D&D 5E Interview with Wolfgang Baur and Steve Winter about their 5E adventures.

[Neonchameleon]

You're right, of course, but there is another angle here. More codified systems create a barrier to entry for DMing. Yes it helps, but its a lot to digest for new DMs. In addition, more codified systems can "hide" bad DMs from themselves and players. Its hard to improve if you don't know whats broken. With more immediate, personal, feedback, DM skills can improve quickly, even for novices.

Less codified systems can also create a barrier to entry for DMs. This barrier involves the DM flailing wildly when the PCs do something odd in the first couple of sessions, then crashing and burning and not going back to DMing. Good rules assist DMs, pointing them in the right direction, rather than hiding them. Something both 4E's later versions of skill challenges and especially Apocalypse World do.

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

And when I play a character I don't want to have to negotiate with the DM for anything I try to do that's not either a basic attack or a spell. If spells were held to the same standard you hold other approaches to I wouldn't mind this.

...

Again, this isn't about lightness of systems, it's about predictability. As a player I'm pretty damn sure how Fate challenges are going to be resolved, and that's lighter than any known version of D&D.

QFT - this is something that gets overlooked in the discussion of light vs. heavy. Thank you for phrasing it so clearly. Some great games have a very well defined system, and the fuzziness is more about how we apply that system than how we reach a particular outcome - like 4E skill challenges. Hopefully 5E will do this well but I have to see the final rules to make that call myself.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And when I play a character I don't want to have to negotiate with the DM for anything I try to do that's not either a basic attack or a spell. If spells were held to the same standard you hold other approaches to I wouldn't mind this. But playing a non-caster in pre-4E D&D feels very disempowering to me.

To me 4e feels lighter than D&D Next. I can get the rules onto a double sided trifold, with everything else being either monster statblocks (with large ones being about the size of an index card) or on the character sheet.

Again, this isn't about lightness of systems, it's about predictability. As a player I'm pretty damn sure how Fate challenges are going to be resolved, and that's lighter than any known version of D&D.

"You must spread some Experience Points around before giving it to Neonchameleon again."

You said it better than I could!

 

[Cybit]

Less codified systems can also create a barrier to entry for DMs. This barrier involves the DM flailing wildly when the PCs do something odd in the first couple of sessions, then crashing and burning and not going back to DMing. Good rules assist DMs, pointing them in the right direction, rather than hiding them. Something both 4E's later versions of skill challenges and especially Apocalypse World do.

FWIW, 5E seems fairly easy to pick up and DM; especially if my players are any indication (very young players who never played prior to this).

 

[jrowland]

Less codified systems can also create a barrier to entry for DMs. This barrier involves the DM flailing wildly when the PCs do something odd in the first couple of sessions, then crashing and burning and not going back to DMing. Good rules assist DMs, pointing them in the right direction, rather than hiding them. Something both 4E's later versions of skill challenges and especially Apocalypse World do.

with all due respect, "DM flailing wildly" is not a barrier to entry. The DM got in easily and then failed as a DM, sure, but it wasn't a barrier to entry.

I agree 4E has a low barrier for DM entry.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

However, therein lies the biggest potential problem 5E is going to encounter... because as you say, "if the DM is good..."

Less rules means more freedom... but it also means more responsibility on the part of the DM to make smart, fair, and interesting decisions. And if you DON'T have a good one, the game is more likely to be less than you want it to be.

The advantage of "more rules" or "codification" is that a DM can be just a "rules arbiter" if that's all they're capable of... and the game can still turn out okay. Even a not-so-great DM can still run pretty okay games.

But in 5E, we're going to ask more of our DMs. And we have to hope that after all this time of playing two editions that allowed DMs more of a security blanket in how they performed... that they've absorbed enough to now move onto a role that requires more responsibility and that they can accomplish it.

Because if not... we're going to hear a lot of stories of bad games because of bad DMs.

I have a lot of those from prior edition days....I've found that no matter how comprehensive the rules system, a bad DM is still a bad DM.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

Less codified systems can also create a barrier to entry for DMs. This barrier involves the DM flailing wildly when the PCs do something odd in the first couple of sessions, then crashing and burning and not going back to DMing. Good rules assist DMs, pointing them in the right direction, rather than hiding them. Something both 4E's later versions of skill challenges and especially Apocalypse World do.

Well the good news is I think 5th edition, based on the last playtest design, was headed down the path of "good comprehensive tools and easy rules of thumb" for DMs both new and old.

The 4E conundrum I often ran into was when players did something unexpected the rules mostly just stopped the DM cold: they want to do this, but the rules don't talk about or seem to allow it....so it must not be possible no matter how odd it is to say such. This was a very common DM newb problem I ran into during the times I got to play 4E; only the old vet DMs who ran 4E (such as myself) could work beyond the rules to handle players going off the rails.

The best middle ground is to have a ruleset that provides good guidance but an even better rule of thumb for how to handle the unusual and unexpected. I think 5E has some great mechanics for that. 4E had certain mechanics that worked in that direction, but the actual implementatio (i.e. skill challenges) fell far short of target.

 

[Cybit]

The 5E guidance is heavy on examples as well, to give players baselines of what would fall under a given attribute (STR vs DEX, or Int vs Wis). That has helped tremendously as well.

5E was the easiest edition I ever had to DM, currently its tied with 4E. The rules are easier in 5E (and are far more intuitive to me, as someone who started playing during 3E but primarily DM'd 4E), but the lack of all inclusive stat blocks does make monsters slightly more of a PITA when they have lots of spells. (Thankfully not many creatures have more than a couple of spells from the public playtest IIRC).

Also, I'm very confident 5E can handle going off the rails, seeing as one of my 12 year old players homebrewed his 4E Gamma World book into a 5E session.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Well the good news is I think 5th edition, based on the last playtest design, was headed down the path of "good comprehensive tools and easy rules of thumb" for DMs both new and old.

The 4E conundrum I often ran into was when players did something unexpected the rules mostly just stopped the DM cold: they want to do this, but the rules don't talk about or seem to allow it....so it must not be possible no matter how odd it is to say such. This was a very common DM newb problem I ran into during the times I got to play 4E; only the old vet DMs who ran 4E (such as myself) could work beyond the rules to handle players going off the rails.

The best middle ground is to have a ruleset that provides good guidance but an even better rule of thumb for how to handle the unusual and unexpected. I think 5E has some great mechanics for that. 4E had certain mechanics that worked in that direction, but the actual implementatio (i.e. skill challenges) fell far short of target.

This wasn't my experience - but I went in with an attitude of "Assume that everything's possible" and some improv drama experience, and I found it easier than just about any other system I'd read to that point. Possibly I'm just a special case.

The 5E guidance is heavy on examples as well, to give players baselines of what would fall under a given attribute (STR vs DEX, or Int vs Wis). That has helped tremendously as well.

5E was the easiest edition I ever had to DM, currently its tied with 4E. The rules are easier in 5E (and are far more intuitive to me, as someone who started playing during 3E but primarily DM'd 4E), but the lack of all inclusive stat blocks does make monsters slightly more of a PITA when they have lots of spells. (Thankfully not many creatures have more than a couple of spells from the public playtest IIRC).

Also, I'm very confident 5E can handle going off the rails, seeing as one of my 12 year old players homebrewed his 4E Gamma World book into a 5E session.

I've only ever DM'd some of the early playtest packets (and if I ever see 21 separate rats all rolling 2 dice again I'm going to force feed the designer their own rules). And Next on the latest draft I've read feels as if it slides into my top three D&D versions - 4E for Action Adventure, Rules Cyclopaedia for Dungeon Crawling, and Next for drifted D&D. I just have problems thinking of a reason I'd want drifted D&D rather than to pick a system that does what I actually want to do this time.

 

[Cybit]

I've only ever DM'd some of the early playtest packets (and if I ever see 21 separate rats all rolling 2 dice again I'm going to force feed the designer their own rules). And Next on the latest draft I've read feels as if it slides into my top three D&D versions - 4E for Action Adventure, Rules Cyclopaedia for Dungeon Crawling, and Next for drifted D&D. I just have problems thinking of a reason I'd want drifted D&D rather than to pick a system that does what I actually want to do this time.

For me, it's because I can drift between versions of the game in between sessions; which is helpful for what I'm testing / running currently. Also, in my perspective, they have cleaned up a lot of the issues with DM'ing in the latest packet. It's nice having a single edition that does 90% of what I want in each aspect rather than having to commit to a single type of game (especially as someone who has terribad ADD). From what I can tell, you and I are both very big fans of 4E DM'ing, so I have been pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoy 5E.