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!

 

[Tony Vargas]

And here plain as day is the biggest difference between the two implementations of maneuvers in the systems... one is a set of one-use abilities while the other is a pool of "uses" to fuel maneuvers... One lines up pretty seamlessly with the fiction of drawing on a trained reserve to accomplish special fighting moves... while the other one seems to imply the same fiction but the modelling seems off. You want to call it a game issue fine, whatever but it certainly caused a certain level of dissonance in verisimilitude for my group when we tried to give 4e a chance.

So, the fact that a 4e fighter can't trade in his higher-level encounter encounter - or more 'exhausting' daily - for an extra use of his lower-level encounter, even though all are tied to stamina-related recovery, is 'dissonant' enough to wreck the game for you? But, the fact that the battlemaster can't trade in his Combat Surge or Second Wind for more CS dice, even though all three have stamina-related explanations and relate back to stamina-related recovery, is in no way troubling? No 'dissonance' there?

Now, I'm not asserting that I know your motivations better than you do, nor will I ascribe a specific, more plausible, motivation to you personally. But you have, in trying to refute the idea, yet again, illustrated the kind of inconsistency Hussar claims to have observed.

 

[Iosue]

I'm not quite keeping up with the thread velocity, but wanted to respond to this.

Maybe. It's certainly true that I entered AD&D via Basic.

I can still honestly report that I've never encountered this interpretation before! I don't know if I like it or not.

I like it, personally. While structured slightly different (class based vs weapon based or universal standard) it is essentially the same as in 4e and 5e respectively.

Again, maybe. I see a big difference between 2nd-ed style "be rewarded for playing in character" and "indie"-style "be rewarded for playing to or against character so as to generate drama/complications", but others might not.

It's a "devil's in the details" kinda thing, IMO. I think that on the ground, there's a HUGE difference. If I'm coming from my friends game where I get Inspiration for giving him the giggles and I play in your game where Inspiration is based on creating complications, that's a huge adjustment to make. But in the aggregate, the style of play is roughly the same: Inspiration distributed as a metagame resource based on a standard decided by the DM/Group. It would, after all, be a similar big adjustment were I to go to a game where the DM gives Inspiration for giving good role-play "in character".

Thanks, interesting. That seems a little bit LotR-ish.

If we're talking LotR movies, I agree. Party vs. Goblins and Cave Troll. Party vs. Uruks and Lurtz. Party vs Many, Many Uruks and Many Lurtz-level captains. Party vs. Orcs and Witch-King. Party vs. Orcs, Trolls, and Sauron.

For me this is one of those through-lines from 4e. 4e introduced the concept of Solo monster, often accompanied by lieutenants and minions. 5e foregrounds that approach with the Legendary distinction and Lair actions.

I think I still stand by my comment of four years ago, that I reposted upthread:

I apologize for missing that when you first post it, as it answers my question very well! And I think I would have 100% agreed with you. In fact, I think it is indeed likely that they had some research that suggested that. But then, I'm of the opinion that even when I can't bring myself to personally like some of WotC's past decisions, I find it hard to fault them for making those decisions. There is a part of me, in my heart of hearts (perhaps not entirely rational!), that looks at 3e as a complete and utter betrayal. And to be honest, even if it had been 5e that came out at that time, would have felt the same. (One might say there's a part of me that's VERY attached to descending AC and AD&D's classic Saving Throws.) But I try to look at it from their point of view, their decisions make sense. Even when I don't personally like it, even when those decisions look, in hindsight, to be wrong, I can see how why WotC might go the way they did.

But the question of whether or not there is market demand isn't a normative question. It's not about (for instance) "being true to" or "turning one's back on" the tradition of D&D. It seems pretty clear to me that there are OSR players and authors who believe that what they're doing is truer to the tradition of D&D than what WotC is doing. They're not obliged to change that view just because WotC's market is 100 or 1000 times bigger than the market for their games.

I too, find some of the rhetoric as taking things too personally -- "turn their backs on", or "fired the fanbase", or even as I wrote above, "complete and utter betrayal." Those might be perfectly understandable personal reactions, but not indicative of sober assessment.

OTOH, I don't find "breaking with tradition" necessarily in the same vein. "Turn their back on tradition", yes, definitely. But breaking with tradition is something every edition does to some extent -- and that extent is the question. IMO (but perhaps not yours, and I respect that), it is no more normative to say 4e broke with tradition -- possibly too far for at least a significant minority -- than it would be to say that 4e pushed the envelope too far, with pushing the envelope being just the phrase the 4e designers used for their process. I don't think it can be denied that 4e tried to innovate. Innovation is a double-edged sword -- sometimes it works, sometimes it comes back to bite you. Where I agree with Mercurius is 4e's innovation was not palatable for some people in a non-specific, additive, emotional way. While technically the blame for that falls on the innovator (WotC), I do not view that as doing wrong, anymore than Gary Gygax did wrong by not presenting D&D in a way that appealed to Ken St. Andre.

Anticipating and supplying markets for these sorts of luxury leisure goods requires commercial cleverness. The goal of that commercial cleverness is profit (and at a reasonable rate of return relative to other opportunities that were available - given that RPG design is not all that capital intensive, I would think that most of the relevant investment is going to be in salaries). If someone wants to argue that WotC would have been financially better off not going down the 4e path then I'm very interested to hear the argument - personally I'm a little doubtful, but I'm not sure that anyone posting here has got sufficient data (including reliable projections for what money WotC might have made or lost had it stuck to 3E, how much money the 4e-inspired boardgames have made, what the profit was on DDI and what alternative income stream would take its place under the 3E scenario,etc).

Agreed.

My feeling is that if 4e really was a net financial disaster for the group, they wouldn't have been given two years to develop 5e. But that's just untutored intuition.

Also agreed.

 

[Imaro]

So, the fact that a 4e fighter can't trade in his higher-level encounter encounter - or more 'exhausting' daily - for an extra use of his lower-level encounter, even though all are tied to stamina-related recovery, is 'dissonant' enough to wreck the game for you? But, the fact that the battlemaster can't trade in his Combat Surge or Second Wind for more CS dice, even though all three have stamina-related explanations and relate back to stamina-related recovery, is in no way troubling? No 'dissonance' there?

First, it was one of many things that turned me and my group away from 4e... I never said it was the only thing or that it "wrecked the game for me"... just want to keep things in perspective here... I reiterate there were numerous things and their implementation in 4e that ultimately caused me to become dissatisfied with the game.

To answer your question... I honestly don't follow your logic... Why would one be able to trade in Combat Surge (I'm going to assume you mean Action Surge here???) or Second Wind (which states specifically that this is a limited well of stamina that does one specific thing) for more combat superiority dice... they are different abilities which I assume require not just stamina but also different training... this is further backed up by the fact that anyone can learn maneuvers and gain superiority dice through a feat... but one cannot learn action surge or second wind in the same way...

As an example to further clarify the point I am making here... cycling increases your overall stamina but you can't decide to trade in your cycling stamina and expect to run a marathon without ever having jogged. You need further training and building up your stamina within the realm of running to specifically do that... while they both require stamina they are two different things.

On the other hand 4e tells me that two abilities that are supposed to be the same type somehow have specific, finite, individual reserves of stamina (unless I am a Slayer then for some reason I can actually do the same maneuver more than once... go figure) that only allow each of them to ever be performed once until I rest for 5 mins or more... regardless of how many of these other maneuvers I can still perform...

Yeah sorry mechanics, implementation and how they correlate with the fiction are different.

Now, I'm not asserting that I know your motivations better than you do, nor will I ascribe a specific, more plausible, motivation to you personally, but, you have, again, illustrated the kind of inconsistency Hussar claims to have observed. Maybe that observation will be helpful to someone who wasn't accustomed to seeing that sort of thing every day, during the edition war.

And again... they are different mechanical models, there is no inconsistency in liking how maneuvers were modeled in one but not the other... no matter how hard you stretch to try and create one.

 

[Tony Vargas]

First, it was one of many things that turned me and my group away from 4e... I never said it was the only thing or that it "wrecked the game for me"... just want to keep things in perspective here... I reiterate there were numerous things and their implementation in 4e that ultimately caused me to become dissatisfied with the game.

Are you sure it's not so much a collection of nominally unrelated things, as what all those things did, as a whole?

Like I said, I think it would be a lot more illuminating to step back and look at the bigger picture of what exploits meant as part of the game as a whole, as contrasted to what maneuvers mean to 5e.

But, if you want to keep digging for rationales....

Why would one be able to trade in Action Surge or Second Wind (which states specifically that this is a limited well of stamina that does one specific thing) for more combat superiority dice... they are different abilities which I assume require not just stamina but also different training...

Each 4e exploit presumably would have required different training, too. Likewise, battlemaster maneuvers would also presumably each require different training. If you object to the 4e fighter not having his encounter-recharge powers 'pooled,' why is it OK for the 5e fighters' stamina-and-training-based features to be silo'd?

Obviously, that's inconsistent. So, it's not dissonance or whether a power is single-use or in a pool that's the root of the problem. I don't see how diving deeper and deeper into smaller and more insignificant differences will shore up the rationalization. ByronD suggested it could be the different 'context' each of the similar mechanics is in that's the culprit.

Martial exploits available to all fighters in the context of a game where spells are gained in similar quantity and merely of greater variety, might be offensive. While, conversely, maneuvers available only to one archetype, that are, in context, fewer and lower impact as well as less varied than spells, might be acceptable. Maybe we could examine those differences?

this is further backed up by the fact that anyone can learn maneuvers and gain superiority dice through a feat... but one cannot learn action surge or second wind in the same way...

They'd have to MC to get those abilities. Again, not terribly different in the fiction. But that just points to them being more remarkable reserves of stamina - the kind you might trade for multiple CS dice, if this were about verisimilitude.

As an example to further clarify the point I am making here... cycling increases your overall stamina but you can't decide to trade in your cycling stamina and expect to run a marathon without ever having jogged. You need further training and building up your stamina within the realm of running to specifically do that... while they both require stamina they are two different things.

I'm fine with that. It's the kind of things 4vengers said when confronted with being too 'tired' to do one exploit, but still able to do another. You're the one who was insisting that sort of thing was dissonant:

And here plain as day is the biggest difference between the two implementations of maneuvers in the systems... one is a set of one-use abilities while the other is a pool of "uses" to fuel maneuvers... One lines up pretty seamlessly with the fiction of drawing on a trained reserve to accomplish special fighting moves... while the other one seems to imply the same fiction but the modelling seems off. You want to call it a game issue fine, whatever but it certainly caused a certain level of dissonance in verisimilitude...

'Inconsistency' is putting it mildly.

On the other hand 4e tells me that two abilities that are supposed to be the same type somehow have specific, finite, individual reserves of stamina

They have the same recharge mechanism. That's the only verisimilitude or in-fiction sense in which they're the same 'type.' Action Surge, CS Dice, and Second Wind are all short-or-long-rest recharge. You claimed you were OK with Second Wind, which healed you, having a separate reserve. Fighters had encounter powers that restored hps for them, too - that'd be pretty different from, say, Come & Get It. So they don't draw on the same reserve or same training. Just like Action Surge and Second Wind don't in 5e.

(unless I am a Slayer then for some reason I can actually do the same maneuver more than once... go figure)

That 'reason' was that you only had the one, Power Attack. Fairly straightforward, really.

 

[Shasarak]

So, the fact that a 4e fighter can't trade in his higher-level encounter encounter - or more 'exhausting' daily - for an extra use of his lower-level encounter, even though all are tied to stamina-related recovery, is 'dissonant' enough to wreck the game for you? But, the fact that the battlemaster can't trade in his Combat Surge or Second Wind for more CS dice, even though all three have stamina-related explanations and relate back to stamina-related recovery, is in no way troubling? No 'dissonance' there?

Maybe a Psionic type power pool would be less dissonant and more accurately model a "Stamina" type mechanic?

 

[Tony Vargas]

Maybe a Psionic type power pool would be less dissonant and more accurately model a "Stamina" type mechanic?

I guess that would depend on which edition it appeared in.

'Pool' mechanics, be they psionics, mana, stamina, or whatever, have their positives and negatives, of course. They can be hard to balance, since they lend themselves to spamming low-cost disicplines/spells/whatever, or going nova with high-level ones, and the like. The 'silo'd 1/recharge approach does reduce the impact of any single over-powered option slipping through, since it's only useable once, instead of being spammed until out of slots/mana/points/etc. FWIW.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=6680772]Iosue[/MENTION], thanks for the thoughtful reply!

 

[pemerton]

Here you state that the superitority dice are "pretty obviously metagame" because they are not connected to any other aspect of the game that model stamina... I was showing you that your assertion (and stated reason for them being pretty obviously metagame) were flat out wrong... it connects to rests an aspect of the game used to model stamina.

Pointing to the fact that they are recovered by a rest doesn't point to anything different from 4e, where encounter powers are also recovered by a rest.

So I assumed that you were pointing to the fact that they are "pooled" rather than "siloed". And with that in mind, I said they seem pretty metagame to me, because they do not connect to other aspect of the game that model stamina depletion (such as action surges, second wind, hit point loss, exhaustion rules, etc).

That doesn't mean they have to seem metagame to you. You may have some understanding of human exertion which means that tripping people wears you out in a different way from action surging. Or there may be some broader contextual feature, perhaps along the lines that [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] has been pointing to, that makes a difference.

Why would one be able to trade in Combat Surge (I'm going to assume you mean Action Surge here???) or Second Wind (which states specifically that this is a limited well of stamina that does one specific thing) for more combat superiority dice... they are different abilities which I assume require not just stamina but also different training

But why does the fighter forget the training after 2 or 6 or however many goes, until s/he rests for an hour?

Or if the fighter remembers the training, why can't s/he repurpose the Wheeties she ate for breakfast intending to power up her action surges to power up some superiority dice instead?

One lines up pretty seamlessly with the fiction of drawing on a trained reserve to accomplish special fighting moves... while the other one seems to imply the same fiction but the modelling seems off.

See, I just don't feel the force of either of these sentences. In respect of the first, I don't really get the notion of a "trained reserve" - I don't know what it is meant to be, in the fiction. In real life I don't have one set of "jogging reserves" and another set of "cycling reserves" and another set of "skipping reserves" - if doing one of those things wears me out and leaves me wanting to rest, then I am tired per se.

It's true that if I have tired arms from (say) carrying a heavy load, then I may still be able to run - because the muscles in my arms are worn out but the muscles in my legs are not. But I don't really see how this works when I compare superiority dice to action surge - my arms are too tired to try and disarm my enemy, but not too tired to attack twice as hard as I normally do?

These are the reasons why, for me, I see all these rationing mechanics as metagame devices.

 

[pemerton]

Maybe a Psionic type power pool would be less dissonant and more accurately model a "Stamina" type mechanic?

There are RPG systems in which spells come directly of stamina (so CON is literally a spell-point stat). Tunnels & Trolls is an early example. Burning Wheel is a more recent example. There are probably others, too, that I don't know about.

The problem with applying this to disarming or tripping is that disarming or tripping someone is, for practical purposes in the context of D&D (which has a very non-granular model of combat exertion), no more tiring than stabbing them. They're all much the same sort of weapon play. If trying to disarm someone with a sword costs you a stamina point, then so should trying to kill them!

The design reason for rationing these abilities via superiority dice is not because there is some actual, real world, endurance phenomenon the game is trying to model. It is to allow the benefits to be mechanically substantial while avoiding overpowered spamming.

 

[Remathilis]

"Fighters cast spells." A favorite edition-war-era h4ter lie, much repeated as a reason to hate 4e. 5e comes along, and fighters - specifically with the Eldritch Knight archetype - /actually/ cast spells. Nobody cares.

Because it's not the detail, it's the context and what's accomplished. Fighters using exploits and wizards using spells in 4e, all under the common AEDU framework, allowed the classes to be better-balanced than ever before (and, obviously, better balanced than they appear to be in 5e). The power-block format also made how each exploit, prayer, & spell worked mechanically, much clearer, reducing the need for ad-hoc rulings to keep the game flowing.

In stark contrast, the EK actually casting spells has none of those effects. Spells have one sort of write-up, totems another, manuevers and ki powers yet others, and so forth. There's not even an appearance of balance among the classes.

In spite of the similarity (fighter casting spells), the differences are clear, and preferences can be formed accordingly.

Wow. I've seen some rhetorical fallacies being tossed around, but this one wins the thread.

First off, the EK is not the default mode the fighter runs in. Of the three fighter archetypes, it's the most radical departure from the stock model. If I want my fighter to cast spells, I have to opt in to it. In 4e, before 2010, I was forced to use the same mechanical system as the wizard's spells (adeu) even if I didn't want "spells".

The power system gave the aesthetic of every class looking the same. Each class was given page after page of dry, technical blocks with maybe one page of italics text to explain what you are supposed to be doing in game. On paper, each class was a barren landscape of jargon, prefaced with about half a page of fluff. I'll take evocative chaos over bland balance.

To be honest, they should have released Essentials first. The knight and thief out the gate would have appeased many, as would the domain and school systems of warpriest and mage. The flavor hewed closer to classic D&D lore as well. But instead, we got Andy Collins Presents Dungeons & Dragons, and lots of people were turned off by it. Then again, the fact essentials bombed probably says by the time they realized one size doesn't fit all, all that were playing were the diehards who liked adeu.

So maybe presentation does matter. But your example is poor at best. There is a word for classes that are perfectly balanced because the all use one chassis to build them: samey. I'm glad even as far back as 2010, WotC started to see that.