D&D 5E Legends & Lore 03/24/2014

[Agamon]

i'm also leery about the trinket table. The person who picks up, say, an heirloom pearl necklace or his father's masterwork sword will be overjoyed, but I can almost imagine a pig-pen like "I got a rock" when someone rolls up that "candle that won't light"

I think the idea is that these items are not useful without being creative and really are only there to inform back story for the PC. So jewellery and better-than-normal weapons probably aren't on the list.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

And people say Monte quit due to differences in design decisions.

Reminds me a bit of starting equipment for DCC funnel PCs, too. I'm a farmer, I start with a pitchfork and a chicken.

I once had a PC who had a fiendish chicken named "Bok Bok".

 

[Dausuul]

I remember pointing many of my players to the equipment pack in B4. I also remember despising the PHB2 equipment pack for including sun rods. Overall, I like equipment packs, but I hope they don't include alchemical items in the base package.

I concur. I'm fine with alchemist's fire, but a lot of the more exotic alchemical items (tanglefoot bags, sunrods, alchemist's frost) rub me the wrong way. I'd rather see alchemy a bit more grounded.

Oh, and can we lose the name "tindertwig?" They're matches. Call them matches. If that seems anachronistic, well, that's because it is (while something like a match existed in medieval China, friction matches as we know them are a 19th-century invention).

 

[the Jester]

I'm glad they are focusing on mundane equipment because I require tracking of everything. It adds a more realistic element to the game and it makes players who ise ammunition to be more cautious. I always use a rule that if you have recoverable ammo then you get back half.

Heh... I require tracking too, though I always roll for each arrow (retrievable 3 in 6).... your way would probably save a lot of time in the long run.

I suspect this comes from playing an older style of rpg, where starting money and equipment really did matter, and you couldn't expect to automatically have good armor and weapons at any level; you always faced the risk of having all your gear lost/stolen/destroyed or swiped by the Talons or something. Decoupling treasure from pc advancement is a huge deal to me.

 

[Derren]

So WotC now tries to sell equipment packages as something new even though they have been around since pretty much the beginning of D&D? I guess they ran out of other "harmless and uncontroversial stuff to show which will not start a discussion".

About the packages, as long as they make sense and you do not get something extra for choosing a package instead of buying the equipment individually its fine. As I said, harmless and uncontroversial. Unless you look below the picture on the last few paragraphs

Long setup times are no longer the norm, and gamers want to get into actual play as quickly as possible. It's easy to write off that trend as purely a digital thing, but it extends to tabletop play as well. From the process of designing board games like Lords of Waterdeep and Castle Ravenloft, we've learned that if a game is easy to set up and quick to start, people will play it more often.

Interesting that they spell out so openly who the target group of 5E is, especially when you see how this situation developed on the digital market.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Interesting that they spell out so openly who the target group of 5E is, especially when you see how this situation developed on the digital market.

Hm, yeah, how unusual for them to declare openly that they're trying to go after players who don't necessarily want to spend hours whipping up their make-believe magical elf.

 

[Li Shenron]

I guess they ran out of other "harmless and uncontroversial stuff to show which will not start a discussion".

I think they might have now started planning their L&L ahead, in order to have enough (but not too many) "previews" before the launch. Thus they will be alternating juicy articles with others that have minor news, so as not to blow all the big previews too soon.

 

[Derren]

Hm, yeah, how unusual for them to declare openly that they're trying to go after players who don't necessarily want to spend hours whipping up their make-believe magical elf.

You might want to ask around the video game community, especially the older players, about how many red flags something like this raises.
Many old but beloved franchises have been destroyed by making them "more accessible", "streamlining" and "broadening the audience".

 

[Li Shenron]

...and about long setup times, I can only speak for myself & friends, and it is indeed a problem. The same people who had plenty of time 10 years ago for system mastery and writing down their own campaign setting, have small children in the house today. If we want to play, we need to go straight to the tabletop action as soon as possible.

But obviously this doesn't apply to others. The point of the matter however, is that all this stuff that helps speed up both players and DM's preparation, is not mandatory. You can still toss that away and go hardcore in character generation and adventure design, if you can afford the time and effort.

 

[I'm A Banana]

You might want to ask around the video game community, especially the older players, about how many red flags something like this raises.
Many old but beloved franchises have been destroyed by making them "more accessible", "streamlining" and "broadening the audience".

The video game peanut gallery isn't exactly known for the most reasoned and well-informed opinions out there. And WotC is a very different kind of company from a video game publisher.