(Can you tell school's out? And I'm trying to find something to keep me occupied?)
One of my biggest faults is that I can be easily swayed by stuff that's new and shiny. I have a tendency to jump on a bandwagon, especially if someone I respect has already jumped on too.....or appeared to have jumped on. Anyway, I've had to really keep myself in check as new things showed up in the OSR, like Adventurer, Conqueror, King system or Crypts & Things or even Rappan Athuk kickstarter. I've had to make myself sit back and ask some tough questions to make sure that I'm not spending money I don't need to spend. I learned that I had this fatal flaw (which advertisers love to see) when 3.0 went to 3.5, and when Pathfinder came out, and when I read of Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and....the list can go on for quite a while.
Tied to this fault is my great ability to make bad decisions quickly and good decisions take time. So, I'm now applying a "wait-and-see" approach to a lot of my life which upsets some of my friends because they want advice now. Sorry. Good advice will take me a little while. Give me a day or two to ruminate and I'll get back to you.
So, applying this to 5e after the one playtest may still be a bad decision, or it may be what I need to answer whatever survey comes from WotC about how I liked the game. In addition to this, I've gone out and read some other blogs by other playtesters to see if they saw what I saw and to see if I missed anything. Here's some things that came out of my reading and ruminating.
Advantages & Disadvantages - Basically, there are no more +4 or -4 or +2 or -2 bonuses for things. There's just the idea that you get an advantage or the opponent is at a disadvantage. It's an interesting mechanic but I can see a lot of potential rule lawyering in it as well. For example, (I'll write up the full story of the playtest it self in the next post) my character charged a group of orcs. I rolled a natural 1 on my attack which we ruled that I had tripped, fell, and slid into them. That means I'm at a Disadvantage and they had Advantage. An Advantage means they got to roll 2 d20's instead of 1 and to take the higher rolls when they attacked me. My attack back was at Disadvantage, which meant I rolled 2d20's to attack and had to take the lower value roll. I like the variability of the rolls but I think there will be arguments about what constitutes Advantage and Disadvantage.
XP - this may be a problem of the skimpy little rules they sent but it appeared that you only get XP from killing things. No XP from defeating or outwitting opponents. No XP from gold or treasure. This could be houseruled differently, but the XP values for the creatures are pretty high themselves (at least when compared to Swords & Wizardry). We defeated 40 kobolds but we didn't kill them. If we go hard interpret of the rules, then we get no XP for that. This could be a big game changer for old school players.
At-Will Spells - our cleric regularly threw these divine bolts several times during each combat. And then the mage joined in with Magic Missile. Really? Unlimited use? I had the most difficulty with that. It's one of the reasons I chose to play a fighter.
So, overall, it still wasn't a bad game or a bad system. There's a few spots I'd houserule to make it palatable for me but might be a dealbreaker for others. I can see this as a good intro system for D&D. But, when I consider all the changes I would have to make (for me), I end up with another version of Swords & Wizardry or OSRIC or 1e with a few things added (like Advantages & Disadvantages, maybe). Of course, the one thing many of the other bloggers are trying to get across also is that this is a playtest. These are not the final rules and in fact, the final rules may not resemble these at all. If the 5e rules stray too much further toward 3e/4e, then I'll not even bother getting the books to steal from. If they pull back more toward 1e, then I might use it as a hook to wean players from MMO/4e styles to more old school styles. Time will tell. The current rumor is that they're working on a release of the rules for GenCon 2013.
1 comment:
Some thoughts on D&D Next:
First off -- I did a quick read of the rules and did one pass only, so I am quite sure I got some things wrong in how I GM'd (for example, I thought a natural twenty meant Double Damage, but it was Max Damage).
I like the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic but I don't have mastery yet of how/when to use it (maybe it will become more clear on a second pass of reading the rules or when more examples come out on how it's officially being interpreted).
I'm not reading too much into the XP rules just yet since they really didn't mention them at all -- I'm guessing they are purposely 'not going there' as they are trying to limit feedback to very specific parts of the system. I imagine by end of summer they'll have another release of the Beta, changing what they got feedback on, and adding in NEW stuff to examine and get feedback on -- maybe we'll see how XP is supposed to work in more depth at that point.
They've already admitted HP is inflated and have plans to dial it back:
"We already have plans to roll back hit point totals, but we'll also see how the playtests go before making a final decision. Chances are, you'll see hit points and damage both go down, so the game's overall lethality might not change much but the math is simpler and damage expressions simpler." (From
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/interviews/9642-What-the-Playtest-of-D-D-Next-Means-for-You.2).
Aside from thoughts on specific mechanics, a few other things jump out to me:
1) They actually appear to be listening to their customers and changing the system based on feedback. This is a HUGE change in culture for them. They're not quite Paizo-level yet in customer care and openness, but it's still different than a few years back. The downside is you'll see some 4e flavored stuff like quicker leveling I think.
2) From a DM perspective, the system is a breeze. One line stat blocks (1 line!!!) just like in the original, with occasionally a small feat or flavor text with tactics below it.
3) I think a rising tide will lift all ships to some extent. If 5e actually keeps this old-school feel it means we'll have a nice gateway product to get the masses (including younger, MMO folks) playing a shiny, very popular product in an old school way. I think OSR popularity may take a hit in the near term but then rebound. This will be an entry for new players who, once used to old school play, can easily transition to other systems (S&W, Osric) with greater ease.
4) I'm thinking the modularity of 5e (which is one of their design goals) will allow you to house rule it easily (as compared to 3.x, where changing rules was like pulling a stick from a Jenga tower with unknown ramifications). So hopefully the things we don't like we can houserule away and yet retain players which wouldn't share our gametable in the old OSR vs. 4e world.
All of which is to say I'm cautiously optimistic and like what I see so far.
One thing I hope they do is divorce the setting rules from the core rules -- I don't really want to see Tieflings and Forgotten Realms fluff laced too much into the core. I hope they shuffle that off to supplements so you could (for example) run Lord of the Rings or Conan with it without having to ignore and houserule a lot of the core system to do it.
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