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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Windjammer" data-source="post: 5784344" data-attributes="member: 60075">It doesn't surprise me that his generalizations do not mirror everyone's - whose experiences do?  Even if you disagree with his generalizations, or my own examples of player/DM-dischord, there remains the bit I bolded at the end of my OP, which is really the heart of his contention as much as mine. Whether you design a game from the players' end or the DM's side will make a huge difference. One year of Legends & Lore has shown me that WotC seems either incapable or unwilling to alter that design focus. We have not had one hint that 5E will come with better adventures, better rules from a GM's perspective, or better allocation and distribution of content between GMs and players. Not one. We had articles about player rules this, player rules that, customize me this, customize me that, ad infinitum et nauseam. Designing the game from the DM's end doesn't seem to be a focus or design goal for 5E. And that is somewhat worrying, I find. 4E is a wonderful game, I plan to play it for many, many years to come, but another player-centric game is not going to make me look at 5E. Been there, done that. Grapple simplified, skill resolution speeded up? Sorry, that was 4E's promise. This time, the hurdles are a bit steeper. And to answer a great many responses, most of them insightful, I wanted to clarify that I don't see the things raised in the OP as unsurmountable obstacles. Like you I firmly believe in the power of human communication and common sense - and, as a prerquisite to either, a careful selection as to who you play with.  Here's the catch. I play with friends, and most of the time with adults. Our issue is this (and sorry if I repeat myself): my players view the D&D experience through a piece of software which does not contextualize rules elements. It simply doesn't. It references sources, not uses, not campaign aptitude. As a result, it's - apparently - the GM's duty to go through dozens of items and talk to players individuallly about each of them.  And that's a colossal waste of time. Here's some real data to back it up: I started sharing my campaign concept last Saturday evening with 1 of my 3 players (he's the one most knowledgable about the published setting), and then sent round a list of what's legit and what's not. Where I'm sitting, it's Wednesday evening. In the time since we have exchanged 73 emails about individual rules item. Some of these emails were longer than my OP. This is a colossal waste of my time, and that of my players. We could have spent this time talking about NPC organizations, about campaign-related stuff. Instead we spend 73 emails discussing on who's getting a +1 to hit from which source, feat, power.  And that's supposedly a rewarding experience? That's the super convenient time-saving software which WotC sells us to kick off campaigns? Really? I'm not surprised that many DM's simply give up. The 'everything's core' philosophy explicitly told them so. But if you don't swallow that, then there must be a more effective way to handle these issues. And that starts with the attitude you communicate to players in your books and ends up with the design of your e-tools. Somewhere inbetween is an actual games engine, which you hope is designed with an enlightened understanding of the gaming table as a social environment in mind. That's my hope for 5E.</blockquote>

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