D&D 5E Legends & Lore - A Retrospective

[Henry]

Iosue, great thread topic! I certainly appreciate your comments' both insight and attempt to avoid bias.

 

[M.L. Martin]

I wonder if Mearls here

One of our employees had come up with the initial idea which he used to work up an RPG system for his home group.

was referring to Chris Perkins' AD&D 3rd edition, an amazing take at evolving AD&D.

I was always under the impression that that was a completely different Chris Perkins than the "DM to the Stars". Was I mistaken?

 

[Iosue]

I was always under the impression that that was a completely different Chris Perkins than the "DM to the Stars". Was I mistaken?

No, you're not. It's a different Chris Perkins.

 

[dracomilan]

Oops my mistake - I was so sure...

Ok now I am REALLY curious to know who the colleague was...

 

[Savage Wombat]

Thanks for doing this - I've been hoping someone would. I'd really love to hear what the author thinks looking back.

 

[pemerton]

I think this is an area where presentation has a lot to do with it, for good or for ill.

Probably. My guess is that contradictory rules presentation, and different rules in the DMG and PHB, didn't help either!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

At the least, we can say that 5e has been the least divisive of all WotC editions to-date.

I'm not disagreeing, per se, but how do you reckon this? Looking at 3E at the same time after release, it seemed way less divisive, with virtually everyone I knew (online and off) seeing it as significant improvement over 2E, and tons of people coming back to D&D for it. People sticking with D&D/1E/2E were far and few between and virtually no-one was even considering D&D-esque games.

Whereas say, a year or three after 3.5E, we were seeing significant dissatisfaction, people heading off to other d20 and non-d20 RPGs, and the very beginnings of mainstream retro-clones, and so on. But where will 5E be in four-five-six years? Hard to say.

Even comparing 5E to the latter, I'm not sure it's brought a lot of people back into the fold - I still see a lot of people playing retro-clones and alternative D&Ds like Pathfinder or Dungeon World. 4E was certainly more divisive than 5E, though.

So I'm not really seeing "least divisive". I can see "managed to heal some cracks and certainly avoided exacerbating most of them". But I feel like 3E brought people together way more, even if it later blew them apart.

EDIT:

This is an interesting passage:

Basically, no matter what your preference for the use of miniatures in D&D, be it theater of the mind, rulers and gridless maps, squares, or even hexes, 5e has something for you.

I don't think you're looking at this the way people who play games, do, though. I don't know of any D&D players, from any edition, who actively look for miniature-based play from D&D, who actively look for a grid/hexes, as a goal in themselves.

I mean, I'm a huge fan of 4E's tactical play, but I'm a fan of the tactical play, not specifically a fan of grids, or minis, or whatever (indeed I hate minis outside of actual boardgames - we use tokens). Do you understand the difference? It's a pretty huge difference. I've never come across a 4E group who were play "because minis" or "because grid" (or "because grid+minis" or whatever). Nor a 3.XE group, for that matter. I know of people who WON'T play a game because it requires minis, but that's a different story.

So I think when you flippantly dismiss 4E-style tactical play, and claim 5E has "something for everyone" because it has rules for mini + grid, I think you're not understanding what people actually want. I think it's a failure of understanding that the leads of the 5E team, particularly Mike Mearls have suffered from, too, so I don't think you're crazy to make it, but it is a failure nonetheless. Even 3.XE/PF fans who like tactical combat stuff will find distinctly less in 5E than 4E.

Basically, 5E did a good job of providing something for perhaps most D&D groups (given plenty of people played 4E but didn't really get into the tactical combat and so on), but definitely not for everyone by a long stretch. And a large part of the reason why is the faulty logic we see here, which presumes we want minis/grids for minis/grids sake, not minis/grid for tactics sake.

We'd see more of this strange (to me) thinking with the whole "Tactics means facing rules right guys!?" deal later.

2nd Edit - I think the big "Mission Accomplished" (ahem) from this column is providing really strong support for TotM, as that was something that had been on the decline since 3E (indeed, I remember writing rants about how 3E was "forcing" me to use minis/grid back when it had been released!). For the first time, a WotC edition unquestionably supported TotM.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It's interesting that the 4e DMG presented the 5e system as the default, yet by the time Mearls writes his column that seems to have dropped off the radar - for Mearls, for 4e critics, and presumably for many 4e players

FWIW, I think this has a few causes.

For one, the implication for me is clearly that low walls, corners, and trees were all things that, due to the rules about how you determine cover, had representations on the "board." It wasn't about fictional context as much as it was about having "interesting terrain" on the grid.

The second big one is that "Common sense" was not clearly presented as an option. The paragraph in the DMG that says you can determine cover based on common sense occurs immediately after a paragraph talking about how the PHB rules should be all DMs need most of the time, and in that context, seems to indicate that "common sense" is equal to "the rule in the PHB." And immediately after the option to use common sense, it goes into an EVEN MORE minis-centric rule that you could use instead of common sense.

That's hardly "the 5e system as the default." That's the system in the 4e PHB as equal to "common sense," and an additional "more accurate" system you could use as an option, too.

That might just be a lack of clarity (lawd knows the 4e DMG has issues with presumptions), but it's not hard to see why players got that sense from the actual rules written down. I can see viable alternate interpretations, but the one "many 4e players" got seems consistent with the rules as they were written in the books.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The second big one is that "Common sense" was not clearly presented as an option. The paragraph in the DMG that says you can determine cover based on common sense occurs immediately after a paragraph talking about how the PHB rules should be all DMs need most of the time, and in that context, seems to indicate that "common sense" is equal to "the rule in the PHB." And immediately after the option to use common sense, it goes into an EVEN MORE minis-centric rule that you could use instead of common sense.

I think you're indulging in some pretty silly business here. I don't think that we saw any 4E groups "ignoring common sense" or the like when it came to cover. Really, everyone knows that, at best, there's a 2D map of a 3D scene, and inevitably, there's going to be times when common sense comes into play, because the wall on the map is half-height, or full height, or full height but has holes in it (all of which might appear identical from the map).

So yeah, common sense absolutely always was a part of 4E's system, it's just not spelled out, because frankly, you shouldn't really need to spell out common sense.

I can see viable alternate interpretations, but the one "many 4e players" got seems consistent with the rules as they were written in the books.

I don't believe any "4E players" who actually played the game, as opposed to reading the rulebook and tutting over it or the like, didn't think common sense and/or DM rulings was involved with decisions about cover. So it may be consistent with the RAW, if we ignore the reality of play, but ignoring the reality of play is really silly.

I mean, am I misunderstanding you here?

 

[I'm A Banana]

I don't think that we saw any 4E groups "ignoring common sense" or the like when it came to cover.

Of course, that's not my contention.

Pemerton presented that "common sense" in 4e = fictional positioning = the default in 4e.

My contention is that if "common sense" there = fictional positioning then this is not the default in 4e.

Which is not the same as "4e players ignored common sense." It is, however, similar to "4e players who saw an emphasis on grid-based play weren't ignoring 4e's default, they were just reading the rules as presented and coming to a fairly logical conclusion based on this reading."