D&D 5E Design Philosophy of 5e

[Thaumaturge]

IMHO, after a 30 year hiatus and missing the entire min/maxing of 3.x and 4th editions, I clearly look forward to 5th to allow us to play a form of D&D that has simple rules; this will allow common sense and a DM's judgement to be the final arbiter. All of this so the story line drives the campaign, and encounters hopefully, though enjoyable, will be an aid to that end. If the story drives the campaign, and not the hard rules, most players can enjoy their PCs with some negative stats, but interesting backgrounds, and not search for that combination that the rules didn't anticipate.

This probably didn't answer the OP's question though....

Answered it perfectly. You like the design ethos and don't know why the rest of us are so crazy about... certain theoretical exploits.

Thaumaturge(ist).

 

[I'm A Banana]

Mike Mearls mentions in the Starter Set Unboxing video (here, discussion starts around 46:15—specific comments around 48:00) they are making the design decision to "not going to try and make rules that will stop people who wanted to be bored from, like, doing boring things."

Yeah, I wasn't fond of that bit of slightly passive-aggressive BadWrongFun-ing.

"Oh, no, if you want to be BORED, go right ahead and play however you want, by all means, we aren't gonna STOP you from having a lousy game night if you MUST."

Not that I really blame Mearls, it was just a bit of off-the-cuffery in the moment. I'm reasonably confident that's not the tone he was intending, and I don't want to read too much into this offhand little statement. He clearly didn't have time to quite examine what was going on with the "error" that folks maybe pointed out, and that's fine. But it's not a shining moment, because it basically implies that there's ways to play that the design team basically regards as low-quality, dull experiences. And if your goal is to make a big tent and cast a wide net, that's not an implication you wanna give out a lot of.

There are multiple ways to look at this design ethos. I think we've had a couple of editions that were constructed very much with the rules lawyer and a careful, exact reading of the rules at their forefront. For this edition they chose, deliberately, to not design that way. To let real people make real rulings that impact their own play instead of trying to nail down a specific style of play through exact language.

I think a benefit of this is it allows them to state things more plainly and use more natural language. A negative of this ethos is, certainly, that people trained by the previous two editions will see gaping holes in certain rules. And those people, myself included, will see various places for exploit potential.

I think these are two different things that you've conflated.

First, we have rules that allow folks to play the way they want to play rather than being tightly codified. The rules don't say that you can trip oozes or give you a codified wealth-by-level guidelines. They're wisely silent on a lot of issues. DMs are trusted to figure it out for themselves and the mechanics don't break whatever you do.

Second, we have rules that don't work as intended in the way they are written. If Magic Missile was more powerful than Fireball, but we insulted people who decided to pick just cast Magic Missile ("Oh, that's just such a BORING spell"), that doesn't suddenly make the issue one of playstyle differences. Yeah, some people won't cast Magic Missile for whatever playstyle reason, and that's fine. And maybe some folks won't even have these spells in their game and whatever. But if someone wants to cast fireball, and finds that it's weaker than magic missile, and notes that this doesn't seem right, the response shouldn't be "Well, that's a table issue, folks who aren't trying to wreck the game don't cast Magic Missile."

These two things are not the same things and conflating the two can lead to the old fallacy of "A good group has no problems with the rules, so your group must just not be very good!" rather than the more honest "The ruleset's got some issues, nothing's perfect, if it's a big deal, lets fix it."

Do people like a more "human-centric" approach? Do people require exact rules because it's our nature? Do people eat enough ice cream?

I think we need rules that create the experiences we want. We can't solely rely on DMs creating those experiences. A good DM can run a good game of the most horrible RPG out there, and that's not the RPG being open to individual playstyle variance, that's a good DM being a good DM and overwriting the bits of the RPG that suck and making the experience enjoyable for everyone.

That good DMing can't be counted on everywhere all the time and in every instance, so I don't think we should accept "it's not a problem for a good group!" when looking at rules issues, because that's always true. No rule is ever a problem for a good group. It doesn't make it a good rule.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

The advantage that tabletop has over a computer game is the world is pretty much infinite in scope.

In the computer game, you eventually get to a point where you have exhausted every opportunity for advancement except boring ones. With an average DM that should never occur in tabletop.

This. The average MMO will see its players have enough time to spare in those things because the amount of time spent in actual productivity is small, when compared the the amount of time you want to spend playing. You won't see this happening in D&D because the trend reverts: a good DM will release "new content" with a speed that MMO developers would never dream of.

Think about this: if Blizzard released WoW patches with new quests, raids and dungeons every week, people would have to spend all their play time going through the new content, and those who wanted to do the extra farming would have to settle in playing obsolete content.

 

[Obryn]

I'll quote myself from some other thread.

I'm great with DM fiat and a general assumption that people should be reasonable and mature around a game table. I am great with rules light systems that require a large amount of fiat from all participants, such as Dungeon World.

However. That's not an excuse for writing/publishing bad or broken rules. Your rule set should need a GM, but it should not need a GM to fix it. It's a kind of subtle difference, but an important one.

Or, simply put, the GM's existence is not an excuse for lazy design.

 

[amerigoV]

I will grant this is a weird analogy, but it illustrates what I want in a ruleset:

I want my ruleset built like a good picket fence -- I want enough support so the whole thing does not collapse on itself under pressure, but I do not want a fence post every 6". Extra support around gates (combat) is good. The rules are the posts and horizontal rails in this analogy. Everything else is me hanging my rulings on this structure (the pickets)

For me, 1e's problem was the so-called fence posts were in all the wrong places much of the time. That fence had many wide-spread posts in some places (no skills for example, every trap was a unique subsystem) and the DM had to make up a lot of stuff. The "posts" that were there many times were of all different types - all the unique subsystems. Other aspects had way too many posts together - the detailed rules on weapon vs. AC and pummeling/grapping. Simply put, that fence looked like a bunch of drunks put it together with whatever materials were at hand. Quaint in its own way, but always in need of repair.

I did very little 2e gaming.

3e may as well be a solid wall. As much as I loved 3e in the beginning, it really wore on me. Its very well constructed and can last a lifetime, but I do not want a solid 10' wall, I want a nice 4' picket fence. I want the breeze to flow through and I want to be able to see beyond my fence. I found in 3e I was in a bunker mentality - what do the rules say about this? what about that?

I did not play 4e enough to comment.

I play Savage Worlds now and I find it to be an Ideal Fence for me. If 5e is moving towards that in GM freedom to run his game, then I am all for it. I am in an long-established gaming group. I do not need the rules to prevent bad GMs which IMO hinder good GMs. IMO 3e tends to push games to the median = ie, only truly bad games are horrible GMs, a few awesome games with great GMs that could overcome the clutter, and a lot of "good" games. I think we lost a lot of "very good games" in 3e rules weight (and I really did like that system, so I am not a hater).

 

[Umbran]

But it's not a shining moment, because it basically implies that there's ways to play that the design team basically regards as low-quality, dull experiences.

Given their access to the playtest feedback, I would not be surprised if they have developed some opinions on what the audience generally finds fun, and what it finds boring. I would be surprised if they *didn't* have such opinions, as getting that information was kind of the point!

Now, after all is said and done, it would be awesome if they did some summary analysis of the playtest feedback, because I think it would be extremely effective in helping us understand where they are coming from.

 

[ThirdWizard]

In my mind, there's a difference between lazy design and designing for real people playing real games.

It seems like a lot of posts on ENWorld come from a theorycrafting mindset and not a real world mindset. There's a disconnect I'm seeing between the way people actually play games, and the way people analyze rules, and those two things often have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Bag of rats, for example, is something that I cannot even fathom happening in a real game with a real DM. It is a complete non-problem. It's an interesting aside, it makes a funny joke. "Hey look at how I could abuse this rule!" But, beyond that, its a non-starter.

I really do think that ENWorld posts (or perhaps a subset of posters) put a lot of emphasis on how a rule could theoretically be broken without looking at the game as a whole and asking the simple question of whether or not the corner case would ever come up in play. Mearls' answer is a perfect example of this. Looking at strange corner cases might be fun, but it isn't practical from a design standpoint. If you start trying to take all these theoretical-but-not-really problems into consideration when designing, you'll end up with a bloated mess.

When the spirit of the rules is clear, it shouldn't matter what the letter of the rules say. When a designer tells you what the spirit of the rules is, when most people reading through the rules could tell you what they are, then there is no issue. The only design problems, from my vantage point, is when people can't tell what the spirit is. Then, you have issues.

I think, as in almost all cases in life, this is where communication is important. Developer-Consumer communication should clear up any "loopholes" that might arise, and then we can all put down our swords and play the game. Because, for all the theorizing about what it might be like to sit down with some friends and play an RPG, it is not actually sitting down and playing an RPG.

 

[TerraDave]

I would characterize the design philosophy differently.

Empirical vs. Theoretical.

Mearls has noted many times how he expected playtesters to demand more complex and detailed options. And they didn't.

On the other hand, 3E and 4E (and actually 1E and 2E) clearly had rules for corner cases and special situations, or were designed to work around them, when in fact these might not be all that relevant to most tables, and the "solution" could create its own problems.

 

[Halivar]

What I really hope to get out of this are rulebooks that make great coffee table books (like 1e-3.x), and not prosaic "oh god, let me consult the stereo manual" books that stay on my shelf as long as possible (like 4e).

 

[ProffessorChaos]

In my mind, there's a difference between lazy design and designing for real people playing real games.

It seems like a lot of posts on ENWorld come from a theorycrafting mindset and not a real world mindset. There's a disconnect I'm seeing between the way people actually play games, and the way people analyze rules, and those two things often have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Bag of rats, for example, is something that I cannot even fathom happening in a real game with a real DM. It is a complete non-problem. It's an interesting aside, it makes a funny joke. "Hey look at how I could abuse this rule!" But, beyond that, its a non-starter.

I really do think that ENWorld posts (or perhaps a subset of posters) put a lot of emphasis on how a rule could theoretically be broken without looking at the game as a whole and asking the simple question of whether or not the corner case would ever come up in play. Mearls' answer is a perfect example of this. Looking at strange corner cases might be fun, but it isn't practical from a design standpoint. If you start trying to take all these theoretical-but-not-really problems into consideration when designing, you'll end up with a bloated mess.

When the spirit of the rules is clear, it shouldn't matter what the letter of the rules say. When a designer tells you what the spirit of the rules is, when most people reading through the rules could tell you what they are, then there is no issue. The only design problems, from my vantage point, is when people can't tell what the spirit is. Then, you have issues.

I think, as in almost all cases in life, this is where communication is important. Developer-Consumer communication should clear up any "loopholes" that might arise, and then we can all put down our swords and play the game. Because, for all the theorizing about what it might be like to sit down with some friends and play an RPG, it is not actually sitting down and playing an RPG.

I think this is well put. I agree with you that communication between developer and consumer is very important, and we know that WoTC thinks the same thing, as Mike Mearls explained a few days ago in the " ALiving Rule Set" L&L.