Mike Mearls Discusses Possible Alternate Class Features for the Ranger on Happy Fun Hour 11/20

[Retreater]

Critical Role draws viewers in the millions. My anecdata are contrary to yours, but neither is data. Which WotC has, and seems to be acting upon.

In the live streaming world, 5E seems to be something of the hard, tactical option in the field already.

I don't watch live streams. I tried Critical Role to see what the fuss was about, and I lost interest within an hour. That type of programming just isn't for me, though I realize many enjoy it.

I play numerous wargames and really cut my teeth on 3rd edition D&D (though I started in 2nd edition AD&D). It's hard for me to get in the mindset that 5E is tactical for some players with the core mechanics, that don't rely on positioning or combat maneuvers, which limits magical buffs and situational modifiers.

I guess compared to FATE or Seventh Sea, it's tactical.

I don't want my games to play like Critical Role. I think that trying to encourage groups to play like them and model the experience of a professionally produced weekly show with voice actors trying to entertain millions of viewers is against the roots of roleplaying games. We're not creating radio dramas. We're gamers.

 

[Azzy]

Aside from some (lackluster) rules options in the DMG, we haven't gotten a good tactical rules expansion to support 3.x or 4e playstyles. It's as if everything has moved to support the Critical Role, streaming, story driven style of game. (For me, I prefer getting my stories from novels, TV, and film, and leaving the games for gameplay. And besides, there are other games that I feel do a better job of storytelling than D&D.)[/QUOTE]

Likewise, there's far better games for what you want. For example, Warhammer.

 

[Retreater]

Likewise, there's far better games for what you want. For example, Warhammer.

I already play it, but I wouldn't say Warhammer is in the same category as a tactical RPG, as you miss out on story, character progression, exploration. Plus, the combat in Age of Sigmar isn't even as rich or tactical as previous editions of D&D.

I have also started a 4e game, and I'm considering switching a 5e game over to a short-term Descent campaign while one of our players is taking a leave for medical reasons. I know there are options. I just wish D&D was one of them.

 

[Parmandur]

I don't watch live streams. I tried Critical Role to see what the fuss was about, and I lost interest within an hour. That type of programming just isn't for me, though I realize many enjoy it.

I play numerous wargames and really cut my teeth on 3rd edition D&D (though I started in 2nd edition AD&D). It's hard for me to get in the mindset that 5E is tactical for some players with the core mechanics, that don't rely on positioning or combat maneuvers, which limits magical buffs and situational modifiers.

I guess compared to FATE or Seventh Sea, it's tactical.

I don't want my games to play like Critical Role. I think that trying to encourage groups to play like them and model the experience of a professionally produced weekly show with voice actors trying to entertain millions of viewers is against the roots of roleplaying games. We're not creating radio dramas. We're gamers.

I think it is less that WotC are encouraging people to play like Critical Role, and more that most already do. The Critical Role cast has a slick production, and has high quality silly voices, but their play resembles my experience starting in 3E. We never played 3E witha grid, though my college group did create an ad hoc minatures representation for one particularly epic battle. Most of the time was sitting on the couch, talking and rolling dice as needed. Part of 5E's genius was taking out a lot of the cruft (such as situational modifiers) that people in my experience would handwave anyways, and providing a quick and elegant tactical game.

The DMG does have more detailed tactical options, at least the ones a sizeable minority probably were interested in. The DMG is where a lot of rules the designers liked (Mearls and Crawford are actually hardcore wargamers themselves) but didn't meet the popularity muster went to live (dice pooling, grid combat, etc.).

That they are wargamers shows this isn't an "Ivory Tower" approach, again: it isn't some designers descending from the mountain with The Game chisled in stone. They made what people have asked for, and been careful to check back regularly on any decision.

 

[5ekyu]

Frankly, higher crunch will be the niche Pathfinder serves.

Chasing the harder style that 5e wasnt targeting is not smart business.

 

[Retreater]

I think it is less that WotC are encouraging people to play like Critical Role, and more that most already do. The Critical Role cast has a slick production, and has high quality silly voices, but their play resembles my experience starting in 3E. We never played 3E witha grid, though my college group did create an ad hoc minatures representation for one particularly epic battle. Most of the time was sitting on the couch, talking and rolling dice as needed. Part of 5E's genius was taking out a lot of the cruft (such as situational modifiers) that people in my experience would handwave anyways, and providing a quick and elegant tactical game.

The DMG does have more detailed tactical options, at least the ones a sizeable minority probably were interested in. The DMG is where a lot of rules the designers liked (Mearls and Crawford are actually hardcore wargamers themselves) but didn't meet the popularity muster went to live (dice pooling, grid combat, etc.).

That they are wargamers shows this isn't an "Ivory Tower" approach, again: it isn't some designers descending from the mountain with The Game chisled in stone. They made what people have asked for, and been careful to check back regularly on any decision.

Not denying your experience, but I literally can't visualize how 3E would work without a grid. I did not use maps or minis prior to it, and ran 2nd edition for close to a decade without them. But I have a hard time understanding how the 3e combat mechanics would work without a grid.

The DMG options are bad. I mean so bad, they're basically unusable. Combat maneuvers grant no perceivable advantage in combat since Attacks of Opportunity have been mitigated to movement only. (So picking up a weapon or standing from prone gives no mechanical advantage; flanking is way too powerful.) I mean it would have taken only a little bit of work to provide fans with meaningful tactical depth, instead of "I move forward and hack with my sword."

And thankfully I haven't gamed with many players of the Critical Role style. It's all a lot of inter-party conflict, joking around, and stealing from fellow party members.

 

[Jester David]

I feel like there are many surveys that pretend to engage the community, but nothing being done with them. There's little in the way of official crunch content that can be added to the supposedly modular design of 5e. Instead, we get rehashed old adventures while the designers rest on their laurels.

Pretty much every single edition has reprinted the same adventures that are being update to 5e.
Crunch is nice but it gets masterbatory pretty quickly. There’s a finite amount that can see use given how long campaigns run.

I remember the promise of 5e at launch that claimed it was going to be a system to support all editions of play. Aside from some (lackluster) rules options in the DMG, we haven't gotten a good tactical rules expansion to support 3.x or 4e playstyles.

I think that particular goal is overstated and misremembered by forumites. And I don’t think it was every remotely states as a “promise”. It was more of an ideal. They wanted a “best of” edition of the game, and *tried* to do that.

I guess if I'm a member of the minority opinion, then going with the will of the most players and forging ahead in a direction I don't like is the way to go. However, in my purely anecdotal experience with the variety of groups I've DMed for, every single one of them would like more tactical and combat options, better codified rules in and out of combat. It comes up every session in the three different 5e games I run.

This might very easily be a self fulfilling prophecy. The groups you GM for are more tactical because you run tactical campaigns, and thus those are the players who stick around. The storytellers aren’t going to join your table.

Plus, they did a pretty expansive survey of gamers during the playtest. If the majority or even largest minority really loved tactical play and hard rules, that would have ended up as more of a focus.
Keep in mind that half of tables don’t even use miniatures...

I don't want my games to play like Critical Role. I think that trying to encourage groups to play like them and model the experience of a professionally produced weekly show with voice actors trying to entertain millions of viewers is against the roots of roleplaying games. We're not creating radio dramas. We're gamers.

Critical Role was also a home game for years prior, and how they played largely didn’t change for the stream.
Even before I started watching, my game was often more like Critical Role than not. Because that’s how a LOT of people enjoy playing.

 

[Parmandur]

Not denying your experience, but I literally can't visualize how 3E would work without a grid. I did not use maps or minis prior to it, and ran 2nd edition for close to a decade without them. But I have a hard time understanding how the 3e combat mechanics would work without a grid.

The DMG options are bad. I mean so bad, they're basically unusable. Combat maneuvers grant no perceivable advantage in combat since Attacks of Opportunity have been mitigated to movement only. (So picking up a weapon or standing from prone gives no mechanical advantage; flanking is way too powerful.) I mean it would have taken only a little bit of work to provide fans with meaningful tactical depth, instead of "I move forward and hack with my sword."

And thankfully I haven't gamed with many players of the Critical Role style. It's all a lot of inter-party conflict, joking around, and stealing from fellow party members.

Mostly when it came to combat, it was "I move forward and hack with my sword" as far as tactics went. I reckon we were technically houseruling by ignoring a bunch of that sort of thing, but it pretty much played the same as 5E but with more arguments about how exactly grappling was supposed to work.

Not sure which random hour of Critical Role you saw, but stealing from each other and conflict driven behavior are extremely rare in that group.

 

[Retreater]

I guess my frustration with this is that I've run story-based, heavy RP games in the past. But when we all got out of college and got families and full-time jobs, the game isn't anyone's priority any more (except maybe me, as DM). At best we game every other weekend. Many times, real life gets in the way and people have to skip sessions. People don't remember details of what happens from session to session. They barely remember what level they are and what class they're playing. As a result, I pay no attention to backstories or motivations. I can't even remember the names of the characters in my sessions.
The only thing left, the only shred of enjoyment left is moving pieces on a board, trying to create fun tactical challenges that can fill up a couple hours while people are only engaged on their turn but are otherwise looking on their phones or telling out-of-character jokes.
And I guess I might be a little hard on Critical Role. Millions of people following a campaign they're not playing when I can't get my own 5 players to pay attention for a single session.

 

[Retreater]

Not sure which random hour of Critical Role you saw, but stealing from each other and conflict driven behavior are extremely rare in that group.

The first session of the second campaign.

Then the rest of my impression comes from other gamers who are Critical Role fans talking about what happened and watching them be anti-party goal and personal "story-driven."