D&D 5E You can't necessarily go back

[slobster]

I find 4e works well for a game with 1-2 big encounters a night, where you know in advance what those encounters will be. Other editions work better for exploration and sandboxing.

Yes, this. That's a good summation of what I was trying to get across. I should have known better than interject a comment that could be taken as edition warring, even if it was meant constructively and not as a dig at anyone's playstyle at all!

 

[ForeverSlayer]

The exact same thing can be said about yourself. You have numerous posts about omitting ALL thing 4E. Maybe D&D Next is not for you either. That said, D&D Next's design goal is to "unite" ALL the previous editions. Not just editions you like.

Fortunately for me and those like me, D&D Next leaves enough 4th edition out, so far, to make me happy so I don't need to go some place else. I do play Pathfinder, never kept that a secret, and I will continue to do so and play D&D Next.

My bases are covered.

 

[S'mon]

IME addition is almost always faster and simpler than subtraction. This is also known both from teaching children and from computers. You find it almost as easy because you are used to that subset of subtraction. And as for knowing pre-roll - I don't recall you announcing the target numbers?

You haven't played with me recently.

Re the math, I think the thing is that as player or GM I find it hard to do the attack roll, see what it is, add bonuses, find out the target AC, and only then see if it hit. I did it that way for years, 2000-2012, but it was always a hassle and I'm finding it far easier to go back to the old way of working out what number needs to be rolled on the die before I or the player rolls.

 

[Libramarian]

Pre-3.x editions of D&D were clumsy assemblages of rules and haphazardly thrown together mechanics. Everything was resolved differently from everything else. Attack rolls worked one way (remember THAC0?), rogue skills were percentile rolls, skills (nonweapon proficiencies) were d20 rolls, etc. There was no unified mechanic. It was a jumbled mess.

This seems to me to be a sort of aesthetic judgement that is only loosely related to usability. You know those people who organize their house until it looks perfectly ordered and clean, which is usually beyond the point of functional cleanliness and sometimes actually makes it harder to find things when you need them? That's what this sounds like to me.

Usability is a pretty complex thing. I don't the rule of thumb "does it look messy?" is actually a very accurate way to judge it. There are multiple aspects to consider.

E.g. the 1e combat system is:
a) Abstruse. It's hard to figure out.
b) Unintuitive. It's hard to remember. It takes a lot of practice before you memorize everything.
but it's not actually c) Slow.

It's actually pretty interesting in the way that it modularizes the rules. It has switches: weapon vs. armor mods, weapon speed factor, spellcasting time. These switches are turned off when you're just womping on some kobolds, and turned on for extra detail when you're facing an NPC adventuring party. And if you want, you can keep the switches off and treat the NPC adventurers like big kobolds without breaking the game. This is why people maintain that 1e combat is simple and fast, despite how "messy" it looks in the abstract.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Everything has always been considered optional in D&D so I'm not sure what makes D&D Next any different.

 

[Jester David]

Earlier editions of D&D were to a large degree vague, shapeless and formless masses open to interpretation. This came about by happenstance, and it seems like WotC is trying to deliberately recreate that happenstance. I don't think they can, pandora's box has been opened and I don't think it can be closed again now that people's eyes are open. Classic D&D was primarily a dungeon crawl system, but it was vague enough to be clumsily adapted to most anything and was used as such to a large degree because people didn't know any better, or at least because there weren't alternative systems that could deliver. In 2012, we do know better and do have alternatives, having seen an explosion of different takes on d20 thanks to the OGL, more robust non-d20 system choices than existed in the past, and also several more specific and idealized visions of D&D from the OSR and even Pathfinder and 4E.

They seem to be trying to go back to how things were, an "old school" dungeon crawling system left vague on purpose, but without the circumstances that led to the magic.

Okay, you're pretty wrong here.

First off, your argument is fundamentally flawed. You're arguing that older editions were vague and thus rule vagueness is old. Or put another way:
Prior editions were vague.
Prior editions are outdated.
Therefore vague rules are outdated.
That's logically unsound. A is B, A is C, therefor B is C.

Moving on to specifics, you have two main "facts" for your argument. First, that older editions had vague rules. Second, that you cannot go backwards.

The vagueness of older rules is debatable. OD&D was vague but 1e had many very, very specific rules. Meanwhile, Basic D&D (which was published concurrently with 1e-2e) had much more vague rules.
Furthermore, there are a number of very modern games that have vague rules, or rules left open to DM interpretation or ruling. The ENnie award winning Marvel RPG is a crunchy yet vague rule system, left open to creative ideas and improvisation. I can think of far more modern games that are "vague" than crunchy, and even 4e was simplified compared to 3e.

The vagueness or specificity of a game system's rules are independent of the game's age.

Moving on to "you cannot go back". This is highly debatable given the existence of retroclones, let alone their prevalence. There are new clones every year, such as the recently released Dungeon Crawl Classics game. Watch for it in next year's ENies. And if you count Pathfinder as a retroclone, they're arguably more successful than the modern game.
Many other media revel in going back. Movies and TV shows have remakes or revivals. Video games try to emulate the feel of older games (look at recent Mario games for an example). Franchises regularly reboot or attempt to go back to basics, recapturing some of the feel that had faded. The Batman and Bond films are great examples.
Recreating happenstance is hard, but not impossible. Something being hard is not a reason to give up.

Going "back to basics" is a tried and true strategy. And while not a guaranteed success it can and has worked before.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

To the OP:

So basically what you're saying is, in your opinion, 4th edition took the RPG gaming industry to it's peak with it's rules and anything else before it is a waste and anything that doesn't use 4th edition as it's model going forward is a waste and is considered obsolete.

Did I get it right?

 

[Remathilis]

To the OP:

So basically what you're saying is, in your opinion, 4th edition took the RPG gaming industry to it's peak with it's rules and anything else before it is a waste and anything that doesn't use 4th edition as it's model going forward is a waste and is considered obsolete.

Did I get it right?

Blah blah "spread XP..." blah.

 

[Hussar]

Jester Canuck - I'd point out that perhaps the use of the word "vague" is ... well... not exact.

AD&D rules are very often vague to the point of being completely absent. It was really hit or miss whether a rule was exacting or not. Looking at spell descriptions, for example, a fireball was very exacting (to the point where I need a calculator to actually figure out how far that fireball goes) but, OTOH, other spells were very hand wavey and open to many, sometimes contradictory, interpretations.

Later games aren't usually vague, but, they are very open ended. For example, Savage Worlds doesn't have a rule for everything. It's a pretty rules medium system. But, there are a couple of universal rules (The Rule of 4 - any result 4 or higher succeeds) which can be broadly applied to nearly any situation.

The difference is, in AD&D, while people did apply all sorts of different rules to different situations (roll a paralyzation save to jump across a pit, or avoid falling into said pit, for example), there was little or no guidance given on when and where and how those rules should be applied.

For example, using paralyzation saves vs falling in a pit was a pretty common thing in the modules. But, why should a thief fall into a pit more often than a cleric? You'd think that the thief would be best at that. But, the advice and the mechanics are largely silent on the whole issue and everything is dumped into the individual DM's lap.

I think, and this is just my take on things, that this is what the OP is getting at. In modern designed games, there are almost always universal mechanics and a fair boatload of advice given on how to apply those mechanics. At least in rules light (er) games. In rules heavy games, you get lots and lots of specific mechanics that should cover every (or at least almost every) eventuality.

So, while I disagree with the tone of the OP, I do think he has a point. We're not going to go back to "rule absent" as a design criteria. Even the playtest doc, while certainly incomplete, covers the bases pretty darn well, with what it's trying to cover anyway.

 

[ferratus]

I don't know, I always go back and look things over these days, looking for snippets of cool stuff. Some rules are perfectly good in older editions and should be brought back, while many other rules simply need a bit of tweaking to work as the designer intended.

For example, I was reading over the rules for making magical items in the D&D Rules Cyclopedia today, and I was struck by just how reasonable the rules were for making items. Namely there is a gp cost, and a risk of failure. Sure the costs are far too prohibitive, but with a little less cost you have a workable system for making items that I think is better than the other editions. 3e and 4e it was perhaps too easy to make magical items (leading to a broken game) but with a risk of failure and set gp cost you can decide whether making a magical item is worth the gamble. In other words I like it and I think could work well.

So why not go back? Whatever works, works... right?