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

[dave2008]

I'm talking from personal experience. It is a FACT that I did not understand the 4e rules.

Of course, but that is not what I am talking about. It is a fact the you did not understand the rules. It is also a fact that the two groups I ran it for understood them. However, it is not a fact the they are generally more or less understandable than other editions. Those are opinions.

There were lots of playstyles for 1st edition. That was its strength. Most other editions retained that. 4e lost it.

I disagree. My personal experience tells me otherwise. In fact, I tried and played more playstyles in 4e than I did in 1e (partially because I tried other RPGs between 1e and 4e). From my experience we did (with 4e):

• Traditional 1e style (at least how we did it) with minis on the table to show general locations, the rest TotM
• Full TotM
• Full battlemap and minis
• Local heroes just finding their way (even did some 0 level stuff)
• Regional Barons managing strongholds
• Plane jumping epic warriors
• Completely ad-hoc freeform (player describes what they want to do & DM adjudicates)
• dungeon crawls
• hex-crawls
• horror
• investigation / intrigue
• murder-hobo
• high magic (elementary school kid group)
• low magic (gronard group)
• Races: human, elf, halfling, yuan-ti, lizardfolk, & dragon

 

[GMforPowergamers]

There is a balance to be found, and yeah, a lot of cooking blogs don't get it right. 5E, however, does get that balance right, pretty much across the board.

5e can't balance fluff to mechainc can't balance class to class and can't balance race to race... heck even spells (the most common thing in 5e) break there own rules on balance for themselves.

 

[Aldarc]

I think a good compromise is the presentation of force powers and starship maneuvers in Star Wars Saga Edition. In fact, I think that if 4e had been presented in a very similar way to SWSE, it would have had much less resistance.

I agree. I suspect that if 4e had been released more like either SWSE or even 4e Essentials from the get-go, then 4e would have been better received. But the 4e launch, development, and marketing had a lot of issues, to put it mildly.

What I do find interesting is that I have seen A LOT of love from 5e players and GMs discovering 4e when it comes to the layout, advice, presentation, and readability of the 4e books. I have seen a number of 5e GMs on Twitter recommending that other 5e GMs pick up the 4e DMG for solid GM advice.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

The centrality of natural language as part of the central design 5E is from WotC own breakdown of the matter.

the words passive and surprise...

now I get A LOT of people telling me I game 'wrong' on this site, but the number of people that tell me X word doesn't mean X word it means something else. In the last 30 days I have had pages of argument over if Passive means 'something you do without action' or 'something you do over and over again', and an argument that something can suprise you without counting as suprised.

 

[dave2008]

I'm a bit perplexed about the second statement. I'm fan of AD&D, but I don't see a very similar playstyle with 4e. Could you expand on that point?

I have had many discussions about this on the old WotC forums and here on EnWorld. What I have come to realize is that for me and my group of players, inertia is more important than rules/edition. I play with the same group since high school and we learned to play a mix of 1e & BECMI. We developed our own playstyle and that trumps the edition, whether it is 1e, 4e, or 5e. We play the game how we want to play the game. Some of it is, to me, 1e required a homebrewer's mentality to get it to work (particularly if you didn't realize AD&D and BECMI were different games), so that philosophy carried forward to all editions: you get the game to work for you, not the other way around.

 

[dave2008]

I agree. I suspect that if 4e had been released more like either SWSE or even 4e Essentials from the get-go, then 4e would have been better received. But the 4e launch, development, and marketing had a lot of issues, to put it mildly.

What I do find interesting is that I have seen A LOT of love from 5e players and GMs discovering 4e when it comes to the layout, advice, presentation, and readability of the 4e books. I have seen a number of 5e GMs on Twitter recommending that other 5e GMs pick up the 4e DMG for solid GM advice.

Yes, it is interesting that MCDM is very successful in 5e by modeling a lot of his stuff on 4e design & presentation.

 

[dave2008]

5e can't balance fluff to mechainc

Well to be fair that has been a problem in all editions IMO

can't balance class to class and can't balance race to race...

I feel these are all balanced enough. I know my players don't complain about balance. I personally don't want complete balance and would prefer if things we actually less "balanced" than they currently are. Also, this is WotC thing not a 5e thing. Just look at LevelUp for how to balance classes better.

heck even spells (the most common thing in 5e) break there own rules on balance for themselves.

It does bother me that some WotC spells don't follow the DMG guidelines, but that is WotC thing not a 5e thing. Just look at LevelUp for how to balance spells better.

 

[Scribe]

Umm, no. The latest Drizzt novel (Glacier’s Edge) was literally released last week.

Right, Drizzt books, a few Elminster, and honestly that's all I remember since the Sundering event.

 

[dave2008]

Right, Drizzt books, a few Elminster, and honestly that's all I remember since the Sundering event.

Didn't a new Dragonlance book just come out?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Well to be fair that has been a problem in all editions IMO

I feel these are all balanced enough. I know my players don't complain about balance. I personally don't want complete balance and would prefer if things we actually less "balanced" than they currently are. Also, this is WotC thing not a 5e thing. Just look at LevelUp for how to balance classes better.

It does bother me that some WotC spells don't follow the DMG guidelines, but that is WotC thing not a 5e thing. Just look at LevelUp for how to balance spells better.

weather being balanced is better or worse is a taste thing... but I don't believe 5e is... maybe that IS a good thing, even if I don't think so.