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Tendales posted:I'd kind of like to see the old 'everyone huddle together, make a plan, fighter goes left, rogue runs deep, wizard hangs back, ready, BREAK' come back and be refined. If it's never specifically your turn, then it's also never NOT your turn and you can't just zone out. Yeah, I'm tempted to go with BECMI style initiative for running 5E or maybe a TSR edition-- it's group initiative split into phases with each side acting in a phase before moving to the next. IIRC, it goes missile, melee, movement, magic, and you declare your action at the top of the round.
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Jul 26, 2014 23:31
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PeterWeller posted:Yeah, I'm tempted to go with BECMI style initiative for running 5E or maybe a TSR edition-- it's group initiative split into phases with each side acting in a phase before moving to the next. IIRC, it goes missile, melee, movement, magic, and you declare your action at the top of the round.
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Jul 26, 2014 23:53
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FRINGE posted:As long as you can can scribble numbers quickly, individual intitiative keeps everything mixed and people paying attention. Nah, not in my experience. Even veteran players will drift off and suffer from analysis paralysis from time to time. And unless the party is fighting a large variety of foes, their initiative counts will likely clump together. Maybe I'm just looking back through rose tinted glasses, but I think using an older initiative system would speed up play at my table. I wouldn't use it with 4E, but 5E's more old school approach might work well with it, and I want to give it a try.
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Jul 27, 2014 00:14
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PeterWeller posted:Yeah, I'm tempted to go with BECMI style initiative for running 5E or maybe a TSR edition-- it's group initiative split into phases with each side acting in a phase before moving to the next. IIRC, it goes missile, melee, movement, magic, and you declare your action at the top of the round. Are there any recent (good) examples of alternate initiative systems like this outside of wargames?
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Jul 27, 2014 00:43
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 Old School Hack uses a system in the same vain as it.
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Jul 27, 2014 00:53
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Stormgale posted:If people want to hear more I could do some wrote ups from the copy I have for the chat thread or fatal and friends. Sure, go for it. In the meantime, I think I'll go ahead and grab a copy since it's on sale right now and it sounds way more interesting than Next.
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Jul 27, 2014 02:07
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Kai Tave posted:Sure, go for it. In the meantime, I think I'll go ahead and grab a copy since it's on sale right now and it sounds way more interesting than Next. Ok someone pick a thread for me to talk about it in, i'll try and have some initial stuff up tomorrow
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Jul 27, 2014 03:34
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To be honest this month's chat threads have been pretty weird(er than usual) so I dunno if you want to risk being overshadowed by SMILIN' SAMMY G, and nothing says FATAL & Friends has to be exclusively for huge multi-part review so I say  it in F&F.
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Jul 27, 2014 03:38
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I've been toying with the idea of getting into D&D, so 5e seems as good a place to get into it as any. I'm curious about peoples play styles though. Do most people treat the game as a true role-playing game, where they are their character, or do most have a degree of detachment where they're more sort of controlling a character rather than embodying it, or is it all just a mix of playstyles? I've been watching to some game vids, and a few podcasts, and it seems like a mix so far. The Nerd Poker podcast crew seem to have a bit of that detachment. I was watching some of the Scourge of The Sword Coast vids run by the Wizards crew, and while the DM and three of the players had a bit of detachment, there was definitely one guy who was his character at all times. I'm only curious because the single other time I dipped my toe into the D&D waters (back during 3.5, I think), one of my friends brought me along to one of his games, and the entire group were the "embodying their characters" type, and it definitely weirded me out a little. The whole LARPing around a table was a bit strange. No offense to anyone who does this of course, whatever you choose for entertainment is cool, it's just not my bag.
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Jul 27, 2014 04:36
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:I've been toying with the idea of getting into D&D, so 5e seems as good a place to get into it as any. From what I've ever seen it's almost always the "detachment style", I don't think I've ever seen anyone basically act out their character the entire time. You might get that playstyle more if you play with theatre group type people and such though, instead of the super number/video game type nerds I tend to play with.
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Jul 27, 2014 04:48
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:I've been toying with the idea of getting into D&D, so 5e seems as good a place to get into it as any. You have stumbled upon one of the fundamental and most viciously contested pillars of nerds warring over which method of pretending to be an elf is superior. There have been gallons of ink spilled on this very subject to a lot of very, very stupid ends. I don't know if there is a "most people" answer because it's not like anyone does any studies any of this stuff. My anecdotal experience is that a lot of one-true-wayists really love to talk up "immersion" as the pinnacle goal of all roleplaying experiences but those guys tend to be huge assholes who lose their poo poo over things like "this ability of the Fighter to deal a tiny amount of damage on a missed attack roll is literally Hitler." I highly doubt that most or many roleplayers spend 4-8 hours completely immersed in their characters like some troupe of niche method actors. Ultimately it's up to you (and your group maybe) how much you want to try getting into your character's head but I think a certain degree of detachment is A). less prone to winding up creepy, insufferable, or exhausting and B). makes for a more enjoyable recreational experience.
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Jul 27, 2014 04:50
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Sometimes I talk about what my character is doing in the third person. Sometimes I make funny voices and do it in first person. It just depends. But I sure as hell don't stay 'in character' the whole loving time because that would be boring and obnoxious.
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Jul 27, 2014 05:05
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My personal experience is generally "detached," with occasional dips into "immersion" for a scene, especially if it's really heavy on the dialogue. I'll use third person for describing what the character does, and don't affect an accent, but I'll still often speak the character's lines instead of just abstractly describing their speech, so if that goes on for a while back and forth between the characters it can become more immersive. Someone constantly using "I" and getting really into it would feel a little weird, maybe, but the "I" part at least (if otherwise detached) could totally be a group-specific thing.
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Jul 27, 2014 05:08
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S.J. posted:Sometimes I talk about what my character is doing in the third person. Sometimes I make funny voices and do it in first person. It just depends. But I sure as hell don't stay 'in character' the whole loving time because that would be boring and obnoxious. Yeah, this sort of thing is totally cool. The group I witnessed was the type where a spellcaster gets his turn, subtly rolls his dice, then stands and start tracing mystical runs in the air while chanting, then "casts" his spell across the table at the DM. There is no  large enough for how I felt when that stuff started going down.
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Jul 27, 2014 05:10
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This stuff is, by the way, why people like the RPGPundit get their hair in a twist over games like FATE, because a lot of "storygames" are designed around the players directly interacting with the narrative on an authorial/metagame level. Games that straight-up acknowledge that they are in fact games and that encourage players to think along lines other than "what would my character do?" piss a bunch of people off for this reason.
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Jul 27, 2014 05:12
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:Yeah, this sort of thing is totally cool. Tell him to stop being such a loving nerd
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Jul 27, 2014 05:13
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:Yeah, this sort of thing is totally cool. I suppose I have no way of actually knowing but I really suspect that's an uncommon way of doing it.
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Jul 27, 2014 05:14
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:Yeah, this sort of thing is totally cool. I was going to write a bunch of stuff, but decided that instead I would just say that that's some weird stupid nerd poo poo and he should cut it out. loving nerds. e: I would not play with this person because my eyes would literally roll out of the back of my head and I would die
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Jul 27, 2014 05:16
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Kai Tave posted:This stuff is, by the way, why people like the RPGPundit get their hair in a twist over games like FATE, because a lot of "storygames" are designed around the players directly interacting with the narrative on an authorial/metagame level. Games that straight-up acknowledge that they are in fact games and that encourage players to think along lines other than "what would my character do?" piss a bunch of people off for this reason. See I get the opposite problem where games like D&D require me to do so much number crunching theres not point where I try to get into character that involves the system. If I do I'm likely to gently caress myself over because of all the poo poo I need to be paying attention to.
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Jul 27, 2014 05:19
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kingcom posted:See I get the opposite problem where games like D&D require me to do so much number crunching theres not point where I try to get into character that involves the system. If I do I'm likely to gently caress myself over because of all the poo poo I need to be paying attention to. Yeah, stuff like AW is much easier to get into since looking up the rules tends to be fast and, once you've internalized the basics, executing on the moves comes quickly and easily, without too much fiddling with numbers or having long stretches that really come down to fiat without any dice use (and without any surprises). D&D always seems to me like there's so much putzing around, looking up stuff in the book, and getting lost and unsure whether there is a rule or not, that you end up just kind of playing this weird half-assed boardgame. Grogs get all vocal about "rulings not rules" but then don't have a game that's so unevenly rule heavy in some places and rules light (or absent) in others.
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Jul 27, 2014 05:24
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:Yeah, this sort of thing is totally cool. This guy owns.
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Jul 27, 2014 05:31
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Did anyone announce whether the digital release for 5e books will be same time as hardcopy, or delayed?
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Jul 27, 2014 05:49
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SirFozzie posted:Did anyone announce whether the digital release for 5e books will be same time as hardcopy, or delayed? Are the digitals going to be through Morningstar? If so, it simply says they plan for Morningstar to be available concurrently with printed matter, but don't give any concrete dates.
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Jul 27, 2014 05:56
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:I'm curious about peoples play styles though. Do most people treat the game as a true role-playing game, where they are their character, or do most have a degree of detachment where they're more sort of controlling a character rather than embodying it, or is it all just a mix of playstyles? I've been watching to some game vids, and a few podcasts, and it seems like a mix so far. The Nerd Poker podcast crew seem to have a bit of that detachment. I was watching some of the Scourge of The Sword Coast vids run by the Wizards crew, and while the DM and three of the players had a bit of detachment, there was definitely one guy who was his character at all times. I think I should point out that D&D is designed for 'rational play' (i.e. detached) over 'role play' likely because the original designers did not see the possibility of 'role play' having a negative impact on the story. Unfortunately, this means that D&D provides no guidelines for situations where 'role play' is in conflict with and causes harm to 'rational play'. I have many times seen/heard of situations where this issue resulted in character death. One was my own character (in 3rd edition) and one that occurred in 5th edition was mentioned in this very thread. As far as I'm aware, there are three generally accepted methods for dealing with this type of conflict. 1. Player wimp-out: Player's implicitly agree to only 'role play' their characters up to the point where real negative consequences would occur. (My character feels strongly about getting revenge, but to pursue it here would be character suicide so I won't.) 2. DM ex Machina: The DM intervenes before or after the damage to the story to set things back on track. (You miraculously survive. Or, Suddenly the party finds a treasure chest containing exactly the right amount of money to bring you back to life!) 3. Sacrifice the 'story': The players and DM agree that the consequences of the action were appropriate and accept the damage that was done to the 'story' of the game. (Black Leaf is dead. Roll up a new character.) It's nice to know which one of the methods is preferred among your group, but admitting that D&D doesn't handle things like this can be a touchy subject with some groups. SirFozzie posted:Did anyone announce whether the digital release for 5e books will be same time as hardcopy, or delayed? I'm certain that the Basic pdf will be updated in sync with the book releases. I think other pdf products may be delayed, but there hasn't been any word that I know of.
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Jul 27, 2014 07:37
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There's an Inspiration mechanic now that gives a floating advantage "when you play out your personality traits, give in to the drawbacks presented by a flaw or bond, and otherwise portray your character in a compelling way." Those are the suggested criteria for getting it. Pretty sure it's meant to replace playing chicken/DM handwaving/killing the PC described above.
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Jul 27, 2014 07:49
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:Do most people treat the game as a true role-playing game, where they are their character, or do most have a degree of detachment where they're more sort of controlling a character rather than embodying it, or is it all just a mix of playstyles? I think a huge part of the fun of roleplaying games is in the swapping fluidly between these two mindsets mid-play. The tension between the two is even more fun than either one of them by themselves.
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Jul 27, 2014 08:55
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OtspIII posted:I think a huge part of the fun of roleplaying games is in the swapping fluidly between these two mindsets mid-play. The tension between the two is even more fun than either one of them by themselves. Mm. It's pretty much impossible to keep acting in character first person when you have to call numbers across the table to determine the result of your actions. The characters don't know about the numbers.
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Jul 27, 2014 09:48
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slydingdoor posted:There's an Inspiration mechanic now that gives a floating advantage "when you play out your personality traits, give in to the drawbacks presented by a flaw or bond, and otherwise portray your character in a compelling way."
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Jul 27, 2014 14:51
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:Do most people treat the game as a true role-playing game  Calling first-person narration "roleplaying" like any other method is some lower degraded form of play is the worst loving grognardism. Even if you don't mean it pejoratively, using it the term like that just encourages and enables the grognard misunderstanding, at best. I don't even care what you call it instead, just don't divide ways to play an RPG into "roleplaying" and everything else.
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Jul 27, 2014 15:09
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Fuschia tude posted:
I feel like this is one of the big joints of miscommunication in RPGs. I think that when most of these groggy types talk about 'roleplaying' they just mean 'any action my character takes that doesn't use hard mechanics', since the original definition of it was something along the lines of 'anything you couldn't do in a wargame, like disarm a trap by poking at it with a stick'. Of course, usage of the word has changed a ton where it now means a lot of way more specific (different) things to lots of (different) people, making it a horrible conversational landmine, especially when 'true' gets attached to it.
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Jul 27, 2014 15:22
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Roleplaying is making decisions for your character. Combat is roleplaying. Which is why it REALLY narks me off when people talk about roleplaying being something done in opposition to combat, rather than being part of it. Arg.
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Jul 27, 2014 15:40
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I'd like to add: I didn't mean to imply that D&D is a bad game because it has this problem. Every RPG has this problem because it is a problem inherent to RPGs. Some more modern games have their answer to this baked in to the system to various degrees of effectiveness. slydingdoor posted:There's an Inspiration mechanic now that gives a floating advantage "when you play out your personality traits, give in to the drawbacks presented by a flaw or bond, and otherwise portray your character in a compelling way." It isn't really going to fix that problem. It will mitigate it, at least. My impression is that inspiration is very similar to skill challenges as a solution to 'noncombat resolution is boring'. It isn't described very well which will lead many DMs to misunderstand and reject the system. However, eventually there will be some DMs who taker the system beyond what the original game designers are capable of. One of the main oddities with Inspiration as it is currently written is that it is laid on top of a system where the effectiveness of a single roll can vary wildly because combat is so granular. If you succeed on a roll out of combat in most cases you have completely done a thing. If you succeed on a roll in combat than congratulations, you hit a man. Another oddity is that you can protect yourself from spell with inspiration, but not from weapon attacks because you don't make a roll to avoid those. My hanzo steel is too real to be deflected by your pathetic plot token. Here's what I'd do with inspiration to address this imbalance. This might be way too powerful but I'd rather it be too powerful than ineffectual. My Call: When you spend inspiration in a combat it applies until the end of combat to every roll you make and against every roll opponents make to target you. Out of combat it applies to every skill roll in a single skill chain. There is another neat thing that the inspiration framework does that D&D has never done before though. It produces direct character plot flags, which is to say that, it allows the player to inform the DM what is important to their character within the game. That's pretty cool.
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Jul 27, 2014 16:38
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DalaranJ posted:Here's what I'd do with inspiration to address this imbalance. This might be way too powerful but I'd rather it be too powerful than ineffectual. This would make inspiration incredibly hard to hand out regularly because of how powerful it'd be, and I think they're going for a system where inspiration is flowing pretty freely between players and the DM, much like force points in EotE.
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Jul 27, 2014 16:54
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DalaranJ posted:I'd like to add: I think that most of the time this is more of a playstyle issue than a rulebook issue--the easiest answer is to make it 'GM/player advice' instead of anything that's hard-baked into the rules. One of the exceptions to this I can think of is, funnily enough, D&D, though. I think that, through some roundabout poo poo, XP = GP actually solves a whole bunch of conflict of interest between player and character issues. The whole game revolves around the acquisition of a resource that's inherently meaningful to both player and PC, so any time you're tempted to do something hosed up to get more of it or try to be a decent human being at the cost of it you end up with, instead of an awkward conflict of interests, an interesting/meaningful gameplay choice. If you combine that with a semi-naturalistic sandboxy setting where the GM tries to run everything 'fairly' above all else (basically, one where the GM just focuses on making interesting situations for the players to experience but doesn't try to create any sort of pre-determined story) you end up with questions like "is the concept of revenge important enough to you to risk your life?" being legitimately interesting, due to the consequences of your choice being 'real', rather than having it just be a fluffy description you slap on top of a character, banking on the GM to make sure that you don't really have to face any too-negative consequences for your choices. Obviously, this style of play has plenty of drawbacks (high initial prep, stories don't follow arcs as cleanly, etc), but it's a style I really like, largely because the triple-dilemma you mentioned before really does bug me in games.
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Jul 27, 2014 17:06
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DalaranJ posted:Here's what I'd do with inspiration to address this imbalance. This might be way too powerful Yeah a bit. Advantage on everything and disadvantage on all the enemies for a whole combat? People'd expect to dunk every fight, and they'd be real disappointed if they still lost. Distorts the whole game. I think Inspiration's fine as is because a floating reroll is good, but not so good that it shouldn't be used or given away lightly, especially since it's one or none, no stacking allowed. I don't even mind the idea of the players preparing for a high pressure situation by mining for their inspiration. Even the most detached player could convince themselves to do some character or plot stuff for a floating reroll, then maybe they'll like it and try to keep having one around. Or they might be more accepting of that player, the one that makes suboptimal in character decisions all the time and keeps having inspiration to make risky plays or save their bacon. Maybe that player even tries to engage the detached players by giving away their own inspiration, knowing they'll regain it soon enough. At the very least a bunch of detached players can use the excuse "I did it for the inspiration" to pretend that earning it isn't its own reward. Also that dilemma isn't that bad, because all of those outcomes shouldn't halt the story or hurt anything. If the character chickens out of revenge, that's great. Someone, PC or NPC, should pry about it. If they go for it, don't cheapen the victory or defeat by handing them a macguffin that lets them just win, make them earn it. If they die and no one wants to pay for the resurrection because no one liked that character anyway, that's fine too. If they do, the cost of Raise Dead is not going to throw off anyone's progression or anything, I had players that acted that way in 4e which was kind of a pain. A lot of stories have situations like that where the protagonist figures out they need to grow before they can accomplish their goal, by chickening out, fighting and losing, or dying.
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Jul 27, 2014 17:17
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P.d0t posted:I think some stuff from 5e could be extrapolated into an interesting, lite game, if it weren't for the fact that they're trying so hard to be 3.5 again. gently caress yes. This was one of my big takeaways from the playtest and I wish it got more attention. I think the new feat system also has a lot of potential, with its emphasis on broad packages that give instant competence in an area. Does your character have the Archer feat? Then they are Good At Archery, period. No need to stack a bunch of fiddly little modifiers. Unfortunately there was basically zero chance that they were ever going to explore this direction, because the target audience really really cares about being able to measure who is better at archery. I still think that the lack of min/maxing potential was one of the reasons 4e got panned by 3.5e fans.
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Jul 27, 2014 18:13
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OtspIII posted:Obviously, this style of play has plenty of drawbacks (high initial prep, stories don't follow arcs as cleanly, etc), but it's a style I really like, largely because the triple-dilemma you mentioned before really does bug me in games. I think I pretty much already agree with this post. slydingdoor posted:Distorts the whole game. I was trying to empower inspiration to fix the story conflict. Which, on further consideration, it seems like it was not intended to do that. I'm still not entirely sure why the limit is one point? slydingdoor posted:Also that dilemma isn't that bad, because all of those outcomes shouldn't halt the story or hurt anything. If the character chickens out of revenge, that's great. Someone, PC or NPC, should pry about it. If they go for it, don't cheapen the victory or defeat by handing them a macguffin that lets them just win, make them earn it. If they die and no one wants to pay for the resurrection because no one liked that character anyway, that's fine too. If they do, the cost of Raise Dead is not going to throw off anyone's progression or anything, I had players that acted that way in 4e which was kind of a pain. A lot of stories have situations like that where the protagonist figures out they need to grow before they can accomplish their goal, by chickening out, fighting and losing, or dying. But that describes exactly why the dilemma is bad. You thought that everyone expected one solution, but the players didn't know that and chose a different solution. It certainly isn't a difficult dilemma to solve though. You merely need to openly agree with the rest of the players when each of the options is appropriate. As an aside, I think one of the main reasons people prefer option 1 in 4th ed is that the tactical part of the game is super fun and interesting. So pursuing that part of the game over other parts will frequently result in a game that is more fun.  Oh god, I have so many bad RPG opinions, please read all of them.
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Jul 27, 2014 18:33
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Gabriel Pope posted:Unfortunately there was basically zero chance that they were ever going to explore this direction, because the target audience really really cares about being able to measure who is better at archery. I still think that the lack of min/maxing potential was one of the reasons 4e got panned by 3.5e fans. 4E is chock full of min-maxing potential, though. Like, the 4E charop boards over on the WotC website are packed with things like Ranger builds that can do 96 damage automatically without even needing to roll or super crit-fishing Avengers and just all kinds of "stack these feats on top of each other for permanent combat advantage and concealment and +X to all your damage forever and also you do this and this and that," exploiting off-turn attacks, etc. There's nothing about 4E that's any less friendly to minmaxing than 3.5 was, it's just that the first step to doing so isn't writing "Wizard" or "Cleric" on your character sheet.
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Jul 27, 2014 18:43
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The big difference, as well, with 4e CharOp is that (with the exception of a few truly broken builds like rebreathers) the highest of high-op, and the lowest of low-op are pretty close together. It's not like 3.5/PF where high-op was a wizard casting six spells with one action and wiping the board, and low-op was a dude, swinging... Everyone shares roughly the same action economy and roughly the same resource economy, which means even the high-op is not ludicrously eclipsing the low-op. (I'd note though, that if someone actively optimises against effectiveness (negative starting mod in primary stat, that sort of bullshit), the gap is wider.) 5e, again, seems to have fallen between two stools on this. There's a lot less to fiddle with than there was in 4e (albeit, only the basic set is out thus far, but having seen the PHB contents... there's around 1/3 the number of feats, no paragon paths, no EDs, and very little to choose in non-spellcasting classes), but at the same time, the optimisation potential of spells seems a little less, and they've corraled the ridiculously broken economy of buffs with concentration mechanics (at least thus far, one thing that really concerns me is how summons will work...). So, there's little there for the mechanics buffs who enjoyed 4e charop to fiddle with and find the fun synergies with, and little there for those who like broken-rear end minmaxing. It tries to masquerade as a quick mechanics-light storygame but has a 400 page rulebook that's 1/4 spell descriptions. It's, basically, almost exactly what I expected it to be, which is unfortunate. It really makes me want to write that 4e heartbreaker. If I'd noticed this month's competition before this weekend, I might actually have done so...
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Jul 27, 2014 19:15
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thespaceinvader posted:It really makes me want to write that 4e heartbreaker. If I'd noticed this month's competition before this weekend, I might actually have done so... Write it anyway. Sign me the gently caress up.
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Jul 27, 2014 22:38
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