While I find the debate on flavor and role-playing interesting, I'm always just happy when games take more time to focus on role-playing and encouraging players to do that. The most used book, besides the core rulebook, for my players for my last Pathfinder campaign was Ultimate Campaign, which is mostly about non-combat activities (and big-ass battles). So the new Player's Handbook having a huge focus on backgrounds, flaws, strengths, etc. is super-exciting for me. I would personally like them to take some more ideas from the 4th edition book (even if you dislike the way the core mechanics functioned, goddamn were the powers often cool), but I will never disparage any book for giving player's more options and sparking their creativity.
And while I'm holding out on purchasing a 5th edition PHB right now (mostly due to being in the midst of another campaign and a lot of investment in other games), I will say that the book has some of the crispest, eye-catching illustrations I've seen in a table-top book.
And the early screenshots look mighty impressive. I just hope it's a buy once model, and not a subscription again.
I haven't heard anything, but I think sub is the assumption.
The one preview I read talked about additional modules being available for purchase later, which makes it sound more like you'd buy particular resources. I really hope that's the case, because I'm not eager to continue paying more for D&D every month than I do for stuff like Netflix or Amazon.
Some of this is still being worked out but I can say that the content one could purchase in DungeonScape will never go away. Meaning that if you pay for something, you'll always have access to it, even if you don't pay for anything else, ever. We'll never take content away from you. We've included a lot more features and tools than the 4E tools offered and we really think it'll be worth your while - and again - some things will be available for free so that you can get a taste of what we're doing. Hope this helps - sorry to not be absolute in my answers!
I hope the price is right (i.e., not just paying for the books I'm already buying a second time). I'd hate to end up regretting purchasing the physical books.
Call me a cynic, but in place of monthly sub, I fear micro-transactions up the wazoo.
You want to make more than 2 characters? Sure! That'll be just $0.99 per extra character slot.
e.t.c.
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Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
Nonono, that's not a micro-transaction, that's a regular one. You can get a whole album track for that much!
Make it 14¢/slot and no-one will notice that they've spent $14 on a hundred by the end of a month. Especially if it's a one-click type system.
Inspiration is something I kind of like. I'm probably going to add something similar to my 4E game, but with more nuance than just Advantage.
Heck I might even just use 4E's Fortune Cards, but hand them out for good roleplaying instead of as a weird, half-supported, pay-to-win system like they were originally. I actually liked playing with Fortune Cards; they were fun and relatively unobtrusive. I just didn't like the booster-pack aspect of them.
This is exactly what we have been doing since our 3rd session of 4th edition (which was a couple of weeks after it was released) - do cool shit get a token that you can cash in for +2 on any d20 roll (have to spend it in advance of the roll, can only use 1 per roll).
After the Fortune cards came out we all chipped in for some, the DM hands them out for cool shit also
Man, sometimes developers can't win for trying. So they can't do a sub, they can't charge outright for fear of pissed off people who already bought the book, and they can't do micro transactions...
So just give it away for free? That seems like the only way the jaded community will accept it.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited August 2014
I'm not sure you exactly appreciate how badly Wizards fucked over people with the previous electronic tools and stuff. For example, the Character Builder and Monster Builder (the offline tools) would continue to work perfectly if you cancelled a subscription - you just couldn't update them anymore. Fair enough, no longer paying for a subscription? Don't get access. So it was rather like what the first option he said was.
Then they decided to not update things for a while and were like "Sorry, Dark Sun is going to be late". Then "We're having some major problems with implementing themes into the builder, Dark Sun is going to be late" and then finally "Hey guys, we're never putting Dark Sun in because it's going into our wonderful new online only tools!".
The online tools naturally were DRM and basically couldn't be used at all without a subscription, only allowed you to make limited numbers of characters/monsters (compared to the offline tools) and were generally less functional. More importantly, it represented a complete bait and switch and meant that where you could pay for DDI, get your CB or whatever but know it was still usable when you stopped, now this no longer was the case. You either used their tools, used the pirated stuff (that BTW, worked better than what people fucking paid for) or stopped buying into DDI.
So maybe if Wizards hadn't made a complete and utter absolute fucking farce of their tools previously, maybe the community wouldn't have been jaded in the first place? I mean, who would have thought that a company that screwed over fans multiple times, renegged on promises, changed how tools people had been paying for over a year worked entirely without any information they were doing so (they just announced it and expected people to buy into it, despite Dark Sun having been out and promised for the offline tools for months) and then replaced what was working with an entirely less functional set (that couldn't work beyond a sub) wouldn't have everyone's straight up faith? I know I wouldn't have any problem believing everything they say!
Oh wait, maybe there's a really good reason at all to be "jaded".
Man, sometimes developers can't win for trying. So they can't do a sub, they can't charge outright for fear of pissed off people who already bought the book, and they can't do micro transactions...
So just give it away for free? That seems like the only way the jaded community will accept it.
I'm honestly surprised they're getting away from subs, my understanding was that the entire business case for doing online stuff was to provide ongoing revenue which is something that RPGs have struggled with.
Really the number thrown about (at random) in this thread, none of them bother me. A dollar for a character slot in perpetuity? Sure thing. I could easily go to five dollars there if it continued the "All you can use" content model from last gen.
I suppose what would be bad enough for me to object to would be if it were akin to their previous PDF policy, which was full retail price for the book to get a PDF. So if it were like 5 dollars to get builder access to each newly published book it would make me pause. Though that would lead to absurd start up costs later on in the edition so I have trouble seeing them going for that.
I'm not sure you exactly appreciate how badly Wizards fucked over people with the previous electronic tools and stuff. For example, the Character Builder and Monster Builder (the offline tools) would continue to work perfectly if you cancelled a subscription - you just couldn't update them anymore. Fair enough, no longer paying for a subscription? Don't get access. So it was rather like what the first option he said was.
Then they decided to not update things for a while and were like "Sorry, Dark Sun is going to be late". Then "We're having some major problems with implementing themes into the builder, Dark Sun is going to be late" and then finally "Hey guys, we're never putting Dark Sun in because it's going into our wonderful new online only tools!".
The online tools naturally were DRM and basically couldn't be used at all without a subscription, only allowed you to make limited numbers of characters/monsters (compared to the offline tools) and were generally less functional. More importantly, it represented a complete bait and switch and meant that where you could pay for DDI, get your CB or whatever but know it was still usable when you stopped, now this no longer was the case. You either used their tools, used the pirated stuff (that BTW, worked better than what people fucking paid for) or stopped buying into DDI.
So maybe if Wizards hadn't made a complete and utter absolute fucking farce of their tools previously, maybe the community wouldn't have been jaded in the first place? I mean, who would have thought that a company that screwed over fans multiple times, renegged on promises, changed how tools people had been paying for over a year worked entirely without any information they were doing so (they just announced it and expected people to buy into it, despite Dark Sun having been out and promised for the offline tools for months) and then replaced what was working with an entirely less functional set (that couldn't work beyond a sub) wouldn't have everyone's straight up faith? I know I wouldn't have any problem believing everything they say!
Oh wait, maybe there's a really good reason at all to be "jaded".
I know what happened. They changed their buisness model and it angered alot of people. I stopped subscribbing for a reason, too. And I guess people can get passionate about it, but Dungeonscape isn't DDI.
First of all, companies CAN learn from mistakes. If you don't think that Wizards isn't trying to learn from what they did wrong with 4e, then I honestly don't know what to tell you. I'm not saying 5e is perfect, and I'm not saying they aren't still making mistakes, but honestly, with the playtest and feedback, and everything, it certainly looks to me like the're trying.
Second, Dungeonscape is being developed by an independent company. Why not give these people the benefit of the doubt? I know how hard that is to ask people who were "burned" before. They have also been working with the public--I'm not sure how much you've followed the codename:morningstar development, but their blog is pretty cool.
I'm just having such a positive experience actually playing the game that I get shocked that people are so angry at the company. that it's coloring their views of stuff they have no experience with. Supposedly the ipad release is coming out this month. I'm hoping for the best because it looks like a great product.
silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
So my DM is on vacation and we're not starting 5E until next month, and the the mean time I've been brewing characters. I am kind of excited, actually.
The one I've developed most is a Tiefling Paladin, because someone who looks like a devil acting like an avenger of the light strikes me as ironic in a good way. Any thoughts?
I'm not sure you exactly appreciate how badly Wizards fucked over people with the previous electronic tools and stuff. For example, the Character Builder and Monster Builder (the offline tools) would continue to work perfectly if you cancelled a subscription - you just couldn't update them anymore. Fair enough, no longer paying for a subscription? Don't get access. So it was rather like what the first option he said was.
Then they decided to not update things for a while and were like "Sorry, Dark Sun is going to be late". Then "We're having some major problems with implementing themes into the builder, Dark Sun is going to be late" and then finally "Hey guys, we're never putting Dark Sun in because it's going into our wonderful new online only tools!".
The online tools naturally were DRM and basically couldn't be used at all without a subscription, only allowed you to make limited numbers of characters/monsters (compared to the offline tools) and were generally less functional. More importantly, it represented a complete bait and switch and meant that where you could pay for DDI, get your CB or whatever but know it was still usable when you stopped, now this no longer was the case. You either used their tools, used the pirated stuff (that BTW, worked better than what people fucking paid for) or stopped buying into DDI.
So maybe if Wizards hadn't made a complete and utter absolute fucking farce of their tools previously, maybe the community wouldn't have been jaded in the first place? I mean, who would have thought that a company that screwed over fans multiple times, renegged on promises, changed how tools people had been paying for over a year worked entirely without any information they were doing so (they just announced it and expected people to buy into it, despite Dark Sun having been out and promised for the offline tools for months) and then replaced what was working with an entirely less functional set (that couldn't work beyond a sub) wouldn't have everyone's straight up faith? I know I wouldn't have any problem believing everything they say!
Oh wait, maybe there's a really good reason at all to be "jaded".
I know what happened. They changed their buisness model and it angered alot of people. I stopped subscribbing for a reason, too. And I guess people can get passionate about it, but Dungeonscape isn't DDI.
First of all, companies CAN learn from mistakes. If you don't think that Wizards isn't trying to learn from what they did wrong with 4e, then I honestly don't know what to tell you. I'm not saying 5e is perfect, and I'm not saying they aren't still making mistakes, but honestly, with the playtest and feedback, and everything, it certainly looks to me like the're trying.
Second, Dungeonscape is being developed by an independent company. Why not give these people the benefit of the doubt? I know how hard that is to ask people who were "burned" before. They have also been working with the public--I'm not sure how much you've followed the codename:morningstar development, but their blog is pretty cool.
I'm just having such a positive experience actually playing the game that I get shocked that people are so angry at the company. that it's coloring their views of stuff they have no experience with. Supposedly the ipad release is coming out this month. I'm hoping for the best because it looks like a great product.
It's not just the change. It's the complete failure to deliver on their original vision for the old tools that breeds a lot of justifiable scepticism re: their plans for the new tools.
Go back and see the videos they first produced when announcing 4e and see how very far short of their goal they fell. Hell they even advertised them in the back of the original 4e DMG with a bullshot of a virtual tabletop that in no way resembles what they eventually delivered, many years late.
It’s all guesswork and predictions anyway. If they come out and actually do everything they promise then that will be awesome. In the meantime all we have to go on is their previous form.
Yeah, I don't see anything wrong with being incredibly skeptical until they actually deliver (or give access to the beta so we can see it ourselves).
In other 5E news, they previewed the red dragon MM entry recently, and I *really* like the entire "lair" concept, and the cool little gameplay things that come along with fighting a major battle in a creature's lair like that.
I've been running games online with dice rollers and such so long that I often have to remind myself that counting the pips on a couple dozen dice is a hassle and a half.
I had a chance at GenCon to see Dungeonscape twice and for the first time with a D&D related character manager, I am impressed. It covers both character creation and character management during play with not only great ease but also through a modern interface that will work well on phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers. It works perfectly with the new rules. And here's another example of why we can trust them: they repeated over and over again that they do NOT want this tool to get in the way of the human interaction of role-playing face to face around a table. No, you will NOT be able to hit a button on your screen and automatically take damage off a monster. This is NOT a video game!
The first release is the Player implementation for character creation and management. It should be available in a month.
The second release is the DM implementation, which should be ready by December. It will allow you to manage a campaign, adventure, and session. For example, a DM will be able to have a digital version of an adventure with all kinds of embedded images, maps, and full text that is not only searchable able to be bookmarked, but you can even select passages and share them with your players. More exciting, the DM will "invite" a group of players via email to a session, which will allow everyone around the table to communicate with each other info like initiative and basic stats, as well as send in game secret messages to each other! This includes the DM!
The third release will be the "forge" implementation next year for content creation, sharing, and even for sale.
Finally, the BIG reason why this company was chosen in the first place was their software for selling, storing, reading, and interacting with digital texts. I saw a "bookshelf" with the Player's Handbook and Hoard of the Dragon Queen, as well as several Encounter adventures, all with full text, art, and interactivity. Very cool!
These guys are SERIOUS programmers who have worked on other major digital properties. I think it is finally going to be an electronic aid that matches the system
No, you will NOT be able to hit a button on your screen and automatically take damage off a monster. This is NOT a video game!
Yeah man, gotta keep all that math off of the god damn computers so that we can use our precious face-to-face interaction time doing it by hand.
This video game fad is really killing all the magic of going "What's 15 + 17? 25? No shit 35! No wait, 32. Right? Yeah. 32. Oh but he has resistance so half that. What's half of 32?"
No, you will NOT be able to hit a button on your screen and automatically take damage off a monster. This is NOT a video game!
Yeah man, gotta keep all that math off of the god damn computers so that we can use our precious face-to-face interaction time doing it by hand.
This video game fad is really killing all the magic of going "What's 15 + 17? 25? No shit 35! No wait, 32. Right? Yeah. 32. Oh but he has resistance so half that. What's half of 32?"
You're not supposed to play D&D without a mathematician. You know this.
All the "We don't want to turn this into a vidja game!" talk seems a little schizophrenic. The tools to allow in and out of game comms and link ups sounds great but then why not allow the DM to hit a button and the program rolls the dice, whacks the monsters and shows the resuls? Why is that a step too far?
Didn't like the breathless tone of the article. The author seemed to go in with a big "You guys sure are great!" hat on but that's a small quibble. Why the fuck couldn't they have got their arses in gear for 4e? This would have been perfect. Grumble grumble.
I was going to come in here and ask if Wizards announced anything regarding 5th edition at GenCon only to realize the PHB was due out tomorrow and the start set/basic rules have been available for awhile.
So, uh... How did 5th edition turn out? And did anything cool get announced at Gencon?
No, you will NOT be able to hit a button on your screen and automatically take damage off a monster. This is NOT a video game!
Yeah man, gotta keep all that math off of the god damn computers so that we can use our precious face-to-face interaction time doing it by hand.
This video game fad is really killing all the magic of going "What's 15 + 17? 25? No shit 35! No wait, 32. Right? Yeah. 32. Oh but he has resistance so half that. What's half of 32?"
They also admitted there were some features that they had pulled back and were re-examining. For example, they were still trying to decide whether to automate certain actions in the program, like tapping on an attack form and automatically getting an attack roll and a damage roll. As convenient as such a thing might be, they were cognizant of the fact that automating too much might ruin the “essence of the game.” I s$&% you not. They said that. “The essence of the game.”
Burn Me Twice…
Here’s the thing. We’ve been burned before. D&D Insider made a lot of promises. It failed to deliver on many, and the ones it did deliver on, it did so only clumsily. Hell, it actually took away some of the stuff it did actually manage to deliver on. It put limits on how much data you could store, data was locked in the cloud, printing and customization options were practically nonexistent, the whole platform became more unstable with every update, and the updates took a long time to deliver.
And I wasn’t shy about stressing that DungeonScape was going to have to work hard to regain the trust that Wizards of the Coast has lost with D&D Insider. Nor was anyone else. There were more than a few questions that were just variations on “prove to us this won’t happen again.”
For example, we wanted to know about internet access. What would happen if we didn’t have access to the Cloud. Would DungeonScape become an electronic brick. No, they said. Information was synched between the local device and the Cloud. Of course, some functionality would be lost without internet access, such as the ability for the players’ and the DM’s devices to communicate, but character data, adventure data, even the library of rulebooks itself would remain accessible with some limited exceptions, like video content that was too hefty to store on the client side.
We asked about licensing and pricing and subscriptions, and they couldn’t tell us too much. But right now, it seems as if once you buy a bit of content, be it a book like the PHB or a module or even just a single race or class, it’s yours to keep. Yours to use. Just like a physical book. Or like an e-book. On the other hand, it is unclear right now whether the purchase of a physical book will automatically grant you access to the electronic data that DungeonScape needs to use it. On that front, we’ll just have to wait and see.
Chris also seemed confident that we wouldn’t have to sit around waiting for a month or more before a newly published book’s data was available through DungeonScape. In fact, he said that once the data was available from Wizards of the Coast in the proper format, it was effortless to push it out to the Cloud. Whether that will prove to be true or not, only time will tell. But, it appears from the way the suite of tools is designed, he’s probably telling the truth. Especially given that’s precisely what Trapdoor Technologies, LLC made its money doing: publishing data. Of course, as brilliant as I am, I can’t claim to be an expert. Again, we’ll just have to wait and see.
I understand the goal. But keeping the dumb math that everyone hates doing as part of the "essential" experience is almost drow-glasses level weirdness to me.
I wasn't the most proficient Maptools programmer, but being able to at least set up scripts for my abilities to quickly and accurately roll common dice (attacks, skill checks, etc) that I could arrange long in advance and not have to keep referring back to my sheet for was a huge positive.
If I'm going to the efforts to schedule a game with friends that I can't see in person, I'll probably cherish the ten or twenty minutes such features can save more than how ICONIC scanning my damned character sheets might be. Automating shit I might be doing a dozen times in a session apiece is not a bad thing.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
So chugging along through the PHB, I'm wondering why they didn't list under each spell's entry the classes that are able to cast it? Having to page back and forth seems unnecessary. I guess it saves printing room.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I wasn't the most proficient Maptools programmer, but being able to at least set up scripts for my abilities to quickly and accurately roll common dice (attacks, skill checks, etc) that I could arrange long in advance and not have to keep referring back to my sheet for was a huge positive.
If I'm going to the efforts to schedule a game with friends that I can't see in person, I'll probably cherish the ten or twenty minutes such features can save more than how ICONIC scanning my damned character sheets might be. Automating shit I might be doing a dozen times in a session apiece is not a bad thing.
Given how seriously I got into maptools while running D&D way back, the idea that clicking a button to remove HP from a monster is a bad thing is a little insane to me, almost.
I mean, I used to make color-coded macro sets that would replicate every power in a character's arsenal in full detail, toggles that would add things like sneak attack damage and combat advantage to those macros, and automatically throw up little icons to represent common statuses and reminders for end of round bookkeeping, and so on and so forth.
I would go entire month's worth of sessions without ever having to refer to a rulebook or even a character sheet of any sort in the middle of a game, and it was one of the better gaming experiences I've ever had, from an 'ease of play' perspective.
No, you will NOT be able to hit a button on your screen and automatically take damage off a monster. This is NOT a video game!
Yeah man, gotta keep all that math off of the god damn computers so that we can use our precious face-to-face interaction time doing it by hand.
This video game fad is really killing all the magic of going "What's 15 + 17? 25? No shit 35! No wait, 32. Right? Yeah. 32. Oh but he has resistance so half that. What's half of 32?"
You're not supposed to play D&D without a mathematician. You know this.
Srsly. How else would I stay employed?
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
I'm not sure you exactly appreciate how badly Wizards fucked over people with the previous electronic tools and stuff. For example, the Character Builder and Monster Builder (the offline tools) would continue to work perfectly if you cancelled a subscription - you just couldn't update them anymore. Fair enough, no longer paying for a subscription? Don't get access. So it was rather like what the first option he said was.
Then they decided to not update things for a while and were like "Sorry, Dark Sun is going to be late". Then "We're having some major problems with implementing themes into the builder, Dark Sun is going to be late" and then finally "Hey guys, we're never putting Dark Sun in because it's going into our wonderful new online only tools!".
The online tools naturally were DRM and basically couldn't be used at all without a subscription, only allowed you to make limited numbers of characters/monsters (compared to the offline tools) and were generally less functional. More importantly, it represented a complete bait and switch and meant that where you could pay for DDI, get your CB or whatever but know it was still usable when you stopped, now this no longer was the case. You either used their tools, used the pirated stuff (that BTW, worked better than what people fucking paid for) or stopped buying into DDI.
So maybe if Wizards hadn't made a complete and utter absolute fucking farce of their tools previously, maybe the community wouldn't have been jaded in the first place? I mean, who would have thought that a company that screwed over fans multiple times, renegged on promises, changed how tools people had been paying for over a year worked entirely without any information they were doing so (they just announced it and expected people to buy into it, despite Dark Sun having been out and promised for the offline tools for months) and then replaced what was working with an entirely less functional set (that couldn't work beyond a sub) wouldn't have everyone's straight up faith? I know I wouldn't have any problem believing everything they say!
Oh wait, maybe there's a really good reason at all to be "jaded".
I know what happened. They changed their buisness model and it angered alot of people. I stopped subscribbing for a reason, too. And I guess people can get passionate about it, but Dungeonscape isn't DDI.
Good, then you understand that faith is earned and not given in this case. Wizards have done zero to earn any faith whatsoever, given that their "playtest" was designed as an echo chamber to only get answers that they wanted and nothing else. Then there is their hilarious, awful and generally tone deaf descriptions of the game, which probably reached its height when Monte Cook was proudly describing an advanced concept for 5E of "Passive Perception" (he was disappeared not long after this, coincidentally).
Dungeonscape has to prove itself, not the other way around and Wizards has to continue with it. Here's my problem, I give (based on previous experience) 2 years before Dungeonscape gets shuttered or shat on, with (if they aren't doing it already) an online only or similar more restrictive platform than what they are describing replacing it (while they simultaneously break Dungeonscape in some way). It will be done either because:
A) lolpiracy Contract was up and we needed to give you a totally better solution, honest!
C) Hasbro isn't feeling like DnD isn't making that 100 million dollar value or whatever, so time to make more revenue aggressively!
Or maybe some combination between all three of these or all three simultaneously. The point is, I have zero reason to give them faith and of course you then go and prove why I shouldn't by posting this description:
they repeated over and over again that they do NOT want this tool to get in the way of the human interaction of role-playing face to face around a table. No, you will NOT be able to hit a button on your screen and automatically take damage off a monster. This is NOT a video game!
This is one of the most idiotic things I have read and Monte Cook was writing for 5E. For one thing, sitting around counting maths is precisely the opposite of "Human interaction" and I know that from about 17 years of running face to face roleplaying games. Sitting there while people add miscellaneous bonuses, subtract DR, add this or that or just have to count up (and sometimes find) the 8d8 they rolled actually slows up everything to do with interaction. Maths is fine of course, but when you're looking at a red dragon that's throwing 26d6 around, there is a point where I would rather just have a computer dice roller do that.
And yes, that's exactly what I would actually do. Thankfully instead of paying Wizards for crappy software that doesn't do what I want, I can use entirely free software like Maptools that does everything I want. Sure I have to program it, but the sheer flexibility in Maptools makes life so much easier: For any large combat in 4E I would use maptools with monster tokens to speed up my turns considerably - which meant more time for my players to do things, which had a net positive effect on greatly speeding up combat and making everyone have more time for other things. Eventuallyo= I could get my complicated tactical combats in, plus a larger amount of general roleplaying all in the same time limit. More done in the same time is the end goal: Not the same amount of time but now with a computer.
Additionally not being able to take damage off a monster automatically? Sounds like a completely fucking stupid decision. One of the reasons I would want to use this as a DM, would entirely be to make tracking monster damage easier. If they aren't going to bother doing that, it's yet another reason why I should just roll my eyes go "lol wizards" and decide not to give them any money for this. The point of electronic tools is to make life easier, faster and remove impediments to fast play.
Needing to roll 26d6 and add it manually? That's an impediment to play.
Needing to calculate all damage myself (DR etc)? That's an impediment to play.
Not actually helping me to speed up my game and um, you know I can't figure out what Dungeoncraft actually offers me or why I would want to pay for it now I think about it. I guess it stores shit for me in an electronic form? But then, so does maptools and maptools has the actual automation to make the game on the day go faster, even if it would have a higher time investment in preparation. I would rather spend the higher time investment beforehand and make the game go better, than have easier preparation (I assume) but get no benefit at the table in terms of speed and ease of running.
Also this might be my bias from posting on a video game forum, but I don't have any major issues with video games myself. Their electronic tools and such could learn a tremendous amount from video games in fact, making the comment doubly worrying and showing me Wizards really has shit all idea what they are trying to accomplish.
I've contemplated dropping $250 for a tablet PC so that, as a DM, I could quickly tally everything. As much fun as carrying a binder and switching between monster stats, environmental stuff, DC tables, etc., is, if I could have an excel spreadsheet or something put together with some nice VBA macros, I'd be all on that.
And I am one of the weird people that love doing math. And I'd still rather it be automated.
The whole ethic of "we're not going to use our technology to actually make things easier" ethos really takes me back to the day we found out that they were dropping thAC0 for 3rd Edition.
The nerd outcry about "dumbing it down for the masses" and "we don't want stupid people playing this game" was deafening.
What I find particularly baffling is why not just include the automagical math tallying as an optional thing, if nothing else? You want to do math by hand, go for it. On the other hand if you don't, then use this option right here.
What I find particularly baffling is why not just include the automagical math tallying as an optional thing, if nothing else? You want to do math by hand, go for it. On the other hand if you don't, then use this option right here.
really? In an age with free dicerollers, everyone I ever played with brings a bag of dice to roll. Do you use a program or do you roll?
If you're meatspace gaming, it's usually a mix of dice and rollers (particularly with games that use irregular dice). Some people want the physical sensation, some just want to present the result as fast and as quietly as possible. Nobody's made to feel as if their preference is incorrect. That's grognard behavior.
From the flipside -- and I freely admit to being an evil GM -- I will roll physical dice whilst gaming online if I don't want the players to know I am rolling dice. But 90% of the time I am rolling away with them publicly (via rolling scripts).
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I haven't heard anything, but I think sub is the assumption.
And while I'm holding out on purchasing a 5th edition PHB right now (mostly due to being in the midst of another campaign and a lot of investment in other games), I will say that the book has some of the crispest, eye-catching illustrations I've seen in a table-top book.
The one preview I read talked about additional modules being available for purchase later, which makes it sound more like you'd buy particular resources. I really hope that's the case, because I'm not eager to continue paying more for D&D every month than I do for stuff like Netflix or Amazon.
edit
http://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/2dhx1r/dd_5e_codename_morningstar_revealed_as_dd/cjqmu4d
You want to make more than 2 characters? Sure! That'll be just $0.99 per extra character slot.
e.t.c.
Make it 14¢/slot and no-one will notice that they've spent $14 on a hundred by the end of a month. Especially if it's a one-click type system.
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DropBox invite link - get 500MB extra free.
This is exactly what we have been doing since our 3rd session of 4th edition (which was a couple of weeks after it was released) - do cool shit get a token that you can cash in for +2 on any d20 roll (have to spend it in advance of the roll, can only use 1 per roll).
After the Fortune cards came out we all chipped in for some, the DM hands them out for cool shit also
So just give it away for free? That seems like the only way the jaded community will accept it.
Then they decided to not update things for a while and were like "Sorry, Dark Sun is going to be late". Then "We're having some major problems with implementing themes into the builder, Dark Sun is going to be late" and then finally "Hey guys, we're never putting Dark Sun in because it's going into our wonderful new online only tools!".
The online tools naturally were DRM and basically couldn't be used at all without a subscription, only allowed you to make limited numbers of characters/monsters (compared to the offline tools) and were generally less functional. More importantly, it represented a complete bait and switch and meant that where you could pay for DDI, get your CB or whatever but know it was still usable when you stopped, now this no longer was the case. You either used their tools, used the pirated stuff (that BTW, worked better than what people fucking paid for) or stopped buying into DDI.
So maybe if Wizards hadn't made a complete and utter absolute fucking farce of their tools previously, maybe the community wouldn't have been jaded in the first place? I mean, who would have thought that a company that screwed over fans multiple times, renegged on promises, changed how tools people had been paying for over a year worked entirely without any information they were doing so (they just announced it and expected people to buy into it, despite Dark Sun having been out and promised for the offline tools for months) and then replaced what was working with an entirely less functional set (that couldn't work beyond a sub) wouldn't have everyone's straight up faith? I know I wouldn't have any problem believing everything they say!
Oh wait, maybe there's a really good reason at all to be "jaded".
I'm honestly surprised they're getting away from subs, my understanding was that the entire business case for doing online stuff was to provide ongoing revenue which is something that RPGs have struggled with.
Really the number thrown about (at random) in this thread, none of them bother me. A dollar for a character slot in perpetuity? Sure thing. I could easily go to five dollars there if it continued the "All you can use" content model from last gen.
I suppose what would be bad enough for me to object to would be if it were akin to their previous PDF policy, which was full retail price for the book to get a PDF. So if it were like 5 dollars to get builder access to each newly published book it would make me pause. Though that would lead to absurd start up costs later on in the edition so I have trouble seeing them going for that.
I know what happened. They changed their buisness model and it angered alot of people. I stopped subscribbing for a reason, too. And I guess people can get passionate about it, but Dungeonscape isn't DDI.
First of all, companies CAN learn from mistakes. If you don't think that Wizards isn't trying to learn from what they did wrong with 4e, then I honestly don't know what to tell you. I'm not saying 5e is perfect, and I'm not saying they aren't still making mistakes, but honestly, with the playtest and feedback, and everything, it certainly looks to me like the're trying.
Second, Dungeonscape is being developed by an independent company. Why not give these people the benefit of the doubt? I know how hard that is to ask people who were "burned" before. They have also been working with the public--I'm not sure how much you've followed the codename:morningstar development, but their blog is pretty cool.
I'm just having such a positive experience actually playing the game that I get shocked that people are so angry at the company. that it's coloring their views of stuff they have no experience with. Supposedly the ipad release is coming out this month. I'm hoping for the best because it looks like a great product.
The problem is they're learning the wrong lessons!
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
The one I've developed most is a Tiefling Paladin, because someone who looks like a devil acting like an avenger of the light strikes me as ironic in a good way. Any thoughts?
It's not just the change. It's the complete failure to deliver on their original vision for the old tools that breeds a lot of justifiable scepticism re: their plans for the new tools.
Go back and see the videos they first produced when announcing 4e and see how very far short of their goal they fell. Hell they even advertised them in the back of the original 4e DMG with a bullshot of a virtual tabletop that in no way resembles what they eventually delivered, many years late.
It’s all guesswork and predictions anyway. If they come out and actually do everything they promise then that will be awesome. In the meantime all we have to go on is their previous form.
In other 5E news, they previewed the red dragon MM entry recently, and I *really* like the entire "lair" concept, and the cool little gameplay things that come along with fighting a major battle in a creature's lair like that.
that's just a damn lot of d6s.
Yeah man, gotta keep all that math off of the god damn computers so that we can use our precious face-to-face interaction time doing it by hand.
This video game fad is really killing all the magic of going "What's 15 + 17? 25? No shit 35! No wait, 32. Right? Yeah. 32. Oh but he has resistance so half that. What's half of 32?"
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Didn't like the breathless tone of the article. The author seemed to go in with a big "You guys sure are great!" hat on but that's a small quibble. Why the fuck couldn't they have got their arses in gear for 4e? This would have been perfect. Grumble grumble.
So, uh... How did 5th edition turn out? And did anything cool get announced at Gencon?
http://www.madadventurers.com/my-dinner-with-chris-and-evan-and-rachel-a-dungeonscape-preview/
Both.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
If I'm going to the efforts to schedule a game with friends that I can't see in person, I'll probably cherish the ten or twenty minutes such features can save more than how ICONIC scanning my damned character sheets might be. Automating shit I might be doing a dozen times in a session apiece is not a bad thing.
4e, roll the dice because its only ever 5-6 at most. When I was playing Pathfinder with 26 d6 sneak attack? Dice roller all the freakin' way.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Given how seriously I got into maptools while running D&D way back, the idea that clicking a button to remove HP from a monster is a bad thing is a little insane to me, almost.
I mean, I used to make color-coded macro sets that would replicate every power in a character's arsenal in full detail, toggles that would add things like sneak attack damage and combat advantage to those macros, and automatically throw up little icons to represent common statuses and reminders for end of round bookkeeping, and so on and so forth.
I would go entire month's worth of sessions without ever having to refer to a rulebook or even a character sheet of any sort in the middle of a game, and it was one of the better gaming experiences I've ever had, from an 'ease of play' perspective.
Srsly. How else would I stay employed?
Good, then you understand that faith is earned and not given in this case. Wizards have done zero to earn any faith whatsoever, given that their "playtest" was designed as an echo chamber to only get answers that they wanted and nothing else. Then there is their hilarious, awful and generally tone deaf descriptions of the game, which probably reached its height when Monte Cook was proudly describing an advanced concept for 5E of "Passive Perception" (he was disappeared not long after this, coincidentally).
Dungeonscape has to prove itself, not the other way around and Wizards has to continue with it. Here's my problem, I give (based on previous experience) 2 years before Dungeonscape gets shuttered or shat on, with (if they aren't doing it already) an online only or similar more restrictive platform than what they are describing replacing it (while they simultaneously break Dungeonscape in some way). It will be done either because:
A) lolpiracy
C) Hasbro isn't feeling like DnD isn't making that 100 million dollar value or whatever, so time to make more revenue aggressively!
Or maybe some combination between all three of these or all three simultaneously. The point is, I have zero reason to give them faith and of course you then go and prove why I shouldn't by posting this description:
This is one of the most idiotic things I have read and Monte Cook was writing for 5E. For one thing, sitting around counting maths is precisely the opposite of "Human interaction" and I know that from about 17 years of running face to face roleplaying games. Sitting there while people add miscellaneous bonuses, subtract DR, add this or that or just have to count up (and sometimes find) the 8d8 they rolled actually slows up everything to do with interaction. Maths is fine of course, but when you're looking at a red dragon that's throwing 26d6 around, there is a point where I would rather just have a computer dice roller do that.
And yes, that's exactly what I would actually do. Thankfully instead of paying Wizards for crappy software that doesn't do what I want, I can use entirely free software like Maptools that does everything I want. Sure I have to program it, but the sheer flexibility in Maptools makes life so much easier: For any large combat in 4E I would use maptools with monster tokens to speed up my turns considerably - which meant more time for my players to do things, which had a net positive effect on greatly speeding up combat and making everyone have more time for other things. Eventuallyo= I could get my complicated tactical combats in, plus a larger amount of general roleplaying all in the same time limit. More done in the same time is the end goal: Not the same amount of time but now with a computer.
Additionally not being able to take damage off a monster automatically? Sounds like a completely fucking stupid decision. One of the reasons I would want to use this as a DM, would entirely be to make tracking monster damage easier. If they aren't going to bother doing that, it's yet another reason why I should just roll my eyes go "lol wizards" and decide not to give them any money for this. The point of electronic tools is to make life easier, faster and remove impediments to fast play.
Needing to roll 26d6 and add it manually? That's an impediment to play.
Needing to calculate all damage myself (DR etc)? That's an impediment to play.
Not actually helping me to speed up my game and um, you know I can't figure out what Dungeoncraft actually offers me or why I would want to pay for it now I think about it. I guess it stores shit for me in an electronic form? But then, so does maptools and maptools has the actual automation to make the game on the day go faster, even if it would have a higher time investment in preparation. I would rather spend the higher time investment beforehand and make the game go better, than have easier preparation (I assume) but get no benefit at the table in terms of speed and ease of running.
Also this might be my bias from posting on a video game forum, but I don't have any major issues with video games myself. Their electronic tools and such could learn a tremendous amount from video games in fact, making the comment doubly worrying and showing me Wizards really has shit all idea what they are trying to accomplish.
And I am one of the weird people that love doing math. And I'd still rather it be automated.
The nerd outcry about "dumbing it down for the masses" and "we don't want stupid people playing this game" was deafening.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Modules!
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
From the flipside -- and I freely admit to being an evil GM -- I will roll physical dice whilst gaming online if I don't want the players to know I am rolling dice. But 90% of the time I am rolling away with them publicly (via rolling scripts).