Mind of tempest
(he/him)advocate for 5e psionics
my brain has never really left the 2010's it just believes we finally hit the season final as everything seems to be going wrong.
D&D General It's really weird loving D&D and not loving the current rules.
Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
You've just hit on a very ... peculiar... aspect of 5e. The game is more complex than it appears at first glance. In a way, for those that like depth and variety that's good! But those complexities and nuances are frequently not well explained... almost hidden at times!
It's almost as if they wanted to have a "surface level" 5e game for some, and a deeper one for the others. 5e absolutely could be better explained.
Man, suddenly I'm having Monte Cook "ivory tower" flashbacks...
Mind of tempest
(he/him)advocate for 5e psionics
gods even I heard of that and it sounds like the worst game design choice devisable from a purely technical standpoint.
honestly, I just want the game to cut loose and do more strange things, try making a new whole class as those gets people's attention.
It's usually selectively quoted to strip things of the context giving them scope as well as situational meaning within that scope. The Alexandrian wrote a nice little thing on it.... "So the next time you see someone misquoting Cooks “Ivory Tower of Game Design”, do us all a favor and link them here. Maybe it’s not too late to nip this bit of false truth in the bud."
Mind of tempest
(he/him)advocate for 5e psionics
I do grasp its points but not telling people things is a bad idea give the base books as more or less a manual and explaining how to do something is good manual design it is still bad.
I get not everything can be the best but why not strip out the worst and only keep the good, great and best?
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
Nuts, I was just about to link to that.
In card games, it works because it's competitive, you want people to gain skill at playing the game, and evaluating options. But D&D isn't supposed to be competitive in the same way. You shouldn't be competing with your fellow players, and competing with the DM is just going to end up with bad feelings all around.
Nobody should feel bad for making a choice for their character- you don't get a lot of decision points, and finding out that taking Actor instead of Polearm Mastery, or choosing to be an Arcane Archer instead of a Bladesinger, just makes you worse.
You can't have true balance but options need to be balanced to some degree. I remember in 4e, there were some amazing non-combat Feats and Utility Powers, but they were rarely taken because you knew there would be combat, and failing combat can lead to death. You didn't know if your amazing power to climb or jump 15' without making a die roll would have the same effect.
CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing
I propose a Retro Game Night challenge.
To everyone commenting in this thread: I challenge you to schedule a one-shot with your regular gaming group sometime in the month of August. Just for one night, where you dust off your favorite older edition of D&D and play a single game. You can use pregen characters or roll up new ones, you can use a published adventure or write your own, you can play for a single session or several.
Then report back here. Post all of your observations in this thread: tell us about all of the things that you missed, tell us about the things that worked better in the older edition (or didn't work as well), tell us what your friends thought of it, and so on. I'm very curious which editions everyone would choose, and how well our favorites have 'aged.'
Who's with me?
To everyone commenting in this thread: I challenge you to schedule a one-shot with your regular gaming group sometime in the month of August. Just for one night, where you dust off your favorite older edition of D&D and play a single game. You can use pregen characters or roll up new ones, you can use a published adventure or write your own, you can play for a single session or several.
Then report back here. Post all of your observations in this thread: tell us about all of the things that you missed, tell us about the things that worked better in the older edition (or didn't work as well), tell us what your friends thought of it, and so on. I'm very curious which editions everyone would choose, and how well our favorites have 'aged.'
Who's with me?
I'd be happy to, but my ability to convince people to play anything new or different is apparently lacking. They want 5e (or maybe PF1) or nothing in my area.
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