D&D 5E DNDNext Commentary on Arstechnica

[CAFRedblade]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/...-story-hands-on-with-dungeons-dragons-next/1/

While the writer definitely has a bias against 4ed it's still an interesting read.
He stresses an older school viewpoint of Story over Mechanics, and encourages people to check out the playtest.

Reading the comments on the article seems to have a wide variety of tastes, and it seems fairly civil.

 

[tlantl]

Your link brought me to the second page of the article.

 

[Shemeska]

Getting back to the story: Hands-on with Dungeons & Dragons Next | Ars Technica

While the writer definitely has a bias against 4ed it's still an interesting read.
He stresses an older school viewpoint of Story over Mechanics, and encourages people to check out the playtest.

Reading the comments on the article seems to have a wide variety of tastes, and it seems fairly civil.

Not seeing a bias really. If anything it's sort of a puff piece IMO.

Sadly though, the edition wars continue unabated in the comments.

 

[tlantl]

The article itself wasn't much, certainly nothing we didn't already know. It is nice to see the word getting out though.

As for the edition warring in their comments section, I imagine it's going to happen especially where those comments are being made by proponents of their favorite edition about some real or imagined slight. Like the author's obvious disillusionment with his experience of 4e. There's no way he can say it without someone finding fault with it.

I guess the question is whether he needed to say it at all.

 

[GreyICE]

Yay, fluff piece meets edition war. Mearls turns out to be decent at describing things, especially when backed by the might of WotC's marketing team. I hated 4E, but we played it for 4 years or something without hitting level 11, what were we doing, I dunno.

 

[CAFRedblade]

Perhaps I was reading too much into the writer's intent in the article.
Although I agree with much of what is written for me personally.

It probably helps that I started with 2ed, and that framework/style colours my personal choices when it comes to gaming, even as I DM 4th.

So far my experience with the DNDNext Playtest has been quite enjoyable, and I look forward to more.

It's just nice to see little articles out in the wider space.

 

[Bluenose]

He stresses an older school viewpoint of Story over Mechanics, and encourages people to check out the playtest.

So he's another person telling us about "Old School" play-styles who doesn't remember what D&D was like in the 1970s. How predictable.

 

[Mattachine]

So he's another person telling us about "Old School" play-styles who doesn't remember what D&D was like in the 1970s. How predictable.

I so agree, and it so bothers me. Old School playstyle? All the playstyles we see today were around back then, too.

My first experiences with D&D were more like an rpg-boardgame, except we made the characters instead of picking from the box. Since there wasn't much story in our games, mechanics were more important.

Later, by the mid-late 1980s, my gaming groups focused way more on story than mechanics, but we used minis and a grid (a collection of chessboards, actually).

My group went heavily back to mechanics in 3rd edition, then continued with that focus in the beginning of 4th edition.

My latest 4e group focused extra heavily on story, using a simpler version of the rules, even.


Bah. *stomps off, going back to Grognard cave*

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

So he's another person telling us about "Old School" play-styles who doesn't remember what D&D was like in the 1970s. How predictable.

If you're going to discount the opinions of anyone under 50, that doesn't leave a lot of room for the hobby to grow (or even continue).

 

[Mattachine]

It isn't about discounting people under 50 (heck, I am under 50). The problem is talking about a time as if he were there (which he wasn't), and about over-generalizing a playstyle.