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Dungeons And Dragons 5th Edition Announced!

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TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#626: Feb 14th 2012 at 10:08:01 AM

That's only because every fighter without exceptional strength died a painful horrible death before the PC meets up with them!

Treblain Not An Avatar Since: Nov, 2012
Not An Avatar
#627: Feb 15th 2012 at 8:20:47 PM

I just hope they don't forget to include the one thing that absolutely must be a spell in 5th Edition.

KNIIIIIIIFE EEEEEEYYYYYE ATTAAAAAAACK!

We're not just men of science, we're men of TROPE!
joeyjojo Happy New Year! from South Sydney: go the bunnies! Since: Jan, 2001
Happy New Year!
#628: Feb 15th 2012 at 9:37:16 PM

Well even if they are harking back to 2rd edition era game play I hope they retain 4th edition's page layout and presentation.

While 4th Edition D&D may of definitely lacked the character and fluff of earlier editions it did make the rules quick and easy to learn if you never played the game before.

edited 15th Feb '12 10:20:34 PM by joeyjojo

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TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#629: Feb 15th 2012 at 9:38:45 PM

Essentials started bringing back a lot of the fluff. Furthermore, since they're moving away from powers (though "feats" will maintain many of the same elements), it's likely that they'll have a higher fluff to crunch ratio.

joeyjojo Happy New Year! from South Sydney: go the bunnies! Since: Jan, 2001
Happy New Year!
#630: Feb 16th 2012 at 4:32:39 AM

I think all the the Rage on class powers would of been a lot less if they name them 'abilities' or something. Anyway I don't mind myself but the fans seem to be getting their wish for Dn D Next

edited 16th Feb '12 4:33:03 AM by joeyjojo

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Ghilz Perpetually Confused from Yeeted at Relativistic Velocities Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Barbecuing
Perpetually Confused
#631: Mar 10th 2012 at 11:48:24 AM

So apparently Rolled Stats are back. And Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards, Vancian Magic. Seems most of 4E stuff was thrown into the bus so to speak. Ritual Magic remains though. At least according to here. Then again this is coming from someone who'd willingly play Rogue Trader.

edited 10th Mar '12 11:49:30 AM by Ghilz

darnpenguin Yakka Foob Mog from one friend to another Since: Jan, 2001
Yakka Foob Mog
#632: Mar 10th 2012 at 12:27:26 PM

So he rants about the horror of rolled stats returning then goes off to play a game where you roll for almost everything about your character, and even have an option to roll for your name?

edited 10th Mar '12 12:27:48 PM by darnpenguin

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Ghilz Perpetually Confused from Yeeted at Relativistic Velocities Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Barbecuing
Perpetually Confused
#633: Mar 10th 2012 at 12:44:35 PM

[up]Pretty Much

Evellex from Canberra Since: Oct, 2010
#634: Mar 10th 2012 at 12:46:34 PM

How is having rolled stats in the book even a thing? Not a good or bad thing, but at all. All the old pint buy tables are going to work just as well as they did before so just use one of those for your campaign, rule zero and all that.

Kayeka (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#635: Mar 10th 2012 at 1:44:10 PM

Where did that guy get his info, and how am I supposed to know that I haven't been reading some nutjob overreacting to some vague suggestions?

TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#636: Mar 10th 2012 at 1:51:57 PM

Incidentally, "Abilities" in place of "Powers" runs into weird interfacing problems when you remember "Ability Scores" are a thing. You want to keep the game language as concise as possible, and avoiding overlaps is one way to do that.

Anyway, from what I've read, it sounds like wizards will actually suck comparatively to fighters. They don't have an asston of ultra spells per day, and while their "nova" damage is higher than the fighter's round by round damage, the one example that Bruce gave of play was actually *less average damage overall.*

joeyjojo Happy New Year! from South Sydney: go the bunnies! Since: Jan, 2001
Happy New Year!
#637: Mar 10th 2012 at 4:30:49 PM

"Abilities" in place of "Powers" runs into weird interfacing problems when you remember "Ability Scores" are a thing. You want to keep the game language as concise as possible, and avoiding overlaps is one way to do that.

battle techniques then?

edited 10th Mar '12 4:32:03 PM by joeyjojo

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TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
joeyjojo Happy New Year! from South Sydney: go the bunnies! Since: Jan, 2001
Happy New Year!
#639: Mar 10th 2012 at 6:43:53 PM

What's wrong with wordy?

hashtagsarestupid
TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#640: Mar 10th 2012 at 7:31:19 PM

It's ugly, that's what.

But it's functional, I'll grant you that. Though, not all powers in 4E are combat powers.

MadassAlex I am vexed! from the Middle Ages. Since: Jan, 2001
I am vexed!
#641: Mar 11th 2012 at 8:41:00 PM

It seems to me that D&D has become too weighty with its own content and expectations. Every other tabletop roleplaying game I know of takes quite a different approach to things when compared to D&D, and for good reason. While D&D still has strong potential, it's become too unfocused and therefore narrative and mechanics exist too far apart.

D&D isn't dead until people stop buying material produced for it, but it looks as though 4e was a turning point for the worst. No matter how you look at it, 4e was a divisive force in the general community of tabletop roleplaying and now there's no single, centralised fanbase that the game can be built towards — thus this modular idea.

The longer D&D tries to maintain its huge diversity of options, the more it's going to buckle and groan under itself, I think. D&D needs a focus it can build off right now. Back in the days of early D&D, that was dungeon crawling. Whatever happens, I think the game needs to scale down, bring it in and focus on producing better-balanced content with fewer classes and the like. Splats can come later, and people can homebrew until then.

Swordsman TroperReclaiming The BladeWatch
TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#642: Mar 11th 2012 at 8:56:55 PM

Back in MY day-

The d20 license was the most successful thing that ever came out of Dungeons and Dragons. I think, as a system, 3E was inferior to 4E, but that modular nature that was able to be used for just about anything sold a shit ton of books. While I certainly understand the "What does it mean to be Dungeons and Dragons?" mindset, I don't think the data supports the hypothesis that that's going to be the death of D&D.

What's more likely to be a problem is the world's various financial crisis'. I mean, people spend less on entertainment when times are tough. Blaming it on things like a lack of vision is just a way of pretending that the creators are in control of their profit more than they actually are.

MadassAlex I am vexed! from the Middle Ages. Since: Jan, 2001
I am vexed!
#643: Mar 11th 2012 at 9:17:25 PM

What I'm witnessing is companies like White Wolf and Fantasy Flight making more thematic, better-received games for the market that D&D created in the first place. D&D as it stands can be an excellent entry level game in mechanical terms, but it doesn't really introduce the player to the concept of stepping into the shoes of the character. Other games use their theming to ensure that a player's character is tied to the setting, such as the various depleting and advancing stats for mental well-being in World of Darkness, stuff like Insanity and Corruption in Fantasy Flight's Warhammer 40k games and so on and so forth.

D&D has its morality axis, but that doesn't connect to the game well in terms of themes, narrative or mechanics. What Lawful, Good, Chaotic and Evil are isn't well understood by players, and when mechanical connections are made, they're often pretty hamhanded. I'm talking about stuff like Paladin falls, Detect Evil and the like.

The extra depth that other games enforce mechanically and/or the greater versatility other games give via free-build character creation are strong factors in ensuring that many D&D players end up moving on to greener pastures. D&D isn't really keeping up with the times in terms of game design — video games, of all things, are regularly exceeding it in terms of clever and strong connection between mechanics and narrative.

Consider how many different settings D&D has to be compatible with, how many game types it has to encompass and how many classes are expected of it and you'll see the issue. There's just too much content to keep up with. I expect this is one of the driving forces behind the modular design perspective of 5e — they want to provide a system where users can generate their own content quickly, easily and within the rules. This is probably a good path to follow, but it doesn't solve D&D's lack of focus issue.

D&D's biggest challenge from here until its eventual collapse (as all things do) is going to be the balance between focus and versatility. Fantasy Flight, with the 40k setting, dealt with this pretty well. It produced a series of games that were mechanically similar enough to work as expansions to one-another, where each game focused on one aspect of the setting. Perhaps D&D should do this, too? Perhaps Dungeons and Dragons really should be about dungeon crawls and monster battles above all, with additional releases supporting other game types more powerfully? I don't really know. But I do know that D&D faces some stiff competition these days.

Swordsman TroperReclaiming The BladeWatch
Exelixi Lesbarian from Alchemist's workshop Since: Sep, 2011 Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
Lesbarian
#644: Mar 11th 2012 at 9:26:58 PM

Let's establish one thing. Mechanical enforcement of roleplaying elements isn't necessarily a good thing. In fact, I personally think it's stupid as fuck, which is why I have problems with WOD. Stats are stats, characters are characters. A character's mechanical stats should have no impact on who they are at heart. Fourth edition took a big step forward on this matter, ditching alignment restrictions and spells that worked based on alignments.

Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-
MadassAlex I am vexed! from the Middle Ages. Since: Jan, 2001
I am vexed!
#645: Mar 11th 2012 at 9:54:10 PM

The interaction between mechanics and narrative is a baseline element of all games, no matter the medium. Mechanics define the rules of reality in a game, so what they reward and discourage is very important. You can trust most players to have a little munchkin in them — if two choices enforce the theme of their character equally effectively, they'll choose the one that provides a greater benefit.

One of the best uses I've seen of mechanics and narrative supporting one another is in The Riddle Of Steel. There are a set of attributes called Spiritual Attributes. They have titles like Faith, Oath, Passion, Drive, Destiny and so on and so forth. A player selects five of these for their character and divides seven points among them (no more than 5 points in any one SA, a SA can start at 0). The catch is that each of these stats has a player-generated focus. That is, there's no list — you just write it down.

For instance, a character's Drive might be "to release my sister from prostitution". Any action related to that (be it social, in combat or skill-based) gets an extra amount of dice up to the Drive SA. By being in that situation and using that SA, you get an extra point to the stat. If you succeed in making headway towards solving the situation, you get two extra points instead.

Therefore, you can see how the mechanics of the game reward player-selected personality traits in all scenarios. The most efficient way to play the game, mechanically, is actually to have a character with their own goals, perspectives and whatnot and to chase them. Furthermore, it's these SA points you can spend at the end of a session to increase physical and mental attributes or weapon proficiencies.

So not only does partaking of scenarios relevant to your character empower them, it's the only way to "level up". It doesn't matter how many men or monsters you slay, how many objectives you complete or whatever. The only way to empower your character is via their Spiritual Attributes, solving problems and defending perspectives that are relevant to them. This can become especially interesting when you have a scenario where two SAs conflict with one another, or where on PC SA conflicts with another PC SA. Or even both.

If narrative and mechanics weren't related, we'd all run around saying "I slay the dragon" and "nuh-uh, it's a ROBOT dragon" and "that's alright, I brought my anti-robot-dragon pepper spray that contains poison" and so on and so forth. Having levels that represent degrees of power is an aspect of mechanics and narrative meeting, as it represents your character being less or more powerful than another entity in the game. It tells a little part of that story.

That's what mechanics are. They're rules that help to tell a story on even ground, where everyone's on the same page. That's why some people, even when they're not out to get an advantage, get so anal about sticking to the rules as written. To them, the mechanics are the building blocks of the story and when you violate those, you rewrite the rules and expectations of the reality everyone is adhering to.

Basically, mechanics and narrative shouldn't aim to be separate in context of a game. Mechanics should always exist to support narrative, and that's always the goal. Sometimes this is done badly, but even then, it displays a narrativist perspective towards the game. Even chess, of all games, has narrative — it expresses a simple version of a medieval battle. That's its theme and narrative tied up in one. You might note that a knight's movement in the game is actually a flanking action, or that a rook's movement is vertical or horizontal while the figure represents a tower, representing something like a castle wall if one were to bridge to the gap between narrative and mechanics.

From playground games to traditional games to video games and beyond, nothing ever changes the inherent rules of game design. In the best games, mechanics and narrative are often one and the same. That doesn't mean mechanics encompass all narrative, but every mechanical aspect of the game that is there should have some kind of narrative purpose. It should be an aid in telling the story, and I think this is where D&D is really falling behind when it comes to modern game design. Its mechanics are too broad and unspecific to meaningfully contribute to narrative outside of providing a baseline for the game's reality. They represent the restrictions one must follow, but they don't guide the players or DM in telling a story.

Swordsman TroperReclaiming The BladeWatch
TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#646: Mar 11th 2012 at 11:41:55 PM

Well, does Dn D really have less market share? Or does it just have less market share for the inputs they're using?

I mean, last I checked, Dungeons and Dragons was still synonymous with tabletop roleplaying and vice versa. The fact that other games are "targeted" may mean they can get outputs for less input, but that doesn't mean that they're actually less prominent.

Also: You're full of crap if you think that "if narrative and mechanics aren't related, we'd all-" I mean, freeform roleplaying exists and there are instances where it doesn't devolve into that.

Of course, there are plenty of instances where it does, but that's just Sturgeon's Law.

edited 11th Mar '12 11:43:06 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

MadassAlex I am vexed! from the Middle Ages. Since: Jan, 2001
I am vexed!
#647: Mar 12th 2012 at 12:37:02 AM

It's just fact that mechanics guide the narrative of the game; they impose the restrictions that give abilities and interactions meaning.

Swordsman TroperReclaiming The BladeWatch
TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#648: Mar 12th 2012 at 12:39:20 AM

No, the plot guides the narrative, and the narrative then dictates what mechanics are used.

MadassAlex I am vexed! from the Middle Ages. Since: Jan, 2001
I am vexed!
#649: Mar 12th 2012 at 1:15:23 AM

To make it clear, the term "narrative" encompasses every technique used to convey meaning within any storytelling context. In a book, an example might be "my stomach turned" — you don't need to be told that the character is anxious or uncomfortable, because the use of that common anxiety response makes that clear. In a film, that might be showing dried blood where there was none before; again, we don't need to be told anything that isn't conveyed through the image. Bloodshed happened there.

Games of all kinds have one further tool — mechanics. Mechanics are a tool of conveying information and therefore narrative. In fact, you don't even need a plot for narrative to exist. It's true that most games have a plot, but let's go back to the chess example. That has no plot, but it has narrative. There are no characters or events, but it can still convey storytelling information (that is, narrative) by its mechanics and the visuals of the pieces alone.

The most effective game uses its mechanics as a tool of narrative. Mechanics can convey information directly in a language everyone understands without any vocal narration apart from the player making their choice. Think about these two sentences:

I attack.

Alaric swung his sword at the vampire.

The second is more interesting (slightly), but both convey the same information insofar as a tabletop game is concerned. In the game, though, the narrative of the second phrase is implied within the mechanics anyway. If Alaric's player simply says "I attack", then everything is conveyed by existing knowledge and context; the DM and other players will know that he wields a sword, and that his enemy is a vampire. It's the mechanics that form the context and give the meaning to that action. Perhaps attacking the vampire is foolhardy or brave, or perhaps Alaric is an experienced vampire hunter. If he is, though, the mechanics will tell us — he might, for instance, have Preferred Enemy: Vampire. So there's a mechanic that isn't just technical. It's not just +1 to attack against vampires. It implies that Alaric is an experience vampire hunter, trained in vampire hunting and that he probably has experience.

Most people see a dichotomy where there is none. Mechanics are narrative. Otherwise, what would be the point of a game? You'd watch a movie or read a book, because if the mechanics aren't a tool for conveying narrative, then they have no relation to the story and are therefore useless.

Trust me, I'm someone who falls way towards the narrativist side of the spectrum when it comes to games of all kinds, and that's why I think it's so important to recognise that mechanics are, in and of themselves, narrative. That's why they exist. And when mechanics are built, they should be considered in terms of what they express, what they encourage and what they discourage. The whole point of narrative game (as most tabletop and video games are) is to produce an experience, and usually that means telling some kind of story.

Just like a book uses narration and just like a film uses imagery and sound, a game uses mechanics as the basis for its narrative. That's how we define the whole medium. We don't say that we read games, watch games or listen to games — we play games, because mechanics are what convey the information that makes games unique.

Swordsman TroperReclaiming The BladeWatch
TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#650: Mar 12th 2012 at 1:31:25 AM

You're rambling, and I can't exactly tell what conclusion you're trying to arrive at, because you have a long argument that doesn't really follow. I can't really disagree with your premises, but I'm not sure what exactly you're getting at, unless this is one big semantics debate.


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