Monte Cook IS working on 5th edition...

[K]

Hey guys, not sure if this belongs in the Mike Mearls thread anymore, now that Monte's taken over. But here's the new article.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx ... l/20111018

Things of note:

-This article could be summed up in three words: Yay old monsters. Having said that, I don't know what meets the criteria for revival and how we fix the armies of FU old monster guys out there.

I got as far as this:

"We reminisced about a lot of old-school monsters that hadn't been updated to the latest edition—or the latest two editions. Or even three."

And then I realised he doesn't know what he's talking about. The vast majority of "old-school" monster have been updated for 3E (and Pathfinder) in the Tome of Horrors (including the gorbel and peryton as illustrated in the article). Maybe he means "officially" updated, but who gives a crap about that?

Am I the only person who thinks that the Peryton is one of the dumber DnD monsters stolen from mythology. Or the only person disturbed that Monte doesn't know that?

[hogarth]

Am I the only person who thinks that the Peryton is one of the dumber DnD monsters stolen from mythology. Or the only person disturbed that Monte doesn't know that?

No, he specifically says the peryton isn't awesome. Apparently, his argument is that terrible monsters are great because there's probably some retard out there who thinks they're awesome (cf. the tirapheg).

[K]

Am I the only person who thinks that the Peryton is one of the dumber DnD monsters stolen from mythology. Or the only person disturbed that Monte doesn't know that?

No, he specifically says the peryton isn't awesome. Apparently, his argument is that terrible monsters are great because there's probably some retard out there who thinks they're awesome (cf. the tirapheg).

Catering to a tiny percentage of the DnD populace is the part I find disturbing.

Some ideas are so bad that they should not be inflicted on anyone, even if a few people think they are cool. As a designer, he should know that the damage to the overall brand is not worth the small returns.

[Leper]

This is Monte. This is also Legends & Lore.

So you can expect:

[*]"The Gnome Effect" as a serious argument. (If one person in 100 likes something, then that means one in ten tables are seriously effected by not having it available--like not including gnomes as a default playable race with full support right off the bat. If one in ten tables are effected, then seriously we need to get right on that guys, and fuck the things that 50 or 90 people out of 100 are asking for, instead of just pointing out that it is there in some form and if not, then you can just fucking house rule it in or redescribe something else to cover it, which has been happening for more than 30 years.)
[*]"The Gnome Effect" as a serious argument used opportunistically. (No matter how many people may want it, if we can make it sound like we're bringing back old stuff to get back a lost market share, then that makes it totally right.)
[*]"The Gnome Effect" as a serious argument used opportunistically only to support things Monte really wants to come back, especially if there isn't what he figures is genuine popular support for it. (See my previous rant about Monte--you plebian, ignorant masses don't know what's good for you, only Poppa Monte does... and a few other folks who are smart enough to agree with him.)

[Username17]

Gnomes and Half Orcs (especially Half Orcs) were way more popular than Half Elves. The fact that 4e dropped with a brand new flavor of Elf and a brand new flavor of half dragon while dropping Half Orcs and Gnomes was just really fucking weird. I could have seen dropping Half Orcs and Half Elves entirely and just putting in Orcs as playables. But striking basic races and classes off the list because they are the least popular with the writer (and not the least popular overall) is fairly insulting to a lot of people.

The Gnome was the sixth most popular basic race, but in a game with 7 basic races, putting out the tiefling and gnome video was a bizarre insult to the fans.

-Username17

[K]

Still, it does fit with WotC's current design philosophy of "please an extra 2% because it might pull them in, even if you insult 70% because they won't leave over this issue."

That being said, playable races is a far cry from perytons. I mean, tossing in new race just might draw in a new player, but a monster won't. (Though tossing in drow as playable base races is a far better PR move if you consider that the few bestselling DnD novels they own happen to star a drow.)

I can't see a few grognard monsters drawing anyone in, but I could see it turning a few people off. The peryton looks stupid and doesn't do anything interesting, and that hurts the brand because it might turn someone off when they skim the MM.

I think they are just IP whores looking to hold onto anything they have and trying to stake out more territory. I mean, illithid/mindflayers are iconic and trademarked, but it's not like FFXI isn't using "soulflayers" who are the exact same color, shape, and general skillset, so they need new stuff or old stuff that was unpopular enough to not be imitated to lock down IP-wise.

[ModelCitizen]

Writing a monster manual goes like this:

Step 1: Port old monsters people care about.
Step 2: Write the few new ideas you've come up with that are actually good.
Step 3: Write a bunch of stupid monsters as filler.

If you're going to have stupid monsters anyway (and you are) there's no reason they can't be old stupid monsters. Having the peryton doesn't mean we have one less good monster, it means we have one less slug centaur or giant penis that ejaculates acid.

[Leper]

Gnomes and Half Orcs (especially Half Orcs) were way more popular than Half Elves. The fact that 4e dropped with a brand new flavor of Elf and a brand new flavor of half dragon while dropping Half Orcs and Gnomes was just really fucking weird. I could have seen dropping Half Orcs and Half Elves entirely and just putting in Orcs as playables. But striking basic races and classes off the list because they are the least popular with the writer (and not the least popular overall) is fairly insulting to a lot of people.

Half elves were unpopular because half elves somehow managed to suck mechanically even harder than half orcs.

"High elf" and "wood elf" are not new concepts by any means.

Yes, I agree that dragonborn and tiefling were not particularly popular choices for old players. They have been pretty popular among my new players, however, and many of my old players have been pretty happy at being able to make "half dragons" and tieflings that weren't straight up crippled by the system.

The choice to not include gnomes in the PHB was not solely aimed at insulting players. They didn't have enough well-made support (as they defined well made) ready to be published when the PHB needed to go to press. They were, however, a completely playable race--they simply did not come with the inbuilt feat support others did. (frankly, considering the inequity of some of that feat support, and that was considered "good material" I'm glad they didn't try to push gnomes out in the PHB with "bad material."

The Gnome was the sixth most popular basic race, but in a game with 7 basic races, putting out the tiefling and gnome video was a bizarre insult to the fans.

-Username17

Frank, I'm not sure what there is about 4e that you don't interpret as "a bizarre insult to the fans."

I get that you have strong opinions, strong likes, and strong dislikes. I also get that after reading several of your posts when I first started lurking in the Den I was damn near sure you were speaking about 4e in glowing terms until I realized you were mostly just talking about your own material. Not a big deal. You dislike the way they pursued the same goals you were after. It happens.

Not everything is "A SLAP IN TEH FAEC!!!!1!!!OMFGELEVEN!" Sometimes you're just not the market they're pursuing, because they can't pursue you (and the many others that share your opinions) forever... If they try, they'll go out of business because eventually you stop spending money on them--either because you have all the material you want/can afford or because you're dead and failed to include a proviso in your will to continue purchasing published materials that agree with your personal outlook.

Their other option is to increasingly pursue larger markets: which is increasingly swinging towards casual gamers who don't want to spend 80+ hours of study just to realize that wizards rule and fighters drool.

Does it suck to be the market they're not pursuing anymore? Fuck yeah. It hurts. I didn't like being the market they weren't pursuing in the first place, and now that their design principles move farther and farther away from the reasons I bought into 4e in the first place (far from perfect, but close enough to be fun for me) I'm a little unhappy.

But I can see why they're doing it. I honestly think the market they're pursuing is going to give them the big middle finger, and newer markets are genuinely going to look at their prurient drivel and go back to playing video games. But I could just be wrong and bitter. ^_^

[shadzar]

Catering to a tiny percentage of the DnD populace is the part I find disturbing.

Some ideas are so bad that they should not be inflicted on anyone, even if a few people think they are cool. As a designer, he should know that the damage to the overall brand is not worth the small returns.

maybe they realized that design is falling because who they have been catering to. they really cannot design for the flaky gamers anymore.

all those poeple that play shadowrun, WoD, D&D, Pathfinder, etc...are not their core audience because they will play anything and want a mix of things, and that can no longer be supported.

so they are trying to decide back to catering to D&D players, and let the others come and go as they please, since a D&D player will likely be found in every group so you can get the flaky gamers to buy products as well, but you can get the D&D players to buy more D&D products.

even then you need a core game, not an everything is core game. eBerron doesnt belong in the core game with its warforged, now did the planescape monsters and spelljammer ones in the Monstrous Manual.

they need to find a core again. core game, core audience; and with them decide what to do with the direction of the game? keep D&D around or just make new games and put the D&D name on them.

D&D is nearly 40 and having a mid-life crisis.

[K]

Writing a monster manual goes like this:

Step 1: Port old monsters people care about.
Step 2: Write the few new ideas you've come up with that are actually good.
Step 3: Write a bunch of stupid monsters as filler.

If you're going to have stupid monsters anyway (and you are) there's no reason they can't be old stupid monsters. Having the peryton doesn't mean we have one less good monster, it means we have one less slug centaur or giant penis that ejaculates acid.

You missed a step: fill every type slot.

Seriously. This is the only reason the basic MM might have a sonic monster or why Plant-type and Ooze-type seems to have equal-ish representation with Undead in every book.

The acid ejaculater exists because someone noticed a profound lack of acid monsters, not just as a dick joke. (As a fun game, find all the dick monsters in the 3.X MMs.... protip: it's more than 4.)

This was done as a nod to game-balance because no one wanted to admit that acid resistance is not going to come up as often as fire resistance if you just picked monsters randomly out of the books and that arrows of elemental slaying will probably never get bought out of the Ye' Ol' Magick Shoppe unless you stocked every MM with more elementals and Rangers need more giants to be awesome against because the iconic list is really small and super-themed for geography.

[shadzar]

Legends & Lore Poll Results: 10/18/2011
Which of the following statements do you believe most strongly to be true?
The game's history is very important and should be preserved. 76.3%
The game's history isn't that important. We should focus on the present and the future. 23.7%

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx ... l/20111025

Experienced players will note that the last entry is sort of a weird collision of 3rd edition and 4th edition rules.

someone made Monte read 4th edition rules.

there is also something he missed about the rules, other than restraining the DM, which Mearls already mentioned a month or so back.

that is the rules also affect how people view a system. Option 3 would tell me i want nothing to do with the system. there are too many moving parts to have to deal with with all this crap.

2e cut down on Gygax wordiness, but still left many things hidden in paragraphs. recent editions have dont more things right just giving bullets of things like a few things in 2e had such as the druid abilities. they were highlighted with red ink, then described so you could find the important stuff...the rule/crunch within the fluff, unlike the dwarf or elf abilities hidden in paragraphs you had to pull out.

when presented with the Option 2, i also would NOT want to play the game because it is too confined. it dictates when a climb check is made as opposed to option 1 and many other things such as that stupid DC i jsut despise.

Option one for me is the best. if fits into 2e still play because you have a specialist climber that can tackle the "epic" climbing, and others can just climb things.

Option one also follows along with the peopel that like to think for themselves as it follows: "lack of a rule does not mean lack of an option". so not having some special rule to climb doesnt mean you cannot climb, same goes for swimming, and the dreaded fire-building.

swimming is one of those character aesthetics....or quirks. it an hamper the party if overused, but can make for interesting play when sued sparingly or correctly.

Option one doesnt dictate you ahve to have some sort of skill in order to climb and anyone can TRY to do it in the game.

it leaves those "rules" that are made by the DM to being for cases where it is extraordinary circumstances.

Ralph the Ranger: I want to climb this tree and get our bearings and see if the enemy is nearby.
DM: ok you climb the tree without incident and you see this.....

no die roll is needed to climb the tree, though one might have been needed to get directions or tell if an enemy was nearby. climbing for most would be something natural to do....such as walking...

She might never do so, in fact, and might assume that there is no success or failure involved with climb unless it seemed right, in the same way that there is no success or failure conditions for walking across the floor.

i am glad to see the game coming back to the idea that codifying everything as opposed to using logic and common sense in play is bad design.

while Option 1 may not make simpler play ALL the time, it sure as hell does most of the time. in the case of climbing you dont have to futz with the dice to do something that isnt a real obstacle..while harsher circumstances MAY cause there to be dice rolls rather than a handwave, and othertimes you jsut ant fucking climb something because you cant.

part of the game would them be finding out WHY you cant climb this thing...that is having the character IN THE WORLD using their logic to figure something out and common sense to derive that logic from.

putting the roleplaying back into RPGs like D&D is much better than changing them to rollplaying.

[Swordslinger]

Gnomes and Half Orcs (especially Half Orcs) were way more popular than Half Elves.

This was mostly due to the fact that half-orcs were the only race to get a strength bonus (which instantly made them popular among fighters) and half-elves sucked balls. The entire concept was that you let your character's mother get raped by an orc so you could get above 18 strength.

Beyond that, the half-orc was exceptionally dull. Allow someone any choice of something with a strength modifier, whether minotaur, warforged, dwarf or dragonborn, and the half-orc's popularity drastically tanks.

The half-elf on the other hand was a concept a lot of people were generally okay with, but they shied away from it because mechanically it sucked. With 4E improving them, I've seen it as a fairly popular race. It was just awful in 1E-3E, so people never used it.

Aside from Dragonlance tinker gnomes, I've honestly never seen anyone express any interest in being a gnome. They've always struck me as some kind of joke race. In 2nd edition I remember them being kind of good because they got an intelligence bonus, so they were a wizard race. I have never seen one played in 3E or 4E and I couldn't offhand even tell you what they do in either edition, nor do I particularly care.

[Stubbazubba]

For those of us with shadzar on ignore, new article is up.

[Psychic Robot]

I have a feeling that 5e is going to push hard for rules lite in the same way that 4e took a dump on the 3e skill system in favor of "just make it up"

[CapnTthePirateG]

Looks like more waffling about the DM versus the rules. Didn't Mearls do an article like this a while back? Because I don't want to see a skill system which is "yo dawg, the DM makes up shit, so all your ranks are as useful as the DM says they are, so you can autoclimb the building making the ranks irrelevant.

[shadzar]

@Capn

this one isnt exactly about the skill system, but the presentation and complexity of the rules.

option 1 gives you just enough to know that something is affected by climbing. your movement is reduced. this implies other things are possible, but not required in normal circumstances.

2, offers more details about what happens when you try to climb. each instance requires a check. now if you just want to climb a tree and pick an apple should you really have to make some sort of check? is it that difficult a task? could a fighter NOT pick an apple in your AD&D game because he didnt have rogue skills?

this is already going overboard.

also 2 adds combat rules in it..and it doesnt belong in the climb section. "on higher ground" giving bonus to attack or what have you was always in the situational modifiers. this isnt about climbing itself and doesnt belong here. it doesnt matter that oyu are climbing.

the problem then is it takes to reverse and gives advantage to someone because you ARE climbing...and that can easily make no sense. it assumes you cannot fight as well while climbing and causes MANY problems. if you are climbing a net rigging on a ship then you are stable just like on the ground, then maybe even higher than someone so should be more easily able to attack them, not be defenseless.

3 is just some complex crap worse than anything Gygax ever wrote.

not to mention it waste space saying things that are probably said elsewhere. if you have boots of climbing, then the advantages of them on climbing should be in THEIR description, not those of climbing in general, since you arent always using boots of climbing.

it is information overload where you have to grapple the rules in order to find what you need. i would much rather they slash option 3 with their sword and get rid of redundancy.

[Gx1080]

About that latest article....Option 2 is the best one. Duh.

[Red_Rob]

About that latest article....Option 2 is the best one. Duh.

One of the things I have learned is that no matter how obvious you think a viewpoint or choice is, there is usually a fairly large group of people who believe the exact opposite and are willing to expound at length about why this is. The most glaringly obvious example is American politics.

[Kaelik]

I think 3 is clearly best, and also, will be willing to expound at length.

[hogarth]

About that latest article....Option 2 is the best one. Duh.

Option 2 is probably the best one to put into a core rulebook that has a limited number of pages. But I firmly believe that adding good, useful detail is a positive thing; "conciseness" isn't the only criterion by which to judge a rule.

[Daztur]

About that latest article....Option 2 is the best one. Duh.

Well the way it's presented option two doesn't give you any clue about how to get the DC, that's a bit of a problem.

[OgreBattle]

Does it suck to be the market they're not pursuing anymore? Fuck yeah. It hurts. I didn't like being the market they weren't pursuing in the first place, and now that their design principles move farther and farther away from the reasons I bought into 4e in the first place (far from perfect, but close enough to be fun for me) I'm a little unhappy.

But I can see why they're doing it. I honestly think the market they're pursuing is going to give them the big middle finger, and newer markets are genuinely going to look at their prurient drivel and go back to playing video games. But I could just be wrong and bitter. ^_^

Do you need new material constantly though? With something like a tabletop RPG it's pretty easy to just stick with your 10+ year old One True edition and ignore the rest, or just make up your own rules.

I'm playing 4e and I've only used a tiny fraction of the published materials. Sure, it's fun to read new stuff, but functionally it's not critical just playing a session with friends.

It doesn't really matter WotC's D&D tanks. TSR tanked too, AD&D is still around, and plenty of retro-clones

[ModelCitizen]

I have a feeling that 5e is going to push hard for rules lite in the same way that 4e took a dump on the 3e skill system in favor of "just make it up"

It doesn't look to me like he's saying that. The first paragraph sounds like it but he turns around after that. Most of his audience are 4e people who are used to resolving 80% of skill checks by the DM making shit up. From their perspective even proposing Option 3 is pushing for more rules.

I think 3 is clearly best, and also, will be willing to expound at length.

Willing to write textwall in defense of Option 5. In D&D land where Spider Climb is a spell, any character who spends points to be good at climbing should be ninja running up walls by like level 4.

[Previn]

It doesn't look to me like he's saying that. The first paragraph sounds like it but he turns around after that. Most of his audience are 4e people who are used to resolving 80% of skill checks by the DM making shit up. From their perspective even proposing Option 3 is pushing for more rules.

I want option 3. I want it because it's infinitely easier to have the rule there and not need, or outright ignore it than it is to not have the rule and have to make it up yourself.

I've never understood why people seem to think they have to use every rule as is.

Willing to write textwall in defense of Option 5. In D&D land where Spider Climb is a spell, any character who spends points to be good at climbing should be ninja running up walls by like level 4.

That's not true. Spider climb could just do something like say "you are considered to have 10 ranks in climb" or it could be a 6th level spell. YOu can move the balance slider in multiple directions, especially if you're creating a new system wholesale.

Tome slides everything toward caster level (if I understand correctly it does so because that's the simpler fix for 3.x). 4e slides everything to fighter level. It's possible to find a happy medium.

[ModelCitizen]

There's no good point on magic's "slider" where Climb is still relevant. No matter what Spider Climb does, flight will eventually push climbing off the list of things PCs care about. If players are allowed to make nontrivial investments in Athletics/Climb/Jump/whatever then climbing and jumping need to get awesome really fast and cap out early. (That doesn't mean they have to get awesome for everyone, just characters who make a serious investment in being good at them.)

I like the idea of having skills and magic meet in the middle for almost everything else, I just don't think it works for Athletics.