CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing (He/They)
From my blog.
Last night, on a whim, my girlfriend and a handful of guests picked up the Rules Cyclopedia and decided to play. We didn't really plan it; we were just hanging out and sipping beer, when one of the guests saw the book on my bookshelf and said "Cool, D&D! We should totally play!" And I thought, "Why not?"
Six hours later, the party of adventurers is returning from The Isle of Dread with the black pearl in hand. One of my guests looks up at the wall clock and exclaims "oh
! It's two o'clock in the morning!"
I haven't had that much fun at a gaming session since high school. We just sat down and played, with minimal preparation and no planning. Combat didn't drag. The story didn't get boring. Character creation took 30 minutes, for all four characters.
-----
It was an awesome gaming session. And it put a lot of things into perspective, with respect to the next edition of D&D. All of the petty arguments and nitpicking aside, at the very heart of it all, this is what I want to see in 5E:
I want character sheets so simple that they can be created from scratch on a spare sheet of graph paper, if necessary.
I want less math. When the players are fighting a sea serpent, I want them to be imagining the roar of the beast and the spray on their faces...I do not want them only half-listening to me, preoccupied with stacking mods.
I want the battle mat and minis to be completely optional, as in "not in the core rules at all, but in a completely different, optional book that is sold separately."
I want dice rolls to be few and important.
I want Save Throws to be rare and terrifying.
I want game mechanics to be simple and intuitive. If Hit Points can't be defined in ten words or less, take them back to the drawing board. See also: Armor Class, ability scores.
I want focused, distinct classes. I want Fighters to look, act, and play completely differently than Clerics, at every level. I think the "everyone is a spellcaster, just with different power sources" trend is very boring.
I want classic, high-fantasy races: humans, dwarves, elves, hobbits. I want everything else to be very easy to ignore.
-----
I guess that what I am really trying to say is that I would like to see a cleaned-up, efficient, flexible BECM. I want to put the d20 mechanics and my Rules Cyclopedia into the Horadric Cube, hit the "transmute" button, and get D&DNext.
I'll keep my fingers crossed, but I'm not going to worry too much about it. It's not like I am going to get angry or stop playing if I end up being disappointed. I've got my friends, my Rules Cyclopedia, my dice, and some graph paper, and that's plenty.
Last night, on a whim, my girlfriend and a handful of guests picked up the Rules Cyclopedia and decided to play. We didn't really plan it; we were just hanging out and sipping beer, when one of the guests saw the book on my bookshelf and said "Cool, D&D! We should totally play!" And I thought, "Why not?"
Six hours later, the party of adventurers is returning from The Isle of Dread with the black pearl in hand. One of my guests looks up at the wall clock and exclaims "oh
! It's two o'clock in the morning!"I haven't had that much fun at a gaming session since high school. We just sat down and played, with minimal preparation and no planning. Combat didn't drag. The story didn't get boring. Character creation took 30 minutes, for all four characters.
-----
It was an awesome gaming session. And it put a lot of things into perspective, with respect to the next edition of D&D. All of the petty arguments and nitpicking aside, at the very heart of it all, this is what I want to see in 5E:
I want character sheets so simple that they can be created from scratch on a spare sheet of graph paper, if necessary.
I want less math. When the players are fighting a sea serpent, I want them to be imagining the roar of the beast and the spray on their faces...I do not want them only half-listening to me, preoccupied with stacking mods.
I want the battle mat and minis to be completely optional, as in "not in the core rules at all, but in a completely different, optional book that is sold separately."
I want dice rolls to be few and important.
I want Save Throws to be rare and terrifying.
I want game mechanics to be simple and intuitive. If Hit Points can't be defined in ten words or less, take them back to the drawing board. See also: Armor Class, ability scores.
I want focused, distinct classes. I want Fighters to look, act, and play completely differently than Clerics, at every level. I think the "everyone is a spellcaster, just with different power sources" trend is very boring.
I want classic, high-fantasy races: humans, dwarves, elves, hobbits. I want everything else to be very easy to ignore.
-----
I guess that what I am really trying to say is that I would like to see a cleaned-up, efficient, flexible BECM. I want to put the d20 mechanics and my Rules Cyclopedia into the Horadric Cube, hit the "transmute" button, and get D&DNext.
I'll keep my fingers crossed, but I'm not going to worry too much about it. It's not like I am going to get angry or stop playing if I end up being disappointed. I've got my friends, my Rules Cyclopedia, my dice, and some graph paper, and that's plenty.
