D&D 5E This Game is Deadly

[Tony Vargas]

And again, we know about major, meaningful differences between the methods used to gather that data, and we know the data they've gathered this time is much greater in quantity than it was before (by orders of magnitude).

We really don't. We know that, this time around, there was a public playtest and a survey, and that they quoted the number of people who signed up for the playtest, in total, and the number of responses - two carefully selected statistics that shed no light on whether the playtest started strong and dropped off or gained playtesters as wit went, nor on what the composition of that self-selected population was like. And we don't know how 'different' everything else was, because they never shared the methodology or results, just their conclusions.

When WotC came out and said there were certain fan-identified problems with 3.5 and fixed them in 4e, there was outrage from certain quarters, and relief in finally seeing those problems fixed in others. Now, they're essentially doing the same thing, hammering on edition-war-complaints about slow combat and grid-dependence and releasing 5e as nominally-TotM with monsters and PCs all but made of glass in comparison to make combats short & deadly. But somehow it's different?

You have to actually show that the major differences between the two methods are meaningless, to make that claim.

You'd have to know something about the methodology in all 3 cases to make the comparison. We don't know anything about them.

All we had, in all three cases, is boosters of the then-new ed or half-ed saying that it had to be what the fans wanted because 'market research!'

I didn't say they know everything and are infallible. I did like 4e (and 3e), and I've never called anyone there incompetent. None of your characterization of my post is accurat

I suppose I should take a page from ScottC and try to re-assure you that the general patterns I'm seeing from 2000, 2008, & 2010 recurring today are not in any way an attack on you personally. They're not. Please don't feel like I'm singling you out, you're just saying things that are reminiscent, not the exact same things - and you're not alone.

 

[SteveC]

When someone says that, then it would make sense to reply to it. But nobody said that, except you. Nobody said the playtest was some flawless representation of what people want. All I, or anyone I have seen, has said is that it tends to be a better tool to measure consumer sentiment than not doing such a large open playtest. The results you get for it have better odds of being correct - and odds are not 100%, just indications of what is or is not a "good bet".

Okay: that's what I interpreted this to mean, said by, well, you:

Finally, we have WOTC doing extensive open playtesting, open surveying, closed (but very large) playtesting, extensive consultation, and internal testing. They also have sales data, and older survey data, and other market research. And then they have poll results, posts, blogs, G+, FB, Twitter, etc.. to draw from. When all of that is pointing, by strong majorities, in one direction, then it's fair to say that one direction is a well represented one among the fan base.

I interpret that to mean with extensive open playtesting etc. that one direction is well represented to be: the playtest reflects what a large portion of the fans want. That is what you believe, correct? If you're trying to have an issue with the semantics of my sentence, please don't. The playtest fallacy is that the fans want, in large part, what they respond to positively in the playtest. If you don't actually playtest something publicly, the fans don't get a vote on it.

Well after you just went on an extensive rant about how much you didn't like the development process for 5e, it's no doubt that you take it with a grain of salt. I don't though. The idea that the designers are lying, that they are engaging in some large conspiracy to misrepresent their findings so they can present their own personal preferences, and to do it in a way that would directly run contrary to them keeping their jobs (because the implication is they are going against what the majority of respondents want, which means the game won't sell well, which means they will be more likely to get laid off) is an extraordinary claim which therefore requires extraordinary evidence to support it.

Baring such evidence, I think it's fair to accept their comments as prima facia correct.

Perhaps when someone says that, it would make sense to reply to it. Seriously, I make no statements that the designers are lying whatsoever. Before 5E I was a certified Mike Mearls fanboy, so I have a lot of respect for him. A ton of it. What I'm saying is that where you start the playtest and the options you don't test skew the results in a major way.

We didn't get to playtest many 4E-isms. If we had, I would have been ecstatic about them. The cantrips got several positive comments from my group, for instance. One comment was "now, go and do likewise for Martial characters!"

This discussion is spiraling down fast, though, and I'm not of a mind to offer more annoyance, so I'll bow out at this point. I'd just remember that if you're of the mind that Ruin Explorer is a lone voice, that's not correct. Some of us just engage in a voluntary thread-ban most of the time, which I will re-engage.

 

[Mistwell]

Okay: that's what I interpreted this to mean, said by, well, you:

I interpret that to mean with extensive open playtesting etc. that one direction is well represented to be: the playtest reflects what a large portion of the fans want.

It means what I said it means. That it's a well-represented view. Not a sure bet that it is a majority view, not a sure bet that it is 100% anything. I also said it "Tends to indicate" which is another way of saying "It increases the odds that". I'm pretty careful when talking about these things. I've never said, or implied, that what WOTC was a sure bet to get them what the majority wants.

Perhaps when someone says that, it would make sense to reply to it. Seriously, I make no statements that the designers are lying whatsoever. Before 5E I was a certified Mike Mearls fanboy, so I have a lot of respect for him. A ton of it. What I'm saying is that where you start the playtest and the options you don't test skew the results in a major way.

No what you said was, "As far as the assumptions of 4E being incorrect. I think one must take those comments with more than a grain of salt: if they're coming from the recent Schwab article, they're from someone who didn't actually like 4E in the first place. Moreover, they're exactly the sort of thing you'd say when you're making changes... they're just done with a better Diplomacy check than during the 4E period."

So in that paragraph you said that the comment is coming from someone who did not like 4e in the first place, and therefore the obvious implication (or else the claim has no meaning) is that he's intentionally biasing his claim towards his own preferences. The second part of your paragraph implies (because again it has no meaning otherwise) that what they are saying is just for public relations purposes, IE what their actual data says does not play a role in their goals in saying it.

So no, none of what I was replying to had a damn thing to do with missing options in a playtest and had everything to do with you implying people lying and engaging in a conspiracy, which runs counter to them keeping their jobs, to satisfy their own preferences and biases for the game. It's an extraordinary claim, and I am waiting for your extraordinary evidence to back it up.

This discussion is spiraling down fast, though, and I'm not of a mind to offer more annoyance, so I'll bow out at this point. I'd just remember that if you're of the mind that Ruin Explorer is a lone voice, that's not correct. Some of us just engage in a voluntary thread-ban most of the time, which I will re-engage.

Explain to me why polling here indicates he can be part of a 3-person response while 60 people will respond the other way? I asked you before how this silent support for him could be played out in the polling, and how generally it's negative voices who are MORE willing to post their thoughts on the Internet than positive ones, and I didn't see you respond. If you want me to accept this claim that RE has some secret silent significant support behind the scenes, you'll have to answer those issues.

 

[Mistwell]

We really don't. We know that, this time around, there was a public playtest and a survey, and that they quoted the number of people who signed up for the playtest, in total, and the number of responses - two carefully selected statistics that shed no light on whether the playtest started strong and dropped off or gained playtesters as wit went, nor on what the composition of that self-selected population was like. And we don't know how 'different' everything else was, because they never shared the methodology or results, just their conclusions.

Do you agree with me that the public playtest and public surveys increase the odds that WOTC will collect more representative data from the community than not doing public playtests and public surveys?

Do you agree with me that we should assume the creators desire to create a game with the best odds of selling well, so that they can keep their jobs, and therefore their greatest bias would be to use the data collection tools they have to gather the best possible data, and to make a game which most closely matches the results of their data?

When WotC came out and said there were certain fan-identified problems with 3.5 and fixed them in 4e, there was outrage from certain quarters, and relief in finally seeing those problems fixed in others. Now, they're essentially doing the same thing, hammering on edition-war-complaints about slow combat and grid-dependence and releasing 5e as nominally-TotM with monsters and PCs all but made of glass in comparison to make combats short & deadly. But somehow it's different?

It's different because they did much more extensive data collection of the marketplace, increasing both the quantity of data collected and they time frame they use to analyze that data and draft rules that best conform to it. Yes, it's different. There are tremendous meaningful differences between the two methods used to collect and analyze the marketplace this time.

You'd have to know something about the methodology in all 3 cases to make the comparison. We don't know anything about them.

No you can make the comparison with what we do know about it, and draw conclusions about which types tend to get you better results, all other things being equal. It might be wrong, but you can make a fair attempt at the comparison.

All we had, in all three cases, is boosters of the then-new ed or half-ed saying that it had to be what the fans wanted because 'market research!'

I suppose I should take a page from ScottC and try to re-assure you that the general patterns I'm seeing from 2000, 2008, & 2010 recurring today are not in any way an attack on you personally. They're not. Please don't feel like I'm singling you out, you're just saying things that are reminiscent, not the exact same things - and you're not alone.

Yeah that's BS. Of course it was personal in this case, in a way that it was not for ScottC, because you responded directly to my paragraph and said it to me about what I had written, repeatedly. There was no attempt at all to indicate anything other than it was personally directed at me - if you thought it wasn't about me you'd have obviously mentioned that fact when responding to me - and the only time you ever tried to mention anything different is when I called you out for it and now you're backpedaling. You obviously (repeatedly) thought I was some 4e-hater and thought your quips in that regard were appropriate.

I liked and played 4e for a long time. I used to routinely be called a 4e fanboy, and that mistophecy crack someone mentioned recently was about a rather infamous incident where I made a positive generalized prediction about 4e when it first came out. My acknowledgement that, in hindsight, 4e was not well-tailored to address the tastes of too many D&D players and could have done with some better and more market research, is not the same as me bashing 4e. It just means I liked a game a significant number of people did not like.

 

[Aenghus]

I also agree with at least some of Ruin Explorer's comments. Not everyone enjoys a deadly game, and even more would prefer some capability to dial deadliness up or down to suit the particular campaign..

There are plenty of players who don't like high mortality games, but a lot of them don't play D&D. I'm confident a bunch of them do, of all editions with houserules, fudging and resurrection in play.

Early on I participated in the 5e playtest but I'm not nostalgic about old school gaming, and my 4e players mostly didn't like the offering either. I sent in what feedback I could till I lost interest. I suspect selection bias was at play in the playtest as those who didn't like the direction of the playtest releases gave negative feedback or dropped out.

Designing a simpler game that hearkens back to 2e and 3e and obfuscated any elements borrowed from 4e may be the correct commercial decision for WotC, but the price is losing at least some of those customers who would prefer a different playstyle.

Rules systems produce a peculiar feedback loop where tactics and strategies that work well within the ruleset are rewarded, and some work badly and are penalised, and therefore those playing the ruleset are trained to think of those tactics and strategies are effective or ineffective. A different ruleset generally changes at least some of the tactics and strategies around so in some cases what was ineffective is now effective and vice versa. For this reason I always try to evaluate a new set of rules on it's own merits without houserules, so I can try and understand how it actually works (as due to emergent properties the explanations of how the system works can often be at variance with the underlying math and mechanics).

There is selection bias also in forum membership. There appear to be more supporters of old school gaming here than rpg.net for instance.

I think that ultimately everyone is a minority in the RPG market -the more particular your tastes the smaller a minority you are part of. We are all individuals.

 

[Thaumaturge]

We are all individuals.

I am not.

Thaumaturge.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I also agree with at least some of Ruin Explorer's comments. Not everyone enjoys a deadly game, and ever more would prefer some capability to dial deadliness up or down to suit the particular campaign...

Which is fine. But it is /so/ easy to avoid the excessive deadliness by starting at the first level after apprentice tier: 3rd.

Apart from that, if the encounter guidelines are about as dependable as they were in 4e, then dialing deadliness up or down is just a matter of adjusting encounter difficulty.

Early on I participated in the 5e playtest but I'm not nostalgic about old school gaming, and my 4e players mostly didn't like the offering either. I sent in what feedback I could till I lost interest. I suspect selection bias was at play in the playtest as those who didn't like the direction of the playtest releases gave negative feedback or dropped out.

That's not an unusual story, and an obvious inference. It would not be hard to analyze the data to see how prevalent it may have been. Did the playtest grow or shrink or churn as it progressed, or were there are large core of playtesters who participated in the whole thing? Did most participants d/l every packet and respond to most surveys or just some or only one?

I think that ultimately everyone is a minority in the RPG market -the more particular your tastes the smaller a minority you are part of.

There are a lot of very small niches in the market. I think when d20 went open source, there was some consolidation, then when WotC turned on the OGL concept, there was some re-fragmentation, perhaps?

 

[Psikerlord#]

I ran the Starter Set twice. The first time with 5 characters, they did well and I did not kill anyone.

Second time, I killed the Cleric when he went into the woods by himself and two goblins hid and shot him to death. He died of failed death saves.

Then in the final battle, King Klarg rolled a natural 20, killing the fighter outright. On his next turn, he ran over to the Wizard, rolled another natural 20 and killed the Wizard outright. The Rogue went down soon after. Only the archer fighter survived long enough to kill King Klarg but not in time to save the poor rogue.

So I had an 80% TPK on the second try.

The Cleric's player was used to 4E so he thought that his high AC was going to be enough to offset the small damage the goblins could do. It was just a tactical mistake on his part.

Love it! I want combat to be suprising and dangerous most of the time. But really, this sort of horrible crit ending will fade after a few levels... once the PCs have 30+ hp, it's gonna be very rare to auto kill them with a single 31+ damage attack

 

[ren1999]

Personally I'd rather just play 4e and knock off a few monster hit points; that way I get the best of both worlds.

Are level-draining monsters back, or did you mean to type 'PCs'?

When I first started testing bounded accuracy, I was modifying high level 4E modules. I took all scores above 30 and dropped them to 30. All humanoid scores above 20 and dropped them to 20. Then took all unique modifiers and dropped them to +5. Then I added reactions. It was a vast improvement! It made 4E playable.

 

[Psikerlord#]

actually, with a natural one accounting for 2 failed saves, it isn´t given that you have 3 rounds to save someone. It is pretty thrilling.
I have established a houserule though: You can go to negative hp of your max hp or your constitution score, whichever is higher. So the risk of death by chance, from full hp to death is lessened.

I have a different houserule in mind: You may spend your hitdice to reduce possibly lethal damage. So save up some HD to reduce instant death chances.

Also if you take any AoE damage while zero hp, it's an auto death roll failure, so there is also that risk.

I hope the DMG includes some suggested houserules on death. It would be good to see options such as -10 and you're dead, or - Con and you're dead, if you take 50+ hp damage make a death save or be reduced to zero hp, and so on. Also, no falling damage cap, thanks very much.

I really like your spend HD rule to reduce possibly lethal -ve damage. Perhaps also spend a HD to reroll a failed saving throw..? Some options such as this in DMG would also be excellent.