D&D 5E WotC to increase releases per year?

[tetrasodium]

Domain management.

I see this every so often but what is this?

Warfare/Mass Combat
Stronghold construction and management
Environmental rules, including for planar adventures
Robust economy guidelines so treasure has a purpose
Expanded travel rules including "journey" style mechanics
Downtime rules that actually work
Campaign creation and management tools
Relics, rituals, and general expanded magic options.
Like that.

I think a lot of these are stymied by a combination of 5e having so many individual pieces designed to obliviate them so you'd need to tweak f/ex ranger "no I ignore that", outlander "no I find food for everyone", goodberry "I feed everyone for the entire day plus a bunch more with a first level slot", long/short rest mechanics that amount to "~givehealth 100<enter>" & so on. Others are made more difficult with 5e not including any magic item budget & assuming feats won't be used when designing things because there's no overhead left to provide mechanical benefits other than pure "here's a gold star" fluff from doing those things in a game. Put the two together & the system will fight you trying to create overhead in addition to trying to add the thing itself.

I'd like to see variant tactical combat & rest mechanics written in a way that doesn't read like they were written by someone who dislikes tactical combat & the idea of attrition being a real risk to be concerned about. Some rules to expand the magic item budget that don't force me to be both the bad guy making PCs weaker as well as the author when I say "we are using these variant rules" would help too. Both of those together would help a lot with much of your list

 

[dave2008]

That would be good. Hopefully not causing any edition oneupmanship... I personally found 4e's monster levels (and minions, regular, elite, and solo monsters) to be a MUCH easier system to balance encounters with. I mean, obviously, it still needed to be tweaked for party make-up, but it was much quicker and easier (for me at least) to tell what I was "looking at" when I put an encounter together.

I've played 5e hardcore (near daily!) since the playtest, and I still don't get it as well as I did 4e's system.

I really liked the 4e monster progression (not really level), but I don't recall it being easier to balance. I just like the option of a lateral option (minion, standard, elite, solo) as opposed to only be able to go up and down in lvl or CR. Of course, 5e as reintroduced this idea with the new mythic monsters, which I like a lot.

 

[dave2008]

I see this every so often but what is this?

How to run a kingdom / business / church. That type of stuff is my understanding

 

[Oofta]

That would be good. Hopefully not causing any edition oneupmanship... I personally found 4e's monster levels (and minions, regular, elite, and solo monsters) to be a MUCH easier system to balance encounters with. I mean, obviously, it still needed to be tweaked for party make-up, but it was much quicker and easier (for me at least) to tell what I was "looking at" when I put an encounter together.

I've played 5e hardcore (near daily!) since the playtest, and I still don't get it as well as I did 4e's system.

Well, 4E was a different beast altogether. For better or worse you had explicit guidelines for magic items by level and the structure was more balanced.

 

[Reynard]

I see this every so often but what is this?

A subsystem that gets into the nuts and bolts of running a kingdom, church or organization. In its simplest terms it brings "4X strategy" elements into D&D. The system I first experienced was the Domain Management system in the Companion Set (BECMI) and to me it is still the gold standard for finding a balance between abstraction and detail. Domain management is usually tied to the changing game -- that is, how higher level characters stop going on adventures in favor of ruling nations, starting religions or opening guilds (or whatever). That stuff has not really been a "thing" since 3E so I admit to mostly waxing nostalgic for a D&D more like the one I grew up with.

 

[tetrasodium]

A subsystem that gets into the nuts and bolts of running a kingdom, church or organization. In its simplest terms it brings "4X strategy" elements into D&D. The system I first experienced was the Domain Management system in the Companion Set (BECMI) and to me it is still the gold standard for finding a balance between abstraction and detail. Domain management is usually tied to the changing game -- that is, how higher level characters stop going on adventures in favor of ruling nations, starting religions or opening guilds (or whatever). That stuff has not really been a "thing" since 3E so I admit to mostly waxing nostalgic for a D&D more like the one I grew up with.

Ahh thanks. I'd recommend the city sheets & dfrpg/fate core to help there. As a big upside to that approach, you can do it seamlessly on top of d&d to quickly cover things like how the important groups & people react among themselves or to the players then just use d&d mechanics when those reactions come into contact with the players

 

[Reynard]

Ahh thanks. I'd recommend the city sheets & dfrpg/fate core to help there. As a big upside to that approach, you can do it seamlessly on top of d&d to quickly cover things like how the important groups & people react among themselves or to the players then just use d&d mechanics when those reactions come into contact with the players

There are a lot of solutions out there, including just using both Domains and War Machine from the Companion Set. What I want is an official, integrated system for 5E not least because it would indicate an understanding that a D&D campaign evolves over time on the part of the design team.

 

[tetrasodium]

There are a lot of solutions out there, including just using both Domains and War Machine from the Companion Set. What I want is an official, integrated system for 5E not least because it would indicate an understanding that a D&D campaign evolves over time on the part of the design team.

That's fair. It would also have the added benefit of having a way to format & transfer it from one gm to another. I could write the most incredible perfect world class gold medal winning world/city sheet for a campaign but would still need to teach someone the method to the madness before I could hand it off or even publish it to dmsguild. A lot of the problems criticized of the various HC adventures forcing a gm to read take notes & memorize the entire book before they know what's going on would get some improvements there I'd imagine too.

 

[Dire Bare]

I'm curious why you feel mocking European accents is acceptable but not other ethnicities. Keeping in mind that exaggerating accent was a huge component to stereotyping Irish, Italian and Scottish immigrants as stupid, dehumanizing Germans during the World Wars, and perpetuating the notion of smug British and French elitist stereotypes.

It would be one thing to say "don't do bad accents of any culture as a joke" or "when goofing with my friends any accent is funny since they know better." But having two sets of standards doesn't fix anything,

Sorry, rant over.

"Mocking" is your word, not mine. Granted, I did use the word "terrible", but I didn't mean deliberately so, just accents of low quality that wouldn't fool anyone and are likely based on stereotypes rather than actual speech patterns.

It's a power thing and a connection thing. Non-whites in the US have been, and continue to be, marginalized, discriminated against, and culturally appropriated for quite some time. I'm white myself, and have little personal connection to other cultures outside of Europe. Like many Americans, my heritage is European . . . and it's hard to get more specific than that. I feel as equally connected to England as I do France and Germany. So . . . I'm okay giving accents of cultural groups I feel connected to a try, and that aren't currently discriminated against strongly in the US.

It's like sports team mascots. Is it okay for a team to be named the Redskins? Is that different from the Notre Dame "Fighting Irish"? The Irish used to be discriminated against in the US, but aren't really anymore. Native Americans, very much still a marginalized group.

I'm not as far from @doctorbadwolf's view on this as it might seem. I think using accents at the table is okay, even if you aren't trained in language and dialect! But I think you have to be careful, even if it's just with your local group of friends in your living room. It's easy to perpetuate racist tropes without even realizing you are doing so. Where exactly should the line be drawn between "okay" and "not okay"? Eeesh, that's tough, and somewhat subjective.

 

[Emerikol]

For those wanting DM tools for domains etc... I have found ACKs to be pretty good (Adventurer Conquerer King). It's not 5e rules of course but 90% of it could be used without change as it isn't really that focused on the mechanics outside.

I collect DM tools by the way.
1. Settings, Cities, Towns, and Buildings in Towns. I buy tons of these books.
2. Books on world building, names, nation building, organizations, npcs.
3. Books of maps of every sort.
4. I have a book on designing religions (Book of the Righteous, best book of 3e IMHO).
5. Books on cosmology like Monte Cook's Beyond Countless Doorways. Very solid book.
6. Stronghold building, domain management, and the economics of kingdoms.
7. Survival guides like Wilderness Survival,one of the best of all time, and Dungeoneers which was very solid.

I don't care about the game system that much. I can fix a monster entry with ease. I mainly want decent flavor and good maps. I think Pathfinder 2 said they were going to deal with downtime management so you might check that book out too.

I think 5e should produce a really good book but if they don't you have options.