D&D General Chris Perkins and Stan! - previous D&D edition thoughts

[Parmandur]

Oof, that one aged especially poorly…

To be gair, these were all pretty ctibgey and desperate in the paged of PC Gamer at the time in the Aughts...

 

[Parmandur]

I've enjoyed Chris Perkins' stuff since dungeon magazine, I even got to chat with him at the first or second pax unplugged.. I hope he continues to enjoy a wonderful career, but man I'd love to see an in-depth interview with him about everything if he wasnt bound by still being a WotC employee. I'm sure a lot would be the same, buuut I want to hear the other stuff too.

Only designer to work for every version of D&D so far (well, minus OD&D, and not sure about Basic).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Just watch the video. The first 50 minutes or so is Chris talking about his past. The conversation turns to the various editions after that.
I just want to add that character creation for 5e does not take anywhere close to ten minutes.

I mean, a highly experienced player can draft a 4e character in two, three minutes tops, especially if they have the character builder ready to hand.

A highly inexperienced player may take hours to build a 2e character.

Without some kind of point of reference, e.g. "how long it takes to introduce a brand-new player" or "working with an average player familiar with at least one previous edition of D&D", it's pretty much impossible to talk about how quick or slow it is. You can get very general trends, e.g. I would argue 3e was the worst offender for slow character creation, 4e and 5e are complex for different reasons with 5e slightly less complex but not by much, and 1e and 2e are less complex....but still a lot more complex than something like Dungeon World.

Just the act of rolling stats makes D&D characters take longer than many other games take.

 

[DEFCON 1]

How "fast" one can make a character has always been one of those nuggets that makes me question exactly why that's so important to people.

I mean if the purpose is to start playing the game as quickly as possible for fear that like potential new players would peace out too quickly if they didn't start the actual game... then everyone should just be using pre-generated characters-- because then you don't have to spend any time "creating" characters to begin with. Or really more to the point... not have to spend any time "writing down game mechanics on paper". Because every single person can "create a character" even when using pre-written character sheets, because a player's character is who they choose to portray and how they portray them... not merely a bunch of numbers.

But once you get past that-- this need to make sure new players jump right into the action of roleplaying so as to not grow tired or bored before even starting the game-- once a person says that "this game is for me" and they want to really create a character whose mechanics become more of a match to what they wish to play and the ideas they have for whom this character is... getting through this process "fast" is no longer necessary. That's the whole point... a person actually wants to get the mechanics for their character as close to what they visualize in their head... which means taking the time to actually go through the products available to them to find exactly all the bits and bobs that they want.

Now granted... I do think there is something to be said for the organization of said products be set up in such a way as to make the process as painless (and by extension as quick) as possible... because that's just intelligent design. But if you have that and begin designing your character... there's no victory points to be gained by being able to say you finished the process in X amount of minutes. If the character means that much to you (mechanically-speaking especially)... take all the time you need. There's nothing to be gained by saying you got it done quick.

 

[Minigiant]

Yep, between the changes I've seen in 2024 and that it looks like they are going to double down from here, I think its time for me to peace out from WotC D&D.

Part of growing old is accepting you aged out the target market of the most popular pastimes and hobbies.

 

[Joshua Randall]

5E: Designed with the view of what was great about previous editions and how do we get the best bits into 5E - a love letter to all of D&D.

Except 4e because f--k those guys, amirite?

4E: An answer to a question of how do we make a game that resonates with Video Gamers? Lots of video games have stolen D&D's tech, how do we get some of those people back?

Oh geez, not you too, Chris Perkins. Edition warrior badge earned.

I am so, so disappointed by this video. One of my heroes with feet of clay revealed.

 

[TiQuinn]

How "fast" one can make a character has always been one of those nuggets that makes me question exactly why that's so important to people.

I mean if the purpose is to start playing the game as quickly as possible for fear that like potential new players would peace out too quickly if they didn't start the actual game... then everyone should just be using pre-generated characters-- because then you don't have to spend any time "creating" characters to begin with. Or really more to the point... not have to spend any time "writing down game mechanics on paper". Because every single person can "create a character" even when using pre-written character sheets, because a player's character is who they choose to portray and how they portray them... not merely a bunch of numbers.

But once you get past that-- this need to make sure new players jump right into the action of roleplaying so as to not grow tired or bored before even starting the game-- once a person says that "this game is for me" and they want to really create a character whose mechanics become more of a match to what they wish to play and the ideas they have for whom this character is... getting through this process "fast" is no longer necessary. That's the whole point... a person actually wants to get the mechanics for their character as close to what they visualize in their head... which means taking the time to actually go through the products available to them to find exactly all the bits and bobs that they want.

Now granted... I do think there is something to be said for the organization of said products be set up in such a way as to make the process as painless (and by extension as quick) as possible... because that's just intelligent design. But if you have that and begin designing your character... there's no victory points to be gained by being able to say you finished the process in X amount of minutes. If the character means that much to you (mechanically-speaking especially)... take all the time you need. There's nothing to be gained by saying to got it done quick.

I agree. For me, going over all the options is part of the fun. Where fast character generation matters to me is in a game where I’m expecting it to be a meat grinder like DCC, but in those games I’m not getting attached to the character and I promise that I’m coming to the table with Bob the Barbarian or Owen the Bowman as my PC. Quick character generation means throwaway characters in my book.

 

[eyeheartawk]

Having started with 2e I can't say that I have ever once felt that running 5e felt like 2e in any way shape or form. Too much of 5e designs against import baseline foundational assumptions like risk and attrition for the loosey "ask your gm" to ever have any significant meaning while running 5e. Even worse is that by having it's shell of 3.x skills crippled by overly condensed skill options and a removable of difficult choices the gm is faced with a scenario where 2e's roll under (but it is probably difficult) you have a chorus of " oh I'm proficient too" from players who can expect success on trivialized skill checks should one PC roll horribly after asking telling their gm what they expect their character sheet to grant them success in.

I can kind of see where Perkins is coming from here, to an extent. Like, yeah, I guess if I had to say which edition 5e feels most like, I would say 2e. But really, even then, it does not even come close to feeling like it. And yeah, like you, I think the main difference is player expectations. Which, 5e really leans into given the sheer competency of your average PC starting at 1st level.

 

[BigZebra]

Oh geez, not you too, Chris Perkins. Edition warrior badge earned.

I am so, so disappointed by this video. One of my heroes with feet of clay revealed.

Perhaps just accept people opinions on 4e differ? We can all have our own opinions about this without taking it so personally.

 

[Retreater]

The interview was interesting. I wish Stan!'s voice was louder and his doodling is clearly taxing the computing power.

5E might be like 2E without the HP bloat. HP and the preponderance of healing are what keep 5E from being backwards compatible with the older products and frankly makes the game boring for me.