Miniatures and Madness - Legends and Lore by Mike Mearls

[MerricB]

Right now my 9 year old is in Vegas with my wife on a mini vacation. He's was looking forward to Wrath when he saw the picture of the box in the Ravenloft set. I think he has this crazy notion that we're going to combine the sets and fight both the Dragon AND the Vampire.

AT THE SAME TIME.

You can do it. Run Adventure #12 from Wrath. (the one where you fight Ashardalon). Then, when you reach his lieutenant, use Strahd.

It'll be amusing to watch, if not a little deadly to play.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

No, I was not joking.

Dungeon, has for many moons, required little actual role playing and lots of dice rolling. I love rolling the dice but if it's all about combat combat combat, why does the GM need to be there? Each player can take a monster's turn on an opposing players turn or something like that.

Honestly, it's far more a problem with the adventures that Dungeon & Wizards are presenting than with the structure of D&D 4E as a whole. Last Sunday, I ran a session of E1: Death's Reach where we had the following encounter types:

* Combat
* Role-playing
* Skill Challenge
* Combat
* Roleplaying/Skill Challenge
* Combat

That was awesome variety, and the players and I really enjoyed it. However, too many adventures have this structure:

* Fight
* Fight
* Fight
* Fight

(Apparently, we're not playing D&D, we're playing the Itchy and Scratchy RPG).

(Tomb of Horrors, so far, is looking a lot better in encounter selection, btw).

Mike's point about the difference in Line-of-Sight rules really struck a chord with me, because it's a situation I see all the time. I'm really, really good with rules. I know them well and apply them quickly. Meanwhile, I have players who, while fine role-players, aren't good with rules. So, they always need to ask someone if they have Line-of-Sight or not.

Hmm.

There's also the bugbear of "Improved Cover", which the rules for in 4E have generally been dreadful. (For some reason, standing mostly behind a wall will not give you improved cover by RAW). So I ignore that; I use DM judgement. Yep, it's improved cover.

Cheers!

 

[M.L. Martin]

5th edition will have no GM.

I predicted this (half-jokingly) for 4E. If they can figure out a way to make it work, I honestly wouldn't be surprised.

(Disclaimer: I have no stake in the edition wars, having given up on both 3.5 and 4E, and now leaning towards Savage Worlds, True20, or the old SAGA rules. All I want from WotC, now that they've ended Star Wars and put Ravenloft back in its crypt, is the 2E and BECMI PDFs back. )

 

[Mercurius]

I'm thinking that Mearls can only really say this now that the DDM have been canceled. It may even be that this is the first sign that WotC is (hopefully!) moving back to a "minis optional" approach. If they aren't going to produce their own minis, they almost have to.

I like using miniatures, but I don't like having to use them (without major rules revision/ignoring).

 

[Azgulor]

Right now my 9 year old is in Vegas with my wife on a mini vacation. He's was looking forward to Wrath when he saw the picture of the box in the Ravenloft set. I think he has this crazy notion that we're going to combine the sets and fight both the Dragon AND the Vampire.

AT THE SAME TIME.

This isn't a swipe at either boardgame, just an observation. With a RPG, he COULD fight a vampire & dragon at the same time. It's also not a stretch that a 9-yr old can play in a RPG, if my kids are any indication.

 

[Azgulor]

No, I was not joking.

Dungeon, has for many moons, required little actual role playing and lots of dice rolling. I love rolling the dice but if it's all about combat combat combat, why does the GM need to be there? Each player can take a monster's turn on an opposing players turn or something like that.

The biggest obsticle to D&D is the GM. He's the keypoing, the guardian, the keeper of the way.

Eliminate that bottleneck and the game will flow freely! In theory at least.

That's what my gut told me when I read that article but it could have been the mojitos.

I think you're right in that this is a goal. Perhaps not for an entire edition, but at least for an intro-style game. In that respect, I think it wouldn't be a bad idea.

However, I believe the theory that the GM-requirement is an impediment is overblown. For the casual RPGer or beer-n-pretzels player, it may be true, but a string of combats is a hollow experience after awhile. To use the dreaded video game analogy, while the gameplay is certainly important, today's video games are producing settings, character development, and story that rivals (and often exceeds) that found in movies, television, and novels. Why? For the immersion, escapism, exploration, or a number of other reasons to explore another world/genre/setting.

Without the GM, you're forced to rely on publisher content for anything other than a tabletop pit/dog/rooster fight. Perhaps you've made entrance into the game easier, but is there any staying power in such a model? I don't think so.

Also, of late, I'm reliving my early RPG experiences through my kids. It drove home the great appeal of being the GM: the ability to have an entire world as your creative outlet. My oldest can't wait to run his first adventure. Both kids are drawing pictures of the characters, as well as imaging villains for them to fight or monsters to defeat.

Can being a GM be a significant investment in time/commitment? Of course, it can, but it's not required. But once you get the GM-bug, it usually sticks. And I don't view it as a bad thing.

 

[Hautamaki]

5th edition will have no GM.

Well that would be a rather silly design goal considering DMs are the ones who spend all the money =p

 

[ferratus]

Count me down as someone who wouldn't mind a DM-optional version of Dungeons and Dragons. Wrath of Ashardalon seems to be a good step in the right direction. As much as I like how 4e forces players to work as a team via the roles system, I would also like a version of D&D that you can play with fewer than 5 players as well (4 roles + DM).

As for miniatures, I love them too. However, I don't think they are conducive to another key aspect of D&D which is exploration and narrative. If you want to have a small fight and move on (such as when you blunder into a barracks of goblins minions) then it really isn't worth the time to draw the map and place the miniatures for a battle over in a couple rounds.

In fact, it might be nice to have a method of combat resolution that can be resolved in a single roll, rather than the combat round at all. You roll well, you came through the encounter unscathed. If you roll poorly you lose a random daily or a healing surge. In other words it uses up resources, but not game time on what would be a good encounter but a boring fight.

 

[CharlesRyan]

I predicted this (half-jokingly) for 4E. If they can figure out a way to make it work, I honestly wouldn't be surprised.

I would. The GM is what separates D&D from an extremely slow, extremely low-res version of WoW.

You know that quote about D&D being 10 minutes of action packed into four hours? The GM is what makes that not true.

These facts are well appreciated inside the walls at WotC.

 

[francisca]

This is interesting for me, as I see the two styles of miniature play at the table when I play AD&D with my two older sons. Sometimes we use minis, sometimes we don't.

The older (12 at the end of March) is the more abstract thinker, and says things like, "I move up behind the guy and attack him!", whereas the 8 year old asks how far he can move, etc...., and if we have the battlemat on the table moves his mini square-by-square in a boardgame fashion (his first exposure to fantasy adventure gaming was HeroQuest, the old MB boardgame).

Whats interesting to me is neither have a problem without minis, or with minis and no grid. However, one completely ignores the grid when its on the table anyway, and the other seeks to use it to his advantage.

I see the grid and minis, when under strict rules, as a sort of enabler. if you are prone to think in a precise, measured sort of way, you fall right into it.

Personally, I prefer to have things one way or another. Either loose and abstract, or nailed down and precise. I dislike the lack of facing in BtB 3.5 for example and at the same time, dislike the "pick a corner, draw a line, if it bisects another blah blah blah..." for flanking, etc... Its a sort of compromise between the two schools of thought which doesn't sit well with me.