D&D 5E Design Philosophy of 5e

[evileeyore]

My only complaint with 5e* is how it's handling skills.

IMHO 3e got skills "just right". No other edition has done it as well. However, I temper my 'disappointment' in 5e's skill treatment by noting at least it's a vast improvement over OD&D.









* I will leave aside my other dislikes of D&D in general as they remain largely unchanged.

 

[Umbran]

Playstyle Preferences are ways of using or interpreting the rules for a different experience -- it takes the typical goals of a D&D game, and tweaks them a bit to be different goals, sometimes only slightly.

The Good Group Fix happens when a rule, as it is written, would create some problematic effect, so good groups and good DMs interpret the rules so that it DOESN'T create that effect.

Except that we cannot agree on what "typical goals" are, so that some folks will see a particular thing as a playstyle change, and others as a good group fix.

Kind of like George Carlin said - when it is yours, it is "stuff". When it is someone else's, it is "crap".

Oh, and saying, "everyone has one hit point" is not an "interpretation".

 

[Uchawi]

The biggest advantage to an RPG is similar to the game Minecraft, where the potential to create is infinite. What 5E has to deal with is the basic building blocks to get there which (including the mechanics that will not to be named) are front and center as evident in the posts that repeat the same topic over and over.

 

[Agamon]

For me, an effect is pretty obviously under the latter camp if it's an unintended consequence of a rules interaction and it produces an effect that a lot of tables will find undesirable -- the effect isn't one you're trying to get, it's an unexpected one you don't want. Nobody's playstyle sets out with the agend of "lets be boring." That's not a goal of anyone's table.

So with Mike's reaction, it's not clear what "playstyle" he's talking about there. There's no real goal served in playing the rule in a boring way, so I don't know why someone would choose to do that.

Though it seems clear that someone just following the rules as they are written could stumble into this negative experience, if they don't manage to fix it somehow.

If a rule is being misinterpreted, and that misinterpretation is proliferated by an off-handed comment by Mike when he wasn't ready for the question, then there might be a problem. In theory. On internet forums, anyway.

However, a player playing the rules as written - assuming the rule hasn't changed from the playtest - isn't going to have problem with the rule in question (which shan't be named. )

That being said, unfortunately misinterpreted rule aside, I agree. The less mistakes in the rules, the better. I don't think anyone would argue that. Just like there's no group that wants to play a boring game, there's no designer that wants to design a flawed game. But no game will ever be perfect, and certainly everyone will disagree to the extent of how flawed a game might be. Even "obvious" problems aren't problems for everyone.

 

[Manbearcat]

Mike Mearls mentions in the Starter Set Unboxing video (here, discussion starts around 46:15—specific comments around 48:00) they are making the design decision to "not going to try and make rules that will stop people who wanted to be bored from, like, doing boring things."

I think with that statement, Mike is tripping over one of the 4e statements that got the edition into some trouble from the word "go" by certain segments of the D&D populace; "Skip the guards (!)" and "get to the fun!"

What that statement is really trying to say are a pair of GMing principles (hat tip Vincent Baker) that I adhere to stridently and, as much as anything else, the fruits of every one of my table every sessions are borne of it:

- Every moment, drive play towards conflict.

and

- Escalate, escalate, escalate!

At its core, its a statement about pacing and stakes. If you're careful and transparent with your words and intent, people will understand. If you tell people they're playing boring/slow/uninteresting games, they're apt to get offended/jilted and tune you out (or worse).

My play agenda is to spend little to no table time on events that are conflict-neutral. What's more, I want play to move at a brisk pace from one conflict that my players are invested in, pretty much right to another. I want play to basically be relentless in its excitement and emotional quantity. I probably want a proportion (bare minimum) of 5:1 action scenes:transition scenes.

That playstyle is not for everyone. At all. Some folks want not just a slower pace, but a considerably slower pace.

What is interesting is how system architecture supports or works against each agenda. My agenda requires a system which is predicated upon individual scenes, their resolution, and then a soft or hard transition to another scene. As such, conflict resolution mechanics (including resource scheduling with that framework and pacing in mind) are a necessity. Conversely, task resolution (and resource scheduling on an adventure or work day basis) works against it in several ways (puts the PC and GM at tension with respect to pacing, makes clear and contained thematic stake-setting difficult, challenge balance predictability can run - possibly wildly - askew). Of course, the opposite is true as well. Conflict resolution mechanics (and resource scheduling predicated upon them) are anathema to several groups who are trying to simulate and explore an open world sandbox, replete with serial time accounting and considerable play-time spent on conflict-neutral tasks (haggling merchants, getting drunk in taverns, chatting up random NPCs to try to load up on "side quests" or to potentially make contacts, crafting) so they can feel like they're experiencing a living, breathing, world.

There are multiple ways to look at this design ethos. I think we've had a couple of editions that were constructed very much with the rules lawyer and a careful, exact reading of the rules at their forefront. For this edition they chose, deliberately, to not design that way. To let real people make real rulings that impact their own play instead of trying to nail down a specific style of play through exact language.

I'm not sure that is exactly accurate. 3.x was enormously rules-fiddly with dozens of interactions and sub-systems. Unbelievably so. Further, There is a decent chunk of fiddliness in AD&D when it comes to the GM's job in tracking initiative segments and in world exploration. Then there was making rulings when the various subsystems were incoherent with one another or outright silent. 4e was an extremely lean chassis that I can GM with virtually nothing in front of me and nary having to look up a thing. Its no Dungeon World, but I literally just need the math of the current level and my GMing principles and I can run it without a single rulebook. Most mental overhead in 4e is in keeping track of all of the conditions that are flying around when you have a large group of PCs (thankfully I never experienced that!).

As to how much excess (meaning stuff that I'd rather not spend any table time on whatsoever) mental overhead will be required of GMs in 5e, when adjudicating the system's blind spots, I'm not entirely sure. The last iteration of the playtest had some pretty sound, coherent exploration rules but I wonder how well it will play with the disparate suite of resources for the classes (both in terms of breadth and in terms of scheduling). The Background system should help with that, but how much remains to be seen (especially as the levels pile on and fiat by spellcasting runs roughshod over a PC constrained by the task resolution system). I've said it before, but my sense is that 5e will likely end up playing best as "the AD&D 2.5 that everyone who disliked 3.x wished would have come about."

 

[occam]

I don't understand how? If the intent is to emphasize gender differences and to model different kinds of armor, then they are not necessarily bad rules for that. If the intent is to have elegant combat and gender equality, then they are bad rules for that, but since I am not a mind reader, I can't really tell what the "Intent of the Founders" is here, all I can go by is what he actually wrote down.

I see all these as different.

Weapon vs. armor type: This was a "bad" rule because, even if you wanted to emphasize the particularities of weapon/armor interaction, it was still a pain in the ass to use. Thus, hardly anyone used it, which made it ineffective for its intended use. The intent was OK, but the implementation wasn't, even for those who appreciated the intent.

Gender-specific ability score differences: This was an easy enough rule to use; as a rule, it worked. The problem was with the intent.

Hmm, how do I address this next part without upsetting Thaumaturge...

Let's just say that you can have a rule that satisfies a certain intent and is easy to use, but that in a small number of cases might be seen as a problem in actual play. (And I believe that WotC has a good handle on that number, from data gathered early in the playtest when they were gauging how to balance resource usage across encounters and adventures, a key early issue.) In response, presumably the designers could:

1) Modify the rule, which may come at a cost of simplicity, usability, and/or flexibility; or
2) Leave it alone, and allow it to be accepted or modified in those outlier cases.

The point of this thread is that WotC has decided, as a matter of design philosophy, to do the latter. They aren't going to try to write rules that are balanced in 100% of games; we've already seen what D&D looks like when the designers try that. (It's a fool's errand, anyway. Arguments over rules interpretations certainly didn't come to an end in 3rd and 4th Editions; if anything, my experience was that the more detailed rules provided additional fodder for arguments.) They're going to write rules that work for 90%, 95% of games (or whatever their target is), and let players and DMs work out the rest. They aren't going to try to fix that last 5% or 10% of corner cases; their standpoint is that you have DMs and players who can do that. Nailing down that target was, I believe, the main purpose of the extended playtest.

So theorycrafters will be able to find "holes", and some small percentage of gamers might actually fall into them. But the benefit is a rules set that's easier to use and more flexible than one that tries (and fails) to cover them all up. And hopefully we can avoid long-drawn rules elements like this:

You must declare that you are using this feat before you make your attack roll (thus, a failed attack roll ruins the attempt). Stunning Fist forces a foe damaged by your unarmed attack to make a Fortitude saving throw (DC 10 + ½ your character level + your Wis modifier), in addition to dealing damage normally. A defender who fails this saving throw is stunned for 1 round (until just before your next action). A stunned creature drops everything held, can’t take actions, takes a -2 penalty to AC, and loses his Dexterity bonus to AC. You may attempt a stunning attack once per day for every four levels you have attained (but see Special), and no more than once per round. Constructs, oozes, plants, undead, incorporeal creatures, and creatures immune to critical hits cannot be stunned.

I much prefer this:

When you score a critical hit on a creature, you can try to stun the creature. The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw (DC 8 + your Wisdom modifier + your proficiency bonus) or be stunned until the end of your next turn.

Can you stun an ooze, or an undead? The rule here is silent, and I think that's OK. Either it's covered somewhere else (the stun condition, or an undead monster's description; in the playtest, it isn't AFAICT), or it's a DM call that you can't stun an ooze. Personally, I prefer that to dealing with all the extra text in the rule.

 

[Uchawi]

It's a mixed bag because the more abstract the game is the more likely arguments will break out. I am not sure there is a correct mix. But 5E has the advantage of hindsight, but tradition may trump it.

 

[evileeyore]

It's a mixed bag because the more abstract the game is the more likely arguments will break out. I am not sure there is a correct mix. But 5E has the advantage of hindsight, but tradition may trump it.

What tradition? There's a whole heap of different traditions in D&D some stretching back nigh on 40 years.

 

[Rygar]

Honestly? They made a catastrophic error.

The main problem D&D has right now isn't "Playstyles", it's wildly different games in form and function. 1st edition, 3rd edition, and 4th edition aren't just "Playstyle" differences, there's an entirely different tone and design process behind each of them. I'll just leave it there for fear of edition arguements derailing where I'm going with this.

The problem this causes is that you have virtually irreconcilable groups, each group prefers a game that literally invalidates the others. Their design goal was to put a bunch of stuff into the books and let people argue at the table over which type of game they're going to play, effectively moving the edition wars to the tables.

This should be relatively fine with groups who only play at home, but is devastating to organized play and public game groups. If some Adventurer's League shop has 50% 3rd edition players and 50% 4th edition players, how do they handle the resulting ruckus about mechanics? Whatever ruling is made, half of the playgroup is likely gone. The other choice is to have two playgroups, but then you end up with friction.

Eventually what you have is: Arguements at the table resulting in negative experiences and eventually player attrition or complete collapse of the playgroup due to these problems. Worse, if the shop owner feels it is more hassal than it's worth, or that it is affecting his sales, he likely will just stop supporting Adventurer's League. That in turn reduces the visibility and accessibility of D&D, which is particularly bad because it isn't going to take long before people openly talk about how Pathfinder's organized play doesn't have these problems.

WOTC punted on the problem of differences in editions, opting to force tables to argue about what rules are used and ultimately what kind of game is played. Placing your consumers in uncomfortable positions, or worse confrontational positions, is a *very* bad idea. People will associate negative experiences with the game, and they will tell others about them.

WOTC never should have punted and made the tables decide how the game is played when they knew that they had three distinct and largely incompatible factions of customers.

 

[occam]

Their design goal was to put a bunch of stuff into the books and let people argue at the table over which type of game they're going to play, effectively moving the edition wars to the tables.

This should be relatively fine with groups who only play at home, but is devastating to organized play and public game groups. If some Adventurer's League shop has 50% 3rd edition players and 50% 4th edition players, how do they handle the resulting ruckus about mechanics? Whatever ruling is made, half of the playgroup is likely gone.

Most people who play in person are not as rigidly dogmatic as many of us are when posting in forums. I've seen plenty of fans of one edition play a very different one just to get some play time in, and we aren't talking about that level of difference.