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Official D&D 5E Announcement

Started by Telarus, January 09, 2012, 03:44:58 PM

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How do you feel about the announced D&D 5th Edition (SURPRISE!)?

WHAT? I NEED IT NOW!
2 (11.1%)
Ummm... don't I already have 4E, Pathfinder, and nonD&D games to play?
7 (38.9%)
Meh.
0 (0%)
Double Meh.
4 (22.2%)
Fnord.
5 (27.8%)

Total Members Voted: 18

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Cramulus on November 14, 2013, 03:53:05 PM
for what it's worth, the D&D Next rules kick ass

still need some stuff ironed out, but I love the direction they went.

Can't be worse than 4th ed <--- personal preference, of course.

Still, I am a grognard, and I shall stick with Pathfinder.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Q. G. Pennyworth

4e convinced me to give GURPS a chance.

Cramulus

you guys tempt me to write out my opinions of 4th ed... but then I realize we already did that earlier ITT, and it's generally a waste of time trying to convince people on the net that your favorite RPG isn't trash.

I tried GURPS for the first time this summer... LOVED the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle RPG. Aside from that, didn't like the system much. Probably wouldn't play it again unless we revisit TNMT. I didn't realize tabletop combat could actually move slower than 4th edition.  :p

Anybody actually tried the D&D Next rules? Would be curious to hear people's reactions. We played with it a bunch a few months ago at a variety of levels and everybody in my group seemed pretty satisfied. I will be happy if they can hold back from repeating their 3rd edition mistakes.

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Cramulus on November 14, 2013, 05:48:39 PM
you guys tempt me to write out my opinions of 4th ed... but then I realize we already did that earlier ITT, and it's generally a waste of time trying to convince people on the net that your favorite RPG isn't trash.

I have - since that time - rethought my position.  I don't think it's trash, I just don't like it personally.

QuoteI tried GURPS for the first time this summer... LOVED the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle RPG. Aside from that, didn't like the system much. Probably wouldn't play it again unless we revisit TNMT. I didn't realize tabletop combat could actually move slower than 4th edition.  :p

GURPS is best done without figs, etc.  And it is a lot of clunk.

QuoteAnybody actually tried the D&D Next rules? Would be curious to hear people's reactions. We played with it a bunch a few months ago at a variety of levels and everybody in my group seemed pretty satisfied. I will be happy if they can hold back from repeating their 3rd edition mistakes.

I'm not going to for 3 reasons:

1.  I have too much invested in Pathfinder (if they ever are so foolish as to launch a 2nd ed, I already have enough gaming material to last me about 300 years, and I'll just stop buying new stuff).

2.  Pathfinder does everything I need it to do.  The game system is actually irrelevant to the quality of a campaign, if you think about it.  I just want a system that I am comfortable with, so I can concentrate on the campaign, rather than worrying about learning a new ruleset.

3.  My players would hang me higher than Haman.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Freeky

Quote from: Cramulus on November 14, 2013, 03:53:05 PM
for what it's worth, the D&D Next rules kick ass

still need some stuff ironed out, but I love the direction they went.

HWiGS really wanted in on that, but they were giving him the run-around and all kinds of bullshit, then his car went up and the stuff he needed was inside, and he couldn't be part of it anymore.  He probably won't be selling much of it when it really hits the street next year, because two of his competitors have already got beta groups and people know to go there instead. 

Don Coyote

Quote from: Cramulus on November 14, 2013, 05:48:39 PM
you guys tempt me to write out my opinions of 4th ed... but then I realize we already did that earlier ITT, and it's generally a waste of time trying to convince people on the net that your favorite RPG isn't trash.

I tried GURPS for the first time this summer... LOVED the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle RPG. Aside from that, didn't like the system much. Probably wouldn't play it again unless we revisit TNMT. I didn't realize tabletop combat could actually move slower than 4th edition.  :p

Anybody actually tried the D&D Next rules? Would be curious to hear people's reactions. We played with it a bunch a few months ago at a variety of levels and everybody in my group seemed pretty satisfied. I will be happy if they can hold back from repeating their 3rd edition mistakes.

I'm not opposed to 5e, but I will not be giving WotC my money for a game product that as as I have seen does nothing new or interesting enough to warrant supporting WotC and Hasbro. I'm much more inclined to give them my money in exchange for reprints of modules and supplements for older editions. But more importantly I'd rather my gaming dollars go to support smaller companies that are producing much more interesting things, or at least things I find much more interesting.

PopeTom

-PopeTom

I am the result of 13.75 ± 0.13 billion years of random chance. Now that I exist I see no reason to start planning and organizing everything in my life.

Random dumb luck got me here, random dumb luck will get me to where I'm going.

Hail Eris!

The Good Reverend Roger

" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Cramulus

I'm psyched. Been loving 4e, but it's getting a bit threadbare. And I can't go back to 3.5/pathfinder.

Doktor Howl

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd Pathfinder 2.0 - which they SWORE would never happen - hits next month.  It is different enough that the two full size bookshelves of Pathfinder I have are not compatible.

I have some 1.0 stuff to pick up at the game store, and then Paizo never gets another dime out of me.  I have enough stuff forever, anyway.

Besides, we're kind of getting into Savage Worlds.  It also has an edition creep issue, but so what?  It's maybe two books, total, ever.
Molon Lube

Cain

I actually read the 5E players handbook for the first time the other week and it seemed alright.

Until I saw Drow in it as a subrace option.


Doktor Howl

Quote from: Cain on August 25, 2018, 10:20:47 PM
I actually read the 5E players handbook for the first time the other week and it seemed alright.

Until I saw Drow in it as a subrace option.




We played through the Elemental Evil thing and it was okay, mechanics-wise.  Beer & pretzels, but okay.

That being said, the module expects you - on no clues whatsoever - to do the top level of each of the temples, in order, then go back and do the second levels, then the third, etc.  We got surprisingly far, and then got TPK'd by mooks in an area that was intended to be run 4 levels higher than we were.
Molon Lube

Cain

Yeah one thing I have heard from DMs is that the devs themselves haven't been at all clear on their vision of campaign design and how to actually go about doing things.  More campaign books would probably help.

Cramulus

Their campaign books are all over the place--very different styles in each one. Like I hear Out of the Abyss is more of a sandbox campaign, where PCs can wander all over the map with little guidance. Whereas Tyranny of Dragons is much more linear. We played through Curse of Strahd -- probably the best pre-packaged campaign I've ever played, owing in part to an awesome group who really got into the story.

When we were running the old playtests, I was really struck by how old 1970s D&D design didn't tell you how to run your game, it mainly just gave the DM tools to run their own story. Like, Caves of Chaos has no inherent story, it's just a sprawling map with different monster factions. The DM has to figure out how the factions relate to each other, and what stories could take place in this setting.

Personally, I found that super empowering. Like, when you run most pre-printed modules, you're just following the instructions. If the players had fun, it was a good module. But with Caves of Chaos, I got to do some authoring. When the players had a good time, I felt some ownership of it, like my ideas are being celebrated too.

And a lot of the campaign books seem like they follow this format... they don't tell you how to run your game. They give you a framework and you figure out how to implement it for your group. When I hear other people talk about Curse of Strahd, their experience is totally different. It was a good module, but our DM made it great.

The flipside of the coin is that it also means that the DM has the responsibilty to make the module work for your group. During Curse of Strahd, there's a lot of places where our DM tossed the pre-written suggestions and came up with his own scenario. It took more prep than a lot of pre-written mods I've seen.



Cain

Yeah, for sure, that kind of freedom can be pretty empowering.  I'm more of a fan of open-ended campaigns myself.

I do think it makes things a bit trickier for new DMs and those getting used to the new system, however.  Something that explains how the 5E developers were thinking and what they were looking at when they came up with the current rules can give people a starting point to say "oh, that's why assume you will go into an encounter fully healed" (for example, though that one's pretty obvious).  And from that you can work at tweaking your own campaigns and encounters, because you see the assumptions that underpin the system more.

But I'm not a DM, so I could just be talking out of my arse here.