D&D (2024) What are the top 3 things, above all else, you want from One DnD?

  1. Something that fixes the balance issues with feats (which they basically did) and spells (which I doubt they will adequately touch)
  2. Something easier to prep for or easier to run ad hoc
  3. Something exciting
That's in order from most likely to least likely.

The one thing that the playtest has been so far is really boring, so I don't have a lot of hope for #3.
Honest question... do you really find no. 2 an issue in 5e? I never have but I have seen that some do and was wondering why.
 

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Honest question... do you really find no. 2 an issue in 5e? I never have but I have seen that some do and was wondering why.
I do.

Compared to virtually any other modern TTRPG, 5E is massively more demanding prep-wise and significantly more annoying to come up with stuff for on the fly. It's just not at all well-designed for it. It's not even as well-designed as 4E for it. There's a whole pile of stuff you're supposed to do for 5E, and the game benefits heavily from actually doing it (encounter design, detailed map design, traps and hazards, treasure and loot, NPC design, etc. etc.) none of which 5E handles with much grace.

If you're comparing to 3E or PF1, yeah it's not as bad as that in many cases, but that's kind of a crazy bar, imho. There are only a handful of modern RPGs which even arguably need/benefit more from prep than 5E.

So I think it's a huge issue myself. Esp. given 4E was significantly less of a pain here.

  1. Something that fixes the balance issues with feats (which they basically did) and spells (which I doubt they will adequately touch)
  2. Something easier to prep for or easier to run ad hoc
  3. Something exciting
That's in order from most likely to least likely.

The one thing that the playtest has been so far is really boring, so I don't have a lot of hope for #3.
Pretty much exactly what I'm looking for. And yeah, the playtest has indeed been profoundly boring so far, which is probably good for compatibility hopes, but not so great from the perspective of making D&D a better or more interesting game.
 

More Gygaxain prose because it will ignite the imagination of DMs.

Design the game so that players can't win by using the rules. That will encourage lateral thinking and thinking within the fiction.

Set up an apprentice program so new DMs can learn from more experienced DMs instead of having to learn from a book.
 

I do.

Compared to virtually any other modern TTRPG, 5E is massively more demanding prep-wise and significantly more annoying to come up with stuff for on the fly. It's just not at all well-designed for it. It's not even as well-designed as 4E for it. There's a whole pile of stuff you're supposed to do for 5E, and the game benefits heavily from actually doing it (encounter design, detailed map design, traps and hazards, treasure and loot, NPC design, etc. etc.) none of which 5E handles with much grace.

If you're comparing to 3E or PF1, yeah it's not as bad as that in many cases, but that's kind of a crazy bar, imho. There are only a handful of modern RPGs which even arguably need/benefit more from prep than 5E.

So I think it's a huge issue myself. Esp. given 4E was significantly less of a pain here.


Pretty much exactly what I'm looking for. And yeah, the playtest has indeed been profoundly boring so far, which is probably good for compatibility hopes, but not so great from the perspective of making D&D a better or more interesting game.
You see I can off the cuff it as easily as 0e to 2e so I found it an interesting thing. I also cuffed 3.x and didn’t have a lot of issues but it wasn’t as easy as earlier editions for sure but I’ve found 5e just as easy as earlier editions. Thank you for sharing with me. I use DCC now which is much, much smoother at it though and haven’t run 5e in 2 years so I might have missed something?
 

More Gygaxain prose because it will ignite the imagination of DMs.
mostly by being sufficiently unclear to require imagination to make it work in any fashion ;)

No, make everything as clear as possible, which is basically the opposite of Gygaxian. It’s not even RAW, make it clearer than that.

Design the game so that players can't win by using the rules. That will encourage lateral thinking and thinking within the fiction.
I like the sentiment, but clearly there are limitations to this. How do you e.g. envision combat to be resolved?
 

You see I can off the cuff it as easily as 0e to 2e so I found it an interesting thing. I also cuffed 3.x and didn’t have a lot of issues but it wasn’t as easy as earlier editions for sure but I’ve found 5e just as easy as earlier editions. Thank you for sharing with me. I use DCC now which is much, much smoother at it though and haven’t run 5e in 2 years so I might have missed something?
For me I think the main thing is level of satisfaction with the results when running off-the-cuff. Like, it's doable with any edition (most challenging with 3E but not impossible or even really hard-hard), but when I look at the output, and whether the results are fun and engaging, I found 3E and 5E to be the weakest when running that way, and 2E and 4E to be the strongest of "AD&D"-lineage games, but like, wildly less strong than games like Dungeon World or Spire or even World of Darkness games or Exalted.

And prep-wise, I think there's a lot you can do to support a DM, and I don't think 5E did really any of it, apart from having an encounter design system which was at least very basically functional (a huge upgrade from 3.XE where the encounter design/rating system was actively misleading!). I think you could make 1D&D a lot stronger here without "messing" with anything, too - like you could have a ton of guidance and tables and suggested this and that, but make it clear it's all optional. Honestly I'm hopeful that a profoundly redesigned DMG might well cause WotC to think this stuff through more and waffle and meander less.
 




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