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2024 Player's Handbook reveal: "New Warlock"
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<blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 9385678" data-attributes="member: 7006"><p>It has to do with player focus nowadays I believe. What is more important to players. And I suspect the tension and fear of your character dying has become much less of a motivator for play than all kinds of other things. Creating an interesting character with a history and desires and seeing them progress and advance throughout a story has become more important. Working with other players in harmony to solve interesting problems has become more important. Playing the tactical board game and figuring out how to win has become more important.</p><p></p><p>But "keep your character from dying" just isn't as much of a concern or an interesting thing to experience for a lot of players anymore. So the need for more deadly monsters to up your chances of seeing your PC killed is not actually necessary for a large swathe of the population I don't think. Sure, players want antagonists that they can go up against to create interesting fights and stuff, but the expectation and fun is in the tactics and progress of the fight you will eventually end up completing (to then move on to the next challenge in the game), and not the chance of being removed from it.</p><p></p><p>In many ways these later editions of D&D combat are merely mirroring the trends in modern board gaming. Board gaming in the 1900s was oftentimes about eliminating your opponents <em>from</em> the game, like for instance <em>Monopoly</em>, or <em>Diplomacy</em>. Once you lost, you got up from the table and walked away, leaving the remaining players to continue playing and having fun, while you sat in the corner depressed and waiting around for the game to hopefully end. Whereas in modern board gaming, the trend is to keep everyone involved in the game through to the end, with everyone being allowed to keep building scores until some end point the game chooses to stop, at which point scores are compared. This method keeps players more invested in what is happening the entire time, keep giving them a chance to come from behind, and doesn't force anyone to go off and sit on their hands doing absolutely nothing and not having fun.</p><p></p><p>Which is exactly what we see in modern RPGs. Eliminating characters from the game is no longer the point in playing for a lot of people, because it just means the player has to sit on their hands and do nothing until the next chance to make a new character and get re-introduced. It's boring, it's sad, and it isn't actually necessary towards making an enjoyable game.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="DEFCON 1, post: 9385678, member: 7006"] It has to do with player focus nowadays I believe. What is more important to players. And I suspect the tension and fear of your character dying has become much less of a motivator for play than all kinds of other things. Creating an interesting character with a history and desires and seeing them progress and advance throughout a story has become more important. Working with other players in harmony to solve interesting problems has become more important. Playing the tactical board game and figuring out how to win has become more important. But "keep your character from dying" just isn't as much of a concern or an interesting thing to experience for a lot of players anymore. So the need for more deadly monsters to up your chances of seeing your PC killed is not actually necessary for a large swathe of the population I don't think. Sure, players want antagonists that they can go up against to create interesting fights and stuff, but the expectation and fun is in the tactics and progress of the fight you will eventually end up completing (to then move on to the next challenge in the game), and not the chance of being removed from it. In many ways these later editions of D&D combat are merely mirroring the trends in modern board gaming. Board gaming in the 1900s was oftentimes about eliminating your opponents [I]from[/I] the game, like for instance [I]Monopoly[/I], or [I]Diplomacy[/I]. Once you lost, you got up from the table and walked away, leaving the remaining players to continue playing and having fun, while you sat in the corner depressed and waiting around for the game to hopefully end. Whereas in modern board gaming, the trend is to keep everyone involved in the game through to the end, with everyone being allowed to keep building scores until some end point the game chooses to stop, at which point scores are compared. This method keeps players more invested in what is happening the entire time, keep giving them a chance to come from behind, and doesn't force anyone to go off and sit on their hands doing absolutely nothing and not having fun. Which is exactly what we see in modern RPGs. Eliminating characters from the game is no longer the point in playing for a lot of people, because it just means the player has to sit on their hands and do nothing until the next chance to make a new character and get re-introduced. It's boring, it's sad, and it isn't actually necessary towards making an enjoyable game. [/QUOTE]
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