D&D 5E (2014) Where is D&D Headed Next (Wired.com)

[B.T.]

Not to take a steaming threadcrap, but Mearls is paid to say things like this. The playtest will give us a much better impression of where things are and where they are headed.

 

[Scribble]

I would venture to say that it's because if we only talked about verifiable facts, we'd have nothing to talk about. As someone who uses and sometimes generates market research data, I can tell you that it's really difficult to find hard information in many areas, even if you're a professional working in that area. As such we have to make reasonable guesses and inferences, which actually works quite well most of the time as long as you're not too biased by your own preconceived notions.

The problem comes when they state said reasonable guesses as fact.It does nothing but incite further anger and division.

 

[Kzach]

As such we have to make reasonable guesses and inferences, which actually works quite well most of the time as long as you're not too biased by your own preconceived notions.

And therein lies the problem.

 

[tomBitonti]

Re-empowering DMs???

"Mearls: In general, we’re pushing more power into the DM’s hands to run the sort of campaign that he or she prefers. For instance, we just talked today about a rule that lets DMs hand out bonus hit points at first level. The DM gets to determine if adventurers in the campaign are lucky, blessed by the gods, or otherwise destined for greatness. I’d say that in general, the game has the open-ended nature of AD&D, the character flexibility of 3e, and the clarity and ease of DMing of 4e."

In any campaign that I've run in, or run, house rules were always partly DM fiat, and partly with the buy-in of players. No DM that I've run with has ever needed permission to introduce house rules. Ever! They did have a problem of player buy-in, but that was a different sort of issue.

The whole notion of empowering GMs to make house rules by a rule seems, well, just a bit wonky.

Thx!

TomB

 

[Glade Riven]

Sounds like they're trying to push back against rule-lawyers. I've gotten scolded a few times by a person or three here on Enworld because I'm a firm believer that a DM should always cheat to make sure rules don't get in the way of fun.

 

[pemerton]

what if, after analysis, you find that the thing that made them bad mechanics was that they too narrowly defined game, gave the players too much explicit control, and there were far too many of them? That's the case I think the designers believe themselves in.

Then you'd change them, I guess.

I have my own views on what the issues are, but they come from a particular perspective about what RPGing is about, and so of course are controversial, because not everyone has the same view of RPGing.

[MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION], in a recent post on a thread somewhere in this forum, said that one phenomenon he has encountered in his RPGing is that he likes a game which requires players to make meaningful choices, but many players don't want to make meaningful choices, but rather want to be entertained.

I've had what I think are similar experiences - both in the real world, and in message board exchanges - and while it wouldn't have occurred to me to describe them in that way, I think they are the same sort of thing, or closely related. They involve expectations about the GM supplying a certain sort of experience to the players - and related to this are expectations about the sorts of powers a GM will exercise. Also expectations about how the imaginary situations around which the game revolves will be set up (in particular, will there be some sort of plot of overarching goal or thematic purpose that the GM supplies and the players respond to?).

Then there are less global, more particular questions about what sort of experience and orientation the mechanics of a game best support.

Take a game like 3E. It has intricate PC build mechanics. (And in that respect resembles Rolemaster and Burning Wheel, and perhaps to a slightly lesser extent Runequest and Traveller, just to name some games I'm familiar with.) Those mechanics have many moving parts, meaning that the way to mechanically optimise your PC's ability at some particular ingame activity (say, killing things using a sword) is not at all transparent. (This is a difference from the other games I've mentioned, which have pretty transparent skill systems in which you basically can't go wrong by trying to lift your numbers in the relevant skill.) And when you then look at the norms of encounter and adventure design for 3E (and D&D in general), you find that the overwhelmingly common conflict is mortal combat, and the overwhelmingly common consequence of losig a conflict is PC death.

Given those factors, it's no wonder that (i) PC building becomes a big part of the game, and (ii) there is player push back against GMs who try to interfere in PC building. That (ii) will occur is particularly obvious, because the whole premise of the game is that the GM will design encounters in which if you don't win then your PC will die - and the only resource you as a player have to prevent that is to use these baroque mechanics to build a PC who will reliably win - and now the same guy who is out to kill you is trying to interfere with your deployment of the one resource that you have!

Conversely, if you're going to keep the basic parameters of the game the same, yet avoid (ii), you're basically saying that the players punt responsibility for the play of the game, including the survival of their PCs, to the GM - and they're just along for the ride! This might fit with roleplaying as entertainment, an experience delivered by the GM. But it's not going to fit with a group of players who want their roleplaying to involve meaningful choices.

I believe that the rigidity of those mechanics is the big question. When you pile on descriptor after descriptor, you define the play experience. This can be overdone, especially in a game like D&D with all its attendant mechanical baggage. Hence the "thrash metal" quote.

Consider the more narrative rpgs. Many of which have very defined, solid, mechanics that tell you very clearly whether you succeeded or failed. Many of which also have perfect numerical character balance. Several even operate without GMs at all. Very few of them actually define for you precisely "how" you succeed or fail.

The problem is...none of those game use mechanical baggage like HP, AC, Vancian magic, Classes, etc. They all start with the presumption that the mechanics will be simulating a story, so things like Narrative Causality often work and are more important than simulating a "realistic" combat.

I don't think that what you say is true of any of the systems I named - Rolemaster, Runequest, Burning Wheel or HeroWars/Quest - except perhaps the lattermost, which is mechanically very light and much more overtly story-oriented in its action resolution mechanics. The other three games all have far more gritty and "realistic" combat engines than D&D.

But RM, RQ and BW all have mechanics every bit as intricate and baroque as D&D. But they are more transparent in their PC build mechanics (not necessarily simpler, but more obvious), so it's more obvious what is involved in making your PC good at something. But, and I think more importantly, they have both action resolution mechanics and assumptions about encounter and scenario design that mean that the stakes aren't always life or death, and that there is more than one path to a viable PC build. (This is as simple as having options other than combat make clear contributions to PC advancement. But it goes well beyond that.)

Obviously, narrative games aren't taking off in a really big way, so I'm not looking to see a whole mess of narrative stuff injected into 5e.

This is true. And I think it goes back to the sort of experience the game is meant to deliver. But there's a long running counter-current in D&D play that says that punting responsibility for, and control over, the play experience to the GM can be a problem. To put it another way: narrative games (and the earlier hypersimulationist games like RQ and RM) are a controversial and perhaps narrow solution to a much more widely recognised problem.

 

[pemerton]

Sounds like they're trying to push back against rule-lawyers. I've gotten scolded a few times by a person or three here on Enworld because I'm a firm believer that a DM should always cheat to make sure rules don't get in the way of fun.

Consider yourself scolded!

If the rules don't deliver fun without cheating, we need games with better rules!