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!

 

[MerricB]

The thing about bounded accuracy... is that it's where D&D started, just because the game didn't progress to really high levels. Every monster in the original game had an AC between 2 and 9. The game lost this as expansions came along, with the demons and devils of Eldritch Wizardry really beginning the process of breaking of what was a relatively bounded system.

As 2E attempted to make high-level play more accessible (see the rise in demi-human level limits), the disparity between low and high level play became more pronounced.

3E then tossed out all thoughts of bounded accuracy (not that there were that many thoughts of such by this point) by having hyper-bonus inflation. No edition of the game had as much of a difference between a 1st level character and a 20th level character when it came to bonuses. It also had little concept of the relation between attack and defense - it was very easy to have attacks that auto-hit, or auto-missed (save criticals) with the same applying to saving throws.

4E, as part of its reaction to 3E, tried to put in bounds for characters and challenges of the same level; that you could predict, far better than 3E, where bonuses should be. However, it maintains a huge disparity between what a 1st level character and a 20th level character; their bonuses are significantly different.

5E hearkens back to the early days of oD&D, with lessons learnt from every edition since then.

That's my view of the issue, at least.

Cheers!

 

[pemerton]

Pemerton, for better or worse you require very clear, sharp parameters - far more clear and sharp than I do.

<snip>

"Breaking from tradition" isn't a particularly exotic or difficult concept.

It's not. But what counts as an instance of breaking from tradition is hotly contested.

In their time the impressionists were hugely controversial. Now they're the stuff of chocolate boxes and wall calendars. Perceptions of their relationship to the tradition of European visual arts obviously have changed.

One complicating factor - not the only one - is that those who participate in a tradition are not always best-placed to see what is essential to it, and what counts as holding to it or breaking with it. For instance, Edmund Burke thought that popular representative democracy would be a break from the traditions of English parliamentary government; most people now would think that it is in fact a part of that tradition, and forget how relatively late in British history were the Reform Acts, the "people's budget" of 1911, the enfranchisement of women.

Marx said that, just as if you want to know what a person is really like, it's no good just to ask that person for his/her opinion of him-/herself, likewise for a historical period: you can't learn what a society is like just by reading its own self-descriptions. The same might be said for traditions.

That's how history is written

Only bad history, or apology masquerading as history. Naturally any historian is circumscribed by limitations - of location (in time and place), of translation (depending on the place and period being studied), or failures of anthropological imagination. But good history tries its best to recognise and correct for such limitations, and to come to the past on its own terms.

Part of that involves understanding practices and beliefs for what they actually were, rather than projecting onto them a teleology that makes things as they turned out to be the true (if concealed) driver of all those earlier choices and decisions.

Let me put it this way. Let's say we start with OD&D as "0". Holmes was just a half-step away, a refinement - so "0.5." Moldvay was another half-step, so "1," with BECMI being another full step, or "2." AD&D, on the other hand, was a larger divergence, say three steps away from OD&D - so "3." 2E was another full step away from 1E, so "4." 3E came in and was another solid divergence, say two more steps away, so "6." And then we come to 4E, which was probably at least (or only, depending up on how you look at it), a full three steps away from 3E, so "9." People became upset, not only because it was three steps away from 3E, but also because it had diverged so far from early versions of D&D.

<snip>

The more I got to know the rules, the more I saw how sharply it diverged from "traditional D&D."

Don't take the numbers too literally - I'm just trying to illustrate the point.

Without the numbers there is no point.

For instance, how far is Gygax's AD&D from OD&D? If by OD&D you mean "OD&D with all the supplements" then the answer is - not very far at all.

How far is 2nd ed AD&D from Gygax's AD&D? If you look at the PC build mechanics and the basic action resolution mechanics, they're pretty close. If you look at the instructional text, the XP system and the GM-side mechanics, they're light-years apart. Read (or re-read) Gygax's instructions, in the closing pages of his PHB prior to the Appendices, on how players should prepare for a session. And then read the corresponding text in his DMG about how a GM should be attempting to cultivate and reward "skilled play". Those ideas and that advice appear nowhere in the 2nd ed AD&D rulebooks, and anyone who started playing from those books would receive not a hint that this is the sort of game that those mechanics were invented to play.

Here is just the simplest of examples to make the point: Gygax's AD&D takes it for granted that players will want high ability scores for their PCs, and will use Wishes to obtain them, and explains how to handle this; whereas the 2nd ed PHB, on p 18, tells prospective players that "if you take an interest in the character and role-play him well, then even a character with the lowest possible scores can present a fun, challenging, and all-around exciting time." You could hardly find an expression of the ideals of roleplaying further from that which infuses Gygax's rulebooks.

What is going on with the OSR? A fairly wide range of things, is my sense of it. But one of those things is people forming the view that AD&D 2nd ed is a break with tradition. A rejection of the sort of play that it promoted (which did not come from nowhere - it was emerging at least by the early-to-mid-80s in published modules and the pages of Dragon Magazine, and as a non-official playstyle may have gone back to before games like RQ and Traveller, which can be seen as potentially promoting it in their own way). A return to Gygaxian, "skilled", play, based especially around dungeoneering.

Whose numbers are right? Yours, which puts Gygax's AD&D at 3 and 2nd ed at 4? Or these OSR-ers, which puts the gap between those systems at some arbitrarily large multiple of the gap between Gygax's AD&D and OD&D?

These are competing views of the tradition.

You are, in effect, asking me whether I - as a fan of 4e - agree that 4e breaks with the tradition of D&D to an unprecedented extent relative to earlier variants of the game. As I have said in other threads, I don't agree with that. I think it does some things that are new for D&D, and I mentioned some of them upthread: the downplaying of exploration of a GM's pre-built world, and the corresponding emphasis on a particular style of player-driven play (the "indie-fication" of D&D) are the most obvious ones.

But there are many features of 4e that I believe draw upon and reinforce elements of the D&D tradition:

* To start with a small point, 4e's use of "squares" harks back to, and serves the same function as, "inches" in Gygax's AD&D, namely, expressing tactical distances in scale terms for resolution purposes (but with an acknowledgement that most contemporary players will be using grids rather than sand tables and tape measures), with a simple translation to "real" distances provided;

* More substantively, the healing system, including the presence of inspirational healing, draws upon and reinforces Gygax's conception of hit points and saving throws, as stated in his AD&D rulebooks;

* 4e's generalisation of "looseness of fit" between mechanics and fiction also draws upon this traditional conception of hit points and saving throws, as well as the narrative fluidity that Gygax explains in his essay (in his DMG) on the 1 minute combat round;

* Building on the above point, 4e integrates the "granularity of focus" that was novel to 3E (6 second combat rounds, precise positioning in melee, manoeuvres, sophisticated action economy, etc) with the fictional "looseness" of Gygaxian melee, thereby reconciling two superficially conflicting strands in the D&D tradition;

* 4e performs another act of integration also: in AD&D melee is "sticky" by default, and wizards who get sucked into that vortex will probably die while fighters rule the roost; in 3E melee is non-sticky by default (due to the movement component of the action economy in combination with very generous 5' step rules); 4e builds on the basic mechanical framework of 3E, but by changing the 5' step rules plus giving fighters a whole lot of abilities to make them sticky (powerful OAs, marking and mark punishment, forced movement of enemies, slowing and immobilising enemies, etc) it re-establishes a dynamic for melee in which fighters are at the centre of a vortex that they control, and that can suck others in but from which those others can't escape - hence melee in 4e is, in its overall story tone and tropes, much closer to my memory of the classic D&D tradition than is 3E;

* As I've explained upthread in my last post to [MENTION=6680772]Iosue[/MENTION], I think that 4e does an incredible job of making the traditional D&D story structure (start with kobolds, finish with Orcus) a part of the game, with the PCs integrated into that story both mechanically and fictionally at every stage;

* And I could give other examples, too, of where I think 4e preserves or reinforces D&D tradition, but I think you get the gist.​

There are things, in my view, that 4e does not do particularly well. I don't think it is an especially good system, for instance, for engaging with the inner lives of the PCs. It is about drama expressed and encountered outwardly (in the fantasy world) rather than inwardly. But this is another respect in which 4e cleaves to the D&D tradition rather than departs from it. (5e's Inspiration rules may be the biggest departure from this tradition that we've yet seen.)

seemingly you don't remember when 4E came out, and many had a huge issue with how different 4E was from 3E.

Of course I remember this. Not being an expert on 3E, I tend to leave such discussions to others. I do note that these issues of difference are (not surprisingly) contested. I also note that 3E is not the be-all and end-all of the D&D tradition.

I think the mistake you make here, if I may, is by focusing on specific rules. Sure, they matter, but it is more the sum total, even the "space in-between" the rules - the vibe and feeling - that makes 4E different.

Who are you speaking for, here? I mean, besides yourself and your own experiences?

I can tell you, that the feeling I get when I play 4e is like the feeling I used to get GMing Oriental Adventures back in the mid-to-late-80s, only the rules are better suited for what I'm trying to do - partially on their own terms, and partially because of the connections they establish between PCs and the shared fiction.

I can tell you that, when I read Worlds & Monsters, my feeling was that these designers had finally identified the heart of D&D, and were describing a world set-up and story structure ("points of light" against a mythic backdrop) that would make it work.

You are inviting me to substitute your experiences and conception of the tradition for my own. With respect, I decline.

 

[pemerton]

4E, as part of its reaction to 3E, tried to put in bounds for characters and challenges of the same level; that you could predict, far better than 3E, where bonuses should be. However, it maintains a huge disparity between what a 1st level character and a 20th level character; their bonuses are significantly different.

MerricB, I've got no disagreement with your analysis.

What I wanted to say was that the "huge disparity" between a 1st level and a 20th level character is what I am calling a story rather than a deep mechanical issue. Because despite the higher bonus of the 20th level character, the default scaling of the mechanical elements with which they are expected to engage in the play of the game means that the underlying maths remains (subject to design errors and approximations) the same.

It's just that the overlaying fiction is of (say) an archmage blowing up a golem rather than an apprentice magic missiling a kobold.

Because of the way that 5e changes the relationship between maths and story (using 4e language, I would say that it has stripped out the 0.5/level from everything) I think that it's version of bounded accuracy will produce quite different story outcomes and story structures from default 4e.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The thing about bounded accuracy... is that it's where D&D started, just because the game didn't progress to really high levels. Every monster in the original game had an AC between 2 and 9. The game lost this as expansions came along, with the demons and devils of Eldritch Wizardry really beginning the process of breaking of what was a relatively bounded system.

You're talking about the first year or so of the game's history, there, I think. That's very old-school, indeed. I'm also not at all sure that restricted level ranges equate to bounded accuracy as 5e finally settled on it. They do equate to, well, restricted levels, like the long-known 'sweet spot' and like 3.x run 'E6.' IIRC, Mearls and his current crop of designers didn't start with 0D&D, in any case, so wouldn't have had your experience of it, first hand (though they said the researched the older eds extensively).

3E then tossed out all thoughts of bounded accuracy (not that there were that many thoughts of such by this point) by having hyper-bonus inflation. No edition of the game had as much of a difference between a 1st level character and a 20th level character when it came to bonuses.

Hmm... in AD&D (1e - it's the ed I memorized when I was a kid, so I'm going with it) a first level fighter would save vs spells on a 17, at 20th (16th even), with a few items, he'd fail only on a 1. He might go from no bonus to hit (16 STR), to wielding a hammer of thunderbolts with Gauntlets of Ogre Power and a Girdle of Storm Giant Strength (+15 to hit) - but, the fighter's attack matrix also improved the whole time, giving him the equivalent of a +2 to hit every-other level (thus 1:1 THACO in 2e, and full BAB in 3e), so that's like a +35 to hit. The 3e fighter's BAB matched that matrix-based advancement, and his STR probably went from 16 or 18, with a feat (+4 or 5 to hit) well into the 20s and a +5 weapon +30 or more to hit. Pretty comparable, really. His saves, OTOH, were abysmal at high level.

It also had little concept of the relation between attack and defense - it was very easy to have attacks that auto-hit, or auto-missed (save criticals) with the same applying to saving throws.

Not that hard in AD&D, either.

4E, as part of its reaction to 3E, tried to put in bounds for characters and challenges of the same level; that you could predict, far better than 3E, where bonuses should be. However, it maintains a huge disparity between what a 1st level character and a 20th level character; their bonuses are significantly different.

Yep, about 20 different, including expected magic and stat bumps and feat-taxes. Compared to 30 or 35 better in 3e or AD&D. Not that meaningful a difference, IMHO. Of course, the AD&D numbers could be substantially different if the fighter just had a stingier DM, he could be right down to just his improvement on the attackmatrix - approximating a +20 over 20 levels (or maybe it was +16 over 16 levels, and 2e took it up to 1:1 THAC0).

5E hearkens back to the early days of oD&D, with lessons learnt from every edition since then.

That's my view of the issue, at least.

It's an interesting one. I tend to see 5e as fitting neatly between 2e and 3e in the ascent of D&D. A tad anachronistic, really, as befits an edition developed at the height of the OSR phenom, I suppose - though not so atavistic as to clearly appeal to that faction.

There are a /lot/ of lapsed AD&D fans out there though, who might like it if they tried it....

 

[Hussar]

The most obvious claim to the DnD tradition is how easily you can convert your character from one edition to the next.

Obviously the jury is still out about how closely 5e follows in that tradition.

The problem is, other than 1e to 2e, it's virtually impossible to convert from 2e to 3e (the conversion documents pegged an 18 percentile strength in the early 20's for example) and 3e to 4e is obviously problematic as well. Compare a 1e character sheet to a 5e character sheet and they are quite obviously from different games.

 

[Hussar]

I don't find the language of "breaking from tradition" very helpful, though. It is very normative, but on no very clear foundation.

For instance, 3E changed the rule that hit dice and CON bonus stopped at name level. It changed the rule that a wizard can't use a sword (s/he can, just with a -4 (?) to hit). Conversely, 4e harks back to Gygax's essays on the metaphysics and game-mechanics of hit points and saving throws.

All revisions to D&D involve changes. But classifying them into ones that break with tradition and ones that don't is fraught. Frankly, it strikes me as ex post projection onto the past.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...t-Big-Reveal-quot-Coming/page67#ixzz3VMFUWvqC

Mercurious does have a point though. 4e did break away from the lore traditions of earlier 3e. They sacrificed a barn full of sacred beef to recreate a whole new set of lore that really did break strongly away from earlier D&D.

 

[Hussar]

[MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] - I think that the bit you missed from [MENTION=3586]MerricB[/MENTION]'s analysis is the reliance on lower level play in AD&D. AD&D in the double digit levels was very, very broken, as you pointed out. Even without going to the extremes you are talking about, it was still ridiculously overpowered. But, in "sweet spot" play, from 1st to name level, things were very much bounded. Even things like Dragons and whatnot didn't really break the bounds. IIRC, red dragons topped out at what, a -2 AC? And that was about as good as it got unless you started looking at unique monsters.

5e has simply (or rather, not so simply, I imagine there was a crapton of work to do this) spread that range over twenty levels.

 

[Tony Vargas]

[MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] - I think that the bit you missed from [MENTION=3586]MerricB[/MENTION]'s analysis is the reliance on lower level play in AD&D.

Nope, I don't think I missed that - rather, I don't see where he said it. He talked about 0D&D being lower-level play, at first, with later supplements changing that, and then straight into 2e pushing for higher level play.

But, in "sweet spot" play, from 1st to name level, things were very much bounded. Even things like Dragons and whatnot didn't really break the bounds. IIRC, red dragons topped out at what, a -2 AC? And that was about as good as it got unless you started looking at unique monsters.

Will-o-wisps had a -8, FWIW. And I'd quibble with the 1e sweet spot getting as low as 1st.

But, I don't think restricted levels to stay in a sweet spot had a lot to do with bounded accuracy. Bounded accuracy was just about smaller numbers - filing the mph readout off the 4e treadmill and acknowledging you weren't going anywhere, as it were.

5e has simply (or rather, not so simply, I imagine there was a crapton of work to do this) spread that range over twenty levels.

There was a lot more to the 'sweet spot' experienced in 3.x and earlier than just bonuses, or even relative bonuses. Class balance (the ill-advised attempt to balance classes over many levels, in classic D&D, particularly) had a lot to do with it, too.

5e still seems to have a sweetspot - like AD&D, 1st level is definitely not part of it, where the upper limit is, I don't know yet - bounded accuracy notwithstanding.

 

[pemerton]

4e did break away from the lore traditions of earlier 3e. They sacrificed a barn full of sacred beef to recreate a whole new set of lore that really did break strongly away from earlier D&D.

Was it a year or so ago we (and plenty of others) were in a big thread on this?

I think 4e breaks away from certain aspects of Planescape lore, and maybe some other world lore that became default in 2nd ed AD&D and 3E.

But I think it does an excellent job of making the classic D&D monster manual coherent, and giving all the humanoids (goblins, kobolds, orcs, gnolls etc) a coherent place in the overall fiction. I've read (and re-read) a lot of D&D monster entries and lore books, and 4e struck me (and continues to strike me) as a part of that tradition, not a break from it.

 

[pemerton]

Bounded accuracy was just about smaller numbers - filing the mph readout off the 4e treadmill and acknowledging you weren't going anywhere, as it were.

I think that's a perfect metaphor!