D&D 5E [L&L] Campaigns in D&D Next

[pemerton]

I agree that 4e has a very specific flavor and probably didn't reach the broad market they hoped for. I disagree that this means that in 4e (or 3e for that matter) the players served the rules instead of the other way around. Just because some rules might not mesh with your playstyle doesn't mean you're serving them.

I agree with this. Until I read the post I am quoting just below this sentence, I didn't even know what "the players serving the rules" was meant to mean!

From my experience, you'd be surprised with how many groups will effectively serve the rules by leaving behind their playstyle in the hope of playing the game as written. By making a lot of strong assumptions, 3E and 4E encouraged that.

I can't really comment on 3E as I didn't play enough of it. I think AD&D makes a lot of assumptions too, though. I tried to GM in accordance with them, and found (i) that I wasn't very good at it, and (ii) that my players didn't really seem interested in the resulting game. So I changed my GMing and changed the rules to help with that (eg I dropped mechanical alignment, which is a fairly big part of AD&D as written; and I abandoned all the advice about building dungeons, framing scenes and adjudicating action resolution so as to reward "skilled play").

But I don't really find it helpful to say that "using the rules and not enjoying the experience" is "serving the rules". I wasn't serving Gygax's rules. I was just discovering that I didn't like the game they led to, and so I took what I wanted from his rulebooks, plus from various magazine articles, and ran a game that I did enjoy.

What Mearls said is not only relatively harmless, but quite embracing

So the main difference in our views is that you see Mearls as catering to (anti-4E?) edition warriors, and I do not.

I read the Mearls column before reading any of the posts on the thread other than the OP. And I had the same response to that sentence as Sage Genesis - it struck me as buying into a widely-known line of criticism of 4e, namely, that it subordinates the fiction to the rules. Rightly or wrongly, I didn't feel embraced.

If Mearls had just said "D&D works best when the action flows and the rules serve the gaming group" then I do not think I would have had the same reaction: for that is obviously true, and I guess important for a commercial publisher to keep in mind (ie design what your likely market wants to buy) even if tending somewhat towards the banal.

OK, I listened to it.

<snip>

here are some things I definitely got from it:

- Returning hit points is defined as "healing", which involves "fixing broken arms", reattaching severed hands and fixing guys who are "lying gutted on the ground" - and fighter types don't do that.

- Inspiring people is done by Charisma and is, apparently, something only Bards do.

<snip>

In short, the top two (?) in the design team seem to see hit points as "meat", whatever their early design article said, and have what seems to me to be a pretty narrow view of what "leadership" is about.

I listened to it too (from around 29 minutes to 32 minutes) and agree with you. (And with Sage Genesis, as far as interpreting what they are talking about is concerned.)

The discussion of William Wallace is not about the movie Braveheart - except for their reference to mooning the English and the "cut" scene, which are jocular asides. Whoever is speaking (I don't know the voices) is making the point that a warlord, even if s/he inspires a soldier to fight on, doesn't heal because the hand doesn't grow back or get re-attached. And the discussion of healing leading up to the Braveheart example characterises warlord healing in terms of being a field medic.

In other words, they seem to be completely discounting non-magical inspirational healing.

I also think that Sage Genesis is correct to note that sleeping doesn't make hands grow back or re-attach either, and hence that - if the hit point/healing model were to be consistent - the limits on inspiration healing should be set by reference to what sleep can achieve rather than by reference to what surgery and miracles can achieve. I am not really expecting D&Dnext to have a consistent hit point/healing model, however. It seems to be closer to pre-4e in both its "natural" healing and magical healing mechanics.

 

[pemerton]

5e is the e replacing 4e, though, and since every edition is somewhat a reaction to the edition before, it's easy to see some of 5e's touted successes (Fast encounters!) as that same sort of "fixing problems that don't exist for me." I think 5e is being more careful about that, though -- it knows not everyone will be into fast encounters.

Now when Mearls talks about faster combats, or 1 hour adventures, I don't read that as a 4e-bash at all. I take it as obvious that default 4e won't deliver fast combats or 1 hour adventures. (I know some people do interesting stuff, like what [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION] is talking about in the "pushing the envelope" thread, but I don't think they're an obvious part of default 4e.)

If Mearls simply said "A lot of people didn't like 4e's rules, so we're designing a new ruleset that will let them play D&D without having to use 4e rules" that wouldn't bother me either. As far as I can see it's completely true.

The thing that grated with me is, I think, the same thing as grated with [MENTION=6706099]Sage Genesis[/MENTION]: the invocation of a phrase about "the game/players serving the rules" which as far as I know has no meaning or use outside the context of criticising the style of 4e mechanics. (Well, I've also seen it used to describe Marvel Heroic RP, but MHRP has mechanics that are, for these purposes, more-or-less the same as 4e's, and hence are contentious for much the same reasons.)

 

[Balesir]

To me, this is more emblematic of the whole "hit points as an abstraction" problem than anything else. It doesn't matter what way anyone spins it, there will always be logical inconsistencies regarding hit points in some way or another. This isn't a 5E issue, this is a D&D issue that (IMO) spans every edition.

While I essentially agree that this is a "hit points as an abstraction" versus hit points as meat effect, I no longer view this as a "problem", more as a feature of D&D. It's a feature that several, but not all, RPGs have, and I find it somewhat perverse that those who still see it as a "problem" want to change D&D rather than just use a system that doesn't use hit points.

Hit points as "dramatic immunity" don't really generate any logical inconsistencies at all. They are just not a simulation of the real world - they are a simulation of action-adventure movie world. Once you internalise that model, they work fine and they allow a style of adventure play that "realistic" systems don't (and the reverse is also true, of course).

My fervent hope is for an optional rules module, preferably in the DMG, that covers more robust damage systems and including lasting injuries. By robust, I mean something a little more well thought-out than a WP/HP system, which I find only slightly less clunky than HP alone.

I actually hope there aren't such rules in DDN. It would lead to a very different game, I think - sort of like some complained about with 4E, it would take the "soul" out of D&D. I am amused by the irony, though, that several of those who disliked 4E because it "made D&D a different game" actually want to make a different game of D&D themselves - just a different game in a direction at variance with that in which 4E took it...

 

[Sadras]

I actually hope there aren't such rules in DDN. It would lead to a very different game, I think (snip) - just a different game in a direction at variance with that in which 4E took it...

I do not think it changes it on that level to tag along a wound system. We have slapped on Wounds and kept the hp, so hp are not meat at all. We have not see a change at all in playstyle, although I will admit our system does reduce the metagame though. No more performing waxia style actions, just because characters are sitting pretty with a lot of hp.
In fact our houserules are often to discourage metagaming. i.e. if a snake bites a character I do not have them roll save versus poison, as a DM I would do that for them. If they make their save and they're aware of the results, they do not waste their resources, if they're unsure they would rather take precautionary action than wait for the effects to kick in.
Other houserules include cutting down on cantrip spamming (light and pew-pew), invisibility/fly spams...etc

 

[I'm A Banana]

The thing that grated with me is, I think, the same thing as grated with @Sage Genesis : the invocation of a phrase about "the game/players serving the rules" which as far as I know has no meaning or use outside the context of criticising the style of 4e mechanics.

I don't know that I'd characterize 4e as "the game/players serving the rules." I'm not sure that Mearls would, either. I don't know how that would even work. If the 4e rules are what you like, it's clearly the rules serving what you as the player want. The problem happens when it's not what you like, but you feel like you need to use them anyway to "play D&D." Which is how I hear Mearls's line.

My takeaway from that line was more that 5e is explicitly telling you that the rules are all optional, and giving you real tools that you can use to manipulate them. The core rules aren't sacrosanct in 5e's conception: that a given table can change them, manipulate them to serve their own game. The rules aren't a thing you need to adhere to or be "broken" or "unbalanced" or "unfair" or "not fun," they're a tool to use to support the way you play. The rules will be subordinate to an individual table's desires and whims, rather than a round hole you need to fit all these different pegs into.

That's in contrast to bits of 4e, sure, where the game assumed a tripped ooze is a thing even if you didn't want it to be, but it's also in contrast to most of D&D, at least as it has been presented in the rulebooks. The presumption of the rulebooks are typically that these are the rules for playing the game, and that if you want to play D&D, you'll use these rules (or at least the ones not explicitly labelled "optional"). It does match how D&D has actually been played, though. It's the logical extension of Rule 0, of the variety of house rules during 1e and 2e, of the d20 explosion.

It's a confession that 5e doesn't have one True Way to Play, and it's not going to tell you what you have to do. If you want a tripped ooze to be a thing, it is. If you don't, it's not. And either way is fine.

Which, after 5 years of hearing every once in a while how if I don't like ADEU then I must hate fighters, how if tripping oozes doesn't make sense to me that I want to cripple players, how if HP are my injury mechanic and not my morale mechanic that I'm Doing It Wrong, is pretty great to me. But that's just the most recent: it's also after 30+ years of hearing from various editions that a given rule is necessary. It's permission to ignore wealth-by-level, demihuman level limits, THAC0, grapple rules, lava damage, falling damage, the Fighter class, gnomes, whatever it is about D&D that I might not want or like at the moment.

 

[pemerton]

5e is explicitly telling you that the rules are all optional, and giving you real tools that you can use to manipulate them.

<snip>

It's a confession that 5e doesn't have one True Way to Play, and it's not going to tell you what you have to do.

Because I've spent so much of my GMing life GMing Rolemaster, which is basically a set of ideas on how to build a system rather than a system ready to go out of the box - particularly once you layer on all the RM Companions - and before that I used to read White Dwarf and Dragon Magazine articles which were full of ideas about how I might tweak the game this way or that way, I've never really thought of RPG rulebooks as "telling me what I have to do".

On the other hand, I'm wary of rulebooks simply telling me I can change this or that and it will all be good. For instance, if you're playing 4e, and you change the game so that rogues can't do sneak attack damage against undead, and then you run a group with a rogue PC through an undead-heavy adventure, there's a good chance the game won't be as satisfying for the player of that rogue as it might otherwise be. Or, to generalise slightly, it's not as if the PC build rules and the action resolution rules that interface with them make no difference to the experience of the players at the table.

In the case of D&Dnext, from my point of view it's not enough that it tell me I can change the rules this way or that way. I want it to take steps to ensure that changing the rules this way or that way will predictably deliver the desired experience. Or to tell me what the predicted experience resulting from a given tweak will be, so that I can work out whether or not I want to make that tweak.

Just to give one practical example: if the game talks about options for slowing down hit point recovery, then on the same page I want it to talk about slowing down the recovery of other resources linked to the daily cycle too, like spells. And to talk about the duration of spells like Rope Trick and Mordenkainen's Magnificant Mansion, and the extent to which I might also want to tweak them to preserve their default role within the overall system architecture. And to talk, too, about how I might change relevant aspects of the exploration and random encounter rules, to make sure that these still interface neatly with the (now slower) recovery rules.

This is the sort of thing which historically (including 4e) D&D has been very bad at. But there are plenty of good examples of how advice can be framed in this sort of practically useful way that prioritises the perspective of the table over the perspective of the fiction. Burning Wheel is the best I know; but 13th Age is a pretty good example within the d20 family of games.

 

[I'm A Banana]

In the case of D&Dnext, from my point of view it's not enough that it tell me I can change the rules this way or that way. I want it to take steps to ensure that changing the rules this way or that way will predictably deliver the desired experience. Or to tell me what the predicted experience resulting from a given tweak will be, so that I can work out whether or not I want to make that tweak.

Totally. And it sounds to me like 5e is going to be designed with this kind of alteration in mind -- that seems to be part of the promise Mearls is making here.

So, yeah, not really a ding against 4e to say that the rules should serve the game/players rather than vice-versa. Just an assertion of flexibility, I think.

 

[Mistwell]

I swear, if Mearls said, "And this time, D&D will feature blue on the cover," a bunch of fans would take it as a dig on their favorite past edition.

One group would go on to list all the D&D books from the past that had blue on the cover, and complain that it was a slap in the face of those fans of prior editions with blue covers to make that claim.

Then another group of fans would say what, are they trying to say red editions are bad or something? And those fans would take it as a slap in the face to claim that covers that featured the color red are being bashed by WOTC.

And then a third group would snark on Mearls for thinking that we should care what color will be featured, as everyone knows that real players just rip the covers off and replace them with their own covers anyway, or use digital copies that have no real "cover".

Mearls can literally say nothing at this point that wouldn't get heated responses and snark. And if he said nothing, he'd get heated responses and snark for that too.

And I am sure the fact that he gets that for saying anything or nothing will, itself, get blamed on Mearls, because of past bad actions or whatever the excuse of the day is for heated responses or snark over anything or nothing.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I swear, if Mearls said, "And this time, D&D will feature blue on the cover," a bunch of fans would take it as a dig on their favorite past edition.

One group would go on to list all the D&D books from the past that had blue on the cover, and complain that it was a slap in the face of those fans of prior editions with blue covers to make that claim.

Then another group of fans would say what, are they trying to say red editions are bad or something? And those fans would take it as a slap in the face to claim that covers that featured the color red are being bashed by WOTC.

And then a third group would snark on Mearls for thinking that we should care what color will be featured, as everyone knows that real players just rip the covers off and replace them with their own covers anyway, or use digital copies that have no real "cover".

Mearls can literally say nothing at this point that wouldn't get heated responses and snark. And if he said nothing, he'd get heated responses and snark for that too.

And I am sure the fact that he gets that for saying anything or nothing will, itself, get blamed on Mearls, because of past bad actions or whatever the excuse of the day is for heated responses or snark over anything or nothing.

To be fair... red covered books really do suck.

 

[Pour]

[MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION] Well, that's one way to embrace those feeling indifferent or suspect with the next edition, indirectly ridicule their perceptions, you know, instead of talking it out like @Kamikaze Midget. We understand you are a strong proponent of 5e. More power to you. And it must be taxing to see all the reactions to it when they don't align with your own, but you're better than this Mist...