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kingcom posted:I totally get not wanting to see the mechanics. Thats a giant pain in the rear end thats not worth it most of the time but this comes back to my fundamental question of why do they like D&D, a game that is flooded with mechanics, if they dont want to see it. Well, couple of reasons. First, D&D is the biggest game in town. Everybody plays and knows D&D. Thou shalt have no other games before D&D. They already bought the books and don't want to pay for something that's surely not going to be very good anyway. Second, seeing mechanics is a matter of degrees. Obviously everyone can see the d20 rolling along and the THAC0 charts and stuff, but that's limited to task resolution. 4e has mechanics like milestones and tight encounter formulas and daily powers for Fighters. That intrudes on DM session prep and assumed playstyles, something D&D has traditionally not done a lot. So all of a sudden you can clearly see mechanics in a place it previously wasn't. Third...well, I don't know really. Dudes be weird.
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Dec 17, 2014 01:45
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goatface posted:There are a lot of people out there who just follow the module along and try to kill their players with whatever is in the room. I would put it as some people want D&D to just be. It's not that the GM is trying to be a super-lethal jerk when he sics the brain dogs on people, he's just going by the book, that's how it's supposed to work. Did that kill some people? Well that's just how D&D is supposed to be, right? Peeling away the layers forces GMs (and players) to either start considering this stuff in more detail or consciously choose to ignore it, but either way it's harder for some people to just go with the flow when it's staring them right in the face that this random encounter is really loving stupid or that Steve's Wizard outclasses Bob's Fighter. It's a constant reminder that maybe the game they're playing isn't a mastercrafted work of art hand-forged by an amazing game design intellect. Why do people like games like D&D while simultaneously not wanting to really interact with the mechanics on more than a surface level? Lots of people like games with lots of detail and complexity and moving parts who don't, themselves, want to dig deep down into the mechanics side of things. I mean, take it back to Magic: the Gathering and I guarantee you that tons of people play Magic who don't sit down and dig into the nitty-gritty of mechanics and timing interactions and stuff, but they loving love having a million cards to make decks out of, all with different powers and abilities. Or look at "Ameritrash" board games. Betrayal at the House on the Hill is, bluntly, kind of a lovely game, it's way random, requires a ton of errata, and wildly vacillates between fraught tension, unfun slog, and comical anticlimax, but plenty of people love games with tons of tiles and cards and token just dripping with theme even if the actual game itself isn't very good. Maybe they feel like they're getting more bang for their buck by having all those options, or maybe they feel like it makes the game deeper and richer knowing that they could dig deeper down into a game even if they never do. People are weird like that, who knows.
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Dec 17, 2014 01:46
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Kai Tave posted:Why do people like games like D&D while simultaneously not wanting to really interact with the mechanics on more than a surface level? Lots of people like games with lots of detail and complexity and moving parts who don't, themselves, want to dig deep down into the mechanics side of things. I mean, take it back to Magic: the Gathering and I guarantee you that tons of people play Magic who don't sit down and dig into the nitty-gritty of mechanics and timing interactions and stuff, but they loving love having a million cards to make decks out of, all with different powers and abilities. That analogy makes it much clearer thanks. Its like where if you play magic within your little group of friends and everyone has the same input/experience with it everything works fine. Then if you ever go outside that you run straight into a wall of a person who has spent lots of time digging the system apart. Seems like D&D circles seem to have this same logic where if works fine and since you tend not to leave your group very often in the same way you would magic you come to assume that every group must operate in the same way as yours and assume the problems aren't there, or at least not in the way other people experience it. EDIT: also get on irc so i can chat about this stuff >.< kingcom fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Dec 17, 2014 |
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Dec 17, 2014 01:56
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That could definitely be part of it. Gaming groups tend to be fairly self-contained, not necessarily out of some exclusionary gatekeeper isolationist policy or whatever but simply because the default assumption for a lot of RPGs is "you'll play this with the same group of players over an extended period of time until you reach a suitable endpoint or everything falls apart." You can play D&D casually, but it isn't really a casual sort of game, and so this probably results in D&D groups that are close-knit and see change in membership infrequently.
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Dec 17, 2014 02:01
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Most flaws in ttgs ultimately boil down to dick waving contests between people who desperately want something to lord over everyone else, and designers wanting to cater to that. lovely rules are waved away with "heh, maybe if you were a better DM, you wouldn't have that problem." Bad math is waved way with "heh, in my group, we've NEVER had that kind of problem." It's why tradition is seen as probably THE most important thing in this hobby - without it, those grogs would have nothing else. Game design HAS to be an art and not a science, because otherwise they could be bad at it. So long as they can claim nobody gives a poo poo about a formula, they don't have to actually worry about MAKING one. One of the prevailing things I see on ENWorld from time to time, outside of "Maybe YOUR DM isn't good, but I don't have this problem," is "I'm so glad you have to houserule this game" stated entirely unironically. They want a broken game so they can fix it and feel really special about it while looking down on people who don't or won't do the same. These people need something to claim as their own - and if it involves taking it away from other people, then quite frankly all the better. It's why there's always such an outcry that the actual developers listen to every time anything more then lip service is paid to trying to get others in the hobby. Better to reign blah blah blah. Nerds by and large are exclusive, lazy assholes who were themselves excluded from anything at one point and never got over it, but refuse to learn or put in any actual work into making their own thing. TTG nerds are no different. The bar is just set extra low.
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Dec 17, 2014 04:06
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ProfessorCirno posted:Game design HAS to be an art and not a science, because otherwise they could be bad at it. Wanting game design to be an art so you can never be bad at it is odd, since you can definitely be bad at things that are considered art.
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Dec 17, 2014 04:49
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Sage Genesis posted:Some people hate being able to "see" the mechanics. Boy, do they loving ever. kingcom posted:I totally get not wanting to see the mechanics. Thats a giant pain in the rear end thats not worth it most of the time but this comes back to my fundamental question of why do they like D&D, a game that is flooded with mechanics, if they dont want to see it. My short experience with TTRPGs is that a lot of design that would be simply inexcusable anywhere else is papered over by the fact that you have a DM and the fact that it's supposed to be some kind of living, breathing world that you're supposed to treat as somewhat real. Like, you'd get a lot of people to agree with you that making a video game RPG in The Year of our Lord 2014 that didn't have a respec option while also having character building that's as trap-heavy and locked-in as D&D 3E/4E/5E would be a bad idea, but that's where we are (with a couple of small exceptions). You'd also get a lot of people to agree with you that making a video game boss fight that's unwinnable for the sake of trying to push a particular plot point that ends with a cutscene would also be a bad idea, but that's the kind of stunt that most DMs try to pull on a regular basis without ever telling their players. This is compounded by the fact that D&D is, for a lot of people, the only game in town. It's like if Blizzard released Starcraft, and everyone who likes strategy games plays Starcraft, but then you get these huge arguments over people who want historical accuracy in their RTS and people who want a no-base-building tactical RTS and people who are just looking for a light, pick-up-and-play game. In video game land we have a scale that runs from Civilization to Europa Universalis, from Panzer General to War in the Pacific, from Starcraft to Age of Empires/Total Annihilation to cater to a lot of people's specific wants and needs, but in TTRPG land most people believe it's D&D and that's it. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Dec 17, 2014 |
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Dec 17, 2014 04:50
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It's possible to write RPG rules in natural, even casual language, but 5th just isn't written that well from a prose perspective. It's wordy and imprecise and still feels like technical writing, just not very good technical writing.
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Dec 17, 2014 05:41
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gradenko_2000 posted:My short experience with TTRPGs is that a lot of design that would be simply inexcusable anywhere else is papered over by the fact that you have a DM and the fact that it's supposed to be some kind of living, breathing world that you're supposed to treat as somewhat real. Something I stated elsewhere: RPGs, and even cRPGs are rapidly turning away from this, are the only games out there where the first thing a player must do is accidentally choose their power level for the rest of the game, with no takebacks.
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Dec 17, 2014 07:09
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Wait does the DMG literally give Honor as an optional attribute "for Asian games"
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Dec 17, 2014 07:17
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Maths is the devil.
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Dec 17, 2014 07:17
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ProfessorCirno posted:Wait does the DMG literally give Honor as an optional attribute "for Asian games" "If your campaign involves cultures where a rigid code of honor is part of daily life, consider using the Honor score as a means of measuring a character's devotion to that code. This ability fits well in a setting inspired by Asian cultures, such as Kara-Tur in the Forgotten Realms. The Honor ability is also useful in any campaign that revolves around orders of knights."
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Dec 17, 2014 07:21
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Maxwell Lord posted:It's possible to write RPG rules in natural, even casual language, but 5th just isn't written that well from a prose perspective. It's wordy and imprecise and still feels like technical writing, just not very good technical writing. I'd say it's eminently possible but the value in doing so is highly contextual. If you're writing a light, breezy game with simple, universal mechanics that don't have a lot of exceptions to them then you run less risk of making things imprecise and unclear by utilizing "natural language." The more technical you make your game, the more technical at least portions of your writing should be in order to convey your intent and instruct players how to play.
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Dec 17, 2014 07:23
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As far as amateur GMs being stupid with stat blocks, I will admit to ~15 years ago saying "my friends have decided to do an all-wizard party starting at level 1, let's have a couple of drow attack because magic resist is exciting and I've completely forgotten that when Sleep gets resisted they have 12 hitpoints between them." The end result was, naturally, "you don't get to be DM anymore until we screw up and it cycles back around to you."
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Dec 17, 2014 08:39
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Was just wondering what the consensus is on fifth edition?
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Dec 17, 2014 15:09
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It's bad but nobody cares because it's D&D.
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Dec 17, 2014 15:13
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Soooooooo I'm planning on multiclassing Fighter/Paladin. I'm getting Fighter to 4 so I can get the stat increase, but I have a question. Now, I know Martial Champions do end up doing more damage in the long run then the Champion, because crits are a trap. However, since I'm not planning on actually improving the martial abilities past what you get at 4, I'm wondering if it would be worth it to just go Champion so I get the 19-20 crit range and more chances to double smite damage dice. Then again, another part of me just wants to stick with Martial Champion so I have another short-rest ability as opposed to just Channel Divinity. That, and when I would roll on crits, I'd double martial damage as well, bringing it to 5D6 (Maul-using Half-Orc) + 2D8 (Martial Champion) + 4D8 (Smite, assuming I use a first level spell slot) AND I'd be rerolling on 1s and 2s  I mean, of course I'd be rolling more crits with Champion, and that would be 5D6 + 4D8, but still. Short rest abilities are fun! What do you guys think?
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Dec 17, 2014 15:40
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Chipp Zanuff posted:Was just wondering what the consensus is on fifth edition?
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Dec 17, 2014 15:40
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Chipp Zanuff posted:Was just wondering what the consensus is on fifth edition? Goon-hated, grog-approved.
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Dec 17, 2014 16:20
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Chipp Zanuff posted:Was just wondering what the consensus is on fifth edition? I'm enjoying myself in our campaign for the most part, but most of that is probably due to the social aspects. Though with this group that's probably about as good as I could expect, since we all have vastly different preferences in D&D games. In that sense, "everybody's second favorite edition" is actually perfect for this group.
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Dec 17, 2014 16:40
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Chipp Zanuff posted:Was just wondering what the consensus is on fifth edition? It's not terrible just disappointing. The single biggest name in the industry will settle for mediocrity, it seems. Nothing in 5e is new or fresh. It's not executed particularly well either. The writing isn't awful like some people would have you believe, but it's also not very clear, inspiring, or solid. Some parts are kind of nice and some parts are kind of idiotic. I wanted D&D to be the highest bar in terms of quality, a yardstick for others. The goal which other game companies would strive to attain. Instead we get a minimum level of entry, the C minus that will barely see you through. Anything worse than 5e is truly bad and anything better is... well, not much of achievement really.
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Dec 17, 2014 16:47
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Chipp Zanuff posted:Was just wondering what the consensus is on fifth edition? Fifth edition comes across as mediocre and cowardly to me. It reads like 4th edition revised specifically to appeal to annoying people who hate 4th edition and worship at the altar of 3rd. Thus You have a handful of 4th edition design twisted through the lens of the 3rd edition with some second edition and cargo cult stuff from 2nd in there as well. Sage Genesis posted:It's not terrible just disappointing. The single biggest name in the industry will settle for mediocrity, it seems. Nothing in 5e is new or fresh. It's not executed particularly well either. The writing isn't awful like some people would have you believe, but it's also not very clear, inspiring, or solid. Some parts are kind of nice and some parts are kind of idiotic. Basically this.
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Dec 17, 2014 17:00
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My vote on 5E is: there are better game systems to play that will let you experience the style of fantasy roleplaying you want. If you want it to BE dungeons and dragons with all of its tropes, items, etc - then use whatever your preferred brand of D&D is. Its currently supported. There are no digital tools or PDFs. I wouldn't spend $100 on the game buying books. At the end of the day its not horrible its just not any good. I'd rather play any of a variety of other games, or house ruled 4E, or BECMI, than play Next. But I'd rather play Next than 3.X or 2E.
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Dec 17, 2014 19:15
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Chipp Zanuff posted:Was just wondering what the consensus is on fifth edition? It's not terrible, it's just incredibly unambitious and mediocre. The only real reason to play it would be if you absolutely needed to play something branded as Dungeons and Dragons and you don't like 4E (hopefully for its genuine flaws). Otherwise, you can easily play other games* that have its level of simplicity and other virtues while also not costing a money (or even a lot of money). * Which specific game would be better than Next depends on what you're looking for. Labyrinth Lord (or the original B/X D&D or the slew of retroclones), Dungeon World, Microlite20, 13th Age, Strike!, are all suggestions I'd put forward depending on your specific taste and those are just the ones that won't cost you anything.
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Dec 17, 2014 19:30
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Chipp Zanuff posted:Was just wondering what the consensus is on fifth edition? Written in part by the most disgusting people in the hobby.
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Dec 17, 2014 21:34
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ProfessorCirno posted:Written in part by the most disgusting people in the hobby.
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Dec 17, 2014 21:49
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ProfessorCirno posted:Written in part by the most disgusting people in the hobby. This part is not even true. Chipp Zanuff posted:Was just wondering what the consensus is on fifth edition? Anyway it's seems to be pretty well liked. With most people that like it even on this site not posting on this thread because they tend to get shouted down for liking it. It's selling very well and getting good reviews in most places. The 5e DMG is probably one of the best if not the best DMG ever I think and is I would say the stand out book among the 3 core ones.
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Dec 17, 2014 21:54
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MonsterEnvy posted:The 5e DMG is probably one of the best if not the best DMG ever I think and is I would say the stand out book among the 3 core ones.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:01
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DM 2 in 3rd edition was ok too. Wizards has always been capable of writing a good DMG, there's just not room for anything helpful because it's so chock full of stuff that should have been in the PHB or MM.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:02
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A lot of posters here understand mechanics and game design better than some professional designers. Specifically, designers who worked "really hard" on Next. Asking about Next amounts to asking beer snobs "Hey what do you guys think about Coors Lite?"
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Dec 17, 2014 22:04
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Power Player posted:Man, it's easily nowhere near as good as the DMG 2 for 4E. Now that actually told you how to DM a game, and had a lot of good advice for non-D&D games as well. As I mentioned my opinion. I like the 5e version better the 4e ones. moths posted:A lot of posters here understand mechanics and game design better than some professional designers. Specifically, designers who worked "really hard" on Next.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:07
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Setting aside the thing about whole sections of the DMG already being written before and just copy-pasted, I have mixed feelings about it because while there's a bunch of useful advice (and random tables and setting fluff) there for newcomers to the hobby, the game is seemingly marketed towards people who only really need the last third of it for system-specific stuff.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:08
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Power Player posted:Man, it's easily nowhere near as good as the DMG 2 for 4E. Now that actually told you how to DM a game, and had a lot of good advice for non-D&D games as well. Jackard fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Dec 17, 2014 |
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Dec 17, 2014 22:10
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Chaltab posted:Byron Hall and James Desborough? Zak S and RPGPundit MonsterEnvy posted:This part is not even true. Their names are still in the credits last I checked.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:16
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ImpactVector posted:I think somebody in here once described it as "everybody's second (or was it third?) favorite edition", and I'd say that's pretty accurate. Yeah, I saw a local fellow looking for a 3.5 group to play with, and I responded, "If you want 3.5 without all the bloat, just play 5th; if you want 3.5 WITH all the bloat, why aren't you playing Pathfinder already?" Not to poo poo on people for liking 3.5 (this time..) but so few people play it any more, dude's really better off getting on board with something newer.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:19
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ProfessorCirno posted:Zak S and RPGPundit Their names are not in "written by" last I checked.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:19
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The only true D&D is Pathfinder with everyone playing Arcanists with Arcanist cohorts.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:21
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P.d0t posted:Yeah, I saw a local fellow looking for a 3.5 group to play with, and I responded, "If you want 3.5 without all the bloat, just play 5th; if you want 3.5 WITH all the bloat, why aren't you playing Pathfinder already?" The impression I got from the Fatal and Friends review of PF is that it's worse than 3.5. Am I wrong?
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Dec 17, 2014 22:23
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gradenko_2000 posted:The impression I got from the Fatal and Friends review of PF is that it's worse than 3.5. Am I wrong? PF is to 3.5 as 3.5 was to 3.0. It's kinda just a patch.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:28
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gradenko_2000 posted:The impression I got from the Fatal and Friends review of PF is that it's worse than 3.5. Am I wrong? You are not wrong, but I would also hazard to say that for people 3.5 appeals to, PF is probably better because they're probably playing for the fiddly moving parts.
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