D&D (2024) GenCon 2023 - D&D Rules Revision panel

[UngeheuerLich]

then why not just keep selling the current version

Because it needs an overhaul afte 10 years?
Do you use the same mobile phone after ten years, the same laptop?

I upgraded my last laptop after nearly 10 years.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Your proposing that the game is successful because its good and so people buy it.

But thats not how it works. People don't actually know one way or another until they experience it for themselves.

Whats actually driving 5es success is name recognition and accessibility, both of which are things being driven by feedback loops from people and groups who rely on 5e for their own success.

Ok. Where is your proof for that?

If it worked the way you proposed, 4e would still be up and running.

(Not that 4e was a bad game, but people who bought it decided to eventually not buy it anymore and even spread the word that it is not what you expect when you want to play D&D...)

 

[Emberashh]

Ok. Where is your proof for that?

I can ask the same of you.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I can ask the same of you.

I edited my previous post with my sight of the things...

 

[Azzy]

Your proposing that the game is successful because its good and so people buy it.

But thats not how it works. People don't actually know one way or another until they experience it for themselves.

Many people play the game before buying into it because of family or friends introducing it. Always been that way.

Whats actually driving 5es success is name recognition and accessibility, both of which are things being driven by feedback loops from people and groups who rely on 5e for their own success.

Tell that to 4e.

None of this has anything to do with the quality of the game's design. These things would be true even if 5e was FATAL levels of bad or even on the opposite end of that scale.

Yeah, no. That's literally ridiculous.

 

[Mistwell]

Ive read the Next playtest, and Im still flabbergasted that they actually caused a lot of the issues 5e has just by dropping half the fantastic ideas they had originally.

Ive said it before, but take the Druid templates. They already perfected it in Next #6. That they moved to what we got in 5e and now have whatever you want to call their abortive attempt in 1DND is just bewildering.

I liked templates too. Shocker, the majority of the audience did not. It's OK to like something a lot of people didn't like. There is nothing objective here - what you and I liked about templates is not objectively better game design, it is just a tastes thing. That's it. It should be acceptable that people just prefer the actual beast stats rather than templates. They didn't perfect some objectively great design with the templates, it was just one of many subjectively workable solutions which didn't work for too many people's tastes.

 

[Mistwell]

What are you looking for specifically? I just want to better understand your point of view.

Why did you just push the button which was clearly marked "DO NOT PUSH." Now look what you've done! Here comes the "Tainted food" metaphors and "They killed the Warlock!" rants.

Bad MockingBird. Bad!

 

[Reynard]

I don't think we should make too much of what "approval ratings" certain elements get. Or, rather, i don't think WotC should. What percentage of what part of the customer base engages with the surveys? And of them, how many actually PLAYtested the material? They probably have MUCH better data from AL and BNDB as far as what classes people play and like.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Negativity is warranted when something genuinely isn't good. Ive said before Im not the only one who thinks this way about how WOTC has proceeded.

Maybe, but you dig pretty deep. You're so far down that someone like me probably looks super-positive to you, when what I am is neutral.

That's still crashing into the fact that trouble with waiting till it's too late to start thinking about the GM is that when they start thinking about the GM it's too late. It doesn't matter if Feb 24 leaves enough time or not for packet 10 to do something for the gm if the prior nine packets do not leave room for it's existence within the rules.

Not that I think WotC designers are incapable of making mistakes (even vast ones) but I think that if they are showing their plan on a slide-show, it probably will work the way they expect it to. Or in other words, they will have time to show us what they want to show us, and collect feedback on that. Would we LIKE them to show us more? Will there be something in the DMG that doesn't work the way it should? Probably. (Of course, that will happen whether we playtest it or not!)

We just saw a return of short rest class design with no change to make resting harder in the same packet that gave low level rogues were given a ranged at will ability to drop almost every flying creature but beholders from the sky with no real cost the *cost" is so low that the resulting fall damage for anything in flight probably equals or exceeds the damage sacrificed. All of that impacts and limits what the GM sees at the table and what the GM stuff can do.

They're clear every time that they test IDEAS, not BALANCE. I'm pretty sure that even if everyone LOVES the new Rogue abilities (and I expect that they do!) It'll almost certainly get nerfed before publication.

February of 2024 is a long time to expect people to keep saying "uhh what munchkin is this written for?". By that point it doesn't matter what then irrelivant tools they might want to include in the dmg because the gm as an individual has already been pigeonholed into the role of enemy to be defeated rather than the monsters the adventure designers world builder lore keeper and collaborator. Wotc needs to do better than we might see in a thread that starts out "newbie here, PEACH my first homebrew" all the way to packet 10 and beyond.

I'm not following this last paragraph, but I find that I often can't quite grok what you're getting at. Personally, I love (and employ) snark, so that's not quite the problem. I think it's that you flit from one negative comment to another like a hummingbird, without always giving us context for us to follow you with.

I mean, how is the DM an "enemy to be defeated"? Are you speaking of 5e specifically? Because for all its faults, I don't see 5e as promoting DM-player adversarialness. Certainly not MORE than earlier editions.

 

[Mistwell]

What’s with everyone being so pedantic?

Welcome to EnWorld! You must be new. Let me show you around.

You see, we're sort of like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, only entirely different.

Over here is the Room of Pedantry. Wonder at this display of dictionaries! And over here will see the Hallway of Dogmatism. That door at the end leads to the Room of Purism, just beside the Pit of Literalism. Please do not confuse any of these rooms with each other, for if you do, you will find yourself strangely back in the Room of Pedantry.

If you feel the need, the Bathroom of Precision can be found over here, and there is also a Bathroom of Exactness beside it, and you must choose which to use. Behind us is the Foyer of Perfectionism.

And that completes this area of EnWorld. Now if you'd like to move on to the Atrium of Verisimilitude, well that will be complicated depending on which laws of physics and magic you've chosen to mix in your drink of rules balance, which can be obtained in the Bar of Crunch and Fluff.