Li Shenron
Legend
Nice thread!
In my personal view, I would rephrase this by saying that 4e delivered me a feeling that they were presenting an innovative game with new functional ideas and new narrative twists to old ideas, but unfortunately it was peppered with the "badwrongfun" remarks and the whole message I received (whether it was what they intended to send or not) was "this is our game, like it or leave it" and so I decided to leave it.
5e delivers me a completely different message, that "this is your game, we're just here to help you set it up". That, together with the fact that the starting point i.e. "core" is simple enough so that I don't need to build any system master, strongly got me onboard since the beginning of the playtest!
Yes, and I agree it's a great idea.
IMHO the main possible criticism to the edition itself may come from gamers who want absolute balance during combat, or absolute balance in each pillar separately. That is not how 5e is built, and those people should probably stick with 4e, because 5e is built instead with the idea of balance across all pillars.
There are other practical issues preventing people from joining 5e, e.g. having lots of 3e/PF or 4e books and wanting to still use them, or having a long-term campaign ongoing and not wanting to update it to new rules, but these are not themselves criticism of the new edition.
Now it may be that one of the main reasons 4E was so controversial is that it didn't take this approach. It started with a lot of variations on traditional fantasy and D&D--both in terms of fluff and crunch--and then had to back-track a bit to include some of the traditional aspects of the game. In other words, it got off on the "wrong" foot, or at least a foot that cleaved too far from expectations and tradition.
In my personal view, I would rephrase this by saying that 4e delivered me a feeling that they were presenting an innovative game with new functional ideas and new narrative twists to old ideas, but unfortunately it was peppered with the "badwrongfun" remarks and the whole message I received (whether it was what they intended to send or not) was "this is our game, like it or leave it" and so I decided to leave it.
5e delivers me a completely different message, that "this is your game, we're just here to help you set it up". That, together with the fact that the starting point i.e. "core" is simple enough so that I don't need to build any system master, strongly got me onboard since the beginning of the playtest!
With 5E, the designers seem to be both "adjusting" the game back to its core traditions, but also providing variant streams that can be taken in a toolbox galore style. Or so I hope. It won't "out 4E 4E"--or OD&D or 3.5, etc--but it does seem to be covering both important polarities in as strong a manner as possible: presenting a relatively simple, traditional D&D game that can be customized in as many ways as individual DMs can dream up--and providing the tools to do so.
Yes, and I agree it's a great idea.
Addendum: There is no way around the fact that 5E won't be for everyone. That's OK. But from what I've gathered, most of the criticisms of the game will be small (e.g. Why doesn't the PHB include my favorite sub-sub-race or spell?) and/or misplaced (e.g. why isn't 5E more like X edition?). As the saying goes, you can't please everyone all of the time - but with 5E, I'm thinking they've done as good a job as humanly possible with pleasing as many people as they can, most of the time. To be honest, in a way I'm rather curious as to what the major criticisms will be - both in the community as a whole, and for myself. We gamers are an ornery bunch
IMHO the main possible criticism to the edition itself may come from gamers who want absolute balance during combat, or absolute balance in each pillar separately. That is not how 5e is built, and those people should probably stick with 4e, because 5e is built instead with the idea of balance across all pillars.
There are other practical issues preventing people from joining 5e, e.g. having lots of 3e/PF or 4e books and wanting to still use them, or having a long-term campaign ongoing and not wanting to update it to new rules, but these are not themselves criticism of the new edition.