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!

 

[Imaro]

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.

I don't think it really matters either way since my point was that you stating martial powers ruined the game for me was false...

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

*Sigh* are you really interested in knowing why or are we just going to keep going until the point where the abstraction doesn't line up and you can say gotcha!! If so let me know now and we can end this conversation...

I don't disagree that in 4e every maneuver would need different (in a specific sense) training just like maneuvers in 5e... but it's like learning a martial art or fencing... the maneuvers you learn are part of a larger umbrella. There are 2 parts we are discussing here that you seem to be confusing... the training to perform the maneuver and the conditioning (stamina) to perform the maneuver. While both are necessary to pull off the maneuvers/powers... 4e then silos off the stamina to perform each specific maneuvers into a discrete piece that can only be used every 5 mins or 8 hours after resting...but just that particular piece. Yes this causes dissonance for me because your conditioning from the art you practice should be applicable to all of those maneuvers, in the same way that if a runner can run 10 miles total, straight in a day... he doesn't run 2 miles then get tired and have to rest 5 mins before running 2 miles again... but can still run 10 miles straight without resting... just not 2 miles before a 5 min rest...


The 4e martial powers and the hoops necessary to justify how they are designed and function in the game... everything from stamina to genre enforcement which I'm sure you as a 4e fan are familiar with are IMO a bunch of excuses to justify a mechanic that causes dissonance for many (never said all or @pemerton specifically) people... and most are unsatisfactory because they either force a playstyle or don't adequately explain all the powers present in the game...

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.

Please stop doing that if we are discussing... don't ask me a question and then tell me what the "obvious" answer is... I didn't get deeper into details above but I have clarified the same difference I stated earlier. If anything it seems like you are diving deeper and deeper into the mechanics to try and rationalize some way in which they are the same mechanically or in the realm of verisimilitude when... at least for me... they are not. I have explained why twice now and yet I'm sure you will now focus on some other minor detail to explain why it's inconsistent for me to like one and not the other...and I'll explain my reasoning again... and so on.

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?

Perhaps for you but I gave my reason above... try reading it again and accepting it as opposed to answering the question you posed to me...

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.

Right... but it shows that they are separate training/disciplines/whatever... since learning one does not bestow the ability or stamina necessary for the other one... do you believe that the training and stamina to be a boxer gives you the same training or stamina necessary to be a long distance runner? If not why would training your body to endure a hit better, also allow you to parry more times?? That's what you're claiming should enhance verisimilitude with 5e... not seeing it.

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.

I never said 4e martial powers and 5e maneuvers were the same... I was commenting on the fact that @pemerton claimed they were both tied to stamina since they used the same recharge mechanism... nice try though.

In fact my whole point has been that they are different and that is why it is not inconsistent to like one but not the other... I mean which one is it, if they are different then there is no inconsistency...

As to your statements about 4e martial powers... and martial characters also had powers that were just same + more damage which would use the same training and reserves of stamina...the fact that these exist makes your point about the healing power irrelevant.

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

Yeah but no one else can use the same encounter power more than once... remember were talking verisimilitude here, right? You're giving me a game reason above... give me an in-fiction reason why one class can allow the use of the same encounter power more than once but another class cannot?

 

[pemerton]

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.

I think this is another of those things that is reader/player-dependent.

When I first read the PHB for 4e, I didn't get an aesthetic of every class looking the same. I could see the fighter's STR-based melee AoEs and spike damage powers, the warlord's inspirational buffs, the CHA-paladin's projection of divine grace, etc.

I've read a lot of 4e power blocks, but have probably read less than half of that italic flavour-text. In most cases I don't need that to tell me what is happening in the game when the ability is used: I can tell from the ability name and its mechanical details.

For me, it harks back to the tradition of B/X and OD&D spells: names that are descriptive ("fireball"), evocative ("contact other plane") or both ("bless"), clearly-presented mechanics ("creatures in the area take Xd6 damage" - 4e adds the keyword "fire"), and imagination informed by an understanding of what that stuff means in mechanical terms doing the rest.

 

[pemerton]

it's like learning a martial art or fencing... the maneuvers you learn are part of a larger umbrella. There are 2 parts we are discussing here that you seem to be confusing... the training to perform the maneuver and the conditioning (stamina) to perform the maneuver. While both are necessary to pull off the maneuvers/powers... 4e then silos off the stamina to perform each specific maneuvers into a discrete piece that can only be used every 5 mins or 8 hours after resting...but just that particular piece. Yes this causes dissonance for me because your conditioning from the art you practice should be applicable to all of those maneuvers

I am very interested to learn more about this conditioning, which means you can only try and disarm a person twice without a rest, but can keep trying to stab him or her all day long.

 

[Imaro]

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.

I think there's some wires getting crossed here... I haven't commented on what you should like or believe at all when it comes to 5e maneuvers... I have been soleley speaking for myself... now [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] and [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] seem to be trying to make a case that because I found 4e martial powers to cause dissonance for me and my group it is inconsistent that 5e maneuvers do not...

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

He doesn't "forget the training"...

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?

I've explained this before, all stamina is not necessarily the same... the endurance to be hit and shrug it off is not the same as the endurance to keep pushing your muscles to do more and so on. I'm sorry but this seems self evident to me... just because you can run for miles doesn't in turn mean you can choose to instead wrestle for hours....

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.

I am going to disagree here... I can be drained from sparring but still be capable of jogging at a steady pace. In fact I've done it before.

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.

Okay action surge doesn't allow you to attack twice as hard as you normally do...it allows you to make another attack... a hail mary of sorts if you will... that is a sudden burst of energy.

Trying to disarm someone requires much more complicated and precise movements which are harder to do when tired. If you don't see a difference cool but I definitely do. I've been tired and still been able to take a wild swing or rush someone... but trying to perform precise movements like a disarm when tired would be much harder...

 

[Imaro]

I am very interested to learn more about this conditioning, which means you can only try and disarm a person twice without a rest, but can keep trying to stab him or her all day long.

One is a precise and more difficult movement that is much harder to do when tired... one is not... it's pretty simple.

EDIT: On another note... I would like to hear about the conditioning/training that allows me to be fresh in combat but as soon as I use a specific move I cannot use said specific move again (but can use more strenuous moves) for the entire fight until I rest for 5 or 8 hours...

 

[pemerton]

On another note... I would like to hear about the conditioning/training that allows me to be fresh in combat but as soon as I use a specific move I cannot use said specific move again (but can use more strenuous moves) for the entire fight until I rest for 5 or 8 hours...

There is no such training. That's why I've said, in my first post on this issue, and have repeated in at least one post since, that I see all these rationing mechanics as metagame devices. Their function is to stop spamming.

What events happen in the fiction to make the spamming non-feasible is up to the game participants' narration and imaginations. A bit like the AD&D 1 minute round - we use our imaginations, supplemented by narration from the player or GM, to fill in the details.

 

[Imaro]

There is no such training. That's why I've said, in my first post on this issue, and have repeated in at least one post since, that I see all these rationing mechanics as metagame devices. Their function is to stop spamming.

What events happen in the fiction to make the spamming non-feasible is up to the game participants' narration and imaginations. A bit like the AD&D 1 minute round - we use our imaginations, supplemented by narration from the player or GM, to fill in the details.

Okay maybe I got confused because you brought up the rest/stamina connection for 4e earlier in the discussion... which I am now unsure as to why exactly that particular point was brought up... But 5e doesn't have a mechanism to stop spamming so another way in which the mechanics are different... so again I'm at a loss as to [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] and [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s assertion that liking one is inconsistent with disliking the other...implementation is key.


For me this is also another difference in the verisimilitude area since I think being able to do the same moves more than once in a fight is plausible and realistic... and because I do not ascribe to a playstyle where I am trying to create a specific story...or replicate any one genre such as one where cool maneuvers only get used once per fight...

 

[Mercurius]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], great post - I really enjoyed reading about your feel for the game, which I really respect and find a lot of resonance with. I think you are being perhaps a bit overly defensive and assuming that I'm doing something that I'm not intending to do. Please take this on good faith - I'm not trying to sway your view, not trying to change how you feel for the game, what your preferences are, or tell you how you should think. I can understand how you'd feel this way, especially with your remarks about your experience over the last 6 years. Maybe you're assuming I'm just more of the same old cavalry in different form, I don't know. But again, that isn't my intention.

Actually, this is an element of this whole discussion that I find problematic - when people insist that you're either on one side or the other of the 3E-4E edition war (I'm not saying that you're doing this, just speaking in general). I've found that problematic because I've never felt strongly in one camp or the other. But I am interested in the "meta-conversation," on the history of the game, on the differences between the editions--both in terms of rules and feel--and on how different people resonate with different editions. This sometimes veers dangerously close to "edition warry" territory, but I am very careful to skirt the edge and it is never my intention to troll or attack or incite skirmishes. But I do think that these sorts of conversations can and should be had without going into outright combat, so I appreciate this back-and-forth with you.

Anyhow, not really sure what more to say at this point except to reiterate what I said in the first paragraph of this post. I maintain the view that I stated previously, that I see D&D as akin to a Platonic archetype, and different people--depending upon their individual mentality and taste, as well as the generational zeitgeist--resonate with different versions (or editions) of the game to varying degrees. It would be foolish to say that one edition captures the archetype more fully in an objective sense; I think the most we can say is to what degree different editions of the game capture that essence for as many people as possible - which is not a qualitative judgement. I mean, clearly popularity and quality--while not being mutually exclusive--aren't necessarily intrinsically connected.

 

[Remathilis]

I think this is another of those things that is reader/player-dependent.

When I first read the PHB for 4e, I didn't get an aesthetic of every class looking the same. I could see the fighter's STR-based melee AoEs and spike damage powers, the warlord's inspirational buffs, the CHA-paladin's projection of divine grace, etc.

I've read a lot of 4e power blocks, but have probably read less than half of that italic flavour-text. In most cases I don't need that to tell me what is happening in the game when the ability is used: I can tell from the ability name and its mechanical details.

I didn't. I saw columns of powers that read like math problems: "Ability A vs Defense B, Hit: do XdY + A damage and add condition Z" I saw fancy names, but I had no idea what a "steel serpent strike" was (or why I could do it only once in an encounter) nor did I get what exactly was happening when the wizard cast "darkening flame" (save for that strip of italic text). While there were some details you could suss out with practice (like attacks that hit reflex vs AC) unfortunately everything (swinging a sword, casting a spell, or summoning angels) all fell into that same format, which made them all look like similar actions.

Come essentials, they put a little blurb above most powers that "described" the power in action (better than the often concise italics did). That was better, but it was a return to whole language (with a power-block summary below).

4e's greatest failing, imho, isn't powers or such, but the fact that they allowed stat blocks to stand in for description. Be it powers, monsters, or magic items, WotC produced dozens of books that read like catalogs of color-coded jargon that only showed numbers and forced the reader to make them fiction. Rather than balance the two, they let one stand in for the other, and it created an illusion that the numbers were the only important thing about them.

 

[Tony Vargas]

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".

Of course, you put "spells" in quotes, because you know they weren't spells. 'Casting spells' isn't the issue. As you go on to spell out:

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.

Almost as if I had asked for another example of this same sort of inconsistency, you provide one. The claim is that using a similar mechanical format for different things makes them aesthetically 'the same.'

Now, we can find multiple examples of that happening in each modern edition. Skills, for instance, all use the same format and the same resolution, yet they're not objected to as 'samey.' The wizard, cleric, and druid use the same format, same casting system, and even actually share some of the same spells amongst themselves, but no objection.

Clearly the objection is not to mechanics using a consistent format, but to what they mean in the broader context of the whole game:

I'll take evocative chaos over bland balance.
...
So maybe presentation does matter. There is a word for classes that are perfectly balanced because the all use one chassis to build them: samey.

So, the objection, is, at bottom, to balance, itself. Once viewed in that light, the inconsistency is resolved.

I don't think it really matters either way since my point was that you stating martial powers ruined the game for me was false...

You reject limited-use mechanics in one system, but not in another. That's the inconsistency, you also said their 'dissonance' contributed to your rejection of 4e, which is tangental, yes, and not that interesting. You go on to provide more and more detail to explain how one instance is different, yet each new objection you uncover in one turns out to be present in the other, as well. The inconsistency remains.

It could be resolved, but, not, I suspect, without looking at the bigger picture rather than deeper detail.

*Sigh* are you really interested in knowing why or are we just going to keep going until the point where the abstraction doesn't line up and you can say gotcha!!

If so let me know now and we can end this conversation...

I'm not sure what you're getting at with the not-lining-up 'gotchya' - AFAICT, that's where we started - but the rest of your response seems to wander from the topic at hand, and you do keep presenting two different rationales for things that are essentially the same, with the only difference being the context in which they occur.

While it would be nice to take a step back and see if we could find out what about that context is problematic in one case, and excuses any issues in the other, your unwillingness to do so merely leaves an example of the kind of inconsistencies we were talking about, sadly unresolved.