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[Nemesis Destiny]

I think this will be doubly so for the warlord because the fighter won't be allowed to have much in the way of metagame mechanics.

In other words, people who are saying that the warlord will be killed of aren't fetishising class identity for its own sake - they're drawing inferences based on the traditional meaning of class in D&D, plus an impression of the design limitations that are going to constrain fighters.

Yeah, this basically covers it, for the most part.

 

[GX.Sigma]

It's a bit like the subsumption of acroatic abilities into NWP in 2nd ed - that kills off the Thief Acrobat as a mechaically full-fledged class, all the abilities becoming weaker or less reliable because mediated via the generic NWP mechanics.

I think this will be doubly so for the warlord because the fighter won't be allowed to have much in the way of metagame mechanics.

In other words, people who are saying that the warlord will be killed of aren't fetishising class identity for its own sake - they're drawing inferences based on the traditional meaning of class in D&D, plus an impression of the design limitations that are going to constrain fighters.

That's a pretty apt comparison, because I don't think there will be any metagame mechanics in the core (Standard) game.

Mearls has already said they want to have options to make D&DN more of a story game (including stuff like fate points) and more of a tactics game (including stuff like removing all non-encounter-based resources), but those will probably be generic options that can be applied to all characters; very unlikely that they'll be integrated with the classes in the same way as 4e.

 

[Ratskinner]

Confining ourselves to D&D-ism, I wouldn't see it as bardic magic - because not magic, in D&D terms - and nor as a morale check, because PCs don't suffer morale penalties.

a) How do you know its not magic? Recitation is a viable performance mode for 3e bards and their magic.
b) Who's a PC?

But we know that won't happen. Which then has implications for the standing of a (former) class where that is done.

The only reason for that to be upsetting is if you are fetishizing the class.

I think this will be doubly so for the warlord because the fighter won't be allowed to have much in the way of metagame mechanics.

I'm not sure at this point that anybody is going to have much in the way of metagame mechanics. Although, TBH, the way that term is used around here still is a bit unclear to me.

 

[Manbearcat]

I don't understand. I read various threads where non-4e advocates say its clear that the 5e design team is intentionally (and sensibly...as a result to backlash against 4e) insulating itself from 4e-esque, overt metagame and scene/encounter-based mechanics and that its reasonable for 4e advocates to comment on the implications therein. Then I see others where non-4e advocates adamantly assert that any insinuation that the 5e designers are intentionally insulating 5e from 4e-esque, overt metagame and scene/encounter-based mechanics is rubbish...and that any protests to that end are reactionary hand-ringing.

How can we be playing the same playtest material, observing the same designer-speak and accompanying columns/podcasts/tweets and reading the same forums...and generally have the same anecdotal history in RPG? Astonishing.

 

[Ratskinner]

I don't understand. I read various threads where non-4e advocates say its clear that the 5e design team is intentionally (and sensibly...as a result to backlash against 4e) insulating itself from 4e-esque, overt metagame and scene/encounter-based mechanics and that its reasonable for 4e advocates to comment on the implications therein. Then I see others where non-4e advocates adamantly assert that any insinuation that the 5e designers are intentionally insulating 5e from 4e-esque, overt metagame and scene/encounter-based mechanics is rubbish...and that any protests to that end are reactionary hand-ringing.

How can we be playing the same playtest material, observing the same designer-speak and accompanying columns/podcasts/tweets and reading the same forums...and generally have the same anecdotal history in RPG? Astonishing.

::shrug:: People panic and see their worst fears...or rejoice and see their greatest hopes. When they (WotC) speak obtusely (as they feel they must) people are left to imagine whatever they want from it. I doesn't help any that we are currently only seeing a incomplete first-draft subset of the rules, and we don't even know for sure what parts of it are "core" or Basic or Standard. (Which makes almost any strong reaction unwarranted, really.)

Personally, I see bits and pieces of almost every edition informing the current proto-5e. Yet it doesn't seem to include the most pronounced distinguishing features of any edition. Lacking those features, fans of every edition seem to fail to see it reflected there. To be fair, I think the 4e fans have "the farthest to fall" both temporally and the design sense, as 4e is both the current edition and the most innovative. (In this case "most innovative" also implies "outlier.")

I do think its an open question as to whether some of the mechanics you mentioned will be available in a "module" or not. I think it will be tough to add, but who knows? I've been surprised by game design before.

 

[Manbearcat]

I do think its an open question as to whether some of the mechanics you mentioned will be available in a "module" or not. I think it will be tough to add, but who knows? I've been surprised by game design before.

We shall see. Its hard to even speculate at this point. Its hard for me to envision how they're going to shoe-horn in encounter/scene-based resource schemes and the pacing change that will go with that, and robust metagame mechanics; catering both to tactical, gamist sensibilities and means for actor and director stance assumption for PCs as well, along with a self-contained/closed, non-combat, conflict resolution framework with the mechanics to support it. They're building around the opposite of all of these things, branding around the opposite and must market to a group that expects the opposite.

I've read through every iteration at length, read through every single column, listened to every single podcast and read most of the designer's "off-the-grid", "grey literature" on their thoughts and design angles. I've playtested 3 of the iterations with one shot games. This is a cleaned up 2e (with its assumptions and expectations of DM force and metagame aversion) married to the simple, contained elegance of Moldvay Basic and updated to a d20 chassis. The mechanics promote open, serial, world exploration (rather than closed scenes) and the pacing is centered around that. Task resolution is pretty standard, inverted NWP tests (d20 ability checks). The only real difference is the math is totally borked in PC's favor right now and SoD is pretty close to non-existent.

With those expectations, it plays quite well. If that was what I was looking for, I would be quite pleased with this product. I'm pretty much at the point where I do not think that its plausible for this chassis to support the type of play I'm looking for. As such, I think they should probably eschew an allusion to the "big tent" approach at this point and fully embrace what they have. There very well may be a large enough market to support an elegant, Moldvay Basicesque AD&D 2e on a d20 chassis. Focus on that and they may have something to sell a large enough audience to keep their jobs for a 6e. It won't be a certain cross-section of the 4e crowd, but I could see this selling to a large, lapsed audience to folks who stay with D&D regardless and to some 3.0 folks (who didn't switch to 3.5/PF) who want a simplified, functional version of their game (especially at the higher levels of play).

That is what I see and is pretty much my opinion now. I'm just ??? when I see opinions to the contrary.

 

[bogmad]

I've read through every iteration at length, read through every single column, listened to every single podcast and read most of the designer's "off-the-grid", "grey literature" on their thoughts and design angles. I've playtested 3 of the iterations with one shot games. This is a cleaned up 2e (with its assumptions and expectations of DM force and metagame aversion) married to the simple, contained elegance of Moldvay Basic and updated to a d20 chassis. The mechanics promote open, serial, world exploration (rather than closed scenes) and the pacing is centered around that. Task resolution is pretty standard, inverted NWP tests (d20 ability checks). The only real difference is the math is totally borked in PC's favor right now and SoD is pretty close to non-existent.
...

That is what I see and is pretty much my opinion now. I'm just ??? when I see opinions to the contrary.

I'd say this is the most cogent analysis of 5e I've seen to sum it up so far [while readily allowing for disagreement I suppose]. For me this works GREAT, though I could swing a little less in PC favorable math and be happy. I mainly play 4e nowadays, but still have a nostalgia for the 2e I started with. If you say the d20 system and balanced albeit pc favored math are small bits of 3 and 4e that fall under the big tent, is the "big tent" still a lie?

Can you have a Big Tent edition that equally accounts for an equal percentage of every edition to fall under the tent?
A lot of the argument on here for me boils down to people wanting more of their favorite edition kept under the tent.

WotC has claimed (or suggested, depending on who you ask) that any style of previous editions will be possible, but at the moment it seems to me that some edition styles may take more stretching via "advance rules" than others to achieve. And who knows if those rules will ever show up?

Should there be a rules module labeled "metagame mechanics"?

 

[mlund]

I'm a little confused by the injection of "meta-game mechanics" into the discussion. Someone please come out and clearly define this in relation to Next and the Warlord.

 

[pemerton]

a) How do you know its not magic? Recitation is a viable performance mode for 3e bards and their magic.
b) Who's a PC?

Of course in the novel I can't tell who's a PC. But presumalby in my Tolkienesque game I want the players, via their PCs, to have Tolkienesque experiences, including being roused and revivified by the well-spoken words of a captain like Faramir or Aragorn.

As to it not being magic, I'm inferring that from a combined analysis of the literary text and D&D magic. D&D magic involves components (V, S, M), discrete effects, and fails in an anti-magic shell. Gandalf's various tricks with light and fire are fairly clearly magic in this sense. But the book very strongly implies that Aragorn and other captains rouse and revive via ordinary human emotions. If I was going to involve magic in this, it would be self-buffing magic: ie Aragorn can buff his own CHA to enable him to better speak well-chosen words. In an anti-magic shell, then, he would be less charismatic (which narratively could be him falling into a magically-induced despair) and thus less able to rouse and revive. But for this treatment to work, you still need the basic mechancis of recovery via CHA check, inspirational healing or something similar.

The only reason for that to be upsetting is if you are fetishizing the class.

I don't agree. A former class that is now being supported by integration into an existing class, in circumstances where other equally-integrable classes are not being integrated, is likely to have fewer of its former abilities replicable, less ongoing support (both at the mechanical and the story level), etc.

I'm not sure at this point that anybody is going to have much in the way of metagame mechanics.

Well, quite. That's the real reason why I think the 4e-style warlord won't figure in D&Dnext.

Although, TBH, the way that term is used around here still is a bit unclear to me.

In my case, I'm meaning mechanics which have at least one of three features, and often (maybe always? - I haven't thought it through) all of them:

(1) The mechanic operates in the first instance upon the game mechanics rather than the imaginary space;

(2) The mechanic does not itself model any causal process in the gameworld;

(3) The use of the mechanic is a player decision that does not correlate to any decision by the PC.​

To illustrate, contrast the classic Haste spell with a warlord's granting of an extra attack:

Haste

(1) The Haste spell operates clearly upon an object in the imginary space - the target of the spell starts acting faster, like Quicksilver or The Flash;

(2) The mechanical resolution of the Haste spell models a process in the gameworld, namely, the PC caster using magic to make the target of the spell become faster;

(3) Casting the Haste spell is a decision taken by the PC wizard.

Warlord extra attack
(1) The use of the ability operates primarily upon the game mechanics, and especially the action economy - we don't know, for instance, whether the extra attack roll is due to fighting harder, or smarter, or more quickly, or more luckily (for a Princess build);

(2) The mechanical resolution of the ability may model some process in the gameworld (the warlord yells out to an ally, drawing his/her attention to an opportunity which the ally takes) but it need not - perhaps the warlord is always yelling out in that way, urging his/her allies on, but only when the ability is used does this cash out in mechanical terms; and in a Princess build, the use of the ability may correspond to a yelling out ("Help me, you dolt!"), but the yelling out is not the cause of the targetted PC's making an extra attack;

(3) Depending on how exactly you went at point (2), using the ability may well be simply a player decision, but not a PC decision - the PC is likely calling out advice or instructions more often than once per encounter, but ony when the player chooses to use the ability does this have mechanical weight.​

You can tighten up the warlord's abilities to make them less-metagamey: for instance you could say that the extra attack is always due to alerting an ally to an opportunity (some will still say that's too metagame-y, because it's a player occupying director stance), so that use of the ability corresponds to a PC choice and an ingame causal process. But it will follow from that that the ability must be at-will. And hence must be limited in power. And hence probably won't recover the full scope of the existing warlord's operations. And that's before we get to healing!

I'm a little confused by the injection of "meta-game mechanics" into the discussion. Someone please come out and clearly define this in relation to Next and the Warlord.

I've tried to explain above why I think the warlord brings metagame mechanics along with it. Also see posts 202 and 203 above (my post, [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION]'s reply).

That's a pretty apt comparison, because I don't think there will be any metagame mechanics in the core (Standard) game.

Mearls has already said they want to have options to make D&DN more of a story game (including stuff like fate points) and more of a tactics game (including stuff like removing all non-encounter-based resources), but those will probably be generic options that can be applied to all characters; very unlikely that they'll be integrated with the classes in the same way as 4e.

I didn't know that Mearls had talked about fate points. I agree that integrating that sort of stuff into classes is pretty key to 4e, so a generic fate point system is likely to play fairly differently.

 

[Manbearcat]

I'm a little confused by the injection of "meta-game mechanics" into the discussion. Someone please come out and clearly define this in relation to Next and the Warlord.

@pemerton has nailed down metagame mechanics in that excellent post above.

The reason why its broken out so much in this thread, I would say, is because the Warlord is the poster child for many of the metagame mechanics (anything that deviates from 100 % fealty to causal logic or expects at least some mental interfacing with "extra-gameworld" considerations) that people impugned 4e for; martial forced movement (not as much as CaGI but its there), martial healing by way of inspiration/invigoration that forces people to get up front and comfy with the abstraction of "HP not as meat", PC-stance fluctuations outside of actor, perceptions of lapsed player agency etc.

These things, and many others, are the reasons that 4e is my preferred ruleset for the D&D experience I'm looking for. Unsurprisingly, they're also the same things that have forced such controversy over the system and that we're always debating on here. I mean, I suspect that the 4e warlord that I contrived a few pages back would cause many 4e detractors to cringe, while I think its relatively tame from a metagame perspective.

By the way, great succession of posts. Unable to xp you and didn't have anything to add so I diddn't comment.