D&D 5E Resting and the frikkin' Elephant in the Room

[Tony Vargas]

More to the point, I'm not sure WotC actually sacrificed anything that would have led any tabletop RPG.

Realistically, they most likely 'sacrificed' trying something else that might have had a shot at leading to that kind of appeal, but would mostly likely have just failed again.
;(

This is true in the same way that IPA beers sacrifice the drinkability of an American Light Lager to appeal to a specific market.

I like that analogy. Well, I like IPAs... and Stouts (the beer, not the halfling-sub-race, not that there's anything wrong with them).

Important to remember that point when going on and on about what's "most popular" and what "most customers want." It's not always quality.

 

[OB1]

Important to remember that point when going on and on about what's "most popular" and what "most customers want." It's not always quality.

No, but what all customers want is a product that meets their expectations, whatever those expectations happen to be. If you don't deliver that you will have a failed product every time. If you meet expectations you still have to deliver it in a way that's profitable or you will fail because you go out of business.

D&D 5e isn't meeting shoak1's expectations, and so he is likely reluctant to buy more of it. WoTC could spend more resources on game designers and page count in an effort to meet those expectations, but the question is would that additional cost cover the additional revenues from more purchases. Even worse, it could lead to a net reduction in sales because the product no longer meets the expectations of the people currently purchasing the product regularly.

Being a division of Hasbro, I'm positive WoTC has market research addressing exactly these questions that it uses to make it's decision. If shoak1 feels like they are missing something in their data, he is free to create his own TTRPG that would provide a product that meets his and other's expectations and sell it, and if he's right, one day may have a more successful product than WoTC and eventually capture it's market share, in which case a lot of people at WoTC would be fired for poor decision making, and new people hired to try again.

Capitalistic Market Forces. The true Elephant in the Room in this discussion

 

[billd91]

WotC is a business, and the vast majority of their customer base want CCGs.

I daresay they also want sex and a roof over their heads, but that's as relevant to Imaro's point as bringing up CCGs when I think we can all understand his context. WotC makes D&D according to what it believes it's D&D customers want regardless of whatever else they also might want.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I daresay they also want sex and a roof over their heads, but that's as relevant to Imaro's point as bringing up CCGs when I think we can all understand his context. WotC makes D&D according to what it believes it's D&D customers want regardless of whatever else they also might want.

Point is, WotC doesn't just exclusively cater to the largest market, or they wouldn't bother with D&D.
Under 5e's 'big tent' they can afford to toss out other options - they already have in the DMG and UA (and PH, for that matter - 3e-style feats & MCing are 'optional'). They don't have to freeze out shoak1 or anyone one else, to continue catering to those already happy with just the core 3 books.

No, but what all customers want is a product that meets their expectations, whatever those expectations happen to be.

Exactly, D&D was a certain way, for a long time. Then, it was a somewhat different way for a while, but still fundamentally the same in many important ways. Then, briefly, even more different. Then back again.

You taste a triple IPA after 30 years of sipping Coors Light, you won't have the same reaction as someone who's been downing 40s of malt liquor for a decade. "Ugh! Bitter!" "Meh, weak."

D&D 5e isn't meeting shoak1's expectations, and so he is likely reluctant to buy more of it.

It's not like they're producing a lot of it to buy, so no big loss, really. And, it's also not like he's not playing it, so it can't have failed him that dramatically. /And/, at least, so far, his criticism hasn't risen to the level, nor joined a dissonant chorus loud enough to tarnish the brand.
So, all seems good, really.

Being a division of Hasbro, I'm positive WoTC has market research addressing exactly these questions that it uses to make it's decision.

Sheesh. WotC was a division of Hasbro, with market research, and substantially more resources to devote to D&D in 2007, too. Didn't make 'em infallible then, don't know why it would now.

 

[OB1]

Sheesh. WotC was a division of Hasbro, with market research, and substantially more resources to devote to D&D in 2007, too. Didn't make 'em infallible then, don't know why it would now.

Not saying that it does, just that they have fact based evidence while we are throwing around made up numbers.

Of course, it's also critically important to ask the right questions with the research or you will get bad results, but the market will tell you pretty quickly if that is the case.

Is there a better version of D&D possible? Of course.

Should additional options be made available to play the game in different ways? Of course! But not in infinite ways since they don't have infinite resources to do so. They should pick what they think will make their product most appealing to their customers.

Should WoTC put out an AP as one of their 3 yearly releases in the style of play that shoak1 is suggesting? Only if they think it will be more profitable than producing a book in the current style.

Should WoTC add staff to produce additional books in the style of play that shoak1 is suggesting? Only if it would be profitable to do so.

Remember, with the OGL, anyone can make a profit by producing games in the style shoak1 is suggesting and selling it in the DM's Guild. WoTC wants people to do exactly that!

Finally, just to bring it back, here was my solution for the Elephant in the Room

Adjusted XP Based Rest Variant
In addition to tracking XP for level advancement, players also need to keep an XP Rest Count. After each encounter, DMs should provide to the players the adjusted XP from the encounter (divided by the number of PCs, as with level XP), which they track as their XP Rest Count.

When you collect 1/3 and then 2/3s of your daily Adjusted XP budget since your last long rest, you gain the benefit of a short rest. You can also gain this benefit from an 8 hour rest in a safe location, but doing so also resets your XP Rest Count to 0.
When you collect XP equal to or greater than your daily Adjusted XP budget since your last long rest, you gain the benefit of a long rest. You can also gain this benefit from a 7 day rest in a safe location. Your XP Rest Count resets to 0 after either type of long rest.

A home, and inn, a friendly keep or guarded camps are examples of safe locations. If players need to set a watch, it is not a safe location. A random encounter triggers a reset of the time necessary in a safe location to benefit from it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Finally, just to bring it back, here was my solution for the Elephant in the Room

Adjusted XP Based Rest Variant

I remember that, yes. Similar to the 13A solution, but more complex, with time pressure still the governing limitation on players wanting to take 'extra' rests, as opposed to 13A's more story-oriented 'campaign loss.'

We CAN indeed have both - it would be rather easy to do imo - and I think our dialog should turn to that

Up thread I had a very minor epiphany: RPGs don't just juxtapose roleplaying and gaming, they integrate them. That is, an RPG isn't x% RP and y% G, it's 100% RPG. The mistake people make is thinking that only talking in character is RP, or that any dice-rolling is just gaming. If I, as an aging, unattractive, socially awkward nerd, whose never been to a method acting class in his life, speak in character as an 18 CHA hero, I'm am so not going to pull it off, but the game is there to say "no, wait, the character has an 18 CHA, and that's +4, and he's proficient in diplomacy for another +4 at this level," and the DM is there to take that into account and rule on what that character, conveying the meaning of what I said, would achieve - or call for that roll. Making the roll doesn't kill the RP, it's part of it, because it's helping to model the character.

The same goes for a tactical encounter. I can, as a system-master, choose the best spell for the situation, and the best action for system, based on the rules, and that, in turn, maps to the character being a skilled spellcaster who knows what spell to cast when - I don't have to shout magic words and make weird hand-gestures, even if I could rock the Dr Strange thing - but, I'm still playing the character, not myself, and need to judge what he'd do, independent of meta-knowledge I may have about the campaign, and even what he /should/ do based on the story.


Taking it (all the way) back to the Elephant that we've been so rudely ignoring, how do you integrate a game with (ironicaly) a 'rigid' rule about resting (short rest = 1 hr, long = 8hrs once per 24 hrs), and an only slightly less 'rigid' balance point of 6-8 encounters and 2-3 short rests between long rests, with the range of Big Stories your "Big DM" might want to tell? By giving him a few alternate resting rules and having him choose one at the start of the campaign? Well, it can work - if you want to run a campaign that's frenetic or languid all the way through, or if you want to consistently stress resources in a Fantasy Vietnam theme, or if you want to have huge mega-encounters that the party has to pull out all the stops to defeat and rest up before the next one. That's a modest range, right there, as long as you don't vary them within the campaign.

For a more varied sort of campaign, the Big DM just flexes his Empowerment and rules whether resting is possible or not and how long it takes. For a series of highly varied, but structured challenges, the Lighter DM would just plan out how long a series of 6-8 challenges should take, and put a long rest before it and at the end, since he's exercising that sort of control, anyway. Whether the challenges are spread over an hour or a month shouldn't matter.

Sound good?

(And, yes, I'm aware I just re-itterated, then slightly re-framed a solution Zapp advocated pages and pages ago... hopefully, though, it makes some sense in the context of the discussion since then.)

 

[pemerton]

One of the defining features of D&D from the beginning is that it's not a competitive game

Huh?

Early D&D featured players competing for treasure and XP. It featured tournament competitions in which teams of players competed to be the one who did the best job of beating the dungeon. The introduction to ToH has Gygax telling us that he built the dungeon to defeat certain hyper-competitive and over-confident players.

Early D&D was extremely competitive. The idea that it's not a competition, that there's no "winning" or "losing", and that the point of the game on the player side is simply to enjoy "being" the PC in the GM's gameworld, didn't become ubiquitous in the published texts until 2nd ed AD&D (though you can see it emerging in some modules and rulebooks from the early 80s).

It baffles me that some posters find [MENTION=54380]shoak1[/MENTION]'s approach to D&D strange, when it seems like pretty straightforward, relatively hardcore beat-the-dungeon D&D.

 

[Caliban]

It baffles me that some posters find [MENTION=54380]shoak1[/MENTION]'s approach to D&D strange, when it seems like pretty straightforward, relatively hardcore beat-the-dungeon D&D.

Speaking for myself, I don't really find their approach strange (a lot of D&D games are little more than a squad based tactical minis game adjudicated by the DM, with little desire for a lot of story or roleplay.)

It's the degree to which they take it that I find a bit strange. The idea that the DM isn't supposed to make any judgement calls or changes once the game has started is pretty extreme. Or at least it seems that way to me. I also don't have a problem with it, other than it seems like a whole lot more work on the part of the DM, and I'm kinda lazy.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Point is, WotC doesn't just exclusively cater to the largest market, or they wouldn't bother with D&D.
Under 5e's 'big tent' they can afford to toss out other options - they already have in the DMG and UA (and PH, for that matter - 3e-style feats & MCing are 'optional'). They don't have to freeze out shoak1 or anyone one else, to continue catering to those already happy with just the core 3 books.

D&D is the largest market for RPGs. But more importantly, it's a recognizable brand. And that's the true value of D&D, but only if they publish a game that maintains its current relevancy. If it's just a nostalgia trip, then it features like it does in Stranger Things, rather than its own movie (eventually). Not to mention the video games. There are a lot of '80s icons that haven't made it to the 2010's video games on a consistent basis.

Exactly, D&D was a certain way, for a long time. Then, it was a somewhat different way for a while, but still fundamentally the same in many important ways. Then, briefly, even more different. Then back again.

Yep, and back again at just the right moment in time too. I don't think the current celebrity acknowledgements as present or past players have hurt.

You taste a triple IPA after 30 years of sipping Coors Light, you won't have the same reaction as someone who's been downing 40s of malt liquor for a decade. "Ugh! Bitter!" "Meh, weak."

It's not like they're producing a lot of it to buy, so no big loss, really. And, it's also not like he's not playing it, so it can't have failed him that dramatically. /And/, at least, so far, his criticism hasn't risen to the level, nor joined a dissonant chorus loud enough to tarnish the brand.
So, all seems good, really.

Sheesh. WotC was a division of Hasbro, with market research, and substantially more resources to devote to D&D in 2007, too. Didn't make 'em infallible then, don't know why it would now.

Because they hadn't figured out that market research is different from playtesting. I think 4e is a very good example of a business designing what they liked and thinking that's what everybody else liked. And in pieces I can see how a lot of it looked really exciting to the 3.5e crowd at conventions. But the bulk of the D&D customers out there aren't convention goers, and aren't optimizers, and aren't interested in a very complex game. A complex game is about as far as most casual players are willing to go.

Up thread I had a very minor epiphany: RPGs don't just juxtapose roleplaying and gaming, they integrate them. That is, an RPG isn't x% RP and y% G, it's 100% RPG. The mistake people make is thinking that only talking in character is RP, or that any dice-rolling is just gaming. If I, as an aging, unattractive, socially awkward nerd, whose never been to a method acting class in his life, speak in character as an 18 CHA hero, I'm am so not going to pull it off, but the game is there to say "no, wait, the character has an 18 CHA, and that's +4, and he's proficient in diplomacy for another +4 at this level," and the DM is there to take that into account and rule on what that character, conveying the meaning of what I said, would achieve - or call for that roll. Making the roll doesn't kill the RP, it's part of it, because it's helping to model the character.

It is, along with the fact that your critics at the table are also a bunch of aging...who are willing to suspend a lot of disbelief.

The same goes for a tactical encounter. I can, as a system-master, choose the best spell for the situation, and the best action for system, based on the rules, and that, in turn, maps to the character being a skilled spellcaster who knows what spell to cast when - I don't have to shout magic words and make weird hand-gestures, even if I could rock the Dr Strange thing - but, I'm still playing the character, not myself, and need to judge what he'd do, independent of meta-knowledge I may have about the campaign, and even what he /should/ do based on the story.

One of the big epiphanies for me over the last few years is role-playing does not equal acting. Role-playing is simply making decisions and choosing actions as if you were somebody else. It's that simple. "What would this person do and how?"

Taking it (all the way) back to the Elephant that we've been so rudely ignoring, how do you integrate a game with (ironicaly) a 'rigid' rule about resting (short rest = 1 hr, long = 8hrs once per 24 hrs), and an only slightly less 'rigid' balance point of 6-8 encounters and 2-3 short rests between long rests, with the range of Big Stories your "Big DM" might want to tell? By giving him a few alternate resting rules and having him choose one at the start of the campaign? Well, it can work - if you want to run a campaign that's frenetic or languid all the way through, or if you want to consistently stress resources in a Fantasy Vietnam theme, or if you want to have huge mega-encounters that the party has to pull out all the stops to defeat and rest up before the next one. That's a modest range, right there, as long as you don't vary them within the campaign.

For a more varied sort of campaign, the Big DM just flexes his Empowerment and rules whether resting is possible or not and how long it takes. For a series of highly varied, but structured challenges, the Lighter DM would just plan out how long a series of 6-8 challenges should take, and put a long rest before it and at the end, since he's exercising that sort of control, anyway. Whether the challenges are spread over an hour or a month shouldn't matter.

Sound good?

(And, yes, I'm aware I just re-itterated, then slightly re-framed a solution Zapp advocated pages and pages ago... hopefully, though, it makes some sense in the context of the discussion since then.)

Was that this thread? We can't let Zapp win! Is he still reading this thread, or is he done with us yet? He gave us too much freedom in this thread and look what we've done.

But the issue with resting remains the same, it's rigid and yet vague, specifically because it's up to each group to determine what type of game they want. They gave a couple of variations, which are actually similar to earlier editions. But they don't work for everybody either.

So here's a slightly different question related to the elephant:

Why didn't this seem to be a problem in AD&D and earlier? You always had spell casters who needed to rest. And yet I don't recall this becoming a problem until much later. Is it just because every class has some short and/or long rest abilities?

 

[Tony Vargas]

But the bulk of the D&D customers out there aren't convention goers, and aren't optimizers, and aren't interested in a very complex game. A complex game is about as far as most casual players are willing to go.

I participated in Encounters from the second season on, through the playtest. It was almost all casual players and many of them new players. They both thrived on 4e. Players went from never having seen D&D before in one season, to running a table the next. I rarely saw a new player that didn't return for most of the rest of the season they started with. Many spun off home groups. Meetup drew a surprising number of folks in.

Thing is, the bulk of D&D players aren't the new players trying it each year, nor the causal ones playing now & then. There the one's who started playing anywhere in the preceding 30-40 years, and kept with it.

The issue was never complexity, it was familiarity.
A game that's clear & consistent doesn't seem complex when you're learning it, the complexity becomes depth as you get into it.
A game that's unfamiliar, though, seems complex when you're un-learning & re-learning it, there's more to that than just learning it cold, and there's a frustration factor, because you've rolled revs before and it was never this hard...

But the issue with resting remains the same, it's rigid and yet vague, specifically because it's up to each group to determine what type of game they want. They gave a couple of variations, which are actually similar to earlier editions. But they don't work for everybody either.

There's nothing vague about the issue with resting. The guideline is 6-8 encounters/2-3 short rests between long rests. Not vague. The time it takes to rest is 1 hr for short (no limit), 8 hours for long (1/day). Not vague. The balance and the balancing mechanism are positively 'rigid.'

I suppose what's vague about the kind of game you want is that if you want a balanced game, you're locked into the rigid formula, if you want a game of caster superiority, you go with more rests, if you want a grueling down-to-the-last-hp slog, you go 12+ encounters between rests.
If you don't care about balance, of course, you play at whatever pacing you want.

What's not so rigid and a lot more open to style & variation is the range of pacing options the DM might want to use /even within a in a single campaign/, and the options open to the party to rest when they want to, not when it aligns with the balance guidelines. That's the Elephant. A game meant to be flexible, intended that way, with fragile/rigid class balance turning on one mechanism, that, almost uniquely among 5e mechanisms, is not by default completely under the DM's control.

Why didn't this seem to be a problem in AD&D and earlier?

It's just the 5MWD viewed from a slightly different perspective, it was absolutely an issue in AD&D.

Maybe it didn't 'seem' to be a problem because frequent resting at low level was necessary just for hps, and casters were at the low end of their curve then, so the boost they got just helped them keep up? At higher levels, casters ruled anyway, so there was no balance to maintain.

And yet I don't recall this becoming a problem until much later. Is it just because every class has some short and/or long rest abilities?

No, that makes it slightly less of a problem. In 4e, every class had very nearly the same number/proportion of encounter & daily abilities, and it was a non-issue in terms of class balance, the 5MWD only mattered to encounter difficulty. In 5e, the fighter having two specific 1/short rest abilities isn't much compared to the versatility of spells or the number of slots caster get, but it's something he can nova with, even on a 5MWD. By the same token, full casters have scaling at-will cantrips, so in a very long day, they're not at a complete loss, even if they do start underperforming, eventually.

Huh?

Early D&D featured players competing for treasure and XP. It featured tournament competitions in which teams of players competed to be the one who did the best job of beating the dungeon. The introduction to ToH has Gygax telling us that he built the dungeon to defeat certain hyper-competitive and over-confident players.

Early D&D was extremely competitive. The idea that it's not a competition, that there's no "winning" or "losing", and that the point of the game on the player side is simply to enjoy "being" the PC in the GM's gameworld, didn't become ubiquitous in the published texts until 2nd ed AD&D (though you can see it emerging in some modules and rulebooks from the early 80s).

It baffles me that some posters find [MENTION=54380]shoak1[/MENTION]'s approach to D&D strange, when it seems like pretty straightforward, relatively hardcore beat-the-dungeon D&D.

I remember there being something of a generation gap, back in the day. There were older guys (younger than I am now, but they sure seemed old) who played wargames but also D&D, and there were young kids who just started playing Basic D&D with no background in the hobby at all.

I was one of the kids, and that everyone else playing D&D with me didn't have to lose for me to 'win' did strike me as quite special - compared to the 'family' board games and chess I was used to.