D&D 5E (2014) A viable game and the vicious edition cycle

[DaveMage]

I like the 1E model best.

Very little bloat, long edition life.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I like the 1E model best.

Very little bloat, long edition life.

What is the 1E model, though?

My experience of 1E is limited, but it seems to me that, if anything TSR didn't produce enough rules material to meet demand in 1E, even whilst regularly adding to the rules through Dragon, as well as the supplements. Such that almost every 1E group I've heard of (which isn't that many, to be fair) had seriously extensive house rules, often featuring entire extra races, classes and so on (and usually really questionable!).

Also, I think people wildly overplay "bloat" as a problem, in this digital age. When everything was on paper, and everything had to be looked up by hand, it was definitely an issue, as you might have spells split among four different rulebooks (easily so in 2E, for example - PHB, FRA, ToM, Complete Wizard/Cleric, that's even before S&P and stuff get in on the act), or the like, which meant you needed to haul more books to the session, and caused a lot of time wasted looking stuff up.

In the digital era, though, it's not the same - anything in 3.XE or PF's SRD/open content can be found with a search in under a second, and/or can be printed by the player who needs it beforehand. Similarly with 4E and the DDI.

I can understand wanting to play a game where everything is in a couple of books, even in the digital era, but there's only ever been and only ever will be one way to do that:

Limit yourself to those books.

Others will not be so concerned about playing a "PHB-only" game or the like, and obviously they are potentially much more profitable than the "I will only buy a PHB!" or "I will only buy a PHB and UA!"-type customers.

If the people doing the digital stuff for 5E do a good job, then we should be able to bring only the PHB (if that) to a session, and anything else we need, we can consult via phones/tablets/PCs. Bloat can be a non-issue.

 

[Mercurius]

As far as bloat goes, in 4E I think the biggest problem was feats. Navigating feats in Character Builder was a nightmare - there were hundreds and hundreds, maybe even thousands of options.

I think 5E is partially rectifying this by making feats meatier and taking out the "tax" feats.

The other aspect of bloat are the actual supplements themselves. I honestly wonder how many people bought Divine Power 2. I didn't even touch the first one, and instead got the necessary options in Character Builder and the online Compendium. So maybe not bothering publishing books like that, but instead offering them online.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

In the digital era, though, it's not the same - anything in 3.XE or PF's SRD/open content can be found with a search in under a second, and/or can be printed by the player who needs it beforehand. Similarly with 4E and the DDI.

While I agree with you that the bloat problem gets painted larger than it really is, your solution isn't easily implemented. Say you want to build a 3.x character able to use a spear to throw his opponents prone. Which search query would yield the feats necessary for this?

If you have a concept in mind search is probably not enough, because you don't know the relevant terms. It's great to decipher a character sheet, though.

 

[Mercurius]

What is the 1E model, though?

One of the things 1E did really well, especially in the early years (late 70s and early 80s) was adventures. The hardcovers were very limited; after the core three you had Deities & Demigods, Fiend Folio, Monster Manual 2, Unearthed Arcana, Oriental Adventures, Wilderness Survival Guide, Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, Manual of the Planes, Dragonlance Adventures, and Greyhawk Adventures. That's 10 supplemental hardcovers in a span of 9 years (1980-88), or 13 total rulebooks over a span of 12 years (1977-88). During that same span of time they published well over a hundred adventures, many of them now considered classics.

I'm not saying that WotC should follow that same model - certainly in this day and age more than one hardcover per year would be nice. But what about only 2-3?

Compare that to 2E, when you had about the same number of hardcovers, but then three times as many of the faux leather sourcebooks, plus all the compendiums, encyclopedias, and countless monster supplements.

3E was even worse - there were literally about a hundred hardcovers in the span of only 8 years of publication - that's about one a month! 4E followed a similar publication schedule, at least for the first couple years.

What is the happy medium? Well it isn't only quantity of product, in my opinion - it i about type of product. Adventures and setting books don't have the feeling of "bloat" because they're clearly optional and won't be incorporated into later products or expectations of canon. Truly optional rulebooks, like Vikings Campaign Sourcebook or Magic of Incarnum don't seem like bloat because they are clearly optional. What feels like bloat are countless monster supplements and feat/class option books - stuff that can easily be incorporated into Basic and online without needing tons of supplements.

On the other hand, when I look at the list of D&D books over the editions I don't see a ton of products that makes me think, "I wish they had never published that," or "Who in the wide world would buy such a thing?" Almost every product has its place, and I for one like a diversity of product.

So maybe, just maybe, the problem of "bloat" isn't a problem at all, just the necessary result of an edition cycle. Maybe WotC can slow it down by releasing fewer, but higher quality, supplements and focusing on adventures and setting stuff, but in the end there is probably no way around accruing bloat over time and necessitating a re-boot. It is the way of things.

 

[Dungeoneer]

Generally liked what you had to say, but I'll quibble with one thing here: Yes, 2e produced a lot of settings - and it was successful in doing so, it sold a lot of setting books and there are still fans out their pining for the return of their favorite 2e setting! Admittedly, settings were bigger in the 90s than they are now, but it's still a viable way to sell books that don't have to bloat the game for everyone.

But 2e didn't go belly-up because it was big on settings. Rather, TSR bet heavily on selling novels, a CCG, and a collectible dice game - all of which went very badly for it. They got in financial trouble and were bought out by WotC. 2e's setting focus wasn't - as far as mere outsiders can tell based on what's been reported - what got them in trouble.

THIS.

TSR didn't go under because it produced too many settings. TSR went under because it was badly mismanaged.

 

[Mercurius]

I like the 1E model best.

Very little bloat, long edition life.

1E experienced a huge bubble in the early 80s which would be impossible to reproduce today. What might be possible to reproduce is the other wing of its huge success - the Dragonlance franchise, including not just the adventures but moreso the novels. I haven't read any game related novels since the early 90s but it seems like it has been since Icewind/Drizzt that they've had a massive commercial success, and even those didn't match the popularity of Dragonlance.

But again, hoping for a 1E model is probably unrealistic, except in a loose sort of way (focus on adventures/stories, less on rules supplementation).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

While I agree with you that the bloat problem gets painted larger than it really is, your solution isn't easily implemented. Say you want to build a 3.x character able to use a spear to throw his opponents prone. Which search query would yield the feats necessary for this?

If you have a concept in mind search is probably not enough, because you don't know the relevant terms. It's great to decipher a character sheet, though.

Not "easily implemented"? Well, I agree in the sense that it requires good data entry, programming and so on to make a system that makes finding such a thing easy! 4E has that, though. So long as 5E is as good as 4E's DDI (hopefully better), it would be trivial to find such a thing.

I agree that with 3.5E/PF it's harder because it's all just on the web (and not in one place with 3.5E), not properly indexed.

I would say, though - would you even have that concept in mind if you didn't know such a Feat or Feat-chain existed? I think not! So you would have some basis for your searching.

The problem is, we have basically a binary scenario here, I think:

1) WotC-enforced no-bloat: WotC refuses to publish any game mechanic material in Dragon, and only produces a handful, tops, of books containing any mechanics over the entire lifespan of the edition (i.e. 1E model, no?)

Obviously that's not profitable for WotC, and it's disappointing for the significant section of the RPG/D&D market who actually likes new material, who will likely turn to 3PPs and/or other RPGs entirely as a result -leading to poor-quality 3PP material likely being more popular than otherwise and less money in WotC's pockets.

2) WotC produces stuff some people will insist is "bloat" - Dragon has mechanics sometimes, books come out fairly regularly with mechanics in them.

In this case, WotC, I suspect, makes a lot more money, fans, I suspect, are a lot happier overall, because they can choose whether to "bloat" or not, and people are less likely to go to 3PPs or other RPGs.

2 can also be mitigated with good digital tool/product design, a la 4E but better.

I mean, am I wrong? Would only releasing 1E numbers of books make WotC more money, in 2014? I'm skeptical of that, I must say.

 

[Dausuul]

Also, I think people wildly overplay "bloat" as a problem, in this digital age. When everything was on paper, and everything had to be looked up by hand, it was definitely an issue, as you might have spells split among four different rulebooks (easily so in 2E, for example - PHB, FRA, ToM, Complete Wizard/Cleric, that's even before S&P and stuff get in on the act), or the like, which meant you needed to haul more books to the session, and caused a lot of time wasted looking stuff up.

In the digital era, though, it's not the same - anything in 3.XE or PF's SRD/open content can be found with a search in under a second, and/or can be printed by the player who needs it beforehand. Similarly with 4E and the DDI.

I found bloat to be a massive problem in DDI. It was my single biggest issue with DDI, in fact, and considering that the thing was built with friggin' Silverlight, that's saying something.

I was mostly unperturbed by 3E bloat, because for it to affect me, somebody at my table had to go out and buy a book. There was an understanding that anything from a splatbook was subject to heightened scrutiny, splats with major issues (Book of Vile Darkness, etc.) could be banned outright, and you bought splats at your own risk. If I wanted to tighten things up, it was trivial to say "These books in, everything else out." Bloat was a hypothetical problem encountered on Internet forums, not something I had to wrestle with much at the table. (I'm not saying it wasn't an actual problem at other tables, just describing my own experience.)

4E before the electronic tools was much the same, but everything changed when my group went over to DDI subs. DDI didn't provide any means to permanently exclude sources you didn't want. The moment you opened up 4E's electronic tools, you got to drink from the fire hose. You could filter a search by source, but you had to re-enter the filter from scratch every time; I got plenty of experience with that from trying to filter out pre-MM3 monsters, and it was a major headache. The bloat was in all of our faces, all the time.

My hope is that 5E's online options will offer more control to both players and DMs. They could give us the tools to control bloat very well. But if they don't, e-tools are going to make things worse, not better.

 

[DaveMage]

1E experienced a huge bubble in the early 80s which would be impossible to reproduce today. What might be possible to reproduce is the other wing of its huge success - the Dragonlance franchise, including not just the adventures but moreso the novels. I haven't read any game related novels since the early 90s but it seems like it has been since Icewind/Drizzt that they've had a massive commercial success, and even those didn't match the popularity of Dragonlance.

But again, hoping for a 1E model is probably unrealistic, except in a loose sort of way (focus on adventures/stories, less on rules supplementation).

Oh, I don't know about that - 5E may very well follow that model.

The bloat problem with the other editions is that you get option paralysis and no time to try out all the cool options.

With 1E, I had time to play all the classes I wanted to. The other editions - no way!

It's like having 1,000 cool toys, but you only have time to play with 15. Deciding which 15 it not only tough at the beginning, but as you are playing with those 15 you regret that you aren't playing with the other 985. (And, before you can play with the 985, they give you 1,000 new ones in a new edition.)