D&D (2024) Do players really want balance?

[tetrasodium]

The system does not make it the default.

Someone is going to need an ambulance for the whiplash induced by this claim.. Especially when you make it while quoting a reply to post 316 where you wrote at length about your Mad Skillz in dialing up the risk/challenge & appearance of it for games in an edition where those things are set so low that they can only occur when the GM far exceeds every bit of guidance the system provides.

Exceeding those guidelines comes with many real costs for the GM that do not apply when the GM chooses to pull punches in order to dial it down,

 

[Micah Sweet]

Deadly -is- the max difficulty you should use...

With newbie players.

Y'all, this book and all of the books are written as guidelines for people who are just starting the game. Greater system mastery means increasing challenges to match that mastery.

That's -why- the "Playtest Medium" became "Published Hard". 'Cause they aggregated the data and skewed things based on the majority of new players and their playtest results.

Just like with MMORPGs you have to build a TTRPG for the newbie and the unskilled to get as broad a possible gathering of people able to play the game... and then trust them to go from there.

If the 5e or D&D24 book were built around people who've been playing for decades before they picked it up it would be either inscrutably arcane for new players and DMs (and honestly, D&D is one of the most complex game systems out there, already, like top 10%) or so brutally difficult most new players would try it once and give up because it's "Wildly unbalanced against the players."

You have written and are writing a supplement for A5e that is clearly designed for experienced players. If WotC ever published something half as ambitious and innovation as you I would seriously consider buying it.

 

[payn]

Y'all make me wanna make a "Short Rest" game where attrition isn't a big part of the gameplay loop and it's instead built around the 5 minute adventuring day...

Sounds like PF2.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In some RPGs. Not in Classic Traveller. Or in some versions of RuneQuest. Or in some versions of Pendragon. Or in Wuthering Heights.

I'm sure there are many other RPGs too where players don't get to decide their PCs' pasts.

In D&D, players get to decide whether or not their PCs are courageous. This is not a universal feature of RPGs - in Classic Traveller, for instance (published in 1977) there are moral rules that govern PCs (and the players who play them) identically to how they govern NPCs (and the GMs who play them). Burning Wheel is a more recent RPG that also has player/PC-affecting morale-type rules ("Steel").

In D&D, players get too decide when their PCs need to rest, or not - there are no rules, for instance, for falling asleep on watch. And as @EzekielRaiden noted, a player gets to decide whether or not their PC succumbs to temptation (contrast, say, The Dying Earth (Pelgrane version), where the player does not get to decide this unilaterally).

I believe you that you prefer death saving throws to a "will to live" mechanic. But I can't take the notion that one is more realistic than the other at all seriously.

In D&D people roll to see whether or not they succumb to fear. And there's no reason there couldn't be rules for falling asleep on watch, or falling to temptation. In fact, those both sound like saving throws to me, and I would welcome them, because they are more realistic to me and because they are in line with the style of the game. Your will to live mechanic is in line with the style of a different game.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Y'all make me wanna make a "Short Rest" game where attrition isn't a big part of the gameplay loop and it's instead built around the 5 minute adventuring day...

I once converted all spellcasters to the warlock chassis (a mix of at-wills and short-rest casting). It was pretty fun.

In addition to SR spells

• Warlock had their Invocations
• Cleric had their SR Channel Divinity.
• Bard had their SR Inspiration at 1st level.
• Druid have Wildshapes

Etc

All classes had their Long Rest features changed to Short Rest.

Added to that, HP was only used for battle as Stamina; you rolled your Stamina when you rolled Initiative (number of HD was reduced IIRC).

Fall to 0 Stamina in battle or get hit by an hazard out of combat? Lose X max HD! So you'll have less Stamina next encounter. At 0 HD you are Defeated, talked with your DM to decide if your PC died or retired or gained a lasting trait/wound etc

 

[Maxperson]

Crawford said as much here: x.com

What kind of terrain might I find in an adventure between locations? What penalties or ways to attack resources might I use beyond just spell slots, ever-climbing HP, and maybe exhaustion?I know there’s 3PP, but if the greater world of DMs isn’t terminally online talking about D&D, they may not even be aware of such a thing. Their game would be enriched by it being included in the default corebooks, and we’d all have a default resource to rely on.

Comments like that are one reason why I can't take Crawford seriously. If all encounters are designed for parties who are fresh, then the first hard encounter should be...........................hard. Instead it's easy. Encounters don't start being hard until you get to the end of the guideline. Further, if the design is for fresh parties, then the second hard encounter should be deadly, and the third should be a TPK. They aren't.

If what he says there is true, they failed completely at their design intent.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't think it's a matter of "trained" by anything.

The majority of players are not interested in random, irrevocable, permanent death as a major, prominent consequence. They prefer other kinds of consequences: moral/ethical dilemmas, the gain or sacrifice of personal power/resources/tools, interpersonal relationships and their development over time, political or social stuff, etc. In large part, this is because whether those consequences are good, bad, or indifferent, the show goes on.

In many ways, the experience of D&D-like tabletop play is like getting to be one of the core characters in a character-driven, plot-heavy TV show, particularly in the vein of things like Babylon 5: while the occasional core character may die (or get Put On A Bus as TVTropes phrases it), the audience's interest is in seeing the characters...y'know...actually DO things and GO places and develop and change and, ultimately, face whatever it is that's going on. The camera isn't looking at people who live lives of quiet desperation or who die pointlessly on a random dirt road or in some forgotten fortification, because those people aren't interesting enough. We look at the ones who...don't. That doesn't mean they never experience hardship. That doesn't mean they aren't subject to some horrific things and have to deal with permanent, lasting consequences. They do! And any show that failed to do that, a show that always had nothing but bright happy awesome things happen all the time forever, would be a show that didn't make it to its first season finale.

That's what most people want out of D&D. A good drama, coupled with feeling like they've gotten something done that was worth doing. What, exactly, is "worth doing" will vary; some want it to be a worthy gameplay achievement, others (which I think would be most similar to you) want a worthy figuring-out of the world and one's place in it; others still want a worthy overcoming of moral and ethical dilemmas; etc.

You're never, ever going to get a game that sells well and reaches a lot of people by telling them that they not only can, but will be subject to story-ending, random, uncontrollable consequences. It doesn't matter that real life is full of story-ending, random, uncontrollable consequences. People don't want real life. They want drama and adventure, and if that requires dismissing significant parts of what makes real life work the way real life works, so be it.

This argument boils down to "your preferences are not popular". So what? I don't really see your point here.

 

[Oofta]

Did all people do this? You have to acknowledge the baseline (intended gameplay in this case) first if you want to argue fairly.

The clear implication of the post I was responding to was that OD&D had a high lethality rate. In my experience with more than a handful of DMs, that wasn't true.

People have always made the game what they wanted and OD&D had a lot of odd bits and pieces. In my experience people always had to pick and choose what they wanted to use.

Of course we have no idea what style of play was more wide spread. I can state that "oops you're dead" style of play was not universal, which was implied.

Unless of course I try to play an elf, but that's been true in every edition.

 

[Oofta]

Is this where we start ranting about “kids these days”?

I tell you, I was babysitting my 18-month old nephew and he had no concept of object permanence!

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

Simmary of ancient Greek complaints about children attributed to Socrates.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The clear implication of the post I was responding to was that OD&D had a high lethality rate. In my experience with more than a handful of DMs, that wasn't true.

People have always made the game what they wanted and OD&D had a lot of odd bits and pieces. In my experience people always had to pick and choose what they wanted to use.

Of course we have no idea what style of play was more wide spread. I can state that "oops you're dead" style of play was not universal, which was implied.

Unless of course I try to play an elf, but that's been true in every edition.

I'm not talking about popularity (to me it doesn't matter unless $$ is involved). I'm talking about intended playstyle; that is, intended by the designers of the game.