D&D 5E Advanced D&D or "what to minimally fix in 5E?"

[W'rkncacnter]

Yes.

Why do you phrase that as some kind of obstacle?

i mean...you want to supplement 5e, not replace it, right? replacing most of the character options seems to go against that goal to me.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

No one here on these boards is stopping anyone from getting what they want.

What IS stopping folks from getting what they want is that nobody else actually wants to MAKE what that person wants.

If someone wants an extension or expansion off of 5E14... they should have been making it and playtesting it themselves over these past 10 years. They could have had want they wanted almost a decade ago... balanced, playtested, fully integrated into their campaigns... rather than making a case now a mere 3 months before the official 5E revision gets published to say "You know what I could use in my D&D 5E game? X, Y and Z. Someone should design those things!"

If no one wanted to design these things back in 2015... it is silly to think someone's going to just up and do it now just cause one person says they would want it.

People, and this isn't exclusive to TTRPGs, believe that their wants and desires are widely held. This is the "false consensus effect." It's a cognitive bias that personal opinions are more widely accepted, by others, than they actually are. We see this in everything from politics to games.

This creates a situation where people don't make and playtest their own ideas, because their ideas are presumed to be popular and presumed to be correct. And that WotC is engaging in "bad game design" by not adopting the ideas. Logically, this means, that it is on WotC to fix these "obvious issues that the community wants fixed" instead of continuing their "bad game design."

If we were to take the game's popularity at face value, this entire house of cards falls apart. It becomes clear that WotC's game design isn't bad, and that the community as a whole quite likes the game. It removes the convoluted excuses for why games that incorporate the proposed traits are, or have been, less popular. But we continually see the popularity of 5e dismissed, largely, because of this bias.

So I have little hope that what you are suggesting will happen. People will continue to make excuses, and continue to call 5e's design bad, instead. And they will do so, because they believe their opinions are both correct and popular.

 

[Shardstone]

I have no idea how I would design such a product, going by OP's stipulations. Changing the classes is one of the biggest things you could possibly do, let alone all the other things asked for in the OP.

 

[Zardnaar]

Wwll you've had 20 years. If your ideas were that popular someone would have e done it.

Or write it yourself.

 

[Stormonu]

I have no idea how I would design such a product, going by OP's stipulations. Changing the classes is one of the biggest things you could possibly do, let alone all the other things asked for in the OP.

If I'm getting the gist correctly, this would be a book like Xanathar's or Tasha's. You still use the PHB, but layer these rule changes on top to tweak the game to work a certain way (think of the class Alternate features or expanded downtime rules). Houserules in written form.

Though personally, I'd rather just outright change it at the core level. And, as I said before, once you break open the cadaver it's hard to just stop at fixing one spot, it's easy to get into scope creep and tweak and tweak and tweak - ending up with something quite different from the original but fitting your ideal of what the game should be.

 

[Micah Sweet]

People, and this isn't exclusive to TTRPGs, believe that their wants and desires are widely held. This is the "false consensus effect." It's a cognitive bias that personal opinions are more widely accepted, by others, than they actually are. We see this in everything from politics to games.

This creates a situation where people don't make and playtest their own ideas, because their ideas are presumed to be popular and presumed to be correct. And that WotC is engaging in "bad game design" by not adopting the ideas. Logically, this means, that it is on WotC to fix these "obvious issues that the community wants fixed" instead of continuing their "bad game design."

If we were to take the game's popularity at face value, this entire house of cards falls apart. It becomes clear that WotC's game design isn't bad, and that the community as a whole quite likes the game. It removes the convoluted excuses for why games that incorporate the proposed traits are, or have been, less popular. But we continually see the popularity of 5e dismissed, largely, because of this bias.

So I have little hope that what you are suggesting will happen. People will continue to make excuses, and continue to call 5e's design bad, instead. And they will do so, because they believe their opinions are both correct and popular.

In principle I agree with everything you said here, but you realize that the implication of your claim is that popular = good design, right? Don't know if I can get behind that as a general rule.

 

[der_kluge]

I'd be happy if folks want to collaborate with me on the "5e, simplified!" ruleset. I'm happy for 2nd and 3rd opinions on that. PM me if you're interested.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

@CapnZapp, would something like Laserllama's work on the PHB (and other) classes work? Greatly increase player options but doesn't fundamentally change 5e.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

In principle I agree with everything you said here, but you realize that the implication of your claim is that popular = good design, right? Don't know if I can get behind that as a general rule.

The implication is, technically, correct. The definition of "good," according to Oxford, is "to be desired or approved of." Popularity is a direct measurement of this in relation to the population as a whole. In essence, there is no other measurement of good, in game design, than the popularity. This is especially true in a commercial setting.

So I don't see an alternative to "popular = good design."

 

[Micah Sweet]

The implication is, technically, correct. The definition of "good," according to Oxford, is "to be desired or approved of." Popularity is a direct measurement of this in relation to the population as a whole. In essence, there is no other measurement of good, in game design, than the popularity. This is especially true in a commercial setting.

So I don't see an alternative to "popular = good design."

Well, why do we have more than one kind of any given thing then? Commercially speaking, shouldn't every company just make the most popular thing?