The 5E Playtest, what will TGD members do?

[NineInchNall]

we're designing the game so that not every player has to choose from the same set of options.

That's impossible. Every single player is choosing from the same set of options.

By putting in the arbitrary layers, they are just making some, but not all, of the options to choose from be non-transparent with each other. That makes the game incredibly hard to balance and incredibly confusing, but it doesn't make there be different options that different people don't have.

-Username17

Yeah, I mean, I know what Monte's trying to say. "It's like Street Fighter Anniversary where you can choose to play as SF2 Ken, or SF2CE Ken, or SF2T Ken, or SSF2 Ken, or SSF2T Ken and play against the same or different versions of Ryu and the rest within the same ruleset and have stuff mostly work. Yay!"

But the actual words he uses don't jibe, 'cause even though SF2 Ken is simpler and has fewer moves to choose from, the player is still at some level choosing from all the different versions, which means he's choosing from all the different moves - just not during an actual match.

You have to do some serious math to make something like SF Anniversary work. I doubt they're gonna do anything like that for 5e.

[TOZ]

I will ignore it.

[Swordslinger]

No one on their team is competent or knowledgeable enough to pull off what they're proposing. They seem to be trying to do everything they can to mechanically fail.

Yeah, they've basically decided to have multiple games and stuff them together.

Their team is lucky to design one good game, let alone multiple. This is the most retarded design philosophy I've ever seen for a game.

I can see having certain PCs with Attacks of opportunity and others who can't do that, but PCs will have to learn the shit based on what the monsters do.

[Krusk]

I'm kind of curious why they think people would opt for fiddly, crunchy, detailed method if the simple option is just as good?

Because it won't be. It will be like the optional magic items rules in dark sun. You can choose not to use magic weapons, and instead get these +xs you would get from those items. Generally having the items is better than not having the items, because you can mesh your items well and synergize them.

Do that for feats, skills, powers. What you get in the end is a quick write up that takes no effort and barely fills a book. So you introduce feats and options for the complex stuff in later books. Complex stuff power creeps others do not.

In the end it is wizard or do Taxes, be Wizard++.

I also see DMs refusing to let players do the less complex options as they aren't roleplaying. I had one who refused the take 10 option for this reason. "Its an unrushed climb check, I don't particularly care about doing good, just not falling so I take my time. Also I saw you use crit fumbles on skills.... Ok actually I'll just leave".

[ScottS]

Weird gamer guy in my area had a huge "universal conversion document" he used whenever he ran D&D. The premise was supposed to be that you could make your character using any edition, any source, and that running it through this rules set would somehow normalize everything and lead to a playable game (I think I heard about this in 2000 so no clue whether he tried to make 4e compatible as well). I'd forgotten about it until now, but that's what this article reminds me of.

[hogarth]

Yeah, they've basically decided to have multiple games and stuff them together.

Their team is lucky to design one good game, let alone multiple. This is the most retarded design philosophy I've ever seen for a game.

Especially if you consider that this way, the (presumably) simple core rules will get much more playtesting than the (presumably) more complex add-on rules that come out later on. When ideally it would be the other way 'round.

[Swordslinger]

Weird gamer guy in my area had a huge "universal conversion document" he used whenever he ran D&D. The premise was supposed to be that you could make your character using any edition, any source, and that running it through this rules set would somehow normalize everything and lead to a playable game (I think I heard about this in 2000 so no clue whether he tried to make 4e compatible as well). I'd forgotten about it until now, but that's what this article reminds me of.

No, what they're proposing is actually worse than that.

They're not trying to have everyone play a 3E character or everyone play a 4E character.

This is where one complex character has a huge character sheet with skills, feats and uses attacks of opportunity, while another simplified character doesn't. I really don't know what happens when the simplified character tries to climb something or when a monster gets to make an AoO on him. But the two characters are supposed to be balanced, so presumably there's some way for the simplified character to climb crap even though he doesn't have the climb skill specifically written down.

[K]

I'm starting to get that bad feeling I got when the 4e teasers were being released.

This really feels like someone read something on the internet and thought it was a good idea, and now they plan to implement the idea without actually understanding the idea or how to go about it.

[virgil]

How did 3E do so well? Why does it seem to be impossible for them to recreate that improvement on the game?

[Ice9]

I thought the settings were just on a per-campaign basis, so that a given game could have or not have AoOs, feats, skills, etc. Which brings it into the realm of hypothetically possible to do right, but not for most designers, and definitely not for WotC. If they're actually setting that stuff on a per-character basis, that's even more of a clusterfuck.

What would be cool though, is an option to quickly make a character with a few choices, and then pick the details over time. This wouldn't have as much balance issues, because everyone will eventually have their character detailed. For example, you want to jump into a game in five minutes, so you pick:
Human, Soldier, Spear, Wilderness Background. Or ...
Dwarf, Conjurer, Iron, Merchant Background
Which gives you a set of default everything, with abilities that are as simple as possible. Then over the course of the next few games, you can tweak that to your liking and start using the full set of abilities.

[fectin]

Yeah, that's actually what I meant - plaster artwork across the books that is:
A. High quality
B. Sexy
C. Pretty

Seriously, they should be busting out the oil pastels and watercolours to splash beautiful scenes of colour for every backdrop, maybe include all of one picture that has actual armour and the rest are either "clad in not much" or have spinning, whirling vibrant robes, and so on. Just make it look amazing and also somewhat sexy.

Let people play whatever games they want with it, but making the rulebooks kind of look like soft porn would draw in big money, because roleplayers tend to buy that sort of thing.

Obviously they should be reasonable. I'm not suggesting they should, for the Succubus entry, show them doing what they do best, nor do we want a centrefold of Miailee's gynaecology exam, but they could at least include an implied-lesbianism poster of their female cast in the middle of the book. Seriously, it'll sell. Then they can write whatever shitty rules they like and no-one will care.

It works for Exalted.
No seriously, the art really underscores and complements the fluff, which is a huge quality boost, without any extra design-side creativity. One of the first things I do with a new book is read all the mini-comics at the beginning of each chapter. They're at least as good at evoking a feel for their subject matter as several pages of text, and a damn sight more aesthetic.

This one went too far:
http://www.amazon.com/Savant-Sorcerer-R ... 1588466752

But just look at these. These are splatbooks, and they make you think, "I want to play that character", which turns into "...so I should buy this book."
http://www.amazon.com/Exalted-Abyssals- ... pd_sim_b_5
http://www.amazon.com/Exalted-Aspect-Bo ... pd_sim_b_1

And compare with Dnd covers. Here's the best I could find, and it didn't come out 'til essentials:
http://www.amazon.com/Heroes-Fallen-Lan ... 22&sr=1-10

3E was even worse; they managed to make every cover character look like a complete twat.

[fectin]

How did 3E do so well? Why does it seem to be impossible for them to recreate that improvement on the game?

Two huge things: cost and default. The core rulebook cost $20, which is a lot more affordable than anything since. College students can swap down to ramen for a week and afford $20 (granted, not all students, but enough).
Default because every weird, one-off setting like stargate, or d20 modern, or spycraft, or Star Wars, or L5R, or Starship Troopers, or Conan, or whatever all used something enough like the d20 system that they wanted you to have the PHB.
Together, that's like if Linus Torvalds got a dollar for every Linux install; it's an economic powerhouse.

Seriously, if 4E had cost $20 per book, and been the basis of a bunch of third party games, who here wouldn't have a full set of it? And once you had a full set of books, wouldn't you be more likely to play it?

[Blicero]

But even without all the extra shit and settings and 3rd party publishing, core 3.0 is still more balanced and less insane/stupid than AD&D, and not as tedious and grindy as 4.0.

It's still filled with bad decisions and massive errors, and it falls apart around doubledigits, but it was still a better version of D&D than that which had come before.

[hogarth]

How did 3E do so well? Why does it seem to be impossible for them to recreate that improvement on the game?

I think it's just that 4E was a step backwards; they've only struck out once so far.

[K]

How did 3E do so well? Why does it seem to be impossible for them to recreate that improvement on the game?

I think it's just that 4E was a step backwards; they've only struck out once so far.

4e wasn't a new edition. It was a completely different game with the name of another game tacked on for marketing purposes. As the first edition of a new game, it had lots of unique problems that other games did not have.

3e was a new edition. They looked at correcting the problems of 2e, created solutions for some of those problems, and then put out the new edition. Some of those solutions had their own problems, and those should have been corrected in 3.5 (but weren't, of course).

5e is also looking like new game and not a new edition. I mean, I've never even heard of someone saying "I need my DnD to be more modular and I need some people at the table to not get feats."

I honestly wonder if Mearls is telling Monte to implement shitty Mearls ideas that Mearls stole from internet message boards. If that's true, 5e is doomed.

[Previn]

How did 3E do so well? Why does it seem to be impossible for them to recreate that improvement on the game?

3e edition had a lot of stong points, and some weaknesses that became obvious as time went on. However, it let you create the stories you wanted, and to generally play how you wanted. It was close enough to 2ed that you could converting things from 2e to 3e without much hassle. So it brought that fan base with it, and the OGL created massive 3rd party support which meant that it was everywhere. Cheap books helped.

4e has very few strong points, limits the stories you can tell, and directly and deliberately alienated large portions of it's player base and is provable mathematically unsound which was one of the biggest selling points to players. Unlike 3e 4e was also specifically pitched to Hasbro as being tied to the VTT and DDI with the intent of generating revenue through online subscriptions and eventually turning into an MMO if the gaming IP license was ever recovered. The GPL killed off 3rd party support.

On top of that 4e isn't just competing with Pathfinder, it's still competing with 3.x which hasn't been in print or supported for roughly 5 years.

3e for all it's flaws is basically hands down a better game than 4e. One of 4e's biggest problems was that it was called DUngeons and Dragons when it would have been much, much better received as a separate game.

[Lokathor]

What would be cool though, is an option to quickly make a character with a few choices, and then pick the details over time. This wouldn't have as much balance issues, because everyone will eventually have their character detailed. For example, you want to jump into a game in five minutes, so you pick:
Human, Soldier, Spear, Wilderness Background. Or ...
Dwarf, Conjurer, Iron, Merchant Background
Which gives you a set of default everything, with abilities that are as simple as possible. Then over the course of the next few games, you can tweak that to your liking and start using the full set of abilities.

This this, I want this to be in more games that people make.

The GPL killed off 3rd party support.

1) It's very weird, as a programmer, to see GPL mean something i'm not used to.
2) Yeah it did, holy crap. Everyone at the start of 4e was ready to come out with 3rd party materials and help the new edition flourish. Then WotC said "no fuck you" and tons of people lost interest in the game. If they'd allowed a SRD 4e to come out, it probably could have killed Pathfinder from ever getting started right there.

[shadzar]

personally i am going to do nothing with the playtest. D&D has been dead since WotC put its hands on it. it is trying to win the hearts of all the people and cater to the masses and make a game for the lowest common denominator, rather than make a game that stands on its own. they have lost sight of game making and now just try to make gimmicks that make lots of money fast for a few years until they can come up with a new gimmick when the last one starts showing signs of dropped sales.

[Prak]

I will take a look, and probably try to make the best of a questionable situation.

[OgreBattle]

Isn't 3e already a highly modular game, with warblades and fighters and warlocks and wizards?

[Previn]

Isn't 3e already a highly modular game, with warblades and fighters and warlocks and wizards?

Most (all?) editions of D&D up until 4e were highly modular.

I suspect the new 'play with the subset of rules you like' is really just a marketing gimmick to prevent another edition war, get people to keep buying 4e (because it will totally be usable!) and get people to feel good about 5e.

I don't think anyone actually believes they can pull off running a 3.x druid and wizard, an 4e fighter and a 1e thief through a 2e module and have it work. I think there are a lot of people who will still buy 5e just on the vanishingly small hope that someone can do that.

[hogarth]

I honestly wonder if Mearls is telling Monte to implement shitty Mearls ideas that Mearls stole from internet message boards. If that's true, 5e is doomed.

I think the problem is that the new version has to be a superset of 3E (in order to compete with Pathfinder and/or old 3E players) and 4E (Essentials, at least), and that's just not possible unless you make a lot of pieces removable. As a "bonus", that means that the minimal version of the game is a "lite" version of the rules.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Now while some rulesets are so integrated that they cannot function except when viewed as a gestalt (such as Exalted), I am sorry to say that D&D is not one of those rulesets.

The unifying factor for D&D has always been the physics of the combat engine and the base resolution system. It's not the classes, the skills, the magical items, the feats, or even the monsters. It's the combat engine and the resolution system.

The fact that the mere idea of Unearthed Arcana doesn't get you immediately laughed out of the room shows that the concept can work depending on how far you go with it. I can totally envision a D&D 5E that 'works' in this way as long as the combat engine and resolution system is equivalent across all the periphery complexities. Obviously it would require extensive playtesting to ensure that the whole rigamarole doesn't blow up in your face when you combine a Complexity 3 class system with a Complexity 1 skill system -- for example, the Essentials Magical Item system post-Mordenkainen's Magical Compendium works for Essentials and Essentials-alone character but is completely unworkable for 4.0E D&D characters.

Now, do I actually think that the design team (or any design team) could satisfactorily do such a thing during that timeline? Fuck no.

Do I think that this is a good idea even if they could do it? Fuck no. Having optional complexities, unless it's explicitly done for 'awesome' one-shots with no concern or care given for the long-term health of the fanbase, completely defeats the point in of itself.

[hogarth]

The unifying factor for D&D has always been the physics of the combat engine and the base resolution system. It's not the classes, the skills, the magical items, the feats, or even the monsters. It's the combat engine and the resolution system.

That's the unifying factor NOW, after 4E came out. Before 4E came out, there were quite a few other unifying factors.

[Dominicius]

But D&D has always been about the combat. It has the most material and rules written for it in all of the edition. Every other mechanical representations of the game world were shaped by the reality of how well they integrated into the combat minigame.

3.5 did this pretty well but 4e said that 90% of those thing do not and should not integrate and we know how that turned out.