So I have recently started playing the latest 2024 rules set. I have extensive experience in 3.5, pathfinder, cyberpunk 2020, and other role playing systems and I just want to give my feedback.
5th ed 2024 is at BEST a combat rules set for epic fantasy combat. I really does nothing at all to support role playing in any way shape or form. That is 100% up to the DM so I am quite disappointed to begin with. Then I heard about the plans to use AI to generate game content including books and modules. I was saving up to spend several hundred dollars on books and digital copies. Xanathars guide, Tasha's coldren, Fizban's treasury, the Heroes of fairune bundle, plus some modules. Absolutely not happening now. I will spend that money on a better system from a better company, which would include just about anything except D&D.
The ‘24 DMG has extensive advice on how to facilitate role playing and social encounters, and on giving rewards for those encounters. You might argue it’s insufficient (and I would disagree with that) but you can’t say it does nothing.
WotC, for all its flaws, has loudly, clearly and repeatedly said they will not use AI in content generation.
But considering this post has a rather hostile tone, I’m going to guess actual facts aren’t a factor in the decision making process. So, hey, you do you. I hope you find a system that works for your group.
Might I ask how you'd like the rules to support roleplaying more? Rules for roleplaying? How does restricting an open-ended activity make things better? The reason so many rules are combat related is because having rules for other things only makes the game worse and more restrictive.
Could the OP please give an example of a system which has extensive role play / social interaction advice?
I haven't played other things in a long time but I also don't remember them having massive amounts of 'how to role play' instruction. The only exception being TOON.
Shadowrun, Palladium (and all of its extensions), Gamma World, Warhammer Fantasy, HERO Games, Paranoia, Twilight 2000... They left the heavy lifting up to the GM.
oohooh! Daggerheart. You are looking for Daggerheart.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
A lot of these "There is no Roleplay support in D&D!" really start to feel like " Tell me what to do and how to play" as opposed to letting people develop and adapt their own styles or pick up stuff from the rest of the table, or more negatively, " I want rules to control how my players can or can't express themselves." There is plenty to encourage roleplay growth.
But yeah, i fell ya on the AI thing. If they turn on the planet killing slop machine to have it vomit out slop books, i am likely going to give up the game franchise i have been playing since the 90's.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player. The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call To rise up in triumph should we all unite The spark for change is yours to ignite." Kalandra - The State of the World
I've played a few systems with "roleplaying support" and I always find it falls into the category of "hand holding" at best and "roleplay railroading" at worst. This include systems that:
Require you to state how your relationship with another character has grown at the end of the session in order to gain XP
Reduce roleplaying into abstracted combat, where it's words instead of swords and feels instead of shields—like a limited edition cereal, same crunch different flavour
Remove all freedom from roleplay and instead make it basically a decision tree you navigate using skills and dice rolls. Want to convince the merchant to give you a discount? Well you'll need the barter, diplomacy, mercantile, and haggle skills and succeed on 3 out of 4 of your skill checks against the merchants Willpower save. Doesn't matter what you say, that's how it works
D&D makes a (reasonable IMO) assumption that people playing the game know how social interactions work and don't need rules/tools for that. The skills provide a means to resolve anything that the DM feels could come down to chance, but generally social interactions don't
I've played a few systems with "roleplaying support" and I always find it falls into the category of "hand holding" at best and "roleplay railroading" at worst. This include systems that:
Require you to state how your relationship with another character has grown at the end of the session in order to gain XP
Reduce roleplaying into abstracted combat, where it's words instead of swords and feels instead of shields—like a limited edition cereal, same crunch different flavour
Remove all freedom from roleplay and instead make it basically a decision tree you navigate using skills and dice rolls. Want to convince the merchant to give you a discount? Well you'll need the barter, diplomacy, mercantile, and haggle skills and succeed on 3 out of 4 of your skill checks against the merchants Willpower save. Doesn't matter what you say, that's how it works
D&D makes a (reasonable IMO) assumption that people playing the game know how social interactions work and don't need rules/tools for that. The skills provide a means to resolve anything that the DM feels could come down to chance, but generally social interactions don't
I'm so glad D&D doesn't work like any of those examples.
One of the things I like about D&D is that it feels like it has rules in the right places. Being somebody who loves creating legend and lore and creating social encounters, I feel like rules around role play would take a lot of the fun out of it for me. I realize that other people come from many different places, so obviously YMMV.
One system that might interest you though is Cosmere RPG. They devote an entire chapter of their rather large handbook to social encounters. GM’s are still in control and checks are similar to 5e in that they only come into play when a specific goal is trying to be accomplished (persuade someone, distract someone, etc).
One thing I find interesting is that you have limited currency in how much you can devote to influencing someone and avoid being influenced by someone. NPC’s have the same limited mental currency that they can apply against your own. Check it out. It is definitely a system I think is worth playing.
Then I heard about the plans to use AI to generate game content including books and modules.
Who said that? Can you link to it?
There are a lot of things "said". What's important is what Wizards/Hasbro say and do. What have they actually said? Are they actually using AI in their current and future releases?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Then I heard about the plans to use AI to generate game content including books and modules.
Who said that? Can you link to it?
There are a lot of things "said". What's important is what Wizards/Hasbro say and do. What have they actually said? Are they actually using AI in their current and future releases?
Probably some random content creator w/a grudge, some random social media thread, or some other "Trust me"-type, using OGLgate to plant the seed.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Could the OP please give an example of a system which has extensive role play / social interaction advice?
Given that the OP references 3.5e, Pathfinder, and Cyberpunk 2020, none of which are exactly notable for their roleplaying support, that seems unlikely. While there are game systems with fairly sophisticated social interaction rules, they're generally built from the ground up with that as an objective.
Historically systems that are considered to be "heavy" on role-playing and or "story focused" are systems with light rules and ZERO support for role-playing. Quite literally the act of supporting role-playing in a game systems is to have no rules for it at all and minimal rules in general.
The concept of "rules" and "role-playing" are polar opposites. The act of "role-playing" is what happens when you are not executing rules. In fact systems that create rules for role-playing, like social encounters and various attributes and properties to manage are generally considered to be terrible at supporting role-playing. Having an energy bar for "social encounters" for example is very disruptive as are things like "action points" and other shenanigans that try to quantify role-playing as a game system. Lots of systems have tried it, I don't know of any that actually improve role-playing and most of the time they hinder it.
This is an old and rather silly argument that one would think at this stage in the development of the hobby would have died along with THAC0 and other such nonsense.
An RPG "systems" job is to manage everything outside of role-playing and this is where the games focus as a system determines what is important to the game part of the RPG experience. In D&D that is fighting monsters, in say Vampire The Masquerade its the manipulation of politics, in a game like Western, its handling shoot outs. etc. Whatever the game is about, the rules define how that game is about that but all RPG's are first and foremost about role-playing and that is something that neither has nore needs rules.
That is of course as long as you adhere to the idea that role-playing is a conversation between players and the GM. I know that some people try to re-define this to some degree by claiming everything is role-playing, including fighting monsters etc.. because you are "playing" a "role" but thats just semantics at that point which is a meaningless debate, role-playing by those terms is whatever you think it is.
As for Wizards of the Coast using A.I. It is a 100% guarantee that they will use A.I. to assist in writing books. This is not up for debate, every single company, every single writer and every single person on the planet WILL use A.I. for everything they do. Saying "we won't use A.I." is like saying that you refuse to use the internet because its cheating... Its a tool, THEY WILL use it, as will everyone else. This resistance to A.I. is a silly and mostly stupid endeavour forcing companies into a wierd political situation in which they are essentially asked not to use a tool that is literally mandatory at this point. Anyone not using A.I. at this point will fail to survive in any business. People need to start making their peace with it. There is no future for any company that refuses to A.I.
& so many other fads repeat this mantra on the establishment, permanence & necessity of a fad and/or bubble. ESPECIALLY toy/game & tech-related fads & bubbles.
Not only is there zero proof of its usage by the DND team after Bigby's(& it eventually stopped on the Magic end, too), it isn't mandatory in the slightest.
So, back to the OP of this thread:Do you have ANY solid proof(As in. not from a company face, namely, someone frm WotC who woked on DND 2024 w/a trustworthy reputation explicitly saying it & backing up their words via proof that doesn't rely on a method that uses the thing it's being accused of) of your accusations of planned mass AI usage regarding production DND content besides the isolated Bigby's incident & hearsay?
Because it feels like you just flat-out trusted someone who just claimed to have an inside source, likely asserted as unidentifiable by the rando, lest they get sued, which is major "trust me, bro" hearsay.
Remember when DNDShorts trusted GlassDoor blindly & claimed to have inside sources that were too real to be verified, & everyone just trusted & repeated him w/o external verification, despite his history of explicitly lying about things you can do in-game even before OGLgate? Or when Indestructoboy hypocritically used AI to "prove" AI was used in a non-Bigby's piece, then, when disproven, feigned ignorance about the tool he used? Fun times.
The ‘24 DMG has extensive advice on how to facilitate role playing and social encounters, and on giving rewards for those encounters. You might argue it’s insufficient (and I would disagree with that) but you can’t say it does nothing.
WotC, for all its flaws, has loudly, clearly and repeatedly said they will not use AI in content generation.
But considering this post has a rather hostile tone, I’m going to guess actual facts aren’t a factor in the decision making process. So, hey, you do you. I hope you find a system that works for your group.
My understanding is they just reversed that decision and said they are actively pursuing AI including in content generation. That is what I am basing that on.
And I have extensive experience with a variety of systems including D&D. The SYSTEM very very much does not support role playing. The way the numbers work just does not function. Yes there are some hacks and techniques to get around that, and you can DO role playing in the D&D system but it is much more despite the system than because the system actively promotes it. The 'swing' of a 20 sided die when your proficiency is 2-6 and your stat modifier is -4 - 4 is just far far too high. Also, the binary proficiency no proficiency system is widely criticized for very good reason. People are not equally good at all the things. They have a no skill in some things, a little skill in others and extensive skill in still others. The binary system definitely hurts role playing as it literally does not support any numerical reflection of that. Of course all systems are simplified and not intended to simulate reality fully but D&D takes that to an extreme. A LOT of work falls on the players and GM to actively fix the problems the system causes role playing wise.
The issue with the rules role playing wise is that they do a very poor job of arbitrating non-combat actions and anything that is not epic fantasy style play. The binary on/off skill proficiencies for example do not allow for a character to reflect that they are a bit better than average cook but not a well trained chef. But the biggest problem is the inherent level of randomness when you have a 20 sided die and a +2 - +5 proficiency bonus and a -2 - +4 or so stat. This just does not reflect the actual difference between someone who is highly talented or highly skilled at something and someone who is not. That is made worse by going all in on advantage/disadvantage rather than using more numerical modifiers. The result is a lot of work on the DMs part to make up for silliness the system introduces. Take an experienced ranger and a wizard with no survival skills. Give them both a moderate survival skill situation and the ranger might have +3 stat +3 bonus in survival and the wizard might have +1 and +0. The difference is a 25% better chance that the ranger succeeds when it should be a much higher chance. So we patch things up with passive scores where you assume a 10 was rolled and whatnot but you still end up with the wizard pulling off some insane feat of survival without having any training and the trained person failing.... IF you use the system to support your role play. So it falls exclusively on the GM to arbitrate who is able to do what without system support.
Even in combat the system is all about the epic fantasy arc where an epic character (high level) can survive and dish out insane amounts of damage compared to an 'ordinary' human. That is fine for an epic fantasy system so I have no issue with it but it is a limitation. The lack of support for just about anything outside combat is a real problem though.
Could the OP please give an example of a system which has extensive role play / social interaction advice?
...
Shadowrun, Palladium (and all of its extensions), Gamma World, Warhammer Fantasy, HERO Games, Paranoia, Twilight 2000... They left the heavy lifting up to the GM
There is always a fair amount of heavy lifting up to the DM in role playing and I accept that is going to be the case. The issue I have is the poor support when it does come to be numbers time. D&D is fundamentally very random compared to some other systems including previous editions. The skills are all binary proficient/not rather than scaling realistically and the degree to which inherent talent and trained skill influence outcomes is very minimal in this edition. A character with high skill and high talent might have 40% better odds of doing something than an average talent person with no training. That just does not support using skills to determine outcomes very well. It leads to it not mattering very much what your character sheet says you are proficient in or wither you have a 10 intelligence or an 18. It fails to convey the character's attributes within the system. The advantage / disadvantage mechanic being used almost exclusively rather than numeric modifiers exacerbated that binar effect. Circumstances give you advantage but more circumstances don't give you any more advantage.
Even with those things fixed there will certainly be a heavy load on the GM to determine what is possible, what the difficulty is, what NPCs goals and motivations are etc. but the issue I have is if you declared a baking contest between a completely untrained and untallented person and a talented trained chef the system does not provide realistic support to resolve that with rolling. The chef does have better odds of winning but nowhere near what would be realistic. And I think yes the noob should have some chance of winning, chefs mess up, people get lucky, but it shouldn't be as prevalent as it is.
Honestly I was more upset about hearing they were going to reverse their decision/stance on using AI for content generation.
My understanding is they just reversed that decision and said they are actively pursuing AI including in content generation. That is what I am basing that on.
Again I ask you, who told you this? Please provide a link to the actual source and quote.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Could the OP please give an example of a system which has extensive role play / social interaction advice?
Given that the OP references 3.5e, Pathfinder, and Cyberpunk 2020, none of which are exactly notable for their roleplaying support, that seems unlikely. While there are game systems with fairly sophisticated social interaction rules, they're generally built from the ground up with that as an objective.
True those systems do not have extensive support just much better support than D&D as the system can at least theoretically be used to resolve social issues rather than being more of an impending than an aid. Sure you can roll for persuasion but you can achieve almost the same outcome if you ignore wither you have proficiency in persuasion and charisma. Thorough role playing support would be nice but I acknowledge that is basically a different game that needs to be ground up to support that. But a largely combat arbitration system can support crafting, social situations, and so on much better than this edition of D&D does.
So I have recently started playing the latest 2024 rules set. I have extensive experience in 3.5, pathfinder, cyberpunk 2020, and other role playing systems and I just want to give my feedback.
5th ed 2024 is at BEST a combat rules set for epic fantasy combat. I really does nothing at all to support role playing in any way shape or form. That is 100% up to the DM so I am quite disappointed to begin with. Then I heard about the plans to use AI to generate game content including books and modules. I was saving up to spend several hundred dollars on books and digital copies. Xanathars guide, Tasha's coldren, Fizban's treasury, the Heroes of fairune bundle, plus some modules. Absolutely not happening now. I will spend that money on a better system from a better company, which would include just about anything except D&D.
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The ‘24 DMG has extensive advice on how to facilitate role playing and social encounters, and on giving rewards for those encounters. You might argue it’s insufficient (and I would disagree with that) but you can’t say it does nothing.
WotC, for all its flaws, has loudly, clearly and repeatedly said they will not use AI in content generation.
But considering this post has a rather hostile tone, I’m going to guess actual facts aren’t a factor in the decision making process. So, hey, you do you. I hope you find a system that works for your group.
Might I ask how you'd like the rules to support roleplaying more? Rules for roleplaying? How does restricting an open-ended activity make things better? The reason so many rules are combat related is because having rules for other things only makes the game worse and more restrictive.
Could the OP please give an example of a system which has extensive role play / social interaction advice?
I haven't played other things in a long time but I also don't remember them having massive amounts of 'how to role play' instruction. The only exception being TOON.
Shadowrun, Palladium (and all of its extensions), Gamma World, Warhammer Fantasy, HERO Games, Paranoia, Twilight 2000... They left the heavy lifting up to the GM.
oohooh! Daggerheart. You are looking for Daggerheart.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
A lot of these "There is no Roleplay support in D&D!" really start to feel like " Tell me what to do and how to play" as opposed to letting people develop and adapt their own styles or pick up stuff from the rest of the table, or more negatively, " I want rules to control how my players can or can't express themselves."
There is plenty to encourage roleplay growth.
But yeah, i fell ya on the AI thing. If they turn on the planet killing slop machine to have it vomit out slop books, i am likely going to give up the game franchise i have been playing since the 90's.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
I've played a few systems with "roleplaying support" and I always find it falls into the category of "hand holding" at best and "roleplay railroading" at worst. This include systems that:
D&D makes a (reasonable IMO) assumption that people playing the game know how social interactions work and don't need rules/tools for that. The skills provide a means to resolve anything that the DM feels could come down to chance, but generally social interactions don't
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
I'm so glad D&D doesn't work like any of those examples.
One of the things I like about D&D is that it feels like it has rules in the right places. Being somebody who loves creating legend and lore and creating social encounters, I feel like rules around role play would take a lot of the fun out of it for me. I realize that other people come from many different places, so obviously YMMV.
I think D&D is just fine with social encounters.
One system that might interest you though is Cosmere RPG. They devote an entire chapter of their rather large handbook to social encounters. GM’s are still in control and checks are similar to 5e in that they only come into play when a specific goal is trying to be accomplished (persuade someone, distract someone, etc).
One thing I find interesting is that you have limited currency in how much you can devote to influencing someone and avoid being influenced by someone. NPC’s have the same limited mental currency that they can apply against your own. Check it out. It is definitely a system I think is worth playing.
DM mostly, Player occasionally | Session 0 form | He/Him/They/Them
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Who said that? Can you link to it?
There are a lot of things "said". What's important is what Wizards/Hasbro say and do. What have they actually said? Are they actually using AI in their current and future releases?
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Probably some random content creator w/a grudge, some random social media thread, or some other "Trust me"-type, using OGLgate to plant the seed.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Given that the OP references 3.5e, Pathfinder, and Cyberpunk 2020, none of which are exactly notable for their roleplaying support, that seems unlikely. While there are game systems with fairly sophisticated social interaction rules, they're generally built from the ground up with that as an objective.
Historically systems that are considered to be "heavy" on role-playing and or "story focused" are systems with light rules and ZERO support for role-playing. Quite literally the act of supporting role-playing in a game systems is to have no rules for it at all and minimal rules in general.
The concept of "rules" and "role-playing" are polar opposites. The act of "role-playing" is what happens when you are not executing rules. In fact systems that create rules for role-playing, like social encounters and various attributes and properties to manage are generally considered to be terrible at supporting role-playing. Having an energy bar for "social encounters" for example is very disruptive as are things like "action points" and other shenanigans that try to quantify role-playing as a game system. Lots of systems have tried it, I don't know of any that actually improve role-playing and most of the time they hinder it.
This is an old and rather silly argument that one would think at this stage in the development of the hobby would have died along with THAC0 and other such nonsense.
An RPG "systems" job is to manage everything outside of role-playing and this is where the games focus as a system determines what is important to the game part of the RPG experience. In D&D that is fighting monsters, in say Vampire The Masquerade its the manipulation of politics, in a game like Western, its handling shoot outs. etc. Whatever the game is about, the rules define how that game is about that but all RPG's are first and foremost about role-playing and that is something that neither has nore needs rules.
That is of course as long as you adhere to the idea that role-playing is a conversation between players and the GM. I know that some people try to re-define this to some degree by claiming everything is role-playing, including fighting monsters etc.. because you are "playing" a "role" but thats just semantics at that point which is a meaningless debate, role-playing by those terms is whatever you think it is.
As for Wizards of the Coast using A.I. It is a 100% guarantee that they will use A.I. to assist in writing books. This is not up for debate, every single company, every single writer and every single person on the planet WILL use A.I. for everything they do. Saying "we won't use A.I." is like saying that you refuse to use the internet because its cheating... Its a tool, THEY WILL use it, as will everyone else. This resistance to A.I. is a silly and mostly stupid endeavour forcing companies into a wierd political situation in which they are essentially asked not to use a tool that is literally mandatory at this point. Anyone not using A.I. at this point will fail to survive in any business. People need to start making their peace with it. There is no future for any company that refuses to A.I.
This exact thing was said about NFTs.
& is still said about crypto by shady people.
& so many other fads repeat this mantra on the establishment, permanence & necessity of a fad and/or bubble. ESPECIALLY toy/game & tech-related fads & bubbles.
Not only is there zero proof of its usage by the DND team after Bigby's(& it eventually stopped on the Magic end, too), it isn't mandatory in the slightest.
So, back to the OP of this thread:Do you have ANY solid proof(As in. not from a company face, namely, someone frm WotC who woked on DND 2024 w/a trustworthy reputation explicitly saying it & backing up their words via proof that doesn't rely on a method that uses the thing it's being accused of) of your accusations of planned mass AI usage regarding production DND content besides the isolated Bigby's incident & hearsay?
Because it feels like you just flat-out trusted someone who just claimed to have an inside source, likely asserted as unidentifiable by the rando, lest they get sued, which is major "trust me, bro" hearsay.
Remember when DNDShorts trusted GlassDoor blindly & claimed to have inside sources that were too real to be verified, & everyone just trusted & repeated him w/o external verification, despite his history of explicitly lying about things you can do in-game even before OGLgate? Or when Indestructoboy hypocritically used AI to "prove" AI was used in a non-Bigby's piece, then, when disproven, feigned ignorance about the tool he used? Fun times.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
My understanding is they just reversed that decision and said they are actively pursuing AI including in content generation. That is what I am basing that on.
And I have extensive experience with a variety of systems including D&D. The SYSTEM very very much does not support role playing. The way the numbers work just does not function. Yes there are some hacks and techniques to get around that, and you can DO role playing in the D&D system but it is much more despite the system than because the system actively promotes it. The 'swing' of a 20 sided die when your proficiency is 2-6 and your stat modifier is -4 - 4 is just far far too high. Also, the binary proficiency no proficiency system is widely criticized for very good reason. People are not equally good at all the things. They have a no skill in some things, a little skill in others and extensive skill in still others. The binary system definitely hurts role playing as it literally does not support any numerical reflection of that. Of course all systems are simplified and not intended to simulate reality fully but D&D takes that to an extreme. A LOT of work falls on the players and GM to actively fix the problems the system causes role playing wise.
The issue with the rules role playing wise is that they do a very poor job of arbitrating non-combat actions and anything that is not epic fantasy style play. The binary on/off skill proficiencies for example do not allow for a character to reflect that they are a bit better than average cook but not a well trained chef. But the biggest problem is the inherent level of randomness when you have a 20 sided die and a +2 - +5 proficiency bonus and a -2 - +4 or so stat. This just does not reflect the actual difference between someone who is highly talented or highly skilled at something and someone who is not. That is made worse by going all in on advantage/disadvantage rather than using more numerical modifiers. The result is a lot of work on the DMs part to make up for silliness the system introduces. Take an experienced ranger and a wizard with no survival skills. Give them both a moderate survival skill situation and the ranger might have +3 stat +3 bonus in survival and the wizard might have +1 and +0. The difference is a 25% better chance that the ranger succeeds when it should be a much higher chance. So we patch things up with passive scores where you assume a 10 was rolled and whatnot but you still end up with the wizard pulling off some insane feat of survival without having any training and the trained person failing.... IF you use the system to support your role play. So it falls exclusively on the GM to arbitrate who is able to do what without system support.
Even in combat the system is all about the epic fantasy arc where an epic character (high level) can survive and dish out insane amounts of damage compared to an 'ordinary' human. That is fine for an epic fantasy system so I have no issue with it but it is a limitation. The lack of support for just about anything outside combat is a real problem though.
There is always a fair amount of heavy lifting up to the DM in role playing and I accept that is going to be the case. The issue I have is the poor support when it does come to be numbers time. D&D is fundamentally very random compared to some other systems including previous editions. The skills are all binary proficient/not rather than scaling realistically and the degree to which inherent talent and trained skill influence outcomes is very minimal in this edition. A character with high skill and high talent might have 40% better odds of doing something than an average talent person with no training. That just does not support using skills to determine outcomes very well. It leads to it not mattering very much what your character sheet says you are proficient in or wither you have a 10 intelligence or an 18. It fails to convey the character's attributes within the system. The advantage / disadvantage mechanic being used almost exclusively rather than numeric modifiers exacerbated that binar effect. Circumstances give you advantage but more circumstances don't give you any more advantage.
Even with those things fixed there will certainly be a heavy load on the GM to determine what is possible, what the difficulty is, what NPCs goals and motivations are etc. but the issue I have is if you declared a baking contest between a completely untrained and untallented person and a talented trained chef the system does not provide realistic support to resolve that with rolling. The chef does have better odds of winning but nowhere near what would be realistic. And I think yes the noob should have some chance of winning, chefs mess up, people get lucky, but it shouldn't be as prevalent as it is.
Honestly I was more upset about hearing they were going to reverse their decision/stance on using AI for content generation.
Again I ask you, who told you this? Please provide a link to the actual source and quote.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
True those systems do not have extensive support just much better support than D&D as the system can at least theoretically be used to resolve social issues rather than being more of an impending than an aid. Sure you can roll for persuasion but you can achieve almost the same outcome if you ignore wither you have proficiency in persuasion and charisma. Thorough role playing support would be nice but I acknowledge that is basically a different game that needs to be ground up to support that. But a largely combat arbitration system can support crafting, social situations, and so on much better than this edition of D&D does.