|
Mr. Lobe posted:I don't think they could make that ideal game you described even if they tried. I doubt WOTC are sabotaging their own rules for profiteering reasons, personally. The moneymen at the top wouldn't have the nose to sniff that sort of thing out, and I doubt the designers are willing to knowingly make a bad product on purpose. It scans more as stubborn refusal to accommodate feedback than anything else to me. Add in that they've got competing design priorities, which leads to compromises. Their desire to use natural language rules, for example, conflicts with the ability to provide mathematically rigorous rules. This could be squared by providing both, such as having the natural language rules at the front and a mathematical formula in an index in the back, but that conflicts with a business priority to keep the size of the book (and thus the cost to produce the book) at as low as possible. This could be squared by only putting the natural language rules in the book and having the mathematical formula available online but that conflicts with their clear requirement that everything necessary to play is included in the printed book. Then that combines with their stubbornness to accept feedback and well, that's how you get 5e.
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 13:26
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 08:39 |
|
|
yeah I don't particularly think this is some nefarious profit motive thing. I mean more than any other version of D&D anyway. It's just poor writing and design, that is often load bearing on the GM.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 14:19
|
|
|
Doesn’t seem right to say they need new editions to make money. They can always make new adventures and settings. DMs are always looking for new modules to run. Not even sure I’d bother buying the core rule books anymore. Everything is online and a lot easier to use with search functions.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 16:02
|
|
|
Summit posted:Doesn’t seem right to say they need new editions to make money. They can always make new adventures and settings. DMs are always looking for new modules to run. Frankly, sell me an adventure plus foundry maps for everything for like 60, 80 bucks ill bite the poo poo out of that.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 16:29
|
|
|
Summit posted:Doesn’t seem right to say they need new editions to make money. They can always make new adventures and settings. DMs are always looking for new modules to run. What proportion of D&D players are DMs? Modules don't make much money by comparison to player facing options - and 5e has been exceptionally restrained about producing splatbooks.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 16:30
|
|
|
neonchameleon posted:What proportion of D&D players are DMs? Modules don't make much money by comparison to player facing options - and 5e has been exceptionally restrained about producing splatbooks. From my "numbers I pulled out of my rear end" file I'd say assuming a table of 6 has 1 dm and 5 players, I'd guess at least one of those players will TRY dming. So, roughly 1 in 6 are dedicated DMS, but 1 in 3 will at least dabble.....Now insofar as actually BUYING DMing material, I'd say that is a much smaller number. There are plenty of  options people rely on when they dip into DMing (or even dedicated DMing), but the people just dipping their toes in likely bum off the dedicated DM.I'm sure the number is actually smaller.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 16:36
|
|
|
Summit posted:Doesn’t seem right to say they need new editions to make money. They can always make new adventures and settings. DMs are always looking for.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 16:38
|
|
|
neonchameleon posted:What proportion of D&D players are DMs? Modules don't make much money by comparison to player facing options - and 5e has been exceptionally restrained about producing splatbooks. Based on my playing experience, I'd venture at a bare minimum half of the total money spent at a table on books is spent by the DM. I'd venture it is probably closer to 75% on average, if you count players who also DM in that. Also, I'd venture that there's a ton more players out there needing DMs than DMs who need players, so supporting DMs and making their experience central makes a lot of sense to me.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 16:40
|
|
|
Azathoth posted:Based on my playing experience, I'd venture at a bare minimum half of the total money spent at a table on books is spent by the DM. I'd venture it is probably closer to 75% on average, if you count players who also DM in that. This wasn't the case back in the 3.5e days. All of the players had a stack of splat books to min/max their characters. I imagine Pathfinder players have a lot more books than 5e players. Players will buy books to get more options, but this isn't exactly the best way to design a good game.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 17:23
|
|
|
Yeah, I'd venture there's a significant difference between Pathfinder and 5e players in that regard, in that there aren't a lot of Pathfinder players who aren't deep into the hobby, regardless of which side of the screen they're on. 5e has to worry much more about a casual base of players than Pathfinder. My 5e experience has been about half the players own nothing more than the Players Handbook and maybe another book or two. I've yet to meet a DM who doesn't have a shitload of books.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 17:32
|
|
|
Back to DruidChat for a moment, I understand the whole "red in tooth and claw" vibe they have, but it does strike me as amusing that druids are basically anti-vegan.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 18:17
|
|
|
Capfalcon posted:Back to DruidChat for a moment, I understand the whole "red in tooth and claw" vibe they have, but it does strike me as amusing that druids are basically anti-vegan. Druids seem to have conflicting opinions about agriculture in general in the first place. It ranges from outright hostility (shadow druids) to begrudging tolerance to acting as helpers (worshippers of Chauntea). But I think they'd all see red at the sight of a factory farm.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 19:14
|
|
|
Mr. Lobe posted:Druids seem to have conflicting opinions about agriculture in general in the first place. It ranges from outright hostility (shadow druids) to begrudging tolerance to acting as helpers (worshippers of Chauntea). But I think they'd all see red at the sight of a factory farm. nah the druids of talona would love it
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 19:29
|
|
|
Maybe I’m an anomaly but at least 50% of my players never bought any book of their own.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 19:47
|
|
|
I've been playing for four years and never bought anything other than copious amounts of snacks. It's good to pitch in a bit for the DM's expenses, though.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 20:28
|
|
|
Only my most dedicated players ever bought any books, and nearly all of those were just the PHB and whatever splat made their class of choice stronger. The campaign I'm playing now is about 50/50 book-owners of any kind. Note that we're all older people with stable incomes.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 22:06
|
|
|
Content sharing on DNDbeyond is a godsend
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 22:30
|
|
|
I own a few books but they are purely decorative at this point. Not going to crack one open to get a ruling when I could just Google an answer.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 22:39
|
|
|
yeah the only physical books I ever buy are ones for smaller games as a show of support, or ones that have very very good art.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 22:55
|
|
|
I've bought most of the books in physical form because there is a nonzero chance that websites can revoke access to the content. I share a pdf of the PHB with new players but always suggest they buy their own copy just to snuggle up with on a cold rainy day.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 23:09
|
|
|
The last physical book I bought was the 5e players handbook and it didn’t have very good binding (reminded me a lot of the TSR books in that respect). I own a bunch of books on DnD Beyond and I probably won’t ever go back to physical editions.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2022 00:26
|
|
|
Last time I used the physical books was because I wanted to compare subclasses, something that gets annoying if you have to keep scrolling up & down / flipping between tabs.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2022 00:45
|
|
|
Rutibex posted:That's not true Call of Cthulhu never changes their rules and they still exist. You mean the game that is currently on its 7th edition?
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2022 08:10
|
|
|
Mr Beens posted:You mean the game that is currently on its 7th edition? Yeah imagine that, 7 editions and they are all compatible with each other. Turns out you can make a modern book with new layout and just leave the loving rules alone!
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2022 08:36
|
|
|
Mr Beens posted:You mean the game that is currently on its 7th edition? Shadow Run is on its 6th edition and if the SR thread is anything to go by the only thing getting cut out each edition is quality
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2022 08:41
|
|
|
champagne posting posted:Shadow Run is on its 6th edition and if the SR thread is anything to go by the only thing getting cut out each edition is quality Yeah if you want to talk about a cynical cash-in loving up its rules just to push another product out the door, SR 6e is the RPG to look at I don't think anyone who worked on that can honestly say they feel like they did a good job there. Well, except the people who did the German version which I hear is functionally a completely other edition for all the cleanup they did.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2022 13:41
|
|
|
Too bad they aren't translated back to english
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2022 13:46
|
|
|
champagne posting posted:Too bad they aren't translated back to english If I had a zillion spare hours, back translating it could be a fun way to hone my at-best B1 level German skills up a notch but alas I do not
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2022 13:51
|
|
|
Rutibex posted:Yeah imagine that, 7 editions and they are all compatible with each other. Turns out you can make a modern book with new layout and just leave the loving rules alone! But they have changed the rules. Ability scores went from 3-18 D&D style scores to percentile scores. They got rid of the Resistance Table, added levels of success, and completely changed the way to resolve opposed tests. The skill list has gone through a lot of changes over the years, so have monster and spell stats. And 7E added new chase rules to the system. The rules are generally compatible with each other, but I still needed to sit down and restat some baddies and reconfigure some challenges when I ran Shadows of Yog-Sothoth in 7E.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2022 14:07
|
|
|
NotNut posted:I know. In my campaign they're not going to be though. The animal people are in the chaotic good plane instead. I'm not sure what the neutral good outsiders are going to look like but I want them distinct from from angels, who in my campaign look like seraphim and ophanim, and chaotic good outsiders that are like nature spirits. Maybe in that case, move the Empyreans from chaotic good to neutral good and now problems solved for both your name and description?
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2022 15:47
|
|
|
Welp I'm finally playing a 5e game. Gonna be a druid.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2022 15:51
|
|
|
Dm let me swap some spells around. Thoughts? Mage Armor -> Lightning Bolt (Psychic, DM lets us pick damage type, my mage robes are 14+Dex AC anyways MA does nothing?) Fog Cloud -> Dispel Magic (I tend to use items for this anyways) Watery Sphere -> Stoneskin (Watery Sphere's more or less been supplanted by Telekinesis and I have other Concentration spells) Levitate -> Psychic Lance (I've never used Levitate, I have a fly speed, and I have a 1/day non-attunement magic item that lets me use Tensor's Disc for non-combat reasons anyways). We've been facing I think a concerning number of enemies with magic damage, but the astral dreadnaught we fought I THINK was non-magical slashing damage? So hopefully this isn't a wasted spell.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2022 17:25
|
|
|
What kind of caster? I'm assuming sorcerer or warlock
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2022 17:32
|
|
|
Mendrian posted:"What other long term popular game has better rules" is also a silly question unless you're looking to crib notes. I was not defending 5E design, I was making a point that any RPG with so many rules and so many players is going to generate rules arguments no matter how well-written the rules are. In matters far more important than games, we need a whole branch of government dedicated to dealing with disagreement over laws and contracts and the like, because language is imperfect and people are imperfect and you don't elect politicians on the basis of how precisely they write a sentence. My point was that expecting argument-free play online for an RPG isn't realistic to begin with and that some of the problems with 5E reflect the popularity and longevity of the D&D system and don't arise with many other systems in the first place. I've seen arguments based on someone expecting that a 5E spell would function like it did in 1-3E despite the 5E description clearly differing. That's not a likely argument in PF 2E, partly because the rules are so different from 1E and partly because nobody played PF 1E 25 years ago, dropped out of RPG play, and then came back to PF 2E expecting it'd be pretty much the same. "Under millions of eyes" explains why D&D isn't better. If you have an account here, I'm going to assume you're familiar with the Internet, right? If I were designing a focused, niche product and had a limited-access Discord with almost a hundred dedicated playtesters, and expected to eventually sell a few thousand copies of the system, then gathering useful feedback and making improvements based on that feedback is going to be challenging but achievable. Imagine instead that you're operating thousands of playtest threads across the Internet and have participants ranging from those dedicated Discord fanatics to the people who make Youtube comments all day. Yes, you have millions of opinions. Some of them are complete bullshit, some of them are trolling, some are grogs, and with a million people you'll have a lot who want the game to be very different from how it is, but will have strong disagreements about HOW. If the PHB can be trusted, 5E had over 175,000 playtesters. If we set aside the art production team, who wouldn't have been dealing with rules-specific feedback, and if we assume that "additional contribution" and "additional consultation" folks weren't involved with the feedback and revision process, you end up with at most 15 credited people. So most of the feedback, as received, would have been in spreadsheet form. That's useful in gauging how receptive your playtesters were to, say, all fighters using maneuvers, but it's entirely useless when it comes to tightening up rules wording or otherwise making disparate parts of the system function properly. I would wager that zero of the people involved had extensive experience with processing that much feedback and delivering it in a useful and productive form; I would guess poorly paid or unpaid interns ended up doing the work, assuming anyone looked at anything that doesn't involve an online survey with no written feedback allowed (in which case you only get the answers to questions you thought to ask). And the people in charge didn't have any special expertise in taking feedback at this level and making judicious improvements; in fact, the lead designers were (checks 5E credits) Mike Mearls and Jeremy Crawford. I'm gonna go out on a limb and speculate that the combination of weight of feedback and the people in charge produced changes to the 5E rules that made the system worse, not better. Now that it's "in the wild" things get even worse. How precisely are those millions of D&D players producing intelligible feedback that will get to Crawford in the first place, much less produce errata? Keep in mind that almost nobody playing 5E actually follows RAW and so many comments are going to be about problems that don't exist RAW, and fewer comments will crop up about RAW problems that everyone has houseruled (although I bet many of these are known). Generating rules-fixes based on the people who tweet at Crawford is a miserable way to try to improve an RPG. Wizards removed their forum. How many criticisms of 5E here (in the 5E thread) are useful and substantive and how many are valid but easily dismissible or phrased in a way that looks like griping? If D&D were a home-game and only forty people were playing it, getting feedback and improving rules would be easy to address that audience. 5E is so big it would be hard to address the feedback even if the people in charge of the rules were highly skilled at doing that. A game with a better defined "niche" is going to be better within that limited area because it isn't trying to be all things to all people. I suppose you can generate and run a Call of Cthulhu campaign that's a power fantasy with PCs flying Hyperborean spaceships around and nuking Star Spawn, but the base game is designed to have a very technologically limited humanity with powerful magic that erodes the casters' bodies and minds rapidly. It isn't a power fantasy kind of game. A Star Wars RPG is probably expecting players to want to have Force powers and is going to be much more aligned with power fantasy and movie situations where the heroes shoot more accurately than the "elite" stormtroopers. If D&D were really built around Tolkien, a wizard would be a semi-divine being but would rarely use magic of any sort, and the people would be fairly fragile, unless it was built around the movies, in which case "one PC can kill 500 goblins" starts looking like a good possibility. (Even a strictly book-based MERP-like system is going to have huge gaps between ancient and powerful elves and ordinary humans.) But D&D wants to be a platform for all possible fantasy-based RPG play. So we end up with initially unintelligible treasure systems: the 5E DMG recognizes different campaigns will have different power/loot expectations, but doesn't do enough to discuss how to link that to PC rewards. Random treasure tables have never been an especially good way to handle things. And I think Toshimo is being unfair to suggest 5E's designers don't care about treasure: Xanatar's Guide discusses magic item distribution and provides a useful table of items (immediately obsolete, but never mind) as well as articulating downtime uses for money a little better. Never providing a Wealth by Level table may be inexcusable, but it is also understandable, because any such table is going to be useful but wrong, at least for many groups. 5E cares less than any other system about PC wealth, and the attunement system means it cares less than any other system about how many magic items PCs have, too. Basically, I don't see how it is possible to expect a D&D edition to be well-designed given the constraints the designers are under now. The game isn't a few people selling print-on-demand out of a basement. If you take a big change, like the one 4E arguably did, and sales drop, you're fired. If sales don't go up as much as Hasbro wanted, it's still a failure. Ironically, the inherent conservatism of the big corporation has led to greater continuity, in the sense that one designer on each team was also on the last design team. The corporate system wants to turn out product that sells well. D&D is the fast food of the RPG world, and improving the quality of the food isn't Hasbro's top priority. Put together the best design team you want, they're still going to produce mass-market rules, and those simply aren't going to satisfy gourmet players, but they can hit the spot when you're tired and want something fast and consistently mediocre over a demanding and potentially bad experience.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2022 17:43
|
|
|
Mr. Lobe posted:What kind of caster? I'm assuming sorcerer or warlock Sorcerer, I'm sort of a composite of Aberrant Mind and Psionic Soul; I started as Psionic Soul from UA, but my DM is also letting me get the Aberrant Mind features on top of it. I love the psionic talent die and didn't want to lose it when we swapped over to Tasha's. The party is overall significantly more powerful for their level, but my build was (deliberately) not optimal for combat encounters and that's been getting increasingly a tad frustrating as combat gets deadlier (re: Astral Dreadnaught encounter at a fishing tournament vs our level 9 party, which we killed in 1 round) to account for the overall party power level. So hopefully a bit more damage spells, and a bit better defencive options will let me contribute more and get down'd less. Basically our combat encounters are a lot like Modern armor combat; I present the Survivability Onion:  Concentration and Action Economy and positioning makes enacting some of these difficult. The magic item that gives me advantage on all saves is just for 10 rounds and needs an action to activate, and only once per LR. I also have a staff that lets me spend charges as an action to let me as a reaction reroll a save/check/attack in the next 10 minutes. So I have options but the opportunity isn't usually there to do some of them at the start of an encounter (because they're deadly enough that spending 2-3 turns activating my magic items means 2-3 turns in which I am not casting spells that can shape the battle). So right now, a scenario that's an issue for me is I can use Stoneskin and maybe in some encounters I'll take less damage, but being Concentration means not using Telekinesis to target an enemy to lock them down (I have a solid 1d20+9+ (usually) 1d8 to that contested check) and if I am using Telekinesis then I lack the protections that would let me keep that enemy locked down. If I'm hit once my Blur goes away until my next turn, Shield is not helping me most of the time when the enemy has +10 to +15 to hit. Blink is maybe my best option but that also maybe conflicts with Telekinesis, I think so far the DM has been letting me use them together, but that can change whenever and I probably shouldn't depend on a ruling that's very likely to be incorrect even if it sorta makes sense for my character. I think what I could try is Fog Cloud using a grenade I drop at my feet with a short radius; even if I still need to see the enemy I can just leave the fogcloud, use my action to re-assert the contest, and then go back in and be immune to anything that requires seeing me.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2022 18:59
|
|
|
Summit posted:Doesn’t seem right to say they need new editions to make money. They can always make new adventures and settings. DMs are always looking for new modules to run. Yeah, when I got into D&D this round I was really blown away by the lack of content I wanted to buy. I would have totally whaled out - but there was nothing really to whale out on. I was expecting character packs with miniature bits and effects and cool cards. Like, you can play "cleric" with just the rules - but it's way funner and easier at the table if you buy the pack with cards (for spells/abilities/class-stuff-you-picked/equipment), a character sheet customized for your class and its progress/options, and miniature bits supporting that (spell effects or whatever). The only stuff like this I see for sale (from WotC anyway) is the spell cards... and they suuuck. They should have cool art on the front, with super-condensed spell effect (range/numbers/etc..). Like a Magic card. Then maybe have more full rules on the back or something, so you can look up whether it can target clocks or potato wedges or whatever. Instead, they're terrible for clarity/reference AND they're boring/ugly. In terms of mission content, I can buy... a book with a mess of stuff, lots of which I'm not interested in, and that often doesn't make DM'ing much easier. For $60 CDN or whatever, I feel like I should get more than a book - I should get some miniatures, maybe a couple maps. And the scenarios should be easier to run, require less prep, and be more predictable in terms of difficulty. There should be some easy fun gimmicks that make me feel like I'm running a cool game. Like, I can do a bunch of work to prep a fun session myself - or I paid some money so now I have it easy and the session still has some clever bits. As it stands, I feel like it's worst of both worlds. As to rules clarity... it's really bad as a new person coming in, and it seems like it doesn't get much better over time. The whole paradigm seems bonkers; using casual language doesn't make things easier for anyone. Compare old Magic cards with new Magic cards. The old ones used much more casual language and they were worse in every way. They were less clear to new players and old players, and however "less imposing" the terms were, that was immediately cancelled by how much more text they needed. Being direct and using consistent templates takes effort, and it'd be work to keep some stuff functioning the same - but it's an obvious huge win.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2022 20:36
|
|
|
Mr Beens posted:You mean the game that is currently on its 7th edition?
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2022 21:25
|
|
|
jmzero posted:Yeah, when I got into D&D this round I was really blown away by the lack of content I wanted to buy. I would have totally whaled out - but there was nothing really to whale out on. That is true for 99.99999% of RPGs out there. You usually need only the books - and they usually sell you only the books.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2022 23:27
|
|
|
YggdrasilTM posted:That is true for 99.99999% of RPGs out there. You usually need only the books - and they usually sell you only the books. Yeah but it's not typical for D&D. Every edition before 5e had a much larger selection of supplement books and physical products available by now.
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2022 12:46
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 08:39 |
|
|
So, my players have succesfully navigated the unterdark and emerged unharmed in Out of the Abyss. The adventure so far has taught me that I do not care for any sort of resource managment that goes beyond spell slots/abilities/one time conusmables. You eat. You shoot arrows. I don't care where they came from. Also, official adventure suck to prep. You have to do half the work anyway. The only good thing is I don't have to come up with plot hooks and character names and the like. And some flavour art. BTW: If anyone wants to run OotA, I have some battlemaps I created from the official maps in DungeonDraft for some locations in the first half of the adventure. And for other poo poo like random encounters.
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2022 14:32
|
|