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!

 

[TwoSix]

I think you probably need a bite attack for this one... do some foxes attack with claws?

I'm not sure...but what does the fox say?

 

[Manbearcat]

I think you probably need a bite attack for this one... do some foxes attack with claws?

Not really, no. They're omnivores and their live prey are exceedingly small (bugs, reptiles, etc). They typically pounce, hold with their claws and shred with their canines...S.O.P for their family.

But this fox. She is a prissy little fairy. Getting her muzzle drenched in gore is right out. I think she would go the bat-bat-bat route (like a kitty) with her claws (they do have nasty claws and some are great climbers/diggers) when she can't ensorcel folks.

 

[Manbearcat]

I'm not sure...but what does the fox say?

LOL. WHAT? Oh man, literally gutted. What the hell is wrong with this stupid (and by stupid I mean awesome of course) world we live in?

 

[Remathilis]

Well, there were some pretty close guesses...

[sblock=Reveal]Dahlia is an eladrin fey warlock who as cursed into the form of a cat by a spiteful evil fey queen. Her claws are a result of her cat form, eyebite her former warlock power. Lure of the Wild and Undeniable Beauty are abilities that reflect her cute, harmless appearance (augmented by fey glamour). Lastly, Step through the Mists is the remnant of her Eladrin Fey Step ability. [/sblock]

Of course, I had the idea before I designed the stat block so I built it around that notion. You all took her stats and built something else unique with it. Which I guess shows that both methods have validity, and that there should be support for both (5e's MM does that, by giving me several paragraphs of fluff and then a concise stat block that is just the facts m'am.)

 

[Tony Vargas]

My experience was very different. Reading the 4e Monster Manuals and players' manuals (not the general rules, but the power lists) makes me want to see these things in play (and to imagine what might happen in the course of such play).

That's not really that different from my experience. I remember my old group going through the PH1 for the first time, and being excited by what the powers could do - particularly fighter and rogue powers, for obvious reasons. A bunch of hobbyist can look through even a dry, technical manual and have those kinds of reactions.

And, sure, there was flavor stuff in 4e. It drops hints about Nerath and Arkhosia and so forth. It has sidebars about what the power sources represent and stuff like that. On balance, though, it didn't compromise being a decent reference book to be a better read.

It's not the same as reading a story, obviously. But I don't really read RPG books for story.

I appreciated the readability approach in Storyteller, even as I was frustrated by the lack of adequate indexes and crunch. I liked having good rules I could fairly easily look up in 4e - and the best of the bad lot of Essentials core books was the pure-reference Compendium - but I didn't ever read /everything/ in any of them, because they don't have that readability. Both styles are perfectly valid and have their good and bad qualities.

The Essentials verbiage, on the other hand, I find completely off-putting. Either show me mechanics that will make it true in play (how does the PHB tell me that dwarves are hardy? because they get Second Wind as a minor action!), or say nothing at all. But long descriptions that are divorced from the play experience, and sometimes are misleading as to they way some power or ability will actually play out at the table, are not very interesting to me. When I look through my Essentials books, I skip over all that stuff so I can see what the mechanics are, and hence really see what sort of fiction is going to be created by using this stuff in a game.

Personally, I found E-fluff mostly just redundant filler, a large-type re-iteration of the italic fluff in each power description. But, yes one stereotypical failing of RPGs is to give a great fluff-text description of something, or put in a cool illo of the same thing, and then have the mechanics completely fail to live up to it.

I don't think you can count on getting fluff and crunch into perfect alignment (for one thing, because necessarily natural-language fluff can always be interpreted in a variety of ways), so instead, you can explicitly let one or the other 'win' and put more emphasis on getting that aspect right. 4e put mechanics first in it's design priorities, so it had clear, balanced, playable mechanics that made it plain what each game element accomplished in play. It left the 'fluff' sketchy, weak, and not always matching up that well, but invited the user to substitute something from his own imagination, instead. There have been games - Storyteller, again, is an example I'm familiar with - that go ahead and put the fluff first and just broadly paint the mechanics, figuring you'll go with what you want, and the mechanics are just a temporary crutch that should work badly, so you'll have an incentive to learn to do without them ("bad rules make good games").

5e, since this is a 5e thread, really, does try to take a more middle-of-the-road approach. The DM is free to change the mechanics as he likes, but they're not officially subordinated to fluff, and re-skinning of fluff, even by players, still seems acceptable - if there's a flavor/mechanic disconnect the DM has the final say in resolving it. That may not be avoiding the problem entirely, but it at least gives permission for the DM to fix it as he thinks will best suit his group.

I find this a chicken-or-egg dilemma then.

Is the dwarf hardy because it has second wind, or does it have second wind because its hardy? Which comes first, the mechanics or the fluff?

In that specific instance, there's no dilemma: the hardy Dwarf archetype precedes D&D, let alone 4e D&D.

D&D has traditionally written from a place of fluff first, mechanics support it. Your proposing that the mechanics come first, and then you can hang whatever fluff you want on it. That is a very radically different way of doing things.

I think it would be more accurate to say that D&D had traditionally mixed fluff and natural-language rules with mechanical jargon. A lot of the unfortunate complexity (complication), steep learning curve - and constant 'rules lawyer'ing of the early games came from that tendency.

But, yes separating fluff and mechanics and letting the fluff be modified to suit by the player was a striking innovation, for D&D (it had been done much more extensively in Champions! 27 years earlier, so was hardly new to the broader hobby). That approach (whatever game is using it) still doesn't necessarily put one 'first' in the character-creation process though. A player can pick mechanics based on preference or optimization, and then adjust or assign fluff in order to justify the results - or, he could choose the 'fluff' concept he's going for, and make choices that mechanically support the concept, modifying their fluff to match the concept if it doesn't already. It does put crunch first in resolution, though as always, the GM is inevitably free to rule or over-rule as he likes.

 

[TwoSix]

LOL. WHAT? Oh man, literally gutted. What the hell is wrong with this stupid (and by stupid I mean awesome of course) world we live in?

All things about our modern world, both profound and terrible, can be summarized by a chimpanzee riding on a segway.

 

[pemerton]

I find this a chicken-or-egg dilemma then.

When I think of chicken-or-egg problems, I tend to think of them as causal puzzles, or (if we stretch the metaphor) as puzzles of logical or conceptual circularity.

But in RPG design there is no puzzle, because the mechanics and the fictional/story element that the mechanics express can emerge simultaneously. For instance, when I read the "dwarf" rules in 4e I'm not a tabula rasa - I've played D&D, I've read LotR, I can see the art on the page. So I know the trope/genre I'm being pointed towards.

I don't know if you saw my example of the Chained Cambion I talked about upthread, but that was a case where even with the flavour text about the Chained Cambion's pain, rage and frustration it wasn't fully clear to me what the power was meant to be until it came out in play - at which point, to me at least, it became beautifully and powerfully clear.

Describe to me what that monster is. (Hint: Dahlia is the creature's name, not type)

[sblock]Dahlia Level 1 Elite Skirmisher
Tiny fey beast XP 200 each
Initiative +6 Senses Perception +2; low-light vision
HP 40; Bloodied 20
AC 20; Fortitude 15, Reflex 22, Will 17
Saving Throws +2
Action Points 1
Speed 6
Claw (standard; at-will)
+3 vs. AC. 1d4+1
Eyebite (Standard; recharge 56) Arcane, Charm, Psychic
Ranged 10; +4 vs. Will. 1d6+3 psychic damage and you are invisible to the target until the start of your next turn.
Undeniable Beauty (immediate interrupt, when Dahlia is targeted by a melee attack; at will)
+ 3 vs. Will against the attacker; the attacker must target a different creature or end its attack.
Lure of the Wild (standard; recharge )
Ranged 10; + 3 vs. Will. The target is pulled 5 squares and is dazed (save ends).
Step Through the Mists (move; encounter)
Dahlia teleports up to 3 squares.
Alignment Good Languages Common, Elven
Skills Acrobatics +9, Athletics +5, Stealth +9
Str 6 (–2) Dex 18 (+4) Wis 10 (+0)
Con 12 (+1) Int 14 (+2) Cha 12 (+1)
Equipment +1 amulet [/sblock]

It is small, weak (but fit for its size - look at its Athletics) but clever and talks elven. So it's not a (mundane) animal. DEX is its best stat and it has Acrobatics. So it's quick.

It's good, so not a gremlin or quickling, but it is clawed like them.

It has warlocky-abiliites: it can Eyebite, and teleport through the mists; and it is fey, so presumably when it teleports it steps through the mists that are the veil between worlds (mortal world and Feywild).

At this point it could be a type of good but wild fairy, or a fey cat of some kind. But it has lure of the wild - so enemies are entranced by it and drawn to it. (That's not a charm effect, though. Perhaps it should be?) But it also has Undeniable Beauty, which means when its enemies reach it and try to attack it they can't.

That suggests some sort of nymph, rather than a cat. But its type of "beast" suggests a cat, rather than a nymph. It can't fly, so it's not an insect or faerie/pseudo-dragon.

Conclusion: from the stat-block I can't tell definitively what sort of creature it is (eg exactly what it's body type is), but I think it is some sort of wild creature of the feywild, a beautiful cat or something similar. It may have a human face - the fact that it uses Eyebite at least suggests that its eyes are placed on its face as they are for a person (hence why I'm thinking of a cat as another possibility, as well as the claw), and its undeniable beauty would fit with having a human face too.

Whether it is a beatiful wild creature of the feywild, or a human-faced animal, it is clearly enchanted (Eyebite, lure of the wild, misty step) but relatively peaceful (Reflex and Acro, Good alignment, undeniable beauty). In story terms, it might make a good familiar for a good-aligned elven or half-elven Feylock; or it might be a creature that the PCs are trying to find because if they can persuade them to let it have a lock of its golden hair or silver coat (etc), then they can present that to the Fomorian king as a token for safe passage. But that will require the PCs first to successfully approach it, which will be hard because it hides from them (eyebite, misty step) and dazzles those who approach (undeniable beauty, lure of the wild).

That's my take. How'd I do?

 

[Remathilis]

That's my take. How'd I do?

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...oming/page83&p=6573118&viewfull=1#post6573118

Not too shabby.

 

[pemerton]

I wrote my answer to [MENTION=7635]Remathilis[/MENTION] before reading on. Now that I have read on, some thoughts.

[MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] - at first I was thinking something gremlin-like (but good and beautiful rather than evil and ugly) but then noticed that didn't fit with the Beast descriptor!

I'd probably use that block for some kind of super-kawaii faerie kitty. Or give it a fly speed and use it for a fairie dragon. It's a tiny fey beast with a claw attack, so any sort of small predator works, with magical abilities oriented around evasion, primarily, and some minor control. A familiar for a Sidhe mage would work, too.

We are very cose - I'm not sure what "kawaii" is (does that mean my anime-fu is weak?) but I also went with a fairy cat, noted the faerie-dragon issue, and canvassed the possibility of being a familiar!

A pixie from the Feywild loved picking sunflowers to give to and make happy the children of her pixie village. Unfortunately, these sunflowers came from a grove that forbade outsiders from spreading its beauty to the world. The grove's miserly master was a powerful, evil sorcerer. One fateful day that sorcerer caught the pixie and laid her low....polymorphing her into a little fox...never to fly again. Sad pixie ANGRY PIXIE! The pixie makes a deal with a powerful archfey and gains the beguiling, otherworldly (well I guess not for the Feywild...) power of a warlock.

Her ongoing mission? To explore new flora and new sweet-smelling, pretty things. To seek out miserly, evil sorcerers who horde beautiful flowers and dispatch them. To boldly go into forbidden groves where no pixie-turned-fox has gone before.

I think you probably need a bite attack for this one... do some foxes attack with claws?

Manbearcat, I like your backstory but I think I agree with Imaro about claw vs bite.

But foxes do have the frontward-oriented eyes to support Eyebite.

The reason I didn't go for a shapeshifter-style thing is the lack of a polymorph ability. But your curse backstory covers that nicely.

And now I've just read the reveal. [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] wins on the cursed polymorph backstory. [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] and I win on the faerie cat!

EDIT: And . . . ., I kept reading:

Not too shabby.

Cool!

Did it work in play like you hoped when you built it? For me, that's the test of a good game - and that means "good game" is player- and table-relative.

 

[TwoSix]

We are very cose - I'm not sure what "kawaii" is (does that mean my anime-fu is weak?)

Somewhat. "Kawaii" means incredibly cute and adorable. Ideally, you need to imagine the word being said with last syllable being drawn out for several seconds at a very high pitch, while being said by a sobbing in happiness 10-year old girl.