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My interest is on what I can actually achieve at a table when I'm making my characters. When 9 out of 10 GMs is going to view Intimidate as the Screw Yourself Over Even When You Succeed With Flying Colors skill, then yes, I'm going to say "oooookay, never ever ever take that skill; the chance I...

Then the simple problem is that D&D, with the exception of 4e in my experience, has taught GMs not to run this way. My current (5e) GM ran and enjoyed 4e during its day, so he's just as much part of that despite us using 5e for the two-ish years I've been in the group. Blame it on the...

It is worth noting that, consistently, statistics from video games indicate that, for most games, players overwhelmingly (like more than 4:1) favor "good" options over "evil" ones when they're put to the choice. Good example, there's a dog in the Dragonfall campaign of Shadowrun Returns, and he...

I have already said I don't think they want to do this. But this is just the goalpost shifting, no? First it was questioning whether the path even made sense at all. Then it was whether the path would have even a hope of making money. Now it's whether there's any interest on their part in doing...

Two attacks, claw-claw. But yes, two attacks. If both hit, each had a chance to inflict the save.

Minor caveat: I think it would be dramatically more accurate to say, "That's not what the original community wanted." Because 5e's community now has almost nothing to do with the successful edition warriors doing their wardance over the corpse of 4e. Turns out that ceding all of your important...

Neither. The hatred of gunpowder, but fetishization of plate. I wasn't talking about the magic. I was talking about how gunpowder is utterly unacceptable, despite cannons predating plate armor by a full century. The first cannon appeared in Europe sometime in the early 14th century (e.g. we...

Because D&D is allergic to actually taking seriously the technology and social structures of early-Renaissance Europe. It wants elements of technology and culture that literally span from a mere couple of centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, all the way up to the late...

Then you are, frankly, being willfully blind to the exact issue and then accusing the non-GMs of being the cause of the problem. The very admission "that's ultimately a DMing problem, not a character build problem" IS saying that bad GMing results in skills that could be useful actually getting...

Yes--but my point is that there are (many) ways to get folks on board with the new thing.... ...and that that's actually one of the reasons to do the performative side of playtesting! Like...if they actually had a real expert on staff to help them design good, well-made surveys, and an actual...

And yet what do we so often actually see? Incredibly cookie-cutter worlds, incredibly cookie-cutter player options, incredibly over-used tropes and themes and such. For all the talk of the potential infinitude that TTRPGs offer, the GMs who actually run them, on average, have absolutely no...

I do, yes. Because I genuinely believe that a competently-designed game can actually deliver on the real, practical version of the airy-fairy "modularity" that they talked up all througout the "D&D Next" playtest, which then was 90% DOA when the books finally arrived.

Of course, as I said back when it was still the incredibly stupidly-named "One D&D" playtest, 5.5e won't have the longevity 5.0 had. Revisions are always diminishing returns. 3rd edition got three of them (3.5, PF1e, PF1e "Unchained"), and none of them lasted more than ~5 ish years. That does...

Statistical testing isn't any more expensive then the incredibly time-wasteful process they went through with 5.0. "D&D Next" wasted nearly two whole years just figuring out the "core four" classes. They proffered only ONE iteration of Warlock and Sorcerer during the entire public playtest, and...

People will like it or hate it completely without regard to how you've designed it, so I see little point in caring about that part.

TL;DR: Mearls and other design team members were doing a game (recorded for a livestream or podcast, can't remember which) as a promo for 5e. They had a basic but decent party and took on like three ghouls vs their IIRC five characters. The ghouls absolutely slaughtered them, completely taking...

I'm afraid I can't see whomever you quoted, @payn. But my point was that, for all the effort they poured into (allegedly) making the thing everyone wanted, they openly admitted to several things they considered blunders, and 5.5e happened specifically because they failed to nail several classes...

Not just consumed nostalgia: instant nostalgia. We're having remakes of shows, games, movies, etc. that aren't even that old. How to Train Your Dragon got a live-action remake...only fifteen years after it originally came out. Like there are literally people who went to see it in theaters as...

Folks have, very recently, told me that this is not true and that the playtest really was there to test things to see if they would work. That it wasn't performative. So...like I completely agree with you! But there are people, even today, who adamantly insist that this isn't true and that the...

I really don't think there's any "self-fulfilling" about it. Performance checks have never been common in any game I've played. Ever. Doesn't matter what system. I've literally never even heard of a GM calling for lots of performance checks prior to @MostlyHarmless42 saying so just now in this...