D&D 5E (2024) Do you plan to adopt D&D5.5One2024Redux?

[Aldarc]

So far, 5.2 seems to have the best class design out of all the new 5E spinoffs coming out.

I don't think that I have heard yet of this one. Is there a link with information about the classes for this spinoff?

 

[Hussar]

Yeah. Now it is clear. At that point it was not. Now that this is settled, maybe all should just stop with that pointless sidetrack and go back to the actual topic.

Yeah. We should get back to insisting whether or not Nobles are monsters. That's a key point.

 

[Lanefan]

Response 4 - No, you're wrong. Gaming is about "emergent" stories. Totally different from authored stories.

Personally, I really love #4 because, well, it ignores the fact that emergent or not, without a climax, you don't actually have a story. You have a setting. You have characters, but, you don't have a story.

When looking back at the game logs of old campaigns I've run, there may not be an overarching climax but there's various minor climaxes, usually within an adventure when the goal of the adventure (or short series) is realized, the BBEG is defeated, or whatever.

So if "story" isn't the correct term for the resulting game log and the scattershot and rather unstructured tale it tells, what is?

I mean, FFS, our Ravenloft campaign ended in the middle of a freaking combat. The DM just vanished into the ether and never came back. Real life stepped on him hard. I get that. But, poof. Campaign gone. No warning. No word. Just showed up for the game next week and... no DM.

Let's face it: that one comes under the "you've had bad luck" header I noted upthread.

Then again, I should ask: are you playing exclusively online, or at an actual face-to-face table with friends that you communicate with out-of-game and thus would more likely be aware of their non-gaming lives?

It would be far easier, I think, for a DM to ghost an online game where the odds of otherwise interacting with the players afterwards is basically zero than it would be to ghost a game one is running for one's face-to-face everyday friends.

 

[Hussar]

When looking back at the game logs of old campaigns I've run, there may not be an overarching climax but there's various minor climaxes, usually within an adventure when the goal of the adventure (or short series) is realized, the BBEG is defeated, or whatever.

So if "story" isn't the correct term for the resulting game log and the scattershot and rather unstructured tale it tells, what is?

Umm, I'm not quite understanding you here. You say that you have climaxes within an adventure and when you reach set goals.

Which is what I NEVER GET. Why is this so hard to understand? I don't get "minor climaxes". I don't get to reach the "goal of the adventure". When I talk about campaigns ending, it's not that it just sort of peters out and dies. No. It ends in the middle of round 3 of a fight. It ends while walking across a bridge.

I'm honestly baffled why this is so difficult to understand. I'm not talking about a campaign that stretches on for years and years and years. IME, a campaign has a half life of about 30-50 sessions. That's MAX. And many don't even last that long.

Let's face it: that one comes under the "you've had bad luck" header I noted upthread.

No, it isn't. It's USUAL. In that poll I put up, while it's early days still, HALF of players rarely or never actually conclude a campaign. This isn't just "oh, you have bad luck" or "oh, you play online". ThIs was true back in the 2ed and 1ed days, LONG before the Internet.

Dude, we've both played about the same amount of time. In the same amount of time that I've played, I've actually gotten to conclude an adventure maybe a half a dozen times. And, no, this isn't rare. This is very, very much not rare.

So, telling me, "oh, the journey is the reward" is naughty word. No, it isn't. If that's all the reward I can look forward to because DM's refuse to pick up the pace and face the fact that most campaigns are going to die within a very short time, well, telling me that I should just be happy with what I get isn't really much comfort.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Umm, I'm not quite understanding you here. You say that you have climaxes within an adventure and when you reach set goals.

Which is what I NEVER GET. Why is this so hard to understand? I don't get "minor climaxes". I don't get to reach the "goal of the adventure". When I talk about campaigns ending, it's not that it just sort of peters out and dies. No. It ends in the middle of round 3 of a fight. It ends while walking across a bridge.

Wow - this strikes me as really... odd DMing that you are consistently encountering. When we play, like @Lanefan, there are lots of minor goals which can ultimately lead the party closer to a larger goal. Sometimes that larger goal is explicit: Defeat Strahd or Save Elturel. Sometimes that larger goal is a bit nebulous: explore a mysterious world. Sometimes the larger goal has to do with the character arc of each character. And sometimes that larger goal changes along the way. I'm sure there are other variations. Like @FitzTheRuke, I also think it is a shame you've rarely completed a campaign and it is doubly a shame that you "NEVER GET" to complete minor goals towards completing a campaign (whatever that "completion" might be).

I think we have some common ground here. When I play a session, my personal preference is for two things to occur: 1. the characters Get Things Done and 2. we've had some laughs. Like you, I don't want a session where the characters are, as you say, "faffing about" the whole time making zero progress towards a minor goal (or the campaign goal). In that vein, I'm not going to stay at a table very long when there are multiple sessions where the characters do nothing else but talk to each other OR the entire focus is a PC shopping trip OR there is excessive non-game talk during our very limited allotted gaming time. Some tables might love those first two things or consider the hang-out more about social time with some gaming sprinkled in. That's fine for some but just not my preference when playing D&D.

I take to heart what the Introduction of the 5e PHB has to say: "Together, the DM and the players create an exciting story of bold adventurers who confront deadly perils" and especially "The group might fail to complete an adventure successfully, but if everyone had a good time and created a memorable story, they all win." For me, these things aren't happening if we're not making (or, at a minimum, trying to make) some progress each session towards completing the smaller quests and adventures that make up a larger campaign.

To bring it back to the OP: if 5e2024 has some tools that help our table achieve our preferred goals of play then, heck ya, we'll adopt it.

 

[mamba]

Which is what I NEVER GET. Why is this so hard to understand? I don't get "minor climaxes". I don't get to reach the "goal of the adventure".

maybe instead of running the big WotC campaigns, string together some shorter adventures. That way you at least had some successes and completed arcs when the thing falls apart during the 3rd to 5th adventure

Basically what Colville recently said


There are also other games that focus more on faster arcs that are D&D adjacent. Shadow of the Demon Lord basically wants the story to be finished in less than 20 sessions because long campaigns fall apart. Weird Wizard should do the same. 13th Age with going to level 10 only might aim for that too, not sure

 

[Micah Sweet]

So far, 5.2 seems to have the best class design out of all the new 5E spinoffs coming out.

Best in what way? What makes it "best" to you? I can't see that in any sense beyond subjective preference, so what about 5.2 makes it better to you than everything else?

 

[James Gasik]

Sorry, painting with too broad a brush and splashed you. My bad.

Doesn't stop the, by my count, at least four other posters, and I believe more, who've been tripping over themselves to tell me how wrong I am for not wanting to play the right way.

Funny thing is, when WotC did address this in the 4e DMG, they got absolutely pilloried for it. The whole "skip the gate guards" thing that became so farcical it became its own meme. But, here we are, ten years later, and even suggesting that it might make D&D games run better to tighten things up - a little - not everything, not all things, just cut out maybe, 15-25% of the fat on a campaign, might make for better games means that I hate role playing (a criticism that has been voiced more than once), been questioned why I even play RPG's and don't go off and play something else (also direct quotes), and been told that I'm totally off base here.

I think what you're running into here is that if a DM has decided there's going to be an encounter with the gate guards, they think that it's important. It very well might be for some reason, like, you'll encounter those guards again later, or they have a clue or something. Simply put, you're saying "skip irrelevant encounters" and I think some DM's see that and bristle because they don't think they have irrelevant encounters!

See, I look at climbing out of a ravine (with 5e's very lenient climbing rules) as not a big thing- but there might be a time when I want it to be a thing for some reason. So maybe it's rained recently and the ravine is full of mud, or the rock face is particularly smooth, or there's high winds, or there's goblins shooting at you- that's an encounter!

I bring up old school "in room 5B, two orcs sit at a table playing cards- badly. Upon the party entering the room, they jump up and draw their swords to attack!" style encounters as examples of things that are speed bumps. I don't run these (even though I can't deny that encounters like this should happen, logically) because, in general, it's barely worth rolling dice for. These guys will probably die to sword swings and cantrips in 5e! However, there can be times to run the battle, like say, you're sneaking around an orc fortress and drawing attention to you or letting an orc sound an alarm is a very big deal.

Now I don't think that is what you're saying at all, that everyone who runs, shall we say "minor encounters" is badwrong for doing so. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think you are instead saying "if there's no good reason for the encounter, don't make it an encounter". Which is just basic DMing- don't roll dice unless there's a good reason to do so. Don't put an option on the table if you don't want it to occur.

Now, that having been said, if a given DM and their players absolutely love rolling dice for everything, and are masochistic enough to savor gambling on hours of hardship because one guy rolled a 2, hey, have it! D&D is for everyone!

But like, even in an adventure I plan to run, where the PC's fight enemies in a mine, once they defeat all the leaders, I fully plan on saying "and you clear out the mines" after that, even though there would be monsters left, because narratively speaking, the juice of fighting those battles out wouldn't be worth the squeeze!

Some might say "but the experience points!" but they're getting those and what little treasure they have anyways, I'm simply cutting past what I feel would be a foregone conclusion.

 

[James Gasik]

Yeah. We should get back to insisting whether or not Nobles are monsters. That's a key point.

Nobles are monsters if you are intended to fight them. Nobles are NPC's if you're intended to interact with them non-violently. A Noble can be both, or switch from one to the other depending on circumstances.

I just find the MM quote to be hilarious because the official definition of a monster is so all-encompassing it could actually mean the PC's are monsters (and I suppose, to the monsters, they are!).

The reality is simple- if you want your Noble to have combat stats, you use a stat block. In every edition of the game, you'd do that. But only rarely as a "Noble". Until the Aristocrat class was created, most nobles you'd find statted up in D&D had class levels, like the King of Cormyr in the Forgotten Realms being a 20th level Cavalier (?!). And often, these stats were to keep players from just assassinating leaders of state, lol.

It wasn't until 4e, and now 5e, that you'd have a generic "Noble" monster.

So moving away from that, there's now the issue of what being a noble means in D&D. Is a Barbarian Chieftain, the son of the old Chief, and the son of the Chief before him a noble? Would his daughter be a Barbarian princess and thus a noble, despite the fact that she can lop a man's head off with an axe?

Is a Frost Giant Jarl a noble? An Archdevil? How about the wealthy mayor of a town?

Is being a noble in a setting the result of the Divine Right of Kings? Do you have to be 2/3 God and one part Man? Or are you just a worshiped as a God?

Can you buy your way into the aristocracy or be granted a Knighthood? Is Conan a noble because he sat down on a throne and declared himself King?

There's no "one size fits all" description here, which does give a lot of weight to the argument that the Noble Background might not work when you interact with a culture you're not a part of. Is the Daimyo of House Kakita going to accept that this "round-eyed white demon" is actually a Noble from a distant land? Would it matter if he did?

The Background Features are written for a game where there is some mystical quality that sets a noble apart- it's a staple of Western European folklore. In The Matter of England or the Matter of France, there is something special about nobles, and most people recognize that on sight.

What's interesting is that not all D&D worlds are like that. Being a King isn't a big deal in the Forgotten Realms- having an army is! Just ask the Tuigan. But walk into the Kryptwood and Old Gnawbone will devour you the same as he would anyone else!

Being a King isn't particularly special in most D&D settings (Birthright being a notable exception) in of itself. So yeah, the background does kind of stick out like a sore thumb- it works if that's the kind of game you're running. But the feature (and the DMG) are written in a way that ways "this is how this works in D&D" as a general statement. Very strange.

Now me personally, I don't mind the players having special destinies and people noticing that there's more to that "moisture farmer" or "assistant pig-keeper" than meets the eye. The concept of being a Ta'veren is fine with me (I'd draw the line at a Kwisatz Haderach though)...to a point.

And that point is, when one player's story runs the risk of taking too much spotlight, or interfering with another's. As Matt Colville once quoted about something a friend said, "I didn't realize D&D is a game where your fun could be ruined by someone else's fun".

But all that having been said, if you don't want PC's who are inherently special, and have to earn their legend from scratch, something like the Noble Background isn't going to work out as written.

Whoever came up with the Backgrounds Concept was coming from a place where WotC was willing to define what D&D is. Which as we know, they quickly backed away from.

D&D is just a system of rules, man. The game is what you make of it.

 

[Maxperson]

See here’s the thing.

It’s not weird. It’s pretty par for the course. It’s what I’ve seen from dm after dm stretching back decades. It happens all the time.

Why do you think they included the infamous “skip the gate guards” advice in the 4e DMG? They weren’t making that up.

I didn't play 4e so I had to look that up. This is not the same issue. Are they both kinda sorta under the header of fun? Yep. The entire game is. Having someone roll to hit a door, though, isn't the same as encountering guards at the gate. I've known many, many DMs who have gate guards, but not one that has had someone roll to stab a door. At least not outside the rare joke roll that wasn't to see anything other than answer, "You hit the door" no matter what was rolled.

The gate guard advice, by the way, is bad advice. Gate guards are a fantastic resource for the PCs when arriving at a new city. The guards ask them where they are from and what they are doing and then usher them inside. It takes all of 10-30 seconds. UNLESS!!!! The players want to know where something is. Often they will ask the name of a good tavern, or where the blacksmith is, or... If the encounter with the guards goes longer than 30 seconds, it's because the players wanted it to be longer. Once the group is familiar with a city, the guards can and should be ignored unless important to the story somehow.

Good gate guard advice would have been advice on when to encounter the guards and when not to, as well as advice on length of time for such an encounter and ways that the guards can help the PCs.

The 4e DMG, though, telling players that it's bad wrong fun to have a good encounter with guards at the gate. It is straight up saying that all gate guard encounters aren't fun.