Wizards of the Coast Announces One D&D

[Christopher R Taylor]

GDW has always been in the business of selling miniatures and accessories the games are an afterthought and it shows.  The British worldview tends to be extremely bleak and hopeless and it shows in their games.

[Ternaugh]

3 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

GDW has always been in the business of selling miniatures and accessories the games are an afterthought and it shows.  The British worldview tends to be extremely bleak and hopeless and it shows in their games.

 

Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) was based in Normal, Illinois, and didn't really sell miniatures.

[Steve]

One of the big things that Hasbro seems to be missing and that some posters have commented on is that starting to play the game requires a support network, a little bit of teaching from others to get started.

 

In the Ancient Days of the early 1980s, I had just played AD&D, and that was after a friend taught me how to play. I could have learned from the books, but it’s not easy to learn that way. I had to learn how to play Champions from the old blue box set I picked up at a game convention.

 

Habsro is expecting people to just jump into playing OneDnD and throw money at them after the movie comes out, I think. But they’re nuking the support network with this OGL fiasco they’ve stepped in. They’re already having a shortage of DMs, and the crash is coming.

 

They may think they’ve dodged a bullet by backtracking and semi-apologizing, but people now know that the suits hired from Microsoft are going to try squeezing every last dollar from them now. RPGs are big business and Wall Street wants to see revenue growth.

 

A D&D implosion seems to be happening, but I hope the other game systems out there can grow to fill the void instead of the hobby dwindling.

 

I’d really like Hero to join the ORC alliance. They’ve been around a long time, a senior member of the gaming community, and I don’t see how it could hurt the brand to become part of the Rebel Alliance now forming.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) was based in Normal, Illinois, and didn't really sell miniatures.

 

Oh yeah I was thinking of Games Workshop, nearly the same name.  Does Warhammer etc.

[Chris Goodwin]

1 hour ago, Steve said:

I’d really like Hero to join the ORC alliance. They’ve been around a long time, a senior member of the gaming community, and I don’t see how it could hurt the brand to become part of the Rebel Alliance now forming.

 

I think this would be awesome if they would at least support the venture.  I've asked Jason before about open-licensing HERO in some way, and he's made it clear that there's no way he can, given that the two main assets were the system and the Champions universe, and now they only own the system.  I still think they could do it though, and that's always been my "lottery dream". 

[Old Man]

4 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

I've harped on adventures for Hero in the past.  Not just adventures, but content: spells, monsters, and so on.

 

So have we all.  And yet all we ever got were settings and new rules editions, neither of which would have helped a new GM start a game.  Even the settings never made any actual decisions about the rules and just dumped them in the new GM's lap.  For Fantasy Hero specifically the learning curve just got steeper with each edition until FHC.

 

4 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

D&D 3.x had the OGL, and an explosion of third party content, meaning adventures, spells, monsters, and so on.  D&D 4e had a restrictive license, and no third party content.  D&D 5E had the OGL again, and again an explosion of content.  We're watching the slow motion trainwreck of D&D 6E happening in internet time.

 

Doesn't look very slow motion to me.  I don't even see how 6E could be released now.

[Scott Ruggels]

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

 

 

 

Doesn't look very slow motion to me.  I don't even see how 6E could be released now.

 

Oh, it's going to get released.  The plans have started. The general mechanics may not change, but the minor mechanics may on the edges, and definitely the tone is going to change.  OD&D was a tense survival Horror game, with tense resource management.  Current D&D is turning into a YA novel in tone. complete with magic academies, and proms. The new rules will move further in that direction, except with a subscription based virtual table top, and  micro-transactions.

[Khymeria]

30 minutes ago, Scott Ruggels said:

 

Oh, it's going to get released.  The plans have started. The general mechanics may not change, but the minor mechanics may on the edges, and definitely the tone is going to change.  OD&D was a tense survival Horror game, with tense resource management.  Current D&D is turning into a YA novel in tone. complete with magic academies, and proms. The new rules will move further in that direction, except with a subscription based virtual table top, and  micro-transactions.

Nailed it. The comparison between survival horror and YA is brilliant mate. 

[MrAgdesh]

7 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

 

 

So, you joined a game with experienced players and an experienced DM, and you have not had to refer to the rules yourself. 

 

How does that mean that D&D is easy to pick up by just reading the books?  You did not have to read the books. You learned from a group of experienced players.

 

I find that, often, people discover later, to their surprise, that the group didn't actually follow all the rules and/or that their interpretations of the rules are not universally shared.

Well, when I was 14, I picked up Moldvay’s Red book and pretty much taught myself how to play. I didn’t have a gaming group then and was the only person I knew that was interested in it. 

[Opal]

3 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

OD&D was a tense survival Horror game

I don't think I ever played it, nor "B/X" which OSR types seem to remember could walk on water and cure cancer. 

 

But I played 1e AD&D plenty until I found a group for Champions.

And, yeah, the first few levels, it had a life is cheap vibe, like multiple backup characters would be good.

 

5e D&D, which I have played a little and run a little more, is also unpredictably, pointlessly deadly at 1st level. Especially the more the party leans toward sword-swingers over spell-slingers.  

But it drops off quickly as the party's hp and spell slots accumulate.

The big difference between D&D then & now, as I see it, is casting.

(Rant warning)

Spoiler

Oh, many of the same spells, some nerfed, and similar progression, but, as EGG would have said "unrestrained."

 

1e, the spells you know are random. To cast, you get a good nights sleep, memorize each spell individually, if you want to cast a spell twice memorize it twice, when it comes time to use a spell, stand up straight and still on a stable surface, take out the material components and mumble, gesticulate, and fondle the components /with total concentration/ for, typically, 6 seconds per spell level. If you're hit for even a point of damage, spell's gone, round wasted.

And getting new spells? Hope you find MU scrolls and decide to use or copy them.

 

5e you start with 4 or 5 sells know of your choice and gain one every level. After a "long rest" that doesn't require you sleep, and can't be interrupted by less than an hour of combat (?), you prep level+int mod spells and your "slots" are refreshed you can then cast any spell you have prepared using a slot if equal or greater level (which makes it more powerful). To cast, you use your action which can be before, during, or in the middle of your movement, so nationally takes less than 6 seconds, this happens on your turn, doesn't give any opportunity for interruption, requires only one free hand for a component pouch or a focus, and suffers no penalty for being done in melee.

 

You have enough spells to get you through a 6-8 encounter day, and have at will attack cantrips as good as weapon attacks if you want to save a slot...

...but surveys show the average group typically faces 1-3 encounter days.

 

So, yeah "tense resource management," not so much, anymore.

 

[Duke Bushido]

5 hours ago, Ternaugh said:

 

Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) was based in Normal, Illinois, and didn't really sell miniatures.

 

 

Right.

 

What few miniatures did carry the GDW logo were mostly made by Martian Metals, and of such small size (most GDW games favored 15mm scale) as to be rather bland.  I have no idea who paid who in those cases.

 

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, Opal said:

I don't think I ever played it, nor "B/X" which OSR types seem to remember could walk on water and cure cancer. 

 

BECMI, as it is now known, is oddly the best version of D&D because its initial simplicity allowed it to scale without collapsing under its own weight.  But that simplicity meant that you were playing one of ten different character race/classes so if you wanted to play a dwarven wizard, tough.

 

1 hour ago, Opal said:

 

But I played 1e AD&D plenty until I found a group for Champions.

And, yeah, the first few levels, it had a life is cheap vibe, like multiple backup characters would be good.

 

Near as I can tell AD&Dv1 was meant to be played almost as a wargame, with a platoon of randomly generated and entirely expendable characters from which you would choose a squad (reinforced with hirelings) for any particular dungeon crawl. 

 

1 hour ago, Opal said:

 

5e D&D, which I have played a little and run a little more, is also unpredictably, pointlessly deadly at 1st level. Especially the more the party leans toward sword-swingers over spell-slingers.  

But it drops off quickly as the party's hp and spell slots accumulate.

The big difference between D&D then & now, as I see it, is casting.

 

(Excellent writeup/rant cut for brevity)  That is indeed the biggest difference and when I first started playing in a 5e campaign I played it wrong for like a year, because I didn't realize I didn't have to assign memorized spells to specific slots.  5e D&D spellcasting is a change-slots-only-during-a-long-rest multipower with level-specific charges.  (This may actually vary depending on spellcaster type, I'm not sure.)  It was the second most confusing thing about 5e, the first being the literal hours I spent hunting for the paladin experience table (there isn't one).

 

Despite the welcome streamlining, 5e still has the core D&D flaws: class-based character creation and level progression, class power imbalances at the low and high ends, and literally hundreds of individually defined class and race abilities, feats, and spells with no underlying rule structure to govern their interaction.  Oh, and all-or-nothing saves.

 

[Chris Goodwin]

Linked from the Defending the OGL Discord server: 

He appears to be a business data analyst.  The immediate next message in the thread is eye opening: 

 

Quote

As a company Wizards of the Coast did over a billion dollars in revenue last year. 

 

After one week of brand damage millions of dollars have been shaved off this revenue and it appears to be getting worse day by day. It will likely evolve into double-digit percentages.

 

[Ragitsu]

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

Despite the welcome streamlining, 5e still has the core D&D flaws: class-based character creation and level progression

 

To use a cuisine-based analogy: if I'm playing/GMing GURPS or HERO, I'm going to want that fully stocked kitchen, because I'm in the mood for experimentation and finer control...even if my own skill at whipping something together isn't exactly professional-grade. On the other hand, if I'm playing/DMing D&D, then I'd rather pay an experienced chef specializing in, say, Spanish or Greek fare, because I know they'll satisfy the particular flavor I demand and because I'm not in the mood to expend energy experimenting with ingredients.

 

1 hour ago, 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.

 

Sorry: swinging a sword really well .

 

There was an expectation that a DM would either use or write adventures that allowed opportunities for all the classes to shine; developers didn't think every class needed video game (3e/3.5e)/MMORPG-esque (4e+) abilities to rigidly enforce an especially egregious level of "balance".

 

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

literally hundreds of individually defined class and race abilities, feats, and spells with no underlying rule structure to govern their interaction.

 

This change started happening towards the end of 2e and into WOTC with their 3e/3.5e. It's easy to churn out Prestige Classes/alternative class paths (a lifting of "kits" from 2e) and a Feat for everything than it is to write setting material. I remember reading a Rogue path from 4e and being gobsmacked at how it literally guaranteed you an "epic" victory.

 

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

Oh, and all-or-nothing saves.

 

Coincidentally, that was one of the most significant reasons I converted to 2e: designers back then weren't nearly as afraid of asymmetric combat.

[Old Man]

31 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

Linked from the Defending the OGL Discord server: 

He appears to be a business data analyst.  The immediate next message in the thread is eye opening:

 

Great find!  I take issue with one part of his analysis though: in his timeline he marks the release of the WotC "corporate apology".  That was no apology, that was a stack of of obvious lies with a generous helping of contempt for their own customers.

[Duke Bushido]

4 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

Great find!  I take issue with one part of his analysis though: in his timeline he marks the release of the WotC "corporate apology".  That was no apology, that was a stack of of obvious lies with a generous helping of contempt for their own customers.

 

It wasnt all lies.

 

There were three- possibly four-  sentences in there that meant absolutely _nothing_.

 

Technically, those arent lies.

 

 

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

As for Dark, I’d like to play Necessary Evil. You start out as a villain and “should” become a hero and save the world. Who doesn’t love a good redemption story?

[Scott Ruggels]

Well, it appears to get worse. 
https://twitter.com/dnd_shorts/status/1614401062575767554?s=46&t=YAnIHYZbfb-V6387H-99ew

[Cygnia]

[Hugh Neilson]

11 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

So have we all.  And yet all we ever got were settings and new rules editions, neither of which would have helped a new GM start a game.  Even the settings never made any actual decisions about the rules and just dumped them in the new GM's lap.  For Fantasy Hero specifically the learning curve just got steeper with each edition until FHC.

 

 

Adventures took a lot of evolution through the hobby.

 

Back in the early 1980s, a typical game was released on its own, maybe in a box, and might have had one micro-adventure included (remember the original Basic blue book and that little tower?)  TSR eventually started releasing new games with a boxed set including an adventure that lead into a 3-part series of adventure modules.  After that, most of their games received no further support.  Only a few successful games from larger companies received much support in any form. 

 

TSR started publishing a lot of D&D adventure modules, though. Some other games/companies also started publishing more modules with their games. TSR published a few monster books as well. That's the environment Hero started out in.  They provided more support than most games, including a few adventure modules and Enemies books. I recall a note early on that Champions modules would always try to include more than just an adventure, but also something useful longer-term (new rules; setting support; something).

 

In 1985, along came Unearthed Arcana (UA) - a D&D hardback with new races, classes and other rules (weapon specialization was a big one) - even a new stat (Comeliness).  Meanwhile, Hero published some new games (often boxed sets), and Champions rules additions (Champions II and III), enemies books and adventures. Iron Crown became involved, eventually pretty heavily.

 

2nd Ed AD&D's release in 1989 didn't change much early on.  We still saw lots of adventure modules.  But the designers learned from UA that new rules sell. 2e also exploded settings for D&D, and then lead to the class and race splatbooks, kits, etc.  Adventures started to dwindle, as designers had figured out that only one person in a gaming group (the GM who would run the module) typically bought adventures.  Meanwhile, Hero stagnated under Iron Crown, and then R. Talsorian, and we got Fuzion.

 

T2K brought D&D 3e, and the OGL. It also saw few published adventures from WOTC. They relied largely on Dungeon Magazine and third parties under OGL. I think they expected to publish the more lucrative rules expansions, and that third parties would content themselves with lower-selling adventure. Hero entered the DoJ era and started publishing but, like most big players, not many adventures.  I'm sure that, at several points, they made it clear that adventures were comparatively poor sellers, so they did not focus on adventures.

 

But the market was evolving - gamers were getting older and didn't have the time they once had to build game worlds and adventures. The Big Boys didn't get that, and WOTC farmed Dungeon (and Dragon) out to Paizo from 2002 - 2007. When that ended, Paizo started the Adventure Paths.  They realized adventures sell - but longer adventures, that set the campaign, instead of modules that get plugged into the GM's own campaign.  With the advent of D&D 4e in 2008, self-defense required they create Pathfinder to keep selling APs.

 

By the time it became at least somewhat clear that the market had shifted and adventures were both essential game support and more lucrative than they had been, Hero's publishing had been pretty sharply reduced, and never got into the adventure or AP evolution.

 

We've had a lot of discussions on the Board about the need for games using Hero System, supported with adventures. My bias would be (using Champions), a game that sets the dials, provides enough pre-fab powers and templates to build a reasonable variety of Supers, leaves out mechanics not being used in favour of a scaled- down rule book. Champions Complete got much of this part down, but probably even a bit more scaled back in favour of pre-fab powers. Now add a starting setting (a city, or even a neighbourhood) and an opening adventure, perhaps a second volume which is really the first volume of an AP. This AP would further set the tone - perhaps as "Avengers/Justice League gathering of major heroes to become defenders of the world". Build the AP over further volumes, which can introduce more setting and even rules materials.

 

Then we can start another AP with a new (even if related) setting, and a new tone (maybe this is the "School of Young Heroes" setting, or street-level Supers, or intergalactic Supers).  APs that do well can be supported with new material (rules, setting expansions, more adventures/APs) and those that don't can be left for homebrew.

 

 

8 hours ago, Opal said:

I don't think I ever played it, nor "B/X" which OSR types seem to remember could walk on water and cure cancer. 

 

But I played 1e AD&D plenty until I found a group for Champions.

And, yeah, the first few levels, it had a life is cheap vibe, like multiple backup characters would be good.

 

5e D&D, which I have played a little and run a little more, is also unpredictably, pointlessly deadly at 1st level. Especially the more the party leans toward sword-swingers over spell-slingers.  

But it drops off quickly as the party's hp and spell slots accumulate.

The big difference between D&D then & now, as I see it, is casting.

(Rant warning)

  Hide contents

Oh, many of the same spells, some nerfed, and similar progression, but, as EGG would have said "unrestrained."

 

1e, the spells you know are random. To cast, you get a good nights sleep, memorize each spell individually, if you want to cast a spell twice memorize it twice, when it comes time to use a spell, stand up straight and still on a stable surface, take out the material components and mumble, gesticulate, and fondle the components /with total concentration/ for, typically, 6 seconds per spell level. If you're hit for even a point of damage, spell's gone, round wasted.

And getting new spells? Hope you find MU scrolls and decide to use or copy them.

 

5e you start with 4 or 5 sells know of your choice and gain one every level. After a "long rest" that doesn't require you sleep, and can't be interrupted by less than an hour of combat (?), you prep level+int mod spells and your "slots" are refreshed you can then cast any spell you have prepared using a slot if equal or greater level (which makes it more powerful). To cast, you use your action which can be before, during, or in the middle of your movement, so nationally takes less than 6 seconds, this happens on your turn, doesn't give any opportunity for interruption, requires only one free hand for a component pouch or a focus, and suffers no penalty for being done in melee.

 

You have enough spells to get you through a 6-8 encounter day, and have at will attack cantrips as good as weapon attacks if you want to save a slot...

...but surveys show the average group typically faces 1-3 encounter days.

 

So, yeah "tense resource management," not so much, anymore.

 

 

I think this also evolved from player feedback.  I can either have a competent character at low levels (a Fighter, most likely, maybe multiclassed) whose utility drops off later, or a competent character at high levels (a spellcaster, almost certainly) if he survives being a squishy one-spell wonder at low levels.  I think a lot of evolution was directed at specific goals like making all classes viable at all levels (so give the spellcasters more spells at lower levels and maybe de-power some at higher levels); provide more choice by the player in character design (so some spells are player-selected, not randomly selected); and reducing lethality as a series of dead characters tended not to endear the game to new players (especially as broader options and more choices made character creation more labour-intense).

 

Funny... more spells for a starting character, less issues with resources running out over the course of the day and greater player choice in character design were selling points for Hero.  Your comments suggest they were the wrong selling points.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

Despite the welcome streamlining, 5e still has the core D&D flaws: class-based character creation and level progression, class power imbalances at the low and high ends, and literally hundreds of individually defined class and race abilities, feats, and spells with no underlying rule structure to govern their interaction.  Oh, and all-or-nothing saves.

 

And the single die roll resolution.  And hit points for all-or-nothing combat (you're fine, you're fine, you're fine, you're dead).  And armor class (you hit, you didn't).  The core of D&D, which cannot fix or it stops being D&D, is where its primary flaws originate.

[Hugh Neilson]

4 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

And the single die roll resolution.

 

"Roll 1d20; high rolls succeed" is not all that different from "roll 3d6; low rolls succeed". Looking at 5e's "bounded accuracy" and with no actual game play, I get the sense that the d20 is the primary determinant of success at all levels, which makes a bell curve seem like a good feature.

 

6 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

And hit points for all-or-nothing combat (you're fine, you're fine, you're fine, you're dead).

 

As opposed to "you're fine, you're fine, you're fine, you're knocked out or dead"?  D&D has some conditions that impair the character. Hero has Stunned (but it doesn't have a "cut to one half-phase action" condition - maybe it should - "dazed"?).

 

8 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

And armor class (you hit, you didn't).

 

There are miss chance situations, including incorporeal creatures. Damage reduction and energy resistances too, although these are more rare. Some players don't like "you hit...oh, but you may as well have missed since it just bounced off",and the lack of an "always hits; defended in another manner" option has been raised as a gap in Hero on various occasions.

 

All games have some core mechanics that have advantages and drawbacks.

 

Like it or not, the D&D mechanics have stood the test of time. We can crow about the huge marketing budget today, but the early editions had no such budget, and D&D somehow rose to the top of the industry and stayed there.

 

I always find the perceived brand loyalty odd.  For many years, D&D was D&D.  BECMI, OD&D, AD&D 1e and 2e were the same game with some tweaks.  But 3e, 4e and 5e were three completely different games even though they kept some of the same trappings.

[Cygnia]

D&D Community Accuses WotC of Lying About the OGL Controversy

[Old Man]

3 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Well, it appears to get worse. 
https://twitter.com/dnd_shorts/status/1614401062575767554?s=46&t=YAnIHYZbfb-V6387H-99ew

 

Good find, although this is merely confirmation of what we all knew had to be true.

[Cygnia]

It's Musk and Twitter all over again