D&D (2024) Are we going to see DMG previews?

[DEFCON 1]

You're being facetious, but the problem with the joke you're telling is that this has been the default state for 5e, with even the books themselves talking about how players won't even notice if you simply don't even care about modifiers and just look at the die roll itself.

That, right there, conclusively demonstrated that the rules don't actually matter. Of course, you then get a significant number of people who hypocritically claim that rules, and especially balanced rules, do not matter...and then get angry when certain options are over- or under-powered. Which is profoundly frustrating to me.

It's been the default state for the entirety of the existence of the roleplaying game. It's too bad people keep thinking "game balance" is actually possible across the entire breadth of the player base. Cause it ain't.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's been the default state for the entirety of the existence of the roleplaying game. It's too bad people keep thinking "game balance" is actually possible across the entire breadth of the player base. Cause it ain't.

Except that none of those things is true.

Rules actually do matter quite a lot. That's why we write them in the first place--for any game. Just because rules can be written badly doesn't mean they don't matter. Rather the reverse: it means that because they matter, we should take seriously how we write them.

Game balance, which you have so much venom for, is in fact very important, because it is what avoids both "nothing matters, do whatever, it won't have any effect" on the one hand, and "there is one correct answer that you have to calculate, and once you have it, you never need do anything else" on the other hand. Both extremes cease to be games; the first isn't a game because it's formless blob of nothing, just shouting into the void, while the second ceases to be a game because it has become a fixed, inviolate puzzle.

A well-balanced game, on the other hand, nixes brute calculation because there are multiple valid paths to success, while nixing the "formless blob of nothing" because not all paths to success are valid.

When the rules do not matter whatsoever, the results don't matter either. When the rules resolve to mere calculation, creativity dies. It is only when you actually do achieve balance that the decision of what to do becomes based on the qualitative, not the quantitative, that you can reward creativity without robbing it of that vital spark of actually mattering.

 

[mamba]

There. Is that enough for you? The culture of play of 5e is actively antagonistic to the idea that rules matter.

I’d say to the idea that the rules were handed down from God on stone tablets and to never be altered

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I’d say to the idea that the rules were handed down from God on stone tablets and to never be altered

I have never known any DM who believed this. Where, exactly, is this supposed to be a thing?

 

[mamba]

I have never known any DM who believed this. Where, exactly, is this supposed to be a thing?

I am saying that DMs rightfully do not treat them like that, and that not being the same as disregarding the rules altogether (your ‘rules don’t matter’).

So I do not really have to show any DMs that treat them like gospel, you on the other hand would have to show DMs with a complete disregard for any and all rules and basically winging / improvising the entire session, and not just that, but that this behavior is due to and encouraged by 5e and not just something that DM would do with other rulesets as well

 

[I'm A Banana]

You're being facetious, but the problem with the joke you're telling is that this has been the default state for 5e, with even the books themselves talking about how players won't even notice if you simply don't even care about modifiers and just look at the die roll itself.

Heh, I remember when I noticed in my 4e games that all the modifiers basically amounted to "If you roll a 9 or better on the d20, you hit."

D&D became quite the number cruncher in 3e and 4e. 5e has some of this, though I appreciate that it's toned down significantly (ability + proficiency is mostly all you need). I wonder if this was something that hit some nostalgia buttons for those who were bigger fans of earlier editions...

That, right there, conclusively demonstrated that the rules don't actually matter. Of course, you then get a significant number of people who hypocritically claim that rules, and especially balanced rules, do not matter...and then get angry when certain options are over- or under-powered. Which is profoundly frustrating to me.

Yeah, I think anyone saying that rules don't matter is at the LEAST being hyperbolic. I just dropped like $50 on the new PHB, I don't just drop that money on things that don't matter.

"Balance" is a slippery thing to define for an audience, but I think people do want rules that work. That deliver the experience they're hoping to get with the inputs they're given. Folks get squirrelly when you try to get them to define those experiences and how rules produce them (self reflection is hard), but I do think people - generally - care about that. Or, at least, people generally act like they care about that, whatever they say.

None of which, of course, removes the maxim that any particular rule might not matter to any particular table at any particular moment. Which is, charitably, what I think a lot of people are getting at when they say the rules don't matter. You don't always need to add up the modifiers - pretty sure that 3 will fail, and that 17 will succeed, and that's because the game is designed so that the dice have a significant impact on success or failure at all levels. Doesn't mean that the modifiers don't matter, just that they don't ALWAYS matter, and it's OK to let them not matter in a given moment (and to let them matter in the next!).