D&D 5E My D&D Next Experience at DDXP
drunkenmonk
First Post
True, but the world is full of little areas. GenCon is about trying the newest games and meeting the movers and shakers of the gaming industry. (or at least that's what it says on the website.) I'm not sure that's indicative of what people are playing in their living rooms, kitchen tables, and front porches.
The gamers at small cons play the games they like. They choose the games they are playing, or they want to play. As a result, I think these small conventions are a better view of what people in rural america are actually playing. They are hard working americans that would rather stay home and play with local gamers than fly across the country to play with strangers. I for one, see nothing wrong with that.
Plenty of people are playing with tattered beat up old editions, and many of them just *gasp* may not have liked the newest edition(s), or they just may not have seen any significant reason to upgrade. I saw no reason to buy the 4E books (or even anything but the core of 3e books), but I am pretty giddy for this 5e, and to get a cheapskate like me on board... that's pretty good.
It seems obvious that there is some proportion of PF and OSR players who are not going to be recruited by WotC to play 5e. I don't know what that proportion is, but would be surprised if it's more than 60% of PFers. I'd be equally surprised if it's less than 20%. I hope for their sake the WotC does have some idea.
It seems also fairly obvious to me that WotC does not want to risk losing a significant proportion of its customer base for the second time in 5 (or so) years. That's why, from WotC's point of view, it is surely imperative that 5e be attractive to many, if not most, of those who are currently paying WotC for 4e material.
Which then raises the question - why is 4e attractive to those who play it? and does WotC know the answer to that question? In retropsect, it seems that they didn't know the answer to the same question in respect of 3E.
To date, I find that their characterisation of 4e does not capture what I like about it. 4e, for me, is not primarily about tactical combat. It is about dramatic combat, with the tactical format (squares, tokens, action economy etc) as the medium through which the drama is resolved. It's about a system that encourages cutting straight to the action - be it combat or non-combat - without action resolution mechanics that lead to bogging down in (what is for me) mere exploration.
The fact that 4e is easy to GM is important, but for me secondary. I think that GMing Basic D&D is pretty straightforward - monster design is pretty simple, for example, as the vast lists of home-made monsters in Dragon, White Dwarf etc illustrate; and action resolution is fast and loose. But I'm not playing Basic, because it doesn't have the mechanics that 4e does which background exploration while foregrounding conflict and dramatically-paced action resolution.
WotC is full of knowledgable designers. They must all think about this sort of stuff, and have views on it. Some of Mearls' thoughts are available through stuff he said on RPGnet and the like back before he went to WotC. They must have had this sort of stuff in mind when designing 4e, given that it pervades the design. But nothing in Legends and Lore over the past year, or the more recent designer comments, has spoken about these matters in relation to D&Dnext. I'd like to hear about them.
I was struck by this passage:
On that topic, your next move isn’t on your character sheet. You don’t go paging through all your stuff thinking, “Well, I could Bluff this guy.” Nope. We were doing what we thought our characters should do, even if that involved our very NOT charismatic half-orc fighter trying to be a charismatic leader of a band of skeptical savage orcs. Multiple times. In other games, it’s “Okay, who has the highest Charisma? You? Okay, you go talk to those orcs and get them to help us.”
Everything was fun and fast and fluid. I didn’t feel like the game got bogged down at any time during our session, even when we had a few rules questions for Monte. Things just happened and they flowed with the story and the story was awesome because we made it that way.
Everything was fun and fast and fluid. I didn’t feel like the game got bogged down at any time during our session, even when we had a few rules questions for Monte. Things just happened and they flowed with the story and the story was awesome because we made it that way.
All this is good to hear, but how much does it contrast with someone's normal game of D&D? I mean, I think that my gaming group creates some (moderately) awesome stories in a fun game. It's probably not as fast and fluid as Monte's game, but he gets paid to do this stuff, whereas I'm just doing it in my spare time every second or third Sunday!
I'm also curious about the half-orc fighter trying to be a leader of sceptical and savage orcs, because my 4e game currently has a similar situation, in which the PC with the lowest social skills - the dwarf fighter - is also the party leader. I've been pleasantly surprised with how 4e handles this (via skill challenge mechanics). The fact that the PC is not charismatic matters, but the player (and the group) is nevertheless not penalised for having his PC take up this role. 4e is not the only RPG to have this sort of design - Burning Wheel does too, for example, although it achieves it through different mechanical techniques from 4e's.
Classic D&D, in my experience, doesn't handle this well - unless the GM fudges the action resolution mechanics (which is not something I'm a big fan of), the player and group will tend to suffer. I wonder how D&Dn rewards (or penalises) this sort of "playing to one's weaknesses"?
I've also felt that playtest reports do not seem to be positive due game mechanics, instead they could be from any session where the DM and players are in rapport. Due NDA, there has not been real info how the DDN mechanics supported the fun, but on the other hand, some people have reported that the GM was great, but the mechanics were so-and-so (partially ok, partially not).
Still, I've had some trouble understanding why people are so stoked due the playtest reports, as I'd except these kind of reports from any good session, regardless of the system used. On the other hand, I am really weary of the idea of modules with different levels of complexity (which is really surprising as I used to like that kind of systems), and I might have to come terms with that DDN is not going to be for me, and that probably colors my expressions on the DDXP reports.
My concern from reading somebody or others tweets was about how the players approached things. It seemed that somebody was fighting the bad guys while another was trying to bluff them while another was trying to rationalize with them. I'm all for a group trying to approach a problem from different angles, but having individuals PCs chatting with goblins while their friend is hacking them to bits 10 feet away? Ehhh, not for me.
BryonD
Hero
I truly think the fact that 4E works so well for you is a happy coincidence.
They trumpeted things like "ease of DMing" over and over in 2008. They didn't sell the ideas that you praise.
And I also find your particular praises of the virtues of 4E to be nearly unique amongst 4E fans. Not to claim they wouldn't agree with what you said or that they don't state certain individual points the same.
Mearls is the best of the best.
If I may throw out a theory, while I don't at all agree with some of the silly ideas out there that management and bean counters micromanaged 4E design, I do think that the day Mike was told "we are doing 4E and you are going to lead it" one of the key parameters he was given was "Design 4E to be a game that attracts and converts people who have never played TTRPGs" In particular they wanted to know why the millions of people pretending to be an elf in WoW* were not pretending to be an elf in D&D.
Mearls, being the best of the best, set out to design a game with that rather intense condition in place. And a result of both conscious choice and natural by-product was that a game well designed for chasing large numbers of new fans came out as a game that fits your personal tastes very well.
Unfortunately, for 95+% of WoW players, "pretending to be an elf" isn't really a part of the fun in a way that D&D players would describe it. So their primary goal didn't work, and they lost a lot of existing fans for their trouble. But they also made a specific niche of fans very happy. I'm not sure if you are an outlier from that niche or just a corner case within it. But either way it clearly worked out great for you.
* - 4E was not WoW. 4E was D&D designed in an attempt to appeal to WoW fans. These are two importantly different things.
You know, from my experience, I wouldn't say that WOW players are pretending to be elves. I don't think they're pretending anything. They're playing a video game set in a richly realized world that they like, but I really don't think they are buying into their characters. They don't think about their characters parents or home village or old master. They aren't even particularly concerned with life and death. It's just a game. This is probably what WotC couldn't grasp. If you want to make a game to transfer WoW players to D&D, you have to offer what WoW doesn't and nevermind the things that it does. The stated design goals for 5E should actually appeal to WoW players who have never played TTRPGs before, if they have an in into a group.
Osgood
Adventurer
With all the talk about how fans of different editions would feel about the new game, I've been thinking a bit about it. Since I have played and loved every edition of D&D (other than OD&D). As much as anyone can I will attempt to rate the base game from the perspective of a fan of each edition. Again, this is MY impression of the game mechanics and play, based on a single 4 hour session (and my experiences with/memories of the previous editions). Individual mileage may vary.
- Basic D&D: Familiar, but has a lot of confusing rules, and lots of stuff to sift through on the character sheet. I don't get what's going on with healing. What's up with these ability checks? 3/10
- 1E: Not a bad game, it comes close to having the heart of D&D, but there is too much dice rolling. The healing situation is weird. What's up with these ability checks? 4/10
- 2E: Close, but no cigar. The combat is pretty good, but the healing is a mess. It seems to bring back to many of the messy elements of 1E I disliked. Don't get me started on healing. What's up with these non-weapon proficiencies? 3/10
- 3E: Pretty good, but I miss customization. Spellcasters are busted. There are still a lot of elements that don't "feel" like D&D to me, but MOST have been purged. WTF healing? What's up with these skills? 5/10
- 4E: The characters are unbalanced and I don't feel like I am doing cool stuff. The healing situation makes me nervous. What's up with these skills? 2/10
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