built around consistent XP maximums available to be earned by the PC's and used as a (measurement of) difficulty level for the DM in the construction phase.

The underlying idea seeming to be whereas, with 4e, a single gaming session may have only consisted of one or two combat Encounters exclusively, a DNDN session will be built around including a little bit of everything, making for a more varied and fun gaming experience.

I'm a bit of a loss as to nomenclature at the moment. 'Encounter' primarily seems to be equated with combat as does 'Delve' conjure up Dungeon Crawling. 'Adventure' seems to be to all-encompasing as evidenced by the confusion in this thread.

I can well imagine blocking out the outline of a story with adventure hooks, making a map and seeding it with Adventure Modules chock full of Three Pillars goodness and letting the PC's roam the map freeform advancing from levels 1 to 5 in the process.

Will this be a 5e possibility? Here's hoping.

Dave

Incenjucar · Mar 20, 2012

It's basically just superfast D&D encounters. There was, what, two actual encounters and some minor skill challenges? You could probably do that in 4E with the right group and the right setup.

Caster · Mar 20, 2012

Incenjucar said:
It's basically just superfast D&D encounters. There was, what, two actual encounters and some minor skill challenges? You could probably do that in 4E with the right group and the right setup.

Actually, I don't think that is an accurate assessment at all. 4e is ENTIRELY designed and built around the conceit that the (primarily combat) Encounter is the single most important element of the game. EVERYTHING else in the rules from character design to gameplay and adventure/campaign construction follows from that basic premise.

Now imagine what the rules (yes, all of them) of 5e will have to look like to support the idea that the Three Pillars collectively - as conceptualized by the One-Hour Adventure - is the single most important element in the game.

I think they will look like something that is very different from what currently makes up the ruleset for 4e.

If you have time, go back and re-read all the blogs and columns regarding 5e mechanics that we've seen so far with the new knowledge of what the Design Team's Mission Statement seems to be (i.e. the One-Hour Adventure premise.) It was a bit of an eye-opener for me as the logic behind things that confused me before clicked into place.

Dave

Incenjucar · Mar 20, 2012

I've read all the blogs and entries.

The 1-hour thing just makes it sound like they plan to gloss over everything like it's a checklist rather than get deep into it.

4E's rules are mostly about encounters - scenes, really. Like a movie. Or a novel. Or life. 5E seems to be about what amounts to a cliff notes or soundbite method.

Mattachine · Mar 20, 2012

I didn't take away that they want the "1 hour" adventure as the design space, but the "short adventure". They had a 1 hour adventure using a simple rules set with a well experienced and focused group.