The announcement of 5th edition, or D&D Next, came with another announcement. That the Forgotten Realms would be the games default setting. The Realms is big, it has a rich history and a rich future. It has novels set in its cities and wilderness, it is the home to some of D&D's most well known heroes and villains.
And for anyone starting the game with this next edition, it will be the default world that their characters call home when they sit down to play. And, its a good world. Its big! It has a lot of preexisting resources that WotC can republish. Anything can happen in the Realms, and that's a great thing.
But, as a DM and a player, I have a small request. It is one that for WotC would have a negligible cost and would help countless DMs who are interested in world building and setting creation, those of us who want to play in our own sandboxes.
Give us professionally crafted maps of large landmasses, continents, archipelagos, sub-continents, etc. Put the forests, mountains, cities, and towns on there, fill it with interesting terrain and little dots to let us know where things are.
But don't label any of it.
The default setting of D&D should be a nearly blank map. A world mysterious to the players, full of danger and unknown terror.
A nearly blank map would give DMs creative control over their world. Don't know anything about the realms? Don't want to learn the complex political structure of Ebberon? Want to start with a blank slate and populate it with what monsters and civilizations you choose?
Here's your map. This city here, on this river, what's in it? Who lives there? Is it a city of human nobles at war with the elves in the nearby forest? Is it full of thieves and river bandits, allied with the gnolls? Or, perhaps its a city in ruins, waiting to be explored.
No presumptions on the part of WotC or the players. It is up to the DM to tell their players what they know about the world surrounding their tiny village. A world ripe for exploration.
For some of us, the Realms and other per-generated worlds don't give us the freedom we like. They have too much baggage, whether its in the form of novels or source books or even just adventures. The more the Nentir Vale got filled in with "stuff" the more I disliked it. The more crowded with other peoples ideas it felt.
A blank map though, of that area? A lovely thing.
Then you can publish cities that can be dropped into these maps, dungeons and ruins that all the DM has to to is pick a dot on his map and say "Here is where the lost ruins of Kalab'ahran, the Bright City of the Dwarves, lies."
Entire cultures can be created, free from the tyranny of published settings. Want to create an interesting clan of elves? Want to give Orcs their own kingdom where the Orc King worships Erathis? Here is a blank map where WotC and others have no assumptions or hold on you. Put them where you like.
I will admit that this desire comes from a simple problem: I am not a cartographer. I have no skill at drawing worlds. And when I do its basic colored marker and pen, on white paper. A professionally done map though? Would be an inspiration. For myself, I will admit, and others.
For those of you who enjoy published settings I do not suggest that WotC abandon these worlds. Athas, Abeir-Toril, Oerth, and even the world of the Nentir Vale all have their stories to tell us.
I would just like a blank world, or a series of them, where the only thing telling me what lies over the next hill is what I want to put there, not what someone else wanted.
Thank you. :)
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Character Archetypes, Roles, and D&D Next
4th edition introduced a new way of looking at characters in pen & paper rpgs, that of the "role". These roles weren't anything overly new to the game, but the labels were. These labels were borrowed from MMO terminology, modified to fit into the construct of a table top game, and let loose upon the world of Dungeons and Dragon's players for good or ill.
Some people used the codifying of roles as another example that 4e was "just an MMO" in paper form, forgetting that MMO's spawned from table top RPGs themselves, first as MUDs (Multi User Dungeons) and related games, and then as graphical worlds in and of themselves, each one improving (hopefully) on the last. The conceits of D&D and other fantasy RPGs were borrowed and are evident in Everquest, Ultima, and yes even in World of Warcraft.
These roles are fairly simple, for the most part.
Defender: The "tank" in MMO speak, the defender punishes the enemies for attacking his friends.
Striker: The "DPS (Damage Per Second)" class in MMO speak, also known as the guy that puts out the hurt.
Leader: The "healer" role who helps his team mates by replenishing hit points and tossing out bonuses.
Controller: the "crowd control" role in MMOs, able to impose negative conditions on enemies, and generally make the enemies life miserable.
These roles aren't all bad, in one way or another they've always existed in D&D. The fighter, for the most part, has stood in front of the mage to prevent the monsters from interrupting his spells (acting as a defender). The rogue sneak attacks the bad guys, doing extra damage (being a striker). Clerics heal, wizards cast fireballs, and so on and so forth. What MMOs had to do was enforce what was already there and make those things mechanically work within the boundaries of a video game.
What 4e did was create the labels as both a way of discussing what a class was supposed to be doing and also a way to compare classes meaningfully. If strikers are supposed to deal damage, we can compare 2 striker classes, and look at how they are accomplishing this goal, and see if its working or not. No matter how you feel about roles, from a design perspective I can't see this as being anything but useful. At least, if you value class balance. Another idea borrowed from MMO and video games. To clarify, class balance means that at any given level, 2 classes doing the same job are relatively comparable and viable. You don't want X to be so much better than Y that Y is almost never played.
Roles can also be restrictive, though. There were many people who played the fighter class as a damage dealer, choosing to be "the guy in lots of armor with the big sword". Where 4e initially went wrong was not providing options for players who liked to play a class against its stated role. And, though I love 4e and playing it with my friends, that is true. If you want to play a pure damage dealing wizard...you play a sorcerer and deal with it. That's not a game breaker for me, but for others I can see the frustration. It has made steps in the right direction with essentials and with options like the Heroes of the Feywild barbarian, but for some that is not enough.
In the Next Edition should roles stay? Yes, I think they should. Not only are they a good way to decide what type of class to play, but also a way of achieving balance. It is a good way of offering comparisons, deciding on features, and also a way to find out what a player wants to do. Some people like playing the healer, other guys just want make things bleed. Keep them. But they shouldn't be a straight jacket for classes, they should be a descriptor, flexible, and those descriptions should be able to change depending on what options you take. If they stay with Powers / Abilities perhaps each one could come with a descriptor, and then you decide what your character is by the balance of powers you take?
IE: You take 3 powers with the "Striker" label, and only 1 "Controller" power, and your character is considered a striker. Or, choose this class feature and you are a Striker, and this one and you are a Controller, or Defender.
In current 4e terminology a fighter could look like this
If you want to play a defender choose Defender Aura for your class feature. If you want to play a striker, choose Power Strike as a class feature. If you want to play a controller, choose (This Thing) as your class feature.
Not perfect, I know. But it works for the purposes of discussion.
Now, the second broad topic I wanted to discuss was archetypes are something that are very useful in D&D, and in literature in general. In some ways Power Source is an archetype in 4e. Roles are also a form of archetype.
But more broadly than that, archetype is a general descriptor that lets you know what flavor a character has. If I ask you to describe a "Rogue" you have a good idea of what that type of character is in your head. If I ask you to describe a "Mage" you also have a good mental image of what that character may look like. These images persist through storytelling, MMOs, table top games, literature, artwork, and almost anything relating to our hobby.
I posit that there are several prevailing archetypes in our hobby:
The Warrior: A person who takes up weapons and armor to engage in hand to hand combat.
The Sneak: A person who relies on stealth and deception. Lightly armored and armed, the sneak keeps to the shadows.
The Spellcaster: Wearing no armor, the spell caster wields power unknown to the common man to smite her enemies.
The Healer: The healer also wields power, but unlike the Spellcaster who uses it to kill his foe the Healer uses his powers to aid his allies.
The Archer: Just as it sounds, the Archer prefers to fight at range.
The Savage: A person of the wild, the savage shuns civilization and its traps.
Now, many archetypes are missing from this list, and others can be seen as a combination of the 2. A ranger could be seen as a Savage Archer, an Archer Sneak, or a Savage Archer Sneak. Notice that even the term "ranger" brings up a set of preconceptions when I mention it? That is a type of archetype. A paladin has a clear archetype as well, a warrior of the divine. (an archetype mixed with a power source).
Archetypes, power sources, and roles are all building blocks used to describe and differentiate characters. Race can be seen as another block, each race having its own archetypes built in either mechanically or historically.
I hope that in the next edition that we have access to all of these tools in order to build interesting stories, discuss balance and mechanics, and work towards design goals.
Some people used the codifying of roles as another example that 4e was "just an MMO" in paper form, forgetting that MMO's spawned from table top RPGs themselves, first as MUDs (Multi User Dungeons) and related games, and then as graphical worlds in and of themselves, each one improving (hopefully) on the last. The conceits of D&D and other fantasy RPGs were borrowed and are evident in Everquest, Ultima, and yes even in World of Warcraft.
These roles are fairly simple, for the most part.
Defender: The "tank" in MMO speak, the defender punishes the enemies for attacking his friends.
Striker: The "DPS (Damage Per Second)" class in MMO speak, also known as the guy that puts out the hurt.
Leader: The "healer" role who helps his team mates by replenishing hit points and tossing out bonuses.
Controller: the "crowd control" role in MMOs, able to impose negative conditions on enemies, and generally make the enemies life miserable.
These roles aren't all bad, in one way or another they've always existed in D&D. The fighter, for the most part, has stood in front of the mage to prevent the monsters from interrupting his spells (acting as a defender). The rogue sneak attacks the bad guys, doing extra damage (being a striker). Clerics heal, wizards cast fireballs, and so on and so forth. What MMOs had to do was enforce what was already there and make those things mechanically work within the boundaries of a video game.
What 4e did was create the labels as both a way of discussing what a class was supposed to be doing and also a way to compare classes meaningfully. If strikers are supposed to deal damage, we can compare 2 striker classes, and look at how they are accomplishing this goal, and see if its working or not. No matter how you feel about roles, from a design perspective I can't see this as being anything but useful. At least, if you value class balance. Another idea borrowed from MMO and video games. To clarify, class balance means that at any given level, 2 classes doing the same job are relatively comparable and viable. You don't want X to be so much better than Y that Y is almost never played.
Roles can also be restrictive, though. There were many people who played the fighter class as a damage dealer, choosing to be "the guy in lots of armor with the big sword". Where 4e initially went wrong was not providing options for players who liked to play a class against its stated role. And, though I love 4e and playing it with my friends, that is true. If you want to play a pure damage dealing wizard...you play a sorcerer and deal with it. That's not a game breaker for me, but for others I can see the frustration. It has made steps in the right direction with essentials and with options like the Heroes of the Feywild barbarian, but for some that is not enough.
In the Next Edition should roles stay? Yes, I think they should. Not only are they a good way to decide what type of class to play, but also a way of achieving balance. It is a good way of offering comparisons, deciding on features, and also a way to find out what a player wants to do. Some people like playing the healer, other guys just want make things bleed. Keep them. But they shouldn't be a straight jacket for classes, they should be a descriptor, flexible, and those descriptions should be able to change depending on what options you take. If they stay with Powers / Abilities perhaps each one could come with a descriptor, and then you decide what your character is by the balance of powers you take?
IE: You take 3 powers with the "Striker" label, and only 1 "Controller" power, and your character is considered a striker. Or, choose this class feature and you are a Striker, and this one and you are a Controller, or Defender.
In current 4e terminology a fighter could look like this
If you want to play a defender choose Defender Aura for your class feature. If you want to play a striker, choose Power Strike as a class feature. If you want to play a controller, choose (This Thing) as your class feature.
Not perfect, I know. But it works for the purposes of discussion.
Now, the second broad topic I wanted to discuss was archetypes are something that are very useful in D&D, and in literature in general. In some ways Power Source is an archetype in 4e. Roles are also a form of archetype.
But more broadly than that, archetype is a general descriptor that lets you know what flavor a character has. If I ask you to describe a "Rogue" you have a good idea of what that type of character is in your head. If I ask you to describe a "Mage" you also have a good mental image of what that character may look like. These images persist through storytelling, MMOs, table top games, literature, artwork, and almost anything relating to our hobby.
I posit that there are several prevailing archetypes in our hobby:
The Warrior: A person who takes up weapons and armor to engage in hand to hand combat.
The Sneak: A person who relies on stealth and deception. Lightly armored and armed, the sneak keeps to the shadows.
The Spellcaster: Wearing no armor, the spell caster wields power unknown to the common man to smite her enemies.
The Healer: The healer also wields power, but unlike the Spellcaster who uses it to kill his foe the Healer uses his powers to aid his allies.
The Archer: Just as it sounds, the Archer prefers to fight at range.
The Savage: A person of the wild, the savage shuns civilization and its traps.
Now, many archetypes are missing from this list, and others can be seen as a combination of the 2. A ranger could be seen as a Savage Archer, an Archer Sneak, or a Savage Archer Sneak. Notice that even the term "ranger" brings up a set of preconceptions when I mention it? That is a type of archetype. A paladin has a clear archetype as well, a warrior of the divine. (an archetype mixed with a power source).
Archetypes, power sources, and roles are all building blocks used to describe and differentiate characters. Race can be seen as another block, each race having its own archetypes built in either mechanically or historically.
I hope that in the next edition that we have access to all of these tools in order to build interesting stories, discuss balance and mechanics, and work towards design goals.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
D&D Next - The Edition for Everyone?
Warning: this blog will ramble about 5e, new mechanics, and conversations had with friends about D&D and edition wars. :)
Part The First: Begun, the Edition Wars Have.
So, Wizards of the Coast have made the announcement. 5e, or whatever they end up calling it, is official. Twitter is abuzz with #dndnext comments (and a few jokes from myself, to be compiled later), and all of the relevant websites are throwing in their 2 cents.
And, of course, the forums. A quick perusal of the Future Releases forum this morning makes my heart sink. The continued bad blood between those who dislike 4e and those who enjoy it has already started to stink up discussion about 5e. Of course, I didn't really expect any different but I can hope, right? Thank you, gaming community, to once more showing the world that we are not, in fact, above calling each other grognards and fanboys with enough vitriol to make a black dragons phlegm look positively base.
It really reminds me of a conversation I had over the weekend with a friend of mine about D&D itself. He stated, in no uncertain terms, that anyone who liked 4e was (to condense his comments) "retarded, lazy, stupid, and doing it wrong". Wow. The sticking point for him was that 4e didn't offer enough character customization, it lacked choices, and it pigeonholed. Now, I will say that there are some classes that are very tight. Too tight, too restrictive. Vampire, as silly as you are, I'm looking at you.
But, here's the rub for me, to my friend his fun in D&D, whenever I hear him talking about it, is in making the God Character. The heavily CharOp monster that gives DM's headaches and makes non CharOp players feel useless. That's where his fun comes from.
But not mine.
He also pointed out that all the power was in the hands of the player in 4e. To which I have to say "bwuh???"
Add in his "Plays like a video game, don't want to play wow on the table top" and any number of other cliched ways to bash 4e and I just get tired. And then I go on the forums and see the same thing, the same stupid, old, boring, pointless arguments going on about 5e and what should and shouldn't be included and it makes me sick.
Part The Second: Moving Forward with 5e
Now, I will say this going into the rest of this post. I love 4e. I think, with some work, that 4e has the base of a really really good system. There are a lot of things in 4e and Essentials to love, that are Good for D&D moving forward. 5e or D&D Next or Dungeons and Dragons: The Directors Cut Ultimate Edition Supreme (each book comes with sour cream and tomato) or whatever they call it, can learn a lot of things from it for making fun games.
And yes, 5e/D&D:tDCUES can learn things from older editions as well. But there are also traps in older editions, things that were cut out for 4e, that I feel still need to be avoided. Sacred Cows of D&D that I, for one am glad to see dead.
The first of these Sacred Cows I was glad to see die was Vancian magic. The "I prepare 5 first level spells, 4 second level, etc" that was a part of D&D up until 4e slit its warty throat with the At-Will, Encounter, Utility, Daily (AEDU) system.
But did 4e do it right? I don't think it did. Many people accuse 4e of playing like a video game, but I wish in this instance that 4e had gone a bit farther. Most video games use Mana (or an energy bar or some other device) to indicate how much magic energy you have to use to cast spells. I would love for 5e to have something similar, a resource to be managed that you used to cast your vast repertoire of spells from. Mana could be managed per encounter, so that you never have the "Wizard / cleric is out of spells, lets rest now guys" problem that was true of low level adventures in 3.x and prior.
I'm not a game designer, but its worked in so many MMOs and adventure RPGs that I can't understand why it can't work at a table top level.
The second Sacred Cow is the "Spell casters suck at low level compared to fighters, then fighter suck at high level compared to the god like mage". Good riddance, bad rubbish, etc. I am a fan of balance. Of being able to have fun, across the board, at any level of play. This is something they need to have in 5e. Balanced, fun play at any level, with no one feeling useless because they didn't pick "The God Class" at that level range.
There are other SC's that I don't mind seeing gone, but many of them are fluff related and not mechanics. The Great Wheel cosmology, the 9 alignments, and so on. But because they are fluff and not rules NOTHING stops any group from using them.
Now, lets move on to other things that I think 4e can teach 5e.
Ease on the DM. I have never had an easier time designing and running games than in 4e. Period. Lets keep this in the 5e pot.
Themes: I am unabashedly a fan of characdter themes. I hope they stay in, in one format or another.
Stances: One of the big things I liked about Essentials, once I looked at it, was stances for the ranger and fighter.
Now, on to some things that need to be cut or added.
Trap feat choices, feat taxes, and redundant feats. Cut them. Lets not give players false choices, or the potential to make plain bad choices. At the same time, lets not force players to "choose" something to fix the game designers bad math. That's not really a choice at all, is it?
Weapons that are not mechanically different enough having different proficiency bonuses / damage dice. So, here are your choices, a +3 prof. bonus weapon that does 1d8 damage or a +2 prof. bonus weapon that does...1d8 damage. I'm sick of all of my fighters wielding longswords. :P
Read the DMG 2. Now, take about 1/2 of that and put it in the DMG 1. All the advice for how to make a good game, say "Yes, but..." etc. Treat the DMG 1 as the "Hey, you've never ever been DM before, here's how to be awesome"
Make magic items a bonus and not an expectation in the math. Make magic items the purview of the DM, not a shopping list for the players. (unless the DM wants them to be).
Some things are themes, not classes. Remember that. Vampires and assassins, I'm looking at you.
Support for all classes and races as evenly as possible. No releasing a class (vampire!!!!) that has next to no options and then a few months later releasing yet more content for an existing class while ignoring the impoverished ones. Either publish a whole class or don't publish it at all.
Part The Third: Where I Express My Fears For The Coming Future
I will say this up front, 5e makes me worry. And not because I don't want 5e, or I think that 4e is some holy object that can't be improved upon. But because it is designed to be "The One Edition to Rule Them All". And I don't see that as a realistic design goal.
You know the saying, I hope. You can't please everyone. But that is the exact design goal of D&D: Super Ultimate Designer Edition / 5e. Make everyone happy.
I just don't see it as being achievable. Take my conversation with my friend I mentioned earlier. He is heavily into CharOp, would love an edition that gave him 10,000 choices so he could put together Monster Character and watch his madman's creation run roughshod over the DM's adventure (and if the DM can't handle it its their fault for not being creative enough to stop him, btw). I would rather have an edition with less choices, but more meaningful ones, where my non CharOp character can feel almost (not quite, though, realistically) effective as the Monster Character and where neither can run roughshod over the adventure.
Those 2 design goals are mutually exclusive. So how do you design for that?
Also, modularity can be an issue. I have friend who don't like "optional" material, such as items published in Dragon magazine. They have a variety of reasons, but ultimately it comes down to the same thing "This isn't core / doesn't feel like core, I don't want it in my game". That's fine.
But what happens when, say, 90% of the game is expressly optional modules that you can choose not to use?
How many "Well my DM won't allow me to play X because it came out in splatbook Y which is optional" will there be? I see an existing problem being magnified, multiplied, and exasperated.
I love D&D. I have loved it since the first time I put my hands on the Fiend Folio in my USAF library in Croughtan England when I was a child, to when I bought the original red box, to when I had my 2nd Edition PHB and I used a school book cover to make sure the front of it never got damaged. I loved it when I bought my 3rd edition PHB and when I bought Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms.
I have loved it from when I used any excuse to draw random dungeons on graph paper to when I picked up a the dice to play encounters.
I want 5e to succeed. I want it to be a good game, where all gamers who love D&D can engage in jovial dialogue about what makes 5e great.
But when so many conflicting opinions exist as to what makes D&D, well, D&D, and those opinions and desires are mutually exclusive (vancian spell casting vs. a more flexible system, for example), I don't see how 1 edition can rule them all.
And, as much as I hate to say it, maybe that's a good thing? Do we *need* 1 edition?
The success of Pathfinder proves there is room on gamers shelves for more than 1 edition. I have friends who own Pathfinder, reworkings of 2nd Edition, and 4th edition who would gladly play all of them for different reasons. I have other friends that are hardcore into 1 particular game system.
I don't understand why, as a community, we have to bash each other over the head with "My Edition is better than yours" arguments when they aren't true. We like different things.
And that's ok. Its time we realized it and just sat down and played some D&D without insulting each other because of what version of it we love the most. 5e, in my fears, will just make another wall instead of tearing those walls down.
Prove me wrong. Please.
Part The First: Begun, the Edition Wars Have.
So, Wizards of the Coast have made the announcement. 5e, or whatever they end up calling it, is official. Twitter is abuzz with #dndnext comments (and a few jokes from myself, to be compiled later), and all of the relevant websites are throwing in their 2 cents.
And, of course, the forums. A quick perusal of the Future Releases forum this morning makes my heart sink. The continued bad blood between those who dislike 4e and those who enjoy it has already started to stink up discussion about 5e. Of course, I didn't really expect any different but I can hope, right? Thank you, gaming community, to once more showing the world that we are not, in fact, above calling each other grognards and fanboys with enough vitriol to make a black dragons phlegm look positively base.
It really reminds me of a conversation I had over the weekend with a friend of mine about D&D itself. He stated, in no uncertain terms, that anyone who liked 4e was (to condense his comments) "retarded, lazy, stupid, and doing it wrong". Wow. The sticking point for him was that 4e didn't offer enough character customization, it lacked choices, and it pigeonholed. Now, I will say that there are some classes that are very tight. Too tight, too restrictive. Vampire, as silly as you are, I'm looking at you.
But, here's the rub for me, to my friend his fun in D&D, whenever I hear him talking about it, is in making the God Character. The heavily CharOp monster that gives DM's headaches and makes non CharOp players feel useless. That's where his fun comes from.
But not mine.
He also pointed out that all the power was in the hands of the player in 4e. To which I have to say "bwuh???"
Add in his "Plays like a video game, don't want to play wow on the table top" and any number of other cliched ways to bash 4e and I just get tired. And then I go on the forums and see the same thing, the same stupid, old, boring, pointless arguments going on about 5e and what should and shouldn't be included and it makes me sick.
Part The Second: Moving Forward with 5e
Now, I will say this going into the rest of this post. I love 4e. I think, with some work, that 4e has the base of a really really good system. There are a lot of things in 4e and Essentials to love, that are Good for D&D moving forward. 5e or D&D Next or Dungeons and Dragons: The Directors Cut Ultimate Edition Supreme (each book comes with sour cream and tomato) or whatever they call it, can learn a lot of things from it for making fun games.
And yes, 5e/D&D:tDCUES can learn things from older editions as well. But there are also traps in older editions, things that were cut out for 4e, that I feel still need to be avoided. Sacred Cows of D&D that I, for one am glad to see dead.
The first of these Sacred Cows I was glad to see die was Vancian magic. The "I prepare 5 first level spells, 4 second level, etc" that was a part of D&D up until 4e slit its warty throat with the At-Will, Encounter, Utility, Daily (AEDU) system.
But did 4e do it right? I don't think it did. Many people accuse 4e of playing like a video game, but I wish in this instance that 4e had gone a bit farther. Most video games use Mana (or an energy bar or some other device) to indicate how much magic energy you have to use to cast spells. I would love for 5e to have something similar, a resource to be managed that you used to cast your vast repertoire of spells from. Mana could be managed per encounter, so that you never have the "Wizard / cleric is out of spells, lets rest now guys" problem that was true of low level adventures in 3.x and prior.
I'm not a game designer, but its worked in so many MMOs and adventure RPGs that I can't understand why it can't work at a table top level.
The second Sacred Cow is the "Spell casters suck at low level compared to fighters, then fighter suck at high level compared to the god like mage". Good riddance, bad rubbish, etc. I am a fan of balance. Of being able to have fun, across the board, at any level of play. This is something they need to have in 5e. Balanced, fun play at any level, with no one feeling useless because they didn't pick "The God Class" at that level range.
There are other SC's that I don't mind seeing gone, but many of them are fluff related and not mechanics. The Great Wheel cosmology, the 9 alignments, and so on. But because they are fluff and not rules NOTHING stops any group from using them.
Now, lets move on to other things that I think 4e can teach 5e.
Ease on the DM. I have never had an easier time designing and running games than in 4e. Period. Lets keep this in the 5e pot.
Themes: I am unabashedly a fan of characdter themes. I hope they stay in, in one format or another.
Stances: One of the big things I liked about Essentials, once I looked at it, was stances for the ranger and fighter.
Now, on to some things that need to be cut or added.
Trap feat choices, feat taxes, and redundant feats. Cut them. Lets not give players false choices, or the potential to make plain bad choices. At the same time, lets not force players to "choose" something to fix the game designers bad math. That's not really a choice at all, is it?
Weapons that are not mechanically different enough having different proficiency bonuses / damage dice. So, here are your choices, a +3 prof. bonus weapon that does 1d8 damage or a +2 prof. bonus weapon that does...1d8 damage. I'm sick of all of my fighters wielding longswords. :P
Read the DMG 2. Now, take about 1/2 of that and put it in the DMG 1. All the advice for how to make a good game, say "Yes, but..." etc. Treat the DMG 1 as the "Hey, you've never ever been DM before, here's how to be awesome"
Make magic items a bonus and not an expectation in the math. Make magic items the purview of the DM, not a shopping list for the players. (unless the DM wants them to be).
Some things are themes, not classes. Remember that. Vampires and assassins, I'm looking at you.
Support for all classes and races as evenly as possible. No releasing a class (vampire!!!!) that has next to no options and then a few months later releasing yet more content for an existing class while ignoring the impoverished ones. Either publish a whole class or don't publish it at all.
Part The Third: Where I Express My Fears For The Coming Future
I will say this up front, 5e makes me worry. And not because I don't want 5e, or I think that 4e is some holy object that can't be improved upon. But because it is designed to be "The One Edition to Rule Them All". And I don't see that as a realistic design goal.
You know the saying, I hope. You can't please everyone. But that is the exact design goal of D&D: Super Ultimate Designer Edition / 5e. Make everyone happy.
I just don't see it as being achievable. Take my conversation with my friend I mentioned earlier. He is heavily into CharOp, would love an edition that gave him 10,000 choices so he could put together Monster Character and watch his madman's creation run roughshod over the DM's adventure (and if the DM can't handle it its their fault for not being creative enough to stop him, btw). I would rather have an edition with less choices, but more meaningful ones, where my non CharOp character can feel almost (not quite, though, realistically) effective as the Monster Character and where neither can run roughshod over the adventure.
Those 2 design goals are mutually exclusive. So how do you design for that?
Also, modularity can be an issue. I have friend who don't like "optional" material, such as items published in Dragon magazine. They have a variety of reasons, but ultimately it comes down to the same thing "This isn't core / doesn't feel like core, I don't want it in my game". That's fine.
But what happens when, say, 90% of the game is expressly optional modules that you can choose not to use?
How many "Well my DM won't allow me to play X because it came out in splatbook Y which is optional" will there be? I see an existing problem being magnified, multiplied, and exasperated.
I love D&D. I have loved it since the first time I put my hands on the Fiend Folio in my USAF library in Croughtan England when I was a child, to when I bought the original red box, to when I had my 2nd Edition PHB and I used a school book cover to make sure the front of it never got damaged. I loved it when I bought my 3rd edition PHB and when I bought Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms.
I have loved it from when I used any excuse to draw random dungeons on graph paper to when I picked up a the dice to play encounters.
I want 5e to succeed. I want it to be a good game, where all gamers who love D&D can engage in jovial dialogue about what makes 5e great.
But when so many conflicting opinions exist as to what makes D&D, well, D&D, and those opinions and desires are mutually exclusive (vancian spell casting vs. a more flexible system, for example), I don't see how 1 edition can rule them all.
And, as much as I hate to say it, maybe that's a good thing? Do we *need* 1 edition?
The success of Pathfinder proves there is room on gamers shelves for more than 1 edition. I have friends who own Pathfinder, reworkings of 2nd Edition, and 4th edition who would gladly play all of them for different reasons. I have other friends that are hardcore into 1 particular game system.
I don't understand why, as a community, we have to bash each other over the head with "My Edition is better than yours" arguments when they aren't true. We like different things.
And that's ok. Its time we realized it and just sat down and played some D&D without insulting each other because of what version of it we love the most. 5e, in my fears, will just make another wall instead of tearing those walls down.
Prove me wrong. Please.
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