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Is there some reason why they don't just re-release AD&D and can call it a day? They could call it, "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 5e Next."
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Mar 1, 2013 15:53
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Kai Tave posted:To be fair we haven't seen much of their vaunted "tactical rules module" yet, facing rules and all, assuming that's even still a thing. But I largely agree that for a year into development even the core, basic structure of the game seems incredibly lackluster. I never thought that I would actually say this, but given what we've seen so far I honestly wonder what things would look like now if Monte Cook hadn't left. Like, I'm doubtful that I would think it was a vast improvement or anything, but I don't know. Well, I mean, my trust with the Next team has run pretty low. I'm not sure these modules exist or will ever exist. Remember when Mearls said 4e fans would be getting some neat toys? When he told us to wait and see, 4e flavor was coming? When he told us every class every printed would show up in the core? Then remember when surges/hit dice got axes, and we lost martial anything, and we now have the Warlord effectively cut, and cleric is back to heal bot? The extent to which the Next team is willing to keep whittling this thing they've made, down and down, until it's just some bizarre 2e/3e mashup with almost no lessons attached to it is staggering. The latest round of 'eyeball design' strikes me as particularly egregious. If I've just started drinking whiskey, what's a good way to go without breaking my wallet or my throat?
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Mar 1, 2013 18:03
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petrol blue posted:Ah, fair enough. Honestly, until D&D can match the WoW Firefighter bossfight, I'm alone in the corner shouting "Yes! More MMO-like!" I think even people who like 4e mostly admit that combat takes too much time, even when it's fun. In fact, that's on the list of legitimate criticisms about 4e that will never be addressed or honestly discussed because it was buried under a mountain of misinformation and complaints about the game that address mechanics which do not even exist. For instance, 4e doesn't actually have 'aggro mechanic' or a 'taunt' in the sense that people actually mean when they talk about that stuff. Marking doesn't force monsters to attack you, it provides an incentive to do so. Yet in 2013, I still find myself arguing with people particularly on RPGnet, about what constitutes a 'taunt'. About how 4e isn't WoW. About how monsters aren't forced to turn and face the fighter or whatever. "Marking is just WoW tanking/taunting" is like some kind of battle cry that sends me into fits. That stuff obfuscates the real issues and creates false issues. 5e is based on feedback. Feedback is going to be generated at least partially in reaction to 4e at least as much as 5e's actual playtest. Knowing that most of those reactions are based on false information keeps me up at night. Mendrian fucked around with this message at 06:50 on Mar 2, 2013 |
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Mar 2, 2013 06:47
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Maybe I'm just jaded but even expertise dice seem sort of weaksauce to me. "Instead of having a static modifier, you have a variable modifier to add to your variable dice roll. Except that the variable modifier is sometimes a resource instead." I sort of want to be convinced on why it's cool. The idea of a modifier that is MORE swingy (in a system where +1 to something is a huge deal) doesn't enthrall.
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Mar 3, 2013 07:15
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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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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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fatherdog posted:How long will it take for someone to start referring to 4th edition as New Coke Do you mean in this thread, or in general? Because I'm pretty sure that must have happened before it was even released. I have no intention of making a New Coke derail. Though hilariously the analogy is surprisingly apt, since New Coke formed the basis of Diet Coke, which is now insanely popular even though people keep bringing up New Coke as some kind of failed enterprise.
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Mar 4, 2013 22:07
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Elmo Oxygen posted:Because who cares Right. This is basically the Xerox effect. The phrase 'D&D' has become synonymous with elfgames, which just entitles consumers even more to feel that they have a right to define what D&D is and makes that definition murkier by the inclusion of stuff WotC has no control over. To the point where the 'soul' of D&D includes stuff that isn't and never was D&D. I don't envy WotC. One of the advantages McDonalds has is that they have strict control over their brand, even by franchise standards. D&D (and indeed, all RPGs) will always be filtered through DMs, and the experiences of play groups. They get to control the presentation of their game, the advice they give on how to run it, and the rules that the game uses, but they have almost no control over the end-user's experience. That's weird, and pretty unique to the RPG market.
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Mar 4, 2013 23:02
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Lady Gaga posted:Games don't have souls. They have traditions, perhaps. Sometimes the most important thing a game can do is to break the rules set by its predecessors. Should it break every rule at once? Probably not. But there's nothing particularly sacrosanct about D&D's mechanics. This is really important and something that also aggravates me about the oWoD/nWoD argument that still happens now and again. The 'soul' basically amounts to the 'feel' of a game. But that's stupid, right? Games don't actually have feels. They are't fabric. They're ephemeral. Like a lot of things, we know that we like it or that we don't like it, and some people don't think about it a lot more than that. Some people know that they don't like something and try to figure it out backwards, and invent things that aren't true. Sometimes that manifests as a sort of weird gesticulation towards an item, with a shrug, adding, "Well, it does't feel right." Because we lack other answers. The 'feel' of a game is basically the way it made us feel when we played it. Expecting a different game to produce the same experience is dumb. You'll never capture the 'soul' of D&D and not because of bullshit nostalgia reasons, either. It's just not possible to articulate and reproduce the 'feel' of something without making the thing itself. I do think it's possible to make a game that captures an entirely new if somewhat related sense of wonder. Reign made me feel that way the first time I read it, and so did Exalted. I sometimes wonder, half cynically, if the feel we're always chasing is actually a species of novelty.
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Mar 5, 2013 06:00
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Ratoslov posted:I've often thought that the proper way to make a new D&D edition would be to throw out everything in Appendix N and make an entirely new fantasy RPG with your own Appendix N, full of whatever's current and popular. Get some Avatar: The Last Airbender, Harry Potter, and maybe even Twilight in there. If not Twilight, then definitely some of the current magical teenager romance genre. Being overly attached to the past is bad for games. Or at the very least, find equivalents that are relevant today. Game of Thrones, I'm looking at you (despite being a like, 20 year old book.)
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Mar 5, 2013 06:26
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Mikan posted:What if you do want to become a billionaire on RPG sales My basic opinion is that if you want to become a billionaire writing RPGs, you need to pump out a lot of very innovative products very quickly. You need to become the RPG equivalent of Stephen King.
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Mar 5, 2013 17:11
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Isn't this sort of fatalistic thinking though? 'Nobody outside the hobby will ever get involved' is the kind of thinking that resulted in 'let's appeal to 40+ year old grognards and no one else'. RPGs may not be some kind of grand growth industry, and yeah, it's a risky bet, but if we as the fans continue to treat it as our own private clubhouse, it's never going to grow. There is some kind of barrier to entry, certainly. As Winson said, it's probably a time investment thing. But I mean, somehow, videogames became popular despite years of people saying they were too niche to go mainstream. Hell, knitting became popular briefly in the early 00's. Treating the RPG market as if it were a stagnant undead thing isn't productive. If we assume it's a real business (it is), we* have to at least pretend the market can grow and we* have to figure out how. Treating it as a non-business is what got us in this position to begin with. *'we' being the collective industry
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Mar 5, 2013 17:34
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Winson_Paine posted:I never meant no one outside will ever get involved, or that any growth is impossible. I just can't stand the idea that the hobby is doomed because it will never be as popular as the NFL or whatever. Success is entirely possible, but success doesn't mean you are suddenly the prince of everything and everyone loves you and your words are on the lips of all the little people out there. Success comes in a lot of sizes and shapes, and there is plenty of room for growth and success in RPGs without bemoaning the idea that it will never be super popular or whatever. Oh yeah I totally agree with that. Success doesn't need to be measured in terms of absolute success, yeah, totally agreed. We can measure success in increments. In fact, I would argue that it's the "absolute success" problem that's really dogging the industry. Each iteration of videogame console did better than the previous one. If Sony was comparing the sales of its consoles to, say, NFL ticket sales, where would we be today?
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Mar 5, 2013 17:43
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The rise of online play has changed the game a little though. Queue websites where you can pay to have access to DM rating systems, fabulous online tools, and meetup options for people who hate online play. I'm saying that there's room for growth and innovation. There are ways to smooth out these problems. They'll probably never completely ago away. But if D&D could at least get up to the level of say, amateur league football, that would be pretty rad. And they have similar time-investments and the need for a quality 3rd party referee.
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Mar 5, 2013 18:00
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Splicer posted:I'm waiting for a decent 3D tabletop to exist, like that 3D boardgame posted a while back where you could see everyone's cursors and fight over cards and stuff. Attach a voice client, make the board a generic grid, add in some virtual pens to scribble with and a way to import pre-rendered 3D scenery objects, tie it all up with a way to save/load sessions and stick it on steam or something and you come close to being able to actually run "pick-up" RPG sessions. If organising a one-shot is as easy as organising a quick game of L4D2 then it might finally get somewhere. My god. D&D on Steam. Why hasn't this already happened?
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Mar 5, 2013 18:08
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2 out of the 6 people I've played 4e with started playing because they thought the online character builder was so awesome. True story. If you're listening Wizards, get your tools ready, integrate them into a virtual tabletop/community software. Put it on Steam. Integrate a freemium model if you have to. Realize that getting people to play your game is a million times more important than book sales or 'beating Pathfinder' or whatever other crazy thing you're trying to do.
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Mar 5, 2013 19:26
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Fenarisk posted:The best part of RPGs and tabletop is having a GM. Totally. Which is why I think a self-policing online mechanism would be a huge boon.
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Mar 5, 2013 20:28
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Fenarisk posted:How is this even possible? Assuming you have a functional online virtual desktop with active 'pickup' games, you can rate your DM. If this infrastructure is in place, there's no reason you can't rate a DM in real life.
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Mar 5, 2013 20:33
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Ulta posted:I think there's a subtle difference. When something kills you in Dark Souls, you (hopefully) learned something, because Dark Souls is lawful evil. It's going to kill you, but it plays by the rules. Well, it's a 'learning experience' in the sense that if you keep running the same exact dungeon over and over again, you might get a little further each time. Sort of like playing Super Meat Boy, but with dice.
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Mar 5, 2013 21:13
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Selachian posted:Mearls and Thompson did a podcast and it's pretty clear -- as if it wasn't already -- that the 4E warlord is dead and buried. Among other things, they reemphasized that "warlord" will be a fighter build and also added that "inspiration" and tactics should be the bard's thing, not the warlord's. Nothing quite like burying one of the most beloved innovations of 4e to bring your fans back to the table. Edit: I think this is pretty much the worst news I've heard so far, particularly since 'non-magical' healing is out. I can't imagine describing the temp-hp granting stuff as anything other than 'inspiration', so I can't even imagine what the Warlord theme would do at this point. -surges? Check. -Warlord and non-magical healing? Check. +Vancian magic? Check. -Fightguy doing non-Fightguy stuff? Check. I eagerly await the announcement that casters are losing at-will powers, since that's pretty much all we have left. Mendrian fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Mar 6, 2013 |
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Mar 6, 2013 17:52
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whydirt posted:I don't inherently mind the fighter killing the warlord and taking its stuff because "guy who hits stuff" is a comparatively boring and narrow role. What is an issue for me is that they're doing that while still leaving other legacy alt-fighters with their own specific niches and still allowing wizards to have mastery over all types of magic. I don't know what stuff belonging to the Warlord the Fighter will actually be taking, considering 'inspiration and tactics' defines the totality of the Warlord's kit. Edit: It'd be like if they said Paladin would become a Fighter theme and bits about healing, protection, and holy warriors were being handed off to the Cleric, where it would be more appropriate. Mendrian fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Mar 6, 2013 |
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Mar 6, 2013 18:31
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Clearly the Warlord's focus is too narrow. Now, shirtless angry fightguy? That's a broad concept man. It's so broad I can drive a truck through. The truck basically just says "Conan" on the side of it, but it's still a pretty big truck.
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Mar 6, 2013 19:45
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Kai Tave posted:One of the dudes on the podcast goes on at some length about how William Wallace didn't grow peoples' limbs back or stuff their guts back in their bodies by shouting at them, so that should be all the answer you need to tell you whether the Next design team would be cool with martial attacks running off of things like Intelligence or Charisma. "HP don't always represent physical wounds. Or like, maybe half of them do. Or maybe they do now, I don't know, whatever, gently caress you." This is what I hear whenever I hear one of these design guys talk about HP and what they represent.
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Mar 6, 2013 20:18
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dwarf74 posted:It's refreshing to see this "shouty battle heal-screaming" sort of edition warring coming from within the Next development team instead of just random dudes on ENWorld. I mean pfft, isn't that stupid? Who would design a game like that? I want to know where in the WotC playbook is says, 'poo poo all over previous editions of the game we designed.' What other company references their own older products this way?
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Mar 6, 2013 21:27
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This was sort of the big divide that hit D&D between 2->3. At some point people looked at 3.x and said, "this game has too many options." And you know, really it does, and if 3.x has too many options, 4e has too many options too. For players who just want to dive into the game, options (particularly feat selection) is perceived as a barrier between them and what they want to do. Hell, given the semi-competitive nature of most D&D games people start to feel inadequate, so not only do they need to pick a drat feat every so many levels, they have to make sure it's the best one. 5e has the right idea with it's feat-delivery system. They tried to make feat selection more like picking a class to limit the total number of options. I applaud the effort, I really do. I think it's one of the best ideas Next has. I don't particularly care if it was a unique idea for Next either, but ramming the idea of Feats into the idea of Kits was a good decision, particularly since it isn't mandatory. This, in light of the fact that the grog solution to 'too many choices' is frequently, 'we should have no choices at all.'
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Mar 7, 2013 05:52
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Nothing screams "realism" to me like a fighter that was to take a few extra weeks to sit around sipping tea to get back to full hit points. I feel like this whole line of conversation is an attempt to 'prove' that fixed-rate healing is objectively 'better'. Just say, "It's a little wonky, sure, but it's simple" and be done with it. Put your design priorities on the table, Next. Stop acting like these conclusions are the only logical conclusions.
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Mar 7, 2013 17:57
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But I mean, I don't think that problem is that Fighters have more health. I think people understand intellectually that the greater HP of the Fighter represents greater vitality, and that Wizard has less, and even a Wizard at full HP is less vital than a Fighter at half. The problem is the metagame decision to sit around waiting to heal. I'm the Fighter. Let's say I have 35 HP. Let's say the Wizard has, I don't know, 12. Both me and the Wizard are reduced to 6 HP, respectively, during our last adventure. Once we get back to town, the Wizard heals back to full, right? He's at 12 HP. Around the same time, the Fighter will be at 12 HP. How do we rectify that? We can say that the Wizard's best is only a fraction of the Fighter's best, and that the Wizard's idea of 'healthy' is a shadow of the Fighter. I think everybody gets that. The problem is that the Wizard is 'healed', and the Fighter says, "No, Randolph, I don't feel quite ready to adventure yet. Clearly we have healed to the same level of basic functionality - walking, talking, reading books - but I could really use some more R&R. Like maybe another week." In practice if a Fighter wants to work at full capacity he has to do so by spending more time doing nothing. That seems weird. What's happening? Is he healing? Resting? What? If he's healing, what exactly is he healing? His morale? Clearly if HP are physical wounds, he's at least as functional as the Wizard at 12 HP, so what's happening?
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Mar 7, 2013 19:57
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kingcom posted:The most fascinating thing about D&D Next is watching every issue that gets discussed/resolved in a completely different manner with people coming from all sides of the equation. This edition so drat screwed purely on the basis of everyone being annoyed/angry/impressed/confused to every single issue. I would love to see non-combat advancement completely broken out and divorced from combat advancement, in a category every bit as significant as class. It's a huge deal for me and something I'd love to see developed. I thought that would be what Background/Theme were going to be doing, but apparently not.
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Mar 14, 2013 14:27
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Rexides posted:It seems a good candidate for a module. I prefer core to remain simple, and I think that the background system does that to a good extend. An exploration module could add more crunchy exploration options, and then maybe an interaction module could do some stuff that we see in more indie games. Yeah I could certainly see that argument. I feel like at this point simplicity is all Next really has. If they want to be that game, they should embrace it.
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Mar 14, 2013 14:36
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Mikan posted:It works in Dungeon World because that's how the entire game is structured, and it's smart enough to include ranges like "close" and "near" and "far". The moves are all written around the concept. Yeah, all of this. I don't think anyone is saying TotM doesn't work, but there are a lot of implicit contracts, agreements, and 'negotiations' that happen behind the rules that really ought to be rules anyway. I run a weekly V:tR game, and WoD has always used a weird mix of exact/inexact measurements. I basically solved the problem be ignoring basic movement rates and gauging the ability to close with an enemy based on action economy, favoring characters with explicit resources sunk into making their characters go faster. But that's still contract; that's still a species of house rule, working against the scads of minor things that increase character movement rates by 1 and other silly little benefits. I'd really prefer a system that uses TotM as its rules basis, rather than relying on hard coded numbers to resolve everything. The problem with TotM is that, frequently, all details in a scene exist in a kind of Schrodeinger's paradox, neither existing nor not existing until someone checks on them. That results in uncertainty, and the more details the players check, the more likely it is for a detail to get fudged or forgotten. Why deal with exact measurements at all if you're going to play it like that? Star Wars: Edge of the Empire deals with this whole problem in a super rad way. Basically it has inexact ranged measurements, which isn't new, a lot of games do that. Then, based on what characters roll, they can grant bonus dice to friends or penalty dice to enemies (or vice versa, if they roll poorly). These flexible advantages tend to represent terrain features which weren't narratively important until just a moment ago, which is a neat way of dealing with the paradox. "This bonus die represents you diving behind a box for cover" is a lot more fun, to me, than, "There is a box 6ft away from you. There is another box 9ft away from you..." etc Mendrian fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Mar 16, 2013 |
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Mar 16, 2013 19:05
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Just finished playing a playtest and I am angry about games. To the DM's credit, I think she did things well. We had a limited time slot and she tried to keep things moving, tried to keep people involved, and everybody started the game engaged. Combat is almost too fast. Entire combats would end before many of our players even had a chance to act. I was playing a Fighter and I was really feeling in a weird place. I did so much damage that I could one-shot almost any monster that wasn't set to 'arbitrary bullshit' levels of difficulty. Outside of combat I was leaning mostly on my Intimidate and Dungeoneering skills, though there was limited non-combat play anyhow. This particular module was a huge, winding dungeon that just felt lot a like of wasted space for no reason. We didn't find the Wizard particularly overpowered, but then, we were level 2; she seemed liked she was struggling to apply the spells she had prepared and leaned most heavily on her Cantrips. All three of the 'stand still and hit things' characters felt very similar. The Barbarian never had a chance to Rage, and I spent most of my time throwing handaxes because of a few somewhat contrived ranged combats. The monk used his crossbow more often then his fists. The protection ability this particular Fighter build had felt extremely lackluster and swingy; I used it twice and rolled a one both times, which felt minimal at best (though I'm sure someone could show me how, statistically, it's great.) Over all it felt really meh. It feels like a system that's trying desperately to get out of your way, but the modules are all very focused, so I can't tell if it's trying to be a generic system or what. You'd think if Wizards wanted to make the perfect dungeon-running game they'd include lot more stuff about dungeons but I never felt like the characters we had were particularly well suited to crawling around in caves, Dungeoneering skill not withstanding. Best parts of the system include variable Attribute skills (so Intimidate can be a lot of different things, though I'm waiting for someone to tie it to Dex-based breakdancing) and Hit Dice, though I only like the latter because they're almost-not-quite healing surges. Rolling attacks and saving throws for every spell was probably the worst thing.
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Mar 16, 2013 23:06
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Payndz posted:No kidding about combat being fast. I did another test, three low-level characters (L2 cleric, L2 wizard, L1 fighter) vs [flicks through Bestiary...] a mind flayer. The plan was to see how quickly it killed them, but it didn't work out quite like that. The flayer whiffed its initiative roll and ended up going last, and promptly got smacked by a Thunderwave from the wizard (failed save, 12 damage), a maul hit from the cleric with the Channel Wrath daily (17 damage) and a good sword strike from the fighter using his damage die (16 damage). Game over for the flayer before it even lifted a tentacle, and a shitload of XP for the characters. Yeah this was very pronounced in the test we played. Trying to put it into words is weird, and I'm a writer, so I find that frustrating. It seems like monsters don't really get harder so much as you go up in level. It seems like their threat level, the risk they present to your party, increases. But really, they're no more 'dangerous' in the sense we'd normally mean in D&D than anything else. The Mind Flayer in your example is only more dangerous in the event that it gets to launch its OMG BS WTF arbitrary powers. His hit points don't feel appropriate for how you'd want to use him in a story. He's like a bucket full of dynamite, with a small chance he'll explode if the PCs look inside of him. He's dangerous, because looking inside a trapped bucket full of dynamite is stupid, but it's not likely to result in a dynamic or interesting confrontation. It's dangerous like hitting a snake with a club is dangerous.
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Mar 17, 2013 07:52
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I feel like the point of Feats is to create a kind of make-your-own specialty system. Class Features do this already, but the things Class Features let you specialize in are fairly broad - 'Do more damage' versus 'Be more damage resistant', for instance - and those choices are one-time. Feats add a lot of granularity to the class system and hypothetically allow a huge degree of variance between characters. In practice it's just another sacred cow. Most players take required feats A, B, and C, and then proceed to plow all remaining feats into a single given specialty. Usually, 'do more damage', but sometimes it's, 'be a better defender'. I like the idea because players are 'discovering' how to build a really effective dungeon-mans for a particular, focused task (or alternatively, a bunch of different tasks.) Really though it's just an illusion, like so much of what D&D does; the choices are actually pretty narrow, and unless you're someone who really enjoys tinkering with bizarre ways of doing things (Clerics who are only melee, Wizards who use swords, etc) you're probably going to go down one of three paths anyway. I can't think of a feat system that would be fun to use in this way but which would also forgo the illusion of choice the current system creates.
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Mar 18, 2013 05:30
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Having the dice available each turn was not overpowered. Having recently played the game, allow me to offer this: All of the maneuvers that aren't 'do more damage' are sort of dumb. The only reason I even used my 'Protect Others' power is because it didn't consume my Martial Die for the purposes of dealing more damage. I prevented 2 damage out of the roughly 30 that was dealt to the whole party. If I'd had to choose between 'prevent between 1 and 6 damage' and 'kill this thing, thus preventing a hypothetically unlimited amount of damage', guess which I would choose?
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Mar 18, 2013 15:43
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Dire Human posted:I'm reading through the playtest document, and I just got to the Rogue, and I just want to ask these guys... Don't sully my elfgame with your numbers. Rolling more dice is always more fun. Always.
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Mar 21, 2013 21:26
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So I had a crazy idea - maybe it warrants its own thread, maybe it doesn't. Do we think we could design a class using Next's language that is fun to play? I'm not asking this in the spirit of, "Well, if you don't like it, why don't you do better!" More, "If we can do it, than people who get paid actual money for our nerd dream job should be able to do it." That would be a fun contest.
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Mar 22, 2013 16:24
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Jimbozig posted:I think that they already have classes that are fun to play. The ones that aren't are only a couple of easy tweaks from being fun to play. I feel like while Next is broken and crappy, the judgement is only as harsh as it is because it would be so easy to fix. They are starting from a system proven to be fun and managing to fix some of the broken spots while breaking other spots - they are so close to getting it right sometimes. It seems like they think of the solution to a problem and then just go with their first idea instead of evaluating it for possible consequences or weighing it against the rest of the game. Well I mean, in that case, would it be possible to present the class with all of its tweaks and stuff? I just think it would be an interesting exercise. Hell, if classes are just a tweak or two away, that means it would also be easy.
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Mar 22, 2013 16:30
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Halloween Jack posted:What do you mean by "Next's language?" I just mean using features Next actually uses and trying not to deviate too much from the format they use for their classes. Play with Advantage/Disadvantage, the Skill Die, Ability Checks and so forth. Write it so that if you held it up alongside another Next class, it would be recognizable as something you might play in Next. Edit: I hear you on the 'Do Things' problem of Feats. Particularly when/if those Feats exist next to other Feats that add static modifiers to things. Do I take a Feat that actually lets me steal things as a Thief, or do I take one that gives me +1 KiloMans? Mendrian fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Mar 22, 2013 |
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Mar 22, 2013 17:18
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Rolls exist to add a random possibility of success/failure where fiat would do instead. Fiat is usually determined by the person running the game, though some systems have a sort of "player fiat" as well. I enjoy skill systems that allow a random possibility of persuasion. A big part of roleplaying for me (as a DM) is seeing how the game unfolds; the story doesn't exist, to me, outside of an outline until the game is actually played. By giving players a chance of narrative control, I get to enjoy the game more. I'm frequently surprised by the events that happen and I enjoy integrating them into the game. If you can convince an Orc warlord to take off his armor, it's fun for me to figure out why he would agree to do that.
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Mar 22, 2013 18:02
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 02:01 |
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Jimbozig posted:That's simply not the way I wanted the conversations to go, but that's exactly the way they were going. With my group, we HAVE to roleplay them out naturally and then call for rolls when appropriate or else we end up with the above. Maybe your group is okay with that, or maybe your group roleplays out the conversations without any prompting. I wasn't okay with how the situations went in my game and so I made the decision to change it while still maintaining the efficacy of social skills. Ahhh I can totally see that. Yeah it varies a lot by the group I've been in. Some groups just want to roleplay, while others don't. Thankfully I've never been in a mixed group. Usually we found that best way to handle it was to figure out what a player wanted to say and then allow them to roll it. 4e has a real problem during any skill situation where the solution tends to be (Find Highest Rated Skill) - > (Roll Highest Rated Skill). Forcing someone to at least articulate what they want to say first is illustrative of how goofy their methodology actually is. I've played with people who applied a similar methodology to exploration, but I found that substantially less enjoyable. 4e already handles Perception in a fairly binary pass/fail way and encourages maxing out Passive Perception by 1 and exactly 1 member of the party. Honestly finding a solution to that particular problem is something I'd like to see addressed; there's virtually no point in having hidden things in 4e, but at the same time I don't like the oldschool BS way of handling it either.
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Mar 22, 2013 18:40
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