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

[Siberys]

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."

It's more like;

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

Response: "Other people did, because the rules weren't written for it. It may be fine for you, but objectively it is less well suited for that style than games that were built for it."

 

[Tony Vargas]

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.

There is flavor text, it's just an example. So if the example doesn't work for you, you come up with something that does. Or come at it from the other side. What do you want your character to be able to do? Pick something that matches /that/.

I bet the Strategic Review had complaints about HP

Of course. Just no complaints that they're a "dissociative mechanic" nor anything remotely like that. But that's not the inconsistency. It's that someone will claim that they're bothered by 'dissociate mechanics' and that said mechanics only occur in one edition, but, they can't come up with a coherent definition of those mechanics that doesn't also apply to mechanics in other editions that they don't have the same issue with.

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.

That's a valid alternate way of viewing the daily restriction, yes. The 'official' ones are in a sidebar in a PH - martial dailies exhaust 'deep reserves,' arcane dailies are wiped from the caster's mind &c. - I also find they're a little blah, and often like more 'narrative' alternatives like this one.

It's a daily power in the rules because of how powerful the effect is.
You are correct that this is done in the director/author stance, rather than the actor stance.

Which is fine, if you're into that. If you're not, you, presumably, wouldn't change the 1/day rationale that way. Instead, you'd re-imagine the flavor text in a way that worked with the PH explanation - or re-imagine both to your satisfaction. It is your character, afterall. You've presumably got a character idea that calls for this sort of thing, or you wouldn't be considering the power, at all, right?

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 can if you want it to - and you can do some pretty good character modeling and genre emulation doing it that way, if those things are priorities for you.

You can even adjust the way you visualize powers as you go - it's a lot like improvising maneuvers, except you don't have to talk the DM into them, since the mechanics are stable.

 

[Rygar]

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.


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.


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...

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.

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.

No, you are strawmanning the "Double standard" in order to dismiss the criticism of 4th edition. You're asserting that if I complain about martial dailies in 4th edition, because I didn't also complain about falling rules in 2nd edition in the same post, I have a "Double standard" and I should be ignored. You fabricate inconsistencies in order to avoid dealing with criticism. You set an impossible requirement to not have a "Double standard" because I will always have a double standard so long as you can think of any one thing which I didn't complain about at the exact same time I complained about something in 4th edition.

It's also telling that you're "Open to a reason that makes sense", so you place the condition on the issue of Dissociative Mechanics that they don't exist until someone gives you an explanation you accept. This is a classic "Moving the goalposts" arguement. You invite the opposition to meet some condition, but you declare the condition abstract such that it can never be met because any evidence can be dismissed since you fail to establish a concrete requirement.

 

[Lalato]

Vecna on a pogo stick!

Why is it that the same cast of characters has to derail every freaking thread with 4e vs 3e vs 5e vs 1e vs BECMI claptrap. I can't be the only one that grows tired of these threads. Seriously, people... whatever it is that makes you click the post reply button; kill it in its sleep.

 

[Tony Vargas]

No, you are strawmanning the "Double standard" in order to dismiss the criticism of 4th edition. You're asserting that if I complain about martial dailies in 4th edition, because I didn't also complain about falling rules in 2nd edition in the same post, I have a "Double standard" and I should be ignored.

Falling is only one example of how hps fit some definitions of 'dissociative mechanics,' and hps only one example of the kind of mechanics that fit such definitions. Depending on the definition they can be quite common in many editions, or virtually absent from all of them.

It's also telling that you're "Open to a reason that makes sense", so you place the condition on the issue of Dissociative Mechanics that they don't exist until someone gives you an explanation you accept.

A definition that works for their reasoning. If you dislike something because of some element you find to present in it, but you can't find any way of demonstrating the presence of that element that doesn't /also/ detect it in things you claim you /do/ like because of it's absence, you have an issue.

I have yet to see a definition of dissociative mechanics that 'works' in the sense of being present in one, disfavored, edition, and also absent from others. Thus, as an explanation for favoring one edition over another, it consistently fails.

That doesn't mean there's no valid reasons, including wholly subjective ones, just that one of the reasons that got tossed around a lot in the edition war never held up to scrutiny.

You invite the opposition to meet some condition, but you declare the condition abstract such that it can never be met because any evidence can be dismissed since you fail to establish a concrete requirement.

If Dissociative Mechanics are a real thing that make a game unbearable for someone, and they find one game unbearable, and another quite bearable, then it should be possible to find a definition of them that applies only to elements in the unbearable game. That's not an abstract condition. Really, it's inescapable, it's a condition that is implicit in the claim, itself.

 

[BryonD]

If Dissociative Mechanics are a real thing that make a game unbearable for someone, and they find one game unbearable, and another quite bearable, then it should be possible to find a definition of them that applies only to elements in the unbearable game. That's not an abstract condition. Really, it's inescapable, it's a condition that is implicit in the claim, itself.

The problem is that you are using an absurd "presence"/"absolute absence" standard.

One system can push dissociation to the forefront as a virtue and another can accept it as necessary imperfection to be minimized where possible and worked with where needed. Tolerating something in obligatory minimums in one case is not in conflict with being completely turned off by the celebration of that same thing in another case. (Which, of course, is not to say that either the avoidance or the celebration preference is intrinsically better. It is simply, to point out that you argument either includes a deep fundamental failure to comprehend the position or is being intentionally counter-productive)

I've detailed my house-rule for falling a few times recently.
To house rule this kind of issue out of 4E would be silly because the game would be unrecognizable and destroyed in the process. The obvious answer is to simply played a game designed with my tastes in mind. But that difference in taste and difference is delivery of that taste are real.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The problem is that you are using an absurd "presence"/"absolute absence" standard.

That gets trotted out sometimes, but it doesn't hold up particularly better. Narrow the definition enough that can't be applied to much in another edition and it stops applying to so many things in the one you're down on, too.

Though it's not like the complaint only surfaces when there's a high volume of such mechanics. There was only one instance of DoaM in the playtest, but it was deemed intolerable. There are people supposedly ragequitting over the fighter's Second Wind.

Tolerating something in obligatory minimums in one case is not in conflict with being completely turned off by the celebration of that same thing in another case.

'Celebration' is an odd way of putting it, I think, but I'm perfectly willing to consider the relative prevalence.

Martial dailies, for instance. There's a lot of 'em, (though, really, they're just instances of a single mechanic) but they only get used 1/day, and only by martial classes - far from impossible to avoid. Hps, OTOH, there aren't a lot of hp /mechanics/, but everyone's using them all the time. They're actually quite prevalent by comparison.

 

[pemerton]

The DM looks at the map and tells the players about how far away the monsters are. Based on that information, the PCs can attack with missile weapons or close to melee. Once in melee with an opponent, a PC needs to take a withdrawal action to avoid giving his opponent a free attack roll.

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.

For me, the key issue is OAs.

In classic D&D these are provoked only by withdrawing; but as long as you just manoeuvre in melee you don't trigger them. Hence you only need to keep track of gross distances, engaged/disengaged, and roll % dice to resolve disagreement over who is in which AoEs.

5e seems simpler than 3E/4e - fewer OAs, and none for manoeuvring within threatened squares - but not as simple as classic D&D, because it still has quite a bit of rather granular forced movement.

(Also, if the GM is tracking positions on a grid, and the grid is just not being made public, I'm not sure that counts as fully TotM.)

Where I think 4e was most frustrating for "system-tactics neophytes" was that as soon as you get beyond simply making attack and damage rolls, you're drinking from the fire hose.

<snip>

Some players take to this naturally (especially experienced 3.x players). Others never seem to take to it because it feels more like work than play.

<snip>

I regret that I never had the opportunity to play 4e with a group composed entirely of dedicated and motivated players.

The group I play with incudes long-time RM players, wargamers, CCG-ers, PBM-gamers, etc. I've never tried to introduce a non-gamer to the system.

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.

<snip>

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.

<snip>

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.

I think this is highly subjective across players.

At least for the players I play with, deciding "I want to do a lot of damgae now, so I'll trigger my daily" doesn't involve any switching of mental perspectives. The character feels the urgency of giving it his/her all, just as the player does - it's clear, for instance, that the fight is harder than it looked at first. And so the player, playing in character, gives it his/her all ie uses a daily.

No dissociation.

The simplest character in the PHB was probably the Ranger, but even that character had Hunter's Quarry, which was almost like saying "add 1d6 damage to the first target you hit on your turn," but couldn't quite be played that way because you needed to use your minor action to designate the target closest to you as your Quarry, once per turn.

It's a bit simpler than you say: you don't have to do it 1x/turn, because the quarry lasts until the target is killed.

It's a bit more fiddly than you say, too: because if you hit with one attack and crit with the other, you get to put your quarry on the crit (and thereby maximise it).

It's not the most elegant mechanic of all time!

 

[pemerton]

pemerton - Sorry if I spoke for you. Didn't mean to put words in your mouth.

No worries, and no need to apologise. I don't think we're saying identical things, but I think we're looking at things from a similar perspective.

The biggest puzzle for me in understanding 4e is Essentials. I honestly can't understand who thought that was going to be a successful format. And I don't understand the love affair with bloated, over-wordy descriptions of everything. 5e continues that. Contrast Moldvay Basic, or the original Rolemaster books, which make a virtue of terseness.

I feel the problem with 4e, as someone who has played 4e for over 4 years, was the fact that it was not a versatile system, at least not easily enough, to cater for all playstyles, whereas 5e has that versatility straight out the gate.

4E was hard coded. 5E is promoted as being highly hackable. Anything a player doesn't like can be removed an replaced.

For me, a key word here is "promoted". A game doesn't become less "hard coded" just because it denies that it is.

I think 4e is very flexible across a range of campaign assumptions, magic item densities, granularity of resolution, healing expectations, etc. And to date I haven't seen anything in the 5e materials to suggest that it is more flexible.

It seems the long-term goal is to make profit of the *brand*. Not the RPG, specifically, but the Dungeons and Dragons name as a whole. Now, selling a lot of game books is *awesome*, don't get me wrong. But if the long-term point is to get people to buy stuff with "D&D" on it, then whether you actually buy or play the current game is secondary to getting you to have a generally positive impression of the brand.

This does seem to be a key feature of 5e. Which makes the marketing of 5e very important.

This is why it might be as important to assert flexibility as to actually be - because impressions of the brand are crucial for this strategy.

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.

So 4e isn't an RPG at all? Is that the implication of the comparison to Monopoly?

The two games have almost nothing in common. Just for starters, Monopoly has no action declaration, in part because it has no characters.

Your other claim, that metagame mechanics drive a wedge between player and PC, may be true for you but doesn't generalise very reliably. Most people I've ever gamed with, for instance, feel that having resources they can deploy when the situation of their PC is desperate - ie being able to push themselves harder - reinforces the unity between player and PC.

 

[Saplatt]

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....

But Pathfinder had already tied Wizards in Q3 of 2010, just before Essentials was launched. See

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/19151.html


Wizards regained the lead in Q4 of 2010 after Essentials was released.

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/19721.html


The key thing that stands out to me is that the upstart Pathfinder was able to tie the WotC goliath before Essentials was even released. That tells me that 4E was already in serious trouble, and the idea that Essentials represented a wrong turn that drove otherwise great sales into the dirt isn't supported by te data.