D&D (2024) Anyone else dislike the "keyword" style language of 5.24?

[kayakingpoodle]

So--this leads to a few questions.

Why should only people with an internet connection get access to a useful, made-for-reference book?

What if you were to learn that your impression (IMO, more like "gut feeling") that "the books were made for DDB and printed" were completely incorrect? That is, a lot of this sort of feeling, of alienation because it uses defined terms, seems to arise from a fear of such a thing without even once ever actually...y'know...doing that thing. People said much the same of 4e, which never got a video game. It never got this "made for computers" thing everyone was so fearful of. If that thing never actually manifested--if the game never actually did the thing your gut reaction was responding to--what does that say about that gut reaction? Because to me, it says that that gut reaction ought to be examined and questioned. It may be that you are dealing with self-inflicted problems because you have jumped to conclusions about what a game-design element is for, rather than fairly judging that game design element on its merits first and then deciding what it is "really for."

I think you are reading a lot more into my post than I wrote, the ad hominems are hard to filter through so I may be missing a point your trying to make.

 

[MothMayI]

So, WotC should design game books that are tailored more to being more enjoyable reads for a tiny minority of players than actually being useful rule books?

Read a novel if you want entertainment. Getting upset that the rulebooks aren’t riveting enough is a you problem. This is like complaining that a cook book spends too much time on recipes and needs more memoirs about eating food.

It's interesting that you claim that a natural language writing style appeals only to "a tiny minority of players" when a TTRPG written in natural language became the most dominant and successful iteration of said TTRPG ever. I don't think that's a coincidence; the natural language is a significant factor to 2014 5e's accessibility.

In fact, I think it's actually the opposite: it's a tiny minority of players who care about Capitalized keywords and who think that makes the rules better, and the designers made the deliberate choice to aim their product towards that subset. I'd be willing to bet that if they had the figures that, say, 60% of all players prefer natural language but 90% of the 10% niche they're basing their design direction around prefer Keywords, they would still go with Keywords.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

So I'm not supposed to advocate for something I enjoy because you believe I'm in a "tiny minority of players". Thanks but no thanks.

No, I think you should change your opinion, because it's wrong. If you got your way, it would greatly damage my experience playing the game.

When I heard you say "I read the books more than I play the game, so I think the books should be more enjoyable reads" my mind immediately went to this video (warning: swear words).

Game books should not prioritize being fun reads for the DMs. They should prioritize on having content (lore, mechanics) that would be fun to play. And, for the record, I am a DM that spends more time reading the books than playing the game, as I don't have the opportunity to play very often. That's the "tiny minority of players" I was referring to. The majority of players are not DMs, and I would be surprised if most DMs spend more time reading the rulebooks than playing.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

The SRD is there for those that want a stripped down version of the ruleset. The books should convey the rules in a way that is enjoyable, easy to read and look at. Not as a sterile jargon filled white paper or a website with hyper links that was printed and bound.

The keyword writing style gives me the impression the books were made for DDB and printed, where as the previous books were made for print. Which is off putting and comes across as both a cost saving and lazy choice.

Does capitalizing important words make books less entertaining to read? Does it make it less easy to read or look at? I don't think it does. I've read several novels that capitalized important parts of the story and worldbuilding ("One Ring"). Is Lord of the Rings less enjoyable or less easy to read or look at because Tolkien capitalized "One Ring" when referring to it?

How would this help for D&D Beyond? And how does it ruin the experience of reading the books? D&D 5e has always had key words. It just used to have them be lower case and had slightly different phrasing, which sometimes made it difficult to tell if a condition was being applied. Now, it's easier. Rule clarity, to me, is much more important than the fact that some people think it looks weird.

Also, I'm pretty sure Micah was referring to more than just capitalizing important words when talking about "making D&D books enjoyable to read," given past discussions.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

It's interesting that you claim that a natural language writing style appeals only to "a tiny minority of players" when a TTRPG written in natural language became the most dominant and successful iteration of said TTRPG ever. I don't think that's a coincidence; the natural language is a significant factor to 2014 5e's accessibility.

In fact, I think it's actually the opposite: it's a tiny minority of players who care about Capitalized keywords and who think that makes the rules better, and the designers made the deliberate choice to aim their product towards that subset. I'd be willing to bet that if they had the figures that, say, 60% of all players prefer natural language but 90% of the 10% niche they're basing their design direction around prefer Keywords, they would still go with Keywords.

"Tiny minority of players" meant "players that spend more time reading the D&D rulebooks than playing the game."

Also, I don't think most players are aware of this change or would have any opinion on it if you asked them. There are far more players than DMs, and I believe most wouldn't care about the change or see how it mattered. I know people in niche internet discussions often inflate their importance, but this is in no way a major change that will negatively (or positively) impact the success of 2024 5e. D&D 5e's popularity is far more influenced by Critical Role and Stranger Things than (checks topic of the thread) whether or not the names of conditions is capitalized in the books.

 

[Azzy]

Looks like my fellow grognards are grognarding again. Wait... Maybe I should use keywords...

Looks like my fellow Grognards are Grognarding again.

Everybody take 10d12 Psychic damage.

 

[Arilyn]

I have many rpgs. Some are written very sparsely, like a manual and use keywords. This is fine. Others are written with richer, more conversational language. There are advantages to both styles.

My problem with D&D 2024 is it's attempting to be clear and manual like, but is not very successful, in my opinion. The over use of the words action and condition is unnecessary. The frequent use of the passive voice weakens the direct style it's aiming for. Some explanations are shorter and clearer than 2014, but there are too many convoluted sentences that actually muddy the waters. Look at the weird writing and confusion surrounding stealth, hide and the invisible condition. The OP's example of rope is painful to read.

There is a definite shift toward nailing down the rules. I assume this is to help with clarity. I have a suspicion, we are going to have just as many arguments over rules as ever, as D&D is still a sprawling ruleset with many edge cases and oddities. The writing style of 2024 is not actually helping. On top of all this, the keywords are not capitalized consistently. This book needed another editing pass.

 

[MothMayI]

No, I think you should change your opinion, because it's wrong. If you got your way, it would greatly damage my experience playing the game.

This kind of sentiment is interesting, because clearly a non-Keyword approach didn't "greatly damage your experience" of playing 2014 5e.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

The system needs to distinguish between text intended to provide description and flavour vs text intended to be clear, because doing so makes it more readable. We don't need the rules of some particular spell or ability to be nice to read because the rules are the mechanics.

GEO
1 action, range 1-4, Object
Digging into wells of geothermic power, you will
the battlefield to reshape itself.
Object [X]: Create one or (5+) two height 1
boulder objects in free space in range. When you
create an object, you may push an adjacent
character 1 space away from it.

This is an example from the ICON playtest (version 2.0 just came out) and it shows how they separate the flavour of the ability from the mechanics.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think you are reading a lot more into my post than I wrote, the ad hominems are hard to filter through so I may be missing a point your trying to make.

There is no ad hominem. I have expressed my criticism of your statements, where you communicate something in one way, and I have said I see it in another. But if you want it as pithy as possible (which I never like doing, because literally 100% of the time my pithy responses are disliked for not having enough detail):

You want a book that is fun to read for itself. You think anyone who doesn't want that can shove off and use an internet connection. That's not very nice, because it says "my interests are more important than any other reason someone might want this book." Why should a book explicitly written to communicate game rules be instead written as entertaining fiction?

These are rule books. Why should rule books primarily focus on being entertaining fiction?