Uniting the Editions, Part 2 Up!

[Mark CMG]

I wish I could get some sense of what the designers think about non-combat. They seem to be defining earlier editions and their work moving forward in relation to combat and styles of combat-oriented play. I get the sense that they are primarily concerned with modes of combat during play and are looking to define 5E in terms of how players approach combat situations. If it turns out that "themes" are no more than a thin veneer to deal with combat-oriented play approaches, that's going to undercut the one aspect of design I have so far seen that seems to speak to 5E as an actual roleplaying game.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I'm getting a little annoyed by these very uninformative Legends & Lore articles ever since the announcement was made. I feel I just read this one and know almost nothing I didn't know before. Why can't they let some of the details slip? We're going to be playtesting soon, or at least I hope we will!

Yeah. Don't get me wrong, the last two articles did concisely clarify what they mean when they say modular and getting to the core of D&D. It's important that we all understand the high level design goals.

But I'm dying to get to some nitty gritty mechanical details. Sure, every detail needs the big disclaimer, "THIS IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE IF IT DOESN'T WORK", but I want to know what they're trying out right now. I want to know what they've tried and discarded, and what they're thinking about trying.

But, that's just curiosity and impatience. I'll get over it.

 

[thedungeondelver]

This right here:

In effect, what you end up with is a fully playable game with its own style. Think of it this way: It would be wrong to say that there is no inherent D&D style that carries across the nearly forty-year lifespan of the game. What you really end up with, in this approach, is a game that ends up looking—not coincidentally—like original D&D. Not entirely, of course, and not precisely, but close. It's a game that captures the feel of OD&D.

Is an incredibly tall order. I honestly shudder to think about the task they've laid down for themselves here.

This is like saying "We are going to produce a no-budget 11 minute silent film shot on hand-wound cameras that is going to win Best Picture 2012."

The comparison of original DUNGEONS & DRAGONS to early silent films, is, incidentally not a slight but a compliment. I love original D&D almost as much as AD&D. Moving on...

That is a monumental task. I hope they pull it off.

 

[The Shadow]

It will keep being this way until the playtest actually arrives. Right now, they are just buttering us up with what they hope the next edition will achieve. That way, when the playtest does start, you won't have everyone going "this is completely bonkers!" because they didn't have any idea what they were aiming for.

I was buttered up and excited a couple weeks ago. Now I'm getting annoyed. Nobody can sustain excitement in the absence of hard information.

I think the more telling thing in these articles are the polls. Not only how people are responding but which questions they are asking. So far, they seem to be asking the right ones.

The results to the polls are statistically meaningless. Self-selected sampling limited to fans who visit their website? What's the point? Ego-stroking?

The questions, I grant, are interesting. But there's only so far you can parse them.

Yeah, I think they're heading for a bit of a PR disaster by announcing this early (with press release and NY Times interviews and so on) and then not offering up anything for the masses to chew on.

Yes. When's the playtest start? March? April? They haven't even told us that yet. If we get no new substantive information before then, I'm going to
get positively peeved.

Worse, they haven't even yet committed to the playtest being for home-groups rather than through stores. Why on earth not? If they really want feedback, surely they want it from all sorts of groups!

(Their "select bloggers get details on this but are under NDA" strategy also seems a poor choice from a PR perspective.)

Amen to that, with knobs on! "I can't tell you anything specific, but it felt like D&D" is reassuring at first. Then, as time passes, it's just frustrating.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm concerned by the implied degree of complexity in the overal system. I've played some 'modular' build-your-own-system systems in my day. Well-done, they can be a joy to work with and a lot of fun for the obsessive DM with a lot of time on his hands. But they're increadibly complex. You don't just decide things like 'well, don't need drive or pilot in my medieval fantasy game.' You're looking at things like: how do skills workd? How does damage work? what list of powers can players use? etc, etc... it's like building a custom campaign world from the ground up, with a complete grand unified field theory to underlie it.

Like I said, fun! But, not for everybody. Not nearly.

And to lay that same complexity on the player?

...

 

[Number48]

Yeah, the polls seem unintentionally designed to say whatever they want them to say. Reading the polls I get the feeling that they are going to ask a question like "Would you buy this setting book if it was the price you want to pay?" The answer is in the question, the only answer is yes. In this latest poll, if you had to rank your choices from most important to least important you would get a feel for the relative worth of each, but these polls are designed so there is no tradeoff. You can answer 5 to everything. "How important is it to you that 5E comes with free cake for a year?" Well, extremely, unless that means getting less of something else.

 

[TwinBahamut]

In this latest poll, if you had to rank your choices from most important to least important you would get a feel for the relative worth of each, but these polls are designed so there is no tradeoff. You can answer 5 to everything. "How important is it to you that 5E comes with free cake for a year?" Well, extremely, unless that means getting less of something else.

This isn't quite true. For me, low scores can also be the answer I want to pick. I voted a 1 for "DMs should influence player customization" (or however that was phrased. Because I don't think they should.

Anyways, this is yet another article from Mr. Cook that makes me a bit worried about the direction the 5E is going. He talks about the core elements of the game from a matter of history, rather than proper game design and player perception. A version of history that seems to ignore 4E, at that (fireball, magic missile, and hold person are not exactly as fundamental to 4E as they were to previous editions). Also, saying that the base game should have the "feel" of OD&D just seems wrong to me. OD&D is at the extreme end of a wide spectrum, and it simply does not appeal to many D&D players. You can't use it as a foundation for common ground.

One last minor thing that bugs me is his talk about this big divide between what players decide and what DMs decide. Those lines imply a mentality of "the players choose their characters and the go with whatever campaign the DM wants to run," which is not a philosophy I agree with. If you ask me, there should be more discussion of creating consensus within a D&D group, rather than drawing battle lines between players and DMs over contentious issues.

 

[Li Shenron]

I agree completely on everything Monte says in this article

If those are the premises of 5e, then the foundations seem solid. Very hard tasks ahead however, let's see what they can pull off in the next year of work.

 

[Saracenus]

Also, saying that the base game should have the "feel" of OD&D just seems wrong to me. OD&D is at the extreme end of a wide spectrum, and it simply does not appeal to many D&D players. You can't use it as a foundation for common ground.

TB and everyone else, take a deep breath. Now let it out. They are not going to build the core around one edition only.

1) They have already shown tech from various editions at D&D XP that are in the proto-core (Themes - 4e; DR - 3e; Stats for Skills - OD&D; Vancian Magic for some spellcasters, other types of casting for other spellcasters, etc).

2) Something that evokes OD&D, AD&D, 2e, 3e, and 4e are not directly supporting those versions of the game. The idea is you can dial up and dial down the complexity of the game and emulate said version.

3) 4e (my current and favorite version of D&D) and 3e are on the high side of the complexity scale of rules and I do not expect it to be a major part of the D&D Core game that will be rules light and quick. There will be elements of those versions in the Core Game but a true emulation of 3e and 4e will require adding more complex modules.

One last minor thing that bugs me is his talk about this big divide between what players decide and what DMs decide. Those lines imply a mentality of "the players choose their characters and the go with whatever campaign the DM wants to run," which is not a philosophy I agree with. If you ask me, there should be more discussion of creating consensus within a D&D group, rather than drawing battle lines between players and DMs over contentious issues.

I think you are drawing too stark a line there. Monte is correct that their are dials that DMs and Players typically control.

If I am DMing I usually choose the version of D&D that we are going to use (with player input) and I might put restrictions on classes, races and themes depending on the story of the world I am basing it in (No divine classes in 4e Dark Sun is a classic example). The players handle what characters they are building for said campaign (with a little input from me).

Most DMs and Players do this automatically. The only time I have played and DMed in everything goes campaigns has been in Organized Play and eventually even those venues have limited the scope of play.

One last thing, WotC has to lay out the vision otherwise people are going to look at the proto-rules and not know what to do with it. The blog post by Sly Flourish over at Critical Hits basically tells us that expecting the playtest to be like 3rd or 4th edition is going to be a shock to the system if you are not prepared for it.

Frankly, I am happy that WotC is shooting for the moon with this edition. The time for half measures is over. If they want to recapture the magic that can be D&D they need to go big or go home. That is scary because failure can have really bad consequences. That is why you get high rewards for high risk, but there is that pesky risk.

Thanks,

 

[Iosue]

What YOU say makes the most sense, but it's not at all what Monte said.

Actually, I think that's exactly what Monte said.

To be clear, we're not talking about creating a bridge so that you can play 1E and 4E at the same time. Instead, we're allowing you to play a 1E-style game or a 4E-style game with the same rules. Also, players at the table can choose the style of character they want to play.

If 3E style is about character customization and a tactical view of combat, options should allow you to customize characters with feats and skills, plus play with a grid and miniatures (and have rules that support threatened areas, attacks of opportunity, and so forth). But in a 2E-style game, some or all of these options would not be desirable. Because of this truly modular approach, it means you don't have to pick an edition style. You can have the simple, fast combat of 1E with the character customizing skills of 3E, or any other combination.

Anyways, this is yet another article from Mr. Cook that makes me a bit worried about the direction the 5E is going. He talks about the core elements of the game from a matter of history, rather than proper game design and player perception. A version of history that seems to ignore 4E, at that (fireball, magic missile, and hold person are not exactly as fundamental to 4E as they were to previous editions). Also, saying that the base game should have the "feel" of OD&D just seems wrong to me. OD&D is at the extreme end of a wide spectrum, and it simply does not appeal to many D&D players. You can't use it as a foundation for common ground.

I really can't see that 4e is being ignored, at least not from this article. In order to create a unified set of rules that can be enjoyed by fans of any edition of D&D, his perspective must be to a certain degree historical. 1e, 3e, and 4e all play very different. And yet they are all D&D. So what is it that makes both 1e and 4e D&D? If he can find those elements, he can use that as a base to integrate the disparate elements that distinguish the two. Fireball, magic missile and hold person were indeed integral to 4e as D&D. 4e got a lot of "This isn't D&D" flack as it was; imagine what the reaction would have been if the things Monte mentioned hadn't been in it. Speaking personally, I love 4e, but if there was no magic missile, I would have been, "What's this crap?!"

Also, he did not say that the base game "should" have the feeling of OD&D. He said that if you try to make a base game out of all those common elements of all the editions, what you just naturally get is something that looks like OD&D. And he notes, "Not coincidentally." BD&D was a variation on OD&D. 1e was a variation on OD&D. 2e, 3e, 4e, they all built on the skeleton of OD&D to create their varying styles.

What he is certainly not saying is that OD&D is a game we can all gather around. OD&D is not the style I want to play -- I want simple character generation (BD&D), unified mechanics (3e/4e), and the option for 4e style cinematic tactical combat. What Monte wants to do is give me the option to build on the skeleton of OD&D to make the kind of D&D I want to play. If he succeeds, the game I want to play will not "feel" like OD&D, though the core game may look like it.