D&D 5E D&D Next Design Goals (Article)

[pemerton]

How much did you play?

<snip>

I just wonder how much B/X you've played (I always lump in Basic and Expert, sorry). And, I wonder how your thoughts on it would change over the course of say 10, 20, 30 sessions.

A couple of years. I was young, but serious. But didn't play with anyone who had learned other than from the books.

(Since then, I've played a handful of times in a one-shottish, light-hearted way.)

I read quite a bit of Lewis Pulsipher (in White Dwarf) at the time, and tried to emulate that approach in my GMing - it's hardcore Gygaxian dungeoneering (if you don't know Pulsipher, think Gygax's discussion of "skilled play" in his PHB and DMG). But that never worked for me. I eventually found my stride as a GM when Oriental Adventures came out - it presented a very different approach to what the game could be about. It put heroics, myth and history more at the centre of things.

How do you resolve the chandelier in say, 4E? An Acrobatics or Athletics check right? But... You're setting the DC too right? How do you arrive at that DC? Is it an easy task? A hard task?

In my opinion, the DM is always making these judgments. Adding in a "roll" doesn't remove those judgments.

Agreed. I think it can shape the parameters for judgement, though. Whether that's worthwhile is (to some extent, at least) a matter of taste, I think.

I'm not sure it's all taste, though. One thing the standardised DCs, damage etc do in 4e is set up a type of "reliable floor" that can give players the confidence to have their PCs do stuff without fear of being hosed. They don't remove the need for GM judgement, but they channel or constrain it's mechanical expression in certain ways.

I think 4E minimizes the importance of fictional positioning. This is why a lot of people complain it feels like a board game. It's not entirely irrelevant, but it's certainly trumped by mechanics.

<snip>

When I played 4E, I tried my damnedest to bring it to a fiction-first level. The problem was, I had to fight the system to do it.

Can it be done? Sure. But, 4E doesn't encourage, or lend itself well to it.

<snip>

Sure, we can have our moments of creativity in 4E. But, that's the exception, not the rule. For the most part, we're looking at our power list and thinking, "Hmmm. Which power would be best here...?"

This is very different from my experience of 4e. I find that 4e makes the fiction I care about matter - how the group is working together, where they are in relation to one another, dramatic entrances or retreats, etc - while making the fictional minutiae I don't care about - is the fighter attacking high or low?, is the ranger aiming for the head or the chest, etc - take care of itself. For me, powers abstract away just the right amount of the fiction, while making salient just the right part of the fiction, for my tastes.

There are three things I like about skill challenges. (And in this respect I don't think they add anything new to RPG design. I see them as a version of the generic concept of extended conflict resolution.)

(1) They establish a certain type of pacing - the scene can't resolve until either N successes or 3 failures. That works for me. It produces more interesting and unexpected happenings.

(2) By using standard DCs, they give the players a type of confidence to engage the mechanics without worrying about their PCs being hosed. They establish a type of safety net for players engaging the situation.

(3) They establish finality in scene resolution. This helps especially in social situations, I find - the players don't have to worry, for example, that they will be hosed by NPCs suddenly changing their minds from what was earlier agreed.

I don't think 4E does the "engage the fiction to open up mechanical effects" well though. I think it does the opposite: engage the mechanics so we can engage the fiction. "I use mechanics." Ok, we apply fiction after the fact.

I'm thinking of stuff as simple as "spill some oil on the ground to enhance my forced movement effects" or "open up my flask of elemental fire to enable me to use an Arcana check to do something funky with it".

I really can't stand the "Old School Primer" honestly. It has some tidbits of goodness in there, but some of it is just B.S.

I found the "rule of the Ming vase" stuff helpful. It helped me run a combat in a library in my 4e game.

In another thread, we're talking about old school saving throws. We're arguing about something else in terms of the saves, but in relation to this conversation, they do that mechanics-first thing and I hate it! There's a fireball! Roll a save vs. blast! "15!" Sweet! I jump out of the way.

Gygax endorses this approach in his DMG. Which is not to say that he's right. But every time I want to defend the place of "fortune in the middle" mechanics in D&D, I point out that Gygax was doing it back in the day!

I want to see, "I do something." Kick in mechanics.

"A fireball is hurtling at you! What do you do?" "I leap behind the corner of the wall!" Ok, kick in mechanics for that. Or, "I throw up my shield and try to cling behind it as closely as possible." Ok, kick in mechanics for that.

This is too focused on minutiae for me. I like combat in my games, but not at this level of detailed description. Apart from anything else, as a GM I don't know enough about it to adjudicate it.

Anyways, sorry for the rant.

Absolutely no need to apologise (at least as far as I'm concerned). I'd give you some more XP if I could.

 

[FireLance]

Now if we can agree that balance doesn't actually bring any fun itself, but it more like a tool to prevent people from getting pissed off and disengaging, we're really in business.

It's an easy enough statement to agree with on the surface, but it goes a bit deeper than that.

Suppose you worked at a job where you were discriminated against, but for various reasons, you stuck at it. Then, the company restructured and instituted new practices that treated all the employees fairly. You would be happy simply because you are now treated fairly.

That said, balance remains important. It is my view that they who can give up essential balance to obtain a little temporary fun, deserve neither balance nor fun.

 

[Lanefan]

I read quite a bit of Lewis Pulsipher (in White Dwarf) at the time, and tried to emulate that approach in my GMing - it's hardcore Gygaxian dungeoneering (if you don't know Pulsipher, think Gygax's discussion of "skilled play" in his PHB and DMG). But that never worked for me.

"Hardcore Gygaxian dungeoneering" has its place, but if it's all the game ever consists of it loses its appeal after a while. Personally, I prefer to take that as a base and then layer on a living breathing world beyond the dungeon for the characters to interact with (or not, as they will); and then add a thick slab of whimsy and-or humour to the whole thing.

I eventually found my stride as a GM when Oriental Adventures came out - it presented a very different approach to what the game could be about. It put heroics, myth and history more at the centre of things.

I've come to appreciate game-world history's importance in world design more and more as time has gone on. Myth grows out of that, along with what the various pantheons give.

I don't care much about heroics - if the players want to play heroes, fine. If they want to play ordinary schlubs out to get rich quick, fine. If they want to play conniving double-crossing backstabbers, fine. Usually, any given party ends up as a mix of all these and more, leading to some wonderful arguments.

I'm not sure it's all taste, though. One thing the standardised DCs, damage etc do in 4e is set up a type of "reliable floor" that can give players the confidence to have their PCs do stuff without fear of being hosed.

My worry is that if this philosophy is taken too far the game just seems, well, pre-packaged somehow. There always has to be a chance of screwing up. I mean, you might make that jump to the chandelier 19 times out of 20, but the 20th time the chandelier swings left when you expected right, pokes you in the eye for 3 points damage, and you crash painfully to the floor. Your opponents then beat the tar out of you.

There are three things I like about skill challenges. [...]

(2) By using standard DCs, they give the players a type of confidence to engage the mechanics without worrying about their PCs being hosed. They establish a type of safety net for players engaging the situation.

See, there it is again - the safety net. Why does there have to be a safety net? More to the point, why do the players need to know there's a safety net? Surely you're not telling them the DC they have to beat.

(3) They establish finality in scene resolution. This helps especially in social situations, I find - the players don't have to worry, for example, that they will be hosed by NPCs suddenly changing their minds from what was earlier agreed.

Doesn't that rip the guts out of playing a nefarious double-crossing villain, if the PCs can trust her just because of what their dice did? On a different tack, how does this allow for behind-the-scenes plot development? Example: party uses a skill challenge in a social setting to get the local Baron to agree to allow them to adventure in his realm; but while they are in the field the Baron has second thoughts (or another adventuring group make him a more profitable offer), thus when the PCs come back from their adventure they are arrested and thrown in jail by the same Baron.

The Baron has changed his mind from what was earlier agreed. From what you say above this cannot happen, which makes no sense.

Lan-"I roll a 19 to slash the safety net to ribbons - do I hit?"-efan

 

[Incenjucar]

Oooh, 4e players agreeing that DM fiat is not necessarily bad, but a tool that can be used wisely and unwisely. That's cool.

Now if we can agree that balance doesn't actually bring any fun itself, but it more like a tool to prevent people from getting pissed off and disengaging, we're really in business.

The point of balance is fun. A lack of balance significantly increases the possibility of someone not having fun, for a variety of reasons, which increases the chance of nobody having fun (say, if the DM can't design a fair encounter because of it).

Balance isn't sought because of OCD.

 

[AntiStateQuixote]

I want to hear the actual play reports of these all-Druid, all-Wizard adventuring parties.

I played and DM'd 3.x from release until 4e came out.

We ran many, many games. Very few got past 12th level or so, and most didn't make it past 5th level or so.

I can remember exactly one game that got to 16th level and it totally ended anyone's willingness to run high level D&D. In that game I played a dwarf gish (2 levels of fighter; the rest were wizard-type caster levels). Another guy played a druid. We were super optimized. Either my character OR the druid could easily outshine all of the other three PCs in combat in almost any circumstances.

Other characters included a rogue, a ranger, and a ??? Hm, I can't recall. Yes, the caster characters were more optimized than the others, but I don't see how it would have mattered much. My wife played the rogue. I tried to help her. There was no saving that character from being a background characeter in fights and a backup trapfinder when spells ran out.

 

[AntiStateQuixote]

So what specifically are the At-Will powers everyone can use called?

Aid another, melee basic attack, ranged basic attack, bull rush, charge, coup de grace, crawl, escape, grab, run, shift, total defense, walk . . . probably others.

 

[Imaro]

Aid another, melee basic attack, ranged basic attack, bull rush, charge, coup de grace, crawl, escape, grab, run, shift, total defense, walk . . . probably others.

Yous should probably re-read the entire conversation before jumping in at the end to answer... just sayin.

 

[pemerton]

My worry is that if this philosophy is taken too far the game just seems, well, pre-packaged somehow. There always has to be a chance of screwing up.

<snip>

See, there it is again - the safety net. Why does there have to be a safety net? More to the point, why do the players need to know there's a safety net? Surely you're not telling them the DC they have to beat.

Sometimes DCs are public, sometimes not, depending on mood, whim, whether I think it will up the tension or reduce the tension, etc.

As to the rationale for a safety net - it's a bit like hit points in combat. In general, I find 4e's hit point system fosters a type of heroic approach to combat that is different from Rolemaster's wound system, which supports ambushes, scry-buff-teleport, etc.

The "safety net" from scaled DCs and damage expressions plays a comparable role for other
areas of the game.

I'm not saying it's the only way to achieve this. But it's one way.

Doesn't that rip the guts out of playing a nefarious double-crossing villain, if the PCs can trust her just because of what their dice did? On a different tack, how does this allow for behind-the-scenes plot development? Example: party uses a skill challenge in a social setting to get the local Baron to agree to allow them to adventure in his realm; but while they are in the field the Baron has second thoughts (or another adventuring group make him a more profitable offer), thus when the PCs come back from their adventure they are arrested and thrown in jail by the same Baron.

The Baron has changed his mind from what was earlier agreed. From what you say above this cannot happen, which makes no sense.

Well, if the Baron changes his mind, it follows that the PCs didn't succeed in getting the Baron to agree. Maybe they thought they did, though, because the players failed an Insight check in the course of the skill challenge.

As for trusting more generally, it depends on what comes out of the challenge. I can think of three significant examples from my own game.

(1) The PCs were in the process of raiding a hobgoblin fortress. They took temporary refuge in a room, where they found some duergar also taking refuge, waiting for the fighting to calm down. Negotations ensued. It turned out that the duergar had bought from the hobgolbins the slaves the PCs were there to rescue. The slaves were already on their way to the duergar hold; the two duergar still there were just finalising the financial side of the deal. The outcome of the skill challenge was that the PCs (who didn't feel up to assaulting a duergar hold) agreed to ransom the slaves back, the settlement to take place in a month's time in a neutral city.

When, in due course, the settlement date arrived, the PCs turned up to comply. And I had the duergard comply also. The players got the benefit of their skill challenge success.

(2) The PCs were dining at court where there enemy was "hiding in plain sight" (the nobility didn't know that the court astrologer was also the evil leader of the hobgoblin army), and the upshot of their successful challenge was that they goaded him into attacking them in a way that made it clear to the court that he was the villain, not them. In a subsequent session, one of the players gently reminded me of this outcome as I was in the process of narrating some subsequent free roleplaying with one of the nobles.

(3) The PCs were interrogating a prisoner. The "paladin" (actually a fighter/cleric of Moradin) had been sent upstairs to guard against intruders while the sorcerer, wizard and (actual) paladin (of the Raven Queen) interrogated the priestess of Torog. She extracted a promise from the interrogating PCs that they would make sure that the fighter/cleric insist on the Baron sparing her life - noting that the Baron couldn't refuse such a request from him, given that his status and his town's survival were resting upon that PC's support. They promised, intending to subsequently kill her themselves, and she spilled the beans. Then the player of the fighter/cleric, getting bored, had his PC come back downstairs into the action - at which point she reiterated that the promise had been made. And the player of the fighter/cleric decided that his PC was obliged to keep the promise that had been made in his name, even though he hated it. As did all the other PCs.

This isn't an example of me as GM being bound by a skill challenge. Rather, it shows what I like about the mechanics - in order to generate the checks that will in turn produce a victory, the players have to narrate what their PCs are doing. Which, in this case, included making promises in the name of another (honourable) PC. Who, when those promises came to light, felt bound by them. Resulting in a prisoner being spared who everyone at the table, half-an-hour earlier, had assumed would die.

I like a mechanic that encourages participants - both players and GM - to put interesting stakes onto the table, and generates interesting results as a consequence.

If one upshot of that mechanic is that I might become bound in the way I frame subsequent scenes, so be it - fundamentally, that's no different from my being bound by the PCs killing a monster in a combat, rendering it unavailable to turn up in some subsequent encounter.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I like a mechanic that encourages participants - both players and GM - to put interesting stakes onto the table, and generates interesting results as a consequence.

If one upshot of that mechanic is that I might become bound in the way I frame subsequent scenes, so be it - fundamentally, that's no different from my being bound by the PCs killing a monster in a combat, rendering it unavailable to turn up in some subsequent encounter.

Great post, must spread XP, yada, yada, yada.

I want to add to the above part that this matches my experience, and that "bound in the way I frame subsequent scenes" is not even a new restriction for me, from such rules. Even when I ran AD&D, I felt bound to frame subsequent scenes, by what had come before. That's already part of my playstyle--to make decisions/judgments--often on the spur of the moment, but consistent with the nature of the participants and what has gone before--and then be bound by them for future events.

So the objection that I might be so bound is a bit like "throwing me in the briar patch."

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Ok? I use a similar process.

I didn't say you didn't. You asked how I do things. I answered.

I just don't need as many rules covering as many things. If anything, those things just slow down my game.

I don't need those rules either. I prefer the rules that come along with a detailed skill system.

You're the one who asked how I resolved something and then condescendingly responded with the "DM Fiat" comment.

Actually, that was Incenjucar's response, I just agreed with him in an experience comment. I asked how you resolve things out of honest inquiry. It has been a long time since I played B/X and I couldn't recall how things were resolved and I was curious if you were adding in other rules from things like ACK (which had never heard of before this thread).

Seriously. You could have said, "That's fine. I would have done it this way."

I thought I did basically say that. If it came across any other way I apologize.

Instead, there is a condescending tone. So, you can imagine why I would react to your DM Fiat comments with suspicion.

No condescension intended. I understand the values and pitfalls of DM Fiat. And I was merely intending to explain why I enjoy less DM Fiat in my games. I understand why many people enjoy DM Fiat over more detailed rulesets. Your comment about slowing your game down is one major factor. There is an opportunity cost to more detailed rules, you don't consider that cost worth the time for your enjoyment of the game, I do. Neither of us is playing a lesser game for using the method we enjoy.

So, if the outcomes are similar, what does it matter that you had a "cover" rule and I used a "shield" rule to make my judgment call? Or, you used strength and I used the encumbrance chart and items as tall as a character require two hands to carry?

It doesn't matter. It was just an example of my priority of adjudication.

The vibe I'm getting from you guys is that "DM Fiat" is bad so we have to minimize it. And, I'm saying, you're still doing DM Fiat even in this so-called rules based circumstances. DM judgment is what makes the game so amazing. And, instead of an extra 100 rules trying to "minimize" DM judgment, I'd rather have clear guidelines for having the best possible DM judgment calls made.

I don't know where you're getting that vibe having read my previous posts. If I thought DM Fiat was bad I would seek to eliminate it. I have already said I use DM Fiat, so there I'd have to agree with you. I've stated the reasons I like things like the skill system in my games for reasons other than "minimizing DM judgement." One of which is allowing choices the player makes in how his character trains to effect the gameplay.

With your example of the chandelier, the character either succeeds or fails at your choice. With the skill system another option is added. I can set the DC so low that the character succeeds. I can set it so high that they fail. Or I can set it anywhere in between where success or failure is not pre-determined. I take on those rules because I enjoy the added option. Both games can be fun or not fun depending on how the DM runs it with either DM Fiat or Skill System as the game rule.

There was mention earlier about rules empowering players. I disagree. I think sound judgment calls empower players.

I've sat at the table as a player and my "fair shake" with DCs made up by the DM. "Oh, that's DC 40..." Wtf? I can't even roll that high. Why not just tell me, "No, it's too far. You'll fall right to the floor."

Agreed. Bad judgement calls by a DM are bad no matter what system one prefers.

Better yet, I prefer a good mix of the two, like Apocalypse World's "moves" that allow a GM to call for rolls when the situation might have failure, like your tense situation, but the GM isn't setting any DCs. The PC just rolls and gets partial success, success or failure based on what they roll.

But, even then, there's still GM judgment to call for that roll in the first place. Of course, AW gives excellent guidelines on when to call for rolls and whatnot. So, it's a balancing act.

To be clear, I don't always call for a roll. I only call for a roll when there is a risk of failure. In the chandelier example if the PC is merely goofing off and trying to swing from a chandelier it doesn't really matter, no roll needed. If he's being chased by goons then him falling from the chandelier and crashing through a table would cause him problems to say the least, so let's roll and see what happens. I use good judgement and guidance from the rules to set the DCs as appropriate. You wouldn't hear me calling for a DC 40 unless a epic-powered character is trying something miraculous (DC 40 would be a 25-foot standing long jump). Otherwise I'd just tell you it's too far to jump.