DND 5.0 remake

[Chris Brady]

Is it me or does this sound like PR/Marketing Grunts press release to say everything without saying anything concrete?

Pretty much.

[RubySlippers]

I'd be happy if the game was all in ONE book at a costs of less than $40 hardcover for all the rules and the basic monsters needed to run a game.

[Oniya]

You mean, like Synnibarr? 

*flees before people start throwing things*

[Avis habilis]

*throws the horns*

[SinXAzgard21]

I'd be happy if the game was all in ONE book at a costs of less than $40 hardcover for all the rules and the basic monsters needed to run a game.

And for the reason of it being expensive is now why all the books can be pirated including the dragon magazines.

[TheGlyphstone]

You mean, like Synnibarr? 

*flees before people start throwing things*

Isn't Synnibar getting a new edition too, now that you mention it?

[Oniya]

No clue.  The only reason I know about it is that I inherited a copy from a gamer-friend who passed away several years ago.  (The man was a dear, but he had a tendency to put 'new gaming stuff' ahead of food sometimes.)  I've since found out that it ranks up there with FATAL on the list of 'games not to mention in serious or polite conversations'.

Hence, the fleeing.

[TheGlyphstone]

No clue.  The only reason I know about it is that I inherited a copy from a gamer-friend who passed away several years ago.  (The man was a dear, but he had a tendency to put 'new gaming stuff' ahead of food sometimes.)  I've since found out that it ranks up there with FATAL on the list of 'games not to mention in serious or polite conversations'.

Hence, the fleeing.

Having seen both, it's not as mind-wrenchingly awful as FATAL. Awful, but in a 'this game is written awfully' sense, not the 'Oh God Please My Eyes Are Chewing Their Way Backwards Through My Brain' offensively awful of FATAL.

[MasterMischief]

I'd be happy if the game was all in ONE book at a costs of less than $40 hardcover for all the rules and the basic monsters needed to run a game.

I am afraid we consumers have explicitly expressed our overwhelming glee at buying RPGs piecemeal.  Even Hero split its system into three (so far) core books (not including Bestiary).  One of the reasons I did not buy 6th Edition.

[Chris Brady]

I am afraid we consumers have explicitly expressed our overwhelming glee at buying RPGs piecemeal.  Even Hero split its system into three (so far) core books (not including Bestiary).  One of the reasons I did not buy 6th Edition.

The reason I didn't get 6e was the fact that it's at least 3 PHONE BOOK SIZED HARD COVERS.

That's iNsAnE!

[Callie Del Noire]

The reason I didn't get 6e was the fact that it's at least 3 PHONE BOOK SIZED HARD COVERS.

That's iNsAnE!

What? You didn't want them to beat your irrating players senseless with?

[OldSchoolGamer]

About fucking time, 4.0 was garbage.

I am an MMO player but I play MMO's for a reason, when I get to DnD, I want to customize my own shit not follow a path like a video game.

This.

Let paper and pencil be paper and pencil, and let video gaming be video gaming.

[Oniya]

What? You didn't want them to beat your irrating players senseless with?

Phone-book-sized soft covers have a much nicer whippy effect.  *nods*

[OldSchoolGamer]

Be honest.. either the 'old school' folks will win back their system or the 'New edition' crowd will. It cant' be a universal balm to everyone. And they seem to claim they can do it all.

I don't see the old system being brought back.  I don't think it can be brought back.  It was a product of a different gaming culture in a different time.  Before anime and high-res video games and the Internet.  You had gaming rooted in the adventures of Tolkien, Homer, Grendel, Bram Stoker and Edgar Rice Burroughs.  Before most these things were interpreted and reinterpreted in 1080p/7.1.  Our culture was a niche culture, and a written/oral rather than visual culture at that.

Now, everything is visual.  Every-frakking-thing has been thrown into the mix, from Bilbo Baggins to Green Lantern to Akira to Sherlock Holmes to sparkling vampires to X-men to Hogwarts to World of Warcraft.  The whole classic gaming storyline of largely ordinary people without super powers and feats and whatnot going on an adventure and quite possibly dying is gone.  Now if someone doesn't have tentacles, or ninja attack skills, or the ability to fart magical blue fire for 3d8 damage, forget about it.  And what's worse, the video has eroded the power of imagination.  Storytelling has been replaced with charts and feats and tactics.  I'm just waiting for a game to be run by PowerPoint slides.

Gaming as those of us who were blessed enough to live through its glory years knew it is gone forever.  If you gamed between 1978 and 1988 (give or take a year or two) you know what I'm talking about.  If you didn't...you never will, no matter what happens with D&D 5.

[Chris Brady]

About fucking time, 4.0 was garbage.

I am an MMO player but I play MMO's for a reason, when I get to DnD, I want to customize my own shit not follow a path like a video game.

Hate to break it to you, Chief, but D&D NEVER let you customize your own character.  From the beginning (or at least Red Box/BECMI, which I finally got to play a few months back) it was a pretty strict and structured class system you chose from.  Hell, way back in Red Box, any sort of customization was either optional, or very limited.  Actually, it was pretty much both.  Fighters did ONE thing, and often with ONE weapon.  Magic Users had the most variety, but even then, without their spells per day, they didn't contribute much.  Thieves were mainly for opening chests, and maybe doing some support stabbing with Backstab being so limited.  And Clerics were anti-Undead healbots.  Which didn't really change.  Ever.  They all still had their rolls.  The Fighter was the Tank, the Thief was the Positional Killer, the Cleric the Healer and Magic Users were the Glass Cannons and Crowd Control.

Hell, nothing has changed in over 30 years.  Just the minutia of it has.

If you want a game that truly let you make an archetype as you want, I believe (And this is sincere, no snark, or sarcasm intended) the various iterations of Runequest do.  Although Mongoose Publishing has had to change the name of their second variant to Legend.  I hear, though, that it's pretty game good.

I know I can get copies for about 18 with tax, of which I'm planning to.

[TheGlyphstone]

Hate to break it to you, Chief, but D&D NEVER let you customize your own character.  From the beginning (or at least Red Box/BECMI, which I finally got to play a few months back) it was a pretty strict and structured class system you chose from.  Hell, way back in Red Box, any sort of customization was either optional, or very limited.  Actually, it was pretty much both.  Fighters did ONE thing, and often with ONE weapon.  Magic Users had the most variety, but even then, without their spells per day, they didn't contribute much.  Thieves were mainly for opening chests, and maybe doing some support stabbing with Backstab being so limited.  And Clerics were anti-Undead healbots.  Which didn't really change.  Ever.  They all still had their rolls.  The Fighter was the Tank, the Thief was the Positional Killer, the Cleric the Healer and Magic Users were the Glass Cannons and Crowd Control.

Hell, nothing has changed in over 30 years.  Just the minutia of it has.

If you want a game that truly let you make an archetype as you want, I believe (And this is sincere, no snark, or sarcasm intended) the various iterations of Runequest do.  Although Mongoose Publishing has had to change the name of their second variant to Legend.  I hear, though, that it's pretty game good.

I know I can get copies for about 18 with tax, of which I'm planning to.

Indeed. As above, there are few statements outside of the more extreme political commentaries I've ever found more utterly mind-numbingly stupid than '4E = Videogame LOL". It's part Grognardian Syndrome, part elitism, and part blinkered prejudiced ignorance build off hearsay.

Heck, someone I knew for a while liked to outright complain that 4E was as roleplayable as WoW, often while playing WoW on his RP server. Pointing out that bit of ironic hypocrisy was entertaining.

[RubySlippers]

But retro-clones like Basic Fantasy RPG kept that and leaves the GM free to have fun. I for example tossed all the thieves skill percentages for a block Thieves' Knack class feature that covers all of them with some specialties and they are better overall. I added other things to suit and pulled some things out. Its very loose. And many gamers don't mind classes I always found the build them yourself models rather hard to use I need that structure just not to much. Even in 3.5 a rogue is not always a thief I had one that was a acrobatic athletic performer and staff fighter that after using some optional rules and couldn't pick a lock to save her life. Alot of things were also roleplaying you could be a fighter prefering unarmed combat, a monk who was a courtesan or a mage who was a half-orc with a pretty modest Int that just tried hard and knew lots of lower level spells.

It seems to me 4th Edition channeled characters outside of this flexibility and added complexity not always a good combo.

[OldSchoolGamer]

Hate to break it to you, Chief, but D&D NEVER let you customize your own character.  From the beginning (or at least Red Box/BECMI, which I finally got to play a few months back) it was a pretty strict and structured class system you chose from.  Hell, way back in Red Box, any sort of customization was either optional, or very limited.  Actually, it was pretty much both.  Fighters did ONE thing, and often with ONE weapon.  Magic Users had the most variety, but even then, without their spells per day, they didn't contribute much.  Thieves were mainly for opening chests, and maybe doing some support stabbing with Backstab being so limited.  And Clerics were anti-Undead healbots.  Which didn't really change.  Ever.  They all still had their rolls.  The Fighter was the Tank, the Thief was the Positional Killer, the Cleric the Healer and Magic Users were the Glass Cannons and Crowd Control.

There's some truth to this...but then, a lot depended on your friendly neighborhood DM.  Most I knew were amenable to kits and mods.  Specialty priests helped to evolve the priest/cleric class beyond the stereotype you describe.  And there was multiclassing, too.  Most old-school DMs were willing to bend the rules there, too.  I remember playing a specialty priestess of Artemis who got to use the THAC0 tables for fighters when wielding a bow (house rules). 

[TheGlyphstone]

But retro-clones like Basic Fantasy RPG kept that and leaves the GM free to have fun. I for example tossed all the thieves skill percentages for a block Thieves' Knack class feature that covers all of them with some specialties and they are better overall. I added other things to suit and pulled some things out. Its very loose. And many gamers don't mind classes I always found the build them yourself models rather hard to use I need that structure just not to much. Even in 3.5 a rogue is not always a thief I had one that was a acrobatic athletic performer and staff fighter that after using some optional rules and couldn't pick a lock to save her life. Alot of things were also roleplaying you could be a fighter prefering unarmed combat, a monk who was a courtesan or a mage who was a half-orc with a pretty modest Int that just tried hard and knew lots of lower level spells.

It seems to me 4th Edition channeled characters outside of this flexibility and added complexity not always a good combo.

You do realize these two statements are completely unrelated, right? A 4E monk can still be a courtesan, and in fact a moderate-Int Mage in 4E is actually possible to play where it would have been impossible in 3.5E, since a 4E character's ability to use their powers is not dependent on their ability scores, only the save DCs of powers. You'll be weak, but not unplayable like a low-Int 3E mage. I played a 3.5 Rogue once who was a professional doctor, using his expert knowledge of anatomy to deprive other people of theirs - all I have to do in 4E for the same character is train Heal, and there's an entire Fighter archetype/track (the Brawler) based around grabs and unarmed combat.

In 1e and 2e, there was no Rogue, all Rogues had to be Thieves. So 4E is actually more roleplaying condusive on that front as long as you stick to the printed rules/fluff, and if you don't, what's the issue?

[Chris Brady]

The problem with 3.x (Outside of the CoDzilla, which is Core Book, the escalation of hit points until Save or Die effects are mandatory, and the Christmas Tree magical item progression) was that you could, quite easily make a character that could be a problem.  More often to the GM.  Who, if they were like me, were too nice to have make something else.

You know the less than useful type of character that if you threw an equal level challenge at would fold faster than Superman on laundry day, while the other Players would breeze through.  That was HELL on my adventure design.  Trying to think of something that would challenge the party without crushing two thirds of it, because one character accidentally was superiour than the rest.  Hell, with the right spells he WAS the party.

And having run several games/campaigns of 3.x over it's entire lifespan, I can tell you, that as a DM, having to deal with that, every freakin' campaign was not fun.

At least in 4e, it's tighter, and harder, to make it so the GM has to work that hard.  One thing I will give praise on 4e is that DM'ing the crunchy bits is easy.  I don't have to worry about PC spells, it's all detailed and up to them to take care of, all I need to do is if it's a combat scenario, add the right monsters and watch things explode.  Or if it's a trap manipulation, get skill challenges up and running.  Otherwise it's RP time with the rare dice roll.

[MasterMischief]

Gaming as those of us who were blessed enough to live through its glory years knew it is gone forever.  If you gamed between 1978 and 1988 (give or take a year or two) you know what I'm talking about.  If you didn't...you never will, no matter what happens with D&D 5.

Wow.  Just...wow.

Hey kids, once OldSchoolGamer is done kicking you out of his yard, you are all welcome over at my place for cookies and gaming.   ;D

[OldSchoolGamer]

Wow.  Just...wow.

Hey kids, once OldSchoolGamer is done kicking you out of his yard, you are all welcome over at my place for cookies and gaming.   ;D

Okay, so maybe that came out a bit more codger-like than I intended.

Still, I stand by my point.  Think of it like the difference between a garage rock band in 1962 versus 2007.  Yes, both are artists and legitimate musicians.  Yes, music was still music in 2007.  But there's a different context, a different culture, a different vibe to being part of something semi-underground and nascent and raw versus something established and commercialized and refined.  If you're in a music festival here in the 21st century, hey, more power to you...but it's not going to have the same panache as playing at Woodstock, sorry. 

[Chris Brady]

'Underground'?  They were selling D&D in dept. stores in the early 80s.  All the Satanism claims and Mothers Against D&D, not to mention Jack Chick were helping the craze.  Until about 1989, D&D was the Beatles of the RPG/Gaming world.  You couldn't go anywhere game related without a reference of it somewhere.

However, right now?  This very instant?  We ARE living in the true RPG Golden Age and it is AWESOME! So many games, so many options, so MUCH FUN TO BE HAD!  This is a great time to be a gamer, and I frankly worship every second of it!

So I say with 5e, BRING IT ON!  I am ready and signed up to help make history!

[Callie Del Noire]

'Underground'?  They were selling D&D in dept. stores in the early 80s.  All the Satanism claims and Mothers Against D&D, not to mention Jack Chick were helping the craze.  Until about 1989, D&D was the Beatles of the RPG/Gaming world.  You couldn't go anywhere game related without a reference of it somewhere.

However, right now?  This very instant?  We ARE living in the true RPG Golden Age and it is AWESOME! So many games, so many options, so MUCH FUN TO BE HAD!  This is a great time to be a gamer, and I frankly worship every second of it!

So I say with 5e, BRING IT ON!  I am ready and signed up to help make history!

I don't know.. I like the advent of the Open Licensing movement as the beginning of the Golden Age. Not all of the stuff that came out the movement was great (okay.. most of it wasn't) but it encouraged growth, innovation and imagination in ways no one had before then. Have a campaign setting you have been playing around with for a decade +. Go for it..

I think we're still riding that Golden era thing, but we've had some stumbles.

[Chris Brady]

The problem with the OGL was that D20 was dominating the market.  And most of it was outright crap.  Only one thing came out of that glut that ended up being any good.  And that was Mutants and Masterminds.  The rest has either failed, or companies decided to go another route.

Hell, the GSL has been one of the best things for the industry!  You have Mongoose's Runequest (1&2 and now Legend), you have Chaosium's reformatting of their signature Basic Roleplaying System, Cthulutech, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk made something of a less than great comeback, Icons, Supers, Anima: Beyond Fantasy, Dark Heresy and it's sister games of Rogue Trader and Deathwatch, Savage Worlds!  And that's just a small smattering of what has been available at my favourite game store!

So this is a MUCH better than when the OGL came out.