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Message: <blockquote data-quote="catastrophic" data-source="post: 5634293" data-attributes="member: 81381">One of the things i'd noe about a lot of what people are saying is that there are good, later-generation design ideas that can deal with them in various prducts to date.  This is why a lot of the retrograde talk about 5e frustrates me, because I feel like the best way to deal with these issues is by moving further forward, not stepping further back. 5e needs to continue down the path 4e started- a move towards modern design philsophy backed up by proven mechanics from other sources. One example of this. A legit 5e needs is a broad framework for dealing with victory conditions, resources, stakes, and outcomes, all in a relatively compatible way. For instance, there's the idea of setting stakes- regardless of the situation, having the players be able to decide how important or risky a scene is, to a degree. I could easily see this as a good trade-off between gm power and player power, without making the game completly shared narritive. Players could raise the stakes of a scene or battle, doing things like putting their pcs at risk of longer lasting wounds (or even death) in echange for a bonus in combat, or better outcomes from combat.  This could apply to noncombat scene too, and allow players to opt into such scenes better. Imagine a situation where the player of the party rogue deliberatly says something infuriating to a city guard, kicking off and entertaining chase- but in exchange for offering the complication, the rogue gets an extra Hero Point to use later.  Another option would be a sandbox game where it's accepted that sometimes the PCS wil face monsters that are more powerful than they are- but in return, from such battles they earn Hero Points or Prestige Points that they can spend on various plot and in-game effects.  The PCS accept higher risk from a scene, in return for a reward token to spend later in various ways. You could have a universal value, like a Hero Point, and then have optional rules for subdividing it into more specific resources like Wound Points, Resource Points, and Prestige Points. Mechanically, they would be comparable and act the same way, but it would be down to the campaign 'settings' as to wether various subtypes interacted or crossed over.  So in one campaign, the pcs could use Hero Points, and say, beating a big scary monster just makes you more heroic and helps with all sorts of things, in an out of combat. You gain Hero Points, which would be useable like healing surges, and action points, but also as a resource to spend on land, reputation, and other outcomes. In another campaign, the GM could rule that big scary monsters in addition to normal damage would cost you Wound Points (a version of healing surges), while defeating it would net you Prestige Points which could help you raise an army, gain land, or become king, but won't do anything for the big bite mark on your upper body (Wound Points could only be healed through time and powerful magic).  Ideas like this are far from new, or unproven. This could be teamed with a mechanic that would, automatically, add victory conditions to all combats, in addition to the combat slog.  This is not really far fetched. It would be really easy for the DMG to codify the fact that in every combat scene, in addition to 'killing all the monsters', there would be say, three victory conditions- two minor, and one major. These conditions might bring combat to a close faster, or offer additional outcomes from combat, or some combination of the two. A good 5e DMG could have a pretty big list of conditions like this for DMs to crib from.  This would of course work better if there was a general victory/stakes system to play off it with, but the point is, these are not razy new ideas. Plenty of rpgs have been doing stuff like this for ages.</blockquote>

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