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

[TiQuinn]

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.

It was a different game then but we played during our lunch break in school and made it work. I think there’s definitely something to be said for making short mini adventures playable in an hour or less.

 

[Zaukrie]

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.

I can't imagine it being fun for our groups to not have options and randomness and to play that fast. I don't think that's why we play

 

[Umbran]

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.

Mod Note:
So... you figured that being broadly insulting yourself was going to be... a good choice that shows how a well-socialized person behaves? Maybe that needs a bit of rethinking, hey what.

If you feel someone is breaking the rules, please report them. Tossing around insults instead isn't a viable option.

 

[Horwath]

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.

an hour of TV show is about 4-5 hours of D&D in content presented. maybe even more hours of D&D. Depends on the group.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I can't imagine it being fun for our groups to not have options and randomness and to play that fast. I don't think that's why we play

Yeah, I think there's a real tension between the desire to maximize options and the cost to those decisions. Real Paradox of Choice stuff. Deciding between options is kind of inherently satisfying! But it also takes time and analysis and cognitive load.

The usual resolution to that paradox is fewer, more dramatic options (up to a point). I wonder what the minimum level of options are to feel like we're making a satisfying choice. Do we need 3 decision points in a turn? Is 1 enough? 5? 7? 9?

I'd wager this is different for different folks, depending on how much they play D&D for the choices, but I wonder how few the game could theoretically get away with...

Like, I think we can intuit from AD&D-era fighters that one decision point (who do I attack?) is probably not enough. Results in the "attack....attack....attack..." monotony. But the other side of that continuum is probably 4e's combats, which were RICH with decision points, but also hit a "drag" point for a lot of tables. 5e's somewhere in the middle (and where it is depends in part on which class you choose - an elements monk has more choices than a champion fighter)....but it definitely takes longer than 1 minute to resolve a turn, still.

Movement is kind of its own kettle of worms, too. It's mostly one decision point (do I get closer to or farther away from a particular enemy), but there's a lot of steps to that decision point, since each 5' of movement could result in different effects from terrain or provoke OA's.

an hour of TV show is about 4-5 hours of D&D in content presented. maybe even more hours of D&D. Depends on the group.

I think it's a very valuable design exercise to see how much that 4:1 ratio can be improved, if only because the amount of people with 4-5 hours to spend on a weekly game is....pretty limited. I spend that time with my in-person group, but it's ALWAYS touch and go, and half of them aren't even parents, just folks with stuff to do.

 

[tetrasodium]

It was a different game then but we played during our lunch break in school and made it work. I think there’s definitely something to be said for making short mini adventures playable in an hour or less.

There's quite an ocean of difference between being capable of playing a game during a session that takes place in the school lunchroom during school lunch and a game being designed to maximize for that particular style of "session".

A game designed for that K-12 lunch break format is going to be making significant sacrifices negatively impacting sessions that are somewhat more stable in order to maximize that bite sized roll&go lunch hour.

 

[Merlecory]

But the other side of that continuum is probably 4e's combats, which were RICH with decision points, but also hit a "drag" point for a lot of tables. 5e's somewhere in the middle (and where it is depends in part on which class you choose - an elements monk has more choices than a champion fighter)....but it definitely takes longer than 1 minute to resolve a turn, still.

Movement is kind of its own kettle of worms, too. It's mostly one decision point (do I get closer to or farther away from a particular enemy), but there's a lot of steps to that decision point, since each 5' of movement could result in different effects from terrain or provoke OA's.

Truncating here, with the intention of adding on some small wrinkles: The importance of those decisions, and the easiness of those decisions are two other axis you could use to determine player satisfaction. One important decision, with several compelling alternatives can be a satisfying turn.

 

[Xeviat]

I think a solution where EVERY class has a bonus action at-will ability would be best. Then there isn't that struggle of "what will I do?", the player can just default to their class BA if they don't have other options.

Fighting Styles could have all been a bonus action, for instance. Now that I think about it, which classes don't have an at-will bonus action?

 

[Horwath]

I think a solution where EVERY class has a bonus action at-will ability would be best. Then there isn't that struggle of "what will I do?", the player can just default to their class BA if they don't have other options.

Fighting Styles could have all been a bonus action, for instance. Now that I think about it, which classes don't have an at-will bonus action?

Rogues and Monks are only one with reliable at-will bonus actions.