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2D8HP
2017-04-10, 11:31 AM
This could go in the 5e Sub-Forum, but I want to hear dissenting views.

A while back (in a bit of hyperbole) I posted about D&D:


True, they'll grumble while they play the game by default, because they won't be compromise together on another game. Being "everyone's second favorite" game means it actually gets played, unlike "favorite" games that mostly remain on the shelf.


What I was trying to get across was that even if it isn't the majority at a table's favorite RPG, some version of D&D is often what a table will agree to play.

Now with so many disparate editions, which D&D to play is an issue.

Somewhere I saw 5e described as "the nostalgia edition", and some posts seem to bear that out:


. 5e brought me back. I had sold my 3 and 3.5 books at second hand books, still have my OD&D and 1e stuff and my 2e stuff in the closet.


5e does feel more like old school D&D, doesn't it?

Is it though?

Is 5e an effective "compromise" edition that folks who are fans of disparate editions agree to play, or has it only further segmented D&D players?

Thrudd
2017-04-10, 11:52 AM
I don't really see it as being any closer to the TSR editions than 3e was. It may be an easier game to get into than 3e, overall, the simplicity might feel more familiar, but it still is more similar to 3e and 4e than to AD&D.

hamlet
2017-04-10, 11:55 AM
I've been playing and running D&D 5 pretty much since it came out (and a fair bit under playtest) and while I think it's relatively fun, I must admit, I'm enjoying it less and less. Why? No real definable reason. Nothing that I can put a finger on and say "that, that right there!".

It just doesn't . . . feel right . . . I guess?

Dunno.

Yes, I think that New and Old school gamers can get together and play this edition together and have a good time (though I'm positive in the time I've run it I heard equal or more amounts of grumbling coming from the 3.x/pathfinder members in the group), but that's a lot like saying that you can have fun playing just about any game with the right group. Hell, I'm pretty sure with the right group you could actually enjoy a game of FATAL. It's not an actual point of data so much as it's "less objectionable than 4th edition" which is the general consensus amongst pretty much all the gamers I game with. It's better than no D&D, really, but it still ain't old school.

Just my opinion. Just sayin'.

hamlet
2017-04-10, 11:57 AM
I don't really see it as being any closer to the TSR editions than 3e was. It may be an easier game to get into than 3e, overall, the simplicity might feel more familiar, but it still is more similar to 3e and 4e than to AD&D.

Yeah, bad form double posting, but anyway.

Yeah, this. It's got less problems in it than 3.x and 4.0 do for the old schoolers, which doesn't mean that they really like it any more, just dislike it less.

Darth Ultron
2017-04-10, 12:13 PM
No.

The rules aside, you have two huge, incompatible ways to play. The classic way and the modern way....and there just is no compromise.

But the 5E rues are a lot better then the 3E rules in terms of DM control of the game and get away from the silly ''everyone must follow the rules that are set in stone'' idea that popped up at the start of 3E. In 5E a DM can once again just say ''X happens'', without a jerk player slamming a fist on the table and demanding to know what rule the DM is using and get all up on their high horse to ''check'' and make sure the DM is ''following the rules like a player''.

The end result is you can play 5E more in the vague style of Old School.....but it still has a huge amount of ''new'' stuff like ''balance'' and 3/4 E ideas.

Yora
2017-04-10, 12:21 PM
If I had players really wishing to play 5th edition than I wouldn't put up a big fight and run it. I really don't want to touch 3rd edition (or any other d20 game) ever again.

I still don't want to run 5th edition, though. And I still would run it pretty much the same way I run B/X.

ngilop
2017-04-10, 12:23 PM
]first off I need to say that coming from somebody who started in 1st ed. I have never ever understood that hate filled 'edition wars' that 'old school' people always start.

if the OP disliked any other edition except 1st or 2nd he/she will simply continue to dislike any other edition except for 1st/2nd. That's no going to change with 5th, 6th or even 157th edition.


Now, I can say that while I played 4th edition and enjoyed it. It did not feel like D&D to me. I enjoyed the rules, abilities, and most everything about said edition. it just did not feel like I was playing D&D when I sat at the table and started gaming. SO I can totally understand how KorvinStarmast said 5th brought him back he probably tried 4th and did not enjoy it that much,

If you loathed later editions of D&D then there are going to be enough of those elements in 5th edition to make you dislike 5th as well.

I never experienced a whole lot of difference between the various editions. Played them all the same, each has their own issue(s); 1st/2nd having a lot (lot) of open to whatever rules,3rd being all bout dem spells, etc etc. It is, at least in my experience, all in the way you play the game, less so to do with the actual edition behind it.


the editions themselves DO NOT segment the players.. the player's do that all on their own.

Knaight
2017-04-10, 12:40 PM
]first off I need to say that coming from somebody who started in 1st ed. I have never ever understood that hate filled 'edition wars' that 'old school' people always start.

if the OP disliked any other edition except 1st or 2nd he/she will simply continue to dislike any other edition except for 1st/2nd. That's no going to change with 5th, 6th or even 157th edition.
I don't buy it. I've seen enough people consider it a solid successor to 2nd edition that this is clearly refuted.


]I never experienced a whole lot of difference between the various editions. Played them all the same, each has their own issue(s); 1st/2nd having a lot (lot) of open to whatever rules,3rd being all bout dem spells, etc etc. It is, at least in my experience, all in the way you play the game, less so to do with the actual edition behind it.
There are definitely similarities - as someone who plays mostly not-D&D, I can confirm that the differences between the editions seem much smaller with the broader context. As far as it just being the way you play the game, I've also seen it not play out that way - the group is the most important factor, but if you take the same group and swap the game around they'll have more fun with some games than others. For instance, my standard group had a lot of fun playing Microscope and Fudge, and then this same group really didn't enjoy Torchbearer. It was the same group, we were playing in similar ways (inasmuch as personal style does get mixed with the game for the end result), and the system demonstrably mattered. The same thing happens across editions.

Florian
2017-04-10, 12:46 PM
Hm... No, not really. 5th managed to stop and revert some of the design decisions that lead to 3rd and 4th, but it still has inherited too many of the necessary aspects of both to create the same "feel" that the old TSR stuff had. For example, itīs still miles too "gamey" than some of the better clones are, especially Adventurer, Conqueror, King.

Yora
2017-04-10, 12:52 PM
I just plain don't like the idea of new class features every level. Except for spells, I am really very happy with characters having the same mechanics at every level. Characters evolving with each level puts stats and level advancement in the foreground, which perhaps you could call gamey. It's much better in 5th edition, but when characters can have builds, I think something is going wrong.

ngilop
2017-04-10, 01:07 PM
I don't buy it. I've seen enough people consider it a solid successor to 2nd edition that this is clearly refuted.


There are definitely similarities - as someone who plays mostly not-D&D, I can confirm that the differences between the editions seem much smaller with the broader context. As far as it just being the way you play the game, I've also seen it not play out that way - the group is the most important factor, but if you take the same group and swap the game around they'll have more fun with some games than others. For instance, my standard group had a lot of fun playing Microscope and Fudge, and then this same group really didn't enjoy Torchbearer. It was the same group, we were playing in similar ways (inasmuch as personal style does get mixed with the game for the end result), and the system demonstrably mattered. The same thing happens across editions.

the same can be said for 3rd edition as a successor to 2nd. I have seen that countless times, just because a lo of people say something does not make it fact, let alone true.



I am going to argue against the whole editions are just as different as a whole new system.


anybody is not going to play champions the same way they play vampire they same way they play D&D the same way they play.. eh what's that one game GiTP is in love with.. fated..fate or something like that? But within those disparate games one is going to play champions pretty much the same throughout the what...6 different editions I think it is up to? Barring big rules changes that make some things not work the same or at all from edition to edition. One game is going to look pretty much the same no matter the edition.

I bet I can tell a story of a game happening and tell you the specific game but leave out the exact edition and one would not be able to tell the difference in the majority of times.

and the group directly effects the playstyle. or at least in my won experience it has. I have one set of friends where I know the guy is a storyteller DM, think of playing with him like playing a video game but only the 23 hours you put into it, its 21 hours of cutscenes. I am going to play completely different under him as a DM as I am my other friends who are very combat and politics oriented. I understand that different people have different playsyles and some games lean more towards a certain play style than others.




I fail to see the issue with me as a player getting something every level or every power increase? what is the point of me playing a game if I have absolutely no advancement in the hours I'm putting into the game?

What is wrong with character builds? I mean.. I want to be an archer in X game, so building my character around archery focused abilities is inherently doing it wrong?

Knaight
2017-04-10, 01:11 PM
the same can be said for 3rd edition as a successor to 2nd. I have seen that countless times, just because a lo of people say something does not make it fact, let alone true.
It's not about whether it's actually a successor in either case. It doesn't need to be - it just needs to have people who think that it is, and who are thus willing to play it, and 5e does that.


I am going to argue against the whole editions are just as different as a whole new system.
I wouldn't argue they're just as different either (at least if it's genuinely a new system and not something like Pathfinder or ACKS which are basically offshoots), but the point is that the system does matter. D&D also has unusually large changes between editions, compared to something like GURPS, Champions, etc.

2D8HP
2017-04-10, 01:29 PM
]...if the OP disliked any other edition except 1st or 2nd he/she will simply continue to dislike any other edition except for 1st/2nd...


OP here.

For the record the only RPG's I've played this decade have been TSR '81 B/X D&D, and WotC 5e D&D.

I think I actually like 5e better at 1st level, and B/X better by 11th level. 2nd level 5e and 3rd level B/X feel like a tie to me, both are fun.

Neither has been as fun for me as 1977 "Basic", oD&D, and the AD&D that I played before I entered high school, but since that's true of most everything, I think fun was just more fun at 12 than at 48!

I've never played "2e", "3e", "3.5", or "4e". 2e looks to be mostly like the other TSR D&D I've played, so I think I would like it especially if I can get a PC past 1st level. 3e looks like it would be fun for me at lower levels but than feel too "OP", at higher levels, and I haven't really looked much at 3.5 and 4e.

Of all RPG's I've found Call of Cthullu the easiest to gamemaster, and I still find D&D (any edition) to be the most fun to play, of games I've played.

Also for what it's worth I'm curious to play Pendragon, Castle Falkenstein, 7th Sea, Savage World's, Flashing Blades, and FATE.

ComaVision
2017-04-10, 01:48 PM
In response to the thread title, I don't think so.

I play 3.5e because I like the depth of the system and the breadth of options. I'm sure 5e would be fun to play but I'd get bored with it mechanically. I'd say roughly half of the people I play with hold 5e in contempt.

thamolas
2017-04-10, 02:09 PM
I think people's frustrations with D&D are mostly fluff-related. The crunch of level-based systems doesn't work well.

I loved old school D&D and AD&D, but I think it was because the settings hadn't become cliche yet. It was fresh. Now, the setting is stale and attempts to freshen it up either don't work or fail to connect with enough fans to further develop (Dark Sun was fresh, but it came too soon). Never had the "spooky dark elf, hiding in the shadows" in your group?

Back in ye good olde days, whenever I played skill-based systems, they were always better than the level-based systems, but these games usually had setting problems (see White Wolf, for example) or glaring design failings (see Shadowrun, for example).

In the past, I played D&D more than any other system because it was the only game the groups could consistently agree on on play consistently enough for characters and/or story to develop. Not because it was the best choice. I don't remember it ever being the best choice, except maybe when I first started and didn't know that other games existed.

Honestly, 2Ed wasn't great, but its failings could be overlooked. 3Ed and 3.5/Pathfinder seem designed to inspire people to act like OCD rules lawyers (which isn't fun for me) -- never saw such crap happen so often before or since. 4Ed is just poorly designed. 5Ed is better than 4Ed, but still seems altogether too "meta" and the default Tolkien-esque setting is showing its age in a bad way. When people ask me to play D&D, I pass. It's just not that fun anymore. I LOVE RPG-ing. Just not D&D.

To get TSR and WotC fans to play together, why not pick a different game altogether? Such divisiveness doesn't make sense.

Knaight
2017-04-10, 02:48 PM
To get TSR and WotC fans to play together, why not pick a different game altogether? Such divisiveness doesn't make sense.

Some people really like D&D, setting and basic rules both. For them, a mutually accepted D&D edition is the best option. I'd argue that the number of people who really like D&D is dwarfed by the number of people who only play it because it's the big name in the market and who would be better suited with other games, but the people who are really attached to particular editions and can articulate why are going to be disproportionately the fans whom D&D suits.

thamolas
2017-04-10, 03:11 PM
I'd argue that the number of people who really like D&D is dwarfed by the number of people who only play it because it's the big name in the market and who would be better suited with other games

You might be right. I've seen it in forums a lot. Never seen it in real life, but I haven't played with every group in existence, either.

Sorry for the negative tone of that post. Everybody's different.

Cluedrew
2017-04-10, 04:42 PM
No.

Although the reason I said that is probably not what you expect. As someone who plays a lot of "pagan games" the differences between D&D... look pretty small. In fact I think it comes down more to a matter of the associated play style than the rules. Not that the rules don't mean anything, they are built with a play style in mind. Still I have seen/heard play styles within each edition, that pretty much seems to cover the range the systems were aiming at anyways.

So really, there was nothing stopping people from playing together before, besides lines in sand. So 5e, even if it starts somewhere in the middle, probably still covers the full range. If they want to play together they could do it, you might need some tweaks here and there, but people have been house ruling D&D since it was born from a collection of house rules.

I'm not saying that any game covers all play styles, but people are arguing over spaghetti and spaghettoni while I have wondered off and gotten some pizza.

Beelzebubba
2017-04-10, 04:48 PM
I've played since Blue Box in 1978, and this version is good. It feels like a good 'triangulation' of the best stuff from each version, with the simplest 'math & chart nonsense' I've seen since B/X.

My group is a mix of people; an old fart like me, a few 3.x veterans, a 4.x Dark Sun player, and even a few total newbies. It really works for the whole group.

Advantage/disadvantage is a fantastic mechanic, and the super nerfed spellcasting makes it probably the best balance it can be while still giving casters things to do each round.

It does have problems - I almost think it wouldn't be D&D without them - but it's really fun so far.

Kurald Galain
2017-04-11, 01:54 AM
It strikes me that since 3E was released seventeen years ago, the amount of TSR players left is small enough to not actually matter to WOTC's sales team.

In terms of gameplay, there's two main groups who like to see "combat as war" vs "combat as sport". 1E and 2E are clearly designed for the former philosophy, 5E is obviously in the latter group. So that's a clear clash of design. Of course, the third and arguably bigger group is "let's have fun with my friends not not overanalyze the game" and this group will most likely enjoy any edition.

Florian
2017-04-11, 02:29 AM
It strikes me that since 3E was released seventeen years ago, the amount of TSR players left is small enough to not actually matter to WOTC's sales team.

In terms of gameplay, there's two main groups who like to see "combat as war" vs "combat as sport". 1E and 2E are clearly designed for the former philosophy, 5E is obviously in the latter group. So that's a clear clash of design. Of course, the third and arguably bigger group is "let's have fun with my friends not not overanalyze the game" and this group will most likely enjoy any edition.

Hm....

No, canīt agree with you there. Thereīs a rather huge cultural difference in how "role playing games" are understood and played.

Cluedrew
2017-04-11, 08:23 AM
In terms of gameplay, there's two main groups who like to see "combat as war" vs "combat as sport".When I say that from the outside D&D is all kind of the same, this is what I am talking about. I mean all of them are combat focused systems for one, I play some "combat as an event" system where combat does happen. And if we collected together all the combat rules it might take less than a page. So it falls pretty far from D&D in terms of how it approaches combat.

I was going to say something else about within combat focused games, but before I do I should clarify: What is the difference between combat as war and combat as sport? The main ones I am aware of are really about how difficult combat should be to win and maybe a player skill vs. character skill divide.

To Florian: What cultural difference are you talking about?

Florian
2017-04-11, 08:46 AM
To Florian: What cultural difference are you talking about?

European culture is more about collaborative Story Telling than focusing on beating Encounters.

Anonymouswizard
2017-04-11, 08:59 AM
Some people really like D&D, setting and basic rules both. For them, a mutually accepted D&D edition is the best option. I'd argue that the number of people who really like D&D is dwarfed by the number of people who only play it because it's the big name in the market and who would be better suited with other games, but the people who are really attached to particular editions and can articulate why are going to be disproportionately the fans whom D&D suits.

I think this is a big thing, I was once in a group where only one member loved D&D, the rest of us were much more of the 'I played D&D, then I played other games and much preferred them'.

Now I'm in an odd position with most groups, I'm rarely going to run my favourite system (GURPS) because it's rarely what people want (a simulationist skill based crunchy game, most people want something a fluffier and a bit gamist or narrativist in my experience). A big problem some people have is that the game that's the biggest name in the industry is a relatively crunchy system, while they'd prefer something like Savage Worlds where they just need to know 'roll skill die type and get above TN' (and despite the variety of Edges you can get a good number dedicated to just 'ignore this penalty' or 'add +1 to this').

I'll agree that the difference between D&D 3.X and D&D 5e is tiny when compared to the difference between say Unknown Armies and Ars Magica, in that they both use the same basics (level based system that gives both bonuses and new powers with levels) and work from the same assumptions (the game is about killing things and exploring dungeons). I don't offer to run D&D because I hate these assumptions and the gaining of 'nonsupernatural' powers as the game goes on. Comparing this to Unknown Armies, which is about a bunch of people going crazy in the occult underground of the modern world, and we can see pretty major fundemental differences compared to 'do fighters get bonus feats or class features'.

Now unlike a year or so ago I don't hate level-based RPGs, because I've discovered games which do what I want (levels are mainly incrementing numbers, new powers smoothly come online as you gain the resources to activate them), primarily Anima: Beyond Fantasy (a gloriously crunchy game that is the only fantasy RPG that I'll consider running at this point despite it's balance problems). But I don't run D&D because it's just not what I like, everybody's second favourite only works if the game's actually in my top 50%.

There's also the fact that sometimes the group wants a certain genre, but a particular game doesn't fit it. While I can use Anima for pirate campaigns I'm unlikely to, it encourages being careful and moves slowly, I'll use Savage Worlds instead because PCs can easily tank a couple of hits and action remains relatively fast in combat. If my science fiction game is about Rebels heroically taking down the Empire I'll use Fate, if it's about a bunch of corporate representatives trying to strike a deal with Martian Prospectors I might use GURPS instead.

Also, I've generally seen the GM of the next game getting to call what system we're using. The players might get input on the type of game they want, but it comes down to who's willing to run and what sort of game are they offering.

Steampunkette
2017-04-11, 09:48 AM
Yes... provisionally.

So, 2e was my game.

I started playing D&D in or around 1993. I was a young geekling just taking their first steps into true nerddom. I walked into a comic and gaming shop called "The Bookmark" to buy some magic cards and saw some people playing a game I didn't know anything about... so I sat in.

Within a couple of weekends, I was rolling up a Mage that was horribly derivative of Raistlin for the Dragonlance campaign Toby (The DM) was running. I was easily distracted, unfocused, annoying, and constantly needed help to do literally anything from character creation to rolling the dice because the rules didn't make sense, yet.

And it was kind of fun. Mostly I think I enjoyed having so many older teens focused on me in a positive way, sharing something they enjoyed, was a precious feeling that I'll never forget. Over the next few years my brother and I got a real "Feel" for what roleplaying and Dungeons and Dragons were about.

It wasn't long before both of us were running our own games. Sometimes at home, sometimes at the Bookmark. My parents were delighted because the family was pretty poor at the time, but people were happy to loan us their books if it meant someone else was the DM, y'know? My parents would drop us off at the Bookmark on Weekends and due to the way gaming worked at the shop, we'd get a decent meal without it costing the family precious food stamps...

I traveled the Sea of Silt in a skiff. My brother walked through the doors of Sigil. We fled from Darkon with riches untold, and died at the teeth of countless fantastic beasts. The game was fantasy, and escape, and warmth of camaraderie. Surrounded by people who would die for me, even if it was only in a game of imagination.

Over time, we scrimped and saved enough to buy a few sourcebooks, the Dark Sun Boxed Set, and the core rulebooks. But Norman grew out of tabletop gaming and, without my knowledge, sold all of the books for some cash so he could buy tickets to a Metallica Concert. I was devastated.

Still. I borrowed books. I wrote until my wrist hurt. I memorized charts and tables of attacks and experience and I continued to run games to the best of my ability, and play in them.

Third Edition came out while I was in Job Corps. I had been unable to get to a tabletop game for over a year, and satisfied myself with reading GURPS books and the like or trying to play in some ridiculous games that had as much focus as a camera with no lens dipped in bacon grease. These weren't even beer and pretzels games, folks, they were hollow attempts at self-aggrandizement by the GM while everyone else tried and failed to do anything interesting.

My boyfriend and I bought the core books for 3e somewhere around 2001. I started running games pretty much immediately and pretty much nonstop. I used old campaign notes and adapted monsters to the new stats and systems, but it all felt... wrong. The stories didn't feel supported by the rules, being things of deadly seriousness while the rules were too lenient with the players, giving them endless solutions and choice paralysis.

The feeling of real RISK was gone. My players? Loved it. So I ran.

3.5 came along and, for a brief time, it was a bit better. With the changes they made, there, helped to limit some of the shenanigans, but soon the massive glut of rulesets bogged everything down, again. Endless new classes and prestige classes and feat trees created mires that left my stories by the wayside... Most of my old campaign notes and adventures were lost around that time. I just gave up on ever hoping to have that feeling, again.

4e was a mess. I had minimal interest in it. But Pathfinder was a new and interesting take on 3e's systems while killing off the 3.5 glut. New class design and features shifting things around and made the overwhelming quantity of tables and rules-infringements disappear... at least until they made it all 3.5 compatible.

At that point, I more or less left tabletop gaming behind for the second time in my life, and threw myself into MMORPGs and Internet Chat RP to scratch that escapist itch. It's where I eventually met my husband (A different story, altogether!) and the best friend we both have. This best friend? He does tabletop gaming online. And brought us into it, full force. Mutants and Masterminds, Pathfinder, 4th Edition D&D, some small measure of Savage Worlds... None of it felt -exactly- like home, but it was warm, and friendly, and I loved it.

5th edition came down the pipeline. By this point in my life, I was a systems design nerd. I love breaking down the mechanics of how a game determines successes or damage, balances different characters, and more. So 5th edition initially drew me in on -that- basis.

But as I played, I started feeling that old feeling, again. Just glimmers of it, here or there. The feeling I had, sitting at a table of friends, looking up from character sheets to dice and shouting with delight at the result. OF being truly -excited- by the game, by the friends, by the outcomes. Feeling nervous when I rolled a die. Feeling like there was a real weight in my hand...

It still wasn't perfect. Not until I started running Tyranny of Dragons. I know. I know. It's so simplistic and railroady and site-to-site... But my players don't always hold to the rails. Don't always follow the plan. They're players like that. And during one of the first encounters in that game, the whole table, scattered across the US as we are, felt the excitement, the weight of the dice. The feelings I'd not truly felt in almost two decades crystallized in that moment, into perfect clarity.

And suddenly I was a kid, sitting at the table with my friends, watching a die bounce in slow motion, feeling the trepidation and hope for how it would land, the fifth death save of my husband's character, bouncing across the digital playspace as a computer generated image of a polyhedral dice...

And the feeling stayed. It hasn't faded, yet.

When I look at 5e D&D I feel that joy, again, that unbridled exuberance. Like a sleeping dragon finally taking to the skies, anew, after a decades long slumber. And the glory of the world is blinding and bold. Worlds. From Athas to Faerun to Golarion and Krynn. Across Oerth and the Planes I'm ready, again, to step forth onto a skiff to cut across the sea of silt. To step into the dungeon-tomb of Acererak. To plunder Undermountain and to stand Against the Giants.

5th edition isn't for everyone. 5th edition won't rekindle everyone's childhood feeling of what D&D truly -was-. It's not a perfect system, by a long shot. And it's definitely not 2nd edition. But it's closer, in my opinion, than anything has ever been. And it did it while moving forward, while learning from 2e's mistakes and making new ones that it'll learn from as it goes on.

I highly recommend it.

2D8HP
2017-04-11, 10:10 AM
....I'm ready, again, to step forth onto a skiff to cut across the sea of silt. To step into the dungeon-tomb of Acererak. To plunder Undermountain and to stand Against the Giants....


I'm in awe:

https://media.giphy.com/media/cR1gQt9dN1mDe/200w.gif

Your post....


https://media.giphy.com/media/eZM32yDc8HfKU/giphy.gif

neonchameleon
2017-04-11, 10:13 AM
5e is designed to be a compromise edition - something that is designed to give a little something to everyone and not too much to anything. To me that makes it lukewarm tofu and as a strong 4e fan I'd far rather play BECMI than 5e. But yes, there is a bit of something for everyone.


In terms of gameplay, there's two main groups who like to see "combat as war" vs "combat as sport". 1E and 2E are clearly designed for the former philosophy, 5E is obviously in the latter group. So that's a clear clash of design. Of course, the third and arguably bigger group is "let's have fun with my friends not not overanalyze the game" and this group will most likely enjoy any edition.

No RPG in the history of RPGs where someone can take an orc wailing on them with an axe for a full minute and have precisely zero chance to take any long-lasting consequence has ever treated combat as war. Especially not with resurrection magic on the table. I've plenty of games, including GURPS and even WoD games, that have shock penalties, injury rules, and where combat is actually war. But D&D grew out of tabletop wargaming and for 1e and 2e fans to claim that they play combat as war is like soccer fans claiming that American Football is artificial because the teams regularly stop and line up opposite each other.


but it still has a huge amount of ''new'' stuff like ''balance'' and 3/4 E ideas.

Because E. Gary Gygax spent no time at all balancing D&D and challenging hardcore wargamers to do their worst. Oh wait.


The logic behind it all was drawn from game balance as much as from anything else. Fighters have their strength, weapons, and armor to aid them in their competition. Magic-users must rely upon their spells, as they have virtually no weaponry or armor to protect them. Clerics combine some of the advantages of the other two classes. The new class, thieves, have the basic advantage of stealthful actions with some additions in order for them to successfully operate on a plane with other character types. If magic is unrestrained in the campaign, D & D quickly degenerates into a weird wizard show where players get bored quickly, or the referee is forced to change the game into a new framework which will accommodate what he has created by way of player-characters. It is the opinion of this writer that the most desirable game is one in which the various character types are able to compete with each other as relative equals
Balance in D&D is not new. It's as old as D&D gets from both Gygax and Arneson. Yes the Lorraine Williams years more or less dropped it. But D&D was written with a lot of care for balance.

Anonymouswizard
2017-04-11, 10:29 AM
5th edition isn't for everyone. 5th edition won't rekindle everyone's childhood feeling of what D&D truly -was-. It's not a perfect system, by a long shot. And it's definitely not 2nd edition. But it's closer, in my opinion, than anything has ever been. And it did it while moving forward, while learning from 2e's mistakes and making new ones that it'll learn from as it goes on.

I think this is the key. I've played 5e and even enjoyed it, but it's not for me. It rekindles those original days I had of playing the Red Box with my dad, but that's not actually what my defining experience of what an RPG was.

That was sitting down to create characters for an Unknown Armies game when I was 19. Suddenly because of my concept I had to balance three different aspects of the game and everyone else was balancing two (combat ability and their magic, I was insane and went for two types of magic), and designing the character to contribute in ways other than killing people was fun, and then the GM asked me a question, 'why do you have two hardened notches in self'. It made me think about the game in a different way, I could take these numbers on the sheet and use them to define my character's personality. For the first time my character had a role in the world as well as the game. It literally changed what I saw an RPG as.

If 5e had come out six years ago (yeah, I'm one of those upstart youngsters with their ideas of 'player fiat' and 'not giving the GM ultimate control') I'd probably still be raving about it, but for me my childhood is no longer the moment which defines what I see and RPG as, and what I want to rekindle. I don't want the experience of going into a dungeon and bashing goblins anymore, I want those cases where four people are roleplaying socially awkward characters who don't know each other but have to learn to be a group, and slowly moving to a competent team (of hapless fools admittedly, we were never sure what exactly we should be doing, but still competent.

Steampunkette
2017-04-11, 10:43 AM
The point of my post wasn't "Bashing Goblins is where it's at" but rather than 2e had significant emotional memories for me, of the way the game and the table felt.

2e shaped my way of thinking of roleplay and tabletop gaming for much of my life because of those 7 formative years spent playing it. There was a lot more in that time than doorkicking fights. I went through a very painful puberty with D&D as my primary outlet of expressing emotions, ideas, and contextualizing concepts through roleplay. It was a particularly significant time in my life, is what I was getting at, and no other game -felt- the same. Even other editions of the same one.

2D8HP
2017-04-11, 11:14 AM
....as a strong 4e fan I'd far rather play BECMI than 5e. But yes, there is a bit of something for everyone.


Except for wanting to learn a very popular game, so that I may have more opportunities to actually play, I'm more curious to try 4e than 3.x (sorry!). As far as BECMI goes, I've jumped at the opportunities to play TSR D&D when they've come up recently, but they never last. I've had much more luck with 5e DM's not quitting.

All the superpowers at higher levels in 5e bug me, but at least I get to play!

B/X?

It's fun for a while, but no game of it that I've gotten to play has lasted very long this decade.

OD&D, and AD&D?

Are just dim memories for me now so they don't count (unless someone reading this is going to start a game hint hint).

FATE and other RPG's?

Potential GM's talk a good game, but when you show up with a PC?

*crickets*
No one actually starts the game!
Pathfinder and 5e just plain have actual tables, with actual living DM's.

Other games?

*searches in vain*
Dammit! Where are you?

...Balance in D&D is not new. It's as old as D&D gets from both Gygax and Arneson. Yes the Lorraine Williams years more or less dropped it. But D&D was written with a lot of care for balance.


It was also a different kind of balance.
Demi-humans had extra abilities at first, but they couldn't reach the heights that humans could, and Caster vs. Martial?

Dungeons & Dragons Book 1: Men & Magic, page 6 (1974)
"Magic-Users: Top level magic-users are perhaps the most powerful characters in the game, but it is a long hard road to the top, and to begin with they are very weak, so survival is often the question, unless fighters protect the low-level magical types until they have worked up."



Yes... provisionally.....

....I highly recommend it.


I just had to read that post again.

That was some seriously good writing.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/41/46/f6/4146f6220eaa9360c920f2136bac4a11.gif

Thanks.

Joe the Rat
2017-04-11, 11:48 AM
I think a lot of our preferences are a click between what we value in a game, and when we find them.

I've played everything from B/X to 3.P, and on rare occasions ran sessions. I've played a few of the retroclones (Basic Fantasy fairly intensely, DCC being the current OSR of choice). I slumbered through 4, but have tried to learn the system (it looks like a wonderful system for what it does). Through all of that, 2nd ed was my home. I was playing during the revision process, though I was not in the loop to know of the dealings in Lake Geneva. I played in the era of Unearthed Arcana, Barbarians, and Drow, and the wonky-to-wanky Dragon offerings (which are often tools for the DM, but since it exists of course players want it), and a ton of fiddlyness regarding everything not your class abilities. 2nd ed cleared a lot. Restructured classes. Nonweapon proficiencies - skills! - to define how well you can do things like tie ropes, swim, or make armor. The roll-under attribute check made stats between 6 and 15 matter. The Worlds!: This was the birth of Dark Sun, and Spelljammer, and Planescape, and Ravenloft as a setting. Specialization, kits, and even the late Options books had wonderful potential for customization... in concept. A lot of it was a mess, and badly in need of playtesting. Complicated, but not too complicated. Set rules, but not too many. It hit around High School, which is where I started to mature more as a player, and followed me into college. My signature character was born at this time.

I think part of it is that is was a clean-up system - different enough to warrant an edition, but not so different that you couldn't wrap your head around it (other than the disappearance of the attack matrices).

When 5th started rolling in, I was deep into Basic Fantasy (playing, then running the online game) and 3.5 (The Dads and Daughters game). I liked a lot of what I saw. The "all stats matter" due to skills and saves, flatter power curve, and "subtyping" classes brought the 2e nostalgia. The "combine and clean up" approach to prior editions probably evoked some of this as well.

Being a simpler system with at minimum the features I wanted in a game, the ease of teaching, "healer-optional," and the fact that it is a fairly hackable made it a must-do. Heck, I actually DM in this one. Half my players are true old school greybeards (myself only salt-and-pepper-bearded), the other half new school (pathfinder and 4th), or newbie (like her second character ever). You can see it in the way they play (mr. strategic placement and effect-stacking, and mr. 10-foot-pole-floor-poker have very different pacing on their turns; little miss newbie uses common sense and wins encounters.), but they come together at the virtual table and do that most important part of the game: Abusing on the Cleric Having fun.

For me, it is my favorite edition. But I'd still play 2nd ed in a heartbeat.


Yes... provisionally.

So, 2e was my game.

{Epic tale ensues}
I knew there was something I liked about you.

Kurald Galain
2017-04-11, 11:59 AM
I was going to say something else about within combat focused games, but before I do I should clarify: What is the difference between combat as war and combat as sport?

In brief, combat-as-war is the style of gameplay where combat is highly dangerous and likely to leave your characters maimed or killed. You don't know in advance how strong your opponents are and they may well be much stronger than you. Battles are won through strategy, by setting yourself up for as much advantage as possible through ambushes, espionage, dirty fighting, etc, and then utterly trouncing the opposition; when this is not an option, battles are avoided as much as possible. Examples of this style include 1E and 2E D&D, Cyberpunk 2020, most World of Darkness games, and the MMORPG Eve Online.

Combat-as-sport is the style of gameplay where combat is a fair and balanced encounter. Your enemies are level-appropriate opponents with neither side having an unfair advantage (indeed, rules are usually set up so that unfair advantages aren't possible or give only a minimal benefit). Battles are won through tactics, battlefield positioning, and using your powers/maneuvers/spells more effectively than your opponent. You are usually expected to have a set number of battles per adventure or per level. Examples of this style include 4E and 5E D&D, Descent: Journeys in the Dark, and the MMORPG World of Warcraft.

This does not mean that all RPGs fall in one of these categories, but in general almost all RPGs that are based on D&D do. 3E supports either style of gameplay so will fall in either category depending on who you ask. HTH.

Anonymouswizard
2017-04-11, 12:00 PM
The point of my post wasn't "Bashing Goblins is where it's at" but rather than 2e had significant emotional memories for me, of the way the game and the table felt.

2e shaped my way of thinking of roleplay and tabletop gaming for much of my life because of those 7 formative years spent playing it. There was a lot more in that time than doorkicking fights. I went through a very painful puberty with D&D as my primary outlet of expressing emotions, ideas, and contextualizing concepts through roleplay. It was a particularly significant time in my life, is what I was getting at, and no other game -felt- the same. Even other editions of the same one.

True, I understand all of this, I was just trying to say that '5e won't ring for some people because their defining RPG experience was for different reasons'. I was just saying that because my experience with D&D when I was young boiled down to 'bashing goblins' it wasn't as big a factor for me and so 5e just falls flat, I was really trying to explain the following bit of your post and my view on it:


5th edition isn't for everyone. 5th edition won't rekindle everyone's childhood feeling of what D&D truly -was-.


Now there are also reasons outside the game why my RPG preferences are defined by a game from when I was 19. I was at university retaking first year because I'd had problems before, I didn't really fit into my course (too much 'lad culture' in a few significant ways, combined with my autism led to my friends being on different courses entirely), one of my best friends was having trouble with her visa, and I was beginning to have identity issues that have mostly sorted themselves out. In several ways the weekly game I ended up in helped to keep me sane because I just knew that not only did anything that happen there not effect the rest of my life in any significant way, but it also forged some of the strongest friendships I've had. If that group hadn't changed the system every game I'd probably have the same views on Unknown Armies as you do on 2e.

I wasn't trying to say anything about you and your experiences, that paragraph was entirely about why I don't have any of these feelings towards 2e (which I actually adore, I need to get my PhB and DMG out of storage, best Ģ5 given to a second hand book shop ever).

Cluedrew
2017-04-11, 01:59 PM
To Kurald Galain: Thank-you. And I appreciate the range of example you brought in. ... I have some more things to say but I realized that they actually have nothing to do with 5e so I will cut myself short.

Honest Tiefling
2017-04-11, 02:08 PM
4e was a mess. I had minimal interest in it. But Pathfinder was a new and interesting take on 3e's systems while killing off the 3.5 glut. New class design and features shifting things around and made the overwhelming quantity of tables and rules-infringements disappear... at least until they made it all 3.5 compatible.

While not everyone can agree that 5e is a return to form, I think everyone can agree that 4e was even worse for that. I don't think 4e is a bad game, I just don't think it worked for my group, sadly. I wanted to like it, but it fell flatter for me then a squashed pancake.

And unlike many people here, my only experiences with second edition is Baldur's Gate. I joined tabletop and roleplaying with 3rd edition. I think that 5e has a good mix of being able to optimize a character, but still make them a character, which is what interested me in 3rd edition, but the glut of rules and spells and imbalance and trap options often impeded.

Psyren
2017-04-11, 11:46 PM
5th edition isn't for everyone. 5th edition won't rekindle everyone's childhood feeling of what D&D truly -was-. It's not a perfect system, by a long shot. And it's definitely not 2nd edition. But it's closer, in my opinion, than anything has ever been. And it did it while moving forward, while learning from 2e's mistakes and making new ones that it'll learn from as it goes on.

I highly recommend it.

I don't have that "childhood feeling" since I myself started with 3e, and pretty much every exposure I've gotten to what came before (...THACO... *shudders*) has been a turn-off. I like consistency, and rules that clearly tell me what I can and can't do, and that is my biggest problem with 5e. I enjoy it, don't get me wrong (certainly far more than I did 4e's endless reskins) but it will never replace 3.5 or PF for me.

Katrina
2017-04-12, 02:11 AM
In response to original question, no. I do not believe that 5th Edition bridges TSR's old AD&D style with the newer WotC 3E style enough that hardcore players of either would enjoy it. As my evidence, I merely point to the incredible amount of salt for 3E and its children on the 5E forums and the comparative amount of salt for 5E you'll see on the 3E forums.


]
the editions themselves DO NOT segment the players.. the player's do that all on their own.

This, and so much this.

The main "Features" of 5E I see promoted over 3E is that it "Gives the GM the ability to houserule" and is "Simpler." I also hear the phrase "Encourages roleplay" bandied about a bit; all in comparasion to 3E and its kids. First of all, no it does not really do any of that but the simpler part. The GM has always had the ability to houserule, and it "Systemizes" roleplay by turning it into a mechanic rather than truly encouraging it.

While I will concede that many 3E players are rules lawyers, I do not believe its the system itself that causes it. Rather, I believe that rules lawyers gravitate towards a system with the most defined and concrete ruleset they can find so as best to use their abilities. It can completely be played as "Houseruled" and "heavy roleplay" as 5E in any situation.

I believe that what we are seeing is a difference in types of players propping up the systems they like because those systems appeal to what they want. 5E players want a mechanically simple system that does not at any point get in the way of their story. They are willing to give up the ideas of Transparency and the myriad of options that cluttered 3E to get that. I won't say they are wrong, it's a sound idea.

I believe 3E players want a more mechanically complex system with a lot of options to allow them to get things "just so." They are people who focus a little more on the game aspect than the role playing part, and like to have a highly structured and concrete idea of how the world works in every situation. And I don't mind that either.

I can have fun playing either one mainly because of the concept that someone has already referred to as "everyone's second favorite game". I prefer Exalted, World of Darkness, and other stuff like it. But my friends mostly like D&D. So, I have a lot of D&D experience. My two cents is that the major difference from Pathfinder to 5E is actually tone. 5E, the monsters are tougher and the player character classes are weaker. A group of four characters probably can take a CR equal to their level almost all the time, but a single character or a group of three is likely to have a lot more trouble. In Pathfinder, there are certain classes who can take a CR equal to their level by themselves at certain points, and the list is pretty big. It was a very big shift in tone to go from one to the other. 5E feels grittier, a little darker, a little more "Conan" than "Forgotten Realms". But either is bad in my opinion.

Florian
2017-04-12, 02:37 AM
To Kurald Galain: Thank-you. And I appreciate the range of example you brought in. ... I have some more things to say but I realized that they actually have nothing to do with 5e so I will cut myself short.

Itīs a very important distinction to look at for with a system, as it places a premium on what is thought to be important, in turn letting you see why some people are for or against a system.

Letīs take Warhammer Fantasy, probably the system with the most incentive to play "Combat as War", as your character will get permanently maimed when damaged, coupled with a death spiral due to wound penalties.

Here, real tactical mastery directly translates into game mastery, as you as the actual player must work with the environment to gain an advantage. A flask of oil and a torch can be more deadly than the best build knight.

RazorChain
2017-04-12, 05:42 AM
To get TSR and WotC fans to play together, why not pick a different game altogether? Such divisiveness doesn't make sense.

Hahaha funny :)

It's just as likely that my group would pick D&D as a compromise between Shadowrun, GURPS or the Apocalypse system. Never going to happen.

Sicarius Victis
2017-04-18, 03:20 PM
Me, I really don't get why people are so particular about this. Sure, different games have different playstyles. And people always act like things are bad for being different. But they aren't. They have different good parts and different bad parts, but that doesn't make them better or worse altogether. They're just different. So while it makes sense that you'd have one game or another that you prefer to play, I don't see why people talk about them as if they were actively bad.

In fact, it's better for them to be different. It gives you a different perspective, allows for different possibilities. H*ll, it makes things interesting. Variety is the spice of life, neh?

If you want something like what you're used to, just do what you're used to.


European culture is more about collaborative Story Telling than focusing on beating Encounters.

Also, that's not a cultural difference, it's a personal one. It's got nothing to do with where you are, it's all about who you play with. I'm from North America, for example, and my regular game is exceptionally story-focused.

Psyren
2017-04-18, 03:39 PM
That's Stormwind Fallacy anyway - beating encounters does not have to get in the way of the collaborative storytelling. Indeed, with Mechanics as Narrative you can tell or further all kinds of awesome stories through combat.

Sicarius Victis
2017-04-18, 03:41 PM
That's Stormwind Fallacy anyway - beating encounters does not have to get in the way of the collaborative storytelling. Indeed, with Mechanics as Narrative you can tell or further all kinds of awesome stories through combat.

Indeed. And often, some of the best stories you can find will come from the dice, whether good rolls or bad.

Love your avatar, by the way.

Honest Tiefling
2017-04-18, 04:10 PM
I wonder if it is a part of American gaming culture to scream at frustration at people who think that those who optimize and find it fun cannot enjoy a story as fully as a 'roleplayer' who doesn't even understand the system.

Maybe only the beating their head against a wall thing.

Sicarius Victis
2017-04-18, 04:16 PM
I wonder if it is a part of American gaming culture to scream at frustration at people who think that those who optimize and find it fun cannot enjoy a story as fully as a 'roleplayer' who doesn't even understand the system.

Maybe only the beating their head against a wall thing.

Again, I don't think it's culture. I think that some people in general just have trouble realizing that certain things are not mutually exclusive. And not even just roll/roleplaying, either. It can apply to just about anything.

2D8HP
2017-04-18, 04:26 PM
...at people who think that those who optimize and find it fun cannot enjoy a story as fully as a 'roleplayer' who doesn't even understand the system....


I suppose I fall into the "doesn't even understand the system (much)" category, but in my own limited experience, there isn't that much positive or negative correlation between "optimization" and "role-playing".

While they're some who are exclusively interested in one or the other, many are apathetic and are disinterested in both, and most do some of each, because they care about their characters, and want them to survive.

Honest Tiefling
2017-04-18, 04:39 PM
While they're some who are exclusively interested in one or the other, many are apathetic and are disinterested in both, and most do some of each, because they care about their characters, and want them to survive.

Nah, I'm talking about THAT sort of 'roleplayer'. The one who doesn't understand the system, doesn't care to understand the system, gets upset when other people understand the system, gets very butthurt when people prove with actual math how the system works, and looks down upon anyone with reading comprehension.

The type who will insist on making a poorly built character and gets personally offended when people don't want to take him seriously in combat despite scraping him off of the floor constantly. The type who insists on RPing being THE BEST warrior in the group even if there are other people who are warriors and probably don't want to play second fiddle. The type who wants to RP talking to the king despite displaying and possessing a charisma of 8, insisting that roleplaying is better then 'roll-playing', even if they are RPing all of their stats at effectively being 16+.

Anonymouswizard
2017-04-18, 05:01 PM
You see, I've got the reputation of being the group munchkin in two groups, and it's true as I tend to try to understand a system and build a strong character (there's another player who optimises, but specifically for large amounts of damage, I'm more of a character builder). Although this isn't a bad thing, one of the groups works under the assumption 'at least a bit of munchkinning is necessary', or essentially 'you shouldn't build a weak character if that's not the point'.

Now one of these groups includes a player who has trouble learning character creation rules, but that's compensated for by everyone else being willing to help her. She's in many ways the harmless version of 'that roleplayer', she can have trouble understanding the system and isn't that interested in the rules, but she doesn't want to drag down the party and doesn't try to hog the spotlight or play the best. The only problem is when there's multiple people wanting to play engineers (the group is 2/3 engineers with the rest being scientists, it's a popular character type).

mephnick
2017-04-18, 06:29 PM
Until I can stumble into a group of 14 trolls at level 2 new D&D will never scratch that old itch. I mean, I can make my own unbalanced encounter tables, but the system sure doesn't handle it well.

2D8HP
2017-04-18, 06:48 PM
Nah, I'm talking about THAT sort of 'roleplayer'....


You've encountered multiple people like that?!

Honest Tiefling
2017-04-18, 06:59 PM
You've encountered multiple people like that?!

You haven't!??! What was your address again? I need some new players...

EDIT: And why is no one surprised that I mentioned bringing math to the gaming table to show what the system can and cannot do?

2D8HP
2017-04-18, 07:32 PM
You haven't!??! What was your address again? I need some new players...


I live in between "Bikes on Solano" in Albany, and "Blue Heron Bikes" in Berkeley.

I last encountered someone who fits most of what you described at a DunDraCon, in the late 1980's or early 1990's (so I"d been playing RPG's for about 10 to 15 years), and I thought him singularly repulsive.

As I recall he insisted on playing a "Melnibonean" in a setting that didn't have them.

Otherwise, no not really, but there have been other behavior among those I've gamed with that I didn't like, but those been mostly OOC actions (loosing an attack ferret, unwelcome placement of a "bedroom" toy, and of course B.O.).

Maybe I've been lucky?

Pex
2017-04-18, 07:41 PM
If it means anything the DM of one of my 5E games was a 4E DM, and it shows. I hate 4E.

He still says creatures are "bloodied" even though it doesn't mean anything mechanically, but on the other hand it would be in character knowledge for the party to know a creature isn't looking so healthy anymore since we're right there looking at and fighting it.

Anonymouswizard
2017-04-19, 06:55 AM
EDIT: And why is no one surprised that I mentioned bringing math to the gaming table to show what the system can and cannot do?

Honestly, because I've played at a table of scientists and engineers. Once you've been in a group where 'can I do something' might result in calculations to work out the stats required (we got ~40 Strength needed to lift Paris in M&M) you kind of assume it as a given. Heck, once had a discussion on how to handle the system giving easy to access FTL travel (~30PP, double that for FTL flight) and whether it should act like it would in reality. Plus maths can be fun.

Max_Killjoy
2017-04-19, 09:15 AM
EDIT: And why is no one surprised that I mentioned bringing math to the gaming table to show what the system can and cannot do?


At least in my case... no one who has delved deeply into multiple editions of the HERO system, and gone on to be deeply involved in an attempted homebrew system, can should be shocked by the maths.

E: changed "can" to "should" because I've come across multiple published systems that seemed to involve little to no math in their design or playtesting... such as the system where an average person with an average characteristic making an average difficulty roll against that characteristic... will fail about 55% of the time.

ComaVision
2017-04-19, 10:45 AM
He still says creatures are "bloodied" even though it doesn't mean anything mechanically, but on the other hand it would be in character knowledge for the party to know a creature isn't looking so healthy anymore since we're right there looking at and fighting it.

I do that and I've never played or even read 4e. I'm just communicating to my players that they're getting close to killing whatever it is they've "bloodied".

big teej
2017-04-19, 12:17 PM
my two bits.

3.X got me into roleplaying (when I started, I didn't even realize 3.0 and 3.5 were different things) I've got a shelf full of 3.x supplements, and an 80 something page, constantly work-in-progress houserule document to make it all fit nicely how I want it.

but the more I grew as a gamer, and the more I was exposed to other rulesets, the less enamored I became of my home system. eventually, I made the decision to kill my campaign off (I was burnt out as a GM after running essentially every week for several years straight) and informed the group that we wouldn't be playing dnd anymore. this was mostly due to just how chunky and dense a ruleset 3.x is (don't get me wrong, that's one of my favorite things about any given ruleset). but the big thing that killed it for us was the intimidation factor it had on new players... they would take one look at the stack of rulebooks, or be told they needed to give me 3 hours of their time to crank out a character and balk... contrast the other system we were running at the time, Savage Worlds, where a non-gamer can crank out a character in less than an hour.

long story short, we left dnd behind, for years.

I refuse to play 4th, and Pathfinder rubs me the wrong way. but 5th edition brought me back into the 'willing to play' spectrum.

... Kinda.

I'd become very used to playing Savage Worlds, Iron Kingdoms FMF, PTU, and a handful of other systems in the intervening time... I'd gotten very used to being able to build a character how they were in my head, and then find the rules that supported that, from the word go.

I sat down to play a dnd 5th game and discovered how much I hate cookie cutters. (yes, 5th ed has taken strides in correcting this, but at the end of the day, I can't even use the 'combine cookie cutter' of 3.x to arrive at my original concept)

tl;dr - not my most eloquent argument or explanation, but eh. I will almost certainly never GM dnd 5th, and probably not 3.x either, again. BUT. depending on players in the group and the man behind the screen, I'm very willing to sit down at a table for dnd 5th.

/unsolicited ramble.

Quertus
2017-04-19, 01:24 PM
First and foremost, I want to thank Steampunkette (sp?) for one of the best stories I've read in a while.

As to the topic at hand... IMO, it would be nice if 6th edition captured the strengths of each edition, while allowing the most possible play styles. How well 5e accomplishes my desires for 6e therefore largely corresponds to how well it works to bridge the gap between the editions.

Here's my first pass a list of the actual and situational/perceived strengths of the various editions; I'm sure others can expand and improve this list significantly.

Older editions
Strengths: ease of character creation, FUN!
Maybe: DM control, combat as war, "balance", critical fumbles
Bad: Thac0, "save vs obfuscated rules", "AC 10", AC goes down, "pants-on-head" "you didn't say you were breathing" stupidity, death to own AoE (and otherwise making characters seem incompetent), roll high or low or high without going over or...

3.x
Strengths: d20 system, codified rules ("touch AC", hold an action, etc), breadth of options, concept of encounter balance, assumption of character competence (AoO, AoE, etc), defined competence (knowledges, etc).
Maybe: "builds", introduction of combat as sport
Bad: trap options, martial / caster, character creation time

4e
Strengths: balance between classes, codified actions (daily / encounter / at will)
Maybe: codified short rest / long rest
Bad: no world building logic (drops do not match abilities/fluff, random double HP for solo encounters, etc)

What I would like to see in 6e is the breadth of 3e's options, but characters as simple as in 2e and earlier. If I watch Kuba and the Two Stings, and want to create a 6-limbed insect samurai, I want to read at most 3 entries (one each for base rules, class, and race) to build my character, and know that they will be perfectly viable to play from 1st through 20th level.

I want to have plenty of rules to explain the simple, consistent rolls I need to make if my character wants to hide behind his horse, swim across a lake, bite a fish in half, make an origami dragon, lasso a bird, or read tax laws. I want it to be easy to understand my character's capabilities and evaluate their chance of success - and I want it to be easy for the DM to add new rolls as new circumstances arise.

I want to play Combat as War with random allies with random gear, some of which doesn't appear in any books because the DM - or even the character! - created it whole cloth. But I don't begrudge those who want to play combat as sport with very regimented roles (one fighter, one cleric, one mage, one thief... or one striker, one tank, one etc) in worlds with magic item Wal-Mart, or even with no items whatsoever, and I therefore want the system to handle any such permutations of style gracefully.

I want different characters to feel different, play differently. I want to be able to tell if everyone is going to have a role to play, easy to nudge things to make that happen, and at least possible to allow any random party to eventually fill any given role.

I want every character to be able to participate in every encounter, but for no one character to dominate every encounter.

I want to be able to play equally well with or without minis.

I want the system to support beginners, by having no trap options, by making characters play in obvious ways, as you'd expect them to. And to support new DMs, with good instructions, and helpful entries like, "this creature uses SoD/SoS effects - using this creature is not recommended unless...". But I also want it to show the most possible options to those who know what they're doing. Don't childproof my game... but maybe limit core to "baby's first D&D".

Oh, but put psionics in core. I'm F'ing tired of psionics being treated like an outcast. Or, better yet, make every single core class psionic, to make up for the treatment in earlier editions.

I want to have lots of interesting options for things to do in combat, besides just "hit it for X damage", available even to beginning characters with no particular "specializations". But I don't begrudge those who want something as simple as, "hit it for X damage", so I want both techniques to be valid. Further, when a character does have a "specialization", I want it to mean something. Like, say, with Master Grappler, when I succeed a grapple check, I have the choice to move the target up to 10" in any direction, or knock it prone and force a save or be stunned, or deal damage + disarm or pin or disable a limb or deal damage a second time.

I want characters to feel competent, larger than life, able to do amazing things... not have it feel amazing that they survived puberty in their world. I want characters to be knowledgeable of their world and their abilities, to pull off feats of skill, not lots of oops. I don't want house cats or shadow swarms to kill small armies, but I do want the pc's to do so. I want to tell epic tales of the pc's standing up to the gods themselves

So, how's 5e stand up to my criteria for 6e?


In response to the thread title, I don't think so.

I play 3.5e because I like the depth of the system and the breadth of options. I'm sure 5e would be fun to play but I'd get bored with it mechanically. I'd say roughly half of the people I play with hold 5e in contempt.

Yeah, I outgrew extremely limited selection several hundred characters ago.


European culture is more about collaborative Story Telling than focusing on beating Encounters.

I'm pretty sure I'll react negatively to anything that could be labeled "collaborative Story Telling", but, just to be sure, how do you define those words? Because I hear, "kids bickering over how the stuffed animals respond at the tea party".


The main "Features" of 5E I see promoted over 3E is that it "Gives the GM the ability to houserule" and is "Simpler." I also hear the phrase "Encourages roleplay" bandied about a bit; all in comparasion to 3E and its kids. First of all, no it does not really do any of that but the simpler part. The GM has always had the ability to houserule, and it "Systemizes" roleplay by turning it into a mechanic rather than truly encouraging it.

I think we need a different word - the ability to house rule before the game starts is one thing; the ability to create rulings on things missing from the rules on the fly is another. I want the GM to be able to say, "since your arm is broken, you suffer a -5 penalty to climb checks". I don't want the GM to pull a circle chief and say, "that thing straight out of the books (or reality) doesn't work that way in my game, because I don't view it that way. No, that doesn't work, either. Nor that." :smallmad:


While I will concede that many 3E players are rules lawyers, I do not believe its the system itself that causes it. Rather, I believe that rules lawyers gravitate towards a system with the most defined and concrete ruleset they can find

Games with good, systemized rules attract those of us who like good rules. Those of us who like good rules, and like playing by the rules (rather than playing Calvin ball, or "what the banker says, goes" monopoly) will prefer 3e. Does 5e have good rules?


It can completely be played as "Houseruled" and "heavy roleplay" as 5E in any situation.

No, I've got a +23 in my "roleplay" stat - it says so, right on my character sheet. You can't get that in your system, so my system is best for roleplay. :smalltongue:

I have yet to encounter a system better suited to role-playing than good old D&D. :smallcool: But I've seen plenty with rules that get in the way of role-playing. :smallfrown:


I believe that what we are seeing is a difference in types of players propping up the systems they like because those systems appeal to what they want. 5E players want a mechanically simple system that does not at any point get in the way of their story. They are willing to give up the ideas of Transparency and the myriad of options that cluttered 3E to get that. I won't say they are wrong, it's a sound idea.

I believe 3E players want a more mechanically complex system with a lot of options to allow them to get things "just so." They are people who focus a little more on the game aspect than the role playing part, and like to have a highly structured and concrete idea of how the world works in every situation. And I don't mind that either.

Player agency is usually what gets in the way of the GM's story; anything else helps make a story. (yes, 2d8, even bedroom toys)


My two cents is that the major difference from Pathfinder to 5E is actually tone. 5E, the monsters are tougher and the player character classes are weaker. A group of four characters probably can take a CR equal to their level almost all the time, but a single character or a group of three is likely to have a lot more trouble. In Pathfinder, there are certain classes who can take a CR equal to their level by themselves at certain points, and the list is pretty big. It was a very big shift in tone to go from one to the other. 5E feels grittier, a little darker, a little more "Conan" than "Forgotten Realms". But either is bad in my opinion.

So, would either (or both :smalleek:) of these statements apply to 5e?

* 5e cannot tell the story of the characters taking on the gods;
* characters do not feel like BDHs (even if you were playing as Asmodeus himself?)


Letīs take Warhammer Fantasy, probably the system with the most incentive to play "Combat as War", as your character will get permanently maimed when damaged, coupled with a death spiral due to wound penalties.

Here, real tactical mastery directly translates into game mastery, as you as the actual player must work with the environment to gain an advantage. A flask of oil and a torch can be more deadly than the best build knight.

Oh, Sigmar, I got hit. Time to make a new character. :smallfrown:


Me, I really don't get why people are so particular about this. Sure, different games have different playstyles. And people always act like things are bad for being different. But they aren't. They have different good parts and different bad parts, but that doesn't make them better or worse altogether. They're just different. So while it makes sense that you'd have one game or another that you prefer to play, I don't see why people talk about them as if they were actively bad.

In fact, it's better for them to be different. It gives you a different perspective, allows for different possibilities. H*ll, it makes things interesting. Variety is the spice of life, neh?

If you want something like what you're used to, just do what you're used to.

I think, if we combined the obfuscated verbiage and Gygaxian pros of earlier editions with the book diving and trap options of 3e, the "fluffless" and illogical world of 4e, and a little sprinkle of odd rules from other systems for added confusion, we could create a system which was truly just bad. Those who only look at a system from one PoV can, therefore, easily see just the bad and miss the good.

Or, you know, the system could have a huge, glaring problem (like, say, not being written in English, if I'm looking at it) that ruins it for them, no matter how good it might otherwise be. :smallfrown:


Also, that's not a cultural difference, it's a personal one. It's got nothing to do with where you are, it's all about who you play with. I'm from North America, for example, and my regular game is exceptionally story-focused.


I suppose I fall into the "doesn't even understand the system (much)" category, but in my own limited experience, there isn't that much positive or negative correlation between "optimization" and "role-playing".

While they're some who are exclusively interested in one or the other, many are apathetic and are disinterested in both, and most do some of each, because they care about their characters, and want them to survive.

I'd like to think I'm exceptionally roleplay-focused in my war game :smalltongue:


Until I can stumble into a group of 14 trolls at level 2 new D&D will never scratch that old itch. I mean, I can make my own unbalanced encounter tables, but the system sure doesn't handle it well.

Hear, hear!


If it means anything the DM of one of my 5E games was a 4E DM, and it shows. I hate 4E.

He still says creatures are "bloodied" even though it doesn't mean anything mechanically, but on the other hand it would be in character knowledge for the party to know a creature isn't looking so healthy anymore since we're right there looking at and fighting it.

I mean, I (probably unfairly) hate 4e, too, but I think adopting the "bloodied" verbiage is your GM's good.


Honestly, because I've played at a table of scientists and engineers. Once you've been in a group where 'can I do something' might result in calculations to work out the stats required (we got ~40 Strength needed to lift Paris in M&M) you kind of assume it as a given. Heck, once had a discussion on how to handle the system giving easy to access FTL travel (~30PP, double that for FTL flight) and whether it should act like it would in reality. Plus maths can be fun.

Hilton, or the city?

I mean, I opened conversation at lunch with my co-workers with, "If I have a force sufficient to counteract the acceleration due to gravity on a 200KG mass, how much could it affect the trajectory of an incoming bullet to push it off target, if it had an effective range of...". Good times. IIRC, we calculated somewhere between 2"-4".

2D8HP
2017-04-19, 02:13 PM
Because I find them useful for discussion, I'm going to use and label @kyoryu's excellent typology's (please suggest better labels than mine!).


I consider there to be there interaction types in RPGs.

Type 1:
GM: "This is the situation."
Player: "I do the thing!"
GM: "This is now the situation."


(GM as worldbuilder, player as explorer, I'll call it the Fiatist style).


Type 2:
Player 1: "I move my pieces in accordance with the rules"
Player 2: "I move my pieces in accordance with the rules"
Player 3: "I move my pieces in accordance with the rules"


(GM as stopwatch holding referee, I'll call it the Gamist style).


Type 3:
Player 1: "A thing happens!"
Player 2: "And then another thing happens!"
Player 3: "And then another thing happens!"


(Collaborative storytelling in which that the fictional "world" created is decided as much by players as by the nominal GM, I'll call it the Collaborationist style).

I'd add another style:

Type 4:
GM: "This is the situation."
Player: "Well I do.. !"
GM: "This is now the situation."
Player: "Hey I didn't say.."
GM: "This is now the situation."
Player: "Are you deaf? I said.."
GM: "This is now the situation."
Player: *groan*

(Often called "The extreme railroad", and only nominally an RPG, I'll call it Storytime style).


No game is really purely any of these... .


*Full disclosure*

My own preferences are probably:

4 parts Fiatist,
3 parts Gamist,
2 parts Collaborationist (PC backgrounds), and
1 part Storytime (narration past the boring parts)

for TableTop, and:

7 parts Fiatist,
1 part Gamist,
1 part Collaborationist, and
1 part Storytime

for PbP (please someone suggest better labels!).

Anyway, with the caveat that I mostly know the earliest, and the current editions, and have only glanced at 2e to 4e, based on what I hear, Oe was played the most Fiatist, and 4e the most gamist, 5e is in-between (please set me straight if you disagree).

Presumably different editions will attract fans of different tastes (and our taste's are formed by what we're used to), thus "edition wars", but here's the thing, I can remember fierce arguments over style when both people were only familiar with one or two very similar (in retrospect) editions.

For example:

Either late when 1e was still current or early after 2e came out (I remember what motorcycle I rode to the game, and what job I went to in the morning, but not the exact year), a player I'll call the "Melnibonean", and the DM I'll call "Too-tired-for-this-mess", had this interaction:


"Melnibonean" the player: As the Dragon closes it's jaws I place the sword hilt down blade up so that when it bites down it gets pierced.

"Too-tired-for-this-mess" the DM: Roll to hit.

"Melnibonean" the player: What do you mean roll to hit? Didn't you hear what I said?!

"Too-tired-for-this-mess" the DM: Yeah, roll to hit.

"Melnibonean" the player: You're doing it wrong!


So, a play style argument between a player who wanted a Collabarationist game, and a Gamist DM both of whom only knew TSR D&D.

If the conversation happened today I suspect that they'd post how (whatever)edition makes for poor DM's or players.

I also suspect that who the DM's and players are, and what they want matters more than the particuliar RAW, but I have a poor memory for learning new rules, and learned the game when you had to make up a lot to keep it flowing, so I probably place less importance on RAW than many.

My hope is that more of us (including myself) can learn to sit at most any table and "love the game you're playing", rather than just only "play the game you love" (and no it doesn't have to be any particular game or edition), because frankly they're just not enough tables to be too picky. But then again I walked away from actually playing (instead of just buying and reading) RPG's in 1992 and only started again in 2015 so my view is limited.


First and foremost, I want to thank Steampunkette (sp?) for one of the best stories I've read in a while.

As to the topic at hand... Epic spoiled post...


But how do you really feel?

Quertus
2017-04-19, 05:33 PM
But how do you really feel?

Tired. Hopeful that something I wrote will resonate with someone. Hungry for a good edition of D&D.

2D8HP
2017-04-19, 05:59 PM
...Hungry for a good edition of D&D.


Not just a "good enough" one then?

Quertus
2017-04-19, 09:27 PM
Not just a "good enough" one then?

No. Old-school D&D was fun, but it wasn't good. Newer editions may have clearer rules, but aren't as fun. I want good, not just good enough.

I play with too many people who aren't interested in learning a new edition to try to convince them to look at "good enough". It has to be good.

Mr Beer
2017-04-20, 12:00 AM
I like 5e a lot. If I was going to run D&D again, I'd use 5e for sure. It feels like AD&D that's been fixed and properly organised and has crunch from 3e that makes it interesting.

Katrina
2017-04-20, 01:43 AM
I think we need a different word - the ability to house rule before the game starts is one thing; the ability to create rulings on things missing from the rules on the fly is another. I want the GM to be able to say, "since your arm is broken, you suffer a -5 penalty to climb checks". I don't want the GM to pull a circle chief and say, "that thing straight out of the books (or reality) doesn't work that way in my game, because I don't view it that way. No, that doesn't work, either. Nor that." :smallmad:


I can see what you are going for there. A difference like "House rules are pre-agreed upon changes to the system or game options in play for the campaign" and "Improvisations are minor changes, effects, or fiddly bits not normally a part of the game system that the gm adds to make the game run the way he feels it should". The problem is that both are in essence, the same thing simply applied at differen times and different ways.
While I can't always speak to the way others mean it, having looked at 5E, it has its own odd balance. Imposing more rules or different effects on it would have the same highly variable rewards most other systems do. In my opinion, it doesn't really handle them any better or worse than other systems. Maybe slightly better if you consider that because the rules are more simplistic, there is less chance of an unusual conflict when a GM is forced to make a non-canon ruling; but that is of debatable usefulness.


Games with good, systemized rules attract those of us who like good rules. Those of us who like good rules, and like playing by the rules (rather than playing Calvin ball, or "what the banker says, goes" monopoly) will prefer 3e. Does 5e have good rules?

3E's rules feel heavy. Due to the extensive attention to the skill system, spellcasting system and combat system, a GM familiar with the rules feels fairly confident that his rulings are fairly in theme with how the system works everywhere else. "You want to do this? Alright, that's a standard action, it provokes AOs, and you roll this for it." But because the rules are robust and detailed, there is little feeling of not knowing how to rule something.
5E's rules feel light to me. While a detailed examination will lead you to a fairly good idea of how the rules work, I feel it would be easy to be mislead at first. The differences between some things are not always readily apparent (such as "Ability Checks" not including attack rolls). The differences between what is an Action and what is a Bonus Action seem to be codified by some unusual logic that I can't claim to understand. I don't personally feel that the rules of 5E are better than 3E, but there has been a lot of debate on this subject.



No, I've got a +23 in my "roleplay" stat - it says so, right on my character sheet. You can't get that in your system, so my system is best for roleplay. :smalltongue:

I have yet to encounter a system better suited to role-playing than good old D&D. :smallcool: But I've seen plenty with rules that get in the way of role-playing. :smallfrown:


I'm personally fond of Exalted (Both 3.0 and 2.5) as a system that allows for excellent roleplaying. I mainly say this because of the social combat system that actually allows for "My character is charismatic and persuasive even though I am not." without being wonky or hard to adjudicate in Player v Player situations. While it does mean that it requires a dedication to the roleplaying to not simply go "I roll Charisma+Presence to convince him", it provides an excellent rules framework for things like impassioned debates. That being said, Exalted has its own rules that "get in the way" of roleplaying or force character action (I'm looking at you, Virtues! :smallmad:). Thankfully, 3.0 removed those and settled on just having the Great Curse. Now there are only two ways to lose control of your character (Enemy Social Attacks and the Great Curse.).



Player agency is usually what gets in the way of the GM's story; anything else helps make a story. (yes, 2d8, even bedroom toys)

No strategy survives contact with the enemy, I believe is the old saying. :smallbiggrin:



So, would either (or both :smalleek:) of these statements apply to 5e?

* 5e cannot tell the story of the characters taking on the gods;
* characters do not feel like BDHs (even if you were playing as Asmodeus himself?)


For your first question, yes and no. As a dedicated group of individuals, your party can potentially take on a god. You'll probably lose someone, but in the end you might be able to pull it off. Now, can Raistlin Majere take on Takahisis and win? No. No he cannot.
Second question: In my opinion, no. But, if you've been paying attention, you know I have a pretty variable "Player power bar". I mean, I play Exalted. The players feel like heroes from one of those gritty 90s fantasy movies where they are winded by running up stairs and they constantly run from more than 1 on 1 odds. If you removed the Spellcasters, you could use this to run a Conan game. This is how I feel the 5E characters are in power level. The removal of most utility magic with the combination of the CR system revamp means makes it feel that way. In 3E, a single character might be able to take out a monster equal to his CR if he is very good or very lucky. In 5E, the amount of luck needed rises exponentially.


I mean, I (probably unfairly) hate 4e, too, but I think adopting the "bloodied" verbiage is your GM's good.

I think the "Bloodied" verbiage is probably the best thing to come out of 4E. I really hoped they were on to something with splitting elves into Eladrins and Elves, but it didn't last to 5th.


As for your criteria, its hit or miss. I hear they released a Psychic class, but I've not done proper research on it. Every report I get from the friends who have more time to game says that it is broken, and that seems to be the theme for Unearthed Arcana. In my experience and opinion, "Builds" are still a thing in 5E. The Thief Archetype for the Rogue is reportedly just plain bad, while the Assassin is very dangerous. The warlock can't really go wrong, but the Pact of the Familiar seems weaker than the other two. The Fighter feels like it has one good option and two Trap paths. The Druid can either have a really mild spellcasting boost or the insanity that is Circle of the Moon. It seems that some Archetypes are just leaps and bounds better than others. Combat seems to boil down to a "Damage off", so less versatility there in my opinion. For the most part, classes play as you would think. A fighter should be in the middle of the fight. A wizard should be casting spells. The Cleric role gets a bit of a boost in that Short Rests make it possible for any character to heal themselves, so the Cleric can relax a little.

Anonymouswizard
2017-04-20, 09:22 AM
I'm going to admit right here why I hate D&D.

I think D&D scales too much.

In D&D you start as a nobody who can die in a lucky hit from a bandit, but eventually work your way up to being a demigod (if not effectively a full blown deity depending on edition). 5e limits this scaling slightly due to bounded accuracy, but I can still go from 'can throw firebolts and occasionally put people to sleep' to 'is this Meteor Swarm worthy or should I just drop an 8d6 fireball?' I have no problems with either side of the equation, but I'd generally prefer to either stick at the more human end or begin the game able to survive orbital re-entry twice without healing.

Now the games I own do tend to be smaller scale, I prefer running games at the 'team of specialists' level than the 'demigod' level (and don't particularly like the 'people off the street' level either). This is why I don't run D&D at all, and only play it when the group insists (I have other friends who have similar 'dislikes' towards D&D based on wanting something different). My next game is either going to be done with Savage Worlds or Rocket Age if I haven't got my homebrew system to a playtestable state.

ComaVision
2017-04-20, 10:30 AM
I'm going to admit right here why I hate D&D.

I think D&D scales too much.

Interesting, that's actually a big point why I like D&D 3.5e. I like stories/games that span from zero to hero (or demigod).

Anonymouswizard
2017-04-20, 10:47 AM
Interesting, that's actually a big point why I like D&D 3.5e. I like stories/games that span from zero to hero (or demigod).

And isn't it great that we can both play games that give us what we like :smallsmile:

I mean, there have been times when I've argued that D&D should die already, but that's mostly me being annoyed that people insist on playing it when there are other games out there that'll work better for whatever they're doing. It literally seems to be the point where D&D and Pathfinder seem to be the only names most 'roleplayers' know, even though I know from personal experience that this isn't the case.

I mean, I'm actually fine with D&D existing. I don't like the style of game D&D is suited for, but many people actually do and that's fine. It's when it gets to the point of 'Starfinder will be to science fiction what D&D was to fantasy' that annoys me (and yes, I saw that exact line once), because that game already exists and is called Traveller. Heck, I'm even considering maybe picking up Starfinder, a good science fantasy RPG (not called Shadowrun) will be a massive boost to my collection and it looks like a cool idea, it's just the assumption that a lot of people seem to have that D&D/Pathfinder is 'the only RPG' that annoys me.

Heck, I actually like playing D&D3.5 or Pathfinder. I find complex rules systems fun from both sides of the screen. I'd just prefer to run a complex game that didn't rocket up the power scale.

Maybe I should write that game then, a d20 game where there's an explicit, relatively low cap on the power characters can have, and levels instead bring abilities and a handful of hit points and skill points. If you have +5 to your attack rolls at level 1 you might have +7 or +8 at level 20 (conversely there's no need to stop using the standard orc at higher levels, while you now have 30hp instead of 10 you're not much harder to hip and they still deal 1d6+2 damage).

2D8HP
2017-04-20, 10:55 AM
....I think D&D scales too much....


That's a very valid point.

While I know that @Jay R says that the danger of PC's dying in his very early (mid 1970's) D&D games was higher in perception than reality, in the games I played (a little bit late 1970's, a little more early 80's) the majority of my PC's died before reaching Second level, but I was a particularly incautious player:


IIRC-
To illustrate how this played out, the scene:
A dank almost crypt like basement/garage during the waning years of the Carter Administration, two pre-teens and some teenagers surround a ping pong table, that has books, papers, dice, pizza and sodas on it
Teen DM (my best friend's older brother): You turn the corner, and 20' away you see the door shown on the map.
Teen player (who thinks he's all that because he's been playing longer than me with the LBB's, but does he have the new PHB and DMG? No! So who's really the "Advanced" one huh!): With the lantern still tied to the ten foot pole, I slowly proceed forward observing if they are any drafts from unexpected places. You (looks at me) check the floor with the other pole.
Me (pre-teen): Oh man it's late, are we even getting into the treasure room today!
Teen player: You've got to check for traps!
Me: I run up and force the door open!
DM: Blarg the fighter falls through the floor onto the spikes below.
*rolls dice*
Your character is dead.
Teen player: Dude you got smoked!
Me: Look at my next character. I rolled a 15 for Strength.
DM: Really?
Me: Yeah, Derek totally witnessed me rolling it up!
DM: Did he?
Derek (my best friend, another pre-teen who invited me to the game): Are you gonna eat that slice of pizza?
Me: No.
Derek: Yeah I totally saw it.
*munch*
Me: See!
DM: *groan*
:smallwink:


In memory of my best friend, Derek Lindstrom Whaley, who in 6th grade saw me reading the blue book and invited me to play D&D at his house - R.I.P.,

since by the time I wised up to employing a "ten-foot-poles-and-bags-of-flour", style of play, I just didn't get to play much D&D, I remember 1st level TSR D&D as being a meat-grinder. The simple solution would've been just to start at higher levels, but that just didn't occur to us, in contrast 5e players seem to start at higher levels all the time!

Also it took about a year of play to go up a level (see Gygax's April '76 article "DM is only as good as the DM" from The Strategic Review", later re-printed in the 1980 Best of The Dragon, where I first saw it if you disbelieve me).

In contrast about a month (or less!) of play in 5e earns you a level, and (in my experience) most 5e PC's survive, which in some ways drives me bonkers, because I'm now I'm the cautious one, and urge retreat while other players say things like, "The DM wouldn't scale it so we'd lose."

Do our PC's know this?!

I'm pretty sure my PC has never heard of a CR!

*mumble, grumble, rant, rave, fume*


Interesting, that's actually a big point why I like D&D 3.5e. I like stories/games that span from zero to hero (or demigod).


I've never played 3.5, but I assume that it's more like 5e in how it scales.

As someone who used to play TSR D&D, a 5e "zero", (1st level) feels to me like a TSR "hero" (3rd level), and how much and how quickly 5e scales up is a little jarring.

To make TSR D&D feel more like 5e, I would have PC"s start at 3rd level in 1st level Dungeons. To make 5e more like TSR D&D, I would use the "Gritty Realism variant" from the DMG, use the free online 5e "Basic rules", and only a little bit more from the PHB (no feats), and slow "level ups", way the Abyss down.

After typing all that I wonder if an effective "compromise" edition is even possible, which makes me a little sad, as unlike some posting on this Forum, I really don't have that many opportunities to play (my favorite DM is now "Pining for the fjords").

Okay now I'm starting to think of "Mission of Burma", and "Joy Division" songs.

Quertus
2017-04-20, 11:09 AM
I can see what you are going for there. A difference like "House rules are pre-agreed upon changes to the system or game options in play for the campaign" and "Improvisations are minor changes, effects, or fiddly bits not normally a part of the game system that the gm adds to make the game run the way he feels it should". The problem is that both are in essence, the same thing simply applied at differen times and different ways.

Hmmm... Let me see... Yes, house rules and rulings are very similar. And, generally, it's better when rulings become house rules. So let me try this:

Rulings: on the fly additions to the game where the rules are silent, or on the fly fixes to the game where the rules are inconsistent, incoherent, or discovered in play to be broken. These should then be added to the house rules.

House rules: a repository of rules, available before the game behind, that lists all previous rulings, plus all additional changes to the rules.

FU: changes to the rules or to known facts made on the fly, usually by jerks.


I'm personally fond of Exalted (Both 3.0 and 2.5) as a system that allows for excellent roleplaying. I mainly say this because of the social combat system that actually allows for "My character is charismatic and persuasive even though I am not." without being wonky or hard to adjudicate in Player v Player situations. While it does mean that it requires a dedication to the roleplaying to not simply go "I roll Charisma+Presence to convince him", it provides an excellent rules framework for things like impassioned debates. That being said, Exalted has its own rules that "get in the way" of roleplaying or force character action (I'm looking at you, Virtues! :smallmad:). Thankfully, 3.0 removed those and settled on just having the Great Curse. Now there are only two ways to lose control of your character (Enemy Social Attacks and the Great Curse.).

Perhaps I should explain what I mean about rules getting in the way of role-playing.

Can a very convincing non-magical character convince someone to commit acts of unspeakable evil for the lols? Do you feel this is a realistic representation of how humanity works?

Can it model a political/ethical/etc debate, where different observers are convinced to vote for different choices from the same arguments?

Think about the times that someone has said something that changed, not just your opinion, but your beliefs. Has fundamentally changed who you are as a person. Does the game model this?

Will the rules produce less reasonable results than a good group just role-playing?

Because, IMO, someone who does not take your character's charisma into account is not role-playing correctly.

Of course, I prefer much more cooperative environments to PvP,


In my experience and opinion, "Builds" are still a thing in 5E. The Thief Archetype for the Rogue is reportedly just plain bad, while the Assassin is very dangerous. The warlock can't really go wrong, but the Pact of the Familiar seems weaker than the other two. The Fighter feels like it has one good option and two Trap paths. The Druid can either have a really mild spellcasting boost or the insanity that is Circle of the Moon. It seems that some Archetypes are just leaps and bounds better than others. Combat seems to boil down to a "Damage off", so less versatility there in my opinion. For the most part, classes play as you would think.

So, 5e was hit and miss. I'll need 6e to be a critical hit. :smalltongue:


I'm going to admit right here why I hate D&D.

I think D&D scales too much.

That's a feature, not a bug. You just level too fast in modern editions. You're "supposed" to take decades IRL to level. And the game is supposed to be really deadly. Thus, few characters survive to be played at multiple power levels - only the truly epic amazing heroes will ever experience your issue. And, for them, their tale should be worth the telling.

Knaight
2017-04-20, 11:33 AM
That's a feature, not a bug. You just level too fast in modern editions. You're "supposed" to take decades IRL to level. And the game is supposed to be really deadly. Thus, few characters survive to be played at multiple power levels - only the truly epic amazing heroes will ever experience your issue. And, for them, their tale should be worth the telling.

It's deliberately designed, but that doesn't mean that we have to like it. As for older editions, that's not necessarily a fix - the scale is still there as a setting artifact, you're still advancing in power dramatically (although much more slowly), and while the old school design does work well for playing the same character for decades that's also a design that a lot of people really, really dislike. Personally I don't like the idea of staying within the same genre for more than a year - 6 months of a fantasy game means that it's time for sci-fi, or mystery, or horror (as a one shot), or something.

Kurald Galain
2017-04-20, 11:36 AM
Maybe I should write that game then, a d20 game where there's an explicit, relatively low cap on the power characters can have, and levels instead bring abilities and a handful of hit points and skill points. If you have +5 to your attack rolls at level 1 you might have +7 or +8 at level 20 (conversely there's no need to stop using the standard orc at higher levels, while you now have 30hp instead of 10 you're not much harder to hip and they still deal 1d6+2 damage).

That strikes me as the exact design philosophy of 5E. Well, except for the skill points.

ComaVision
2017-04-20, 12:03 PM
I've never played 3.5, but I assume that it's more like 5e in how it scales.

As someone who used to play TSR D&D, a 5e "zero", (1st level) feels to me like a TSR "hero" (3rd level), and how much and how quickly 5e scales up is a little jarring.

Not really. From what I understand, each edition of D&D has made the characters less likely to die than the last. D&D 3.5e doesn't have death saving throws so you're one good hit from death at level 1, though you do have some class abilities (usually) so you aren't a complete scrub. Then the power scales up much faster than 5e. I'm not aware of another game with as wide a power scale as D&D 3.5e.

Knaight
2017-04-20, 12:04 PM
That strikes me as the exact design philosophy of 5E. Well, except for the skill points.

The HP difference is also much more dramatic in 5e - it doesn't go from 10-30 so much as it goes from 13-100. Similarly the damage in 5e grows pretty dramatically.

Stepping back a bit, in the classic HP/Damage and Attack/Defense system there's basically two axes that naturally fit together - the HP/Damage axis and the Attack/Defense axis. 5e bounded Attack/Defense (which later stretched into skills), while leaving HP/Damage able to scale pretty dramatically. 3.x bounded neither, with both growing heavily. It's pretty common outside the D&D paradigm to put a bound on the HP/Damage axis while letting skills get dramatic. This does both.

Anonymouswizard
2017-04-20, 12:09 PM
That's a feature, not a bug. You just level too fast in modern editions. You're "supposed" to take decades IRL to level. And the game is supposed to be really deadly. Thus, few characters survive to be played at multiple power levels - only the truly epic amazing heroes will ever experience your issue. And, for them, their tale should be worth the telling.

True, that's a valid style of play. However, whether it's a desired feature will vary based on the person. It's certainly not a feature I desire, although I understand it is one people like. Also, most games I play don't last for more than six months, I prefer characters to get slightly stronger every session or two rather than a big jump every few months (or years).

Or essentially what Knaight said.


That strikes me as the exact design philosophy of 5E. Well, except for the skill points.

Eh, 5e still has way too much 'zero to hero' for me (as well as the worst skill system ever). Also ironically (given I want lower scaling) too much focus on talent (ability scores) over training (proficiency).

Scaling is also a matter of style. It doesn't matter if orcs are still a threat at level 16, because by then it's expected that I'm fighting flaming demons that are on fire that burns with the heat of 10 fires. I also have a few problems with how much magic there is.

I'm planning a pair of games, one lowish fantasy and one hardish science fiction, based on the idea that even the best can't get into a six on one fight and survive without a lot of luck. I'll post them here if I get anywhere.

Yora
2017-04-20, 12:14 PM
An interesting article on the topic of hit point growths throughout the editions (http://udan-adan.blogspot.de/2016/04/your-demon-lord-doesnt-need-that-many.html).

Quertus
2017-04-20, 01:05 PM
It's deliberately designed, but that doesn't mean that we have to like it. As for older editions, that's not necessarily a fix - the scale is still there as a setting artifact, you're still advancing in power dramatically (although much more slowly), and while the old school design does work well for playing the same character for decades that's also a design that a lot of people really, really dislike. Personally I don't like the idea of staying within the same genre for more than a year - 6 months of a fantasy game means that it's time for sci-fi, or mystery, or horror (as a one shot), or something.


True, that's a valid style of play. However, whether it's a desired feature will vary based on the person. It's certainly not a feature I desire, although I understand it is one people like. Also, most games I play don't last for more than six months, I prefer characters to get slightly stronger every session or two rather than a big jump every few months (or years).

Or essentially what Knaight said.



Eh, 5e still has way too much 'zero to hero' for me (as well as the worst skill system ever). Also ironically (given I want lower scaling) too much focus on talent (ability scores) over training (proficiency).

If you're not playing for more than 6 months, you're not experiencing the "bug" of exponential growth in older editions.

But, true, you lack the "every session or two" growth, unless you count items, or henchmen, or prestige, or "character growth", or stuff like that.

Older editions - well, 2e, at least - did focus primarily on talent over training. I agree, that wasn't so good. So, how does lower scaling work in a skill system? You... want the best artist to not be much different than children's scribbles? :smallconfused: that would explain modern art, at least

Knaight
2017-04-20, 01:15 PM
Older editions - well, 2e, at least - did focus primarily on talent over training. I agree, that wasn't so good. So, how does lower scaling work in a skill system? You... want the best artist to not be much different than children's scribbles? :smallconfused: that would explain modern art, at least

If this is directed at both of us, I don't know. I'm all for a bit more scaling in the skill system than 5e had, potentially a lot more. The core mechanic I've been playing around with recently involves it being theoretically possible for anyone to achieve anything*, where skills progressively grant an increased baseline below which you can't fail, with an expected result well above said baseline.

*Though the chances for the unskilled follow an exponential decay curve, so that theoretical possibility is more "there's an asymptote" than "this will actually happen".

Anonymouswizard
2017-04-20, 02:07 PM
If you're not playing for more than 6 months, you're not experiencing the "bug" of exponential growth in older editions.

But, true, you lack the "every session or two" growth, unless you count items, or henchmen, or prestige, or "character growth", or stuff like that.

What I mean is some of use like our characters to get stronger gradually, instead of in large bursts (I also dislike 'strength via loot', and Henchmen might leave if their contract is finished).


Older editions - well, 2e, at least - did focus primarily on talent over training. I agree, that wasn't so good. So, how does lower scaling work in a skill system? You... want the best artist to not be much different than children's scribbles? :smallconfused: that would explain modern art, at least

Focusing here, I'd make a distinction on 'scaling with levels' and 'scaling between characters'. If it's impossible to have more than a +15 bonus then, assuming it's worthy of rolling, the best artist will do better than the child most of the time (actual cap to be decided). If we assume that a level 20 character doesn't have a higher cap, but does have more skill points, then level represents versatility instead of power.

Squiddish
2017-04-20, 05:16 PM
As for your criteria, its hit or miss. I hear they released a Psychic class, but I've not done proper research on it. Every report I get from the friends who have more time to game says that it is broken, and that seems to be the theme for Unearthed Arcana. In my experience and opinion, "Builds" are still a thing in 5E. The Thief Archetype for the Rogue is reportedly just plain bad, while the Assassin is very dangerous. The warlock can't really go wrong, but the Pact of the Familiar seems weaker than the other two. The Fighter feels like it has one good option and two Trap paths. The Druid can either have a really mild spellcasting boost or the insanity that is Circle of the Moon. It seems that some Archetypes are just leaps and bounds better than others. Combat seems to boil down to a "Damage off", so less versatility there in my opinion. For the most part, classes play as you would think. A fighter should be in the middle of the fight. A wizard should be casting spells. The Cleric role gets a bit of a boost in that Short Rests make it possible for any character to heal themselves, so the Cleric can relax a little.

Unearthed Arcana isn't game-ready for the most part, it's playtest material and more importantly balanced without multiclassing in mind.

Most of the common perceptions of archetypes being better or worse are wrong, and even when archetypes are better, the general attitude of 5e is that you don't need to optimize to have a good game.

To address your individual points on archetypes:

Thief is handy, assassin is good but seems much better on paper.
Warlock can go wrong, and I'm not sure where you got the idea that pact of the chain (the familiar one) is worse, since the one with actual problems is bladelock (these problems are solved with multiclassing). Warlock's big thing is short rest spell slots, which makes it a potent multiclass for charisma casters.
Champion is generally worse than battlemaster or eldritch knight, which are both good, but that's because champion is built for simplicity.
Circle of the lands is for people who want to play nature wizards, and is decently powerful; it's just that circle of the moon seems far more impressive (and is more powerful, to be honest).


Combat is no more of a damage off than in other editions, the only real difference is concentration, which limits the number of buffs, continuous damage spells, etc. Controllers are still perfectly viable and often more useful than raw damage.

Archers are just as useful as tanks, though that d10 HP isn't coming into play as much.
Wizards can just as easily be wading into the fight, ever heard of abjurers and bladesingers?
Cleric can do a lot of things, and healing has definitely taken a side role (except to life clerics), while light clerics are as good at blasting as most wizards.

Kurald Galain
2017-04-21, 01:30 AM
Eh, 5e still has way too much 'zero to hero' for me (as well as the worst skill system ever). Also ironically (given I want lower scaling) too much focus on talent (ability scores) over training (proficiency).

That's a fair point. Actually in regards to the OP's question, that's another important distinction between editions.

The skill system in 2E and 3E is specialist. Characters are clearly good at skills they've trained in, and bad at skills they haven't. Trained characters can routinely perform tasks that ordinary characters struggle with. It is good to have a diverse party, since other PCs are trained in different things, and the country needs adventurers because they markedly possess skill levels that the average people don't.

Whereas the skill system in 4E and 5E is generalist. Characters are more-or-less equally skilled at every skill, and the deciding factor is more the roll of the die than how much training the character had. On the one hand, everybody can contribute more-or-less equally to any skill-based situation. On the other hand, untrained characters frequently beat trained characters at opposed skills, and almost all checks can also be made by a group of commoners. I'm sure someone will now bring up an 20th-level rogue as the counterexample, but during most of your campaign the PCs won't be 20th-ish level rogues.
These two systems don't mix well, and fans of one of them will probably dislike the other.

Katrina
2017-04-21, 04:48 AM
Not really. From what I understand, each edition of D&D has made the characters less likely to die than the last. D&D 3.5e doesn't have death saving throws so you're one good hit from death at level 1, though you do have some class abilities (usually) so you aren't a complete scrub. Then the power scales up much faster than 5e. I'm not aware of another game with as wide a power scale as D&D 3.5e.

Haven't played Fantasy Flight's Anima, have you? :smalltongue: You can go from mildly better than a common farmer at level one to able to destroy entire battlefields in as low as level 6 if you get the right Ki dominions. But, it does only go to Level 10.



Kurald Galain:

These two systems don't mix well, and fans of one of them will probably dislike the other.

So much this. Have to admit that I'm a "Specialist" system player that kept looking at Star Wars Saga, 4E and 5E squinty eyed.


Squiddish
To address your individual points on archetypes:
Thief is handy, assassin is good but seems much better on paper.
Warlock can go wrong, and I'm not sure where you got the idea that pact of the chain (the familiar one) is worse, since the one with actual problems is bladelock (these problems are solved with multiclassing). Warlock's big thing is short rest spell slots, which makes it a potent multiclass for charisma casters.
Champion is generally worse than battlemaster or eldritch knight, which are both good, but that's because champion is built for simplicity.
Circle of the lands is for people who want to play nature wizards, and is decently powerful; it's just that circle of the moon seems far more impressive (and is more powerful, to be honest).


Combat is no more of a damage off than in other editions, the only real difference is concentration, which limits the number of buffs, continuous damage spells, etc. Controllers are still perfectly viable and often more useful than raw damage.

Archers are just as useful as tanks, though that d10 HP isn't coming into play as much.
Wizards can just as easily be wading into the fight, ever heard of abjurers and bladesingers?
Cleric can do a lot of things, and healing has definitely taken a side role (except to life clerics), while light clerics are as good at blasting as most wizards.


Notice I said reportedly on the Thief Archetype. I've gotten less chance to playtest 5E than most other editions. Partially because of my schedule, partially because my group is very split on it. My group plays multiple games without me on different days, and they like the Bladelock build. Something about combining the ability to add your Charisma Mod to Damage with it making you very skilled in melee while you still get to keep the crazy number of attacks and accuracy of Eldritch Blast. I personally don't see it that good, but that's because I have a bit of a holdover from 3.5 where the last place I want my spellcaster is in melee. Given that every character has the same proficiency bonus and can have a decent Dexterity for finesse weapons (That no longer require a feat to use with that Dex mod), any character can be decent in melee for damage. Resilience is still another matter.

Have to admit that the lack of any form of numeric buff (almost everything I see is Advantage/Disadvantage in 5E) and the Bounded Accuracy still scare me away from concepts like the Bladesinger you mention. Not that it isn't viable on paper, it just doesn't feel safe if that makes sense. It could simply be me being used to the number boosting that came from 3.0 and its ilk. :smalltongue: In the end, I've stated a lack of a lot of experience with 5E multiple times and most of my statements are based on what others say about the system and a few times of me crunching numbers, eyeballing stats and running mock battles to see how the system feels in play. Please don't take any of this as serious contention.

Anonymouswizard
2017-04-21, 05:47 AM
Haven't played Fantasy Flight's Anima, have you? :smalltongue: You can go from mildly better than a common farmer at level one to able to destroy entire battlefields in as low as level 6 if you get the right Ki dominions. But, it does only go to Level 10.

Yes, but at least they don't try to pretend Fighters are normal Earth humans at level 20 :smalltongue: the exponential scaling is there, but it feels like it's just something everyone has when they start gaining XP. It doesn't bother me as much as in D&D (although it is also possible to run a high powered Anima game without getting into stuff the characters couldn't do at the beginning. Maybe it's the nature to broad magic D&D had that I don't like).

Oh, and Anima various the corebook XP level at 15 (roughly D&D level 30 power level wise), although it's easy to extend. You're meant to do more of a level 1-10 game though.

Oh, and remember that a standard farmer is a freelancer who likely put 90% of his DP into secondary skills. A 1st level fighter can't kill an entire village but will at least slaughter the pub, you start much higher than in D&D (although still at the level of 'guy who's seen a couple of battles).

Knaight
2017-04-21, 06:24 AM
The skill system in 2E and 3E is specialist. Characters are clearly good at skills they've trained in, and bad at skills they haven't. Trained characters can routinely perform tasks that ordinary characters struggle with. It is good to have a diverse party, since other PCs are trained in different things, and the country needs adventurers because they markedly possess skill levels that the average people don't.

It's not just that though. 3.x favors hyper specialization with a handful of skills extremely good, and the rest absolutely terrible, and actively disincentivizes being kind of good at a variety of things (there's a few mechanisms here, but cross class skills stand out). Even if people favor the general idea of specialized characters much better at what they do than the untrained that doesn't mean that the 3.x implemenatation will go over well. Personally, I've never seen a D&D skill system I didn't at least somewhat hate.

Kurald Galain
2017-04-21, 07:25 AM
Eh, 5e still has way too much 'zero to hero' for me (as well as the worst skill system ever).

It's not just that though. 3.x favors hyper specialization with a handful of skills extremely good, and the rest absolutely terrible

Right, so D&D successfully lets people bond over how terrible the skill system is :smallbiggrin:

Knaight
2017-04-21, 10:20 AM
Right, so D&D successfully lets people bond over how terrible the skill system is :smallbiggrin:

I don't disagree, given how often I'm able to cite games from the early 80's as examples of how to do it better.

Max_Killjoy
2017-04-21, 10:22 AM
I don't disagree, given how often I'm able to cite games from the early 80's as examples of how to do it better.

HERO and oWoD handle it better... :smallwink:

2D8HP
2017-04-21, 10:30 AM
Right, so D&D successfully lets people bond over how terrible the skill system is :smallbiggrin:



I don't disagree, given how often I'm able to cite games from the early 80's as examples of how to do it better.



HERO and oWoD handle it better... :smallwink:


Oh! 0h!

I want to play this too!

1978's Runequest's skill system
(Though I never had as much fun as with D&D, but I also never felt as much like banging my head against the table. Comme ci, comme įa.)

Knaight
2017-04-21, 01:18 PM
HERO and oWoD handle it better... :smallwink:

oWod?...

Shots fired. :smallwink: