D&D 5E Should Next have been something completely new and made from scratch?

[Zardnaar]

I'm kind of in the same boat. To many 4Eisms in D&DN and so far it has not been modular. After 12 years of 3.x type rules I have been playing retroclones for the last year and they seem to push the "is this D&D button for me". Problem for WoTC is one can have continuing support for OSR games and PF if one doesn't like D&DN. Modular also seems to be a codeword for incomplete so they can sell you more splat books. A simple change to AD&D like using ascending ACs and BAB instead of THACO also does wonders or throwing out level limits, racial restrictions and boosting the human.

 

[The Human Target]

I am in the opposite boat, in which I don't want 5E to be a weird hybrid throwback old school game.

Yet I don't see how scrapping the basics of DnD would make it more likely for me to like 5e, or even really be possible.

 

[TerraDave]

There is a deep and strange irony here....

The point is, they are trying to lure players like me, who really enjoy 2nd and 3rd edition but hated 4th
edition, into playing a game that contains elements of 4th edition in it. It's those elements that drove me away from 4th edition so why would I want to play in a game that has them? Now if I could swap them all out, like what was proposed in the beginning, then I would be cool with it, but we haven't received what we were promised.

4E was a bold attempt to take the rules in a new direction. I have immense respect for the team that rolled those dice, and I happen to have really enjoyed 4E, but it had major repurcussions for the game (good or bad, depending on your preferences).

That's what you're saying you'd like them to do this time around as well. ...

That's an entirely different subject to Next being something completely new and made from scratch, though.

So, you are saying, since you didn't like 4E, they should do what they did with 4E?

Thats what you seem to be saying. Or maybe you are saying you like one of the many d20-OSR mashups out there? Actually, you haven't said that.

What bugs me on this is that it actually is a new game. They have done exactly what you asked! You should be happy.

The advantage mechanic, backgrounds, feat design, spells and magic, specific race and class mechanics, they are different! And not really in a 4E (or 1, 2, or 3 way), but in a new, 5e, way.

It is true 5E has at will casting and so does 4E. But so did 3E with the warlock and some other later add ons. So do, say, a lot of supers games (or something very much like it). And monsters have had "at will" powers going way back (thats where the term comes from).

But why does 5E have it? Because people, including ones who identified as fans of older editions, said it was good to have.

Damage on a miss is a little odd. But I will let you know one thing, when a character misses with an attack in 4E, they normally don't do damage.

 

[Grydan]

Would it have been better if D&D Next was a completely new game that the designers created from scratch?

The reason I believe this is because the problem with trying to please everyone with a game that takes elements from earlier editions is that it's usually the elements from those previous editions that caused certain players to not play that edition. I can't stand 4th edition but I do like Shadowrun and I know people who may like 4th edition but they also like Shadowrun so liking Shadowrun is what we have in common. A whole new system is something that could have brought all of us together instead of a hodge podge edition that already contains elements of a previous one that I don't like. If you take 2nd edition, 3rd edition and 4th edition elements and make a game from it then there is a portion of the game I don't like, and it could be enough to turn me off of the game entirely.

In my opinion, it would have been better if everyone could have approached the game from a fresh slate.

To truly start from scratch, with a fresh slate, would mean abandoning any game mechanic that had ever appeared in any edition of the game before. Toss out the polyhedrons. Forget classes. No more HP. AC is dead. Levels? What are those? No XP for gold, no XP for killing monsters, no XP for completing quests, no XP for roleplaying, no XP for anything. No Dex, Con, Wis, Str, Cha, or Int. No ability scores, no ability mods.

Forget Fighters and Fighting-Men, Magic-Users and Wizards, Clerics, Rogues …

And most importantly, neither Dungeons nor Dragons can be featured in any way.

Clearly, if we lose everything that ever appeared in a previous edition, we're left with precious little that makes sense to call Dungeons & Dragons.

Of course, that's a rather ludicrous position, one might say. By clean slate, we might instead mean getting back to basics, stripping things back to what is definitively D&D and working from there to build a new version of the game … which is what they actually did. They've told us about it. They went through and played every edition, and tried to figure out which bits were universal, and thus needed to be kept. They wrote columns about what made that cut (with their list not being entirely uncontroversial, if I remember correctly, but at least fairly widely accepted). Then, working from that list, they built a game.

Given that one of their goals was to at least try to appeal to everyone who has played some version of the game before, yes, some of the things they added to that universal base were inevitably going to be pulled from one edition or another, whether directly or indirectly. But when there's reason to believe that at least part of the market wants 'some way to do X', and you've had some degree of success in the past with a mechanic that does X, it's at least going to be one of the options you consider. So you toss it in the playtest, see if it floats. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

They also tried new things (advantage/disadvantage, new variations on spell-casting rules, new saving throws, new death rules, exploration rules) that had never appeared before.

So I'm honestly confused as to how they could have made a more 'from scratch', 'clean slate', and 'completely new' D&D game than the one we've seen, without making something that was almost, but not entirely, completely unlike D&D in any meaningful way.

 

[GreyLord]

This entirely. Over and over and over again they said it. Next being compatible with other games was never a goal.

So for those who like D&D and not an entirely NEW game...what's the point of getting Next when we can get closer renditions of what we play or want from something else (aka...Pathfinder, OSR games...etc). Except for 4e and new gamers...what exactly is Next supposed to offer D&D (and that's specific to the D&D player) players?

Afterall, it's not like most were clamoring for a new game...most were clamoring for THEIR game.

 

[GreyLord]

That's not really what I've been talking about. They promised us that a 4th edition style wizard would be sitting at the same table as a 3rd/2nd edition style one. They made it sound like it was a puzzle where you could add or take whatever you wanted in order to play a particular style of edition.

That's EXACTLY how they presented it to me when they first did their original presentation. It appears things have changed.

 

[fjw70]

So for those who like D&D and not an entirely NEW game...what's the point of getting Next when we can get closer renditions of what we play or want from something else (aka...Pathfinder, OSR games...etc). Except for 4e and new gamers...what exactly is Next supposed to offer D&D (and that's specific to the D&D player) players?

Afterall, it's not like most were clamoring for a new game...most were clamoring for THEIR game.

Unless we have access to market research then any guess as to what the market wants is just a guess.

 

[fjw70]

That's EXACTLY how they presented it to me when they first did their original presentation. It appears things have changed.

Here is a L&L article from almost how years who talking about the goals of DDN and no where does it talk about being compatible with earlier editions. Instead it talks about a modular system that could recreating the style of each earlier edition.

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120130

I think I may remember some statements that DDN would be easier to play with older edition modules but I don't think it was ever a goal.

 

[MerricB]

So for those who like D&D and not an entirely NEW game...what's the point of getting Next when we can get closer renditions of what we play or want from something else (aka...Pathfinder, OSR games...etc). Except for 4e and new gamers...what exactly is Next supposed to offer D&D (and that's specific to the D&D player) players?

It is very rare for a group to be 100% happy with any particular version of D&D. This is quite true of designers - Gary Gygax could have stopped with the original game, but released several supplements, revised it again into AD&D, released more supplements, and was considering a 2nd edition before his plans were unfortunately derailed. Not only that, but the potential player base *also* is changing. Each version of the game is completely legitimate and will serve a portion of the gaming public. Should he have stopped with just the original three booklets? In my opinion, definitely not! Although the core of them is genius, the books are poorly organised, badly set-out and contain some extremely questionable design.

Thus, we started getting new editions.

Now, here's the thing: We should be playing the game we most enjoy, whether it be original D&D, AD&D, 3E, 4E, Pathfinder or something else entirely. I'm currently running three games: AD&D, 4E and the Next playtest. Each one has strengths and weaknesses, but none of them is perfect for my purposes. I would say the number of people who are 100% satisfied with every element of an edition is quite small.

Next offers us the opportunity to see if the newest version of the game fits our needs better than previous versions. By no means do I think it will be automatically better for everyone. Not a chance! The hope of the designers is that it will fit enough people's needs better than the alternatives.

What makes it particularly interesting is the design goal of modularity, of allowing groups to choose the complexity of the game themselves, allowing it to be played in a very simple form up to a quite complex form. I've no idea how this will work in the final product - I remain fascinated in the result.

Someone who is 100% satisfied with AD&D will have little interest in Next. That can be assumed. But for those who like AD&D but aren't fully satisfied by it, Next should be enough like AD&D for them to see if they like it better. Unusually, this also applies to fans of 2E, 3E and 4E: if Next's modularity works as desired, Next should be a potential choice for someone who likes those systems and wants a different take on them - one which might be better for them. It's an ambitious goal; I don't know how successful it will be.

Of course, the other aspect to all of this is that playing the current version of the game means it will be better supported than the older ones and it is probably easier to find players for that game. (This isn't anywhere as certain as in previous years, thanks to the effects of the OGL and the strong support of fan and commercial publishers for older editions). Playing the current edition is still a strong draw.

None of this assures success. However, by potentially appealing to all previous players of D&D, Wizards do allow themselves the possibility of getting more interest than if they only targeted players of one edition.

Cheers!

 

[KiloGex]

This makes no sense; they did make an entirely new game from scratch. While it's true that they wanted to make the edition feel like AD&D, they aren't pulling any mechanics or traits from it. Rather, they have lowered the power creep of 4E, lifted the creativity of 2E, and shaken up the flexibility classes of 3E to create a new edition.

Ultimately, we're playing Dungeons & Dragons, and they need to stick to certain aspect of that system. We're going to have classes, Armor Class, Hit Points, the core ability scores, skills, and everything else that goes along with playing D&D. What differs from edition to edition is the balance of those elements and what the leveling process is throughout.

If you want to play a game like Shadowrun, Call of Cthulu, Warhammer 40K, Mutants & Masterminds, or L5R then play goes games. It's not WotC job to make a clone of those games to draw in customers; it's their job to make each edition of D&D something that people will enjoy playing (not all people, but enough).