D&D (2024) Reworked…revised…redone….but

[Remathilis]

There's no point adding the tenth ham sandwich to the market. Make your monkey brains game and if only three people like it so be it. Maybe three thousand people will like it.

I guess that's fine if my monkey brains game is a hobby/labor of love given to the world with no expectations of even recouping my losses, but if I have any inclination that I want to be reasonably compensated for my time and energy, I don't know if 3 or even 3000 will cut it. If one million people buy ham sandwiches and I get a 10th of that, I'm doing better than my CMB dinner.

Maybe when we reach post-scarcity Communism like Star Trek, people will make games regardless if they will be played or not.

 

[Yaarel]

I guess that's fine if my monkey brains game is a hobby/labor of love given to the world with no expectations of even recouping my losses, but if I have any inclination that I want to be reasonably compensated for my time and energy, I don't know if 3 or even 3000 will cut it. If one million people buy ham sandwiches and I get a 10th of that, I'm doing better than my CMB dinner.

Maybe when we reach post-scarcity Communism like Star Trek, people will make games regardless if they will be played or not.

Selfishness is a factor.

If one is performing a service, by designing D&D products to the meet the desires and needs of other players, then one can reasonably expect to be compensated financially by those others.

However, if one is designing for ones own desires and needs, then there is less expectation for financial compensation. One already has ones reward, seeing ones own perspective in a practicable form. Any additional compensation would depend on how many others share the same perspective.

Part of the success of 5e is, its designers strive to meet the desires as evident in the surveys. It is often the case, the designers dont do what they would personally want for ones own sake. Hence the financial compensation.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

There's no point adding the tenth ham sandwich to the market. Make your monkey brains game and if only three people like it so be it. Maybe three thousand people will like it.

I agree, but also don't, with this statement.

I think it is important to understand what the designer is designing for. Let me use two different examples.

1. I will often design new bespoke games (rules lite games) for my table. I think it's fun to do as a one-shot. When I am doing that, I am designing the game knowing that I do not need to sell the game. That the players all play in good faith. And that the purpose of the one-shot is to have a good time. I don't need to worry about issues like commercial appeal, or that there might be a balance issue, or that the players might try to find some loophole. Moreover, I can design the rules lite game knowing that the table is already familiar with the conventions of FKR/rules lite games!

In other words, I can get my freak on when I am making those games, because it's for a small and selected audience that I know.

2. On the other hand, Crawford and the designers at WoTC have a different remit. They aren't designing for themselves. They are designing for Hasbro. And their remit, either explicitly or implicitly, will be to design a game that:
a. Maintains D&D dominance in the TTRPG market.
b. Sells all the copies. ALL UR PROFITZ R BELONG TO HASBRO.
c. Makes current 5e players happy, while appealing to new market entrants.
d. I'm not positive on this, but I assume they have been working with the VTT/DDB people to make sure that changes are easily expressed in whatever boondoggle they are creating.

I assume that if they were designing the best game for themselves, it might be different. But they aren't. They are designing within the limitations imposed by the fact that they are employed to maintain the brand.

 

[Chaosmancer]

That's a lot of sarcasm for one post!

And that's a lot of not disagreeing with me.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I was selling D&D books back then, every bit as much as I do now, and from a marketing perspective, the messaging hasn't been less clear this time around. They're very similar, other than this time there is a MASSIVE amount of videos and their website, and google, and many other ways to look up what the new books are if you don't already know. That time there were a few articles in trade magazines and us FLGS-workers to tell you (which we're still here for).

There wasn't a whole ton of haters trying to spread misinformation, though.

Yeah, that is the part that deeply frustrates me. I've started following one or two DnD creators who are not well-versed in the rules and the community, and to hear them telling their audience "Well, some people are saying this is 6th edition? So, do I need to get rid of my older books? Or is this a different product than that? I don't know." when I KNOW that all comes from people who are simply bound and determined to paint WoTC as liars, despite having little to no interest in the actual product...

It is manufactured confusion, spread by people who insist that they, and they alone, have figured out "the truth" of what WotC is "really planning"

 

[Chaosmancer]

There's no point adding the tenth ham sandwich to the market. Make your monkey brains game and if only three people like it so be it. Maybe three thousand people will like it.

And what if you still want to make the best ham sandwich there is, because nine of those sandwichs are trying to ride on the success of YOUR ham sandwich? Does it make sense to tell those people who love your sandwich "we've had a lot of ham sandwiches, so to be different, I'm selling monkey brains from now on"?

 

[Chaosmancer]

I assume that if they were designing the best game for themselves, it might be different. But they aren't. They are designing within the limitations imposed by the fact that they are employed to maintain the brand.

And to zoom in on this, not because I think you would disagree Snarf, but because of the response I expect from others. "And this isn't a bad thing".

People keep pressing forward on this idea of unlimited designer freedom, that the designers should all be free to design only the thing that they want to design... Well, not everyone is going to agree to the design, and most major things that get released do not rely solely on the single vision of a single artist.

To step away from gaming for a second and talk about Manga, there is a rather famous story in the Manga/Anime community. Masashi Kishimoto, the man who created Naruto, did not have any plans to include the rival character Sasuke. He was told, by his editor, to include the character against his initial wishes. Sasuke is HALF the story. The story as it exists, every single major arc of hundreds of chapters, makes no sense at all if he is taken out of the story. It all falls apart.

And yes, you could challenge "but maybe it would have been an even better story without him!" And, you can make that argument in talking about a series that is impossible to imagine, just like I can say "the new novel released in 2030 will completely destroy Tolkien in terms of quality and drive him into obscurity". You can't disprove that, because the story doesn't exist and it is theoretically possible. But practically, it is a hard claim to defend.

Yes, a designer is not 100% free to do anything they want when they work for someone else. But that can just as easily make their work BETTER as it can make it worse.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Yes, a designer is not 100% free to do anything they want when they work for someone else. But that can just as easily make their work BETTER as it can make it worse.

I mean ... there's a reason we play tennis with a net.

Unfettered freedom to create can sometimes be a great thing. But designing within constraints can also lead to amazing work.

There never is a correct answer.

 

[Nijay]

New content has been delivered as new editions, supplements (optional), and errata (mandatory - for digital, at least). But 5.24 is being defined as something else like a supplemental errata. It's a bit of a paradox - it is both mandatory and optional. If a table is playing the 5.24 rules, those rules, including the class tables and class spell lists, become the default rules. 5e characters are converted unless they're not in 5.24. For the earlier example of the bladesinger with booming blade - they couldn't have booming blade RAW because Wizard is in 5.24 but, from a comment I saw, booming blade is not. Yet it is also fine to play a 5e character made with 5e rules at a table playing 5.24, so you can have a bladesinger with booming blade RAW. Both of these bladesingers can play in the same game. That's great flexibility, but forgive me, it's chaotic. I think that for practicality's sake 5e and 5.24 may work best if treated as different editions.

Naming is functional and communicates compatibility for characters between editions. A lot of what I'm seeing is a broad handwaving about balance to state there's compatibility. But I think players' perception of balance can be pretty important. I would want at least a heads up if I was going to be playing a 5e monk, paladin, fighter, ranger, what have you at a table with a similar 5.24 character, or vice versa. We can play across versions, but that doesn't mean we should.

5.24 is backwards compatible in the way that the Borg are compatible with anyone. Just convert. It's funny, by stating 5.24 is backwards compatible, it defines 5.24 as a different edition. Because you don't state that a supplement or errata is backwards compatible. The linguistic gymnastics to say the books are backwards compatible instead of the new edition is backwards compatible is impressive.

tl;dr I think the naming matters because it sets expectations and player perceptions of fair play are more important than how balanced the characters might be.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If my goal is to serve the most exotic and elaborate meal to you that I can, is it a victory if I serve chilled monkey brains and nobody eats it? I met my goal, and all you did was vomit on the rug. Part of design is knowing your audience.

Seems a bit hyperbolic. I doubt your strawman is what the designers want. You keep standing that poor stuffie up so you can knock it down though.