D&D 5E What Makes 5E "5E"?

[Garthanos]

I dont think Hasbro/WotC/D&D has a choice.

For example, in response to the ap-OGL-ypse, many players who were dissatisfied with that back then said fine, we will design our own core rules. Creating core rules is an enormous amount of work to do well. It is valuable when Hasbro/WotC/D&D does it for us. They really are the "stewards" of our collective tradition. But when an AI program can do it for us, every player will have exactly the version of D&D that one wants.

Consider the Level Up version of 5e. It is an example of tweaking the core rules of 5e according to taste. Soon AI will make this diversification available for each individual at a single table.

AI is if nothing else incredibly fast at that kind of thing. You can even define design goals, critique existing things in terms of those goals and give it something new and get an analysis in terms of your established patterns very much about following your lead. You can use others analysis of problems as part of the goal and so on.

 

[SteveC]

I think this is an interesting question. If I'm just talking about 5E as a system, there are a lot of things that every edition has. But if we're just talking 5E versus other editions I would say...

Bounded accuracy and proficiency bonus.
Advantage and disadvantage
Concentration

Other than that, "Ze game remains the same!" For me at least. Now I'm sure there are some other changes that I'm forgetting, but I just played a session and that's what came to mind.

 

[Reynard]

And I think it's a great onboarding to traditional D&D. It's the new Basic set.

Absolutely. A lot of folks on the Shadowdark FB page use it to introduce kids before they bring them to full 5E. I can see that working.

"Okay, it works mostly like before except you get extra abilities" and so on.

 

[Shardstone]

Personally speaking, I am ok with Hasbro/WotC. Moving the core rules to CC license was an ethical solution. Indies now have that to play with. In the mean time, WotC is still doing the heavy lifting. I love the way 2024 is turning out.

Because Hasbro/WotC is emphasizing "IP" and "branding", these D&D traditions that WotC owns will continue to generate financial revenue regardless of what tweaks players make to the core rules. Meanwhile, DMs Guild will probably still be around as a creative source for D&D gaming.

I truly hope your AI idea never comes to pass.

 

[payn]

I truly hope your AI idea never comes to pass.

I think its a good deal off. We are just now getting a VTT. This hobby industry moves at a snail pace often at community demand.

 

[Shardstone]

I think its a good deal off. We are just now getting a VTT. This hobby industry moves at a snail pace often at community demand.

Having an AI that creates your own custom rulesets means that game designers essentially no longer exist. Yeah, I'd hate that. I'd despise it, actually, and I truly hope it never comes to pass.

 

[Reynard]

Personally speaking, I am ok with Hasbro/WotC. Moving the core rules to CC license was an ethical solution. Indies now have that to play with. In the mean time, WotC is still doing the heavy lifting. I love the way 2024 is turning out.

Because Hasbro/WotC is emphasizing "IP" and "branding", these D&D traditions that WotC owns will continue to generate financial revenue regardless of what tweaks players make to the core rules. Meanwhile, DMs Guild will probably still be around as a creative source for D&D gaming.

If one could get an AI to write an RPG for them, why would they have it write D&D for them?

 

[Malmuria]

It's not mechanics, it's play culture, heavily influenced by Critical Roll, Dimension 20, and general social media zeitgeist

OC [original character] basically agrees with trad that the goal of the game is to tell a story, but it deprioritises the authority of the DM as the creator of that story and elevates the players' roles as contributors and creators. The DM becomes a curator and facilitator who primarily works with material derived from other sources - publishers and players, in practice. OC culture has a different sense of what a "story" is, one that focuses on player aspirations and interests and their realisation as the best way to produce "fun" for the players.

This focus on realising player aspirations is what allows both the Wizard 20 casting Meteor Swarm to annihilate a foe and the people who are using D&D 5e to play out running their own restaurant to be part of a shared culture of play. This culture is sometimes pejoratively called the "Tyranny of Fun" (a term coined in the OSR) because of its focus on relatively rapid gratification compared to other styles.
...
These norms were reinforced and spread by "character optimization" forums that relied solely on text and rhetorically deprecated "DM fiat", and by official character builders in D&D and other games. Modules, which importantly limit the DM's discretion to provide a consistent set of conditions for players, are another important textual support for this style. OC styles are also particularly popular with online streaming games like Critical Role since when done well they produce games that are fairly easy to watch as television shows. The characters in the stream become aspirational figures that a fanbase develops parasocial relationships with and cheers on as they realise their "arcs".

 

[Malmuria]

Fwiw, I don't thinking "rulings over rules," a phrase taken from the OSR, actually applies to most 5e gameplay as it has evolved over the years. A lot of 5e gameplay is all about parsing the rules to resolve a situation, particularly in combat, but also out of combat when it comes to task resolution. Consider Matt Finch's contrasting examples of play from the "Rulings, not rules" section of his Old School Primer:

The Pit Trap (Modern Style)
GM: “A ten-foot wide corridor leads north into the darkness.”
John the Rogue: “I check for traps.”
GM: “What’s your target number for checking?”
John the Rogue: “15.”
GM: Decides that the pit trap in front of the party is “standard,” so all John has to do is
roll a 15 or better. “Roll a d20.”
John the Rogue: “16.”
GM: “Probing ahead of you, you find a thin crack in the floor – it looks like there’s a pit
trap.”
John the Rogue: “Can I disarm it?”
GM: “What’s your target number for that?”
John the Rogue: “12. I rolled a 14.”
GM: “Okay, moving carefully, you’re able to jam the mechanism so the trap won’t
open.”
John the Rogue: “We walk across. I go first.”

The Pit Trap (Old Style)
GM: “A ten-foot wide corridor leads north into the darkness.”
John the Roguish: “We move forward, poking the floor ahead with our ten foot pole.”
GM: Is about to say that the pole pushes open a pit trap, when he remembers something.
“Wait, you don’t have the ten foot pole any more. You fed it to the stone idol.” [if the
party still had the pole, John would have detected the trap automatically]
John the Roguish: “I didn’t feed it to the idol, the idol ate it when I poked its head.”
GM: “That doesn’t mean you have the pole back. Do you go into the corridor?”
John the Roguish: “No. I’m suspicious. Can I see any cracks in the floor, maybe shaped
in a square?”
GM: Mulls this over, because there’s a pit trap right where John is looking. But it’s dark,
so “No, there are about a million cracks in the floor. You wouldn’t see a pit trap that
easily, anyway.” [A different referee might absolutely decide that John sees the trap,
since he’s looking in the right place for the right thing].
John the Roguish: “Okay. I take out my waterskin from my backpack. And I’m going to
pour some water onto the floor. Does it trickle through the floor anywhere, or reveal
some kind of pattern?”
GM: “Yeah, the water seems to be puddling a little bit around a square shape in the floor
where the square is a little higher than the rest of the floor.”
John the Roguish: “Like there’s a covered pit trap?”
GM: “Could be.”
John the Roguish: “Can I disarm it?”
GM: “How?”
John the Roguish: “I don’t know, maybe make a die roll to jam the mechanism?”
GM: “You can’t see a mechanism. You step on it, there’s a hinge, you fall. What are
you going to jam?”
John the Roguish: “I don’t know. Okay, let’s just walk around it.”
GM: “You walk around it, then. There’s about a two-foot clearance on each side.”

 

[mamba]

when an AI program can do it for us, every player will have exactly the version of D&D that one wants.

I very much doubt the AI will get there any time soon, or our ability to express ourselves that precisely