D&D General Why Editions Don't Matter

[Oofta]

Time pressure (or consequences in general) is a big thing, so let's stick with that.

The DMG says that a party can move 300 ft. per minute at a normal exploration pace, or 200 at a slow one. In the 60 minutes before I roll and random encounter check, they will have been, looted, and gone home for a long rest.

There are some more practical exploration rules in the DMG, but it lacks any unifying procedures to hold them together. What exactly triggers a roll for encounters, or weather, or whether a monster notices a PC? The final playtest actually had a bunch of this stuff, but they removed it. Important procedures are missing.

Outside of dungeons, I don't think the game has any comparable procedures, either. OK, so the evil duke and his scary knights are trying to track down the PCs and their friends in the city. The PCs are racing against time to find a solution. How close is he to getting them? How do I decide when this happens? Do the players have a right to know how near he is, or that he is after them at all?

This is what I mean by incompleteness.

I'm still failing to see what procedure you would want or how it would work. Time pressure can work in multiple ways, it can be anything from the distraction you planted should keep the dragon out of the lair for the next 45 minutes, you took out some guards and if they don't check in within the next half hour the alarms will start ringing, you know reinforcements are likely coming and will be there by morning. The time pressure can be so varied, the scenario being played out can be so unique that I don't see how or why you'd want one standard procedure. There are many times I don't want my players to know the exact countdown because the PCs would not know. It's part of the fun. Did the distraction really work? Are the guards really that punctual? What happens if the info you have is wrong and you find out that the reinforcement will actually be there by midnight?

Related to that, if some of this is based on previous challenges or intelligence gathering, how well did they do? On a scale of 1 to 10 did they get a 1 or an 11 because they were more clever than you had expected?

It's that kind of flexibility that I want in a game and I think it's the kind of flexibility that the game encourages. Anyone who has watched spy movies, played any number of video games has a general idea of the kind of things that can and do go wrong along with how careful planning and intel can help out. The last thing I want is a metagame conversation at the table "Okay folks, this is round X of exploration so we only have 3 more rounds of exploration before we hit that random monster." It would take much of the sense of immersion and discovery out of the game for me.

Which was one of the issue I had with skill challenges as presented and used. We knew we needed 4 successes before 2 failures. There was no circumventing the hard-and-fast procedure, not clever ploy, no rabbit I could pull out of a hat. Any kind of procedural dungeon delving would start to feel the same.

 

[Garthanos]

For example: cantrips in 5e are part of its slightly chocolatey flavour. They add an unwelcome note to many dungeon crawls and wilderness adventures (light? mending? mage hand? prestidigitation? yuck). On the other hand, I think the 'he failed, what now?' problem makes it clear that there are some missing ingredients.

For me cantrips make casters always feel like casters instead of a dude with a crossbow (3e), or dude chucking darts(1e and I think 2e). They avoid players introducing out of genre flavors and create in genre flavors.

 

[FrogReaver]

Perhaps some people experience a sense of sameness when structure isn't varied enough.

That might explain some of the aversion to 4e skill challenges, the aversion to the 4e AEDU power structure, the desire for less formalized structure in 5e, the preference for how 5e skills work with DM determination as the first step over say 3.x skills, etc.

 

[pemerton]

Time pressure (or consequences in general) is a big thing, so let's stick with that.

<snip>

so the evil duke and his scary knights are trying to track down the PCs and their friends in the city. The PCs are racing against time to find a solution. How close is he to getting them? How do I decide when this happens? Do the players have a right to know how near he is, or that he is after them at all?

This is what I mean by incompleteness.

I'm still failing to see what procedure you would want or how it would work.

A skill challenge would be one example.

Systems of opposed checks would be another.

Time pressure can work in multiple ways, it can be anything from the distraction you planted should keep the dragon out of the lair for the next 45 minutes, you took out some guards and if they don't check in within the next half hour the alarms will start ringing, you know reinforcements are likely coming and will be there by morning. The time pressure can be so varied, the scenario being played out can be so unique that I don't see how or why you'd want one standard procedure.

But you've just described one standard procedure - the GM decides, based on what they imagine is happening offscreen!

As I read their posts, @hawkeyefan and @gorice are canvassing the possibility of different procedures.

It's that kind of flexibility that I want in a game and I think it's the kind of flexibility that the game encourages.

By "flexibility" here you seem to mean something like freedom for the GM to imagine things and make them part of the shared fiction.

 

[Malmuria]

Actual rats?

Underrated comment

The DMG says that a party can move 300 ft. per minute at a normal exploration pace, or 200 at a slow one. In the 60 minutes before I roll and random encounter check, they will have been, looted, and gone home for a long rest.

So the DMG rule is not good, especially for replicating the kinds of pressures/tensions that you would find in a b/x dungeoncrawl (along with high encumbrance limits, near-universal darkvision, xp-for-monsters, etc). That's different from saying that the rule doesn't exist. If anything, I think the mistake is to include rules for things that encourage them to be handwaived anyway.

Outside of dungeons, I don't think the game has any comparable procedures, either. OK, so the evil duke and his scary knights are trying to track down the PCs and their friends in the city. The PCs are racing against time to find a solution. How close is he to getting them? How do I decide when this happens? Do the players have a right to know how near he is, or that he is after them at all?

Whitehack 3e and Worlds Without Number both have interesting and helpful thoughts on planning out what factions are doing and how it might come to bear upon the PCs. But they still rely a lot on GM interpreting and deciding, maybe with the aid of a random table. I mean, in whitehack the whole faction "procedure" is all of two a5 pages. I'd be wary of a 5.5, say, that aimed to be complete by trying to anticipate every possible situation that might occur in a game. More elegant, I think, is succinct advice that empowers DMs to design their own solutions.

 

[Older Beholder]

doesn’t matter
- post deleted -

 

[Oofta]

A skill challenge would be one example.

Systems of opposed checks would be another.

But you've just described one standard procedure - the GM decides, based on what they imagine is happening offscreen!

As I read their posts, @hawkeyefan and @gorice are canvassing the possibility of different procedures.

By "flexibility" here you seem to mean something like freedom for the GM to imagine things and make them part of the shared fiction.

But the "procedure" is all based on unique scenarios based on knowledge of the actors involved and the specifics of the scenario.

One time clock could be used for a murder mystery (try to find the killer before they kill again or dissappear) or it could be a carefully planned bank Heist. You could be in a race to beat your opponents to the MacGuffin. There could be multiple clocks ticking that react to the actions of the PCs.

There is no way I can see to make any kind of system for that, at least not one that I would want to use.

 

[Baron Opal II]

For me cantrips make casters always feel like casters instead of a dude with a crossbow (3e), or dude chucking darts(1e and I think 2e). They avoid players introducing out of genre flavors and create in genre flavors.

Interestingly, I have the opposite opinion regarding unlimited cantrips. I would much prefer having prof. bonus + attribute bonus number of cantrips per day, long rest whatever.

That I have a different preference than you isn't my point, however. It would have been amazing if this was a dial that could be turned and the design staff have a side board on the impact you could expect on what high or low frequency cantrips might be. That way we could have both our preferences available as well as have some guidance on what secondary effects might arise.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think you are just looking under a greater magnification under the microscope than I am.There's alot of similarity in roll under stat -> roll over dc.

But roll under stat wasn’t how many out of combat procedures worked in early editions.

Sure. My flag is firmly planted on the ground of pros and cons for most everything.

Okay. So what are the pros and cons of “GM Decides” as a system?

I have no idea what you mean here.

I was asking what you meant. You said that a game could be hacked to do exactly what you want. Then you said that adding structures can be problematic.

I assume by hack you mean some kind of formal change to the system and not just off the cuff adjudication. In which case, I was asking how hacks can help but also be problematic.

Then you are clearly missing my point. What xyz is doesn't actually matter. The 'why' behind every preference is a mystery.

I’m literally asking you to tell me what you like about the way 5E functions. Like specifically.

I'll say this though, the reoccuring theme of people trying to explain why the prefer D&D in what you call it's incomplete form is because they view it easier to modify toward their preferences. I suppose ideally they would prefer a game built already aligning to their preferences that was just as popular as D&D currently is, etc. But usually when people don't pick the obvious answer like that it's because they have already considered whether such a thing is feasible and ruled out that possibility. So they settle for the tradeoff of having to 'hack' a game to their tastes.

Do you mean modify formally? Like come up with actual rules and share then with players? Or do you mean the freedom to just kind of decide stuff in the moment?

Because structured games can also be modified. So I think you mean more the latter than the former.

 

[hawkeyefan]

But the "procedure" is all based on unique scenarios based on knowledge of the actors involved and the specifics of the scenario.

One time clock could be used for a murder mystery (try to find the killer before they kill again or dissappear) or it could be a carefully planned bank Heist. You could be in a race to beat your opponents to the MacGuffin. There could be multiple clocks ticking that react to the actions of the PCs.

So how do you adjudicate this at the table? Like, you say the murder mystery and the bank heist are different; how so?

Do you share these mechanics with the players in any way?