D&D 5E What are the "True Issues" with 5e?

[CleverNickName]

You know what would be good Man Vs Nature stuff?

Weather rules!

More interesting terrain features including hazardous terrain like poison sumac patches and crumbling escarpments!

Fantastic animals the game doesn't insist are monstrosities with lairs and watering holes and game trails!

Camping equipment that does things!

Cooking and Fishing and Trapping and Crafting!

Any of the actual reasons people go hiking and camping instead of faithfully reproducing the Donner Party Experience of just suffering through the trip!

That's pretty much how I run hexcrawls. I don't think "The Isle of Dread" would feel right without the weather tables, random events table, and the interesting flora/fauna/geology that can't be found anywhere else in the game world.

 

[Baron Opal II]

So wait, you're arguing that tents offer no protection because it's not defined by the book? As if no one knows what a "tent" is in real life and extrapolate? That somehow not explaining how a tent works is a failing of the rules? Are they also supposed to explain the purpose and uses of a shovel?

Well, yes.

How strong a wind blows over the tent? How cold until you get into trouble? How much earth can the party move if they need to dig a defensive trench? How much more benefit is it to have tiny hut or dig compared to what those spells could be used for otherwise?

I mean, LotFP has a paragraph on how much you can dig with and without decent shovels.

 

[Golroc]

That is true of literally every mechanic. You have to find a group that appreciates the value of mundane resource management.

Not that it applies very well to encumbrance, but I actually do think a mechanic can bring value without producing interesting/compelling/enjoyable gameplay. For some groups (mostly new players or those on a nostalgia trip) a mechanic can bring value without any, or even negative, impact on gameplay.

For example, character creation may involve things that are completely irrelevant to gameplay, but that still bring excitement to players. One could make the point that this is merely semantics, and/or that I have a too narrow definition of gameplay, but I think those of us who are jaded or just more cynical by nature can sometimes forget. Sentimental or symbolic value. Contradicting my initial statement, I just realized that there might even be players who find value in playing with D&D encumbrance despite not being appreciative of mundane resource management or weird physics, simply out of nostalgia. I've seen plenty of people stick almost religiously to a specific set of rules for sentimental reasons.

I don't think designers should generally cater to such things when the mechanic in question is otherwise really bad (as in this example), but for other mechanics, a new edition can easily be better off not (or only lightly) touching certain mechanics, to preserve some of symbolic and/or sentimental value.

But if anything, WotC designers seem too restrained currently. And that comes with issues in itself. I think it's a shame they don't have the guts to evolve D&D more. I guess 4th edition is still a boogeyman in that regard - but 1st edition to 2nd edition was a pretty strong improvement, so it can be done. Pathfinder also did an admirable job with their first edition bump - and I'm seeing their 2.5 (or remaster as they seem to prefer) continue that trend.

5th edition certainly isn't perfect - so if the coming revision (even if they don't call it a new edition, it is a version bump if there's a new PHB with rules changes) is anemic and doesn't show any courage in changing or adding to the game, I think D&D will end up gradually losing ground to 3rd party content and competitors. Which isn't a bad thing as such. Just a shame if they keep having such a weirdly low level of ambition.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not that it applies very well to encumbrance, but I actually do think a mechanic can bring value without producing interesting/compelling/enjoyable gameplay. For some groups (mostly new players or those on a nostalgia trip) a mechanic can bring value without any, or even negative, impact on gameplay.

For example, character creation may involve things that are completely irrelevant to gameplay, but that still bring excitement to players. One could make the point that this is merely semantics, and/or that I have a too narrow definition of gameplay, but I think those of us who are jaded or just more cynical by nature can sometimes forget. Sentimental or symbolic value. Contradicting my initial statement, I just realized that there might even be players who find value in playing with D&D encumbrance despite not being appreciative of mundane resource management or weird physics, simply out of nostalgia. I've seen plenty of people stick almost religiously to a specific set of rules for sentimental reasons.

I don't think designers should generally cater to such things when the mechanic in question is otherwise really bad (as in this example), but for other mechanics, a new edition can easily be better off not (or only lightly) touching certain mechanics, to preserve some of symbolic and/or sentimental value.

But if anything, WotC designers seem too restrained currently. And that comes with issues in itself. I think it's a shame they don't have the guts to evolve D&D more. I guess 4th edition is still a boogeyman in that regard - but 1st edition to 2nd edition was a pretty strong improvement, so it can be done. Pathfinder also did an admirable job with their first edition bump - and I'm seeing their 2.5 (or remaster as they seem to prefer) continue that trend.

5th edition certainly isn't perfect - so if the coming revision (even if they don't call it a new edition, it is a version bump if there's a new PHB with rules changes) is anemic and doesn't show any courage in changing or adding to the game, I think D&D will end up gradually losing ground to 3rd party content and competitors. Which isn't a bad thing as such. Just a shame if they keep having such a weirdly low level of ambition.

I've never thought WotC losing ground to other RPG publishers was a bad thing.

 

[Composer99]

That is true of literally every mechanic. You have to find a group that appreciates the value of mundane resource management.

Yes, but what I'm getting at is:

(1) To the best of my knowledge, the outstanding majority of D&D fans seem to find D&D spellcasting to be a mechanic that produces interesting, enjoyable, and engaging gameplay - or at least that produces satisfactory gameplay as regards compelling-ness, enjoyment, etc. - in a way that counting up encumbrance of gear by pounds simply does not.

(2) Tying back to my earlier post in this thread, this is a case where the way in which D&D is designed to cater to different gameplay preferences creates mechanics that interfere with the kind of gameplay being sought by each disparate player base. The game makes you count up encumbrance of gear by pounds, annoying anyone who wants to play in a more heroic mode and not have to worry about how much they're carrying, but it also provides spells and magic items that make it easy to simply bypass or ignore those limits, annoying anyone who wants mundane resource management to actually matter in play.

(3) Even some OSR or OSR-adjacent games that intend for mundane resource management to be a more central part of gameplay are also abandoning pound-weight encumbrance (or its OD&D/Basic D&D cousin, coin-weight encumbrance) for more abstract systems, such as slot-based encumbrance, because they're finding that pound-weight encumbrance isn't producing gameplay that their players are finding interesting, engaging or compelling. I expect that has to do with scale - e.g. it's tiresome and tedious to count up dozens or hundreds of pounds/coins, but much more accessible and, seemingly, immediately visceral to count up a half-dozen or dozen "slots/points" of encumbrance.

(To my mind, this point about scale is not unlike how many players have found it tiresome to count up all the many circumstantial modifiers that could apply to attack rolls, damage rolls, or defences in 3.X or, to a lesser but still real extent, 4e.)

To my mind, D&D would be better served with:

1. An encumbrance mechanic that supports heroic adventure gameplay (mostly by getting out of the way of such gameplay);
2. An encumbrance mechanic that robustly supports survival gameplay and mundane resource management;
3. One of (1) or (2) is the core/standard rule and the other is an optional/variant rule - probably (1) if my guess about how most tables are playing the game is correct;
4. Eschewing pound-weight as the encumbrance mechanic.

 

[Oofta]

Well, yes.

How strong a wind blows over the tent? How cold until you get into trouble? How much earth can the party move if they need to dig a defensive trench? How much more benefit is it to have tiny hut or dig compared to what those spells could be used for otherwise?

I mean, LotFP has a paragraph on how much you can dig with and without decent shovels.

So ... tents, shovels, baskets, cooking pots, any mundane item really needs to have detailed specs or it's a "true issue"?

At some point you just have to make some assumptions that people actually know what a bucket is, even if we don't know it's exact capacity.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes, but what I'm getting at is:

(1) To the best of my knowledge, the outstanding majority of D&D fans seem to find D&D spellcasting to be a mechanic that produces interesting, enjoyable, and engaging gameplay - or at least that produces satisfactory gameplay as regards compelling-ness, enjoyment, etc. - in a way that counting up encumbrance of gear by pounds simply does not.

(2) Tying back to my earlier post in this thread, this is a case where the way in which D&D is designed to cater to different gameplay preferences creates mechanics that interfere with the kind of gameplay being sought by each disparate player base. The game makes you count up encumbrance of gear by pounds, annoying anyone who wants to play in a more heroic mode and not have to worry about how much they're carrying, but it also provides spells and magic items that make it easy to simply bypass or ignore those limits, annoying anyone who wants mundane resource management to actually matter in play.

(3) Even some OSR or OSR-adjacent games that intend for mundane resource management to be a more central part of gameplay are also abandoning pound-weight encumbrance (or its OD&D/Basic D&D cousin, coin-weight encumbrance) for more abstract systems, such as slot-based encumbrance, because they're finding that pound-weight encumbrance isn't producing gameplay that their players are finding interesting, engaging or compelling. I expect that has to do with scale - e.g. it's tiresome and tedious to count up dozens or hundreds of pounds/coins, but much more accessible and, seemingly, immediately visceral to count up a half-dozen or dozen "slots/points" of encumbrance.

(To my mind, this point about scale is not unlike how many players have found it tiresome to count up all the many circumstantial modifiers that could apply to attack rolls, damage rolls, or defences in 3.X or, to a lesser but still real extent, 4e.)

To my mind, D&D would be better served with:

1. An encumbrance mechanic that supports heroic adventure gameplay (mostly by getting out of the way of such gameplay);
2. An encumbrance mechanic that robustly supports survival gameplay and mundane resource management;
3. One of (1) or (2) is the core/standard rule and the other is an optional/variant rule - probably (1) if my guess about how most tables are playing the game is correct;
4. Eschewing pound-weight as the encumbrance mechanic.

That would be nice. Unfortunately, since WotC is terrified to make substantial changes to their version of D&D, it looks like we're going to have to look elsewhere for that kind of innovation. Fortunately, plenty of third party publishers have already done so in different ways.

 

[Lanefan]

Like the rules, don't like the rules, don't care. There are rules that can be used in the book.

The bolded bit is, I think, what's being questioned; as if the rules can't be functionally used they might as well not be there.

 

[billd91]

(2) Tying back to my earlier post in this thread, this is a case where the way in which D&D is designed to cater to different gameplay preferences creates mechanics that interfere with the kind of gameplay being sought by each disparate player base. The game makes you count up encumbrance of gear by pounds, annoying anyone who wants to play in a more heroic mode and not have to worry about how much they're carrying, but it also provides spells and magic items that make it easy to simply bypass or ignore those limits, annoying anyone who wants mundane resource management to actually matter in play.

A couple of points to add:
For some players, it's not just about not worrying about how much they're carrying for a "more heroic mode" but also to allow them to have a Dex-melee build and dump their Strength stat without a suffering a trade-off. That may sound cynical, but we've encountered plenty of discussion on these boards about players who dump Strength now.

And as for the issue of annoying one set of players who don't want to deal with it vs one set who does - that's why individual tables need a Session 0 to hash the issue out for the group if some players feel strongly about it. It may indicate a general play style incompatibility.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

So ... tents, shovels, baskets, cooking pots, any mundane item really needs to have detailed specs or it's a "true issue"?

At some point you just have to make some assumptions that people actually know what a bucket is, even if we don't know it's exact capacity.

The problem with making that kind of ruralist assumption is that for a large fraction of your players, it won't be true.

I mean, it might for a bucket, but a medieval tent? I doubt even you could describe to me a medieval two-man tent adequately.

What you really need is rules for how they're used and what they help with. But D&D basically doesn't have any survival rules except "DM makes them up on the spot", so it's all a bit silly.