D&DNext: Playtest Review

[Chamomile]

-snip-

The first rule of Gaming Den is you do not talk to Shadzar. The second rule of Gaming Den is you do not talk to Shadzar.

[Lago PARANOIA]

There is no particular reason why class-and-level-based systems are inherently worse in general as compared with non-class-and-level-based ones. They do different things, and suit different genres.

The current generation of game designers, both in video games and TTRPGs, by and large do not seem to have the slightest clue what are the strengths and weaknesses of a class-and-level system are. I mean, Jesus fuck, have you looked at Cthulhutech or the 5E D&D system?

If the game designers so pointedly refuse to grasp what class-and-level-systems do better over template-based systems or pure skill point systems then I would prefer it if they just abandon the idea entirely.

[koz]

There is no particular reason why class-and-level-based systems are inherently worse in general as compared with non-class-and-level-based ones. They do different things, and suit different genres.

The current generation of game designers, both in video games and TTRPGs, by and large do not seem to have the slightest clue what are the strengths and weaknesses of a class-and-level system are. I mean, Jesus fuck, have you looked at Cthulhutech or the 5E D&D system?

If the game designers so pointedly refuse to grasp what class-and-level-systems do better over template-based systems or pure skill point systems then I would prefer it if they just abandon the idea entirely.

If people can only use a system retardedly, it shows that people are retarded - not that the system in question is retarded. I would also like to add that by-and-large, I find all game designers in the industry to be retarded, so I'd rather they stop designing games as such, rather than simply stop using something. Template-based or skill point systems are just as easy to make retarded content for, since I believe they actually require more work to analyze and balance.

[Christ Figure]

-snip-

The first rule of Gaming Den is you do not talk to Shadzar. The second rule of Gaming Den is you do not talk to Shadzar.

lol, my bad. I figured everyone here was kosher.

[K]

There is no particular reason why class-and-level-based systems are inherently worse in general as compared with non-class-and-level-based ones. They do different things, and suit different genres.

The current generation of game designers, both in video games and TTRPGs, by and large do not seem to have the slightest clue what are the strengths and weaknesses of a class-and-level system are. I mean, Jesus fuck, have you looked at Cthulhutech or the 5E D&D system?

If the game designers so pointedly refuse to grasp what class-and-level-systems do better over template-based systems or pure skill point systems then I would prefer it if they just abandon the idea entirely.

If people can only use a system retardedly, it shows that people are retarded - not that the system in question is retarded. I would also like to add that by-and-large, I find all game designers in the industry to be retarded, so I'd rather they stop designing games as such, rather than simply stop using something. Template-based or skill point systems are just as easy to make retarded content for, since I believe they actually require more work to analyze and balance.

Yeh, just take a look at Eclipse Phase for a game that fails so hard in making a skill-based system that it's like a parody of a skill-based system.

Even the best skill-based system on the market, Shadowrun, is still pretty bad.

[Christ Figure]

Yeh, just take a look at Eclipse Phase for a game that fails so hard in making a skill-based system that it's like a parody of a skill-based system.

Even the best skill-based system on the market, Shadowrun, is still pretty bad.

I've been reading the Eclipse Phase core book and agree that the mechanics are appalling. Its just another example of a Sci-Fi setting erring on the side of way too fucking much granularity in skills.

However, just because its easy to bork a skill system doesn't make level systems any less flawed. And flawed they indeed are, inherently so.

Don't know much about Shadowrun, but I seriously doubt its the gold standard for skill-based systems. For that, I would go with Gumshoe, which can be pared down or expanded to accommodate different genres and play-styles.

[Koumei]

When you fuck a class and level system up, people notice pretty quickly. They then argue about it on the Internet for decades (exhibit A: D&D). When you fuck a point-buy system up, either everyone takes it for granted and doesn't care (exhibit B: BESM) or it's such a wild mess that people have a problem noticing it and incorrectly think it all works well (exhibit C: WoD).

But that doesn't say how good they are, just how easy it is to hide the problems. It's harder to get point-buy to work at all, whereas with classes and levels, you can do it with a smaller level of competence. You still need some competence though (exhibit D: Rifts, exhibit E: 5th edition D&D). So when you're a total hack and make a trainwreck of a class and level system, it's glaringly obvious and even my dog can see it. Possibly to the point that people don't argue - 5th might actually be so bad that we don't get people saying "No, the classes all work, you're just playing wrong."

[Christ Figure]

Possibly to the point that people don't argue - 5th might actually be so bad that we don't get people saying "No, the classes all work, you're just playing wrong."

Has anything concrete been revealed about 5th's mechanics? So far I've just seen a lot of speculation and playtesting hearsay.

[K]

However, just because its easy to bork a skill system doesn't make level systems any less flawed. And flawed they indeed are, inherently so.

Level systems have traditionally been bad because they are DnD-clones and share all of DnD's legacy mechanics and assumptions.

Cut those legacy mechanics and assumptions, and level-based systems become at least as viable as skill systems.

I mean, the vast majority of skill systems are a combat engine strapped to a "Mother May I" dice-rolling exercise for non-combat stuff. It's not a very high bar to beat.

[Emerald]

Level systems have traditionally been bad because they are DnD-clones and share all of DnD's legacy mechanics and assumptions.

Cut those legacy mechanics and assumptions, and level-based systems become at least as viable as skill systems.

Are there any good level-based systems out there right now, or at least level-based systems that aren't D&D clones/d20 variants?

[K]

Level systems have traditionally been bad because they are DnD-clones and share all of DnD's legacy mechanics and assumptions.

Cut those legacy mechanics and assumptions, and level-based systems become at least as viable as skill systems.

Are there any good level-based systems out there right now, or at least level-based systems that aren't D&D clones/d20 variants?

I don't think so. Games tend to fall into the categories of DnD-clones and Shadowrun-clones, or at least borrow heavily from the mechanics of those games.

[ModelCitizen]

Possibly to the point that people don't argue - 5th might actually be so bad that we don't get people saying "No, the classes all work, you're just playing wrong."

Has anything concrete been revealed about 5th's mechanics? So far I've just seen a lot of speculation and playtesting hearsay.

All you have to do to get into the playtest is give WotC a spamdump email, so you can fact-check all that speculation and hearsay for yourself if you care. You probably don't care and that's fine, but we do have reliable information about the current state of Mearls' thalidomide baby.

[Korwin]

Possibly to the point that people don't argue - 5th might actually be so bad that we don't get people saying "No, the classes all work, you're just playing wrong."

Has anything concrete been revealed about 5th's mechanics? So far I've just seen a lot of speculation and playtesting hearsay.

All you have to do to get into the playtest is give WotC a spamdump email, so you can fact-check all that speculation and hearsay for yourself if you care. You probably don't care and that's fine, but we do have reliable information about the current state of Mearls' thalidomide baby.

That was'nt exactly his question.
His question (I think) was, is there a concrete mechanic in the 5ed playtest files.
I do have them on my computer, but could not be arsed to look into them.

I do know there is a pdf named character generation.

[Username17]

Whether a game counts as good or not depends largely on what you want the game to do. Class and level systems provide faster character generation, minimum defenses for particular levels of power, and encounter guidelines. That's pretty awesome if you want to have an extended campaign and face a bunch of potentially deadly obstacles while still getting to the end and starting quickly.

Class and level systems "fail" when they provide stupid results. Generally this is by providing divergent power gains such that after a number of levels two characters can't be challenged by the same things. This in turn breaks the encounter guidelines and makes the campaign sputter out.

But while that is rightfully regarded as a failure of class-and-level design, most skill systems hit that wall immediately. If you're going to make a hack/slash game in White Wolf, for example, you have to understand that one character will be killed by opposition that another character will treat as a minor speed bump. The very nature of skill based systems means that one character can spend more into "combat" than another and be better at the combat minigame. Then, the game either has built-in assumptions to allow other characters to excel in other areas of missions and have the players feel like they were fully contributing (Shadowrun is the archetypical example here), or the game just feels broken and unfair from the get-go (like World of Darkness).

For that, I would go with Gumshoe, which can be pared down or expanded to accommodate different genres and play-styles.

Gumshoe is not, of course, a skill-based system. It is a rules-lite cooperative storytelling game. It does its job well enough, but the game does not handle campaigns well. I mean, for fuck's sake you have to re-do character generation for everyone if one player fails to show up next session or one extra player wants to join. That is a level of campaign failure that D&D openly and justifiably scoffs at.

Gumshoe does quasi-open ended one shots pretty well. It's fast to teach new players and you can get the game up and running with only one person at the table who has the slightest idea of how the game works inside a single evening. It's practically the perfect convention game. But it fails even harder at what D&D is trying to do than D&DNext does. It doesn't provide a tactically engaging combat system or a sustainable campaign with character growth. It doesn't even really try to provide those things.

-Username17

[phlapjackage]

Earthdawn for a good level/class-based system? Ignoring the weird die-step level thing...

[ModelCitizen]

For that, I would go with Gumshoe, which can be pared down or expanded to accommodate different genres and play-styles.

Gumshoe is really only suited to mysteries. The Investigative Skills system is designed around making sure players automatically succeed at finding clues, which is kind of weird if you're trying to do something other than "find clues." All skills can do is give you case-specific, DM-determined story nuggets. It seems interesting for what it does, but if you want skills that redirect the plot instead of advance the plot, Gumshoe doesn't do that.

The General Skills part of the system is confused and generally bad. The probabilities are weird and the optimizations are weird and none of it rewards versatile or genre-appropriate characters. (Ignore all utility skills! Minmax Health! Throw dynamite!) The whole thing looks like the author didn't care about it. It's also so completely separate from the Investigative Skills part of the system that you could swap it out for a better combat engine and lose nothing. My impression is Robin Laws came up with the Investigative Skills idea and wanted to publish it as a complete new game, but he wasn't really interested in writing rules for fights or stealth or chases so he just did it quick and dirty.

Ok, there's one thing in the combat engine he has strong ideas about. Gumshoe has a lot of weirdness about lethality. Laws can't write a weapon damage table without a half-page rant about how strange it was that his playtesters wanted more lethal weapons and how smart he was for ignoring them. The whole thing smacks of being designed to thumb his nose at someone in some internet fight. From talking to the publisher (on this board, after he marshaled a bunch of trolls over here because we said mean things about another of his company's games) it appears there are a bunch of secret house rules you're supposed to use for health and damage.

[Red_Rob]

I'm just about to run a Gumshoe game for our group, so I'm reading these comments with interest. The first thing we did when we read the rules was rip out the general skills system resolution system and kludge in the dicepool system from Shadowrun / After Sundown. The dice pools work out about the same values so we didn't even need to change Chargen.

[Christ Figure]

I mean, for fuck's sake you have to re-do character generation for everyone if one player fails to show up next session or one extra player wants to join. That is a level of campaign failure that D&D openly and justifiably scoffs at.

Gumshoe does quasi-open ended one shots pretty well. It's fast to teach new players and you can get the game up and running with only one person at the table who has the slightest idea of how the game works inside a single evening. It's practically the perfect convention game. But it fails even harder at what D&D is trying to do than D&DNext does. It doesn't provide a tactically engaging combat system or a sustainable campaign with character growth. It doesn't even really try to provide those things.

-Username17

That's...actually a fair point. Losing or gaining a player has the potential to throw off balance in a Gumshoe game.

The RAW:
Players who can only attend every now and then get the same number of investigative build points as everyone else, but are not counted toward the total when deciding how many points to allocate.

So the rule book does address this, though I admit it is not ideal.

[Christ Figure]

For that, I would go with Gumshoe, which can be pared down or expanded to accommodate different genres and play-styles.

Gumshoe is really only suited to mysteries. The Investigative Skills system is designed around making sure players automatically succeed at finding clues, which is kind of weird if you're trying to do something other than "find clues." All skills can do is give you case-specific, DM-determined story nuggets. It seems interesting for what it does, but if you want skills that redirect the plot instead of advance the plot, Gumshoe doesn't do that.

I don't agree that only mysteries can work. In a game like Trail of Cthulhu, clues are what progress the narrative, but in a fantasy game what are you really doing when not in combat? Basically moving around the setting and gathering information (clues) to assist you in your next big dungeon or conflict or whatever.

General abilities and combat could use some work, though Night's Black Agents introduced Thriller Combat Rules, which add more depth to the standard Weapons and Firearms skills.

But anyway, thread derailed.

[Lago PARANOIA]

You probably don't care and that's fine, but we do have reliable information about the current state of Mearls' thalidomide baby.

You know, it's commentary like this that makes me keep coming back to these boards.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Has anything concrete been revealed about 5th's mechanics? So far I've just seen a lot of speculation and playtesting hearsay.

All you have to do to get into the playtest is give WotC a spamdump email, so you can fact-check all that speculation and hearsay for yourself if you care. You probably don't care and that's fine, but we do have reliable information about the current state of Mearls' thalidomide baby.

That was'nt exactly his question.
His question (I think) was, is there a concrete mechanic in the 5ed playtest files.
I do have them on my computer, but could not be arsed to look into them.

I do know there is a pdf named character generation.

Does "argue with the DM" count? Because that's a mechanic Mearls is fapping to.

[ModelCitizen]

I don't agree that only mysteries can work. In a game like Trail of Cthulhu, clues are what progress the narrative, but in a fantasy game what are you really doing when not in combat? Basically moving around the setting and gathering information (clues) to assist you in your next big dungeon or conflict or whatever.

Not just that. You're also gathering resources:

"I use Alchemy to make some potions!"
"I use Barter to fence our loot for better prices!"
"I use Persuasion to convince the militia to fight for us!

Gumshoe investigative skills have entirely MTP results, so Gumshoe can't handle using skills to gain powerups without a buttload of new rules.

You might also be using your skills to monkeywrench the DM's plans a bit, and MTP skill systems really can't do that. That's a much bigger deal in games with a broader scope.

I'm not trying to bag on the Investigative Skills system. I actually kind of like it for what it does. I even think treating skills as per-adventure point pools has some potential for handling crafting/social skills, but you'd have to write so many new rules you couldn't really call it the same game anymore.

[sabs]

Earthdawn is not a Level/Class system.. per say.
It is a class system. But you 'level' by spending xp on your abilities, and when your abilities match a certain rank, you can choose to level.

It's the opposite of D&D. Your skills determine your level, instead of your level determining your skills.

[shadzar]

trying to make sure what 5th is supposed to be, does this about sum it up correctly at this point?

[hogarth]

The arrows in that diagram are mostly meaningless.