D&D 5E Design Philosophy of 5e

[Blackbrrd]

Honestly? They made a catastrophic error.

Looking at the poll data here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?356149-Are-you-going-to-buy-5e I think that your conclusion is made from a subjective point of view and that empirical data suggest otherwise. With only around 6% saying 5e isn't their kind of game, it looks like they nailed it with this edition.

 

[dd.stevenson]

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 might be wrong, but I think this means they're finally rolling back Skip Williams' influence on D&D. Personally I couldn't be happier about that.

Edit: As a side note, I just got enough xp to finally get the title I've always wanted. No more xp people! This is perfect.

Thaumaturge.

Maybe add a sig note to that effect?

 

[DM Howard]

I'm not sure if this has been brought up, but I feel like the design philosophy, being what it seems to be, allows for a certain level of expected DM Fiat (aka "The DM is always right.") to occur. Whether one sees the DM being the true master of not only the campaign/story but the rules (to an extent) as well as a good or bad thing is open to discussion, but that's the first thing that popped into my head after reading the opening post.

 

[fjw70]

My take is that I like simple straightforward rules. They don't need to be comprehensive enough to cover all the corner cases but they should be clearly communicated.


As an example let's look at how BX AC and AD&D handle fireballs.


Here is the BX description:

This spell creates a missile of fire that bursts into a ball of fire 40' across (20' radius) when it strikes a target. The fire ball will do 1-6 (Id6) points of fire damage per level of the caster to each creature within the sphere of fire. EXAMPLE: A fire ball cast by a 6th level magic-user will burst for 6-36 (6d6) points of damage. If the victim of the fire ball saves vs. Spells, the spell will only do half damage.

Here is the AD&D version:

A fireball is an explosive burst of flame, which detonates with a low roar, and delivers damage proportionate to the level of the magic-user who cast it, i.e. 1 six-sided die (d6) for each level of experience of the spell caster. Exception: Magic fireball wands deliver 6 die fireballs (6d6), magic staves with this capability deliver 8 die fireballs, and scroll spells of this type deliver a fireball of from 5 to 10 dice (d6 + 4) of damage. The burst of the fireball does not expend a considerable amount of pressure, and the burst will generally conform to the shape of the area in which it occurs, thus covering an area equal to its normal spherical volume. [The area which is covered by the fireball is a total volume of roughly 33,000 cubic feet (or yards)]. Besides causing damage to creatures, the fireball ignites all combustible materials within its burst radius, and the heat of the fireball will melt soft metals such as gold, copper, silver, etc. Items exposed to the spell's effects must be rolled for to determine if they are affected. Items with a creature which makes its saving throw are considered as unaffected. The magic-u,ser points his or her finger and speaks the range (distance and height) at which the fireball is to borst. A streak flashes from the pointing digit and, unless it impacts upon a material body prior to attaining the prescribed range, flowers into the fireball If creatures fail their saving throws, they all take full hit point damage frqm the blast. Those who make saving throws manage to dodge, fall flat or roll aside, taking 1/2 the full hit point damage - each and every one within the blast area. The material component of this spell is a tiny ball composed of bat guano and sulphur.

The BX description is very simple and straightforward. The AD&D version complicates things by talking about filling the volume and setting things on fire. Those types of details can and should be left to the DM. The AD&D DMG goes on to say that this spell cannot be used underwater. That's a corner case that the DM could rule on and doesn't need to be specified in the rules.


Unclear rules also add unnecessary complexity to games and causes players and DMs to think and talk about rules more and makes it harder for rules to fade into the background.

 

[evileeyore]

Most people who play in person are not as rigidly dogmatic as many of us are when posting in forums. I've seen plenty of fans of one edition play a very different one just to get some play time in, and we aren't talking about that level of difference.

Hey, I hate D&D* and even I'll belly up to the table and roll some d20 if it's the game we're playing.









* It burnssss usssss it doesssss....

 

[jrowland]

DMing trumps rules. Bad DMing as much as good DMing. The rules can't stop bad DMing, but they can encourage good DMing, and rules that produce unintended, negative effects don't encourage good DMing, they just create bad play experiences in the absence of DMs who are specifically good on that metric just as it comes up in play.
.

Yeah. As I said, It's all a difference of opinion. I disagree that rules encourage good DMing. For me, good DMing is all about the judgement calls*. Good rules diminish the need for judgement. If the rules clearly show Magic Missile to be better than Fireball, well no judgement call, its the rule. Changing that rule doesn't make one a better DM, it just means that DM embraces Rule Zero. DM trumps rules, as you say. But that sort of begs the question, doesn't it? If DM trumps rules, why is it so important that every thing be codified as a rule?

I was discussing creating more good DMs. More rules is a barrier to entry for DMing. I am pretty sure I even said less rules lead to more bad DMs:

Yes, there will be MORE bad DMs

hey, I did say that! You missed the point that I was discussing which is creating more good DMs by creating more DMs period, even Bad ones, because they may even become good DMs.


*caveat: GREAT Dming includes skills like improvisational storytelling, imagination, etc. I am just limiting the good/bad to rules/lack of rules discussion skills of DMs to keep the discussion bounded...somewhat.

 

[KidSnide]

So it seems like one of the big points of contention here is the distinction between a playstyle preference and a "Good Group Fixes Everything" rules patch. I think the latter might be getting confused with the former.

Here's the way I see it:

Playstyle Preferences are ways of using or interpreting the rules for a different experience -- it takes the typical goals of a D&D game, and tweaks them a bit to be different goals, sometimes only slightly. ...

The Good Group Fix happens when a rule, as it is written, would create some problematic effect, so good groups and good DMs interpret the rules so that it DOESN'T create that effect. ...

I think this sets up a bit of a false dichotomy between "A game that is highly codified" and "A game that prevents bad DMing."

DMing trumps rules. Bad DMing as much as good DMing. The rules can't stop bad DMing, but they can encourage good DMing, and rules that produce unintended, negative effects don't encourage good DMing, they just create bad play experiences in the absence of DMs who are specifically good on that metric just as it comes up in play.

I think there is less of a dichotomy between "playstyle preference" and "good group fix" than you suggest. I see it as more of a spectrum. There are plenty of rules that require a "good group fix" if the group has a particular play style, but work fine in groups (who may be good or bad at fixing) with a different style. Lots of groups would be bothered by a magic missile that is better than fireball, but - evidently - rules like martial healing and rest dynamics draw a more varied response. Some of those positive responses are people suggesting "good group fixes", but others are from groups where the issue just never came up. To take the martial healing example, there were some people who suggested how to tweak or narrate the rule to get around the realism issue, but other groups just thought it was awesome. If you just like how a rule works, you don't need a "good group fix."

What I think Mike and the rest of the WotC design team concluded (but wasn't stated in Mike's off-hand remark) is that there is a complexity cost in trying to tighten up the rules that they just weren't willing to pay. I don't want to go into the merits of "the rule that dare not speak its name," but I'm guessing the design team just couldn't come up with a simple version of the rule that did what they wanted without generating the potentially boring incentive that has taken over so many threads.

As a consequence, they pushed the default form of the game to one where the rules are less precise and, in certain ways, less balanced. Groups with a higher emphasis on tactical optimization may require more "good group fixing" for that kind of game. But as someone who adjusted 4e to be less precise and to give mechanical significance to "flavor text", this change in design philosophy seems good to me, even if I acknowledge that it causes trouble for other tables.

Certainly, the merits of that change in design philosophy are worth debating. I'm not sure what I'm going to think after a couple years, but it's refreshing now. I can imagine my husband playing 5e and having fun, whereas our experiment with the 4e starter set did not go well.

Personally, I think it will be very interesting to see how well the DMG and errata satisfy the precision desires of groups more inclined to tactics and optimization.

-KS

 

[Obryn]

Honestly? They made a catastrophic error.

The main problem D&D has right now isn't "Playstyles", it's wildly different games in form and function. 1st edition, 3rd edition, and 4th edition aren't just "Playstyle" differences, there's an entirely different tone and design process behind each of them. I'll just leave it there for fear of edition arguements derailing where I'm going with this.

The problem this causes is that you have virtually irreconcilable groups, each group prefers a game that literally invalidates the others. Their design goal was to put a bunch of stuff into the books and let people argue at the table over which type of game they're going to play, effectively moving the edition wars to the tables.

This should be relatively fine with groups who only play at home, but is devastating to organized play and public game groups. If some Adventurer's League shop has 50% 3rd edition players and 50% 4th edition players, how do they handle the resulting ruckus about mechanics? Whatever ruling is made, half of the playgroup is likely gone. The other choice is to have two playgroups, but then you end up with friction.

Eventually what you have is: Arguements at the table resulting in negative experiences and eventually player attrition or complete collapse of the playgroup due to these problems. Worse, if the shop owner feels it is more hassal than it's worth, or that it is affecting his sales, he likely will just stop supporting Adventurer's League. That in turn reduces the visibility and accessibility of D&D, which is particularly bad because it isn't going to take long before people openly talk about how Pathfinder's organized play doesn't have these problems.

WOTC punted on the problem of differences in editions, opting to force tables to argue about what rules are used and ultimately what kind of game is played. Placing your consumers in uncomfortable positions, or worse confrontational positions, is a *very* bad idea. People will associate negative experiences with the game, and they will tell others about them.

WOTC never should have punted and made the tables decide how the game is played when they knew that they had three distinct and largely incompatible factions of customers.

Wow.

And here I thought people could just sit together and play games like grown ups.

I agree with the poster above. I don't think people are this dogmatic about their elf games, as a general rule.

 

[RedShirtNo5.1]

Personally, I think the spirit of the rules is by far more important than the letter of them. Others disagree. ENWorld was pretty heavily centered around RAW back in the day, with the Rules forums devoted pretty strongly to finding RAW interpretations. Even when that RAW was silly, people would fall back on a kind of RAW is RAW philosophy. Those were heady days, and I have to say I was somewhat caught up in the echo-chamber back then. But, back then I was pretty steeped in 3e D&D, and my mindset was based on what I was reading on ENWorld.

Sometimes I think Hypersmurf's legacy was a net negative. The most vicious arguments in the 3e days were almost always at base about what the rules represented and how to approach interpretation. This led to the dismissive "That would be a fine house rule" snub against anyone who didn't take what I'll term the 'strict constructionist' approach. And I don't recall Hypersmurf doing much to stop that until very late in the 3e life cycle.
What I see now are two groups that are in favor of strict constructionism. One group is folks who like the rules to represent the physics of the game. It seems like people in this group often take the "hp are meat" view, although it's not clear to me why that is or if I'm just experiencing some confirmation bias. The other group is folks who want rules to provide fairly strict balance. I see the combination of discussion of DM power and "rulings", story before balance class design, move back to natural language, and comments from Mearls, all as generally pointing to the idea that 5e is less concerned with the strict constructionist approach. I don't know if it will be most suited for a rules-as-intended approach, or even a broader rules-as-tools approach.

 

[Iosue]

The thing is, the WotC D&D team don't have one answer for all issues. Some rules may require clarification, others errata. They've expressed a willingness to provide both. They want things to work as they intended for the most part, and they want to fix those things that don't.

That said.

Some things aren't a result of the rules not working as intended in the course of most games, but people taking a very meta-approach to the rules to create effects unintended by the designers. The 15-minute workday and the issues with the Mechanic That Shall Not Be Named reflect this kind of problem. And their take is simple. Is your group having fun playing that way? If yes, knock yourself out. If no, then they suggest you stop playing that way.