D&D 5E Is Tasha's More or Less The Universal Standard?

[Bill Zebub]

I'm not knocking your preference at all, but I think it is a coincidence that WotC is currently catering to it. They are catering to casuals, because that's their biggest market. It absolutely is shallow, as written. That it also allows you to play the way you prefer is awesome, but a side effect as far as WotC is concerned.

I guess it’s hard to prove one way or another, but I do think there are a lot of players like me. So maybe they decided to target two audiences at once.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Nothing wrong with not caring for PB Simulation. Many don't. I just got the impression that you didn't see your statement as opinion, but rather fact, and I take issue with that.

I'm pretty mystified as to how you'd formed that impression given I specifically said "seemed" not "become" to make it clear I was talking opinions not facts, but such is the internet!

I'm not knocking your preference at all, but I think it is a coincidence that WotC is currently catering to it. They are catering to casuals, because that's their biggest market. It absolutely is shallow, as written. That it also allows you to play the way you prefer is awesome, but a side effect as far as WotC is concerned.

I don't think it is a coincidence at all.

The fact is that PB-sim RPGs are inevitably more mechanically complex than RPGs that don't attempt that kind of simulation and typically benefit more from the players having a strong grounding in physics, engineering, chemistry, biology, and even disciplines like history than other RPGs. They're more restrictive, typically, in the audience who can appreciate them. Sometimes they benefit from specialist knowledge well outside of RPGs, like Millennium's End did (like proper tradecraft, how to breach & clear and so on).

That's never going to fit well with a broad, diverse (in the most purely literal, non-political sense) audience, because the reality is, most people don't have that kind of knowledge, and aren't particularly interested in acquiring it via RPGs. This unfortunately often includes the authors of PB-sim RPGs who often have outdated knowledge or just incorrect ideas about how certain things work, and instead have pop-culture or pop-science or pop-history assumptions about stuff (again, armour is a prime example here).

So a truly mass-market RPG is basically never going to be a PB-sim RPG, because those are inevitably rules-heavy, and reliant on a greater level of engagement with the subject matter than most people are likely to have. Most people just aren't that interested in simulating stuff. The same applies to videogames. You can see how fast simulation videogames fell out of favour as soon as more arcade-y takes on similar subjects were available.

The mass market doesn't want simulation. It's a significant market that does, but a niche one. Hence it's not a "coincidence". Indeed I'd go as far as to say it's inevitability (given there is a mass-market RPG at all).

As for "shallow", well, that's obviously a subjective value-judgement - literally your choice of word is inevitably a value judgement, so isn't particularly helpful or arguable.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm pretty mystified as to how you'd formed that impression given I specifically said "seemed" not "become" to make it clear I was talking opinions not facts, but such is the internet!

I don't think it is a coincidence at all.

The fact is that PB-sim RPGs are inevitably more mechanically complex than RPGs that don't attempt that kind of simulation and typically benefit more from the players having a strong grounding in physics, engineering, chemistry, biology, and even disciplines like history than other RPGs. They're more restrictive, typically, in the audience who can appreciate them. Sometimes they benefit from specialist knowledge well outside of RPGs, like Millennium's End did (like proper tradecraft, how to breach & clear and so on).

That's never going to fit well with a broad, diverse (in the most purely literal, non-political sense) audience, because the reality is, most people don't have that kind of knowledge, and aren't particularly interested in acquiring it via RPGs. This unfortunately often includes the authors of PB-sim RPGs who often have outdated knowledge or just incorrect ideas about how certain things work, and instead have pop-culture or pop-science or pop-history assumptions about stuff (again, armour is a prime example here).

So a truly mass-market RPG is basically never going to be a PB-sim RPG, because those are inevitably rules-heavy, and reliant on a greater level of engagement with the subject matter than most people are likely to have. Most people just aren't that interested in simulating stuff. The same applies to videogames. You can see how fast simulation videogames fell out of favour as soon as more arcade-y takes on similar subjects were available.

The mass market doesn't want simulation. It's a significant market that does, but a niche one. Hence it's not a "coincidence". Indeed I'd go as far as to say it's inevitability (given there is a mass-market RPG at all).

As for "shallow", well, that's obviously a subjective value-judgement - literally your choice of word is inevitably a value judgement, so isn't particularly helpful or arguable.

I do not care about what the mass-market wants; that is not me or my players. I do have a grounding in history (that's what my degree is in) and I have an abiding interest in trying for accuracy when it is possible. To me, 5e is mechanically shallow, and has become increasingly so under WotC in the last few years. I'm aware that the majority seems to want that, but I never have. I am not a casual player, and have little interest in mechanics that cater to those who are. Thst's my opinion.

That being said, it is the game for which it is easiest to get players, and which is most familiar to my current group, so I pretty much have to start there. Level Up's superior (to me) version of the game is my base, supplemented by my voluminous houserule document. I can make that work in a way that I and my players are happy with.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

You and I have very different gaming likes. I can't stand the increasing simplicity of the current game. Every time I see WotC make another change in the name of "ease of use", I cringe.

Eh, I also enjoy complexity, but I'd rather it be optional than have to decrease complexity in places I don't want it.

I'm not knocking your preference at all, but I think it is a coincidence that WotC is currently catering to it. They are catering to casuals, because that's their biggest market.

If they were catering to "casuals", which is a somewhat pejorative term when used that way, the game would have been more complex and harder to play in 2014. It wasn't. The Champion Fighter (Standard Human) is the most popular character, and has been since day one, including when you only look at people who have at least the whole PHB purchased on DDB. So, absolutely not "casuals".

It absolutely is shallow, as written.

No, it's not. It's just not needlessly complex.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I do not care about what the mass-market wants; that is not me or my players.

Sure, and I see that, but this was about you saying it was a "coincidence" that it was the most popular style. I would suggest the opposite is true - it's an inevitability that any popular RPG isn't of a PB-sim-centric design in terms of basic setup.

To me, 5e is mechanically shallow, and has become increasingly so under WotC in the last few years.

That's interesting. I can't really see it myself. To my eye, for example picking your +2/+1 and having a fixed +2/+1 are both pretty shallow approaches mechanically and intellectually (I presume this is part of what you were referring to), and I know that some PB-sim games would reject both the current WotC method and the older one as simplistic. As you say, it's an opinion though. Certainly 3E's LA-based approach to races allowed for a far more simulationist take (I will admit some sympathy for that approach myself, actually, I feel like D&D could do with finding away to allow more stuff to be playable and whilst LA wasn't perfect, it wasn't awful either).

That being said, it is the game for which it is easiest to get players, and which is most familiar to my current group, so I pretty much have to start there. Level Up's superior (to me) version of the game is my base, supplemented by my voluminous houserule document. I can make that work in a way that I and my players are happy with.

This is not an issue unique to players who like PB-sim games or simulationist games in general, though. It's an issue for literally anyone who doesn't think "D&D is the best". If you like narrativist games, D&D's current approach is pretty disappointing. If you like game-ist games, well, 5E is slightly less disappointing, but it's still pretty disappointing compared to say, 4E.

In fact I'd say, you're probably slightly better-positioned than people who have either of those preferences, because 5E is easier to houserule into a more PB-sim shape than narrativist or game-ist ones, because PB-sim stuff can often be supported by adding rules, sometimes multiple layers of rules, where to make D&D more narrativist or game-ist, you kind of need to remove rules as much as add them, and indeed to really go game-ist you'd pretty much need to strip out 5E's approach to magic I'd suggest.

 

[Azzy]

No. Gods are beyond mortal magic in that way and it takes a DM letting that slide for Pun-Pun to work as people are writing it.

Yep. There are too many steps in the Pun Pun process that outright require the DM to be actively and knowingly complicit in the shenanigans.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

In case it isn't coming across clearly, @Micah Sweet , a preference for simplicity is not an indicator of casual engagement with the game or with gaming in general. Many of us have developed simpler preferences as we have become more and more deeply engaged with the hobby, in fact.

Many of the most dedicated dnd players i know, the ones who have 1 hobby and it's TTRPGs and primarily DnD, prefer to play mostly at-will very simple characters in 5e, because they don't feel constrained by lists of abilities that way.

I have already heard from people who've played a few months of level up that they immediately saw a reduction in improvisational play, or what some folks call "shennanigans", because people are more inclined to stick to what's on their sheet, the more little mechanical knobs and dials and widgets they have on their sheet.

Many people who are quite the opposite of "casual" strongly prefer simpler mechanics that put the onus of creativity in play more strongly on the players and DM. That isn't a casual preference, it's actually rather an advanced preference, IME.


The other point that is worth noting, here, is that wotc has made the game more complex and less "easy mode" over the last several years, not less. No longer can you just look at what your class needs for stats and pick one of the races that gets that, you have to actually look at the races and think about them in order to make a choice that you won't be dissatisfied with later. The monster design has shifted to giving monsters more bang for their CR, on average, and making them harder to counter, both by making more abilities not be spells or even magical, and by making PC race magic resistance into spell resistance.

Frankly, that last one is overkill, at least for the gnome, IMO, so my group will be treating the trait as advantage against all magical effects that target the mind. Still, it's absolutely not a case of dumbing anything down, making anything easier, or making the game more "casual friendly".

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yep. There are too many steps in the Pun Pun process that outright require the DM to be actively and knowingly complicit in the shenanigans.

Yeah I can't imagine it literally ever happened IRL.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Yep. There are too many steps in the Pun Pun process that outright require the DM to be actively and knowingly complicit in the shenanigans.

To be fair those builds (this, the peasant rail gun, and a lot more) were NEVER meant to work or be used in play. They are thought experiments that also double as jokes. The DM and Player are 1 and the same, and just working together

 

[Zubatcarteira]

Besides Twilight Sanctuary, I don't think it's particularly op in comparison to the stuff that came before. It's usually that and the race stuff that I see being banned, but the latter is usually more due to not liking the design of floating ASIs.