The gang discusses the Wizards of the Coast's announcement that they are working on a new version of D&D.
Knights of the Night
KOTN Actual Play Podcast 70: "Round Table Discussion of DnD 5E"
[music] Hello, and welcome to Nights of the Night Actual Play Podcast. This is a special roundtable discussion episode, where we discuss role-playing in general and wizards of the coasts announcement of a new Dungeons and Dragons version specifically. If this type of episode isn't something you enjoy, feel free to skip it. We promise we'll be back with our regular actual play sessions at our normally scheduled release time. And now, on to the episode. Before we actually get in play, I was wondering if any of you heard about the announcement that 5e is coming up from Dungeons and Dragons. I am not kidding. I need to read that actually. I have not read a single thing, but I was thinking to myself about I wonder where it was. I'd be interested to see where the transition, where they went from 4e, considering what a revolution it was from 3e. 3.5. I'm sorry, 3.5.5. 3.75, whatever it was. The 4th. I think it was a dead giveaway when they hired on Monte Cook full-time that they were going to release or announce the release of an edition. And that and they're getting their ass kicked by Pathfinder. More people are actually, I think, playing Pathfinder, which is really glorified 3.5 than are playing 4e right now. Was there just taking a bath? Really? Yeah. One of the things I heard is they're going to do extensive play testing. They're going to offer it out to a lot of people and get feedback from players on what they want. What kind of system would Monte Cook come up with? You know that about him? He was a major contributor to 3, if I'm not mistaken. Well, his tallest book. I mean, that was all 3rd edition. It was massive. I think he left after 3e and wasn't there for 3.5 if I'm not mistaken. Definitely. Well, what was the impetus, like, how they went through every spell and every power and every ability and condense them down. I remember to this very simple, almost legal speak, where I thought it was actually kind of cool how. Yeah, I disagree. Okay. Well, I just remember, I liked reading it, like, pseudocode, where it says it this way, so this is how we're going to play it. Are they given the idea of what direction they're going to head back to? Are they just trying to rebrand to re-attract people? Oh, they're... As far as I've heard their sales pitches, they're going to draw together the 3 and 4. Even 2 and 1 people look like all those versions into this new version of 5.0. Are they going to go away from me? Which is saying absolutely nothing. I mean, that's just... Well, it should almost be sales. Ryan Foro is, okay, this is a miniature game. See, the problem I have with Foro is, I think they did a very similar, I just tried... Thomas and I were talking about this in the car the other day. It's good to be. I think they did exactly what EverQuest did. EverQuest was an MMO. When it first came out, the characters were all incredibly different. They were different. They were diverse. You had a bard that could do some really wacky shit. And then the weight is whole mechanics. Even programmatically, as a programmer, I could tell that the code that they wrote was entirely different for the bard. Instead of casting a spell, they would sing a song. It would last for 3 clicks. Then they could start a song and then start a second one that would last for 3 clicks. That means two of them would be overlapping. And then you could start a third one. You could actually have 3 things cast at the same time and weave them together. And it made playing the bard so interesting and challenging and different. But it made the game difficult to balance. You had bards being able to do things that no other class could do. But to me, that was the draw. That was the interest. They came out with EverQuest 2. And what they did is they started down at the bottom and said, "Wam, everybody's the same." Everybody, every class is exactly the same. Or what they call it. It's balance. It's balance. And as you go along, you pick a tree and you go a different way and you get different powers. But the powers were always very similar to the other powers that other characters got. There was no character class that was truly unique, which sucked all the fun out of the game. And I think 4e suffered from the same problem. As you have warriors that could do spells, there was no difference in those cards between a warrior and a cleric and a sorcerer. And a marcher, except for the verpage. They all did a range attack that did 1 dice sex and there was a little bit of flavor. This was a fireball. This was an arrow. And it's just total bullshit. They sucked all the fun out of the game. And they made it easy to play, easy to understand, universal system. All characters are balanced. Where the hell is the fun? I wasn't having a very fun time playing D&D 4e. It was all right. I didn't mind spending my evening doing it. But I definitely felt like there was a disconnect from combat to role-playing. When you went into combat, you went into a whole different mode. It was like you're playing a mini-game within a game where we're all role-playing. We're all telling a story. We're all having fun. And all of a sudden, it's combat time. And all the cards come out. And everyone's talking about, "If you do this, then I can do this. And then I can follow up with this." And it did engage you, so you weren't waiting a half hour for your turn to come around, which I think was one of their major goals. But it became a board game and a miniature board game at that. Or a magic card game. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, it was like, well, what about role-playing? It became almost superfluous to the miniature game itself that you played whenever there was combat. I'm sorry, but that skill challenge stuff, that was cacked on bullshit. Yeah, they tried to fix it, but it just, it was, you could tell, it wasn't. They didn't pay as much attention to the role-playing. I think that was about a month before the game came out. Oh, wait. Skills. We should put the skill challenge in there. Because it just seemed so different. It didn't fit, and it was... Right, and it became a disconnect as well, where it wasn't... And yeah, it went to the role-playing embellishment they wanted it to be. They wanted to be a system of role-playing where you were role-playing. It was a series of roles. Yeah, I can't remember. It didn't flow. The three-five had like a skill-point system or an edge so that you had knowledge of certain skills or secondary skills. It was points, if I remember correctly on my character sheet looking, thinking back. I think you had to invest in some skills. You had level five in herbalism, and that would be your bonus to determine something, right? John's character was a clerk. Was it dwarf? What was it? Stone Sculptor. I'm glad. He had a domain. He had a domain where his god was the god of stone, and then he had special powers that were stone sculptor. Which brings up another issue is that the magic, the magic in 4.0, with magic was gone from the magic. It was all just number-prunching. Well, unfortunately. There wasn't any ambiguity, no unknown. In 3.5, you did some really wild-ass shit with stone sculpting. Because the GM said, "Okay, there's no role for this, so let's play with it." Yeah. It's almost as if you define it too much. Yeah, it does. It removes the excitement or the creativity. But what do you actually think about it? Creativity. See, trust in doesn't. It gives you almost too much freedom. Well, I think because of the boundaries and the restraints we had in the old system. I remember a couple times where we tried to get as creative as possible with our magic, trying to fill the... Because I remember trying to... And something like, "I had no spell to detect an invisible attacker that you sent against us." But I thought, "Okay, if I could fill the room with fog and use my spellcraft to only fill it up to waste high with fog, like a low-hanging fog, then there would be a big hole that the little person was walking around." Right. You're trying to cram it into... I'm going to make this square peg fit this round hole because I really need something to have a chance to survive here. I kind of like that. I mean, that's like taking the roles that you have and then trying to work within them. And that's fine. But I see a point. But I think some people enjoy knowing that I need to move three spaces to get to that guy. And if I can't, how can I... How can I do that? How can I pull him one closer or move myself? And that's the whole part that they like about four is the structure and the tactical aspect. Well, right. And there's value there, and I can understand that. I mean, there's elements to the four that I remember liking that, you know, the wizards in particular, which are actually one of my favorite character classes to play next to some of the other ones. Palms. I just want to say the magic word, but Palms always get short-tripped. Everyone just thinks they're good to get used, which I just technically are. No, I like the idea that you weren't one and done. That you have your one magic missile spell, you have your another big spell, and you're kind of... Hey, I've used my magic. I'm not saying every stuff they made with four was bronze. I'm not trying to be the four-o defender here either. I just... I think there's a middle ground. I've been trying to do it. I love it. I really enjoyed it. I didn't like the min-maxing aspect it took on. It's got you to become addicted to it. But you just... Well, it became somehow... It's almost like legalizing pot. Everyone was doing it before in three-five, where they were trying to... You know, everyone called them munchkins, and they were gonna find the right combination of feats and skills and whatever to get them, plus as we can get. And it seemed in four, they were like, "Okay, look, always do that." You know, every race gets plus two, plus three, you know, whatever. Everything would ever, and we are trying to max out, because you guys want it? Here it is. You're gonna have it. You had a problem with the fact that they didn't have any minuses. They went with all pluses. Did that bother you? I didn't bother me, but it just was... Kind of like they... Almost... Kind of like you said how the skill challenges were attacked on. It just felt like they conceded something to their perceived audience. Look, they're gonna do it anyway. And instead of going through the esoteric of finding the combinations and seeing what works, you know, you have so many options to create the kind of character you wanted, and I remember three, that it was kind of fun and neat to the character creation. One other explanation I gave it of the two different systems is 3.5 was Legos. You had those small little blocks that were incredibly tiny, and you could build them in a way to make something very intricate. And 4.0 is Duplo, where you've got those big, you know, huge blocks. I'm gonna build a wall, 'cause that's about all I can make here. It just was such a higher level that everything was big and chunky. You know, when you made your character, your decisions were where 3.5, you could do some crazy things with your character because there were so many small little pieces that you could arrange in different ways. I just can't remember even just knowing the books. I remember enjoying reading and figuring out the books and the 3.0 and 3.5, better than the 4.0, 'cause the 4.0 just felt like... Cookie Cutter. Or at least... 4.0 seemed like an instruction manual to me, where I read it. It didn't have that creativity, that magic, that the other games, the other books had. But we also complained about all the time with World of Darkness. It's where the hell of the rules are hidden in all of this flow. Again, they're in the middle ground somewhere. You could merge the character creation and establishments and the powers and the roles and classes of D&D with a more of the role-playing that we got out of World of Darkness. I don't know how you handle the combat without losing some of the... I just consider World of Darkness and dressing to be a lot looser in comments. Just go along with the circus, really. It's your tongue of story and it's not about the mechanics or the tactics of where you are. Definitely not tactics. But one of the answers... I've had a fin of zones, but... Yeah, it is a little fabulous and a little too loose. But John, you mentioned something about sometimes you would break the game. I didn't think about it. Right. But didn't that become the stories that you tell? Oh, yeah. Sure. I mean, it wasn't... Then how was that a bad thing? If you did something that was epic and storytelling, it's just something you have to tell everybody about because it was just so... Right. Cool. How was that bad? How was the game... I brought a monster in the sewers under a city and I encased it in a ball of stone. But it broke free of the ball and was smashing into things and that can't happen in Dresden. It can't happen in 4.0. There's... For different reasons. Because you can make that happen in Dresden. But just because I think of something clever doesn't mean I can do it if the dice don't let me. In 3.5 it was game-breaking because I could do it just because I had the spell loss. Just got sealed inside stone and it could just happen. And here I have to roll for it and rarely am I good enough to do some crazy crap like that. The one thing I don't like about Dresden is in one story so far, we've had maybe, I'd say between six and eight epic successes. You know, you really can do whatever you want to do with it reason. And it's okay in the story, but I guess I'd like Epic to be just a little less occurring. Then, then it happens right now. But if you save your fate points and you've written your aspects pathway intelligently, you can really do some epic things almost on a nightly basis. My guy, whenever he runs, I think for me it was just a problem of building my character to do what he does really often. Right, but it was my character that got the multiple offers. It did. Only. Only when I'm fighting. If it's only. But is it bad to be good at what you want to be good at? No, no, it's not bad to be good at what you want to be good at. It takes a little bit away from the excitement when you can do an epic once or twice a night. That's all. I mean, I enjoyed the system overall and I enjoyed a hell of a lot more than I enjoyed 4e. 4e was just, it was tediously mechanical to me and there'd be people out there obviously who agree with that and people who disagree. There's people within our group that left because we're not playing it anymore because that is the type of game that they enjoy. Well, I'm kind of, you know, it's funny that you should even bring this up because I was kind of thinking, you know, I wonder where the idea is right now. I'm just, I'm curious, although I just don't know if I can stand the idea of spending another hundred bubbles. Wow, that's a question too, isn't it? You know, and is there rebranding, are they just going to repack and shite to, hey, you guys went away and come back to us. Look, we're still relevant or we're still- Right, it would have to get some pretty awesome reviews. Yeah, money could be shot. Not a god. No. But he's done some decent work in the past. Some of his concepts have been interesting. Um, wasn't he the one that made up the one system where there were no, it was like a setting in which there were no clerics. It was something steel iron. Oh, yeah, I remember that. I know what you're talking about. Well, he's done, I'm not that baron. You're not thinking about iron. Iron, iron, sky. I can't think of the name of it either. Yeah, anyways, it's not important. But it was an interesting concept. And so I guess just to wrap it up is when it comes on. Read the reviews. If it just blows the doors away, I'll give it a shot again. Otherwise, there's so many other systems out there to try and enjoy that I probably would not invest another hundred dollars minimum to buy the three main books and get started and not to mention if they still have the monthly expenditures. They have the character builder and, you know, all that crap. And the rule of thumb is to not buy 0.0 of anything from what's the right stuff. Wait for five bucks. I was so annoyed when they pulled that one out. I remember you saying how excited you were about the character generator they had where you'd be able to. Yeah. And what did I tell you? They promised like that before and they'll believe it when it comes out. I know. I know you want to wrap this up, but with the three, five stuff and finding the, you know, finding the combinations that work for you and the synergies that they had. I remember downloading free Excel spreadsheets that would do a beautiful job of creating character sheets. And I kind of enjoyed that Excel spreadsheet that generated a wonderful PDF far better than... You're a built-in character generator. They're built-in character generator. Yeah. Because I know both Thomas and John, I'm pretty sure if you had to pick a flavor of D&D, three, five, three, five, three, five, I never tried anything earlier than that. Well, you know, there was a point where I'm going to see like, you know, maybe we should look at pathfinder boys. I know it kind of was the path not the road not taken. For us, but not for most people. I guess something I like about Dresden is that they have mechanics for social conflict and that sort of ties into the role-playing where before you never did that, they didn't have a... It gives mechanical skill to each other or whatever. But it has a mechanic for role-playing and that helps it along. I don't know. It's tricky. These five had a great system for that. Exactly built-in better than 4.0. 4.0 is like... Entering a skill challenge. Everyone get ready. Everyone has to participate. Yeah, and it just was really clear that you've got so... You need so many successes and that seems somewhat arbitrary. What if you had an exceptional success? And one very salient point that should win it. Well, right. Why do I need four more now? We never got there, but you know, when I was experimenting with that character generator, I remember thinking that once we even got to Paragon level, let alone the epic level, but I'm just like, how are you going to manage these assets and powers and conditions? And it just almost was like, well, I mean, maybe we never got there. I think we'll get as tight as I can keep. But just looking at some of that stuff, I was like, yeah. We switched ours over from 3.5 to 4.0. When we were level 10. We were level 10, so we reached Paragon. But that's when my guy lost all his flavor. He had all these earth powers, and then I had to pick a Paragon and I'm like, battle priest? Maybe. But nothing enabled me to manipulate stone or... Yeah. And again, it's back to the magic loss. It's charm because it became just numbers. You guys ever played one in the first edition, right? No. I don't try it in 3.5. Actually, it might have been 3.0 in the first edition. Not at 3.5, or even second? It was just a skill, right? It was just a skill. You were really good at it because you stole that crown. I don't remember that. Alright, so the general consensus is, well, wait and see. I mean, obviously, I know I could predict it's not coming out for... I'd take two years. Oh, jeez. I'd take two years. I'd get on that bandwagon and then... Well, they're talking about extensive playtesting, at least a year worth. So, I wonder, I'd be interested to see how Pathfinder who bought up all that... Maybe GenCon? I would guess GenCon 2014 would be the most likely release release. Maybe 13. Maybe 18 months. It's possible. I'm guessing 14 now. I'd like to... I'd like to read the material first. I'll be at the time. Yeah. I was just curious if you guys had any thoughts on it or anything about it. Oh, well, what you said makes me want to maybe... A research Pathfinder. If you missed your 3.5 mojo, you should like Pathfinder. To be honest, I haven't even really given any thought. Then I was thinking about signing all my books on eBay just to kind of get some room. So, we'll stay with Dresden and some World of Darkness, and we'll see what the future holds. Oh, no. Thanks for listening to Knights of the Night Actual Play Podcast. Visit kotnpodcast.com for more information on this and other adventures. Where you will find character stats, photos, storytelling, props, and even a form for comments and suggestions. Or you could email us directly at feedback@kotnpodcast.com. Or contact us via Twitter or leave a message on Facebook. All music for this podcast was created and performed by Zen Audio Smith. If you'd like custom professional music created for your podcast or business, please visit ZenAudioSmith.com and please join us next episode for more mystery and adventure. And it's just total bullshit. They sucked all the fun out of the game. And they made it so easy to play, easy to understand, universal system, all characters are balanced. Where the hell is the font? Palms. I just wanted to say the magic word, but Palms always get short-tripped. And everyone just thinks they're good to get used to which I just tend to play right now.