When 5E D&D flops, will the designers go to the 3E D&D well?

phlapjackage · Post by **phlapjackage** » Fri Sep 14, 2018 6:43 am

Mord wrote:I'm not so quick to dismiss accessibility as a legitimate selling point for 5e. Among people who actually play 5e, it seems to be the most commonly-cited advantage over 3.X or PF1. The empty book publication schedule does factually keep the overall complexity of the 5e ecosystem down.

I'm not denying this is the current situation either. I'm questioning whether this was a happy little accident, or whether this was one of the main talking points for 5e before launch for why people would want to play the new system. Did they say something along the lines of "we aren't going to produce much content or write many rules because we want 5e to be simpler and more accessible" ? Because the whole modularity talking point would seem to refute that.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Fri Sep 14, 2018 7:23 am

I mean does it matter what their promotion was before it launched? If I have a product and my fans hand me excuses for my work then what motivation do I have to deny them that? The fans are pushing lack of rules as a selling point and word of mouth is one of the strongest advertisements.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Fri Sep 14, 2018 8:46 am

MGuy wrote:I mean does it matter what their promotion was before it launched? If I have a product and my fans hand me excuses for my work then what motivation do I have to deny them that? The fans are pushing lack of rules as a selling point and word of mouth is one of the strongest advertisements.

Indeed how they advertised it matters less than how it actually turned out.

4e started failing out of the gate and word of mouth made wotc release errata after errata despite being initially advertised as perfection itself. Each patch promised to fix everything and failed to deliver.

5e has none of that noise. It just works for a lot of people, no need for rules overhauls all the time.

Jason · Post by **Jason** » Fri Sep 14, 2018 9:22 am

To be fair, if you have hardly any rules to begin with, neither do you need a lot of errata, nor will you find a lot of noise requesting change. As it stands, hardly anyone I know even plays by the rules of 5e, even if they claim to do so.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Fri Sep 14, 2018 9:50 am

That's how it is for most games in my experience. It is very possible that people get so used to that it isn't a problem and the freedom from worrying about looking things up, people challenging the GM or indeed players being able to take hold of the narrative with their own abilities is probably valued to a degree that people forget how much work they have to put in themselves. That is if they consider ass pulling rules to be work. I think the real misstep they made is making it actual combat abilities seem to fail at a significant rate. Of all the things a friend of mine could complain about that's the only thing he routinely laments.

Tannhäuser · Post by **Tannhäuser** » Fri Sep 14, 2018 2:51 pm

A lack of communication on the flaws in a system is not a selling point on that system or its administrators, and I never need to buy an official Calvinball rulebook.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Sep 14, 2018 4:10 pm

5e has none of that noise. It just works for a lot of people, no need for rules overhauls all the time.

Even though from a pure game-balance perspective, 5E D&D needs it a lot more than 4E D&D did. I've played a year and a half of Adventurer's League usually at least once a week and this is true whether we're talking about low-level play or theoretical high-level play.

Dogbert · Post by **Dogbert** » Sun Sep 16, 2018 6:07 am

Jason wrote:As it stands, hardly anyone I know even plays by the rules of 5e, even if they claim to do so.

That is because there aren't any rules to play by.

5uckers pay $150 for three books with nothing printed on them except "eh, just wing it." That's why we call them 5uckers.

Because that's what they are.

5E is Tom Sawyer charging schmucks $150 USD for the privilege of taking turns painting his fence.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Sun Sep 16, 2018 6:33 am

Jason wrote:To be fair, if you have hardly any rules to begin with, neither do you need a lot of errata, nor will you find a lot of noise requesting change. As it stands, hardly anyone I know even plays by the rules of 5e, even if they claim to do so.

The exact thing happened with 3.x. There are plenty of holes and unclear rules not to mention all the loopholes. Two different groups playing 3.x will be two quite different experiences. So the rules do not need to be airtight.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Sep 16, 2018 7:22 am

The claim that 5e is both good and doing well because it still has that new game smell after four years is bizarre and requires an enormous amount of cognitive dissonance.

We all know that core books are where the real profit is. But expansion books are also self funding. They don't make a lot of money on the level of millions of dollars that Hasbro cares about, but they do make money. Coca Cola still makes small contracts to sell to corner markets and shit even though they make a lot more money from grocery stores. The idea that there is any rational reason or that it says anything positive about the organization or the edition that there isn't a book coming out every month or even every two months is simply absurd. The argument that there is any reason that reflects well on the edition or the organization that they don't have a new product to show on any given month is ridiculous - especially because the actual authors of the edition have not articulated one.

The argument that "nothing" is better than something is... really something. There are certainly things that are worse than nothing, but if you honestly expect that to be true about a majority of the products for an edition, then claiming that edition is good or even remotely OK is absurd. If you are arguing that it's a good thing that less books have come out, you are implicitly arguing that the books that have come out are bad. It's only a good thing for there to be no more Star Wars movies if the alternative is Attack of the Clones. An argument that you are glad they aren't writing more D&D books is an argument that the books they are writing are fucking awful.

If you concede that the edition isn't producing much in the way of material, which you must because that's factually true, then you are conceding that things aren't going well for the edition because those the first statement implies the second. It's possible for an edition to be doing badly and still produce a lot of material (see Edition, 4th), but it's not possible for an edition to be doing well and not commission expansion material. Because fucking obviously.

If you claim that it's in any way "good" that few books are coming out, you are equally claiming that the books that are coming out add negative value. That's the only way that position could make any sense. If the books written for an edition add negative value, that edition is bad. Like, really bad, since AD&D2 was by all accounts a pretty bad edition but it was still a net good when new books came out because they were mostly fun to read and had some cool ideas in them and shit.

-Username17

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Sun Sep 16, 2018 12:52 pm

To be pedantic, you could argue that 2 books per year is good, and more than 2 is bad. Or effectively that the authors have some good material, but not enough good material to match an ambitious posting schedule.

During my first semester at college, one of my professors gave an analogy about writing a 3-5 page paper. He said paper is like orange juice. If you write a 2-page paper but it's the best 2-page paper I've ever seen, you're going to get a better grade than if you take that same paper and water it down to 5 pages - it won't be good anymore.

In the context of 3.x, I could see someone saying that they could have gotten their good material in 1-2 books per year, and that on the balance the books had a lot of 'junk' that cluttered up the edition and needed to be ignored.

But even if I agree to that, I think it's clear 5e has learned the wrong lesson. Giving up the game - all mechanics, all character options - all of everything everywhere to avoid power creep is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Sun Sep 23, 2018 10:13 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: If you claim that it's in any way "good" that few books are coming out, you are equally claiming that the books that are coming out add negative value. That's the only way that position could make any sense. If the books written for an edition add negative value, that edition is bad. Like, really bad, since AD&D2 was by all accounts a pretty bad edition but it was still a net good when new books came out because they were mostly fun to read and had some cool ideas in them and shit.

The traditional 5e position seems to be that more books are bad because the designers have given up the job of balancing splatbooks they never attempted in the first place. Certainly there have been books that were a net bad for the edition, such as Complete Warrior, Complete Mage, or Complete Psionic.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Mon Sep 24, 2018 12:43 am

CapnTthePirateG wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote: If you claim that it's in any way "good" that few books are coming out, you are equally claiming that the books that are coming out add negative value. That's the only way that position could make any sense. If the books written for an edition add negative value, that edition is bad. Like, really bad, since AD&D2 was by all accounts a pretty bad edition but it was still a net good when new books came out because they were mostly fun to read and had some cool ideas in them and shit.
The traditional 5e position seems to be that more books are bad because the designers have given up the job of balancing splatbooks they never attempted in the first place. Certainly there have been books that were a net bad for the edition, such as Complete Warrior, Complete Mage, or Complete Psionic.

Yeah, a lot of people will rather have a lot less books than the devs just throwing stuff at the wall as fast as they can and the group needing to figure out what sticks.

And although some players do like reading the rules just for the sake of reading rules and theorycrafting builds, a lot of players don't, they just want to get a character done fast and actually play them, bonus points for not needing to cart around a dozen books to play said character.

For example I know quite a bit of players who admit that 3.X vancian casters are the pwrnz but still refuse to play them because they consider it plain not-fun to dig through spell lists spreading across multiple books (in particular when inevitably there's an elitist player who's gonna call "why didn't you preparer uber-spell Y from book X?"). But they're fine actually playing the 5e casters with non-bloated spell lists.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Mon Sep 24, 2018 1:10 pm

CapnTthePirateG wrote: Certainly there have been books that were a net bad for the edition, such as Complete Warrior, Complete Mage, or Complete Psionic.

It’s a side note, but what makes you put Complete Mage in the same category?

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Thu Sep 27, 2018 3:03 am

RobbyPants wrote:
CapnTthePirateG wrote: Certainly there have been books that were a net bad for the edition, such as Complete Warrior, Complete Mage, or Complete Psionic.
It’s a side note, but what makes you put Complete Mage in the same category?

Did you not read the advice section?

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Sep 27, 2018 5:02 am

Wait, you did read the advice section?

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Sep 27, 2018 5:32 am

I don't remember much about the complete series but I know that warrior and mage were really popular among my groups back then. If we're talking about net quality I really don't see how either of them could be a net negative.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Thu Sep 27, 2018 5:57 am

Warrior nerfed all the 3.0 prestige classes that were any good. You got Karmic Strike, Shock Trooper, and Frenzied Berserker I guess?

Maybe bad examples, but we could use Serpent Kingdoms instead. Whatever.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Thu Sep 27, 2018 5:47 pm

CapnTthePirateG wrote: Did you not read the advice section?

Yeah, that's definitely shit. I was thinking in terms of classes, feats, ACFs, and what not. I mean, most of the PrCs are shit, too, but that's par for pretty much every 3.5 book. Reserve feats seemed like a cool concept, but they're way too weak to be useful, and you have to wait too long to use them.

CapnTthePirateG wrote:Warrior nerfed all the 3.0 prestige classes that were any good. You got Karmic Strike, Shock Trooper, and Frenzied Berserker I guess?

Maybe bad examples, but we could use Serpent Kingdoms instead. Whatever.

On a related note, when I moved up to Canada, I only took half my books with me to save on space. I left most of the Completes behind, but I did bring the five 3.0 soft covers, since they take up way less space and have better classes in many cases.