D&DNext: Playtest Review

[OgreBattle]

To be fair to Wizardry, when the license moved from weird German people to weird Japanese people the property got way the hell better. Tales of the Forsaken Land has a pretty damn good plot for a cRPG-derived jRPG.

The Katsuya Terada artwork was the reason I picked up that game.

The Allied Actions/Madden plays system was a lot of fun.
I think it's a good alternative to straight up "Wizardry I" combat and having a gridmap to move around in.

There's a sequel that never came out in English though that added more stuff.

[Shrapnel]

Voss wouldnt know a Hercules graphics card if it bit him on the ass, not could he understand then transfer from 8 to 16 bit graphics. Sprite are what made Atari and Nintendo and the SSI series games had sprites just as good as Contra had until that other company came along.

The incomprehensibility of that sentence is making me suffocate.

[zugschef]

Voss wouldnt know a Hercules graphics card if it bit him on the ass, not could he understand then transfer from 8 to 16 bit graphics. Sprite are what made Atari and Nintendo and the SSI series games had sprites just as good as Contra had until that other company came along.

The incomprehensibility of that sentence is making me suffocate.

lulz

[infected slut princess]

Yeah. So check this out:
http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx ... l/20130819

If you ever needed more evidence that Mearls is in the wrong line of work...

So, what did we learn from the public playtest? In some cases you confirmed things, in others you dispelled some notions that had become lodged in R&D's view of you.

• You like simplicity. You want to jump into the game quickly, create characters, monsters, NPCs, and adventures with a minimum of fuss, and get down to the business of playing D&D.
• You like that every class has the potential to contribute in most situations, but you're OK with some classes being better at certain things if that fits the class's image. You see balance on a larger, adventure-based or campaign-based scale.
• You want rules that make it easy to build adventures and encounters. You want to think about the story or your setting's details, rather than fiddle with math.
• You value flexibility in rules. You prefer an ability or a rule that's easy to adapt or that leaves space for creative applications, rather than rigidly defined abilities.
• You aren't edition warriors. You want the game to support a variety play styles in equal measure. You're not attached to any specific ways of doing things as long as the game works.

Uh, what? These are their big discoveries?

They fucked around for more than a year and their playtest "findings" are all blatantly obvious shit. No public playtest is necessary to come to these conclusions. These are the basics of an RPG.

They say the playtest "dispelled some notions that had become lodged in R&D's view of you". Dear god. What were those notions? Must have been something like this:

• You like complexity. You want to get into the game slowly, create characters, monsters, NPCs, and adventures with maximum fuss, and fiddle fuck around instead of playing the game.
• You like that every class lacks the potential to contribute in most situations, and you're OK with some classes being better at certain things if that fits the class's image.
• You want rules that make it hard to build adventures and encounters. You don't want to think about the story or your setting's details, you'd rather fiddle with math.
• You value inflexibility in rules. You prefer to have rigidly defined abilities and rules, rather than rules that are easy to adapt and leave space for creative applications.
• You care more about the edition war than the content of the game.

FUCK YOU MIKE MEARLS

[shadzar]

what he is saying is they fucked up with 3rd because they thought the hardcoded rules that had all the fiddly bits was what people wanted, since he was hired after that period. those that created 3rd are now no longer at WotC save for James Wyatt, and he is obviously an idiot in place only to calm the bible-thumpers as he is a Reverend working on D&D so it isn't really witchcraft but has his seal of approval on it.

the minutiae isn't what people want form the game, but want to add their own level IF and WHEN they saw fit.

i bet he pulled half of that list from when i talked to him in May of 2010? 2009? whenever that was, and finally over a year or more later realized the English words i was using and tried to understand the language properly.

the Bill S way of D&D that came from Alternity and other shit has no place in D&D is what the playtest is showing, but that should have been evident when 4th edition, the brainchild of Bill S, bombed worse than Hiroshima.

probably now the corporate suits understand that the Alternity crowd were never trying to make D&D but some stupid shit, so 6th edition might have a chance when the playtest for it starts in 2 years, and they finally go back to making D&D.

[John Magnum]

I would like to believe that it is indeed true that shadzar's conversation with Mike Mearls four years ago produced these insights. That is a world I would like to live in.

[shadzar]

well it is more like he read the AD&D DMGs and pulled that list from them. but at least the balance shit that 4th pulled isnt what the game is about, and it is time people learned that. classes are classes for a reason, and if everyone is the same, you have no need for classes ala 4th edition.

now if only he understand the difference between a board game which 3rd and 4th implies and a living game world where things happen outside of player interaction, he might stand a chance of understanding D&D for the first time in these many decades since he first touched it.

[vagrant]

Shad, I was this close to agreeing with you.

[erik]

Voss wouldnt know a Hercules graphics card if it bit him on the ass, not could he understand then transfer from 8 to 16 bit graphics. Sprite are what made Atari and Nintendo and the SSI series games had sprites just as good as Contra had until that other company came along.

The incomprehensibility of that sentence is making me suffocate.

I checked and was relieved to see that Shrapnel has since been active after this post. I imagined a grown man collapsed on the floor amongst a pile of giant transformers, blue lips making a tender farewell kiss to the largest of the lot.

The horror.

Glad you're okay Shrapnel.

[Voss]

Yeah. So check this out:
http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx ... l/20130819

If you ever needed more evidence that Mearls is in the wrong line of work...

So, what did we learn from the public playtest? In some cases you confirmed things, in others you dispelled some notions that had become lodged in R&D's view of you.

• You like simplicity. You want to jump into the game quickly, create characters, monsters, NPCs, and adventures with a minimum of fuss, and get down to the business of playing D&D.
• You like that every class has the potential to contribute in most situations, but you're OK with some classes being better at certain things if that fits the class's image. You see balance on a larger, adventure-based or campaign-based scale.
• You want rules that make it easy to build adventures and encounters. You want to think about the story or your setting's details, rather than fiddle with math.
• You value flexibility in rules. You prefer an ability or a rule that's easy to adapt or that leaves space for creative applications, rather than rigidly defined abilities.
• You aren't edition warriors. You want the game to support a variety play styles in equal measure. You're not attached to any specific ways of doing things as long as the game works.

Uh, what? These are their big discoveries?

They fucked around for more than a year and their playtest "findings" are all blatantly obvious shit. No public playtest is necessary to come to these conclusions. These are the basics of an RPG.

Well, the last one is almost entirely a consequence of being bad at statistics and/or framing poll questions. 'Select a preference from a short list of things that people find preferable' generally hits a fairly level distribution unless something fairly strange is going on. If it was phrased as 'do you prefer 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or anything so long as it works,' the answer is indeed going to self-evident.

The big thing they're going to find is their sales projection are going to be really disappointing. They're taking a least 3 different groups, and treating their combined answers as an aggregate, but that really isn't what is going on. The groups at the extremes are going to be _really pissed off_ and completely pan the game. They can only hope their 'centrists' are enough of a market.

[wotmaniac]

So, what did we learn from the public playtest? In some cases you confirmed things, in others you dispelled some notions that had become lodged in R&D's view of you.

• You like simplicity. You want to jump into the game quickly, create characters, monsters, NPCs, and adventures with a minimum of fuss, and get down to the business of playing D&D.
• You like that every class has the potential to contribute in most situations, but you're OK with some classes being better at certain things if that fits the class's image. You see balance on a larger, adventure-based or campaign-based scale.
• You want rules that make it easy to build adventures and encounters. You want to think about the story or your setting's details, rather than fiddle with math.
• You value flexibility in rules. You prefer an ability or a rule that's easy to adapt or that leaves space for creative applications, rather than rigidly defined abilities.
• You aren't edition warriors. You want the game to support a variety play styles in equal measure. You're not attached to any specific ways of doing things as long as the game works.

Wait, wait, wait. wait, wait. Wait just a goddamned minute ....
DDN playtest actually = fucking FOCUS GROUP?


[img.]i can't even be bothered at this point[/img]

[Kaelik]

Guys I think you are confused. Read that list very carefully, and compare how accurately each of those sentences describes 3e and 4e.

The lesson they learned from the public is that people like 3e and not 4e.

If only there were some kind of sales data so they could have learned that before.

[infected slut princess]

Here is something else to talk about. 5e Multiclassing rules, which no one discussed before because no one cares:

For multiclassing, we're adopting a system similar to 3rd Edition's. Some of this will be old news to longtime readers, but I'm going to recap what we've mentioned before and then add in a few elements that are new.

• In order to multiclass, you simply take a level in a new character class when you gain a level.
• The math for attack bonuses, saving throws, and so on scales based on your overall character level, so you don't have to worry about accidentally breaking your character.
• Multiclassing with spellcasting classes is somewhat similar. Your overall levels in classes that cast spells determines how many spells you can cast. Your levels in those individual classes determine which spells you can prepare. For instance, a 3rd-level mage/3rd-level cleric casts spells per day as a 6th-level character, but can choose to prepare spells available to a 3rd-level wizard or to a 3rd-level cleric. Luckily, our scaling spells ensure that you can still get the most bang for your spells.
• What if you combine a fighter and a mage, or a caster class with one that isn't a caster? If you want to dive deeply into such a combination, we're designing a set of subclasses that cater directly to spellcasting. The eldritch knight is a fighter subclass that augments a fighter/mage combination. The warden subclass gives a ranger/druid the flavor and forms of that character class.
• Our approach to low-level characters removes the abuses you can achieve by dipping into several classes by spreading out features over the first few levels.
• For things such as weapon and armor proficiencies, we have multiclassing-specific rules to ensure that you gain some new proficiencies, but not all of them. You can't dip into fighter to gain all weapons and armor.

[Josh_Kablack]

I think that's unfair to 2E D&D. That game has a few things going for it. I mean, I consider that game to be the bare minimum of what it takes to have a game that's worth playng, but I can see someone who's not shadzar making a positive case for it.

And when you see that, you need to add such a person to your ignore list.

The things 2e did right are vastly outweighed by the collective mental deficiencies and utterly alien patterns of cognition of its remaining fanbase.

[OgreBattle]

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/1335944/D ... -Survey-10

You can give your feedback to them now.


As a standalone game I'd say what I've seen of D&DN was pretty nifty, though it gets confusing when you get outside of combat.

[Ghremdal]

Well my trolling of the feedback appears to be paying off...perfect.

[Schleiermacher]

Here is something else to talk about. 5e Multiclassing rules, which no one discussed before because no one cares:
(...)

With the exception of the subclasses-that-cater-to-fighter/mages stuff (3e already shows us that creating effectively mandatory patch PRCs to mitigate trap options is bad design), that actually sounds like they're doing something right!

I guess they can still screw it up by failing to evaluate the worth of the combinations correctly, and most likely will, but that checklist seems like a decent place to start if you want to try to implement open multiclassing.

[ishy]

What were those notions? Must have been something like this:

• You like complexity. You want to get into the game slowly, create characters, monsters, NPCs, and adventures with maximum fuss, and fiddle fuck around instead of playing the game.

Actually while I prefer to get into the game immediately, with a minimum amount of fuss etc. I do really like meaningful complexity.

I understand that a lot of people don't though. Some people love to play 3.5 barbarians, while I can't stand it, because it feels like my only real option in combat is full attack.

And for example when creating a cleric, I hate weeding out the terrible spells that I'm never going to use anyway. But I love picking between useful spells.

[nockermensch]

i bet [Mike Mearls] pulled half of that list from when i talked to him in May of 2010? 2009? whenever that was, and finally over a year or more later realized the English words i was using and tried to understand the language properly.

shadzar did DDN, guys. You heard this here first.

[Shrapnel]

Voss wouldnt know a Hercules graphics card if it bit him on the ass, not could he understand then transfer from 8 to 16 bit graphics. Sprite are what made Atari and Nintendo and the SSI series games had sprites just as good as Contra had until that other company came along.

The incomprehensibility of that sentence is making me suffocate.

I checked and was relieved to see that Shrapnel has since been active after this post. I imagined a grown man collapsed on the floor amongst a pile of giant transformers, blue lips making a tender farewell kiss to the largest of the lot.

The horror.

Glad you're okay Shrapnel.

You've made my day.

[MfA]

With the exception of the subclasses-that-cater-to-fighter/mages stuff (3e already shows us that creating effectively mandatory patch PRCs to mitigate trap options is bad design), that actually sounds like they're doing something right!

You actually buy the statement that the spell scaling makes not getting access to the higher level spells viable?

[Ravengm]

Wait, wait, wait. wait, wait. Wait just a goddamned minute ....
DDN playtest actually = fucking FOCUS GROUP?

I'm really not surprised at all. "We needed to fuck around for close to a year to figure out that there are things every group wants, and has wanted, since this hobby came into existence" is juuuuust about the right amount of pretending to do actual work that I've come to expect from Mearls.

[Voss]

Wait, wait, wait. wait, wait. Wait just a goddamned minute ....
DDN playtest actually = fucking FOCUS GROUP?

Well, yeah. That was blatantly obvious from day 1.
They were specifically not looking for a concrete direction, but a compromise that most of the audience* would accept.

*and the majority of the audience are people who still hung around the WotC website and forums.

[wotmaniac]

Wait, wait, wait. wait, wait. Wait just a goddamned minute ....
DDN playtest actually = fucking FOCUS GROUP?

I'm really not surprised at all. "We needed to fuck around for close to a year to figure out that there are things every group wants, and has wanted, since this hobby came into existence" is juuuuust about the right amount of pretending to do actual work that I've come to expect from Mearls.

Well, yeah. That was blatantly obvious from day 1.
They were specifically not looking for a concrete direction, but a compromise that most of the audience* would accept.

*and the majority of the audience are people who still hung around the WotC website and forums.

*<sigh>
I guess I wasn't paying close enough attention.
Here's my issue: If you're going to do a focus group, just do a goddamned focus group .... that'd be what, a couple of months? 6 max?
A playtest is just that -- you're testing the game through real-world play. And even then, all you're really able to accurately test is how the procedures mesh with the human element.
And now they're just finally getting around to actually doing the real design and development.
"D&DN: a stack of fuck-shit on top of itself"

I know why this became the case, ..... I just don't want to have to believe/accept it.

[shadzar]

*and the majority of the audience are people who still hung around the WotC website and forums.

or jsut didn't get banned for trashing 4th and calling it the steaming pile of shit that it is right on the WotC forums.