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.
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