D&D (2024) Did you make up your mind about 5.24?

[tetrasodium]

Might one inquire as to what those reasons for being unimpressed may be? Particularly the ones exacerbated "in concerning ways"?

Handfull of off the cuff top tier examples?

• Failure to lock down the player facing rest/recovery rules to move from the last decade of gm as fun police saying "no" to GM as fun facilitator who can say "yes this time" when it makes sense or seems reasonable
  • Yes I know there is a footnote buried in the DMG where players are unlikely to ever read it , but how the rules are written & where they are placed matters... the footnote is in the wrong book
• Failure to do anything about the fun killing time suck where multi attack PC players abuse the rules exactly as designed to break up their attack and movement choices by staring at the gm and holding the round hostage for an attack by attack update if the gm doesn't go adversarial and skip to next in the initiative or do something like house rule in the old school 2e/3.x style action economy
• Failure to settle on a single rest cycle in order to continue with classes designed to exploit 5mwd short rests as their pool eventually scales in size and power far beyond what could be spent before the next rest at any pace other than "extreme nova".
  • Sure it works fine in tier1 or so of play, but there are many more levels for the size & power of that short rest pool to grow through
• Failure to fix a laundry list of absurdly abusable must take spells and actually doubling down on some while adding more.
  • There's literally a thread going on now about some of the new obvious ones
• Failure to provide rules (default or optional/variant) for anything other than DBZ/OPM in tone.
• Failure to provide rules for carrying capacity/encumbrance not designed to remove their own impact from play..
• Might as well add in the lack of meaningful container interaction rules resulting in the most permissive of video game/litrpg style inventory shenanigans unless the GM does the dirty work of acting as fun police or altering combat in seemingly adversarial (and difficult for the gm to track) ways due to the multiplicative impact of the next point.
• Failure to fix or provide a variant rule that locks down what a character has in their hands when & instead choosing to double down on it by explicitly making it easier to have a quantum free hand that has the most useful of anything or nothing in a character's inventory in it during their turn
• Failure to give enough weight to a gm advocate type role during design rather than leaning into phrases like "frustrating for GMs" & ~"off limits to the gm".

 

[Neonchameleon]

That is a way but not everyone has the genius of Gygax to do that well. Some do.

Are we talking improvising or worldbuilding here?

I would hope in almost all cases the DM comes from the ranks of players. Play the game and see how a good DM does it and then carry on. I am not at all against inside out designs. To some degree even the outside in people do that somewhat.

And I would say that the Dungeon Master's Guide should be written from the perspective that this is not the case. It should be written with the goal that a group of kids have only heard of D&D decide to try to use it, the PHB, and possibly the MM to play a game of D&D entirely bereft of a teacher. And even those learning secondary hand could do with a refresher.

I think that just having the players bring their own gods might work for you but it would not for a lot of us. I don't really know much about Matt Mercer but if he agrees with you on this then I disagree with him.

Matt Mercer is the (main) DM of Critical Role. At this point he is possibly the most famous and certainly the most emulated DM on the planet, not excluding E. Gary Gygax. (For that matter, streaming audiences being what they are even a comparatively niche streamer like Deborah Ann Woll probably has more imitators of her puzzle centric gameplay than Gygax has direct imitators).

There is nothing wrong with disagreeing with Mercer - heaven knows that I don't always agree with the way he does things. But if you disagree with the way he does things you are disagreeing with mainstream D&D play in the 2020s. And as such although catering to you might be nice you can't expect your way to be the default option.

Well for me it has a tremendous amount of impact on play. In fact as a player I must insist on it.

This is covered in Chapter 1: differing expectations. Yours differ from the mainstream

I don't want to play a campaign were the DM is just one step ahead of me making it up as he goes. The world will lack verisimilitude and flavor.

YMMV. My experience is the absolute opposite; worlds that are the rigid product of a single mind are the ones lacking in both versimilitude and depth - and ones that have the characters basically Isikai'd in because the DM wants to rigidly control the world rather than having the players set up parts of the setting to come from are the equivalent of blatantly obvious green screen acting.

And I'm not saying it needs to be chapter 1. I guess it never affronted me that it was early in the book though. I think general table management, how to write up a session 0 (which would include the DM giving out details players must know), and how to write adventures and build encounters is important too. Not more important as both are essential but equally important.

World building is inessential.This doesn't make it undesirable. But I've played in a very fun one shot where the entirety of the worldbuilding was "you are all teleported from your homeworlds to the start of the Dungeon Of The Mad God with bomb collars locked round your necks on a countdown. The only way to survive is complete it". But it was a good group and an enthusiastic, charismatic, and interesting DM so it was a good game.

Does this make at least some worldbuilding undesirable? You can run a kitchen without garlic but I don't recommend it. But not even every savoury recipe requires garlic. The longer a kitchen stays running and the larger the menu the more likely you'll be to notice the lack.

 

[Scribe]

So what I'm hearing is that you hate D&D. Where the 2014 PHB was the first PHB to have actual background rules that aren't simply your race is your culture and we live on the planet of the hats.

Seems like quite a leap to go from "nothing is being said really" to "I hate it."

I have no issue with the Background rules container. It has no bearing on culture which easily could exist as well, if Wizards cared to do the work.

 

[abirdcall]

My stance is informed by the fact that I run homebrew races, classes, and spell lists.

I don't like it. This feels to me like a cash-grab: everyone knows core books sell well, and most of the changes feel like they just make things worse. While the situation might feel akin to the 3.5 release, that at least had a wide variety of modifications that, in hindsight, feel like pretty much everyone agreed made things better.

Moving stat adjustments from races to backgrounds is, frankly, stupid, and is not something I'll be implementing.

Dragonborn flight at 5th is certainly a choice you can make. It's not one I'll be allowing at my table.

A cash grab with more page count, more art, and $50 MSRP?

 

[Yaarel]

I like the simplicity of the Bastion rules. I'm not particularly impressed by the events system, however. I feel like there should be more risk or at least a chance of greater penalties to the owner.

It is interesting that the bastion is part of the tension regarding character death.

The bastion is part of the character sheet, an aspect of the character concept. It seems in the playtests, the players do self-identify their bastion as part of their characters self.

Relating to the DM being handsoff with the players character choices, this extends to bastions too.

I guess, home is where the heart is.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I like it a lot, but it's far from perfect (so what else is new).

I'll be using it, and I'll use it "out of the box" for a bit to see what it does, but I'll probably keep tinkering on some of my homebrew ideas to shove things toward where I'd rather they be.

 

[Emerikol]

Are we talking improvising or worldbuilding here?

I'm talking about building a world slowly and probably improvising some because the edge of what is known is not far off.

And I would say that the Dungeon Master's Guide should be written from the perspective that this is not the case. It should be written with the goal that a group of kids have only heard of D&D decide to try to use it, the PHB, and possibly the MM to play a game of D&D entirely bereft of a teacher. And even those learning secondary hand could do with a refresher.

To be honest, their chances aren't good. You may likely burn through an entire group of potential long term players because all they know is the complete mess they first experienced.

Matt Mercer is the (main) DM of Critical Role. At this point he is possibly the most famous and certainly the most emulated DM on the planet, not excluding E. Gary Gygax. (For that matter, streaming audiences being what they are even a comparatively niche streamer like Deborah Ann Woll probably has more imitators of her puzzle centric gameplay than Gygax has direct imitators).

I bet not more than 5% of D&D players have ever even heard of him. And that is high because that is probably about the same percentage that have heard of enworld.

There is nothing wrong with disagreeing with Mercer - heaven knows that I don't always agree with the way he does things. But if you disagree with the way he does things you are disagreeing with mainstream D&D play in the 2020s. And as such although catering to you might be nice you can't expect your way to be the default option.

This is covered in Chapter 1: differing expectations. Yours differ from the mainstream

We don't agree on a lot of things. As everyone is abundantly clear about. I think my playstyle is a lot more popular than you think but I'm not saying it's a majority. It's a sizable minority. My playstyle does require a skilled DM and those are rarer. Just realize from a business perspective that all the really need to get you to buy is the new books every so often.

It's like natural selection. After you've had all your children, what happens next to you doesn't matter in a carry genes forward sense.

I do believe they have decided to focus on getting brand new players over retaining older players. Maybe the former is easier given you have the biggest franchise in the business. Maybe they just assume their older players will "graduate" to another game. Anything from OSR, Pathfinder, to something more narrative focused.

YMMV. My experience is the absolute opposite; worlds that are the rigid product of a single mind are the ones lacking in both versimilitude and depth - and ones that have the characters basically Isikai'd in because the DM wants to rigidly control the world rather than having the players set up parts of the setting to come from are the equivalent of blatantly obvious green screen acting.

World building is inessential.This doesn't make it undesirable. But I've played in a very fun one shot where the entirety of the worldbuilding was "you are all teleported from your homeworlds to the start of the Dungeon Of The Mad God with bomb collars locked round your necks on a countdown. The only way to survive is complete it". But it was a good group and an enthusiastic, charismatic, and interesting DM so it was a good game.

Well, you have a high tolerance for things I don't have a high tolerance for in my games. I've never made it to a second session with a DM I figured out was winging it. For me exploration is the heart of the game and I now know there is nothing to explore. And while I in theory believe there might be some improvisers who could pull it off on rare occasions, I don't think they can consistently and I think very few can do it at all.

oes this make at least some worldbuilding undesirable? You can run a kitchen without garlic but I don't recommend it. But not even every savoury recipe requires garlic. The longer a kitchen stays running and the larger the menu the more likely you'll be to notice the lack.

I don't know where the end of this thing went but I see a game where you do a one shot as something entirely different from a game in a campaign. A one shot has all the charm of an all star game which is not much. I recognize it may be a good way to learn the mechanics of the game and for some the competition type scenarios appeal to them.

 

[Neonchameleon]

To be honest, their chances aren't good. You may likely burn through an entire group of potential long term players because all they know is the complete mess they first experienced.

Which is why you need a good DMG.

I bet not more than 5% of D&D players have ever even heard of him. And that is high because that is probably about the same percentage that have heard of enworld.

Critical Role has over 1.2 million followers on Twitch and their biggest episode has over 20 million views on YouTube with multiple episodes with over 5 million views. Critical Role is a much bigger deal than ENWorld (with 200,000 members).

Remember that the majority of D&D players started with 5e.

We don't agree on a lot of things. As everyone is abundantly clear about. I think my playstyle is a lot more popular than you think but I'm not saying it's a majority. It's a sizable minority.

Single figure percentage points I think. Which is non-trivial, granted.

My playstyle does require a skilled DM and those are rarer.

And rarer still because it puts extra entirely unnecessary burdens on the DM.

Maybe they just assume their older players will "graduate" to another game. Anything from OSR, Pathfinder, to something more narrative focused.

Or maybe they just don't have that much to sell because the margins for anything beyond the core books are low.

Well, you have a high tolerance for things I don't have a high tolerance for in my games. I've never made it to a second session with a DM I figured out was winging it. For me exploration is the heart of the game and I now know there is nothing to explore.

Meanwhile if I just wanted to explore I'd be playing video games which have far more detailed worlds and far less lag. And that's why your style is dying - it tries to turn the DM into an inferior computer.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And rarer still because it puts extra entirely unnecessary burdens on the DM.

Unnecessary to whom? People who don't want what @Emerikol and those with similar preferences want? Who cares? People want different things, so games that want to embrace a wide group of gamers should support more than one style (even if business reasons require they set a default).

 

[TwoSix]

Critical Role has over 1.2 million followers on Twitch and their biggest episode has over 20 million views on YouTube with multiple episodes with over 5 million views. Critical Role is a much bigger deal than ENWorld (with 200,000 members).

Not to mention an animated show on Amazon Prime now entering its fourth season.

If you play D&D regularly and don't at least know who Matt Mercer is, that's mostly just showing you actively disengage from knowledge of the intersection of D&D and pop culture.