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

[AstroCat]

Really, really liking DDN so far, I've played as a GM and a player and both are super fun. GM'ing is easy like it was in 4E, player options and flexibility is like the 3/3.5E era and the groove is like O/1E/2E. Totally digging it and so is the rest of our "seasoned" crew.

 

[Libramarian]

I wonder how strong the dismissal is.

They're not in the current playtest, but this just could be because they don't need testing. The playtest isn't a preview. There's every chance that both of these rules get specifically called out as ways you could mod the game right in one of the first books about changing rules to fit your style.

They've mentioned group initiative before in some blog or article...they said they tried it and liked it but decided against it because we're all used to cyclical initiative since it's been standard for 2 editions now, which I found annoyingly presumptive. It didn't sound like they were considering it as an optional rule.

Yeah, they've already said they want to have lots of options for XP, and one of them is treasure XP.

I don't recall them saying anything that definite about treasure xp, but maybe.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

My vote: Not Enough Information Available To Decide.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Yeah, group initiative is easy. It doesn't need to be playtested, so you'll never see it in the playtest. Individual initiative gets much more complex. Doesn't mean it won't be included in the final rules.

The one place that I've deviated from the playtest as written, since the first couple of releases, is that I use group initiative exclusively. It does need some playtesting, if only to make sure that they don't introduce things into the main rules that make it unnecessarily hard to do.

Mainly, they need to be careful about how they do "until the end of your next turn" and other such phrases, as some of them work great in both group initiative and single initiative, while some of them only really work well with the assumptions of either group or single initiative.

 

[JustinAlexander]

As with 4e, I think they're doing exactly the right thing, but also as with 4e, I suspect the end product will be "not for me".

Interesting comment. If it's not the right thing for you and it also failed to achieve its commercial goals (as has been confirmed by multiple WotC sources at this point), in what sense do you feel 4E was WotC "doing exactly the right thing"?

 

[DM Howard]

Interesting comment. If it's not the right thing for you and it also failed to achieve its commercial goals (as has been confirmed by multiple WotC sources at this point), in what sense do you feel 4E was WotC "doing exactly the right thing"?

I think that delericho is getting at the idea that 4E broke a lot of long held conceptions of the D&D game, and while some weren't a great decision from the perspective of veteran players it opened up D&D from being so narrowly focused and short sighted.

I'm the target audience of D&DN, there was something I've liked about every edition, but none have been perfect. I think 4E showed that innovation can work, but there are certain things that go too far or too fast, changing the idiom for the entire play experience.

 

[Obryn]

Interesting comment. If it's not the right thing for you and it also failed to achieve its commercial goals (as has been confirmed by multiple WotC sources at this point), in what sense do you feel 4E was WotC "doing exactly the right thing"?

It was developed and released because 3.5 was failing to meet its commercial goals, though, so you can draw your own conclusions as to how unexpected that is.

IMO, it fixed exactly what I wanted fixed, with one big exception, so there are several values of "right things" here.

-O

 

[delericho]

Interesting comment. If it's not the right thing for you and it also failed to achieve its commercial goals (as has been confirmed by multiple WotC sources at this point), in what sense do you feel 4E was WotC "doing exactly the right thing"?

I felt (and indeed feel) that 3.5e has some deep, systematic flaws that could only be fixed by taking the game apart and rebuilding from the ground up. Which is essentially what the 4e team did.

It was just unfortunate that the re-assembled game didn't suit me - which of course was always the risk when coming from that direction.

 

[Lwaxy]

Voting for my whole playtest group - ambivalent by now. .

Would be "like" if not for some damage issues, and the fact that about everything new can be so easily incorporated into our house rules we wouldn't need a new edition for it. We also don't agree with changing the fighter options again. Also not happy about the caster options although we hope there will be more. Right now, wizards are still too boring to bother with.