D&D (2024) I have the DMG. AMA!

[TiQuinn]

It is a cheap hobby. This is why WOTC seems to eternally struggle. If they could monetize the real value, they could have 10% the players and make far more money. In fact there is a market for them to support every edition of D&D as if it were live, if they could monetize it correctly.

Part of the problem with being subservient to the needs of a larger publicly traded corporation.

 

[Imaro]

∆like when players decide they don't care and are just going to rest even if the world burns)

OK, I have to ask... if your players have decided this, what advice could they possible offer that would force them not to rest?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Let's suppose D&D was as profitable as golf. A golfer very easily spends 150 dollars a month on his hobby. If D&D made that it would be like every month was a new players handbook, DMG, and monster manual. And I'm not saying they can get to the level of golf. 10 dollars a month would be a vast improvement. Why do you think they are working on D&D beyond so hard.

The reason D&D can never be as profitable as golf is simple - golf is pay-to-play. D&D, you really don’t need to keep buying anything. If you have a set of core rules from 1979, that’s all you need. You can play D&D as much as you like, as often as you like, and not spend another penny.

To make money from D&D, you need tempt people into buying stuff they don’t need to play. To be tempting, that tends to mean keeping prices down.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So this is the thing about encounter building, encounter frequency and the rests.

The game was originally designed to have 6-8 combat encounters between long rests and two to three short rests between these long rests. This is why casters have a ton of spell slots, this is why some classes refresh their stuff on long rests and some refresh them on short.

And common complaints about 5e were that combats are easy and that full casters are overpowered. And this was in big part due people not actually running the suggested number of encounters between the rests, which is understandable, as that it just doesn't fit the narrative pacing a lot of people want. That much combat daily might make sense in clearing some old school mega dungeons, but that just isn't how a lot of people play these days. Like I would consider my game to feature quite a lot of combat, but it is actually rare there to be more than one fight per in world day.

I don't see that any of this has changed. But they seem to have removed both the suggestion for the number of combats, so the GMs don't even know what the assumption are, and the only tool for altering this pacing whilst maintaining the balance which is altering the rest lengths. So a lot of new people will end up having these problems, but they will lack both the information to help them understand why this is and the tools for fixing it. I don't think this is good.

As for hypothetical book of options, a full dedicated GMs toolbox, yes that would be a dream come true, but at the moment I have no reason to believe that such a thing is coming.

 

[TiQuinn]

So this is the thing about encounter building, encounter frequency and the rests.

The game was originally designed to have 6-8 combat encounters between long rests and two to three short rests between these long rests. This is why casters have a ton of spell slots, this is why some classes refresh their stuff on long rests and some refresh them on short.

And common complaints about 5e were that combats are easy and that full casters are overpowered. And this was in big part due people not actually running the suggested number of encounters between the rests, which is understandable, as that it just doesn't fit the narrative pacing a lot of people want. That much combat daily might make sense in clearing some old school mega dungeons, but that just isn't how a lot of people play these days. Like I would consider my game to feature quite a lot of combat, but it is actually rare there to be more than one fight per in world day.

I don't see that any of this has changed. But they seem to have removed both the suggestion for the number of combats, so the GMs don't even know what the assumption are, and the only tool for altering this pacing whilst maintaining the balance which is altering the rest lengths. So a lot of new people will end up having these problems, but they will lack both the information to help them understand why this is and the tools for fixing it. I don't think this is good.

As for hypothetical book of options, a full dedicated GMs toolbox, yes that would be a dream come true, but at the moment I have no reason to believe that such a thing is coming.

I think there’s more of a shift coming in the way monsters are handled that may mitigate this. We already know several have more HP, more ranged attacks with increased damage and so on.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The game was originally designed to have 6-8 combat encounters between long rests and two to three short rests between these long rests

No it wasn’t. There was nothing about this in OD&D or any early editions.

This is why casters have a ton of spell slots

Casters have a lot fewer spell slots than they did in earlier editions, and short rests are a recent edition to the game.

And common complaints about 5e were that combats are easy and that full casters are overpowered

And yet 5e is by far the most popular edition of the game, so clearly these “complaints” have not negatively impacted people’s enjoyment of the game.

Hypothesis: players LIKE feeling like badass superheroes.

So a lot of new people will end up having these problems, but they will lack both the information to help them understand why this is and the tools for fixing it. I don't think this is good

As pointed out, very few people actually used these rules, and did not report problems. This would be more of a non-problem.

As for hypothetical book of options, a full dedicated GMs toolbox, yes that would be a dream come true, but at the moment I have no reason to believe that such a thing is coming

I believe EN World publishes something of that sort….

 

[Emerikol]

Sure, but that’s a situation where having a timeline matters. Not every campaign has that race against time necessity.

Let me correct my original point. I did make it look like I meant that I expected the players to prevent the Dukes assassination. I did not. I just wanted to say they could in theory still prevent it so it's not a railroad. There are timeline events that occur to add verisimilitude to the world. A far off war or a draught or the bringing in of the ice to the ice house. These are all timed events. They happen at particular times. Either as events on the timeline (meaning one offs) or as events on the calendar (meaning occurring periodically).

 

[TiQuinn]

Let me correct my original point. I did make it look like I meant that I expected the players to prevent the Dukes assassination. I did not. I just wanted to say they could in theory still prevent it so it's not a railroad. There are timeline events that occur to add verisimilitude to the world. A far off war or a draught or the bringing in of the ice to the ice house. These are all timed events. They happen at particular times. Either as events on the timeline (meaning one offs) or as events on the calendar (meaning occurring periodically).

How many of those events require day to day tracking? If the Duke is going to be assassinated a month or 3 months from now, why not figure out after the fact how long the PCs spent on a particular adventure rather than track mornings and evenings? That seems like a lot of extra bookkeeping that doesn’t have relevance to the party. It’s more for your cognitive understanding of the world, and it seems there’s a less onerous way of doing it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Just In Time DMing.

You track time when it’s relevant to track time, otherwise it’s wasted energy.

I feel this method harms immersion in the sense that the times you don't keep track feel less real. At least you should keep track of the calendar date over the course of the campaign.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Refers back to the observation that 50% of players have never played any other edition but 5e.

And therefore don't know there are any other ways to do things than WotC's. Removing variants from WotC itself just makes that experience for new players even more narrow mechanically.