D&D 5E [Poll] Do You Like The Direction D&DN Is Heading In?

[Derren]

Y'know, Derren, your point would likely be a whole lot more accessible if you stopped trying to speak for other people. As in, instead of talking about "many others", why not just talk about your own experiences.

Additionally, since I have seen elsewhere that you admit that you stopped looking at 4e pretty much after the core 3 were released, wouldn't that be a lot like judging 3e based entirely on the first printing 3e core 3? I mean, if you're going to talk about how 3e broadened its focus beyond things, you really should take some time to examine the stuff that's come out in the last two or three years for 4e before passing broad sweeping judgements.

Just a thought.

It would be so nice if you would stop living in your dream world where 4E is universally liked and played by everyone except me. 4E drove away a lot of players from D&D and my complains have been repeated by many of them. So I am pretty confident about my claim about "many others" having the same problem no matter how much you want to deny that.

And yes, even when only looking at the core books my point still stands. The feat system which allowed greater customization of characters, the expanded skill system and multiclassing were all available in 3E core as was the equalization of PCs and NPCs which allowed in my eyes a better interaction between them. Compared to the previous edition all this made 3E more open in my eyes as it allowed for more customized characters and supported more styles of games.
4E core contained the restrictive roles and linking of usable weapons to class, the simplification of skills with removing skill points and having everyone advance in all skills at the same rate excluding training coupled with the environment scaling to player skill so that everything was always equally difficult regardless of level. It also had the "Point of Light" setting which includes the "Not allowed to play evil" and "You only need what you kill" design (Yes, those things were later changed in 4.1 or 4.2). And skill challenges which were advertised as improvement were broken and not fixed until much later.

All this makes 4E more "focused" or in my words more limited as the rules and the marketing makes it perfectly clear that this edition wants to drag the game back into the dunegeon where D&D had its origin. Everything else was just stuffing which was supposed to be handled as quickly as possible to get the game back to the important parts. So I really fail to see how 4E is more open than 3E.

 

[Hussar]

Well, many is no more of an overreach than the attribution in the post he quoted. And I agree with his point. (IME, "many" on these boards doesn't require more than two).

Yes. If someone did that, it could be equally valid.

For example, if a 2e player reads 3e and concludes that skills and feats are too detail-heavy or don't "feel like D&D", reading more books of feats is not really necessary to verify that conclusion. By the same token, if one reads that the 4e classes are designed around combat roles and concludes that the focus has shifted towards combat, they don't need to read another dozen of those classes to confirm that.

But, that would only be true if you ignore the other sections of the rules which govern all sorts of out of combat stuff which actually demonstrate that the system isn't shifted towards combat any more than any other edition.

Of course, cherry picking quotes and taking things out of context are pretty much textbook methods for "proving" an edition is X or Y, so, I guess I shouldn't expect anything else.

Meh, I took the stab at it. I have neither the patience, nor the energy anymore for this. It's just not worth it.

 

[DM Howard]

And in what way did 4E "open up" D&D? I and many others do not have the perception that 4E made D&D broader. Rather the opposite, it narrowed to focus down again to dungeon crawling after 3E started to broaden its focus beyond that with its skill system and having the same rules for PCs and NPCs.

I was mainly referring to how 4E went out on a limb and tried to do things in a mechanically different way. I thought it was refreshing from a game design perspective and think it will serve as a point of reference just like the other editions.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Iosue]

But it is definitely Pretty Good So Far, IMO. They seem to be on the right track to fulfill the goals they set out for this edition. I don't know if it will end up replacing people's favorite editions or not, but I think a lot more people are going to buy it than the polling may suggest; and I think a lot more people are going to use it for there games than the polling may suggest; and I think with time, more and more people will be added to those that use it...older gamers and new gamers. I have hope that this edition could literally become THE edition of D&D. No more Editions after this. Maybe minor revisions, additions of optional modules, errata correction, etc., but really the final word on D&D...and the edition that truly is evergreen.

To be honest, I think WotC's goal here has been hugely misunderstood. The prevailing wisdom is that they are trying to create a D&D that will make everyone happy, and get a significant number of TSR-era folks, OSR folks, 3e folks, and 4e folks all playing 5e. I think that's true in as far as there's a large silent market out there of people who have no interest in edition wars, who may have preferred editions, but are not completely happy with them, and would like to mix and match different options. Certainly there's a market for the kind of game they are designing. 4e fans who want simple chargen. 3e fans who want simple DM tools. TSR fans who want more unified rules.

But I think WotC is also taking an entirely new approach: they are not competing with their old editions. It's not just the PDFs. They had PDFs up previously, basically as a sop to nostalgia. But when 3e came out they stopped supporting 2e. When 4e came out they stopped supporting 3e. I don't think that's the case here. I think 5e is being designed with modularity because the intent is to support every other edition through 5e. Adventures and settings published for 5e will deal with the modularity, which means they'll be written for easy conversion. For example, Mearls mentioned wanting to include a ToEE-like mega-adventure with the Basic D&D product. Such a product would be extremely easy for a B/X or 1e player to use. Certain non-core modules or splats could lend themselves to being used by earlier editions. Maybe you do a big, cinematic adventure path using the Standard Rules with the Tactical Battle System, with conversion notes for 3e and 4e.

This is a model that was untenable even 12 years ago. The costs of printing and distribution prohibited supporting something that might take away from sales of the primary product. Now, technology gives them a whole host of tools. Print-on-demand, PDFs, digital tools. They have all sorts of ways to deliver product to customers.

This is not just idle speculation or what I wish they would do. This is what I have gathered from a lot of what they've said. Talking about support for all editions in more than place. The desire to make 5e largely compatible with any previous adventure/module (I think that was in a Rodney Thompson Q&A). Much of what Mearls & Crawford talked about in this panel regarding adventures. The fact they're reprinting every edition of AD&D. I was entirely unsurprised when the PDFs were re-released because much of what they were seeing seemed to be leading up to that. I think there's a very significant reason Caves of Chaos and Isle of Dread are playtest adventures. It's not because they were pandering to grognards and old-schoolers. The goal is to design a kind of Gamic Philosopher's Stone.

 

[Ratskinner]

And in what way did 4E "open up" D&D? I and many others do not have the perception that 4E made D&D broader. Rather the opposite, it narrowed to focus down again to dungeon crawling after 3E started to broaden its focus beyond that with its skill system and having the same rules for PCs and NPCs.
As for the poll, it would be interesting to see how what 4E players think of 5E and what PF/3.X players think of it. Because WotC has to try quite hard if they want to recapture the latter group while the former one is more easy to hook.

Y'know, Derren, your point would likely be a whole lot more accessible if you stopped trying to speak for other people. As in, instead of talking about "many others", why not just talk about your own experiences.

Additionally, since I have seen elsewhere that you admit that you stopped looking at 4e pretty much after the core 3 were released, wouldn't that be a lot like judging 3e based entirely on the first printing 3e core 3? I mean, if you're going to talk about how 3e broadened its focus beyond things, you really should take some time to examine the stuff that's come out in the last two or three years for 4e before passing broad sweeping judgements.

Just a thought.

But, that would only be true if you ignore the other sections of the rules which govern all sorts of out of combat stuff which actually demonstrate that the system isn't shifted towards combat any more than any other edition.

Of course, cherry picking quotes and taking things out of context are pretty much textbook methods for "proving" an edition is X or Y, so, I guess I shouldn't expect anything else.

Meh, I took the stab at it. I have neither the patience, nor the energy anymore for this. It's just not worth it.

I don't know what history you may have with Derren here, Hussar, but this doesn't seem particularly fair here. Derren made no claims about the rules content, only what he and "many others" thought of the rules. "Many others" is a very vague term which doesn't even imply a majority. Making no claims about the rules, he certainly cannot have been "cherry-picking" them. Given that "its a good skirmish game, but not D&D" is one of, if not the single most common dismissive comment I've witnessed about 4e both in-person and online, I think he's quite likely justified in using those words.

While I thought initial 4e did a lot of things well...I'm pretty sure those "other sections of the rules" you're talking about here were not among them, especially if you are only considering the first 3 books. I mean, wasn't the original skill challenge system one of the very first things re-worked? Several recent conversations on this board have featured 4e proponents (including [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], IIRC) discussing the weakness of the 4e books/system as it was originally presented especially in all those OOC areas like skill challenges and scene-framing. To my eyes, one of those conversations seemed to conclude that 4e initially presented all that pretty badly, and it didn't even come close to fixing it until DMG2 or later.

I consider myself a pretty savvy gamer. FWIW, FATE is actually my preferred system, and I've tried a lot of other indie games. I totally did not see all the things you guys did in 4e. I was out of 4e about the time of PHB2. Now, maybe all the errata and later books fixed or updated all those problems, and maybe all those problems were only misperceptions due to 4e's horrible initial presentation/editing/advertising/whatever. However, if you can only know that by having stayed in the 4e in-group, you can't blame out-group members for not knowing, or even for not caring anymore. It may not be fair to the edition (whatever that means), but that's the way it is.

Now, that's not to say that we should quit talking about it. I've really enjoyed what folks like [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] have had to say about 4e. It's gone a long way to "re-hab" the edition in my mind. If I had a group of willing players, I might buy the monster vault and give it another go. (..might still pick MV and essentials, after they drop in price.)

That's how I see it anyway. I hope that helps. Play what you like.

 

[Derren]

I was mainly referring to how 4E went out on a limb and tried to do things in a mechanically different way. I thought it was refreshing from a game design perspective and think it will serve as a point of reference just like the other editions.

That WotC certainly did. And in my eyes the designers were so focused on "making things different" that they totally forgot to look if the change was for the better. Change for the change sake so to speak. But I do not think that the changes in 4E made the game more open.
Imo the problem was that WotC did miss that 3E gained a lot of players thanks to its broader focus and also OGL support where 3rd party companies did something "not quite" D&D like. And when they tried to bring D&D back to its roots many of those players rebelled as they didn't care for the roots of D&D and liked the extra stuff 3E added and which was now thrown out again in favor of more streamlined rules (or completely) so that they do not distract from the "real" D&D gameplay (namely tactical minitaure combat).

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION], [MENTION=2518]Derren[/MENTION] does have a posting history here of repeated characterisations of 4e as a combat-centred tactical skirmish game. It is very much in the same vein as Justin Alexander's "tactical skirmish linked by freeform roleplaying" in his notorious "dissociated mechanics" blog.

I tend to share [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s frustration with those posts, because each one is always back to the start, as if no one ever posted expaining how 4e is actually being played by those who play it and post about it on these boards. That frustration is exacerbated by Derren's tendency to talk as if his(?) conception of 4e actually captures how it is played, which means that those posts tend to be very dismissive of the games of posters who have replied to him actually expaining how they play the game.

As for presentation of 4e, it was obvious to me before 4e was even released (from prerelease blogs etc) that 4e was going to be a scene-focused version of D&D with the high degree of metagame necessary to run that sort of game. I agree that the core 3 books woudn't have made it easy for someone not familiar with that approach to work out how to do it; and there were at least two other serious issues two: a failure to clarify how objective DCs (used in combat resolution, and some skills associated with combat like Athletics to jump) related to metagamed DCs (which are crucial to skill challenges and p 42); and a failure to clarify how keywords are central to leveraging fictional positioning via powers (which comes out expressly only in the DMG discussion of damaging objects).

Given these flaws of presentation, I can see how some players not working out what was going on might collapse the game into a skirmish engine with skirmishes linked by freeform roleplaying. But given, for instance, that the PHB itself calls out the centrality of non-combat encounters to the game in multiple places, and talks about using attack-powers in those encounters, there is basically no justification for thinking that this is what the designers actually had in mind.

And once you put in the discussion of player-designed quests (in PHB and DMG), of wish lists for items (in DMG), of "say yes" (in DMG), etc, there is no justificaiton for thinking that the designers intended the game to be played as a GM-force tactical-skirmish railroad.

TL;DR: it's reasonable to not have worked out what all that non-combat, player-driven, indie-influenced stuff was for, given it didn't explain itself very well; but in my view it's not reasonable to therefore talk about the game's design and purposes as if none of that stuff was even there.

 

[Obryn]

4e. I was out of 4e about the time of PHB2. Now, maybe all the errata and later books fixed or updated all those problems, and maybe all those problems were only misperceptions due to 4e's horrible initial presentation/editing/advertising/whatever. However, if you can only know that by having stayed in the 4e in-group, you can't blame out-group members for not knowing, or even for not caring anymore. It may not be fair to the edition (whatever that means), but that's the way it is.

Nope, and I've said before and probably will have to again, because so many people want to put words in my mouth - I certainly don't blame people for jumping off the edition with some of the flaws in the first three books. It was understandable and ultimately regrettable - WotC has only themselves to blame for letting the game get published with such shallow and fixable errors. Those of us who stuck around, did so because we saw some things in it we loved, things that fixed what we didn't like about whatever game/edition we were playing before, and worked through the warts.

But here's a conundrum. If I point out that most of the biggest, most glaring errors have been fixed, people start accusing me of saying, "Oh, you'll love it now!" as someone's doing right now in another thread. That's not the point, though - moreso than any other edition, 4e had a vigorous (and at times downright exhausting) errata and update process, which fulfilled its ultimate goal - making it a better game. I don't know that the fixes would change anyone's mind who didn't like the game to start with. What I do know is that it's tiring to hear a game that basically doesn't exist anymore , post-errata, taken as representative of 4e as it currently stands. It's downright exhausting; I mean, I agree the initial skill challenge rules were a busted abomination. I agree that the way 4e monsters were set up was more or less an invitation to long, grindy battles. I agree that the game did a poor job of presentation, that some of the earliest classes and powers were busted, and that it was advertised poorly.

But I don't want to lose the simple fact that 4e now is a better game for the 4e players who've stuck around and it's rendered a lot of the criticisms from the early game (like skill challenge awfulness and monster grind) moot.

I said it before and I'll say it again - 4e right now is a vastly better, mathematically sounder, more complete game than it was when it was first released. This doesn't mean someone who disliked it before would miraculously like it now; it's just ridiculous when a few posters insist that the game more or less hasn't improved since their (imo, understandably) disastrous early experiences with the game.

-O

 

[pemerton]

Imo the problem was that WotC did miss that 3E gained a lot of players thanks to its broader focus

For someone like me 3E didn't have a broad focus at all. There are a range of games I could imagine trying to run despite 3E's mechanics, but there's not many games I could imagine trying where its mechanics would help - mostly because its skill system is gritty but its combat system gonzo and its magic system, at mid-to-high levels, over the top completely. For my purposes that's an incoherence that narrows, rather than broadens, the range of games the system can support.

which was now thrown out again in favor of more streamlined rules (or completely) so that they do not distract from the "real" D&D gameplay (namely tactical minitaure combat).

As I posted just above: perhaps you don't know how to run a game in which skill challenges, quests (including player-specified quests), rituals, open-ended skills, etc figure. But that's no excuse for just pretending that none of those rules are in the book.

Here's just one instance: 4e is the first version of D&D to have clear rules separating the acquisition of treasure from the defeat of enemies in combat and the looting of dungeons - because it is the only edition to have rules that link treasure acquisition to PC level progression at the metagame level, leaving it up to the GM and players to actually operationalise this within the fiction (as looting, divine gifts, mortal gifts, lucky discovery, or whatever else suits the game being played).