No hold barred - how I would develope 5e

[Glade Riven]

I posted something like this in another thread, so this is an expansion/development of a reply I made. So here is how I would develope 5e. Now, there will be things which there is a good chance some people here would hate, but please read to the end - there is a good reasons for many of the decisions made.

First off, all sacred cows are being shipped off to slaughterhouse. This is mind-blowingly non-traditional in setup. So please keep an open mind.

The core product shifts from the wargame/RPG hybrid that is 4e to a boardgame/rpg hybrid. I'm talking Red Box to the next level. Start out by having a enough stuff in the box so that people can pick up and play. Dungeon tiles, counters, tokens, cards, a full set of dice. 6 classes and 6 races that people can mix and match.

Heroic Box: levels 1-10
Paragon Box: levels 11-20
Epic Box: 21-30

Gameplay shifts between those tiers anyways, even under 3.5. Selling it much like a board game makes it simple for people who have never played RPGs to pick it up. They understand board games. They understand pretend. The transition is a lot easier, allowing for growth in the market. Sell each box in the $30-$40 dollar range.

Now, we get on to auxillery products.

Extra classes can be sold, with all the rules and items to play them, in individual packets. I'm talking $10 getting you all the game aids and rules to play that class (except dice) in one handy dandy packet. Better yet, include rules in these packets to play those classes all the way to epic, because now people will want to buy the other box sets so they can play their characters all the way to the top. Include a random collectable mini.

Monsters are sold in $5 card packs, with each card having a punch-out token to represent on the field. Throw random PC race card in each expansion.

DDI. Options, discussions, articles, ideas for new dungeons, adventures, locations, exclusive play tests, etc. Digitally create your character and print off your character sheet. Everything DDI does now, only more. Engage the subscribers, run contests for unique and awsome things.

Expand into a new area - let subscribers pick their favorite adventures, articles, rules, etc. and let them build their own books, POD style.

D&D is now on a collectable model, something WotC does and does well with Magic. And I know what you're thinking. You've ruined my franchise. Well, wait for the upsale.

The Hardcore Gamer's Handbook. This is the meat of the system. I wouldn't even release this book right off the bat - I'd wait at least 6 months to a year. Follow up with the DMG and Monster Manual. These are tools designed for the elite, for the hardcore who roll the dice. These are our books. And these books are marketed as such.

Connect with fans. Grow the Brand. Give them a reason to buy. Hook. Line. Sinker.


Okay, so it's all an elaborate marketing ploy to grow the brand, with the ultimate goal of all the crap that sold going in is rendered unnessessary by the time new players graduate to the core rulebooks (by then, the goal is to make that money off of DDI and DDI POD). Part of it is to play up to WotC's strengths in the CCG market. Part of it is what they need to do to expand DDI from where it is. The third part is to provide a product for all of us who already know how all this whole RPG thing works and don't need all that extra crap, except to sucker in freinds and relatives that have never experianced roleplaying. It also provides products along multiple price points. And yes, it does depend on providing quality products that people want to buy - but that's a given.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Ah, the Warhemmer FRP third edition strategy, eh?

Anyway, as they say...

Connect with fans.

"This."

(ugh)

Everything else? Uh yeah, maybe. I'm a tad sceptical (just for something different ). But hey, you never know. Some people must like the forementioned RPG, after all.

 

[Wik]

Honestly, I'd go an entirely different route. I personally feel the way to market D&D is as follows:

"Are you sick of playing video games and being able to think of something you want to do that the game won't let you do? Play D&D!"

The game is based around that. Simple resolution mechanics that require little in the way of computations. Make it so that an eight year old GM can, fairly accurately, figure out how to topple over a statue onto orcs and resolve that.

Keep the math simple. "Buckets of dice" is replaced with no die rolls higher than 3d12, and that should be rare. Limit scaling numbers - max level characters might only get +5 or +10. A cool side effect would be that new GMs can throw all those exciting monsters right into their campaign... high level characters can just fight more of them.

Fast combats, fast adventures. Have a game that caters to the fact that people have a much shorter attention span than they did thirty years ago. Ideally, the game would have an attack matrix, so they'd never even need to add attack numbers to a d20 roll.

Limit the amount of rules. Limit the number of situational bonuses. And, perhaps strangely, limit the number of PLAYER OPTIONS. The idea being that players will use their character's abilities as the situation warrants, not based on some lines of arbitrary rules text.

Have the core classes, and the core races. Each class should have multiple options to advance - be they talents, skills, spells, whatever. They should all feel somewhat different in scope. And then, set it up in such a way that GMs can create their own.

Encourage house-ruling, world-building, and campaign building. Set the game up that GMs have the tools and encouragement to create their own campaign worlds that are different from the rest. Do not foster "cookie cutter settings", but instead tell each GM that it's okay to completely removes races, classes, and gear from the game.

No magic item christmas tree. Instead, throw in lots of single-use items, so you can still give out gear and let players play with it, while at the same the PCs don't glow with magic.

No splat books. None. Instead, release stuff in gazeteer type books. Add new monsters with adventures. Write "tactical guides" that have PC expansions. In essence, have the books be marketed always towards PCs and GMs at the same time (with the possible exception of adventures). Every book is a mix of fluff and crunch. Make sure the game has limited access points for crunch, and shift away from "builds"... characters should be set up so that they can be improved upon organically in play. Hell, if every class offered only five levels, PCs could actually expect to go through four or five classes through a full campaign, which would let them try out those new classes in future books!

Make the game "modular". In essence, release a "psionics" book. And a "Future tech" book. And a "Lovecraftian horror" book. And a "Druidism" book. And a "Steampunk" book. As well as a "Dark Sun" book, "Spelljammer" book, "Planar" book, etc. The goal being that a GM can say "okay, for this campaign, we're using the druidism, steampunk, and lovecraftian modules, but the others are banned from play. This would allow campaigns to use entirely different subsystems, and would make different tables experience the game in entirely new ways... really upping the replay value of the game.

Speaking of which, shorten the expected campaign length. If combats are shorter, this is even easier. If you can reasonably expect players to finish a new campaign every 15 months or so, and you have a seven year product life, they'll go through six or seven full campaigns in the game's lifespan. And each time, they'd be buying different books for the game, and keeping up interest - the game would be "ever changing" without any real errata or "rules updates".

While we're at it, drop minis or any expected hardware. Make a game that you can easily run off the internet. Stress the game's differences from video games, rather than emphasize them. Focus on fast gameplay, ease of GMing, and creation - not of rules equations, but creation of a shared story.

Market it as such. Encourage fan story submissions. Have a "campaign journal" in DRAGON each month where players can submit in-character excursions for other players' perusal.

That's how I'd do it, at least.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Everything up to here: Amen. Now for the bit that gets some extra attention...

Encourage house-ruling, world-building, and campaign building. Set the game up that GMs have the tools and encouragement to create their own campaign worlds that are different from the rest. Do not foster "cookie cutter settings", but instead tell each GM that it's okay to completely removes races, classes, and gear from the game.

Absolutely! I can't sufficiently express my agreement here, to be honest. RPGs are meant to "made your own". It's in the history, right from the start. And it's been there ever since. May as well go with that, rather than [attempt, feebly, to] fight against it...

For a parallel, check the PC game modding scene. Supply, support, and encourage the use of some kind of "construction kit" or the like, and bam! Loyalty, more money your way, dedicated fans that speak well of you...

And so on.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

The game is based around that. Simple resolution mechanics that require little in the way of computations. Make it so that an eight year old GM can, fairly accurately, figure out how to topple over a statue onto orcs and resolve that.

But the game (products) must take care to coach the prospective GM on story telling, adventure design, and campaign building. Maybe develop a proto-adventure format detailed enough to run a game but flexible enough to be useful to other GMs as well. Add in a vibrant user community a la social network, set up a Wiki of GM tips and tricks.

Focus on useful products to enhance the game experience, not on rules and options.

 

[Wik]

Everything up to here: Amen. Now for the bit that gets some extra attention...


Absolutely! I can't sufficiently express my agreement here, to be honest. RPGs are meant to "made your own". It's in the history, right from the start. And it's been there ever since. May as well go with that, rather than [attempt, feebly, to] fight against it...

For a parallel, check the PC game modding scene. Supply, support, and encourage the use of some kind of "construction kit" or the like, and bam! Loyalty, more money your way, dedicated fans that speak well of you...

And so on.

Exactly. The idea of "kitchen sink" D&D seems good on paper, but what you're really doing is making people that don't play kitchen sink D&D feel like they're no longer playing "D&D" and shifting them away from your brand.

What you want D&D to be is a game where - when someone describes a fantasy novel, movie, or crazy dream they had - you can say "hey, D&D can do that!". You do NOT want D&D to have this huge overt flavour to it, because it causes people to look away from D&D when they want a game of a different flavour.

This is why Savage Worlds is so popular - it's almost infinitely modable. And it encourages such modding and "do it yourselfism". A D&D brand that effectively allowed for personalized campaign settings would be AMAZING.

Not to mention, people would still buy module add-ons even if they weren't gonna use them in their current campaign - because there's always the next world. Many GMs love to build new settings, and if you engineer the game to have shorter lives, GMs are always going to be thinking of their next campaign world anyways.

 

[Wik]

But the game (products) must take care to coach the prospective GM on story telling, adventure design, and campaign building. Maybe develop a proto-adventure format detailed enough to run a game but flexible enough to be useful to other GMs as well. Add in a vibrant user community a la social network, set up a Wiki of GM tips and tricks.

Focus on useful products to enhance the game experience, not on rules and options.

Agreed, especially on proto-adventure formats. That's a great idea, and would help make the game one easy to run both "on the fly" and for new GMs to cut their teeth. Better yet, use your proto adventure format so new GMs can be super creative right out of the gates, so they don't have to "learn the game running a generic dungeon" before they can throw that epic quest involving a cult of gnoll sky-pirates against the PCs who are trying to put together a mech.... because, let's face it, most newbie GMs like to assume they're "just a fast learner" and will jump right into their epic quest idea anyway.

Honestly, a great way to set the game up is to ensure that each new product is a good combination of setting material, advice, adventures, adventure ideas, and crunch. In other words, just enough of each that almost every type of gamer... would want every book.

 

[Wik]

Another idea for what I'd do:

Have the characters be focused on power sources, with each power source having an innate mechanical and "fluff" flavour to it. Have these set up so they can be modified, of course, but generally provide concrete examples of what they do. And then, stick to it - don't create ways to vary off that, without making those variances somehow expensive.

Three roles, with the game axing the "leader" option and instead making leaders an "add-on" option available to each power type.

Each power type would have a class for each role (striker, controller, defender), a core unifying mechanic, and then an option for either a specific benefit, OR the leader option. As an example (I'm writing this on the fly... it probably isn't "balanced" in any way):

MARTIAL POWER SOURCE

MArtial characters are non-magic. They have a lot of hit points, generally high ACs, and deal decent damage. However, they are able to only focus on one foe at a time, and lack area-effect attacks for the most part. They have good defences.

Martial characters have special "Stances" that can be triggered with Adrenaline Points. Each stance costs different amounts of adrenaline points to activate, and must be maintained each round. Martial characters gain adrenaline points based on their class.

Option A: The character gains extra adrenaline points. In addition, he regains 1 extra adrenaline point any time he would regain an adrenaline point.
Option B: Higher Defences and/or hit points and/or feats.
Option C: Leader Option. The character can heal an ally once per combat. Plus some leader-y powers.

And then we'd have the classes, with each class having a few talents hard-wired in (a rogue's sneak attack, maybe) and other optional talents ("Do I take 'evasion' or 'lucky stance'?"). Each class would also have a few options on how they regain adrenaline points, and maybe some extra ways on how to spend those points.

***

"Feats" would be much simpler in scope, and really wouldn't offer much in the way of new things a character can do. Instead, they'd be a limited resource that would exist mostly so players could tweak the limitations of their class to either shore up their weaknesses, or to better reflect some archetype they'd seen elsewhere.

 

[Starfox]

Honestly, I'd go an entirely different route. I personally feel the way to market D&D is as follows:

I agree with most of this, only I'd axe one more sacred cow; the classes.Make basic building blocks and let players combine these as they like. If you prefer a more class-like system, make these building blocks rather large. If a more point-bye-like system is preferred, make the blocks smaller and the build grainier.

 

[kitsune9]

Wow transbot, interesting ideas for 5e.