D&D 5E Do you want D&D Next to succeed?

[TwinBahamut]

Will you be happy if the game is popular, even if it's not one you'd want to play?

If it's not one I want to play, it won't really affect me. It's not like I care about the Call of Duty franchise of videogames, even though it is successful. I only bother with things I like.

Will you be willing to give it a try to support the D&D brand that has brought so many people years of fun, even if the rules aren't perfect? (And really, have you ever thought any version of D&D had perfect rules?)

I don't demand perfection (D&D certainly hasn't ever been that), but I do demand a certain level of quality. If that quality isn't there, then... No. I won't support a brand just for the sake of supporting a brand.

Do you trust that the game designers are people who love gaming, who want to help others have fun, and who are trying to make a game that best encapsulates what they think the audience wants D&D to be?

I trust them if they prove themselves to be skilled and competent. They don't get an "A for Effort".

Do you think that the benefits of having Hasbro's infrastructure to help market, distribute, and sell the game outweigh whatever limitations might be passed down from a corporate level?

Almost certainly.

Will you not begrudge your fellow gamers if they have different tastes than you?

They continue to baffle and confuse me, but I care more about what the rules say that what other gamers want or do with the rules.

Me, I liked AD&D 2nd edition because I was gaming with friends, but I house ruled it. I liked D&D 3rd edition because I was gaming with friends, but I house ruled it. I liked D&D 4th edition because I was gaming with friends, but I house ruled it.

I know 5e isn't going to satisfy me wholly from a game mechanic perspective. But what would make me happy, what would excite me and bring joy that no system has in a decade, would be if my fellow gamers across the internet would realize that we share a hobby, and while our differences might mean we won't share a game with a given person, that shared love of RPGs should unify us.

Let's stand behind D&D Next. What do you say?

Hell no.

If I have to houserule it to get it to work, it's not worth the paper it is printed on.

I also have no particular desire to "unify" with anyone. I care about having fun with the people I know and get along with and play with. I'll play with the people I have fun playing with, but I have no desire to reach out to people whose styles don't mesh with mine. The "shared love of RPGs" is nowhere near meaningful enough to put up with some of you people.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

DND Next

>Will you be happy if the game is
>popular, even if it's not one you'd
>want to play?

It doesn't really matter to me. If it's popular, good for them. If it isn't, they probably didn't do a good job with it.


>Will you be willing to give it a
>try to support the D&D brand

I quit buying things to "support a brand" a very long time ago. When it comes out, I'll take a look at it. If it looks like something I'd play, I'll buy it. If not, I won't. 4e really hacked me off - WoTC has to work to win me back as a customer.


>Do you trust that the game designers
>are people who love gaming, who want
>to help others have fun, and who are trying
>to make a game that best encapsulates
>what they think the audience wants D&D to be?

Sure. That doesn't mean they will be successful, though. Time will tell.

>Do you think that the benefits of
>having Hasbro's infrastructure to help
>market, distribute, and sell the game
>outweigh whatever limitations might
>be passed down from a corporate level?

Marketing can't make a bad game good. Corporate meddling can make a good game bad, though.

>Will you not begrudge your fellow
>gamers if they have different tastes than you?

I don't care what others think about a game. If they find something they like, more power to them.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Absolutely. I am not sure why anyone would want D&D Next to fail.

Perhaps for the same irrational reasons that so many worked so hard to make 4e fail, and are so delighted that it has? The edition wars happened with 3.5/4e. Concerns that they might happen with 4e/5e are understandable.

I don't think it's going to happen, though. The edition war happened because 3.5 fans had the OGL (and, later, Pathfinder) to rally around. The OGL isn't suitable to 4e, and it's much more restrictive GSL means no retro-clones like Pathfinder. So there won't be any foundation for 4e-based anti-5e campaign.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I want it to succeed. But I want it to succeed by being a good game I want to play. Failing that I want it to succeed by being a good game other people enjoy even if I'm not the audience. I think I'd rather it failed than see a bad game succeed.

 

[CasvalRemDeikun]

The success of 5E is in the hands of the people making it. If they make a garbage system, they only have themselves to blame. And if it is a garbage system, I DO hope it fails, so they can start anew. Wanting something inherently awful to do well is counterproductive.

If it is a system people like, then I hope it does well, even though at this stage, I can't see myself even buying the core books.

 

[kitsune9]

Even if D&D Next comes out with everything I consider to be absolutely terrible, I would like it to succeed.

I don't see myself picking this game up aside from the core set just for collection purposes, but I still want it to do quite well.

 

[I'm A Banana]

If I have to houserule it to get it to work, it's not worth the paper it is printed on.

This is an odd sentiment to me, when looking at the goal of modularity.

I mean, a modular system assumes you house-rule it. Very likely, the core of the system is light and simple and favors casual play over a more detailed approach.

So I think almost everyone who plays 5e will have to -- or want to -- house-rule it.

Wanting a system you don't have to house-rule feels to me like it might be demanding too much from the game. I don't need Next to exclusively cater to my particular unique niche tastes alone, thus alienating everyone who doesn't play like I do. I DO need Next to let me make it into something that particularly serves my unique niche tastes without much hassle.

I fear anyone who wants to be served exactly what they want without tweaking the thing will be out in the cold, here, at least at launch. Unless what they want is a simple, stripped-down experience, I guess. D&D hasn't ever been just one monolithic kind of thing (though it's occasionally tried to be).

It's like a programming language. Or, it's like LEGO. It's made to be built with. If what you want is a giant castle, LEGO won't give you that out of the box. It gives you a pile of bricks to make your own giant castle with. And sometimes it gives you a "giant castle kit" that helps you build that specifically. But you can build a giant castle without that kit, and you can use that kit to build other things, and either way you still kind of have to do the assembly yourself (though I suppose you could always pay your friend to do it).

If 5e can deliver that, it wins my vote. If you want a prefabricated experience made specifically for you, it might loose yours. At least until it comes out with the Giant Castle Set or something anyway.

 

[pauljathome]

Wow, those are some insanely biased questions.

Will you be happy if the game is popular, even if it's not one you'd want to play?

Not if it is so popular that it makes it harder for me to find players of games that I do want to play. Otherwise, sure.

Will you be willing to give it a try to support the D&D brand that has brought so many people years of fun, even if the rules aren't perfect? (And really, have you ever thought any version of D&D had perfect rules?)

No. I don't care about the brand.

Do you trust that the game designers are people who love gaming, who want to help others have fun, and who are trying to make a game that best encapsulates what they think the audience wants D&D to be?

I think that is likely PART of their motivation. Keeping their paycheques is likely another part.

Do you think that the benefits of having Hasbro's infrastructure to help market, distribute, and sell the game outweigh whatever limitations might be passed down from a corporate level?

No

Will you not begrudge your fellow gamers if they have different tastes than you?

Of course not

Me, I liked AD&D 2nd edition because I was gaming with friends, but I house ruled it. I liked D&D 3rd edition because I was gaming with friends, but I house ruled it. I liked D&D 4th edition because I was gaming with friends, but I house ruled it.

I know 5e isn't going to satisfy me wholly from a game mechanic perspective. But what would make me happy, what would excite me and bring joy that no system has in a decade, would be if my fellow gamers across the internet would realize that we share a hobby, and while our differences might mean we won't share a game with a given person, that shared love of RPGs should unify us.

I agree we share a hobby. I don't see why that means we should share a game.

Let's stand behind D&D Next. What do you say?

I'll stand behind it if and only if the game deserves it. I'm most certainly NOT going to embrace a game that I don't like for some mythical sense of unity.

 

[TwinBahamut]

This is an odd sentiment to me, when looking at the goal of modularity.

I mean, a modular system assumes you house-rule it. Very likely, the core of the system is light and simple and favors casual play over a more detailed approach.

So I think almost everyone who plays 5e will have to -- or want to -- house-rule it.

This isn't true at all, though. The goal of a modular system is to make something you don't need to houserule. If a modular system is built well, then it had inbuilt flexible rules that can be customized in place of a strict rule structure that needs houserules to change. A modular system is designed to be customized, but if it needs houserules on top of that then the modularity is either flawed or insufficient.

Wanting a system you don't have to house-rule feels to me like it might be demanding too much from the game. I don't need Next to exclusively cater to my particular unique niche tastes alone, thus alienating everyone who doesn't play like I do. I DO need Next to let me make it into something that particularly serves my unique niche tastes without much hassle.

I fear anyone who wants to be served exactly what they want without tweaking the thing will be out in the cold, here, at least at launch. Unless what they want is a simple, stripped-down experience, I guess. D&D hasn't ever been just one monolithic kind of thing (though it's occasionally tried to be).

Again, a customizable modular ruleset is not the same thing as houserules. A game can cater to multiple tastes without requiring any houserules if it is modular and well-designed.

Also, there is a difference between wanting to houserule something and needing to houserule something. A game is not worth the paper it's printed on if I have to houserule it, not if I houserule it because I want to tweak it a little more to my tastes.

Basically, I want a game that works without crossing any of the "unacceptable" boundaries I could lay out. I'm willing to put up with somethings I don't want, certainly, but the game still needs to reach a certain minimum standard, and I won't accept anything that doesn't reach that standard.

It's like a programming language. Or, it's like LEGO. It's made to be built with. If what you want is a giant castle, LEGO won't give you that out of the box. It gives you a pile of bricks to make your own giant castle with. And sometimes it gives you a "giant castle kit" that helps you build that specifically. But you can build a giant castle without that kit, and you can use that kit to build other things, and either way you still kind of have to do the assembly yourself (though I suppose you could always pay your friend to do it).

If 5e can deliver that, it wins my vote. If you want a prefabricated experience made specifically for you, it might loose yours. At least until it comes out with the Giant Castle Set or something anyway.

You are really stretching this "prefabricated" strawman here...

Let's just say that I don't want to be forced to use ducktape and glue in order to build a castle out of a random box of legos because the legos are poorly manufactured and won't stick together properly.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

This is an odd sentiment to me, when looking at the goal of modularity.

I mean, a modular system assumes you house-rule it. Very likely, the core of the system is light and simple and favors casual play over a more detailed approach.

So I think almost everyone who plays 5e will have to -- or want to -- house-rule it.

I realize this is a definitional dispute, but I disagree with the idea that "modular" equals "house rule." I will agree that it is often more a matter of degree than of kind, and there will be a lot of fuzzy areas. There will even be some where to get it to work the way you want, you activate a module, and then house rule from there. But there's a huge difference between working systems that I can swap in or out, dial up or down, switch on and off -- versus something I put together myself out of duct tape and bailing wire.

Not least of all, I disagree with that thinking because it sets a really low bar for "module". It turns "module" into "some crap the designer through together and maybe tested a bit," or more positively put, but the same thing, "a designer's house rule with professional presentation."

"Modular" is when you take one kind of trailer off your truck and put another trailer on the hitch, switching out the light connections. "House rule" is when you weld a piece of metal with a hole in it to the back of your truck frame, then wire the lights up yourself. They may both haul your boat equally well in the end, but one is a heck of a lot more work than the other.