Is D&D Next going to flop?

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 8:43 pm

You mean nocker's parody system?

Roll a d20 for everything you want to do and check the follow table:

1 : you fail hilariously bad
2 - 7 : you fail
8 - 14 : you and the DM argue if you should succeed or no
15 -19 : you succeed
20 : you succeed so good, people will talk about it afterwards.

nockermensch wrote: Because the 8 - 14 item seems too MTP for some tastes, I propose a system where the player and the DM can only argue from a limited number of "bullshits". For example: it's an attack roll against a gargoyle and it comes a 12. The DM starts arguing that the gargoyle skin is "stone-like" (1 bullshit). The player counter by saying his sword is "enchanted" (1 bullshit) and that his character "trained on a monastery to be totally badass" (2 bullshits). The player wins and hits the gargoyle.

Finally, we can make a character creation process that streamlines the number of bullshits you have for each kind of action, leading to something like this:

Attacking +3 (magical serrated adamantine weapon, weapon is a katana, ninja!)
Defending +2 (backflips, has a cape)
Diplomacy +2 (has a cape, mysterious past)
Sneaking +2 (ninja!, cape is black)
...

Same thing for the monsters. Then all the rolls could be resolved quickly. I believe I already saw "indie RPGs" with looser rules than this one.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 9:09 pm

Josh_Kablack wrote: The system being described in the above Meals quote is one where the optimal character choice is to be a generalist who takes as different skills off the "trained only" and "give bonuses to things other than skills" skills as possible, and trying to specialize in any given skill is a mathematically wrong choice.

No it isn't. It is from the current playtest doc in a sidebar entitled 'Using These DCs,' which describes DC25 as 'extremely hard' for low level characters, but becomes easier after 10th level. Neither is really true except for some special cases. If you don't get an expertise die, the true state of things is that 25 is impossible unless you've maxed out your stat (which you can't do with point buy until level 4 minimum) , and 10th level+ doesn't alter that one iota.

There is no skill training in the current iteration, every pulls off of stat modifiers, and some classes get an additional die (starts at d6 and increases) for a specific stat- usually dex or wis. The only way to have a generalist is to aim to have 14s in everything, then keep them in step as you level. And at that point you actually can't succeed at any of the hard stuff, because you can't hit DC25 at all. Doing anything BUT specializing is a recipe for failing always. Specializing without being an 'expertise' class means failing most of the time. Specializing and being an 'expertise' class means only an average amount of failure when using skills linked to your chosen stat

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 9:21 pm

What's D&DN's policy on taking 10 and 20?

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 9:24 pm

As far as I can tell, the policy is 'No.'

You can do retries, unless the DM decrees that you can't.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 10:12 pm

Did D&D just forget about that aspect or the rules or something? 4E D&D fell down on the job, too.

Corsair114 · Post by **Corsair114** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 10:23 pm

It might be a small commercial success.

It'll almost certainly flop like a Magikarp out of water from a critical standpoint, though.

Tumbling Down · Post by **Tumbling Down** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 11:42 pm

Well, we knew ahead of time that 5e was dead in the water. The only thing we have learned today is that the emperor will catch pneumonia if he keeps taking fashion tips from Mike Mearls.

infected slut princess · Tue Sep 10, 2013 2:08 am

The emperor has had no clothes for so long that the dog already chomped his dick off.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Tue Sep 10, 2013 2:43 am

Corsair114 wrote:It might be a small commercial success.

It'll almost certainly flop like a Magikarp out of water from a critical standpoint, though.

Pretty much. They can probably bring in more cash than they paid for art, salaries and whatever, because there are almost always enough people that just mindlessly buy shit ('at least it is better than 4e' will be a common excuse, as will, 'my group just wanted to try it,' which at least is less grating). But it will be even harder to hit the 'hundreds of thousands (of copies)' mark this time, and they just smear more dirt of the reputation of the franchise., probably spring for some manner of reboot or 'Essentials' in year 2 rather than year 3, and finally just give up after that brings in even less money.

Then some sort of weaseling will happen, blaming either a changing market, a lack of interest in the form or genre, or competition undermining the foundation, or most likely, poor data from the playtest giving 'misleading information' that lead to 'reasonable, but false assumptions.'

But at no point does anyone admit that they just made a shitty game.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Sep 10, 2013 2:58 am

So once upon a time, back in 2000, I used to say "I play D&D." That was something I totally said when relevant up until about 2009.

I no longer say that any more. And I don't think I ever will again. Since 2008, I bring it up a lot less as a hobby, because I would have to clarify so much. I don't want to tell people I play D&D, and have them think I am the kind of fucking idiot who would play D&D 4e and like it.

My standard on a new edition is not even better than 3e. It is literally just... I hope that the new edition isn't so embarrassingly bad that I don't tell people I play D&D, because I don't want them to play it because I said that, and then hate me.

Apparently, I still won't get even that from 5e.

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Tue Sep 10, 2013 3:27 am

I have the comfort that my group or anyone I play RPG's with, know that 5th edition is going to be trash, and won't play it. However, even I'm at a loss nowadays what RPG to suggest for new players. So much of D&D is so outdated, that I heavily desire one that's actually up to date in both design, and taking into account the advance of Fantasy over the last few decades.

New reditions of RPGs, or 5th editions, seem to be sucking these days (saddens me some friends of mine are playing Shadowrun 5th edition...).

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Tue Sep 10, 2013 4:31 am

Aryxbez wrote:I have the comfort that my group or anyone I play RPG's with, know that 5th edition is going to be trash, and won't play it. However, even I'm at a loss nowadays what RPG to suggest for new players. So much of D&D is so outdated, that I heavily desire one that's actually up to date in both design, and taking into account the advance of Fantasy over the last few decades.

How about one of them retro clones that smooths out clunky gameplay while staying rules lite.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Sep 10, 2013 4:48 am

OgreBattle wrote:
Aryxbez wrote:I have the comfort that my group or anyone I play RPG's with, know that 5th edition is going to be trash, and won't play it. However, even I'm at a loss nowadays what RPG to suggest for new players. So much of D&D is so outdated, that I heavily desire one that's actually up to date in both design, and taking into account the advance of Fantasy over the last few decades.
How about one of them retro clones that smooths out clunky gameplay while staying rules lite.

That would be the exact opposite of up to date in design. He doesn't mean "was designed yesterday" he means "is designed based on the principles we have learned actually make good games."

MTP is literally the least up to date a game could possibly be in a design sense.

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Tue Sep 10, 2013 6:14 am

I've heard good things about M&M 3rd, but I know that at least one of those recs was from a guy who loves superhero RPGs.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Tue Sep 10, 2013 8:53 am

Kaelik wrote:So once upon a time, back in 2000, I used to say "I play D&D." That was something I totally said when relevant up until about 2009.

I no longer say that any more. And I don't think I ever will again. Since 2008, I bring it up a lot less as a hobby, because I would have to clarify so much. I don't want to tell people I play D&D, and have them think I am the kind of fucking idiot who would play D&D 4e and like it.

My standard on a new edition is not even better than 3e. It is literally just... I hope that the new edition isn't so embarrassingly bad that I don't tell people I play D&D, because I don't want them to play it because I said that, and then hate me.

Apparently, I still won't get even that from 5e.

Can't you just say, "I play 3rd edition D&D, because 4e and later are terrible"?

That doesn't sound like a lot of qualification.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Sep 10, 2013 9:59 am

RadiantPhoenix wrote: Can't you just say, "I play 3rd edition D&D, because 4e and later are terrible"?

That doesn't sound like a lot of qualification.

Honestly, to people who aren't part of the scene, that sounds like this:

-Username17

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Tue Sep 10, 2013 11:21 am

FrankTrollman wrote:
RadiantPhoenix wrote: Can't you just say, "I play 3rd edition D&D, because 4e and later are terrible"?

That doesn't sound like a lot of qualification.
Honestly, to people who aren't part of the scene, that sounds like this:

-Username17

I don't think many people would know D&D well enough to know the latest rules, but not well enough to understand that there are different Editions. The likelyhood that anyone would think ill of someone for playing D&D because they only know DDN is quite low.

Bihlbo · Post by **Bihlbo** » Tue Sep 10, 2013 12:07 pm

Kaelik wrote:
OgreBattle wrote:
Aryxbez wrote:I have the comfort that my group or anyone I play RPG's with, know that 5th edition is going to be trash, and won't play it. However, even I'm at a loss nowadays what RPG to suggest for new players. So much of D&D is so outdated, that I heavily desire one that's actually up to date in both design, and taking into account the advance of Fantasy over the last few decades.
How about one of them retro clones that smooths out clunky gameplay while staying rules lite.
That would be the exact opposite of up to date in design. He doesn't mean "was designed yesterday" he means "is designed based on the principles we have learned actually make good games."

MTP is literally the least up to date a game could possibly be in a design sense.

I attended a panel at PAX entitled "Modernizing Fantasy RPGs" with the guys who made Dungeon World (a good example of a modernized, retro, rules-light rpg that I had fun playing) and Luke Crane, the guy who did The Burning Wheel. Part of it was a dissappointing patience-tester as we were inundated with the first two guys' attempt to convince us all they were non-sexist in really trendy, empty-headed ways (from this I learned that I should probably read Gor, because douchbags say, "You should probably not read Gor."). The rest of it was mostly about how modernization has happened in rpgs over the years. Highlights from my notes (understanding that these come from things the panel said and not me):

Early D&D required you to use rules from 2 other games published by two different companies.
Pendragon was the first modern RPG, and Pendragon 5th edition is very good.
Burning Wheel is all about player priorities & desires. The character exists outside of you. The character sheet exists to guide you in playing the character. This was presented as a modernization.
Task vs. Conflict Resolution (touching largely on "failing forward" and other similar concepts) - What you intend isn't always what you achieve with success, if your GM is creative and knows what's going on around you. Task: here's a lock, you have picks, now roll. Con.Res.: you want in the room, find a way in.
The worst thing a game can ever do is include rules that tell players that after they attempt something and fail, nothing happens. That is a dead end and does nothing to advance the story or keep the game moving. There should always be a result to any action taken by a player.
Other rpgs are now attempting to expand beyond heroic battles and include entirely new genres or points of focus for the game. Examples: Microscope, The Quiet Year, Saga of the Icelanders.

MTP, by name or concept, was never mentioned. I really should have asked a question about that, come to think of it.

Bihlbo · Post by **Bihlbo** » Tue Sep 10, 2013 12:40 pm

It seems like it would be possible for a good writer to frame actual problems and functional issues with D&D in a way that the koosh-brained dweebs at the helm would understand as being problems with the "feel" and "impression" of the game. For instance:

It is stupid that heroic characters have roughly equal chance of succeeding at adventure-related tasks as a wimp with a modern desk job.

becomes:

I like the concept of the fighter, but while playing it seemed as though I was more of an armchair quarterback than a hero. Even with average die rolls I couldn't do average things, and that makes being a fighter not fun.

If I were an aspiring writer I'd probably spend a few hours every day taking actual problems with D&D5 and reframing them (under multiple pen names) as ways the game just doesn't feel right or isn't "D&D enough," with hopes that it will lead them back to the math. Like a marketer for logic.

Fuchs wrote:I don't think many people would know D&D well enough to know the latest rules, but not well enough to understand that there are different Editions. The likelyhood that anyone would think ill of someone for playing D&D because they only know DDN is quite low.

I recently mentioned to a friend that I enjoy D&D, and his reply was telling me about how much fun he's had playing D&D, but he meant AD&D. When I mentioned there was at least one edition after that, he was baffled. When I tried to explain that there was a 3rd edition he asked where the 2nd went, and when I answered his question about what the differences were he almost seemed angry to be talking to me. This isn't the first time something similar has happened. It's like most people think of D&D as being a game that is set and codified like Monopoly or basketball, and the idea that it is instead something more like the current menu at McDonald's is straight-up offensive. So yeah, I tend to agree with you Fuchs. When I talk about it at all I just say I'm a gamer, and if they ask what kind I say, "Video games, table-top games, anything that lets me have fun with friends." If rpgs are mentioned at all I express interest and immediately ask them to start talking about their rpg experiences. If they care about D&D editions or the quality of games I'll know pretty fast, but otherwise I'll just talk about the stuff they like.

Part of living in a polite society is learning that you should almost never tell people anything about what you really think unless they actually do want to know and have proven it somehow. That is why I like non-polite places like this.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Sep 10, 2013 12:51 pm

To go back to the original OP's question, I'm putting my money on 'flops, and flops immediately'. I'm sure it'll be the top-selling TTRPG of the month but only for lack of competition. But the writing will be on the wall after three months, maximum.

It has all of the problems of 4E D&D, with a few additional ones.

Unlike 4E D&D, it's not being packaged with some first or second-party software to sweeten the deal. The Virtual Tabletop looked rad as hell and even though I was skeptical of the edition at first I hung on for a couple of years in hopes of getting to see it to completion. Hell, I bought a subscription to DDI just in hopes of getting to do the beta test for it. No dice. This is the 21st century and I agree with other people that any major TTRPG release has to have some kind of digital support these days to be taken seriously.
5E D&D does not have a good pre-existing campaign to go along with it. You'd think that Mike Mearls would've learned that the campaign setting is by far the most important part of a TTRPG by now. If 5E D&D had a really good default campaign setting, he could probably get 4-5 years out of the product while releasing the rules that he currently has. But no.
It has no pre-existing settings to back it up. 4E D&D killed the Forgotten Realms in the cradle, but up until that point there was no reason to believe that FR was going to die anytime soon. It had a hugely successful 3E D&D run and was coming fresh off the Neverwinter Nights 2 trilogy. 5E D&D has nothing going for it.
Few new ideas. Oh, it has a couple of old ideas repackaged as new ones like modular game design, but aside from bounded accuracy everything I've heard or seen about the edition has been a rehash of Shit We've Already Seen. Not to say that the 'same, but more refined' strategy is a necessarily unfruitful one but if you're not going to cater to pre-existing fans nor are you going to try to pull in a new audience with a new pitch, then who the hell is supposed to enjoy your edition?
5E D&D is shedding people faster than Enron in its final months. Seriously, they've lost their number two and number three and the edition isn't set to be released for a few months. And they didn't lose them due to firings or because they found gainful opportunities -- Monte Cook and Bruce Cordell made it clear that extended unemployment was better for their careers than being associated with 5E D&D. Even if 5E D&D did manage to beat all odds and succeed, convincing people to stop bailing out, the working environment would be a shambles just from turnover.
No clear release strategy. 4E D&D's release strategy was stupid and unrealistic, but at least they had one: pump out massive amounts of shovelware expansion material so that you had some kind of major release every six months, use the DDI for playtesting and to retain fans between book releases, and use the GSL to pump more money from their fans. Only one aspect of that strategy seemed to have any kind of success, but at least they had one.

What exactly is 5E D&D's plan? Are they going to re-rollout the old SRD and hope that other 3rd party developers save them? Are they going to go with the old shovelware approach or bundle up all of their 'A-game' material into infrequent but quality releases?

4E D&D, including 4.5E, lasted for a bit less than 4 years, right? I'm putting 5E D&D's death at a little over a year after its release.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Sep 10, 2013 1:01 pm

It is difficult for me to imagine how "d20, roll under" could possibly be considered a "modern system". Seriously, if you're using the "default ability check" advice from Dragon Magazine in the 1970s as your core mechanic, you probably aren't a "modern system". No matter what else it is that you do.

I don't think that games neatly fall into "modern/pre-modern", because there are definite periods of gaming system. Pendragon came out in the mid-eighties and is a Runequest hack with a lot of personality trait jiggery. It exhibits some traits of late eighties gaming, but mostly it looks like a clear evolution of late seventies/early eighties stuff. Right down to characters who are "very prudent" being forced to act rashly 30% of the time.

Late 80s sees the rise of the universal system and point based everything. Early nineties everyone tried to make dicepools work (and almost no one figured out fixed target numbers, so it was all fubar). And so on. By and large, you can read a book's game mechanics and authorial style and date it very closely without looking at the copyright notice. Pendragon doesn't stand out as being especially unusual for a 1985 production.

-Username17

codeGlaze · Post by **codeGlaze** » Tue Sep 10, 2013 2:33 pm

Kaelik wrote: That would be the exact opposite of up to date in design. He doesn't mean "was designed yesterday" he means "is designed based on the principles we have learned actually make good games."

MTP is literally the least up to date a game could possibly be in a design sense.

So what design principles has The Den learned, that The Den also agrees on, which make better games?

edit: Fixed one grievous grammatical error.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Tue Sep 10, 2013 3:13 pm

1. If you have a base mechanic that involves subtraction, attempt to replace it with an isomorph which uses addition. Example: switching from THAC0 to BaB.
2. When rolling dice, only one parameter should vary between tasks. If the DC changes between tasks, your modifiers should remain constant. If the number of hits required changes, the TN on the die should not vary.
3. If a rule boils down to "Argue with the GM," that rule should use only the minimum space required to explain it. Rules that take too much space should be cut during editing.
4. People are bad at remembering long lists of options, but good at remembering shorter iterated options. Making one choice from a list of 20 options is harder than two choices from two lists of 5 options.
5. If the rules produce bad results, they will be ignored. Despite this fact, games are best if the rules remain consistent throughout a single campaign. If your rules force the GM to change them mid-way, something has gone wrong in your design.
6. When designing a game, be as anal as possible about the rules as written matching what you intend the rules to do. The written rules are your one chance to provide input to the players, don't blow it by being lazy or unclear.
7. Do the math for your game. If you, the designer, cannot do the probabilities for what will happen according to the rules in a given scenario, you have no idea if they are good rules or bad rules. Gut instinct alone cannot help you and will only mislead you.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Sep 10, 2013 4:17 pm

codeGlaze wrote:So what design principles has The Den learned, that The Den also agrees on, which make better games?

What an absurdly broad question.

Let's discard the glittering generalities that people can agree on or agree to eschew like 'clear rules' or 'encourages roleplay'. Instead, let's look at a spectrum of how games are designed.

Choice v. Surprise/Regret
Equality v. Merit
Constitutionalism (small c) v. Emergent Consensus
Specificity v. Subjectivity
Interparty Cooperation v. Competition
Association v. Dissociation
Difficulty Level

And of course these will depend on the game. My vision of D&D errs on the side of Surprise/Regret, balances Equality and Merit, Constitutionalism, Specificity, Cooperation, Association, and has a Low-to-Medium difficulty level. This isn't the same as my vision of Shadowrun. My vision of Shadowrun errs on the side of Choice, goes heavily on Merit, Constitutionalism, balances between Specificity and Subjectivity, Cooperation, Associate, and has a Medium-to-High difficulty level.

A lot of people on TGD, as far as I can tell, have their sliders close to where mine are for their vision of D&D -- which is the primary game played here.

Hicks · Post by **Hicks** » Tue Sep 10, 2013 7:41 pm

What. The Fuck. Seriously.

That is the most incomprehensible post I have ever read;it was more incomprehensible than Shadzar. What the fuck is Constitutionalism (small c), and what the fuck does it have to do with Emergent Consensus? No, what the fuck does it have to do with anything? Man alive! Don't jump to the second half of an argument before you have even established a common frame of reference! Please never again do what you have just done.