Friday, August 29, 2014

5e Confessions

[I'm off Monday.  I plan on doing sports posts next week, and then posting the new setting mentioned here.]

I’ve got one last new setting (doesn’t that sound unintentionally ominous) ready to be posted.  It uses the Fantasy Core rules and has lots of monsters and NPC stats.  I’ll be putting it up shortly, but I thought I’d pause and reflect here for a moment.

Somewhere in the middle of this project, I completely lost confidence in my own rules.  I still think they’ll work reasonably well and would be fun, but over the course of stat’ing out a bunch of monsters, I started getting really frustrated.  There are certain limitations, not just with my own homebrew, but with the underlying system they’re based on, that just creak and moan with age and poor design.  These issues go straight back to the origin of the game and through every succeeding version. 

Don’t get me wrong.  The rules work well enough to provide an enjoyable time with friends and strangers, who will soon be friends, around the table.  Gygax and Arenson created a whole new genre of gaming, a highly impressive accomplishment.  That game was made from with adaptations of other games, and from drawing upon widely varied mythic sources.  It’s allowed the game to be changed to be whatever you want it to be and however you want to play it.  But there’s never been any real innovation since those original rules. There are any number of dopey conventions that gamers adhere to, not because they’re good, but out of tradition and familiarity.  D&D is like a ship with a leaky hull, still floating because of the mass of encrusted barnacles attached to it covering them.

Rules like Fantasy Core could be classified under the broad category of a “Fantasy Heartbreaker,” a D&D-like game that offers a few novel ideas, but ultimately disappoints.  I think everyone who’s really looked at D&D’s rules at least subconsciously recognizes that they’re fundamentally flawed in almost every aspect.  The mechanics are unsatisfying and unrealistic.  The milieu is a goulash that forces everything to be included.  The goals are arbitrary and self-defeating.  (The more powerful a character gets, the less fun the game gets.)  The Fantasy Heartbreaker tries to keep the inherent spirit of the game, while correcting some of these flaws.  They fail because the rules can’t be fixed.  It’s like sending reinforcements to the battlements of a sandcastle.  Maybe certain aspects can be improved, maybe not, but it doesn’t matter, if the whole initial concept has problems.

Here’s part of where 4e went wrong, in my opinion.  The rules were incompatible with the preceding versions of the game, but offered no real innovation.  It was a Fantasy Heartbreaker.  Pathfinder has been a success in the meantime, but only because they’re using 3.5 with some minor houserule adjustments.  They’ve since gone wild with supplements of the sort that have weighted down other editions.  Pathfinder is the hobbyist game with its complex layers of rules, because a newbie is going to have a steep learning curve just making their character, much less playing.    

That brings me to 5e.  I haven’t seen the rules yet.  I plan on acquiring the basic rules at some point in the near future.  (My Internet connection is through work and the WOTC site is blocked.  I’ll see if I can get them through a friend.)  I’ll consider buying the books if I’m impressed enough.  What I already know is that these rules are considered to be a “best of” mix of other versions with the addition of the new advantage/disadvantage mechanic. 

In other words, 5e is nothing really new.  The playtest was well, but cautiously, received.  The beginner box was panned instantly upon the announcement of its contents.  This grief turned to joy, as shortly thereafter, with the news of the online release of the basic rules.  I think most gamers were predisposed to being standoffish up to that point.  The new rules might have their merits, but aren’t especially better, in fact, simply a retread of familiar ground.  The free version meant you could try the rules, in large part whole, without any monetary obligation.  More importantly, these rules are now out in the wild forever, like the retroclones, so 5e is going to be around for a long while if you like it.

WOTC’s free release has been a boon to book sales.  With the basic rules being fairly simple and free, this should allow new players to be brought in easily.  New books will be brought out to expand options for continuing serious players.  But there is going to be a price to this.  5e will be last published version of D&D by WOTC. 

This version had a long development cycle, and the rules had to be given away to get gamers to try them.  Unless they intentionally put in a show-stopping broken feature, there’s not going to be a 5.5 version, much less 6e.  There’s going to be mild updates, but they’re not going to be able to change them radically.  The expectation is going to be that any rules changes are going to be put into that free version, which will have to be compatible with the books. 

WOTC will ride the high on this as long as they’re getting good sales.  But I have to think the executives have already got an exit strategy planned.  There’s no way they’re going to sit through another long development cycle/sales drought, like they did between 4e and 5e.  Gamers aren’t going to be interesting in another slightly improved nostalgic version of D&D, not five years from now, probably not even ten.  This is it.

I think WOTC is already handing out licenses to other RPG companies in preparation for this.  Right now, it’s for publishing 5e adventures.  I’d almost think they’d offer to work with Paizo again, whom they’ve worked well with before.  Paizo’s game world and adventures would surely make 5e an even bigger hit.  Perhaps that’s why they won’t.  Paizo has already proven they can do D&D better than they can.  Paizo would end up profiting off of all of WOTC’s development by simply converting their existing material and at little cost.  Again, remember the free rules and how locked in WOTC will be to those.  Their core rule book sales will taper, while Paizo 5e products could end up dominating the market. 

The real question is: What will WOTC do when 5e reaches the end of its product cycle?  Frankly, I’m hoping they consider selling the name and IP to another company to produce the traditional tabletop RPG.  Meanwhile, Hasbro (WOTC’s parent company) uses the name and IP to make other games, perhaps even a non-hobby version of the RPG (something that can be simply set up like a traditional board game, but allowing the free-form action and imagination of an RPG).  In sum, I think the RPG experience is great and it works as a hobby to tinker with, but the current legacy rules suck and need a complete makeover. 

For my part, I have a couple of other last projects in mind (though just a couple).  If I like the 5e rules, I may use those instead of Fantasy Core.  There’d probably be some dubious legitimacy in posting such an adventure here, even if I’m not selling it and there’s no advertising on the site.  It might be worth the risk anyway.  I’d still like to clean up, make a couple of changes, and make a pdf out of Fantasy Core, but with 5e being the thing, it seems like a waste of effort at the moment.  

2 comments:

  1. Interesting take on the developments over the past couple of years. I think it's a plausible outcome, given the scuttlebutt I've been running into regarding the innerworkings of the business. It certainly seems like WOTC shot their wad with 5e - spent all their money - used all their resources - in a lofty attempt to revitalize the brand. Judging from the future product list, it's like Hasbro said 'You got until January 2015. If we don't see wads of cash, the D&D brand goes to the chop-shop and then the auction block."

    Personally, I LOVE what they've done with 5e, I do have this gnawing worry that it might not be enough to make Hasbro happy though.

    - Ark

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  2. Thank you for your comment. I was fully expecting to be called an idiot, and still might. The night is young.

    I hope the merits of the rules can be judged without consideration of the publisher's business agenda. 4e too closely mingled their marketing with their rules to judge them separately.

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