D&D 5E I think the era of 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons had it right. (not talking about the rules).

[Tony Vargas]

Sure, I don't disagree with [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] as far as preference. I don't blame anyone for wanting the kinds of material we've all come to expect...player options, setting books, and so on. I'm sure we'll get those kinds of options before too long.

I was just stating my preference given that I want to see this edition succeed and last. And I think the shift they've shown in slowing the release schedule from prior editions is the key to their early success. I want a slow release schedule, not a non-existent one.

Heh. To be clear, my personal preference /is/ for the slow pace of releases (I've felt that way since around '95 when I gave up on 2e because it was bloating so horribly), I'd just like to see the players options rounded out. Right now they're too skewed towards 2e-emulating support and way, way too skewed towards PC caster options.

It wouldn't take much:

• A a pair of non-caster classes, one of them the Warlord, obviously (the could be something like the Warblade perhaps) - or even just the Warlord re-imagined as more than just a 'leader' with a lot of archetypes and many more new non-supernatural Fighter, Rogue, Barbarian, Ranger (and maybe even Monk) archetypes. Some sort of Bo9S supplement, for instance, or, to keep to the SCAG model, a lower-magic setting supplement. That would go further towards enabling 4e-supported styles than a mere tactical module.
• A solid, flexible (both magic & not-magic takes entirely workable, old-school sci-fi/Freudian weirdness an option) take on Psionics - more than just the Mystics and assumptions of a Far-Realms link, but basically in the pipeline as we speak.
• A module for magic-items/wealth-by-level assumptions, the Artificer class (and Alchemists and other high-magic/magic-as-technology/pervasive-magic goodies), and more granular player options like PrCs - an obvious place for it would be an Eberron supplement - and that'd make 3e, player-empowering styles more practical.

Three books spread over 3 years, and there'd be little left to complain about beyond missing little niche things like specific PrCs or obscure non-PH classes.

Given that, I'd prefer if players and DMs embraced homebrew ing and third party material.

I'd prefer both: the game rounded out /and/ players being more accepting of homebrewing (because that's really the stumbling block, most DMs are OK with wielding the banhammer, adopting non-core things /they/ like, or making up their own stuff - it's when players, particularly those accustomed to the 3e style of player 'entitlement' - dig in their heels at deviating from the RAW that there are problems). There's nothing about them that's innately exclusive. Indeed, more opt-in options puts the option of homebrewing more solidly in the DM's court by creating the expectation that different things will be available at different tables.

I don't think it's generally as difficult as many make it out to be, or as time consuming as folks think.

I've done it a lot over the years, and, when I'm inspired, I can bang out something halfway decent in a matter of hours. When I'm inspired. What I'm inspired to make is not always what my players need, though.

The rules are a place to start, but right now that place is way over on the side of everyone playing a caster in a high-magic world where you have 6-8 encounters every day, and it's along uphill walk in the snow to anyplace else.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Personally, I think the majority were bought by players wanting to make sure they had copies of all the versions at the time. And as a matter of fact, I did go back and buy them.

It seems to be a common assumption around here that the 'majority' do exactly whatever the forumite posting did.

However, the Basic set sold a million or more copies while everything else sold a fraction of that. Obviously the 'majority' of those basic set sales couldn't be to folks also buying other things.

D&D was a fad in the mid 80s, most of the people who have ever bought D&D bought it then, because it was a thing at that moment, most of the people who ever played D&D didn't keep playing it.

But, sure, in the post-fad era, most D&D sales have been to existing fans buying and re-buying core books with each new edition, half-edition, or even printing with a different cover.

Oh, I know what "advanced" means. But you didn't use it in any way that makes sense. I think you were looking for "experienced"

It was obvious from context that he was using advanced to mean experienced, yes.

 

[Corwin]

What would be the primary, underlying reason for assuming an "advanced" player needs additional content above-and-beyond what we currently have?

 

[Tony Vargas]

Sure, and that's fair enough.

And that's all I meant by it. I /am/ (again) relieved at the slow pace of releases...

But, then again, as I understand it, you only play one character per season of AL right? You don't mix and match a bunch of characters over the course of a season. Well, I suppose you could, but, wouldn't you be at a significant disadvantage since your new character couldn't take the items that your last character was carting around? Granted, I don't play AL, so, if I'm way off base here, I have zero problem being corrected.

I've run AL a lot more than played, and I don't enforce the rules carefully at all, so I could be mis-remembering it, but you can change everything about your character except its name through 4th level, so there's plenty of room to experiment if you want.

But the point was not that an experienced player would /become/ bored with the choices in the 5e PH1, it was that he might well (as I find myself, and I don't want to generalize here, I'm speculating that I might not be entirely alone, not that I speak for some imagined majority) /already/ be bored with choices in the 5e PH.

3e and 4e each had something entirely new in their PH (even the 2e PH made the Bard a standard class and introduced a lot more wizard specializations than just the Illusionist). That's nice for a long-time player, IMHO. 5e, with it's retro, past-edition-PH1, mandate, has added exactly nothing new.

And, again, we don't want to make it harder to DM AL games either. We WANT more DM's don't we?

Well, yes we want DMs, really, really good DMs, so new & returning players can have a positive experience when they walk into AL. And we do have a large pool of experienced DMs who are committed to the classic vision of D&D, to which 5e appeals very strongly. And not because it's easy to run.

How much experience playing either 3e or 4e or Pathfinder would you expect an organized play DM to have before they sit behind the screen?

Wow, ask about the extremes, why don't you... Fine, Honestly:
3e? Hopefully years, hopefully running for at least a few hard-core optimizers, and presumably sticking to the exhaustive list of RPGA fixes. I never ran for 3e organized play, in part because I just had bad experiences with the RPGA, in part because running 3e was a pain.
4e? I watched brand-new players transition to DMing adequately after playing through one season. When we had too many players at encounters, a table would just split and one of the players would run.

And, as the number of supplements grows, the barrier to running AL games grows higher as well.

Theoretically, sure. 5e is that kind of design, again, where adding options necessarily adds mechanics, which necessarily opens up unintended synergies that you might have to be on guard against. OTOH, if you embrace 'rulings not rules' (and if you ever ran D&D in the 20th century, it's probably in your blood, like a retrovirus), you can blow that crap out of the water even if you didn't see it coming.

The thing about 5e and AL is how it brings together experienced DMs and new players.

Where's the tipping point? Say every supplement increases complexity by 5%. This is a totally imaginary number that I'm just making up. That means after 20 supplements, you've doubled the complexity of the game. Doubling complexity seems like it would make it vastly more difficult to get people to run the game, considering it's not easy to get DM's right now.

I think the DMs who can handle 5e can handle a hypothetically 'twice as complex' 5e. For one, thing, the complexity at the table is limited to what half a dozen PCs can bring in...

1e managed to get by just fine with a new options release several years after initial release with Unearthed Arcana.

Yep, and I'm fine with the releases coming slowly, as long as they come. Even just 1/year is fine (better than fine, I'd been missing book-a-year every since I gave up on 2e in frustration at the bloat of book-a-month). But, it's been over 2 years, and we've gotten SCAG.

 

[Corpsetaker]

What would be the primary, underlying reason for assuming an "advanced" player needs additional content above-and-beyond what we currently have?

Why do you ask such a silly question?

 

[Corwin]

Why do you ask such a silly question?

Why did you fabricate such a silly theory?

 

[Shasarak]

What would be the primary, underlying reason for assuming an "advanced" player needs additional content above-and-beyond what we currently have?

Maybe they would be most likely to be bored with the basics we currently have*?

*Except for that Dwarf Fighter guy of course.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Not all "advanced players" will want more content.

Exactly. The newest gamer in my group started in the early 80's and nobody is clamouring for more content yet. Nothing wrong with having it, but even in 3e 90% of characters were from the PH only. I spent so much on splats and we barely used them. To me if the what 750 pages of rules, spells, options, monsters, etc, isn’t enough to run a great game the game must suck. A lot of people disagree and that's cool. Give me a copy of OD&D and some good friends and we will have just as much fun as we did with any edition.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I think that I went through the phase where I wanted more options, and thought that more was always better. I think I've come through the other side, though. I realized sometime during the Pathfinder phase that complex doesn't mean interesting when it comes to the game mechanics, it tends to just mean slow. And when talking about game mastery, the difference in skill level it takes to play a simply constructed character compared to a complex one is usually pretty negligible.

I came to the conclusion with 3e that 99% of the fun is from the interactions between the players, the game world, and the DM. Even the players who seemed mostly play for the "Ding" are having a blast at the table. The rules just need to stay out of the way, so adding in more and more and more at my table was getting in the way of that. When I was looking though the Rules Compendium I thought to myself, "what kind of game needs a rule book to clarify the rules in the other 15 books..." Granted you don't have to go that far when adding content to the game but more content never equalled more fun at our table and it often got in the way since it seemed that d20 session would bog down into arguing or looking up rules. IME YMMV and all that.

Regardless if they put out no new splats or rule books I think D&D is perfectly playable as it is, for any level of player.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Why do you ask such a silly question?

Is a very valid question.