Well the announcement has come that Wizards of the Coast is beginning work on the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons. The opinions I had offered on other sites already seems to be jiving with updates that have come after I made those posts. Creating content that can be played no matter your favorite edition and, in fact, the possibility of combining editions in the very same party has been proposed with the implementation of modular rules that add features of the past editions of D&D. I think this proposed direction is an exciting one. It opens up all sorts of ideas for how to play the game of D&D.
Think about this. Think about a system that can be stripped down to its basics and still function. Think about a system of modular rule sets that each person at the table can choose to add in or not as it meets their needs. Units of gradually increasing complexity. From the basic attacks of first edition fighters, to the feat system in 3.x which further specializes warriors beyond just their weapon and armor choices, to 4e which allows even two people playing the very same class to create very different characters based on the powers they chose.
Some people didn't care for the idea of the power system. Maybe they never stepped back and examined what spell casters have always been, even from first edition. No two mages were exactly alike in 1st edition, really, if they picked different spells. 4e finally rolled this out to ALL classes.
But there was a cost.
Complexity makes things harder for first time players. And it can bog down the game in combat situations if the player is unsure. Remember (those of you that can remember back this far) when you were playing first or second edition D&D and a new person started playing. What did you tell them? Make a spell caster? Noooo. Make a fighter, they're easier. Make a spell caster next time after you get more familiar with the game and can read through the huge list of spells. 4e took that option away somewhat. Granted you had a much smaller list to look through but it still was more reading and decision making than making one in 4e. So there's that hope for 5e - that it can return simple characters to the table for the noobs.
But it can also return it for those of us that want to speed up combat. Let's face it, it's pretty hard to sit there and stew over your next action on your turn when you have only one or two options for attacking on your turn. Decision get made quick and rounds pass faster. But for smaller groups of players there's perhaps even more options.
My gaming group is long lasting - we've gamed together, continually, for over 25 years now. We've played every edition together that TSR or WotC has ever come up with. We've done so, most of that time, with just 3 players. That includes the DM. How? Each player plays two characters to make a lean, mean party of four. Some people who haven't tried this hate this idea. ... Well some of us have had little choice. But never let anyone tell you it cannot work. 25 years. Still works. And for us there is this thought. During our sessions it is often easy, depending on how we've developed our characters or who we are more interested roleplaying that night, to give one character or the other more spotlight time. So what about this: make a simple version and a complex version of the same character and swap out as needed.
Better yet, for those of you out there who still play only one character, make a simple and a complex version of your characters to speed play. Run into a random encounter? Get out the simple ones and get the combat over quickly. Going up against the reoccurring villain? Break out the complex characters to get the full nuanced combat and heighten the drama.
Better yet would be if the system itself let you turn these things on and off on the same character sheet so you didn't need two of the same character. Turn down the detail to speed the action, turn it back up to heighten the tension.
Anyway I think something like that would be great. No longer could we complain about a system that moved too slow or was too complex or too simple when the system itself gives us the ability to give it the gas or apply the breaks as WE see fit on an encounter-by-encounter basis, if need be.
But I'm more interested to see how this functions on the other side of the screens. I DM more than I play, generally speaking, and I love it. But I like it when my work to prepare combat is easy. Monsters clearly will need to be able to be dialed up or down in the same manner - bare bones monsters for fast, easy, 1st ed style play, to the complicated 4e creations. Monsters than can be tweaked up or down levels throughout ALL levels of play by just adjusting a few simple stats. Add complex attacks as they go up levels if you need to. Or raise up their level and strip down their attacks to create minion-like foes.
I have to take an aside here and say I love and hate minions. I love the idea that some foes at some levels are just easier to take out. But I hate the one hit thing. It makes those combatants seem... unheroic to face. Taking on a hoard of minions and wiping them out might seem epic if it were done on film I suppose but not so much on the gaming board when the players know they are fighting nothing but one-hit wonders. Reduced enemies, yes. Unexciting enemies, no.
Some things will probably have to be there across all levels of difficulty. I suspect the grid and miniatures will remain even though you technically didn't need them in 1st Ed. But it would be hard to get rid of them in a mixed complexity party. Not a big deal I think.
I'm curious to see if feats will be powerful like in 3.x or rather wimpy like in 4e. Maybe they will have both as different levels of complexity packages. Skills/Non-Weapon Proficiencies will likely remain the rather stable things they have remain over the course of all the editions of D&D. And Stats will of course remain. No telling how saves will turn out.
And as a big adventure making, world building/setting creating guy I'm curious how they will again define the core of D&D. I love the new 4e gods and the alignment system which makes things so much more satisfyingly vague and in the grey area just like real life is. I hope they keep that option.
I also hope for a better minis system. Most adventuring groups I know need simple ways of tracking characters on the battle mat. If you have a mini that *actually resembles* your character or the thing you are fighting so much the better. But I will say this:
D&D is the ONLY game reliant on tracking game pieces that doesn't supply adequate game pieces to do just that. An apt comparison is that it's rather like playing chess without the pre-made pieces coming in the box. I'm not looking for anything really detailed here: I'd just love something universally *usable*
Want to know what I've done at home? I went out and bought 3/4 inch wooden cubes from a craft store, some black paint, and some stick on letters in various colors. I painted the cubes black to represent the evil forces on the board and I stuck on a letter on each. White letter on one side, the same letter, only in red, on the opposite side. When an opponent is bloodied we flip over the cube. Not the sexiest solution, really, but it *works*.
What I want, if you're somehow listening, Wizards of the Coast, is enemy counters that vaguely look like enemies wielding weapons. Stylize it somehow like in, say, chess or something. Basic shapes. Make these able to be manipulated somehow to reflect conditions on that enemy. Make it able to display ALL these conditions. I don't care if that's a ring you toss over it of the appropriate color or a peg you place in it or a dial you turn on it or a side you turn face up but *something* that comes in the box of counters made for those counters so I am not playing with some crappy homemade solution to a problem that should have been solved an edition ago. Make 'em come in different sizes.
Make some white colored (or whatever colored, doesn't matter so long as its clear it is different than the enemy) counters for the basic role types - controllers, defenders, strikers, and leaders. Make whatever variety you need to cover a basic group for all classes/races (and for races I'm thinking more short races vs. tall races to be generic here). Sell the hero ones all together. Buy one pack and have all the counters you need for any party you want to make. Buy as many enemy packs as you think you need for your game. You can always come out with more detailed ones or better ones or ones more reflective of the race or creature but by coming out with the basics, at least, you would complete the game... finally... for many many players who have been making due with whatever since the game began. Cool minis will always trump these ones. But we need basic utilitarian ones as well. The range of simple to complex once again. I'll shell out cash for these gladly. And I think many would. Especially those new to the game that have no old minis to speak of.
Um... what else? ...
More regional settings generic enough to be plopped down in most home brew or published worlds. I'd love a City of the Dwarves boxed set with a book and some maps and art to bring a generic dwarf city to life. Or an Elven city. Or a city about trade or a capitol of some sort. Things that take a rather lot of time to create at home for a DM. A great big book full of nothing but unlabeled cartography would be fantastic. City maps without names, regional areas without labels. Good visual aids for DMs to create their worlds around and save them a lot of time. I've scoured Google over and over again and even the internet itself runs short of things sometimes.
A book of NPCs and Villains for the DM. I've said this before. Having all sorts of achetypes from stories built into usable as is characters can help a DM populate his/her world. I've been using Chethar the heavy set cigar smoking closed door deal making merchant over and over again and I have no need to pull from another source when I need a character of that type. Making a big book to help DMs who aren't good with characterization and roleplaying dozens of characters in one session in this way can save preparation time as well as create a bonding experience in between different sets of players.
Imagine going to GenCon and running through an adventure where you meet the same sort of character you have met in other roleplaying sessions with other characters. People might have had all sorts of interactions with this NPC character and can bring that past experience to the table to make the encounter fun for everyone. Swap stories online of what happened with that NPC. Rather like players and DMs do now famous (or infamous) villains in published adventures. Maybe this is sort of a lame idea... but I sort of like it.
Anyway exciting new things are afoot in the world of D&D... I can't wait.
0 comments:
Post a Comment