So I came into DnD late in life, partly because when I first got into TTPG's in the mid 90's it was games like L5R, the World of Darkness, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Cyberpunk. games where combat was brutal and so it pushed you into the Roleplay heavy aspects. DnD was looked down upon by everyone I knew as a one dimensional game where you crawl through a linear dungeon, then go to a shop, then crawl through the next linear dungeon, so we didn't even bother trying the system out. At uni I then got into LARPING, going off for full weekends and being in character from friday to sunday, or meeting down the pub for a game of Vampire. So the Theartre aspect of roleplay games has always been present for me.
As a result when I finally ran 5E (after work colleagues wanted a DM, knew I was experienced, and wanted to play DnD) all that experiance I had of running RP heavy games continued. Then I found critical role etc and was interested in the approach they where taking and how it mirrored the way I have always played, only with DnD a game that for years I was told couldn't be RP heavy.
I have no issues with DnD being a combat sim, the problem is that it tries to sell itself off of those roleplay heavy online sessions and the fact is that the rules are not setup to do that out of the box. It relies on players roleplaying what there character can and can't do, on them choosing not to try and hide the camp because "my city based cleric would have no idea even though I have survival, that is all city based at this early level", now, the game allows for that, but, if you are brand new you won;t have any clue that is an option, or something you can maybe try and do, no, I have survival, so even though I have never been out of the city once, I can absolutley make and hide a campsite and follow those tracks, and make a rabbit trap to get food.
So I don't disagree, I am an experienced 20+ yr DM so I have the tools to approach the game this way, but if I was brand new coming in then I would not know that these where possibilities, that is my fear, that in 10 years time the majority of DnD players and DM's will be playing the game the way it is in the book because they don't know any better. It will have become more and more generic, and the materials made for it will also flow that way because that is the players Wizards has got because of it's new system. There is nothing here that is even remotely risky, or innovative, or new. Nothing that makes us go, wait, that's different. As another poster answered it is all just Beige, lots and lots of Beige, and beige is good, if you have the ability and skill to know how to accentuate it, how to use colour and accesseries to make it better. But, if you don't then you will think that Beige is what is normal.
If any argument for or against a system starts "an experienced DM/Player will be able to work around this" then the system is fundamentally flawed from the outset. It is asking for a someone new to understand an inherent truth that is not defined in the books.
Yeah, to a degree I think that is probably true but you have to remember that most people who learn about D&D today don't learn to play from books anyway. Meaning they learn the rules, but "what is D&D, how do you play it", that induction to the game is primarily done through social mediums like YouTube where you learn by watching the game being played and I think the examples, debates, instructions and information available online is far more robust than anything we ever had in my day. We learned from the books and each other because there were no alternatives (at least us old dudes), but I don't think modern gamers do anymore. The books are more like reference guides... the "how do you play instruction", that comes from online content. I doubt anyone has ever read a players handbook cover to cover (would love to see the poll on that), even less likely with the DMG and that is quite apparent from the types of discussions we have on this forum.
Around here we theory craft and debate the game, but most of these debates are philosophical not practical. People say stuff like "proficiency means this and that", but these things are based on culture and tradition, less the rules. The game is actually quite generic if you read what the book says and many of the things people think are in there based on assumptions and history of the game... actually are not at all.
Still that said I suspect that in the future D&D won't really be seen as part of the RPG community as a game. Its move to digital, its push for online play and its insistence that this is the future of the game is not really supported by any sort of actual movement in the RPG community at large and the overwhelming majority of people do or wish to play at a table. The online space is their as a convenience and placeholder for people that simply don't have the option, I rarely meet the gamer who prefers to play online rather than in person.
I suspect that D&D will be sort of its own entity and the rest of the RPG community will continue to function as it always had, I just don't see any other RPG's following WotC's D&D down this rabbit hole.
If there is any trend in the RPG community right now its setting specific RPG's and I think in big way this is where role-playing as a whole is heading. People don't want to play "generic fantasy RPG", they want to play games that are laser focused on a specific genre, setting, story etc.. At least that is my observation.
We'll see how it shakes out, but If I was a betting man, D&D will continue to become more and more streamlined, generic and designed mechanically to eventually just be a sort of DM control online game that can be replaced with an AI and the design of the rules as they are today makes codifying D&D into a video game very easy. In fact, I have considered starting a micro project like that myself just to test the theory. Can I create a DMless game using 5e rules as written without any adaptation. I think the answer is.. yes I can.
5th edition is still a good pen and paper RPG system. I just think that some core changes going into DnDNext are in a weird state.
1. No one really cares about ability scores, people care about the modifier.
2. Species generally should have some level of difference in ability modifiers. A good example in real life is Homo Sapien vs Neanderthals, where a Neanderthal is built like a brickhouse and can sprint really fast, but Homo Sapiens are more built for long distance running. (Seriously, it is an interesting thing to look up). Humans should have something representing their advantage in long distance running but instead they are in this weird "we are everything and have no physical advantages" thing.
3. The skill system is too limiting. They need to have some kind of secondary skill selection that fills the need for things like specific knowledge skills and other talents. Basically, if they take what they got now and make that the general skill selection, then replace the whole idea of tools to secondary skills and have general categories of secondary skills (Knowledge and Crafting), that would probably shore up most of the weaknesses they have at the moment.
4. Just about every race should have the ability to select an origin feat, not just humans.
In regards to combat and social features of classes, I have felt that these should be completely seperate, by which I mean. That classes should get both combat and social features but when accounting for class balance, the combat features should be balanced separately to the social features of the class. Having both combat and social features balanced together never really worked, for spellcasters, rituals are a powerful form of social feature, since rituals are rarely going to have much combat interaction given their long ritual cast time... meanwhile classes like figther got almost no social features at all, that is slightly improved in 2024 but on the flip side... yeah Ranger. Too much is moved to generic ability checks and classes aren't showing distinctions as well, outside of combat, with the exception of how players role-play them.
It has been a "combat engine" game for a while now.
Specifically, it's been a combat engine since 1974. The RP components of D&D have always been bolted on to a tactical game (TSR stands for Tactical Studies Rules).
Not watched Secrets of Blackmoor ?
Or read any one of Jon Peterson's histories of the game and or of the development of the hobby in general?
Specifically what set table-top role-playing games apart from mere tactical games was the introduction of a referee who would arbitrate for things for which there weren't combat rules because the game's pioneers wanted to play a game that was about more than just combat.
So those who invented the game saw it as a game with which we could do so much more ... but it's just a combat engine?
I gave specific details explaining how the game has increasingly become about combat. Which you notably omitted.
3. The skill system is too limiting. They need to have some kind of secondary skill selection that fills the need for things like specific knowledge skills and other talents. Basically, if they take what they got now and make that the general skill selection, then replace the whole idea of tools to secondary skills and have general categories of secondary skills (Knowledge and Crafting), that would probably shore up most of the weaknesses they have at the moment.
So I agree, having a way to define how good you are at a skill, maybe a level of experience, or have more examples of ways that a players backstory can help shape the benefit skills give in situations.
For instance a Druid who has proficiency in Arcana I may still say can't use arcana for figuring out a very wizard type of magic because they have no experience of it, so roll straight and don't add it.
Or a character with a high survival who has only ever lived at sea suddenly finds themselves in a forest is not going to know how to build a camp and hide it.
This is where you can flavour things much beter and add nuance, the issues are that as ther are no "rules" for this then players may well push back and complain, meaning newer DM's won't try and be creative like this.
Yeah, to a degree I think that is probably true but you have to remember that most people who learn about D&D today don't learn to play from books anyway. Meaning they learn the rules, but "what is D&D, how do you play it", that induction to the game is primarily done through social mediums like YouTube where you learn by watching the game being played and I think the examples, debates, instructions and information available online is far more robust than anything we ever had in my day. We learned from the books and each other because there were no alternatives (at least us old dudes), but I don't think modern gamers do anymore. The books are more like reference guides... the "how do you play instruction", that comes from online content. I doubt anyone has ever read a players handbook cover to cover (would love to see the poll on that), even less likely with the DMG and that is quite apparent from the types of discussions we have on this forum.
Around here we theory craft and debate the game, but most of these debates are philosophical not practical. People say stuff like "proficiency means this and that", but these things are based on culture and tradition, less the rules. The game is actually quite generic if you read what the book says and many of the things people think are in there based on assumptions and history of the game... actually are not at all.
Still that said I suspect that in the future D&D won't really be seen as part of the RPG community as a game. Its move to digital, its push for online play and its insistence that this is the future of the game is not really supported by any sort of actual movement in the RPG community at large and the overwhelming majority of people do or wish to play at a table. The online space is their as a convenience and placeholder for people that simply don't have the option, I rarely meet the gamer who prefers to play online rather than in person.
I suspect that D&D will be sort of its own entity and the rest of the RPG community will continue to function as it always had, I just don't see any other RPG's following WotC's D&D down this rabbit hole.
If there is any trend in the RPG community right now its setting specific RPG's and I think in big way this is where role-playing as a whole is heading. People don't want to play "generic fantasy RPG", they want to play games that are laser focused on a specific genre, setting, story etc.. At least that is my observation.
We'll see how it shakes out, but If I was a betting man, D&D will continue to become more and more streamlined, generic and designed mechanically to eventually just be a sort of DM control online game that can be replaced with an AI and the design of the rules as they are today makes codifying D&D into a video game very easy. In fact, I have considered starting a micro project like that myself just to test the theory. Can I create a DMless game using 5e rules as written without any adaptation. I think the answer is.. yes I can.
I am just starting a new campaign with 4 new players and 2 experienced and none of them watch DnD on you tube, I think the sheer amount of content that is up is putting people off engaging, and, if things go the way I expect then the biggest of them, Critical Role, will be stopping using DnD in 2025. (Daggerheart is in fact one of the systems I intend to try in 2025 as a replacement for my current DnD campaigns)
I do agree that DnD seems to be going down the "single player computer game" format, the comments made about trying to tap into the online gamer market also suggests why they have removed a lot of that nuance from the rules.
I like to Homebrew and create my own worlds now days, it is where I get my fun from, even when running Cyberpunk or World of Darkness I let my players know that my version of that world is very different (in my World of darkness there is a multiverse and different planes and I have come up with a way to traverse them), Although I have. very very large soft spot for Rokugan and the legend of the 5 rings 1st edition version of that world.
It would be good to see more people moving away from DnD on youtube, exposing the viewers to other systems, I think you learn so much more as a DM and player when you immerse yourself in different ways of figuring out success and failure. I see in the new DMG they are trying to introduce partial success and failure mechanics, I actually wish they had devoted more pages to that then bothering with the Greyhawk stuff, it is something that can really add to, and solve, some of the problems of DnD
It would be good to see more people moving away from DnD on youtube, exposing the viewers to other systems, I think you learn so much more as a DM and player when you immerse yourself in different ways of figuring out success and failure. I see in the new DMG they are trying to introduce partial success and failure mechanics, I actually wish they had devoted more pages to that then bothering with the Greyhawk stuff, it is something that can really add to, and solve, some of the problems of DnD
Several of the bigger channels tried that following the OGL fiasco last year and almost all of them later said it had too big an impact on their income. Non-D&D videos were getting a fraction of the views and interactions, even at the point when people were most motivated to try something different, and most have since gone back to just doing D&D or at best setting agnostic advice
The fact is that DnD is similar to other quick start pen and paper games, but has the advantage of an established IP backing it. Call of Cthulu is the other big name on the block because it does what DnD can't really do. It's a system that is easy on DMs and relatively easy on players.
As for tactical combat and the ability to really play a support role correctly, Pathfinder 2e does that way better than DnD even in the new edition. In Pathfinder the primary damage dealers are melee characters and spell casters tend to fall into supporting roles, with a lot of distinct spells that do combat tricks. My favorite one is mislead, which creates an illusory duplicate of yourself and you turn invisible, then can control the duplicate while you maintain concentration.
Certainly I think they have landed on the list of skills, but their usage is so broad, the list itself and the meaning behind them is really quite irrelevant. Meaning, proficiency is not a requirement to be proficient in a sense. This system has effectively reverted to being a ability score test that under certain conditions, you get a proficiency bonus. This means that skills aren't really defined in a narrative context, they are a mechanical bonus. A high intelligence with no arcana skill for example is the same thing as an arcana proficiency with a low intelligence, their is nothing to distinguish these two things.
For example if you have no Arcana skill proficiency but have an 18 Intelligence (+4 bonus), you actually know more about Arcana than a 1st level character with a skill proficiency but lower intelligence, for example a 10 Int with a skill proficiency you would have at 1st level a +2 bonus.
Without governance over usage and specific representation of what proficiency means or how it impacts the narrative, it basically just boil down to a generic ability score roll and its just a question of what bonuses you get (ability score modifier and/or proficiency bonus).
1) As I cited above, you as the DM have the explicit right to gate player rolls based on literally any criteria you want. If you want to make it so the 18 Int character with no Arcana proficiency can't possibly succeed at deciphering Acererak's lab notes because you think that makes more narrative sense, don't ask them to roll - it really is that simple.
2) Proficiencies being broad / inter-applicable is a good thing - that's a feature of the system, not a bug. If one player asks to get past a stuffy official's checkpoint by flashing a forged seal at them, another by magically disguising themselves as a visiting elven dignitary, another by calling in a fake bomb threat, and still another by simply towering over everyone and cracking their knuckles menacingly, the system is flexible enough to accommodate any or all of those approaches - and the DM doesn't have to stop the game to look up the Intimidate table to see what competence bonus the knuckle-cracking PC gets from their strength score or what circumstance bonus they get from their height and species.
I'm not suggesting the system was better whole sale, meaning that I understand that there were issues with the implementation of the design, but I still hold that class-cross class skills as a concept could have been improved and would have given us a better result.
With skills in a class system, in order for the narrative purpose of classes to make sense and for the role of skills to make sense their have to be a couple of things that govern their use.
1. Classes as experts should be a concept included in the game. The Wizard and Sorcerer for example should have an advantage in skills like Arcana over a Barbarian or Rogue. This makes narrative sense and that should be reflected in the mechanics in my opinion. This is a trope, but its one that defines fantasy, in a word, we expect this to be true and so it should be.
2. Skill expertise should have some impact on when a skill can and can't be used. A person who is not trained in survival should not be able to get "lucky" and suddenly, magically know how to be an expert survivalist just because the dice landed in their favor. You either know something or you don't, if you don't you cannot even make the attempt or at the very least the outcome should reflect your expertise.
For example a 10 Int Barbarian with no proficiency should not be able to make an Arcana roll to determine the origins of an Arcane Rune... There is nothing about their class, intelligence level and training that would suggest they know anything about magical runes, but as it is in D&D today, they could roll a 20 effectively be an expert on the subject.. While an 18 Int Wizard with Arcana proficiency might look at a Rune, roll a 1 and be dumbfounded by it.
To me the absence of of addressing that is a real problem as it effectively breaks the suspension of disbelief and disconnects the narrative concepts built into classes and skills.
The 3.5e system certainly had its issues, but there were clear requirements and restrictions that defined the fantasy and while I would certainly make a far more improved and streamlined implementation to get this effect in 5e, abandoning this concept entirely I think was a mistake, its resulted in a very generic and narratively disconnected skill system.
1. So give them ad-hoc advantage, or a lower DC, or even automatic success if they have the right class/background. Baldur's Gate 3 did all of these, and it was pretty intuitive even for complete D&D neophytes.
2. As I said above (yet again) it can. If you want Expertise to gate a certain very difficult roll because it doesn't make sense to you that anyone else can even attempt said roll, do that. 5e makes that sort of thing easy without having to return to 3.5's outdated paradigm.
So those who invented the game saw it as a game with which we could do so much more ... but it's just a combat engine?
The mechanics of D&D are almost entirely a combat engine. This doesn't mean you can't use it for other purposes, people have been using it for other purposes for as long as the hobby existed, but you're largely not using the rules when you do so. 5th edition is not more that way than prior editions.
Certainly I think they have landed on the list of skills, but their usage is so broad, the list itself and the meaning behind them is really quite irrelevant. Meaning, proficiency is not a requirement to be proficient in a sense. This system has effectively reverted to being a ability score test that under certain conditions, you get a proficiency bonus. This means that skills aren't really defined in a narrative context, they are a mechanical bonus. A high intelligence with no arcana skill for example is the same thing as an arcana proficiency with a low intelligence, their is nothing to distinguish these two things.
For example if you have no Arcana skill proficiency but have an 18 Intelligence (+4 bonus), you actually know more about Arcana than a 1st level character with a skill proficiency but lower intelligence, for example a 10 Int with a skill proficiency you would have at 1st level a +2 bonus.
Without governance over usage and specific representation of what proficiency means or how it impacts the narrative, it basically just boil down to a generic ability score roll and its just a question of what bonuses you get (ability score modifier and/or proficiency bonus).
1) As I cited above, you as the DM have the explicit right to gate player rolls based on literally any criteria you want. If you want to make it so the 18 Int character with no Arcana proficiency can't possibly succeed at deciphering Acererak's lab notes because you think that makes more narrative sense, don't ask them to roll - it really is that simple.
2) Proficiencies being broad / inter-applicable is a good thing - that's a feature of the system, not a bug. If one player asks to get past a stuffy official's checkpoint by flashing a forged seal at them, another by magically disguising themselves as a visiting elven dignitary, another by calling in a fake bomb threat, and still another by simply towering over everyone and cracking their knuckles menacingly, the system is flexible enough to accommodate any or all of those approaches - and the DM doesn't have to stop the game to look up the Intimidate table to see what competence bonus the knuckle-cracking PC gets from their strength score or what circumstance bonus they get from their height and species.
I'm not suggesting the system was better whole sale, meaning that I understand that there were issues with the implementation of the design, but I still hold that class-cross class skills as a concept could have been improved and would have given us a better result.
With skills in a class system, in order for the narrative purpose of classes to make sense and for the role of skills to make sense their have to be a couple of things that govern their use.
1. Classes as experts should be a concept included in the game. The Wizard and Sorcerer for example should have an advantage in skills like Arcana over a Barbarian or Rogue. This makes narrative sense and that should be reflected in the mechanics in my opinion. This is a trope, but its one that defines fantasy, in a word, we expect this to be true and so it should be.
2. Skill expertise should have some impact on when a skill can and can't be used. A person who is not trained in survival should not be able to get "lucky" and suddenly, magically know how to be an expert survivalist just because the dice landed in their favor. You either know something or you don't, if you don't you cannot even make the attempt or at the very least the outcome should reflect your expertise.
For example a 10 Int Barbarian with no proficiency should not be able to make an Arcana roll to determine the origins of an Arcane Rune... There is nothing about their class, intelligence level and training that would suggest they know anything about magical runes, but as it is in D&D today, they could roll a 20 effectively be an expert on the subject.. While an 18 Int Wizard with Arcana proficiency might look at a Rune, roll a 1 and be dumbfounded by it.
To me the absence of of addressing that is a real problem as it effectively breaks the suspension of disbelief and disconnects the narrative concepts built into classes and skills.
The 3.5e system certainly had its issues, but there were clear requirements and restrictions that defined the fantasy and while I would certainly make a far more improved and streamlined implementation to get this effect in 5e, abandoning this concept entirely I think was a mistake, its resulted in a very generic and narratively disconnected skill system.
1. So give them ad-hoc advantage, or a lower DC, or even automatic success if they have the right class/background. Baldur's Gate 3 did all of these, and it was pretty intuitive even for complete D&D neophytes.
2. As I said above (yet again) it can. If you want Expertise to gate a certain very difficult roll because it doesn't make sense to you that anyone else can even attempt said roll, do that. 5e makes that sort of thing easy without having to return to 3.5's outdated paradigm.
All true... for experienced DM's. What your asking/saying requires a deeper and more meaningful understanding by the DM as it requires both some consistency and the ability to respond to challenges to this DM fiat authority you are claiming, which is fine for experienced DM's but to assume that a novice DM would derive all that from a reading of the book is a real stretch.
Which is kind of the point, the reality is that most DM's are not going to do this, they are going run the game RAW without this internal interpretation and sort of secret language living between the sheets of D&D based on 50 years of narrative logic.
I get what your saying, and I agree with you, its how I do it... but how do you pass that on to a generation of players that has no point of reference? Would you assume a novice DM would know any of that or come to that interpretative conclusion based on the reading of the rules?
I mean I think one way is to re-emphasize the actual gameplay loop as set down in the books. Make it so that the default action for a DM is to just freeform describe the results of character's actions rather than busting out the dice immediately. If the community gets used to Story First as a priority over mechanics it would work better.
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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!
All true... for experienced DM's. What your asking/saying requires a deeper and more meaningful understanding by the DM as it requires both some consistency and the ability to respond to challenges to this DM fiat authority you are claiming, which is fine for experienced DM's but to assume that a novice DM would derive all that from a reading of the book is a real stretch.
Which is kind of the point, the reality is that most DM's are not going to do this, they are going run the game RAW without this internal interpretation and sort of secret language living between the sheets of D&D based on 50 years of narrative logic.
I get what your saying, and I agree with you, its how I do it... but how do you pass that on to a generation of players that has no point of reference? Would you assume a novice DM would know any of that or come to that interpretative conclusion based on the reading of the rules?
I have serious doubts about that.
"Secret language?" Everything I quoted is right there on the page in plain sight. I don't think you're going to get very far by underestimating players to this extreme degree. Again, Baldurs Gate 3 got literally millions of people who'd never played D&D before to figure this stuff out, and they didn't even HAVE a DM to help them; advantage and autosuccess based on background or class is pretty intuitive stuff. So I find your fearmongering here to be beyond overblown.
All true... for experienced DM's. What your asking/saying requires a deeper and more meaningful understanding by the DM as it requires both some consistency and the ability to respond to challenges to this DM fiat authority you are claiming, which is fine for experienced DM's but to assume that a novice DM would derive all that from a reading of the book is a real stretch.
Honestly, the skills required are not terribly strongly mapped to being "experienced DMs"; there is very little mechanical understanding required to be good at non-combat challenges, because there simply isn't a lot of mechanics to them in the first place. A DM who's been running dungeon crawls for forty years could easily be worse at it than a new DM with some improv experience.
All true... for experienced DM's. What your asking/saying requires a deeper and more meaningful understanding by the DM as it requires both some consistency and the ability to respond to challenges to this DM fiat authority you are claiming, which is fine for experienced DM's but to assume that a novice DM would derive all that from a reading of the book is a real stretch.
Which is kind of the point, the reality is that most DM's are not going to do this, they are going run the game RAW without this internal interpretation and sort of secret language living between the sheets of D&D based on 50 years of narrative logic.
I get what your saying, and I agree with you, its how I do it... but how do you pass that on to a generation of players that has no point of reference? Would you assume a novice DM would know any of that or come to that interpretative conclusion based on the reading of the rules?
I have serious doubts about that.
"Secret language?" Everything I quoted is right there on the page in plain sight. I don't think you're going to get very far by underestimating players to this extreme degree. Again, Baldurs Gate 3 got literally millions of people who'd never played D&D before to figure this stuff out, and they didn't even HAVE a DM to help them; advantage and autosuccess based on background or class is pretty intuitive stuff. So I find your fearmongering here to be beyond overblown.
Sure but every person that played D&D using Baulders Gate 3 was a player, not a DM. I understand that players have an understanding of "do what the DM tells you", but how does the DM know for example when a proficiency would prevent or allow a roll? That is not a rule or instruction, its simply assumed that the DM would "know"...somehow...because for some reason we are making an assumption that its common knowledge to know how to rule the game via DM fiat without any training, knowledge or instructions simply based on text that says "just have fun".
All true... for experienced DM's. What your asking/saying requires a deeper and more meaningful understanding by the DM as it requires both some consistency and the ability to respond to challenges to this DM fiat authority you are claiming, which is fine for experienced DM's but to assume that a novice DM would derive all that from a reading of the book is a real stretch.
Which is kind of the point, the reality is that most DM's are not going to do this, they are going run the game RAW without this internal interpretation and sort of secret language living between the sheets of D&D based on 50 years of narrative logic.
I get what your saying, and I agree with you, its how I do it... but how do you pass that on to a generation of players that has no point of reference? Would you assume a novice DM would know any of that or come to that interpretative conclusion based on the reading of the rules?
I have serious doubts about that.
"Secret language?" Everything I quoted is right there on the page in plain sight. I don't think you're going to get very far by underestimating players to this extreme degree. Again, Baldurs Gate 3 got literally millions of people who'd never played D&D before to figure this stuff out, and they didn't even HAVE a DM to help them; advantage and autosuccess based on background or class is pretty intuitive stuff. So I find your fearmongering here to be beyond overblown.
Sure but every person that played D&D using Baulders Gate 3 was a player, not a DM. I understand that players have an understanding of "do what the DM tells you", but how does the DM know for example when a proficiency would prevent or allow a roll? That is not a rule or instruction, its simply assumed that the DM would "know"...somehow...because for some reason we are making an assumption that its common knowledge to know how to rule the game via DM fiat without any training, knowledge or instructions simply based on text that says "just have fun".
I think you’re underestimating the intelligence of new DMs. I’ve been playing for 4 years, DMing for almost as long, and managed to figure out all of that stuff by reading the books, watching Critical Role and watching YouTube videos on how to DM. As someone said earlier (either here or in the almost identical thread that popped up at the same time) most modern DMs and players aren’t just learning from reading the rule books, they’re not even really coming here as recent forum polls have shown, they’re heading to Reddit, YouTube and Tiktok for how to play
Sure but every person that played D&D using Baulders Gate 3 was a player, not a DM. I understand that players have an understanding of "do what the DM tells you", but how does the DM know for example when a proficiency would prevent or allow a roll?
They make it up. Just like they've done in every edition. There's elements of running non-combat scenes that take learning and practice to do well, but they aren't because of the rules being vague... they're because handling the infinity of things that can happen is hard.
I am a little disappointed by the lack of a class/subclass building system.
Not that I want to make anything new. But I would like a linear and logical system for all that creation. I would like to see the base classes modified to fit any new system that comes up and all subclasses modified to fit the new rules. If WOtC can come up with a publishable system. The DM's and players who want to make a new anything would have something to follow that could be accepted and or moved from game to game.
Its just a chapter I would like to see in the new version.
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So I came into DnD late in life, partly because when I first got into TTPG's in the mid 90's it was games like L5R, the World of Darkness, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Cyberpunk. games where combat was brutal and so it pushed you into the Roleplay heavy aspects. DnD was looked down upon by everyone I knew as a one dimensional game where you crawl through a linear dungeon, then go to a shop, then crawl through the next linear dungeon, so we didn't even bother trying the system out. At uni I then got into LARPING, going off for full weekends and being in character from friday to sunday, or meeting down the pub for a game of Vampire. So the Theartre aspect of roleplay games has always been present for me.
As a result when I finally ran 5E (after work colleagues wanted a DM, knew I was experienced, and wanted to play DnD) all that experiance I had of running RP heavy games continued. Then I found critical role etc and was interested in the approach they where taking and how it mirrored the way I have always played, only with DnD a game that for years I was told couldn't be RP heavy.
I have no issues with DnD being a combat sim, the problem is that it tries to sell itself off of those roleplay heavy online sessions and the fact is that the rules are not setup to do that out of the box. It relies on players roleplaying what there character can and can't do, on them choosing not to try and hide the camp because "my city based cleric would have no idea even though I have survival, that is all city based at this early level", now, the game allows for that, but, if you are brand new you won;t have any clue that is an option, or something you can maybe try and do, no, I have survival, so even though I have never been out of the city once, I can absolutley make and hide a campsite and follow those tracks, and make a rabbit trap to get food.
(this was to me, apparently)
Yes, I quoted the new DMG.
Yeah, to a degree I think that is probably true but you have to remember that most people who learn about D&D today don't learn to play from books anyway. Meaning they learn the rules, but "what is D&D, how do you play it", that induction to the game is primarily done through social mediums like YouTube where you learn by watching the game being played and I think the examples, debates, instructions and information available online is far more robust than anything we ever had in my day. We learned from the books and each other because there were no alternatives (at least us old dudes), but I don't think modern gamers do anymore. The books are more like reference guides... the "how do you play instruction", that comes from online content. I doubt anyone has ever read a players handbook cover to cover (would love to see the poll on that), even less likely with the DMG and that is quite apparent from the types of discussions we have on this forum.
Around here we theory craft and debate the game, but most of these debates are philosophical not practical. People say stuff like "proficiency means this and that", but these things are based on culture and tradition, less the rules. The game is actually quite generic if you read what the book says and many of the things people think are in there based on assumptions and history of the game... actually are not at all.
Still that said I suspect that in the future D&D won't really be seen as part of the RPG community as a game. Its move to digital, its push for online play and its insistence that this is the future of the game is not really supported by any sort of actual movement in the RPG community at large and the overwhelming majority of people do or wish to play at a table. The online space is their as a convenience and placeholder for people that simply don't have the option, I rarely meet the gamer who prefers to play online rather than in person.
I suspect that D&D will be sort of its own entity and the rest of the RPG community will continue to function as it always had, I just don't see any other RPG's following WotC's D&D down this rabbit hole.
If there is any trend in the RPG community right now its setting specific RPG's and I think in big way this is where role-playing as a whole is heading. People don't want to play "generic fantasy RPG", they want to play games that are laser focused on a specific genre, setting, story etc.. At least that is my observation.
We'll see how it shakes out, but If I was a betting man, D&D will continue to become more and more streamlined, generic and designed mechanically to eventually just be a sort of DM control online game that can be replaced with an AI and the design of the rules as they are today makes codifying D&D into a video game very easy. In fact, I have considered starting a micro project like that myself just to test the theory. Can I create a DMless game using 5e rules as written without any adaptation. I think the answer is.. yes I can.
5th edition is still a good pen and paper RPG system. I just think that some core changes going into DnDNext are in a weird state.
1. No one really cares about ability scores, people care about the modifier.
2. Species generally should have some level of difference in ability modifiers. A good example in real life is Homo Sapien vs Neanderthals, where a Neanderthal is built like a brickhouse and can sprint really fast, but Homo Sapiens are more built for long distance running. (Seriously, it is an interesting thing to look up). Humans should have something representing their advantage in long distance running but instead they are in this weird "we are everything and have no physical advantages" thing.
3. The skill system is too limiting. They need to have some kind of secondary skill selection that fills the need for things like specific knowledge skills and other talents. Basically, if they take what they got now and make that the general skill selection, then replace the whole idea of tools to secondary skills and have general categories of secondary skills (Knowledge and Crafting), that would probably shore up most of the weaknesses they have at the moment.
4. Just about every race should have the ability to select an origin feat, not just humans.
In regards to combat and social features of classes, I have felt that these should be completely seperate, by which I mean. That classes should get both combat and social features but when accounting for class balance, the combat features should be balanced separately to the social features of the class. Having both combat and social features balanced together never really worked, for spellcasters, rituals are a powerful form of social feature, since rituals are rarely going to have much combat interaction given their long ritual cast time... meanwhile classes like figther got almost no social features at all, that is slightly improved in 2024 but on the flip side... yeah Ranger. Too much is moved to generic ability checks and classes aren't showing distinctions as well, outside of combat, with the exception of how players role-play them.
Not watched Secrets of Blackmoor ?
Or read any one of Jon Peterson's histories of the game and or of the development of the hobby in general?
Specifically what set table-top role-playing games apart from mere tactical games was the introduction of a referee who would arbitrate for things for which there weren't combat rules because the game's pioneers wanted to play a game that was about more than just combat.
So those who invented the game saw it as a game with which we could do so much more ... but it's just a combat engine?
I gave specific details explaining how the game has increasingly become about combat. Which you notably omitted.
So I agree, having a way to define how good you are at a skill, maybe a level of experience, or have more examples of ways that a players backstory can help shape the benefit skills give in situations.
For instance a Druid who has proficiency in Arcana I may still say can't use arcana for figuring out a very wizard type of magic because they have no experience of it, so roll straight and don't add it.
Or a character with a high survival who has only ever lived at sea suddenly finds themselves in a forest is not going to know how to build a camp and hide it.
This is where you can flavour things much beter and add nuance, the issues are that as ther are no "rules" for this then players may well push back and complain, meaning newer DM's won't try and be creative like this.
I am just starting a new campaign with 4 new players and 2 experienced and none of them watch DnD on you tube, I think the sheer amount of content that is up is putting people off engaging, and, if things go the way I expect then the biggest of them, Critical Role, will be stopping using DnD in 2025. (Daggerheart is in fact one of the systems I intend to try in 2025 as a replacement for my current DnD campaigns)
I do agree that DnD seems to be going down the "single player computer game" format, the comments made about trying to tap into the online gamer market also suggests why they have removed a lot of that nuance from the rules.
I like to Homebrew and create my own worlds now days, it is where I get my fun from, even when running Cyberpunk or World of Darkness I let my players know that my version of that world is very different (in my World of darkness there is a multiverse and different planes and I have come up with a way to traverse them), Although I have. very very large soft spot for Rokugan and the legend of the 5 rings 1st edition version of that world.
It would be good to see more people moving away from DnD on youtube, exposing the viewers to other systems, I think you learn so much more as a DM and player when you immerse yourself in different ways of figuring out success and failure. I see in the new DMG they are trying to introduce partial success and failure mechanics, I actually wish they had devoted more pages to that then bothering with the Greyhawk stuff, it is something that can really add to, and solve, some of the problems of DnD
Several of the bigger channels tried that following the OGL fiasco last year and almost all of them later said it had too big an impact on their income. Non-D&D videos were getting a fraction of the views and interactions, even at the point when people were most motivated to try something different, and most have since gone back to just doing D&D or at best setting agnostic advice
The fact is that DnD is similar to other quick start pen and paper games, but has the advantage of an established IP backing it. Call of Cthulu is the other big name on the block because it does what DnD can't really do. It's a system that is easy on DMs and relatively easy on players.
As for tactical combat and the ability to really play a support role correctly, Pathfinder 2e does that way better than DnD even in the new edition. In Pathfinder the primary damage dealers are melee characters and spell casters tend to fall into supporting roles, with a lot of distinct spells that do combat tricks. My favorite one is mislead, which creates an illusory duplicate of yourself and you turn invisible, then can control the duplicate while you maintain concentration.
1) As I cited above, you as the DM have the explicit right to gate player rolls based on literally any criteria you want. If you want to make it so the 18 Int character with no Arcana proficiency can't possibly succeed at deciphering Acererak's lab notes because you think that makes more narrative sense, don't ask them to roll - it really is that simple.
2) Proficiencies being broad / inter-applicable is a good thing - that's a feature of the system, not a bug. If one player asks to get past a stuffy official's checkpoint by flashing a forged seal at them, another by magically disguising themselves as a visiting elven dignitary, another by calling in a fake bomb threat, and still another by simply towering over everyone and cracking their knuckles menacingly, the system is flexible enough to accommodate any or all of those approaches - and the DM doesn't have to stop the game to look up the Intimidate table to see what competence bonus the knuckle-cracking PC gets from their strength score or what circumstance bonus they get from their height and species.
1. So give them ad-hoc advantage, or a lower DC, or even automatic success if they have the right class/background. Baldur's Gate 3 did all of these, and it was pretty intuitive even for complete D&D neophytes.
2. As I said above (yet again) it can. If you want Expertise to gate a certain very difficult roll because it doesn't make sense to you that anyone else can even attempt said roll, do that. 5e makes that sort of thing easy without having to return to 3.5's outdated paradigm.
The mechanics of D&D are almost entirely a combat engine. This doesn't mean you can't use it for other purposes, people have been using it for other purposes for as long as the hobby existed, but you're largely not using the rules when you do so. 5th edition is not more that way than prior editions.
All true... for experienced DM's. What your asking/saying requires a deeper and more meaningful understanding by the DM as it requires both some consistency and the ability to respond to challenges to this DM fiat authority you are claiming, which is fine for experienced DM's but to assume that a novice DM would derive all that from a reading of the book is a real stretch.
Which is kind of the point, the reality is that most DM's are not going to do this, they are going run the game RAW without this internal interpretation and sort of secret language living between the sheets of D&D based on 50 years of narrative logic.
I get what your saying, and I agree with you, its how I do it... but how do you pass that on to a generation of players that has no point of reference? Would you assume a novice DM would know any of that or come to that interpretative conclusion based on the reading of the rules?
I have serious doubts about that.
I mean I think one way is to re-emphasize the actual gameplay loop as set down in the books. Make it so that the default action for a DM is to just freeform describe the results of character's actions rather than busting out the dice immediately. If the community gets used to Story First as a priority over mechanics it would work better.
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!
"Secret language?" Everything I quoted is right there on the page in plain sight. I don't think you're going to get very far by underestimating players to this extreme degree. Again, Baldurs Gate 3 got literally millions of people who'd never played D&D before to figure this stuff out, and they didn't even HAVE a DM to help them; advantage and autosuccess based on background or class is pretty intuitive stuff. So I find your fearmongering here to be beyond overblown.
Honestly, the skills required are not terribly strongly mapped to being "experienced DMs"; there is very little mechanical understanding required to be good at non-combat challenges, because there simply isn't a lot of mechanics to them in the first place. A DM who's been running dungeon crawls for forty years could easily be worse at it than a new DM with some improv experience.
Sure but every person that played D&D using Baulders Gate 3 was a player, not a DM. I understand that players have an understanding of "do what the DM tells you", but how does the DM know for example when a proficiency would prevent or allow a roll? That is not a rule or instruction, its simply assumed that the DM would "know"...somehow...because for some reason we are making an assumption that its common knowledge to know how to rule the game via DM fiat without any training, knowledge or instructions simply based on text that says "just have fun".
I think you’re underestimating the intelligence of new DMs. I’ve been playing for 4 years, DMing for almost as long, and managed to figure out all of that stuff by reading the books, watching Critical Role and watching YouTube videos on how to DM. As someone said earlier (either here or in the almost identical thread that popped up at the same time) most modern DMs and players aren’t just learning from reading the rule books, they’re not even really coming here as recent forum polls have shown, they’re heading to Reddit, YouTube and Tiktok for how to play
They make it up. Just like they've done in every edition. There's elements of running non-combat scenes that take learning and practice to do well, but they aren't because of the rules being vague... they're because handling the infinity of things that can happen is hard.
I am a little disappointed by the lack of a class/subclass building system.
Not that I want to make anything new. But I would like a linear and logical system for all that creation.
I would like to see the base classes modified to fit any new system that comes up and all subclasses modified to fit the new rules.
If WOtC can come up with a publishable system. The DM's and players who want to make a new anything would have something to follow that could be accepted and or moved from game to game.
Its just a chapter I would like to see in the new version.