D&D General Reification versus ludification in 5E/6E

[Charlaquin]

You introduced a confusing misnomer of 6E, and said it would have taken too much effort on your part, so here we are spending time clarifying terms. A stitch in time saves nine.

It really wasn’t confusing. You understood exactly what they meant, and expressed your distaste for that misnomer as faux confusion.

 

[Parmandur]

Folks, do we really need to turn this thread into another pointless argument about what defines an edition instead of engaging with the actual point @pawsplay is trying to make? SMH…

Anyway, I think this is a pretty insightful observation. While I agree with @dave2008 that the conjure spells are maybe not the best example to use to try to illustrate this point, I think it’s accurate to say that the 2024 revisions have shifted things in favor of treating elements as game constructs rather than as objects. The hobgoblin longsword is a great example. Another example is how the new rules for hiding give you the invisible condition, not because you’re supposed to be able to become transparent by hiding behind a tree, but because the invisible condition fulfills the game rules function they wanted to use to represent the effects of hiding. The condition isn’t being treated as a reified thing in the fictional universe, it’s just a package of rules functions.

There are benefits and drawbacks to both reification and “ludification” as it’s being used here, and D&D has always tended to lean more ludic, but there is a noticeable trend of this revision leaning further in that direction than pre-2024 5e did.

Words have meaning, and if it saves co fusion in the future it is always good to head off malaphorisms from being used in practice.

The rules in 2014 were not simulations of reified thingyness either, though. Using a bunch of inconsistent wobbly stat blocks versus a consistent effect is not more or.less abstract gamism.

 

[pawsplay]

IOW, you absolutely can summon a "seal" or whatever animal you like to summon. What you cannot do is abuse the system, just like every other caster, and try to gain advantages over the game.

Sure, you can summon a "seal." But either it can't swim, or it can't breathe air.

 

[Hussar]

Folks, do we really need to turn this thread into another pointless argument about what defines an edition instead of engaging with the actual point @pawsplay is trying to make? SMH…

Anyway, I think this is a pretty insightful observation. While I agree with @dave2008 that the conjure spells are maybe not the best example to use to try to illustrate this point, I think it’s accurate to say that the 2024 revisions have shifted things in favor of treating elements as game constructs rather than as objects. The hobgoblin longsword is a great example. Another example is how the new rules for hiding give you the invisible condition, not because you’re supposed to be able to become transparent by hiding behind a tree, but because the invisible condition fulfills the game rules function they wanted to use to represent the effects of hiding. The condition isn’t being treated as a reified thing in the fictional universe, it’s just a package of rules functions.

There are benefits and drawbacks to both reification and “ludification” as it’s being used here, and D&D has always tended to lean more ludic, but there is a noticeable trend of this revision leaning further in that direction than pre-2024 5e did.

Not honestly sure that I'd agree that it's insightful. To me, the vague definitions that were used in the game in 2014 D&D led to a shopping list of abuses. Players would simply "creatively interpret" every single vague statement in the game to maximize the power of their characters. It has nothing to do with trying to "reify" anything and everything to do with power gaming and rules lawyering.

Good riddance to bad rubbish, AFAIC. The only real problem is when people insist that game defined terms MUST mean a particular dictionary definition instead of treating it as a game defined term. You are invisible - as in not being able to be seen. This is a perfectly valid interpretation of the word invisible. The problem comes when people want to define invisible as the way it was used in the Invisibility spell - which, in itself, is a ludic definition of the word.

Instead of trying to reinterpret game terms, why not embrace them and realize that the game terms are just that? Like you said, a package of rules functions under a specific key word. It's this insistence that everything must be written in plain, conversational English, that causes virtually all of the malfunctions in the D&D ruleset.

 

[Parmandur]

It really wasn’t confusing. You understood exactly what they meant, and expressed your distaste for that misnomer as faux confusion.

Well, yes, it is bothersome, but if it leads to more clear language usage in the future it is worthwhile to point out. Every. Time.

 

[Hussar]

Sure, you can summon a "seal." But either it can't swim, or it can't breathe air.

Conjure Animals?

They can absolutely do both. They can swim and they can breathe air. They move as you direct them. They're intangible animal spirits. I suppose, as such, technically, they neither breathe or swim, but, that seems a rather pointless distinction.

How is this not 100% reified? I summoned a pack of animal spirits that attack enemies and help me. How would it be more reified?

 

[Parmandur]

Conjure Animals?

They can absolutely do both. They can swim and they can breathe air. They move as you direct them. They're intangible animal spirits. I suppose, as such, technically, they neither breathe or swim, but, that seems a rather pointless distinction.

How is this not 100% reified? I summoned a pack of animal spirits that attack enemies and help me. How would it be more reified?

I believe he is referring to the Conjure Animals Spell there. But hard to say.

 

[Charlaquin]

Words have meaning, and if it saves co fusion in the future it is always good to head off malaphorisms from being used in practice.

“Words have meaning and you’re using the wrong ones” is a much more cogent argument than “I don’t understand what you mean when you say 6e.” Everyone dialed in enough to D&D to be discussing it on ENWorld understands what someone means when they say “6e.” We may take issue with their choice to call it that, but let’s at least express that issue directly instead of playing coy about it.

The rules in 2014 were not simulations of reified thingyness either, though. Using a bunch of inconsistent wobbly stat blocks versus a consistent effect is not more or.less abstract gamism.

The claim isn’t that the 2014 rules were simulations of anything. It’s that the 2024 rules are more casual about using different rules for the same game object in different contexts than the 2014 rules were. In the 2014 rules, a longsword always did 1d8 damage in one hand and 1d10 damage in two hands, regardless of context. In the 2024 rules, a longsword still does 1d8 damage in one hand and 1d10 damage in two hands in the context of a PC wielding it. However, some monster stat blocks describe monsters using longswords but have them dealing a different amount of damage. This isn’t a problem, necessarily, but it is an observably different design choice.

 

[Parmandur]

The claim isn’t that the 2014 rules were simulations of anything. It’s that the 2024 rules are more casual about using different rules for the same game object in different contexts than the 2014 rules were. In the 2014 rules, a longsword always did 1d8 damage in one hand and 1d10 damage in two hands, regardless of context. In the 2024 rules, a longsword still does 1d8 damage in one hand and 1d10 damage in two hands in the context of a PC wielding it. However, some monster stat blocks describe monsters using longswords but have them dealing a different amount of damage. This isn’t a problem, necessarily, but it is an observably different design choice.

True, though it is one that evolved organically over a decade across a number of products.

Heck, I remember an episode of Happy Fun Hour where Mearls actually talked about how they had realized in 2018 that they could use Spell effects and Monster Stat blocks more or less interchangeably to represent the same things, which ended up leading to the Conjure Spells in Tasha's in 2020 and then adopted into the new PHB.

So I don't see it as a departure or rejection of the 5E approach so much as the maturation off the designers approach to the tech inherent in the ruleset.

 

[Charlaquin]

True, though it is one that evolved organically over a decade across a number of products.

Heck, I remember an episode of Happy Fun Hour where Mearls actually talked about how they had realized in 2018 that they could use Spell effects and Monster Stat blocks more or less interchangeably to represent the same things, which ended up leading to the Conjure Spells in Tasha's in 2020 and then adopted into the new PHB.

So I don't see it as a departure or rejection of the 5E approach so much as the maturation off the designers approach to the tech inherent in the ruleset.

No, indeed I don’t think it’s a rejection of anything. It’s just something that has shifted over time, and I would agree that it was an organic shift. But, since some players have a pretty strong preference for the former, it’s unsurprising that this shift would leave many such players unhappy. This same group of players have been unhappy with this shift, mostly since around the release of Tasha’s Cauldron, though some noticed it starting before that and some are only noticing now with the release of the revised core books. I think this framing of the shift as being a matter of embracing “ludification” in favor of reification more often than early 5e did (while acknowledging that D&D has always had elements of both, and 5e has always tended more towards “ludification”) is a useful way to articulate the source of this frustration that many players have been feeling with later 5e.