7 Years of D&D Stories? And a "Big Reveal" Coming?

When asked what he was working on, WotC's Chris Perkins revealed a couple of juicy tidbits. They're not much, but they're certainly tantalizing. Initially, he said that "Our marketing team has a big reveal in the works", and followed that up separately with "Right now I'm working on the next seven years of D&D stories". What all that might mean is anybody's guess, but it sounds like there are plans for D&D stretching into the foreseeable future! Thanks to Barantor for the scoop!

 

[billd91]

I feel you have missed my point. When it comes to the purchase of luxury consumer goods, the concept of intransigence has no work to do.

Describing someone as "intransigently" refusing to buy 4e books can't mean anything other than that a person chose not to buy those books.

Coming from someone who is usually so precise in his terms, I find this statement mind-boggling. I don't see how you can miss the pejorative connotation to saying someone intransigently refused to buy 4e books.

 

[Tony Vargas]

What about the Level 20 rogue with 20 dex and +6 (+11) and the Level 20 fighter with 10 Dex and no prof bonus to the skill save in question (+0)?

What about them? In 4e, the high-DEX rogue who is trained has a stat bonus (probably +6 or even 8 depending on race & Epic Destiny) and training bonus (+5) over the same-level character who is untrained and has a low/no stat bonus (probably +1 due to paragon & epic stat bumps). That's +11-13 vs +0-1. There's a little variability because there's no hard stat cap.

5E takes the solution to the 3.5 problem and then solves the 4E problem.

The 3.5 problem was a practical one: a character who isn't trained can't do /anything/ at high level when a skill check comes up. 4e solves that with a +5 training bonus and +1/2 level bonus (the treadmill). 5e solves it by reducing the trained bonus from +4-23 over 20 level to +2-6. The net effects are very similar. The 5e 'problem' is that a character who doesn't receive training /never/ gets any better. No matter how much your wizard may run around in the course of his adventuring career, he never gets any more athletic, no matter how many enchanted beats your fighter vanquishes, he never picks up on the similarities among then. The 4e problem is that your rogue whose spent his long adventuring career in a city is actually pretty good at surviving in the wilderness once he's become a superhuman demigod.

Maybe it'd've been nice if 5e let you 'pick up' some secondary stuff at something less than +2-6, or if 4e let you designate abject incompetence at something. :shrug:

 

[BryonD]

The fiction might be different, but the mechanics won't be.

By you own examples "nearly impossible" is 30 and a character can have -1.
That leaves a lot of range for common examples where the roll requires a 15+ or even better than 20.

In my game at 7th level there are often DCs of 16 or 17 and there are characters with +0 finding themselves throwing the die.
Obviously part of the game is that the party would greatly prefer the rogue be making the DEX save than the Fighter. But sometimes it doesn't work out that way.

And, I'm playing the game.
It is working the way I want to and the homogenity of 4E is not present.

 

[pemerton]

Coming from someone who is usually so precise in his terms, I find this statement mind-boggling. I don't see how you can miss the pejorative connotation to saying someone intransigently refused to buy 4e books.

That's my whole point! The pejorative connotation has nothing to work on. The whole normative overlay misfires.

It equally misfires when people say that WotC "turned its back on its fans" or treated its fans "arrogantly".

These are consumer transactions within a commercial market. I'm not saying that there is no scope for moral commentary on such transactions (though none on ENworld, because of board rules). But the moral overlay that has been used in this thread misfires.

That's why I said of myself, upthread, that I am "intransigently" refusing to buy PF or Savage Worlds books. All that can mean is that I've chosen to spend my money elsewhere, for whatever personal reasons have motivated me.

 

[Imaro]

Okay I just have to ask...

How is the below

4e was designed to set default success chances to around 55%-65% provided that a GM followed its encounter-building advice (ie use the DC-by-level chart, used monsters and NPCs statted within -2 to +4 or so levels, and avoided higher-level soldiers)

... a 55-65% chance the same as...

This...

5e's bounded accuracy is much the same thing, but with the level-relativity stripped out. My maths suggests that the success rate in 5e is slightly broader than 4e - a band of around 40% to 80%, depending on build and level.

plus this...

But still have a decent chance of success (eg 30% against DC 15, which seems to be the median DC for the system).

... a 30-80% chance...

Is the argument that each game has a range of success so they are the same (which if true is the silliest argument I've ever seen, any game based on math is going to have a range for success)... because a 30%-80% chance isn't the same as 55-65%

 

[BryonD]

What about them?

They are wildly different than the misleading example you provided.

The 3.5 problem was a practical one: a character who isn't trained can't do /anything/ at high level when a skill check comes up. 4e solves that with a +5 training bonus and +1/2 level bonus (the treadmill). 5e solves it by reducing the trained bonus from +4-23 over 20 level to +2-6. The net effects are very similar. The 5e 'problem' is that a character who doesn't receive training /never/ gets any better. No matter how much your wizard may run around in the course of his adventuring career, he never gets any more athletic, no matter how many enchanted beats your fighter vanquishes, he never picks up on the similarities among then. The 4e problem is that your rogue whose spent his long adventuring career in a city is actually pretty good at surviving in the wilderness once he's become a superhuman demigod.

Once again we have a 4E fan reaching a conclusion for someone else by demonstrating a complete inability to conceive of a difference in taste.

The idea that a person not good at something is not good at that thing is not a problem at all to me. It is a feature.
I get that it bugs you.
I'm not going around presuming that nobody liked the 4E alternative.

I don't like it that the rogue gets good at surviving in the wilderness "just because". I have no qualms that you do.

But this is a difference of taste and by pointing out that they DO work different here you are disproving Hussar's claim and making it purely a matter of taste. You are just failing to recognize the potential for an actual difference in taste.

Maybe it'd've been nice if 5e let you 'pick up' some secondary stuff at something less than +2-6, or if 4e let you designate abject incompetence at something. :shrug:

For some it would have been a small grain of rice off the negative scale.

 

[Tony Vargas]

They are wildly different than the misleading example you provided.

a +11 difference is wildly different from a +11-13 difference? Really? Both were trained/proficient vs untrained/non-proficient, both were heavily invested in a stat vs no investment in the stat. Both were high level. Nothing in the least misleading about the example.

Once again we have a 4E fan reaching a conclusion for someone else by demonstrating a complete inability to conceive of a difference in taste.

There's a clear difference among 3.5, 4e, and 5e in how they model lack of interest in a skill at high level. In 3.x, if you never invest in a skill, you are as bad at 20th as you were at 1st, and compared to someone who invested heavily in that skill, that's incredibly, something that completely eclipses the d20 roll. We're talking +30 or more vs as little as -1. In 4e, if you never invested in a skill in the slightest, and 30th level, you'd still be +15 (that's assuming an 8 stat at 1st level) better than you were at 1st level, while the heavily invested guy (with race & epic destiny both piling onto the skills stat) would be +28 - a difference not entirely eclipse by the roll of a d20. In 5e, you're talking -1 for 8 stat and no proficiency, vs 11 for max stat and proficiency, still, unlike 3.5, and like 4e, something where a d20 roll can sometimes make up the difference.

You characterized the 4e solution as a 'problem,' and, rather than claim it wasn't a problem, I pointed out that the 5e solution had a contrary 'problem.'

It's a matter of how you want to model the high end of the spectrum.

That's hardly me being unable to see another point of view.

The idea that a person not good at something is not good at that thing is not a problem at all to me. It is a feature.
I get that it bugs you.
I'm not going around presuming that nobody liked the 4E alternative.

By claiming that 5e 'solved the 4e problem,' that is exactly what you presumed.

I don't like it that the rogue gets good at surviving in the wilderness "just because". I have no qualms that you do.

Clearly you do or you wouldn't be screaming at me for accepting that both can be characterized as problems.

But this is a difference of taste and by pointing out that they DO work different here you are disproving Hussar's claim and making it purely a matter of taste.

They have different side effects, but they do accomplish the same primary thing: minimizing the difference between the specialist and the non-specialist skill checks at very high level, which was an issue in 3.x (albeit, perhaps an issue that some folks loved, because they wanted that kind of profound spread in competence to make most skill checks one-man-shows).

And, 5e characters are still on this same-proficiency-bonus-for-everyone progression, just as 4e characters were on the same level bonus for everyone progression. It's just not applied as evenly.

But, yes, I am arguing against aspects of Hussar's theory that 4e and 5e are 'the same' ....

The brilliance of 5e though, and I stand in awe of this, is just how much they've brought into 5e, but because of the way they've handled the fandom this time, they've managed to convince people that it's completely divorced from all things 4e. It really is absolutely brilliant.

Heh. I think you're overstating it. Yes, details like bounded accuracy, HD, overnight healing, at-will & encounter powers for casters, a few specific spells, battlemaster maneuvers, Adv/Dis and whatnot may have been lifted from 4e in one sense or another. But they're not in the same form as in 4e, nor are they put to the same use. Bounded accuracy is like the treadmill, but unevenly applied. HD are like surges, but are so few and independent of other types of healing, that spells are once again the prime sources of healing. The benefits of AEDU are there, in a sense, for an individual character if he's the right caster class, but the broader benefits of class balance have been thoroughly purged.

The whole beast may be made up of distorted fragments of 3.x, 4e, and d20 in general - but it is still very much in the shape of 2e. Like a dinosaur re-engineered from bird DNA.

 

[Umbran]

I don't think this is an accurate summation.

There was a ton of arguing as 3E rolled out. I doubt anyone would dispute that.

I state so myself - yes, there was arguing. But arguing and edition warring are not the same thing.

And a lot of evolution is structure aside, it is a lot the same.

It is a lot the same, but it is a lot different as well, especially in terms of social structure, and the attitudes of the participants. 1999 was not the same as 2008 on the internet.

But (A) the population of ENWorld was overwhelmingly pre-3E and (B) the nature of 2E was so chaotic that it seemed like no two people had the same history with it.

Thus, as I said, there was no solid, emotionally invested 2e community present. You are rather demonstrating my point - the community was different.

As 3e ran, folks on the forums still had different experiences, but they also had unifying communications from places like this, WotC's site, and others - which were largely missing in the 2e era. So, there wasn't a solid block of users to break apart - and thus no war. In addition, much of our communication style about RPGs had changed significantly - The Forge, for our purposes, didn't really get rolling until 2001, after the 3e rollout, and like it or not, that work significantly impact how we approach discussing games.

In addition, 1999 was back before either Facebook or Twitter, both of which have impacted communications styles, and are still doing so today. We *couldn't* have argued over whether it is okay to tweet product status information when 3e rolled out!

So, I think I can reiterate - the social and communication structures that were required for the Edition Wars to happen didn't exist in 1999.

 

[pemerton]

The 5e 'problem' is that a character who doesn't receive training /never/ gets any better. No matter how much your wizard may run around in the course of his adventuring career, he never gets any more athletic, no matter how many enchanted beats your fighter vanquishes, he never picks up on the similarities among then. The 4e problem is that your rogue whose spent his long adventuring career in a city is actually pretty good at surviving in the wilderness once he's become a superhuman demigod.

This is what I'm getting at when I say the two systems produce different fictions, with different story structures. The "tiers" - from Heroic to Epic - are central to 4e, whereas 5e has no comparable default story structure, and tends to actively push against it.

But as you say, these different approaches to story are built on very comparable mechanical frameworks.

By you own examples "nearly impossible" is 30 and a character can have -1.
That leaves a lot of range for common examples where the roll requires a 15+ or even better than 20.

Yes. In my 4e game there is a lot of scope for DCs of 40 (Hard) with characters having bonuses of +14 to +16. Those PCs can't succeed without some sort of boost.

At 11th level, there was scope for DCs of 27 (Hard) with character having bonuses of +4 to +6. Those PCs coudn't succeed without some sort of boost.

In 5e there is an interesting tendency to have made ACs a bit lower relative to 4e, and to have made skill DCs overall a bit higher.

The AC thing I understand - it is part of speeding up combat. The skill thing is a little opaque to me, but perhaps it is to compensate for the increased likelihood of advantage on skill checks.

But the overall spreads are not radically different.

 

[BryonD]

That's my whole point! The pejorative connotation has nothing to work on. The whole normative overlay misfires.

It equally misfires when people say that WotC "turned its back on its fans" or treated its fans "arrogantly".

These are consumer transactions within a commercial market. I'm not saying that there is no scope for moral commentary on such transactions (though none on ENworld, because of board rules). But the moral overlay that has been used in this thread misfires.

That's why I said of myself, upthread, that I am "intransigently" refusing to buy PF or Savage Worlds books. All that can mean is that I've chosen to spend my money elsewhere, for whatever personal reasons have motivated me.

How does the dragon crap cartoon fit into this analysis?
I can take a joke, and I'm not hurt over it.

But how does that fit your scenario?