D&D General Ray Winninger on 5e’s success, product cadence, the OGL, and more.

[Tigris]

Yes he was.

No he was not.


Initially only 3 people were designing 4E This is well documented. He was later added to the DEVELOPMENT team. He was responsible for the horrible adventure which made people hate 4E, but had nothing to do with the initial gamedesign of the system. Thats why you can find the "I believe" in the quote I posted from Mearls.





About no grid being an oversight: Well it was by decision, and 13th age is the most tactical game without grid, but it was a bit an oversight over how much tactical depth you lose without the grid. Of course this was a clear decision, but it lost with this decision a lot of what made D&D 4E good.

 

[Velderan]

Foundry is still browser based.

It is which is a lower barrier to entry than having to actually install an application for each player, but it still uses a lot of system resources for that browser tab if you have a bunch of modules loaded and can have issues displaying things properly if your resolution isn't setup the way it likes. The crappy laptop I am on now struggles to do much beyond letting me setup user accounts and import token/portrait art for example.

 

[payn]

Just in case anyone here doesn't already know this, if you love 4e, please check out 13th Age. It's absolutely awesome. I can't wait for the next version to come out and, unlike 4e, it had no big VP oversight pushing it in the wrong direction.

Pathfinder 2 also has some 4E influence as some of the 4E designers helped build it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You think they left it out by accident?

Or "huge oversight" means "I don't like it"?

I think they didn't really consider how important it might be to what made 4E good for the people who liked 4E. I don't dislike 13th Age mechanics-wise (though I do frown that they've re-involved Jonathan "Race Science" Tweet), but I've played (though not run it) and for me, it didn't have the punch and cool choices that 4E combat had.

Pathfinder 2 also has some 4E influence as some of the 4E designers helped build it.

Yeah I'm not a big PF2 booster as I think some of their stuff is a miss and it's bit overcomplicated at times, but I feel like it's actually got slightly more of what I want "tactical combat"-wise than 13A.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That's an extremely clear point and yes, that's a straight-up contradiction of the kind I'd expect to find in some slightly half-baked late edition of Shadowrun or something, not in a fancy WotC-produced D&D book. Because that's quite a fundamental contradiction, and as you point out, not clarified at all by the DMG. Also it feels like the page 19 approach is frankly better, because there will be conditions where hiding is appropriate, but where the page 368 rules aren't met.

Yeah, I'll likely be going with the "DM decides" version of those two. Luckily, my players seem to generally trust my judgement and we have good conversations when there's an issue.

 

[payn]

It is which is a lower barrier to entry than having to actually install an application for each player, but it still uses a lot of system resources for that browser tab if you have a bunch of modules loaded and can have issues displaying things properly if your resolution isn't setup the way it likes. The crappy laptop I am on now struggles to do much beyond letting me setup user accounts and import token/portrait art for example.

Right, a player doesn’t need much PC power , but a GMs does.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Right, a player doesn’t need much PC power , but a GMs does.

Yeah and that's bad enough - whereas with the 3D VTT, pretty much everyone involved will need at least fairly decent PC power or $1000 mobile phones or the like.

 

[mamba]

Should the DM respond with "yes, you have 3/4s Cover" or with "yes, it's appropriate to hide now, if you can find 3/4s cover?"

Ultimately whatever the DM feels like. To me the player should know the conditions for hiding. The DM can confirm that they actually meet the conditions, and can therefore attempt to hide, or that they do not

 

[Velderan]

Right, a player doesn’t need much PC power , but a GMs does.

Sorta.

One of the players in my previous campaign had a really bad PC, I used to ask him if it came with Vista it was that bad. His computer struggled to handle the game we had hosted on Forge even when he turned down as many settings as he could, so even a player needs a certain level of power in their computer to play. We tried once for one of the players to use his iPad in Safari when he was traveling on a work trip, but it wasn't very touch friendly so we just had him play TotM for the session while I moved his token for him.

But on the plus side, there's nothing to install for a player and it works fine on a Mac from what I know.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

As you mention, and as a longtime Everquest player back in the late 90s and early 2000s, there were definitely clear roles in EQ of the tank, healer, and DPS (and crowd control, you're right) and these were wired into bosses in EQ before WOW was even released. The concept of roles may not have been directly wired into the mechanics of WOW (I can't say) but the ideas were around even before WOW was.

WoW very much uses the EQ model of player character roles. They finally got around into adding one of EQ's more obscure character types -- the support class -- in a recent expansion. But the game is almost entirely built around the triumvirate of tank, healer and damage.

I've never understood the objection to acknowledging that EQ got this from D&D-as-it-is-played, even if it was never directly stated before 4E. (And WotC is now back to keeping quiet about it, given the backlash.)