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Jimbozig posted:Having limited experience with pre-4e editions, I have a question. Yes, broadly. In AD&D the "balance" was more or less that wizards weren't likely to actually make it to higher levels. In practice groups either found this not fun (and thus monsters didn't attack the wizard outright or wizards had different ways to ensure their life) or the group would rally around protecting the wizard, which had the side effect of making the game into the Wizard Show, but in a reverse way.
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Mar 4, 2013 03:32
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If we're talking really old-school D&D then the apparent assumption was that you weren't just going into a dungeon with you and your 3-4 best buds, you were going into a dungeon with your 3-4 pals and a contingent of hirelings like some sort of ad-hoc subterranean army, and what I've been told is all it took to completely block off an avenue of approach in your typical 10'-wide corridor was three people standing abreast. So in lieu of any sort of gentleman's agreement not to spread the Magic-User across the ground like jam you could also suggest that proper dungeoning tactics would involve an emphasis on marching orders and formation so you could screen fragile party members behind a wall of dudes with shields and spears. Also there were reaction attacks that were like proto-Opportunity Attacks where if you broke away from someone in melee they got a free attack against you, so I suppose you could look at that as a sort of "stickiness," running up to the orc berserker or whatever and getting into melee with it to try and keep it focused on you. Not that gentleman's agreements probably didn't exist either, mind you. I mean, if a GM is really, really determined to bum rush the MU/Wizard then they have limitless enemies to do it with, but in really old-school D&D combat was a thing you tried to avoid whenever possible instead of a thing you dove into for sweet XP. All you really wanted was the money. So I would guess that it was a combination of carefully assigning marching orders and formation, a bit of a gentleman's agreement on the GMs part, and the players trying not to get into fights in the first place. I don't know exactly how this process evolved/mutated over the course of, say, OD&D to AD&D2E though. I know that by the time 3E rolled around the default assumption seemed to be that hirelings weren't a thing most playgroups cared to deal with and fighting monsters was both a source of XP and also an enjoyable end in and of itself and I would guess that the Attack of Opportunity as it was codified in 3E was created to try and give melee fighters the ability to do zone defense after a fashion but, like a lot of things in 3E, it was both needlessly complicated and didn't quite work out as it was probably intended to in practice.
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Mar 4, 2013 03:44
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I don't like Next. I don't like it from a design standpoint. I don't like the way Mike Mearls discusses the design. I don't like how they care so much about existing player feedback when they should care about what engages new players. I don't like that they focus so heavily on what is the essence of "D&D" like some type of Platonic ideal when they should really focus on what's fun or what makes sense mechanically. I especially don't like spell slots. I don't like that grapple rules are still somehow cumbersome. I don't like that a rogue can have the same AC as a sword-and-board fighter at lower levels. I don't like how rogue sneak attack works. I don't like rolling for stats. I don't like that alignment is even still a thing. I don't like the concept of an "adventuring day." But I enjoy myself when I play Next. I'm currently playing in a home game and Encounters using Next, as well as a Dark Sun game using 4E. I love 4E, but I enjoy the Next campaigns just as much, if not more. For everything that Next is, it's definitely simpler than 4E. There are no crazy movement rules, character sheets aren't 5+ pages, no minor actions, no long lists of skill numbers, no crazy math, etc. And that simplicity makes it a more elegant game. When I sit down with my friends, whether they are veterans or new players, there is less getting between us and the story/roleplay when we play Next compared to 4E. As I'm wont to say, every die rolled, every number added, every table consulted, represents an interference between the player and the interactive story that forms the very core of D&D. These are failures. Do I think they could have created a better game by not throwing out so much of 4E? Yes. Do I think Next has some serious issues that will need to be resolved before they can offer a compelling product? Absolutely. If you go back to the older Next thread, you will see that I am critical of Next. But I play Next every single week and I come back to it every single week for a reason: I have fun. That's all I can say. As long as I still have fun with Next, I will keep playing it.
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Mar 4, 2013 03:48
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So the target audience is the non-discriminating one.
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Mar 4, 2013 03:54
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I won't argue that someone enjoying a game is having actual badwrong fun. Hey, I used to love the hell out of Exalted, so what do I know from good systems? I will, to pick a particular nit out of that post, say that I strongly disagree that things like "no minor actions" lead to a more elegant game when the result of "no minor actions" has been "a bunch of things that work like minor actions used to but we don't have a standardized term and rule for things that fall outside of Attack and Move actions so every time something like that comes up we have to elaborate upon it and give it its own little explanation of how it falls outside the standard set of actions." That's not elegant, that's the opposite of elegance. I don't know why they decided "hey, let's get rid of minor actions" and then proceeded to get rid of the term "Minor Action" and kept everything else about them, but to me that sort of thing is strongly indicative of the design going into Next.
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Mar 4, 2013 04:05
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I apologize for getting off Next here, but have you tried non-D&D systems with less emphasis on dice and number crunching and if so, what do you think of them in relation to the reasons you're citing for Next vs. 4E? E: Posted too slow. Clarified who I was talking to.
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Mar 4, 2013 04:08
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SilverMike posted:I apologize for getting off Next here, but have you tried non-D&D systems with less emphasis on dice and number crunching and if so, what do you think of them in relation to the reasons you're quoting for Next vs. 4E? Who are you addressing? E: ahh, never mind.
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Mar 4, 2013 04:09
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SilverMike posted:I apologize for getting off Next here, but have you tried non-D&D systems with less emphasis on dice and number crunching and if so, what do you think of them in relation to the reasons you're citing for Next vs. 4E? I love Monsterhearts and there's hardly any dice rolling in that. I really want to try Dungeon World too. I do like the general idea of the d20 though because the 5% probability segments make sense to me. The tough part for me is that my mood varies. I like a bit of tactical combat, but not too much. I like role playing but I get a little bored when it's just a bunch of people sitting around pretending to be at an elven council meeting or whatever (I tend to play very action-oriented characters). Skill checks bore the poo poo out of me. There's absolutely no tactics or role playing involved. So I guess I would want something that was like 50% interactive storytelling, 50% tactical combat and I'd be happy. Next has come closest to that for me so far. Like I said, I think Dungeon World might be good for me.
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Mar 4, 2013 04:21
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I have just finished another homebrew. Beer, not a game. The homebrew game is taking longer and is more complicated than the beer, but at least I don't have to sterilise everything. The beer is a nice smoky-ish Bock. I made a mess when I bottled it, but not as much as last time. The game is a mess too, but not as much as D&D Next still looks to be. What is a good meat dish to eat with Bock? What defines the feel of D&D? I believe one of these questions can be answered.
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Mar 4, 2013 04:38
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AlphaDog posted:I have just finished another homebrew. Do you name your homebrews? My brother makes mead and designs labels for each batch. My favourite was "Lusty Argonian Mead". 
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Mar 4, 2013 04:48
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AlphaDog posted:What is a good meat dish to eat with Bock? The feel of d&d to me was always just STR CON DEX INT WIS CHA. Keep that, and I'll consider it d&d.
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Mar 4, 2013 05:11
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Lord Frisk posted:The feel of d&d to me was always just STR CON DEX INT WIS CHA. Which is funny given all the "DEATH TO ABILITY SCORES" I see in tradgames.
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Mar 4, 2013 06:15
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Lady Gaga posted:As I'm wont to say, every die rolled, every number added, every table consulted, represents an interference between the player and the interactive story that forms the very core of D&D. These are failures. I don't necessarily disagree with this idea, but if it's truly what you believe regarding RPGs, then probably D&D is not for you. Minimizing die rolls and table consulting has never been a thing in D&D - quite the opposite, in fact.
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Mar 4, 2013 06:23
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Lady Gaga posted:I love Monsterhearts and there's hardly any dice rolling in that. I really want to try Dungeon World too. I do like the general idea of the d20 though because the 5% probability segments make sense to me. The tough part for me is that my mood varies. I like a bit of tactical combat, but not too much. I like role playing but I get a little bored when it's just a bunch of people sitting around pretending to be at an elven council meeting or whatever (I tend to play very action-oriented characters). Skill checks bore the poo poo out of me. There's absolutely no tactics or role playing involved. So I guess I would want something that was like 50% interactive storytelling, 50% tactical combat and I'd be happy. Next has come closest to that for me so far. Like I said, I think Dungeon World might be good for me. "Oh, you want to flank that goblin? Sure, Defy Danger (Dex) to sneak around behind him and then deal your damage because he's distracted by the Fighter." It's an awesome game, but it definitely doesn't scratch that wargaming/D&D tactical combat itch. It's just way too fluid and freeform. Burning Wheel could be more what you're looking for, with its Fight! and the Duel of Wits systems. And then on the RP side you have Beliefs to drive the characters and the action forward.
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Mar 4, 2013 06:27
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Asphyxious posted:My favourite was "Lusty Argonian Mead". I need a bottle of this RIGHT loving NOW. Or at least the label so I can make my own mead. That is perfect
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Mar 4, 2013 06:27
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ImpactVector posted:It's an awesome game, but it definitely doesn't scratch that wargaming/D&D tactical combat itch. It's just way too fluid and freeform. Does anything currently scratch this itch? Sacred BBQ is cool, but it's much harder to convince people to play a pdf I "found on some forum" than a book I can tap the cover of and hear a nice, hefty knocking sound. It seems every game people talk about here that isn't D&D (specifically 4e in fact, with Next's abandoning of the grid again for whatever reason) is very freeform. For reference, I even found 13th Age's combat too freeform for my tastes, and I know people really applauded it for being tactical despite not having a grid or specific ranges.
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Mar 4, 2013 06:31
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Kai Tave posted:Which is funny given all the "DEATH TO ABILITY SCORES" I see in tradgames. Ability scores may not be the best way to deal with how to mechanically plot a character in an rpg, but honestly, d&d isn't the best rpg. Those stats, with their inherent problems and missteps, convey everything about d&d, including its problems and missteps. Given that there are shortcomings with abilities, and the seemingly best way to deal with those shortcomings would be to abandon ability scores, raises the issue that without them, (for me at least), it wouldn't feel like D&D. I guess that it just means you can't make a "perfect" rpg out of D&D (provided of course, that you could hit the asymptote of a "perfect rpg")
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Mar 4, 2013 06:44
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Countblanc posted:Does anything currently scratch this itch? Maybe GURPS or HERO depending on your tastes. Heavy Gear, though that's maybe cheating given that Heavy Gear is both an RPG and an actual no-fooling tabletop wargame. Technically Spycraft and Fantasycraft make use of 3.X-style combat measurements, but I don't really have enough hands-on experience with them to say whether people like busting out grids with them...the couple of times I've gotten to play the Craft system the answer has been "not really," but anecdotes and data, etc. My own personal opinion is that out of all the RPG combat systems I've played 4E's stands out as the best blend of robust tactical gameplay and abstraction. There are games that have even more detailed tactical combat systems but a lot of that detail comes at the cost of speed, more numbers to crunch and little edge case rules to flip through, and there are games with combat that moves faster but a lot of them tend to sacrifice detail and options to do so. For me, 4E combat exists in a sweet spot somewhere between the two where you have this steadily growing list of cool things you can do (set up in a way that you can't just spam the best one over and over again, which means you have to consider which one is best at that particular moment and your choices of which will shape your playstyle) but at the same time you aren't having to worry about your facing, whether you're standing or crouched, wound penalties, whether your exploit will work on this particular enemy given the exhaustive rules surrounding the interactions between enemy types and sneak attacks, etc. Part of this too, and it's a big part, is bound up in 4E's monster design. Like, you could have all of 4E's tactical grid combat with all your AEDU powers and class features and healing surges and so on, but if all the monsters were big fat sacks of hitpoints and damage then the game would still be boring as gently caress. 4E monster design, and it was definitely an evolutionary process, is such that pretty much every fight has the potential to be some kind of different tactical puzzle each time that forces the players to figure out what the gently caress is going on and adapt. You have enemies which respond to certain behaviors in different ways, you have enemies which only become vulnerable at certain points or after certain actions, there are enemies that get a free hit on dying or enemies that can make a saving throw to remain alive instead of dying when you drop them to 0 HP, there are enemies that slowly build up to a massive attack thus forcing the players to prioritize what to do, etc. A good 4E combat generally follows this pattern: 1). Combat starts, initial blows are exchanged. 2). PCs get beat on as they try and come to terms with whatever weird poo poo the monsters have going on, usually at the expense of having it go off in their face. "Oh poo poo, when you kill these ones they explode, better watch out for that. Can I get a heal?" 3). PCs either get their poo poo together and rally or dither about and get beat on even more. This goes on until the fight is finished. It's actually kind of amazing how well the whole thing comes together, or how well it came together once WotC unfucked their stupid monster math and such, and while it's not perfect (nothing is) it produces pretty consistent play along these lines. But it wasn't just some random quirk of chance that everything happened to work out that way, the game had to be built to do that sort of stuff on a number of fundamental levels...how PCs work, how monsters work, how healing works, how magic works, etc. It's not tremendously surprising to me that Next isn't really replicating this because it isn't the sort of thing you can package up into a "module" and just plug it in wherever, you really need a game that supports it from first principles. I would love to see more games like 4E in this regard, not exact replicas but games where a lot of attention is really paid to "how can we make combat, or hell, conflict resolution in general more than just people rolling dice back and forth in a Theater of the Mind space until someone's set of numbers beats another set of numbers." The one thing I was really disappointed about is that we never got anything like a "4E Modern." I'd have loved to see WotC when their designers were at their peak turn their attention to making a 4E-style game in a modern/sci-fi flavor. I guess we got Gamma World, and Sacred BBQ looks like it's doing some cool things. Also there's the new XCOM which has a lot of 4E feel to it.
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Mar 4, 2013 07:31
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Lord Frisk posted:Ability scores may not be the best way to deal with how to mechanically plot a character in an rpg, but honestly, d&d isn't the best rpg. I mean, I realize that "making the best RPG ever" probably isn't really number one on the priority list for the Next team (it's probably somewhere between "keep our team in the black/keep Hasbro off our backs" and "bring back fans of old editions"). But in an ideal world you'd think that'd be the goal, and screw everything else. Hell, you could probably even get away with keeping ability scores if you axed skills and either kept them away from the core combat math or had your class choice set your primary automatically to 18 or something. Disclaimer: I've generally only ever liked D&D when I didn't understand it. Once you know how to break the game over your knee with a few right/wrong choices it loses a lot of its magic in my mind. 4e was the only exception, since it's actually pretty tough to break too badly. But even there I've had enough of the game's idiosyncrasies that I'm probably done with it... especially teaching it to new players. Seriously, gently caress that feats list. Countblanc posted:Does anything currently scratch this itch? I've not played them yet, but Last Stand and WHFRP/SW:EotE are probably the closest things I can point to. Last Stand has a similar grid setup even if the scale is a little different. And the wagering system seems to make you weigh your choices for an added "push your luck" element. It seems to have even less noncombat stuff to do than 4e though if that's an issue for you. Warhammer Fantasy and Star Wars both ditch the grid, but keep an abstracted positional system that seems kinda similar to what I remember from my brief glance at 13A, where the distance between combatants is measured in the number of movement actions between them. But between WHFRP's card focus and both system's gimmick dice that generate story/situation twists on the fly I'm extremely intrigued. After I wrap up my Dungeon World campaign in a few weeks I'll likely run the Star Wars beginner's set for my group. And like I said, Burning Wheel is actually pretty tactical both in physical and social combat. They both have you scripting your moves and then revealing them at the same time as your opponent, which adds an aspect of reading your opponent and bluffing.
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Mar 4, 2013 08:19
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Dark Heresy, etc, can be played that way as well if you pay close attention to cover rules, etc. I'm not sure if the horde rules work out well on a grid, but I would hope they would.
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Mar 4, 2013 10:16
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ImpactVector posted:Warhammer Fantasy and Star Wars both ditch the grid, but keep an abstracted positional system that seems kinda similar to what I remember from my brief glance at 13A, where the distance between combatants is measured in the number of movement actions between them. But between WHFRP's card focus and both system's gimmick dice that generate story/situation twists on the fly I'm extremely intrigued. After I wrap up my Dungeon World campaign in a few weeks I'll likely run the Star Wars beginner's set for my group.
Adjacent square = Close One or Two squares away = Medium Three to Five squares away = Long Everything else = Extreme Flanking: Standard game rules say that if your team is the biggest team in the engagement you get white dice. Cover: Just chuck some black dice at it. AOE spells: Pretty much all AoE spells are "engagement", so there you go. Also, last night I made delicious chips*. I peeled and thick-cut my potatoes, then I fried a couple of thick-cut rashers, some garlic, and one of the mystery death chillis** in a small pot a bit more than a chips-depth of oil. After about five minutes I scooped out the chilli, garlic, and half the rashers, and threw in half the chips. After another 5 minutes I took out the chips and rashers, put the chips in a colander, and put in the rest of the bacon and chips. After another 5 minutes I took out everything, colandered the remaining chips, and put them all into the oven for a few minutes while the chicken breast they were being served with finished cooking. The rashes were  *Fries to you American heathens. **I don't know what they are, I found them unlabelled in my corner shop and they are murderously hot. They're possibly some form of scotch bonnet. Splicer fucked around with this message at 11:54 on Mar 4, 2013 |
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Mar 4, 2013 11:41
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Asphyxious posted:Do you name your homebrews? My brother makes mead and designs labels for each batch. My favourite was "Lusty Argonian Mead". Not really. It's something I've thought since I currently just refer to them as batch numbers and pages in my notebook, so this one's "Batch X, Bock, 04/03/2013" and then notes on how I made it if I look in the book. The bottles just have a number on a circular sticker. If I was going to name it, I'd need a whole fictional brewery and history of the brewery, brewing in the local area, the local area, brewing in general, and the various gods of alcohol to go with it, because of verisimilitude. That's a whole lot of extra work just to get cheap beer. Speaking of mead and a whole lot of extra work... I'm seriously considering taking up beekeeping just so I can start with bees and end up with alcohol. Also, when the apocalypse comes, I'll be the guy in the viking helmet defending what will be by that point the world's last functioning brewery, since I need none of your "civilized" supply chain  Also, the bees will help defend the brewery, because any decent sort of apocalypse will turn them into giant intelligent bees who are my friends. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 11:54 on Mar 4, 2013 |
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Mar 4, 2013 11:50
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AlphaDog posted:Also, the bees will help defend the brewery, because any decent sort of apocalypse will turn them into giant intelligent bees who are my friends.  I made two what is wrong with me Splicer fucked around with this message at 13:36 on Mar 4, 2013 |
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Mar 4, 2013 12:53
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Lord Frisk posted:Ability scores may not be the best way to deal with how to mechanically plot a character in an rpg, but honestly, d&d isn't the best rpg. Those stats, with their inherent problems and missteps, convey everything about d&d, including its problems and missteps. You could make a functional game using ability scores but as long as ability scores convey both mental and physical traits and imply a huge difference between having them be fully trained and left bare its never going to work once any sort of roleplay shows up. That said, a 100% dungeon-crawling adventure could get away with DnD's score system as it stands which is exactly what DnD started with. The fact that ability scores haven't changed to reflect this (2e and its Comliness stat non-withstanding) is a testament to the staggering effect of grogs on the game. Nolet's Gin on the other hand is a great example of keeping a long-running thing good and modern. Its a classic Holland style gin that abandoned Turpentine as a flavoring agent (DEATH TO ABILITY SCORES AND TURPENTINE) and replaced with fruit infusions that make it smooth and sweet to drink. If you aren't having Nolet's Silver you aren't drinking a good gin.
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Mar 4, 2013 17:03
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Lady Gaga posted:I love Monsterhearts and there's hardly any dice rolling in that. I really want to try Dungeon World too. I do like the general idea of the d20 though because the 5% probability segments make sense to me. The tough part for me is that my mood varies. I like a bit of tactical combat, but not too much. I like role playing but I get a little bored when it's just a bunch of people sitting around pretending to be at an elven council meeting or whatever (I tend to play very action-oriented characters). Skill checks bore the poo poo out of me. There's absolutely no tactics or role playing involved. So I guess I would want something that was like 50% interactive storytelling, 50% tactical combat and I'd be happy. Next has come closest to that for me so far. Like I said, I think Dungeon World might be good for me. ImpactVector posted:4e is actually kinda unique in that regard. Especially the positional/forced movement bits. There's really not much else like it. Kai Tave posted:we never got anything like a "4E Modern."
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Mar 4, 2013 17:35
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ImpactVector posted:Not really saying this to pick on you dude, but Christ what a low bar. If you're going to spend a bunch of time/money to make an RPG, why wouldn't you try to avoid problematic mechanics/implementations so you can make the best one you know how? I have no idea how I could construe that as picking on me, so no worries. Is the low bar you're referring to the inclusion of the six base stats (to define it as D&D)? I guess we just get back to the question of "what makes D&D D&D?". I threw stats out there, because that captures the feel for me, not as a means to say that it does for everyone else. So what characteristic would need to be retained for TG to consider it D&D?
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Mar 4, 2013 18:28
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Lord Frisk posted:So what characteristic would need to be retained for TG to consider it D&D? Classes. Treasure. The words "D&D" on the front. e:Also, Crunchy Combat. Splicer fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Mar 4, 2013 |
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Mar 4, 2013 18:31
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Splicer posted:Levels. I would throw the big six attributes on that and probably throwing d20s to hit stuff. Although to look at the bigger picture, WHAT IS THE SOUL OF D&D is the dumbest loving conversation ever and will never go anywhere good.
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Mar 4, 2013 18:33
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Lord Frisk posted:I have no idea how I could construe that as picking on me, so no worries. quote:d&d isn't the best rpg. In the end what it boils down to is that I don't want to have anything to do with a game that doesn't try to be the best at whatever I'm looking to do. There are so many great games out there and our time for gaming is limited enough that it doesn't make any sense to me to settle for less.
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Mar 4, 2013 19:39
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ImpactVector posted:It was mostly this bit that set me off: Actually, I sort of have an answer there. D&D has never been the best RPG except for maybe back when it was the only one. But even by the time 2nd Ed came out other systems were already starting to lap them in terms of rules and such. They stepped away from that a little with 4th, but not a whole lot. They are catering to their legacy because D&D has never tried to be the best, it has tried to be the most broadly appealing. To a fair extent it has succeeded? It is trying to be the best, but what you are thinking is the best is not the best best they are going for in the same way that McDonalds is never going to produce great food but goddamn if a lot of people don't eat it.
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Mar 4, 2013 19:51
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ImpactVector posted:It was mostly this bit that set me off: But that's the problem right there (in bold). If they scrapped everything and built a new system, dropped classes, abilities, leveling, the six scores, and the d20, they wouldn't be making D&D, would they? As a more direct reply to your post, I don't think that the Next design team freely concedes that it's not the best rpg, so it shouldn't be an issue for them to make the new best.
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Mar 4, 2013 19:52
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Lord Frisk posted:But that's the problem right there (in bold). If they scrapped everything and built a new system, dropped classes, abilities, leveling, the six scores, and the d20, they wouldn't be making D&D, would they? I disagree, the issue is that DnD has tried to force people to like a pre-concieved game rather than tailor the game to a pre-concieved audience. If DnD Next restructured itself to focus on a specific demographic (lets go with a huge one with presumable overlap: video-game playing Adults 18-35) it would find out that a lot of its supposed "core" mechanics are meaningless, outdated, and conflict with expectations of the majority of the market. In addition, they would quickly note that the product fails to have profit generation mechanisms in line with what this demographic is comfortable with and expects. The fact that the Next team is basically pissing away a huge opportunity to rebuild brand equity, expand the player base, and retool the game around new and more efficient profit generation systems in favor of doing the same thing as before should insult you as a consumer. It means on a fundamental level they are uninterested in you and no amount of modules will produce a recommendable product.
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Mar 4, 2013 20:00
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But that's just it. A lot of games are dropping classes, levels, and ability scores. If they're making those things, they should find ways to use and innovate with those things. They should preserve them and push in a new direction. See, one of the things about 4e (and I love 4e) is that it's working against its own legacy by using these artifacts that don't really enhance the game at all. I'm not saying 4e isn't D&D because that's dumb and also nonsense. But I am saying that 4e was less interested in innovating in the direction of its own strengths and more interested in innovating in other directions. 5e could be about innovating, but instead of going against the grain, it could try to find ways of using Ability Scores and Saving Throws and levels and classes that have never been tried before, or never tried in this specific combination, or whatever. D&D could, in short, at least try to be the best D&D it could be, instead of conceding that the way things were was pretty much as good as it could ever be. I don't think Ability Scores et al are a bad idea, but they rarely do any heavy lifting in the system. Even in 2e, they're mostly tertiary unless you get an absurd score in one of them. And 5e is trying that, sort of, except it's not using any new innovations aside from, "let's use everything about Ability Scores and put it all in a big pot." I'm ranting.
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Mar 4, 2013 20:02
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Winson_Paine posted:Actually, I sort of have an answer there. D&D has never been the best RPG except for maybe back when it was the only one. But even by the time 2nd Ed came out other systems were already starting to lap them in terms of rules and such. They stepped away from that a little with 4th, but not a whole lot. They are catering to their legacy because D&D has never tried to be the best, it has tried to be the most broadly appealing. To a fair extent it has succeeded? It is trying to be the best, but what you are thinking is the best is not the best best they are going for in the same way that McDonalds is never going to produce great food but goddamn if a lot of people don't eat it.
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Mar 4, 2013 20:35
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Lord Frisk posted:But that's the problem right there (in bold). If they scrapped everything and built a new system, dropped classes, abilities, leveling, the six scores, and the d20, they wouldn't be making D&D, would they? Ability scores get harped on by a lot of 4e vets around here, but their existence isn't the real problem. The real problem is that the way they're implemented creates a false choice where it's very easy for a newbie to gimp their character forever before even playing the game. If you can find a way to implement them that removes that element of false choice, then we'd probably all be on board. Lord Frisk posted:As a more direct reply to your post, I don't think that the Next design team freely concedes that it's not the best rpg, so it shouldn't be an issue for them to make the new best.
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Mar 4, 2013 20:56
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As long as I can pretend to be an elf and slay orcs in crunchy combat, it will feel like DnD to me.
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Mar 4, 2013 21:08
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Lord Frisk posted:But that's the problem right there (in bold). If they scrapped everything and built a new system, dropped classes, abilities, leveling, the six scores, and the d20, they wouldn't be making D&D, would they? If WotC makes a new D&D that has all new mechanics but keeps the same iconic kinds of characters, monsters, and dungeons, then it would still be D&D. Sure some grognards would claim otherwise but they are wrong. Rexides posted:As long as I can pretend to be an elf and slay orcs in crunchy combat, it will feel like DnD to me.
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Mar 4, 2013 21:40
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I think it's important to remember that D&D is just a brand. Brands are whatever the brand's owner chooses to define them as. The public can accept or reject the brand, but they don't get to decide if something is 'Coke' enough, or 'McDonald's' enough. You can walk into a McDonald's, and find that they have a wait staff, and serve steak, and it's a black-tie affair. McDonald's can choose to brand itself that way. It would be a confusing choice after years and years of exactly the opposite, and would probably result in poor business choices, but they're allowed to do that. It's still McDonald's. Brand identity certainly has a level of momentum behind it, to be sure. But the brand of Mt. Dew today has almost no resemblance to its original brand identity. At the end of the day it's all about whether or not decisions within that brand will result in increased or decreased recognition. TLDR: I don't think the fans get to decide what makes D&D, D&D. Because really, all you have to do is own the rights to it and publish something to decide what D&D is. And in fact, putting the brand on ice and coming out with something a decade from now is probably a better use of the brand than trying to work within the confines of fan expectations.
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Mar 4, 2013 21:47
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You know what.s, in my opinion, a good recipe? Get some fuckin black beans and peppers and poo poo, mash it all the hell up with a little cheese or w/e. Stick that poo poo in a tortilla cut into quarters, roll em the gently caress up into a cone, stick a toothpick in and bake it for however long it takes (it varies a bunch) and then eat those fuckers, as an appetizer or the actual meal who gives a gently caress they're delicious. Also, I don't have any feelings what so ever, on the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons - Dungeons and Dragons Next. I figure this must be okay, though, because this is the "Dungeons and Dragons Next. a Thread for Discussing Dungeons and Dragons Next. Also the Traditional Games Cooking Thread" thread.
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Mar 4, 2013 21:48
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Every edition of DnD gets gradually more streamlined: i wonder why they don't take it one step further and toss ability modifiers. Have a skill test be: Roll vs. your ability + skill bonus. The difficulty would impose a penalty or bonus to the skill test. Not sure what that scale would be, though. The skill RANK system would have to be re-defined too. The numbers would have to be smaller, I guess. Maybe... for combat, AC could be a penalty to your attack dice roll? Hmm... off to the Homebrew Thread I go...
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Mar 4, 2013 21:51
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