I had mentioned this in my Twitter feed yesterday and the day before, but I really do not know what to think of D&D Next. Like a lot of people, I had high hopes when 4th Edition was released, only to have those hopes slowly dashed over the course of a couple of years as I discovered just how truly complicated it can be to run that game. Not necessarily for the game master, but for the players; when you have 14 different options to choose from, it could sometimes take up to 5 full minutes for one person to make one move. That doesn't sound like much, but my game groups tend to run between 4 to 6 people, so the delays add up and a lot of people get bored and begin looking at "I can haz cheeseburger" pages on their iPads. It sounds like they have addressed a lot of these problems with the open playtest that just finished a few months ago. I really hope so.
Of course, having now expressed this skepticism, I will admit that I will most likely buy the three main books (Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual) for the new edition when it comes out. No real gamer doesn't have at least two or three games collecting dust on their bookshelf that they thought were a good idea at the time, but no one expressed any interest in them. It's a thing.
Take care,
~Rob
Grouchy old Grace still runs 1st ed.
Games I’ve got collecting dust include Warhammer (the RPG), Torg, and Space: 1889!
I always viewed 4th ed as the “new coke” product for WotC. They seemed to think this was a product the market wanted, but didn’t really have the demand they thought they did. In the end, WotC lost many of their customers to Paizo’s Pathfinder, while not making up the loss in new players going over to 4th. Now 5th/Next may right the ship, and I hope WotC all the best. I’ve got my Forgotten Realms game running in Pathfinder so I won’t be coming along on D&D Next.
I played 4th for 1 month [4 games] and then quit [and yes it was darn near a Rage Quit] because of how convoluted it was and how long it took for each persons turn. Give me a 2nd Edition or 3.5 for a good game,…. they just seem to flow easier,…..
I tried 4th edition once, and then went back to 2nd. It’s just too constricted for me; all the choices mean that there are less opportunities to do off-the-wall stuff.
I haven’t had the chance to play in a 4th edition game since the people who did buy it have since refused to play it. That being said, I run most of my games using Savage Worlds now, but I do like Pathfinder as well. WotC haven’t received any money from me in a while. I’m looking forward to where the portal goes, I own every Planescape module/book they printed, wonderful stuff.
I have no idea what any of you are talking about.
Huh, my experience going from 3.5 to 4.0 was that things went slightly faster because there were fewer player options and what you should do with them was more straightforward.
Though my impression of 3.5 may be skewed–the games I was in tended to have a lot of casters and a corresponding lot of wrangling over spell description interpretation. (And not just from the casters, actually–the fighter types would do it for their abilities too.) 5-10 minutes for a turn was not unheard-of, and goodness help you if you had a summoner in the party…
Oh, dear. Do you have one of those groups that believes that RPG rules are important and should be followed? Or even worse, follows the rules and tries to optimize character performance based on the rules?
That calls for retraining your players. I have a firm, “No, you don’t get to see the GM’s papers,” policy and also a, “Yes, the GM’s word IS FINAL,” policy. They still get to roll the dice if they want to, but when it really counts for storytelling or play quality issues the dice really have no say in what happens in my games. It makes things a lot faster and a lot more fun. It can take a while to get a new group to learn that creative roleplaying is what gets rewards and results, but once they work that out, they generally don’t feel like spending time working out optimizations for things that may be irrelevant.
Complications can arise when they figure out that creative group roleplaying gets bonus points from me. One person has a good idea, another person has a modification, and suddenly the GM is on hold for 20 min while the players have a committee meeting on what they’re going to do in the next 5 seconds of game time.
It also means that I have to do a lot more content prep as a GM. I normally figure 4 hours of prep for me can put out 1 to 1.5 hours of group play. It’s actually a lot less work for the GM if the players are busy bogging themselves down in the mechanics of the game.
Basically with RPGs, if the rules are creating problems it means that you’re not ignoring enough of them.
I suppose the fine print is that how to ignore the rules is an art, and if it’s done poorly it can wind up worse than if you had stuck with the rules.
Ah. A stable interplanar Vorp. Those can be fun. And interesting, in the Chinese sense. ^_^
Tracey Hickman (a name many of you may be familiar with) put together a book with his son called X-Treme Dungeon Mastery that has some great stuff about running a game well despite what rules you are playing with. I recommend it for it’s insight, insightful-ness, and hilarity. Even if you don’t end up using anything in the book it’s a riot to go through – particularly the parts on pyrotechnics.
http://www.amazon.com/X-Treme-Dungeon-Mastery-Tracy-Hickman/dp/0977907465
Ignoring the DnD Next story, as the closest thing I play is Neverwinter… and it looks like Philo gets even more Doctor-like, as the sensor wand on his infoscope looks suspiciously like the sonic screwdriver. The 3D glasses don’t help, either.
@Strykor: He wears 3D glasses now. 3D glasses are cool. 😉