D&D 5E Are you happy with D&D Next so far?

[jsaving]

What has most surprised me about 5e to date is the seriousness with which they're taking the all-editions mantra. I went into this expecting a thinly disguised revamp of 3rd edition but was surprised to see a great deal of 1e/2e flavor coupled with 4e mechanical advances like at-wills and themes/backgrounds. And as somebody who thinks every edition has something to contribute, I'm heartened to see each edition making its mark on Next.

 

[Steely_Dan]

IMO, we had enough of this condescending stuff back in 2008. It is possible to discuss these things without denigrating other peoples' preferences.

How am I denigrating people, I am merely noticing that 4th Ed is very much a derivative of DDM?

As I said in the other thread, I totally dug 4th Ed when it first came out, then I DMed 6 or 7 sessions and realised it was not D&D, IMO.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

This would only be true if they were trying to make a game to please you specifically. They may very well know exactly the type of game you prefer and what goes into it, but know they have a much wider audience than just you.

Of course. I don't expect them to make a game just to please me, but I suspect there's a good chunk of customers who are likeminded.

 

[Derren]

No.
It seems to be turning out exactly as 4E did as a "only combat matters" edition where everything revolves around combat. The few breadcrumbs thrown to non combat look nice on paper when coming from 4E, but they are only fixing what they broke before and are not actually improving things when you look back through the editions. Also, those breadcrumbs look like cheap addons they slapped onto the combat engine to silence the RP crowd and not like something which was included from the beginning.

It seems that this edition will be even more "streamlined" and verisimilitude gets replaced with more gamiest nonsense because players can't be bothered to remember rules or DMs to run a world which doesn't freeze as soon as the PCs enter a dungeon.

I do not care if the game fits into a mythical definition of what "D&D" has to be, I want an interesting RPG. But what I see so far is only a board game.

 

[Campbell]

I was pretty happy with the way 5e was shaping up based on the initial offering of the play test, but that was back when I assumed the material we were presented was the most conservative version of the game we would see and that the game's audience as a whole would be willing to compromise to an extent where we might actually be able to sit at the same game tables again.

What I've seen from WotC and the community since feedback has started to come in shows a lack of willingness to embrace elements of the game that might bring us back together. What I'm seeing is a preference towards ghettoizing elements of the community that prefer elements of 4e towards optional rules without providing them additional value. I'll be sticking around for at least one more iteration of the play test rules, but if I don't see some legitimate give and take I'll probably write off the next edition and look more towards games that allow the sort of narrative play I prefer like 4e, FATE, FantasyCraft, RuneQuest with the right dials, Burning Wheel, etc. I'm not on board for the second coming of 3e.

 

[Ratskinner]

What I've seen from WotC and the community since feedback has started to come in shows a lack of willingness to embrace elements of the game that might bring us back together. What I'm seeing is a preference towards ghettoizing elements of the community that prefer elements of 4e towards optional rules without providing them additional value.

Please understand that I ask these questions earnestly, because your post stood out to me.

Could you elaborate on what elements you mean here?

How is having modular support for 4e style games "ghettoizing" them? It seems to me that lots of various rules are going to be in modules.

 

[SteveC]

Having played and run the current material, unless there's a lot more coming, I have no reason to play this. I own every edition of the game, and so I have the material they've given us. I have Keep on the Borderlands, and, the thing is, 30 years later I want more out of a game. Heck I at least want as much as I already have.

Now this is such an early playtest that there may very well be a lot more to come, but right now this game is giving me a mid-eighties vibe, and I'm not interested in going back. What's more, it's taken the classes that I enjoyed the most (rogue and fighter) and returned them to a "why bother" status. Ugh.

 

[Boarstorm]

but if I don't see some legitimate give and take I'll probably write off the next edition and look more towards games that allow the sort of narrative play I prefer like 4e, FATE(...)

See now, this blows my mind. IMO, if "tools for narrative play" was a continuum 4E would be ALL the way over on one end, and FATE would be ALL the way over on the other.

But I guess it's more fuel for my theory that what narrative tools a system offers is largely colored by our individual expectations of that system. Or to put it another way, we all bring our own baggage to the table.

 

[Raith5]

I'll be sticking around for at least one more iteration of the play test rules, but if I don't see some legitimate give and take I'll probably write off the next edition and look more towards games that allow the sort of narrative play I prefer like 4e, FATE, FantasyCraft, RuneQuest with the right dials, Burning Wheel, etc. I'm not on board for the second coming of 3e.

This is fairly close to my view. I have to say that on one level I am impressed with the DDN rules - I think they are going the right way about things. But while I think they have been successful in doing what they set out to do (productively combing editions), I want more than this this for my table. I want most of the elements of 4th ed with classes better realised than they were in 4th, faster combats and better support for out of combat options. I want to be able to do 4th edition plus some of the elements of D&D which fell away a little.

So I basically waiting to see how the modularity can kick in and enable the game I want.

 

[pemerton]

See now, this blows my mind. IMO, if "tools for narrative play" was a continuum 4E would be ALL the way over on one end, and FATE would be ALL the way over on the other.

But I guess it's more fuel for my theory that what narrative tools a system offers is largely colored by our individual expectations of that system.

I'm wondering if by "narrative" you mean the same as what Campbell means by "narrative".

Here's an earlier post by Campbell that captures my own experience with 4e:

4e Classic (4eC) sings with the right group, but requires a high degree of player buy-in to get the results that I want out of it. I tend to view 4eC as a visceral game about violently capable individuals who set out willingly or not to irrevocably enact change in their worlds who end up becoming mythic figures in their own right. This is highly reinforced in the assumed setting of the game with the backdrop of the Dawn War, tales of the fall of civilizations, and highly active Gods, Demon Princes, Primordials, etc. 4eC presents a world on fire in desperate need of heroes. Thematically it strikes the same currents that Greek Myth, the Diablo games, and Exalted does though tied to a more mortal perspective.

Of course to really embrace these aspects players need to be able to shift between awareness of the game's narrative to engaging its combat encounter mini-game while remaining focused on the underlying fiction. 4eC asks a lot out of the players, but I find the relatively unique combination of satisfying my narrative jones while engaging my tactical/strategic mind incredibly refreshing.

I think the comment about the need, if 4e is to work, for the participatns to remain focused on the fiction while they are engaging the combat mechanics, is correct. I think that many aspects of the game are designed to support this - both mechanical aspects, and story elements. But the support and integration is not as tight as, say, Burning Wheel (which is otherwise somewhat similar in linking narrativist play to mechanically intricate subsystems).

One feature of 4e that distinguishes it, I think, from 3E is that if you don't remainn focused on the underlying fiction, the combat resolution mechanics won't give you much of an alternative default fiction. This is because of their well-known non-simulationist character (eg encounter powers, scaling DCs etc). In my view, this is why, for those groups who aren't interested in or don't maintain that focus on the underlying fiction, the game plays (as it is often put) "like a board game". Whereas in 3E, even if you don't care about the stakes of what is going on in the fiction, the more-or-less simulationist mechanics themselves still deliver some sort of surface-level fiction about who went where and tried what and stabbed whom.