D&D 5E Dear WotC: D&D 5, Hero Lab, and the OGL

[drjones]

If you have a message for WotC, please send it to WotC. They have their own message boards and e-mail addresses. EN World is not some official WotC communication dead-drop, or the like.

Yeah but then he would only get to troll in one spot, where's the fun in that?

 

[WayneLigon]

I'm not a fan of Hero Lab or their software model.
WotC, blow them out of the water with your own (better) tools.

Do we know if they'll actually be better? Liquid promised us the sun and the moon as well, and look how that turned out. An Access database that didn't even do templates.

D&D player
38 years and counting

 

[Starfox]

I feel Stormonu was using an imperative, telling WotC to blow them out of the water, not saying they would. We'll see how it goes, but it would be nice if they did it well. If they don't, a good license would help let a competitor make something better. Competition is good.

 

[Laznabog]

I was looking for this type of information and was a bit surprised to recognize the name of the original author. If he is who I am quite certain he is, he has ran about 10-15 pathfinder games for me when I lived on his side of the country, and I can say without hesitation he is one of the best DMs I have played under.

One of the reasons for this is because he constantly keeps a very healthy pace in everything that happens and fairly adjudicates “new” rules on the fly quickly…when they are provided quickly. I can’t count how many times I have tried to do something a little obscure or some complex combination and he has said “Can you show it to me?” I pull up a spell off an app on my phone with a couple of clicks or point to a paragraph on a PDF, he gives it a quick glance and we continue to have a lot of fun in his games. It takes so little time to do it with this tech, I started readying things DMs might want to see prior to asking just in case.

I have created a few characters for 5e, and have started playing in a homebrew campaign. While I am having fun with it, the pacing and user friendliness of 5e just sucks so horribly in comparison when you need to see actual text. An actual book has become a very inefficient way to find information scattered amongst lots of other somewhat similar information.

In character creation, I flip pages back and forth hundreds of times. I am repeatedly thinking “If I just had a search bar or another window I would be done with this. I used to have fun making characters.” Also while we are at the table, everything routinely screeches to a halt when someone tries to look something up. We are all fairly new to this set of rules, so even with the limited amount available now it happens a fair amount. Every time I see someone open up to the index section, I think “I wonder what is happening with XXXXXX not related to the game, I know I have several minutes to devote attention to that.”

I have read a lot of stuff from WotC claiming they want this game to be easy to learn and fast to play. If physical books………….and gd twitter posts (but that is another argument)……are how you want people to know your game, you can’t claim to put a premium on ease of playability.

I too really want to like this game better than I do Pathfinder (side issue with some of their staff I find distasteful.) But to do that, it needs to be easy to maneuver and capable of keeping a solid pace in the face of massive options and mechanics.

 

[Thank Dog]

I have created a few characters for 5e, and have started playing in a homebrew campaign. While I am having fun with it, the pacing and user friendliness of 5e just sucks so horribly in comparison when you need to see actual text. An actual book has become a very inefficient way to find information scattered amongst lots of other somewhat similar information.

I've had the opposite experience. Then again, I think this is a playstyle issue and not a rules issue. I tend not to look anything up during a game unless it will have a significant impact or if I'm a player and can do so in-between rounds. As a DM, I'd much rather simply rule on the fly and figure it out after the game. This was one of the major issues I had playing with Pathfinder players and 3.x players. They would insist on stopping the game and looking up rules minutia and arguing about rules and quoting forum consensus determinations instead of just playing.

And on top of that, when I have had to look something up in 5e, the book was quick and easy to reference. At least for me it was.

 

[Laznabog]

I've had the opposite experience. Then again, I think this is a playstyle issue and not a rules issue. I tend not to look anything up during a game unless it will have a significant impact or if I'm a player and can do so in-between rounds. As a DM, I'd much rather simply rule on the fly and figure it out after the game. This was one of the major issues I had playing with Pathfinder players and 3.x players. They would insist on stopping the game and looking up rules minutia and arguing about rules and quoting forum consensus determinations instead of just playing.

And on top of that, when I have had to look something up in 5e, the book was quick and easy to reference. At least for me it was.

We are a PF group that converted over. Our party TPKed one session while I was away. The GM asked my feelings about converting over to 5e for a new campaign. He said he had been thinking about it and since I was the only person with a live character he thought my opinion was most important. I jumped on the chance.

I also try to look up my information between actions because I am very aware of pacing and its importance to the game. But I also noticed how it took me a lot longer and I was not aware of what the party was doing at the time I was flipping through the book to verify out what was in a pre-built pack. I did so in a way not to slow things down, but I can't rely on everyone else to do the same.

Some of them feel a little green to me and I don't begrudge them for it. But we like to do a lot "by the book." This includes our DM, who has yet to commit this all to memory. I like that thee is a lot more fluff potential and that there is a lot more built in "Take the DMs word and run." but I also like knowing exactly what I can expect. I spend a lot of time mapping out choices outside of the game based on written text, if a GM were to tell me after the fact, "I don't know what the rules say on this and I really don't care right now" I couldn't play under that type of GM.

 

[Starfox]

At my Pathfinder table, one player has taken on the role of inofficial rules-look-up-guy. Whenever something is in dispute he looks it up in the SRD on his pad, which is then easily handed around to concerned parties - including me as GM. This is a service I'd simply hate to miss out on. Going back to physical books, or even to PDFs, just doesn't feel like an option anymore.

 

[RevTurkey]

I can only manage 34 years and counting...so I'd better shut up

 

[Lawngnome4hire]

Personally I'd prefer they keep the licensing private like they've done so far. In theory having more choices is good, in practice it means having to weed through a ton of crap to find something decent. Private licensing doesn't mean other companies can't produce products for D&D, it just means they have to get permission first. Which means your product needs to be good enough that WotC is willing to put their name on it.

I'd much rather have fewer quality products, than lots of crap and mediocre products.

 

[Laznabog]

If you don't like wading through 3rd party options, why use them? The only game I have ever played that used 3pp was when I allowed psionics in a game I ran. All the other "crap" out there never affected me. I want OGL because I want to find 1pp rules quickly.

We are at the tip of the iceberg right now. There are very few books out. The time to find things is going to increase with more books and the cumbersome nature of them is only going to grow. I ride a motorcycle most of the time. I am not capable of bringing hard copies of all the PF resources I used to the game. I assume 5e will continue to grow, in a similar way.