Explore subterranean labyrinths! Plunder hoards of treasure! Battle legendary monsters!
The Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set is your gateway to action-packed stories of the imagination. This box contains the essential rules of the game plus everything you need to play heroic characters on perilous adventures in worlds of fantasy.
Ideal for a group of 4 – 6, the Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set includes a 64-page adventure book with everything the Dungeon Master needs to get started, a 32-page rulebook for playing characters level 1 – 5, 5 pre-generated characters, each with a character sheet and supporting reference material, and 6 dice.
The Player’s Handbook is the essential reference for every Dungeons & Dragons roleplayer. It contains rules for character creation and advancement, backgrounds and skills, exploration and combat, equipment, spells, and much more.
Use this book to create exciting characters from among the most iconic D&D races and classes.
Dungeons & Dragons immerses you in a world of adventure. Explore ancient ruins and deadly dungeons. Battle monsters while searching for legendary treasures. Gain experience and power as you trek across uncharted lands with your companions.
In an audacious bid for power the Cult of the Dragon, along with its dragon allies and the Red Wizards of Thay, seek to bring Tiamat from her prison in the Nine Hells to Faerun. To this end, they are sweeping from town to town, laying waste to all those who oppose them and gathering a hoard of riches for their dread queen. The threat of annihilation has become so dire that groups as disparate as the Harpers and Zhentarim are banding together in the fight against the cult. Never before has the need for heroes been so desperate.
he Monster Manual presents a horde of classic Dungeons & Dragons creatures, including dragons, giants, mind flayers, and beholders—a monstrous feast for Dungeon Masters ready to challenge their players and populate their adventures.
The monsters contained herein are culled from the D&D game’s illustrious history, with easy-to-use game statistics and thrilling stories to feed your imagination.
The Cult of the Dragon leads the charge in an unholy crusade to bring Tiamat back to the Realms, and the situation grows more perilous for good people with each passing moment. The battle becomes increasingly political as opportunities to gather allies and gain advantage present themselves. From Waterdeep to the Sea of Moving Ice to Thay, it is a race against Evil. Succeed or succumb to the oppression of draconic tyranny. Win or lose, things will never be the same again.
The Dungeon Master’s Guide provides the inspiration and the guidance you need to spark your imagination and create worlds of adventure for your players to explore and enjoy.
Inside you’ll find world-building tools, tips and tricks for creating memorable dungeons and adventures, optional game rules, hundreds of classic D&D magic items, and much more!
Da Boss wrote: I'm slightly optimistic about Next actually.
I am as well, I just think the PR company didn't really read what they wrote, or they aren't quite sure what they are selling. I doubt it will be the official statement when [WotC] makes their big marketing push, which will be a bit more polished. I could be wrong, though, as I am not a lifestyle gamer.
Yeah I get that impression. Some of the word choice is just really strange marketing garbage. That side of WOTC is a big weakness I think- a more honest conversation with fans will win them over a lot more than this sort of crap.
I know I'm initially going to be all over Next because I like simplistic systems without too much bloat, but then I'm going to fall out of love with it as it bloats up.
Bit of a necro, but two weeks ago I ran a little once off with the playtest document. My players had a lot of fun, and commented that it felt pretty good to play.
They were skeptical that it'd hang together well at higher levels though. So I've converted a section of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil over to 5th and am going to run them through it tomorrow. Will report back on how it went tomorrow!
I think there are still some of the ideas of 4th edition in there- stuff like the Hit Dice, the recharging powers to a lesser extent, even the skill system and the idea of a flat bonus to hit for everyone, it's all a little 4th edition.
Yeah. The guy playing the Wizard in our level 2 game really enjoyed that, and the fact that he could swing a sword half competently when it came down to it.
Anticipation is high for information on Wizards of the Coast next Dungeons & Dragons edition, while WotC has been tightlipped with specific details. Now it appears online book retailer Barnes & Noble has accidently leaked the first two releases and their summer street dates, which we believe to be correct.
First posted on Sunday, the B&N.com active pages have been removed, but are available as Google cached pages. According to the now removed B&N pages, the Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set will release on July 15th with an MSRP of $19.99, and the hardcover Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook will release August 19th (right after Gen Con), with an MSRP of $49.95.
These release dates appear to be in line with WotC’s announced “summer” release (see "'D&D Next' Launch Date Set"), and WizKids planned release of the first set of D&D Miniatures (see "WizKids Creating 'D&D' Miniatures").
Not a huge surprise, really. I think some variation of the Starter Set and Core Trilogy i pretty much standard for D&D for decades.
(Fun fact: I've recently read that the first 1st Edition AD&D book published was the Monster Manual. The Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's guide came out over the next two years.)
I'ma little concerned this may be a bit rushed, despite having been under development for a while. Playtest reviews have been a bit controversial, and it sounds like there may have been some goals that were abandoned. I'm interested, but I really want to see more reviews before spending more money on these than I did the 1st edition AD&D "Premium" reprints I picked up recently!
Balance wrote: Playtest reviews have been a bit controversial
On the other hand, how could it be anything but? I don't fear swimming for getting wet and similarly neither do some folks complaining make me wary of 5E. As for seeing reviews before purchasing -- I think that is a great idea ... and now I'm going to get a bit conspiratorial ... because I don't think the published product will necessarily ... erm, exactly reflect, let's say, the play test documents. My own (conspiracy) theory is that this whole episode boils down to an extended marketing platform designed to create both chronological and emotional distance from the latest (and probably worst) bout of edition wars. I think this because (1) 5E as a rule set did not really require years of public play testing and (2) I don't think the slice of the demographic that did the playtesting is WotC's main concern. I really wonder whether it will even retain the name "Next."
As for me, I am already on board. As the Emperor wisely told Luke, "it is pointless to resist." In fact, I am going to GenCon this year for the first time specifically to bask in the glory of 5E. So you can look forward to a post-GenCon review from me. Not sure if I will get the starter set but if I do, you can bet I will review that here as well.
With mass release being right after GenCon, meaning that printing is done, I wonder if GenCon attendees will be able to get it early. I MUST HAS IT. IT IS PRECIOUS TO ME.
I'm expecting something at Gen Con to be available, but I won't be surprised if it's somehow limited. Maybe just the starter set? Would be cool if they gave that with some sort of rebate on the full books.
I did some more reading on D&D Next and would currently rate myself as 'cautiously optimistic.'
Ont he plus side, I like that they're going for quick character creation and not regressing to 3rd edition point-fiddling, which I did not like. The Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic sounds good and has possibilities as a mix of 'rules' and GM fiat*. Also numbers may be a bit saner: Double-digit modifiers to rolls should be rare.
On the other hand, there's a few negatives. Reports indicate that Paladin and Ranger get spells as their high-level powers, which I never liked. A lot of promised 'modules' are rumored to be AWOL, and I'm curious how open this edition will be to 3rd party material.
* What I mean by this is Advantage and Disadvantage can be assigned by hard rules, or by GM fiat. So the rules might say the Thief has Advantage to pick a lock by default, which is fine normally. The GM has the option to say "But you're doing it hanging upside down from a rope, so that's Disadvantage" and there's a simple system to work out what happens if both apply. (There's no such thing as double-advantage or double-disadvantage, and disadvantage cancels advantage. End of rule.
My gaming group (Hardcore Pathfinder lovers) play tested this for a bit using modules from different editions and then with myself free forming a campaign...They really liked it and as a DM i enjoyed the challenge it provided. The rules were flowing well and there were only a few small issues that I imagine will be fixed with the final product, but my group enjoyed it....although a few of them still preach pathfinder as if they were the pope......
ENWorld has a nice recap of the highlights from Wizards' presentation on the upcoming 5th edition of D&D. You can read the whole thing here, but the gist of it is:
Organized play will be set in the Forgotten Realms, and 5E will kick off with the Tyranny of Dragons story, which centers on the cult of Tiamat. (No word if that also means there will be a Living Realms.)
The D&D boxed starter set will be "gorgeous."
There will be a PH, DMG, and MM. Only one PH (we'll see how long that lasts). All the "iconic" monsters will be in the MM.
They will continue to make previous editions available.
They could've done something like mix elements from multiple editions...
personally, my favorite covers are the 1st edition Revised, I think... Especially the DMG with the green-cloaked wizard-type holding two massive doors open, if I remember correctly. Great image, although 'my' edition was 2nd.
So at PAX East, Perkins said 5E is 97% done. One wonders if that means the core books will not be available at GenCon. The other news from PAX is that Tyranny of Dragons will be "self-contained," i.e., will not require the PHB or DMG, which makes me really think the 5E core books will not debut at Indy this summer.
Oh and Perkins said we'd get some Ravenloft soon ... whatever soon means ...
Manchu wrote: So at PAX East, Perkins said 5E is 97% done. One wonders if that means the core books will not be available at GenCon. The other news from PAX is that Tyranny of Dragons will be "self-contained," i.e., will not require the PHB or DMG, which makes me really think the 5E core books will not debut at Indy this summer.
Oh and Perkins said we'd get some Ravenloft soon ... whatever soon means ...
Could the "Tyranny of Dragons" just be the name of the starter box, or some sort of fluff book?
I'll be honest, I haven't been keeping too close an eye on this, but I was hoping to get the starter books at Gencon.
Manchu wrote: I bet Tyranny will be a range of products including a starter rpg box set.
That's my guess. I'm assuming it's going to be kind of a theme for the first year or two of this edition. A major plot event for the Realms, but if they do any other settings in this period it might reflect their as well. Maybe update the Dragonlance Adventures modules series (again) to be in-line with this edition for a relatively easy re-release? It's got Dragons, and Tyranny.
This could be a neat direction for releases, though. Ravenloft has been mentioned... maybe after ToD has run its course the next 'event' will be horror-themed, starting with some undead horror stuff on the Realms, transitioning into a Ravenloft release.
I think White Wolf used to do this with their old World of Darkness line for a while. They'd have "Year of..." events which would generally have a bunch of related releases for different lines as well as a new line... For example, I think they did "Year of the Scarab" which had Egyptian-themed contend for Vampire, Werewolf, etc. culminating in the release of their Mummy game.
The only thing I find annoying with this is I feel the Realms fans are getting some Setting Event Fatigue. To my understanding, 4th made major change to the setting with a 'spellplague' and the a cosmic event literally changing the layout of the setting, I believe removing a few sub-settings (like Maztica) and changing to the 4e cosmology and magic systems. 5e is pretty much undoing this, and it's so blatantly a "We tried this, it didn't work, let's switch back" that I wonder if they'd be better off just saying that and taking the lumps than even trying to write around it. (Or just say that there's a 4e-Realms where the sstuff happened and a 5e Realms where it didn't, but I don't know if this would invalidate any novels and such.)
Still, I like that they seem to be looking at old settings (beyond the Realms) that have lain dormant for an edition or two for material/inspiration.
I think their novel publishing business keeps them from doing a hard reboot of the Realms. I don't think that will ever happen while WotC still has Ed Greenwood involved.
FR is okay but I am super ready for some new Ravenloft or DragonLance.
I've just been re-collecting the Swords and Sorcery Ravenloft stuff, having found it in English in a little comic book store in Dusseldorf.
Not too sure if I'm excited or not for a new Wizards version. I've run their Expedition to Castle Ravenloft adventure twice, and didn't find that it was really "Ravenloft" enough for me either time. We'll see though- they surprised me with the quality of their 4th Edition Underdark and Darksun materials.
I'd like it to be fairly low fantasy, human dominated and with some reference to the setting as it was- the realms and their different cultures were really cool. It was also one of the few D'n'D settings to have Renaissance levels of culture and technology for some of the realms, I really liked the interplay between the more civilised realms like Dementliu and Paridon and the more savage like the Beastlands or Verbrek.
The last 3.5 offering was a bit too "generic" for my liking. It tried to be something that could slot into any fantasy campaign, and lost a lot of what makes Ravenloft cool and unique by doing so. Perhaps Wizards see "uniqueness" as something which is not desirable, especially when it reduces player options (for example, Ravenloft did not have a half orc race, or any Orcs of any kind. Monstrous humanoids generally were pretty rare, and non-humans were rare apart from isolated enclaves.
That sort of stuff is what I'm hoping for. Expedition to Castle Ravenloft provided a sort of generic 3.5 version that is actually pretty good for what it is, but having been a prior fan of the Swords and Sorcery and older material, it was a bit of a let down.
That said, I wouldn't be at all against a modernising of some of the lamer old school Ravenloft background, the stuff that was hammy when it was written and is really old by now. If they changed things a lot from what I've described but kept that original feel, I'd be happy. I feel that Ravenloft was the one setting where I got to play a gouty old Victorian gentleman, and that was awesome.
Mechanically, I am cautiously optimistic. Seems like a fairly stripped down system that is closer to 3.5 while incorporating parts of 4th. Seems to try to balance magic and non magic classes, we'll see how successful it is. My main worry is that players will dislike the lack of options, but I haven't found the monsters to be too "padded" at this point, they are reasonably threatening and go down in a reasonable amount of time.
A lot depends on how they manage the "tone" of the release- I felt like the stupid power names and flashy lightshow descriptions of 4th edition combat kinda put off my gaming group from playing, and the art style didn't appeal to them as much as the Pathfinder style. So we'll see how they manage. Another important point is whether the rules will be easily accessible online, in the same way Paizo's are. That's a big deal, to my group.
@Da Boss: I think I understand what you mean about Expedition to Castle Ravenloft being too generic but if you go back to I6 and I10 ... they were also pretty generic. The Ravenloft you seem to be thinking of owes more to a sub-setting, Masque of the Red Death (the "Gothic Earth" setting), and subsequent development via the S&S books you mentioned back towards fantasy thanks to everyone's favorite emo monster mash RPG company White Wolf. What others might call "Ravenloft proper," drawing from the original material, is exactly a Halloween-themed, generic fantasy drop-in module. I would strongly, strongly recommend you get hold of some Lamentations of the Flame Princess material given what you like about Ravenloft.
As to the presentation of 5E ... I like this deviantart concept style better than the comic book style of 3E or the saturday morning cartoonishness of 4E. But I think they should have gone a bit fresher, maybe something a bit more abstract.
@Alpharius: There are a lot of reviews of the final playtest packet out in the blogosphere but I honestly can't recommend any of them to you. And I can't be bothered to write one, either, because I learned from FFG that reviewing beta rules is a waste of time. My advice? Hold off on forming an opinion either way until you can read the final product or at least other people's thoughts on the final product.
Manchu- Thanks for the recommendation, I'll look into Lamentations.
I think Masque of the Red Death came out after the swords and sorcery Gazeteers, which are some of my favourite D'n'D setting books ever.
I'll agree- many of the 2nd edition ravenloft realms, and the original conceit, were not too far from what was presented in the Wizards 3.5 adventure. But that's all the worst and lamest stuff about the setting.
Masque of the Red Death might go too far the other way, in some respects- I've run some sessions with it, and it's so political and intricate that it won't be to everyone's taste. The Ravenloft presented in the Doomsday Gazeteers are a decent mix of that sort of Gothic horror and pulp fantasy.
I'm not generally a white wolf fan at all, but they had a pretty excellent run with that line of books in my opinion. (Of course, my goggles are most definitely rose tinted, as Ravenloft was the first setting I ever ran a game in and it's still probably one of my most fondly remembered campaigns, by my players and myself. Still, the ability to produce such a strong experience speaks for the quality of the material, I think.)
It's a good point about the fact that these rules are still beta, and anything I may have liked may change with the new edition. I feel a little burned by my investment into 4th edition which is now a lot of wasted money (especially the monster manuals) so I'm somewhat nervous about this release. Hopefully it's on the good side of my expectations.
Da Boss wrote: I think Masque of the Red Death came out after the swords and sorcery Gazeteers, which are some of my favourite D'n'D setting books ever.
Masque of the Red Death was a 2E Revised boxed set. It came out in 1994.
S&S was an imprint of White Wolf for publishing d20 fantasy. D&D 3E came out in 2000. S&S did its first Ravenloft Gazateer in 2002.
Da Boss, Have you looked at the two HackMaster versions of Ravenloft? Robinloft 1 and Robinloft 2?
HackMaster was written using the AD&D ruleset by Kenzerco, and is pretty easily portable to 2nd edition (just drop the 20 hitpoint kickers off everything). While HackMaster has a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor, it's downplayed in these modules. At least, it certainly was in Robinloft 2.
Da Boss wrote: I think Masque of the Red Death came out after the swords and sorcery Gazeteers, which are some of my favourite D'n'D setting books ever.
Masque of the Red Death was a 2E Revised boxed set. It came out in 1994.
S&S was an imprint of White Wolf for publishing d20 fantasy. D&D 3E came out in 2000. S&S did its first Ravenloft Gazateer in 2002.
I didn't know that! Did you know they did an update for Masque of the Red Death for 3.5? That's what I thought you were talking about. Cool. Never heard of the 2E version.
Da Boss wrote: Not too sure if I'm excited or not for a new Wizards version. I've run their Expedition to Castle Ravenloft adventure twice, and didn't find that it was really "Ravenloft" enough for me either time. We'll see though- they surprised me with the quality of their 4th Edition Underdark and Darksun materials.
I'm guessing this adventure is a bit closer to the original Ravenloft adventure (for 1st edition AD&D), which was innovative for the time but was basically a dungeon crawl with an intelligent boss (Strahd) and some gothic horror trappings. It was the campaign setting that really took the setting to someplace interesting by adding the other domains, the idea of Ravenloft being the 'Demiplane of Dread' and the Dark Powers and such.
To me, to do it properly they need to reintroduce all that stuff, and maybe add some more. A Nentir Vale Domain would be a nic touch for the 4e fans.
Is there a synopsis of what's what with this upcoming edition yet?
In a lot of ways it's been compared to an 'alternate 3rd edition' in that it takes a lot of 2nd edition concepts and modernizes them, but in a significantly different way than 3rd. In general, I expect play experience to resemble 3rd more than 4th.
@Alpharius: I never think of one edition replacing another. To me, they are all totally separate games on my shelf, like as different as Risk and Axis & Allies. I would never say, well I can throw out Risk now that I have A&A or I'll never play A&A again now that I remember how much more rules lite Risk is.
Manchu wrote: @Balance: What do you mean by "modernize"?
From what I've seen, less restrictions, more rigorous rules writing, and unified systems as compared to 1st/2nd edition.
One skill mechanic (stat-based, I think) instead of going to percentile skills for thief skills.
No hard-coded weird bits like racial level limits.
Some attempt to prevent casters being over-powered once beyond a certain level.
Overall nothing about it says 'revolutionary' and there's a few things that scare me, but I'll give it a try, I guess, if my group gets interested.
Balance wrote: Some attempt to prevent casters being over-powered once beyond a certain level.
Spoiler:
So we don't get to "modern" until 2008?
I agree completely about more rigorous rules and unified systems (core mechanic) but I am wondering what you mean by "restrictions." Do you mean all the racial stuff (you mentioned racial level caps)?
I'm also really curious about what scares you about the playtest materials.
Manchu wrote: @Balance: What do you mean by "modernize"?
@Alpharius: I never think of one edition replacing another. To me, they are all totally separate games on my shelf, like as different as Risk and Axis & Allies. I would never say, well I can throw out Risk now that I have A&A or I'll never play A&A again now that I remember how much more rules lite Risk is.
Agreed!
But I played so much 1E AD&D 'back in the day' that, some 20+ years later, I can DM a game again with no problem at all!
In all fairness, the guys I came with haven't really seen 'caster dominance' as an issue, but we rarely got above 12-14th level in 3rd, and our play-style for those games was generally such that there wasn't time to do a lot of item creation or similar. I'd almost like to play another game with those additions to try out the metamagic feats and such, in fact. I'm not sure when caster-dominance really became a 'thing' but I've seen scary builds in 3rd. 2nd and older just seemed tougher to advance, so a magic user getting to high enough levels to throw mroe than one fireball was a big deal and deserved it.
I agree completely about more rigorous rules and unified systems (core mechanic) but I am wondering what you mean by "restrictions." Do you mean all the racial stuff (you mentioned racial level caps)?
Yes. To my understanding, while the 'numbers' look a lot more like 2nd edition (They're trying to prevent the situation in 4th and to a lesser extend 3rd where you'd roll d20+20 or more for an attack, then roll 1d4+18 for damage, or similar silly numbers.) they've gotten rid of the level limits by race (so a Dwarf can't go beyond level 15 or whatever as a fighter) which a lot of people ignored anyway as player characters are supposed to be the heroic outliers of the game anyway.
I'm also really curious about what scares you about the playtest materials.
There's a few things:
One is the early playtest reports had some issues with trying to replicate 4th features without acknowledging it. Monte Cook, who is a good RPG designer with some great credits to his name wrote a dev blog that basically recreated 4th's "Passive perception" concept... A concept that was a key part of the most recent edition of the game they were using. Monte left the dev team for reasons not clearly stated, and I think he's happier working on his own projects anyway, but it did not bode well for the project. Basically, this was the first of several times that an idea was brought up but had to be different from 4e because 4e was bad, not because the idea was bad. (Note: I enjoy 4e.)
Healing Surges were a 4e concept to limit healing and spread it out, Simple implementation, worked well in practice, became an interesting resource to manage. 5th can't just use this idea, so they had (for a time, at least) 'Hit Dice' (similar to the regular hit dice...but for healing) that worked similarly, but were more random and didn't tie in to other systems.
Many players want Fighters to be more interesting. I agree. They've tried several systems for 5e to do this and I like the most recent one I've heard of. Fighters (and maybe other warrior-types)
get 'Superiority dice' or similar that can be used to add to AC, add to damage, or used for special effects. (The good side, here, is that from what I hear they realized that 3rd editions "Take a minus to do a status effect instead of damage' for some tricks was a bad design as, ultimately, the best status effect ever is 'dead'.
'Modularity' was a big design goal, because the stated goal for the edition was 'unifying the editions' with some statement indicating that we could have a table with a 1st edition style Dwarf, a 2nd edition style Elf Mage, a 3rd edition Halfling Rogue, and a 4th edition Dragonborn Warlord. Much of this got dropped as they presumably realized this was non-sense, but some thing have been moved to 'modules'. This includes skills, and there's some promises of a 'tactical module' for 4e style play. I wonder if this'll ever come out, and if it will work as it's non-core.
In general, the designers have not built confidence. There's been a few math failures, and this hurts things. A lot of neat ideas got tossed away because there seems to be a strong bias to do things the old way.
However:
The advantage/disadvantage mechanic reads like a great tool for DMs to run things on the fly. It's a mix of rules giving out bonus and room for a DM to give out situational bonuses. For example, rules might state that a thief gets a Dex check with Advantage. The DM might say that Disadvantage applies due to there being a monstrous fight happening just while the thief works, The two cancel each other and it's a straight-up roll, but the thief is still better at this than anyone else would be.
Some of the suggested systems I've seen for skills seem interesting.
They're acknowledging a lot of older settings and such that haven't gotten love since 2nd (or int he case of Ravenloft, 3rd party in 3rd). I even saw a mention of Planescape as the 'great wheel' is back.
I have fond memories of 2nd edition and would probably try running it tomorrow given willing players. I find the idea of something similar, but with the warts filed off, interesting.
In some ways it reminds me of how several dakka posters reacted to the early news/rumors about Apocalpyse for 40k: excitement because the game was returning to an older state, albeit modernized.
Ahtman wrote: So you are saying you think they may have let Monte Cooke go for being to 4e friendly?
I don't knoe the full reasons he left, but the 'perception incident' was a great example of how not to endear oneself to the community. I've heard he may have wanted to to more with the system than was done, or may have jsut wanted the freedom to do his own (creator-owned) settings such as Numenara.
I grew up with AD&D, moved from Rifts to 3E in some of our gaming years post high school, and eventually embraced 4E when it came out, though by then my group had splintered across the province, and found the online table top tools lacking for our purposes. Had a blast with the campaigns we did run, usually in the Heroic and Paragon tiers, but it's been years since I played.
I've been following the development of 5E on another forum, and from what I've read and seen of the official releases, it just doesn't seem to be for me. Which isn't a bad thing, in general. It just means it's being written for players and groups with preferences different from mine, and while I wish them luck, I am not planning on adding a core set to my current collection. If I feel the need to dungeon crawl with friends (my current crew are more WW and WH players anyway), I've already got 3 systems on hand to do so, and while I have a preference for 4E, I could see myself settling in to play 3E without much difficulty either.
Hell, I've got a couple of character concepts I've been meaning to put to paper for years, and might even get an opportunity to do so one day.
I don't fault anyone for preferring the Red Box or 2E or Next or anything, but the raw venom and loathing aimed at 4E has definitely surprised me. I'm no stranger to "edition wars" in general, but while 3E caused some concerns in the circles I traveled in, and as did 4E and Next alike, the raw anger the existence of that edition confounds me to this day.
Some people take that kind of thing way too personally and seriously.
Ahtman wrote: So you are saying you think they may have let Monte Cooke go for being to 4e friendly?
I don't knoe the full reasons he left, but the 'perception incident' was a great example of how not to endear oneself to the community. I've heard he may have wanted to to more with the system than was done, or may have jsut wanted the freedom to do his own (creator-owned) settings such as Numenara.
I was just curious because I have heard people say the he brought to much 3e baggage. I don't really keep up on that sort of thing so I have no idea.
Manchu wrote: My own (conspiracy) theory is that this whole episode boils down to an extended marketing platform designed to create both chronological and emotional distance from the latest (and probably worst) bout of edition wars. I think this because (1) 5E as a rule set did not really require years of public play testing and (2) I don't think the slice of the demographic that did the playtesting is WotC's main concern. I really wonder whether it will even retain the name "Next."
I was taking Ahtman literally, as in the PLAYERs (not the player characters) are the real monsters. But yes, I have had a lot of parties trend evil. I think it is the nature of D&D -- from the beginning, mind. You play people who don't fit into normal society. Instead of farming, serving as guards, or some other sane and profitable livelihood, PCs decide to raid dark holes in the ground full of lethal monsters on the off-chance of finding stuff they can sell. Sure, there is often a "save the world" bed sheet thrown over it but the basic character motivations inherent to the game (kill things, steal their gak) don't foster pure of heart heroics.
I am on the fence about the beginner box. One of the big draws for me in RPG's is creating my own characters and that will be pregens, but they often have handy information on learning the new system as well.
Stupid question: what good is the PHB if the DMG doesn't come out for three more months? Do people just play with the PHB? Or I guess read and start thinking up campaigns and stuff?
Polonius wrote: Stupid question: what good is the PHB if the DMG doesn't come out for three more months? Do people just play with the PHB? Or I guess read and start thinking up campaigns and stuff?
Not terribly hard to play without the DMG. Harder without a Monster Manual though.
I really hope this new edition has more character customization than 4th when all characters were essentially the same with different names for the power effects. I don't want it dumbed down. I want an RPG that actually makes me feel I'm somewhere else and not a paper version of an MMO. 4th failed so spectacularly for me that I haven't played a game of D&D since.
I've been playing L5R mostly with some Iron Kingdoms and old school Cyberpunk.
This new edition better knock my socks off or I won't bother.
Explore subterranean labyrinths! Plunder hoards of treasure! Battle legendary monsters!
The Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set is your gateway to action-packed stories of the imagination. This box contains the essential rules of the game plus everything you need to play heroic characters on perilous adventures in worlds of fantasy.
Ideal for a group of 4 – 6, the Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set includes a 64-page adventure book with everything the Dungeon Master needs to get started, a 32-page rulebook for playing characters level 1 – 5, 5 pre-generated characters, each with a character sheet and supporting reference material, and 6 dice.
In an audacious bid for power the Cult of the Dragon, along with its dragon allies and the Red Wizards of Thay, seek to bring Tiamat from her prison in the Nine Hells to Faerun. To this end, they are sweeping from town to town, laying waste to all those who oppose them and gathering a hoard of riches for their dread queen. The threat of annihilation has become so dire that groups as disparate as the Harpers and Zhentarim are banding together in the fight against the cult. Never before has the need for heroes been so desperate.
August 19
The Cult of the Dragon leads the charge in an unholy crusade to bring Tiamat back to the Realms, and the situation grows more perilous for good people with each passing moment. The battle becomes increasingly political as opportunities to gather allies and gain advantage present themselves. From Waterdeep to the Sea of Moving Ice to Thay, it is a race against Evil. Succeed or succumb to the oppression of draconic tyranny. Win or lose, things will never be the same again.
Ahtman wrote: I am on the fence about the beginner box. One of the big draws for me in RPG's is creating my own characters and that will be pregens, but they often have handy information on learning the new system as well.
I'm grabbing the starter set since it comes out almost a month before any of the actual books do. It should also have a few monster write ups I can use until the MM finally does drop.
Edit: Also I believe some of the books are being made available early at GenCon. If anyone is going (I can't make it) and is willing to pick up a few books for me, please PM me. I'm happy to pay in advance.
I'm interested. I don't know if it solves the linear fighters, quadratic wizards issues, but this news that it's simple and lacking in crunch and a bit more freeform is what I want.
In 3E, casters became much more powerful (quadratic or exponential progression) over the course of 20 levels than non-casters (linear progression). This was actually solved by 4E. Despite being severely misunderstood and under-appreciated, 4E improves on 3E in many ways. I hope the best ideas of both will make it into the final 5E product.
Alpharius wrote:I think I understand the 'Linear Fighter' thing, but... what's the rest all about?
Quadratic wizard (although really the problem included clerics and druids as well).
As Manchu said, basically the power of casters racked up at a much higher rate than non-caster classes. About level 5 it got silly. Beyond that it went insane, with non-caster classes being essentially completely ineffectual by end-game.
In 3E, casters became much more powerful (quadratic or exponential progression) over the course of 20 levels than non-casters (linear progression). This was actually solved by 4E. Despite being severely misunderstood and under-appreciated, 4E improves on 3E in many ways. I hope the best ideas of both will make it into the final 5E product.
I really, really hope you're right, I do. I loved 4e since it actually gave my fighters the tools to do the job they're supposed to do. But my initial looks into the 5e playtest stuff (and I admit I stopped caring about halfway through the playtests) showed nothing for martial classes really. Fighter turns were basically back to "I swing my sword" and that was it. Oooh, a couple extra dice so I can ... swing my sword better? And that's it?
Mechanics should not be confused with narrative. One of the worst things about 3E is the way it discouraged narrative creativity. A lot of players never thought of trying anything that wasn't spelled out on their character sheet. Unfortunately, 4E closely followed this model by making everything about combat into a mechanic. (Which is probably why it makes for such a good board game but not the best RPG.)
If I am playing a fighter, it's up to me to make his moves interesting when I describe what I do to the group. It is then up to the DM to figure out what I need to roll for my character to attempt what I described. If I can't come up with the description, then I need more practice as a player. If the DM says I can't do that because it's not in the rules, he needs more practice as a DM.
I envision the classes reflecting play style. The Fighter is for a more swashbuckling sort of player who uses his iniative and takes risks. Casters, by contrast, are for players who like to stick their noses in the books, carefully reading the spell texts, and doing the calculations about exactly when/where is the right moment to use up a precious spell.
What 5E does NOT need is books and books and books of "feats" or "maneuvers" or "powers."
Alpharius wrote: I think I understand the 'Linear Fighter' thing, but... what's the rest all about?
If you sketch out 'power curves' for the various classes, in most editions of D&D fighters are a relative straight line from the bottom left (1st level, low power) to the upper right (high level, high power). Spell casters are more of a curve as they start out worse than a fighter (a fighter can swing his sword all day as long, while a wizard casts his spell or two and goes to take a nap) but gain massive power as they level (common example is Fireball becoming available at whatever level: The fighter can swing his sword a couple times, while the wizard can trash a small army, and still has several 'lesser' spells before needing that nap. This continues, as warrior-types get smallish upgrades to hit a little better, maybe a few fests based around tricks (in 3rd) while the spell casters get wish spells and can otherwise remake reality.
The impact of this differs by edition, but many seem to feel the peak is 3rd which spawned the term 'CoDzilla' (for Cleric-or-Druid-Zilla) as the divine spellcasters took the lead for once. "Caster dominance is certainly not limited to making warriors feel inadequate either: I saw a commend from a 3.5 edition player that got discouraged as he realized that his thief was mathematically less useful to the party than a handful of wands to detect traps, open locks, etc. He felt that his character was taking a share of XP and loot for something that would be better served by a handful of magic items. (and 3.0 made magic item crafting a more common and easy PC 'thing' than previous editions.
I feel 3rd may have encouraged this by actually trying to think about balance and consistency more, which begat more discussion of 'winning builds' and 'tiers' of classes and such. Earlier editions could certainly have issues like that (2nd edition spell casters could certainly remake reality easily, ad fighters tended to not even have bad options besides attacking, much less good options.However, I do feel these had certain design decisions which damped this effect, like more random spells and a general tendency against 'ala carte' magic items so building a character around a specific combination of spells, magic items, etc. was less likely to be workable unless the DM made things available.
4th did some clever things to avoid this. The base classes all used a common power structure so everyone had some tricks and was relatively balanced, A lot of spells that violated the idea of 'niche protection' became 'rituals' which were more expensive in both character-building and usage costs.
Consider opening a locked door in a 'stressful' situation: In 2nd, the Rogue can try (percentage chance to make it or not). If the Wizard has it memorized, knock makes this pointless. 3rd is broadly similar, with the option that the Wizard might be a sorcerer and can choose the spell on the fly, or making a Wand of Knock is a relatively trivial outlay by mid-level. In 4th the Rogue can roll the skill check, or a caster can use the Knock Ritual which takes something like 10 minutes (so "no" in combat) and costs a significant amount.
I'm not sure how 5th is dealing with this concern. In a lot of ways it looks like a reset to 3rd or 2nd: I've heard it described as '3rd edition from an alternate universe' and dealing with this concern is something I'm interested in seeing.
I'm sure there will be players option type books eventually. I am saying that the game does not NEED to reduce everything down to a purchasable mechanical widget. There are people who, taking their cue from video games, think that's what RPGs are all about.
Manchu wrote: I'm sure there will be players option type books eventually. I am saying that the game does not NEED to reduce everything down to a purchasable mechanical widget. There are people who, taking their cue from video games, think that's what RPGs are all about.
Right, I get that. The problem is that the business model for D&D has been selling books with more purchasable mechanical widgets for years. Fluff/setting books don't seem to sell as good as the Complete Book of X.
Naturally. There is usually only one DM per group after all and he's the most likely to pick up a campaign setting or module.
But I think you've missed my point. Sure WotC will publish splat, players will purchase it, and they will want to use it considering that they paid for it. That's fine. I got no beef with WotC selling "players options" books and no beef with players buying it.
The problem is when players forget the narrative and just want to shout the name of some power (like in anime) and roll dice. Because at that point, we might as well just play a board game or even better a video game. Or maybe just watch some anime.
Manchu wrote: I am okay with the fighter swinging his sword.
Mechanics should not be confused with narrative. One of the worst things about 3E is the way it discouraged narrative creativity. A lot of players never thought of trying anything that wasn't spelled out on their character sheet. Unfortunately, 4E closely followed this model by making everything about combat into a mechanic. (Which is probably why it makes for such a good board game but not the best RPG.)
If I am playing a fighter, it's up to me to make his moves interesting when I describe what I do to the group. It is then up to the DM to figure out what I need to roll for my character to attempt what I described. If I can't come up with the description, then I need more practice as a player. If the DM says I can't do that because it's not in the rules, he needs more practice as a DM.
I envision the classes reflecting play style. The Fighter is for a more swashbuckling sort of player who uses his iniative and takes risks. Casters, by contrast, are for players who like to stick their noses in the books, carefully reading the spell texts, and doing the calculations about exactly when/where is the right moment to use up a precious spell.
What 5E does NOT need is books and books and books of "feats" or "maneuvers" or "powers."
I should be clear that "Swing my sword" wasn't a descriptive, but rather an "effects-based" annotation of what the fighter was doing. It doesn't matter how fancy you describe the fighter swinging his sword, when the end result is "roll a d20 vs AC" with exactly 0 changes mechanically from "I attack" to "I drop low, switch my grip on my longsword and slash upward through the monster's throat!". Anything the GM fiats is just that: fiat.
I'd also point out that in a world of "I describe what I do and let the GM fiat it all he wants" there is (and really should be) nothing preventing a caster class from doing the same thing. "I cast magic missle" vs "I summon bonds of eldritch might, forge them into silvery shards of magic and send them careening through the monster's throat!"
Whether the DM "needs more practice" for not wanting to fiat every single descriptive attack is up to you and your group. Some prefer more straight forward things, other are willing to bend every rule in the game. Both of these situations are independent of class balance however.
You have, I believe, previously said that you were fine with the implementation of the Tome Of Battle giving other abilities to non-caster classes, whereas the majority opinion on the matter seemed to be "omg suddenly fighters are OP!" (which I have never agreed with). If 5e lacks for that sort of alternate ability for non-casters, I fail to see how it won't be another "casters run away with the edition" ... edition, unless magic has been SERIOUSLY toned down.
Well, I think that's being a little intolerant of other people's fun, Manchu. I certainly prefer narrative games, but if people want to play it like a computer game and they enjoy that, I'm not going to say they're doing it wrong.
From what I've seen btw, casters have been scaled in a couple of ways: 1. They get less spells, period, but some minor damage abilities that "recharge". 2. The damage and effects of the spells they do get are more limited in scope. Spells either do similar damage to a fighter on a good round for that level, or they do weird stuff but take a while to cast and so on. 3. Melee is not out of the question for wizards, since everyone gets a similar bonus to hit and not all monsters are out of range of those attacks.
I suppose there will probably be balance issues, but those sorts of things have never killed a roleplaying game for me. Sometimes it's fun to play the underdog or everyman in a super team.
Perhaps you have read some of my posts about Old School and Modern RPGs? Quick summary: Old School rules require interpretation. Modern rules (theoretically) just need to be executed as-written. Each approach has totally different game play emphases: Old School is about exploration and is mostly played in the form of conversational narrative. Modern is about combat and is mostly played with grid mats and miniatures. Each approach also has a totally different kind of DM. The Old School DM is a neutral story moderator. The Modern DM is an enemy combatant.
The kind of "fiat" you are talking about assumes a very Modern sense of RPGs. That happens to be exactly the type of thing I am generally arguing against. Why? Frankly, there is a purely practical reason: RPGs are not as good at being tactical board games/miniature skirmish games as ... well, tactical board games/miniature skirmish games.
The larger reason is, the main thing RPGs are actually good at is generating characters and stories. The tendency in Modern games, following video games, is to reduce a character to a character sheet and a story to a series of combat/resource management scenarios. Computers are better at handling that sort of thing, making the table top redundant as a kind of analog version for luddites.
If I am playing a fighter, it's up to me to make his moves interesting when I describe what I do to the group. It is then up to the DM to figure out what I need to roll for my character to attempt what I described. If I can't come up with the description, then I need more practice as a player. If the DM says I can't do that because it's not in the rules, he needs more practice as a DM.
Pretty much describing GM fiat? Or are we having a symantic issue?
Da Boss wrote: if people want to play it like a computer game and they enjoy that, I'm not going to say they're doing it wrong
But in fact, I am talking about people playing it like a computer game and not enjoying it. Pointing out that D&D is not a computer game is a pretty good way to explain why someone playing it like one is not having fun.
streamdragon wrote: Pretty much describing GM fiat? Or are we having a symantic issue?
No, it's not semantic. I understand what you mean; it boils down to "disregarding the rules" or even "cheating." In older editions of D&D, this isn't an issue because the DM's job is to interpret the rules. That means, you describe what your PC is doing and the DM tells you what is going on mechanically. In modern rules, you tell the DM what mechanic you are using and the DM watches as you roll your dice, marking off the monsters' HP as necessary. In the Modern context, Old School DMing is "fiat." Old School style still survives somewhat in Modern games: in 3E, for example, the DM could give a +/-2 modifier to reflect circumstances.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Coincidentally, here's what Mike Mearls (lead on Fifth Edition) said about the topic in 2011:
"I have a theory about RPGs," Mearls said. "When 2nd edition really got focused on story [in 1989], we had what I call the first era of RPG decadence and it was based on story. The idea that the DM is going to tell you a story, and you go from point A to point B to point C. The narrative is linear and [the DM is a] storyteller going to tell you a static story, and you would just get to roll dice occasionally. 3rd edition came out and said 'To Hell with that,' it's all about players, we're going to give you some really cool options, it's all flexibility in the DM and for the players, there's this meaningful choice.
"I think we've hit the second era of RPG decadence, and it's gone the opposite way," he continued. "It's all about player power now - the DM is just the rules guy - and the DM can't contradict what the players say. [The game] is taking away from the DM, and that's where I worry because other types of games can do that better. I might as well play a board game, 'cause I'm just here enforcing the rules. Without the DM as the creative guy, what's the point?"
Mearls admits 4th edition might have gone too far in creating a perfectly balanced game. "We've lost faith of what makes an RPG an RPG," he said, admitting that in trying to please gamers with a limited imagination, 4th edition might have punished those with an active one. "There's this fear of the bad gaming group, where the game is so good that even playing with a bad gaming group, you'll still have fun."
Were they always $50? I could have sworn they were $40. Either way, my Gencon money is going to be tight this year. D&D, 40k Conquest, KD at the CMoN booth, Forgeworld, and all the other dealers there to tempt my money... I may have to make some hard decisions.
$50 is fairly close, if not the same in some instances, and seems to be a pretty common price for hardback gaming books. Codex's and Supplements ar $49.99, for example. Someone made a list adjusting for inflation.
Looks like only the Starter Set and PHB will be available by GenCon. Note the release date of the PHB is actually immediately after GenCon but I cannot imagine WotC will not have copies there.
As far as the price, I don't know that you can compare the 4E core books with these. They were never meant to be complete and I don't know if that is what's going on here or not. And we certainly can't compare the 5E books with 3E ones, considering they came out 11-14 years ago.
I am not at all surprised by the price. D&D books have always been expensive so this is no change. Consider that the original box set cost about 48 USD in 2014 money.
Manchu wrote: Looks like only the Starter Set and PHB will be available by GenCon. Note the release date of the PHB is actually immediately after GenCon but I cannot imagine WotC will not have copies there.
Man, the GenCon WotC booth/area is going to be crazily packed this year. Lines longer than FFG has been having on Day 1 the last few years.
kronk wrote: Man, the GenCon WotC booth/area is going to be crazily packed this year. Lines longer than FFG has been having on Day 1 the last few years.
You're not kidding. The D&D event tickets sold out like lightning. I missed the All-Access Pass. They took in $36k just on those.
Manchu wrote: Looks like only the Starter Set and PHB will be available by GenCon. Note the release date of the PHB is actually immediately after GenCon but I cannot imagine WotC will not have copies there.
Man, the GenCon WotC booth/area is going to be crazily packed this year. Lines longer than FFG has been having on Day 1 the last few years.
No doubt. I believe I may just pass on fifth edition for now, or wait for the discounted boxed set that'll eventually find it's way to market.
Now I see where I was confused. I was thinking of the pricing for the original 3.5 books, and other than the Core, pathfinder books are $39.99.
kronk wrote: Man, the GenCon WotC booth/area is going to be crazily packed this year. Lines longer than FFG has been having on Day 1 the last few years.
You're not kidding. The D&D event tickets sold out like lightning. I missed the All-Access Pass. They took in $36k just on those.
Event tickets are on sale? feth! How did I miss opening day AGAIN? Aren't I supposed to get an email?
Er, do you mean a starter set? You can pre-order it from Amazon for $18. It comes out July 15. Or do you mean the "gift set" slipcased thing? Was that discounted?
kronk wrote: Event tickets are on sale? feth! How did I miss opening day AGAIN? Aren't I supposed to get an email?
That's what I said!
Yes, it opened on Sunday (of all days) and everything is gone. I know exactly how you feel right now BTW.
Er, do you mean a starter set? You can pre-order it from Amazon for $18. It comes out July 15. Or do you mean the "gift set" slipcased thing? Was that discounted?
kronk wrote: Event tickets are on sale? feth! How did I miss opening day AGAIN? Aren't I supposed to get an email?
That's what I said!
Yes, it opened on Sunday (of all days) and everything is gone. I know exactly how you feel right now BTW.
A friend of mine when on at noon when they started and tossed in all his registrations real quick, as he was a prepared little bunny, and ran to checkout to get a message that he was 4,965th in line to checkout and was in queue. Being there when registration starts isn't much of a guarantee either.
Er, do you mean a starter set? You can pre-order it from Amazon for $18. It comes out July 15. Or do you mean the "gift set" slipcased thing? Was that discounted?
kronk wrote: Event tickets are on sale? feth! How did I miss opening day AGAIN? Aren't I supposed to get an email?
That's what I said!
Yes, it opened on Sunday (of all days) and everything is gone. I know exactly how you feel right now BTW.
I meant the bundle they generally put out of the PHB, DMG, and the MM1. Usually with a small discount on buying seperately.
They've had the same date for months guys, reminded every one via email, and post reminders on facebook(and possibly twitter) constantly. They even made a big announcement about the event list being open last week. There have been big clues.
Er, do you mean a starter set? You can pre-order it from Amazon for $18. It comes out July 15. Or do you mean the "gift set" slipcased thing? Was that discounted?
kronk wrote: Event tickets are on sale? feth! How did I miss opening day AGAIN? Aren't I supposed to get an email?
That's what I said!
Yes, it opened on Sunday (of all days) and everything is gone. I know exactly how you feel right now BTW.
A friend of mine when on at noon when they started and tossed in all his registrations real quick, as he was a prepared little bunny, and ran to checkout to get a message that he was 4,965th in line to checkout and was in queue. Being there when registration starts isn't much of a guarantee either.
I hit the button at the turn of the second and ended up 2987th myself. Managed to get everything I wanted anyway
*shrug* I thought it was strange as well. Not much that can be done about it now. Like I said, we may need to keep a more up to date thread next year, maybe even include guests of honor, artists, and other information such as when the event list is up.
I managed to get seats at both Secrets of Sokol Keep and Shadows on the Moonsea. I'm not sure about the 1-hour events, seems like it's just a demo. The Saturday night game, Kryptgarden, I had no chance of getting into anyway. Still, I would have easily easily paid $150 for the All-Access considering I decided to go this year, my first GenCon and probably the last one I will go to for a long, long time, for the sake of Fifth Edition.
Check often. Tickets become available all the time when people opt out for whatever reason. I managed to get true dungeon with my buddies the first year only because I hung out with them at the door, and a guy sold it to me for the price in generics. Would have been a total waste of money if he had actually spent the tickets, but fortunately for me he didn't and they were credited back to my account.
I have been checking it religiously and will certainly continue to do so.
I actually saw one come up Sunday night but I didn't know the GenCon site would not let me add a ticket to an event that overlapped with an event for which I already purchased a ticket. (The other event was also a precious, precious D&D event.) That little speed bump cost me all of ten seconds but in that single breath the All-Access ticket had already slipped through my fingers.
Don't worry -- you will hear plenty from me, more than you might want to even. And I pre-ordered everything except the PHB (which I would not be able to resist picking up at GenCon). So you will hear it in a timely fashion, too.
If you plan on picking it up on Thursday, get to the dealer hall doors by 7 or earlier. No matter what the staff does there will be a crowd at the doors until they open them. Getting there by 9 is far too late- you won't even see the books. Look at the floor plan and try to figure out which set of doors you need to set up at- stand at the wrong one and the crowd will force you forward and you'll be cut off. Think Black Friday but with thousands of gamers stampeding for the first chance at a product.
If you get a VIG badge you get access tithe dealer hall an hour or 30 minutes early, I can't remember. Usually they'll still have a limited number for them so you could potentially miss out anyway. When Netrunner released FFG told their staff to stop putting it out- it went too fast. When the hall opened for the masses this entire stock was gone in minutes. Popular products sell fast. Other horror stories circulate of other companies not savvy enough about VIGs, and all the VIGs buying ALL of their stock. Many, many people were unhappy they weren't even given the chance to buy a product because they didn't buy the $400 badge. WotC should be well versed enough that it shouldn't be an issue. Hopefully.
Personally I'm liking the covers less. Not a fan of the style.
Thank you for that advice. I hope you will consider writing a GenCon tips and tricks article for people like me. I feel like it could spare others a lot of pain when spending so much to do something like this, especially when you can only really do it once for the foreseeable future, and then it not working out because you just don't know things. I actually read a "GenCon Survival Guide" back in February to learn about what to do but the article was obviously not very good.
For example, I got my badge the day they became available but still missed out on the VIG badges. Ugh. Same thing regarding the hotel situation, which I realize was a new system for this year. Thing is, I know a lot of other people got the VIP badges and their first choice of hotels. There must be more to it than luck ... i.e., experience.
I like the covers more every time I see them. I especially like the DMG because it will certainly be the "scary purple book" that intimidates players. The little red strip/tear thingy in the lower left, where it says Dungeons and Dragons, is weird. I can't figure out what that's all about.
I was actually thinking about doing something like that. I'm trying to get settled into a new house at the moment, so all I have is my phone to browse on so it may be a while.
I've never bothered with on-site housing. It's a crime what they charge, but if you can afford the price the convenience may be worth it. We've always stayed a couple miles away, but it's a straight five-minute drive for us. I forget the name of the street we're on, but its very convenient. Also if you're stayng offsite parking goes fast. We try to get there no later than eight in the morning.
And a note about the VIG badges- if you've been before they'll send you an email about buying them early. They give "repeat customers" first dibs on VIGs. I've never really been tempted myself. You get access to a lounge, the dealer hall a little early, and a couple other perks I can't remember. I've been satisfied with my normal badge so far. Please try to have your badges shipped. Will Call on Thursday will take several hours(judging by the length of the lines we see every year). I believe they also let you pick it up Wednesday, but I assume that would be a bear as well. There are just so many people at the convention, it's quite a sight.
Alpharius wrote: I know I'd appreciate something like that Manchu - for similar reasons.
When I'm finally able to go to Gencon, it will be, if not a once in a lifetime deal, a once in the next 5 to 10 years!
I know this is the D&D 5th edition thread, but since this has come up.
One recommendation I would give that I learned the hard way is don't over-book yourself. I used to play HackMaster 4th edition tournaments, which would eat up most of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (we usually made the final tables). That didn't leave any time for the dealer's room, which is where the magic happens.
Now that I don't commit to so much, I can walk around, plop my happy rear-end down at a booth if a game catches my eye, and play for 20-40 minutes. If I like it, I'll buy it. If not, at least I tried something new. I can also ogle the eye-candy, chit-chat with game designers at FFG and other companies I enjoy, sit in on seminars, and so on.
I usually pick a single 1 hour or so thing to do each day, if something catches my eye (Reaper speed painting, how-to seminars, etc) and spend the rest of my time playing games with my friends.
Don't send your tickets to Will Call. DON'T DO IT! Just pay the $10 and mail it to your home. They are better now than they used to be, but it's not worth standing in line for 1 to 4 hours depending on the day to pick up your gak.
Wander by yourself, of course. But if you have someone with you, go try out a few games with them and share the experience.
I hope that helps. Don't go expecting Adepticon's dealer's room. That's like comparing a gas station to a Super WalMart. That's not a knock on Adepticon. It's just 2 different scales, is all.
Enjoy it, guys!
Edit: Some more information in Manchu's thread here from a few months back. I wouldn't mind a meet up. I regret not meeting all the dakkanaughts at Adepticon last year.
You can have a pretty good time at Gencon even if you don't play in a single registered event.
I went one year, and the dealer room alone takes pretty much a full day. There are demos and the game aucton and tons of other stuff to fill hours. I'd suggest signing up for a few things, but you need less structured gaming than you might think, especially if you are going with/meeting people there.
the guys that play 18+ hours a day, every day? They are the rare exception, and are often exactly who you'd expect...
Polonius wrote:I mean, it's a good price to get me to try a new game.
Agreed. At that price point, you can't help but try it.
Sinful Hero wrote:I think I'd rather have the cocktail personally. I've need had a good experience with an RPG starter set, but maybe I'm just a bad DM.
It's just a good way to check it out rather than paying for all the books. For $12, why not?
Keep in mind with Amazon pre-orders that you will get the lowest price between when you place the order and it ships. So if it does go any lower, you will get that lower price.
Like others, I am not so excited about starter boxes generally but I tend to get excited about D&D starter boxes. I guess it is because they're the first thing to come out but also because I am into the history of D&D and enjoy seeing how each edition is presented to the market.
Tangentially, it is funny to see for how much the 4th edition Red Box starter set (not even the original starter set) is currently selling.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sinful Hero wrote: isn't the starter set a waste of money? It will have no practical use after your first couple of games
Hm, I think starter set adventures can be quite handy for those surprise sessions of D&D that happen every once in a while, when suddenly a bunch of people want to play some D&D but you have nothing prepared and character creation might actually kill the moment. In that case, it is a really handy thing to just pop open the starter set.
If you're going to buy the core books anyway, isn't the starter set a waste of money? It will have no practical use after your first couple of games. I understand wanting to test the rules before you buy them, but most of the starters I've gotten have just been dumbed down versions of the core rules. It's not exactly representative of the real product.
the price doesn't bug me, although convincing my gaming group to try it might be tough. We're all hip deep in a super sweet IK:RPG campaign. Turns out guys that do freelance work for game companies make unusually good GMs...
Odds are, it'd just sit on the shelf , with all my other unplayed games:(
Alpharius wrote: In all likelihood I'll be sticking with 1E AD&D anyway
The AD&D DMG is my favorite D&D book to read. I love browsing through it, picking through the Gygaxisms. There is no more florid screed in the range and I think Gygax's advice (sometimes embracing it, sometimes shunning it) is still very relevant. Every once in a while, I find some tidbit to ruminate upon. Here's an example from earlier this year, posted to an OSR network:
Spoiler:
In the ever colorful AD&D DMG, GG confessed that he "deeply regrets not taking the time and space in D&D to stress repeatedly the importance of moderation" regarding player acquisition of magic items.
Even despite that he himself included powerful magic items in the D&D tables, he spared only the merest sympathy for those DMs whose campaigns are "little more than a joke" because they actually used those tables: "the uninitiated DM cannot be severely faulted for merely following what was set before him or her in the rules."
They can be faulted, yes -- just not "severely." Faulted for following the published rules? Blaming the people trying to deal with your shoddy work for its shoddiness? The part of me that loves 3E/PF can't help but laugh at such astounding arrogance. The thief skill table also comes to mind here.
But the part of me that loves the OSR kind of gets it. As GG himself sardonically lamented, if only he had made it a rule that DMs "use care and logic." Reading between the Gygaxian lines, I guess the "initiated DM" might wonder just what kind of people need permission or a command from a ruleset in order to simply use their brains.
Now that rather elitist attitude fails to account for the truly radical nature of D&D. I have the impression that most if not all other games of the era had permissive rule sets. So maybe GG wasn't being totally sarcastic when he wrote that he should have more thoroughly explained "the intent, meaning, and spirit of the game" when writing D&D.
So for all my fellow OSR scenesters, remember to be gentle and patient when introducing folks weaned on 3E+ to the radical weirdness of earlier D&D. The notion that you don't just follow the rules in order to play the game is pretty strange.
I'm hearing there will be some sort of web-based add-on that adds character creation (probably for low levels and a 'classic' selection of races) to the Starter Kit contents.
Balance wrote: I'm hearing there will be some sort of web-based add-on that adds character creation (probably for low levels and a 'classic' selection of races) to the Starter Kit contents.
Manchu, a friend and I were just recently discussing how we miss the era of more rare and random magic items in D&D. While we don't play this way even in 4th, there's a certain 'RAW' or 'Metagame' in newer editions that making a build is important versus what we perceive as an old-school setup where you deal with whatever random stuff comes your character's way. I think some modern rules would actually benefit that: 4e, for example, has a strong "Don't screw the players" design ethos I like, even if I don't like some other parts.
Still, we miss the idea that a mid-level character might have a magic weapon (hopefully one they're specialized in, if not maybe a back-up for stuff that needs it), a potion or two, and a couple random items that are so situationally useful that James Bond would raise an eyebrow if assigned them.
"We got a magic folding boat and a ring that lets us talk to squirrels. I'm sure this will all come in handy..."
I would argue that 2nd edition ran with the higher level of magic, especially in stuff like Spelljammer (where an inexperienced party might have a flying ship that consumes magic items as fuel or Planescape (Magic weapons & armor loses pluses as you travel from your home plane. They're a bit more common, but if you need a new set every plane, it gets expensive. ).
*sigh* I wanna like D&D, I kinda enjoyed what we did in the play test. Still, It's a game I seem to have trouble getting comfortable in anymore, regardless of edition. Probably still going to buy the new edition though, if only to own for the sake of D&D book.
The key concept you mentioned is "making builds." The idea of setting down and planning 20 levels of character options is kind of presumptuous. After all, you're talking about a character that is going to throw himself into danger at every turn. Lo and behold, the characters in 3E and 4E owe more to super hero comics, complete with all kinds of glowy powers, than fantasy novels. Survival in those editions is less of a question and more of a right.
Chongara wrote: It's a game I seem to have trouble getting comfortable in anymore
Manchu wrote: Tangentially, it is funny to see for how much the 4th edition Red Box starter set (not even the original starter set) is currently selling.
For a real treat look for the DM Kit. I didn't get it because a friend of mine said it just came with the Rules Compendium, which I already had, but as it turns out it comes with the Essentials DMG. It is very similiar to the RC, but has things like, oh, rules for constructing a level appropriate encounter.
Ahtman wrote: but as it turns out it comes with the Essentials DMG
Dang, I wondered what was so special about that considering the prices. If I had known that I would have bought it. I liked the Essentials books a lot.
Ahtman wrote: but as it turns out it comes with the Essentials DMG
Dang, I wondered what was so special about that considering the prices. If I had known that I would have bought it. I liked the Essentials books a lot.
I have all of them but the DM Kit, and it is a hole in my heart now...
The key concept you mentioned is "making builds." The idea of setting down and planning 20 levels of character options is kind of presumptuous. After all, you're talking about a character that is going to throw himself into danger at every turn. Lo and behold, the characters in 3E and 4E owe more to super hero comics, complete with all kinds of glowy powers, than fantasy novels. Survival in those editions is less of a question and more of a right.
It's 30 levels in 4e to be pedantic. I think focusing on a 'build' is a side-effect of MMOs more than anything else, although 3rd did encourage this in some ways: Prestige Classes are an interesting subject that is a massive mix of good and bad for the game.
They add some neat flavor to characters and allow same-class characters to be differentiated. They're fun! They're a neat way to add setting-specific stuff in mechanically (like if a setting has an order of Knights, that's a great Prestige Class concept).
However, they definitely encourage 'builds' as there's a desire to maximize the Prestige Class levels, so characters may have a strict plan of what skills/feats to take to qualify as soon as possible.
I feel like the intent from the initial 3.0 Prestige Classes was that they were meant as a sort of story reward. Consider that the first Prestige Classes were released in the DMG, and included the Blackguard, which requires a Paladin obtain a high level, then fall and turn to evil, and allows a special trade-in of abilities. Much more story-driven than the ones we got later.
If I was making my own 3.0-inspired game, I'd keep the concept of Prestige Classes but make them more rewards. This would probably require some work to provide 'frameworks' or 'families' of classes. To use the Dragonlance setting, if I was making a Knights of Solamnia PrC, I'd actually want a group that could be awarded to players doing a service to the Knights: The core Knight class for fighter-types that want to become full-on knights, and maybe a lower-requirement (lower expectation) 'Friend of the Knights of Solamnia' PrC open to wizards,clerics, thieves, etc. that might not be interested int he main class, but still provides something. Basically, provide something 'unlockable' for everyone.
That's just my 2 cents, though. 2nd and earlier did have some 'build' thought (albeit not by name) in things like planning for spells and such... Even assigning stats is a small step towards this, I guess. Playing anything but 'hard core' (roll stats 3d6 each, in order, play with whatever you roll) ultimately does involve some thought about development, although I think picking a class you're actually suited for is a reasonable 'build' choice.
It's very hard for me to put my finger on just what exactly. More so than when I play other games I always feel a little bit like I'm being torn in two directions, like what I want to do with the mechanics is grinding against what I want to narratively (and both these things are important to me). This applies more so as a player than a GM, given the larger degree of control afforded by the latter position but I've felt it in both roles. That's only part of it though.
Another thing is while I really, really like some aspects your sort of "Standard" D&D setting, I'm annoyed by others. I like monsters and evil wizards. I like crazy looking monsters and flashy magic spells. I like dusty farming villages and ancient ruins. I'm sort of on board with the dwarves and the orcs, and the goblins and such I guess... whatever. Royalty bore me to pieces. Monsters that are like half animal + woman's torso make my eyes roll. I like adventures in the wild and exploring dungeons, but I've little interest in grubbing around for treasure & coin.I hate elves and dear god there is always someone who loves the damn things in every game. It seems like there is always 20 billion varities of them these days. Regular Elves, Half-Elves, Dark Elves, not-an-elf-but-looks-like one, elf elf elf elf elf. Oh god. Make it stop. Please make it stop.
Not that D&D is inherently bound to any standard setting like that and I've played it in different ways. However, it's the default and as such is what people tend to go for.
Balance wrote: It's 30 levels in 4e to be pedantic. I think focusing on a 'build' is a side-effect of MMOs more than anything else, although 3rd did encourage this in some ways: Prestige Classes are an interesting subject that is a massive mix of good and bad for the game.
That's just my 2 cents, though. 2nd and earlier did have some 'build' thought (albeit not by name) in things like planning for spells and such... Even assigning stats is a small step towards this, I guess. Playing anything but 'hard core' (roll stats 3d6 each, in order, play with whatever you roll) ultimately does involve some thought about development, although I think picking a class you're actually suited for is a reasonable 'build' choice.
Always with the MMOs... Builds were popular before MMOs were a big thing. Video games, at least. If nothing else, I remember having established 'good builds' in Diablo 2 (which was pre most big MMOs) and I definitely remember power builds for 2nd edition D&D (which was before all of those).
Heck, the original 'build' class that required 20+ levels of planning was the 1st edition monk. You literally had to take things in order to even get it to work. Your entire career was planned out. Not to mention that first and second edition multi-classing required a high level of pre-planning to make it effective. I clearly remember people gaming out the most powerful characters and planning progression back then (remember dart throwing specialists?)
Focusing on a build is definitely not a new thing.
1st and 2nd edition multi-classing required selecting the option at character creation as for some reason only humans could actually change class once they started (and that was dual-classing, despite it potentially stretching to 3+ classes). And let's not get started on the 1e bard!
I don't remember 1e Monks well enough to comment. I may check tonight as I've got the 1e Reprints at home! I thought they were like most classes with specific abilities at specific levels, and the fun stuff like having high-level characters with limited quotas. (Or am I confused with druids?)
I feel like 'builds' became much more predominant, though, as games advanced and it became a reasonable expectation that you would be able control character options beyond certain points. 2e was very 'front loaded' with Kits that had to be taken at 1st level and relatively limited 'choices' with advancement beyond WP/NWP, spells, etc.
The core math may be a culprit for this perception, too. 4e 9for example) is written with the idea that characters will have magic item bonuses to gear at certain levels: if this is not followed (or an alternate system put in place), it can make the game frustrating as characters fall behind the curve on thee bonus to hit vs. enemy defenses.Older editions have this, to a point, but it's much less defined or obvious. 2nd was also big on requiring magic or +X or greater weapons to damage a lot of monsters, which does mean fighters without a magic weapon might get frustrated... But when I played that edition, it felt like it made sense for an Axe-Specialist fighter to keep a magic dagger around in case he needed the magic to get through defenses. Not perfect. but interesting.
I like 4th, and have been talking with my group's primary DM about 4th fro an upcoming campaign... But I also like the idea from 5th of limiting magic items a bit more.
But the question is not one of "math" considering the numbers are a means (mechanic) to an end (design). (This is probably less true, in a systematic sense, of the sprawling mess that is Second Edition.) Third also assumed magic item bonuses by level. Indeed, 3E is the real watershed moment. Whatever could have been done with builds before, having a build was the default in 3E.
Manchu wrote: But the question is not one of "math" considering the numbers are a means (mechanic) to an end (design). (This is probably less true, in a systematic sense, of the sprawling mess that is Second Edition.) Third also assumed magic item bonuses by level. Indeed, 3E is the real watershed moment. Whatever could have been done with builds before, having a build was the default in 3E.
I have to agree with your assessment of third. Some of the classes themselves encourage builds- look at the ranger and choosing a specialty(ranged or two-weapon fighting). If you don't plan out a build beforehand, your character is severely gimped compared to the trst of your party.
Just as a disclaimer, I've played Basic through 4th edition (and a brief playtest of 5th) and enjoyed them all... But in different ways. The main thing is I feel like they're all solutions to subtly different problems and 'tech levels' kind of like how new major revisions of cars are released every few decades to meet design goals for the era in which they are released.
Seems like you are conflating progress and contingency. I heartily agree that each edition reflects something about how its designers understood the market at a certain moment. I don't think the comparison to advancing technology, such as successive models of cars, is quite so apt.
I don't subscribe to a whiggish history of D&D as I don't see much that can be called progress -- it's just change. That said, 3E and 4E are very, very closely related. I do think WotC attempted to learn from 3E when designing 4E. The two main lessons-learned appear to have been (1) give everyone powers and (2) force everyone to be a team player. Given caster privilege and prima-donnaism truly were big problems in 3E, it's tempting to say 4E was progress BUT that would be assuming the 3E design direction (as opposed to, for example, the BECMI design direction) defines progress.
I think the problem when looking at video games when comparing RPGs, and there are quite a few to be honest, is that with MMO's getting to level cap and all abilities is usually only half the game. Much of a games time is spent at end game, and in a PnP RPG that is far less true. With 3E and 4E being so steeped in the need to get certain things at certain levels to be what you want it detracts overall from the characters growth; it becomes less about what they do then what abilities they have.
Reds8n posted an article some time ago contrasting video games with RPGs, where the main distinction was in video games the reward is progressing through the game while with RPGs the reward is the play itself. 3E and 4E blur that distinction, IMO.
I'm rather conflicted about 5e. Fourth was the edition for me; I have played and collected since 2nd, but 4th was deeply satisfying for me in a way that was dramatically different from previous editions. To the extent that is has, as the saying goes, ruined me for older editions I fear. It's a bit like eating really good Sushi; you look back at the stuff you were eating in college and remember liking it... but not being able to understand quite why.
So, as someone that felt that where 4th diverged from the other editions, it was to the credit of 4th, much of the lead-up to 5th, with the emphasis on capturing the "feel" and character of previous editions, has left me rather cold. I will say that the art is quite good though!
I dunno, I'm way more excited about 5th edition than I am about 7th ed 40K. Probably because D'n'D is most of my gaming these days. I just want it to be easy to run and fluid in play and I'll be happy as Larry. I don't like the bloat that happens past the mid levels in 4th or 3.5/Pathfinder.
We're playing a very loose, open ended Pathfinder game in an Open Table framework, with a slow progression. Anyone who gets killed starts off again at level 1, and XP is awarded per session, so we're seeing level disparities within parties. It's actually been a massive breath of fresh air from our previous GM plot driven experiences, where everything is pretty much up to the players, and the roster is constantly changing resulting in new team dynamics. I've been pretty unforgiving in killing them if the dice come up that way, and they seem to really enjoy the drama of it. But it's all been low level so far- 15 sessions, and the highest level characters just hit level 4. I have to say it's really made me appreciate the fun of simple, open, choice driven gaming with a fast and fluid system. I hope 5th can capture this feeling.
The lack of map and tokens listed on the box makes me think they are trying to avoid the accusation of game being dumbed down that accompanied 4E.
I know there is a bit of art of a dungeon interior on the back of the box, but I can't see them including a map without listing it as a selling point on the box contents.
adamsouza wrote: The lack of map and tokens listed on the box makes me think they are trying to avoid the accusation of game being dumbed down that accompanied 4E.
There's been a lot of evidence that the core rules are mapless (or at least don't get weird without a map) because that's how old editions did it. The good/bad here is it is supposed to make 'quick encounters' easier (4e tended to be underwhelming for smaller encounters, although it worked great for big, massive fights.) and encourage 'creative' combat stuff. The bad side is it does mean that some DMs will not alls anything besides the base combat maneuvers that are included, and there's no positioning and such to make combat interesting.
For 3.0, there was a perception that WotC's "plan" was to control the core. For example, to be compliant and use the d20 logo you had to say "Refer to the PHB for generating stats" and a few other things. There was a definite feel of "You want to play d20? But the basic book from us, then your setting stuff from whomever. We don't care."
It worked, to an extent, in that tons of d20-based games were released. Some good, some bad. WotC got their $ from the PHB instead of pursuing licensing costs. This is also the edition where some classic D&D settings were licensed out: Ravenloft and Dragonlance were done by 3rd parties.
4th was very strongly opposed to 3rd party stuff. I thought there was supposed to be a route for companies to do 3rd party material, but I believe it was difficult to qualify for and little if any materialized. The general community feeling of reliance on the character builder probably didn't help, either.
5th looks interesting. They're definitely taking a new stance. I wonder if they're going to do any new settings or mostly focus on older ones, and what (if any) the 4rd party policy will be. There's definitely room the type of books that came out for 3rd that were big compilations of Prestige Classes, but instead new backgrounds and such for 5e.
The OGL was the kudzu of RPGs. In terms of rule sets, d20 dominated so thoroughly as to dominate the market beyond the D&D brand. In a word, it established an era. I don't know how much WotC directly benefited (given the inward turn during 4E and subsequent/simultaneous development of PF) but smaller gaming companies certainly reaped the windfall both by embracing and reacting against this era.
There were third-party 4E materials, by the way. Yes, there were few compared to the seemingly endless stream of 3E-, then 3.5-, and now PF-compatible materials but far more than pretty much any other system. That there were any at all is surprising not only in terms of the restricted licensing arrangement but also because the logic of 4E was itself very "introverted."
Automatically Appended Next Post: New Take On Basic D&D
As you might have noticed, we made an exciting announcement last week about our upcoming storyline called Tyranny of Dragons, and after over two years of work, countless hours of testing, and hundreds of thousands of playtest packets downloaded, we’ve finally announced release dates for the books and the Starter Set that make up the core of the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons.
It’s been a long road to this point. It seems like just yesterday that we were in crunch mode for that first playtest packet. The team faced a daunting final push of work that day. I’m pretty sure that my rendition of several Public Enemy tracks provided the morale-boosting energy to finish that first release. Either that or everyone just wanted to get their work done to shut me up.
It’s been an interesting journey these past two years. The overwhelming response to the playtest showed us that demand for RPGs is still out there, despite a host of other gaming options. Your feedback and the steadily increasing approval in our surveys showed that we were on the right track. A simpler, leaner, extensible game was right not just for new players, but also for people who had put decades into playing D&D.
There’s a lot to talk about with the new game, but I’d like to take this week to focus on a piece of the puzzle we haven’t talked about yet: Basic Dungeons & Dragons.
Basic D&D is a PDF that covers the core of the game. It’s the equivalent of the old D&D Rules Cyclopedia, though it doesn’t have quite the same scope (for example, it won’t go into detail on a setting). It runs from levels 1 to 20 and covers the cleric, fighter, rogue, and wizard, presenting what we view as the essential subclass for each. It also provides the dwarf, elf, halfling, and human as race options.
But the best part? Basic D&D is a free PDF. Anyone can download it from our website. We want to put D&D in as many hands as possible, and a free, digital file is the best way to do that.
If Basic D&D is the equivalent of the classic Rules Cyclopedia, then the three core rulebooks are analogous to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Want more character options? Pick up a Player’s Handbook. Looking for more critters for your campaign? The Monster Manual has you covered. Want to sculpt a unique campaign? Pick up the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Still, Basic D&D is the true heart of the game and could easily provide a lifetime of gaming.
At the launch of the D&D Starter Set, Basic D&D will include the material needed to create characters and advance to 20th level. In August, with the release of the Player’s Handbook, Basic D&D will expand to include the essential monsters, magic items, and DM rules needed to run the game, along with the rules for wilderness, dungeon, and urban adventuring. (The Starter Set already covers the aspects of these rules that you need to run the included campaign.)
As we introduce new storylines like Tyranny of Dragons, we’ll also make available free PDFs that provide all the rules and stats missing from Basic D&D needed to run the adventures tied into the story. The adventures released as part of Tyranny of Dragons are playable without requiring any of the core rulebooks or the Starter Set. With just the Basic Dungeons & Dragons rules, you can play D&D for years.
Basic D&D makes it easier than ever for new players and DMs to jump into tabletop RPG play. We’re involved in the greatest gaming hobby ever invented. It’s time to bring that hobby to everyone who wants to take part.
Manchu: In reference to some of the recent discussions about editions, I noticed something interesting while reading some older 2nd edition material over the weekend:
I don't know if this is a constant, but I noticed a lot of 2nd material describing class abilities and such is written in a tone that implies that reaching a high level is not common or easy. For example, one passage was something like "The Ranger that reaches level X will gain several abilities..."
I feel like 3rd and 4th both changed the tone to be more positive, more "When your Ranger reaches level X..."
It's a weird, subtle difference. The rules allow high levels for all editions, but later editions seem to expect you'll use them more.
(In all fairness, I should also say that 2nd can get cutthroat in the level 10+ zone. Besides save-or-die stuff being common, there's a lot of stuff that's '1-time-only' like Followers that, if killed or driven off, are not replenished. Rangers, for example (Guess which 'Complete...' book I was browsing!) get something like 2d6 Followers in total, over the life of the character, and cannot replenish them if they're killed, out-leveled, etc. They really seem more like dependents than assets. )
That's an encouraging sign, the free rules. Making them a PDF rather than an index of rules a la SRD is a poor choice, but free rulez is free rulez. It'll be the reason my group switches over, I reckon, if they do. Well, that and me pushing a new campaign using the system on them.
That said, we're good with PF for at least another year, even if I'd be happy to run it in 5th.
Balance wrote: It's a weird, subtle difference. The rules allow high levels for all editions, but later editions seem to expect you'll use them more.
Yes, very good catch, this is what I was referencing earlier ITT re: 3E and 4E:
Manchu wrote: Survival in those editions is less of a question and more of a right.
Balance wrote: They really seem more like dependents than assets.
I honestly think that was the original idea. That is, I don't know if this was supposed to be the case by 2E Revised but I think there is an older idea at work here of a narrative transition from wild adventurer to responsible lord, see e.g. Beowulf or Conan.
Da Boss wrote: Making them a PDF rather than an index of rules a la SRD is a poor choice
Disagree. SRD-style is great for (a) a super complicated game like d20, (b) players already experienced with the rules, and (c) an accessory-heavy table/digital sessions. I think the idea for this product is: casual gamers/beginners gathering around a table armed only with pencils, papers, and dice.
Perhaps you are underestimating the use of the word "basic" here? I cannot imagine a SRD-style format being helpful for, or even applicable to the existing Basic (Holmes, Moldvay, or Mentzer) rule sets and guess the same is true for 5E Basic. That leaves the "advanced" options, which I cannot imagine being available as a free digital index -- at least not for a (probably long) while.
I hasten to add, that kind of index would probably be useful for advanced options -- especially as the inevitable bloat sets in -- just that I reckon it will be part of a paid service a la Insider.
I don't think 'Basic' is really meant to tie into 'Basic D&D' more than the desire nostalgia, and in practice I'm guessing the free stuff will be a good, solid 'core' that isn't an SRD, but is more than a 'quick start.' That sounds pretty good, though.
Not saying it is the same product or even inspired by those older products. Only that it is literally basic. Therefore, there is no need for extensive cross-referencing, which makes the SRD's format so suitable to the complexities of d20.
Furthermore, if you consider the goal encouraging casual/beginner play (inspired by, say, an episode of Community or Wil Wheaton's show on YT), being able to email a free, self-contained PDF is extremely powerful.
I think this is what 5E is all about, in stark contrast to WotC's previous editions of the game. It is designed to be extremely basic and then scale up in complexity to taste.
I think this is what 5E is all about, in stark contrast to WotC's previous editions of the game. It is designed to be extremely basic and then scale up in complexity to taste.
I honestly felt that 4E was "extremely basic" in that, as a player in the campaigns that I participated in, I only needed my character sheet, dice and pencil (PHB 1, 2, or 3 depending on class, if there were any questions or what not).. Certainly if I built characters manually, then I'd "need" more of the books right off the bat, but in the internet age, who doesn't have internet access?
I am somewhat excited for 5e, but I do wonder how easily campaign guides and the adventure modules from previous editions will translate into the new edition?
The pdf dealy sounds very interesting. I look forwards to reading it!
I didn't get on well with 4th - it felt a lot like playing a computer RPG by hand, to me - and the incredibly vague statements I've read about 5th sound promising, like potential lack of a battle map. If the gist of the rules is free then that sounds like a really good way to try it out and see if it's to taste.
Well, first, you're using the word "basic" to describe what you needed to bring to the table as a player rather than a DM. That's not a great barometer for anything. Whether the player needs more than a pencil and character sheet, the 4E DM is toting a crate of mats, maps, minis, markers, books, etc. Second, the word "basic" in this context has to do with the rule set itself and 4E is not basic by that standard at least compared to any other edition of D&D.
HiveFleetPlastic wrote: I didn't get on well with 4th - it felt a lot like playing a computer RPG by hand, to me
I think I understand what you mean. I enjoyed it because I got into the deep tactical side of things and even given its complexity it was an absolute breeze to run those long, long combats compared with the same in 3.5E.
HiveFleetPlastic wrote: I didn't get on well with 4th - it felt a lot like playing a computer RPG by hand, to me
I think I understand what you mean. I enjoyed it because I got into the deep tactical side of things and even given its complexity it was an absolute breeze to run those long, long combats compared with the same in 3.5E.
I definitely don't want to harsh 4e's vibe or anything - lots of people enjoyed it. I think there were three things that contributed to how I felt about it:
1. bookkeeping. My experience was there were a lot of effects that lasted a round and were a hassle to track. This was exacerbated, I believe, by my playing a Rune Priest in one adventure. Rune Priest seems to be the go-to class for annoying-to-track one-round effects! Maybe a bad idea. A computer would have had no trouble managing those effects at all.
2. at will/encounter/daily. Very much a game artifice that didn't make much sense in-setting, but would have been at home in a computer game.
3. dividing things into pretty sharply delineated combat encounters, each of which tended to look eerily like something you might design for a computer RPG.
Because of that I spent a lot of the play experience thinking to myself, "you know, a computer would be great at running this." Maybe a lot of that was even by design, with their plans for the D&D Insider virtual tabletop stuff. It's too bad that didn't take off because that could've been pretty cool!
My first pen and paper RPG was AD&D and I think it still informs my idea of what an RPG should look like. Even if I turn out to not like 5th I'll be really happy to see what direction they're taking it in for curiosity's sake.
I think you will be plenty happy with 5E if you like AD&D.
As to 4E book keeping -- there was a company that made these stackable plastic rings that fit onto the bottom of your PC mini. Each was a different color to represent some effect -- being marked, bloodied, etc, etc. In some combats, we'd have a mini towering over others just thanks to the markers. A computer would have been much better at that, yes.
As for daily/encounter stuff, I think of RPG stories like movies rather than alternative universe proper to themselves. So the idea that you have scene-specific resources makes sense to me. FFG's new SW games tend to think like this as well, I have found.
Not to be too argumentative, but At Will/Encounter/Daily has been around since 1st edition in one form or another and every combat in D&D has been sharply delineated since the first time someone yelled 'Roll Initiative!'.
Not to mention that the reason computer RPGs have similarities to D&D is often because they cribbed those features from D&D in the first place.
Son I am disappoint. I guess I should have thrown in X/day stuff along with Vancian casting, although I will admit those are the closest you will find in pre-WotC editions. Unfortunately closest is still a galaxy away in this case. First off, 4E powers are primarily meant for combat. Second, 4E powers are designed around structured time to create resource management play. Third, 4E powers are for everyone, all the time because powers are the very center of the rule set. While it is true that 4E did not come out of nowhere, looking for its roots in 2E or before is a fools errand.
I didn't say it was exactly the same, but the concept of limited resource management for powers is very old. A lot of people tend to make it sound like 4th invented it and obviously they didn't. 4th took the idea of limited resources in 1st/2nd/3rd and turned it into the core play mechanic.
Another way of putting it is, whatever DNA 4E shares with TSR's games was passed on through 3E (seemingly unlike 5E). But the developments in 3E that led to 4E, such as Book of Nine Swords, are new to 3E. It's part of the larger pattern of relying on paraphernalia.
minis optional <--- 2E ---- 3E -- Bo9S --- 4E ---> minis required
Generally speaking, 4E powers are not just "things my PC can do" but rather "things my miniature can do to affect other miniatures on the grid."
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pretre wrote: 4th took the idea of limited resources in 1st/2nd/3rd and turned it into the core play mechanic.
I can agree with that, but also cannot resist qualifying it a bit more -- WotC took a fairly incidental mechanic in TSR's editions, which had grown in importance throughout 3E, and made it the core play mechanic of 4E by totally transforming it.
pretre wrote: 4th took the idea of limited resources in 1st/2nd/3rd and turned it into the core play mechanic.
I can agree with that, but also cannot resist qualifying it a bit more -- WotC took a fairly incidental mechanic in TSR's editions, which had grown in importance throughout 3E, and made it the core play mechanic of 4E.
Your qualification is exactly right.
...Which is a lot different than 'Very much a game artifice that didn't make much sense in-setting, but would have been at home in a computer game. '
...Which was my whole dispute in the first place.
pretre wrote: 4th took the idea of limited resources in 1st/2nd/3rd and turned it into the core play mechanic.
I can agree with that, but also cannot resist qualifying it a bit more -- WotC took a fairly incidental mechanic in TSR's editions, which had grown in importance throughout 3E, and made it the core play mechanic of 4E.
Your qualification is exactly right.
...Which is a lot different than 'Very much a game artifice that didn't make much sense in-setting, but would have been at home in a computer game. '
...Which was my whole dispute in the first place.
What makes sense "in-setting"? Is a rules set meant to be a simulation of what happens in universe, dictating actions in much the same way the laws of physics dictate what happens in the real world? Is a rules set meant to be framework with which to use somewhat fuzzy or abstracted tools to construct a narrative outline within the game on to which the in-setting meaning is projected by the GM & Players?
Not that these are the only two options mind you, I'm just not so sure what you're pulling out here is a valid criticism beyond a matter of personal taste in how you like to arrive at your "In setting" events.
To use an example: If we had "Power Rangers: The RPG", Would it be OK to simply have a caveat that says that the Megazord can only be summoned when facing a giant monster and that you can only use the sword to end a fight, with no further explanation beyond the restricting game mechanic? Would it be better to have a more involved process outlining the use and limitations of megazords and swords, with no mechanic strictly tying them to the size of monsters and lengths of fights in hopes of supporting the standard trope?
The power/technique/spell/etc is difficult to achieve or very specific in its usage. It requires rest to recharge, or a certain set of circumstances or certain components, or whatever. Just as Vancian casting did before it. Just as Lay on Hands 1/day did, or Turning did, or whatever.
Is a rules set meant to be a simulation of what happens in universe, dictating actions in much the same way the laws of physics dictate what happens in the real world? Is the rules set meant to be framework with which to more abstract concepts to construct a narrative outline on to which the in-setting meaning is projected by the GM & Players? Not that these are the only two options mind you, I'm just not so sure what you're pulling out here is a valid criticism beyond a matter of personal taste in how you like to arrive at your "In setting" events.
I'm not sure where you're going with this question or what this has to do with these things having existed for quite some time and fitting into the setting.
To use an example, if we had "Power Rangers: The RPG", Would it be OK to simply have a caveat that says that the Megazord can only be summoned when facing a giant monster and that you can only use the sword to end a fight, with no further explanation beyond the restricting game mechanic? Would it be better to have a more involved process outlining the use and limitations of megazords and swords, with no mechanic strictly tying them to the size of monsters and lengths of fights in hopes of supporting the standard trope?
Manchu has what I'm talking about. There's a difference between "I can use this magical ability once per day in general, because magic" and "I can use Cleave once per encounter because the game designers thought that would produce an interesting resource management scenario." In one case, the setting is informing the gameplay, while in the other case the gameplay is informing the setting. I don't think either of these is superior. I do think the latter is far more common in computer RPGs, where it's generally impossible to stay true to your setting in the gameplay because it's too complicated to do so.
When I said the encounters look like computer RPG designs, I mean that they tend to have very sharply defined scope, starting and ending parameters as well as enemy setups taken down to a science to provide an encounter of the appropriate challenge level and that is tactically interesting for the players. This is, again, gameplay informing the setting. The encounter is not the way it is because it makes sense from a world design point of view (though obviously as encounter author and/or DM you try to make that fit as well as you can) but because it should provide fun gameplay. That is absolutely what you do in any computer RPG, largely because doing it the other way around is incredibly difficult to impossible.
Again, just for emphasis, I don't think that's a bad thing at all and I believe 4e is a beautiful snowflake worthy of genesis.
I am also interested to hear that 5th might be more similar to AD&D in some regards.
Your qualification is exactly right. ...Which is a lot different than 'Very much a game artifice that didn't make much sense in-setting, but would have been at home in a computer game. ' ...Which was my whole dispute in the first place.
You don't think so?
I think being able to cure a disease once per weak could make sense in-universe. You have to recharge your divine batteries through good works, prayer, fasting, whatever lawful good stuff paladins are presumed to be doing between curing diseases.
Now changing that to a 4E-style power implicitly smashes through the fourth wall because 4E powers are themselves pure artifice. A "week" is a thing that exists in the world of the setting. But an "encounter" is to the game world as a scene is to a movie. None of this is meant to put down 4E. As I mentioned, I like this way of thinking about game time as abstracted but structured. The characters in movies may not know they are in a scene but the audience always does. Similarly, mechanics in a RPG are for players rather than characters. Radically breaking with past editions, 4E finally and flatly acknowledges this.
That isn't what (might) make (in some people's opinion) 4E better suited to playing on the computer, however. But that take on mechanics seems to arise from the idea of making powers the central mechanic, which itself is cribbed from video games. Yes, video games learned a bunch of stuff from D&D. But D&D, especially in 3E and 4E, learned a lot back from what video games did with D&D. For example, curing a disease once per week eventually gets simulated in video games a cool down power, which in turn gets simulated in 4E through abstracted, structured time.
In any case, I think HFP's point about 4E being suitable as a video game mechanic had more to do with keeping track of all the moving parts than it did with the nature of 4E powers. Interesting diversion nonetheless!
Chongara wrote: Is a rules set meant to be a simulation of what happens in universe
I would say that rules [also] form setting but with the reminder that a setting is not the same thing as an universe. A setting is where a story happens rather than an autonomous world. All the "Encyclopedia of Star Wars" type books published for seemingly every franchise over the years have tended to confuse this point for a lot of people -- I apologize if I am belaboring it relative to you guys.
Chongara wrote: To use an example: If we had "Power Rangers: The RPG" Would it be OK to simply have a caveat that says that the Megazord can only be summoned when facing a giant monster and that you can only use the sword to end a fight, with no further explanation beyond the restricting game mechanic?
Having thought about this extensively for my homemade Last Airbender RPG and prospective Voltron RPG, I think the answer is YES YES YES! The reason is because the point of such games is to simulate the respective shows.
In Power Rangers: The RPG what would be the appropriate way to handle the use of the Megazord and its cool finishing moves?
Why do you feel this appropriate?
What are some possible alternatives to handling it that way?
What mechanical challenges do the alternatives present, and how do they relate to making the mechanics feel like you're playing a power ranger?
What narrative challenges do the alternatives present, and how do they relate to telling a story consistent with the tropes and tone of power rangers?
The Power Rangers is a good example for examining the kind of broader issues here because of the strict formula the stories follow. How a game might represent those is a useful lens with which to examine the relationship between mechanics and narrative in RPGs generally.
I found 4th to be quite fun for the "fighting" oriented playgroup. It worked very well for games where the narrative was more of a side thing and people just wanted to hang out and fight stuff but still be into the whole "RPG's and numbers" thing, and it felt like there was a lot more balance between classes in general. It did play much like a video game on paper, but that's what a lot of people were out for. That said, other areas felt thin and the higher level one became the more combat started to break down (too many abilities and modifiers and feats and whatnot to keep track of).
Chongara, I also answered your questions for pretre on the last page. To summarize, the key is to ask what the point of the game is. When you do a licensed game, the point is to simulate the license in one way or another.
Manchu wrote: I think that's a nice summary, Vaktathi.
Chongara, I also answered your questions for pretre on the last page. To summarize, the key is to ask what the point of the game is. When you do a licensed game, the point is to simulate the license in one way or another.
The general line of thinking still applies though. "What sort of stories is a D&D group trying to tell?", with of course the following examination of ways to tell that kind of story. Granted, it's a far more muddled issue since D&D is to be honest...a bit all over the place even within the context any one edition.
What I'm trying to get at here is that the "Powers" system and things broadly like it (specific failures of the 4e implementation such as getting bogged down in big numbers aside.
), aren't necessarily opposed to supporting a lot of those stories. That is, game artifacts such as arbitrary timing restrictions like "Once Per Fight (Encounter)" can allow the introduction of elements that while appropriate in-universe and thematically, might throw off the tone and/or be hard to implement if using mechanics meant to be to be a stricter analog of what was actually happening in-universe.
EDIT: Not that I'm particularly advocating for something like the "Powers" system as superior solution for anything in particular. I just took issue with the assertion that it is somehow more opposed to telling a cohesive "D&D" story than other approaches at modeling the actions of characters.
TBH, AD&D is a mess. It's a mish mash avalanche of more or less helpful tools and options, like a huge panel of hundreds of switches and buttons when all you really need most of the time is a joystick. With experience and fine-tuning to taste, AD&D is super playable. I think what WotC wants out of 5E is something like a coherent version of (3E-flavored) AD&D with Basic as its beating heart.
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Chongara wrote: I just took issue with the assertion that it is somehow more opposed to telling a cohesive "D&D" story than other approaches at modeling the actions of characters.
Sure, I think we are on the same page there. To clarify, I don't mean to exclude D&D from the logic of license games. The interesting part is, D&D is both the license and the simulation. Now with 5E, perhaps more than ever, D&D is trying very hard to simulate D&D. This is what WotC wants so baldy: to recover the phenomenological truth of D&D.
Manchu wrote: TBH, AD&D is a mess. It's a mish mash avalanche of more or less helpful tools and options, like a huge panel of hundreds of switches and buttons when all you really need most of the time is a joystick. With experience and fine-tuning to taste, AD&D is super playable. I think what WotC wants out of 5E is something like a coherent version of (3E-flavored) AD&D with Basic as its beating heart.
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Chongara wrote: I just took issue with the assertion that it is somehow more opposed to telling a cohesive "D&D" story than other approaches at modeling the actions of characters.
Sure, I think we are on the same page there. To clarify, I don't mean to exclude D&D from the logic of license games. The interesting part is, D&D is both the license and the simulation. Now with 5E, perhaps more than ever, D&D is trying very hard to simulate D&D. This is what WotC wants so baldy: to recover the phenomenological truth of D&D.
Well, if that is in fact what they're trying to do this edition they're going to have to have a much more narrow and clear definition of what "D&D" is than they've ever had. Even if they succeed in that, I'd imagine they'd alienate much of their kitchen sink customer base in doing so.
D&D particularly in the "3e" vein is a game that can be used for a gritty, dark game set in an analog of feudal japan where life is cheap and players are grizzled warriors scraping out an existence as bandits. With no tweaks or additional material, that same game can be used to run a campaign where god-like players jet about the world on their flying golden lions, to thwart the plans of a demon-lord that wants blow up the world. Everything in between this is fair game too.
Hell, if you don't mind re-skinning some monster and class names you can even do both with core only.
You pick any one thing in that spectrum even the various things hanging roughly around the "Powered-up middle earth" part of the spectrum, to "Be" D&D and you're alienating someone.
Contrast this with something like the WOD games.As much as I hate them, they've got a relatively cohesive idea of what they are. In vampire you're a vampire, a vampire inherently integrated into this large secret political society. I think it's lame and boring, and boring and lame but it's cohesive. It's meant to do something specific, and is built to do that.
The idea that a rule set can simulate anything is exactly as true of any edition of D&D as it is of chess.
A lot of heartache over/criticism about D&D comes from the faulty assumption that it is or should be all things to all people.
In truth, D&D has a delimited scope. It is a game about people who don't fit into the normal pattern of fantasy world day-to-day life. Instead of farming or joining the watch, they creep into dangerous underground nests of terrible monsters to look for treasure. Eventually, they become embroiled with politics and perhaps even cosmological crises but usually in such a way so that their same, albeit developed skill sets still apply.
Manchu wrote: The idea that a rule set can simulate anything is exactly as true of any edition of D&D as it is of chess.
A lot of heartache over/criticism about D&D comes from the faulty assumption that it is or should be all things to all people.
In truth, D&D has a delimited scope. It is a game about people who don't fit into the normal pattern of fantasy world day-to-day life. Instead of farming or joining the watch, they creep into dangerous underground nests of terrible monsters to look for treasure. Eventually, they become embroiled with politics and perhaps even cosmological crises but usually in such a way so that their same, albeit developed skill sets still apply.
Well you show me how to get a story about creating a unique species and culture of dragon-bear warriors out of game of chess using only the rules exactly as presented and I'll, we'll I dunno. I'll say a silly word of your choosing.
Faulty or not, people have arrived at this assumption because D&D hands out the tools to do so much. It's so open to interpretation because the mechanics are so incredibly broad and kind of fiddly.
That has to do with the origins of D&D: the narrative came first and the rules, or rather the rulings, were made as necessary. These rulings eventually piled up into a messy stack of paper TSR bound and sold as a couple of books stamped "AD&D." run that through the product cycle ringer a few times, including by a Hasbro subsidiary, and you have marketing slogans like "endless adventure" and "anything you can imagine." If you and I sat down to a board with the same mentality they had at those Midwestern tables in the '70s, you bet we could play dragon-bear chess no problem. Of course, nobody else would recognize it as chess either.
Over the past week, we've shared a lot of exciting news with you about D&D's future. We've rolled out the details for our epic Tyranny of Dragons story, shared release dates for the core rulebooks and Starter Set, and spilled the beans on Basic D&D.
As we gear up for previews of the upcoming D&D products, I wanted to take a moment to address a common question we receive about the Open Gaming License and what it means for the future of D&D. Since the start of the fifth edition process in early 2012, we've committed ourselves to taking the time to getting things right. We passed the game through numerous playtests, painstakingly reviewed survey data and feedback, and reworked the game again and again. We held off on announcing anything until the time was right, until we knew that we were going to deliver a game that lived up to the standards that you set for us.
We followed a similar path with Basic D&D. We listened and we took notes. We looked at what people wanted from D&D, how they play the game, and what they value about it the most. Just as we took the time to get the rules right, we spent time making sure the core of the game would be delivered to you in the best way possible.
When it comes to the mechanism by which we want to empower D&D fans to create their own material and make their mark on the many, exciting worlds of D&D, we're taking the same approach. While we are not ready to announce anything at this time, I do want to share with you some of our goals.
To start with, we want to ensure that the quality of anything D&D fans create is as high as possible. The Dungeon Master's Guide will contain the guidelines for creating many elements of the game, from adventures to monsters. While Basic D&D will cover the basics that DMs need to create and run campaigns, it won't go into details on the thinking behind the rules and the consequences of tinkering with them. Basic D&D is aimed at new players or people who aren't looking for a lot of mechanical complexity or depth. It's enough to create adventures for use at your table, but not for material that you want to share broadly. For that reason, we don't want to launch anything at least until the Dungeon Master's Guide has been released in November.
Moreover, it's not enough simply to launch anything the day the DMG hits shelves. It'll take time for everyone to absorb the rules and how they all interact. The R&D team can also share what we've learned while working on the game and the traps and challenges to avoid in design.
Therefore, we want to share the timeline we're working with. While the details are still in flux, we can say that we plan to announce the details of our plans sometime this fall. After that announcement, we plan on launching our program in early 2015.
Until then, we hope you will familiarize yourself with the new edition as the products are released, learn how and why it differs from past editions of the game, and dive into your first campaign. There's no better way to learn the game's intricacies than by digging into it through play. Once the community has some experience with the game, both we and you will be ready to creating the next wave of material for it.
Hopefully, that's enough information to make our intentions clear. As with both the playtest of the fifth edition and the other projects we've worked on over the past few years, we're taking our time to make sure we get things right.
io9 interview with Wolfgang Bauer, whose team at Kobold Press was contracted to write the initial 5E modules:
This summer's Dungeons & Dragons relaunch includes a set of adventures focused on the rise of the dragon goddess Tiamat, designed by Wolfgang Baur and Steve Winter of Kobold Press. In this interview, they told us about adventure design and the joys of writing for a game system while it's still in development.
io9: Could you describe the nature of your license with Wizards of the Coast? Does it extend beyond these two adventures, and does it affect your future slate of Pathfinder and 13th Age material?
Wolfgang Baur: Wizards of the Coast commissioned Kobold Press to create an adventure set in the Forgotten Realms. We're the designers, editors and crew on that adventure, which will be published by Wizards of the Coast.
That agreement doesn't extend beyond these two adventures, and it doesn't affect our future slate of Pathfinder RPG and 13th Age material. We just shipped our biggest Pathfinder RPG release ever, the 376-page Deep Magic tome of spells and the arcane, and the Midgard Bestiary 13th Age Compatible Edition is just the first book of our 13th Age support. We expect to release many more Pathfinder RPG and 13th Age books in the future.
The Kobold Press slate of fantasy game material will remain weighted toward what people want, and what we can deliver. The dragons are a great start!
io9: What can you tell us about the adventures themselves? Is there a lot of intrigue, a focus on dungeon crawls, or a mystery to solve?
Steve Winter: In an adventure this huge, there's plenty of room for all three. The next edition of D&D emphasizes the three pillars of tabletop RPGs: combat, exploration/discovery, and interactive roleplaying.
The adventure starts by dropping characters into the middle of a major raid against a town by the Cult of the Dragon. That's a long night of battling raiders, sneaking through sewers, rescuing hostages, plugging breakthroughs in the defenses, and even squaring off against a dragon—albeit briefly, since the characters are only 1st level.
From there, they go into some espionage and infiltration of the cult, then a dungeon crawl, then a long road trip with all sorts of oddball encounters, more skullduggery, some "Heart of Darkness"-type action in a swamp, negotiations with a traitor, and a huge, dynamic finish that people will remember for a long time. And that's just Hoard of the Dragon Queen. There's much more in The Rise of Tiamat with just as much variety.
Wolfgang: If your readers are curious about the Kobold Press style of adventure design, there's several adventures at half-price right now, including the forest adventures of Tales of the Old Margreve and my own The Raven's Call and To the Edge of the World. The latter two of those are about $4 each, so you'll see how the Kobold adventures tick. The focus is on letting players make their own decisions, and opening up a lot of possibilities. The Raven's Call is a pretty straightforward introduction that works great with new players—and I've run it for 10 and 12 year-olds—while To the Edge of the World is fairly over-the-top and epic.
io9: Are these adventures tailored to less experienced DMs and players? Are there elements you created specifically to make these good introductory adventures?
Steve: The action starts out simple, with short, basic fights against raiders in the town. But after that, the adventure becomes pretty free-ranging. There are specific tasks characters should undertake and a sequence in which they happen, but we don't hand the DM a script.
This adventure lays out what's going on, then relies on the DM to use that information dynamically while interacting with the players. There's very little "This is Tuesday, so this must be Belgium" about these adventures. I suppose some people consider running a game that way to be 'advanced' DMing, but I don't. It's a natural form of play, with lots of give-and-take between players and DM and also between the DM and the adventure itself.
I suppose that's tougher than reading a script, but it's also a lot more enjoyable.
Wolfgang: There's an introductory adventure in the D&D Starter Set, which is out in July, but that's really geared entirely at new players. Tyranny of Dragons starts out fairly basic, but advances quickly to higher complexity, for both players and Dungeon Masters.
io9: I imagine the rules were still in flux as these were being written. What kinds of challenges did that present?
Steve: We received frequent rules updates from Wizard of the Coast, and my stomach lurched a little bit every time one arrived out of fear that some enormous change would throw a big chunk of our work out the window. Happily, most of the changes were fine-tuning that was easy to incorporate, or adjustments to character classes that had little effect on what we were doing.
The exception to this was changes to monsters. Monster descriptions, monster toughness, and even the list of monsters available changed many times, and some of those changes impacted our work significantly. But this is a process, and we've been through it before. You make adjustments and keep going.
There was one incident with the monsters, however, that turned out to be rather funny—to me, anyway. I'm sure some playtesters found it horribly frustrating. We wrote the early encounters using a lot of Human Warriors because they were suitable low-level NPCs for 1st-level characters to tangle with. Before the manuscript was sent to playtesters, Wizards R&D re-statted the Human Warrior as a 5th-level foe, and no one alerted us. Playtesters reported massive TPKs from 1st-level characters being overwhelmed by waves of 5th-level warriors. They must have thought we were the biggest idiots in D&D. But it was just a communication breakdown.
Wolfgang: For the most part, Steve's right, it was the monster changes that were hardest to deal with. Several times, though, spell changes required section rewrites as well. As with any new edition, it's dangerous to assume you know how a spell works just because you know how it used to work. That tripped me up two or three times with simple things like alarm and with more complex things like Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion.
io9: To the extent that it's possible to describe an entire RPG rule set in a few sentences, how would you describe this new edition of D&D?
Steve: I'd call it streamlined, at least compared to the previous two editions. Every new edition of the game veers toward expanding the rules, formalizing and codifying more and more of the experience. But an enormous part of the magic of D&D is that it's wide open. That's what makes it different from any other type of game. Every time you narrow that window, you lose something. The new edition of D&D seems to be veering in the opposite direction, toward more open-endedness and greater freedom for DMs and players.
I think that RPG designers have learned some critical lessons during the last two decades of ever-increasing structure. It's not that structure is bad, because it isn't, but there are ways to have structure and still have flexibility. The D&D designers seem to have put a lot of effort into building with flexible material rather than just setting everything in stone.
Wolfgang: I agree entirely that the looser structure makes it easy for the new edition to accommodate some playstyles that we haven't seen as often recently, focused on player smarts rather than character power. Related to that, the power curve for magic is changing as well. I'm used to thinking of the Forgotten Realms as a very high-magic, high fantasy sort of place, but the new edition of the rules dials things back a bit from the 3rd edition and Pathfinder tradition of "PC Christmas trees", or the characters with a magic item to fill every slot.
Magic is more wondrous and more difficult to find in the new edition—but I think that makes players value it a little more than the days of "oh, a +1 sword, toss it on the pile." The emphasis is squarely on what characters can do, not what their items do.
io9: Did the new rules open up some adventure writing possibilities that Pathfinder or 4th edition made difficult?
Steve: Absolutely. Because you're not overwhelmed by the minutiae of the rules, you can put your energy into devising a complex, fascinating plot and villains whose appeal comes from their motivation (or their psychosis) instead from a menu of intricate combat abilities. We didn't choreograph any of the major combat encounters of Tyranny of Dragons the way they would have been in 3rd or 4th edition.
Instead, we just laid out the situation, described what the villain hoped to accomplish, probably included some variables or conditions under which he'd run away, and then left it in the DM's hands to conduct that battle as he or she thinks best. DMs are smart, and they know their players better than we ever could.
Wolfgang: I enjoyed having the extra wordcount that we got back by removing the need for 500-word stat blocks every few pages. Tyranny of Dragons has a lot more encounters per chapter, because the emphasis is on the adventure flow, not on presenting stats.
io9: Can you describe the actual logistical process of writing an RPG adventure? It's such a strange blend of storytelling and mechanics — how does it all come together?
Steve: That question always reminds me of the conversation in Shakespeare In Love in which the jaded producer tries to calm the nervous financier. "The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster. What do we do? Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well. How? I don't know. It's a mystery."
Once you get past that, there are a few rules. In a project this big, everything revolves around an outline. We spent more than a week pounding out and refining a multi-page outline for the adventures, starting from the story bible provided by Wizards of the Coast. Their document covered an enormous plot with far more going on than we could hope to include. We chose the elements we wanted to focus on, expanded them with many embellishments of our own, and spun it all together into a story.
With a detailed outline in place, it's just a matter of putting words on the screen. Day after day. More words. Thousands upon thousands of the damned things. Line after line, paragraph after paragraph, with no end in sight.
That's all there is to it!
Wolfgang: Steve makes it sound easier than it actually is. But I'm happy to say that our toil and suffering have generated something pretty cool. And that one of the instructions we did get from Wizards was one I was incredibly happy to embrace. I remember it as Mike Mearls saying "Make sure to include ALL the dragons." Oh, they're in there!
I'm ambivalent about the 5th edition modules I have. I've bought them all and run none of them, so take it with the required NaCl, but I can do all the big plot villain motivation stuff myself. What I buy published materials for is the polished and detailed setting to put that stuff in, and for idea for treasure and so on to put into my campaign so I don't have to worry about tediously "balancing" that sort of thing.
I also mine them heavily for location maps and the like. On all fronts, the 5th ed adventures have been no more than passable. On the plot front, the supposed strength, I found them to be perhaps a little dry, poorly connected or too jokey too my taste.
I'll pick up the Tyranny adventures as they drop, for sure. Collecting D'n'D adventures has become a hobby of mine every since I stopped running my own homebrew stuff due to lack of time. But the article doesn't make me excited.
Cheers for posting though Manchu! This is definitely "the release of the year" for me.
I found it an interesting read and haven't been as down on the adventures they have put out thus far since the game isn't even released so it is none to shocking that the adventures have a feeling of incompleteness. I thought Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle was fairly good for what it was.
Alpharius wrote: There are already 5th edition adventures available?
I thought that was a typo, and he meant to say 4th up there!
Well there was the one that had playtest rules plus adventure at GenCon last year (Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle) as well as whatever adventure they had for playtest games there as well, and they have four adventures running at GenCon this year and it wouldn't surprise me if those are leaked/available. Might be more but those are the ones I know of.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Some interesting excerpts from an interview with Mike Mearls published by the Escapist:
Bolding: Because of the staggered release schedule there have been some concerns over both home and organized play, and whether or not people will have enough material to start playing their weekly campaign right off in the new edition and carry them all the way through release. What would you say to people concerned about that?
Mearls: I would say that's definitely where Basic D&D comes in. When the Starter Set launches it's going to cover character creation. Once the Player's Handbook launches we'll update it. [Basic D&D] is going to be a updated a few times when it first launches. With basic D&D you'll have the core monsters, magic items, all the rules for creating adventures, for Dungeon Master guidelines, for balancing encounters, for treasure, treasure tables, encounter tables. This is literally the process I used to outline it: I took the old basic set from 1981 and just the rules in there, the magic items, if it's in there it's in the basic set - except a few things that people don't see as iconic anymore. For monsters, we just went through and said "What are the typical fantasy monsters like Orc, or Ogre?" with a few adjustments for power level in there so there's a nice curve. In theory, with basic D&D, you could run an entire campaign. The core rulebooks could be expansions to that. The core rulebooks are like Advanced D&D.
Bolding: Is there any plan to put Basic D&D into print?
Mearls: Not right now. We know that a number of people have asked about that, either as print on demand or as a print book. I think what we'll most likely do is go through the launch and see where we are and how much demand there is. If we're seeing demand then we'll go ahead and do it. I'm a little nervous about that because it is a free product and I don't want people to go to the game store and want to get into D&D, and get that book, and find out the book is free online. So there's a balancing act. The key would be letting people know if they're buying it that they could get it for free. I don't want the first thing people to feel about the new D&D is that they got tricked into buying it.
Bolding: Of the three books, most people seem confused about what the Dungeon Master's Guide is going to do for them. Can you give us a basic overview?
Mearls: The DMG is, well - going back to Basic D&D as a starting point - if you think of the Player's Handbook as for the player who is looking at character classes and played a couple of them and wants more options or wants to fine-tune what their character is, or who says "I want to play a paladin." The DMG serves the same role for the DM. Basic D&D hits core fantasy, it's stereotypical fantasy adventuring. If you're the DM and you want to do something more exotic, you say "I want to add technology to my game" or "I want to have more detailed rules for a grim and grittier game, more of a horror game." That's where the DMG comes in, it's for really fine-tuning your campaign, and creating a different type of experience than your standard fantasy campaign. It's also for expanding the scope of the game. So we've talked about things like ruling a domain or things like that. The more detailed rules for that would be in the DMG. We've talked about having some basic rules for things like that in Basic D&D but we're not 100% into it either way - is it confusing to new players or is it nice that it gives them a clear progression? We're still not quite decided on that yet. It's for if you want more depth on specific topics.
The DMG also has a lot of utilities in it, like for dungeon creation, adventure creation, creating monsters, creating spells, even if you wanted to create a character class. It's not quite the point-buy system from 2nd Edition, but it does say things like "Well if you want to create a class for your campaign then here's a good way to approach it."
So it's really for getting under the hood of how the system works and building up your campaign.
Is that a table? I love tables! No! Nononononono... Can't go back. Can't get sucked back in... I made a commitment to wait to buy it after gencon...but that's a sweet looking full-page table of what looks like adventure ideas or traits.
If you like tables, Sinful Hero, check out HackMaster 4.0. the critical hit chart is a d10,000 on the Y axis, and a severity range of 1-24 on the X axis. A severity 1 blow to the head might be an extra d4 damage. A severity 24 is "Brain Goo" Instant Death.
kronk wrote: If you like tables, Sinful Hero, check out HackMaster 4.0. the critical hit chart is a d10,000 on the Y axis, and a severity range of 1-24 on the X axis. A severity 1 blow to the head might be an extra d4 damage. A severity 24 is "Brain Goo" Instant Death.
Sounds like my kinda game. Of course, it's cyberpunk though right? Never been a fan of cyber- or steampunk. They just offend me for some reason.
kronk wrote: If you like tables, Sinful Hero, check out HackMaster 4.0. the critical hit chart is a d10,000 on the Y axis, and a severity range of 1-24 on the X axis. A severity 1 blow to the head might be an extra d4 damage. A severity 24 is "Brain Goo" Instant Death.
Sounds like my kinda game. Of course, it's cyberpunk though right? Never been a fan of cyber- or steampunk. They just offend me for some reason.
Not cyber punk. It's AD&D with a 20 hit point kicker on EVERYTHING, and some other stuff tossed in. It has a number of tables that you could use for any RPG, really. Like if you want to give a merchant a bit of realism, 2 rolls on the quirks and flaws table (You see an old man with a receding hair line behind the counter. "Get yer gak and get out!")
NP. I do wonder what role tables will play in 5E. To be sure, the OSR (not sure if Hackmaster qualifies) has its love affair with tables. I can't quite make out the title of the table above.
Now, how about that art. I'm a little concerned. The pose seems awkward. Lower body shows forward momentum but upper body is at rest. Why's she holding her stick like that. Not trying to be a debbie downer but it just looks a bit weird.
The body seems like it is leaning a bit, which is fine, but the arm with the stick seems to be copy/pasted from another picture. Actually I get the impression that both arms originally were similar but someone said it needed a weapon so they erased everything from the elbow down and just added in a random hand and weapon.
I think the artist was going for grace and poise, but kinda failed. Her head is out of proportion to her body, but she could just be a gnome or halfling.
Is it just me, or does the knight look like he's considering taking advantage of the sleeping halfling?
I think I've become too used to a more abstract art style(such as Wayne Reynolds), because I can't seem to find myself get very excited about any of these drawings.
If anything, this is a little too 90s for me ... reminds me of AD&D 2E Revised. I really liked the covers but these two interior pieces are not thrilling. That said, I do like that it's not BEWBSSSSSS because I hope this edition will support/not creep out the growing number of women playing D&D.
Honestly, I can just tell that it's touched up with a computer. It just has that certain "fuzzyness" that grates on my nerves. Not to say artist like Wayne Reynolds, Rebecca Guay, Terese Nielson, or Christopher Moeller don't use technology to assist with their works, but it's the certain style being used doesn't really hide the fact it was computer assisted. It just looks cheap.
Note: I have no problem with Photoshop and it's ilk being used, but there are ways where it's not intrusive upon the piece.
I like the understated nature of the group. If anything I find the wizards robes a bit to opulent and think it is odd the fighter is laying down in his plate armor.
Manchu wrote: Why's she holding her stick like that. Not trying to be a debbie downer but it just looks a bit weird.
Almost seems like he/she is standing in a high wind environment or something... like their back is arched to keep from blowing away with the wind? But that would probably mean that Jimmy Johnson of American Football fame is their hairdresser
There's something odd about how it looks that I can't quite put my finger on, but it's nice to see a group picture that isn't a bunch of random adventurers waving swords at a monster or being shot at by traps. Those two categories encompass nearly every group picture in the 4th edition PHB.
The kobold adventure sounds promising. I didn't get on super well with the 4th edition starter adventure, whose name I don't recall. Being less railroady would be a definite improvement.
Manchu wrote: I think it's more a matter of Fifth leaving no one behind rather than a must-have accessory.
Considering that it doesn't seem to be trying to even placate 4th players, I think my group will likely stick with that for now till we have evidence of these modules that will be in place.
All signs point to 5E being modular. That is, if you want a super heavy rules experience (as per 4E) you can bolt all that stuff on. If what you mean by "placate 4th players" is force everyone who plays 5E to play a 4E-style game, then no I guess 5E is not doing that.
Over the next few weeks, this space will serve as a front row seat into the upcoming Starter Set for the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons. To get things started, let’s take a look at some of what went into the set’s design.
The Starter Set has a fairly straightforward goal. It needs to serve as a gateway through which new DMs enter the hobby, building on the player material that will live online with Basic D&D. As a secondary goal, the Starter Set must also provide long-term value. In the past, intro sets for RPGs have often been focused on a stripped-down adventure scenario and a limited version of the rules that becomes irrelevant once players move on to the full version of the game. We wanted this new set to be something you could keep on your shelf and use again in the future.
We decided early on that any materials likely to be used only once had to be eliminated from the set or kept to a minimum. One example would be a tutorial that teaches the rules through a scripted adventure. And in deciding that such a tutorial is something we didn’t want, we were able to think about how that kind of resource would be much better suited to other media—such as online video. Because we’re giving players the opportunity to learn the game without investing any money in it (with our move to make Basic D&D a free download), a new player who downloads the rules can then make use of video tutorials that provide a much better experience of how D&D works. This approach would be like packaging a master DM like Chris Perkins in every Starter Set.
Once we had an idea of what we wanted to avoid, we focused on what to include. The Keep on the Borderlands is the classic adventure bundled with the 1981 D&D Basic Set. The locations and encounter scenarios introduced in that adventure have stood the test of time, with DMs still using them to run games today. With that in mind, we decided to focus on making the adventure the key component of the Starter Set. A good adventure sees use again and again.
Moreover, we wanted an adventure that was similar to Keep on the Borderlands, but a bit more focused on helping new DMs launch campaigns. The original Keep is almost completely open-ended, but feedback during the playtest told us that some new DMs felt lost when figuring out exactly where to take an open-ended adventure. We wanted an adventure with a bit of direction to launch a campaign, which could then segue to a more open-ended approach after a play group has a couple of game sessions under its belt.
The result is Lost Mine of Phandelver. Weighing in at sixty-four pages, it provides enough material to advance characters up to 5th level. The first segment of the adventure puts DMs through the basics of asking for checks and saving throws, as the characters venture into a goblin lair on a rescue mission. Once the adventurers have dealt with the goblins, they have free reign to explore the region around the village of Phandalin. Three more dungeons and five other adventure locations provide novice DMs with plenty of material to keep a campaign going for months. With Basic D&D as a natural next step, DMs will have the tools they need to further expand the region and keep the action going.
We’ll talk about Lost Mine of Phandelver in more detail next week. The adventure’s author, Rich Baker, has graciously agreed to answer a few questions about the process of creating it.
In addition to Lost Mine of Phandelver, the Starter Set also includes a rulebook. This provides the basic rules of play, descriptions of the spells used by the pregenerated characters and NPCs, and the magic items found in the adventure. In addition, it makes a handy table reference for things like equipment and combat rules, and we expect that DMs who move on to Basic D&D or the three core rulebooks will continue to use the Starter Set rulebook as an extra resource during play.
The adventure comes with five pregenerated characters—a dwarf cleric, two human fighters, an elf wizard, and a halfling rogue. One of the fighters uses a large axe and heavy armor. The other is an archer clad in leather armor. Since the fighter is easily the most popular class in the game, we decided to offer two takes on it rather than a fifth character class. This approach also makes it easy for players to modify the pregenerated characters using Basic D&D, and to advance them past 5th level.
Finally, the Starter Set comes with a set of six polyhedral dice—marbled blue in color with white numbers. I have three of these sets in my dice bag—all early samples sent over by the factory. If you’ve watched our live stream games, you might have seen them in use.
That’s the starter set in a nutshell. As of the publication of this article—June 9, 2014—the Player’s Handbook will have been dispatched to our printer. It’s hard to believe that the past couple of years of work have come to an end on that project. With the Player’s Handbook behind us, we next turn our attention to the Monster Manual, while the Dungeon Master’s Guide and The Rise of Tiamat receive further design and editing.
I'm cautiously optimistic, mostly from having watched/listened to a few 5th edition playtests...
...but the return of the linear fighter/quadratic wizard dynamic is going to take me a long time to get over. And I still don't like what they've done with paladins since 4th, and as far as I can tell, 5th hasn't reverted them back.
As a fighter goes up in level, he certainly gets more powerful.
As a magic-user goes up in level, he certainly get ridiculously powerful.
So, a level 7 fighter can certainly do a lot of nice things, and is nasty in HTH, while a level 7 magic-user is frying multiple enemies with fire balls, lightning bolts and what-nots.
Not to mention wands, staves and various other magic items.
Mike Mearls wrote:Why would I want to buy the DMG? That's more, well, you'd buy it if you wanted to start building your own campaigns and really want mechanical support for it. You want to do something like [...] alter some of the mechanics so it feels more like Fourth Edition, so I want quicker rests and things like that, more encounter-based things.
...but the return of the linear fighter/quadratic wizard dynamic is going to take me a long time to get over.
Could you explain these two? Are you talking about how a fighter grows in power level versus a wizard or something?
(as of 3.5)...
A 1st level fighter can Waggle a length of sharpened metal at a dude next to him.
A 1st Level Wizard knock enemies to the ground, blind them, shrink/grow himself and others, just to start.
A 3rd level fighter can Waggle a length of sharpened metal at a dude.
A 3rd level wizard can summon otherwordly creatures, open interdimensonal safe zones, transform into other people & races, and blind large groups of foes at a great distance.
A 5th level fighter can Waggle a length of sharpened metal at a dude next to him.
A 5th level wizard can summon clouds of nauesting gas that completely incapacitate foes in a large area, can fly, can speed or slown down the passage of time for others, can undo the magic of others, and can render a person entirely defenseless with gesture at 50 yards.
A 7th level fighter level fighter can Waggle a length of sharpened metal at a dude next to him, twice! (but the second time is really inaccurate)
A 7th level wizard can trap all but the strongest enemies in a bank of impassable magic fog, can instantly kill a foe with a nightmare, can turn themselves or others into powerful monsters, can sap the life energy of another with touch, become totally invisible and still fight, lay curses, see across miles and teleport.
and so on...... until
A 17th level fighter can waggle a stick or whatever, he's pretty good at it I guess. Maybe some other stuff due to magic items some wizard made while bored over a weekend.
A 17th level wizard can turn the fighter into a toblerone and eat him. If he feels like stopping time, summoning the entire great hosts of all of both heaven & hell to his side, might be a bit to draining for him to keep creating his own personal universe that day.
EDIT: Or to put a bit more dry mechanical terms:
Mechanics the fighter has: Roll to hit vs AC to cause hit point damage. (also like grappling I guess, and other gak that doesn't work on dragons and the like).
But why the presumption that classes should be balanced to begin with? This is quite a modern development and I think it has to do with the idea that every character has a right to 20+ levels.
Manchu wrote: But why the presumption that classes should be balanced to begin with? This is quite a modern development and I think it has to do with the idea that every character has a right to 20+ levels.
Because while this makes for a good comedy sketch:
But that isn't what happened with earlier editions. Seriously, go play some Basic. There is no (recognizable) attempt to balance anything against anything. Works fine.
Truth is, balance is only an issue because of a certain mentality about stats on a character sheet.
Manchu wrote: But that isn't what happened with earlier editions. Seriously, go play some Basic. There is no (recognizable) attempt to balance anything against anything. Works fine.
Truth is, balance is only an issue because of a certain mentality about stats on a character sheet.
I would honestly say, as a player, that balance only comes into play for a DM. By this I mean that it's the DM/GM who design encounters and whatnot, so it's his/her job to ensure that the encounter is at the right challenge level for the party.
Manchu wrote: But that isn't what happened with earlier editions. Seriously, go play some Basic. There is no (recognizable) attempt to balance anything against anything. Works fine.
Truth is, balance is only an issue because of a certain mentality about stats on a character sheet.
You've just described older versions as being balanced (you don't get BMX Bandit & Angel Summoner), as a counter argument to the idea that things should be balanced.
Now just because there was no "recognizable attempt" to create it, and they reached that balance by some mix of luck, intuition, and/or general mechanics restrictions doesn't mean that making balance a design goal is a bad idea.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: it's his/her job to ensure that the encounter is at the right challenge level for the party
Again, this is only true in newer editions. In older editions, you could come across a dragon at level one. It was not the DM's job to make sure you only encountered things you could handle. It was your job to know when to run.
Chongara wrote: You've just described older versions as being balanced (you don't get BMX Bandit & Angel Summoner), as a counter argument to the idea that things should be balanced.
Now just because there was no "recognizable attempt" to create it, and they reached that balance by some mix of luck, intuition, and/or general mechanics restrictions doesn't mean that making balance a design goal is a bad idea.
Would be cool if you didn't try to speak for me. No, I am not describing older versions as being balanced. I am saying balance was not a goal of older versions. And yes I have thought about this quite a lot, understand the difference between the two concepts, and mean exactly what I am saying. Balance was not an issue in older editions because characters were not defined by the four corners of a character sheet as per newer editions.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: it's his/her job to ensure that the encounter is at the right challenge level for the party
Again, this is only true in newer editions. In older editions, you could come across a dragon at level one. It was not the DM's job to make sure you only encountered things you could handle. It was your job to know when to run.
I'd say that's still the DMs "job"... I think you are correct in the whole "people have a RIGHT to a level 20 character" is kind of a new phenomenon (I've only started playing in 4th, but I enjoy history as a subject) and so many thing, even in the officially released guides are geared much more towards ensuring the party gets there.
Depends on what you mean by "still." As in, "even to this day"? Well, sort of, inasmuch as that is definitely the DM's job in 3.5 and 4E, i.e., later editions. But this wasn't the case in the past. Aside from some admittedly primitive (and entirely optional) HD-based calculations, "encounter balance" is a WotC innovation. Not just an innovation, mind you, but a central design element.
Manchu wrote: No, I am not describing older versions as being balanced. I am saying balance was not a goal of older versions. And yes I have thought about this quite a lot, understand the difference between the two concepts, and mean exactly what I am saying. Balance was not an issue in older editions because characters were not defined by the four corners of a character sheet as per newer editions.
You seem to be trying to make a fuzzy distinction at best.
Was BMX Bandit & Angel Summoner a "Thing that could happen as defined by the rules" or not?
If the answer to the question is yes, then things were not balanced.
If the answer to the question is no, then things were (at least), relatively speaking balanced.
If your argument is that characters did things that weren't on the character sheet, weren't defined within the games written mechanics then that has nothing to do with any property of those rule sets. That's a playstyle choice of using freeform RP elements. It's like judging two versions of shooting rules in RPG because when using one set you sometimes decided that if you used two Gatling guns at once, that's an instant kill on godzilla. Cool perhaps but not a part of the system.
older editions weren't balanced, but it didn't matter. It was ok that some characters were more powerful than others, and while there were efforts to reign stuff in, nobody would think that the PCs in any given encounter were balanced with each other.
Thieves had limited combat ability, but an interesting suite of dungeoneering abilities. Mages of course had virtually not melee, but encounter shifting spells. The problem was that you had to ration your spells out, as you almost always had more encounters than spell levels to easily handle them.
So yes, Wizards got to be way more powerful, but often did little in most combats, even at higher levels, while the fighters could do damage turn in and turn out.
Depends on what you mean by "still." As in, "even to this day"? Well, sort of, inasmuch as that is definitely the DM's job in 3.5 and 4E, i.e., later editions. But this wasn't the case in the past. Aside from some admittedly primitive (and entirely optional) HD-based calculations, "encounter balance" is a WotC innovation. Not just an innovation, mind you, but a central design element.
Maybe we're talking past each other here... But, in the first campaign I ever played in, my buddy designed all encounters for the party to face... As I later talked to him about it, he talked about how he wanted to created varying levels of difficulty from "ZOMG... if you hit this, you will all DIIIIIEEEEE" to "was that really a fight?" So for him, his idea of "balance" came down to whether or not a fight should be easier to face or not, as well as what role the creatures/beings fought had within the storyline. It didn't make sense for us to be cleansing a chapel of undead rot, and face a red dragon, or goblins.... Also, within the overall story arc and combat encounters, he liked to occasionally take more creatures who would be extremely hard for one or two characters to deal with, but were "easy" for the others, and flip flop (ie, undead and paladins, or magic resistant creatures for the wizard, etc)
qualifying it a bit more -- WotC took a fairly incidental mechanic in TSR's editions, which had grown in importance throughout 3E, and made it the core play mechanic of 4E by totally transforming it.
