Wizards of the Coast Announces One D&D

[Christopher R Taylor]

Hey, when you're a corporation, your only value is "more".  They have to show more growth every year or heads will roll.

[Opal]

8 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Now this is a quirk of old style that does bother me. You don’t need to describe how to fight ir cast magic BUT a thief ... the average beginning  player has to describe what he is doing?

The OG Thief's %s were so low, you might do better describing instead of rolling.

 

Even more extreme is social interactions scenes:  after that one reaction check, your character vanishes and you're just trying to fast-talk your DM.

[Opal]

This was nagging at me:

On 1/15/2023 at 1:04 AM, Ragitsu said:

 

On 1/14/2023 at 11:49 PM, Old Man said:

class power imbalances at the low and high ends

 

In other words, not trying to place manipulation of the fabric of reality through arcane or divine means on the same mechanical level as swinging a sword

Actually, D&D has always done *exactly* that.  Magic-user and Fighter both being class choices with easy stat qualifications, their respective mechanics are on the same level, so long as the characters being compared have similar exp totals. 

 

Thus, "power imbalances" is correct.

 

Contrast that with Hero, where "swinging a sword" - say, being a fencer - would have a minimum cost of 11 pts, while "manipulate reality" - sounds like a Cosmic VPP - starts at 60. 

(IIRC, I mix up every thing from 1st through 5th edition of Champions, but I hope the point stands)

 

At the same time, if you play a martial artist with 120 points in manuevers, DCs, levels, skills. and additional STR/DEX/SPD in the same team as a 40apt Cosmic VPP (also 120 points), you're going to be more of a badass in hth, and they're going to be wildly flexible, but you're basically balanced and can belong to the same team without a lot of issues.

 

 

[Ragitsu]

1 hour ago, Opal said:

Actually, D&D has always done *exactly* that.  Magic-user and Fighter both being class choices with easy stat qualifications, their respective mechanics are on the same level, so long as the characters being compared have similar exp totals. 

 

Thus, "power imbalances" is correct.

 

Charm Person and Sleep are both 1st-level spells that shut down encounters pretty effectively for a good long while...and more options - both to end a conflict and circumvent defenses such as Saves/Saving Throws and Magic/Spell Resistance - become increasingly available as the Magic-User/Mage/Wizard rises in power. "Magic should be powerful" is (or was) a central tenet of D&D. Again: balance is overrated.

 

It ought to be noted that - if anything - it was the third edition of D&D that widened the gap...considerably. The exclusive Warrior Constitution bonus went away, the Fighter's Saving throws were weakened and Wizards received many more advantages while the Fighter was saddled with extra Feats as compensation that didn't amount to much in the long run. The key benefit to playing a pre-WOTC Warrior was their sheer endurance: Hit Points, Saves and damage dealing.

[Opal]

4 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

Again: balance is overrated.

That's a very equivocal statement. I think we'd be hard pressed to peg a consensus on how highly balance is rated in the hobby, at all .  So when you repeat it, you're really saying nothing.

If you want to make a point about balance, please, just state it clearly.

 

4 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

"Magic should be powerful" is (or was) a central tenet of D&D.

At best, that's incomplete. If you read EGG's extensive advice and commentary in the 1e DMG and various Sorcerer's Scroll articles, it's clear that D&D was meant to be balanced in a baroque way with many factors, including magic being both powerful *and* heavily limited, mechanically, and also carefully restrained by the DM.

 

(Speculative tangent) 

Spoiler

Personally, I wonder if Gygax's idea of balance was even precisely related to game play.  Before Chainmail & D&D, he worked in insurance, which is concerned with statistics that, while they'll quote them like they're about you, are about whole populations.  EGG may have balanced D&D not in the sense of the experiences of playing classes alongside eachother, but in the sense of the imaginary population of each class relative to the other. Thus, Paladin can be strictly better than Fighter, because the 17 CHA requirement means there are far fewer Paladin. Magic-users' dominance at high levels (like 5th) are OK, because so many of the die at 1st level.

 

Of course, those attempts at balance failed.

 

4 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

It ought to be noted that - if anything - it was the third edition of D&D that widened the gap...considerably.

Can't disagree with that.  In his notorious Ivory Tower Game Design, Monty Cooke (I hope I got his name right - the 3e D&D guy) let slip that they had used an M:tG strategy of including trap choices ("Timmeh Cards") to drive engagement through sysyem mastery.  It worked: 3.x was all about RaW rules and power builds.

 

(And, that was not the last edition)

Spoiler

4e was the odd edition out, it balanced classes and encounters by reducing caster power and magic item impact to reasonable levels, rather than limiting them past the point they were fun to play.  It was so much better than its predecessors it was almost unrecognizeable as D&D.

And that turned out to be a problem...

 

5e's imbalance is profound, perhaps the worst ever, if you credit 1e with perfect DMs and 3e with saintly player self-restraint.  It imitates 1e, but without any of its baroque balancing factors, limitations, or encouragement of DM restraint of casters. 

(It does encourage the DM restrain magic items, tho.)

 

I haven't seen the painfully-named One D&D ("to rule them all ...and on-line monetize them"), but I've been told the playtest previews include "nerfed" Rogues and "buffed" casters.  

Doesn't bode well for any poor suckers who start with it and never try anything else.

 

[Ninja-Bear]

@Old Man, I made a 5e D&D halfling rogue in about a half hour. All by myself. I did use the standard stat array to speed up things and I had to flip around the book a couple of times but still. I did have to make more choices than what I was used too. Using backgrounds and switching out a skill or tool that the class already gave you took some time. I almost felt I was Powergaming but when the book suggests you should put your best stat in what the class calls for, who am I to argue? Initially I put the 8 in Wisdom and 10 in Charisma but after picking my skills? Charisma became the dump stat. I think I could get character creation down to 15 mins. I think it also helps that I’m using miniatures as guidance on what to choose. 

[Scott Ruggels]

And it gets worse!

 

 

 

The best thing about this thread is the News cycle prevents radical thread drift. 😁

[Duke Bushido]

On 1/16/2023 at 9:01 AM, Ninja-Bear said:

 BUT a thief who I’d presume would know more that the average beginning  player has to describe what he is doing? 

 

 

 

Honestly, I always thoight that had more to do with setting of traps than anything else:

 

The GM knows that the door is booby trapped at the latch handle, the peep hole, and the locking bar pivots.

 

If the thief proclaims "I use a small mallet and a drift to remove the hinge pins," then he will not encounter the booby traps.

 

Similarly, suppose there are pit traps on the left and right of a chest, and the thief has failed to detect them.  If he approaches directly from the front of the chest, he is still safe.  Of he remembers the acid spray trap in the last chest, however, and devides it is safer to siddle up edgewise, hw is going for a ride in the spikey chair fifteen feet below.

 

Things like that are the reason I never batted an eye at "describe how you are doing it."  It never struck me as "prove you know how tumblers or double-blind levers work" so much as "where are you standing (and are you crouching) and what bits do you touch?  Which way are you looking?  What are you prepared for??

 

That kind of thing there.  Expecting a twelve year old kid to describe the inner workings of a twist-push-twist-pull-countertwist wood-and-iron lock is preposterous, and any GM demanding that has.... Problems...

 

 

[Old Man]

2 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

And it gets worse!

 

 

 

The best thing about this thread is the News cycle prevents radical thread drift. 😁

 

I have to say there's a certain amount of schadenfreude that I get from watching clueless Hasbro execs slaughter, pluck, roast, and eat their golden goose.  The best parts of this particular tweet are the ban on homebrew and the AI DM.  Congratulations, you have invented the video game.

 

[Old Man]

7 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

@Old Man, I made a 5e D&D halfling rogue in about a half hour. All by myself. I did use the standard stat array to speed up things and I had to flip around the book a couple of times but still. I did have to make more choices than what I was used too. Using backgrounds and switching out a skill or tool that the class already gave you took some time. I almost felt I was Powergaming but when the book suggests you should put your best stat in what the class calls for, who am I to argue? Initially I put the 8 in Wisdom and 10 in Charisma but after picking my skills? Charisma became the dump stat. I think I could get character creation down to 15 mins. I think it also helps that I’m using miniatures as guidance on what to choose. 

 

Creating my D&D 5e paladin would probably have taken half an hour if I hadn't been carrying a lot of baggage from the last time I played D&D.  That and the excessively long backstory I wrote.  But a big part of that was that the DM banned feats, and also disallowed anything from Tasha's, Xanathar's, or UA.  So I didn't have a giant hairball of character creation rules to contend with like I did in the Pathfinder game.

[Scott Ruggels]

53 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

I have to say there's a certain amount of schadenfreude that I get from watching clueless Hasbro execs slaughter, pluck, roast, and eat their golden goose.  The best parts of this particular tweet are the ban on homebrew and the AI DM.  Congratulations, you have invented the video game.

 

and video games once upon a time had Homebrew, if you knew the toolset:

 

proof. Custom models for Quake 2. Werewolf with an AK-47. 

 

More info. 

[Ninja-Bear]

47 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

Creating my D&D 5e paladin would probably have taken half an hour if I hadn't been carrying a lot of baggage from the last time I played D&D.  That and the excessively long backstory I wrote.  But a big part of that was that the DM banned feats, and also disallowed anything from Tasha's, Xanathar's, or UA.  So I didn't have a giant hairball of character creation rules to contend with like I did in the Pathfinder game.

I’m sorta miffed that they have you choose a subrace. To me that should be in a supplement. My brother is already overwhelmed by the choices. I actually made quick decisions. 

[Scott Ruggels]

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

 

Creating my D&D 5e paladin would probably have taken half an hour if I hadn't been carrying a lot of baggage from the last time I played D&D.  That and the excessively long backstory I wrote.  But a big part of that was that the DM banned feats, and also disallowed anything from Tasha's, Xanathar's, or UA.  So I didn't have a giant hairball of character creation rules to contend with like I did in the Pathfinder game.

It’s even faster if you use D&D Beyond. It’s a checklist and choices.  We had a couple of TPKs early ast year, so it was needed.  Web based and free to use for now. The free version limits how many characters you can store there. 

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, Scott Ruggels said:

It’s even faster if you use D&D Beyond. It’s a checklist and choices.  We had a couple of TPKs early ast year, so it was needed.  Web based and free to use for now. The free version limits how many characters you can store there. 

 

I struggled with D&D Beyond actually; I found it hard to move back and forth between stages of character creation, and it didn't help that certain menus were completely hidden, or that others required some non-obvious scrolling down.  Once I figured out the interface I would have been in a good position to make new characters quickly, but I never needed to create another 5e character, and now I probably never will.

[Christopher R Taylor]

That was one nice bonus that 3rd edition had: the character creator.  It made building a D&D character easy because by the time 3rd came around, it had become quite complex and involved.

[BarretWallace]

Our group uses D&D Beyond mostly for character storage, and it is quite handy for that.  We're already talking about backup options in light of this OGL blunder, but for now, we're still with D&D Beyond.  As far as I know, only the DM is paying for a subscription...and I'm never gonna tell her what to do!

[Ninja-Bear]

Thanks @Scott Ruggels for the suggestion. So far I just am enjoying flipping through the book and picking up rules as I look up things. Like Two Weapon fighting. 

[Cygnia]

Myth-Weavers has a good spot for character sheet storage

[Scott Ruggels]

 

[Spence]

Given the names of the people that have taken over key positions in Hasbro/WotC, my personal belief is that they are going to be moving D&D to be a 100% online game. 

There will no longer be dead tree products in a few years. 

 

The game will resemble a CRPG with an online tool-kit that will allow a DM to create and populate maps/locations/campaigns in the D&D server and the players will create their PC's on line.  And then you will all dial into the D&D virtual world and play the game with the DM controlling the creatures/monsters/NPCs with the system automatically resolving the mechanics. 

 

For a fee of course.  The $30 they mentioned for basic access.  The more to "buy" the virtual books. and even more for a "DM's" account. And so on.

 

Sure they will lose a lot of traditional D&D gamers.  But they will be replacing a lot of people that only buy a single book with people on a monthly subscription. 

At $30 a month they will get $360 a year from a player.  How many of the players, not including DM's, at your table hand WotC $360 a year?  The DM's will also need to pay extra for DM content such as monsters and setting books.  And any mappers and campaign tools that are stored and accessed through the program will of course have its own subscription. 

 

And don't forget all the cool in system micro-transactions you can purchase in game to make your characters virtual miniature look cool.  

 

Nope, I think TTRPG D&D is going away. 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

5 hours ago, Spence said:

Given the names of the people that have taken over key positions in Hasbro/WotC, my personal belief is that they are going to be moving D&D to be a 100% online game. 

There will no longer be dead tree products in a few years. 

 

The game will resemble a CRPG with an online tool-kit that will allow a DM to create and populate maps/locations/campaigns in the D&D server and the players will create their PC's on line.  And then you will all dial into the D&D virtual world and play the game with the DM controlling the creatures/monsters/NPCs with the system automatically resolving the mechanics. 

 

For a fee of course.  The $30 they mentioned for basic access.  The more to "buy" the virtual books. and even more for a "DM's" account. And so on.

 

Sure they will lose a lot of traditional D&D gamers.  But they will be replacing a lot of people that only buy a single book with people on a monthly subscription. 

At $30 a month they will get $360 a year from a player.  How many of the players, not including DM's, at your table hand WotC $360 a year?  The DM's will also need to pay extra for DM content such as monsters and setting books.  And any mappers and campaign tools that are stored and accessed through the program will of course have its own subscription. 

 

And don't forget all the cool in system micro-transactions you can purchase in game to make your characters virtual miniature look cool.  

 

Nope, I think TTRPG D&D is going away. 

 

Well their timing couldn’t be worse. As inflation is on the rise, who can afford $30 a month? When eggs are now a real world loot, gaming is even more a luxury. I think you have a valid point of where Hasboro would like to go but I think they over estimated the brand. 
 

I did change the Halfling from Stout to Lightfoot since Lightfoot is the “original” Halfling from Basic. I know, its the Hairfoot but then they were replaced by lightfoot. So the Dwarves I’ll make are Hill Dwarves. And I think Wood Elf is the original elf.

[Scott Ruggels]

9 hours ago, Spence said:

Given the names of the people that have taken over key positions in Hasbro/WotC, my personal belief is that they are going to be moving D&D to be a 100% online game. 

There will no longer be dead tree products in a few years. 

 

The game will resemble a CRPG with an online tool-kit that will allow a DM to create and populate maps/locations/campaigns in the D&D server and the players will create their PC's on line.  And then you will all dial into the D&D virtual world and play the game with the DM controlling the creatures/monsters/NPCs with the system automatically resolving the mechanics. 

 

For a fee of course.  The $30 they mentioned for basic access.  The more to "buy" the virtual books. and even more for a "DM's" account. And so on.

 

Sure they will lose a lot of traditional D&D gamers.  But they will be replacing a lot of people that only buy a single book with people on a monthly subscription. 

At $30 a month they will get $360 a year from a player.  How many of the players, not including DM's, at your table hand WotC $360 a year?  The DM's will also need to pay extra for DM content such as monsters and setting books.  And any mappers and campaign tools that are stored and accessed through the program will of course have its own subscription. 

 

And don't forget all the cool in system micro-transactions you can purchase in game to make your characters virtual miniature look cool.  

 

Nope, I think TTRPG D&D is going away. 

 

That may be the ideal, and to attract the Whales. But for at least, the next 5 to 10 years, tradition will demand the production of physical books. Also, pushback from the friendly local game stores, will keep them producing other physical products to allow for games there. 
 

they made a big mistake in that TTRPGs are not widgets. I saw this thinking back in the late 90s, early 2000s, with video games, especially with Electronic Arts, and it didn’t go too well for them. 

[Cygnia]

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

 

Given the names of the people that have taken over key positions in Hasbro/WotC, my personal belief is that they are going to be moving D&D to be a 100% online game. 

There will no longer be dead tree products in a few years. 

 

 

Yeah I think they want to go to the rental model that software companies (including Hero with Hero Designer) are going to.  The problem from their perspective is that once everyone who wants a book has bought one, there's no more income from them.  So they want that money coming regularly, and instead of printing new editions, they'll rent this one.

 

Problem being... nobody needs D&D rules or products, and can use the older stuff just fine, so why pay to rent a new edition?  Its not like the old one becomes obsolete.

[Scott Ruggels]

 

36 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

 

Problem being... nobody needs D&D rules or products, and can use the older stuff just fine, so why pay to rent a new edition?  Its not like the old one becomes obsolete.

Well yeah. I don't use 6th Edition HERO, myself, sticking around 4-5, though may teach folks using an earlier edition.  

One comment to the video, was that this rejection of WoTC< will fragment the hobby into little niches as it was in the past (before Magic: The Gathering?), rather than one set of reasonably familiar rules.  This may be true, but I am old enough and familiar enough with other rules systems to play or run other games.