I like D&D

[darkwing]

"Easier to take things out than put them in."

That's one of the biggest lies and misconceptions there is. Take attribute scores for example, how do you take those out without reworking and rebalancing everything that is derived from them?

If anything the opposite is true:

It's much easier to start with a simple core system and add the things you want than it is to take a complicated system and cut out the things you don't want.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I'm more a "big tent" guy myself, but even I would hate to see D&D Next disavow (in that elegant Mission Impossible sense) these things.

My question then would be what are you intending to use a the tentpole? Sure, get everybody under the same curcus tent canvas out of the rain, wind, harsh sun, but SOME people are then still going to be standing under the bleachers near the door flap while others are sitting front row-center ring. In short - even if we're all under the same big tent not everybody is going to be equally happy.

Is it going to be a 3 ring circus where 1E, 3E and 4E are all playing at the same time so that while you laugh at the clowns piling out of the little car you don't see the thrilling antics of the Flying Wallendas? Easier by far to just say, "Let's all get along," than to handwave away years of acrimony and divergence of what makes D&D better and why.

My own opinion is that despite its flaws 1E would make the best tentpole. Yet I know that others will only be dragged into THAT kind of tent kicking and screaming - just as I know I would if certain other editions wind up with too heavy a focus. I may not want to buy a ticket and just go back to my Flea Circus rather than be driven mad by the calliope. Actually, considering how thinly I've now stretched the metaphor I think that may have already happened.

 

[Celebrim]

My own opinion is that despite its flaws 1E would make the best tentpole.

Well, certainly I think that 1E was the tent pole under which 3E was errected, but I can't help but think that we've moved on from that. Third edition brought in a large number of players. It's going to take more magic than that I fear.

I think 3E will be the tent pole. I think that they could learn from 4E's attempt at systemization - both from where it goes right and where it goes wrong. I think that they could learn from 2E's commitment to high quality artwork and setting. I think that they could learn from 1E that modules are what sell your game. It's been far far too long since there were really classic modules published under the D&D brand. They've let Paizo dominate that market and its crushing them. Intellectual property is more important than rules, so they better darn well get to making new valuable IP if they want to survive in the long run.

I seriously doubt the new edition can bring back the retrogamers, nor should it try. It would be a better and more likely triumph if they can convince retrogamers that the new adventures are worth back porting into older editions.

 

[Mercurius]

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION], I can agree with you to a point but where we differ is that you seemingly feel that a modular system will somehow take away from this "D&Dness" where I feel that it won't.

For instance, I like classes but I don't want to have to use classes or be limited to that approach. 90% of the time? Sure, but it would be fun to play a free-form character in a D&D campaign. The same goes for pretty much anything from any edition.

To put it another way, your desired approach doesn't include modular except as house rules, while a well-designed modular system includes both your way and a modular options. Why not do both?

 

[Wormwood]

It's much easier to start with a simple core system and add the things you want than it is to take a complicated system and cut out the things you don't want.

Which is my hope for 5e. Not a series of 3e UA alternate rules that in many cases were difficult to integrate, but a core system with a light, simple skeleton (playable in iteself) upon which you could add (provided) options easily.

It would be both revolutionary and evolutionary---and admittedly a bit pie in the sky---but the spirit of D&D would still be evident throughout.

As I posted in another thread, my "perfect' 5e would result in a different D&D at at every table without any house rules necessary.

 

[Essenti]

Which is my hope for 5e. Not a series of 3e UA alternate rules that in many cases were difficult to integrate, but a core system with a light, simple skeleton (playable in iteself) upon which you could add (provided) options easily.

It would be both revolutionary and evolutionary---and admittedly a bit pie in the sky---but the spirit of D&D would still be evident throughout.

As I posted in another thread, my "perfect' 5e would result in a different D&D at at every table without any house rules necessary.

If everything is supposed to be modular, then you won't have to work with the raw materials to build up new modules from the ground up, unless you want/feel compelled to (and the fact that you CAN engineer your own modules is a strength in my opinion, and I think WoTC should lay down specifications for easily achieving that).


The modules should be plug and play. Adding new parts should be just as easy as removing them, if it is done right.

Let us hope we don't wind up with a "windows 95" feature set... and a blue screen o death the first time Mearls shows people how easy the plug and play modularity is!

 

[outsider]

I like killing monsters and taking their stuff.

 

[pemerton]

I like D&D.

So do I.

I've always thought that my problem with 4e is that it was made for people who didn't like D&D.

That's a little contentious.

I like Alignment. I think the two axis alignment system is one of the core defining features of D&D and serves to give D&D a lot of its heft. I grant that many people don't 'get' alignment and that that has from time to time included the author's of D&D, but I get it and I know how to explain it and I've never had players have a problem with it once its explained right.

I don't like alignment. I don't think this is because I "don't get it" - I'm an academic moral and political philosopher whose work has been published in Philosophy and Public Affairs.

I also don't agree that two-axis alignment is core to D&D. It is not part of OD&D or Basic. There are very interesting discussions of alignment by Lewis Pulsipher in early White Dwarves which expressly turn on distinguishing the original Law-Chaos alignment rather than the later two-axis alignment.

 

[mmadsen]

I've always thought that my problem with 4e is that it was made for people who didn't like D&D. It was made for people frustrated with D&D's little annoyances. Heck, it may have even been made by people who had themselves become frustrated with D&D's problems - small and large.

That doesn't ring true to me. I think Runequest and GURPS, on the other hand, were almost explicitly made in reaction to D&D's "unrealistic" rules.

Part of the reason I like D&D, maybe the main reason I like D&D, is I think it does a good job of letting us all sit down and play together. This is I think the result of having been invented bottom up through the course of play in an organic fashion. It's not the product of ivory tower theory about what would be fun, but the product of years of adopting rules, throwing rules out, and settling on something that seemed fun.

It took me a long time in my RPG career to realize how essential that was. It's hard not to have all these bright ideas about how much better everything would be if it was only more realistic, more elegant, more flexible, more like this sort of fiction, and so forth, but when you actually play your bright ideas you find that well, in practice they aren't maybe as great as you'd thought that they'd be. I use to take it for granted that D&D was only good because of nostalgia or because everyone had played it. It took me a long time to humble myself enough to stop and try to figure out what was right with it instead of just what was wrong with it. When I did actually turn my thought to what was right about it, it was like a revelation. I haven't ever looked at game rules the same way since.

I am reminded of Chesterton's paradox, from The Thing:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them,
there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably
be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution
or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected
across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it
and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away."
To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer:
"If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away.
Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you
do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."​

 

[Celebrim]

I think Runequest and GURPS, on the other hand, were almost explicitly made in reaction to D&D's "unrealistic" rules.

That's certainly true, but its not a refutation of what I said. By the time 4e was being designed, we'd largely passed by the era where in we were seeking realism in the game rules as a thing of value unto itself. It's not like a lack of realism is the only thing that might irritate someone about a particular set of game rules. If anything, 4e was a reaction against the perception that 3e moved to far in the direction of simulationism and rules completeness.