D&D 5E What Makes 5E "5E"?

[Yaarel]

Fwiw, I don't thinking "rulings over rules," a phrase taken from the OSR, actually applies to most 5e gameplay as it has evolved over the years. A lot of 5e gameplay is all about parsing the rules to resolve a situation, particularly in combat, but also out of combat when it comes to task resolution. Consider Matt Finch's contrasting examples of play from the "Rulings, not rules" section of his Old School Primer:

You gave two responses to the players question, "Can I disarm it?".
• Modern DM: "What is your target number?"
• Old School DM: "How?"

My modern 5e DM style emphasizes narrative adjudication: "narrative not numbers". So I too ask the players, "How?" Things like it being too dark to see the pit trap clearly, or locating access to the mechanism, might then invite disadvantage or advantage to the skill check, as the players decide how to go about interacting with the narrative challenge.

 

[Yaarel]

I very much doubt the AI will get there any time soon, or our ability to express ourselves that precisely

I am thinking maybe 10 or 20 years to create custom core rules on the fly? It is plausible that 5e-ish remains in play until then.

Core rules need to be mathematically precise, balanced, and most of all, dynamically consistent. At the moment, AI cannot do this. But this kind of consistency is currently one of the goals that "artificial general intelligence" is striving for.

It seems doable soon, to have an AI that is specially trained, to create minor gaming elements, like generating a reasonable statblock for a new monster on the fly, to assist the DM − as long as the DM is closely guiding the output and monitoring its accuracy.

 

[Yaarel]

If one could get an AI to write an RPG for them, why would they have it write D&D for them?

AI will write D&D core rules because D&D is that good. It passes the test of time and has a community culture to support it.

Still, many DMs and players will want to implement their own preferences to tweak the core rule systems. DMs and players already "homebrew" rules now, it will just be much easier, more frequent, and more dramatic with AI assisting homebrews.

Core rules are analogous to a "language". And we see AI getting better at processing a language meaningfully.

 

[Reynard]

AI will write D&D core rules because D&D is that good. It passes the test of time and has a community culture to support it.

Still, many DMs and players will want to implement their own preferences to tweak the core rule systems. DMs and players already "homebrew" rules now, it will just be much easier, more frequent, and more dramatic with AI assisting homebrews.

I think you are missing my point: if a particular player or group wants a bespoke system just for them, there is no reason to believe that game will look anything like D&D. It will look like what that person or group wants.

 

[Yaarel]

I think you are missing my point: if a particular player or group wants a bespoke system just for them, there is no reason to believe that game will look anything like D&D. It will look like what that person or group wants.

The way I look at it.

Instructing an AI (or AGI) to create a new core rules system, is like telling it to invent a brand new language.

The DM and all the players at the table need to be speaking the same language. This need will tend to have a conservative influence on the core rules "language" tradition. So I expect most games to look like 5e to a recognizable degree.

There might be different "dialects" of D&D. Maybe one popular dialect will have eight abilities, rather than six, and focus on modern settings. Or so on.

D&D 5e is a system that most players can live with − whether Old School fans of 1e or generations new to 2024 now. This "most enjoyment most of the time for most people" approach to the game design, is why I expect AI to continue the language of 5e to some degree. There will of course be radical homebrews that become less recognizable, but how many players will be playing them?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Fwiw, I don't thinking "rulings over rules," a phrase taken from the OSR, actually applies to most 5e gameplay as it has evolved over the years. A lot of 5e gameplay is all about parsing the rules to resolve a situation, particularly in combat, but also out of combat when it comes to task resolution. Consider Matt Finch's contrasting examples of play from the "Rulings, not rules" section of his Old School Primer:

That second way makes so much more sense to me I can't even tell you.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You gave two responses to the players question, "Can I disarm it?".
• Modern DM: "What is your target number?"
• Old School DM: "How?"

My modern 5e DM style emphasizes narrative adjudication: "narrative not numbers". So I too ask the players, "How?" Things like it being too dark to see the pit trap clearly, or locating access to the mechanism, might then invite disadvantage or advantage to the skill check, as the players decide how to go about interacting with the narrative challenge.

I see it more as an intellectual challenge than a narrative one, since my goal would be presenting an obstacle that has a logical reason for being there yet nonetheless needs to be overcome somehow if the group wants to advance past it, rather than a scene to be interacted with before we move on to the main act of this part of the story.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I'm late to the party and I think I have a different take on the question of what 5e is.

I wrote a longer post about what 5e is but I'll summarize it here.

5e is an open platform for tabletop roleplaying games, originating with the D&D 2014 5th edition rules but now expanded into multiple rulesets from multiple publishers. It's an open system, available in the Creative Commons for publishers.

5e, to me, means material at least loosely compatible with other 5e material. I can use a 5e monster in any other 5e game, for example. I can run 5e adventures from one publisher with 5e characters built from the core books of a different publisher. Spells, magic items, monsters – these are all compatible with other 5e systems. Some material, like subclasses, species, races, feats, and other work might take some conversion work but are also generally 5e compatible.

There are some games built off of 5e that aren't really 5e. I put Shadowdark into this category. It clearly has 5e in its bones but it isn't really compatible in any reasonable way.

Anyway, thats how I define it.

 

[Xamnam]

Fwiw, I don't thinking "rulings over rules," a phrase taken from the OSR, actually applies to most 5e gameplay as it has evolved over the years. A lot of 5e gameplay is all about parsing the rules to resolve a situation, particularly in combat, but also out of combat when it comes to task resolution. Consider Matt Finch's contrasting examples of play from the "Rulings, not rules" section of his Old School Primer:

Look, I know you didn't write it, but I really hate that Old School Primer example, because the "Modern Style" play is written in a way I've never played, nor ever seen anyone play. Like, it feels like what someone would write on the sole basis of hearing from someone else, "Yeah, kids these days just say skills and roll dice, it's not even really roleplay." It's a strawman, a caricature, and an unnecessary one to get their point across. Yes, I'm sure there is some table out there that has played that way, but it just simply doesn't hold up to paint modern players as a whole with that brush, and it makes it feel like the author has an axe to grind.

Edit: Oh, right, right above that paragraph they say specifically that they're showing off a boring / not good modern DM. They claim it's to show off the difference in how the rules are handled, but honestly, I struggle to believe them. If that was their goal, they should have written the Old Style example in exactly the same manner, so that the contrast is accurate and clear. It's a cheap rhetorical trick.

 

[Reynard]

I'm late to the party and I think I have a different take on the question of what 5e is.

I wrote a longer post about what 5e is but I'll summarize it here.

5e is an open platform for tabletop roleplaying games, originating with the D&D 2014 5th edition rules but now expanded into multiple rulesets from multiple publishers. It's an open system, available in the Creative Commons for publishers.

5e, to me, means material at least loosely compatible with other 5e material. I can use a 5e monster in any other 5e game, for example. I can run 5e adventures from one publisher with 5e characters built from the core books of a different publisher. Spells, magic items, monsters – these are all compatible with other 5e systems. Some material, like subclasses, species, races, feats, and other work might take some conversion work but are also generally 5e compatible.

There are some games built off of 5e that aren't really 5e. I put Shadowdark into this category. It clearly has 5e in its bones but it isn't really compatible in any reasonable way.

Anyway, thats how I define it.

That doesn't actually answer the posited question.