D&D 5E Weighing in on 5e

[delericho]

I wouldn't call Mazzanoble irrelevant or useless, but if she's there to speak to the female demographic, she's not doing a great job.

My gaming circle has a ration of 7 female gamers to 5, and those females have mixed -- not necessarily overwhelmingly negative -- feelings about her writing.

At best, her writing can be hilarious and full of tongue in cheek flavor and at worse it's grating, condescending and insulting to womynkind. As in "OHAI, I'm a gurl, i like girly things and D&D isn't that funny?"

At great risk to my Man Card, I'm going to note that I find her style very reminiscent of "Confessions of a Shopaholic", which of course was immensely successful.

I think the problems with SM's columns are twofold, though:

Firstly, they have one female writer writing to 50% of the population. It feels an awful lot like tokenism, and anyway: Different women like different things, and indeed a individual woman will like different things at different times. (There's also a question about whether WotC should need to speak specifically to women anyway - the mere existence of such a column could be considered patronising. But that's a whole other conversation for another day.) So, they might do well to have multiple such columns, or rotate it amongst many different writers, or something.

Secondly, the "light and fluffy" style strongly suggests to me that it's best suited for casual players, new players, and (perhaps especially) non-players who are curious. I wouldn't expect anyone in those groups to have a DDI subscription, so I have to ask what insane logic put it behind the paywall? Frankly, it's bad enough putting it on a website (so people have to actively seek it out), but to require people to pay to read? Madness. (BTW, I would make the same comment if they had restarted the old "Wil Save" column in eDragon - there's a place for these things, but behind the paywall ain't it.)

(I would expect most female gamers with DDI subs to be pretty serious about the game, if only because of the crap they too often have to go through in the FLGS (and, too often, game groups) - if they've stuck it out this far, they must be dedicated. To experienced gamers I would expect somthing like "Confessions..." or "Wil Save" to be a diversion at best, or a distraction at worst. But that's okay, since WotC doesn't need to go out of their way to capture the experienced gamer, male or female - all they need to do is not actively drive them away. (Oh, and see also some of the commment wrt the D.C. Comics reboot, and especially Starfire, for a very similar situation.))

 

[Dice4Hire]

Well, without feats, where would we be? With more class ability choices, ala essentials.

The game needs something to make characters more different. I would prefer feats.

 

[Kzach]

Well, without feats, where would we be?

Where have I advocated getting rid of feats altogether?

It would seem strange to me, to play in a system that, no matter how good or how bad a player was, their characters all played effectively the same way.

Did I not also plainly say that by eliminating bonuses from feats that it would INCREASE variety and character individuality and play options?

5. Leave the campaign settings alone. No 100 year advancement of timelines or other such stupidity.

That was the best thing that's ever happened to the setting since it was first introduced.

 

[CroBob]

(Actually, bad example. Yoda vs Dooku sucked worse than Midichlorians. )

Well, by New Hope, Yoda was 800 years old. I have no idea how much fighting he has or has not seen in his long life, but this fight scene leads me to conclude; Quite a bit.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

At great risk to my Man Card, I'm going to note that I find her style very reminiscent of "Confessions of a Shopaholic", which of course was immensely successful.

I think the problems with SM's columns are twofold, though:

Firstly, they have one female writer writing to 50% of the population. It feels an awful lot like tokenism, and anyway: Different women like different things, and indeed a individual woman will like different things at different times. (There's also a question about whether WotC should need to speak specifically to women anyway - the mere existence of such a column could be considered patronising. But that's a whole other conversation for another day.) So, they might do well to have multiple such columns, or rotate it amongst many different writers, or something.

Secondly, the "light and fluffy" style strongly suggests to me that it's best suited for casual players, new players, and (perhaps especially) non-players who are curious. I wouldn't expect anyone in those groups to have a DDI subscription, so I have to ask what insane logic put it behind the paywall? Frankly, it's bad enough putting it on a website (so people have to actively seek it out), but to require people to pay to read? Madness. (BTW, I would make the same comment if they had restarted the old "Wil Save" column in eDragon - there's a place for these things, but behind the paywall ain't it.)

(I would expect most female gamers with DDI subs to be pretty serious about the game, if only because of the crap they too often have to go through in the FLGS (and, too often, game groups) - if they've stuck it out this far, they must be dedicated. To experienced gamers I would expect somthing like "Confessions..." or "Wil Save" to be a diversion at best, or a distraction at worst. But that's okay, since WotC doesn't need to go out of their way to capture the experienced gamer, male or female - all they need to do is not actively drive them away. (Oh, and see also some of the commment wrt the D.C. Comics reboot, and especially Starfire, for a very similar situation.))

Yeah, this is a whole topic of its own (that has an entire dedicated forum over at WotC, lol). At the risk of speaking for a group of people of which I am not a member my suspicion is that women have as many different opinions of Shelley's columns as men do. Frankly I've had relatively a lot of women in the groups I run over the years for whatever reasons and I think there's simply no generalizations you can make about them as gamers, nor do I think they have special or different needs from a game as a group. I'd imagine it isn't a bad thing for WotC to highlight the fact that your average heavily outnumbered female gamer has company. You may be right that the column could be better served by being outside the paywall though, given that it is more of an outreach tool vs some kind of resource you're going to turn to in play.

Finally I'd imagine that writing that column is only one tiny part, and likely one of the less important parts, of Shelly's job. I'm sure there are a vast number of other things she does and brings to WotC. It is of course impossible to say if she's a less vital part of the team than any other arbitrary person there. We don't even know who most of the people who work there are, or what they do exactly, or how that group of people functions. Maybe they'd be better off with Shelly doing Mike's job!

 

[DEFCON 1]

Every 6 years, get out the wallets. Stepchild on Christmas Intellectual Property as Dungeons and Dragons x.5, then a whole new edition.

Well, considering the amount of people decrying the fact that WotC currently isn't producing book material at the same rate they did three years ago... I find it hard to believe WotC producing books to buy every six years is really that much of a disappointment.

You do realize that WotC is in a constant Catch-22, right? Half the people want them to produce new material to purchase every month, and half the people want them to cut out the "bloat" of the system. Guess what? You can't have both.

(And I know people will just chime in with "more setting material!", but that's probably the most time and manpower intensive design work there is, if you include all the meetings and organizational structuring necessary to really delve into the new setting and not come up with something that is basically a reprint of 2E and 3E books. Cause god knows the player-based would flip their lids if the new 'Planescape' setting book was 3/4s the exact same fluff material as the old box set.)

 

[blalien]

Ah, I see. You realise that that was almost nothing at all to do with giving the people what they wanted, and a lot more about tying in to the upcoming video game? Likewise, "The Book of Vile Darkness" is a tie in to the film. (And I thought there was a third tie in coming up, but I cannot for the life of me think what it is.)

I was under the impression that the book, the fortune cards, the Facebook game, the novels, and the MMO were planned simultaneously. Which probably means they did a lot more market surveying than if it were just a couple books.

 

[Skyscraper]

Some of these suggestions, especially the ones involving minimal dice rolling,
fixed monster/player math, etc. are completely different games.

And I say that as someone who enjoys playing those kinds of games.

I have a lot of problems with 4th Edition, many of them the same problems everybody does, but most of these suggestions read like "I wish D&D played like my favorite non-D&D system."

Pre-4E D&D editions had fixed monster/player math. I.e. defenses did not scale with level, only attack bonuses. So there was no relative equivalency between monster and player advancement as you levelled up, at least not in the sense that 4E brought it. In 4E, you need to roll, say, 10 and up to hit on an attack and 5/10/15 and up on your d20 (before bonuses) to accomplish an easy/medium/hard DC skill ; why bother with changing the math on your sheet with +1 every two level and bonuses to attributes? The number you need on your d20 never changes anyway, so modifying your PC sheet as you level up with the fixed level-dependent bonuses is useless. Only choices of specialization matter because they change how your PC becomes better relative to the monster math.

 

[delericho]

I was under the impression that the book, the fortune cards, the Facebook game, the novels, and the MMO were planned simultaneously. Which probably means they did a lot more market surveying than if it were just a couple books.

I don't think so. I'm pretty sure the Neverwinter video game came about because the licensee approached WotC/Hasbro about doing so (or told them they were doing it). The book, cards and novels then tied in to that.

I'm certain that the movie was nothing to do with WotC. They're tying the book in to it (rather than the other way around) to at least salvage something from this debacle. The D&D movie deal was one of TSR's most idiotic moves - I'm sure that if WotC could get those rights back they would!

In both cases, I doubt WotC did any significant market research - it's likely that the MMO/movie licensees did some research, but of course that's not quite the same thing.

 

[delericho]

Pre-4E D&D editions had fixed monster/player math. I.e. defenses did not scale with level, only attack bonuses.

?

In 1st/2nd Edition, saving throw target numbers decreases as you went up in level. In 3e, save modifiers likewise went up with level.

In all cases, the only defence that didn't automatically go up with level was AC, and even there the party was assumed to be getting better items as they gained levels, effectively increasing their AC.

What 4e has brought to the table is fixed progressions for all defences, and that progression at the same rate for PCs as with their attack bonuses. But the concept of defences improving with level is not new.