D&D General Redesigning DnD 5e with no Bonus Actions

[cbwjm]

I dunno, a lot can happen in an hour, but you'd have to be more focused on playing the game for that hour that say a 3 or 4 hour session. So long as the game moves forward, a small 1 hour session might be quite good.

 

[Shardstone]

I think its wild that people in this thread saw Mearls post and then posted "I do not respect you, I do not like you, you are a bad designer" lmfao. Some of ya'll have not been socialized.

 

[tetrasodium]

I dunno, a lot can happen in an hour, but you'd have to be more focused on playing the game for that hour that say a 3 or 4 hour session. So long as the game moves forward, a small 1 hour session might be quite good.

That's the thing, it makes me think of playing d&d under a reflavored continually monitored version of phrases like "move it move it moveit.. got time to lean Then you've got time to clean". That sounds less like"playing d&d" and more like work.

It just seems like the time involved in travel to/from the game (traffic!) and time involved in setup/packup of everything alongside only an hour of play would make it hard to fit in anything much more than some kind of "boom here's another random encounter" within an hour of play at anything but the lower levels of play hard to fit anything else (social/exploration pillar/story/personal socializing/etc)

 

[cbwjm]

That's the thing, it makes me think of playing d&d under a reflavored continually monitored version of phrases like "move it move it moveit.. got time to lean Then you've got time to clean". That sounds less like"playing d&d" and more like work.

It just seems like the time involved in travel to/from the game (traffic!) and time involved in setup/packup of everything alongside only an hour of play would make it hard to fit in anything much more than some kind of "boom here's another random encounter" within an hour of play at anything but the lower levels of play hard to fit anything else (social/exploration pillar/story/personal socializing/etc)

Bear in mind there might not be any travel time and set-up might be fairly minimal. A lot of people play online so easy enough to connect and start playing. I also recall stories of WotC staff playing during lunch breaks so in those instances they're likely already at the play location. Which actually reminds me that this was how we played in high school, during the lunchbreak, and I can still remember some of those sessions so I wouldn't say an hour limit is detrimental to playing the game.

 

[NotAYakk]

Every bonus action class feature says "once per turn you can do one one of the following:". "Doing so does not use your action."

Then a system for "bonus attacks" to keep them from stacking 50 feet high, sort of like how extra attack doesn't stack.

For spellcasting: You can cast a leveled spell once/turn. Some spells also require an action. Some spells also require a reaction and can be cast off of your turn.

Finally, better wording for incapacitated and similar.

This means a rogue / ranger can hide (cunning action), attack (and Extra), off-hand attack, and HM on the same turn. Because the "bonus action" is no longer a thing.
; spells, attacks and class features no longer collide, ubless they take actions.

They cannot hide and dash and disengage because cunning action is once/turn.

A monk/rogue could.

It requires some careful rewording in a few spots.

And the "bonus attack" rules could suck. But TWF rules already suck so...

 

[tetrasodium]

Bear in mind there might not be any travel time and set-up might be fairly minimal. A lot of people play online so easy enough to connect and start playing. I also recall stories of WotC staff playing during lunch breaks so in those instances they're likely already at the play location. Which actually reminds me that this was how we played in high school, during the lunchbreak, and I can still remember some of those sessions so I wouldn't say an hour limit is detrimental to playing the game.

I'm probably well beyond the curve, going way back, when it comes to adopting digital tools for ttrpgs. I've never found hybrid physical+remote play all that successful when someone "please please please" wanted to try it for whatever reason and online play always felt very lacking while being much worse when it came to time wasting/inattentive players. An edition designed for the idea of being played for an hour long session seems like it would suffer worse than 4e did from "it might be a cool game, but it's not d&d and should have been called something else " type sentiments.

 

[Shardstone]

I'm probably well beyond the curve, going way back, when it comes to adopting digital tools for ttrpgs. I've never found hybrid physical+remote play all that successful when someone "please please please" wanted to try it for whatever reason and online play always felt very lacking while being much worse when it came to time wasting/inattentive players. An edition designed for the idea of being played for an hour long session seems like it would suffer worse than 4e did from "it might be a cool game, but it's not d&d and should have been called something else " type sentiments.

I think those D&D purist arguments are always weak. You don't know what D&D feels like to everyone; it feels like trying to push preferences as facts.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I can't imagine anything of substance occuring during 1hr sessions, it sounds like reducing ttrpg gameplay to a level of depth adjacent to cell phone gacha idle games unless the session is stripped elsewhere to make room for substance by removing any sort of social interaction with each other like it's some kind of drip om multiplayer fps matchmaking setup..

An episode of prestige TV is about an hour. If I can go on an entire emotional journey in an hour, it'd be exciting to be able to run a game of D&D in about an hour.

I'd bet there's some tradeoffs, but the old criticism of "20 minutes of fun packed into 4 hours" has only become slightly less true in the last 10 years, and it is one of the big blockers to actually playing D&D. The idea of playing a satisfying D&D game in 1 hour is appealing, and even if that goal isn't quite reached, even halving playtime into 90-120 minutes would be worth pursuing.

I think combat is the biggest obstacle to that, since a fight can take an hour by itself (even in 5e, where 3-round fights are fairly quick). You'd probably have to cut quite a bit to get to, say, a 15-minute fight, but maybe the tradeoff is decisions that are more impactful and fun.

 

[tetrasodium]

An episode of prestige TV is about an hour. If I can go on an entire emotional journey in an hour, it'd be exciting to be able to run a game of D&D in about an hour.

I'd bet there's some tradeoffs, but the old criticism of "20 minutes of fun packed into 4 hours" has only become slightly less true in the last 10 years, and it is one of the big blockers to actually playing D&D. The idea of playing a satisfying D&D game in 1 hour is appealing, and even if that goal isn't quite reached, even halving playtime into 90-120 minutes would be worth pursuing.

I think combat is the biggest obstacle to that, since a fight can take an hour by itself (even in 5e, where 3-round fights are fairly quick). You'd probably have to cut quite a bit to get to, say, a 15-minute fight, but maybe the tradeoff is decisions that are more impactful and fun.

Can't say I've ever heard of that show, but it doesn't sound like a revolutionary viewer driven thing where each individual viewer is contributing to shaping the result. There's a massive difference between accomplishing things of note in an hour of something written directed performed and edited for passive entertainment consumption and a ttrpg with active players

 

[I'm A Banana]

Can't say I've ever heard of that show, but it doesn't sound like a revolutionary viewer driven thing where each individual viewer is contributing to shaping the result. There's a massive difference between accomplishing things of note in an hour of something written directed performed and edited for passive entertainment consumption and a ttrpg with active players

Yeah, but the delta doesn't HAVE to be as big as it is. There's formulas, shortcuts, impactful choices, things that can be turned into mechanics and made swifter.

Like, if you just look at combat (since it's probably the biggest thing), a well-done action scene in a TV show or a movie resolves an "attack" in seconds, and each blow makes a difference to the outcome. How close to that can we get? How many decision points can we remove from the player side and embed in the gameplay assumptions? How many die rolls and calculations need to happen? Can we eliminate those? And still keep things fun and interesting?

Can we ever reach a point where a party of 4 and a group of monsters can resolve an entire turn in < 1 minute? < 5 minutes?

I think it's worth trying out that design, if only to see what important bits of a turn get in the way of it, what is "worth" the extra time.