D&D 5E cancelled 5e announcement at Gencon??? Anyone know anything about this?

[BryonD]

I will go further than this. The 4e cosmology is superior to the traditional D&D cosmology for playing a game in which player convictions and thematic concerns are the main drivers, because it contains many elements which are heavily frontloaded with thematically rich conflict, and puts them on display for the players to choose from in building their PCs (via comments in the PHB, sidebars in the Power books, little bits and pieces in the powers' flavour texts, etc).

I really don't have a dog in the cosmolgy fight. I respect that some do and agree that that it was boneheaded of WotC to not think about the full range of their audience, but they made that error in more ways than just this one, so whatever.

But I take issue with your claim on two fronts. You call 4e "superior" on this front. (Strictly speaking this has nothing to do with system and everything to do with default, and disposable, setting.) You base this on the traditional cosmology being frontloaded with elements A - G (or whatever) to choose from, unlike 4E which allows whatever the player brings to the table, be it element B or element JJJ. But the break down there is that you seem to find the front loading of A - G to somehow be an impediment to using JJJ. That doesn't follow at all.

And second, I see having the conflict brought to the player as a real benefit. I'm not saying that letting each player define the world and conflicts as they go is a bad thing. But to me having elements of the plot and conflicts (physical, ethical, whatever) being imposed on the characters and then giving the character free reign to respond to and contend with this conflicts as they see fit has a much more rewarding nature. And, as a bonus, you can still have everything you claim 4E has, you just talk to the DM outside of the game.

This is a pretty abstract view of the issue, but this comes back to the whole simualtion vs gamist debate. These are the kind of things a character within a novel doesn't, and shouldn't, have moment by moment control over. And while giving the players that power may be hugely fun (absolutely not challenging "fun" here), it very quickly becomes not like being "inside a novel" but much more like playing a game, in which having control over these types of things doesn't seem out of place. Thus you are doing "game" things, not "novel/story" things. And simply putting a narrative on top of something that wouldn't fit well in a novel doesn't make it a good story centric device.

 

[MrMyth]

The optimist in me would really like to agree with this, on an edition-level scale.

The cynic in me, however, says otherwise: the bottom line must be served and it thrives on change.

I'm not sure the two are incompatible, though - I think the thought process consisted of, "Hey, we want a game that sells well... so lets address all these problems we believe the game has!"

I mean, I'm sure corporate influence was felt in some areas, but I think more in the peripherals like the GSL - not anywhere in the actual mechanics or background of the game. I can't really even imagine how such things would be motivated by the 'bottom line', rather than by what they felt were the best changes to make for the game.

 

[Umbran]

and you're labeling me as hostile because...

Or, because you're coming across as hostile. Your presentation is getting beyond assertive, and into aggressive, unfriendly, and willing to make the argument personal.

Everyone, do remember - we are talking about a rumor about a hobby entertainment. There are things in the world today that are worth getting heated about. This is not one of them.

 

[technoextreme]

Subjectivity. Not everybody sees it as a joke. Shemeska saw it as a potentially awesome adventuring site. I did, too. The designers did not.

In my mind, it's a problem that the designers did not, and it's a bigger problem that the designers felt like other peoples' fun wasn't good enough for their D&D.

Again, it's something like Mike Mearls doing an interview on 5e and saying, "Minis combat?! That's the antithesis of fun. So boring and tedious and unimaginative! Gotta make delicious hamburger out of THAT sacred cow! D&D is not about playing with little plastic toys, I think we all outgrew that by the time we were 8."

If I do that, it's a little different -- I'm some jagoff on the internet, and nobody really cares what I think, and what I think isn't going to majorly affect D&D one way or the other (unless Mearls really is in my head).

If I become a D&D designer and say that, as I'm designing 5e, a lot of minis combat fans would be rather justifiably provoked to nerdrage over it.

Designers have a responsibility to be aware of how their audience has fun with what they make, if only so that they can effectively design a good game that embraces that. I think perspective like that makes a designer better. Arrogance and condescension don't help anyone make anything better, they just help people defend what they don't want to see change.

I can't believe you actually picked an example where the odds are likely that the made fun of the other combat mechanics. Also, Mearls has called certain mechanics in 4E flawed and dumb and you don't see me getting all whiny about it.

 

[Imaro]

Frankly, I don't recall any such mentality in any real sense. I think it's an artifact of 4e bashing, not any genuine set of behaviour.

They explained their reasons for making the changes they did, in a genuine and well intentioned effort to comunicate with the comunity, and pepple retconned it into some sort of mean jerkfest, to justify their own poor behaviour.

<SARCASM>Yeah, I remember when people who didn't like 4e tried to explain their reasons for not liking it in a genuine and well intentioned effort to communicate with others... then people retconned terms like videogamey, tactical skirmish game and WoW-like into some sort of mean jerkfest, to justify their own poor behaviour.

I believe it was just an artifact of the 3e bashing, by developers and former fans, that went on before 4e was released... Yeah I can totally sympathize with you on this... <SARCASM>

In other words sometimes it isn't just about what you're saying but also how you say it... especially to fans of a certain thing.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

I like to look at the big picture. While individual people might be more or less civil in complaining about 4E, the big picture is that instead of sticking with and being happy with earlier editions or Pathfinder, disenfranchised fans of earlier D&D editions elected to set D&D on fire and poison the atmosphere for the rest of us. That might not have been an individual person's intention but ended up the grand scheme of things.

 

[MrMyth]

Subjectivity. Not everybody sees it as a joke. Shemeska saw it as a potentially awesome adventuring site. I did, too. The designers did not.

In my mind, it's a problem that the designers did not, and it's a bigger problem that the designers felt like other peoples' fun wasn't good enough for their D&D.

I'm not sure how they could have done so, though - how do you reinvent what you see as a flawed system while still preserving elements for those who enjoyed them? I think they tried to capture that in various ways, via the Elemental Chaos, but I think they felt the game as a whole would be improved by their changes. That they could capture the elements that others found 'fun' about the Plane of Vacuum while removing the elements that removed that fun for others.

One can't do so perfectly, of course. For those whom the big issue was the symmetry, for example. But I don't think I see any attempt by them to exile or fire certain gamers, as some have suggested was their plan. (And as seems suggested by your description of their attitude.)

Again, it's something like Mike Mearls doing an interview on 5e and saying, "Minis combat?! That's the antithesis of fun. So boring and tedious and unimaginative! Gotta make delicious hamburger out of THAT sacred cow! D&D is not about playing with little plastic toys, I think we all outgrew that by the time we were 8."

I'm not sure it is quite equivalent, since you are addressing a game element (as a whole) rather than one example as such.

If Mike Mearls said, "Hey, there are benefits to using a battlemap, but sometimes they cause problems too - square fireballs, how dumb is that?"

...I think that would be much more equivalent.

(Not to mention there is a different between criticizing a game element - as he did with calling it the antithesis of fun - and criticizing gamers - as you do in your quote.)

All that said, I'd be a fan of them toning down the rhetoric and trying to avoid such inflammatory statements in the future. But in the end, I think those statements weren't meant as attacks, but just honest criticisms of areas of a game they felt needed improvement, and were not the insults that some read them to be. They are game designers, not public speakers, and so don't always phrase things as diplomatically as they can, its true.

 

[Imaro]

I like to look at the big picture. While individual people might be more or less civil in complaining about 4E, the big picture is that instead of sticking with and being happy with earlier editions or Pathfinder, disenfranchised fans of earlier D&D editions elected to set D&D on fire and poison the atmosphere for the rest of us. That might not have been an individual person's intention but ended up the grand scheme of things.

I don't know... this doesn't sound like "the big picture"... maybe "thecasualoblivion's very revisionist and skewed picture".

In all honesty you seem to have a really biased way of looking at everything concerning the edition wars, and instead of being open to the fallibility or even incompleteness of your own perceptions and biases... you seem more concerned with harping about all the wrongs (many imagined some not) that the fans of 3.X D&D have heaped upon you, WotC and 4e fans throughout the universe.

I'm not going to go into the behaviors both sides have exhibited, since perusing these forums or numerous others will quickly reveal fans of both editions slinging mud back and forth since the beginning... I can only conclude that you either have no desire to see both sides fairly or are willfully ignoring evidence that doesn't support your already established view of the edition wars... either way it would be a waste of time and energy to try and reason with you about it... I just find it humorous that you can play the role of victim and aggressor/aggitator so well at the same time with a straight face.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

I don't see the edition wars to have been necessary at all. For me the civil thing o do would have been to state that 4E wasn't for you, accept things, and walk away.

 

[Imaro]

I don't see the edition wars to have been necessary at all. For me the civil thing o do would have been to state that 4E wasn't for you, accept things, and walk away.

That's what people did do... you just didn't like the way they decided to state that 4e wasn't for them. Which leads me back to my point posted above...

In other words sometimes it isn't just about what you're saying but also how you say it... especially to fans of a certain thing.