D&D 5e: For real this time?

[Ziegander]

Umm, thread drift?

It went over pretty meh at Encounters tonight, even though only one of them knew about it beforehand.  Did have one kid claim he would "stay with 4E", but then I don't know who is going to play it with him...

Didn't know they were doing playtests of 5th yet. Wow, that was fast. Where were you that you got a chance to play it? How many folks were involved in the test, and was there any chance of giving substantial feedback afterward or just, "so, guys did you have fun?"

[Flay Crimsonwind]

Penny Arcade is already making fun of it.

Not gonna lie, that's totally how I found out about this. Wasn't surprised to find the boards beat me to it...

I don't happen to have a non-online dnd group. I drift between everywhere (haven't actually gotten into a game at GitP, but I've got an account), but only play pbp. In the forums I've been to, I see VERY little 4e. Maybe that's just how the online world likes it... but it seems like most people are still cool with and involved in 3.x, and haven't bothered making the transfer to 5th. I just don't know how they're going to manage to sell it, other than playing it off as a new and thus cool thing...

[Ziegander]

it seems like most people are still cool with and involved in 3.x, and haven't bothered making the transfer to 5th. I just don't know how they're going to manage to sell it, other than playing it off as a new and thus cool thing...

You're the second person I've seen make this mistaken assumption. Strange. 5th Edition doesn't exist yet. It's in hush-hush, very initial beta-testing. The announcement made for it is just, "Hey, we're working on it, and we want you all to help us out. We're going to run some events for it based on rules we've written thus far, because we want to hear what you have to say about it. Consider this an open beta test."

[Prime32]

In the forums I've been to, I see VERY little 4e. Maybe that's just how the online world likes it...

4e doesn't really work as well as 3e in PbP - combats have more turns, so they last much longer.

[Sinfire Titan]

A friend of a friend told me that running 4E in PbP works best when there's only one or two real combat encounters per level, and the players do more political encounters to gain XP. Dungeons for him typically consisted of lost of traps and Minions that were low enough level to be under the RNG a majority of the time.

He said it worked out fairly well. I've been debating about trying that here, although my dislike of running 4E is the main counterpoint that keeps me from doing so.

[oslecamo]

Eerr, you can do that in 3.X as well.

Actualy, as  a somewhat experienced PbP DM myself, it's always better to have a few big ecounters, no more than 1-2 per day, than 3-4 "average" ecounters per day. It helps keep the players motivated, and you can use it as an excuse for granting extra exp for faster level up.

In particular I've been running this PbP campaign for over 3 years, and despite giving extra "quest exp" for everything and anything, the party still has only gained 3 levels. And that's not exactly for PbP combat being slow (it is), but simply moving from one place to the other is slow, with even something as trivial as "left or right" potentialy taking days to decide. Battles interrupt the pace of travel/story advance, in particular when it comes the part of looting, so the less you have, the better (but when they happen, make them something to remember!).

[Thurbane]

it seems like most people are still cool with and involved in 3.x, and haven't bothered making the transfer to 5th. I just don't know how they're going to manage to sell it, other than playing it off as a new and thus cool thing...

You're the second person I've seen make this mistaken assumption. Strange. 5th Edition doesn't exist yet. It's in hush-hush, very initial beta-testing. The announcement made for it is just, "Hey, we're working on it, and we want you all to help us out. We're going to run some events for it based on rules we've written thus far, because we want to hear what you have to say about it. Consider this an open beta test."

It's an issue that's going to become relevant at some point though - what will 5E be able to offer to convert 4E and diehard 3.X fans (not to mention 1E and 2E players)?

I suspect it may even fracture the D&D fanbase futher - I can see some 4E players, suddenly without future product support, eyeballing a step "back" to Pathfinder. The lure of having current products (adventures etc.) on the shelves for an edition is not to be ignored.

I find making 5E the "definitive" edition that will appeal to ALL edition fans (to paraphrase some of the hype) an almost impossible goal...although, I'm sure they could make it a lot more "back-compatible" than 4E was. I just can see them "winning back" many 3E, 2E or 1E fans.

IMHO, a HUGE step in the right direction would be a freely available SRD of the core rules...which 4E seriously dropped the ball with.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

 

1e + 2e + 3e + 4e + 5e + goodies = 6e (?!)

[InnaBinder]

Food for thought.

[VennDygrem]

A friend of a friend told me that running 4E in PbP works best when there's only one or two real combat encounters per level, and the players do more political encounters to gain XP. Dungeons for him typically consisted of lost of traps and Minions that were low enough level to be under the RNG a majority of the time.

He said it worked out fairly well. I've been debating about trying that here, although my dislike of running 4E is the main counterpoint that keeps me from doing so.

Not to derail the discussion too much, but I've been running a PbP game and while the pace of PbP is definitely slowing things down, it seems to be working for the most part. I've had to make some concessions to the medium, but I've been finding ways to tweak the way I run it so that things work more smoothly. It's still a challenge, but from what I can tell so far the only real challenges to me are problems I can see myself having with any PbP game (things like working out who's turn it is). Given 4E's predilection toward turn-based and grid-based combat (lots of "move X squares", immediate reactions/interrupts, and often marriages of the two), I can't just let everyone on one side go first. It definitely ends up being more "wargaming, with roleplaying" than "roleplaying, with wargaming" if you have a lot of combat encounters.

As for 5E and all that, I'm just going to be cautiously optimistic. I've got access to enough 4E content that I could keep playing and/or running it for years, and the same goes for 3.5 content. If 5E fails hard, I'm not out of options. However, new players might be. Hopefully it doesn't come to that.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

We'd have to trust them to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to be able to tell the difference in the first place.

Can't we ... I don't know all go spam their twitter or something?

enough of: "PLEASE TAKE ADVICE FROM PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND D&D GAMING SYSTEMS AT MINMAXBOARDS.COM" over and over will atleast get someone to look. Once they do it should be fairly obvious that we have a large community of skilled posters here rather than gitp 'what is alignment?' threads.

It wasn't particularly easy to port character between 2E and 3E

I wish to hear more, specifically what mechanics didn't go and why.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Playtesting ... hints of CO-types banging away in that = hope.

Dim hope, but hope.


Hey, computers get better and better, and customer service
"can" get better and better, if the specific company is so inclined.
Hasbro ought to have access to what they need, to make 5e work.
Ought doesn't equal execution, though.

[Thurbane]

It wasn't particularly easy to port character between 2E and 3E

I wish to hear more, specifically what mechanics didn't go and why.

Well, it's been a few years since I played 1E or 2E now, but bringing 1E and 2E characters into 3E was a bit difficult; 1E/2E "non-weapon proficiencies" didn't translate that well into 3E skills, and feats were a whole new concept. It certainly wasn't impossible to do an "on the fly" rejigging of a 2E character to a 3E approximation, but it didn't flow as smoothly as bringing a 1E character to 2E. When we switched over to 2E, the two systems were so similar that you could run 1E modules under 2E rules with minimal conversion required (in fact most of our 2E gaming was pretty much a hybrid 1E/2E game). I suppose in that regard, 1E was to 2E much as 3.0 was to 3.5.

Now, I didn't play much 4E, but porting a 3E character into a 4E game just didn't seem feasible, with so many radical changes to the rules and character classes.

[caelic]

The interesting thing here is that the situation heading into fifth edition is unique--one that the designers of D&D have never faced before.

In the past, regardless of whether it was the shift from OD&D to AD&D, from first to second edition, from second to third edition, or third to fourth, there was one constant: it was D&D, and therefore, it was automatically at the top of the heap.  If tabletop RPGs were a race, then regardless of what new engine the D&D car had, it automatically started in the lead position, and generally with a large head-start over the other cars.

This time, that's not true.  For the first time in the history of tabletop gaming, D&D will not be automatically starting in the pole position.  It won't be starting in the middle of the pack, true, but it'll still have to fight for the lead with another racer.

What's more, it's strongly arguable that the other racer has the head start this time.  Pathfinder will be in the position of the established game with lots of product support, while D&D 5th edition will be the new kid on the block that will have to win people over. 

Just saying, "It's D&D, it's what EVERYONE will be playing!" isn't going to cut it this time.  4th edition demonstrated pretty conclusively that that's not true anymore.  If the designers want fifth edition to reclaim the lead, they're going to have to work for it--it's not going to automatically receive the position just by virtue of being D&D.

It's also not going to be enough to create a game that does the things Pathfinder does...because Pathfinder beat them to it.   Open playtests?  Nice idea, but it's not going to magically win people over.  D&D 5th edition is either going to have to do things that Pathfinder fails to do, or it's going to have to do the things Pathfinder does do so much better that people will be willing to shell out money for it.

And to be honest, I'm not sure they can do it.  They have a LOT of problems to overcome.  In addition to the fact that they're starting in second place this time around, there's the problem of edition fatigue.  When 3.0 rolled over to 3.5, people grumbled.  When 3.5 rolled over to fourth edition, people rebelled, and they lost a substantial number of players.  Now fourth is rolling over to fifth after only four years.  How many people are just going to decide that they're unwilling to keep repurchasing their entire library of D&D books twice a decade or more? 

There's also the issue of the fragmented playerbase.  The D&D community is severely balkanized at this point, in a way that it wasn't for the last edition switch.  Yes, there were still people playing first and second edition, but the very large majority were playing third edition.

Now?  There's a chunk playing fourth edition, a chunk playing third edition, a chunk playing Pathfinder, and there are STILL people playing first and second edition.  In fact, the last group may well have grown as the result of the OSR.

They're going to have to try to craft a game that appeals to as many of those factions as possible, and appeals strongly enough to get them to switch.  Catering to only one portion of the playerbase is not going to get them back to the top of the heap.

I wish Mr. Cook and his cohorts the very best of luck--because, to be honest, I think they've been handed the most daunting task in the history of the RPG industry.

[phaedrusxy]

Just saying, "It's D&D, it's what EVERYONE will be playing!" isn't going to cut it this time.  4th edition demonstrated pretty conclusively that that's not true anymore. pretty much ruined that for them.

FTFY. 

[Ziegander]

They're going to have to try to craft a game that appeals to as many of those factions as possible, and appeals strongly enough to get them to switch.  Catering to only one portion of the playerbase is not going to get them back to the top of the heap.

Well, it looks like the 5E team (which I suspect they will avoid calling it for PR reasons - I would bet on D&D 2012) are attempting to do exactly that.

It IS a daunting task, and an unprecedented move. Now, I'm fully on board with the "provide the most basic D&D experience possible as the core ruleset, then supplement with modular rules content" design they are espousing. What I'm not on board with, and find implausible at best, is this idea that you can play a "1E-like character" alongside a "3E-like character" and expect the game to be anything remotely resembling balanced. That seems impossible to me, and seems like an absurd design goal. However, if the core rules set is light and well-made, and there are enough well-done modular rules that I can play an interesting and good game, then I am on board with D&D 2012 as a whole.

[caelic]

I think they really need to be careful there.  Having a game that's made up almost entirely of optional rules could really come back to bite them in the butt--particularly since it means that large numbers of their products will only be of appeal to a very limited subset of their customers. 

I'm willing to keep an open mind, but the whole reason EGG made the push to AD&D in the first place was to try to ensure that there was a common set of rules, and that a player from one table could reasonably expect to sit down at another table and know basically what the rules were.

If they've honestly found a way to make a system where people can be playing at the same table using different subsets of the rules, I'll be extremely impressed--but like you, Ziegander, I'm skeptical of that.

[Tarkisflux]

What I'm not on board with, and find implausible at best, is this idea that you can play a "1E-like character" alongside a "3E-like character" and expect the game to be anything remotely resembling balanced.

Can you expand on this Ziegander? My experience with 2e and 3e suggest that it wouldn't be all that difficult, as the primary differences between the editions were totally numeric (BAB vs. THAC0), dropped cruft rules (lack of weapon type vs. armor bonuses, lack of 50 bajillion polearms, and so on), multi-classing rules, fluff stuff, or on the monster side of the screen (stupid hit point inflation). The exception would be save paradigms, as 3e was a pretty strong departure on that note, but the other ones seem pretty easy to overcome or just drop (like dual- / multi-classing, though some form of delayed progression gestalt might work) without them getting in the way of having a 2e-like character.

[Ziegander]

What I'm not on board with, and find implausible at best, is this idea that you can play a "1E-like character" alongside a "3E-like character" and expect the game to be anything remotely resembling balanced.

Can you expand on this Ziegander?

For example, in 1st edition, if I'm remembering this correctly, the Fighter leveled up faster than the other classes, had the most HP, had the best saves, and dealt the most damage, but that was the only thing he was even capable of doing. Try to imagine playing D&D 3.5 where one Fighter at your game table got no feats at all, no skills at all, but 12hp per level, all good saves +1 to all saves/four levels, and Signature Weapon (1d6 extra damage/level with signature weapon attacks); and another Fighter at your game table gets 4+Int modifier skill points per level, the usual number of bonus feats, as well as the Warblade's maneuvers progression and available disciplines. Does that sound like it would work at all? Because it doesn't to me.

[Unbeliever]

The only way I can see something like that working is if you have some "packages" or "archetypes" that are really a lot like ready-built characters.  So, you can pick your Fighter off the rack who is pretty cool, and maybe you make relatively few choices about the character build.  Whereas another player can opt for a more optimization, get into the fiddly bits approach with a more 3E style type of approach.  Honestly, an idealized version of 3E is kind of supposed to (note, doesn't, but is supposed to) do that:  we can build the same general type of character with 15 different classes, or with just taking a single one all the way. 

I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, though I am skeptical of its implementation.

Honestly, what I'd love to see in a new edition is a cut down on the bookkeeping.  I don't mind bookkeeping when it's significant, I happen to really like the way TOB and Star Wars Saga Edition do things.  But, D&D has always struck me as having way too much bookkeeping that is more headache than its worth.