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Will you make the switch come go time in Feb 2024?

I'm eager to start as a DM on the changes I've seen so far, but I'm hearing crickets from my players, they don't like the changes. Mostly because it's shaping up to be a major power shift. 5th is all about super powerful player characters. 5.5 seems to railroad those players into hard choices. Didn't pick high strength, then no you can't take a Barbarian level. Took INT as a dump stat? Then no you can't grab wizard levels. Want to go min max and make stupidly powerful kalashtar gloomstalker Artificer Cheesebot 9000? Well, you can't because that doesn't exist now.

It wipes the slate clean of all the bloat. Which I love.

Yeah, for about 2 days or so..... I am so tired of the edition carousels.

As for my group, they are taking the edition change as an excuse to look a bit beyond D&D for some, but others are staunchly in the 5E or bust camp. They don't want to learn new rules.

Me? I would rather go out and explore new settings, new conventions, and new systems to run them. However, the "D&D or Bust" barrier is a real thing, even after breaking it!

I'll admit, I haven't played D&D regularly since my days with 3E and 4E a very long time ago. I enjoyed both for what they were, and while I was intrigued by 5E, I never found a group that wanted to play, and managed to get my RP/tactical battling fix out of board games like Shadows of Brimstone.

I'll probably keep an eye on 6E, but based on what I read of 5E's development, the sentiment seemed to be more about leaving behind aspects of my favourite era (4E) than anything, so unless that turns about quickly, I doubt this will be aimed at me in particular.

Which is fine. I've still got my 4E books and can run the game anytime if I felt so inclined. I really enjoyed 3E but gave away my collection to someone who lost everything in a forest fire years ago.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Will you make the switch come go time in Feb 2024?

I'm eager to start as a DM on the changes I've seen so far, but I'm hearing crickets from my players, they don't like the changes. Mostly because it's shaping up to be a major power shift. 5th is all about super powerful player characters. 5.5 seems to railroad those players into hard choices. Didn't pick high strength, then no you can't take a Barbarian level. Took INT as a dump stat? Then no you can't grab wizard levels. Want to go min max and make stupidly powerful kalashtar gloomstalker Artificer Cheesebot 9000? Well, you can't because that doesn't exist now.

It wipes the slate clean of all the bloat. Which I love.

Unless they last-minute backtracked on all their promises, it cleans up none of the 'bloat.' (not that 5e had much bloat) This is supposed to be 100% compatible with existing material (though likely more like 90%), with people being able to choose between new and old versions.

Also not sure where you came up with February. No official date has been announced yet, but a social media slip indicated May for the Players Handbook (though that has been officially denied [in the latest playtest survey results video] as not the date, and was never the date). I'd expect August for GenCon marketing reasons.

I've made the jump to other D&D adjacent systems now, so I won't be sticking with 5e OR moving to the new edition. I don't mind 5e but I got quite tired of it by the end, and I'm currently playing an OD&D retroclone called White Box Fantastic Medieval Adventure Campaigns (FMAG for short!) which I find really great, it's like 5 euro on Amazon for an A5 digest book 144 pages that has player rules, DM rules and monsters all in one book. Obviously pretty stripped down, but I'm running it for my lunchtime school D&D club and enjoying myself a lot because it plays so much faster we can get a lot more adventure packed into our 40 minutes.

Aside from that I have Dungeon Crawl Classics if I want a heavier system, Worlds Without Number if I want something with more "player build options" (tbh, unlikely) and One Ring 5e if I want to do low magic Tolkienesque games.

All cheaper than getting the three core books for any edition.

I hope 6e is good but I won't be playing or buying into it, I have enough stuff as is.

 Da Boss wrote:
I've made the jump to other D&D adjacent systems now, so I won't be sticking with 5e OR moving to the new edition. I don't mind 5e but I got quite tired of it by the end, and I'm currently playing an OD&D retroclone called White Box Fantastic Medieval Adventure Campaigns (FMAG for short!) which I find really great, it's like 5 euro on Amazon for an A5 digest book 144 pages that has player rules, DM rules and monsters all in one book. Obviously pretty stripped down, but I'm running it for my lunchtime school D&D club and enjoying myself a lot because it plays so much faster we can get a lot more adventure packed into our 40 minutes.

Aside from that I have Dungeon Crawl Classics if I want a heavier system, Worlds Without Number if I want something with more "player build options" (tbh, unlikely) and One Ring 5e if I want to do low magic Tolkienesque games.

All cheaper than getting the three core books for any edition.

I hope 6e is good but I won't be playing or buying into it, I have enough stuff as is.

Can I ask where you got a digital copy of the White Box? I've been dying to get a game going in D&D .01, like Gygax's first RP Bible. But it's hard to find total accurate digital transcripts. Any help!

Thank you!

By a strange coincidence, a friend has asked me to help him sell off a bunch of 1st ed. AD&D books and modules.

Going through the collection has gotten me nostalgic for the pure simplicity of the Basic Game, which 5th in many ways echoes.

Zero appetite to move beyond what I have. Indeed, I'm actually looking at picking up more Basic/Expert dungeons because they seemed to mesh very well with 5th.

THAC0 forever!!!

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
I've made the jump to other D&D adjacent systems now, so I won't be sticking with 5e OR moving to the new edition. I don't mind 5e but I got quite tired of it by the end, and I'm currently playing an OD&D retroclone called White Box Fantastic Medieval Adventure Campaigns (FMAG for short!) which I find really great, it's like 5 euro on Amazon for an A5 digest book 144 pages that has player rules, DM rules and monsters all in one book. Obviously pretty stripped down, but I'm running it for my lunchtime school D&D club and enjoying myself a lot because it plays so much faster we can get a lot more adventure packed into our 40 minutes.

Aside from that I have Dungeon Crawl Classics if I want a heavier system, Worlds Without Number if I want something with more "player build options" (tbh, unlikely) and One Ring 5e if I want to do low magic Tolkienesque games.

All cheaper than getting the three core books for any edition.

I hope 6e is good but I won't be playing or buying into it, I have enough stuff as is.

Can I ask where you got a digital copy of the White Box? I've been dying to get a game going in D&D .01, like Gygax's first RP Bible. But it's hard to find total accurate digital transcripts. Any help!

Thank you!

So just to be totally clear the White Box I'm using isn't the three original brown books but a tidied up and slightly re-organised retroclone of it, but it's really easy to grok and has most of what was in the 3LBBs. I think the treasure tables are a bit different and the rules for aerial combat might not be included.
But if you're interested, here's where you can get it digitally for free:
https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/de/product/190631/white-box-fantastic-medieval-adventure-game
And here's the A5 booklet for under 5 dollars from Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/White-Box-Fantastic-Medieval-Adventure/dp/1545516480/ref=sr_1_1?crid=28R02B3GWSYDV&keywords=white+box+fantastic+medieval+adventure+game&qid=1706859878&sprefix=white+box+fantast%2Caps%2C182&sr=8-1

If you want the real proper LBBs I think you can buy them from Wizards, but I had a look on their webstore and found it a nightmare to navigate so I couldn't find them!

The largest problem with getting a game of 1ED going, or even 3rd, is 5th is basically the Apple to 1ED's Linux/C+. It's just not easy as 5th. 5th is made to get a literal baby into the game. 1st you need at least high school level math skills, a penchant for starting over(Being ok with failure and trying again), and an ability to take extremely copious notes. Also, the Chaotic Evil ability to sacrifice friends and hirelings to traps and instant death shenanigans. 5th is an escapist fantasy with light combat. 1st is a medical combat survival horror fantasy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just found this:

https://ia903400.us.archive.org/4/items/dungeons-dragons-white-box/Dungeons%20%26%20Dragons%20-%20White%20Box.pdf

Link to PDF version of entire white box if interested.

Cheers!
1e might be more complicated, they definitely made it a bit more kludgey as time went on.

But I find 0e or OD&D really simple to onboard people with. Compare making a character in 0e to 5e:
0e:
1. Roll 3d6 and assign them to your stats in order (simple math, no drop the lowest, no choices to be made).
2. Look at your stats. If high strength, go fighter or dwarf fighter. If high wis, go cleric. If high int, go elf or magic user. If high dex or crap stats but Thief is being used, go thief.
3. If any score is 15 or above, put a +1 beside it. If any score is below 6, put a -1 beside it.
4. Roll hit points. D6, if you are a fighter add 1, if you have constitution 15 or above, add 1.
5. Write down your save - one number you must roll above to resist effects.
6. If you are a magic user, choose 4 spells from the magic user level 1 list.
7. Roll 3d6, multiply by ten. Use the result to buy gear.
8. Your AC is 10. Add the bonus for any purchased armour.
9. Add together the weight of your items.

What's really good about this system is there aren't really a lot of choices for the player to make. They don't have to read about the different races and classes, the dice pretty much decide the character so they discover them rather than build them. Also, all weapons do D6 damage, so new players only have to worry about 2 dice types - d20 for attack rolls and D6 for everything else, including weapon damage.

5e:
1. Choose race, subrace and class. Involves reading through at least a brief description of 9 different classes and 8 races.
2. Roll stats. 4d6 drop the lowest. Assign stats to scores (means you have to understand the significance of the different scores) and then add race bonuses on top.
3. Calculate bonuses and penalties to stats. Subtract 10 and divide by 4 to find the bonus. (this confuses a lot of new players).
4. Choose background. This can take a long time, and it can also slow you down if you try not to have overlap in skills and might involve reading tool proficiencies.
5. Choose skills. Again, a lot of options here and players may want to read over what the skills mean. Add numbers to find skill bonus.
6. If you are a magic user, choose spells (usually multiple cantrips and first level spells).
7. Choose equipment from the lists provided. Equipment can vary a lot so you kind of need to look at what different equipment can do. But the list format does streamline it compared to OD&D.
8. Calculate hit points by following the formula given. Record hit dice.
9. Look up AC for your armour type and add dexterity bonus.
10. If feats are being used, choose feats.
11. Calculate attack bonuses and write down attacks.

You could quibble about the steps, but the important point is a 5e character requires way more decisions to be made by the player and has many more rules that impact them that the player needs to understand. There's much more chance for a player to make a "bad" choice and be unhappy. In OD&D the concept of a "build" doesn't exist, because there just aren't really many choices to be made and your character is rolled randomly anyway.

I've found it's much easier to introduce kids to OD&D than 5e, you can be up and running in 5 minutes easily whereas 5e characters can take 30 minutes to make and require much more looking in the PHB.

That said, I would recommend using ascending AC options given in retroclones, because negative AC is a bit more of a hassle for most people - addition is just more intuitive for people than subtraction.

 Da Boss wrote:
Cheers!
1e might be more complicated, they definitely made it a bit more kludgey as time went on.

But I find 0e or OD&D really simple to onboard people with. Compare making a character in 0e to 5e:
0e:
1. Roll 3d6 and assign them to your stats in order (simple math, no drop the lowest, no choices to be made).
2. Look at your stats. If high strength, go fighter or dwarf fighter. If high wis, go cleric. If high int, go elf or magic user. If high dex or crap stats but Thief is being used, go thief.
3. If any score is 15 or above, put a +1 beside it. If any score is below 6, put a -1 beside it.
4. Roll hit points. D6, if you are a fighter add 1, if you have constitution 15 or above, add 1.
5. Write down your save - one number you must roll above to resist effects.
6. If you are a magic user, choose 4 spells from the magic user level 1 list.
7. Roll 3d6, multiply by ten. Use the result to buy gear.
8. Your AC is 10. Add the bonus for any purchased armour.
9. Add together the weight of your items.

What's really good about this system is there aren't really a lot of choices for the player to make. They don't have to read about the different races and classes, the dice pretty much decide the character so they discover them rather than build them. Also, all weapons do D6 damage, so new players only have to worry about 2 dice types - d20 for attack rolls and D6 for everything else, including weapon damage.

5e:
1. Choose race, subrace and class. Involves reading through at least a brief description of 9 different classes and 8 races.
2. Roll stats. 4d6 drop the lowest. Assign stats to scores (means you have to understand the significance of the different scores) and then add race bonuses on top.
3. Calculate bonuses and penalties to stats. Subtract 10 and divide by 4 to find the bonus. (this confuses a lot of new players).
4. Choose background. This can take a long time, and it can also slow you down if you try not to have overlap in skills and might involve reading tool proficiencies.
5. Choose skills. Again, a lot of options here and players may want to read over what the skills mean. Add numbers to find skill bonus.
6. If you are a magic user, choose spells (usually multiple cantrips and first level spells).
7. Choose equipment from the lists provided. Equipment can vary a lot so you kind of need to look at what different equipment can do. But the list format does streamline it compared to OD&D.
8. Calculate hit points by following the formula given. Record hit dice.
9. Look up AC for your armour type and add dexterity bonus.
10. If feats are being used, choose feats.
11. Calculate attack bonuses and write down attacks.

You could quibble about the steps, but the important point is a 5e character requires way more decisions to be made by the player and has many more rules that impact them that the player needs to understand. There's much more chance for a player to make a "bad" choice and be unhappy. In OD&D the concept of a "build" doesn't exist, because there just aren't really many choices to be made and your character is rolled randomly anyway.

I've found it's much easier to introduce kids to OD&D than 5e, you can be up and running in 5 minutes easily whereas 5e characters can take 30 minutes to make and require much more looking in the PHB.

That said, I would recommend using ascending AC options given in retroclones, because negative AC is a bit more of a hassle for most people - addition is just more intuitive for people than subtraction.

I have never looked at it this way! Thank you for opening my eyes. I always looked at 0 as a way more difficult system, likely due to the fear of dice rolls crippling me. I would however like to point out one key difference. How one progresses. In 5e. You kill a goblin, and get XP, lets say 10. You kill 9 more you Level up! Here is verbatum the manner of how experience works in DND0.



"Experience points are awarded to players by the referee
with appropriate bonuses or penalties for prime requisite scores. As characters
meet monsters in mortal combat and defeat them, and when they obtain various
forms of treasure (money, gems, jewelry, magical items, etc.), they gain “experience.”
This adds to their experience point total, gradually moving them upwards
through the levels. Gains in experience points will be relative; thus an 8th-level
Magic-User operating on the 5th dungeon level would be awarded 5/8 experience.
Let us assume he gains 7,000 Gold Pieces by defeating a troll (which is a
7th-level monster, as it has over 6 hit dice). Had the monster been only a 5th-level
one, experience would be awarded on a 5/8 basis as already stated, but as the
monster guarding the treasure was a 7th-level one, experience would be awarded
on a 7/8 basis thus; 7,000 GP + 700 for killing the troll = 7,700 divided by 8
= 962.5 × 7 = 6,037.5. Experience points are never awarded above a 1 for 1
basis, so even if a character defeats a higher-level monster he will not receive
experience points above the total of treasure combined with the monster’s kill
value. It is also recommended that no more experience points be awarded for any
single adventure than will suffice to move the character upwards one level. Thus
a “veteran” (1st level) gains what would ordinarily be 5,000 experience points;
however, as this would move him upwards two levels, the referee should award
only sufficient points to bring him to “warrior” (2nd level), say 3,999 if the character
began with 0 experience points."

This means that in order to play, past level 1 in DND 0, you have to do fractional mathmematics. You can't just add two numbers together, you have to break out the abacus. Lord help you at the end of the dungeon when you have to split it between 3-5 players, having just dealt with 10-20 traps (Traps were XP back then) and several dozen monsters (Who got the killing blow mattered as well). My brain hurts. You all get 500 XP.

Yeah you know what that is a super fair point. I totally skip all that nonsense and so do a lot of retroclones. The original rules are really badly laid out for comprehension and sort of incomplete, but the game they describe has a lot less moving parts than 5e.

I just do monster + treasure XP in my game, and it works alright. Old school games definitely have a bit of book keeping though - 5e seemed to have moved over entirely to milestone by the end. I actually did milestone (though we didn't call it that) for like my first 15 years roleplaying, and only started to move to other systems later. At the moment I really like gold as XP because it makes XP a player choice in a really clear way.
But milestone is definitely the easiest way and makes a lot of sense for modern style games.

I think Deed based XP growth/leveling is the best idea to come out of modern dnd. It's not how many goblins you kill, its when you kill ALL the goblins that are threatening the town. It's not holding off the Zombies, and the undead giants, and the Yuanti, it's killing the Lich controlling them.

Sure each one of those is a level on the journey, because no one is taking on a lich at level 1-3, but yeah, you don't get a level per month. Even with XP, my group gets a level maybe every 3-4 months.

Yeah, the old gold/killing = XP system really rewarded a lot of bad behavior.

If there is one thing I would strike from DnD in a new edition, it's the (and I have literally no conceivable way to enact this) "thats what my character would do" RP that so often involves the LG character trying to convert the not lawfully good characters into their personal little clergy. It's gross. Or the Thief stealing from the party. I get RP, but it's meta to ask, in front of the party, if you can attempt to steal from us, then if you succeed, expect us to play along with your fantasy.

Actually, I think rolls against other player characters should be illegal. Even perception/insight. If you can't catch me in a lie, your dice shouldn't be able to save you. If you can't convince me to follow your plan to go attack the goblins, then you shouldn't be able to just roll to force me to go along with the plan.

Same goes with forced will spells. I think enchant person type spells should be heavily restricted. I'm sick of watching the bard "control" the barbarian who can't pass a wisdom save.

Many games expressly have rules that spells, attributes, and abilities can not be used on other PCs. All interactions between characters must be handled between players.

It takes like a sentence of rules.

In 5e, that Sentence reads, It's up to the discretion of the Game Master

In my games I just have a hard rule that all gold is split among the entire party (including followers who engage in combat) and leave it at that. There is no possibility whatsoever for anyone to steal gold, all gold is split. The slight dip in immersion is well worth it for the removal of drama.

In defense of gold as XP, I think it's a good system because of how much agency it grants players over their progression. The modern version makes progression DM fiat, which I don't have a big issue with, but gold as XP lets players decide which risks they want to take and which they don't. It does work better for a swords and sorcery style game, of course. But I've done enough save-the-world plots and I'm okay with not doing any more.

That said, I think DM Fiat XP in various forms works perfectly well and isn't bad. I'm just moving away from it after many years and exploring other methods out of interest.

Can anyone break down what the actual edition changes are? I was teying to look through rules and about all i noticed was stat requirements for cross classing.

What is different in onednd?

There is too much to sum up, but it's essentially: they've gone back to locking classes behind stats. Fighters/martial classes must have a strength of 13. Rogues/dex classes must have at least dex 13. Wizards/Magic users must have a Wis/Int of at least 14? I think depending on their class. MAD characters like Rangers need a min of 13 in multiple skills like WIS and STR.

They've cut out a lot of the dumb "feats" and tied them directly to race/character background. Like if you are an entertainer, you get Performer. If you are gladiator, you get X feat. I forget the specifics.

Finally, I think they've complete re-done the racial make up system. You are no longer +/- strength or Int for certain races, but it's more like everyone is a Variant Human with a few +1s of your choice, and a racial specific background feat. They've also completely gutted the Race list. There is no longer 50 different races. There is 1 human, 2 dwarves, 2 Elves, 2 Gnome, 2 Halflings, and I think 1 "orc". I don't think "half races exist" but I am likely wrong, I forget. There have been like 4 rule set drops.

Finally, classes: every class only has 2 subclasses so far. I'm betting this is because of the new Online AI TTRPG thing they are pushing.

It's still in test releases, right? The limited subclasses is likely due to being a unfinished beta.

I approve of removing half races. That gak has always been pretty damn weird. Some guys on a podcast I listen to once said they have half orcs, but half orcs are not half breeds. They are orcs raised outside of orcish society. Half orc is a derogatory term from "full orcs". As in you are not even a true orc. You are only half an orc. I liked that.

Otherwise these changes don't sound very revolutionary.

Yeah I never liked the "half-races" thing. It just made everything to biological, and implied that all the races are the same species.

I much prefer a more magical origin for my magical kindreds.

To me one of the biggest issues with 5e and modern D&D generally is the spell design. Spells are the most reliable and predictable mechanics in the entire game. I think that's not really in keeping with the idea of magic as a wondrous, inexplicable force. That's the main thing that keeps me from having any interest.

Anyway, I will retreat from the thread now because I have been derailing, sorry!

 Da Boss wrote:
Yeah I never liked the "half-races" thing. It just made everything to biological, and implied that all the races are the same species.

I much prefer a more magical origin for my magical kindreds.

To me one of the biggest issues with 5e and modern D&D generally is the spell design. Spells are the most reliable and predictable mechanics in the entire game. I think that's not really in keeping with the idea of magic as a wondrous, inexplicable force. That's the main thing that keeps me from having any interest.

Anyway, I will retreat from the thread now because I have been derailing, sorry!

I mean... that magic thing is really an issue with the class structure. You cannot have a class built entirely around magic (wizard, sorcerer, etc) and then make them unreliable at the one thing they do. There needs to be a separate magic system that anyone can access and characters can specialize in to be better/more reliable without being incapable of the more mundane stuff.

I mean, this won't prevent people walking up to the table with "I rolled this I swear" sheet of all 18s in everything. But still I think it goes a long way towards forcing the majority of players to a more equal base. Powergamers be damned.

I think the "Half races" thing came about back in the days when the monster races were literally designed out of racist character tropes. All orks were big, ugly, dumb, and evil. Same with other monster Races. Half elves came about I think in 2e, because of the racial limitations of Elves. You basically were forced to be a magic user, and could never be any thing else, at least well. Half Elves opened the door to all the classes. But that may be my head canon.

The things that I really love is they brought back things like cleave/great cleave.

But yeah. Everything we've seen so far is BETA, so pending the release, this could all just be washed away and they slap a 6e sticker on the 5e manual and sell it for 90 USD.

Half elves have been around since D&Ds inception.
If anyone will recall, all of DnD is based upon Tolkien’s Middle Earth.
The Dunedain were essentially half elves. Can’t recall the story exactly, but they were born of human and elf parents and one of the Valar gave them the choice to embrace either heritage - human or elf. They chose human and gave up their immortality. Due to such a humble choice, the Valar extended their life spans.

Half races were not based on racist tropes. They were based on the literature the game itself was based on. Later on half orcs were added as in Tolkien, they were corrupted elves, and thus the logic became that if human and elf could have offspring, then so could orcs.

I think this belief in racism being inherent in the game itself is misplaced when you simply look at the literature it was based upon.

 Ghool wrote:
Half elves have been around since D&Ds inception.
If anyone will recall, all of DnD is based upon Tolkien’s Middle Earth.
The Dunedain were essentially half elves. Can’t recall the story exactly, but they were born of human and elf parents and one of the Valar gave them the choice to embrace either heritage - human or elf. They chose human and gave up their immortality. Due to such a humble choice, the Valar extended their life spans.

Half races were not based on racist tropes. They were based on the literature the game itself was based on. Later on half orcs were added as in Tolkien, they were corrupted elves, and thus the logic became that if human and elf could have offspring, then so could orcs.

I think this belief in racism being inherent in the game itself is misplaced when you simply look at the literature it was based upon.

This isn't really true.

ADnD is based heavily on Tolkien. But the OG DnD was more Howards Conan, Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, and other fantasy (including Tolkien) of the time. It was Chainmail, first and foremost. The miniatures from/for that shaped it's base.

The races in DnD being racial/cultural caricature is accurate. This stuff didn't have deep well thought out backgrounds. They chucked stuff in and based it on superficial knowledge of the time.

I mean, just as an example... there are interviews with the main writers of White Wolf books who look back at the racial stereotype groups in their games from the 90s and apologize saying "We didn't have the internet back then. This is the result of well meaning individuals working on deadlines with limited research potential."

If you think Gygax and co were doing much research AT ALL into the cultures and people they were aping to make a paragraph long description of a monster you are giving them WAY too much credit. Tolkien on the other hand WAS doing that research.


Either way, the half races are not weird because of cultural whatevers. They are weird because it's cross species hybrids that produce fertile offspring. Half elf cool. Half orc cool. Half dwarves in Dark sun. So... half elf/half dwarf ? Half dwarf/half orcs? Why can everything produce kids with dragons? gaks weird no mater how you dress it up if you spend any amount of time thinking about it.

Like the players, I’m sure the designers didn’t think much about it aside from ‘Y’know what would be cool?’

Overthinking what your games mean and represent is not what one is meant to do.
They are games. They are only supposed to be fun and cool. There isn’t much more to it than that, and devoting time and energy ‘trying to figure it out’ is a waste of time.

When folks over analyze what they do for fun, it stops being fun.

 Ghool wrote:


When folks over analyze what they do for fun, it stops being fun.

In your opinion. To some, that is where the fun begins! Look at this forum as an example.


I have a feeling that part of D&D (and 40K, and Battletech, and other BIG name games) it that you can spend just as much time talking, thinking, and analyzing the game as you do playing the game. If you can't spend more time talking about the game then playing it, your game will have a short shelf life.

IMHO people need to spend more time playing and less time thinking about it, but not everyone has that luxury.

 Ghool wrote:
Like the players, I’m sure the designers didn’t think much about it aside from ‘Y’know what would be cool?’

Overthinking what your games mean and represent is not what one is meant to do.
They are games. They are only supposed to be fun and cool. There isn’t much more to it than that, and devoting time and energy ‘trying to figure it out’ is a waste of time.

When folks over analyze what they do for fun, it stops being fun.

Thats a hot take.

Lets rewind this to its basics. A game is a creation. And that creation like any other kind of creation can have as much or as little meaning as its creator wants. There are TTRPGs that are shallow nothings. And there are TTRPGs that are really deep impactdul experiences. Ever hear of white wolfs wraith? Other players play your shadow. Your nagging ever present doubt. And every time you try to do things they whisper all that negative in your ear to rip into your insecurities and tear you down. Pushing you to let go, give up, and fade to nothing.

A difficult game to play well. An almost unparalleled experience if you can manage to get it right. A game that is absolutely thinking about what it means and represents.

Exactly that. Some games are Diablo, some games are Disco Elysium.