Though meant humorously, it's a fair stab at "Niche Protection is the Essence of D&D."
And, Niche Protection sure seems like a prominent feature of D&D, if one that eroded over time.
I'd say that's being charitable to both editions. 4e didn't remove /all/ the perennial problems with D&D, and it had a few gaping holes, at times. 5e, obviously, intentionally restored many perennial issues, with great success - and /with/ 'nostalgia' (or some more acceptable term for appreciating the game as it was back in the day) to tip the scales, is a very enjoyable game for doing so.
I despise nostalgia. I genuinely view it as a poison in our social nature; something we should be taught to sublimate and hold in low regard.
5e is fun as hell without any nostalgia.
D&D stacks the deck against itself when it comes to balance. If you wanted to rate balance in TTRPGs on a scale of 1 to 10, you'd have use decimal points to differentiate most editions of D&D.
Couldn’t possibly disagree more. Or, well, I guess I only care at all about roughly 3 editions, and even then only really 4e and 5e, but still. 4e and 5e are very close to each other, but no other edition comes close on the scale.
What, really, would be a barrier to RP? I mean, what in the actual mechanics or content of an RPG, could do that? (For that matter, what really /supports/ RP? I'd say being able to build a character as close to your vision of it as possible, and be able to play it in a way that conveys that vision, while remaining viable in the 'game' aspect and also not rendering anyone esle's vision non-viable in that same sense. That might be part of it.)
Like MMORPGs? (Never played one, but do they really not involve RPGs? Have they been sued for false advertising yet?)
...I guess... a little different. Still curious what those elements, are, exactly.
Often, when people talk about an RP element in an RPG (ignoring the whole thing /is/ an RPG), they're talking about some kind of carrot or stick to reward good RP or punish bad, typically with the DM judging which is which. Inspiration, in 5e, is an example of an RP carrot.
Personally, I don't actually find those helpful.
eh, I don’t care much about this particular argument. IMO having lore in the entry for every single option in the game promotes role playing, for a start.
As does making out of combat challenges have more mechanical weight, and keeping the binary result paradigm to simple checks.
Skill challenges alone helped turn “Garthok moves x [movement] and then attacks using [ability or weapon]/ I want to roll to intimidate the Duke” players into players who inhabit their characters and spend the entire session paying attention and thinking in the “voice” of their character about what’s going on.
The powers themselves also [try to] encourage thinking about how your character moves, fights, defends, and views the battlefield. IOW, they encourage and support roleplaying in combat.
The thing is, no mechanics can
succeed at generating roleplaying, for every player. But even if we could somehow prove that 4e mostly failed at this, and that’s why it divided people (even tho they were divided before the PHB even came out), it wouldn’t mean that 4e doesn’t support RP. It would just mean they failed to engage most people with the game to the degree they needed to.
Off the top of my head and by no means complete and certainly not in any priority order:
- a laser-like focus on combat pillar
- the ebb and flow of combat -- the narrative of the PCs getting pushed down, rallying and coming back for a win is pretty deeply baked in
- the additional restrictions wrt operational movement, planning, and investigation, both magical and slightly less magical
- the commonality of magicks previously kept to higher level use (Misty Step for one)
- square circles and short hypotenuses
- abilities exclusively existing as combat assets
- reduced reliance on external resources
- reduced value of magic items and thus reason to explore
So, this is what I mean about presentation.
What laser-like focus on combat? Are skills, utility powers, rituals, magic items with no direct combat use (or movement stuff that clearly has use just as much in as out of combat), feats that do social or exploration/travel stuff, the mountains and mountains of lore in every single book and mag issue, skill challenges, etc all somehow focused on combat in a way that I missed?
What abilities are only usable in combat? Damaging powers? Even if we ignore that you can absolutely use those out of combat, how is that different from other editions?
Again, I’m not saying you’re wrong to have seen these things this way, I’m just saying that this perception is the result of presentation, not the actual nature of the things in question.
Thus my theory that the essence of DnD for many/most is at least half presentation and socially shared acceptance. Another significant factor is magic feeling as different as possible from the mundane. Make magic a set of skills with basic uses laid out that you have to “stunt” with just like physical skills and attacks in order to do wild stuff, and it probably won’t feel like dnd to most folks.