D&D 5E Legends & Lore 4/21

[TerraDave]

It was good. Exactly what I want as a veteran DM actually...I am sure I won't use it exactly as written, but I like having this stuff.

I mean, based on the general descriptions we keep getting...

I wonder when we will start getting real previews of 5e.

Or a release schedule, or confirmation of products.

 

[Iosue]

Since the inception of the game, it has been the duty of the Dungeon Master (it's in the name!) to make sense of the randomly generated dungeon.

I have never had a problem telling stories with randomly generated dungeons. Just have to be creative.

Yes, indeed! Especially now, when I don't have the time (nor, truth be told, the boundless creativity of youth) to come up with interesting, original adventures. There are always published adventures, but they tend to follow the adventure path model, and I prefer to run exploratory sandboxes. Random dungeons and encounters take a lot of the load off, while at the same time getting the creative juices flowing. Left to my own devices, I'd probably come up with mostly cliched, mannered situations, with but the occasional surprise or off-the-wall idea. With random content generators, there's nothing that doesn't make sense. Counterintuitive results provide an opportunity for me to figure out why that result does make sense. And more often than not that result will be more interesting than what I might come up with on my own out of thin air.

The other benefit is that helps me to be a completely impartial DM, without worrying if I'm being too hard on the players by, say, turning every encounter into a hostile one, or worse, following my natural inclination to go easy on them by creating mostly encounters they have a good chance of winning in straight up combat. I let the random generators create the broad strokes, and then I can, in the words of Mike Carr's In Search of the Unknown, "do everything possible to assist players in their quest without actually providing important information unless the players themselves discover it or put the pieces of a puzzling problem together through deduction or questioning, or a combination of the two."

Also, while improving interactions has generally come easy, coming up with interesting traps and mystery areas (the meat of any good exploratory dungeon or wilderness!) has never quite been my forte. Some help from random content generators is always welcome.

 

[Sadrik]

In addition, the core magic system makes running high-level casters much easier. In my own games, casters I've run usually only have two or three scaling spells prepared, such as magic missile or fireball. Since spells can be cast from a variety of spell slots, it's easy to note their effects and use them in a battle multiple times. NPC casters can unleash their full firepower without needing dozens of spells. For noncombat spells, I list a few options without any details for key NPCs. For NPCs that I expect to only take part in fights, I don't even bother prepping a full slate of spells.

This concerns me a little. I was hoping for more scaling spells. I wanted more than just the roll a bunch of dice for damage spells to scale.

All the other stuff in the article is great.

• Simple rules for quick set up
• No wealth chart by level
• Grouping monsters by CR instead of level (I actually don't care one way or the other on this)
• Monster creation by template or ground up
• XP budgets for adventures and encounters
• Tables for random dungeon/adventure creation (I really like this, nothing like a table to get the creative juices flowing)

 

[Kinak]

Bringing back the random content tables will be a great addition to the DMG. You can build a dungeon with them, but random tables have a near-magical power to give you a bad answer, which makes you realize the answer you actually want.

And, if by some weird chance everything sounds good, hey, free dungeon!

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[the Jester]

I wonder when we will start getting real previews of 5e.

Me too! At this point, I'm becoming convinced that the game is not actually done yet; they're probably waiting for completion before they start releasing preview material, but I don't see how, at this point, they can get anything beyond maybe a Basic Set out by GenCon. It's almost May!

Please for the love of Torm launch with a monster builder app and ideally an encounter tool.

I wouldn't count on much electronic support at launch. Look at how long it took 4e to get a workable MB, and as far as I know the online version (which was in use for a couple of years) was never actually fixed to the point where it did all the math right and saved everything. (Let me add the caveat that I never fiddled with the online one after the first day or two; the limited number of creatures that you could save made is essentially useless to me.)

I think it's wonderful that 5e looks like it won't need e-support, both because I'm sick of laptops at the table and because WotC is really not very good with electronic tools.

 

[Li Shenron]

If the dungeon generation tables are mandatory, then I will be shocked.

How can a random table ever be mandatory?

 

[oxybe]

i guess my main problem with all these random tables we seem like we're getting is this: how much of this is just padding? like a kid who's only got 8 pages in a 10 page essay, how many of these tables are just the equivalent of mucking around with fonts, line spacing and the page margins?

i can see a few random tables being helpful when used sparingly and judiciously but D&D just seems to be using them in excessive amounts when it does use 'em. i also view a frank discussion behind the concepts the table addresses as far more useful then blurb + table and would much rather see concepts explained and expounded upon.

the magic item page in my latest playtest package (10/14/13) has 3 pages devoted to random tables on magic weapons. half of that is there to generate a vagueish description of the weapon's creator and why, but little to no discussion on why this is important beyond telling the potential GM that "it adds flavour to a thing that has no inherent flavour when created in a void".

which is all good, but doesn't tell our potential DM why this is good or why he might want to try actually personalizing these items to fit concepts within his world rather then roll on a chart given to him by the book with little explanation on how to actually use the chart...

heck, i'm going to take back the "kid padding his essay" statement and go strait to "bad parenting": this is the equivalent of dropping your kid off on the couch unsupervised with a Barney the Dinosaur VHS for a few hours and hoping he'll learn life lessons by proxy.

 

[Sadrik]

i guess my main problem with all these random tables we seem like we're getting is this: how much of this is just padding? like a kid who's only got 8 pages in a 10 page essay, how many of these tables are just the equivalent of mucking around with fonts, line spacing and the page margins?

I want tables more than poofy fluff that I might only read once about "player types" and other "helpful" existential gamer stuff like that. Utility over fluff in the DMG please.

 

[Iosue]

I suspect the random tables will take up a solid chunk of the DMG, probably even a whole chapter, since I still believe most of the game will be in the PHB, and the DMG will hold mostly new options for DM's, rather than essential rules. This would also fit with the statement at the GAMA presentation that the DMG will contain "locations, scenes, and magic items."

 

[ExploderWizard]

How can a random table ever be mandatory?

Nothing in an rpg book is mandatory actually, but some tables are given more weight as resolution tools than as suggestions. For example the assassination table is more of a resolution based type of table, while the random harlot table is more suggestive (in more ways than one!)