Re: Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition
 

I'm looking at the Sep 2013 stuff, page 4 of "Character Creation", and it describes the two-axis system, lawful to chaos and good to evil, pointing out that this creates nine distinct alignments. Spells like "Detect Good and Evil" and "Protection from Evil" exist. The text here calls out specific categories, like "undead and fiends", as does the paladin's Smite ability, which I suppose is an attempt to address the question of how the alignment-based stuff works on humans that happen to be evil or good.

I agree. As a boardgame, it's fun.

Some of the abilities have effects that really stretch my SoD, though. For instance, the Warlord had some ability that had a side effect of allowing the player to move some other player's character. So, they move, then the Warlord comes along and tweaks their position. In an abstract way, this represents the Warlord's ability to add C&C to the party. But it felt really odd to me. There were several of these little extras tacked on to various abilities that seemed out of place.

D&Ds roots were in miniatures wargames with a bit of RPG tacked on. But it moved away from that, and created a whole new genre. D&D 4e seems to demonstrate that you can't go home again.

Re: Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition
 

Not having played it, it sounds like a table top video game. That is most definitely not playing to table top's strengths. If anything, it accentuates its flaws of using human calculators.

Re: Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition
 

No, it's not videogame in feel. It's much more minis game in feel. Warhammerish, perhaps, or like the Inquisitor minis game. Actually, yeah, that's a good simile.

If I had to describe D&D 4 based upon the rulebooks alone, I'd say it was a character scale minis wargame with continuing characters and limited rules for social interactions.

Which is exactly the same point as Inquisitor. They just labeled them differently. Now, the spikey bits armor and oversized weapons, that's videogame influence.

Re: Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition
 

Oh, I'm not very knowledgeable with figurine based gaming. Way too poor/cheap to get into that hobby. Not to mention my misplacing small objects is a running family joke.

Sorry for the thread drift.

Re: Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition
 

According to the WotC website there will be a free pdf called basic D&D released at the same time as the Starter set.
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.a...d/4ll/20140527

Re: Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition
 

It works fairly well with cardboard minis, which are not especially expensive. Actually, the 4th edition Monster Vault boxed sets were a very good value (possibly too good value for their sales, since WotC only made two and then stopped).

Re: Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition
 

It works fine with Cheetos and Bottle Caps if you want. Facing isn't relevant.

Honestly, even in GURPS I use random stuff as minis all the time (even though I actually have a fair amount of minis; but it's often a pain to have to dig through to find the right ones). In GURPS you just need random stuff with facing.

Re: Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition
 

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Re: Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition
 

Re: Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition
 

My fear is that they'll go the Complete Book of ____ route. Each new "splatbook" will have to be ever more awesome, to get spend-weary gamers to buy them.

Luckily, though, I like D&D for the "fluff text" and the concepts behind the rules. I don't much care for the mechanics, but they put a lot of thought into the details. :-)