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Post by The Northman on Apr 24, 2017 18:23:32 GMT -8
The 'Fees like AD&D' comment has been a common one since this edition's release, often with an inability of the person making that claim to totally articulate exactly why. I've been in that camp at times.
I get that this is a thread for people who don't like the game, I've just always seen a huge difference between a game doing what it's designed for, and whether that's your cup of tea or not, and game that's mechanically poorly designed. I think 5e is the most elegant of the d20 iterations, but I understand why some people who like different style games don't dig it as much as most.
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HazelnutMudslide
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Post by HazelnutMudslide on Apr 24, 2017 18:58:36 GMT -8
I actually like 5e, it was 3 and 3.5 I didn't care for. 4 is fine, if you remove the D&D moniker, and keep the group to 4pcs it's even a decent intro to convert mmo players to tabletop.
That people can't specifically state why 5e has "that classic D&D feel" is because the hints it gets right, are the intangibles.
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D.T. Pints
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Post by D.T. Pints on Apr 24, 2017 20:01:38 GMT -8
That's it for me..."the intangibles" early D&D (basic) was a *reaches over grabs Red Box* *groans at old man back* SIXTY TWO page players manual and a *takes deep breath, bracing old man back* *grabs dungeonmasters rulebook* *breathes in deeply the fine aroma of 1984 pulpy paper* FORTY EIGHT page book. Lots of things were not explained at the game left lots of room for silly adolescent ruling AND imagination. As rules became more and more complex in later editions culminating with the *strains and nearly shits himself* FIVE HUNDRED AND SIXTY EIGHT! page Pathfinder rulebook with rules for everything from camping to plumbing.
5e with just bare bones players manual really makes an effort to leave room to allow groups to build their own game. It feels more ACCESSIBLE. Its a hobby grower. Nearly six hundred page bulletstoppers are hobby scare crows. Abandon all hope of fun ye who read here....Having said that I play Pathfinder twice a month and have a great time.
I guess the question for me is...if you like this version (and I do, its a beautiful book) play it...if you do not like D&D don't worry give all of this about ten more years and the hobby will be so micro niched and lowly populated you can play whatever game you like...by yourself. Not to be too pessimistic about the future of tabletop RPGs but lets remember WOTC has apparently only TWO people on full staff for D&D. Shane Hensley will never quit his day job and we lose a bookstore about every week. Whats the average age of the attendees of this forum ? Of listeners to the podcast? I will not go gently into that good night but it would seem fifth edition will be THE LAST edition.
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Post by DeathbyDoughnut on Apr 24, 2017 21:49:12 GMT -8
I actually like 5e, it was 3 and 3.5 I didn't care for. 4 is fine, if you remove the D&D moniker, and keep the group to 4pcs it's even a decent intro to convert mmo players to tabletop. That people can't specifically state why 5e has "that classic D&D feel" is because the hints it gets right, are the intangibles. In regards to 4e, I've said it before and I'll say it again. "D&D 4e was an excellent miniatures combat game, it was just bad at being D&D." So much of the hate I see about D&D is specific to group composition and DM styles. Another saying I've come to trust, "Not every player for every game, and not every game for every player." -my pal D13 Personally I was a young'un when I started playing D&D back when 3e's ink was still drying and I think D&D 5e's 'back to basics' feel has a lot to do with the philosophy of the character concepts. 5e doesn't tout that you need to have a specific party/role composition with min/max skills to be effective in the game. Play a lightfoot halfling abjurist wizard, and you're still going to have fun and be effective, even in a group of all wizards. Similarly, it has that kick in the door style, miniatures? take'em or leave'em style of play. A lot of barrier of entry to a roleplaying game is how much stuff does it take to get started? D&D is already tough at 3 core rulebooks. While previous editions (and certain knock off games **coughpathfindercough**) heavily imply that you need miniatures, and maps and and and and stuff. Pretty soon you're laden with bags of accoutrements well past your medium load amount, huffing and wheezing to get to an apartment on the third floor because the friend with the biggest table lives there. One feature of 5e is monsters are dangerous again because the game doesn't give you a precise formula of how to organize your combats and leaves player agency wide open to take on an encounter. All your class features don't revolve around what to do in combat. 5e gives you flavor, flair, and fire to roleplay your character rather than nervously rearranging some action cards in front of you while you wonder if this encounter is going to take 4 hours to resolve because the DM decided it was time in the leveling schema to introduce a hard or deadly encounter, and whether or not you've planned your restroom visits accordingly except you did have that double shot after lunch because after working late for the third week straight and dammit you really need a game night but worry that you'll lack energy for the session since normally you're in pajamas at 8 pm soon after collapsing through the door of your home. 5e reintroduced the ability for a DM to confidently just say "Fuck it, here's a werewolf" and let the party decide what to do rather than react with whichever power cards would be most effective and in which order. D&D 5e has reintroduced uncertainty of the unknown, anything is possible, roleplaying for roleplaying sake, and most importantly player agency, rather than player reactivity. But that's just like, my opinion, man.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2017 21:55:00 GMT -8
That's it for me..."the intangibles" early D&D (basic) was a *reaches over grabs Red Box* *groans at old man back* SIXTY TWO page players manual and a *takes deep breath, bracing old man back* *grabs dungeonmasters rulebook* *breathes in deeply the fine aroma of 1984 pulpy paper* FORTY EIGHT page book. Lots of things were not explained at the game left lots of room for silly adolescent ruling AND imagination. As rules became more and more complex in later editions culminating with the *strains and nearly shits himself* FIVE HUNDRED AND SIXTY EIGHT! page Pathfinder rulebook with rules for everything from camping to plumbing. 5e with just bare bones players manual really makes an effort to leave room to allow groups to build their own game. It feels more ACCESSIBLE. Its a hobby grower. Nearly six hundred page bulletstoppers are hobby scare crows. Abandon all hope of fun ye who read here....Having said that I play Pathfinder twice a month and have a great time. I guess the question for me is...if you like this version (and I do, its a beautiful book) play it...if you do not like D&D don't worry give all of this about ten more years and the hobby will be so micro niched and lowly populated you can play whatever game you like...by yourself. Not to be too pessimistic about the future of tabletop RPGs but lets remember WOTC has apparently only TWO people on full staff for D&D. Shane Hensley will never quit his day job and we lose a bookstore about every week. Whats the average age of the attendees of this forum ? Of listeners to the podcast? I will not go gently into that good night but it would seem fifth edition will be THE LAST edition. Book stores go out of business because the demand for printed books is way down. PDF's are a better product for the general population. They are cheaper for everyone and more usable (search features, hyperlinks, etc). Roleplaying is not chained to the fate of bookstores, so I'm not worried. As far as length equating to ease of use, I don't buy it. I spend much more time lamenting that proper length was not spent to explain things than that they were too long or verbose. I'd pay extra for my PDF's to come with an example (or five) of every single thing the book goes over. Heck, I'd love to see designers produce video companions where they run or comment on games as a way of teaching people to play. I've heard people criticize the 'older cousin' model because it limits growth, but there is no reason that we can't take those lessons and turn them into lectures instead of 1 on 1 lessons. Combine that with active communities (like G+ for many games) and you'd have a complete set of tools to get you into the swing of running or playing in games. Average age of Happy Jack's listeners may have more to do with the show than roleplayers in general. I'm sure that there are other podcasts (or programs on other platforms, such as the RollPlay series) that appeal to a younger audience. I'm a fan of the show, but a lot of the references are to things from before my time. How many young people out there know vaudeville references? Kinda dates the HJ crew.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2017 22:02:24 GMT -8
D&D 5e has reintroduced uncertainty of the unknown, anything is possible, roleplaying for roleplaying sake, and most importantly player agency, rather than player reactivity. But that's just like, my opinion, man. Uncertainty and anything is possible feels like the exact opposite of player agency. Decisions have no meaning in a sea of uncertainty. You can only get whacky results so many times before the game is about the dice, and not the people/characters involved. This is why new players love to tell stories of their favorite rpg moment where they rolled a 20, gasp! Also, those things were never really gone (unless you tried very hard to build to the point that failure was impossible). D20 has been the die of choice for a long time, so uncertainty was nearly the only certainty, as I see it.
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Post by DeathbyDoughnut on Apr 24, 2017 23:34:11 GMT -8
Uncertainty and anything is possible feels like the exact opposite of player agency. Decisions have no meaning in a sea of uncertainty. You can only get whacky results so many times before the game is about the dice, and not the people/characters involved. This is why new players love to tell stories of their favorite rpg moment where they rolled a 20, gasp! Also, those things were never really gone (unless you tried very hard to build to the point that failure was impossible). D20 has been the die of choice for a long time, so uncertainty was nearly the only certainty, as I see it. I feel like you're trying to make a point here, but you didn't make one. You don't like d20s? It's late, I get it. How is uncertain possibility the antithesis of player agency? You say that decisions have no meaning in a sea of uncertainty. But I vehemently disagree, both from a mechanical perspective, as well as a philosophical perspective. Decisions are the only meaning in a sea of uncertainty. Willful application of choice gives direct meaning to the roiling chaos of uncertainty. If left to it's nature, entropy can only increase in a closed system (thermodynamic law #2), however entropy can be reduced by an infusion of energy into the system; following the analogy where entropy is uncertainty, the closed system is the game, and energy is agency. Yo, those who just hate D&D, and this is a D&D hate thread, keep on doing what you do. That's your opinion and I'm not trying to attack that. I'm not trying to defend jack either, simply discussing some points previous posters have posited about the returning to roots blah blah blah of D&D's 5e rules. Though I do disagree with your statement that "Also, those things were never really gone." As someone who actually attempted to DM D&D through the 4e years, the DMGs had game prep, and player progression down to formulaic precision. What uncertainty could there be when everything except the dice rolls were accounted for in a session, and the rulebook actually advocated such things? You could make simple algorithms to replace players and it changed the combat portion of the game very little which was the entire focus of the rules. The D&D board game monsters have little if/then statements on their cards for the monster's behavior. My 4e group and I put together basically the same sort of if/then algorithms for each PC just in case one of the players couldn't make it to the session. Whenever we had to use them, we couldn't tell the difference between the PC and the algorithm because the focus for all the rules were combat focused and all it took from the PCs were appropriate reactions using their power cards and movement. Overall I am not defending either system, simply adding fuel to the discussion from my own gamer perspective. Cool?
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Post by Probie Tim on Apr 25, 2017 7:03:26 GMT -8
I'm a fan of the show, but a lot of the references are to things from before my time. How many young people out there know vaudeville references? Kinda dates the HJ crew. I think you have a point there, given that one of our most often quoted lines comes from Lidsville, a Sid & Marty Kroft show. =/
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Post by Monkeyfun Dave on Apr 25, 2017 9:08:49 GMT -8
I'm a fan of the show, but a lot of the references are to things from before my time. How many young people out there know vaudeville references? Kinda dates the HJ crew. I think you have a point there, given that one of our most often quoted lines comes from Lidsville, a Sid & Marty Kroft show. =/ SHUT YOUR DIRTY WHORE MOUTH, TIMMY. 70's REFERENCES AND RPG'S GO TOGETHER *JUST* FINE.
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Post by Probie Tim on Apr 25, 2017 9:16:18 GMT -8
I think you have a point there, given that one of our most often quoted lines comes from Lidsville, a Sid & Marty Kroft show. =/ SHUT YOUR DIRTY WHORE MOUTH, TIMMY. 70's REFERENCES AND RPG'S GO TOGETHER *JUST* FINE. "How's that for a topper!?" Huh. Yeah, I guess you're right.
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Post by The Northman on Apr 25, 2017 9:16:28 GMT -8
And it makes me feel much better about being one of the old guys at the hobby shop when I'm reminded of how much younger than most of the hosts I am...
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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2017 22:16:14 GMT -8
DeathbyDoughnut I'll try and be brief. There has to be a relationship between cause and effect. Given that a random variable is a part of the equation of cause and effect, you can't always say, "I got result X because I took Y ability." There should be a point though that you can say you are achieving result X an increased percent of the time. Now here's the kicker. That percent of the time that you are going to get X result that you wouldn't have before needs to make sense. Something like a strength score of 20 represents body builder levels of power. Bulging muscles, the type of people who throw telephone poles for sport (crazy Scotsmen). That type of person should have relatively few instances of failure when they go to kick in a door (on average). By comparison, someone of average or below average strength should be unlikely to succeed where our muscle man fails. Lets take a DC15 check to kick a door down. Our 20 Strength strong man (actually impossible to get in creation in most D&D versions) needs a 10 or more to pass. Thus out of 20 possible results, he succeeds on 11 of them. He has a 55% chance at success. Our 10 strength average joe needs a 15 or more to pass. Thus he succeeds on 6 of the 20 possibilities. He has a 30% chance at success. Simple subtraction shows us that by being the pinicle of human strength, our strong man has increased his odds of success by 25% (which we could have derived more simply, but I said I'd be brief and thus took the long way ). Lets do some more math though. We'll take our strongman's chance of failure, 45%, and multiply it by our average Joe's chance of success, 30%. We get 13.5%, which is the percentage of results where Conan the Barbarian kicks the door and nothing happens, meanwhile PeeWee Herman takes down the door. Now remember that our strongman is supposed to throw telephone poles and our average joe probably has zero (or close enough to) chance of lifting a telephone pole off thr ground. Even if you were completely sanguine about Conan the Barbarian only having a 55% chance to kick a door down, how do you square off with the very real possibility that he gets outshown at the thing he is supposed to be good at? Seriously, the odds are greater than 1:10. Anyone who has played a D10 base system knows that 1 in 10 happens. Its not a 3 on 3d6 (which still happens! Play hero system if you don't believe me). When you look at the cause and effect of deciding to play a character who has their strength as a core trait, you see that the effect is a 25% rise in chances. Given that your base chance is garbage, 25% doesn't mean that much. Less than 60% is a failing grade in school. Why should we accept that as the success rate of someone who should be the pinnacle of human achievement? Imagine if your favorite action movie star ran up to a door and failed to kick it in twice before finally succeeding, and this happened regularly. Because of the d20 and how they chose to structure D&D's numbers, the gameplay doesn't resemble the bill of goods you are sold. Play a great hero (who will be humiliated by an average door pretty much half the time!). They could have fixed this kind of issue. They took steps towards it in 4th edition with things like passive perception. They even threatened to do it in fifth, but instead they bowed to the people who want the 'magic' of a 20. "Dear diary. I rolled a 20 today." Gag me with a spoon. I need some level of consistency from games I play. That way my decisions can actually be meaningful, instead of just giving the illusion of it. In D&D a 20 strength is like a normal guy wearing a shirt with muscles painted on it. Will he actually be able to act like said strongman? I don't know, roll your D20 and see if your decision mattered at all.
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Post by ilina on Apr 27, 2017 0:51:41 GMT -8
Elf was technically a race and not a class in Whitebox/0E. it was a class in Basic but Basic came out a bit later.
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Post by ilina on Apr 27, 2017 0:57:44 GMT -8
i actually like 5e. it isn't like any one of the 6 previous variations if you count whitebox and basic as their own separate variations. rather, it takes great concepts from many of them and makes a truly unique game that is simple and elegant, but also has a bit of meat. just the right complexity. it is truly the most customizable and modular edition released and also the most balanced. essentially, i like the fact that wizards aren't forced to miss non stop casting Shankabitch to make it look like they were doing something in combat when they waste their only magic missile.
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Post by Kainguru on Apr 27, 2017 4:03:02 GMT -8
DeathbyDoughnut I'll try and be brief. Because of the d20 and how they chose to structure D&D's numbers, the gameplay doesn't resemble the bill of goods you are sold. Play a great hero (who will be humiliated by an average door pretty much half the time!). They could have fixed this kind of issue. They took steps towards it in 4th edition with things like passive perception. They even threatened to do it in fifth, but instead they bowed to the people who want the 'magic' of a 20. 1) They have passive perception in 5th 2) It is spelt out quite clearly that checks for opening things, such as doors, should only be done if "dramatically appropriate". So, yes, your Conan type *might* fail to kick down the door as Demogorgon approaches . . . and, yes, PeeWee the Pimple *might* (in rush of adrenaline and fear) succeed where the Conan type failed. Sounds like unpredictability and countering 'niche protection' ie: only "Conan Type can can save us, because only Conan type can do this". Which is kind of counter intuitive to previous complaints about the limiting nature of archetypes? Aaron
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