New Legends & Lore

[Dedekind]

Sounds like D&D just can't be everything to everybody.

It reminds me of the old joke: "A camel is a horse designed by committee."

 

[Plane Sailing]

I want to make decisions like: "Okay, my character is a grizzled old mercenary veteran who fights with a battle-axe in each hand, is good at scouting, and can drink a dwarf under the table." And having made those decisions, I want to be able to quickly and easily translate the relevant ones into mechanical terms, without having to worry about whether I'm gimping my PC in the process.

The Heroquest rules from Issaries would do an excellent job of this, FWIW.

 

[Mercurius]

Hmm...I smell 5E in the works. These last two articles by Mearls definitely seem to be both fishing for feedback but also laying out some basic design considerations, with a kind of leading bottom line. In the previous Legends & Lore, Mearls seemed to be paving the way for a re-unification of the D&D fan-base; in this one he seems to be implying that 4E is too complex, with too many options, don't you think so too?

Now it may be that we still won't see a true 5E for a few more years, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a simpler version of D&D in the next year or two. Maybe that is just wishful thinking on my part?

It also may depend on Pathfinder's basic set. Is it going to be merely an intro set? Or is it "Basic Pathfinder" and playable unto itself? If the latter, WotC might want to respond.

And I couldn't agree more that he misses the middle ground. A Basic/Advanced scenario allows for both and could, if done well, please most everybody.

 

[Greg K]

His poll missed an option: I'd quit playing D&D

 

[Dausuul]

The Heroquest rules from Issaries would do an excellent job of this, FWIW.

I haven't read the Heroquest rules, but how do they do at addressing my other criterion? "The character should play differently depending on the decisions I make." I've come to believe that mechanical diversity, in the sense of different archetypes having different rules, is a strong feature of D&D and one that should be preserved--it helps keep the game feeling fresh.

In fact, it's one of the reasons I'd like to see more archetyping in D&D rather than less. The more you use archetypes rather than atomized powers/feats, the more scope you have to create custom-built rules for each archetype, instead of having to find a way to put each element in a power- or feat-sized package. That's why we have classes in the first place, and it's why Essentials opened up a whole lot of design space by breaking away from AEDU.

 

[DEFCON 1]

That's a very accommodating and rules-savvy DM you're assuming there.

Well, of course... but you do have to ask yourself what is more likely to happen:

1) Having a DM who knows the game well enough to build solid characters for you that assign applicable game mechanics to the concepts you wish your character to have...

or

2) WotC creating a new but streamlined version of D&D that maintains it's class system but also layers on top of it an archetype system that will give you all the archetypes you could possibly want with game mechanics behind them to back them up.

I think we can both agree that the first one is much more likely to produce the character that is closest to what you envision. Because the second point is more along the lines of 2E Kits... and TSR had to produce entire class splatbooks to inititute the kit system into the game, and even then, you only had about a dozen different kits per class and that still wasn't enough for many players because they didn't match the concepts they wanted.

I would say it is physically impossible for a single rpg player's guide to produce a class-based chargen with all desired archetypes instantly selectable with applicable mechanics behind them. There's just not enough room in the book, and you would never get enough archetypes listed. There will always be someone shouting "But what about X?!? Why can't I play that?!?" A classless point-buy system would definitely get closer, but even that probably wouldn't list out many more than what Mutants and Masterminds does in theirs... about a dozen. After that... it's up to you the player to design these archetypes yourself. But then we're back where we started currently in 4E.

 

[renau1g]

[MENTION=60075]Windjammer[/MENTION] - don't forgot the circumstantial modifiers (like if you had 5 or more ranks in skill x, you got a bonus in skill y)

 

[delericho]

Generating a fighter in 4E is a lot quicker than in 3E, and Mearls' list of respectively 18 vs. 16 steps feels bogus.

Honestly, I think the 3e/4e argument is a diversion - the main point of difference is the 1st/2nd Ed vs 3e/4e split. Which is, of course, much more significant.

(Besides, in either 3e or 4e, a good auto-calculating character sheet/Character Builder will do all the calculations for you, leaving only the choices. Back when 1st Ed was current, such things weren't really a consideration for most people.)

Edit.: Why do I get the feeling I'm back to reading one of these or these?

Can't be. He hasn't started trying to redefine 'fun' yet.

More seriously: it does give a bit of a feel that he might be laying the ground work for 5e. I hope not, though - it's too soon by about 3 years IMO.

don't forgot the circumstantial modifiers (like if you had 5 or more ranks in skill x, you got a bonus in skill y)

Nitpick: synergy bonuses. IMO, one of those elements in 3e that seemed like a good idea on paper, but that I wasn't sad to see go in both PF and 4e.

 

[Dausuul]

I would say it is physically impossible for a single rpg player's guide to produce a class-based chargen with all desired archetypes instantly selectable with applicable mechanics behind them. There's just not enough room in the book, and you would never get enough archetypes listed. A classless point-buy system would definitely get closer, but even that probably wouldn't list out many more than what Mutants and Masterminds does in theirs... about a dozen. After that... it's up to you the player to design these archetypes yourself. But then we're back where we started currently in 4E.

But that's never where we've been in 4E. Where are you getting this idea that 4E supports every possible concept? It does no such thing. See my above examples of unsupported concepts--the necromancer with multiple permanent minions; the non-Vancian caster of any kind whatsoever. And that's after 3 years of splatbooks. If you restrict yourself to the original Player's Handbook, there are tons of unsupported concepts, from the single-weapon swashbuckler to the shapeshifter to the swordmage.

I'd also point out that 4E is more like my desired system than you might think. Strip away feats and powers, and it looks exactly like what I'm describing. Pick a concept; select an archetype (class); select a theme or style (class feature selection, such as "artful dodger" for a rogue); pick some skills; grab some gear. At this point, you've already covered 90% of the character concepts 4E can produce. But for the sake of the remaining 10%, we have this godawful mess of feats and powers bogging down the game and bloating up the rulebooks.

 

[Mercurius]

I agree with you Dausuul, but this begs the question: How to give lots of options without the feat/power bloat? How to give players the sense that the character they are creating is unique, not just conceptually but in terms of game mechanics and choices?

Let's start with the basic possibilities: race and class. Going by the offline version of Character Builder, and not including Essentials options, you have:

36 Races x 26 Classes = 936 race-class combinations

Now considering that many of those options are rarely used (kenku?), let's reduce the races to "primary" ones used in the three Player's Handbooks, which gives us:

18 races x 26 classes = 468 race-class combinations

That's quite a lot, but even then you have a lot of races and classes that just aren't used all that often (e.g. dwarf swordmage), so when it comes to frequently, so you really have maybe 1-200 common race-class combinations, still quite a few but not a huge amount.

Now if we take your next step and add a theme, you add another factorial - so you have not just 1-200 common combinations, but 1,000+, with a total possible of 10,000+ or more combinations, including the more obscure ones.

That sounds like a ton of options but what would end up happening is that there would be common, archetypal combinations that would be frequently used. Think of going into an independent video store with tens of thousands of possibilities. A lot of them are junk, a lot of them just weird, and a lot of them you aren't in the mood for. So you decide to scoot over to the New Release wall and pick out something that you could have gotten at Blockbuster.

My point being, in that sort of framework--option A + B + C +D = finished character--you end up with surprising few actually used combinations. What I would like to see is a way to add a unique customization, not just a background or concept, but something that adds to the character, makes them one-of-a-kind (if the player wants them to be).

So I would recommend doing away with feats and powers and integrating them somehow into class features, but then adding a new category, something like Aspects or Talents, or the Virtues & Flaws of Ars Magica. It could even be something akin to the Greek concept of hamartia - one's divine talent that is also one's weakness. There might be some that are pre-described, but DMs and players would be encouraged to come up with their own that suited the specific campaign.

So now you'd have something like:

Race + Class + Theme/Style + Aspect/Talent/Virtue/Flaw/Hamartia

I'm just making this up as I go along, but your post(s) inspired me to brainstorm a bit. The bottom line is that I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too: get rid of unnecessary rules bloat like feats and powers, but still have room for unique customization and, at the same time, find a way to bring conceptual background stuff into the rules.