D&D General Why Editions Don't Matter

[Campbell]

I think he fundamentally shows overt cynicism towards game design because for the most part he's not actually interested in running and/or playing a game. I do think there's a solid point to be made that D&D likes are more alike than they are different, but the overall thrust of I'm going to do things the way I want to anyway says far more about him than it does the differences in design. It also bends itself to a cynical bend that treats people who opt to play and/or run versions of the game that are not 5e as being overly precious.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The general problem is that the reference is meant as an insult but is actually a compliment. WoW is a very well-designed game, with constant iteration by a large team of professionals. It’s certainly more well-designed than any version of D&D. Being more like Warcraft was a net good for the game.

Personally, I'd prefer a comparison to FFXIV--WoW has done some preeeetty questionable design things over the years,* and the writing went from "campy but fine" to "one-note but acceptable" to "poor but tolerable" and all the way to "awful but...um..." Particularly with how it treats female characters...but that's a topic for another thread.

*Not least of which, the re-flavoring "unrested XP penalty" to "rested bonus." Something which became an industry trend, I'll note.

 

[pemerton]

Heh. Speak of the devil.

There's pretty much zero difference between any edition of D&D though as far as framing goes.

Well, I think Moldvay Basic is pretty complete - I know, because as a child I was able to read it and play it. The contrast with Classic Traveller was stark - the latter doesn't set out clear procedures of play, although with a few decades of experience under my belt I was able to come back to that system and reconstruct workable procedures from the rule that it does give.

Gygax's AD&D sets out procedures too, though not as tightly as Moldvay: the players make PCs, the GM builds a dungeon, then the first dungeon adventure takes place.

4e has clear procedures of designing individual encounters, for integrating them via quests (either GM authored or player authored), for connecting them to treasure parcels as one part of the PC growth cycle, etc. It gives fairly clear advice on what the GM is supposed to say most of the time, when the players look to them to hear what happens next.

I can't comment on the 5e corpus. I don't think the 5e Basic Rules actually spell out a procedure for play.

 

[TwoSix]

Personally, I'd prefer a comparison to FFXIV--WoW has done some preeeetty questionable design things over the years,* and the writing went from "campy but fine" to "one-note but acceptable" to "poor but tolerable" and all the way to "awful but...um..." Particularly with how it treats female characters...but that's a topic for another thread.

*Not least of which, the re-flavoring "unrested XP penalty" to "rested bonus." Something which became an industry trend, I'll note.

I would avoid that comparison for 4e simply because it's anachronistic. FFXIV didn't come out till 2010, and Realm Reborn (when FFXIV actually became good) didn't come out till 2013.

I'm not going to argue about WoW's writing, but that really doesn't have anything to do with its design.

 

[payn]

Pretty good clickbait formula here. Reduce something to its core element, like, "all movies are motion pictures with a soundtrack and tell a story". Drop little nuggets like, "some movies make you scared, some movies make you feel love, some movies are for stupid people, some movies make you laugh..." You know, so you got some controversy. Be sure to toss in other clickbait creators so you can double dip into each others bait pools.

 

[Charlaquin]

Given things like the infamous "Ghoul Surprise," I pray you'll forgive me for finding this the most humorous statement in your post.

The designers were aware of this in the open playtest. They actually live streamed a playtest session run by Mike Mearls and played by various folks on the design team and were nearly TPKed live on stream by a small group of ghouls that IIRC was supposed to be a medium encounter (which would be “easy” by the PHB rules). I’m pretty sure they actually nerfed ghouls after that, or maybe raised their CR. I’d have to look at the old packets to see how exactly they changed, but I remember a lot of folks on the WotC forums who had been saying ghouls were too strong celebrating the nerf. Guess they didn’t go hard enough.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The characters are not incompetent. He advocates in other videos for characters to have skills appropriate to their backgrounds, and for that to be more free form. PCs in his style are indeed less powerful and operating with fewer safety nets, though antagonists are also correspondingly less powerful. Lower HP leading to shorter combats which get to crisis/decision points more quickly. This is a perfectly fun way to play for a lot of people. I really enjoy this style, though I'm a big 4E fan as well.

What, then, does "skills appropriate to their backgrounds" mean? Because if you're keeping play to less than level 9, you're talking about at most +3 to some rolls. That's not nothing, but it really doesn't have that much impact. An extremely talented (18 stat at chargen), proficient (+2) character is all of 25 percentage points better than a nothing-special (10 stat) untrained rube (non-proficient.) That's only enough to take something from "slam-dunk" (95%) to "better than average" (70%), or from "average" (65%) to "risky" (40%.)

While "dangerous" play (not strictly combat) should probably be faster than it was initially in 4e, hence the shift in math with MM3/MV, being 2-3 hits from instant death is a great way to teach players to never take risks. Especially in the modern environment, where players are generally much more attached to their characters.

Yeah, kind of. I really don't think he's worked up enough about it to be genuinely trying to annoy. I think he throws in little cracks like that as jokes which experienced players will take as such, and expects us 4E fans to roll our eyes, laugh along, or throw an angry comment in which will feed the YouTube algorithm but not hurt his feelings.

That'd be why I only skimmed the video rather than interacting with it. Even a thumbs-down is an interaction. It'd be a lot easier to buy this sort of thing being "little cracks...as jokes" if it weren't, y'know, exactly what people have been slinging for ages.....and in particular coming from a crowd that felt it was being crapped on unfairly and which needed a manifesto to advocate its ends. (See: the Quick Primer, in all its craptastic glory.)

I really don't think he means it hurtfully.

And I frankly don't care what he means. It is hurtful. It shouldn't be a problem to ask for others to respect one's style and preferences, particularly when the OSR movement was built, in part, on asking people to respect their preferences. On telling people, "no, it's NOT just neckbeard nostalgia, we really do find value and joy in this, and it's crappy of you to act like pining for what once was is the only possible motive for doing this stuff."

I think a big central point of the video is that folks take the differences between editions too seriously and put too much weight on them, which is a fundamentally anti-edition war stance.

Which is why you're seeing the pushback. The message is supposed to be anti-edition-war. It's then thoroughly undercut by being accompanied with edition war rhetoric.

It would be like saying that a video talking about how gays and straights aren't nearly as different as people think, and then throwing in a reference to a Monty Python joke about "poofters." Like...it undercuts your message pretty badly, dude, if you claim to be supporting an equality stance and then use actual partisan rhetoric as a joke.

I agree that some of his analysis is a little shallow, informed by his own preferred rules-light play style.

I note that he takes the criticism of the Pathfinder YouTuber, something like "I guess to Professor DM, if a game has Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Hit Points and Armor Class that makes it D&D" at face value, and says "Yep, that's pretty much exactly how I feel", praises the PF guy's channel and suggests people subscribe to it.

Your noted stuff would sound nice, but the preceding sentence again undercuts things. It sounds, instead, like he's just being rather flippant about the whole thing, rather than actually making a serious claim.

 

[Hussar]

Well, I think Moldvay Basic is pretty complete - I know, because as a child I was able to read it and play it. The contrast with Classic Traveller was stark - the latter doesn't set out clear procedures of play, although with a few decades of experience under my belt I was able to come back to that system and reconstruct workable procedures from the rule that it does give.

Gygax's AD&D sets out procedures too, though not as tightly as Moldvay: the players make PCs, the GM builds a dungeon, then the first dungeon adventure takes place.

4e has clear procedures of designing individual encounters, for integrating them via quests (either GM authored or player authored), for connecting them to treasure parcels as one part of the PC growth cycle, etc. It gives fairly clear advice on what the GM is supposed to say most of the time, when the players look to them to hear what happens next.

I can't comment on the 5e corpus. I don't think the 5e Basic Rules actually spell out a procedure for play.

Except that the proceedure in Moldvay Basic is completely ignored by B4 The Lost City, written by Moldvay himself. After all, as I mentioned, the scene is lost in the desert, no food or water, and no town. You actually have to adventure for a considerable while before you find the first "town" and there's no guarantee that it will be friendly.

So, I think the notion that D&D has ever had any sort of hard coded scene framing in mind is pretty out there and any scene framing advice that they did have went largely straight out the window in the first five minutes of play.

Compare to say, Blades in the Dark where you are expected to be a pretty specific group in a pretty specific city. That's the sort of scene framing that @gorice was referring to.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The designers were aware of this in the open playtest. They actually live streamed a playtest session run by Mike Mearls and played by various folks on the design team and were nearly TPKed live on stream by a small group of ghouls that IIRC was supposed to be a medium encounter (which would be “easy” by the PHB rules). I’m pretty sure they actually nerfed ghouls after that, or maybe raised their CR. I’d have to look at the old packets to see how exactly they changed, but I remember a lot of folks on the WotC forums who had been saying ghouls were too strong celebrating the nerf. Guess they didn’t go hard enough.

Yes, that would be the "Ghoul Surprise" moment. The time when they were live-streaming a game and had an encounter that was supposed to be relatively low difficulty, and were shocked "live" by it actually being extremely tough.

It came quite late during the public playtest, as I recall--not super long before the final packet? Correct me if I'm wrong on that. The point wasn't whether or not they fixed it. It was that they were caught with their designer pants down, "on camera" as it were, in something that was supposed to go well and be a display of their work. That that could happen at all is an indication that they didn't really understand the game they'd designed. That it could happen in such a public-facing way is worse; it means they didn't bother testing their intended display encounter.

 

[Mannahnin]

I think he fundamentally shows overt cynicism towards game design because for the most part he's not actually interested in running and/or playing a game. I do think there's a solid point to be made that D&D likes are more alike than they are different, but the overall thrust of I'm going to do things the way I want to anyway says far more about him than it does the differences in design. It also bends itself to a cynical bend that treats people who opt to play and/or run versions of the game that are not 5e as being overly precious.

I think some of his actual advice on prepping for and running games is really great. His two page spread dungeon designs with control panel layout and efficient, bullet-pointed notes, his concepts for running combat and making it dramatic and exciting, and his various suggested house rules for D&D are generally really good stuff. YMMV.