5e - why you think it sucks, and why you're wrong

[squeen]

I am not surprised (and do admire) you sticking to your guns. Fair enough. No animosity from me.

The "special snowflake" crack was just me alluding to Magehand's comment in another thread with regard to his 5e players.
(Honestly, I think it's human nature. We tend to lean that direction the moment we come out of the womb. The antithesis is starting out as nothing and becoming something memoriable solely through play.)

Your point that one can make 5e anything you want is 100% valid---I'm taking about the tone set forth in the official rule-books as well as perhaps at the "average" table---with DM's taking their cues from the books and official adventures. You yourself have talked about what a drag resource management is.

I have no idea why it was so fun running in panicked fear from the dungeon with half the party dead...but it was! (Addictive as all hell too.)

Still. Doesn't the quote from the 1e DMG seem completely anachronistic now? Interesting shift in gaming tone.

 

[bryce0lynch]

The game hasn't changed course: you can do all the exact same things with your character in 5e as you can in any OSR system... you just use an expanded yet more streamlined set of rules to resolve the outcomes. That's the difference.

it's a spectrum and the new editions move along it. As written, the older games are more game and the new games more RPG. but they are all still RPG games. You can play Maid using Warhammer 40k rules if you want, but some systems enable some styles better.

And if you want to play D&D tonight you better pick 5e.

 

[EOTB]

They didn't do it because players 5e were all thin-skinned losers who get butthurt if their character can't fly at level 2, but rather because a game that takes place in a wondrous, magical land with thousands of different sentient species - a game which prides its self on the idea that "you can do anything in D&D" - feels that the folk who want to dabble in those things should be able to have the mechanics to use them. I'd argue this counts as "evolution"; taking the game to the next stage in its goal of "do anything you can imagine".

"do anything you can imagine" wasn't a goal in earlier D&D though. If that tagline is present somewhere, it was empty rhetoric. Not a goal. The gamebooks explicitly direct people to other games for certain types of imagining.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

"do anything you can imagine" wasn't a goal in earlier D&D though.

It's not about TSR/WotC explicitly stating "D&D let's you do anything" as an offical statement, but rather the mentality that perpetuated the vibe of what roleplaying games were, as they compared to other games of the age. The whole point of escapist fantasy was the infinite possibility, the "do anything" of it all.

 

[EOTB]

"Do anything" wasn't TSR's mentality either; its mentality of "humanocentric, limited-choice fantasy and player skill within some bright boundaries" was well-represented in its writings as trying to facilitate a very specific paradigm - that a lot of people wished looser from day 1 and were told "nah, we like it just like this".

You're rewording Squeens point but presenting it as opposition to his point. TSR had a specific idea; some players had a desire for a similar idea but much more broadly and loosely applied into near infinite-choice, where player skill didn't matter as much as player willingness; later D&D has rewritten itself into that vision.

You're not disagreeing with him at all, but by attributing this vibe to "the game" instead of "what some players wanted the game to be" in your earlier post it allows a reader to come away from reading your post with the idea that the game was trying to do what 5E does, and not doing it as well. Thus, the idea that "the game" "evolved" closer to its always-desired final form. This is a thinly-veiled attempt to invalidate what is in truth a different form of the game as an unsuccessful attempt at a shared goal of design. If you can't see that the design goal (skill test/limited) is not a cruder form of the design goal (desire fulfillment/limitless), or simply prefer to think of it that way, I'll leave you to it. But it's preference-flattery, not discernment.

 

[squeen]

The whole point of escapist fantasy was the infinite possibility, the "do anything" of it all.

That is the peculiar bit--my personal "player's epiphany" back in the late 70's. I thought I wanted "what I wanted".

Not so.

I enjoyed the game much, much, more when I seldom got to do what I wanted and was thwarted constantly. I didn't get anywhere near "doing anything"...but I got to "try a bunch of crazy stuff (and mostly fail spectacularly in a serial fashion)".

It was awesome.

You're rewording Squeens point but presenting it as opposition to his point.

Thanks EOTB. I am quite proud to have had "a point". A new personal high-water mark!
What does one do...next...with his "point"? Is it useful?
(Perhaps you can open honey pots with it, suggests Pooh.)

 

[DangerousPuhson]

You're rewording Squeens point but presenting it as opposition to his point.

Not going to lie; I gloss over much of what squeen says.

You ought not be so quick to dismiss my stance by virtue of the existence of his, however. My points are best taken in a vacuum - like all good theories.

 

[squeen]

Not going to lie; I gloss over much of what squeen says.

Ouch!
(cough) short attention spans...(cough)

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Sorry squeen but you only get three sentences, and then scientifically-speaking, I can't follow along with you anymore. Wizards did a study on it, you know... [404 Link Not Found]

 

[squeen]

3. I agree, but again, I believe it to be indicative that the game has been evolving. Simplification of crunch is always the next step in evolution - if it weren't, we'd all be using DOS and you'd be reading this on Usenet.

Just re-read this and I have to say that I also believe something about the computing experience has ALSO been lost in the process of "bringing it to the every-man". The salient defining characteristics of a computer that differentiated it from all the other machines that pre-dated them was the ability to PROGRAM them---change what they could do.

Since Apple revolutionize the "easy of use" learning curve, placing an iPhone-masquerading-as-a-computer in everyone's hands, the way people have been interacting with computer-culture has vastly changed too. The iPhone is not a computer. You cannot program it without an external (real) computer with a compiler. It's just an appliance---like a dishwasher...or more and more appropriately---like a TV. It is watched passively. You don't program. Apple has locked it down---hackers/tinkers/hobbyists/DIY-ers GET OUT! (Don't get me started on Microsoft...)

The content on the internet has also changed massively since the 1990's to reflect the very difference interests of its new users. Passive, consumers---not active programmers. Ads. Gossip. Criminals chasing the money. The intelligence level to which webpages are written has been massively dumbed down. Technical folks (hard-core hobbyists) with cool information are no longer posting pages on their personal web servers---free for anyone to access. Now, much of the interesting stuff is locked behind pay-walls or clamped down by the SECURITY Gestapos. You are punished for publishing in the court of public opinion.

To me, internet was a much, much, more exciting, informative, and vibrant place than it is today. Now it's just your new appliance = TV + telephone + newspaper + mailbox. Useful/necessary, but 95% boring. Dominated by corporations and their narrow focus.

I know you will just gloss over this rant (looking at you DP)---but the discerning reader will see the parallel. There is a balancing act between universal accessibility (on one hand), versus difficulty-level (on the other). Some people gravitate to challenges. Others will be turned off.

Yes, I know this is 100% an elitist view point---I have no defense for that. Sorry. On one hand, I am happy my 80-year-old mother-in-law can surf the web---that's a real win for humanity that greatly over-shadows my privledged angst, and I do enjoy Bryce's forums (a throw-back in many ways to the early 80's BBS days via 300 baud modem)...

...BUT...

...something was lost too. Sometimes it's hard to put your finger on precisely what vanished (hence the rambling/searching posts).

Whatever "it" is, sometimes makes me melancholy with nostalgia...

just like with D&D.

 

[squeen]

Sorry squeen but you only get three sentences, and then scientifically-speaking, I can't follow along with you anymore. Wizards did a study on it, you know...

Best not to argue with Wizards...

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I know you will just gloss over this rant (looking at you DP)---but the discerning reader will see the parallel. There is a balancing act between universal accessibility (on one hand), versus difficulty-level (on the other). Some people gravitate to challenges. Others will be turned off.

You've taken a simple comparison I made as an analogy and are running with it to back up your point. Not ideal. I was just using DOS as an example of something else out there in the world that has changed over the years. Literally the first example that jumped to mind.

If I had said "it's like comparing apples to oranges", would you then go into a page-long spiel about how oranges only recently became easily accessible in the twentieth century, and before that were signs of affluence, and now all the orange eaters out there are happy to be eating oranges, but really you miss the old days where everyone ate apples? And that there's a parallel there, and D&D is the same way and it's lost something because of all the oranges in supermarkets these days?

...Because that's how this argument is starting to sound to me - people grabbing tangents, remarks, and one-off comments and just blowing them up into encyclopedia-sized opinion pieces. That's why I gloss over stuff... these debates are venturing into the realm of absolutes and absurdity.

 

[squeen]

...just blowing them up into encyclopedia-sized opinion pieces.

Yup. Guilty. Gloss away.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Lol, I may gripe, but never change squeen. Never change.

 

[Malrex]

Oranges are harder to peel to finally reveal the treasure of the delicious fruit whereas apples you just bite into, which brings the point of.....I couldn't help myself...

 

[squeen]

...actually the parallel would be:
"Do you recall how exciting it was when you actually got your hands on an in-season orange?"

 

[DangerousPuhson]

NO! WHY?! STOP!

 

[EOTB]

What does one do...next...with his "point"? Is it useful?
(Perhaps you can open honey pots with it, suggests Pooh.)

You find out they're completely useless on the internet except for our own personal vanity.

The word-sparring is fun, but it's a guilty time-waster. DP likes his game, as he should; and dislikes people talking down his game, as he should.

And both of us would be better off just writing more stuff for what we like

 

[Malrex]

...actually the parallel would be:
"Do you recall how exciting it was when you actually got your hands on an in-season orange?"

Well..it was exciting, until I had to put in the time and effort to peel it. Much more to my delight was to sink my teeth into the flesh of a sour apple as it was easier to delve into its treasure than that of the in-season orange. Which makes one wonder--shouldn't oranges taste better since it takes more effort to reach the juicy morsels? Or what of the banana?

 

[squeen]

@EOTB : What you write is so freakin' insightful. Honestly. I'm not being sarcastic.

Your previous post (not this last one, which just makes me feel like a delinquent child), was brilliant. Sometimes I think I'm just poking the bear (DP?) to get you to respond. I love the clarity of your thinking. You'd make a heck of a Holy Crusader.

Enough. No more posting for me this week. Back to work. Signing off. (TTFN!)

(..."Or what...of the...[fuckin']...banana?" Indeed! Malrex you slay me too.)