D&D 5E The Mainstreaming of D&D

[Charlaquin]

Yeah, they are guidelines for a maximal experience, not the only way the game functions. Matt Mercer essentially never throws fights at the Critical Role crew that aren't cakewalks, because 7 PCs with no resource grind are basically unbeatable: but he still gives his players a fun time. He puts the fear of God into them with theatrics, rather than pushing the characters to their actual mechanical limits. The game plays fine that way, but yes without grinding PCs resources it will be hard to kill them.

I see no particular reason to suspect one or another about what newer players are doing with the grindiness: I see these complaints more on forums where more experienced players who like involved wargame scenarios are talking about the game. I think newbies are doing fine, whether they are pushing the resource limits or not.

Yeah, in my experience, this Matt Mercer style of intense theatrics but minimal mechanical risk of character death is what I think the majority of players want from the game. Players tend to like their characters and don’t want them to die, they just want the feeling of their character being in danger, so they can overcome that danger and feel like awesome heroes. An occasional character death can be acceptable of course, but it should feel dramatically appropriate when it happens.

Now, this obviously isn’t what everyone wants, but do I think folks (and especially DMs) who want more mechanical challenge are disproportionately represented in online D&D discussion spaces like forums. Obviously I don’t have data to back that up, but it’s the sense I get. And even in those spaces, we still see a respectable amount of advocacy in favor of that low-lethality, theatrical type of play.

 

[Parmandur]

then why does it bother so many people?


I guess we're just bad at dnd, or playing it wrong.

How many people is "so many"?

Not bad, or wrong, but it sounds like y'all took that module a bit slow, which is fine. Sounds like you may have enjoyed it at a faster clip, though.

 

[Parmandur]

You mean sticking to the edition for as long as possible? Yeah, as long as it doesn't become unwieldy. So far they've been good at keeping the crunch content (painfully) low so they can just keep selling settings for years.

But when (not if) the edition DOES change, I really hope they're not affraid of some radical change. We could have had an interesting Sorcerer who transforms and manifest more and more of their heritage the more sorcery point they spend, but instead we got the boring 'CHA Wiza

No, I honestly hope they never do an Edition change as significant as 3E>3.5 again.

 

[CleverNickName]

Why did the hipster burn his tongue?
He was drinking coffee before it was cool.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, in my experience, this Matt Mercer style of intense theatrics but minimal mechanical risk of character death is what I think the majority of players want from the game. Players tend to like their characters and don’t want them to die, they just want the feeling of their character being in danger, so they can overcome that danger and feel like awesome heroes. An occasional character death can be acceptable of course, but it should feel dramatically appropriate when it happens.

Now, this obviously isn’t what everyone wants, but do I think folks (and especially DMs) who want more mechanical challenge are disproportionately represented in online D&D discussion spaces like forums. Obviously I don’t have data to back that up, but it’s the sense I get. And even in those spaces, we still see a respectable amount of advocacy in favor of that low-lethality, theatrical type of play.

If we divided playstyle preferences into quadrants (big-flashy with low lethality, small-grindy with high lethality, small-grindy with high lethality, and big-flashy with high lethality), it seems that three out of four are easily adaptable from the rules as-is (leaving big-flashy and high lethality out in the cold), and that might indicate where the majority spectrum lays

 

[Charlaquin]

It's because it's not fun for a significant number of people.

It’s also great fun for a significant number of people.

Running 6-8 (boring and easy) encounters is a MMO grind for the sake of a grind. Cut out the middleman and just give casters less resources. Stop wasting everyone's time on trash encounters that have no real risk and serve no purpose other than to let non-casters have a chance to "shine" doing scutwork.

Just because an individual encounter is short and easy doesn’t necessarily mean it’s boring. Players have fun handily winning an encounter with only a few hp and maybe a low-level spell slot lost. And after a few of these, they stop being quite so easy. Eventually, they become pretty challenging. That’s good pacing! Now, not everyone enjoys resource management games, and that’s fine. That’s why the game gives guidelines for what an average group can be expected to handle, instead of restrictions on what a DM is allowed to run. If you don’t like the baseline parameters, they’re easy to change, and the game works just fine. But, again, it’s silly to complain that the game is too easy when you’re significantly undershooting the recommended difficulty.

 

[Shiroiken]

While I'm not necessarily thrilled with the overall direction of the game, one of the great things about it is the ability to adapt it to your own desires. I still run a fairly old school, adult themed Greyhawk game using 5E; I just make the necessary mechanical adjustments required. I have traditional racism, but it's based on actual race, not ethnicity (dwarves and elves don't get along, gnomes and dwarves are cousins, everyone hates orcs, ect). I've divorced any connect they might have with any real world ethnicity by playing up their differences from humanity (they shouldn't be just funny looking humans). Pretty much the only trope I've dropped is the damsel in distress, simply using X in distress based on the particular adventure I've made. Because of this, it works quite well to give the feel of sword & sorcery without any real world baggage attached to it.

 

[Oofta]

Oh for sure. I'm actually glad that, for once, corporate synergy is leading to new stuff like the Magic setting and that they're willing to create new settings as well. I meant more in a general far flung 'future' sense if the current popularity continue to increase... especially if the movie ends up being a hit too. It's not a 'now' problem.

Even a after the 2007 movie, Transformers Animated happened (but they switched Hot Shot for Bumblebee and then in Transformers Prime, Bumblebee couldn't speak like his movie counterpart...) so it's not like a it was a sudden hard stop on innovation, more of a progressive slow down?

I could see WotC being really affraid of any significant edition change even after 20 years of 5e. And even if they do make a new edition, I expect a lot of mechanic being grand-fathered in just for the sakee of continuing from 5e, regardless if new ideas would fit better.

There's a long history of innovative ideas an products that failed. The Edsel, New Coke, Google Glasses, Android phones. So I don't think innovation is necessarily better. It can be, or we'd still be sitting in caves around the fire. Innovation and new ideas not necessarily good, nor is it necessarily bad.

 

[Scribe]

@Charlaquin doing gods work in here.

@Reynard you aren't alone. That's why I hope for Planescape, SOON.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

How "significant" a number of people are you talking about? Do you have some marketing research numbers on playstyle preferences you would like to share?

Sure, it's not to everyone's taste, but the game works fine if you don't push things and want a more relaxed experience, or a swingier experience. The fights are their own reward, for those that find that sort of gameplay fun, which WotC found reason to believe represented a "significant" number of people.

Given the number of threads here that find 5E's approach to combat dull and repetitive, or caster vs non-caster balance, I'd count that as significant. WOTC has acknowledged most people don't run 6-8 encounters per day. Maybe it's time to start figuring out what they can do to fix it. Because the solution to boring, low risk MMO trash fights isn't to force us to run more boring MMO trash fights. I'm an adult with responsibilities, I don't have time to waste on rolling initiative and tracking HP on some puds whose sole purpose is to eat a paltry amount resources (and repeat pud fight 3 more times!) before we get to the fireworks factory.