D&D 5E Should 5e reflect the designers' point of view?

[MasterTrancer]

In my opinion yes, any game designer should shape the product she's working on...otherwise why bother with designers in the first place? A bunch of clerks could just gather the results of (endless) polls and forum posts and create the most mediocre (in that it appeals to everyone) system...sounds fun huh?

The true issue, as many have greatly exposed before my post, is that when you work on something as powerful (almost living) as D&D you should appease the whim of the greatest part, that otherwise would turn back to whichever edition it likes the most.

Which brings us to what I see as the core of the problem: why create editions upon editions?

The first answer that comes to mind is "so to unite the fanbase", but it would be too naive, and plainly disconnected from the real world.

I remember that when 3E came out, one of its main tenets was "to solve the multiple decades houseruling of 2E"...which considering the age of 2E seemed rightful, though the 3.5E offspring may have hindered the original target.

I wasn't playing anymore D&D due to personal life when 4E came out, so I can't know why it was coinceived, other than my personal opinion in browsing through the PHB (or however it's called, I just borrowed it from a friend) which ran along the lines of "this new D&D is targeted mainly to the now-10-yrs-old, raised on M:tG and such" (which was perfectly fine and rightful as well, just didn't suit my flavor of play...though I haven't been able to actually try it out, so I may be terribly wrong).

So, I'm coming back to the original question: why Next? (I know that this may have and surely has been answered countless times, but I'm a very recent comeback to D&D)

Is it a move compared to my 4E guess, i.e. so to bring new players in the movement? If that's the case, great!

To unite previous-editions players? Don't see it working.

To give another flavor to old-time players? Nice, though I can't see that strong drive in this, so to create a new venue.

I know that I am a dreamer, but woulnd't it reap more money putting out new, updated books for the various settings (and settingless as well), with the rules to be used with all the previous editions?

I am no experienced game designer, though I would have considered also this, which would have alienated way less people to the game in my view.

My 2 pieces of low currency,
MT

 

[Umbran]

It seems to me that a good game includes the view, desires and style of the designers, but considers the players out in the market as well.

This is much like anything else you want others to consume. Like in fiction writing, certainly, the writer has to put themselves into their work - but they must also consider their audience, or else the only person they're apt to communicate to is themselves. So it is with games.

 

[Jester David]

Wait! You just said the designers have to 'build on' what came before. So they're ADDING something new? Who decides what gets added? Isn't the 'something new' going to have to be the designer's vision?

"Build on what came before" as in "work with what they're given and not start from scratch". Changes can be made, but they should be mindful of the past and every change should have a good reason. Making a change shouldn't come down to personal taste or one person's feelings.
So, yes, you can add new things, but it has to work with the old. And sometimes you can change old things, provided they didn't work well originally.

I disagree with you quite a bit, Jester. And I think your example disproves your own point. Studios have started 'rebooting' major franchises by handing them to filmmakers with very strong points of view who change them up quite a bit. We've had three Daniel Craig Bond movies now, so maybe we've forgotten how controversial he was to start with. "A blond Bond?!? Perish the thought!" Craig took Bond in a whole new direction, without entirely throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Or look at J.J. Abrams Trek reboot. Or the Dark Knight trilogy.

The fact is, when you want to reinvigorate something stale, you don't slavishly hew to tradition. You strike out in a new direction! It doesn't always work, but when it does people really love it.

Emphasis added. Craig raised some eyes, and if he hadn't done such a good job with the role and the movie hadn't been one of the better Bond's in ages he might have ended up a forgettable Bond like George Lazenby. And, again, that was the fuss over the colour of his hair. If he'd become Indian or gay or a woman the movie would have to feel that much more Bondian to win people over.
(And while I tolerated Star Trek, I hated Into Darkness. So not the best example to use for me. And, really, most of the Trek movies don't really capture the feeling of the TV show, with no social commentary or musings on humanity beyond "blow the ^%$#@ out of the villain".)

And it should be noted that all three of your examples are reboots that go back to basics, retelling the origin and get back to the roots of the franchise after it had drifted away from it's base and what the audiences wanted. People struck out in a new direction with a happy Batman in a campy movie, or Bond movies with increasingly outrageous gadgets like invisible cars, or, well, after a poorly executed movie and a couple bad TV shows. Trek is a muddier example.

There is a happy medium: this is a sliding scale with extremes. Going too far retro to innovation falls flat is problematic, I'll admit that, but so is making things unrecognisable though too many changes. Changes have to fit the context of the story and character, and larger changes have to be surrounded by familiar elements. Change should not be arbitrary or come down to one person's taste.
The Dark Knight trilogy is a good example. It dumped the camp and silliness of the last couple Batman movies and returned to an emotionally haunted Wayne. It removed most of the wackier high tech gadgets in favour or realistic weaponry and ninja training. But, it was not afraid to innovate with things like the tank-like Batmobile, adding new characters, and the like.

Let me ask YOU a question. If the designers need to 'stick to the script' on D&D, as it were, without contributing their own personal vision, why bother making a new edition at all? If we aren't going to allow them to innovate or take risks, new editions become pointless. I suppose WotC could instead release endless incremental updates. 3.75 and 4.5. I'm sure that would make some people very happy!

It's not a matter of making no changes, it's a matter of not fixing what isn't broken. Or not rebuilding the garage when all it needed was a splash of paint.
AC that goes down instead of up? Yeah, that's a valid change. Consistent math across all the levels? Yes, absolutely. Removing a myriad of combat modifiers in favour of one? Sure, sounds good. New idea for a class or race? Sure, people can ignore it if they hate it. Having the fighter cast fireballs? No, that's probably not a good idea.
(I had other examples of "bad" ideas that went too far, from both 3e and 4e, but I'm omitting them to avoid needless edition warring)

This gets much trickier with lore, as it's harder to say if a story is "broken" or not.

There's some wiggle room. You can do a lot while still respecting the past and emulating the tone and feel of what came before without replicating the mechanics. Which is important and a counterpoint to the "Kill all the sacred cows!" cries over the past few years.

 

[Tovec]

When was the last time a committee managed to make everyone happy? Committees specialize in the sort of grumbling compromise that is barely acceptable to most people. That hardly counts as 'happy'.

Actually in this context that is exactly what I would define as happy. If everyone can come together and "live with" the same game then the job was successfully done. Especially if you are able to draw together people from across very different games. Happy in this context means that perhaps not any one person gets exactly what they want, but every person gets enough of what they want so that they can play the same game.

The more you specialize and cater to one group the more you limit who can play your game. I specialize and work on my own thing, and the final product will be something I absolutely adore. But I'm not looking to make money and sell my product to you. Nor am I a professional game designer with a full blown game company behind me setting deadlines and figures I must meet. In such a case the win condition isn't to please myself, it is to please as many as possible. To do that I need to look at ideas that come from somewhere other than my own head. I need to look at the people who think I'm doing a terrible job and figure out if I can fix the game for them and make it palatable.

Obviously there are people who aren't going to find the game good no matter what is done, but if there is a sizable portion that dislikes a very specific aspect then it is worth looking into and probably changing. From WotC's standpoint they probably could care less if the designers love DOAM since there is such a loud population that seems to find it repulsive. If they want us, they need to look at that. And if they want us then the easiest means to getting us is by simply dropping the DOAM ability, replacing it with something more palatable and likely giving it to us later in a less in-your-face way (ie. option module to be added back on). This isn't the case with everything, it can't be. There has got to be a default. But in this specific situation the added on after the fact is an easier change than removing it.

13age is different, they sought to make a game that was 4e 2.0 and from accounts they seem to have succeeded. If they were trying to make a 5th edition with design goals similar to what WotC has put forward then they majorly failed. Happy or not, they wouldn't have succeeded at 5e. Happy or not their game would be bland to those who didn't enjoy 4e.

I don't think this word 'bland' means what you think it means.

Food I dislike is not 'bland'. It's icky!

I know what the word bland means, thanks. That is in fact why I italicized it. In this context (since it's a RPG and not food) I'm using it to mean unpalatable. Something that is not enjoyed, at least by some. Something that is not to ones taste. It is as much bland as it is icky, or yucky, or any other term you would like to throw at it. I'm not saying it is "chocolate" I'm saying it is a flavour I do not care for

If the makers of 13thAge were trying to make a game that WotC is aiming for then they failed and to those they tried to recruit they made a game that is icky/yucky/bland to their taste of an RPG. To 4e players, they (seem to have) found an amazing series of rules for people to enjoy. But they aren't trying to recruit the non-4e people, and thus to those people the game is bland and unimpressive.

 

[The Human Target]

There's no doubt that 4e built on 3.x and addressed many of its issues, but it also added a lot of things that weren't really related to 3.x. Class roles come to mind. Skill challenges. The tactical combat system, generally.

Sure, I mean not everything in the game was based on 3e complaints or observations.

Class roles really just codified D&D truths. Fighter= meat shield. Wizard= AoEs/debuffs. Clerics= healbot/buffer. Then made them better at it.

Skill challenges were an attempt to make skill use more dynamic and group oriented. Skills as combat. People have long complained about D&DS anemic skill system.

Tactical combat for sure was an off growth of 3e though. But the extent of it was probably designer POV.

 

[Mistwell]

Once you get enough versions of D&D out there, the game which is everyone's second choice is probably the game played by the most number of people at the end of the day.

Between OD&D, B/X, AD&D 1e, AD&D 2e, AD&D 2e+Player's Options, 3.0e, 3.5e, Pathfinder, 4e, 4e+Essentials, and 5e...if 5e is the edition everyone can "live with" as their second choice at any given table, what are the odds that everyone at a given table will agree on what their first choice will be? I think a meaningful number of tables will default to the second choice that everyone can live with.

And that's in addition to the tables who choose 5e as their first choice, which according to polling data seems like a fairly significant number as well.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I would rather they make an interesting game that tries new things...

Okay, stop right there. That's the problem. D&D Edition Any shouldn't be a different game. If you aren't familiar with how extremely D&D has differed across its editions compared to other RPGs, get out there and look at some completely non-d20 unrelated games. (If you are familiar, disregard my comments.) I'm completely serious when I say the variance between editions of almost all other games is less than the variance between 1e and 2e AD&D, and usually no more than the difference between 3.0 and 3.5 at most.

Quite frankly we have a series of different games bearing the D&D label rather than a single game--which is not good thing.

I really think we need to be aware that D&D is already extreme in its edition variance. I think the unification ideal of 5e is intended to try to instate a core that will mitigate that. I think that's a good thing. I don't think D&D needs to get special treatment in its edition variance compared to all the other kids RPGs. In fact, I think it kind of needs to get its crap together and join the greater RPG community on equal footing.

5e should be somebody's favorite game...

I have moderate to extensive experience with every edition of D&D except OD&D, and I can already tell it will be mine. And despite what the forums may indicate, I'm pretty sure I'm not in a small minority.

(Sorry if this post comes off as confrontational--I just latched on to the "interesting game" comment with my pet peeve radar and felt the need to address it as an undirected commentary.)

 

[The Human Target]

I dunno.

D&D is the Flagship of RPGs.

It's the Kleenex.

It doesn't exactly play by the same rules as the other RPGs in the first place.

Plus, having only a tiny bit if variance in editions like other games isn't in itself a good thing.

Call if Cthulhu 7e feels like an antique.

Mutants and Masterminds 3e has a bunch of vestigial d20 nubs that don't really fit.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I for one agree with the OP.

How dare they not have race as class! They don't realize how vital that is to the D&D experience!

And how come people can get high level without having a castle and hundred of followers to boss around? I thought we were playing D&D, not Mearl's opinion on what D&D is!

And why did they take out getting exp for getting gold? If getting gold isn't the fastest way to earn EXP, it's simply not D&D! (to me)

 

[Farscape]

I for one agree with the OP.

How dare they not have race as class! They don't realize how vital that is to the D&D experience!

And how come people can get high level without having a castle and hundred of followers to boss around? I thought we were playing D&D, not Mearl's opinion on what D&D is!

And why did they take out getting exp for getting gold? If getting gold isn't the fastest way to earn EXP, it's simply not D&D! (to me)

I liked it when you actually got XP for doing things besides killing creatures.