Dungeons and Dragons Exploring a New Edition

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Ed the Coastie

I acquired the AD&D 2e PO and DMO stuff more for the sake of curiosity and completeness than anything else. It was OK, and I even went to the trouble of adapting a couple of AD&D modules (The Sentinel and The Gauntlet) into it...but it wasn't really spectacular enough for us to bother doing much with it.

We ended young PO:Spells and Magic a lot though, especially the Spell points + Channeler options... which turned out to be the precursor to Metamagic feats and the Sorcerer class in 3e.

[D10]

"Working on a game that's almost 40 years old now, we've seen the complex end. And what happened with each edition of D&D is it got more complex and we need to go back to the original D&D." - Mike Mearls.


I really hope when he says more complex, he had a brain fart and forgot 4e even existed, because that edition is as simple as it gets in an RPG, and its horrible.

Im getting a feel this will be pretty bad, the damage done to the brand by 4e is far too great for them to be able to recover from it, they cant please everyone, and I have a feeling they will try.

[David L Pulver]

I wonder if the proposed 5th edition will have a bare class-and-level approach that resembles 1st edition (and original) and can be used on its own but with additional chapters covering progressive build-options for skills, feats, powers, etc. that depending on which combo of chapters is used emulates later or different versions.

I was primed to like 4th edition, but I found there were two things that pushed me away from besides specific mechanical issues.

The first was a feeling that it no longer attempted to emulate in a broad fashion the fantasy fiction I enjoyed (let's say the long tradition of greco-Roman-norse-celtic myth, Conan, Lord of the Rings, Grey Mouser, Black Company, Game of Thrones, etc., etc.). Older forms of D&D had human classes that owed something to the real world; in 4e I felt that all classes were generally odd collections of super powers and strange effects. For a game that was the fountainhead of fantasy roleplaying, I felt too pushed away from the common experience of western mythology and fantasy and into a weird world of specific made-up races, super powers, and so on that seemed to just exist for the game's sake itself and no more. Most prior editions of D&D could easily emulate standard epic fantasy (game of thrones, lord of the rings, conan etc.) by going light on magic items or spellcasters if you wanted; I felt 4e could not do this at all without radical surgery.

The second was the default miniatures-based system. I can wargame just fine with GURPS and enjoy it more; 4e play just seemed too fiddly.

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by D10

"Working on a game that's almost 40 years old now, we've seen the complex end. And what happened with each edition of D&D is it got more complex and we need to go back to the original D&D." - Mike Mearls.

I really hope when he says more complex, he had a brain fart and forgot 4e even existed, because that edition is as simple as it gets in an RPG, and its horrible.

Huh? 4th edition is not as simple as it gets in an RPG. There are vastly simpler rpgs. Tunnels and Trolls. Over the Edge. Indie systems too numerous to mention. Even in the D&D line (e.g., the first version of Basic).

[D10]

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

Huh? 4th edition is not as simple as it gets in an RPG. There are vastly simpler rpgs. Tunnels and Trolls. Over the Edge. Indie systems too numerous to mention. Even in the D&D line (e.g., the first version of Basic).

It was an overstament from someone who expected it to be vastly more complex than the 3rd, with active defenses and whatnots

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Can you expand on this a bit? It's new to me, and I thought I'd lived through most of the history.

It is to AD&D as Moldvay is to Cook... almost.

It consolidates the mechanics of Whitebox+Supps 1 & 2 into a common ruleset, makes a few subtle changes, but only goes to level 5.

Cover is blue, shows a party facing a dragon.

Written by J. Eric Holmes, MD.

Mechanics presage AD&D more than later "Basic Set" versions.

link to cover pic

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

I wonder if the proposed 5th edition will have a bare class-and-level approach that resembles 1st edition (and original)

I hope not. I'm playing a game of Castles & Crusades right now and C&C could be described as "D&D 1+2". It's very like 1st ed with some 3.0 like mechanical clean up (3.0 AC rles and soem Saving Throw clean-up).

There are no Feats, no Skills, no Class powers to speak of for many classes, no AoOs, no Free Actions, no Move Actions, No standard Actions or Full actions, no Grappling rules that I've stumbled across and as a new contribution what might actually be the worst Encumbrance system I've ever see.

You know what i have discovered from this experiment?. It's at least as dull to play a low level Fighter in C&C as it was in 1st ed.

Quite a lot of the fixes in later editions (particularly 3.x-Pathfinder) were _needed_. I _like_ Pathfinder Fighters.

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I hope not. I'm playing a game of Castles & Crusades right now and C&C could be described as "D&D 1+2". It's very like 1st ed with some 3.0 like mechanical clean up (3.0 AC rles and soem Saving Throw clean-up).

There are no Feats, no Skills, no Class powers to speak of for many classes, no AoOs, no Free Actions, no Move Actions, No standard Actions or Full actions, no Grappling rules that I've stumbled across and as a new contribution what might actually be the worst Encumbrance system I've ever see.

You know what i have discovered from this experiment?. It's at least as dull to play a low level Fighter in C&C as it was in 1st ed.

Quite a lot of the fixes in later editions (particularly 3.x-Pathfinder) were _needed_. I _like_ Pathfinder Fighters.

I remember downloading a skills system from TLG for C&C... an excerpt from Castle Zagag... "CZExt_PrintBooklet.pdf" It also includes multiclassing rules for C&C.

The continued success of rules-light games, Fred, tends to indicate such "need" for more detail is more of a personal issue than one of systems.

I love skill systems, but I also love T&T... and stock T&T is even more rules light than AD&D, and with good GMing and players not conditioned to rely on skill systems, T&T 5.X works really well. 1st level is not boring at all, despite being even more frail and less diverse than AD&D 1E or stock C&C...

A particularly rules-light D&D flavor for 5E would be actually likely to get a lot of the OSR crowd to take a look.

They really could do far worse than to do a really basic, straightforward OSR game.

[smurf]

I never liked DnD in any various edition. Never really got into DnD neither.

For me, when the 4e rolled off the production lines I watched the rest of the game industry stand back to watch the old fart clear a path. Some oohed and aaahed but it took a month or so before things got back to normal.

So within 5 years DnD may produce another, 5e, DnD. What about 5 years after that? My feeling is it may go the route of GW with the constant rereleasing rules books and army books:

GW's path
Rogue Trader (1987)
Second Edition (1993)
Third Edition (1998)
Fourth Edition (2004)
Fifth Edition (2008)

Makes you think it's time for the 6th ed now.

Or WFB
First edition (1983)
Second edition (1984)
Third edition (1987)
4th edition (1992)
5th edition (1996)
6th edition (2000)
7th edition (2006)
8th edition (2010)

What's DnD in comparison:

1974 Dungeons & Dragons
1977 -1985 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (5sets)
1977 - 1985 Dungeons & Dragons, or the Basic Set and its sequels (5sets)
1989 - 2000 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition
2000 - Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition
2003 - Dungeons & Dragons v3.5
2008 - Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition
2010 - Dungeons & Dragons Essentials
2012 - The 5th Edition

IMO the are doing what GW does, constant rehash of rules. This could be a marketed accerlation of relaunch product to the 'next generation'.

AFAIK World of Warcraft does a better job at Dungeon bashing than the old RPG will ever do, providing that kill x = y xp.

sorry, I have appeared to have ranted.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by smurf

AFAIK World of Warcraft does a better job at Dungeon bashing than the old RPG will ever do, providing that kill x = y xp.

sorry, I have appeared to have ranted.

Actually, Warcraft seems to be dying, and the Next Best Thing seems to be Star Wars The Old Republic. And SWTOR seems to focus much more on story than WoW does, at least in dungeons. Perhaps it is the sign of the computer game industry to be learning their lesson from the tabletop fellas (however, given the other, dumbing-down trend with computer games, I might be overly optimistic - perhaps I'll post an expanded explanation about this trend later).