5E on the horizon?

[SkidAce]

I would not go so far as quit gaming over a rule system, but I respect your position.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I would not go so far as quit gaming over a rule system, but I respect your position.

Thanks you for that respect.

My position is based upon an important rule: "Life is too short for games you're not enjoying."

Unfortunately, both Pathfinder and 4e are far too combat-oriented, and take far too long to resolve the least important fights, for me to consider them as games of choice. I don't believe that combat choices are the only important ones, and they are not choices I want to linger with for half an hour or more every time combat occurs. Nor do I want to need a grid to resolve combat!

When I was running 3e, I would be able to assume that there would be only 3 encounters during a session for a low- to mid-level party, because combat took so long to resolve. Time that would be better spent in exploration, negotiation, and making choices that affect the longterm game were instead spent deciding what the best route was on the "board" and whether or not an AoO would be provoked.

Meh.

I will never, never go back to a system like that.

I have better things to do.

Thankfully, I also have other options to choose from!

Now, I also respect that some others will revel in things that I dislike. And that's cool. That's great, actually! You shouldn't play games because I like them, but because you do.

That's what makes sense to me, anyway.


RC

 

[Mercurius]

The real shame about 5e is that it would have been nice to see what they would come up with if they proceeded along the track that took them to 4e. There's still a lot wrong with the model, and the likely design goals for 5e are unlikely to address much of it. To be frank I don't think there will be many coherent and functional design goals for 5e, but even if there are, they're not going to be about fixing skills and skill challenges, or genuinly solving the grind.

Why do you assume that 5E won't be an evolution from 4E? As some have said, I don't see WotC going back to a "3.75," although based upon Mearls' nostalgia they are going to try incorporating elements from earlier editions that have been de-emphasized in 4E.

But I think that one of the core design goals of 5E is/will be to fix the problems of 4E, especially the grind but also skill challenges, dissociation of rituals from play, non-classic tropes as core (e.g. wilden, dragonborn, etc), putting magic back into magic items, and so forth. The most encouraging thing--and I hope I'm not reading too much into it--was Mearls talking about the "complexity dial," which would theoretically please those who prefer a 15-minute combat and those that like 1-2 hour long highly tactical encounters. I'm particularly intrigued by the notion of being able to switch the dial within the same session, sort of like "blitz" option for combat that resolves easy combats with one or two die rolls.

IMO, WotC should NOT try to "out-3E" Paizo. Pathfinder fans are too faithful, and I also feel that going backwards would be a kind of regression. 4E added a lot of good things to the game - it is just time to iron out the problems and maybe re-incorporate stuff that was left behind. But they can create a product that Pathfinder fans will like and spend money on. It doesn't matter as much if people defect from Pathfinder to 5E in order for 5E to be successful; what matters is that Pathfinder fans spend money on 5E products. WotC should focus their attention on pleasing existing 4E fans and bringing new people in - they shouldn't put too much effort into trying to get people back from Pathfinder.

 

[Don Incognito]

Of course it's on the horizon. It's always been on the horizon. Hell, 6e is on the horizon.

Do I think it's on the horizon soon? Probably not. People are all up in arms about what Slavicsek's departure means, but editions are something that take a long time to develop (at least a year), typically they've hired people rather than let them go. I seriously doubt that, if a new edition's in the works, they would develop it alongside Essentials. Plus, unless they haven't been paying attention at all, they have to know that putting out a new edition fractures their base even further into little warring cliques. They can only do that so many times before everyone's got an edition they're 100% satisfied with and refuses try something new.

Mike Mearls' articles have gotten people worked into a frothing mess over the concept of a new edition being a love letter to the TSR era, but I'm just not sure that's the smart financial move for anyone right now. My guess? Re-releasing OD&D box set for the 40th anniversary.

 

[catastrophic]

Why do you assume that 5E won't be an evolution from 4E? As some have said, I don't see WotC going back to a "3.75," although based upon Mearls' nostalgia they are going to try incorporating elements from earlier editions that have been de-emphasized in 4E.

Yeah but, those elements haven't actually been de-emphasised- for instance, many fans of older editions say that 4e is more 'dnd-like' than 3e was, for them. In most cases, what has been de-emphasised has been bad design who's re-inclusion would make for an inferior game.

As an example: you can't actualy 'bring back vancian magic' or 'make the classes more mechanically differentiated' without screwing up what makes 4e a better game than 3e. And no matter how often people deny it, 3e was a less fun game for the poor suckers who played one of the many, many, many trap options in it's designs, which included entire classes, including the type of classes a new player was likly to try and play.

The claim that 4e is servicing various design goals less well is simply not accurate- it's not popular to say it, least of all around here, but 4e isn't actually more video gamey, or less door kickey, or less improvisational.

In reality, the main reason critics of 4e note differences in their play experience between 4e nd previous editions? The main thing that makes a difference to play content in those cases? Is that in previous editions various elements were so poorly designed that players and DMs would find excuses not to use them, or buffer them with endless fiat, improv, and what they define as roleplaying.

This actually caused problems for 4e- a lot of people played a lot of 4e combart when it came out, because hey, combat isn't a dumb chore anymore- and that got a bit much. OTOH, it really helped expose key issues, like the grind.

And all this is not to say there aren't failures of design in 4e- skill challenges continue to be at best, a poor first effort at making skills work. But contrary to what the rope use brigade insists, there was nothing lost in the transtion from 3e to 4e skills, but a lot of wasted effort that wasn't particularly fun.

Often, 4e players, upon finding this, heaved a sigh of relief and put all that extra effort into making cool stories and encounters together- with plenty of improvisation, roleplaying, and house ruling thrown in. All too often, 4e haters rebelled not because 4e had less roleplaying, or less improv, or less house ruling, or less anything particularly good, but because they wanted their ball and chain back.

The lost, lamented 3e skills were nothing more than a coat-hangers to suspend a bunch of fiat play and improvisation from, and while a proper skill overhaul would probably look a lot different from 4e skills, and might even include for instance, a single self-contained craft skill, it doesn't change the reality of those skills and their usage in actual play.

At the core of this debate is the notion that every criticism if 4e is a legitimate argument about design- either design directly, or design with regards to servicing play-style. I reject that assumption, and considering many of the mechanics that people defend, I have no doubts that my position is the correct one. Of course, stating such an opinion carries consequences on a forum like this, but that doesn't make it a less legitimate viewpoint.

But I think that one of the core design goals of 5E is/will be to fix the problems of 4E, especially the grind but also skill challenges, dissociation of rituals from play, non-classic tropes as core (e.g. wilden, dragonborn, etc), putting magic back into magic items, and so forth. The most encouraging thing--and I hope I'm not reading too much into it--was Mearls talking about the "complexity dial," which would theoretically please those who prefer a 15-minute combat and those that like 1-2 hour long highly tactical encounters. I'm particularly intrigued by the notion of being able to switch the dial within the same session, sort of like "blitz" option for combat that resolves easy combats with one or two die rolls.

This all sounds great, but it's based on the assumption that design is simply a thing we can do whatever we want with.

There's a myth about design as it related to play styles, which states, essentially, that all play styles are of equal merit, and hence, design is about servicing that variety fully. The assumption made here is that all play styles can be equally serviced by design, no matter what contradictions or incoherences they would seem to posess, from the position of logical analisis of competing goals.

But in reality, not only are all play styles not equally served by design, but all play styles do not have equal merit in any play. When we claim otherwise, we make assumptions without any legitimate reason for doing so, primarily because doing so avoids arguments and outrage from people who might take such criticisms personally. But if you're going to design well, and design well for actual play, you need to be up front about what design achieves, and what occurs in play.

And in play, the kind of design we see in 4e just plain works better. Not IMO better, not 'just for me' better, but straight up, let's-wants-to-have-fun, let's-play-a-game-together-and-enjoy-it, better at being fun and hence, better at doing what design of games is intended to do.

Not all designs are created equal, and not all playstyles are equally legitimate.

Not all designs are created equal: people have limited time, enthusiasm, cognititive resources, attention, ability to schedual, ability to commit in various time frames, and so on, and on- there are real limits to play, so there are real limits to what design can achieve. Good design is about getting the most from the limited resources that people can bring to bear when playing a game- no matter how much time or self-agrandised brainpower people claim to bring to their tables, there are still limits, and issues, and problems that design needs to take into account.

Not all play styles can be equally serviced by design, or are of equal merit:
Somebody might claim that their super-mean killer gm retroclone is super awesome, but I garuntee you, a lot of proud killer gms are just power tripping jerks who drive people away- not just from their table, but from the hobby as a whole. The fallacy that such games are 'fair' because of various props like random rolls or uasi-realism is simply a crutch used when absing dm fiat. This leads to the classic scene of a GM with a bunch of random charts, who simply keeps rolling on the charts until they get the result they're after. Are many 'killer' gms just making fun for their players? Sure. Sure. Are you going to claim that you can design to service that play style? Good luck.

Somebody might insist that the GMPC they play in their iconic 20 year campaign is a vital part of the story, but if a newbie asks me about running a gmpc, i'm stilll going to say 'hell no' because, all excuses aside, gmpcs have a way of turning players into passive, deprotagonised doormats. Can you create a design where gms get to play a pc and be a gm at the same time, and not lose much of the benfit in play of seperating those roles? Possibly. But I wouldn't put money on it, and I wouldn't demand WOTC do so, either.

And the same goes for most of that the anti-4e brigade demands of 5e. they are, in short, demanding bad design. Wish lists that are about gratifying their assumption about play, not about gratifying their actualy players in actual play.

A 5e that tries to serve these kinds of play goals? That adopts that myth of equality of playstyles, and tries to service that myth with the compounded myth that design can simply service any style of play, any time? That's a great way to make a really crappy game.

And the idea that they can dial up and down these factors? So uh, at what dial setting do fighters turn into jokes again? What setting do we turn the dial to to remind ourselves how much worse 3e-style buff recalc was than 4e style grind? Is the old random prostitute generation chart a modular component, or just an optional house rule?

Now, I realise that you probably aren't after that stuff. But when mearls talks about that stuff, he's not aiming at either of us.

Even leaving aside the issue of preference and goals. I'd be cautious about any 'versatile' system, and i've played the best and craziest, that being the HERO system, extensivly.

Hero is a great game. But it's also a game where the gm basically has to co-build every pc from the ground up with the player, in a process that has much in common with game design, as it does with character creation. That is where versatility leads, and that is the only way it can reliably work. And i'm pretty sure . . . pretty sure that that is not D&D- although hero can make for a pretty cool fantasy game.

You might argue, hey, we can just add in a bunch of optional rules! But at some point, your game actually has to be playable, game by game, session by session. I honestly think a limited modular design would be a good idea, with modules for things like owning land, and grand rituals, but all those components would have to be balanced, and none of them are worth putting paid design time into, unless they service a reasonably large and marketable audience.

IMO, WotC should NOT try to "out-3E" Paizo. Pathfinder fans are too faithful, and I also feel that going backwards would be a kind of regression. 4E added a lot of good things to the game - it is just time to iron out the problems and maybe re-incorporate stuff that was left behind.

I honestly don't think that much was left behind. I mean magic items? Ok, need to be way better but. . in 3e it was just a matter of deciding what star to put on the top of your christmas tree. Earlier ediitions were frankly too archaic to draw actual design from.

People can talk about cool play moments, but demanding that 'cool memory/nostaliga=game design goal" is not good design.

But they can create a product that Pathfinder fans will like and spend money on. It doesn't matter as much if people defect from Pathfinder to 5E in order for 5E to be successful; what matters is that Pathfinder fans spend money on 5E products. WotC should focus their attention on pleasing existing 4E fans and bringing new people in - they shouldn't put too much effort into trying to get people back from Pathfinder.

I agree, and it's possible that there is a more reasonable cross section of fans available. But you woulnd't know it from reading a lot of forums, and i'm afraid it's the hostility to 4e that is driving design decisions at wotc. I mean it's not like opinions dissenting against that hostility get very good treatment, in most places on the net.

It's very hard to find discussions that aren't trampeled over by the idea that design and hence, D&D, can be exactly what everyone wants it to be, and that the only people who stand in the way of My D&D being exactly what I want are mean corporate jerks and 4ron edition warriors.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Whooompf....



Whips out marshmallows

 

[JamesonCourage]

And the same goes for most of that the anti-4e brigade demands of 5e. they are, in short, demanding bad design.

There's a lot to what you wrote, but I find the idea that those who don't agree with 4e design choices to be advocating "bad design" to be both inflammatory and unproductive to a discussion. It might make a good statement for an argument, but implying that "the way you enjoy things is wrong" as that statement does strikes me as inflammatory.

And in play, the kind of design we see in 4e just plain works better. Not IMO better, not 'just for me' better, but straight up, let's-wants-to-have-fun, let's-play-a-game-together-and-enjoy-it, better at being fun and hence, better at doing what design of games is intended to do.

And this is simply incorrect. When the measuring stick of how effectively something is is Fun, and Fun is subjective, than there is no objective way to say which way is more Fun. Period. You might be able to squeeze in a "for most people" in there. You can definitely squeeze in a "for the target audience" in there, as all you have to do to accomplish that is pander.

But, saying one game is inherently better designed for fun for everyone is incorrect. There's simply no way to make that a blanket statement and be correct.

But hey, as always, play what you like

 

[Imaro]

STUFF

 

[catastrophic]

There's a lot to what you wrote, but I find the idea that those who don't agree with 4e design choices to be advocating "bad design" to be both inflammatory and unproductive to a discussion.

What is the purpose of the discussion? Because at some point, you're going to have to design a game based on all these grudges and greviances, and it's not unproductive to point out that that game, that design as an attempt at peacemaking, would probably be a badly designed compromise that would please nobody.

Put it this way. If design really could simply service any playstyle and do it well, then it would be entirely possible to design a game, with a bunch of dials, and in doing so, from an actual design perspective, please everyone.

But this debate has never been about design, and when people argue that they're after design outcomes, they're not arguing in good faith. You can label me as inflamatory, but i'm not the one demanding the impossible.

It might make a good statement for an argument, but implying that "the way you enjoy things is wrong" as that statement does strikes me as inflammatory.

Well I find it inflamatory that we're all supposed to apologise for having playable, balanced, fun classes in our rpg of choice, and that we aren't allowed to define that as a goal for class-based design.

I find it inflamatory that there are people who act like i'm some kind of tyrant if I don't want new players in this hobby suffering a lot of wasted time and frustration that will probably drive them from the hobby, time and frustration that is often caused by the cherished and fiercly defended sacred cows of various rpgs and their play style.

I find it inflamatory that when the people who designed 4e set out some of the flaws in 3e, they were supposedly doing something terribly offensive and mean to 'the fans'.

It's easy to choose to take offence at people who disagree with you, or to violate an unwritten rule of a debate which is defined, and amplified, and perpetuated by such rules and norms. A better option is to recognise that if you define good debate as 'whatever people on the internet will never take offence to', then you've just ended any and all genuinly good debate.

Likewise, if you define game design as 'give people whatever they say they want, no matter what is actually possible to give them', then again, kiss good design good-bye.

I like this hobby. I want it to be a success. I want new people to join the hobby, and have fun with it. It's a great hobby. But play is not a purely subjective event, and design is an issue of merit, as well as more subjective issues.

D&D lagged, laughably lagged behind the curve of design for decades. Each era of innovation saw D&D as nothing but a foot-note, no matter what it's less well traveled fans believe. With 4e, we finally have a version of this hobby's flagship product, the gateway, the mainstay, the financial and social core of the hobby, that is actually well desgined.

This is the first time this has ever happened. It's a very positive thing. In the long term, the philosophy behind that design could be the only hope that rpgs have of surviving, and in fact, thriving and becoming an integral part of a new era of creative entertainment.

The notion that we should turn our backs on all of that because a bunch of people bitching in an edition war want to pretend that third edition wizards and fighters were well designed? Yeah, I find that inflamatory.

I'll take or leave 5th edition. But the hobby can't really make the same choice.

And this is simply incorrect. When the measuring stick of how effectively something is is Fun, and Fun is subjective, than there is no objective way to say which way is more Fun. Period.

This is great logic for people wanting to avoid arguments, but terrible logic for people wanting to make fun games and understand how to do so.

At some point, we have to have the maturity and profesionalism to look at two mechanics and say "you know what? That one on the left is better". Not IMO, not YMMV, but in an genuine assertion of merit, of the kind that underpins every rational undertaking of any concrete substance in the entire history of human achievement.

Now, you want to pretend that designers are like artists, and we're all absorbing art with no concrete, procedural elements? You go right ahead, but it's called game design for a reason. It is about building a game, and as with anything else, if you build it with shoddy components, it ain't gonna work.

Now as I said, it's possible to argue that design is purely about servicing subjective preferences and play styles. But guess what? That is a sefl defeating enterprise. After all, if play styles are purely subjective, and have no indepandant or functional critiera, then you still can't design for them. Where are you going to start? It's subjective, right?

Only by defining a play style in relatable, somewhat concrete terms, can we hope to design for it- and if that is the case, than we can, and should apply broader rules and norms that can appy to all play styles, even if they're tweaked based on the needs of a particular style.

You might be able to squeeze in a "for most people" in there. You can definitely squeeze in a "for the target audience" in there, as all you have to do to accomplish that is pander.

But, saying one game is inherently better designed for fun for everyone is incorrect. There's simply no way to make that a blanket statement and be correct.

But hey, as always, play what you like

There's a point at which internet sophistry either destroys all rational dialogue, or is defeated by it. You can argue YMMV IMO until you're blue in the face, but if we're going to have a meaningful discussion, we have to get past that.

99%? Whatever dude, are we going to talk design or not? I'm not talking about the .01% of theoretical grognards who want their fighting-men to be suitable parables for hapless 13th century serfs, or the somewhat larger group of people who are mad at 4e and talk a bunch of words about it that often don't bear very close scrutiny, but in real terms, if we're actually talking about good design, we can't keep acting like the hate-fest is a genuine design critique.

I am confident saying that we cannot brush games off as purely subjective, and hence, we cannot deny the role of critiera, and the core, relatable qualities that all games in the genre should seek to posess. We might aruge over what they are, but they're certainly there, wether we deny them or not.

 

[DaveMage]

Can someone hit this thread with a Picard facepalm, please?