D&D 5E I think we can safely say that 5E is a success, but will it lead to a new Golden Era?

[Keldryn]

I think that route was probably quite common: Neophyte picks up Basic D&D; finds other guys to play with, but the DM uses AD&D; so he switches and never moves on to Expert D&D.

Yes. Established gamers would most likely have already been playing AD&D, and it would be natural to just switch to what they are playing. The Basic -> Expert progression was building up a new population of gamers outside of established gaming circles.

Even by 1980 (when I started), the roots of D&D were irrelevant to millions of new players. We hadn't the faintest idea what Chainmail was, or why things were measured in inches. All we knew was that exploring dungeons and battling monsters was awesome.

This too. I started in 1986 (I was 12), and I had no idea what a wargame was, nor did I care. Exploring dungeons and battling monsters entirely our shared imagination was awesome, and we all wanted more.

We all eventually "moved on" to AD&D 1e because it had more classes, races, spells, monsters, and magic items. Without realizing it, we were essentially all still playing Basic/Expert D&D rules, just with the AD&D books as sourcebooks. We just ignored all of the weird and complicated stuff. It wasn't really until 2e that we completely left Basic/Expert behind. We did a lot of our gaming on our school lunch breaks every day, never once using minis or a grid. Any time a battle got complex, the DM just drew a quick sketch. This worked for D&D, this worked for AD&D, it worked for WEG Star Wars, it worked for various Palladium games, it worked for Star Frontiers, it worked for Warhammer FRPG, it worked for Paranoia, and it worked for various home-brewed systems too.

This is exactly my experience. I'm 10 sessions into a 4E Essentials campaign, and besides the one other guy who has read the rules, I still have to hand-hold the players through every combat. I'm enjoying the campaign (mainly because we only have 1 or 2 combats a session). But I think I would enjoy it a lot more with a dedicated group of players. I can player TSR D&D (and from the looks of it, 5E) with casual players. Not because they're more familiar with TSR D&D, but because they can simply describe what their characters do and let me handle the mechanics, far easier than is the case in 4E (or 3E).

I wasn't just hand-holding my 4e players during play. I would keep tweaking their characters to have more straightforward powers and I kept trying different ways of formatting and presenting their various abilities to make them easier to understand.

I've also never had any trouble introducing TSR D&D to casual players, for the same reasons you mentioned. 5e looks like it will be much closer to this than to either 3e or 4e.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Of course range, area, and movement were expressed in feet. You know, real-world measurements. Was it supposed to say that the fireball spell had a range of 90 zipfals and explode in a sphere of 30 cubic gorwaks?

I'd think you'd be familiar with rules that actually facilitate TotM, but, no, of course not, rather you'd have much /less/ granularity. You'd have ranges like 'close' rather than 35' + 5'/level, for instance, or fireballs that affect '1 area' rather than a 20' radius, conforming to the available volume. Much simpler, a bit more abstract, more rules-lite stuff that doesn't drown in detail or precision that's inconvenient to track without some sort of analogue to what's happening in the imagined world (be that tokens & grid, minis & play surface, or just sketched out Xs & Os).

First, AD&D 1e specifying distances in scale inches was indicative of how it was meant to be played, and now using real-world measurements is indicative of the same thing?

Absolutely. Whether you're going to the precision of scale inches, feet, or 'squares,' the result in not innately suitable for TotM. Indeed, while a scale inch or square strongly suggests using minis of a particular size, the finer granularity of in-world feet actually makes them even less suitable for TotM.

You don't need specific rules to facilitate TotM play. You simply need to not have rules that make it important to keep close track of positioning and movement during combat. Many issues regarding range or area of effect can be answered by the DM looking at his map and making a judgement call.

You could make the same judgement call about other things that make it important to keep track of positioning and movement. Knowing whether three nearby orcs are caught in a 120-degree arc of 10' long jets of flame requires just as much careful tracking of relative positions as knowing whether one that was just pushed 10' can get past you to attack an ally without provoking on OA.

But, no, you don't 'need' specific rules. I can run Hero System in TotM, and it makes 3e or 4e look free-form by contrast. But I'd never say Hero was /meant/ to be run that way. I can also run any version of D&D that way - each might make some bits easier than others (areas easier in 4e because they're just cubes, positioning easier in AD&D by just house-ruling it away on the grounds of the 1-min round, movement in combat easier in 3e because it tended toward static full-attack exchanges that precluded all but 5' of it each round, etc) - but I wouldn't say any of them were designed for it just because I can make it work.

OTOH, FUDGE, FATE, 13A, or even the old MSH FASE-RIP system /are/ designed to be run TotM and have rules that reflect that.

Even if a game just classifies things as "long" or "medium" range, the GM will still generally need to translate that into some real-world units of measurement so that everyone has some frame of reference.

Not so much. Once you do that, you have to start tracking it with some level of precision or you'll have inconsistencies - you never know when a player is going to notice that they were 60 feet away from a door, moved 35 feet towards it, but are now somehow 40 feet away, in spite of not having moved again. That kind of thing is always an issue, since players can focus on just a few things like that, while you have to keep the entire scene organized in our head as GM. It's a lot easier to track which characters are in each of a couple of 'areas' and which in a given area are adjacent, than how far each is from every other one, and from each feature in the scene.

 

[Keldryn]

I started with AD&D, and I always wondered why more of you didn't use minis before 3e.

Not because of gridded combats, or rules. Just to avoid the arguments about whether or not the wizard was in the range of the dragon's breath, or where the fighter was when the trap went off. "You said you were in the back of the party! You can't just be right there at the chest!" "Sure I can, I'm very fast!"

In our 2e games, we would often use minis (if playing at home) to indicate roughly where characters were positioned, as it did eliminate a lot of arguments and cut down on how many times the DM had to explain things.

It was essentially just a visual diagram that everybody could see at the same time and indicate where they were moving to. Never bothered with counting movement or ranges unless it looked like it might be far enough to matter.

In 3e and 4e, players would move their mini square by square, and once they reached a destination, kept their hand on the mini as they checked to see if they provoked any AoOs. Like they were moving a chess piece. That slowed things down tremendously.

 

[prosfilaes]

It is when the differentiation has no basis in anything definable, but, instead, always comes down along edition war lines.

If some people says your food is bitter, and some people don't think so, it doesn't help anything to point out that "bitter" isn't definable, and claim that they're just saying that because they don't like the food. It doubly doesn't help when they point out the phenylthiocarbamide-containing food as the cause and you say that that's not bitter to you, so they must just be hating on your food.

How do the 4e mechanics encourage, or imply, a greater separation between player and PC than (say) the 3E mechanics? In either game, playing your PC, you wonder about what you should do. You compare your knowledge of the ingame situation (as related to you by the GM) to your conception of what you (as your PC) are good and bad at, and you declare actions.

You could say that about Monopoly, too; you're the little person traveling around Atlantic City looking at the in-game situation and declaring actions. There's obviously more to it then that.

Stuff like Dizzying Blow ("You crack your opponent upside the head") as daily makes no sense to me in world. Why is it a daily limit? Why isn't he trying to crack his opponent upside the head whenever the opportunity presents itself? If you abstract it out, then an attack can be described as "I crack my opponent upside the head", but if that's also the description of the ability, then what's the difference in world? If there is no difference in-world, then I'm not choosing to Dizzying Blow in character. If I can only crack my opponent upside the head once per day, then I need a model of the world where my PC understands that, or I'm concerned about different things then my PC. I've been told that it's your character has found an opening to do this, but then instead of playing my character, I'm taking director stance, I'm dictating the story of the world, which separates me from my character.

Yes, I'm sure you can point to things in 3E like that. But I can justify a barbarian's rage as taking so much energy that it just knocks him out, as a physical limit per day, and Vancian casting is just magic, and works by the rules of magic, and my character understands that.

And it took me a while to write this because, as per the first part of this message, I don't think it will help. You will take my subjective feeling about why I subjectively feel the way I do and try and explain why I'm objectively wrong. I don't think you want to understand why we feel this way; you want to dismiss it.

 

[Keldryn]

Not so much. Once you do that, you have to start tracking it with some level of precision or you'll have inconsistencies - you never know when a player is going to notice that they were 60 feet away from a door, moved 35 feet towards it, but are now somehow 40 feet away, in spite of not having moved again. That kind of thing is always an issue, since players can focus on just a few things like that, while you have to keep the entire scene organized in our head as GM. It's a lot easier to track which characters are in each of a couple of 'areas' and which in a given area are adjacent, than how far each is from every other one, and from each feature in the scene.

You must have very different players than I've ever gamed with.

"How far away is the orc?"
"He's at close range."
"How close is that? Can I reach out and touch him, or do I have to walk over to where he is first?"
"It doesn't matter, he's at close range and you can just attack him."
"Of course it matters, because if he's right in front of me, he'll probably hear me whisper something to Bob, but if he's ten feet away then he probably won't."
"...."


"I draw my pistol and shoot at the agent before he runs out the door."
"Okay, the agent is at medium range, which means you are at -2 to hit."
"Wait, how big is this room?"
"It's an auditorium."
"Okay, but there are big auditoriums and small auditoriums."
"It's a medium sized auditorium."
"No, seriously, how far is it from one side to the other?"
"Sigh. Maybe 100 feet."
"Oh come on, I can hit a target with a bow and arrow at 100 feet no problem and firing a pistol is way easier."

Players can be pedantic whether you're giving them real-world measurements or abstract "close, short, medium" descriptors. Pretty much anyone I've ever done any significant gaming with would grill me about how far away "medium" actually is.

Also, most dungeon maps and wilderness encounter maps are drawn with measurements in feet, and DMs will often describe areas using those dimensions in order to make mapping easier. Once the DM describes roughly where creatures are in a room, players have a good idea whether a creature is within range or an area of effect simply based on the dimensions of the room.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It's been awhile, but if I recall the sales figures correctly, Pathfinder had already equaled or passed by WotC before Essentials was ever launched. In the quarter after Essentials was launched, WotC regaine the lead.Then, when they returned to the ADEU books, they fell behind again - though at that point, I think they were already wrapping things up.

Pathfinder first topped the IcV2 charts in Q2, 2011, when Essentials was the flagship, the 'Class Compendium' had been cancelled, and the only new D&D book was the execrable and very Essentials-style Heroes of Shadow. D&D went on to beat Pathfinder with even the very slow releases of the much better, Heroes of the Feywild, Elemental Chaos, and Into the Unknown supplements (the 'AEDU books' you alluded to) before finally petering out with the edition-neutral Menzobarranzan in Aug 2012. In fall 2012, with publication of D&D on hiatus, Pathfinder once again took the top spot, though it didn't keep it consistently, even with D&D not publishing anything new.

If some people says your food is bitter, and some people don't think so, it doesn't help anything to point out that "bitter" isn't definable, and claim that they're just saying that because they don't like the food.

Thing is, bitter /is/ definable. People have been tasting bitter since the dawn of the human race. There are chemicals that are definably bitter to some people, and not others, but if you put one of those chemicals in food it doesn't normally occur in, the people who can taste it don't suddenly lose the ability to do so.

That's the point. The things edition warriors claimed were 'bitter' in one version of D&D were inexplicably not 'bitter' when located in editions they liked. Evidence that they weren't really tasting anything, or were applying some sort of arbitrary double standard.

Stuff like Dizzying Blow ("You crack your opponent upside the head") as daily makes no sense to me in world. Why is it a daily limit? Why isn't he trying to crack his opponent upside the head whenever the opportunity presents itself?

That fluff text is only an example. You can visualize the exploit however you like. If you choose not to visualize it in a way that makes sense to you...

Yes, I'm sure you can point to things in 3E like that.

In every edition. Even hps have that issue, yet no one ever complained about it, because it's not a real issue. It's a fake one, made up for the edition war by a blogger and repeated often enough to convince people who wanted to believe.

And it took me a while to write this because, as per the first part of this message, I don't think it will help. You will take my subjective feeling about why I subjectively feel the way I do and try and explain why I'm objectively wrong. I don't think you want to understand why we feel this way; you want to dismiss it.

I'm not dismissing the way you feel, I'm dismissing the rationalization you give for feeling that way because it contains inconsistencies that render it meaningless.

I'm open to a reason that makes sense.

 

[Haffrung]

I started with AD&D, and I always wondered why more of you didn't use minis before 3e.

If you're doing dungeon crawls mostly, where you typically have 5-9 combats a session, minis and a grid would really slow down play. If there was a particularly complex situation, we'd put minis and dice and bottle caps on the table and sketch out the borders of the room, but that's about it. Area of effect and stuff was still adjudicated by the DM.

Not because of gridded combats, or rules. Just to avoid the arguments about whether or not the wizard was in the range of the dragon's breath, or where the fighter was when the trap went off. "You said you were in the back of the party! You can't just be right there at the chest!" "Sure I can, I'm very fast!"[/QUOTE]

We rarely argue about those kinds of details because, again, in order to speed up play we assign one player to rule on that stuff - the DM. No fuss, no muss.

Am I hearing this right? You have to 'hand hold' players because they don't know the rules in one edition, which is terrible, but in another, you have to handle all the mechanics for them because they don't know the rules, and that's great?

Yep. Because the amount of hassle involved correlates directly to how much mechanical detail the game has. It's one thing to adjudicate the mechanics of "I swing at the orc... I got a 14." It's another to adjudicate which power is being used, how frequently it can be used, the conditions it can be used in, and how it affects other PCs. All on a grid where I have to do the counting and explaining. If one of my casual players has one special thing he can do a session, he'll remember it. If he has two, he'll need some help. If he has more than two, then I, or the other 'expert' player will have to walk him through all the options and explain when and how they can be used. There are a lot more special things most PCs can do in 3E and 4E than in TSR D&D.

You will take my subjective feeling about why I subjectively feel the way I do and try and explain why I'm objectively wrong. I don't think you want to understand why we feel this way; you want to dismiss it.

There does seem to be a lot of that in this thread, doesn't there?

Statement: "I've had no trouble playing D&D theatre of the mind for 30 years."

Response: "You shouldn't expect to have a good time playing D&D theatre of the mind because the rules don't explicitly and mechanically support it. It's not the way you're supposed to do it. You'd be better off playing something else. You've made an objectively bad choice."

 

[Tony Vargas]

Yep. Because the amount of hassle involved correlates directly to how much mechanical detail the game has. It's one thing to adjudicate the mechanics of "I swing at the orc... I got a 14." It's another to adjudicate which power is being used, how frequently it can be used, the conditions it can be used in, and how it affects other PCs.

Funny how these comparisons of complexity or detail never include either spellcasting, nor all the 'improvising' that's supposed to make the beatstick fighter somehow interesting and fully-contributing.

Statement: "I've had no trouble playing D&D theatre of the mind for 30 years."

Response: "You shouldn't expect to have a good time playing D&D theatre of the mind because the rules don't explicitly and mechanically support it. It's not the way you're supposed to do it. You'd be better off playing something else. You've made an objectively bad choice."

I haven't had any trouble running D&D "TotM" in the last 34 years, myself. I'm not at all incredulous about claims like that. The claim that you /could/ run AD&D or 2e C&T 'TotM,' but not 3e, OTOH, I find less credible. The idea that 5e is somehow better-suited to that mode of play - without actually having any mechanical differences that'd make it so - is also suspect.

If someone were to pipe up that they love 13A because they can run it TotM more easily than D&D, that'd make sense, because 13A actually /is/ designed to be run that way.

 

[prosfilaes]

Thing is, bitter /is/ definable. People have been tasting bitter since the dawn of the human race.

Those are two entirely different things. Bitter in the 21st century may be definable through reference to some complex biology and chemistry, but bitter in the 19th century or to the average person today can only be defined by pointing to things that are bitter.

That's the point. The things edition warriors claimed were 'bitter' in one version of D&D were inexplicably not 'bitter' when located in editions they liked. Evidence that they weren't really tasting anything, or were applying some sort of arbitrary double standard.

Or evidence that they had a hard time localizing what they found bitter, or that things are more complex then you think and certain things mask other things, or quantities were different then what you perceive.

That fluff text is only an example. You can visualize the exploit however you like. If you choose not to visualize it in a way that makes sense to you...

That's part of the problem. My character and I see eye to eye on what's going on when he bull-rushes someone. If Dizzying Blow doesn't refer to something specific in the game world, my character is not seeing eye to eye with me on what's going on when I say Dizzying Blow; he could be doing anything. That's a disconnect between the mechanics and the game world for me. My character doesn't understand "Hit: 3[W] + Strength modifier damage, and the target is immobilized (save ends)." and without the flavor text, that's all Dizzying Blow is.

Even hps have that issue, yet no one ever complained about it, because it's not a real issue.

I bet the Strategic Review had complaints about HP, and I know pre-100 issues of Dragon did. You're claiming that no one has ever complained about one of the most complained about things in D&D! Hell, the two of us have argued about HP on ENWorld before! And yes, the way HP works in D&D doesn't particularly help me connect to my character.

 

[Keldryn]

Stuff like Dizzying Blow ("You crack your opponent upside the head") as daily makes no sense to me in world. Why is it a daily limit? Why isn't he trying to crack his opponent upside the head whenever the opportunity presents itself? If you abstract it out, then an attack can be described as "I crack my opponent upside the head", but if that's also the description of the ability, then what's the difference in world? If there is no difference in-world, then I'm not choosing to Dizzying Blow in character. If I can only crack my opponent upside the head once per day, then I need a model of the world where my PC understands that, or I'm concerned about different things then my PC. I've been told that it's your character has found an opening to do this, but then instead of playing my character, I'm taking director stance, I'm dictating the story of the world, which separates me from my character.

He (the character) is trying to crack his opponent upside the head whenever the opportunity presents itself.

You (the player) get to decide when the character is able to actually accomplish this. It's a daily power in the rules because of how powerful the effect is. Within the fiction of the game, the circumstances which allow you to be ready to strike at your opponent's head (undistracted by other foes, for example) at the exact moment that he lets his guard down happen relatively infrequently, perhaps once every 3 or 4 battles, or for ease of tracking, once per day.

You are correct that this is done in the director/author stance, rather than the actor stance. It can take some mental gymnastics to wrap one's head around it, and I also find that it pulls me out of any sense of inhabiting the fictional world.

This is one area where 4e is very inconsistent. The powers of non-martial power source classes generally work pretty well from the actor stance. There are some exceptions, and there are cases where a particular power usually makes sense from the point of view of the character but gets weird in some corner cases. With martial characters, some powers fit the "thinking as my character" model, whereas many don't, with the infamous Come and Get It being the poster child.

Playing a martial character in 4e can involve a lot of switching between thinking in terms of "I do this" to "this happens, now I need to explain within the fiction of the game either how my character caused it or how it happened to my character."

It's a weird experience.