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Originally posted by Diffan

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Originally posted by Arivia

I'm most comfortable and familiar with the 3e Realms and ruleset there, so I'm not really interested in 5e stuff for 5e's sake. 5e is a really bad system, from an objective design

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ah....no. Subjective til the cows come home through, sure we can work with that.

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Originally posted by Arivia



No, it's really not. Class design, the core math of the game, and the general design of the game are postively retrograde. It's a really, really sad step back from 4e and a lot of evolutions in RPG design since like 2003.

It's easier to play than 3e for new players, but that's honestly about all it has going for it. Mearls and his design group were postively lazy and pretty much phoned the entire edition in on shallow ideas of what "feels" like D&D.

Because 3e and 5e are objectively as bad from a game design perspective, I'll play 3e since that's what I'm used to and know already. That's where the subjectivity comes in.

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Originally posted by Storyteller Hero

I am seeing the words "objective" and "subjective" being tossed a lot on this thread, and not every use of it seems to be supported appropriately. I'll leave this here just in case.

Objective (adjective): (of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
"historians try to be objective and impartial"

Subjective (adjective): based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions.
"his views are highly subjective"


My personal take on 5e: It streamlines a lot of mechanics based on lessons learned from previous editions. There are a number of sacred cows that I felt could be done away with, like AC, but all in all it's not bad. It's not as hard to master/break as 3e, is more open to creative design work than the more rigid structures of 4e, and tries to keep a lot of things open to narrative like 1e/2e. The edition is an attempt at balance, for the sake of making as many people satisfied as possible; for the most part it seems to be successful, since books are selling well and the third party design community is growing.

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Originally posted by Markustay

I hated 4e, because it didn't feel like D&D to me. However, 5e feels much more like (old school) D&D than 3e did, to me.

I guess people who are stuck in 3e like the world-juggling, 37-PrC, "I can do anything an NPC can" powerPCs. AS a DM, I am glad that monumental overhead of purposeless design is gone (NO, you are NOT allowed to create your own artifacts, etc, and I don't have to write-up a 3 page NPC baddie for a 10-minute encounter). 5e is more about the play, then the encounters, which 4e went way too heavy on, IMO. Like I said, it seems like the perfect mix, and it put most of the control back into the DMs hands, as it should be (and as it was, in OD&D, 1e, & 2e).

I want to tell a story, and I want my players to be able live-through and affect that story. As Gygax himself is credited with saying, "The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules." 3e got away from that vision... ran amok, actually. 4e hacked a lot of the excessiveness out, but in the wrong direction (once again, IMO). Just give me a stage (my players are the actors), and I can write my own script. The dice rolling is just to give the players something physical they can hold on to*... we've never really needed it, and I've played in games where there wasn't ANY.


*the dice-rolling is a sham. Always was. I know thats going to annoy a lot of people, but NOTHING happens in a D&D game that a DM doesn't want to happen. Its a parlor trick - like what a magician does when he is trying to distract you from what he is really doing.

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Originally posted by Markustay

D&D started out as a wargame (miniatures rules) that evolved into a squad-based game with options into what was (supposedly) the first RPG. Of course, I could argue kids were playing 'lets pretend' since the dawn of time. Gygax & co. simply added rules to that (or rather, added the 'pretend' part to rules).

In 4e you could say D&D "went back to its roots", and you'd probably be fairly accurate. I don't know - I never got to play with the old Chainmail rules. But it seems to have come from 'little bits of dramatic play' between encounters, and that's what 4e felt like... TO ME (I realize everyone is going to have different opinions here). So when you argue that '5e took a big step backwards', I could further argue that 4e took a humongous step backwards. Part of D&D's flavor (unfortunately?) is that 'broken' feeling. The rules were slapped together over the years, with various systems having nothing in common. 3e fixed most of that... and then proceeded to hit us with gobs and gobs of bloat (thus breaking what I thought was 'perfect' in the beginning... once again, just IMO). I see Paizo, sadly, heading down the same path. When you spend more time studying the game and using it as a 'mental exercise' then actually playing it, well then, you have........ Candlekeep.

5e isn't supposed to be gobs and gobs of intricate rules - its supposed to be what it is - a set of fairly easy rules for a group of friends to get together and have a good time. If you are a 'power-gamer', then play a previous edition, or some other game - no-one is stopping you. But you can't expect the Nissan Sentra to be the tricked-out Ferrari (or whatever) with all the precise options you like. And you can easily add-in any options you like (but power-gamers don't like that, because that puts ALL the control in the DMs hands, and they can't rules-lawyer themselves into a godlike, broken PC).

Also, I am not understanding why people need the setting and rules to be on the same page - you can run any setting with any set of rules, just about. FR is FR, and D&D is D&D, and although they are more closely connected now than ever before (like GH used to be), you can still separate them. You can still play with 5e rules in the 1e/2e/3e era, or vice-versa. Do whatever makes YOUR group happy. But don't expect the rest of the world to be on the same page as you.

And that last sentence just described everything that is wrong with the world right now... people expecting others to agree with everything they say. That means you have the assumption you are always right, and that's ... well... this isn't the place for this type of conversation. Lets just say everyone should do what makes them happy, and stop worrying about what others are doing, or how they feel about what you're doing. Because is none of their business... and their business is none of yours.

Now I have to go out the rest of the day, and that's probably a good thing, considering the mood I am in.

Ado

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Originally posted by sleyvas


I'll somewhat mirror what Markustay is saying here. The only edition I've had a problem with was 4e, and that was mainly because they broke the classes and gameplay IMO. Secondarily, what they did to the realms itself was too vastly sweeping.

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Originally posted by Diffan

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Originally posted by Storyteller Hero

I am seeing the words "objective" and "subjective" being tossed a lot on this thread, and not every use of it seems to be supported appropriately. I'll leave this here just in case.

Objective (adjective): (of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
"historians try to be objective and impartial"

Subjective (adjective): based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions.
"his views are highly subjective"


My personal take on 5e: It streamlines a lot of mechanics based on lessons learned from previous editions. There are a number of sacred cows that I felt could be done away with, like AC, but all in all it's not bad. It's not as hard to master/break as 3e, is more open to creative design work than the more rigid structures of 4e, and tries to keep a lot of things open to narrative like 1e/2e. The edition is an attempt at balance, for the sake of making as many people satisfied as possible; for the most part it seems to be successful, since books are selling well and the third party design community is growing.

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That's a pretty impartial review of the system, and I largely agree with your assessment. The thing is, a Role-Playing Game system can't really be "objectively" bad because "Bad" is in and of itself a subjective term. What's "bad" for some people (I'll throw out 4th Edition here) was "great" for other people (such as myself).

One could say that it was "Bad" at keeping D&D at the top in sales. One could say that it was "bad" for the Forgotten Realms community at large (due to the split and arguments, etc.) and one could even say that it was "Bad" at emulating some of the editions prior to it. Those all have factual evidence that sustain the notion of "bad".

Was the game actually good? Well yes, the design principals were exceptional. It helped create balance across classes that was pretty unparalleled without direct and constant modulation from a DM to "fix" it. It helped keep characters doing fun things throughout combat, had a pretty substantial option-base, continued to support Fantasy and the allowance of both Classic and Unorthodox characters. There's really nothing you can do in a previous Edition that 4E also can do in most capacities (with the end-all product mind you). Still, didn't change the fact that after 6 years they went with 5th Edition and a slight overhaul of the game (not a bad thing).

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Originally posted by Markustay


EDIT:
Great RW example of this. The 'Pet Rock'. Yes, it was a real thing, and the guy made millions off of it.

At the end of the day, it was't really a very good pet. But that wasn't its purpose, was it?

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Originally posted by Markustay

yes, 'broken' is definitely the right word.

Growing up with every edition of D&D (except Chainmail - that was just before my discovery of D&D), I can say with all honesty and perhaps expertise that D&D is/was 'a mess'. In 2e, we had no less than THREE different systems for fatigue... none of them related. Things just kept getting pasted-on without some of the writers even knowing what others had already done (you know, like how we got both Duergar AND Derro, because of different adventures written by different authors). But that was part of its charm - no-one was ever really sure if their group was 'doing it right'. No two games were alike. Half the time, the DM just made crap up as he went along (I sure as heck know I did). Part of the fun was that it was so crazy.

I hadn't been playing D&D for like seven years (later part of the 90's), but when 3e came out I saw it advertised all over the place, and I picked up a copy of the PH and it was AMAZING. It was like a version of D&D I always dreamed about - one mechanic (D20) linking all the systems together, and everything working along similar paths (so no 'negative AC is better' stupidity). You didn't even need a DM's screen with boatloads of tables on them!

Then they realized they had done the worst thing possible - a company had created the 'perfect product'. That means once you've reached 'market saturation', your profits would plummet. So they decided to publish several hundred unnecessary (and mostly redundant) books with tons and tons of 'new rules', PrCs, monsters, races, etc., etc., ad infinitum. And the best part was, they KNEW they were breaking the hell out of the game, and didn't care - they needed to make another edition anyway (look up 'planned obsolescence'). Its kind of like a car company selling you a beautiful new automobile, and then sneaking over your house every night and beating it up with a sledghammer. Except that YOU were handing them the hammer.

The only thing they didn't foresee is people loving the new (now old) 3e system so much that they'd flee to other companies who were still supporting it (so the OGL came back and bit them in the arse... but that may have been planned as well, by people who had crafted a 'lifeboat' just in case the ship started sinking). When they turned on their own system and settings (rather vitriolically, in many cases), fans got angry and went elsewhere. It was simple as that. They had grown to love the system more than the company.

Now Paizo is systematically breaking the system it fixed so brilliantly (3P). I haven't been keeping up; they may have done so already. And just as people are tiring of Pathfinder and Golarion and looking elsewhere, D&D and FR have reemerged from the ashes. I wish I could say the timing was genius, but I think its just more serendipitous. The only downside to all of this is that we've 'lost' many of our luminaries during the 4e era, and right now is when we need them back the most. FR could potentially reach a peak of development and popularity unseen even during the 2e/3e eras, if only we had the right people still steering the ship, and making that happen. And to that end - if any of you are listening right now - it may be time to abandon ship (the one you're on). The captain no longer need go down with it - that's an outdated notion. The simulcrum of The Forgotten Realms has been fashioned - we just need the right people to come back and breath some life into it.

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