D&D 5E Kate Welch on Leaving WotC

Staffan said:

The thing with on-boarding is that what you want from a teaching manual is very different from what you want from a reference manual. When I'm playing D&D or Pathfinder, what I want the rules to do is to quickly tell me "what does X do?". How much damage does a fireball do? What does the Backstabber trait on a dogslicer mean? What does it mean if I'm grappled? But I've been playing for a while, so I already know the basics of the game. A book that's useful for me at the table is probably horrible for someone learning to play, and a book that's good for on-boarding new players would be a horrible reference manual.

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Haffrung said:

Yes, in instructional documentation teaching procedures to new users and providing a reference to experienced users are two different kinds of content. A lot of boardgames have recognized this, and have separate Learn to Play Guides and Rules References. A further level of incoherence is added to RPG rulebooks, because you also have people who read them for pleasure. So RPG books are typically trying to serve three masters:

1) New player who needs to learn the procedures of play.

2) Existing player who needs to reference specific system procedures and details.

3) Reader who wants to consume the book as an entertaining text and may never use it in play.

1 and 3 can be combined by giving careful thought to layout and presentation, and keeping the rules and fluff distinct. 2 is best presented in a separate document, and delivered in a compact and accessible format, like the 4E Essentials Rules Compendium or the Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition. But then we run into the default D&D publishing model of big, hardcover books. So many forces working against WotC delivering rules in an effective format.

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Parmandur said:

The symmetry and exceptions based rules are part of the fun.

The base rules are quite short, and a player only needs to know his own exceptions at any given time. Reduce that, and we may as well be playing a boardgame (notably, the Powers worked very well for the boardgame line).

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AbdulAlhazred said:

Still, the previous approach was at least simpler and at least as easily justified as the 5e one. I don't see what the reasoning was for the change.

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AbdulAlhazred said:

Well, the theme was about the 'User Experience' and I think the general tone of the discussion has been about how it is too fiddly for a lot of new players, and how it is difficult to 'start cold' and play. I feel that this sort of complexity is a big part of the reason for that. I can't address, and don't really want to address, your aesthetic preferences, they don't really bear weight on the topic at hand, do they?

As a game designer, I think that there is only so much you can load up into people's minds. So introducing these extra layers of distinctions and subtleties is burning part of your 'budget'. So the question is twofold. Is 5e 'over budget'? And did this feature haul its weight?

My own experiments and experience with extending and reworking the 4e approach tells me that it can be even more drastically simplified in some respects. It also tells me it can be quite thematic and interesting, when the narrative weight of the game is bound onto other game processes.

I think, personally, that 'classic' D&D, and 5e, put too much weight on using spells as a key part of narrative generation. This approach suffers from a few weaknesses, and one of its consequences is a desire to make elaborate and thus often confusing and certainly complicated to understand, spells. This also leads to difficulty in terms of having non-casting PCs. 4e didn't really solve these issues, it adopted a different power system, and it became amenable to more elaboration and flexibility in terms of narrative subsystems, but didn't really try very hard to include them and make them work well. I find it a bit sad that we didn't cross all the way over this bridge, and instead retreated and kind of burned it. It is hard to see where you go with 5e from here. It is kind of just stuck being what it is, which is OK, but I wonder if it will grow increasingly stale over time.

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Snarf Zagyg said:

Magic users (and illusionists) must prepare (memorize) their spells from a larger list of spells known. Choose each day.* Rinse, repeat.

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Staffan said:

The reasoning is pretty simple: they wanted to make ability scores central to the system.

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Whizbang Dustyboots said:

Remember to check to see if the magic-user or illusionist can even learn the spell, though, which is a function of intelligence. So 1E intelligence-based spellcasting is actually worse than it appears.

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Staffan said:

The reasoning is pretty simple: they wanted to make ability scores central to the system.

The core mechanic of 5e is pretty simple: if you want to do something, roll 1d20 and add an ability score modifier. If it is something in which you are proficient, also add your proficiency bonus.

So, if you want to climb something, that's a Strength roll. If you are proficient in Athletics, add proficiency bonus.

If you want to hit someone with a warlock spell, that's a Charisma roll. If you are proficient with warlock spells, add your proficiency bonus.

If you want to dodge something, that's a Dexterity roll. If you're proficient in Dexterity saves, add your proficiency modifier.

You'll note that official material pretty much never says "roll Perception" or "roll Arcana". It's always "roll Wisdom (Perception)" or "roll Intelligence (Arcana)". That's because they are primarily ability checks, with the potential bonus of a skill proficiency.

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