D&D 5E (2014) What does 5E do well?

[Micah Sweet]

Not have things people would object too??
Ease of use??
Be usable for live stream play??

Lately we've had quite a few things in 5e people have objected to.

 

[DammitVictor]

That's interesting, can you expand on this? Is it because more players will have more interplay with each other, and thus require less content during the session? Likewise, you'd need to do more one-on-one personal engagement with each PC, whereas with 6-7 you can focus on the story arc?

It's partially that, but only partially, and almost its opposite. I'm struggling to explain it in a couple of brief sentences, so bear with me...

My platonic ideal of D&D is an aggressively character-driven sandbox. I don't plan a campaign beyond the "elevator pitch" I offer my players and sometimes the first adventure. What I do is set the tone, come up with a handful of elaborate plot hooks, and then everything that happens in my "campaign" is the ongoing consequences of the players' choices in regard to those initial plot hooks. People they injure or insult nurse grudges and plot revenge, the delicate checks and balances they disrupt realign themselves, power vacuums get filled and power players react to new competition. So having more players isn't a matter of everyone "focusing on the story"... it's a matter of more players providing the "one on one personal engagement" for each other.

It actually ties into my "no backstories" houserule/philosophy: it seems like it contradicts "character-driven" roleplaying, but the idea is that if all of a character's "background substance" fits on an index card, well, all of the other players can memorize six or eight index cards' worth of background substance and engage with it, compared to three or four times three or four pages of background substance that they'll never read.

So with more players:

• Collaborative setting design, which I love for settings like Spelljammer or my own Shroompunk, works so much better with more players.
• More inspiration for plot hooks, and more wholecloth plotlines, that I don't have to come up with myself. Any one PC's "personal storyline" can suddenly become the "main plot" at any time, and nobody complains I'm playing favorites because it was everyone's choice.
• More PC-to-PC interaction and player engagement with eachother's BS means that their "personal storylines" become interconnected organically, multiplying my "one on one engagement" by two or more characters and making it seem like part of the campaign.
• Larger combats in any edition of D&D take more time to resolve, but multiple player interactions during combat keep them from feeling as grindy-- especially because larger parties can both punch well above their weight class, and survive defeats that would wipe a smaller party.
• The obvious common threads between these points are "getting players to do my prep work for me" and "keeping players occupied with each other while I plan my next move". Less obvious, but more critical, it relies on the players keeping each other engaged and actively putting each other in the spotlight.

Basically, my entire playstyle is based on the idea that six players can do the DM's job better than one DM can, but no matter how much I congratulate my players for how clever they were... I still end up getting all the credit.

 

[Parmandur]

Honestly, not in my experience. Fire Emblem's tactics revolved at least in part round keeping synergistic death balls together and in part round mission objectives. 4e's tactics revolve around the use of the current specific environment and round the tension between grouping up for focus fire and spreading out to avoid AoEs.

I would call the Foee Emblem model a superior tactical experience. But it is a wargame, not an RPG.

 

[humble minion]

Fights in 5E should be over by the end of round 3, usually 2.

I keep hearing this, but jeez, it really doesn't reflect my experiences. Maybe my groups just haven't been optimal, but I routinely get very close to (or beyond) the duration end of my 1 minute abilites/spells in combat in my current campaign. It is SKT, so lots of giants and huge numbers of hitpoints to chew through, so maybe that makes a difference. But I can't imagine finishing any of the past half-dozen or so combats we've run within 2-3 rounds. The damage output just isn't there compared to the hp total of the enemies.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I would call the Foee Emblem model a superior tactical experience. But it is a wargame, not an RPG.

On the contrary. Fire Emblem Three Houses, i.e. the Fire Emblem on Switch, is explicitly a tactical [computer] RPG where you play as the character of Byleth and your in character choices determine how the story progresses. If Mass Effect and the Witcher 3 are RPGs then so is Fire Emblem: Three Houses. And if you're defining RPGs to exclude cRPGs entirely then you're heavily outvoted.

 

[Parmandur]

I keep hearing this, but jeez, it really doesn't reflect my experiences. Maybe my groups just haven't been optimal, but I routinely get very close to (or beyond) the duration end of my 1 minute abilites/spells in combat in my current campaign. It is SKT, so lots of giants and huge numbers of hitpoints to chew through, so maybe that makes a difference. But I can't imagine finishing any of the past half-dozen or so combats we've run within 2-3 rounds. The damage output just isn't there compared to the hp total of the enemies.

That suggests that the encounter guidelines are not being followed, or that you guys got into fights that were best avoided by your characters.

 

[Parmandur]

On the contrary. Fire Emblem Three Houses, i.e. the Fire Emblem on Switch, is explicitly a tactical [computer] RPG where you play as the character of Byleth and your in character choices determine how the story progresses. If Mass Effect and the Witcher 3 are RPGs then so is Fire Emblem: Three Houses. And if you're defining RPGs to exclude cRPGs entirely then you're heavily outvoted.

No, by the standards of CRPGs, Three Houses is not an RPG. The gameplay loop involves a series of combat scenarios where the player controls a squad of troops, itsa wargame. There are story and characelements, but it is more Chainmail or Warhammer than D&D.

 

[Neonchameleon]

No, by the standards of CRPGs, Three Houses is not an RPG. The gameplay loop involves a series of combat scenarios where the player controls a squad of troops, itsa wargame. There are story and characelements, but it is more Chainmail or Warhammer than D&D.

No, by your definition Mass Effect is not an RPG. The gameplay loop involves a series of combat scenarios where the player controls a squad of troops. This makes it a wargame? Or an FPS?

For that matter by your definition I don't think that any of the Final Fantasy games are RPGs either. The gameplay loop involves a series of combats where the player controls a small squad of troops.

By the normal definitions Fire Emblem, Mass Effect, and Final Fantasy are all considered RPGs.

 

[TwoSix]

No, by the standards of CRPGs, Three Houses is not an RPG. The gameplay loop involves a series of combat scenarios where the player controls a squad of troops, itsa wargame. There are story and characelements, but it is more Chainmail or Warhammer than D&D.

Honestly, at least half the gameplay loop is finding your favorite character's lost items and having tea parties so they can become your waifu at the end of the game.

I would disagree with the notion that having a grid and turn-based combat system suddenly makes a RPG into a not-RPG. You're really only controlling 10-11 characters at a time, not armies. (Although I suppose the gambit system pushes against that a bit.)

 

[Parmandur]

Honestly, at least half the gameplay loop is finding your favorite character's lost items and having tea parties so they can become your waifu at the end of the game.

I would disagree with the notion that having a grid and turn-based combat system suddenly makes a RPG into a not-RPG. You're really only controlling 10-11 characters at a time, not armies. (Although I suppose the gambit system pushes against that a bit.)

No, it's the lack of an exploration gameplay loop (I'm not counting the entirely optional school interludes, much ad I love them, they are entirely skiable to the core game). Tactical grid combat obviously doesn't mean a game isn't an RPG, but when the grid combats are the game, with everything else being an elaboration of building the army for the preset wargame scenarios...that's a wargame. This is way more clear with earlier entries in the series, that usually lacked many of the roleplaying side game elements in Three Houses.

It's sort of the inverse of the Legend of Zelda: there are obvious RPG influences on Zekda, and the core gsmeplay loops are Delving. exploration and Dungeon delving. But there are no or very limited character development mechan, and little in the way of tactics.