D&D General Does D&D (and RPGs in general) Need Edition Resets?

[nevin]

But out of how many things being sold? Millions? billions? Still outliers.

 

[Remathilis]

There were only 27 people who died due to the Pinto's problems. More were injured without actually dying, but far fewer than the actual number of Pintos sold.

Something can be an extremely serious fault while still not actually being some universal, every-single-user-sees-it problem. Now, that doesn't mean every fault IS "extremely serious." Many aren't. But the "people bought it, therefore it can't be a problem" argument is an excuse, not a rebuttal, here. And I'm quite tired of this conversation-ending "nothing to see here, move along citizen" kind of response. There are issues. Criticism has grown with time. And some of those issues cannot, even in principle, be fixed with purely iterative, piecemeal, baby-steps changes.

That is simply the fact of the matter. Whether WotC chooses to address this on its own, or waits until it becomes genuinely impossible to ignore the criticism, is a separate matter entirely. Telling me, tacitly, to like it or lump it because "it's popular" accomplishes literally nothing.

Can you advise how many people 5e has killed?

 

[Parmandur]

could go on, sure, have today's player base and market share, I doubt that very much

To be honest...I think it could be even better than it is now, without the problems caused by decades of product confusion.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Nothing is a problem if it doesn't cause literal fatalities.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But out of how many things being sold? Millions? billions? Still outliers.

Not at all. I used some of the most prominent, popular, well-known products as examples for a reason.

By your standard, D&D is an outlier already, so we should be ignoring it entirely.

 

[Zardnaar]

It is nowhere near as unlikely as you think.

The Model T? Terrible vehicle. Especially for safety, dear God it was incredibly dangerous to drive. But it was cheap, and it was (relatively) rugged, and it was easy to make. Yet there's a reason we don't use plate glass windshields anymore, amongst many other faults in its design.

Windows? Tons of design issues. Still by far the most widely-used OS. But being the first big thing on the market has huge value.

Mcdonald's? I don't think people like it because it's nutritious, environmentally friendly, nor good to its employees, nor even because it's amazingly flavorful. It's cheap, and it uses lots of salt, sugar, fat, and MSG to twiddle all those basic tastebud responses.

EverQuest was the reigning king of MMOs for years, and it had some genuinely terrible design. (My dad played it for quite a long time and became intimately familiar with how hostile it could be to the people playing it.) Yet it was called "EverCrack" in its heyday.

There are many, many, many, MANY reasons why something can be popular, can sell well, can reach a huge audience. Only a portion of those reasons are the actual quality and design of the product itself. And, before I get nasty accusations yet again, yes, some of the design choices of 5e DO contribute to its popularity. But many, many things that have nothing to do with that also contribute: culture shifts, economic environment, changes in media, marketing/word of mouth, world events, etc., etc.

I am of the opinion that a majority, not a massive one but a majority nonetheless, are actually unrelated to what you read between the covers of the 5e PHB, DMG, and MM. (Certainly unrelated to the design quality of the DMG, or should I say general lack thereof.) I am and have been further of the opinion that, as 5e ages, criticisms of what is in it will grow with time. This has been borne out thus far, though I admit much more slowly than my (likely biased) expectations. But it used to be nigh-impossible to make any criticism at all of 5e. That is no longer true, even without factoring in the OGL debacle or other WotC foot-in-mouth disease, and hasn't been true for probably three-ish years now.

Hell, I was making the exact same criticisms of the 5e DMG, eight or nine years ago, that people are now making today. To the point that even avowed 5e fans will get annoyed at the suggestion that people would defend the DMG's faults, e.g. "yes yes we know the DMG isn't great can we move on please", when literally as little as three or four years ago people were doing exactly that, declaring it good or even great and dismissing any criticism as unwarranted and incorrect....often on popularity grounds.

Now, don't mistake me. I get that this is a prediction of future trends, and I am no fortuneteller. But if past is prologue, and if 5.5e is as minimally changed as I expect it to be, then it isn't alarmist in the least to say that five-ish years from now, there will be rather more criticism than there is today, and much of it will center on things that can't be fixed iteratively or gradually.

Which was my thesis.

I even explicitly said, repeatedly, that a balance between stability and change is needed. Too much change and you drive people away. Too much lack of change and people slowly get fed up. Iterative change tries to have its cake and eat it too, and in fairness it actually does a decent job at that. But there are some things it cannot fix, even in principle—and as those things remain fixed points for longer and longer stretches, they will chafe more. That is the nature of the beast.

I pointed out several problems with 5E in 2014//5 mostly directed at 5 feats, CR system and several OP spells.

Alot of them are nerfed in the playtest.

 

[Minigiant]

could go on, sure, have today's player base and market share, I doubt that very much

That's the core issue.

An RPG doesn't have to reset. However without resets, it won't be able to grow nor keep up with the changes in the RPG market.

Especially after the invention of the internet.

CoC doesn't need to reset. But CoC is niche and small in the market.

 

[Umbran]

Can you advise how many people 5e has killed?

Mod Note:
Literal life and death was not the point - that an issue can be serious, but not seen by everyone, was the point.

Your reach for snark got in the way of you taking a constructive part in the discussion. If you actually want your comments to be useful, please leave the snark behind. If you don't care about being useful, then please just go find some better use for your time. Thanks.

 

[Lanefan]

My point is you would need a reset to insert the more mechanical versions of these.

Skills weren't in 1e and they were integrated into the gameplay loop in 2e. Feats didn't exist. Maneuvers didn't exist. Different types of rest didn't exist.

If we could on our own dream up different types of rest for our homebrew (we did this in about 1984) it's not a big leap to think the pros could have done the same.

• Does a ranger get a bonus to their Woodcraft or Animal Handing NWP compared to a wizard?
• Which level do you get a feat?
• What schedule is Pact Magic, Psionics, or True Naming work?
• How does wildshape work?
• What is an aberration or fey or giant?
• Are you doing a ton of bonuses, a feat sets of bonus categories, or reducing things down to advantage disadvantage?
• Is the fighter just +1 to hit per level but the paladin gets a class feature every level?
• How does balance work if you add feats or skills or full caster bards or wildshape druids?
• Is Challenge rating a thing? Do you have encounter building tools.
• How do you add magic or martial to a monster?
• How do you swap a monsters race if they only are ability adjusts and Charisma doesn't do anything for monsters?
• Are races just static ability score adjusts?

You need a reset to answer these questions.

Without going point by point, the answers to some of those already exist in 1e (and maybe 2e?), some of them would require tinkering with the system, while others might never have become relevant.

 

[Lanefan]

How do shields work?

They improve AC by either adding or subtracting an amount from it.

By definition, they are "add +1 (or w/e) armored-ness, to go from second-place armor to first-place armor." That's how descending AC works.

Where is this "second place armour" and "first place armour" piece coming from?

Whether descending or ascending the AC number is just a number, not a ranking or placing; and in this case is simply abstracting the in-game reality that using a shield makes your defenses that little bit stouter.

And it isn't just shields. Rings of protection, magic armor, magic shields, spells, physical detriments, you name it, there's a whole host of arithmetic modifiers to armor class.

Indeed, and some of them stack while others don't.