D&D 5E The Mainstreaming of D&D

[Malmuria]

This came up in a previous post on whether or not 5e is good or bad for indie games, but creativity is less likely to come from a large company like wotc. OD&D was inherently experimental, and in the 2e era they seemingly allowed designers to create whatever, but they were running their business into the ground. I don't find 5e official products to be particularly inspirational but I find all the things other publishers individual creators are doing (whether for 5e, osr, or indie) to be extremely imaginative. I have many more games than I have time to run. It's just that that doesn't include any 5e module.

 

[Parmandur]

You have a different take on Critical Role than I do. He doesn't grind their resources down... except when he does like the days in which they spent dealing with Lucien with little or no rest. He throws cakewalks at them... except when he doesn't like the encounter that killed Mollymauk, or the sphinx, the elder brain, or the various dragons they've encountered.

He generally doesn't grind them down with 6-8 encounters per day, true. That's not all that conducive to the format of game they're looking for because it would drag too much - but the set pieces he does put up are hard to describe as real cakewalks. I suspect a number of them could have ended up as TPKs if the group wasn't as good at cutting and running as they are. And that may be part of the difference. His players freak out and run because of the theatrics, the drama, and their desire to make sure their characters have a chance at playing out their story while other groups might buckle down and fight it out, probably winning but probably also racking up more net deaths overall. He also prefers to let the dice fall as they may and will stick the players with the consequences of their mistakes, so that too may have the net effect of encouraging them to run well before it's too late, something way too few players do.

Right, the swinginess mentioned in previous posts. Without the 6-8 encounter a day, that's what happens. Big fights that are easy by themselves, except when they go sideways. As opposed to the norm of straightfrorward fights that build up attrition.

 

[Parmandur]

Wouldn't 3.5>4E be a more significant change?? Wasn't 3.5 largely compatible with 3E stuff?

Largely, yes, but that is as big a change as I would ever want to see again. Preferably far less significant.

 

[Yora]

I believe the original pitch for the OGL in the early 2000s was that WotC could shove the unprofitable business of publishing adventures to minor creators who'd love the opportunity to do so, while they focus on the big money makers that are the rulebooks.
Given the scracity of splatbooks for 5th edition and DMs Guild, they seem to have fully embraced that idea again.

 

[Charlaquin]

Then why arent more people running it that way? WOTC has admitted as much.

Lots of people do run it that way. Not the majority, but still plenty.

Hey kids, keep digging through the crap and eventually it gets fun!

For many people, more, shorter encounters is in fact fun. Not eventually fun, just fun, beginning to end. If it isn’t for you, then don’t run it that way.

This was a case where 4E had it right. Treat encounters as memorable set pieces and handwaive the "there's 2 kobolds in a 10X10 room" cruft that takes as long to setup as play out.

2 Kobolds in a 10x10 room takes literally no time to set up, what are you talking about?

But during the playtest WOTC was sadly in divorced dad mode, desperate to bring the grognards back, so any good lessons learned from that edition had to be jettisoned.

5e unfortunately tossed out a lot of great stuff from 4e. It also kept a lot of great stuff from 4e, although less of it than I would have liked, and much of it disguised in presentation. But if you want a small number of set pice encounters only, that’s something 5e handles fine. If you want lots of quick encounters, that’s not something 4e handles well.

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

I unironically have and wear this shirt:

I feel like you might need to grab one, too. 'Cause honestly, that's what this feeling is. We're D&D Hipsters, the lot of us.

It does sound like a hipster complaint
"DnD is too mainstream now. I liked it better when it was an indie scene"

Think I prefer DnD as it is, with the hobby booming rather than slowly dying out

 

[el-remmen]

To get back to the mainstreaming and "feel" - one thing that doesn't jibe with me personally is the comparison of D&D to an action movie (or certain kinds of anime) and the expectation it play out that way. This is not necessarily "new" (lots of people played "story-forward" D&D as far back as the early 80s, if not earlier) I just hear it as a point of comparison more often it seems when describing the game to newer players.

[If you're feeling tl;dr-ish just jump down to "But here is the important part"]

I mean, I like action movies fine (I love Die Hard - nearly perfect movie and when it comes to anime I prefer something like Grave of Fireflies) and I think certain elements or encounters can have an action movie or over the top anime feel and be hella fun, but I don't play or run the game to feel like I am in an action movie (my guess is other systems would be better for that anyway), I play/run to experience a world and make changes to it if (as a player) I get powerful and influential enough but am happy to just survive it and do the best I can in the process OR to mediate that experience for others (as DM) and just see what happens - so for me, I don't want any kind of "plot protection" in my games, I don't want cut scenes flashing back to the past or having scenes the PCs are not present for described to me (don't cut away to the BBEG plotting). If Luke, Han, Leia and Chewy are escaping the Death Star we know they aren't going to be shot and killed (most likely - might be why I have never much enjoyed licensed franchise games much), but if Redgar, Alhandra, Krusk, and Eberk are trying to escape the Dark Lord's palace, I expect there to be a decent chance one or more will be killed or captured. I want things described as our characters would sense them, not as if on a screen we are watching (I don't want close-ups or aerial views or tracking shots - DMs using film language to describe a scene irks me - on the other hand using comic book language to describe a Supers game feels right), let us go totally off the rails and be wrong and never even get to adventure climax if our choices drive us there. If we didn't bring enough rope and there is none to be found, I don't want to handwave if there is rope. If we find 20,000 cps, I want to actually try to figure out if there is a convenient way to carry it all out or if it is even worth trying - a puzzle is a puzzle and our characters decide which puzzles are worth our time. If I decide to leap off an exploding tower tied to fraying remains of what rope we have, I want there to be a decent chance I actually die or am grievously wounded from doing something desperate and unlikely, rather than happen to find a window to leap into clear of the blast because of "coolness" factor. There is no narratively appropriate time for a PC to die in my eyes. Or if there is, it is because in-game someone took the opportunity to craft the story so it sounds good to NPCs being entertained at the inn, not because it necessarily played out that way.

But here is the important part:

I've been running my current 5E games like this and it has been great - but I also know that I am vastly in the minority.

If this thread is about our personal feelings about the feel of the game and its expectations that is where I am at.

If this thread is about how D&D should be designed and marketed by WotC then what I want and what I like shouldn't really matter. I already play and I am gonna keep playing some version of the game. I am also of the belief that while WotC may technically own D&D, no one actually owns D&D and there will be lots of different people playing with lots of different approaches themes, expectations, and results no matter what the current edition of the game was intended to be like - and leaving every other detail aside, that is what I want out of D&D.

 

[Parmandur]

Lots of people do run it that way. Not the majority, but still plenty.

Honestly, I'm not sure there is any particular reason not to suspect that it is a majority playstyle. It could literally go either way, more data required.

 

[Malmuria]

Well, would you hate Worlds Without Number... (Which is a shame, since it has great mechanics.)

I like WWN! The layout is functional, with topics being confined to 1-2 pages and with headings that are easy to read. Pretty much every page has a heading at the top that lets you know where you are in the book. The world building tools are extensive and I haven't tried to use them myself, but I like how straightforward the game is in saying "in this game the GM builds a world, and here are a bunch of concrete steps and tools to build that world." The 5e dmg tries to do that but between the terrible organization (step 1: create the multiverse), the vague and verbose writing (did you know that stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end?), and uninspiring random tables it does not work out well. I'm just looking at it now. Look at p. 81, where the important topic of Creating Encounters starts in the middle of the page, runs over 5 pages with interspersed unrelated art getting in the way, with headers like on p. 84 that start at the end of the page and has one sentence on that page before the rest is on the next page. What I want from this section is a 2 page spread with a flowchart and all the important tables with another 2 page spread with any contextual information, preferably in bullet point form where possible, and some art because you have extra space from being so concise. <end rant>

But yes, world building with WWN is exactly the thing I get excited about more than pulling out any official 5e book anymore

 

[Yora]

Okay, I think I might not actually have tried reading the 5th edition DMG. Only looked up the tables for monster creation and magic items. If the comprehensibility is compared negatively to WWN, that's really bad.