D&D (2024) Dungeons and Dragons future? Ray Winninger gives a nod to Mike Shea's proposed changes.

[Haplo781]

I chose poorly my wording on this. 4E definitely has theme, its a little too particular into the game aspect. Especially the tactical combat and powers. It is difficult (for me) to imagine the adventuring aspect of the game because of this focus. There isnt much there about the exploration or social pillar of the game. So, its not an excise of theme, but a hyper focus at the cost of general themes. They simply get lost in the background.

What does 5e have for social and exploration pillars that isn't in 4e, exactly?

 

[SkidAce]

Okay, I'll bite: what exact number does the purposefully inexact word 'several' imply?

2-5.


edit; cause if you get to 6, its a "half dozen".

 

[Parmandur]

It’s really, incredibly impolite to put words into people’s mouths under the pretense that you understand their meaning better than they do, especially when what you’re saying is exactly the opposite of what they said. You didn’t care for 4e’s writing, and that’s fine. But I would hope you could understand and respect that others did like it.

Sure, from an aesthetic point of view. People like all sorts of things.

But from the lens of the products reception: the dry presentation was a miatake. Regardless of what one's tastes might be, that approach actively harmed the game and the hobby at large.

 

[SkidAce]

More specifically, it's one more than a couple(2), since several is 3 to many. A few is just a small number of, which would include 2, but also 3 or 4, which is several.

These descriptive number groups make my head hurt. I mean, 4 stars in a solar system is a large number of stars for a solar system, which is many. So would that make 3 the only number that qualifies for several, since it's less than many? Or since 4 is a small number, would that simply be a few stars?

Yes.

 

[Charlaquin]

Sure, from an aesthetic point of view. People like all sorts of things.

But from the lens of the products reception: the dry presentation was a miatake. Regardless of what one's tastes might be, that approach actively harmed the game and the hobby at large.

We don’t know that. 4e didn’t grow as quickly as WotC needed it to, but we have no evidence that the writing was at fault for that. Indeed, what we do know is that 4e was incredibly popular with new players, but the loss of old players created a bottleneck to entry. What this suggests is that the biggest problem was that their early marketing decisions made long-time players feel snubbed.

EDIT: I also don’t think “dry” is a fair characterization of 4e’s presentation. 4e was full of flavor, it was just more technical than previous editions had been.

 

[payn]

We don’t know that. 4e didn’t grow as quickly as WotC needed it to, but we have no evidence that the writing was at fault for that. Indeed, what we do know is that 4e was incredibly popular with new players, but the loss of old players created a bottleneck to entry. What this suggests is that the biggest problem was that their early marketing decisions made long-time players feel snubbed.

This can have an impact on new players too. They often look to what senior members choose and think for their own decisions. Players will roll with whatever the GM wants to use.

 

[Parmandur]

We don’t know that. 4e didn’t grow as quickly as WotC needed it to, but we have no evidence that the writing was at fault for that. Indeed, what we do know is that 4e was incredibly popular with new players, but the loss of old players created a bottleneck to entry. What this suggests is that the biggest problem was that their early marketing decisions made long-time players feel snubbed.

I can only speak to my own experience, as someone who really, really wanted to like 4E and just kept getting disappointed.

This is a thread about hopes for the future, so I don'twant to spend any more time dwelling on the misfortunes of the past: I'll leave this sideline with the positive note thet I highly doubt thst WotC will regress on the readability front in future books, and that this lesson has been well internalized into the D&D team culture.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Sure, from an aesthetic point of view. People like all sorts of things.

But from the lens of the products reception: the dry presentation was a miatake. Regardless of what one's tastes might be, that approach actively harmed the game and the hobby at large.

That’s a huge stretch.

You’re basically just assuming out of hand that the thing you didn’t like about it is the reason it was controversial, even though that was not even top 5 of the things people complained about.

 

[Parmandur]

That’s a huge stretch.

You’re basically just assuming out of hand that the thing you didn’t like about it is the reason it was controversial, even though that was not even top 5 of the things people complained about.

The formatting and readability come up just about everybtike the topic rears it's head.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Why would you need game rules to be useful for anything other than playing the game? We don’t rate Monopoly instructions this way.

I do. Monopoly doesn’t do a good enough job explaining the player/piece divide. I know people who play the Hat in the exact same way they play the Car. It’s all about optimization for them. They turn it into a board game.