D&D 5E Coming Around on the "Not D&D" D&D Next Train

[AbdulAlhazred]

No disrespect intended to wrecan, but I read his improv guide and it's seven steps. I can't see that being used in a game very often, and a game where even just using your stock power loadout is often compared to bullet time in The Matrix (i.e. way too slow to allow any of the other pillars of gameplay any air to breathe in). Thing is, I don't want to look at powers and decide what to do in this room or that situation. If I'm playing a big strong fighter, or a swashbuckling rogue, or a shape-changing druid, I can think of all manners of things to do on the spot without the need (or desire) to simply put my card down and say "this is what happens now, will ye nil ye" to the DM. It removed the DM from the equation from adjudicating often simple things that shouldn't be tough calls. If you're in a room full of barrells propped up with a perch, chased by orcs, I run by and say by the way, I kick the prop down as I run by them to cause them to roll. Why do I need an "encounter" power to do that? The DM quite often, for trivial or clever or cinematic things, would just say "ok, yeah you knock that fruit cart over, causing a raucus, it gains you and your friends a 1 round head start to get away".

Really do not like "auto-happen" cards that replace creativity and make all the fruitcarts or barrels that the DM either describes are in your surrounds, or aren't. I just can't see that "power of skill" working without props in the scene to use - PCs will probably not be carrying a load of garbage around just to make a tiny area of debris -- and what if you're in an empty room? Shouldn't work. Just...no. And you take this "Power of Skill" instead of some other, much better feat or power at that level. What I'm saying is, for the love of improv I think relying on cue cards that automatically work is a way to ignore what the DM describes in the scene and having to think on your feet to actually make it happen. I think it cheapens the job of the DM, gives players no incentive to actually listen to the DM (I've seen this in every edition, but much more so in 4e, since improv is so suboptimal a strategy / lackluster next to just killing stuff).

"Plot coupons", no offense, sounds like a terrific way of describing a gameplay mechanic that I wish had never been made a part of D&D. What power of skill does is reduce the actual room or alley or environment your PC is in to a set of squares, and everything within them, other than "difficult terrain" or monsters are fluff.

The best set of rules to improvise are those that get the heck out of the way of your creativity, and require you to FOCUS on what the DM is saying, and what he / she is describing to you. The rules I'm describing are, of course, ability checks or skill checks, or proficiencies, and should be only used appropriately, and with DM fiat. Players being able to dictate the narrative with "this happens" is just not true to the spirit of the game. At least not in any that I want to play in. DMs I've played with love when you do creative and interesting things, just could never get their heads around the 4e way of doing it. Wrecan's positive contributions to the 4e forums over at Wotc headquarters might be held in high regard by many, but the improv guide I read of his is just so impractical, and is in such a 4e-esque frame of mind (hey, this simple encounter is already taking three hours, what's another twenty minutes to adjudicate how we're going to knock over this bolder from the roof). Sigh....at a certain point we just wanted battles to be over because they long ceased to be exciting any more.

I work 60 hours a week, and just don't have time to play a game where every skirmish turns into an hour long affair. You get nothing done. One of my first posts here mentioned how when I joined some pathfinder groups it was such a breath of fresh air. To me, that was playing D&D again. Sure it's not perfect, and it is very rules heavy too, but once you have your character made you can do a zillion things per session, and you had bloody well pay attention to what the DM is telling you if you don't want your PC to wind up in an early grave.

All I can say is that IME games in which the players participate in at least some ways in defining the world are far deeper and richer games than ones where they just sit and listen to the DM tell them how it all is and do nothing but react to that. The "create a bit of difficult terrain" power is minor but it is a perfectly good illustration. For one thing it removes a great burden from the DM. When my character suddenly runs down some ally in the town should we have to rely on the DM to create a cool scene filled with chickens, laundry, a fruit stand, a low shed roof that a character could scramble up onto, and 5 other things that suddenly became relevant in this otherwise unremarkable ally? I don't think so. What's wrong with 6 heads working on that instead of just one? The guy with this power can say "Hey, there are 5 cages full of chickens stacked on a handcart by a door, I tip them over". You've instantly gained a little depth and detail that you lacked before. This doesn't derail things like exploration, each character can do it now and then at the cost of a power use or whatever.

I'm not sure which of Wreccan's things people were looking at, but IME at least MOST of the time things aren't so formal. However, Terrain Powers (which are actually in DMG2, though Wreccan wrote about them) CAN be quite handy. If I have a large setpiece that I've developed then it makes quite good sense to just anticipate the PCs and set up some TPs ahead of time. They are just basically 'solidified page 42'. This is an illustration of a major theme of 4e, to move work into the setup phase of the game in order to make table time quicker and easier. It also allowed for a way to create libraries of TPs that can be reused. I think its reasonable to consider which things you really need though. Not every little piece of terrain needs a power and not every improvisation PCs perform needs to be elaborately thought out and balanced against other powers. Most of the time its sort of a one-shot thing and basically just a skill use and big deal. Some DMs will lean more heavily on skills than others too. I've seen some that use them constantly for a lot of things, and others that pretty much play a style where the PCs mostly just use powers. 4e is like any other D&D, there's a lot of ways to play it and none of them is wrong.

Anyway, I dunno. I don't get this 'bullet time' thing. I ran a game last night. It went about 3 hours. The entire action took place in a single (rather large) room. There was exploration, lots of skill use, a bunch of RP, and a sort of running fight that went on for a good part of the evening. I guess you could have called it a "3 hour fight", but a really wide variety of different things happened. In game time it was probably only a few minutes, possibly with a few breaks for negotiation, but it sure wasn't boring. The players were doing what they wanted to do, the plot was moving rapidly forward, new toys showed up, amusing annecdotes were manufactured to be repeated in future sessions, etc. I could have spread things out over more space, and more time, but it didn't really matter. Just because 4e might have you living in the world time of a single 'encounter' for a good while isn't especially bad. I find it is just better to go with the flow of a game, do things how it wants, and then pump it up to 11 and see what happens. 4e works well that way. Personally I found it hard to pump AD&D up that way, and I haven't seen it really happen in DDN so far.

 

[El Mahdi]

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[Dausuul]

The point is: Move on, and play what you like.

I am. I'm moving to 5E, in which the problem is being fixed.

More seriously, though: There's always a question of who a given game is meant for. D&D is obviously a niche game meant for a small subset of the population. If a large fraction of D&D players is having trouble with something, then WotC can either decide that the game was not meant for those people, or it can accept that the something in question is a problem. (Of course, that still leaves the question of whether it's a big enough problem to justify fixing. And it's possible that the only available fix will alienate another large fraction, in which case WotC is screwed either way. But I don't think that situation is as common as it's made out to be.)

Sometimes it's necessary, but in general, "This wasn't meant for you" is a bad approach to dealing with a widespread issue. It promotes an insular mentality that prevents learning and improving. It also tends to shrink the customer base.

 

[Gorgoroth]

For one thing it removes a great burden from the DM. When my character suddenly runs down some ally in the town should we have to rely on the DM to create a cool scene filled with chickens, laundry, a fruit stand, a low shed roof that a character could scramble up onto, and 5 other things that suddenly became relevant in this otherwise unremarkable ally? I don't think so. What's wrong with 6 heads working on that instead of just one?

There's nothing wrong with it, it's just not D&D. DMing is not a collaborative affair, because players and DMs are not both privvy to the actual state of the world and the locations of key items, the true purpose of items or villains. I'm sure it can work in a completely different game, but I don't want to tell a story except through my character, that's how I roleplay. I take the role of a character in the fictitious world invented in the theater of the mind of the DM. My imagination parses his descriptions, and I can easily ask him what's lying around in the alley. I know it's a lot of work being a DM, but conjuring mundane items on the fly is not IMO one of the real challenges. If we're in a crowded street market, I expect there to be a cart to knock over, just not necessarily "there". I can describe what I do to it, but not that it will forcibly fall in the exact way I want to (even a DC 10 strength check will not auto-succeed).

I will accept that other people on here have had much better success than I have at improv, I just have seen enough rules lawyering about silly and trivial things that it turns out were not at all obvious why they shouldn't work. E.g. to actually fight while flying you need a fly "speed", not the ability to hover. It takes english words and garbles them to give them game-only meanings that are counterintuitive and often contradictory (I could go on...but won't). Anyway, if you enjoy it, play it! Have fun.

I just don't want a "fruit cart knockdown" power to even exist, anywhere in D&D 5.0. It is unnecessary and superfluous, and relies on a bunch of baggage that does not make the game more fun. We always improvised in D&D quite fine without it. Better, by far. I played 4e so much that I realized only upon returning to PF that my brain was in sleep-mode most of the time. Chess is not my idea of upper brain stimulation (others will disagree on this, but studies have shown that the only skill that being good at chess generates is...being good at chess. I felt the same way in 4e. Unless it's "crunch", it's fluff. If so, it's meaningless and has no bearing on the outcome of the game. The power card telling you where debris is in the alley is a travesty against the DM and players querying him about where things are). For this reason, and many others, I believe 4e is intrinsically anti-thetical to the theater of the mind, and more than AC, more than HP, more than longswords, theater of the mind is the real core of D&D, to me. That power card relies on a grid being on the table, and for it to be effective you need to draw it in, and lure enemies to walk exactly "there". Do not want this level of specificity, it's pointless, tedious, and un-fun.

Say what you will in favor of 4e, but being able to play without a grid on the table is not possible. And I LOVE minis, and tactical play. Just not for every little thing. Soooooo annoying.

 

[Randomthoughts]

But I'm coming around to the idea that maybe this really WILL be a "D&D" worth playing--insofar as I'm actually interested in "D&D" as a game / genre / trope.

<snip>

It seemed a bit of paradox at first, but the more I think about it, D&D Next makes a whole lot of sense to me as the "Not Yet Anybody's D&D" edition. If D&D Next manages to straddle the line between editions even moderately well, then I'm okay playing a D&D that ISN'T anything that came before it, and just manages to be "D&D" on its own terms.

I'm looking at DDN (like most RP games I buy) with the eye of "how likely will I play or run it?" And the answer for me is "likely to very likely." So, I will probably purchase it, and run it, but probably not right away. I also don't how often I would run it, whether just one-shots, short arcs or a full campaign. The exact parameters of the modules is what will definitely sell me (or not) on the game.

Right now, it has a nice "Basic D&D" vibe that I like. I ran a session for a bunch of 9-10 year olds and their dads and it went well. I do like the simplicity of the rules but look for more complicated options as well (4e being my fave edition so far; second fave is B/X).

OTOH, I'm really digging MHR right now, and my 4e Dark Sun campaign is still going strong, so I'm not in any rush for DDN.

 

[El Mahdi]

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[AbdulAlhazred]

There's nothing wrong with it, it's just not D&D.

Phwew! I'm glad you've cleared this up for us all!

DMing is not a collaborative affair, because players and DMs are not both privvy to the actual state of the world and the locations of key items, the true purpose of items or villains. I'm sure it can work in a completely different game, but I don't want to tell a story except through my character, that's how I roleplay. I take the role of a character in the fictitious world invented in the theater of the mind of the DM. My imagination parses his descriptions, and I can easily ask him what's lying around in the alley. I know it's a lot of work being a DM, but conjuring mundane items on the fly is not IMO one of the real challenges. If we're in a crowded street market, I expect there to be a cart to knock over, just not necessarily "there". I can describe what I do to it, but not that it will forcibly fall in the exact way I want to (even a DC 10 strength check will not auto-succeed).

Its perfectly reasonable for you to say you don't want to play except in games where the DM is the absolute arbiter. However, I will point out this a rather old-fashioned style of play at this point, and one has to wonder why WotC should create a game which can only support this type of play in the 21st Century.

Conjuring a really deep detailed environment is EXACTLY one of the primary problems for a DM. Every little thing can be resource for players, a clue about the environment, or potentially a hazard. There is no detail too small, as watching any of the myriad detective procedurals on TV nowadays will quickly tell you. The example I gave is a perfect one, the characters dodge into an ally, what resources and obstacles do they encounter there? If you expect the DM to provide every detail you're either going to have to have a VERY VERY good DM, Chris Perkins level good, or else you're better off with some plot coupons. I'm not sure what your last sentence about how the cart falls means. If you are objecting to a power with no check attached to it IMHO that's a minor detail. I think the point of it was to not NEED a check where a normal PC without the power would need to roll a check. You are of course free to object to the details of any given power, they can always be written in many different ways.

I will accept that other people on here have had much better success than I have at improv, I just have seen enough rules lawyering about silly and trivial things that it turns out were not at all obvious why they shouldn't work. E.g. to actually fight while flying you need a fly "speed", not the ability to hover. It takes english words and garbles them to give them game-only meanings that are counterintuitive and often contradictory (I could go on...but won't). Anyway, if you enjoy it, play it! Have fun.

Meh, rules lawyers are obnoxious the world-wide. I don't think they're especially more of a problem in one edition than another. I had plenty of arguments with players back in the 1e days. In fact I've not had many such issues in 4e.

I just don't want a "fruit cart knockdown" power to even exist, anywhere in D&D 5.0. It is unnecessary and superfluous, and relies on a bunch of baggage that does not make the game more fun. We always improvised in D&D quite fine without it. Better, by far. I played 4e so much that I realized only upon returning to PF that my brain was in sleep-mode most of the time. Chess is not my idea of upper brain stimulation (others will disagree on this, but studies have shown that the only skill that being good at chess generates is...being good at chess. I felt the same way in 4e. Unless it's "crunch", it's fluff. If so, it's meaningless and has no bearing on the outcome of the game. The power card telling you where debris is in the alley is a travesty against the DM and players querying him about where things are). For this reason, and many others, I believe 4e is intrinsically anti-thetical to the theater of the mind, and more than AC, more than HP, more than longswords, theater of the mind is the real core of D&D, to me. That power card relies on a grid being on the table, and for it to be effective you need to draw it in, and lure enemies to walk exactly "there". Do not want this level of specificity, it's pointless, tedious, and un-fun.

Well, honestly I have no idea where you're coming from on this. DM absolutism isn't the same thing as ToTM. It is just a limited way to imagine the world you play in. 4e is no more or less an RPG than any other. The rules are only there to help you imagine whatever you want to imagine is going on. That's how we play anyhow. All I can say is I got sick and tired of the arguments about where stuff was, etc. We never have those issues anymore with 4e, but if you are wanting to do something where the rules seem to be getting in the way then just make up something. No edition of the game can change your ability to do that, and it works fine even if the players are part of the making up of stuff.

Say what you will in favor of 4e, but being able to play without a grid on the table is not possible. And I LOVE minis, and tactical play. Just not for every little thing. Soooooo annoying.

Meh, I only break out minis and grids when it is really needed. quite often we don't even really bother. Besides, we have some good minis and props and stuff, so its quite fun.

 

[teitan]

Gorgoroth, you could easily import rules from other games that allow pcs to edit the environment. It makes for a fun game. My players got good use our of them in mutants & masterminds

 

[El Mahdi]

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[WheresMyD20]

OD&D is D&D!

AD&D is D&D!

3E D&D is D&D!

4E D&D is D&D!

5E D&D is D&D! Even in it's current form! It started as, is, and will be D&D!

Yes, but...

Soccer is Football! (association football)

American Football is Football!

Rugby is Football! (union football)

Arena Football is Football!

Canadian Football is Football!

Australian Football is Football!

Gaelic Football is Football!

...the point being that just because it has the same name, doesn't mean that it's the same game, or that it's equivalent or interchangeable. Just because there's a common ancestor doesn't mean that it's all the same.

The reason we have so much D&D market fragmentation is that the "editions" of D&D have effectively split into different games. They may have the same name, they may have a common ancestor, but they're not the same game anymore.