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So did they just drop modularity ? This is what has me worried.
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<blockquote data-quote="Iosue" data-source="post: 5996915" data-attributes="member: 6680772"><p>To my eyes, the playtest overflows with modularity.</p><p></p><p>I've got two groups right now. One is my friends and family group that grew up playing B/X and BECM. They don't care for the complex chargen of 3e, the power card structure of 4e, or the prospect of playing on a grid. They may not be especially enamored of Vancian casting, but it's tolerated as part of the game. All that said, our style of play is essentially heroic fantasy. We're trying to recreate LotR and similar fantasy.</p><p></p><p>The other group is one of hardcore Japanese geeks. (Basically, the only ones who play D&D in Japan are the gaijin and the hardcore Japanese geeks.) They love 4e, and have little interest in actually playing 1e or BECMI. They appreciate the history, but right now they are having a ball making up characters and setting them loose on the grid. They roleplay a bit, but skill challenges are for the most part dry "pick best stat and roll, in order around the table", and perhaps humorously describing a bad roll.</p><p></p><p>I have fun with both of these groups. I enjoy 4e, but find a lot of value in BECMI, particularly the fast chargen.</p><p></p><p>With the 5e playtest, I can take out backgrounds (except for the Rogue skills), I can take out themes/specialties, I can ignore fighting styles and Hit Dice healing and expertise dice, I can even make the minor spells into dailies, and basically recreate a cleaner retro-clone of TSR D&D. Or, I can throw in the minor spells, Hit Dice, and fighter options, and I have a game that my friends and family group would be happy to play. And personally, having made up some characters even with backgrounds and specialties, I'm very happy with chargen -- quick and easy.</p><p></p><p>My other group, they can ignore backgrounds and specialties and go right for picking skills and feats a la carte. They can mix and match. I can max out Hit Dice to act like surges. I can play right now on a grid pretty easily, since the game essentially uses units of 5 feet. It's not as involved as 4e's grid, but there's plenty of design space to come. The point is, I can do theater of the mind and the 5 foot units provide ease of distance reference <em>and</em> I can do grid because distances in the game are all in multiples of 5.</p><p></p><p>The game DM advice encourages "Rule of DM", which works well with my friends and family. But it also comes with a crapload of sample DCs, sample ability score saves, rules for movement, stealth, perception, 10 distinct combat actions, cover, non-lethal damage, 12 distinct conditions, lighting, drowning, and encounter budgeting. All simple rules I can turn to as well to take off the load.</p><p></p><p>Oh, and now I have two additional magic systems to play with.</p><p></p><p>Is it complete? No. Is all the math fine-tuned, all the bugs worked out? Of course not, it's the second iteration of rules in a public playtest process that's looking to take two whole years. But as I see it, even in this early playtest when they're still just working on hammering out the core, there's already a lot of adjustable dials and plug-and-play modules to work with. It's already giving me a lot of what I like about 4e, plus fast, easy chargen. I was intrigued about 5e in January, curious in May, and now in August I'm officially excited.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Iosue, post: 5996915, member: 6680772"] To my eyes, the playtest overflows with modularity. I've got two groups right now. One is my friends and family group that grew up playing B/X and BECM. They don't care for the complex chargen of 3e, the power card structure of 4e, or the prospect of playing on a grid. They may not be especially enamored of Vancian casting, but it's tolerated as part of the game. All that said, our style of play is essentially heroic fantasy. We're trying to recreate LotR and similar fantasy. The other group is one of hardcore Japanese geeks. (Basically, the only ones who play D&D in Japan are the gaijin and the hardcore Japanese geeks.) They love 4e, and have little interest in actually playing 1e or BECMI. They appreciate the history, but right now they are having a ball making up characters and setting them loose on the grid. They roleplay a bit, but skill challenges are for the most part dry "pick best stat and roll, in order around the table", and perhaps humorously describing a bad roll. I have fun with both of these groups. I enjoy 4e, but find a lot of value in BECMI, particularly the fast chargen. With the 5e playtest, I can take out backgrounds (except for the Rogue skills), I can take out themes/specialties, I can ignore fighting styles and Hit Dice healing and expertise dice, I can even make the minor spells into dailies, and basically recreate a cleaner retro-clone of TSR D&D. Or, I can throw in the minor spells, Hit Dice, and fighter options, and I have a game that my friends and family group would be happy to play. And personally, having made up some characters even with backgrounds and specialties, I'm very happy with chargen -- quick and easy. My other group, they can ignore backgrounds and specialties and go right for picking skills and feats a la carte. They can mix and match. I can max out Hit Dice to act like surges. I can play right now on a grid pretty easily, since the game essentially uses units of 5 feet. It's not as involved as 4e's grid, but there's plenty of design space to come. The point is, I can do theater of the mind and the 5 foot units provide ease of distance reference [i]and[/i] I can do grid because distances in the game are all in multiples of 5. The game DM advice encourages "Rule of DM", which works well with my friends and family. But it also comes with a crapload of sample DCs, sample ability score saves, rules for movement, stealth, perception, 10 distinct combat actions, cover, non-lethal damage, 12 distinct conditions, lighting, drowning, and encounter budgeting. All simple rules I can turn to as well to take off the load. Oh, and now I have two additional magic systems to play with. Is it complete? No. Is all the math fine-tuned, all the bugs worked out? Of course not, it's the second iteration of rules in a public playtest process that's looking to take two whole years. But as I see it, even in this early playtest when they're still just working on hammering out the core, there's already a lot of adjustable dials and plug-and-play modules to work with. It's already giving me a lot of what I like about 4e, plus fast, easy chargen. I was intrigued about 5e in January, curious in May, and now in August I'm officially excited. [/QUOTE]
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So did they just drop modularity ? This is what has me worried.
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