D&D 5E Play experience contributing to D&DNext expectations

[Tallifer]

From what I am reading, It seems like a lot of players have played in games with Dungeon Masters who seem to derive pleasure from playing adversary to the players, killing their characters, and "winning" at D&D (instead of providing a great story and shared experience for the players)

Generally in the past I was able to avoid bad dungeon masters and play with excellent ones. However I recently experienced a campaign which was distinctly embittering. Very adversarial, and moreover the dungeon master played favourites, killing off some players and promoting others with extra experience, giving magical items suited to a few players and even stripping items from others. Town guards, mercenaries, bandits, every hostile NPC was higher level than the party. The most powerful gods in his pantheon consisted of evil player characters from his high school campaign who had attained godhood by killing the old gods.

 

[Minigiant]

I've played with many groups and DMed a few. I've seen a lot. Especially when I played PbP games.

Killer DMs
Inexperienced and later Frazzled DMs
All Social No Combat PCs in games with both
No Social All Combat PCs in games with both
100% Useless PCs
Superhero Casters
Completely destroyed Adventures
Spontaneous Nerfs
Irrational banlists and houserules
Uninspired, boring, and copied settings

This is why my MAIN HOPE FOR 5E is explanations of the causes and effects of player and DM choices.

 

[Serendipity]

It would seem that my group's play experience is not similar to a lot of other gaming groups out there, and that really tempers my opinion of what I want to see in D&D next.

I feel similarly, but from my perspective it seems like every other person has played in groups where each of the players are massive dicks. So many of the horror stories I hear or read about seem to involve one or more of one's fellow players deliberately attempting to cheat or break the game or in some other fashion attempt to sabotage the experience for anyone but themselves. Which simply isn't my personal experience at all, which makes it all the more baffling.

 

[Rhenny]

Melkor, I've been lucky too and the reason is because the DMs I've played with (including myself when I DM) were all very conscious and took pains to make sure that each individual got something he or she wanted in each game. Sometimes that meant that each player had a chance to turn the tide of a battle. Sometimes that meant that one character was able to bargain with someone to gain an important item or resource for the group. Sometimes it meant that a character's idea/resource allowed the group to avoid an unwanted combat or escape one that was not going well. Sometimes it was one character aiding another to save his or her life or give the other PC a chance to do something truly heroic.

I really don't think that PC powers/game balance was the issue in all of my experiences. In a balanced game, if different players don't get chances to do what they like to do (combat, explore, social)...make a difference from time to time, even the "balanced game" will not be fun.

From what I'm reading about 5e, I like the idea that there will be competence in all three pillars for all PCs, and I like that there will be some way to gain back the feel of truly magical spell effects (with some limits of course).

Perhaps, one section of the new rules should really help new DMs understand how to pay attention to all of the players at the table and give each player reasons to feel as if he or she is the favored player/pc (even when the DM really will not favor anyone over another player)...excitement and achievement for all players in every game.

 

[Raith5]

I have never experienced competitive DM v Player play even though everyone wants a challenge. When things go bad for me in game it is due to bad luck, bad tactics, bad communication between players or a bad decision to enter into a hostile situation (or some combination of these).

But I like a clear sense of balance being inscribed in the game because it makes these in game experiences possible - it is not fun to have a single character - normally a caster throw down a single game winning spell and get the party out of trouble nearly every time. I like the resource restrictions on 4th ed wizards because they can still do game changing things like arcane gate or twist of space - but everyone needs to contribute in their own way to getting us out of trouble.

 

[hbarsquared]

I have not had to, personally, deal with an adversarial DM or with adversarial players.

The DMs I have played under tended to use common sense rather than the rules as written where the latter create terrible situations. They would reward creativity. They would punish lack of common sense, or stupid action, but generally wouldn't let one bad roll ruin an epic campaign.

I have, however, dealt with games where the DM/players simply did not know how to do this, myself definitely included, be it from DMing for the first time, learning the new system, or playing D&D for the first time.

New players and new DMs simple do not have "common sense." As a five year old "new DM" I desperately want to provide an amazing game experience for my friends, one that I have never had. It's sometimes hard to tell whether particular player choices will make it difficult later. My intuition of "DC 20" or, "sure you can," or, "one more monster" is often horribly, irrevocably wrong.

I would like a well-balanced game to mitigate such disasters. Because I want to tell the most immersive, enjoyable, best game my players have played.

 

[Hussar]

Melkor, the thing you have to realize though is that D&D is played by more than just groups who have been playing together for years and have internalized a social contract that makes everyone happy simply by virtue of the fact that they've played together for years.

There are far, far more groups out there for whom membership is a matter of months (if not weeks). School groups, whether high school or uni, tend to fall into this category IME, where people's lifestyles are so in flux that the idea of having a stable group for years on end is rarely achievable.

Then there is also organized play which plays a very large part in WOTC's business model. In Organized Play, you don't have any of the qualities that you are speaking of because everyone at the table is a stranger and will likely never see each other again.

You're absolutely right in that play experiences will color perception. Totally agree. When I polled this topic a few years back, about 1/3 of people claimed that their overall experience with DM's was poor. So, you get into the Gnome Effect where, while it's never the majority, because poor DM's are very common, generally any new(ish) group will have at least one player who's been totally burned before and is not exactly jumping up and down with love for his new DM.

You are absolutely right in that there are very, very few problems in a game that a group, as a group, cannot solve. That's absolutely true. Heck, 1e play was virtually predicated on the idea that the group will take the rules and fold, spindle and maul them into a shape that the group wanted to play.

I don't think games are given that amount of latitude anymore though. We've seen the lights of Paris and we generally can recognize good game design from poor (even if it's only good or bad from our own point of view). And people are a lot less willing, I think, to simply shrug and start playing amateur game designer. We did that and, for a lot of us, it resulted in many, many hours of piss poor games.

Heck, look at the HUGE amount of criticism WOTC gets for errata for 4e. If you were right and problems can simply be solved by DM's applying common sense, then why are so many people so up in arms that WOTC has errata for its books? After all, it should be a simple matter to fix the game yourself. Why berate WOTC time and time again for improper play testing or releasing rules too early or the like?

The answer is pretty simple. People (rightfully so) expect games to be at a certain level of professional design and when the game in question fails to meet that standard, it's heavily criticized. If 1e were released brand new today, it would get absolutely shredded by gamers. It's a different community in 2012 where we have had decades and hundreds of thousands of hours of play time to educate gamers on game design.

 

[Lanefan]

Successfully accomplishing my ideal requires this very thing. If my optimization produces a character that blows away a non-optimizing player's character, then I am breaking the game, and ruining someone else's fun. I do not want that.

Fair enough, and well said.

I was talking about my characters in that quote. If I have to make my character make bad decisions just to avoid hurting my fellow players' feelings because of a poorly balanced game, that's metagaming, not roleplaying.

One could just as validly argue that the very act of optimizing is itself metagaming; that doing anything to give an advantage outside what the character itself would do within its own frame of existence is simply gaming the system.

In 3e, an optimizer's dream if ever there was one, I came up with (and played) some very sub-optimal character concepts - not because I was trying to be useless, but because that was the character I wanted to play and the rules almost got in the way. In one instance, a full-on optimizer got hold of one of my characters* and guest-piloted it; he later squawked at me about how terribly built it was. However, once I explained that I was trying to achieve X, Y and Z with this character he had to grudgingly admit that I'd actually done the best I could have with it.

* - I was trying to build a "heavy Ranger", a woodsman in plate, but as a straight Ranger without going the PrC route. He later picked up a couple of levels of Cleric due to an in-game religious experience.

Lanefan

 

[innerdude]

One could just as validly argue that the very act of optimizing is itself metagaming; that doing anything to give an advantage outside what the character itself would do within its own frame of existence is simply gaming the system.

Sombody needs to XP Lan-"If I'm so smart, why can't I put my pants on properly?"-efan for me for the above quote.

(Kidding about the pants bit. Unless of course, you are particularly pants-challenged . . . )

 

[MortalPlague]

And that when players and DMs come into conflict, the players somehow win, despite the DM's rather obvious advantage.

The DM is trying to play fair. The players are using every edge the rules will give them.