D&D 5E With Respect to the Door and Expectations....The REAL Reason 5e Can't Unite the Base

[innerdude]

Is because as this thread shows, though we've been loathe to admit it as a "gamer" community, we've never really been united in the first place.

I've spent some time lurking recently at RPG.net, and if that community's any indication, D&D as a whole is one of the least-well-regarded systems out there (at least from a mechanical standpoint).

I've also been thinking about the so called "edition wars," and why the 4e/3.x schism seemed to be particularly bad (though apparently the 1e/2e vs. 3e split was fairly divisive as well).

And I think maybe it's because the 4e / 3.x split finally put out in front of us, in the full daylight of blogs, forums, and chat rooms, something that we had maybe suspected but weren't really willing to admit to ourselves---That when it comes to D&D, rather than being "united" in our game of choice, we'd actually been demanding radically different things from E. Gary Gygax's magnum opus all along. The fact that it remained somewhat of the community's "lingua franca" for nearly 25 years is a testament to Gygax's original vision.

One reason the 4e / 3e split was so divisive, I think, is because when the 4e fans threw up their hands in joy and said, "FINALLY!!! CLASS BALANCE!!", all of us 3e fans went "Huh? Really? THIS is the game you wished you'd been playing for the past 25 years? Hmm. Didn't see that one coming." The concept that entire groups of players would so wholeheartedly embrace 4e's conventions seemed almost foreign to the 3.x-ers.....and the 4e-ers couldn't for the life of them figure out why the 3.x-ers couldn't see that the mechanical improvements were producing a "superior" style of game.

As a community we were forced to look across the table, across the room at our FLGS, and realize that what we assumed was a "shared D&D nationality" was more akin to groups of isolated city-states battling it out for territorial control. (I realize some of the more long-standing gamers probably came to that recognition long before 2008.)

D&D Next will not be a "commercial" failure by any stretch. It will certainly be as profitable as 4e. But I have a hard time seeing it really uniting the fanbase into this wonderful "Stepford Dungeon" community. There's too much competition--strong competition--from outside vendors now. We've all tasted what it's like to find a system tailored to us---and not the other way around.

Unless D&D Next can REALLY be as "modular" as they claim, it's really going to be nothing more than "another way to pretend to be an elf, kill orcs, and take their stuff." Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm just not drinking the "TEAM UNITY!" kool-aid at the moment.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I think it's fair to say that someone playing 4e (or 1e, for that matter) is probably doing something virtually unrecognizable to me as an rpg (which is not a statement on the merits of that activity). They're going the right direction with the concept of customizable rules and modularity, but they're a long way from achieving a game that works for all these different people and different mentalities.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

It was a thought creeping up on me as 3E launched that the divisions ran deep. Those that thought 2E settings were the cat's meow didn't like all kinds of stuff that I liked in 3E. As the started talking about Next, all doubt was removed. I even said as much in the other thread you referenced.

 

[Umbran]

I've spent some time lurking recently at RPG.net, and if that community's any indication...

It isn't.

I know some folks will argue with me. But really, the folks who hang out on message boards and post are not your typical gamer. We are a small percentage of the gaming community as a whole. Most gamers play their games, but don't spend hours on the internet nitpicking them to heck and back like we do. That indicates that we are different - not representative of the whole. In statistics, the term is, "self-selected".

Now, I agree with your original posit - that we haven't been united for a very long time. But that's only in a sense. I think we've almost never been entirely united in playstyle. Each group picked up the original books, and did their own thing with them, with some apprenticeship-style handing down of tendencies.

But, way back then, we managed to do those different styles with basically one core set of rules, that we each mangled to fit our needs. Eventually, different games of well-considered rules came up to fit our needs better than we could do ourselves, and then we became fractured not just in style, but in market.

Well, with "rules modules", it seems to me that WotC plans to hand us well-considered ways to mangle our games to fit our needs, thus giving us a route to the market unity we used to have, while not forcing a style unity on us.

As I've said with this at other times - this is a tall order. It requires they be extraordinarily clever. Possibly more clever than any game designers before them. I am not sure they can pull it off. But, if they do pull it off, I think it will be quite impressive.

 

[Umbran]

I think it's fair to say that someone playing 4e (or 1e, for that matter) is probably doing something virtually unrecognizable to me as an rpg (which is not a statement on the merits of that activity).

Really, though? Unrecognizable? Honestly?

They're still playing at being frakkin' elf. That elf's powers are structured differently, but it's still a darned elf. You know, pointy ears, snooty attitude, waves around a longsword, spells, or arrows, thinks dwarves smell funnily of mushrooms? Yeah, and elf. And he's still pretending to be it, sticking that sword or arrow into a troll...

I'm sorry - that's not "unrecognizable" unless you put on horse blinders on what you consider "an rpg". If you're going to be narrow, there is nothing any game designer will ever be able to do for you, except by accident.

Do what you like in your game, but I honestly think we'd be better off if people freed their minds a little bit.

 

[Fifth Element]

They're still playing at being frakkin' elf. That elf's powers are structured differently, but it's still a darned elf.

And the powers may be structured differently in how they're acquired, but when you use them you roll a d20 to hit and then some other dice for damage. And you make skill checks, and tell the DM what you're doing as you explore the dungeon, and argue with fellow players about what the best course of action is. Seriously, large swathes of playtime are indistinguishable from earlier editions.

Edit: Didn't notice that 1E was included in the quote as well. Yikes.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Really, though? Unrecognizable? Honestly?

I was specifically thinking of a time when I walked into a comic book store and saw some people playing what I assumed was Warhammer or something, but eventually realized that it was D&D. The idea of battlemaps and miniatures is a familar asthetic to me, as I used to have a friend or two who were into wargaming, but the idea of using such things for an rpg is completely foreign to me personally. So if you are part of the crowd that does use miniatures in D&D, you're playing something that I literally wouldn't immediately recognize as such.

Speaking more broadly, I run fantasy games, but I never really got into an "old-school" or "dungeon-crawl" mode, so a lot of content that people use is foreign to me as well. Even by a very broad definition, I've probably run only a single-digit number of "dungeons" in over ten years of DMing. I remember reading the one published adventure I ever got (as a gift), which was Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, and I could not imagine what I would do with it. It didn't look like D&D at all. So if you're running "classic" D&D, that probably doesn't ring any bells to me either.

And yet, the games I run are full of tropes and D&D-isms; I definitely run D&D. So yes, there are some pretty substantive differences between different people's games, in my opinion.

Do what you like in your game, but I honestly think we'd be better off if people freed their minds a little bit.

I surely will. My mind's pretty open already though.

 

[Someone]

Really, though? Unrecognizable? Honestly?

Well, they're different enough.

[sblock=d&d of yore]
Fighter player: I block the troll's way to give the wizard time to cast his spell!
DM: You can't. The troll is much bigger and stronger than you.
Fighter player: What? Those kobolds blocked me last session and they're frigging rats!
DM: That's different because uhhhh... different body mass rations and also they had spears. Anyway the troll doesn't care about being hurt since it regenerates so you can't block him.
Fighter player: So if the troll doesn't care it means I'm slashing as he goes past me?
DM: That "attacking out your turn" notion is preposterous
[/sblock]

[sblock=more recent d&d]
Wizard player: I cast Charm monster at the troll!
DM: let's see... Will is his poor saving throw, which means he must roll a... 23!? Curse you, wacky saves and arbitrary stats!
Cleric player: Cool, it's been a while since we didn't have a fighter.
[/sblock]

[sblock=current version]
Fighter player: I move, uh, 1,2,3,4 squares circling around the ogre to avoid OAs then activate Rain of Steel and cast I mean use Tide of Iron on the ogre with +2 from combat advantage from flanking which pushes him 1 square into that difficult terrain and slows him from hindering shield feat and I can shift forward 1 square and I gain +1 to AC and Ref from the boots, and the ogre is Marked and takes 1d8+9 damage from the tide of iron and 1d8+2 from Rain of Steel in it's turn.
DM: It's not an ogre, it's a troll. I didn't have a troll mini.
Fighter player: Who cares?
[/sblock]

 

[Fifth Element]

And yet, the games I run are full of tropes and D&D-isms; I definitely run D&D. So yes, there are some pretty substantive differences between different people's games, in my opinion.

Sure, but you said they weren't recognizable as an RPG. That's someone quite different.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Is because as this thread shows, though we've been loathe to admit it as a "gamer" community, we've never really been united in the first place.

I've spent some time lurking recently at RPG.net, and if that community's any indication, D&D as a whole is one of the least-well-regarded systems out there (at least from a mechanical standpoint).

...

While I'll agree with most of your post, I'll quibble with this bit. I actively participate in rpg.net (under the same name, even) , and the opinions and trends I see there are not indicative of any other community I know, online or otherwise. It is a great place to discuss non-D&D games though.

I'll agree that reaching 5E's goals are going to be a challenge. I liked 3E but I missed some things from previous editions quite a lot (initiative, spell interrupts) 1E made everyone more or less happy, and we just customized the game to our play style. As you said, it seems to me that 3E and 4E chose to customize to the preferences of different groups, in each case sacrificing some things to meet those ends. Making a game that the 3E preferred and 4E preferred groups both prefer to their current games is going to be really difficult.

 

[Mallus]

Making a game that the 3E preferred and 4E preferred groups both prefer to their current games is going to be really difficult.

Not for the D&D players who prefer DMs, campaigns, and people over systems!

ie, not all system preferences are strong ones.

 

[Derren]

Not for the D&D players who prefer DMs, campaigns, and people over systems!

ie, not all system preferences are strong ones.

And why should those people play D&D in the first place?

 

[ExploderWizard]

And why should those people play D&D in the first place?

Perhaps because that is what a friend would like to run and they want to play in their friend's game?

I don't have a strong preference for system as a player. Instead I have a strong preference for gaming with people that don't suck. When I run a game, then I have stronger preferences since there is more investment involved of my time.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I've spent some time lurking recently at RPG.net, and if that community's any indication, D&D as a whole is one of the least-well-regarded systems out there (at least from a mechanical standpoint).

I'll second this. Classic D&D in a non-D&D RPG group is about as well regarded as Windows at a Linux users convention. And for much the same mix of technical reasons and snobbery. (That said, it's still from what I can tell better regarded than e.g. Rifts).

4e on the other hand goes down pretty well with players who play non-D&D RPGs as a whole (see either RPG.net or Something Awful's Traditional Games board). This is because as far as I know, no other game does what 4e does as well as 4e, and of the things 4e doesn't do there is almost always a system that will do the game better than classic versions of D&D.

For example 4e doesn't really do absolute zero to hero. But with all due respect 3e and AD&D aren't much good at it either. AD&D wizards get to cast spells that won't blow up in their face and 2e fighters? Ouch. If I want to run a zero to hero campaign, I'm going to break out Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (either 3e or at least using the 2e magic rules - although even the 1e spell point system does better than D&D). It covers the "Starting at zero in a fantasy world that hates you" much better than a system with Gygaxo-Vancian Magic.

Classic (pre-4e but especially 2e and 3e) D&D has two real advantages - the first is that people already know it, and the second is that precisely because it doesn't do anything especially well it can do well enough in a wide range of campaigns.

And I think maybe it's because the 4e / 3.x split finally put out in front of us, in the full daylight of blogs, forums, and chat rooms, something that we had maybe suspected but weren't really willing to admit to ourselves---That when it comes to D&D, rather than being "united" in our game of choice, we'd actually been demanding radically different things from E. Gary Gygax's magnum opus all along. The fact that it remained somewhat of the community's "lingua franca" for nearly 25 years is a testament to Gygax's original vision.

And to the embedded user advantage. Classic D&D is good enough for a lot of things - so once you'd passed the hurdle of learning a complex rulesset (whether or not you regard this as an example of the Sunk Costs fallacy) you could use it for other things.

One reason the 4e / 3e split was so divisive, I think, is because when the 4e fans threw up their hands in joy and said, "FINALLY!!! CLASS BALANCE!!", all of us 3e fans went "Huh? Really? THIS is the game you wished you'd been playing for the past 25 years? Hmm. Didn't see that one coming." The concept that entire groups of players would so wholeheartedly embrace 4e's conventions seemed almost foreign to the 3.x-ers.....and the 4e-ers couldn't for the life of them figure out why the 3.x-ers couldn't see that the mechanical improvements were producing a "superior" style of game.

As a community we were forced to look across the table, across the room at our FLGS, and realize that what we assumed was a "shared D&D nationality" was more akin to groups of isolated city-states battling it out for territorial control. (I realize some of the more long-standing gamers probably came to that recognition long before 2008.)

The amusing thing here is that Gygax himself considered class balance to be very important. And introduced a huge range of rules into D&D that are there to facilitate class balance. See, for example, the differing XP tables. Or the giving the fighters a free keep at level 9 or so when the wizards get a tower. Or even weapons doing bonus damage against large monsters and certain powerful spells having a serious danger of backlash. All things put into the game to assist with class balance. (And, not unsurprisingly, the bulk of the rules that the designers of 3.0 were kind enough to remove from the game). 1e did not, of course, go far enough so they added weapon spec to the fighter, and added Cavaliers and (ack) Barbarians.

Because Gygax considered it important, and generally did a good job complete with effectively a massive amount of playtesting, fixing things when they broke, people didn't have to worry about it so much. Gygax didn't allow Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit to happen - so the wildshaped bear with a bear companion summoning a swarm of bears to beat up the fighter was an issue that didn't arise.

As for 4e being what we'd wanted all along, perhaps, and perhaps not. It would certainly have been possible to produce a game that satisfied the D&D players who love 4e without changing quite so much - but it would still probably have made wizard and CoDzilla lovers complain because the fighters were now about on a par with them and magic took substantial nerfs. 4e went further and harder in the direction it chose than it needed to. But the GenCon audience cheered the removal of Vancian Magic with good reason. The 3.X primary spellcasters needed to be torn apart to satisfy the group that likes 4e. (For example the 3.X druid in 4e is literally three separate classes; the summoner, the nature loving healer with an animal companion, and the shapeshifter - and all are viable as classes, and the Cleric has been split into Cleric and Invoker.)

D&D Next will not be a "commercial" failure by any stretch. It will certainly be as profitable as 4e.

I question this assertion. Mostly because I'm not sure who D&D Next players are going to be. I don't see them being Pathfinder players - WotC is not as good as Paizo at what Paizo does. I don't see them being 4e players - WotC is busy pissing all of us off. And I don't see them being people who stuck with AD&D - no published system is going to be a match for more than a dozen years of experience. I further don't really see D&D Next as a true OSR game for various reasons. And it certainly isn't an "appeal to the Indy crowd" game or a "let's change the language used from that of tabletop wargames to that of WoW because that's what people these days know" game.

I just don't see the market segment they are aiming at.

While I'll agree with most of your post, I'll quibble with this bit. I actively participate in rpg.net (under the same name, even) , and the opinions and trends I see there are not indicative of any other community I know, online or otherwise. It is a great place to discuss non-D&D games though.

I see rpg.net as being not very different from other places I'd expect to discuss non-D&D games. And the opinions on 4e and previous editions of D&D as being not that different from Something Awful's TG forum.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Sure, but you said they weren't recognizable as an RPG. That's someone quite different.

Given that I (as do many others) consider D&D to be the archetypical PnP rpg, I was not focusing on that distinction, which in this context I would consider to be a small one. The point remains that many people's games, which they would consider to be D&D (and necessarily an rpg) are quite foreign to me, which is intended to exemplify the difference in what is commonly referred to as playstyle but which really goes deeper than that.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Is because as this thread shows, though we've been loathe to admit it as a "gamer" community, we've never really been united in the first place.

I would disagree, though for partly technical reasons. Once upon a time we WERE united, even though we played a couple different flavors of D&D - out of the original D&D we were given Holmes, Moldvay, and AD&D in addition to it. We played our chosen game, enjoyed ourselves, and seldom if ever tore into other players for the version they were playing or how they were playing it. We all got along.

I think there were two factors that changed that. One, is that those other versions ceased publication for one reason and another, and then we were given a SINGLE, actively published version of D&D to play.

Second is that we were finally given a technology that allowed us to freely and "instantly" communicate with each other rather than by mail or meeting at conventions - the internet.

It is those two developments either singly/in combination that really started the formal split among the fanbase, but the catalyst that sped up the reaction was when the publishers of that lone version of D&D began to tell us that ONLY the current version was the correct choice for anybody, and in fact the previous version was specifically the stupid choice because, well, it was CLEARLY such a bad choice and the new version with the go-faster stripes was so obviously superior.

I think the division in the fanbase was largely inevitable, but the speed of it, the form which it's taken and even the occasional vehemence of the reactions are all the result not of OUR natural choices as gamers, but of the choices that were forced upon us by game manufacturers and the ill-considered and intemperate opinions of DESIGNERS. The natural state of the hobby was initially one of openness, cooperation, and acceptance of different versions of the game, different play styles, and even different RPG's altogether. I really think that it is the publishers and designers who have created this bed of intolerance and divisiveness that they now find uncomfortable to lie in. We have come to accept and believe that X is (or can be) demonstrably superior to Y because we have been told so strenuously and repeatedly by the professionals with their names on the title page.

D&D Next will not be a "commercial" failure by any stretch. It will certainly be as profitable as 4e.

Not "will be" but certainly can be. I harbor the sad suspicion that may indeed have finally come to the point where there will be no 800# Gorilla of RPG's and that means that no version will ever again enjoy the dominant position in the market.

But I have a hard time seeing it really uniting the fanbase into this wonderful "Stepford Dungeon" community.

Ditto. An 800# gorilla is what DDN will have to be if it is to actually succeed in RE-uniting the community. See, they are not proposing to RE-unite the community in terms of changing our collective attitudes about what we each play, how we play it and why. They are proposing to unite us by convincing us all to play the same game, albeit with widely different "rules modules". DDN may turn a profit, but I SERIOUSLY question whether it can succeed in its goal of community unanimity by getting us all to buy and play the same game. They have a highly laudable goal but they have misidentified the actual problem and therefore the feasable solution to it.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Not "will be" but certainly can be. I harbor the sad suspicion that may indeed have finally come to the point where there will be no 800# Gorilla of RPG's and that means that no version will ever again enjoy the dominant position in the market.

Wait, monopolies are a good thing?

 

[RangerWickett]

I see no reason to be hostile to one game or another.

3e & Pathfinder give you lots of options and made sure the rules parsed with a fictional reality.

4e gives you a variety of interesting tricks so that combat is fun as a game as well as as a story.

Take those two elements, make them compatible, and make them toggle-able, and you'll have a great game. Then write great adventures for it, and it can sell.

 

[Umbran]

Wait, monopolies are a good thing?

D&D has never been a monopoly in that sense - the game has never had the strength to push around others in the marketplace.

Instead, we could say that big D&D was a leader in an ecology. One can argue pretty well that the existence of one major game made it *easier* for small games to get into the marketplace, rather than more difficult, by raising consciousness of both players and retailers.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I would disagree, though for partly technical reasons. Once upon a time we WERE united, even though we played a couple different flavors of D&D - out of the original D&D we were given Holmes, Moldvay, and AD&D in addition to it. We played our chosen game, enjoyed ourselves, and seldom if ever tore into other players for the version they were playing or how they were playing it. We all got along.

You know, from my perspective I'd probably phrase this one as "you were united", rather than "we were united". You see, you're ignoring the generation gap here. Younger players like myself got into the game well after the fanbase had ceased to play the same game. I started playing non-simplified versions of the game with 3E, and have never played either version of AD&D. I don't particularly want to try playing any version of AD&D, to be honest.

This period of "we all got along" simply doesn't exist for many gamers, because the entire time we've been playing D&D has been marked by older fans dragging us into edition wars and telling us that our way of playing is bad for all kinds of reasons. I honestly can't even imagine a D&D culture where people got along and played the same game, because I've never seen it. I can't imagine getting along with people who have never once made any attempt to get along with me.

This is exactly why it is incredibly hard for me to buy into WotC's dream of creating an edition to unify fans.