Anything more streamlined or dumbed down is a breaking point for me. Something that's fast approaching with the way magic like attacks instead of spells...
No offense, but this seems like a strange hill to die on. Magic like attacks instead of spells is too streamlined or dumbed down? It's pretty much the same thing, aside from Counterspell (not) being applicable.
Hmm lets see, "Something that's fast approaching with the way magic like attacks instead of spells... "
Why would that be a problem? Lets get rid of those pesky saving throws and just have one stat to resist magic. It would streamline it right, make it faster right? Do you really need all those stats now as well, lets just cut them down to three and be done with it. Why need HP's, just have hit boxes, you get one box for each level. Imagine how much faster and boring combat can be made so now the game is about the story tellers not the gamers. I'm just going down the merry path of going through someone who isn't a gamer but wants to be a writer running game development to simplify the game.
Anything more streamlined or dumbed down is a breaking point for me. Something that's fast approaching with the way magic like attacks instead of spells...
No offense, but this seems like a strange hill to die on. Magic like attacks instead of spells is too streamlined or dumbed down? It's pretty much the same thing, aside from Counterspell (not) being applicable.
Hmm lets see, "Something that's fast approaching with the way magic like attacks instead of spells... "
Why would that be a problem? Lets get rid of those pesky saving throws and just have one stat to resist magic. It would streamline it right, make it faster right? Do you really need all those stats now as well, lets just cut them down to three and be done with it. Why need HP's, just have hit boxes, you get one box for each level. Imagine how much faster and boring combat can be made so now the game is about the story tellers not the gamers. I'm just going down the merry path of going through someone who isn't a gamer but wants to be a writer running game development to simplify the game.
Did you cast Grease on your second paragraph? Because that slope seems pretty slippery
Anything more streamlined or dumbed down is a breaking point for me. Something that's fast approaching with the way magic like attacks instead of spells...
No offense, but this seems like a strange hill to die on. Magic like attacks instead of spells is too streamlined or dumbed down? It's pretty much the same thing, aside from Counterspell (not) being applicable.
Hmm lets see, "Something that's fast approaching with the way magic like attacks instead of spells... "
Why would that be a problem? Lets get rid of those pesky saving throws and just have one stat to resist magic. It would streamline it right, make it faster right? Do you really need all those stats now as well, lets just cut them down to three and be done with it. Why need HP's, just have hit boxes, you get one box for each level. Imagine how much faster and boring combat can be made so now the game is about the story tellers not the gamers. I'm just going down the merry path of going through someone who isn't a gamer but wants to be a writer running game development to simplify the game.
This might have made sense if spell-like abilities actually were a dumbed-dwn version of "real" spells, but again - they're not. Can't be a slippery slope if it's not a slope to begin with.
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Every single franchise I have ever grown up with has changed immeasurably since I've first encountered them:
Lord of the Rings went from being a book series to the reason the fantasy genre became popular in hollywood on a blockbuster scale
Star Wars was completely bought by Disney, had its entire expanded universe officially wiped out and was retconned to hell and back
Final Fantasy has had 15 main franchise entries, and don't get me started on how many games FF7 has had in its storyline.
Fast and Furious went from being a movie about 10 second cars to a global literal world hopping franchise that prides itself on not just jumping the shark, but how many sharks it can jump in a single entry.
These are just notable examples. When it comes to D&D, I'm not surprised the way it's being presented is changed. The way we consume media in the last 20 years has changed drastically, and it's only been emphasized even more in the last 10. I'm setting this table because its related to my perception on how this game is changing.
When we speak to how some professional produced versions of D&D, be it Black Dice Society (3 hours), Strixhaven Chaos(2 hours), Rivals of Waterdeep(2 hours), most of them are just that. They are professional produced, and because of that when you look at shorter sessions its important to call out that those are professional. They don't have table arguments, long bouts of rules lawyering, etc etc.
That being said, I do see the game getting shorter and that isn't exactly a bad thing. Our perception of time as a society has changed. I don't have to make plans with 6 people who also need to make said plans to have a good night out. The internet exists, and is widely accessible. A fountain of content is infinitely accessible and because of that the perception of how D&D should run IS going to change.
How am I hoping that works with 5th? I want more cohesive content. If things can be tightened up a bit to make it easier for the DM to figure out and the players to manage? I'm for that, and that's been the design philosophy behind 5th and it's now the philosophy with the changes in the new monster book. Mechanics have changed every edition, and for a long time things got so mechanically dense that managing a character honestly sucked. Don't get me wrong, parts of me miss AD&D 2nd and all of the intricasies of characters and rules, but I don't miss adjudicating that shit. At all. 30 minutes talking through a single rule wasn't fun and it was a waste of other peoples time. Time that was very valuable and limited. If the onus right now on Wizards is trying to bite size some content to try and respect and value my time? I'm down.
Most imporant? If I don't like the changes? **** it, I won't use them. Just like the PHB says to do.
You don't remember Lord of the Rings animation? It came out in the 70's. That was the first time I had ever heard of of it. And then the opera Götterdämmerung/Ring of the Nibelungs which I guess was the inspiration of the Lord of the Rings.
White Hack and Black Hack, two different games with author word play going on there are probably as stream lined as you can while saying "you're playing D&D". They're slick and fun.
To the start of this thread let's remember Jeremy Crawford's role in these interviews is to say "Yes and..." as part of keeping 5e central to "big tent" they believe D&D can accomodate, so a big cause behind that comment is to engender good will among the live play audiences by claiming "D&D is designed with you in mind too." Live play isn't the end all and be all impetus for designing adventures (and possibly mechanics) to accomodate shorter sessions.
On a more personal note, as someone who played long six hour + sessions back in the day, but largely limit my games to 2 hours (actually 1 hour and 48 minutes last night) these days ... I don't think I've changed things all that much. I've never liked ending a session in the midst of something without some sort of punctuation with dramatic heft. Consequently I'd always deviate from script creating a "wrap" moment. I'll admit I got a dramatic/narrative flair and that capacity has a chicken and egg relationship with my TTRPG experience but it's definitely a campacity most DM GMs "so can you!"
I know my fair share of creatives. On the writing front some folks think of themselves as "novelists" other short fiction writers. I know journalists who write books, others who do "long form" and others who are better doing newspaper articles. But among those specialists there are folks who are a bit more versatile or maybe "master of none" but get it done in the good clean fun department. D&D is full of folks who like things defined and defining things. My preference is to be aware of these catagories and be very comfortable floating between them. When I'm running or (rarely) playing the payoff still feels the same way.
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Crawford's comments quoted in the OP are clearly about the possibility and potential plans to the effect of making it more convenient to play D&D in shorter sessions. Note that he did not say anything at all about how that might be done. He used the term "bite-sized" as an obvious buzz word but didn't say bite-sized what. Presumably, bite-sized sessions in the range of one or two hours instead of the more traditional three or four hour sessions he also mentioned. Taken as is, entirely based on a straight reading of that quote, it's just a corporate spokesman saying that his company is working on making their product more marketable while actually promising nothing. That being said, I see two ways that WotC could go for making D&D more friendly to the "bite-sized" session length idea.
1: Published Adventure/Module Design. My guess is this is the main thing Crawford is hinting at. It goes hand in hand with the entire idea of conserving time in general because one way a lot of people do exactly that is buy prewritten adventures instead of spending hours coming up with their own original plots, villains, NPCs, monsters, etc and then organizing all of those things into a format that they can run a game from (be that handwritten notes in a three ring binder or maps, tokens, and stat blocks for a VTT, or however else it's being done). If you want to make those adventures more suitable to shorter sessions you just write them in more episodic sections by making all of the parts less individually complex.
The RP focused royal ball/dinner/wedding/etc with eight significant NPCs to interact with, each having their own information to divulge and subplots to dangle in front of the party, gets cut out in favor of a number of separate encounters each involving only one or two of those eight NPCs and the party can go through them over the course of multiple sessions, possibly doing something else entirely in between (like fighting off some assassins sent after them by the villain or some other short combat encounter to mix a bit of action into the session). You still have all of the same information, characters, and general content as the big social event but it's not presented in a way that will take several hours to fully explore, develop, and exploit in one go while all those threads are in the same place.
I will point out that social RP portions of any game and the time spent on them vary wildly between gaming groups. Some groups might want to just abstract everything by rolling a few social skill checks until they get the required number of successes to have the DM just flat out tell them what they need to know to progress the story. Others will want to spend an hour trying to chat up and seduce as many waiters/waitresses as they can for quickies in the pantry instead of talking to the Royal Vizier and the foreign merchant who actually have plot relevance. But the writers can at least present the material in smaller and more isolated, distinct encounters that can be theoretically played through in smaller spaces of time.
Combat encounters get the same treatment. Instead of one big fight against the Big Bad and their three miniboss lieutenants in a lair full of complex terrain and hazards you get each of those lieutenants separately, each with a few weaker henchmen and maybe one or two lair-esque features or hazards to on the battlefield that are different with each one to keep things from feeling repetitive before finally taking on the final boss who is fleshed out mechanically with legendary and lair actions. By this approach, much like with the social RP example, you keep the flavor and lore of fighting those same significant enemies but you do so in four separate encounters that individually take up less time to play out instead of one big epic battle that could easily take several hours to resolve from start to finish.
2: Further streamline the rules. I'm going to say I don't like this option and don't think it is even possible without losing the feel of being Dungeons and Dragons. This would pretty much only affect combat as that's where most of the chonky rules are and where players are actively using rules at all. Very little time is spent rolling dice and considering the results of those rolls in a discussion with an NPC; at most you make a Persuasion/Deception/Intimidate check and the DM either already has a DC ready or rolls an opposed insight check or such and that's the extent of rules mechanics involved.
Combat has a lot of dice rolling going on. Pretty much everything any participant in a combat outside of basic movement, PC or otherwise, involves rolling dice and adding or subtracting something to the result then comparing it against a target AC/DC/etc and then you're often rolling damage and somebody has to note that, either PCs on their character sheets or the DM on their monster notes. And you have to do each of these things one at a time because the DM is adjudicating them all and also has to be aware of everything in order to keep it all coherent.
I will now make my self-obligatory point of noting that this generally goes a lot faster if everyone involved learns the damn rules in the first place instead of stopping everything while they either look up what an ability that they've had on their sheet for the past four sessions does or get the DM to explain how each of their available spells works until they decide on one to cast. There are eight pages of rules in the Player's Handbook on how ability scores work and ten on combat, plus another six for spellcasting. That's maybe an hour's worth of reading for most people, especially considering a good deal of the dead tree real estate is taken up by pictures to make the book look pretty, and that's still no more time than one of our notional "bite-sized" sessions. Investing that hour, maybe two to make sure you actually understand it, shouldn't be that big an ask to make every single subsequent session go so much smoother and faster.
Side rant aside, 5e rules are already very simplified and streamlined compared to previous editions of Dungeons and Dragons. Basing pretty much all D20 rolls around the Proficiency Bonus rather than separately calculated, class and individual character specific modifiers for attacks, saving throws, and ability/skill checks is a lot easier to both teach to new players and actually use in practice. As the current rules are any further streamlining will mean removing character options. So if you want to "streamline" the combat rules to be super simple and fast you can expect an experience much like the old "Kung Fu" game on an Atari 1600 where you just walk in a straight line and punch a single button to randomly punch or kick an enemy with the dice representing whether or not you press up or down fast enough to duck under or jump over their attacks. Confused by the different kinds of area of effects for spells? All spells now only affect a single target and to save time measuring distance they only work if the target is right next to you and you flip a coin to see if it works or not instead of an attack roll or saving throw. There, magic in combat is super fast and easy. It also feels a lot less "magical" and fun but, hey, now you don't have to spend five minutes waiting for the guy that's been playing a wizard for three months to decide which spell he wants to cast because they're all the same and he doesn't have to look up how burning hands works for the actual twenty-ninth time. You want to use a spell to make the stairs slick then push the assassin down them? Sorry, that's too complex an action for simplified rules, you can flip a coin to magic them or you can flip a coin to sword them. The fight is now over in two minutes instead of a half hour!
I really, just really, don't understand the whole flaming fracas hullaballoo over magical actions instead of spells. A magical action for "this is the critter's basic attack option. If you don't have a better move, use this" is not dumbing down the game, it's allowing monster designers a whole lot more freedom to make good monsters. And frankly Counterspell is such an absolutely godawful toxic game-souringly bad idea anyways that anything which reduces its omniprevalence is a good thing.
It's like...spellcasters are still spellcasters? Good DMs don't bother tracking spell slots or the like anyways. You just turn the spellcaster into a critter stat block, give them a basic attack option that resembles whichever their basic cantrip is, give them their big bazooka AoE blast or their horrifying single-target SupahStab on a Recharge counter like a dragon's breath weapon, maybe give them an alternate spell action or two to drive home their theme, and then turn 'em loose. Outside of combat they can cast whatever spells make sense for them to cast whenever it makes sense for them to do it.
The only - and let me repeat this repeatedly for emphasis: only only only only only only only only only only only only only ONLY ONLY - things in the whole ass entire game that need to use the PC rules are PCs. Spell slots are for PCs. NPCs don't need them, don't get them, and have no use for them. The list of PC spells is for PCs. NPCs can cast whatever the DM blurdy well needs them to cast, and if players are all "the hell spell was that?! How do we learn that spell?!", then congratulations - you have a new adventure seed!
The system is better, not worse, the more people realize that NPCs do not use the same rules as PCs and have never needed to.
Really? Good DM's? well okay then. Good to know I'm not one. You can ignore me from now on.
I really, just really, don't understand the whole flaming fracas hullaballoo over magical actions instead of spells. A magical action for "this is the critter's basic attack option. If you don't have a better move, use this" is not dumbing down the game, it's allowing monster designers a whole lot more freedom to make good monsters. And frankly Counterspell is such an absolutely godawful toxic game-souringly bad idea anyways that anything which reduces its omniprevalence is a good thing.
It's like...spellcasters are still spellcasters? Good DMs don't bother tracking spell slots or the like anyways. You just turn the spellcaster into a critter stat block, give them a basic attack option that resembles whichever their basic cantrip is, give them their big bazooka AoE blast or their horrifying single-target SupahStab on a Recharge counter like a dragon's breath weapon, maybe give them an alternate spell action or two to drive home their theme, and then turn 'em loose. Outside of combat they can cast whatever spells make sense for them to cast whenever it makes sense for them to do it.
The only - and let me repeat this repeatedly for emphasis: only only only only only only only only only only only only only ONLY ONLY - things in the whole ass entire game that need to use the PC rules are PCs. Spell slots are for PCs. NPCs don't need them, don't get them, and have no use for them. The list of PC spells is for PCs. NPCs can cast whatever the DM blurdy well needs them to cast, and if players are all "the hell spell was that?! How do we learn that spell?!", then congratulations - you have a new adventure seed!
The system is better, not worse, the more people realize that NPCs do not use the same rules as PCs and have never needed to.
Yurei, if NPC's don't have and track spell slots, how do you know when the npc is out of a spell and can't cast it anymore, for purposes of an attrition fight; or are these abilities being limited to a number of times per day or long rest? If their powers are abilities rather than spells, will they still need, focus's that can be knocked away, or verbal and somatic components? Never mind counterspell, will silence be able to disrupt an enemies magical attacks? Will hold-person be able to?
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I feel like you are getting the wrong take away from this. It's not a mutually exclusive thing, being a good Dm and Doing what Yuri said, its simply something that a lot of good dms do to keep the game moving because most players and Dms are moving away from long drawn out combat. If you enjoy the minutia of tracking the exact number of Hp and spell slots a creature has that's great I'm glad you are having fun. I'll be over here with the others who don't like having 3 sessions dedicated to a single combat encounter and keep approximating locations in the theatre of the mind, rounding Hp and treating spell slots the way they treat Ki points for Monk-like monsters (they don't).
I really, just really, don't understand the whole flaming fracas hullaballoo over magical actions instead of spells. A magical action for "this is the critter's basic attack option. If you don't have a better move, use this" is not dumbing down the game, it's allowing monster designers a whole lot more freedom to make good monsters. And frankly Counterspell is such an absolutely godawful toxic game-souringly bad idea anyways that anything which reduces its omniprevalence is a good thing.
It's like...spellcasters are still spellcasters? Good DMs don't bother tracking spell slots or the like anyways. You just turn the spellcaster into a critter stat block, give them a basic attack option that resembles whichever their basic cantrip is, give them their big bazooka AoE blast or their horrifying single-target SupahStab on a Recharge counter like a dragon's breath weapon, maybe give them an alternate spell action or two to drive home their theme, and then turn 'em loose. Outside of combat they can cast whatever spells make sense for them to cast whenever it makes sense for them to do it.
The only - and let me repeat this repeatedly for emphasis: only only only only only only only only only only only only only ONLY ONLY - things in the whole ass entire game that need to use the PC rules are PCs. Spell slots are for PCs. NPCs don't need them, don't get them, and have no use for them. The list of PC spells is for PCs. NPCs can cast whatever the DM blurdy well needs them to cast, and if players are all "the hell spell was that?! How do we learn that spell?!", then congratulations - you have a new adventure seed!
The system is better, not worse, the more people realize that NPCs do not use the same rules as PCs and have never needed to.
Yurei, if NPC's don't have and track spell slots, how do you know when the npc is out of a spell and can't cast it anymore, for purposes of an attrition fight; or are these abilities being limited to a number of times per day or long rest? If their powers are abilities rather than spells, will they still need, focus's that can be knocked away, or verbal and somatic components? Never mind counterspell, will silence be able to disrupt an enemies magical attacks? Will hold-person be able to?
The only way an NPC even has spell slots is if they have PC class levels, and the ones you find in officially published material generally do not. Yurei is suggesting treating all NPCs like any creature with a Monster Manual style stat block, and those, RAW, do not track spell slots. They have a few spells listed with how often they can be used, generally either at will or 1/day. Yurei also suggests giving NPC casters one or two more powerful spells reusable on a die based recharge mechanic like a dragon's breath weapon. His entire argument is that all NPCs should be treated as such to give the DM less things to keep track of and this is in fact how they are presented in official published adventure modules.
I think the answer is variety. D&D should design both 60–90-minute quick games that stand alone or could be a part if wanted of a larger campaign. But they should also continue design and write campaigns that may take 3 hours sessions one a week and 2-3 months to complete. Through in by the way a few every now and then that might last longer.
Quick campaigns that are completed in 1 to 1 1/2 hours
Quick campaigns that are completed in 1 to 1 1/2 hours that may be a part of a larger campaign if wanted
Medium length campaigns that meet once a week for 3 plus hours and may take 2-3 months to complete
A few longer running campaigns for those adventurer's that desire that, maybe 6 plus months
In summary please don't just focus on one particular customer base even if for now that customer base is trending a bit higher right now. To borrow from the Lion King, "It's the Circle of Life!"
Yurei, if NPC's don't have and track spell slots, how do you know when the npc is out of a spell and can't cast it anymore, for purposes of an attrition fight; or are these abilities being limited to a number of times per day or long rest? If their powers are abilities rather than spells, will they still need, focus's that can be knocked away, or verbal and somatic components? Never mind counterspell, will silence be able to disrupt an enemies magical attacks? Will hold-person be able to?
Silence and Hold Person don't always work on spell slot casting, so they're a bit iffy to rely on. But components are pretty easy to add back if they're missing from an NPC the DM would prefer to have them anyway, whether spell slots are used or not. If you want an ability to require gestures or utterances, go for it. Keep in mind that to some extent, exceptions have been made for monster spellcasting already: monsters like Acererak can cast a number of spells at will, aside from others they use slots for; Djinni and Efreeti have a number of at will spells too, and they can cast all their spells without needing material components; plenty of monsters already had magical abilities to begin with, like the Leviathan. None of this is really all that revolutionary.
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I feel like you are getting the wrong take away from this. It's not a mutually exclusive thing, being a good Dm and Doing what Yuri said, its simply something that a lot of good dms do to keep the game moving because most players and Dms are moving away from long drawn out combat. If you enjoy the minutia of tracking the exact number of Hp and spell slots a creature has that's great I'm glad you are having fun. I'll be over here with the others who don't like having 3 sessions dedicated to a single combat encounter and keep approximating locations in the theatre of the mind, rounding Hp and treating spell slots the way they treat Ki points for Monk-like monsters (they don't).
" Good DMs don't bother tracking spell slots or the like anyways."
That's the only thing I needed to know. The people I play with and myself play this because we love the combat. Age range from 28 to 53. So, no, it's not grognards complaining. It's people with a different play style who are fed up being told that they're playing the game wrong. With how the evolution is going, you will get improv theatre, not role playing games. Combat will be an annoying afterthought, just like exploration has already become in this edition. So only the social role play will remain. The exact opposite from where it started. This is now heavily criticized as being one-sided and boring, only focusing on combat was not a good thing. And I agree.
Going full swing in the opposite direction is also a bad thing. Twenty-page backstories at lvl 1 where everyone is the epicentre of the universe is as obnoxious as: me gronk me crush.
I feel like you are getting the wrong take away from this. It's not a mutually exclusive thing, being a good Dm and Doing what Yuri said, its simply something that a lot of good dms do to keep the game moving because most players and Dms are moving away from long drawn out combat. If you enjoy the minutia of tracking the exact number of Hp and spell slots a creature has that's great I'm glad you are having fun. I'll be over here with the others who don't like having 3 sessions dedicated to a single combat encounter and keep approximating locations in the theatre of the mind, rounding Hp and treating spell slots the way they treat Ki points for Monk-like monsters (they don't).
" Good DMs don't bother tracking spell slots or the like anyways."
That's the only thing I needed to know. The people I play with and myself play this because we love the combat. Age range from 28 to 53. So, no, it's not grognards complaining. It's people with a different play style who are fed up being told that they're playing the game wrong. With how the evolution is going, you will get improv theatre, not role playing games. Combat will be an annoying afterthought, just like exploration has already become in this edition. So only the social role play will remain. The exact opposite from where it started. This is now heavily criticized as being one-sided and boring, only focusing on combat was not a good thing. And I agree.
Going full swing in the opposite direction is also a bad thing. Twenty-page backstories at lvl 1 where everyone is the epicentre of the universe is as obnoxious as: me gronk me crush.
And this is where we end up with hyperbole used like a nuke instead of a tactical weapon. I don't mind it per se, in fact I like a nicely illustrative bit of hyperbole from time to time, but when everything gets blown out of proportion on all sides you have to spend more time explaining things aren't as extreme as that than you do discussing the actual arguments.
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" Good DMs don't bother tracking spell slots or the like anyways."
That's the only thing I needed to know. The people I play with and myself play this because we love the combat. Age range from 28 to 53. So, no, it's not grognards complaining. It's people with a different play style who are fed up being told that they're playing the game wrong. With how the evolution is going, you will get improv theatre, not role playing games. Combat will be an annoying afterthought, just like exploration has already become in this edition. So only the social role play will remain. The exact opposite from where it started. This is now heavily criticized as being one-sided and boring, only focusing on combat was not a good thing. And I agree.
Going full swing in the opposite direction is also a bad thing. Twenty-page backstories at lvl 1 where everyone is the epicentre of the universe is as obnoxious as: me gronk me crush.
First, Yurei is very outspoken and she likes to use hyperbole. She also makes excellent points.
Second, coming from a person who plays the mechanics light games like Fate, I really don't see D&D going in this direction at all. Building NPC's fundamentally differently from PC's doesn't mean the game is going to turn into all narrative all the time. I don't want to speak for Yurei, but I honestly don't think she meant to talk about it as good DM's vs bad DM's, but just meant that DM's have their tricks to make playing dozens of NPC's at once easier, one of which is to use the already present stat block format and a recharge mechanic, which are easier to track than spell slots.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
The only way an NPC even has spell slots is if they have PC class levels, and the ones you find in officially published material generally do not.
I agree with the essence of your post, but this part isn't really correct. The Abjurer (Volo's) is a 13th level spellcaster NPC using spell slots, for instance; Acererak from ToA is a 20th level spellcaster with spell slots (as well as a number of at-will leveled spells); there's the Evil Mage from LMoP; Naxene Drathkala from Storm King's Thunder; and so on. Monster stat blocks do track spell slots. There's no absolute need to do that, however.
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Let's say I was creating a boss NPC for a lowish-level adventure - a former wizard corrupted by one too many deals with devils who's now causing the sort of ruckus adventurers can spend a few sessions of delightful roleplaying fun putting a stop to. His stat block might look something like this.
Why would it look like this? Frankly it probably wouldn't, there's already quite a bit going on there, but if it did here's why:
The 'Spellcaster' trait is a reminder to the DM (me, in this instance) that if the players do something to futz with Elias' spellcasting, his non-spell actions that are mimicking spells should also be futzed with. It's unnecessary, since I as a DM am not bound to execute code like a buggy machine but can instead see what the players are doing and adjust accordingly. I know I can do this because I've already done it - a banshee-inspired undead monster I ran against my party back when I tried to make Ghosts of Saltmarsh suck less primarily used life-ripping screams and dread (spoken) curses to assail its foes. When the barbarian grappled it and the cleric dropped Silence on it, I didn't continue using those things just because the machine code didn't say "this monster's stuff is not immune to being silenced." I used my GM brain and decided "yeah, no, they got me good. If it's silenced, its scream and its curses stop working. Can't melt your brain with sound if it can't make sound."
The list of spells on Elias would be more to remind me of the sorts of things he can generally do. How often he does them? Hell if I know. Is he a wizard or a warlock? Yes, and also no. He doesn't have class levels, he's an NPC I'm setting up to get violently murdered by a bunch of wandering war hobos before his soul getsa dragged to hell. Nobody knows or cares what his class levels are. He casts spells that make sense for him to cast, in and out of combat. Maybe he leads off with a Bane against the party before lighting off his Hellfire Blast. Maybe if somebody gets close, he casts "Bestow Curse of Imp Bait", marking the PC for his imp minions to focus on and letting them do extra damage when they hit. I'm the ******* DM, I don't need to stick to the list of sample curses for Bestow Curse. Maybe if he gets Bloodied, he casts Invisibility and tries to run away, sacrificing whichever devils have survived so far. Maybe he busts out a Burning Hands when people get a little too cozy on his bad luck recharging Hellfire Blast, just to remind the players that he's a caster and they should engage accordingly. Who knows? I certainly don't, I'd have to have an actual adventure in front of me to have a clue!
Gave him two different summons to help sell the whole "accursed by devils" thing and tie into the probably-fiend-cult storyline I'm telling, on top of because a single solo spellcaster is a terrible boss fight and everybody knows it so I gave him a way to constantly generate minions. He can summon imps whenever, using the minion rules for our table, to keep the battlefield shifting and cluttered and make sure players can never focus on just Elias, and he also gets a 1/day Bigger Badder Imp as an "ahh, shit" moment for the players.
His main actions are specially named and flavored versions of existing spells that both remind me to put some narrative twang on his abilities and let me do things the typical spell list would not. Elias' Fireball is a Wisdom save, not a Dex save, and it imposes frightened instead of doing above-curve damage because I don't need to instasplode the party. I need to put the fear of Satan into them, have them all "oh **** that's not good!" and get them scattering away from potential Fireball grouping, while also hindering their actions and making it harder for them to clear Elias' minions or damage him again. I like doing stuff like that as a DM, having big-punch stuff linger on the field for a turn or two and disrupt the players' plans more than just MOAR DAMAJ would. Most of my custom critters have ways to hinder the players beyond simply biting new and fascinating holes into them, I like to try and make people have to choose between hitting the angry bitey thing or helping their friends out of a jam.
And then I gave him a throwaway melee weapon for the occasional AoO and because everything needs some kind of mundane, last-resort swipe, and I figured if I was doing it I may as well make it spicy. Probably be a cursed item the players can nab if they really want to, along with the Wand of the War Mage I already factored into his Hellfire Spark.
Tossed this goober off from scratch in...maybe an hour? And some of that was figuring out what to present as a semi-public monster. I'd probably go over it again at least once, make a second pass for SAN checking and to see if he needs all the bitsies I gave him or if there's a better way to do it, but yeah. That'd be how I'd initially rig up a spellcasting boss critter for my party to fux with. No muss with tracking spell slots, no screwing around with specific spell lists, no "this guy is a former wizard turned kinda-warlock so I need to build a 6th-level DDB sheet for him and use that as his boss monster stat block" bullhonky. The block has what I need to write encounters and adventures with the guy und zat est all.
I'm not "throwing away" combat. I'm not de-emphasizing gaming in favor of 'story'. I'm remembering that I'm the ******* DM and the PC rules are for the players, not me. I get to do whatever makes for an interesting, challenging fight and an engaging, fulfilling story, and ideally I do that in ways that minimize the amount of hassle and headache I have to endure because the job sucks enough as it is and keeping track of random unnecessary minutiae doesn't help me run better games.
Designing monsters that make it easier for me to run badass fights does.
I firmly disagree with the point "that good GM's do not track spell slots". If I am playing with a GM that does this I will leave the game if it is in the base rules or is the GM styles. Having said that I agree there are lots of types of games and GM out there and hope everyone can find a game and style that works for everyone.
The problem I have seen in the past when playing (home, Con) and or watching games (game store or Con) when a GM does not state what rules they are using or house rules it causes problems with the players. After a few Con game I have asked the GM how they did this or that and they simply said it needed to happen for my story so it did. In this type of game (IMHO) you are playing in a box that you have the illusion of free action and often your actions only affect things in that box and noting else and you box shrinks or grows depending on what the GM needs to happen.
I do hope that everyone GM's and players find groups that they can play with and enjoy themselves.
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Hmm lets see, "Something that's fast approaching with the way magic like attacks instead of spells... "
Why would that be a problem? Lets get rid of those pesky saving throws and just have one stat to resist magic. It would streamline it right, make it faster right? Do you really need all those stats now as well, lets just cut them down to three and be done with it. Why need HP's, just have hit boxes, you get one box for each level. Imagine how much faster and boring combat can be made so now the game is about the story tellers not the gamers. I'm just going down the merry path of going through someone who isn't a gamer but wants to be a writer running game development to simplify the game.
Did you cast Grease on your second paragraph? Because that slope seems pretty slippery
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This might have made sense if spell-like abilities actually were a dumbed-dwn version of "real" spells, but again - they're not. Can't be a slippery slope if it's not a slope to begin with.
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I only play adventure modules, so it's pretty easy to start and stop playing after the end of every chapter. Adventure modules rule.
Every single franchise I have ever grown up with has changed immeasurably since I've first encountered them:
These are just notable examples. When it comes to D&D, I'm not surprised the way it's being presented is changed. The way we consume media in the last 20 years has changed drastically, and it's only been emphasized even more in the last 10. I'm setting this table because its related to my perception on how this game is changing.
When we speak to how some professional produced versions of D&D, be it Black Dice Society (3 hours), Strixhaven Chaos(2 hours), Rivals of Waterdeep(2 hours), most of them are just that. They are professional produced, and because of that when you look at shorter sessions its important to call out that those are professional. They don't have table arguments, long bouts of rules lawyering, etc etc.
That being said, I do see the game getting shorter and that isn't exactly a bad thing. Our perception of time as a society has changed. I don't have to make plans with 6 people who also need to make said plans to have a good night out. The internet exists, and is widely accessible. A fountain of content is infinitely accessible and because of that the perception of how D&D should run IS going to change.
How am I hoping that works with 5th? I want more cohesive content. If things can be tightened up a bit to make it easier for the DM to figure out and the players to manage? I'm for that, and that's been the design philosophy behind 5th and it's now the philosophy with the changes in the new monster book. Mechanics have changed every edition, and for a long time things got so mechanically dense that managing a character honestly sucked. Don't get me wrong, parts of me miss AD&D 2nd and all of the intricasies of characters and rules, but I don't miss adjudicating that shit. At all. 30 minutes talking through a single rule wasn't fun and it was a waste of other peoples time. Time that was very valuable and limited. If the onus right now on Wizards is trying to bite size some content to try and respect and value my time? I'm down.
Most imporant? If I don't like the changes? **** it, I won't use them. Just like the PHB says to do.
You don't remember Lord of the Rings animation? It came out in the 70's. That was the first time I had ever heard of of it. And then the opera Götterdämmerung/Ring of the Nibelungs which I guess was the inspiration of the Lord of the Rings.
White Hack and Black Hack, two different games with author word play going on there are probably as stream lined as you can while saying "you're playing D&D". They're slick and fun.
To the start of this thread let's remember Jeremy Crawford's role in these interviews is to say "Yes and..." as part of keeping 5e central to "big tent" they believe D&D can accomodate, so a big cause behind that comment is to engender good will among the live play audiences by claiming "D&D is designed with you in mind too." Live play isn't the end all and be all impetus for designing adventures (and possibly mechanics) to accomodate shorter sessions.
On a more personal note, as someone who played long six hour + sessions back in the day, but largely limit my games to 2 hours (actually 1 hour and 48 minutes last night) these days ... I don't think I've changed things all that much. I've never liked ending a session in the midst of something without some sort of punctuation with dramatic heft. Consequently I'd always deviate from script creating a "wrap" moment. I'll admit I got a dramatic/narrative flair and that capacity has a chicken and egg relationship with my TTRPG experience but it's definitely a campacity most DM GMs "so can you!"
I know my fair share of creatives. On the writing front some folks think of themselves as "novelists" other short fiction writers. I know journalists who write books, others who do "long form" and others who are better doing newspaper articles. But among those specialists there are folks who are a bit more versatile or maybe "master of none" but get it done in the good clean fun department. D&D is full of folks who like things defined and defining things. My preference is to be aware of these catagories and be very comfortable floating between them. When I'm running or (rarely) playing the payoff still feels the same way.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Crawford's comments quoted in the OP are clearly about the possibility and potential plans to the effect of making it more convenient to play D&D in shorter sessions. Note that he did not say anything at all about how that might be done. He used the term "bite-sized" as an obvious buzz word but didn't say bite-sized what. Presumably, bite-sized sessions in the range of one or two hours instead of the more traditional three or four hour sessions he also mentioned. Taken as is, entirely based on a straight reading of that quote, it's just a corporate spokesman saying that his company is working on making their product more marketable while actually promising nothing. That being said, I see two ways that WotC could go for making D&D more friendly to the "bite-sized" session length idea.
1: Published Adventure/Module Design.
My guess is this is the main thing Crawford is hinting at. It goes hand in hand with the entire idea of conserving time in general because one way a lot of people do exactly that is buy prewritten adventures instead of spending hours coming up with their own original plots, villains, NPCs, monsters, etc and then organizing all of those things into a format that they can run a game from (be that handwritten notes in a three ring binder or maps, tokens, and stat blocks for a VTT, or however else it's being done). If you want to make those adventures more suitable to shorter sessions you just write them in more episodic sections by making all of the parts less individually complex.
The RP focused royal ball/dinner/wedding/etc with eight significant NPCs to interact with, each having their own information to divulge and subplots to dangle in front of the party, gets cut out in favor of a number of separate encounters each involving only one or two of those eight NPCs and the party can go through them over the course of multiple sessions, possibly doing something else entirely in between (like fighting off some assassins sent after them by the villain or some other short combat encounter to mix a bit of action into the session). You still have all of the same information, characters, and general content as the big social event but it's not presented in a way that will take several hours to fully explore, develop, and exploit in one go while all those threads are in the same place.
I will point out that social RP portions of any game and the time spent on them vary wildly between gaming groups. Some groups might want to just abstract everything by rolling a few social skill checks until they get the required number of successes to have the DM just flat out tell them what they need to know to progress the story. Others will want to spend an hour trying to chat up and seduce as many waiters/waitresses as they can for quickies in the pantry instead of talking to the Royal Vizier and the foreign merchant who actually have plot relevance. But the writers can at least present the material in smaller and more isolated, distinct encounters that can be theoretically played through in smaller spaces of time.
Combat encounters get the same treatment. Instead of one big fight against the Big Bad and their three miniboss lieutenants in a lair full of complex terrain and hazards you get each of those lieutenants separately, each with a few weaker henchmen and maybe one or two lair-esque features or hazards to on the battlefield that are different with each one to keep things from feeling repetitive before finally taking on the final boss who is fleshed out mechanically with legendary and lair actions. By this approach, much like with the social RP example, you keep the flavor and lore of fighting those same significant enemies but you do so in four separate encounters that individually take up less time to play out instead of one big epic battle that could easily take several hours to resolve from start to finish.
2: Further streamline the rules.
I'm going to say I don't like this option and don't think it is even possible without losing the feel of being Dungeons and Dragons. This would pretty much only affect combat as that's where most of the chonky rules are and where players are actively using rules at all. Very little time is spent rolling dice and considering the results of those rolls in a discussion with an NPC; at most you make a Persuasion/Deception/Intimidate check and the DM either already has a DC ready or rolls an opposed insight check or such and that's the extent of rules mechanics involved.
Combat has a lot of dice rolling going on. Pretty much everything any participant in a combat outside of basic movement, PC or otherwise, involves rolling dice and adding or subtracting something to the result then comparing it against a target AC/DC/etc and then you're often rolling damage and somebody has to note that, either PCs on their character sheets or the DM on their monster notes. And you have to do each of these things one at a time because the DM is adjudicating them all and also has to be aware of everything in order to keep it all coherent.
I will now make my self-obligatory point of noting that this generally goes a lot faster if everyone involved learns the damn rules in the first place instead of stopping everything while they either look up what an ability that they've had on their sheet for the past four sessions does or get the DM to explain how each of their available spells works until they decide on one to cast. There are eight pages of rules in the Player's Handbook on how ability scores work and ten on combat, plus another six for spellcasting. That's maybe an hour's worth of reading for most people, especially considering a good deal of the dead tree real estate is taken up by pictures to make the book look pretty, and that's still no more time than one of our notional "bite-sized" sessions. Investing that hour, maybe two to make sure you actually understand it, shouldn't be that big an ask to make every single subsequent session go so much smoother and faster.
Side rant aside, 5e rules are already very simplified and streamlined compared to previous editions of Dungeons and Dragons. Basing pretty much all D20 rolls around the Proficiency Bonus rather than separately calculated, class and individual character specific modifiers for attacks, saving throws, and ability/skill checks is a lot easier to both teach to new players and actually use in practice. As the current rules are any further streamlining will mean removing character options. So if you want to "streamline" the combat rules to be super simple and fast you can expect an experience much like the old "Kung Fu" game on an Atari 1600 where you just walk in a straight line and punch a single button to randomly punch or kick an enemy with the dice representing whether or not you press up or down fast enough to duck under or jump over their attacks. Confused by the different kinds of area of effects for spells? All spells now only affect a single target and to save time measuring distance they only work if the target is right next to you and you flip a coin to see if it works or not instead of an attack roll or saving throw. There, magic in combat is super fast and easy. It also feels a lot less "magical" and fun but, hey, now you don't have to spend five minutes waiting for the guy that's been playing a wizard for three months to decide which spell he wants to cast because they're all the same and he doesn't have to look up how burning hands works for the actual twenty-ninth time. You want to use a spell to make the stairs slick then push the assassin down them? Sorry, that's too complex an action for simplified rules, you can flip a coin to magic them or you can flip a coin to sword them. The fight is now over in two minutes instead of a half hour!
Really? Good DM's? well okay then. Good to know I'm not one. You can ignore me from now on.
Yurei, if NPC's don't have and track spell slots, how do you know when the npc is out of a spell and can't cast it anymore, for purposes of an attrition fight; or are these abilities being limited to a number of times per day or long rest? If their powers are abilities rather than spells, will they still need, focus's that can be knocked away, or verbal and somatic components? Never mind counterspell, will silence be able to disrupt an enemies magical attacks? Will hold-person be able to?
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
I feel like you are getting the wrong take away from this. It's not a mutually exclusive thing, being a good Dm and Doing what Yuri said, its simply something that a lot of good dms do to keep the game moving because most players and Dms are moving away from long drawn out combat. If you enjoy the minutia of tracking the exact number of Hp and spell slots a creature has that's great I'm glad you are having fun. I'll be over here with the others who don't like having 3 sessions dedicated to a single combat encounter and keep approximating locations in the theatre of the mind, rounding Hp and treating spell slots the way they treat Ki points for Monk-like monsters (they don't).
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"Play the game however you want to play the game. After all, your fun doesn't threaten my fun."
The only way an NPC even has spell slots is if they have PC class levels, and the ones you find in officially published material generally do not. Yurei is suggesting treating all NPCs like any creature with a Monster Manual style stat block, and those, RAW, do not track spell slots. They have a few spells listed with how often they can be used, generally either at will or 1/day. Yurei also suggests giving NPC casters one or two more powerful spells reusable on a die based recharge mechanic like a dragon's breath weapon. His entire argument is that all NPCs should be treated as such to give the DM less things to keep track of and this is in fact how they are presented in official published adventure modules.
I think the answer is variety. D&D should design both 60–90-minute quick games that stand alone or could be a part if wanted of a larger campaign. But they should also continue design and write campaigns that may take 3 hours sessions one a week and 2-3 months to complete. Through in by the way a few every now and then that might last longer.
In summary please don't just focus on one particular customer base even if for now that customer base is trending a bit higher right now. To borrow from the Lion King, "It's the Circle of Life!"
Fizikal
For the King!
Silence and Hold Person don't always work on spell slot casting, so they're a bit iffy to rely on. But components are pretty easy to add back if they're missing from an NPC the DM would prefer to have them anyway, whether spell slots are used or not. If you want an ability to require gestures or utterances, go for it. Keep in mind that to some extent, exceptions have been made for monster spellcasting already: monsters like Acererak can cast a number of spells at will, aside from others they use slots for; Djinni and Efreeti have a number of at will spells too, and they can cast all their spells without needing material components; plenty of monsters already had magical abilities to begin with, like the Leviathan. None of this is really all that revolutionary.
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" Good DMs don't bother tracking spell slots or the like anyways."
That's the only thing I needed to know. The people I play with and myself play this because we love the combat. Age range from 28 to 53. So, no, it's not grognards complaining. It's people with a different play style who are fed up being told that they're playing the game wrong. With how the evolution is going, you will get improv theatre, not role playing games. Combat will be an annoying afterthought, just like exploration has already become in this edition. So only the social role play will remain. The exact opposite from where it started. This is now heavily criticized as being one-sided and boring, only focusing on combat was not a good thing. And I agree.
Going full swing in the opposite direction is also a bad thing. Twenty-page backstories at lvl 1 where everyone is the epicentre of the universe is as obnoxious as: me gronk me crush.
And this is where we end up with hyperbole used like a nuke instead of a tactical weapon. I don't mind it per se, in fact I like a nicely illustrative bit of hyperbole from time to time, but when everything gets blown out of proportion on all sides you have to spend more time explaining things aren't as extreme as that than you do discussing the actual arguments.
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First, Yurei is very outspoken and she likes to use hyperbole. She also makes excellent points.
Second, coming from a person who plays the mechanics light games like Fate, I really don't see D&D going in this direction at all. Building NPC's fundamentally differently from PC's doesn't mean the game is going to turn into all narrative all the time. I don't want to speak for Yurei, but I honestly don't think she meant to talk about it as good DM's vs bad DM's, but just meant that DM's have their tricks to make playing dozens of NPC's at once easier, one of which is to use the already present stat block format and a recharge mechanic, which are easier to track than spell slots.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I agree with the essence of your post, but this part isn't really correct. The Abjurer (Volo's) is a 13th level spellcaster NPC using spell slots, for instance; Acererak from ToA is a 20th level spellcaster with spell slots (as well as a number of at-will leveled spells); there's the Evil Mage from LMoP; Naxene Drathkala from Storm King's Thunder; and so on. Monster stat blocks do track spell slots. There's no absolute need to do that, however.
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Let's say I was creating a boss NPC for a lowish-level adventure - a former wizard corrupted by one too many deals with devils who's now causing the sort of ruckus adventurers can spend a few sessions of delightful roleplaying fun putting a stop to. His stat block might look something like this.
Why would it look like this? Frankly it probably wouldn't, there's already quite a bit going on there, but if it did here's why:
The 'Spellcaster' trait is a reminder to the DM (me, in this instance) that if the players do something to futz with Elias' spellcasting, his non-spell actions that are mimicking spells should also be futzed with. It's unnecessary, since I as a DM am not bound to execute code like a buggy machine but can instead see what the players are doing and adjust accordingly. I know I can do this because I've already done it - a banshee-inspired undead monster I ran against my party back when I tried to make Ghosts of Saltmarsh suck less primarily used life-ripping screams and dread (spoken) curses to assail its foes. When the barbarian grappled it and the cleric dropped Silence on it, I didn't continue using those things just because the machine code didn't say "this monster's stuff is not immune to being silenced." I used my GM brain and decided "yeah, no, they got me good. If it's silenced, its scream and its curses stop working. Can't melt your brain with sound if it can't make sound."
The list of spells on Elias would be more to remind me of the sorts of things he can generally do. How often he does them? Hell if I know. Is he a wizard or a warlock? Yes, and also no. He doesn't have class levels, he's an NPC I'm setting up to get violently murdered by a bunch of wandering war hobos before his soul getsa dragged to hell. Nobody knows or cares what his class levels are. He casts spells that make sense for him to cast, in and out of combat. Maybe he leads off with a Bane against the party before lighting off his Hellfire Blast. Maybe if somebody gets close, he casts "Bestow Curse of Imp Bait", marking the PC for his imp minions to focus on and letting them do extra damage when they hit. I'm the ******* DM, I don't need to stick to the list of sample curses for Bestow Curse. Maybe if he gets Bloodied, he casts Invisibility and tries to run away, sacrificing whichever devils have survived so far. Maybe he busts out a Burning Hands when people get a little too cozy on his bad luck recharging Hellfire Blast, just to remind the players that he's a caster and they should engage accordingly. Who knows? I certainly don't, I'd have to have an actual adventure in front of me to have a clue!
Gave him two different summons to help sell the whole "accursed by devils" thing and tie into the probably-fiend-cult storyline I'm telling, on top of because a single solo spellcaster is a terrible boss fight and everybody knows it so I gave him a way to constantly generate minions. He can summon imps whenever, using the minion rules for our table, to keep the battlefield shifting and cluttered and make sure players can never focus on just Elias, and he also gets a 1/day Bigger Badder Imp as an "ahh, shit" moment for the players.
His main actions are specially named and flavored versions of existing spells that both remind me to put some narrative twang on his abilities and let me do things the typical spell list would not. Elias' Fireball is a Wisdom save, not a Dex save, and it imposes frightened instead of doing above-curve damage because I don't need to instasplode the party. I need to put the fear of Satan into them, have them all "oh **** that's not good!" and get them scattering away from potential Fireball grouping, while also hindering their actions and making it harder for them to clear Elias' minions or damage him again. I like doing stuff like that as a DM, having big-punch stuff linger on the field for a turn or two and disrupt the players' plans more than just MOAR DAMAJ would. Most of my custom critters have ways to hinder the players beyond simply biting new and fascinating holes into them, I like to try and make people have to choose between hitting the angry bitey thing or helping their friends out of a jam.
And then I gave him a throwaway melee weapon for the occasional AoO and because everything needs some kind of mundane, last-resort swipe, and I figured if I was doing it I may as well make it spicy. Probably be a cursed item the players can nab if they really want to, along with the Wand of the War Mage I already factored into his Hellfire Spark.
Tossed this goober off from scratch in...maybe an hour? And some of that was figuring out what to present as a semi-public monster. I'd probably go over it again at least once, make a second pass for SAN checking and to see if he needs all the bitsies I gave him or if there's a better way to do it, but yeah. That'd be how I'd initially rig up a spellcasting boss critter for my party to fux with. No muss with tracking spell slots, no screwing around with specific spell lists, no "this guy is a former wizard turned kinda-warlock so I need to build a 6th-level DDB sheet for him and use that as his boss monster stat block" bullhonky. The block has what I need to write encounters and adventures with the guy und zat est all.
I'm not "throwing away" combat. I'm not de-emphasizing gaming in favor of 'story'. I'm remembering that I'm the ******* DM and the PC rules are for the players, not me. I get to do whatever makes for an interesting, challenging fight and an engaging, fulfilling story, and ideally I do that in ways that minimize the amount of hassle and headache I have to endure because the job sucks enough as it is and keeping track of random unnecessary minutiae doesn't help me run better games.
Designing monsters that make it easier for me to run badass fights does.
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I firmly disagree with the point "that good GM's do not track spell slots". If I am playing with a GM that does this I will leave the game if it is in the base rules or is the GM styles. Having said that I agree there are lots of types of games and GM out there and hope everyone can find a game and style that works for everyone.
The problem I have seen in the past when playing (home, Con) and or watching games (game store or Con) when a GM does not state what rules they are using or house rules it causes problems with the players. After a few Con game I have asked the GM how they did this or that and they simply said it needed to happen for my story so it did. In this type of game (IMHO) you are playing in a box that you have the illusion of free action and often your actions only affect things in that box and noting else and you box shrinks or grows depending on what the GM needs to happen.
I do hope that everyone GM's and players find groups that they can play with and enjoy themselves.