D&D General 6E But A + Thread

[Older Beholder]

What about a completely Magic the Gathering based 6E ? Might be interesting.
Built from the ground up using the 5 colour magic system. (Or whatever, I don’t know enough about MTG)
It would only use MTG settings.

We would be getting something new, which could be cool, and then think about how well 7E would sell when they go back to ‘classic DnD’ again

 

[Lanefan]

And what happened when Jon Snow was supposed to die in the show...?

They killed off one major character, early in the story. It put people on edge.

Had he died in the books first (i.e. had GRRM got that far in writing the bloody things) and stayed dead, nobody would have batted an eyelid when he died in the show. Same as Ned Stark - everyone knew going in that he dies because that's what the book says, so it doesn't come as a big shock when he dies in the show.

That said, I wonder if bringig Snow back to life was, more than anything else, to bail the writers out of a corner they'd written themselves into.

Lanefan.

Are we invested in the story of specific players on an adventure?

Or are we there to look at literally 95% identical jerseys milling about the field?

The analogy fails because you've made it circular. You've started from something that isn't comparable in the first place.

For me it's close to 100% comparable.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr is currently a very good and quite recognizable baseball player on the Toronto Blue Jays. Should he leave the team next season*, however, I'd keep following the Jays as a team, not him as a player.

And in the end the characters are largely interchangeable within the roles they fill: you've got the fighters who might be Hyperia and Sir Grailen this adventure who then retire or cycle out to be replaced by Melkolf and Perseus next adventure; meanwhile the healer might be Raven this time cycled out for Claire next time; the sneak is Melwen now but she's leaving so Elwyn+ will take her place, and so on - all with the same four players. All those cycled-out characters remain available to come back in later. The party and its story/ies, meanwhile, carry on, even while its internal dynamics change significantly from one adventure to the next.

* - hypothetical, as he just signed a contract that keeps him a Jay for ages.
+ - all characters are from different bits of my current campaign. Melwen and Elwyn are two closely-associated (as in, sometimes-lovers) thiefy-type characters run by different players; this isn't one player doing a like-for-like replacement

The vast majority of people do not.

The look at it like a TV show, book series, film series, etc. If Indiana Jones dies 2/3rds of the way through Temple of Doom and his place is taken up by, I dunno, Oregon Smith, his research assistant, people aren't going to give Oregon Smith and the Last Crusade much attention, even if it shows her connecting with Henry Jones Sr. over their reminisces about Dr. Jones.

Not the same. Movie series like Indiana Jones focus on one key character while everyone around that character comes and goes from one scene or movie to the next. Party-play RPGs do not (or IMO should not) focus on one key character, therefore the "everyone comes and goes" piece now really can mean everyone.

Also, character turnover is useful in that it keeps things interesting and fresh. Playing the same character - or playing with the same character(s) - year after year can get very boring; no matter how entertaining the character is, sooner or later it's time for a refresh.

 

[Remathilis]

Maybe the reason to keep investing is something beyond your own PC(s).

I missed this on my first read-through.

Let me tell you a story about the last D&D character I played before real life conspired to make me a Forever DM: Esmerae.

You see, my DM bought Spelljammer (The Beadles and Grimm version no less!) with the intent to run Light of Xarysis. I intentionally avoided spoilers the best I could, but being an active reader of ENWorld, I knew three things:

• The contents of the player guide
• The Athas was supposed to be Doomspace (not relevant)
• The main bad guys were astral elves.

That's about it. So with that knowledge in mind, I created a character. An astral elf lunar sorcerer (the Dragonlance subclass reflavored) with the astral wanderer background. She had been taken from her family by githyanki raiders and spent decades wandering the astral to get back. This focused a character who was youthful (due to not aging), eccentric, full of wanderlust, and had a vengeful streak when she witnessed injustice. Remind you of anyone? Here's a hint:

spoiler

Spoiler

And that worked great with the game. Her personal sense of betrayal from the Xarysis plot towards her adopted home (Faerun) helped focus the group towards the plot, and when the time came to make the moral choice at the end, she did not hesitate to let them burn for their cruelty and arrogance.

Would she have been as cool if she was a human fighter? Or a halfling thief? Honestly no. She was created with the campaign in mind, her own journey and the journey of the campaign. I didn't even know how well her story would fit into the plot. She never overshadowed the other players, who also got their own arcs. But the fact I could create her exactly as I wanted allowed me to tailor her to what the campaign needed.

I'm sure you are going to dismiss it both for being an adventure path (and very linear one at that) and how I used metagame knowledge to wedge myself in. I'm also sure that it was inferior to a bunch of randomly generated characters in a sandbox game in your eyes. I don't care. A randomly generated character wouldn't get a $40 Heroforge color mini. Esmerae has one. She means more than dozens of unnamed Basic D&D characters rolled up and killed in the Keep of the Borderlands.

 

[Remathilis]

That said, I wonder if bringig Snow back to life was, more than anything else, to bail the writers out of a corner they'd written themselves into.

It's been a minute, but wasn't there a prophecy about him dying and returning, thus forcing him to go through that? The bigger issue (of course) is that his return does nothing. He's not the king, doesn't kill the Winter King, the only thing he does is kill the 11th hour villain after she makes her face-heel turn and he is banished for it, making both titular characters (Dani as fire, Jon as ice) failures. The winner is the DM's overpowered Deux-ex-machina-in-a-wheelchair NPC.

If you think that's a great D&D game...

 

[Chaltab]

I never even connected the titular song to Snow and Danerys.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And your interests deserve to be included, supported, and respected.

But they don't deserve to be the only, primary, nor enforced thing everyone has to go along with. Design predicated on your way being the only way isn't going to fly.

You realize this sentiment works against you just as much as it works for you, right? Do you really think both can be fairly presented as options in the same game?

 

[mixmastashizz]

I missed this on my first read-through.

Let me tell you a story about the last D&D character I played before real life conspired to make me a Forever DM: Esmerae.

You see, my DM bought Spelljammer (The Beadles and Grimm version no less!) with the intent to run Light of Xarysis. I intentionally avoided spoilers the best I could, but being an active reader of ENWorld, I knew three things:

• The contents of the player guide
• The Athas was supposed to be Doomspace (not relevant)
• The main bad guys were astral elves.

That's about it. So with that knowledge in mind, I created a character. An astral elf lunar sorcerer (the Dragonlance subclass reflavored) with the astral wanderer background. She had been taken from her family by githyanki raiders and spent decades wandering the astral to get back. This focused a character who was youthful (due to not aging), eccentric, full of wanderlust, and had a vengeful streak when she witnessed injustice. Remind you of anyone? Here's a hint:

spoiler

Spoiler

View attachment 415868

And that worked great with the game. Her personal sense of betrayal from the Xarysis plot towards her adopted home (Faerun) helped focus the group towards the plot, and when the time came to make the moral choice at the end, she did not hesitate to let them burn for their cruelty and arrogance.

Would she have been as cool if she was a human fighter? Or a halfling thief? Honestly no. She was created with the campaign in mind, her own journey and the journey of the campaign. I didn't even know how well her story would fit into the plot. She never overshadowed the other players, who also got their own arcs. But the fact I could create her exactly as I wanted allowed me to tailor her to what the campaign needed.

I'm sure you are going to dismiss it both for being an adventure path (and very linear one at that) and how I used metagame knowledge to wedge myself in. I'm also sure that it was inferior to a bunch of randomly generated characters in a sandbox game in your eyes. I don't care. A randomly generated character wouldn't get a $40 Heroforge color mini. Esmerae has one. She means more than dozens of unnamed Basic D&D characters rolled up and killed in the Keep of the Borderlands.

View attachment 415869

In my own anecdotal experience, we've made several hero forge custom minis for characters in my 1e game that have, despite the odds at times, survived to about level 4-5. I've played 4e and 5e with these players, and I've never seen them more attached to these randomly generated characters compared to ones they've built and wrote backstories and plans for in the past.

They have their stable of characters and henchmen at the ready that we switch between depending on the scenario/players present.

For us it wasnt the story that we came to the table with, it was the story that came from their actions within the game world that made it matter. They describe it as "feeling earned."

Both experiences are valid, it just depends on what the group is looking for and agree upon.

 

[mixmastashizz]

That said, for a potential 6E, I dont need it to rehash all of what old school dnd is. I already have it, though it'd make finding players my age easier (early 30s). I understand the last 25 years of the game since WOTC took the reins showed that there is popular and financial demand for crafted characters, and they'd be better off catering to their core audience.

 

[mamba]

Oftentimes his best way of helping the party win combats was to run in, draw fire and foes that otherwise would have hit and hurt others but didn't touch him, and wait for the damage-dealers to come and bail him out.

run in and draw fire is pretty much the opposite from staying the heck away so you cannot get hit though, as mentioned in the post that started this sidetrack...

You don't have to roll dice on your turn you are gambling by doing that. You can take other actions on your turn which are automatic (dash, disengage, dodge)

 

[Faolyn]

I've never understood why some folks insist on conflating gnomes and halflings. Even if you for some reason don't think both are "needed", what benefit is served?

The primary benefit was so the people who did the Complete Book of... series for 2e didn't have to come up with completely different histories, mythologies, kits, etc., all on their own.

Neither race has a lot of mythology that could be easily plundered. For halflings, you get hobbits and, if you really feel like it, Munchkins from Oz. And that's it. For gnomes, you get Dragonlance tinker gnomes, that book by Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet, gnomes as creatures of elemental earth, and gnomes as being the same as (mythical) kobolds--but the latter two would go against how D&D had always treated gnomes. Dwarves and elves have tons of stuff in mythology, fiction, and in previous D&D lore. (I remember first reading the Complete Book of Elves, seeing the two-year pregnancies, and thinking, somebody's been reading ElfQuest. 2e had a lot of cool stuff, but they weren't really as innovative with the PC races as they could be.

Honestly, I think it could be cool if a hypothetical 6e had gnomes as being creatures of elemental earth. They don't need to be any more elemental than the genasi are, but they could be something like halflings or dwarfs who emegrated to the Plane of Earth eons ago and adapted.