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Mearls On D&D's Design Premises/Goals
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7759535" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I don't think I fully get your question.</p><p></p><p>If a player has a PC goal like <em>I'll free my loved one from the evil duke's dungeons</em>, then I'd expect that to drive play to some reasonable extent. And likewise if a player has a PC goal like <em>I will become the richest baron in all the land</em>. But I would expect that character to drive a quite different game from typical D&D, in which the gathering of the treasure is largely an afterthought to the action, yet is treated as a major win condition. (By "the traditional style of game play" I take it that you mean looting dungeons for treasure. My sense of how treasure plays in 5e as it is presented, seems to be pretty much like Keep on the Borderlands but without the XP awards.)</p><p></p><p>I understand the "treasure as afterthought to action" approach in the context of those editions that make having treasure to spend an important element of character development, or that make it a literal win condition (in classic D&D you need to find it to earn XP, and then spend it to join the endgame; in 4e it is part of the doling out of PC abilities, either literally in the form of magic items, or in the form of the medium used to acquire magic items). I don't really get it for 5e, though. As a win condition it seems to have become detached from the actual play of the game and the develpoment of the characters. So why does it loom so large?</p><p></p><p>I don't feel that this answers my question; it really just underpins it and sparks new, related questions.</p><p></p><p>Presumably in the imaginary world of D&D (or at least many, I'd even conjecture most, D&D campaigns) there are aristocrats who live at the "aristocratic" standard of upkeep and live in castles, but don't loot a dragon hoard every year. If a player wants his/her PC to become an aristocrat and live in a castle, why does the game suggest that killing dragons is the answer?</p><p></p><p>To be clear: I know what the reason is in classic D&D - it's a game of dungeon exploration and looting in which gp are the win condition, both in terms of achievement at looting and PC progression. But I'm wondering what's the deal with 5e - is it still a dungeon crawling game that's dropped the second (PC progression) part of the classic D&D win condition? If so, how is this tight design? If not, then why does it still connect adventuring to loot-collection in the way that classic D&D did?</p><p></p><p>That seems a pretty contentious claim, unless we accept as a premise that the stakes of play are ultimately about the PC living or dying in one-on-one combat.</p><p></p><p>OK, so you're prepared to embrace the contentious premise! </p><p></p><p>The bit I've bolded seems to run togehter some potentially separate things - it's the primary player agency mechanism, but that's in part because there are no other robust mechanics that generate finality of resolution without being mediated through largely open-ended GM decision-making; and even allowing that it is the primary player agency mechanism, that needn't require it to be as complex as it is.</p><p></p><p>As to the idea that travel rules or shopping rules add complexity, I don't agree with that. 4e has travel rules (skill challenge), shopping rules (skill challenge), persuading-the-king rules (skill challenge), and they're not very complex, can be used in other fictional contexts besides the ones I've mentioned, and work reasonably well. And there are plenty of other RPGs that have genuinely uniform resolution mechanics that can be used for everything from fighting to persuading to trekking to shopping. (And Classic Traveller got fairly close to this 40 years ago; closer, at least, than 5e.)</p><p></p><p>That's not to say that 5e is poorly-designed - there might be good reason to break out combat rules from a generic resolution system, give it a rather high search-and-handling time, while subordinating other possible domains of action and resoltution. But I don't think it's light, and I think to a significant extent it trades on legacy expectations and understandings.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7759535, member: 42582"] I don't think I fully get your question. If a player has a PC goal like [I]I'll free my loved one from the evil duke's dungeons[/I], then I'd expect that to drive play to some reasonable extent. And likewise if a player has a PC goal like [i]I will become the richest baron in all the land[/I]. But I would expect that character to drive a quite different game from typical D&D, in which the gathering of the treasure is largely an afterthought to the action, yet is treated as a major win condition. (By "the traditional style of game play" I take it that you mean looting dungeons for treasure. My sense of how treasure plays in 5e as it is presented, seems to be pretty much like Keep on the Borderlands but without the XP awards.) I understand the "treasure as afterthought to action" approach in the context of those editions that make having treasure to spend an important element of character development, or that make it a literal win condition (in classic D&D you need to find it to earn XP, and then spend it to join the endgame; in 4e it is part of the doling out of PC abilities, either literally in the form of magic items, or in the form of the medium used to acquire magic items). I don't really get it for 5e, though. As a win condition it seems to have become detached from the actual play of the game and the develpoment of the characters. So why does it loom so large? I don't feel that this answers my question; it really just underpins it and sparks new, related questions. Presumably in the imaginary world of D&D (or at least many, I'd even conjecture most, D&D campaigns) there are aristocrats who live at the "aristocratic" standard of upkeep and live in castles, but don't loot a dragon hoard every year. If a player wants his/her PC to become an aristocrat and live in a castle, why does the game suggest that killing dragons is the answer? To be clear: I know what the reason is in classic D&D - it's a game of dungeon exploration and looting in which gp are the win condition, both in terms of achievement at looting and PC progression. But I'm wondering what's the deal with 5e - is it still a dungeon crawling game that's dropped the second (PC progression) part of the classic D&D win condition? If so, how is this tight design? If not, then why does it still connect adventuring to loot-collection in the way that classic D&D did? That seems a pretty contentious claim, unless we accept as a premise that the stakes of play are ultimately about the PC living or dying in one-on-one combat. OK, so you're prepared to embrace the contentious premise! The bit I've bolded seems to run togehter some potentially separate things - it's the primary player agency mechanism, but that's in part because there are no other robust mechanics that generate finality of resolution without being mediated through largely open-ended GM decision-making; and even allowing that it is the primary player agency mechanism, that needn't require it to be as complex as it is. As to the idea that travel rules or shopping rules add complexity, I don't agree with that. 4e has travel rules (skill challenge), shopping rules (skill challenge), persuading-the-king rules (skill challenge), and they're not very complex, can be used in other fictional contexts besides the ones I've mentioned, and work reasonably well. And there are plenty of other RPGs that have genuinely uniform resolution mechanics that can be used for everything from fighting to persuading to trekking to shopping. (And Classic Traveller got fairly close to this 40 years ago; closer, at least, than 5e.) That's not to say that 5e is poorly-designed - there might be good reason to break out combat rules from a generic resolution system, give it a rather high search-and-handling time, while subordinating other possible domains of action and resoltution. But I don't think it's light, and I think to a significant extent it trades on legacy expectations and understandings. [/QUOTE]
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