A difficult question

[thecasualoblivion]

(also adding this to the OP)

To go further, if 5E appeals to you, is it ok if it doesn't appeal to others and a(not necessarily the current) schism in the community continues? How much are you willing to sacrifice, or are you willing to sacrifice at all, getting what you want for the sake of the game appealing to most everybody?

 

[SKyOdin]

To be honest, I don't really care if the schism continues. There is nothing unnatural or wrong about people playing different games that appeal to their individual tastes. In fact, I consider it a better situation than one where there is only one game in town.

I don't think repairing the schism is even possible, since asking people to give up on playing games that appeal particularly to their tastes is rather futile.

So I wouldn't be willing to sacrifice anything in order to heal a schism. It just isn't that big of a deal in the first place. In of itself, it does no harm.

EDIT: Also, I think it is worth pointing out that the idea of a schism itself may be an illusion. There is no law written down anywhere that any given player or group is mandated to play one and only one game for all time. It is perfectly natural and normal for a group to play many different games. Heck, I for one am used to alternating between two different campaigns using two very different rule systems every other week, with an occasional one-shot of something like Paranoia.

 

[Black Knight Irios]

In regards to what a given person wants out of 5E, is it more important that 5E delivers the D&D you want or that it delivers everyone else playing the D&D you want?

**EDIT**

To go further, if 5E appeals to you, is it ok if it doesn't appeal to others and a(not necessarily the current) schism in the community continues? How much are you willing to sacrifice, or are you willing to sacrifice at all, getting what you want for the sake of the game appealing to most everybody?

5E is going to have modules.

1) Therefore, not everyone will play the same game. And I couldn't care less.

2) I hope that I can play a D&D game that I like and my fellow players and DMs. And I hope a lot of people I don't know can enjoy 5E.

3) I'm not sure what I would sacrifice so that D&D can appeal to the most people possible. Due to the modules, why should there be so many sacrifices necessary?

 

[jsaving]

To go further, if 5E appeals to you, is it ok if it doesn't appeal to others and a(not necessarily the current) schism in the community continues? How much are you willing to sacrifice, or are you willing to sacrifice at all, getting what you want for the sake of the game appealing to most everybody?

Your question presupposes that sacrifices are needed, and I'm not actually convinced that they are.

If you visit sites like rpgnet, for example, what you see is a strongly held view that 3e/Pathfinder fans want a highly complex and unbalanced system that discourages teamwork. To them, "compromise" in Next would mean accepting needless complexity and vast power differences between classes and races and spells in the name of unifying the fan base, which they for the most part aren't willing to countenance.

At comparable 3e/Pathfinder-friendly sites, what you see is a strongly held view that 4e fans want a simplistic Diablo-type game that jettisons history and flavor to provide bland and overly similar classes, powers, etc. To them, "compromise" in Next would mean a needless dumbing-down of the system and a continued aping of MMORPGs in the name of unifying the fan base, which they for the most part aren't willing to accept.

I'm not convinced either view is correct. As somebody who plays and enjoys both 4e and 3e/Pathfinder, I think 4e is better-balanced, but this came at a cost: a rigid standardization that makes classes, powers, etc far more similar than they need to be. (The ways in which 4e achieved greater simplicity and a greater emphasis on teamwork came at a cost, too.) So I think many of the objections lodged against 4e really have more to do with the way in which 4e achieved its stated objectives of balance/simplicity/teamwork than with the objectives themselves, leading to misunderstandings on both sides about who wants what and why.

Balance can be achieved without rigid standardization. Streamlining can be accomplished without becoming simplistic. Teamwork can be fostered without an intense focus on minis and battlemats. And if all of these things are done, Next can potentially represent an improvement to 3e/Pathfinder and 4e fans alike.

What we shouldn't do is weigh how much less balance we're willing to accept to attract the 3e/Pathfinder community, or how much of a dumbing-down we'll endure to retain the 4e community. Those are false choices based on stereotypes rather than reality, in my view at least.

 

[ExploderWizard]

RIght now it looks like its in the same category as all other WOTC D&D, a game that I will gladly play but not be interested in running.

 

[MarkB]

There are plenty of small, niche systems out there, some of which cater more to my preferences than D&D.

For the sake of the hobby's general health, I'd tend to prefer the next version of D&D to be something that a lot of people are reasonably happy with than something a few people are very happy with, even if I turn out to be one of the few. I like D&D positioned as a reasonably generic system which can share a large player base.

 

[Steely_Dan]

RIght now it looks like its in the same category as all other WOTC D&D, a game that I will gladly play but not be interested in running.

I can see that, after DMing a consistent 3rd Ed campaign for 3 years I got burned out (around 13th level it became too unwieldy), and took about 10 sessions of 4th Ed to make me become disillusioned.

The last year or so I have been going back to Basic and 1st/2nd Ed, and seeing what I can steal from 3rd and 4th (which both have great things) to make the game I want (I am very much digging what I see so far in 5th Ed).

 

[Texicles]

Like my status message has said for some time now, "my fun is not mutually exclusive with your fun." I hope that DDN lives up to exactly this mantra.

Early on in playtesting, I saw some attitudes on these very boards that ran counter to this (eg. paladin/ranger/druid/assassin etc. shouldn't be a class) but thankfully that's subsided.

I want to see DDN facilitate the concept of same name, countless games. I shouldn't have to sacrifice anything to play the game I want, nor should anyone else. By the same token, that also means that players/DMs cannot approach this with the idea that, if X exists anywhere in the game, I won't play it because I don't like it and neither should anyone else.

It's still early on in development, but I remain hopeful that inclusivity will be the cornerstone of the final release, and we can look back on our fears and laugh.

 

[Jester David]

I think what I want most of all from 5e is a game that is so good, my blog becomes endless posts of "yup, things are good. Uh-huh."

To go further, if 5E appeals to you, is it ok if it doesn't appeal to others and a(not necessarily the current) schism in the community continues?

No. I would rather the base game appeal less and the schism be healed.

How much are you willing to sacrifice, or are you willing to sacrifice at all, getting what you want for the sake of the game appealing to most everybody?

So much of what I want is modules and non-standard it's hard to sacrifice, as I'm already accepting I'll be receiving a minority of content.

I accept some redundant classes being Core to add different plays styles into the base game.
I accept that we might see some of the more popular grid filler 4e classes return.
I accept hit points and heavy armour making you harder to hit as the default, which makes viable options harder.
I accept a focus on the Forgotten Realms, likely at the exclusion of my prefered Campaign Settings.
I accept having to wait longer to get the game I want while more popular options and variants connect first and take priority.
I accept having to pay for a book that includes pages of content I will never read, let alone use.
I accept balance as important to many, and that many rules will likely lean to gamist logic for balance reasons.

 

[Steely_Dan]

To be honest, I would prefer if D&D adheres to what it has been for the last 34 years; not to say it has to stay unchanged completely.