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!

 

[Rejuvenator]

This seems to be one of those "matter of degree" things. Because this well of stamina is not connected to any other aspects of the game that seem to model stamina (eg hp, fatigue rules, STR checks, Athletics skill, etc), it seems to me pretty obviously metagame. At which point the choice between a pool of uses, and a pool of one-use-each abilities, looks like a gameplay issue rather than a verisimilitude issue.

Not just a matter of degree, but also a degree of concurrence. A lot of mechanics are pretty obviously metagame, and yet simultaneously induce verisimilitude (for many, this occurs upon reading of the rule, or at the very least during gameplay). The choice of a pool of uses vs a pool of one-use-each abilties may reflect the designer's intent to account for both goals for the mindset of the target consumer.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I absolutely think that was the case. The degree to which it mattered varied from table to table, but LFQW was a thing. E6 came out in 2007 before 4e. The Book of Nine Swords was an early draft version of 4e that they abandoned and reworked for 3e. The demand was there.

It is, but there is a countervailing demand for imbalance, caster dominance, and martial archetypes being modeled exclusively with low-player-agency mechanics. The market is divided.

The thing is, WotC, in conceiving and playtesting Next/5e (and watching the devastation of the edition war) figured out that though the market was divided and the two things it wanted incompatible, one side of the divide was long accustomed to having to cope with a D&D that didn't deliver what they wanted, while the other was willing to watch the whole franchise burn rather than give up what they'd had for so long.

Regardless of relative size, the expedient thing to do was to cater to that side. Witness the fact that 5e did exactly that.

However, the key is, "demand for more balance and more things for martials" doesn't equal "demand for powers". 4e powers were WotC's implementation

They were a surprisingly good one, too, in a technical sense. But, no, I don't think the implementation was the key issue. Any implementation that delivered balance between martial and caster archetypes would have received as virulent a reaction from the same crowd, for the same reasons - just with different buzzwords and talking points.

Could you imagine, for instance, if D&D were to do away with the concept of daily caster resources, entirely?

 

[Wicht]

The thing is, WotC,... figured out that though the market was divided... one side of the divide was long accustomed to having to cope with a D&D that didn't deliver what they wanted,

What noble, selfless martyrs!

...while the other was willing to watch the whole franchise burn rather than give up what they'd had for so long.

What a collection of selfish, validation-seeking savages!

 

[Tony Vargas]

There's nothing selfless about fixing up or working around shortcomings in a game.

'Selfish' doesn't exactly fully capture the waging of the edition war, either, for that matter.

 

[TwoSix]

It is, but there is a countervailing demand for imbalance, caster dominance, and martial archetypes being modeled exclusively with low-player-agency mechanics. The market is divided.

I demand imbalance, martial dominance, and low player agency mechanics for magical characters. I'm calling it "Warblades & Warlocks".

 

[Wicht]

Because, nothing quite beats out a "caster dominance" debate for making a thread really hum...

 

[TwoSix]

Because, nothing quite beats out a "caster dominance" debate for making a thread really hum...

I know, it took 700 posts for this thread to really get started!

 

[Rejuvenator]

What a collection of selfish, validation-seeking savages!

It's also the savages' fault that they didn't know how to correctly express their enjoyment of asymmetry. One biased reporter even went so far as to stage a fake protest scene and had the savages hold up signs and chant "We demand imbalance, we demand imbalance!" It was a complete fiasco for the savages' cause.

 

[Mercurius]

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

Of course. And when I wrote "breaking" I don't mean "severing" as in a compound bone fracture. I mean more diverging or veering from the main direction of. Achtung Baby was still U2, but it "broke from the tradition" that they had established in the 80s - at least for many fans. In this context, it seems that a large number of people felt that 4E diverged from the core D&D tradition enough to feel like it did not adequately carry the flag of "true" D&D.

Again, I'm not saying that this is true, just that it is how a large number of people felt and a major factor in why 4E wasn't fully embraced by the community.

Only bad history, or apology h 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.

We always revise history, whether individually (autobiography) or collectively. No one called the Renaissance by that name in 1500, but we can see now that it was a period of immense cultural growth and transformation that pivoted Europe and much of the world from the Middle Ages into the Modern Age. I wouldn't call that "bad history." I think the mistake people make is in thinking that history is somehow a factual record of events and miss that there is a mythic, human element - how we remember things. In other words, history is story. If various technological and societal innovations hadn't occurred after 1500 and the world had stepped back into a second Medieval period, then what we now call the "Renaissance" might have been called something like the "Interregnum" or the "False Revival." The word Renaissance only makes sense in light of what happened after.

So in terms of teleology, I would say that the telos of history is now. So it is totally appropriate to consider how past events have led up to and formed this moment. This isn't as much projecting teleology onto past events, practices and beliefs, but looking back at them in light of how things are, seeing how things led up to this moment.

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.

Right. We can pick out any number of things or combination of things to find similarities and differences in the various editions. ByronD would call confirmation bias. But this is a good example of what I was saying about the difference in the way that you and I think and communicate; as I see it, you focus on and seemingly require far more specificity about things, while I tend to look for the overall feeling or vibe. Another way to put it is that you seem to emphasize parts while I emphasize wholes. Maybe that is too broad of a generalization, but that's part of my point!

But back to the numbers, they were being used to emphasize a point - that 4E felt like a larger jump (or divergence) from 3E, and from earlier editions, than many were comfortable with. The exact numbers don't matter because they aren't factual or even real - and they depend upon the individual.

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.

Yes, I fully agree. As I said, the numbers depend upon the individual, so you could say all are right (or wrong, depending on how you want to look at it). But it does seem that there are groups of people that gravitate around certain broad "views of tradition," such as the OSR folks, the d20/3E/Pathfinder folks, and the 4E folks.

I personally see "D&D" as a kind of Platonic Idea of which there are infinite possible versions, iterations, and manifestations. All are "true," all are valid, but some are more resonant with different individualities, generational zeitgeists, and cultural mentalities.

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.

No, I am more asking if you can see how for a large number of folks--those that rejected 4E, to whatever degree--it (4e) broke with the tradition of D&D enough that they wanted something more "personally resonant" with the Platonic Idea of D&D.

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

All interesting, valid points. But for whatever reason, a lot of folks didn't have the same experience as you. For a lot of folks there were aspects of 4E that obfuscated what you are talking about, making it feel too "video gamey," Warcraftian, etc etc.

Again, I'm not talking about what is true in a factual, measurable sense, but more in the Jungian sense of being "psychic realities." Carl Jung diverged from other early psychologists in that he didn't try to determine whether what someone was saying was true or not, but why it was meaningful for the individual. So when people accuse 4E of being too much like a MMORG, one approach is to provide lists of why that isn't true, but it negates their actual internal, psychic experience. They feel that it is too much like an MMORG; that is a valid, psychic reality to them. Rather, we can--in a Jungian sense--try to understand why they feel that way, and see how it might be valid - if only for them.

Just as I can read your list and understand how 4E worked for you as a worthy carrier of the "D&D essence."

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.

No I am not, and I'm sorry if you think that is my intention - I can assure you that it is not. By talking about the "space-between" or the "vibe and feeling," I am merely saying that the experience of a game or edition isn't only about specific rules or combination of rules, it is also about other less tangible elements - anything from art and presentation to the fluff text, the basic assumptions of the game, etc.

Maybe for you all of that is wrapped up in specific rules, but time and time again I have seen people emphasize the art or the flavor text or the vibe of the game and how that influences their affinity (or lack thereof) for it. For some people the art doesn't matter, while for others (that are, perhaps, more visually oriented) it is huge.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Any "Reveal" in any of these pages of debate?

Not that i noticed, having finsihed skimming. I predict a TV deal for Dragonlance. BTW who owns the TV rights anyway.