D&D General New Interview with Rob Heinsoo About 4E

[Undrave]

I think I will keep doing math because I passed elementary school. Also that's another strawman because all those classes and rules at once is way more complexity than adding 2 levels of fighter and use a dragon magazine mini-feat chain of two to add a parry mechanic. I encourage you to do better than this, especially of you take the effort to post such image that compares that "real math" to sums and subtractions and the occasional, please don't be intimidated, multiplication.

Adding 2 levels of a PC class to an NPC is already too much. There's no good reason for NPCs to use PC rules. I was doing comedy through extremes.

And also: "he said she said" is no proof. I want evidence for this now pretty disturbing pro-wizard conspiracy, thank you. Because to me sounds, among other things, a pretty nice excuse to avoid Hanlon's Razor.

I'd love to track down the quote but that'll be really hard... not helped by the fact 'Wizards' is what many called WOTC.

 

[Cadence]

The easiest fix, I think, is to split combat and non-combat spells as they did in 4E and give everyone fairly easy access to non-combat spells via a 4E-style ritual system. The wizard only loses exclusive access to the most powerful spells.

I was going to make a comment about how letting just everyone easily cast spells might be one of those big campaign design world changes that people would complain about... but with level dips in 3e being such a thing, never mind.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And when you're watching a play, you can see the makeup, and the cardboard doesn't resemble the castle walls, and cast members move through the audience, and there's artificial lighting.

And when you're reading a book, you are holding a physical object, and reading a language you memorized, and puzzling out pronunciations, using a bookmark, getting papercuts.

These are just trappings of the medium. If you want to portray a person in armor on a stage, you put them in costume. If you want to portray a person in armor in a book, you write a description of the armor. If you want to portray a person in armor in a game of D&D, then you choose it as equipment and apply its effects to your Armor Class and whatever else it affects (encumbrance, speed, etc.).

If you are a person for whom the game is mostly medium, then you are someone that approaches with the usual audience assumption of "I am going to not worry about the trappings of the medium." Yes, the actor just appeared from offstage, but because I'm a willing participant in this little bit of make-believe, I am going to pretend that the character just arrived from a battlefield, because that's what the narrative is asking me to go along with.



Mostly in agreement. I think there's some nuance that doesn't reflect the absolutes that are worth clarifying.

I agree that the only necessary thing for storytelling, in general, is your imagination. However, storytelling in various mediums means engaging with that medium. If you choose to tell a story with a painting, you're going to engage with paints to produce it (among other trappings of the medium, such as canvasses, brushes, even display locations like galleries or restaurants). If you choose to tell a story with D&D, you're going to engage with game mechanics to produce it (among other trappings of the medium, such as other players, dice, etc.).

I agree in principle that to play a game, you need to engage with the rules of the game. Those rules can be entirely in your head, of course. A game of tag has rules, but you don't need to do any math or random number generation to play tag. A game can be played entirely in your imagination. To specifically play a game of D&D, you do need to engage with its rules, which include dice rolling, math, etc.

I believe that D&D is often at its best when medium and narrative work together to support each other.

My point was this:

Can you play a game without, in any way, consciously engaging with its rules?

Because picking up a die is engaging with rules. Reading a die is engaging with rules. Writing down a newly found item onto your character sheet is engaging with rules.

Nothing even remotely like this exists when listening to a person tell a story or reading a story from a book. Books and verbal storytelling are part of how we encounter all information, so there is no difference between listening to a friend recount a real event that actually happened to them and listening to a friend tell a completely fictional story. You do not have anything even like the need to interact with a rule.

Unless you believe it is possible to play a game while never even once interacting with rules as rules, it is not possible to achieve this alleged state of perfect, unquestionable Zen union with the experience. You are, of necessity, experiencing rules upon which you project a sense of meaning and value—unless, as stated, you believe that you can play a game while never once actually interacting with a single one of its rules.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

cantrips, upcasting spells…

How are these, in any way at all, not just "Vancian, but moreso"? How are they, in any way at all, less gamist than Vancian spellcasting?

 

[Belen]

When coupled with the other, actually irrational positions (like the need for Wizards to always be the best class in the game, as Heinsoo himself reported following 4e's launch), explosive responses are guaranteed.

Yet I have not see anyone play a Wizard in my games in years as a lot of people hate to deal with managing a wizard.

 

[Kaiyanwang]

Adding 2 levels of a PC class to an NPC is already too much. There's no good reason for NPCs to use PC rules. I was doing comedy through extremes.

First and foremost no, adding 2 levels of class is not nearly a significant effort in any way, shape and form. It's a less then 5 minutes work in this case at least, and can last for every Marilith since.
Secondly, remember that this was just to show that not only the 5e marilith is nothing like the 3e one, but that the 3e one on top of all the spells etc, can be quickly modified to add RAW the only different thing the 5e version has. That was it.

 

[overgeeked]

To you, and some other people, "more options" is "better." That's not the case for other people, or at least, not better enough to make the wizard palatable compared to its drawbacks. "Simplicity is fun" players, for instance, find the wizard laborious to play, which is why several members of my own group (which has been playing for almost fifteen years now) have never played one.

Hence what I wrote before about the problem of assuming that your terms, ideas, and preferences are understood by others, even when you use the same nomenclature.

That all strikes me as very intentionally trying to redefine words to avoid acknowledging the facts of the matter. If you find fun in simple design and choices, that’s great. We’re talking about the power of a class compared to other classes, not whether you personally enjoy it. This is what I mean about people just blindly denying reality. You’re arguing that 2+2≠4 because you don’t like how the math makes you feel.

 

[Undrave]

And when you're watching a play, you can see the makeup, and the cardboard doesn't resemble the castle walls, and cast members move through the audience, and there's artificial lighting.

And when you're reading a book, you are holding a physical object, and reading a language you memorized, and puzzling out pronunciations, using a bookmark, getting papercuts.

These are just trappings of the medium. If you want to portray a person in armor on a stage, you put them in costume. If you want to portray a person in armor in a book, you write a description of the armor. If you want to portray a person in armor in a game of D&D, then you choose it as equipment and apply its effects to your Armor Class and whatever else it affects (encumbrance, speed, etc.).

If you are a person for whom the game is mostly medium, then you are someone that approaches with the usual audience assumption of "I am going to not worry about the trappings of the medium." Yes, the actor just appeared from offstage, but because I'm a willing participant in this little bit of make-believe, I am going to pretend that the character just arrived from a battlefield, because that's what the narrative is asking me to go along with.

The thing is: READING the rules of a game is not the same as PLAYING the game! Why should reading the rules of the game need the same level of detachment as playing it? When reading the rules, I'm not in the audience watching the play, I'm the actor reading the script.

Rulebooks should be clear and precise first before they try to enchant you with tales of a made up world. Having the rule book explaining clearly and plainly what a class was designed to do shouldn't diminish the immersion at the table.

 

[overgeeked]

I was going to make a comment about how letting just everyone easily cast spells might be one of those big campaign design world changes that people would complain about... but with level dips in 3e being such a thing, never mind.

Well, to be fair, it is more of a cast from a scroll or book rather than suddenly everyone’s a true caster.

And level dips in 5E.

 

[Alzrius]

That all strikes me as very intentionally trying to redefine words to avoid acknowledging the facts of the matter.

That strikes me as a rather bad-faith interpretation of what I said. I've known plenty of players over the years who hated playing preparatory spellcasters because they found it to be too much work choosing spells each day, didn't like flipping through myriad sourcebooks to confirm what each spell did, found the rules about casting unintuitive, etc. If we define the word "better" as "more fun," which doesn't strike me as being particularly odd, then wizards were in no way the better class for those people.

We’re talking about the power of a class compared to other classes, not whether you personally enjoy it.

No, "we" aren't talking about that. Everyone (in terms of the community) gets a say, and there's no assumption that your use of a term or my use of a term are the standard, to-be-assumed-and-understood use of a term.

This is what I mean about people just blindly denying reality.

And this is what I mean about bad faith. Having a different interpretation of what's important, what's better, and what's fun, is not "denying reality." It's denying your reality, which is everyone else's prerogative.

You’re arguing that 2+2≠4 because you don’t like how the math makes you feel.

See above. You're arguing that "more options is more fun" because you don't like how other people disagreeing with that makes you feel. "My belief in what's fun is as objectively true as 2+2=4" is an opinion masquerading as a fact, and is highly disingenuous.