Alright, so, news about development for the 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons has been wide-spread enough to hit things like Forbes, for Chrissakes, so I'm not going to dwell overmuch on it, other than to note that they're asking for feedback from fans about what THEY would like to see in 5th edition. I want to start off here by noting that this is basically a PR ploy to try and pull back in some of the Grognards that left the fold, as well as to get some free media attention. Anything anyone submits to the design team will probably be completely ignored. They're not stupid, and, moreover, they have Monte fucking Cook, a man who couldn't listen to an outside opinion if his life depended on it, as the lead designer. So this whole post is an exercise in futility.
That said, I feel it's important to talk about the game, and say what I would like for the 5th edition. The fundamental problem with D&D is, paradoxically, it's success. When people think of table-top RPGs (with a brief exception during the mid 90's), they think of D&D. In order to "succeed," it has to reach an enormous audience, each of whom runs their own "game," by their own interpretation of the rules (See http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/01/11 ). The very fact that one person's D&D matches with another is nothing short of a brain miracle. Moreover, since it's been going since forever, it's got an enormous amount of legacy baggage, which is beloved by various fans. No matter how shitty an implementation of an idea was (Psionics, Vancian Casting, Epic Levels, etc.) , it has to be included, because otherwise people will (and have) pitch(ed) a shit fit. Finally, it's been around since the goddamn dark ages of RPG design, when Gary Gygax and a bunch of chucklenut friends sat around and came up with some sort of a half-wargame thing (modeled on a shitty wargame, to boot) to try and pretend to be elves. This means that the "bones" of the game are not well suited to what it is today.
In a terrifying way, Dungeons and Dragons is the United States Government. It was made a long time ago, and in ways that don't really fit with how things work now. It's got an enormous crowd of hangers-on, each of whom has some tiny little portion of the rules that they belove, and will throw a fucking tantrum about any attempt to touch it. It has an enormous impact on the world around it, and is enormous is reach and symbolism, so it can't really just "do its own thing" without an enormous perception of failure, and huge problems for all sorts of different people, all of whom are to be governed under one law. Finally, the odds of any individual voice working to shape changes to the rules are basically nil, so I'm free to burble on about all the goofy things that I would do if I ran things, without any risk of actually having my designs carried out.
So, therefore, let there be two sets of proposals, the vanity project and the realistic project. Each detailed below.
Vanity Project:
Preface: I want to begin by acknowledging the broad success that Dungeons and Dragons has enjoyed. It's made relatively large chunks of cash, and it's wasted the free time of countless introverted nerds throughout the ~40 years of it's life. That said, I feel releasing another edition of the game is moronic. Kill it. The reason for my position is actually pretty simple: any rules set that claims to be Dungeons and Dragons has, built in, an enormous weight to carry. If we imagine an alternate universe in which GURPS was the default game system, and I released a game called "Ned's Asskicking Game," and I used the rules that were published in the basic set, I would sell 10 copies. 9 of those copies would be to my relatives.
The motive:
The point of a table-top game (broadly speaking) is to allow people to inhabit a different decision-making space, in some combination of taking on a role that is unavailable to us normally and examining decisions which we don't deal with on a regular basis. In short, to have fun. Rules can either serve to facilitate or destroy fun. This isn't to say that you CAN'T have fun with any rules set. You can play "magical tea party storytime," a game with no rules, and have fun. You can have fun playing monopoly with friends, even though the INHERENT DESIGN OF THE GAME IS TO SHOW YOU HOW LITTLE FUN IT IS.
In it's current state, any game which is "Dungeons and Dragons" is burdened with a large number of rules which are profoundly fun-destroying, on the whole. The biggest offender isn't even a rule so much as an attitude, an attitude which was mostly unstated, and frequently denied, but is as much a part of the game as the To Hit roll: There are players, and there is a GM. The GM tries to make a world for the players to inhabit. The players try to manipulate that world using the tools they are granted by the rules. Fun is made by the players acting on the world. In reality (a funny word to use when talking about, in effect, a collective hallucination), the longest-lasting enjoyment that people draw from the hobby is that of stories. An RPG is a way to tell stories together.
The Problem:
Telling stories is very hard. I've tried. I've run games, and I've played in games. When you're running a game, you want to come up with a plot. You want to force your will on the players, to make them actors in your drama. When you're a player, you identify with your character. You want him to succeed (or at least fail interestingly). You want him to prosper and grow. He's YOUR GUY. D&D makes these two roles very clear, and, unsurprisingly, it then requires an vast array of rules to try to ensure that the GM can pose appropriate challenges for the players, and the players have tools (but not TOO many tools) to influence the world.
What I would want:
I want the game to change in the following way- I want to make the players consider a wider world than their own character, and, simultaneously, I want to reduce player control over their own character. As it stands right now, players have such complete control over their own characters that they behave like automatons who exist only for the sake of gaining power, which is the only thing that allows them to influence the evolution of the narrative. In exchange for allowing the players to have some explicit control over the thread of the story, the story needs to have some ability to influence the characters. There have been a series of WONDERFUL rulessets that try to accoplish this very thing.
If we want a game that lets us tell stories about heroic fantasy characters crawling in dungeons that is, in some way, a new thing, we must change the way that the roles are assigned within the system. To do this is impossible, I feel, with the current baggage associated with the Dungeons and Dragons license.
My realistic proposal:
Problems-
I feel that 4th ed made the game a lot less like horrible rocket-jousting and reduced the level of caster supremacy. However, the rules for out-of-combat stuff (which, admittedly, was less important), were reduced far, far too much in scope. In addition, the codification of attacks into powers, which had the beneficial step of making the rules much more self-contained, had the negative effect of reducing the amount of creative energy that the players put into encounters, encouraging more of a tactical feel (something I really like, in general BTW). This was exacerbated by the endless slew of conditions that required tracking.
Solutions-
Transform the "powers" format into something slightly less technical, and slightly more descriptive.
Add additional neat non-combat options, not only for the casters, but also for non-casters! 99% of the characters who do cool shit in fantasy novels (at least before the widespread acceptance of D&D as the dominant paradigm) were not wizards or clerics or druids.
Reduce the number of status effects, and make them dependent on some sort of a "ladder of Woe." The worse you're hurt, the worse the effect is, in general. See the homebrew thread in SA/Tradgames for someone's proposal.
No more psionics, except within the context of a very specific campaign setting
No more 100million fucking fantasy races. I'm a fantasy racist. I don't want to have to deal with fitting minotaurs AND living crystal people AND dragons with tits in the same world
No more 100 million classes! Actually, on that subject, can you not release an endless torrent of spatbooks? I know these last two are not going to happen, because it's the "business model," but it's shitty.
Monsters that die faster (I know this was fixed in MM3, but I didn't get that one).
and a Pony
I'm done.
That said, I feel it's important to talk about the game, and say what I would like for the 5th edition. The fundamental problem with D&D is, paradoxically, it's success. When people think of table-top RPGs (with a brief exception during the mid 90's), they think of D&D. In order to "succeed," it has to reach an enormous audience, each of whom runs their own "game," by their own interpretation of the rules (See http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/01/11 ). The very fact that one person's D&D matches with another is nothing short of a brain miracle. Moreover, since it's been going since forever, it's got an enormous amount of legacy baggage, which is beloved by various fans. No matter how shitty an implementation of an idea was (Psionics, Vancian Casting, Epic Levels, etc.) , it has to be included, because otherwise people will (and have) pitch(ed) a shit fit. Finally, it's been around since the goddamn dark ages of RPG design, when Gary Gygax and a bunch of chucklenut friends sat around and came up with some sort of a half-wargame thing (modeled on a shitty wargame, to boot) to try and pretend to be elves. This means that the "bones" of the game are not well suited to what it is today.
In a terrifying way, Dungeons and Dragons is the United States Government. It was made a long time ago, and in ways that don't really fit with how things work now. It's got an enormous crowd of hangers-on, each of whom has some tiny little portion of the rules that they belove, and will throw a fucking tantrum about any attempt to touch it. It has an enormous impact on the world around it, and is enormous is reach and symbolism, so it can't really just "do its own thing" without an enormous perception of failure, and huge problems for all sorts of different people, all of whom are to be governed under one law. Finally, the odds of any individual voice working to shape changes to the rules are basically nil, so I'm free to burble on about all the goofy things that I would do if I ran things, without any risk of actually having my designs carried out.
So, therefore, let there be two sets of proposals, the vanity project and the realistic project. Each detailed below.
Vanity Project:
Preface: I want to begin by acknowledging the broad success that Dungeons and Dragons has enjoyed. It's made relatively large chunks of cash, and it's wasted the free time of countless introverted nerds throughout the ~40 years of it's life. That said, I feel releasing another edition of the game is moronic. Kill it. The reason for my position is actually pretty simple: any rules set that claims to be Dungeons and Dragons has, built in, an enormous weight to carry. If we imagine an alternate universe in which GURPS was the default game system, and I released a game called "Ned's Asskicking Game," and I used the rules that were published in the basic set, I would sell 10 copies. 9 of those copies would be to my relatives.
The motive:
The point of a table-top game (broadly speaking) is to allow people to inhabit a different decision-making space, in some combination of taking on a role that is unavailable to us normally and examining decisions which we don't deal with on a regular basis. In short, to have fun. Rules can either serve to facilitate or destroy fun. This isn't to say that you CAN'T have fun with any rules set. You can play "magical tea party storytime," a game with no rules, and have fun. You can have fun playing monopoly with friends, even though the INHERENT DESIGN OF THE GAME IS TO SHOW YOU HOW LITTLE FUN IT IS.
In it's current state, any game which is "Dungeons and Dragons" is burdened with a large number of rules which are profoundly fun-destroying, on the whole. The biggest offender isn't even a rule so much as an attitude, an attitude which was mostly unstated, and frequently denied, but is as much a part of the game as the To Hit roll: There are players, and there is a GM. The GM tries to make a world for the players to inhabit. The players try to manipulate that world using the tools they are granted by the rules. Fun is made by the players acting on the world. In reality (a funny word to use when talking about, in effect, a collective hallucination), the longest-lasting enjoyment that people draw from the hobby is that of stories. An RPG is a way to tell stories together.
The Problem:
Telling stories is very hard. I've tried. I've run games, and I've played in games. When you're running a game, you want to come up with a plot. You want to force your will on the players, to make them actors in your drama. When you're a player, you identify with your character. You want him to succeed (or at least fail interestingly). You want him to prosper and grow. He's YOUR GUY. D&D makes these two roles very clear, and, unsurprisingly, it then requires an vast array of rules to try to ensure that the GM can pose appropriate challenges for the players, and the players have tools (but not TOO many tools) to influence the world.
What I would want:
I want the game to change in the following way- I want to make the players consider a wider world than their own character, and, simultaneously, I want to reduce player control over their own character. As it stands right now, players have such complete control over their own characters that they behave like automatons who exist only for the sake of gaining power, which is the only thing that allows them to influence the evolution of the narrative. In exchange for allowing the players to have some explicit control over the thread of the story, the story needs to have some ability to influence the characters. There have been a series of WONDERFUL rulessets that try to accoplish this very thing.
If we want a game that lets us tell stories about heroic fantasy characters crawling in dungeons that is, in some way, a new thing, we must change the way that the roles are assigned within the system. To do this is impossible, I feel, with the current baggage associated with the Dungeons and Dragons license.
My realistic proposal:
Problems-
I feel that 4th ed made the game a lot less like horrible rocket-jousting and reduced the level of caster supremacy. However, the rules for out-of-combat stuff (which, admittedly, was less important), were reduced far, far too much in scope. In addition, the codification of attacks into powers, which had the beneficial step of making the rules much more self-contained, had the negative effect of reducing the amount of creative energy that the players put into encounters, encouraging more of a tactical feel (something I really like, in general BTW). This was exacerbated by the endless slew of conditions that required tracking.
Solutions-
Transform the "powers" format into something slightly less technical, and slightly more descriptive.
Add additional neat non-combat options, not only for the casters, but also for non-casters! 99% of the characters who do cool shit in fantasy novels (at least before the widespread acceptance of D&D as the dominant paradigm) were not wizards or clerics or druids.
Reduce the number of status effects, and make them dependent on some sort of a "ladder of Woe." The worse you're hurt, the worse the effect is, in general. See the homebrew thread in SA/Tradgames for someone's proposal.
No more psionics, except within the context of a very specific campaign setting
No more 100million fucking fantasy races. I'm a fantasy racist. I don't want to have to deal with fitting minotaurs AND living crystal people AND dragons with tits in the same world
No more 100 million classes! Actually, on that subject, can you not release an endless torrent of spatbooks? I know these last two are not going to happen, because it's the "business model," but it's shitty.
Monsters that die faster (I know this was fixed in MM3, but I didn't get that one).
and a Pony
I'm done.
