D&D 5E D&DN going down the wrong path for everyone.

[I'm A Banana]

Picking sides may well be silly, @Kamikaze Midget , but it's a fact that at some point we all will pick sides, unless you're in the business of supporting Wizards for Wizard's sake. Tribalism, as you referred too it, is a fact, whether you would have it so or not. I didn't create it by making this thread, I did not ask people to join the PF army and help me fight off Wizards. No amount of hand holding and kumbiya singing is going to change the fact that people have preferences. You're not going make a PF player like 4e by appealing to their sense of gamer unity... and what this comes down too is that D&DN needs a larger market share, and I don't see it getting one by trying to please everyone.

There are, arguably, lots of important things in the world to pick sides over (Politics, Religion, Honey Boo Boo), but I'm afraid I don't think that how one pretends to be a magical gumdrop elf is one of them. I give people more credit than that. Preferences are real, but they're not allegiances sworn by soldiers under penalty of death. If the PF player wants to play a game where, I dunno, archons are LG outsiders and not elementals, I don't think NEXT intends to stop them. Nor does it, I believe, intend to stop the 4e player from playing a game where archons are elementals. I imagine there's room to play for the guy who wants all at-will magic, and the guy who wants no at-will magic. The one who wants grievously gritty health rules, and the guy who wants inspirational healing. I don't see NEXT deciding that any of these preferences are illegitimate.

The only way NEXT can fail with that is if there are more tribalist goofballs in this hobby and its potential target audience than there are people who just like to play make-believe with weird dice and funny voices.

I don't think it's pervasive either, which is why I don't accept the premise of the OP. But I have been noticing more posting of this type lately here on ENWorld; more frequent and more strongly stated. In other words, the fringe minority is getting more vocal and entrenched. Even though I disagree with the OP, it appears to me that this is beginning to spread; though it's very possible it's only my own perception.

I'd really hate to see things devolve back into what we had during the last edition release.

I think there's some "squeaky wheeling" going on, sure. The tribes built during the 3e/4e transition keep people on both sides defensive, ready to lash out at an apparent deviation from their preferred norm. This is going to be especially prominent from the 4e fans, since they're the ones with a game that's on its way out (PF is by all accounts sailing along smoothly), with philosophies underpinning their game that are being re-examined, modularized, and deconstructed. Philosophies that they themselves have spent a lot of time and energy defending, and so are even MORE invested in!

But it takes a lot of energy to be a defender of tribal purity, to police the border and be hyper-vigilant for violations. I'm wagering that D&D fans by and large are more interested in playing D&D in ways they find fun than they are with the way someone else's table plays the game. And if that's true, and if NEXT is good at delivering modularity, it should be fine. And if that's not true, and the less divisive players I'm meeting and talking to on the boards are all exceptional individuals who don't represent the majority of D&D players, then I've been living a sheltered life.

 

[D'karr]

And if that's not true, and the less divisive players I'm meeting and talking to on the boards are all exceptional individuals who don't represent the majority of D&D players, then I've been living a sheltered life.

There's a reason invasion of the body snatchers is a true account. Friggin' pod people.

 

[Kinak]

I have to agree that a design trying to appeal to every edition's fans is almost guaranteed to miss the mark.

I don't mean, of course, that there won't be people who play and like it. But the more they move away from 4e to attract other players, the more 4e fans they lose. That hurts when you're trying to substantially boost your playerbase.

The idea of a consensus edition feels more like a corporate edict than a vision I can get behind. Even as a non-4e player, I'd be more excited to see a game based on a refined Essentials than a consensus edition.

Now, it's possible they'll capture lightning in a bottle somehow. But going after people who've already turned their backs on you once (or multiple times in some cases) doesn't seem like the way to go.

That is a huge IF, one of monumental proportions. Specially since WotC has never been very reliable with providing that level of support to begin with.

Agreed. I'd be shocked (pleasantly shocked, but definitely shocked) if WotC managed to produce the quality of support Paizo has.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

That is a huge IF, one of monumental proportions. Specially since WotC has never been very reliable with providing that level of support to begin with. WotC adventures? Not in my estimation. A fresh world that gets supported heavily? Again, no. Expanding rules support? That's what all the "expansion" books are. Isn't that one of the things the design team was "rallying" against?

They have their work cut out for them. But, we do know two things in their favor. First, they've been doing tons of work on the Forgotten Realms world bible, so strong setting support looks likely. And their desire to focus on story and fewer rules expansions is exactly the tactic that Pathfinder has taken. Pathfinder only releases three rulebooks a year, and about ten times that many Golarion based books.

 

[NewJeffCT]

My problem with both 3E and 4E is that combat takes too damn long. I had a huge group for my 3.5E campaign, including a few that were fairly new to gaming/D&D. So, in order to challenge my group, I had to throw the kitchen sink at them - there were big combats that took many hours to resolve. There would be 8 or 9 PCs and several allies and/or summoned creatures/planar allies on one side, and possibly dozens on the other side. I'd have a high level cleric as the main bad guy for an encounter, then a few clerics and/or wizards of a level or two lower to counterspell and dispel PC's magic, and then melee types to protect the casters, summoned monsters and planar allies, etc. (Edited to add - my bad guys had so many options, that I'd take time to determine what my main bad guys would do in rounds 4, 5, 6, 7, etc because things changed so much with so many moving pieces on the board. And, since we had some new-ish gamers, I'd give them a bit of extra time to come up with their action)

At an early climactic point in the campaign, I ran a big encounter as an homage to a former DM - however, I cut the bad guys down by about 2/3 from his original encounter, and left out the treant and other fey allies for the PCs. It still took 3x longer than the previous encounter ran in 2E.

With 4E, the battles would start off with a bang where my bad guys would toss out daily/encounter/recharge powers in round 1, spend whatever action points they had, and then they'd be stuck repeating at-wills and hoping to recharge. And, it would be a just lather-rinse-repeat every round until my bad guys were finally dead. While I found battles to be quicker overall, they were still very long in resolving and far less interesting to me as DM.

What I've heard so far about D&D Next is exciting to me - combat is greatly sped up. If they can do that, and still make it fun and balanced and not kill too many sacred cows, then I'll be thrilled. I can run a big climactic encounter for the PCs, and still have plenty of time left for the aftermath and furthering of the plot, and more role-playing.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yes, I did. Given the disdain for D&D as a game that was only good at dungeon crawling widely expressed in non-D&D circles then and now, the fact that 2e AD&D was rather good at showing a wider range of play was probably the best thing about it. That was something I thought TSR tried to emphasisse quite strongly, frankly. So when WotC came in with "Back to the Dungeon!" as if this was some great rallying dry, I wasn't the only person to be annoyed by it.

Yeah, I liked the WRITING in 2e. The problem was the system didn't deliver on the promise. It was the exact same old dungeon crawling system of 1e. Sure, they had different suggestions for how to give out XP, which was nice and all, but the game itself didn't even attempt to encourage or facilitate the sort of play they were talking about. It was as if Jeff Grub took a page from one of the early story games and tried to convince everyone D&D was that kind of system. It just didn't work, I was left feeling disappointed. Note that 2e wasn't better in some modest respects than 1e, but it left so much more on the table, it seemed almost like cowardly design.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The only way NEXT can fail with that is if there are more tribalist goofballs in this hobby and its potential target audience than there are people who just like to play make-believe with weird dice and funny voices.

The only way 4e can fail with that is if there are more tribalist goofballs in this hobby and its potential target audience than there are people who just like to play make-believe with weird dice and funny voices.

--FTFY

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Well, I think I'm rapidly watching the target audience disappear over the horizon, even though I'm mostly where I've always been. It seems to me that a big chunk of the target audience when given a choice between a rather pedestrian system that has some shiny books and lots of fluff that pushes their buttons right, or a good system, will buy the first one. Especially if the system is careful to claim that it does more than it does in that fluff.

So my honest expectation is that Next is going to turn into something where I'll buy a handful of the books, run it some and have fun, but never invest heavily in (in any sense of the word "invest"). Meanwhile, I'm sitting on the porch thinking that if everyone else wants to go over there, well, it's their life and they should do what they want. But I'd rather play the "Watch Paint Dry" game then participate. If it makes everyone warm and fuzzy to think that when I'm playing with the Next ruleset, I'm doing the same thing they are, they can knock themselves out.

You can't make a community by asserting one.

 

[billd91]

Yeah, I liked the WRITING in 2e. The problem was the system didn't deliver on the promise. It was the exact same old dungeon crawling system of 1e. Sure, they had different suggestions for how to give out XP, which was nice and all, but the game itself didn't even attempt to encourage or facilitate the sort of play they were talking about. It was as if Jeff Grub took a page from one of the early story games and tried to convince everyone D&D was that kind of system. It just didn't work, I was left feeling disappointed. Note that 2e wasn't better in some modest respects than 1e, but it left so much more on the table, it seemed almost like cowardly design.

I think you have to look at the role 2e played. It wasn't attempting to rewrite AD&D from the ground up. Rather, it was compiling a lot of the ideas that had appeared in print in a variety of other sources into the core. If that's the goal, who needs or wants bold changes in design?

 

[JustinAlexander]

There are, arguably, lots of important things in the world to pick sides over (Politics, Religion, Honey Boo Boo), but I'm afraid I don't think that how one pretends to be a magical gumdrop elf is one of them. I give people more credit than that.

Are the Rip van Winkle of gaming or something? Did you fall asleep in 2007 and not wake up until yesterday?