D&D (2024) Command is the Perfect Encapsulation of Everything I Don't Like About 5.5e

[Minigiant]

When is a problem a rules problem?

I think this question plagues this community, on this forum and beyond. Many issues are misintrepreted as being rules issues when they are not. An example would be a background that gives a feature, one with no hard mechanical benefit, being ignored or made useless by a DM. This could be attributed to a rules shortfall, a balance issue per say. But in reality this is a DM issue, one where the severity varies by player expectation.

In this case we have a spell with a open ended spell description. If that spell causes a prolonged rules debate, is that an issue with the spell? Or is that a DM issue as the prior example was?

My inclination is that both of these are DM issues. I think hyper-specificity on rules hems in games with good DMing to prop up those with bad. Removing options from players in an ill-fated attempt to "fix" bad DMing. My biggest fear in this hobby is that we "rule" our way out of dungeon masters and into a video game, and sadly this is a small step in that direction.

This dances around the part everyone dances around.

Expectation.​

Alice, Bob, and Charlie expect different things from Command.
Times that by 100 with this game of 500+ spells.
No way am I gonna discuss 50 spells every Session Zero.

This is an inherent issue when you have a large diverse audience/customer base.

Smaller games have smaller self-selected demographics who have similar expectations from their spells.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This dances around the part everyone dances around.

Expectation.​

Alice, Bob, and Charlie expect different things from Command.
Times that by 100 with this game of 500+ spells.
No way am I gonna discuss 50 spells every Session Zero.

This is an inherent issue when you have a large diverse audience/customer base.

Smaller games have smaller self-selected demographics who have similar expectations from their spells.

Quite frankly: so what? You think the answer is to restrict things mechanically so fewer interpretations are valid? I don't think so. Much better to deal with unexpected issues as they arise. And, maybe, as I've said before, stop pushing quite so hard for market dominance at all costs.

 

[Minigiant]

The way I DM I'm faaaaaaaaaaaaar more likely to bend the mechanics to the narrative than the other way around. I didn't like that 4e assumed that all DMs should take the mechanics as sacrosanct and then bend the narrative to fit them. I LIKE the approach of "no, it's a freaking cube, of course you can't trip it, I don't care what the rules say" much much more than "it creates a resonance wave." By bending the mechanics to fit the narrative it makes the narrative matter more since it trumps the mechanics and (in my experience at least) makes the players care more about the narrative and get more immersed in it.

And yeah, it's often harder for newbie DMs. In my experience TSR-D&D is hard to DM (I certainly sucked at is as a kid in the 90's) but easy to play (can get kids up and running with a 1e PC in ten minutes) while games like 4e are a lot easier to DM but a lot harder for newbie players to get the hang of (especially newbies without much of a background in computer/board games). 5e was a decent enough compromise somewhere in the middle in my experience. 5.5e a bit less so it looks like...

Read what you wrote.

That's exactly why what was done was do.

Designing your game to be hard from newbie DMs is objectively bad game design unless you are sure that experienced DMs will take the reins.

 

[Hussar]

If you have a group that are going to grind the game to a halt arguing over semantics every session, nothing written in the book is likely to change that fact.

Strongly disagree.

The shift from 2e to 3e ended many of these pointless arguments.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Read what you wrote.

That's exactly why what was done was do.

Designing your game to be hard from newbie DMs is objectively bad game design unless you are sure that experienced DMs will take the reins.

DM training is based on the master/student model, where an experienced DM shows a new one the ropes. Failing that, there's always the current starter set. Nothing objectively bad about any of that.

 

[Minigiant]

Quite frankly: so what? You think the answer is to restrict things mechanically so fewer interpretations are valid? I don't think so. Much better to deal with unexpected issues as they arise. And, maybe, as I've said before, stop pushing quite so hard for market dominance at all costs.

It's not market dominance.

It's expanding the customer base.
Games who market to niche audiences will stay niche.
Business 101.

 

[Minigiant]

DM training is based on the master/student model, where an experienced DM shows a new one the ropes. Failing that, there's always the current starter set. Nothing objectively bad about any of that.

The Experienced DMs mostly flipped the bird at anything new, stuck to OSR, and refused to teach the new anything but what they like.

So here we are.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's not market dominance.

It's expanding the customer base.
Games who market to niche audiences will stay niche.
Business 101.

And games that try to market to everyone run the very real risk of becoming bland and rote. But I'm sure that would never happen to the "world's greatest role-playing game".

 

[SableWyvern]

Smaller games have smaller self-selected demographics who have similar expectations from their spells.

I suspect demographic for smaller games tends towards "interested GM's with groups who are willing to try different games". I don't see any reason to assume players of such games are more likely to have similar interpretations of ambiguous text than anyone else.

In any case, you don't need to clearly define every spell, you just need a group who are capable of having a reasonable discussion, who aren't playing in an antagonistic fashion and a process for making rulings.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The Experienced DMs mostly flipped the bird at anything new, stuck to OSR, and refused to teach the new anything but what they like.

So here we are.

Plenty of folks who've been playing 5e since it started are out there, and they all have...checks watch...about 10 years under their belts, at least.