D&D 5E Changes in Interpretation

[Hussar]

I can't XP anyone here at the moment, but I want to add my voice to the "productive discussion", "mutual understanding apparently reached" chorus.

Ah, now here is a point of difference. I didn't have social encounters in mind when talking about "exploration" above (neither WPM nor ToH, my two primary exhibits, has social aspects to them). I'm from the school that find skill challenges are a very robust mechanism for handling social encounters.

I've always had a reasonably rich interaction element in my games (at least, it seems that way to me), and 4e has supported this well by reducing the amount of GM fiat and increasing the capacity of the players to leverage the mechanics in the interests of their own protagonism.

I'm not sure. There's just only so many ways you can search a room. After the fourth or fifth room, it becomes pretty rote and generally relegated to standard proceedures. I get that exploring the environment is fun and all that (hey, the World's Largest Dungeon is all about that), but, in my beef with 4e is that you have very simplistic exploration tools and very complext combat tools.

So, you spend large swaths of time killing stuff, but, searching a room takes ten seconds to play out. OTOH, I don't want to go back to pixel bitching either. I think that simply scaling back a bit on the combat system would make me happier. Something that 5e seems to be intent on delivering.

 

[pemerton]

There's just only so many ways you can search a room. After the fourth or fifth room, it becomes pretty rote and generally relegated to standard proceedures. I get that exploring the environment is fun and all that (hey, the World's Largest Dungeon is all about that), but, in my beef with 4e is that you have very simplistic exploration tools and very complext combat tools.

I didn't have the searching of rooms in mind. Personally, I regard searching rooms as the worst legacy from classic D&D - it is boring as all hell.

But what I was responding to was this:

I want out of combat stuff that is every bit as engaging as the combat stuff. Trying to convince someone to do something should be every bit as mechanically robust as trying to stick a sword in him.

Trying to convince someone to do something is very different from searching a room. I like that sort of thing a lot, and find 4e quite good at resolving it.

 

[Iosue]

It was shallow, "jilted-lover" type stuff that didn't care one way or another about dissociated mechanics, battlemat grinds, unified mechanics, homogenization of classes, etc. What my micro-anecdote says about any of the macro-issues, I don't know. However, I fully hold that certain friends of mine would have given the edition a chance if it weren't for that fateful introduction to the edition.

I think a whole lotta of this can just be laid the feet of edition change. One need only look at the change from 1e to 2e, which compared to 2e to 3e or 3e to 4e is hardly a change at all in terms of rules. Still, a whole lotta folks didn't make the switch, and a good many harbored resentment about it.

For some reason WotC has historically been pretty oblivious to this kind of fan response. Per Jeff Grubb, when 3e was coming out one of the WotC folks said they didn't give a damn if any 2e people switched over. They came up with the plan of releasing a new edition every 10 years, with the .5 editions coming midway between. That may have worked, but they just haven't been able to stick with it. 3e in 2000. 3.5 in 2003. 4e in 2008. Essentials in 2010. And now 5e. Every change brewing at the very least the kind of resentment that the change from 1e to 2e engendered. Even more so, since a lot of folks find an edition they like, and then WotC pulls the rug out from under them.

Unfortunately, this background undermines a lot of the good work they do. It doesn't matter how good 3e is at what it does, how good 4e is at what it does, how good 5e becomes. People feel that resentment a priori, before the new edition even comes out.

The design folks have been suggesting that their intent is that they can put out 5e and just leave it out there for a much longer period, after which would follow minor changes in presentation (e.g. popular modules put into the core) rather than a wholesale re-design. I'd like to believe them, but I don't blame anyone for having extreme skepticism. I do believe that if WotC wants get the fanbase all playing D&D again, they need to come up with a new business model. If releasing the core books once and then trying to live on settings and splats (2e) doesn't work, and constant releasing of entirely new editions every five years brews resentment and kills the golden goose, then they need to do something else. And I think they need to play the long game, keeping everything that comes after as compatible as possible.

 

[S'mon]

S'mon's preference is a "feel" thing. This may stem from the same issues that you have and your (shared with many) sense that 4e is adversarial to simulation play due to 4e's outcome-based simulation rather than process-based simulation.

Yes, indeed - there are a lot of little ('outcome-based'/GDS Dramatist) bits here and there in the 4e rules that get in the way of my immersive environment-sim ('process-based'/GDS Simulationist) preference. Take DCs - while I'm fine with "Wood door break STR DC X, Admantine door break STR DC X+20" I am NOT ok with "Cave Slime Acrobatics DC = X+PC Level".

I've had to scrap the 4e table of target DCs keyed off PC level, it makes Sim-Baby-Simon cry. Instead I created a table of target DCs explicitly based not on the level of the PCs, but on the level of the threat/task - so eg if breaking down the door to Orcus' throneroom is STR DC 40 (Epic-Hard) it stays DC 40 whether the PC ramming it is 21st, 30th, etc.

 

[S'mon]

Honestly, I think the reason that 4e doesn't work particularly well for the sort of "setting interaction/exploration" play that S'mon and Pemerton are talking about (and I agree with their opinion) is that it's the combat engine getting in the way. Comments about grind aside, it generally does take about an hour to resolve a 4e combat. By and large. Which means, in a 4 hour session, if you have 3 combats, there isn't a whole lot of time for exploration.

I agree - and in my current campaign the big fights now seem to be taking more like 2 hours (even with half-hp monsters!), when we only get about 2.5 hours actual play time into the typical session.

The worst thing, I find, is that after one of those big sloggy fights, everyone is just exhausted and completely uninterested in going back to exploratory play. No one (me included) even wants to search the room! OOC we take a toilet break, get a drink, maybe chat OOC and wind down/chill out. Then the session ends.
So, I find that as GM I need to get all the exploratory and dramatic (talky stuff) done BEFORE the first fight, or it's not going to happen. 4e has a weird tempo - with other editions, a session starts calm, with anticipation, rises to the first fight scene, relax, explore, another fight, and so on. With 4e you basically need to do it as a single ramp going up the whole time until the session climax, then let it fall way off, chill, and either take a midway break in a long (5-6 hour) session, with the second half essentially a new game session, or else see-you-next time in a shorter (2.5-3 hour) game.

 

[S'mon]

I've always had a reasonably rich interaction element in my games (at least, it seems that way to me), and 4e has supported this well by reducing the amount of GM fiat and increasing the capacity of the players to leverage the mechanics in the interests of their own protagonism.

Personally I am strongly in favour of GM fiat; unless the GM is sh*t it does not harm PC protagonism. And if the GM is sh*t I don't want to play with him.

I do find the 4e skill rules pretty robust, and combined with my brilliant skill DC table they give good results. Example - Esmerelda of Waterdeep the beautiful half-elven bard (8th level) has huge Diplomacy modifiers - she can make very high Diplomacy DCs. And the player is a good RPer, so he will spin a plausible tale also - I absolutely will not let someone just "Roll Diplomacy" if I don't know what it is they are at least trying to say. Recently she tried to get her half-sister, the warlord Valeris, to send troops as part of a plot against King Boris of Llorkh, she had another PC deliver Valeris a letter, but had not adequately prepped the groundwork. So with use of evil GM fiat I was able to judge it a "Moderate Paragon Task" - something a mid-Paragon Bard would find tough but not impossible - which on my DC table is a 25. Esme rolled low and failed. Conversely she had sent a similar letter to a minor noble, a rebellious vassal of Boris, with whom she had prepped the groundwork, so that was an auto-success.

 

[S'mon]

The design folks have been suggesting that their intent is that they can put out 5e and just leave it out there for a much longer period, after which would follow minor changes in presentation (e.g. popular modules put into the core) rather than a wholesale re-design. I'd like to believe them, but I don't blame anyone for having extreme skepticism.

They've shot that pooch and buried it under the porch. When 5e has been out 5 years without a major change or new edition, then maybe they'll start to have some credibility with me. But it was less than 2 years ago they said 4e Essentials would be an evergreen product, core of the 4e product line moving forward, la la la. I was ok with 3e (overdue) and 3.5 (more or less - it did address some issues with 3.0). They put out 4e a year too early, clearly inadequately tested. They then deluged the market with way too many splats, way too soon, before they had even got the game right. By mid-2010 they had finally got original 4e right (Dark Sun, Monster Manual 3) - only to go to Essentials, which was mechanically ok but undermined by the crappy online tools and switching off of the downloadable tools, as well as by the weak Red Box, appalling marketing, etc etc. So in 2011 they give up on 4e and start making 5e in secret instead.
Compare this to a (the?) company that actually knows what it's doing - Paizo, a company formed from sacked Wotc/Hasbro employees...

 

[pemerton]

Personally I am strongly in favour of GM fiat;

<snip>

So with use of evil GM fiat I was able to judge it a "Moderate Paragon Task" - something a mid-Paragon Bard would find tough but not impossible - which on my DC table is a 25.

I've got nothing against scene-framing and DC-setting. My objection is to fiat in resolution. Once you've set a DC, and determined what will happen if the DC succeeds by reference to the action the player has declared, you're not fiat-ing. (At least, not in the sense that concerns me.)

 

[Neonchameleon]

Yes, indeed - there are a lot of little ('outcome-based'/GDS Dramatist) bits here and there in the 4e rules that get in the way of my immersive environment-sim ('process-based'/GDS Simulationist) preference. Take DCs - while I'm fine with "Wood door break STR DC X, Admantine door break STR DC X+20" I am NOT ok with "Cave Slime Acrobatics DC = X+PC Level".

I've had to scrap the 4e table of target DCs keyed off PC level, it makes Sim-Baby-Simon cry. Instead I created a table of target DCs explicitly based not on the level of the PCs, but on the level of the threat/task - so eg if breaking down the door to Orcus' throneroom is STR DC 40 (Epic-Hard) it stays DC 40 whether the PC ramming it is 21st, 30th, etc.

Just to point out that this is how I have always interpreted the 4e skill challenge DC table. That the level of the skill challenge in question is based not on the PCs level, but on the level of what the are attempting to do. Trying to ambush Orcus in his lair is always going to have DCs associated with a high epic skill challenge, no matter whether the PCs are low paragon or high epic.

 

[Ratskinner]

I think a whole lotta of this can just be laid the feet of edition change. One need only look at the change from 1e to 2e, which compared to 2e to 3e or 3e to 4e is hardly a change at all in terms of rules. Still, a whole lotta folks didn't make the switch, and a good many harbored resentment about it.

See, I read people saying this about the 1e-2e transition, but I just don't recall it (granted we didn't have the webs to spread our disgruntlement, but there were still conventions I attended) I don't recall the 1e-2e jump being advertised or received as some tremendous update/shift in the rules...more a clarification and badly needed editing/representation. I suppose there were those who didn't change, but you could still basically run the two together...(at least plenty of folks around me did.)

Similarly, by the time 3e came out, most people around me were either dragging themselves with increasing resentment through 2e campaigns that were heavily houseruled or had switched to another system/game or had stopped ttrpg gaming. For a large number of younger people, Fantasy gaming meant computer games and Magic:the Gathering. The coincidental(?) release of 3e and the Invasion block resuscitateda lot of D&D in my circles.

Neither of those (and I was patrolling the conventions, forums, and lists by the 3e release) had anything near the widespread vitriolic rejection that 4e engendered (fairly or unfairly). Yes, there were occasional objectors and objections, but nothing near the wholesale defections represented by Pathfinder and the 3.x folks (let alone the OSR folks, who I think are honestly a relatively small minority, despite my participation in an OSR group right now.)

IMO, time (in addition to WotC's PR incompetence) is the critical factor. I think that we get bored with our rules and books after a while. We squeeze whatever good easy fun out of them that we can...and then we start to tire of them. The trouble is that this boredom takes far longer to set in (several years at least) than the "new edition" turnaround time that WotC needs to keep D&D a viable business on an ongoing basis (apparently less than 5 years). This puts WotC in the awkward position of pooh-poohing a product that they just sold you a year or two ago, or "updating" rules that you didn't think were an issue.* We just aren't bored with the system by the time a new edition is coming out.

Personally, I suspect that 5e may be the "farewell" edition. That WotC puts it out, and then only meagerly supports for a few years before closing the department. Provided someone remembers to check in 10 years, they might whip out a 6e or something to take advantage of that boredom. I would honestly suspect that to be more along the lines of the 1e-2e "jump", but that's stretching my prognosticating powers. Alternatively, if they find a way to hook us monthly (and if the experience is close enough to tabletop, I might be interested) the game could stay vital for much longer.

Of course, I could be wrong. Making predictions is hard, especially about the future.


*Additional Evidence: Both 3.5 and 4e contain many design elements/motifs that make it easier (theoretically) to play online, and WotC has several times stated, leaked, bragged, or over-confidently announced their desire to create an online D&D experience to mimic the tabletop....thus turning an occasional $30 purchaser into a $5/month subscriber. Why they seem to have soooo much trouble with this is a mystery that I, as an occasional software author and consultant, cannot fathom.