D&D (2024) In Interview with GamesRadar, Chris Perkins Discusses New Books

[Mirrorrorrim]

Eh. Cleric, fighter, rogue, wizard. Everything else is a subclass or a multiclass of those four. Bard is a wizard-rogue. Paladin is a fighter-cleric. Druid is a subclass of cleric. Warlock is an optional casting schema, like spell points. Barbarian is a fighter subclass. Monk is a fighter-rogue. Sorcerer is another optional casting schema. Artificer is a wizard-rogue. Ranger is either a outdoors-focused rogue subclass or a fighter-rogue. You could even collapse wizard and cleric into one class with different specializations.

There are too many cool, unique abilities for the 13 classes for them to be limited as subclasses of only 3-4 basic classes.

If your idea of a barbarian is just a Fighter that has rage, I want no part of it. What about all the fighter abilities and the barbarian abilities? How does all that fit into one class? Is your answer to get rid of all the cool abilities? Would all warriors just be "fighting men" with only a slight variance? If so, that sounds like a boring saltine cracker for those seeking a feast of variety.

 

[TwoSix]

There are too many cool, unique abilities for the 13 classes for them to be limited as subclasses of only 3-4 basic classes.

If your idea of a barbarian is just a Fighter that has rage, I want no part of it. What about all the fighter abilities and the barbarian abilities? How does all that fit into one class? Is your answer to get rid of all the cool abilities? Would all warriors just be "fighting men" with only a slight variance? If so, that sounds like a boring saltine cracker for those seeking a feast of variety.

I think in that kind of system, the "class" would only provide a slim skeleton of features (like Hit Die, attack progression, spell slot progression, etc.); the bulk of the meatier, defining features would come from subclass.

Or, you simply don't have a lot of mechanical definition, and your "class definition" is simply a narrative layer you stick over your simple mechanics; this would be the "old-school" way.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

I think in that kind of system, the "class" would only provide a slim skeleton of features (like Hit Die, attack progression, spell slot progression, etc.); the bulk of the meatier, defining features would come from subclass.

Or, you simply don't have a lot of mechanical definition, and your "class definition" is simply a narrative layer you stick over your simple mechanics; this would be the "old-school" way.

Yeah, I don't play OSE style games. That works for some, but not me. I like looking forward to, and using, cool abilities.

 

[TwoSix]

Yeah, I don't play OSE style games. That works for some, but not me. I like looking forward to, and using, cool abilities.

Totally fair. I'm in the middle, I want interesting abilities up front and a lot of mechanical differentiation. But I would prefer for new and interesting abilities after character creation to be gained in fiction, not from metagame progression.

 

[Arilyn]

I have different moods. We are playing Black Sword Hack right now and Old Gods of Appalachia. I also love all the choices in Level Up. Just want all the games...

 

[overgeeked]

I’m definitely on the lighter end and want minimal mechanical progression and more in-fiction progression.

 

[gorice]

I'm at fault for escalating this discussion. A few quick thoughts before I see myself out, because I think this issue is actually important, as trivial as it might seem.

There is no "pure game." Games are always subservient to their design goals. It's fine to dislike the goals, and to not like a game even if it achieves those goals (sometimes because it achieves those goals), but that's not really a critique of the game as much as it is a reflection on how you value those goals. Saying 5e was built to fit the needs of the brand isn't a novel criticism. It's just...true, basically. And so what? All games have design goals. If you don't want to play a game that feels like D&D...I guess play something that's not D&D?

How is it possible to judge something without having a standard to judge it by? Take it as given that I don't think 'feels like D&D' is an admirable design goal. This was exactly the opinion that started this argument: I think WotC is devoted to making a game that 'feels like D&D', and this means that other aspects of design are secondary for them.

The problem is that "popular = good" and "popular != good" are equally facile statements. It imagines that quality (something being "good") is a singular spectrum, something that can only be represented as a 0-100 score on Rotten Tomatoes, or a Famitsu 40/40, or by the number of Michelin stars.

It neglects that something being broadly consumed and enjoyed, even if not to the tastes of a true connoisseur, carries its own form of quality.

I don't think popularity has much at all to do with quality. In the case of 5e: I see a lot of comments about its popularity, and very little about its specific positive qualities, even when I explicitly ask people to describe them. 'Feels like D&D', 'gets out of the way', and similar sentiments don't sound like endorsements to me: they sound like admissions that the specific qualities of 5e don't matter that much.

Apologies to @Oofta for not replying to them directly, but I guess this is my response to them, too.

It’s also worth noting that 5e products are often well received by reviewers. It tends to be random guy on the internet that finds it objectionable.

How many of those reviews are based on actual play experience? There's no way of knowing, in most cases, but my impression is 'very few'. That's before we get into the incentives for reviewers to give positive product reviews, which is a whole other issue.

My comment about elitism was your assumption that people aren’t capable of making a rational buying decision and that only you see through the fog to the true path. I fully admit to liking MacDonalds and Coca Cola even though they are bad for me. But I’m not being tricked, I’m choosing to focus on one thing over another because at that point it’s what I care about. This is particularly the case with TTRP gamers, who are generally literate and imaginative.

Marketing does work of course. But you seem to be under the illusion that it convinces people to do something they don’t want to do. Rather than putting the products that people want in front of them. Most marketing is about understanding what your potential customer wants and making sure you provide it.

While marketing can distract from downsides - MacDonalds and Coca-cola being good examples - are you honestly saying that WotC marketing is doing this? What downsides does the marketing itself cover up? The only things that matter are that D&D feels overall like D&D, is a fun communal game to play and that people will want to keep playing it. I’m really struggling what downside exists that is being obfuscated by marketing? Obviously folks can always be lied to and tricked into believing things that aren’t true by people they trust but that isn’t marketing and I don’t think that is what’s happening here.

Your spice argument doesn’t hold up because you are assuming there are distinct camps of gamers and that folks who have issues with 5e are doing so on big macro terms like the spice level. When in fact disagreements about 5e are usually about extremely narrow (and in the grand scheme trivial) things like whether Rangers have spells and the uniqueness of the sorcerer. These are topics that the vast vast majority of diners just don’t care about. Your gaming arguments equate to being that WotC used Bolivian chillies not Argentinian chillies and therefore the dish is mediocre. I say mmm, the spice level here is nice and crack on.

All this ignores the fact that when it comes down to hobbies and in particular relatively cheap and accessible ones like D&D. Popularity is an extremely important measure, because it means the system gets support and development over a sustained period of time, which to be honest is all I want. The reality is that WotC is changing its spice balance in a series of small changes to try and get the balance even better. They’re just not using the spice you like.

In truth popular just means liked and accessible by more people. I don’t know why folks are so against us saying it’s amazing and brilliant that D&D is liked and accessible to so many more people. Conversely what are you expecting us to care about that is more important than that?

Marketing doesn't just appeal to desire, because our desires are not entirely fixed and predictable. At some level, marketing generates or manipulates desire. It wouldn't be as effective if all it did was give us factual information about something we might like -- which is, emphatically, not what most marketing is.

As for the consequences... I said upthread that WotC promises all things to all people. They can't possibly deliver on this. In my (extensive) experience with 5e, it can be used for a lot of things if you're willing to put in tremendous amounts of effort, but it exerts a gravitational pull towards a certain type of DM-led play that might be called railroading. The offical adventures are pretty much all examples of this, as far as I can tell. The implicit message that this is the entirety of what RPGs are is, I think, a negative infliuence on the hobby as a whole.

 

[TheSword]

I'm at fault for escalating this discussion. A few quick thoughts before I see myself out, because I think this issue is actually important, as trivial as it might seem.


How is it possible to judge something without having a standard to judge it by? Take it as given that I don't think 'feels like D&D' is an admirable design goal. This was exactly the opinion that started this argument: I think WotC is devoted to making a game that 'feels like D&D', and this means that other aspects of design are secondary for them.


I don't think popularity has much at all to do with quality. In the case of 5e: I see a lot of comments about its popularity, and very little about its specific positive qualities, even when I explicitly ask people to describe them. 'Feels like D&D', 'gets out of the way', and similar sentiments don't sound like endorsements to me: they sound like admissions that the specific qualities of 5e don't matter that much.

Apologies to @Oofta for not replying to them directly, but I guess this is my response to them, too.


How many of those reviews are based on actual play experience? There's no way of knowing, in most cases, but my impression is 'very few'. That's before we get into the incentives for reviewers to give positive product reviews, which is a whole other issue.


Marketing doesn't just appeal to desire, because our desires are not entirely fixed and predictable. At some level, marketing generates or manipulates desire. It wouldn't be as effective if all it did was give us factual information about something we might like -- which is, emphatically, not what most marketing is.

As for the consequences... I said upthread that WotC promises all things to all people. They can't possibly deliver on this. In my (extensive) experience with 5e, it can be used for a lot of things if you're willing to put in tremendous amounts of effort, but it exerts a gravitational pull towards a certain type of DM-led play that might be called railroading. The offical adventures are pretty much all examples of this, as far as I can tell. The implicit message that this is the entirety of what RPGs are is, I think, a negative infliuence on the hobby as a whole.

the problem is your standard is not my standard. We all like what we like and there is no agreed set of criteria for excellence. Even if there were I’d be very surprised if 5e wasn’t ranking on many of not most of them. Say what you like about WotC they aren’t amateurs.

You seem to think the only design goal is ‘feels like D&D’ and this is a problem. While in fact there are several design goals with the caveat that if it stops the game feeling like D&D they get vetoed. It’s a bit like safety at work. In my business we have several business goals but no course of action is going to happen if it’s not safe. Same with ‘feels like D&D’. It’s a bar that proposals have to clear before addressing other goals. It’s an important one too. Because I don’t want to play a different game I want to play D&D. Let other folks make other games.

You have this persistent idea that people don’t seem to understand the game. Reviewers play D&D. Fans play D&D. Parents teach their kids D&D. Folks consume adventure path after adventure path and some make their own up. People are playing D&D 5e. They aren’t buying the books sticking on them on shelves and forgetting them. The game is not a marketing ploy or a trick.

I think you need to start making a distinction between advertising and marketing. Advertising makes a person try and feel positive about a product and it usually tries to do that by making the product resonate with the player and appeal to the kind of thing they like. It doesn’t make someone like something they don’t like. But it does use emotion and aspiration. I never said it was purely factual and dry.

Marketing includes advertising but also includes lots of other things like research, product design, customer retention, the feedback loop etc. Certainly the kind of marketing WotC does doesn’t make people think things that aren’t real or they aren’t predisposed to. Great marketing discovers latent desires and fans that flame. It’s not voodoo. Are there any dubious marketing ploys you can actually point to, or is it all just conjecture.

Im sure the designers like to think they’re a broad church with a flexible system but I’m not sure 5e markets itself to be all things to all people at all. It tends to be a claim fans make not the designers or the WotC team. I’m definitely sure they don’t claim to be all there is. So I think that is a little bit of projection on your part.

 

[I'm A Banana]

How is it possible to judge something without having a standard to judge it by? Take it as given that I don't think 'feels like D&D' is an admirable design goal. This was exactly the opinion that started this argument: I think WotC is devoted to making a game that 'feels like D&D', and this means that other aspects of design are secondary for them.

I hear your point, and I validate it. I think you're essentially right that 'feels like D&D' as a goal meant putting that before some other design ideas (there's some nuance, but it doesn't detract from the centrality of your argument).

My point is: this isn't a bad thing.

In my (extensive) experience with 5e, it can be used for a lot of things if you're willing to put in tremendous amounts of effort, but it exerts a gravitational pull towards a certain type of DM-led play that might be called railroading. The offical adventures are pretty much all examples of this, as far as I can tell. The implicit message that this is the entirety of what RPGs are is, I think, a negative infliuence on the hobby as a whole.

So the central issue is that the design feels too "railroady" to you, if I grok you here.

But if that design was objectively a bad way to run a game, then people would not be having fun, and would not continue to buy books with that design.

So we can say with some confidence that the type of play that official products serve is "fine." It works. It's enjoyable enough for a broad enough swath of the population that D&D as it currently is has been wildly successful when compared against itself.

If you want to make a case that it could be better....well, I don't think you'd find much disagreement there, and I'd be interested in your ideas on it. "It's mostly fine the way it is" is the baseline, though. This idea that we're all being deceived and that the slavish loyalty to history has damaged the hobby and the game is not really well supported. Meanwhile, the idea that D&D5e tends to be uncomfortably railroady and here's some ways it could break out of that is an idea I'd be interested to hear about.

 

[Oofta]

I think I disagree with just about everything. Well, everything other than the apology, sometimes what we write does come across as harsher than what was intended.

I'm at fault for escalating this discussion. A few quick thoughts before I see myself out, because I think this issue is actually important, as trivial as it might seem.


How is it possible to judge something without having a standard to judge it by? Take it as given that I don't think 'feels like D&D' is an admirable design goal. This was exactly the opinion that started this argument: I think WotC is devoted to making a game that 'feels like D&D', and this means that other aspects of design are secondary for them.

I have no idea what this means. The standard I judge "Does 5E feel like D&D to me?" is the time we spend at the gaming table. With the exception of 4E, fighting has always been the rules dominated portion of the game with a bit of leeway, how much leeway depends on the DM and group. Outside of combat there's been some support, but with a few exceptions it's mostly up to the group. Of course some editions had more or fewer rules, later editions certainly gave you a bit more concrete things to fall back on. But even way back in the day if there was some uncertainty we just called for a roll. It's just more official now.

I don't think popularity has much at all to do with quality. In the case of 5e: I see a lot of comments about its popularity, and very little about its specific positive qualities, even when I explicitly ask people to describe them. 'Feels like D&D', 'gets out of the way', and similar sentiments don't sound like endorsements to me: they sound like admissions that the specific qualities of 5e don't matter that much.

I think the qualities of and what kind of gameplay D&D appeal to a broad audience. The reason you see negativity is because the people who don't like something (and many who don't even play D&D) are the ones that are complaining the loudest. That, and I suspect a bit of confirmation bias. People tend to discuss what doesn't work for them, not what does. I'm never going to bring up Bless but I'll complain about Heat Metal because casting it on metal armor with the target having no save to avoid disadvantage isn't a good thing in my book. Especially for a low level spell. That doesn't mean I'm not perfectly okay with the vast number of spells in the book, it's just that I'm going to complain about that 1% that I don't like.

Do I think D&D 5E is a quality game? Based on relatively objective measures like overall consistency of the rules, lack of errata, general presentation (other than the DMG), yes. Based on do I personally enjoy playing? Absolutely. Based on the enthusiasm of the people I actually play with on a regular basis? Again, yes. Is it objectively a quality game considering both? Quality, much like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. For millions of beholders (which EEK! A swarm of beholders! Run while you can!) it sure seems to be a quality game, I'm not sure why else the majority of people would be playing it or why we would have had double digit growth every year for nearly a decade.

Apologies to @Oofta for not replying to them directly, but I guess this is my response to them, too.


How many of those reviews are based on actual play experience? There's no way of knowing, in most cases, but my impression is 'very few'. That's before we get into the incentives for reviewers to give positive product reviews, which is a whole other issue.

So now because you don't agree with the reviewers they don't know what they're talking about? Good grief.

Marketing doesn't just appeal to desire, because our desires are not entirely fixed and predictable. At some level, marketing generates or manipulates desire. It wouldn't be as effective if all it did was give us factual information about something we might like -- which is, emphatically, not what most marketing is.

You will send me money ... oooh ...

Wait, that didn't work? Dang.

I think the imaginary marketing manipulation you speak of (I don't remember the last time I saw an add for D&D) is any more effective. Now, Debeers getting a monopoly on diamonds and convincing people that a diamond was the only way to prove true love? That was pretty brilliant. But comparing manipulation like that to D&D's "Hey try this game!" is comparing apples to oranges.

As for the consequences... I said upthread that WotC promises all things to all people. They can't possibly deliver on this. In my (extensive) experience with 5e, it can be used for a lot of things if you're willing to put in tremendous amounts of effort, but it exerts a gravitational pull towards a certain type of DM-led play that might be called railroading. The offical adventures are pretty much all examples of this, as far as I can tell. The implicit message that this is the entirety of what RPGs are is, I think, a negative infliuence on the hobby as a whole.

So many things wrong here. First, they don't promise all things to all people. It's more flexible in tone and style of campaign than many TTRPGs but it's primarily schlocky high magic heroic fantasy fiction. If you want gritty historical accuracy, D&D isn't the game for you and it doesn't pretend to be.

Railroading is a loaded term. The modules tend to be linear because they're easier for DMs to run. I started playing a Waterdeep: Dragon Heist game with one DM that was sadly cut short because of covid. It was a blast because the DM knew how to improvise and run with what we did. I played it through with another DM and it just didn't really work because he didn't know how to flesh out the game. It's a module that gives the DM a lot of hooks, NPCs, organizations and a sketch of a story line. But it struck me as more of a setting book than an adventure module.

As an example with the first DM we had a blast with the ghost bartender and it was a highlight of the session. Working with the factions in town was pretty involved. Second DM? Yeah, there's a ghost give me a persuasion check. Factions? Let me read boxed text on what they are, you can join them if you want. The second DM would have been better off with a linear campaign that kept a focus on action with clearly defined steps.

Oh, and I run a very free form player driven campaign while having very few house rules. It doesn't take "tremendous amounts of effort" and never has.

Just because you don't seem to care for D&D, I think it's a tremendous leap to say it's a bad influence. First, I disagree. I suspect that unless some other game had come along that filled D&D's role TTRPGs could well have remained even a smaller niche hobby than it is now.

EDIT: When I say things like "the rules get out of the way', that doesn't mean the rules don't matter. It means the empty spaces matter just as much as what gets filled in along with the rules are fast and streamlined enough that they don't slow the game down most of the time.