No hold barred - how I would develope 5e

[olshanski]

I could be on board with what Transbot suggests except the following:

To make it more mass-market appealing, and to cut down on the number of fiddly bits needed with each box, I think you are going to have to cut the levels down significantly. Something like Heroic = 1-3, Paragon=4-6, and Epic = 7-9.

Also, I think you should replace the miniature figures with counters, as that will cut down production costs, make it easier to get into the game, and it will look more like your online virtual tabletop (you'll be using the art from your counters in your virtual tabletop).

Finally, you've gotta release the adventures in their own box, each which includes supplemental tiles and monster counters. The adventure will assume the DM owns the basic tiles, but will include extra tiles and counters specific to the adventure.

 

[Lanefan]

On first read, I have to say I think the good-idea score here stands at something like Wik 7, transbot 1. I'd buy Wik's 5e.

That said, Wik might have pitched a shutout were it not for this:

Speaking of which, shorten the expected campaign length. If combats are shorter, this is even easier. If you can reasonably expect players to finish a new campaign every 15 months or so, and you have a seven year product life, they'll go through six or seven full campaigns in the game's lifespan. And each time, they'd be buying different books for the game, and keeping up interest - the game would be "ever changing" without any real errata or "rules updates".

I think this is exactly the wrong way to go.

One of the things the game in general seems to have lost (and some will argue this point with me till the next ice age hits, but whatever) is depth, or richness, sacrificed in the name of speed. Without a good DM at the helm, the modern game lurches from combat/encounter to combat/encounter with minimal if any interaction with the outside world...and then the campaign's done.

Instead, I think you want to go for depth. If you're going to include worldbuilding as part of the core game (excellent idea, by the way), then make the system function such that once the world is built there's a chance to get some good long use out of it. Give ideas as to how to get players to look at the world beyond the end of their swords, and to interact with it. Have a core rules option for long campaigns. (I'm no Pathfinder fan, but I'll give 'em props for putting short-medium-long campaign options right in the core rules)

Lan-"Wik, get yourself on the 5e design team, will ya?"-efan

 

[Wik]

That said, Wik might have pitched a shutout were it not for this:

SNIP

I think this is exactly the wrong way to go.

First, points for hockey reference.

Second, allow me to defend my argument.

While there should be no reason for the game to NOT allow long-term campaigns, I think the game should be defaulted towards shorter-term campaigns. There are a few reasons for this:

1) If the game is set up in the way I've outlined, new campaigns mean new module options. It also means new PCs, new minis, etc. Essentially, if you encourage new campaigns every year and a bit or so, you encourage growth of your game. Long term campaigns can mean less purchasing of product. Bad for business.

2) People these days have shorter attention spans. I know a lot of people have seen campaigns "fizzle out". If you have shorter campaigns as the default, you'll have less fizzling out, and ideally a more rewarding game experience.

3) Note that setting the game up to support the short campaign as a default doesn't mean you can't do long campaigns; it just means that the game pushes towards the short game. I see no reason why there wouldn't be some variant set of rules that would change things for long-term play.

To be honest, the more I look at the proposed changes, the more I actually kind of want to play it. Might be time to see if I can put somethign together.

 

[Lanefan]

Second, allow me to defend my argument.

While there should be no reason for the game to NOT allow long-term campaigns, I think the game should be defaulted towards shorter-term campaigns. There are a few reasons for this:

1) If the game is set up in the way I've outlined, new campaigns mean new module options. It also means new PCs, new minis, etc. Essentially, if you encourage new campaigns every year and a bit or so, you encourage growth of your game. Long term campaigns can mean less purchasing of product. Bad for business.

2) People these days have shorter attention spans. I know a lot of people have seen campaigns "fizzle out". If you have shorter campaigns as the default, you'll have less fizzling out, and ideally a more rewarding game experience.

3) Note that setting the game up to support the short campaign as a default doesn't mean you can't do long campaigns; it just means that the game pushes towards the short game. I see no reason why there wouldn't be some variant set of rules that would change things for long-term play.

Problem is, we're already seeing (or at least I am IME) that by-the-book 3e campaigns without a decent DM have all the depth of a Hollywood blonde; and 4e isn't set up any differently as far as I can tell. And once someone's played that sort of system for a while and finds themselves wondering "is that it?", they're gonna leave...and bang goes the player everyone worked so hard to attract.

An average or mediocre DM can take what's given in 1e - or better yet 2e with all those great settings - and just by paying attention to the books can muddle together a campaign that at least has some depth to it, with a world the players want to explore and interact with. (in fact, that pretty much sums up my entire first campaign) Some of those people might even get interested enough to at some point try building a world of their own, and the beat goes on.

The newer versions of the game tend to either ignore or gloss over this part.

Ease of play brings 'em in, but if the campaigns are shallow they'll get bored mighty quick. Depth and richness is what keeps 'em in.

And this is where the business model of the game kinda has to stand on its head: the most successful game to play is probably going to be the least profitable to publish in the long run. In the ideal game system, after the first year's worth of books (representing in this case almost all of the profit you're gonna get) the system/edition should be fully released and in place. After that, all you should need to publish are adventures and very occasional updates as people think of better or newer ideas. Otherwise, turn people loose and let 'em play the game.

Lan-"a good DM solves all these problems but such things are hard to find"-efan

 

[delericho]

One thing that 1st and 2nd Edition did was that once you reached "name" level, the rate at which more power was acquired was vastly pulled back (for Fighters; unfortunately, not for spellcasters). What this meant that people who wanted the "quick play" experience could run their campaigns from levels 1-10 and then start over, while those who wanted longer campaigns could play indefinitely without the power levels running out of control.

Unfortunately, 3e moved away from this model, deliberately setting things up so that characters continued to gain power at a high rate throughout their careers. They also set the game up assuming campaigns of 12ish months, and so that you could go from levels 1-20 in that time. Unfortunately, this had several nasty consequences - power levels quickly spiralled out of control, campaigns tended to fizzle out after turning into just a sequence of encounters, and it was had to ever get used to a character because you were gaining a level (and a bunch of new powers) every couple of sessions, right through the campaign.

(And people still complained about "dead levels"!)

4e has ramped down the rate at which characters gain in power. However, they haven't really done anything about any of the other issues, and if anything have further reduced the expected length of a campaign.

With 5e, I would be inclined to have the bulk of power acquisition occur in the Heroic tier. The Paragon and Epic tiers would be about other things entirely (impacting the world, and impacting the multiverse, respectively). That way, those who want the "quick play" experience can just play in the Heroic tier, while those who want to progress at a more leisurely place can see their characters grow to become Aragorn, but then almost reach their maximum potential and have to develop their role in the world instead.

(Incidentally, I've found that my group at least starts to get restless with a campaign after a certain amount of real time, regardless of how many sessions we fit in in that time, or how long those sessions are. So, if the game runs for 8 months, playing every week for 6 hours, we might go from levels 1-15; if we meet every 2 weeks for 2-3 hours, we might go from levels 1-6. Either way, though, several people start to feel restless.)

 

[ProfessorCirno]

The Penny Arcade podcasts were, I think, a huge success. One thing you see a lot in other countries - and everywhere in Japan, when I was at Yellow Sub there were more of these then actual RPGs - are Replays. Maybe have one or two set up to be released with or right before the game comes out to sort of ease people into it.

 

[chaochou]

I like the way 4e does collaborative combat. It works nicely, gives every player opportunities to make a meaningful contribution to combat, and (I can't speak for higher levels) often gets good and tense.

But the game design out of combat - irrespective of how 'good GMs' or 'good players' make it work - is turgid. In by view 4e is an excellent skirmish boardgame with a few skills bolted on to your combat stats to move you between fights. That's how the game design looks to me.

I think 'depth' comes from social mechanics, and here RPG design has moved on. Lots of games have found mechanical ways of creating tension in social situations - whether it's the duel of wits in Burning Wheel, escalation in Dogs in the Vineyard or the GM's fronts, threats and moves in Apocalypse World.

I think D&D 5e would benefit from giving the 'layer' of gameplay above tactical combat more interesting, more subtle and more rounded mechanical support. I'd like negotiations with a local warlord about releasing my imprisoned cousin to have the same tension, the same ebb and flow and the same drama as a fight with his guards in the the jail block. I'd like to see the game move away from pass/fail task resolution to 'gains and losses' conflict resolution.

If I was WotC, I'd be getting my team to streamline all the combat powers and magic item bloat and hiring Robin Laws to write me a new D20 conflict system of skills, goals, beliefs and relationships.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Problem is, we're already seeing (or at least I am IME) that by-the-book 3e campaigns without a decent DM have all the depth of a Hollywood blonde; and 4e isn't set up any differently as far as I can tell. And once someone's played that sort of system for a while and finds themselves wondering "is that it?", they're gonna leave...and bang goes the player everyone worked so hard to attract.

I ... question whether this is new to the WoTC editions. To the point that if you were to have asked me to name a shallow RPG twelve years ago I'd have said D&D.

An average or mediocre DM can take what's given in 1e - or better yet 2e with all those great settings - and just by paying attention to the books can muddle together a campaign that at least has some depth to it, with a world the players want to explore and interact with. (in fact, that pretty much sums up my entire first campaign) Some of those people might even get interested enough to at some point try building a world of their own, and the beat goes on.

Between the encouraged DM-Jackassery in 1e and the utter mechanical incoherence in parts of 2e (notably Dark Sun and Planescape - two superb settings, such a pity about the mechanics, and I'd go so far as to say that 4e Dark Sun is superior to 2e Dark Sun), I'd say that the biggest change this way was to lower the bar for becoming DM. And then 4e brought it down to floor level - it's little harder to DM 4e than to play.

The newer versions of the game tend to either ignore or gloss over this part.

And depth and richness is far more due to the DM than it is the presence of a wandering harlot table. That said, I do think 4e would be a lot better if it was packaged with A Magical Medaeval City: Western Europe or something simmilar to spark that side of the DM's creativity.

Ease of play brings 'em in, but if the campaigns are shallow they'll get bored mighty quick. Depth and richness is what keeps 'em in.

Again, this is a DM issue. 4e provides fewer seeds in the background mechanics than the lockin. But it's a direction to focus and crystalise rather than the nature of the game. That said, AD&D hasn't been the same since the GP for XP rule was removed giving the players something to crystalise round and a massively strong assumed playstyle.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

snip
An average or mediocre DM can take what's given in 1e - or better yet 2e with all those great settings - and just by paying attention to the books can muddle together a campaign that at least has some depth to it, with a world the players want to explore and interact with. (in fact, that pretty much sums up my entire first campaign) Some of those people might even get interested enough to at some point try building a world of their own, and the beat goes on. ...

This i disagree with and it runs counter to my own experience. I do agree that more could be done to encourage world building but I think that it is better supported by work in the DMG, articles in Dragon and there should be a couple of well described locations in each published adventure, alomng with notes in how to fit int to any setting.

 

[Stormonu]

I agree with most of this, only I'd axe one more sacred cow; the classes.Make basic building blocks and let players combine these as they like. If you prefer a more class-like system, make these building blocks rather large. If a more point-bye-like system is preferred, make the blocks smaller and the build grainier.

I wouldn't axe the classes, I'd make them "starting packages".

Fighter? X points towards attack bonus, can use any weapon and armor.
Wizard? X points in the magic casting ability and a few starting spells.
Thief? X points in various skills (stealth, pickpocket, etc.)

and so on.