D&D 5E D&DN going down the wrong path for everyone.

[Nemesis Destiny]

Well, the problem with that is that in some cases, inclusion of Element X necessarily excludes Element Y. For example, with hit points, baking in "self healing" as the system default has sweeping ramifications for much of the rest of the system as a whole--the pacing of its use, expected number of encounters per day or "scene," how frequently each class has access to it, how it interacts with magical healing, etc. Inclusion of self healing as the "baseline" can still be modified later in a module, but that module is going to have to be just as hard baked as the original.

This, as I understand it, was intended to be a "dial" that individual tables could adjust from "off" to "full restore after each encounter" and everything in between. Presumably the book will cover this in some detail since it seems to be a sticking point for many. I don't see any exclusion here.

Second, it's much easier to point out things to exclude, because otherwise we have to make a bullet-point list of everything that's included in every edition, and compare it to the playtest. At a certain level, it's easier to just make certain baseline assumptions based on D&D's past history, and use those to compare exceptions.

This is poor justification for thumbing one's nose at everything that 4e brought to the table. My decision on whether or not I like and will run 5e depends on whether or not it will support a playstyle I prefer. The more things that are excluded, the less likely it becomes that I will choose that system. I have dealbreakers like anyone, but I don't care what else is included, so long as I can easily ignore the stuff I don't want to use. If it doesn't have something included that I deem critical to running the game I want to run though, that's far more of a dealbreaker than if it includes some optional rules for multiclassing that I can just ignore.

 

[innerdude]

This is poor justification for thumbing one's nose at everything that 4e brought to the table.

My apologies if you felt this was the intent; I wasn't advocating that it's okay to impose character judgment on people who are advocating for a particular RPG play style.

I have dealbreakers like anyone, but I don't care what else is included, so long as I can easily ignore the stuff I don't want to use. If it doesn't have something included that I deem critical to running the game I want to run though, that's far more of a dealbreaker than if it includes some optional rules for multiclassing that I can just ignore.

This is a good point. I'm not sure exactly how a 4e fan would react to what they've seen from D&D Next so far under this context, but if we're using pemertonian scene framing, player narrative control, and opportunities for fictional positioning as requirements for rules mechanics in D&D Next, there's not much more to say right now than, "No, there doesn't appear to be any real sense from the 4e developers that these are critical components for the next edition."

I'm not saying you can't or shouldn't fight for / vocalize those concerns, but I know if I was a 4e fan, I'd probably be preparing myself now to accept that Next simply isn't a system I'm going to be interested in. If my desire was to continue running 4e long term, the real choice would be to figure out how to sustain relevant group play using the materials at my disposal.

 

[DMZ2112]

if we're using pemertonian scene framing, player narrative control, and opportunities for fictional positioning as requirements for rules mechanics in D&D Next

You know what I think is unequivocally the wrong path for D&D5? Using these terms to describe anything about it. What the hell do they mean, and why can't they be described using English?

 

[Dausuul]

You know what I think is unequivocally the wrong path for D&D5? Using these terms to describe anything about it. What the hell do they mean, and why can't they be described using English?

Heh.

Well, I looked up the thread on "pemertonian scene framing" (it's here) and have so far been unable to boil it down into a cogent explanation, though it seems to have something to do with an improvisational style of DMing and tailoring encounters to the PCs. There's a lot of GNS-talk going on in that thread.

Player narrative control means the players have a limited ability to "play DM"--for instance, "luck points" that you can spend to say stuff like, "My PC happens to have an uncle who lives in this town and can give us shelter from the watch." In D&D, this is mostly a 4E phenomenon, and even there you don't see much of it.

Fictional positioning means resolving a scenario without recourse to the mechanics--you just say what your PC is doing and the DM responds. The extreme case would be "free-form" roleplaying where you don't use a system at all. This happens a lot in old-school D&D, less often in 3E and 4E.

 

[innerdude]

You know what I think is unequivocally the wrong path for D&D5? Using these terms to describe anything about it. What the hell do they mean, and why can't they be described using English?

It's referencing a fairly in-depth treatment of a play style advocated by ENWorld poster pemerton, wherein he regularly espouses the virtues of 4e in supporting a style of play that is much less contingent on the GM driving "story." In this mindset, 4e's mechanics present specific aspects of character development and action resolution as being part of the "story" already, which help point the GM in creating scene "frames" that let the characters have greater control in the overall "narrative."

There's a sizable contingent of people on this site that agree with the general premise, and use it as a demonstration of 4e's "killer features" that are not supported as well, if at all, in prior editions.

 

[DMZ2112]

Well, I looked up the thread on "pemertonian scene framing" (it's here) and have so far been unable to boil it down into a cogent explanation, though it seems to have something to do with an improvisational style of DMing and tailoring encounters to the PCs. There's a lot of GNS-talk going on in that thread.

It's referencing a fairly in-depth treatment of a play style advocated by ENWorld poster pemerton...

Ugh, I was hoping it was at least you guys leveraging some kind of revolutionary playwriting technique, and that was bad enough. I neither need nor want terminology that is so specific that only a subset of a subset of D&D players are going to understand it.

I'll have to read the thread myself and see what he's on about.

Player narrative control means the players have a limited ability to "play DM"--for instance, "luck points" that you can spend to say stuff like, "My PC happens to have an uncle who lives in this town and can give us shelter from the watch." In D&D, this is mostly a 4E phenomenon, and even there you don't see much of it.

Or, I gather, use in-combat powers that modify the battlefield and therefore the outcome of the fight in ways only the DM could in previous editions. This part I get. I use Pathfinder Fate Cards in my Pathfinder games.

Fictional positioning means resolving a scenario without recourse to the mechanics--you just say what your PC is doing and the DM responds. This happens a lot in old-school D&D, less often in 3E and 4E.

...So it happens /less/ often in D&D4? That's not the sense I was getting from the term's usage.

 

[Dausuul]

...So it happens /less/ often in D&D4? That's not the sense I was getting from the term's usage.

Same here, which makes me wonder if I'm missing something. But "resolving events without using the mechanics" does appear to be the general use of the term. In my experience, that was far more common in BD&D and AD&D, where the rules covered less territory (and were often so jumbled and incoherent that fictional positioning was the only way to make sense of them). 3E and 4E have much heavier, more comprehensive rulesets.

 

[oblivious]

My impression is that it's a disagreement over the role of rules systems. In particular:

1) Players interact with the game world through the rules system.

or

2) The rules system should only adjudicate narrative disagreements between real people.

The "Permotonian" view seems to be that a game is basically a sequence of fights (fight A, fight B, fight C) that have been pre-ordained. The context of each fight is re-skinned on the fly by the DM based on player actions, while the content of each fight is re-skinned by players on the fly. In a way, "narrative control" reduces to who has power to re-skin what.

This is largely a reaction to previous editions that tightly defined combat stuff while leaving skills and (especially) spells much more loose. The impression is that some classes had more "narrative control" because their part of the rules system was more loosely defined (eg the Wizard who can mess up the story with a teleport).

4e deals with this by clinically defining every mechanic any character can employ in tactical combat, while leaving everything else in the game completely undefined. People who believe the rules system should be how players interact with the game world view this as removing all RPG elements from the game and turning it into a tabletop tactical boardgame.

 

[Dausuul]

This is largely a reaction to previous editions that tightly defined combat stuff while leaving skills and (especially) spells much more loose. The impression is that some classes had more "narrative control" because their part of the rules system was more loosely defined (eg the Wizard who can mess up the story with a teleport).

4e deals with this by clinically defining every mechanic any character can employ in tactical combat, while leaving everything else in the game completely undefined. People who believe the rules system should be how players interact with the game world view this as removing all RPG elements from the game and turning it into a tabletop tactical boardgame.

Wait... I don't get it. The problem, apparently, was that pre-4E D&D had tightly defined combat mechanics and loosely defined noncombat mechanics. So 4E solved it by making combat mechanics absolutely locked down, and noncombat mechanics loose to the point of nonexistence?

 

[JamesonCourage]

The "Permotonian" view seems to be that a game is basically a sequence of fights

As someone who regularly disagrees with pemerton, or at the least questions him often enough, I'm going to pipe in and say I strongly, strongly disagree with this depiction of his game. Not that fights aren't important (they are important in my game as well), but his game is not "basically a sequence of fights" from what he's communicated on these boards. As always, play what you like