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1 year ago ::
Jan 12, 2012 - 11:16AM
#301
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Date Joined:
Mar 14, 2009
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I fear that they may try too hard to "satisfy everybody"
I just hope that doesn't actually morph into "offend nobody" - which is a lot easier but also actually satisfies pretty much nobody.
Unfortunately, I think "offend nobody" is the second most likely possibility - behind "satisfy the people who are already satisfied by 2E and Pathfinder but hate 4E".
In fact, I really wonder who 5E will be aiming for. Even if they want a modular system, there are choices that must be done, at the conceptual level, and these choices can't be apropriate for every kind of d&d player.
Let's take "balance" for instance - you must chose the criteria you will use to balance the game. In 4E, encounter balance was based on the concept that adventurers would, each day, have a given number of encounters, and that the typical encounter would be "equal" to the characters. In other words, the encounter balance was meant for dungeon exploration (and relatively short dungeons of four or five encounters). This created some problems for players/DMs who prefered to have their adventures outside of dungeons - there has been a lot of thread, over the years, on how you could "tweak" the rules for one encounter every few days of travel (or intrigue, or whatever).
It also meant that "big" dungeons (either with many, many encounters, or with bigger encounters : reinforcment, really big battles, etc) needed more work - because they were not the typical case the rules were balanced around.
I wonder what choices 5th edition will make. I think they will chose dungeons (probably longer ones) as their "typical day" basis - after all it is the traditional way to play D&D. But "dungeon exploration" is a very specific thing - and more fit for a boardgame than a RPG, I would say... Can the designers create multiple "balancing" options, giving dungeon explorers and more RP/intrigue/anything oriented player the same chances to like the game? Will the game be (as it still is now, in fact) made for a given style of play ?
Another example would be treasures : will 5E keep this rather... strange idea that heroes spend their time counting their gold coins, like in the old days of D&D and in modern MMORPG ? This is an old concept - I don't know many RPGs who are so enamored of the coins you gain, finding magic items, buying this or that and having lots of potions and so many magic items on yourself that you could warp space by sneezing... So will a character be more defined by the things he can do - or the things he has ? This is also a high conceptchoice, and an important one for "balance". And one that can make the game more or less interesting to different people.
The more I think about it, the less I think that "sacred cows" like dungeon exploration, plethora of magic items, dead enemies pocket wiping and so one will be abandoned - they are, after all, what everybody, even those who stopped playing long ago, remember of D&D, to the point of not wanting to play 4E because "D&D? you want to play door-monster-treasure oh look I'm sparky again ? come on... We already have a WoW account for this."
So, a D&D for those who always liked these aspects of D&D. I doubt they would try to enlarge the game by making other choices, throwing away the notions of dungeons, item collection, etc and make a "modern" wide-appeal RPG of epic heroes and adventures, and have the "dungeon-side" being one of the added options, not the basis of eveerything else.
Annyway - even these basic design choices are limiting, that's what I waned to say. Balance fighting around a "fight day", or balance each fight as a separate entity, means a completely different game, pleasing to different players... And these choices being the basis on what you are building the very core of the game may make it extremely difficult to introduce other "styles" of play without having to rebuild everything from scratch each time.
Well, let's hope they manage to make it...
Remember Tunnel Seventeen !
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1 year ago ::
Jan 12, 2012 - 11:29AM
#302
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I loved that character because he was a self sufficient machine.
So why did he hang around with those other guys all the time?
QFT!
My group has had players from time to time with the attitude that dmgorgon espouses. They were universally considered "trouble players" and all were eventually asked to not come back. Like it or not, D&D is a cooperative game and always has been. Characters who are anit-social, lone wolves, or psychotic are not allow in my campaigns because the game and story isn't about them or how cool they can be individually, it is about the group and how they can work together to overcome challenges.
Kalex the Omen Dungeonmaster Extraordinaire Concerning Player Rules Bias
Show
Gaining victory through rules bias is a hollow victory and they know it.
The argument goes, that some idiot at the table might claim that because there is a "default" that is the only true way to play D&D. An idiotic misconception that should be quite easy to disprove just by reading the rules, coming to these forums, or sending a quick note off to Customer Support and sharing the inevitable response with the group. BTW, I'm not just talking about Next when I say this. Of course, D&D has always been this way since at least the late 70's when I began playing.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 12, 2012 - 11:41AM
#303
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Date Joined:
Jun 15, 2010
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. I personally like the dice to help tell the story, even more than just whether I hit or miss. I like the challenge of shaping the narrative according to the dice. This is totally a personal asthetic concern. I understand other most likely prefer more control.
Dice make crappy story tellers...
Simple solution. Remove the To-Hit and Damage Rolls. Remove saving throws. Remove skill checks. Then you can tell your story exactly the way you want. Let the DM decide if the monster hit or miss. Let him tell his story. No dice to muck it up.
Simple but crappy and assumes its the DMs story... instead of the groups story.
Extremes are still just extremes the wider the impact of dice the less like a story and the more "like a mush that has to be fixed" it can become. This is a pattern it does not necessarily mean that a diceless extreme is ideal NOR does it imply DM totalitarian determinism NOR does it imply game play free of mechanics.(see resource management) NOR does free of dice free you from randomness any time you have choices from limited knowledge you have random.
Dice can cause unexpected things to happen.. but the coolest unexpected things to happen are when your players suprise you with decisions and ideas.
Oh and yes dice "help" provide inspiration but there are some better sources for that too.
Its certainly subjective ... "do you like craps" or "chess" .. I have a game at home called nightmare chess which inserts random factors in to a regular game of chess.
Conversely I like MTG the cards also have randomness... but deck design often hinges around reducing that.
Did you notice that I listed player centric rolls first and said you can tell your story by removing them. Then I listed DM centric rolls and said the DM can tell his story by removing those? Why bold the part about the DM but ignore the same section about the players? My guess is that you assume that I'm pushing some DM centric agenda because that's what you expect, rather than what I wrote. I will admit, I do assume it's kind of up to the DM to be in control of the monsters and how they react in the story. I suppose you COULD leave that up the players, but having the players control the monsters would mostly remove the need for a DM at all.
I find more often than not that the dice make amazing story tellers. My party wanted to try to break down an interdimensional ward on their way to negotiate with some witches and due to some poor dice rolls, ended up inadvertantly opening a dimensional gate that was cycling through different planes. I told them that if they were to enter this gate, they would go to whatever plane it was on when they entered. Elemental Chaos, Shadowfell, Astral Sea or Feywild. This was totally unplanned and improvised. They decided they wanted to jump in. It would have been much better for me if they had simply chosen the Feywild since they also had an unfinished quest that would ultimately lead there. They wanted to roll for it and so we did. They ended up in the Astral Sea and had to find their way home, ultimately through the Shadowfell. It was an amazing blast of an experience all set up because we let the dice tell the story. I never would have thought to do what the dice recommended but I'm thrilled I left myself open to it because it ended up being amazing. Some may struggle with this method but I embrace it.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 12, 2012 - 11:54AM
#304
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Date Joined:
Aug 17, 2007
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1. The OGL was a travesty. I hope they don't bring it back, and I don't think they will. 2. The biggest problem I see with modularity is that it isn't just about rules, it's about aesthetics. Different editions of D&D had different aesthetics, and of you look at 1E and 2E the aesthetics set them apart more than anything. As little faith as I have in a modular system being able to appeal to conflicting tastes, it's the aesthetic aspect I expect them to royally fail at.
The GSL was a travesty. The OGL was definitely not a travesty. It was one of the best things to come out of the switch to 3rd edition. Some of the best adventures form 3.0/3.5 era came from 3rd parties which would not have been possible without the OGL. The OGL made possible lots of games such as True20, Savage Worlds, Mutants and Masterminds, and Pathfinder. I cannot conceive how you can make such a statment with a straight face. You are probably in for a dissapointment with 5E because one of the desingers has already said that the lessons learned from the GSL "mistake" will not be forgotten.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 12, 2012 - 11:59AM
#305
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Date Joined:
Jun 15, 2010
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1. The OGL was a travesty. I hope they don't bring it back, and I don't think they will. 2. The biggest problem I see with modularity is that it isn't just about rules, it's about aesthetics. Different editions of D&D had different aesthetics, and of you look at 1E and 2E the aesthetics set them apart more than anything. As little faith as I have in a modular system being able to appeal to conflicting tastes, it's the aesthetic aspect I expect them to royally fail at.
The GSL was a travesty. The OGL was definitely not a travesty. It was one of the best things to come out of the switch to 3rd edition. Some of the best adventures form 3.0/3.5 era came from 3rd parties which would not have been possible without the OGL. The OGL made possible lots of games such as True20, Savage Worlds, Mutants and Masterminds, and Pathfinder. I cannot conceive how you can make such a statment with a straight face. You are probably in for a dissapointment with 5E because one of the desingers has already said that the lessons learned from the GSL "mistake" will not be forgotten.
Help me understand something. You say great third party adventures would not be possible without the OGL, yet I've played quite a few great third party adventures for 4E. What am I missing?
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1 year ago ::
Jan 12, 2012 - 12:17PM
#306
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Date Joined:
Jan 29, 2005
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1. The OGL was a travesty. I hope they don't bring it back, and I don't think they will. 2. The biggest problem I see with modularity is that it isn't just about rules, it's about aesthetics. Different editions of D&D had different aesthetics, and of you look at 1E and 2E the aesthetics set them apart more than anything. As little faith as I have in a modular system being able to appeal to conflicting tastes, it's the aesthetic aspect I expect them to royally fail at.
The GSL was a travesty. The OGL was definitely not a travesty. It was one of the best things to come out of the switch to 3rd edition. Some of the best adventures form 3.0/3.5 era came from 3rd parties which would not have been possible without the OGL. The OGL made possible lots of games such as True20, Savage Worlds, Mutants and Masterminds, and Pathfinder. I cannot conceive how you can make such a statment with a straight face. You are probably in for a dissapointment with 5E because one of the desingers has already said that the lessons learned from the GSL "mistake" will not be forgotten.
Savage Worlds is not OGL. It has nothing to do with d20 at all.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 12, 2012 - 12:39PM
#307
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Date Joined:
Apr 27, 2006
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there are many things i would like to see in 5e. perhaps foremost in my mind is a desire for 5e to be free of the handcuffs endured by prior editions with respect to errata. if something needs correcting, no matter how significant the fix, then correct it. i don't want to hear that the fix would alienate those who purchased the book containing the original material to be corrected. also, adding alternatives is fine, so long as it it not intended as a substitute for fixing something that needs fixing. i imagine that this could be accomplished by shifting the focus from printed material as primary source to digital material as primary source.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 12, 2012 - 12:42PM
#308
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
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. I personally like the dice to help tell the story, even more than just whether I hit or miss. I like the challenge of shaping the narrative according to the dice. This is totally a personal asthetic concern. I understand other most likely prefer more control.
Dice make crappy story tellers...
Simple solution. Remove the To-Hit and Damage Rolls. Remove saving throws. Remove skill checks. Then you can tell your story exactly the way you want. Let the DM decide if the monster hit or miss. Let him tell his story. No dice to muck it up.
Simple but crappy and assumes its the DMs story... instead of the groups story.
Extremes are still just extremes the wider the impact of dice the less like a story and the more "like a mush that has to be fixed" it can become. This is a pattern it does not necessarily mean that a diceless extreme is ideal NOR does it imply DM totalitarian determinism NOR does it imply game play free of mechanics.(see resource management) NOR does free of dice free you from randomness any time you have choices from limited knowledge you have random.
Dice can cause unexpected things to happen.. but the coolest unexpected things to happen are when your players suprise you with decisions and ideas.
Oh and yes dice "help" provide inspiration but there are some better sources for that too.
Its certainly subjective ... "do you like craps" or "chess" .. I have a game at home called nightmare chess which inserts random factors in to a regular game of chess.
Conversely I like MTG the cards also have randomness... but deck design often hinges around reducing that.
Did you notice that I listed player centric rolls first and said you can tell your story by removing them. Then I listed DM centric rolls and said the DM can tell his story by removing those? Why bold the part about the DM but ignore the same section about the players? My guess is that you assume that I'm pushing some DM centric agenda because that's what you expect, rather than what I wrote.
You did remove the player rolls sure but I didnt read any of the "you" as being player, a lot of people seem to assume that when dice are removed things decay to DM fiat a very D&D oriented assumption (but which is kind of backed up by ADRPG which is heavily governed that way) since their has been quite a history of things like just about everything currently governed by skill checks being a DM fiat. I actually assumed you were saying that reduction of dice significance is DM slanted and that was why it wasnt desireable.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 12, 2012 - 12:59PM
#309
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Date Joined:
Jun 15, 2010
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. I personally like the dice to help tell the story, even more than just whether I hit or miss. I like the challenge of shaping the narrative according to the dice. This is totally a personal asthetic concern. I understand other most likely prefer more control.
Dice make crappy story tellers...
Simple solution. Remove the To-Hit and Damage Rolls. Remove saving throws. Remove skill checks. Then you can tell your story exactly the way you want. Let the DM decide if the monster hit or miss. Let him tell his story. No dice to muck it up.
Simple but crappy and assumes its the DMs story... instead of the groups story.
Extremes are still just extremes the wider the impact of dice the less like a story and the more "like a mush that has to be fixed" it can become. This is a pattern it does not necessarily mean that a diceless extreme is ideal NOR does it imply DM totalitarian determinism NOR does it imply game play free of mechanics.(see resource management) NOR does free of dice free you from randomness any time you have choices from limited knowledge you have random.
Dice can cause unexpected things to happen.. but the coolest unexpected things to happen are when your players suprise you with decisions and ideas.
Oh and yes dice "help" provide inspiration but there are some better sources for that too.
Its certainly subjective ... "do you like craps" or "chess" .. I have a game at home called nightmare chess which inserts random factors in to a regular game of chess.
Conversely I like MTG the cards also have randomness... but deck design often hinges around reducing that.
Did you notice that I listed player centric rolls first and said you can tell your story by removing them. Then I listed DM centric rolls and said the DM can tell his story by removing those? Why bold the part about the DM but ignore the same section about the players? My guess is that you assume that I'm pushing some DM centric agenda because that's what you expect, rather than what I wrote.
You did remove the player rolls sure but I didnt read any of the "you" as being player, a lot of people seem to assume that when dice are removed things decay to DM fiat a very D&D oriented assumption (but which is kind of backed up by ADRPG which is heavily governed that way) since their has been quite a history of things like just about everything currently governed by skill checks being a DM fiat. I actually assumed you were saying that reduction of dice significance is DM slanted and that was why it wasnt desireable.
In my games, I create villains and their motivations and the rest is pretty much collaborative. Even my villains are often based on the back stories of the players.
The point was just that if you think dice are not good story tellers, to remove them, then the story can be what everyone wants. I like letting the dice tell the story. It's one of the best ways to really surprise everyone (including the DM). The trick is to make sure that any options the dice have to tell the story are interesting ones. I drive to D&D every weekend and I'm excited to find out what will happen and where the story will go. Because I honestly have no idea. Between giving the players a lot of narrative power and giving the dice a lot as well, its truly a mystery for me, the DM. I'm forced to react (as the NPCs) to what happens each night just like the players are.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 12, 2012 - 1:13PM
#310
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
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. I personally like the dice to help tell the story, even more than just whether I hit or miss. I like the challenge of shaping the narrative according to the dice. This is totally a personal asthetic concern. I understand other most likely prefer more control.
Dice make crappy story tellers...
Simple solution. Remove the To-Hit and Damage Rolls. Remove saving throws. Remove skill checks. Then you can tell your story exactly the way you want. Let the DM decide if the monster hit or miss. Let him tell his story. No dice to muck it up.
Simple but crappy and assumes its the DMs story... instead of the groups story.
Extremes are still just extremes the wider the impact of dice the less like a story and the more "like a mush that has to be fixed" it can become. This is a pattern it does not necessarily mean that a diceless extreme is ideal NOR does it imply DM totalitarian determinism NOR does it imply game play free of mechanics.(see resource management) NOR does free of dice free you from randomness any time you have choices from limited knowledge you have random.
Dice can cause unexpected things to happen.. but the coolest unexpected things to happen are when your players suprise you with decisions and ideas.
Oh and yes dice "help" provide inspiration but there are some better sources for that too.
Its certainly subjective ... "do you like craps" or "chess" .. I have a game at home called nightmare chess which inserts random factors in to a regular game of chess.
Conversely I like MTG the cards also have randomness... but deck design often hinges around reducing that.
Did you notice that I listed player centric rolls first and said you can tell your story by removing them. Then I listed DM centric rolls and said the DM can tell his story by removing those? Why bold the part about the DM but ignore the same section about the players? My guess is that you assume that I'm pushing some DM centric agenda because that's what you expect, rather than what I wrote.
You did remove the player rolls sure but I didnt read any of the "you" as being player, a lot of people seem to assume that when dice are removed things decay to DM fiat a very D&D oriented assumption (but which is kind of backed up by ADRPG which is heavily governed that way) since their has been quite a history of things like just about everything currently governed by skill checks being a DM fiat. I actually assumed you were saying that reduction of dice significance is DM slanted and that was why it wasnt desireable.
In my games, I create villains and their motivations and the rest is pretty much collaborative. Even my villains are often based on the back stories of the players.
The point was just that if you think dice are not good story tellers, to remove them, then the story can be what everyone wants. I like letting the dice tell the story. It's one of the best ways to really surprise everyone (including the DM).
Player choices all ways seem to me to be the best suprises.. dice are not that expressive
The trick is to make sure that any options the dice have to tell the story are interesting ones. I drive to D&D every weekend and I'm excited to find out what will happen and where the story will go. Because I honestly have no idea. Between giving the players a lot of narrative power and giving the dice a lot as well, its truly a mystery for me, the DM. I'm forced to react (as the NPCs) to what happens each night just like the players are.
Shrug the players part I will agree with.. in rpgs the more the dice did well the less it seemed to make sense.
DragonQuest had horrible spell failure system (... call it what it is huge and warty - nice flavors but way too easy to fail you are playing a young clueless apprentice)
If you had a spell caster dice might make big difference on the turn of a battle but it was just dumb luck fluke not because of the choices of the protagonists.
Its like using dice to determine wandering monsters.. or floor plans, big meh.
I remember the meandering pointless tunnels with monsters there because the dice said so... dice have been used as a short cut tool in place of thinking an aweful lot.
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