D&D 5E Blog Post by Robert J. Schwalb

[Klaus]

Isolation is wrong - you've described how people have to work together in 4E.

No, I didn't. I agree with him that a good chuck of the rewards were being earned not at the table, but at home, alone, in front of the Character Builder. For a segment of the audience, that's when you start playing, dodging the "trap choices" and finding the hidden synergy.

And at no point does he claim this is wrong (and yet again, I agree with him). He just pointed out a very real situation, and how he found himself drifting away from that mindset.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Could his phrasing have been better? Yes.
Could he have been more delicate to avoid ruffling feathers? Yup.
Does that make him wrong? Not necessarily.

But he is wrong, because his assertions are wrong.

Does The Game reward creative thinking? Do the rules favour creative thinking over optimization? The answer to that is "no".

What is "The Game"?

3e didn't discuss creativity but codified so much that formerly creative ideas became mechanical, and often there were heavy requirements (feats) to even attempt certain actions. There was less room for creative thought.

Agreed, but it's wrong to say creative thought wasn't rewarded. It was only not rewarded when the mechanics got in the way. As they will in 5E, just as in 3E.

4e allowed for some creative thought but made this inherently mechanically inferiour to powers possessed by characters, so they were incentivized to always use The Game.

I'm not going to have this party again, but your assertions are only true in combat and only arguably then. They are not true in Exploration or Social Interaction (as 5E puts them) in 4E. Or, if they are, they are also true of 5E, which is quite similar to 4E here.

It's tricky to even play 4e non-optimized, as some amount of munchkining is assumed. The math assumes characters are stacking their to-hit stat and actively taking ability boosts to that stat, and taking complimentary feats and magic items while actively perusing your combat role. Being less effective hurts the entire party who is expected to synergize and all contribute equally to their role.

People like to say this, but it's so divorced from the actual play of 4E as to be like claiming 2E was nothing but "guess the right search phrase!". You don't need to be very optimized, and most optimization happens naturally. Further, being non-optimized also hurts the party in 5E, and not much less than 4E (because as noted, cross-optimization is wildly overstated as an issue - and indeed to challenge even a moderately cross-character optimized group in 4E you WILL need Hard Encounters as your BASELINE - thus it's wrong to claim the game is balanced primarily for that. I speak from years of experience here).

The counterpoint is DMs can reward creative thinking. However, this is essentially a house rule, which me makes this an e-fallacious argument. The Oberoni or Rule 0 Fallacy states that the argument that the rules of a game aren't flawed because they can be ignored is logically unsound, because it supposes something isn't broken if it can be fixed. If the rule is not broken, it shouldn't need to be fixed.

This is true in all editions. You didn't get to do anything clever in 2E unless the DM chose to reward creative thinking. At least in 3/4/5E (and yeah, 5E is in there) you can do stuff like roll skill checks to try and do something without pure DM permission.

Is this all a bad thing?
That's the catch... If you don't care about creativity and want a D&D that plays well and is balanced them no, this isn't a bad thing. It's a good thing. If you're an optimizer - or at least an optimizer sympathizer - then then the last two editions have been amaztastic.
But if you have a slightly different playstyle.... Well, that's a different situation.

This is just untrue, though. I love creativity, and 4E worked very well for me and my group. Just as well as 2E. Claiming we are uncreative or whatever is not only untrue, it's sneering and rude. Not that you're doing that (others have).

However, playstyle aside you can look at the matter as a designer. Look at it objectively. There is a rules element that is creating a barrier to entry and slowing down the start of play. Even if people like it, is it good? No. If it's keeping people from playing and scaring people away from the game it's a bad thing, even if some people like it. (And it's essentially polarizing the audience.)

I don't buy that it polarized people, really. 3E would have flopped if it had. 4E's did polarize people but for very complicated reasons, not really related to gameplay, because most people who strongly disliked 4E never actually played it, or barely did (not all, most).

How often have you spent the entire first session doing character creation? Should it take three or four hours to make a character.

Never in any edition of D&D, and if it takes you "three or four hours" to make a PC in 3E or 4E, that it nothing to with the system. None of the PCs in my 4E game took more than 15 minutes to make. Most under 5. You need to explain yourself here, seriously.

Have you every helped a new player (let alone 2-5) create a character? Or level up their characters?

What are you talking about? I've added a number of NEW TO RPGs players with 4E. None of them needed my help to level up - 4E is in fact the ONLY EDITION I've ever not needed to help people level up! I have no idea what you're claiming here.

Yes, I can knock out a level 10 Pathfinder character in 30 minutes, but I've been playing some variant of 3rd edition for fifteen years. The experience of being a new player overwhelmed by the game system is an experience forgotten by most of us.

Not for me, Jester, as I said, I've introduced multiple NEW TO RPGs players to 4E, and they were fine. One guy had never even played a boardgame beyond Monopoly!

(For a quick reminder go to http://eclipsephase.com/, download the core book, and make a character. See how long it takes you and how you feel about the experience. Them imagine you're about to start playing and can't until you finish and people are waiting on you.)

No edition of D&D remotely resembles Eclipse Phase, so that's ridiculous.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

No, I didn't. I agree with him that a good chuck of the rewards were being earned not at the table, but at home, alone, in front of the Character Builder. For a segment of the audience, that's when you start playing, dodging the "trap choices" and finding the hidden synergy.

And at no point does he claim this is wrong (and yet again, I agree with him). He just pointed out a very real situation, and how he found himself drifting away from that mindset.

You claimed he was pointing out FACTS.

He is absolutely NOT. He is expressing an opinion, as are you, as am I. His was, is, I felt an ill-formed, absolutist one. You think this is a "very real situation". I think it's a ridiculous and hyperbolic parody of a minor part of a real game.

I've thought about creative solutions in D&D before. I even did some blogging on the topic of mixing creative power use with power cards. So I know it's doable in 4e... if your DM is on board.

There is no edition of D&D where the DM does not have to be on board. He definitely has to be on board in 5E, because you can do even less with out his say-so. So I'm not sure what your point is.

 

[Jester David]

As soon as someone says "that isn't my experience with X" I begin mentally checking out of the argument.

It's such a weak defense. "Didn't see it, didn't happen."

Personally, I've never had problems with quadratic wizard and linear fighters in my game. That does not mean the problem does not exist, it just means the type of game I play might nit reveal the problem.
(I also haven't had the problems Mr. Schwab describes as I like making characters and most of my table likes building characters in their free time. But I've seen enough players to recognize the ones who have be scared off by overly regimented play, especially as I do a lot of Organized Play (Living Greyhawk and Pathfinder Society). So I acknowledge the problem.)

Anyhoo, I've said my point and made my posts and there's nothing else to say.
If I haven't convinced anyone yet that the primary focus of the most recent editions was based around system mastery and optimization then five more posts won't change any minds.
If I have't made anyone consider that overly complicated characters are a barrier to entry that should be mitigated and controlled, then posting more is just empty talk.

Later all.

 

[Jester David]

Okay... One last post. Mostly to clarify.

No edition of D&D remotely resembles Eclipse Phase, so that's ridiculous.

That's the point.

Even my first time making a 4e character (well before the character builder) I could knock out a 4e character pretty quickly because I was familiar with D&D and the conventions of the game.
The best way to see what it's like to be a new player coming into D&D is to make a character in an unfamiliar crunchy game that is unlike D&D. There are many, but Eclipse Phase is free so that makes a good example.

I'm sure skilled Eclipse Phasers can knock out a character in minutes. New players... not so much. It's certainly not the baseline.

(Out of curiosity, how often do you use the Character Builder when making characters for new people?)

 

[Matt Thomason]

I do see your point. However, I felt the above extract referred more to modern game systems than to players. Sure, many of us just throw out or house-rule over the parts that encourage math over roleplay, but the fact remains many modern systems have included more and more rules that - intentionally or not - provide a greater reward for the player that generated their character sheet to fit a mathematical model rather than making choices around a fictional concept. You see a criticism of players here, while I only see a criticism of systems.

Well the first criticism follows from the second, doesn't it? If you argue that an RPG system sucks because it ruins RPGing, you can expect disagreement from those RPGers who think the system is a good one!

No, the first criticism would be "wow, these people really suck for playing that way." He isn't saying that. He's saying "I dislike how the game was moving away from my own preferred playstyle." At no point does that indicate he doesn't think it's okay to play other ways, just that he doesn't want to and would like to see the game move back to supporting his own preferred playstyle. He even goes out of his way to say it's fine for you to play however you want, but this is how he wants to play.

There is a huge difference between criticizing a game because it doesn't fit the way you want to play, and with criticizing other people's personal playstyle. Can he not state his likes and dislikes? He can't in any way, shape, or form be mistaken about his own gaming preferences, so there's really no argument to be had. Is he somehow a horrible person for wanting to play this way rather than another way? No - no more than anyone else is for playing the way they want to. There's no problem here with the people that simply disagree with him over game style preference and are stating that - we're all allowed to have and to state preferences - it's the ones that are coming out with insulting comments and stating he's somehow wrong to want these things. He can want whatever he wants.

We're all allowed our preferences, and to state them, and to state why a product doesn't work for us and our dislike for it. What we shouldn't ever do, however, is shoot anyone else down over what their own preferences are.

I don't particularly like grapefruit, and I'll quite happily state that publicly - but that doesn't mean I'm in any way attacking people that do. He doesn't like RPGs designed such that players can mathematically discover ways to create a superior character and that give too much of a bonus to the people that take the time to find those loopholes over a player that just picked the options that narratively fit the image of their character in their head - that isn't a criticism of the people that do, it's only him saying that he wants to play a different style of game to that.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

As soon as someone says "that isn't my experience with X" I begin mentally checking out of the argument.

It's such a weak defense. "Didn't see it, didn't happen."

Yes, and the ENTIRE ARGUMENT that Schwalb makes is "Didn't see it, didn't happen", about creativity and so on in 3/4E. That is his whole deal! You get that right?

Personally, I've never had problems with quadratic wizard and linear fighters in my game. That does not mean the problem does not exist, it just means the type of game I play might nit reveal the problem. (I also haven't had the problems Mr. Schwab describes as I like making characters and most of my table likes building characters in their free time. But I've seen enough players to recognize the ones who have be scared off by overly regimented play, especially as I do a lot of Organized Play (Living Greyhawk and Pathfinder Society). So I acknowledge the problem.)

I agree, but this has nothing to do with what has been said afaict.

If I haven't convinced anyone yet that the primary focus of the most recent editions was based around system mastery and optimization then five more posts won't change any minds.

"Primary focus"? Yeah, no, wouldn't by that in a million years. "A bigger focus than 2E"? Sure, buy it in a heartbeat. "A bigger focus than 5E". Looks like it. But "primary focus"? Ludicrous hyperbole.

If I have't made anyone consider that overly complicated characters are a barrier to entry that should be mitigated and controlled, then posting more is just empty talk.

I think we can all agree that D&D should not have Eclipse Phase-style PCs.

The idea, however, that 3/4E characters took, as you appeared to put it "three or four hours" to build is beyond laughable, and if you think that they were an "overly complicated barrier to entry", you've not made any attempt to show how, so anyone convinced by that presumably already believed it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

(Out of curiosity, how often do you use the Character Builder when making characters for new people?)

We always use it for everyone.

Why in god's holy name would I not use it? I'll be using the 5E equivalent as soon as it's available, if we run 5E.

Essentials mode provides a particularly streamlined experience.

EDIT - Before it was available, we used paper. How long did it take to make the first four PCs? Under 45 minutes. I know because we were working against the clock because my brother's wife wanted him to do something in four hours and we wanted to get the whole adventure done!

(We did! )

 

[Njall]

If I have't made anyone consider that overly complicated characters are a barrier to entry that should be mitigated and controlled, then posting more is just empty talk.

Later all.

I'm pretty sure that anyone agrees that "overly complicated characters are a barrier of entry" for new players, however not everyone agrees on what constitutes an "overly complicated character".
Look at you back and forth with Ruin Explorer, here: you kept mentioning how long it took to create a character, he kept telling you that it was never an issue to him.
How many decision points does it take to make character creation "overly complicated"? Do you have a clear, defined, objective answer? Do you think RE could provide objective proof to the contrary? Because, if you can't, then maybe you could start considering that it's entirely a subjective matter.
We're not talking LFQW here, that required that you only create a single core wizard who could mop the floor with half the MM without DM fiat to prove your point ( to a degree ); to make a point in this case you'd need to prove that most new players would find the process of creating a character in 4e and 3e a daunting task, and I'm pretty sure that polling any single potential D&D player goes beyond the scope of this topic ( and would be hardly doable anyway ).

 

[Umbran]

Could his phrasing have been better? Yes.
Could he have been more delicate to avoid ruffling feathers? Yup.
Does that make him wrong? Not necessarily.

Actually, it kind of does.

Customer: "I wold like a slice of your best pie, please."
Waitress: brings slice of apple pie
Customer: "No, I meant *pizza* pie."

Folks read his work, and get a particular interpretation out of it pretty simply. It isn't like they are stretching.

You then tell them, "But if you ignore all that stuff that you interpret as being mean, he's right!"

We have the words he actually put on the page to go on. Selectively removing some of them as inconvenient is just as invalid as selectively focusing too much on a passage - both are just cherry picking.

The counterpoint is DMs can reward creative thinking. However, this is essentially a house rule, which me makes this an e-fallacious argument.
The Oberoni or Rule 0 Fallacy states that the argument that the rules of a game aren't flawed because they can be ignored is logically unsound, because it supposes something isn't broken if it can be fixed. If the rule is not broken, it shouldn't need to be fixed.

The issue here is not "broken". The issue is, "does not do what I, personally, want it to do". Saying that the rules are broken because they reward what they were designed to reward is kind of like saying a Werewolf game is broken because it doesn't focus on Hello Kitty. A fry pan is not broken for not acting well as a hammer.

But if you have a slightly different playstyle.... Well, that's a different situation.

I am not an optimizer by nature. I have never planned a build for a PC I ever actually used. My creativity has not been significantly hampered by 3e or 4e rules. 3e, especially, gives me great breadth of options for organic character growth and development. That also happens to serve the optimizers, but it serves my most common style of play well in that regard.

So please, speak *for yourself*. Do not speak as if you speak for unnamed masses, please, unless you have some survey data or the like to back you up.

However, playstyle aside you can look at the matter as a designer. Look at it objectively.

You are talking about a leisure enjoyment hobby game. There is no "objectively" to speak of. Whether it is good or bad is measured only by how much people enjoy it. There is no objective truth to be had here, only empirical truth.

Even if people like it, is it good? No.

I disagree, as above. If, broadly speaking, people like it, it is good. Given that tens to hundreds of thousands of people play these games happily, I think "good" applies. The proof is in the pudding. Moreover, if it has taken Mr Schwalb a decade and a half to come to this realization, maybe he's overstating how bad it is.

This is kind of like saying that vanilla ice cream is good. Not everyone likes it. Some people prefer chocolate. But you preferring chocolate does not make vanilla objectively bad.

If it's keeping people from playing and scaring people away from the game it's a bad thing, even if some people like it. (And it's essentially polarizing the audience.)

You say that it is keeping people from playing. Others say it is part of play - it is, to them, the character creation minigame.

There is no one, finite, usable ruleset that will please everyone perfectly. Accept that there are folks who like all sorts of different things. If you stop saying that those things they like are bad, and this will go better. Spitting on what others love is at the heart of edition warring. It is a good sign that you are no longer listening to others, and no longer care about what they think. When you stop caring what your fellow gamers think around here, we have a problem.

This, in essence, is where Schwalb went wrong, and where you are going wrong. Despite all his disclaimers, his basic point is that something that many people love was badwrongfun.

How often have you spent the entire first session doing character creation? Should it take three or four hours to make a character.

If I hope to be playing a character for *years*? A few hours seems like a good investment. Some games (say, FATE) make a whole little story-telling game out of character creation, that is intended to take the first session. And FATE is *light* on rules, overall.

Have you every helped a new player (let alone 2-5) create a character? Or level up their characters?

Yes to both.

Here's the thing - if a game is mechanically complex, I can do a few things to make things better for those who aren't into complexity. So those who like rules complexity, and those who don't, get to play at the same table, and enrich each other.

If a game is not mechanically complex, there's nothing much that can be done to bring those who really like such complexity to the table. You will generally only get those players who don't like complexity at the table, and that's limiting. Not a death-knell, but limiting.