D&D 5E What does this photo say to you? [Project: Morningstar)

[Dannyalcatraz]

have you seen http://www.habitualindolence.net/masterplan/

Nifty, but it don't need it. I don't run 4Ed at all. Thanks, though! I'm sure someone else in this thread will get it.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I have no problems with the tech at the table. Mainly because if people are distracted or not paying attention... that's my fault, not the phone or tablets. *I'M* either not engaging them in what is happening, or I'm focused on someone else and not letting them in to participate. Those would be flaws in my game as Dungeon Master. I either need to step up my game to re-engage them... or accept that their character is not actively involved in what is currently happening and thus be okay that they are checking emails.

Tablet or phone use at my table are just symptoms of the real disease, which is poor DMing.

I'll agree to a degree. I don't notice players being distracted much when I'm the DM. But in the group I'm playing in where we do get distracted I can't blame it all on the DM. Perhaps his weakness in that regards is not using the technology to give players a reason to look at the same screen he is looking at.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I'll agree to a degree. I don't notice players being distracted much when I'm the DM. But in the group I'm playing in where we do get distracted I can't blame it all on the DM. Perhaps his weakness in that regards is not using the technology to give players a reason to look at the same screen he is looking at.

I think it is a chicken and the egg problem...

I knew people who would be distracted by the TV, there girlfriends, and land line phones back when I was in highschool and lap tops were not in massive use and cell phones were loaded in cars or in big bags...

We could watch as game at college was fine, but game at someone house was full of distractions... especially when new n64 games came out...

those same people who would be riveted or distracted now have cell phones more powerful then any computer we had back then...

I can give a 1 on 1 example where "The best game in years" happened to fall on the night that Ross droped his phone in a puddle and we had it in rice drying out... When he got it working he was so happy and first thing he did was txt people... but he was also telling them about the most engrossing game he had played in 10 years... the best part is most other players saw right through this... if he wasn't on that damn ohone 24/7 he would be more engrossed...

 

[amerigoV]

That's astonishingly perceptive given that the image only clearly shows two peoples' faces, and one of them is not looking at his tech. How were you able to discern where the other players' attention was directed?

Don't blame me that you crit failed your Perception check.

 

[MarkB]

Don't blame me that you crit failed your Perception check.

Well, I was at a disadvantage, not having any preconceptions to fill in the missing details on the image.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

In response, I'd say that my personal experience was that I greatly preferred it when there was (seemingly) less need for extensive errata due to proof reading and play testing, and that when it was truly necessary, companies made it available in print. Game companies did this one of 3 ways: reprinting the books containing the erratad material; printing standalone errata (most similar in nature to the web page you cited); presenting the errata in a an appendix in a subsequent book.

Don't get me wrong- the website does have its advantages- but if you want a hard copy of the errata, it shifts the printing cost to the consumer...who will not have the same economies of scale as the game company.

This argument makes no sense at all.

Putting the errata in an appendix of a specific books forces the customer to buy that book, or not get the errata. So if you don't want "The Big Book of Magic Items Vol XXI", but it has all the magic item errata in it, you have to buy it, or not have the errata.

Printing a standalone errata, then distributing it is a gigantic waste of resources for everyone involved - the money it takes you to drive to the gamestore alone (or take public transport or whatever), that tiny amount of gas - that's more than it would cost you to print it!

As "forces the cost on to the consumer" - a cost in single-digit pennies... That is a really really awful argument against.

The only bit that makes sense is reprinting the errata'd books. I'd like to see more of that, I don't really know why it doesn't happen - presumably because it means the un-errata'd books are very hard to sell, and then WotC or whoever has to eat that cost.

As for "less need to errata", well, no, I'm not going to go on about it, but it's just beyond belief. There was so much stuff in 2E that needed errata (and thus virtually always got house-rule'd when it came up) that it's impossible, I feel, to argue that it didn't. By that logic, 4E didn't need most of it's errata - but really, it did - because they made it a better game - 2E could have been made a hell of a lot better the same way. 3E got an entire new half-edition to deal with it's errata, and that only began to address it's problems.

As for Dragon material vs DDI, there IS a difference. Most gamers I know didn't use Dragon material at all- in the 30 years I was a subscriber, I was the only one in my circle of gamers (covering several groups in 5 cities in 3 states) who ever did. It was the definition of "surplus", easily ignored. Dismissed as optional, because, while "officially approved" it all was optional. The odds that a gamer you knew was using something out of Dragon were small.

This isn't the 1980s or early '90s any more, Danny. You cannot roll back that clock.

I agree that the odds were low - in large part for two reasons:

1) Dragon had a limited circulation, even within D&D players. Especially as time went on.

2) Player generally never got to see what was in Dragon - they weren't the people buying it (despite it being marketed to them). Every instance of a player using something from Dragon that I can think of from the 2E era was because the DM found it and suggested it to him.

With a more-accessible online publication, neither of those things will be true.

In contrast, DDI blended everything together seamlessly. Since all options appeared on the tables when brought up, you might not notice that something used appeared in Dragon. With the design philosophy of "everything is core", that's great...as long as everyone has access to everything. And everything remains hosted online. In a supported format.

Sure, but however 5E is set up, we already know there is going to be some sort of DDI-type option. And that's going to end up including material from Dragon and other sources.

If & when 4Ed stuff disappears from the DDI servers, the only folks who will have access to the Starpact Hexblade (and similarly limited release options) will be those who downloaded it.

Meanwhile, those like me who never wanted to pay the monthly fee, but bought the physical books instead? We never got to see those rules. We never got those options. And like the Deep Purple album I mentioned, it seems like gouging to ask those loyal customers to buy stuff twice.

Gouging? Really? I guess if you see the single-digit-pennies cost of errata-printing as "passing the cost on to the consumer" in a meaningful way, then maybe, but I am pretty skeptical. Also, why do you cast yourself as "those loyal customers", when you were unwilling to pay that price? It seems to me that someone who has paid for the DDI since it was available is a far more "loyal" customer than the one who buys some of the books, then refuses to buy the others. I would really appreciate an explanation of how someone who has paid less, overall (and particularly less TO WOTC, as opposed to, to middlemen), and who stopped paying years ago (when new books stopped coming out), whereas the DDI guy is still paying, is the "more loyal". Seriously. Explain please. Seems completely bass-ackwards.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Huh. This is Exhibit A for when I show people how not to design an RPG. Video games are often released unfinished and patched later. Annoying, but acceptable, as the patch becomes invisible once applied. Dozens of pages of errata are not invisible and become nearly unusable the larger the volume of errata that appears.

Nobody's perfect and all games need fixing of typos or even a bit of tweeking to rules, but 4e was pretty obnoxious with its abundance of errata.

Happily, it seems WotC learned from this, and we should be back to nominal errata for the new edition.

Agamon, this is a technology issue, not a playtesting issue. It seriously mistaken to think that 1E, 2E, or 3E was "better playtested" than 4E. They weren't. 4E was no more or less "unfinished" than other editions - the issue was, back then, they couldn't errata them, so instead we got endless house rules, Sage Advice rulings in Dragon, or stuff just remaining broken forever onwards.

Contrary to your assertions, too, the vast majority of 4E errata effectively became invisible, as noted. If you needed them all compiled, the Rules Compendium did a good job on that.

If you're claiming you've eliminated any need to errata on an RPG you've designed, by playtesting, I'd like to know what RPG that was, and how many playtesters you used for how long. Please enlighten me.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Rules questions come up in play, so yeah, that's part of when the DDI access separates folks' experiences into the haves and have-nots.

What rules questions do you need the DDI for, specifically, KM? Please give me some real-play examples that can only be answered by the DDI, and wouldn't already be on your character sheet or in the Rules Compendium or whatever.

I mean, the characters you build and the concepts you build them around stay with you for months, if not years, and change a bit at every level. Having DDI, beyond the access, makes comparisons, backtracking, organization, and sorting easy. That changes the specific options chosen, which changes the play of the character.

Neither of these are inherent issues with an online char builder/rules database as much as they are inherent issues with a complex ruleset that relies on precise detail to achieve its effects.

Like I said, this is an extremely weak argument you're making. It's not even really an argument - it's more of a comment. It's not something that is good or bad.

The issue with errata in 4e wasn't so much that it existed, or even the quantity of it, it was the impact of it. In 4e, a little change to a little rule could matter tremendously in play. A DM's best judgement of intent could send a power off the rails with just a little touch (say, changing "creatures" to "enemies" in the targeting of a burst or blast).

This issue has nothing do with errata at all. This issue is entirely down to "tightly-designed rules sets", and applies as much to M:tG or any of a thousand thousand other games (most not RPGs, though, note). I feel like you're overstating the real-world, non-CharOp impact, too, and completely omission of examples on your part seems to support that feeling.

I hope that 5e manages to be more flexible and resilient than that, less fragile. Elder e's certainly are (largely because balance was a much more theoretical thing in them), and there's cause to be optimistic. When 5e needs errata, regardless of the amount it needs, I would hope that the errata would be less necessary, less significant, less massive in play impact. So someone who has the updates might find them clearer or more strictly worded, but they won't risk changing the essential nature of the thing.

I don't think any 4E errata "changed the essential nature of the thing" (unless "the thing" was a single power from a single class, in which case, that's been happening forever in TT RPGs, ever since designers realized they could do it, anyway), and I'd challenge you to find examples otherwise. We will see specific spells and abilities get nerfed/buffed in 5E, post-release, I think we can be pretty sure of that.

5E will be less tightly balanced, we can already see that, but it's just a matter of when, not if, they have to put out errata seriously changing some ability or combo of abilities, unless we want to hear, how, three years down the line, every Fighter is picking the Dragonslayer subclass and then MC'ing into Turbo-Monk or whatever. If they aren't going to do that because it might put someone's nose out of joint, well, the hell with that. You can always house-rule it back to the abusive version, if that's what you want.

 

[Umbran]

Tablet or phone use at my table are just symptoms of the real disease, which is poor DMing.

Er... no. At least, not so flatly and generally. If nothing else, compulsive internet use and ADD are real things, and we are GMs, not mental health professionals.

There are other, less clinical problems, where the major issue is still on the player's side, not the GM's.

I think the generalization - "all you guys who are complaining about distraction are just bad GMs!" - without having discussed it at length, is pretty dismissive.

 

[SkidAce]

Er... no. At least, not so flatly and generally. If nothing else, compulsive internet use and ADD are real things, and we are GMs, not mental health professionals.

There are other, less clinical problems, where the major issue is still on the player's side, not the GM's.

I think the generalization - "all you guys who are complaining about distraction are just bad GMs!" - without having discussed it at length, is pretty dismissive.

Yup, I have a player who loves my games, and is the main instigator/organizer to getting them running.

And then during the game, if not directly involved, she is tapping on her phone or tablet. Contributes to the game, loves the atmosphere, has ADD and will get extremely frustrated and anxious if I tried to ban whatever she was using to dilute her anxiety.

So I learned not to try and change her behavior, but to accept it and "roll" with it.*


* roll, get it?