D&D 5E 5e's big problem - Balancing "Being D&D" versus "Being Not D&D"

[Doug McCrae]

Don't shove us along with some half-baked cocktail of rules that's more the product of pandering than innovative thinking.

The money, what there is of it, is in pandering. Tabletop rpgs are a dying hobby, with an aging player base.

 

[Andor]

Li Shenron said it already but it bears repeating: There is no such thing as a 'best RPG possible.' A Startrek holodeck wouldn't qualify, the Matrix wouldn't qualify.

An RPG is a system for portraying a world, and sometimes building one as well. And then for building and portraying individuals within that world.

The rules of that RPG change with the type of world you want to portray. More than that, they change with how you want to portray it. Do you want sweeping dramas of love and betrayal? Swashbuckling adventure? Gritty character exploration in a corrupt multi-national corporation? Golden-age 4-color superheroics? You could do all of that in a single setting, but you'ld have trouble doing it all well with a single system.

D&D is hard to define, but it does not encompass all the possibilities of roleplaying. it is not golden age superheroes, it is not science fiction, it is not romantic drama, etc. If they try to make the "perfect RPG" they will fail. They need to make the perfect D&D RPG. That is already a herculean enough task without muddying the waters.

 

[Janaxstrus]

I think innerdude is dead on with this. The end product, if fun, will become new D&Disms.

I know you are wrong. Evidence? 4e.

The people who play it, swear it is fun. It's being replaced sooner than normal because it's not selling. It split the player base immensely.

What is a HUGE complaint? "It doesn't FEEL like D&D"

I would rather have a good game that feels like D&D than a "better" game that doesn't. There are all kinds of "good" games out there I could play. I want to play D&D.

 

[dkyle]

Here's the thing: Lots of us want to play a game with an "old" D&D feeling that doesn't use antiquated, broken, un-fun, unfair rules.

Incidentally, I've been working on a homebrew RPG with pretty much exactly that goal: take a lot of what campaigns in original D&D were about, and make a modern, well balanced ruleset that tries to be geared towards those kinds of campaigns, and without being beholden to D&D design traditions. The big thing I'm wondering about is whether antiquated, broken, unfair rules are kind of essential to the "old D&D feeling".

 

[Doug McCrae]

The "antiquated, broken, un-fun" things I'm talking about are things like conflicting subsystems, PC imbalance, broken math, Ivory Tower game design (including "traps" and "feat tax"), etc.--those don't have much bearing on whether the game "feels like D&D." At least, I hope nobody equates a D&D feeling with mystery attack matrices and alignment-change XP penalties.

I think a great many people do indeed equate a D&D feeling with the mechanics you describe as antiquated, broken and un-fun. Equally there are a lot of people who are of the same opinion as you - I'm one of them. D&DNext's modular approach seems to be a good, probably the only, way to keep everyone happy.

 

[dkyle]

looking less like classic Western literary medieval-esque Fantasy and more like the spiky-haired, emo-kid bastard lovechild of Dragonball and Mad Max/Junkyard Wars

If the latter is knock at 4E, I have to wonder what the heck you are talking about. Seriously. The assumed setting and style of 4E is really not that much different from 3.X. If you look at Fighter powers and can't see anything but Dragonball Z craziness, that's your own perception. That's not how the game was written, or meant to be interpreted as.

I don't think it's rude to ask that people who are more attracted to the latter go seek something like Exalted--if you don't like the classic elements of D&D, why are you playing it? There are other games out there that cater to your tastes. Since there are other options for you out there, why are you trying to spoil the fun of those of us who do like D&D in its classic form, with all its familiar trappings? I don't get it; it just seems overbearing and selfish to me.

Exalted looks nothing like the 4E DnD I've played. Besides, setting and fluff isn't why I choose one RPG over another when I GM; it's mechanics. I make my own setting and fluff, and the setting/fluff of the game I'm actually running is just one point of inspiration among many.

I like 4E because it is the only RPG with anywhere near the depth and breadth of balanced character building options and tactical gameplay. Savage Worlds is the closest I've seen, but it's still pretty far removed. And I like indie games too, but they don't scratch the same itch. WotC is really the only company with the resources to produce a game like 4E, and I seriously doubt that 5E will be a suitable replacement.

In short, I like my version of DnD for my own reasons, and there is no replacement for it. Meanwhile, there are tons of retro-clones of every past edition.

 

[Ahnehnois]

D&D is not entirely unique in this. It might be possible to make a "better" science fiction TV show/movie than Star Trek, which is an inspirational classic but also rather dated. But even today, its tropes underly almost all science fiction.

The rpg hobby is a much smaller niche than that, and D&D is completely dominant and the only rpg with any name recognition outside of the hobby (though perhaps PF may make some inroads there). It may be possible to make a "better" rpg; in fact, it may have been done. But who's going to buy it?

Complicating the problem is the diversity of the hobby. There are people who think Gygax is some kind of deity and the original D&D is the "best", but most gamers know nothing about him. A significant number of people actually do like 4e, but the rest have pretty vehemently rejected it. There are so many different ways to play this game, none of which is gospel, that it would be very hard to write rules that cover everyone. At least, this time, they are stating flexibility and inclusivity as their intent.

I hope that they will adopt the same philosophy of other prominent remakes in the genre fiction world; pick out your sine qua non elements, and then take everything else and innovate like crazy.

4e was the one where they threw away all the traditions and tried to make the best game they could. Everyone saw how that turned out, and it's pretty clear they're not doing that again anytime soon.

Just had to point out this rather jaw-dropping statement. Of 4e's many problems, an excess of innovation is not one of them.

 

[Umbran]

But I've got to be honest--if 5e so far doesn't feel all that inspiring to me, I think it's because the designers are "stuck," as it were, trying to make the best version of D&D that they can--rather than simply being able to make the best RPG possible.

Two things:

1)You feel 5e is uninspiring having not seen the game! How fair is that as a basis of judgement, really? Do you find the game uninspiring, or the things said about the game uninspiring?

2) "the best RPG possible" sounds good, until you realize that "best" is completely undefined, such that the statement is not meaningful.

 

[enigma5915]

I know you are wrong. Evidence? 4e.

The people who play it, swear it is fun. It's being replaced sooner than normal because it's not selling. It split the player base immensely.

What is a HUGE complaint? "It doesn't FEEL like D&D"

I would rather have a good game that feels like D&D than a "better" game that doesn't. There are all kinds of "good" games out there I could play. I want to play D&D.

And 4E didnt feel like a good game either. There was nothing truely innovative with 4E. It was a lazy approach to give the illusion of making changes without seriously commiting. 4E is not a good example.

Admin here. You've stopped discussing and started edition warring. (You're also factually incorrect, but that's neither here nor there.) Knock it off. - Piratecat

 

[mkill]

I think there does indeed come a point of wide-open weirdness after which D&D is no longer D&D. For me personally, it's not a firmly delineated boundary so much as a fuzzy patch into which the game wandered at some point in the lifespan of 3E and emerged looking less like classic Western literary medieval-esque Fantasy and more like the spiky-haired, emo-kid bastard lovechild of Dragonball and Mad Max/Junkyard Wars.

I probably should have reported this as a thinly-veiled attempt to start an edition war, but then I remembered how "spiky-haired, emo-kid bastard lovechild of Dragonball and Mad Max/Junkyard Wars" is a great description of Dark Sun (or maybe Planescape?), TSR-era settings that I hold very dear to my heart.

(so yeah, you are off by at least 10 years - Dark Sun is 1991)

I don't think it's rude to ask that people who are more attracted to the latter go seek something like Exalted--if you don't like the classic elements of D&D, why are you playing it?

I don't think it's rude to ask that people who are more attracted to the former go seek something like the OSR--if you don't like the modern elements of D&D, why are you playing it?

(cut out this lame factionalism - it's not getting the hobby anywhere)