D&D (2024) RD&D MM will have nearly 500 Monsters, and new NPCs.

[Emberashh]

pretty sure ‘countless’ is a number close to two, never see many people saying stuff like this.

Not sure how saying ‘play the game you like and exists, don’t try to make 1DD like that game’ is gatekeeping in the first place

To be fair it was in regards to people struggling with the game due to neuro issues or even just general preferences, but its still ultimately the same point.

DND doesn't need to be everything to everyone, and making it more accessible shouldn't be at the cost of making it less appealing. Theres a balance to be reached and sometimes the proverbial equation is only solved by playing something everyone can enjoy.

But thats a diatribe I don't see a point in resurrecting so I'll leave it at that.

not sure how >70% approval rate for most things is out if sync with the player base.

Im not referring to stuff that gets approved. Im referring to things like the Druid, which if it somehow gets even close to 70% will tell me that either somethings screwy with the surveys or that theres a group of players distinct from the Online that aren't in-synch with each other.

 

[tetrasodium]

Here is how I see it.

1. Wizards is clearly telling us that they love the framework of the current edition of D&D and want to keep it. They are essentially asking the public to accept their new definition of "edition," in that refreshes/refinements of the rules on the same chassis is not an "edition change," especially when they assure us that using older content really shouldn't be a problem because it will be easy to kitbash, like books of previous decades.
2. They don't want to use the terms "5.5E" or "6E," because those are loaded terms. Rather they are acknowledging the differences between the books by calling them "the 2014 core books" and "the 2024 core books." I respect their intent and that is how I will differentiate these "versions" going forward. Not "5.1" or "5.5" or "6E", or "RD&D" and not even the project name "OneD&D." I am using the language they are using. Anyone not using the preferred language is still really struggling to make sense of it, or they think in a way that they need very specific labels (and as I am neurodivergent, I can totally see this being an honest need for someone), or is willfully fighting Wizards in their own way, or is maybe just straight up enjoying the edition war rhetoric and chaos. Yeah, some people are unhappy with Wizards or their direction and just want to fight it. But arguing over semantics of what it should be called is not helping the community.
3. I believe Wizards thinks that if they can get people to get on board with this new iterative process that the community can be an ally in the transition, using helpful language to educate new and returning players. (Of course it will only really work if the lion's share of the community like the refinements.) Here is one potential example of a supportive way to handle the transition into a new D&D campaign in 2024:

"Hey Barb! Thanks for your interest in joining our D&D game. To set the tone, As the DM, am choosing to use the new 2024 books as the baseline for this campaign. Will is excited about the Evoker Wizard and Steve is chomping at the bit to play the updated Champion Fighter (I think he wants to play with the new morningstar mastery. Something about a spiked club that he wants to twirl around in flourishes like a badass.) Frankly, I am looking forward to it as well as I really like what they've done with monsters, especially brain eating aberrations. I know you had questions or concerns about the new books, and that's ok. We're going to gather for a Session Zero to hammer out details and concepts next Saturday. I am baking a casserole if you are interested, but feel free to bring any food or snacks you want. Anyroad, we'll be happy to share the new books at the table, and DDB has the 2024 rules if you're interested in checking them out at home on your own time. The SRD is also available in the Creative Commons [here] if you like that layout. It's pretty much the same, with a few tweaks. I've already ran a campaign during the late playtest, so I found some proud nails that I'm going to clear up for everyone.​

​

I do recall Nancy saying that you really wanted to play the 2014 Circle of the Moon druid that you never got to play. While I'd encourage you to check out the 2024 Druid to see how the designers felt they could improve the play experience, as long as you are comfortable doing the research to have all the appropriate 2014 beast stat-blocks at hand, I don't have a problem with it. In the world, your character will just be from a slightly different Circle and essentially have a similar, though different subclass to some other druids. People don't assume all druids are exactly the same. Also, if you ever want to try something from the new books, let me know and we'll work it into the story. But if you wanted to play the 2014 Ranger, I am house-ruling to remove Primeval Awareness, as I personally don't like it. But I am happy letting you swap something in for it. Oh, did you want to use Level Up's Druid? I have to brush up on it to make sure there is nothing that breaks my campaign plans (like the 2014 Ranger's annoying Primeval Awareness), but if it looks good, I won't mind. And if we find small discrepancies between that ruleset and ours, we'll figure it out for our shared experience. It's just a storytelling game, we can smooth out any weirdness."
​

Would that be so hard to do our best to provide feedback to make it the best D&D we can, and get on board if we're going in the same direction?​

​

And would it be so hard to stop raging against it if you decide it's not for you? Everyone here has their favorite version of "D&D" and I bet many are homebrewed enough to not match any edition's core rules anyway. Why not play what you want? Play PF or Black Flag or Level Up if you want to. Stop trying make the next D&D books into other already existing games if you know in your heart that you already prefer those games and aren't going to play Wizards' D&D. You already have what you want.​

​

And do we have to bag on 3rd party products for being different? It's good that they are different. More options are good!​

​

Also, is there any way we can we be the generation that took control to stop the edition wars?​

"session zero" is a poisoned well at this point.. As a concept wotc needs to do much better at supporting the gm trying to run it in the 2024 books if they want to continue mentioning it in their various outreach/pr efforts (tweets streams cons etc). I'm sick of hearing session zero as the cure to slll ills that could possibly happen because 5e is designed to ensure players are free to literally ignore anything the gm tries to bring up then nope out of the discussion. I can't even try to s0 the party building their characters together as a cohesive group because there is an entire chapter oozing with you be you tell your story vibes directing them to make it in isolation without even considering the other individuals at the table or their role in play.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

"session zero" is a poisoned well at this point.. As a concept wotc needs to do much better at supporting the gm trying to run it in the 2024 books if they want to continue mentioning it in their various outreach/pr efforts (tweets streams cons etc). I'm sick of hearing session zero as the cure to slll ills that could possibly happen because 5e is designed to ensure players are free to literally ignore anything the gm tries to bring up then nope out of the discussion. I can't even try to s0 the party building their characters together as a cohesive group because there is an entire chapter oozing with you be you tell your story vibes directing them to make it in isolation without even considering the other individuals at the table or their role in play.

I really have never experienced, or even heard a second-hand account of such an experience. Do you have personal experience having the problem you described? Or is this internet observation and theorizing? I feel for you if you have problems with session 0s. However they are amazing for me, being neurodivergent, as they help people understand the social contract of the table. For instance I would not play in a GoT-style game with that world's level of... nonconsensual interactions. I would politely decline to play at a table if that came up as a possible theme in the session 0.

One of the most important unspoken things about session 0 is to determine if the group has the chemistry to enjoy gaming together.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Also, is there any way we can we be the generation that took control to stop the edition wars?

Great post!

Im referring to things like the Druid, which if it somehow gets even close to 70% will tell me that either somethings screwy with the surveys or that theres a group of players distinct from the Online that aren't in-synch with each other.

They've outright already admitted that the druid was a bust and needs work, so what's the point of holding onto it? It's gone. It sucked. It's dead. Move on. Wait for round two to complain about!

 

[Clint_L]

Here is how I see it.

1. Wizards is clearly telling us that they love the framework of the current edition of D&D and want to keep it. They are essentially asking the public to accept their new definition of "edition," in that refreshes/refinements of the rules on the same chassis is not an "edition change," especially when they assure us that using older content really shouldn't be a problem because it will be easy to kitbash, like books of previous decades.
2. They don't want to use the terms "5.5E" or "6E," because those are loaded terms. Rather they are acknowledging the differences between the books by calling them "the 2014 core books" and "the 2024 core books." I respect their intent and that is how I will differentiate these "versions" going forward. Not "5.1" or "5.5" or "6E", or "RD&D" and not even the project name "OneD&D." I am using the language they are using. Anyone not using the preferred language is still really struggling to make sense of it, or they think in a way that they need very specific labels (and as I am neurodivergent, I can totally see this being an honest need for someone), or is willfully fighting Wizards in their own way, or is maybe just straight up enjoying the edition war rhetoric and chaos. Yeah, some people are unhappy with Wizards or their direction and just want to fight it. But arguing over semantics of what it should be called is not helping the community.
3. I believe Wizards thinks that if they can get people to get on board with this new iterative process that the community can be an ally in the transition, using helpful language to educate new and returning players. (Of course it will only really work if the lion's share of the community like the refinements.) Here is one potential example of a supportive way to handle the transition into a new D&D campaign in 2024:

"Hey Barb! Thanks for your interest in joining our D&D game. To set the tone, As the DM, am choosing to use the new 2024 books as the baseline for this campaign. Will is excited about the Evoker Wizard and Steve is chomping at the bit to play the updated Champion Fighter (I think he wants to play with the new morningstar mastery. Something about a spiked club that he wants to twirl around in flourishes like a badass.) Frankly, I am looking forward to it as well as I really like what they've done with monsters, especially brain eating aberrations. I know you had questions or concerns about the new books, and that's ok. We're going to gather for a Session Zero to hammer out details and concepts next Saturday. I am baking a casserole if you are interested, but feel free to bring any food or snacks you want. Anyroad, we'll be happy to share the new books at the table, and DDB has the 2024 rules if you're interested in checking them out at home on your own time. The SRD is also available in the Creative Commons [here] if you like that layout. It's pretty much the same, with a few tweaks. I've already ran a campaign during the late playtest, so I found some proud nails that I'm going to clear up for everyone.​

​

I do recall Nancy saying that you really wanted to play the 2014 Circle of the Moon druid that you never got to play. While I'd encourage you to check out the 2024 Druid to see how the designers felt they could improve the play experience, as long as you are comfortable doing the research to have all the appropriate 2014 beast stat-blocks at hand, I don't have a problem with it. In the world, your character will just be from a slightly different Circle and essentially have a similar, though different subclass to some other druids. People don't assume all druids are exactly the same. Also, if you ever want to try something from the new books, let me know and we'll work it into the story. But if you wanted to play the 2014 Ranger, I am house-ruling to remove Primeval Awareness, as I personally don't like it. But I am happy letting you swap something in for it. Oh, did you want to use Level Up's Druid? I have to brush up on it to make sure there is nothing that breaks my campaign plans (like the 2014 Ranger's annoying Primeval Awareness), but if it looks good, I won't mind. And if we find small discrepancies between that ruleset and ours, we'll figure it out for our shared experience. It's just a storytelling game, we can smooth out any weirdness."​

​

Would that be so hard to do our best to provide feedback to make it the best D&D we can, and get on board if we're going in the same direction?​

​

And would it be so hard to stop raging against it if you decide it's not for you? Everyone here has their favorite version of "D&D" and I bet many are homebrewed enough to not match any edition's core rules anyway. Why not play what you want? Play PF or Black Flag or Level Up if you want to. Stop trying make the next D&D books into other already existing games if you know in your heart that you already prefer those games and aren't going to play Wizards' D&D. You already have what you want.​

​

And do we have to bag on 3rd party products for being different? It's good that they are different. More options are good!​

​

Also, is there any way we can we be the generation that took control to stop the edition wars?​

This is an outstanding post. /applaud!

 

[Emberashh]

so what's the point of holding onto it?

Would you forgive, nevermind trust, a Chef who presented you with a plate of cat turds when you ordered Chocolate Truffles, just because they agreed after the fact that cat turds are inedible?

An extreme analogy, but it illustrates the point. Im not the sole person, here or anywhere else thats discussed that UA, thats pointed out that what was presented should have already been recognized by the designers for what it was.

To present it as it was is and was a waste of everyone's time including their own, and if they didn't or couldn't recognize it then that is just as suspect as them recognizing it and going forward anyway, if not more so, because it says a lot about what the rest of their ideas are going to be like if (and have been, going by the Rogue) they thought that Druid was appropriate.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Hi Ruin! Are you open to accepting Wizards' apparent preferred nomenclature?

Project Name for the 2024 Initiative to refine and combine the D&D, DDB, and VTT: One D&D
5E 2014 rulebooks: 2014 rulebooks
5E 2024 rulebooks: 2024 rulebooks

Why or why not?

I for one think it is VERY clear language, and it conveys what is necessary to know to identify them.

Those are obviously wildly impractical and the result of desperately trying to not identify this as a new edition, rather than a serious attempt to be helpful or come up with a name.

They're far too long to use, verbally and in text - because WotC isn't serious about using them. They're essentially placeholders whilst they try and figure out if they can "make fetch happen" and convince everyone to refer to the new edition as just "D&D". History relates that they will not be able to, but as we saw with the OGL, just because something is obviously stupid, that is absolutely not going to stop WotC trying it!

Furthermore, they don't address the actual issue we're discussing, which is that, by the standards of most other RPGs, and most editions of D&D, this is absolutely an edition-level change, and trying to say it isn't is pure PR of a cheap and unhelpful kind.

hey are essentially asking the public to accept their new definition of "edition," in that refreshes/refinements of the rules on the same chassis is not an "edition change," especially when they assure us that using older content really shouldn't be a problem because it will be easy to kitbash, like books of previous decades.

This is correct, and it's absolutely not a reasonable position to say it's "not an edition" and "not a X.5", because their logic was absolutely offensively false. As a fellow neurodiverse person you should be able to appreciate that using offensively bad logic as obvious PR is quite triggering for some of us. By WotC's logic most recently expressed, then they shouldn't have called 3.5E anything, and 2E shouldn't have been called anything either. But by the real use of the term "edition", over the last 50 years of RPGs, this is an absolutely an edition, and so was 2E - hell for some games, 3.5E would have just been 4E. Likely the only reason it wasn't was PR.

It's actively unhelpful to their cause to behave this way.

Even if we take the most positive spin on what you're claiming, they're attempting disingenuous manipulation, rather than being honest and simply saying "Yeah, it's comparable to the 1E > 2E change, but we'd prefer not to refer to it that way". Instead we get dishonest claims like it's "not even a change like 3.5E", which just absolutely untenable as claim on any level whatsoever. That's not how you act if you want to transparently work with the community.

Yeah, some people are unhappy with Wizards or their direction and just want to fight it. But arguing over semantics of what it should be called is not helping the community.

Yet you are engaging in exactly that an unhelpful way by suggesting we adopt obviously unusable terminology merely because WotC liked it this week. Will they like those terms in six month? A year? Hard to say. If they can stop lying about previous editions, and come up with a sensible, very short acronym, then we can work with that. It has to be them, if they want it to stick - otherwise it'll be the community, and the community has picked "variants of 1D&D" as the name. Nothing they've said so far will change that.

What's funny is D&D2024/DND2024 was kind of popular when the edition was purely theoretical, but instead of calling it that, WotC introduced the 1D&D branding, and hard-associated it with the new edition. If they intended not to, they screwed up completely - you can see on reddit for example, how quickly that became the new name (whether expressed as 1D&D, 1dnd, OneDnd or whatever).

Also, is there any way we can we be the generation that took control to stop the edition wars?

You're encouraging edition warring, frankly, with your patronising and somewhat contemptuous tone in your post towards anyone who is not 100% on board with you (the one I'm quoting from). If you don't mean to be patronising or sneer, you language is ill-chosen and should be reconsidered. Your "piss off and play other games if you disagree with me" attitude is not the one of a peacemaker. Again, I get you're also neurodiverse, so maybe you've screwed up here, but you are not achieving your goals if so.

 

[mamba]

Im not referring to stuff that gets approved. Im referring to things like the Druid, which if it somehow gets even close to 70% will tell me that either somethings screwy with the surveys or that theres a group of players distinct from the Online that aren't in-synch with each other.

well, the online crowd is a fraction of the player base and I do not think it is actually representative of the overall base. I believe it skews more hardcore, whether more OSR or more crunch

As to the druid, I am curious what rating that will get. I think having templates is a step in the right direction, but this either will need additional optional skills for the statblock, or more statblocks altogether

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Would you forgive, nevermind trust, a Chef who presented you with a plate of cat turds when you ordered Chocolate Truffles, just because they agreed after the fact that cat turds are inedible? An extreme analogy, but it illustrates the point.

Indeed.

Im not the sole person, here or anywhere else thats discussed that UA, thats pointed out that what was presented should have already been recognized by the designers for what it was.

Yeah, they shouldn't have let it go out like that. And it was soooo late, too. You'd have thought that they could have given us something better. I share your disappointment, if not your utter condemnation of the entire process.

To present it as it was is and was a waste of everyone's time including their own, and if they didn't or couldn't recognize it then that is just as suspect as them recognizing it and going forward anyway, if not more so, because it says a lot about what the rest of their ideas are going to be like if (and have been, going by the Rogue) they thought that Druid was appropriate.

Well, I mean, it's very possible that they only wanted to see the reaction to the statblock-part and weren't too concerned about the details. (Again, foolish over foul; stupidity before malevolence). I absolutely agree that it's a HUGE mistake to put something forward to an audience that will absolutely get them lost in the details when all you want is a proof-of-concept.

For example, I actually like the idea of a tested statblock over a "grab any beast" for wildshape. But NOT THAT ONE. Not even close to that one. I think, had they done it right, they might have had a high approval rating. Now they are not. IF they think that means that the audience doesn't want the statblock, I don't think that they're drawing the right conclusion. It was such a mess for so very many reasons, that there's not much that they can conclude from feedback. Which makes it pointless to ask for feedback. As you say, a pointless waste of time.

But I'm not ready to assume that they can't do better. Time will tell.

 

[mamba]

Those are obviously wildly impractical and the result of desperately trying to not identify this as a new edition, rather than a serious attempt to be helpful or come up with a name.

They're far too long to use, verbally and in text

D&D 14 and D&D 24 in text, I have no problem with 5.1e (or 5.24) either

Furthermore, they don't address the actual issue we're discussing, which is that, by the standards of most other RPGs, and most editions of D&D, this is absolutely an edition-level change, and trying to say it isn't is pure PR of a cheap and unhelpful kind.

if we consider 4e and essentials to be separate and 3 and 3.5 then yes, but those were largely compatible too, so we are back to having an undefined term that is meaningless because it is used in different contexts