D&D 5E With the Holy Trinity out, let's take stock of 5E

[Neonchameleon]

It's the Dungeons & Dragons Greatest Hits: Remastered album.

Whether or not that's a good thing is up for debate.

It's the version of D&D in which Greedo shot first, however.

It's the version of D&D in which the designers were trying to party like it's 1999. Where they decided both 3e and 4e went down blind alleys and decided to do what they'd have done with a dozen years of hindsight if they'd been Monte Cook and Co. And basically tried to produce a superior version of Zeb Cook's D&D. D&D: Greatest Hits (assuming you are mostly a fan of the 2e period).

It really really isn't either BECMI or 1e. Firstly it isn't a challenge centred game, and secondly it throws out Gygax's rigorous playtesting, allowing inanity like the Skeleton Army. oD&D and BECMI were as tightly focussed as any modern Storygame and 1E not far off. Also Gygax's playtests were rigorous, relentless, and done by a group of tabletop wargamers trying to win; there has never in the history of RPGs been a game as well playtested as oD&D - something that carried through. Also character creation is not exactly fast - making the challenge focussed game Gygax and Arneson wrote that much harder. It also strips the endgame out of D&D (there was a soft cap at level 10). ( [MENTION=5435]fuindordm[/MENTION] I think this answers your question?)

It also really isn't either 3e or 4e. It doesn't have the detail and the rigour available to planners that 3e gave. And it doesn't have the kinaesthetic sense and the genuine tier based growth of 4e. It's also harder to improvise with than 4e as effects are defined in terms of spells.

It's "D&D's Greatest Hits" as decided by people who thought that 2e needed some tweaks and a rewrite but was the high point of D&D rather than the period that sent TSR bust.

 

[fuindordm]

Yeah, I can see that. I started playing AD&D when I was about 12, and I don't think that I or any of my friends understood the "challenge game" aspect of the system at the time. Our knowledge of the game grew together and the character deaths were part of our apprenticeship, but certainly not the high point of our experience. By the time AD&D was released the designers had been through years of gaming with their homebrew systems, where the DM tries to surprise the players with new threats and the PCs respond with new tactics. I think this is where the endless stream of "trap monsters" in the MM comes from: rot grubs, mimics, trappers, ear seekers, etc. But all of these are one-shot wonders, serving only to give the players a "gotcha" moment followed by an adjustment of tactics.

But I also don't think EGG expected everyone to play that way all the time; by the time AD&D was released many of these original gamers were playing detailed, story-based campaigns with high-level characters. So while I agree that the antagonistic challenge game is an important feature of AD&D, I don't personally see it as a crucial feature of early D&D. And I don't see the lack of explicit support for this kind of play in 5E as a flaw of the game.

A challenge game is a contract between the DM and the players. The players have to agree that they'll enjoy running adventures where their PCs can easily die through bad luck and carelessness, and the DM has to agree to put effort into mystifying the underlying monsters, magic, and even the rules to some extent.

Now, with 30 years of experience under my belt, I know I can run any kind of game I want to with 5E. If my players want a challenge game in the AD&D style, I will make an adventure where mundane supplies such as torches and food are vital to success, and I will slow down natural healing so that recovering fully in the dungeon is very difficult. But most importantly, I will re-skin the monsters and magic so that the party is never sure what they're facing and reading the core books doesn't help them that much. It's not even very difficult to do--stick a troll in a werewolf's skin, and give it the winter wolf's breath weapon, and you've got an original monster and the party has to figure out the best tactics to use by trial and error. If the sorcerer who created the monster conjures a 5-wide screaming skull wreathed in toxic fumes, it will take them some time to figure out that it has essentially the same effect as the Flaming Sphere spell.

For me at least, this kind of game sits very comfortably in the 5E framework.

 

[Iosue]

It's the version of D&D in which Greedo shot first, however.

That's probably the most vicious edition war comment I've ever seen.

 

[The_Gneech]

It's also backwards; 5E is the edition where they went back to Greedo not shooting at all, IMO.

-The Gneech

 

[TerraDave]

...
How this was done was making the rules and their manifestations, monsters, treasure, spells, items, everything, hidden behind a screen so players could learn them as they verbally attempted actions in the game via the referee. The referee doesn't play. They simply enable players to play the game by keeping the information to be remembered and mastered hidden from play.

That mystery, that magic of the game being a cooperative (not collaborative) endeavor, that beating back of the game to become great - both with improved characters and stronger via mental exercise players - that stuff isn't in the game. The rules are mistakenly in front of the screen and known to players. The exercise is of gameplay is mistaken to be expressive, not about impressions and calculations. The mechanics are no longer maze design, but narrative authority resolvers. And so much more.

You have to take the entirety of contemporary "RPG" design and chuck it out the window and dig up how wargames Gygax and Arneson played everyday were designed. Then, perhaps, the philosophical understanding will allow for different schools of thought, design mechanics, and play assumptions by fans.

Its hard to figure out your benchmark. The rules started to be moved to the players with the first PHB, and certainly with the second PHB. That was a while ago, and pre-Forge (not that I know or care much about the Forge).

in 5E, players have access to details of their character races and classes and spells...and what else? There are no detailed skill rules. No real default DCs outside of combat (where there equivalent has always been). Everything in the DMG is basically labeled as optional. The DM can use and or customize monsters, NPCs, traps, diseases, poisons...pretty much anyway they might want. Magic items can be cursed. They can be sentient and cursed. They are totally under DM control.

There is lots of "challenge the player" type language. Lots of it.

The DM can certainly create a "world of mystery" as easily as they could in, say, 1980.

 

[Mouseferatu]

For many of us, 2E was the high point in many respects. Many of us have always played D&D as story-building games, not challenges.

Should D&D allow for both types? Absolutely, of course it should. But the idea that it's not "real" D&D if it doesn't default to challenge-based games is flat-out wrong, including by Gygax's and Arneson's own statements.

 

[howandwhy99]

Its hard to figure out your benchmark. The rules started to be moved to the players with the first PHB, and certainly with the second PHB. That was a while ago, and pre-Forge (not that I know or care much about the Forge).

in 5E, players have access to details of their character races and classes and spells...and what else? There are no detailed skill rules. No real default DCs outside of combat (where there equivalent has always been). Everything in the DMG is basically labeled as optional. The DM can use and or customize monsters, NPCs, traps, diseases, poisons...pretty much anyway they might want. Magic items can be cursed. They can be sentient and cursed. They are totally under DM control.

There is lots of "challenge the player" type language. Lots of it.

The DM can certainly create a "world of mystery" as easily as they could in, say, 1980.

From stories back in the day, rumor had it D&D was outed as a kids game and the adults stopped playing it out of embarrassment. (But not all did) By '83 it was a the hottest item for children on the market. And not one really had any idea why any of it was as it was. The books presume readers come from a wargaming background and undestand like wargamers what games and game rules are for as such.

2e put the rules in front of the screen officially. That was around when I joined as a teenager in SE Wisconsin. There was no end people who had very bad things to say about 2nd edition at that time. That they had completely ruined the game. Of course I had no idea what they were talking about. My high school friends and I played 2nd ed. and were as confused as anyone else about it all. But where are the thoughts of those dissenters now? You're right no one person or group of people screwed up the game, but it deserves to be unstuck.

I think the first move is to remove "story rights" resolution mechanics (who adds what to the fiction) and take the game back to pattern recognition as the primary act of play. A game more comprehensible as a sibling to Mastermind and Situational Puzzles than anything resembling collaborative story creation.

 

[dd.stevenson]

I think the first move is to remove "story rights" resolution mechanics (who adds what to the fiction) and take the game back to pattern recognition as the primary act of play. (snip)

What 5E mechanics are you thinking of, specifically?

 

[Shemeska]

For many of us, 2E was the high point in many respects. Many of us have always played D&D as story-building games, not challenges.

I really wish that we could see a decisive return of the flavor from 2e and its many settings, but there's been IMO something of a real reluctance to fully step back from some of the 4e flavor changes (some of which I can deal with but some of which alter parts of the game's history that I most appreciated).

I would be pleased as punch to see a real embrace of 2e's style of lore and real in-depth presentation of flavor rather than the 3e/4e favoring of rules content.

 

[Raith5]

For many of us, 2E was the high point in many respects. Many of us have always played D&D as story-building games, not challenges.

Should D&D allow for both types? Absolutely, of course it should. But the idea that it's not "real" D&D if it doesn't default to challenge-based games is flat-out wrong, including by Gygax's and Arneson's own statements.

I dont understand the dichotomy here - dont stories inherently involve challenges of various kinds? The narrative doesn't write itself - even in a 1e deathtrap dungeon.


And BTW Greedo clearly did not fully utilize the social and exploration options of his milieu.