D&D 5e Discussion

Incenjucar · May 2012

Man it would be funny if you could accidentally stab or intimidate your allies in combat.

SJ · May 2012

Who said it was an accident

Mr_Rose · May 2012

On intimidation in combat, I always thought it was a bit off that you had to specifically try to scare opponents off, instead of them just seeing you exploding heir mate's head and booking it because fuck that noise.

Accordingly, I wouldn't mind some sort of morale system in 5e; anyone know if that's likely? Or even just a "passive intimidate" score...

Talonrazor · May 2012

The more I experiment away from D&D, the more and more I appreciate the non-mechanical approach to things. I think systems like Serenity's Cortex or even FATE are fantastic in that it focus creativity and collected storytelling. I know D&D is "mainstream" but man, I just do not want any additional numbers anymore.....

Vanguard · May 2012

SJ wrote: »

Uhm, except that even the name 'magic' is a bit of flavor just put on top of some sort of abstract resolution mechanic. You could rename it to 'farming,' if you felt like it, because magic and farming are both just types of flavor that one can imprint on top of a mechanic to enforce a certain type of setting. These are absolutely things that exist in a vacuum, they are entirely apart from one another. There exists no mechanic that cannot have the flavor taken out and altered/swapped into something else. I mean, just the fact that we can talk about them in the kinds of mechanic-less language that we're using is proof that they are, in and of themselves, entirely separate from those mechanics.

This is a silly argument. They are not entirely apart from one another.

Let's say you are designing spell mechanics and you include rules for varying degrees of failure. This decision effects the flavor of magic in your game. Suddenly, it's dangerous.

Or let's say you're writing fluff for a world and you decide that magic is unpredictable and dangerous. When you design the mechanics, you keep this in mind, and the fallout from failed casting reflects this.

Or let's say that you describe your magic as dangerous, but none of the mechanics support this. The flavor of the game is off because there is dissonance between the crunchy side and the fluffy side of the game.

Mechanics support the flavor and vice versa.

Nealneal · May 2012

Except D&D has none of those things and it shouldn't in my opinion. If you want to add them as an additional system on top of the base mechanics, that's great, but don't force me to follow the fluff you want for your fireball just because you believe that the two are inextricably linked. If, in my world, magic is derived from pixie dust made from dried and ground pixies, should that influence the system you use to resolve magic in your world at all?

Vanguard · May 2012

Nealneal wrote: »

Except D&D has none of those things and it shouldn't in my opinion. If you want to add them as an additional system on top of the base mechanics, that's great, but don't force me to follow the fluff you want for your fireball just because you believe that the two are inextricably linked. If, in my world, magic is derived from pixie dust made from dried and ground pixies, should that influence the system you use to resolve magic in your world at all?

Notice I'm not arguing that you have to include this stuff. I'm not telling anyone how to play their game. What I am doing is providing examples where the mechanics of other games support the fluff or mood. And I'm not even arguing that games that do this are better; my point all along has been that mechanics can contribute to flavor.

Nealneal · May 2012

I thought your point was that they are never completely seperate. That is what you wrote after all. They can be and should be in my opinion. Fluff should be up to the group, not enforced through mechanics.

Vanguard · May 2012

Nealneal wrote: »

I thought your point was that they are never completely seperate. That is what you wrote after all. They can be and should be in my opinion. Fluff should be up to the group, not enforced through mechanics.

Yes, that is what I wrote. Try as you might not to be, 4E has mechanics that influence the flavor, albeit in a subtle way. Example: healing surges. This is a codified way that represents your character's second wind. Not all games have that.

Nealneal · May 2012

I'm obviously confused. I thought you were talking about the mechanics and flavor and how the flavor can never be removed from mechanics. As to Second wind and healing surges, is it that they allow you to dig deep and find the will to go on? Or is it that you gulp down a bit of dried pixie jerky to give you a burst of energy? It's totally up to the group how it functions in their world and that can be seperated completely from it's mechanical effects of returning hit points.

Vanguard · May 2012

Nealneal wrote: »

I'm obviously confused. I thought you were talking about the mechanics and flavor and how the flavor can never be removed from mechanics. As to Second wind and healing surges, is it that they allow you to dig deep and find the will to go on? Or is it that you gulp down a bit of dried pixie jerky to give you a burst of energy? It's totally up to the group how it functions in their world and that can be seperated completely from it's mechanical effects of returning hit points.

Sure, you can change the fluff, but there is still mechanical reinforcement of it no matter what. Both mechanics and fluff are mutable concepts. You can change as them as you see fit, but the flavor of your game will be derived between the interaction of the two in addition to the player's imaginations, contributions, etc.

Jam Warrior · May 2012

Is this month's playtest going fully public or is it going to be a limited invite only thing? Either way I'm sure we'll hear all about it and I'm very interested to see some concrete evidence of the state of things behind all the rumour and gossip.

Mr_Rose wrote: »

On intimidation in combat, I always thought it was a bit off that you had to specifically try to scare opponents off, instead of them just seeing you exploding heir mate's head and booking it because fuck that noise.

Accordingly, I wouldn't mind some sort of morale system in 5e; anyone know if that's likely? Or even just a "passive intimidate" score...

I guess that's another rules vs GM power thing. The GM should be already handling the natural fear of the situation depending on the enemy and circumstances. In combat intimidate skill check is the effect of that extra bit of specifically targeted threat that might push a non fleeing enemy over the edge.

As written the intimidate skill in 4e can be min/max abused to become far too powerful.

Mikey CTS · May 2012

@Vanguard How the fuck long are we going to have to hear you go on and on about Burning Wheel in the D&D 5e thread? It's getting old. If you want to talk about Burning Wheel and how IT'S BETTER THAN EVER POSSIBLE SYSTEM EVER!!1!1! then I think you should make a thread about that and stop shitting all over this one.

I'll wait to be infracted for this comment.

poshniallo · May 2012

Mikey CTS wrote: »

@Vanguard How the fuck long are we going to have to hear you go on and on about Burning Wheel in the D&D 5e thread? It's getting old. If you want to talk about Burning Wheel and how IT'S BETTER THAN EVER POSSIBLE SYSTEM EVER!!1!1! then I think you should make a thread about that and stop shitting all over this one.

I'll wait to be infracted for this comment.

You being rude is a separate issue from you being completely wrong. I am very happy to read posts about other games in comparison with D&D.

Vanguard · May 2012

Mikey CTS wrote: »

@Vanguard How the fuck long are we going to have to hear you go on and on about Burning Wheel in the D&D 5e thread? It's getting old. If you want to talk about Burning Wheel and how IT'S BETTER THAN EVER POSSIBLE SYSTEM EVER!!1!1! then I think you should make a thread about that and stop shitting all over this one.

I'll wait to be infracted for this comment.

Can you point me to the comment where I said any of that? This tangent came as a result of SJ claiming game mechanics do not add flavor.

I provided examples from systems that did. One of them (I did mention more than one) happened to be BW. Misdirected rage much?

If we're limited to talking about 5E and 5E only, it's a pretty short discussion since we don't have all that much information yet. And since the game is still very much in the "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" phase of development, it only seems natural to bring other game systems to the conversation about what we hope, expect, and do not want.

poshniallo · May 2012

Actually I can't believe people don't realise theme and mechanics are linked. For example, which two mechanical systems fits LOTR - a system with damage-causing spells that require a party member to sacrifice HP to power them, or a system which gives only low-level bonuses to various skill, ability etc rolls if magic is used in a situation matching one of the spell keywords?

The mark of a good designer is someone who realises that system and theme are linked and puts them together appropriately. If I want a system that focuses on personal heroism and moral quandaries, a gridmap and LOS rules are going to be actively unhelpful. This just seems really obvious to me.

Denada · May 2012

It's probably better, in this particular conversation, to replace flavor with theme or tone. For most people, flavor means the fluff description of what a spell or other thing "does", not the assumed or implied tone of a game based on how its systems are constructed.

Core game mechanics (such as "roll a die and try to beat a target number") have nothing to do with flavor and very little to do with tone or theme. However, systems built from those core mechanics can very much influence the tone or theme of a game. 4E and 3.5E have a different tone because their systems (built with mostly the same core mechanics) are constructed differently.

A perfect example of this is Cortex, which is a set of core mechanics that can be used to build any number of games with different themes and tones. The core mechanics are basically the same whether you're playing Serenity, Leverage, Smallville, or Marvel Super Heroes. But the way those games construct their specific systems heavily influences the tone and themes present in their respective games.

Counterspin · May 2012

But theme isn't fluff. Fluff is the description of something within the boundaries of the game world. I've played D&D characters whose classes have changed over the course of the game, without making any real differences in their fluff presentation. In my 4e game, I allowed people to use the mechanics for races from newer rule books, races that didn't exist in my setting, but they had to use one of the existing races as the fluff.

One could happily hook up any of the mechanics for race in 4e to human and make it work with a little thought. If mechanics and fluff were wedded together, that wouldn't be possible.

Nealneal · May 2012

poshniallo wrote: »

Actually I can't believe people don't realise theme and mechanics are linked. For example, which two mechanical systems fits LOTR - a system with damage-causing spells that require a party member to sacrifice HP to power them, or a system which gives only low-level bonuses to various skill, ability etc rolls if magic is used in a situation matching one of the spell keywords?

Either could be appropriate depending on how you fluffed it in setting. To say there is some ONE mechanic for any given fluff piece is weird, but eh, I disagree with the idea that mechanics inform flavor. When I'm using a fireball to cause damage to enemies (mechanic) it doesn't matter that I'm using explosive pixie powder instead of bat guano (flavor). Still a big ball of fire. Now should a setting influence the flavor of things, sure. I wouldn't expect guns to be in Forgotten Realms. As to your last point about having rules for grids and LOS being actively unhelpful to a game, I have no idea how that even begins to make sense. Even Vampire has rules for where things are in relation to you and could easily be played with a grid and miniatures. I don't believe that affected the ability to play a game of heroism and personal morality at all.

Vanguard · May 2012

To put it simply, both the fluff and the crunch make up the flavor.

Nealneal · May 2012

Then you are using flavor in a way that I've never seen. To me flavor is fluff.

Jam Warrior · May 2012

Vanguard wrote: »

To put it simply, both the fluff and the crunch make up the flavor.

I'm suddenly hungry for a bowl of lucky charms.

SkyCaptain · May 2012

Crunch is anything that is required by the rules. This includes things like fire, wind, earth, etc. if they have mechanics attached to them. Fluff / flavor is everything else.

Aegeri · May 2012

SUPERSUGA wrote: »

Although this article has its own issues (the sniper example isn't fantastic) I generally agree with the author's philosophy on niche protection and player engagement.

Here's the particularly relevant part, underlined for emphasis.

What this piece of advice reveals about the hobby, of course, is that too many people still persist in seeing RPG play as linear. The GM thinks of a scenario that he believes will be fun, with a beginning, middle and end, and the players follow it through to its conclusion. If the players don't have fun, it's the GM's fault, because it's the GM's job to be on his knees under the table giving them orgasms.

All of this falls away if you pursue nonlinearity. This is the USP of RPGs: the GM creating a setting, with hooks to get the players involved, and the players going about their business in a way they deem best. Computers can't emulate this well. It's one of the huge advantages that pen-and-paper has over the computer game. And yet for some reason the vast majority of players still don't seem to have got the message yet.

Now, this isn't to say the GM doesn't have a role in this. If the player wants to be a ninja and is doing ninja-ish things, the GM needs to support him in that. When he makes ninja plans to ninja stuff the fuck up, the GM needs to interpret his ideas favourably, and certainly shouldn't be saying "Nah, you can't do that". The GM's job is to be the catalyst for, to encourage, creativity. But there's a world of difference between that and the GM engineering things to suit specific players.

Personally, I don't really agree entirely with the core of that argument but I do understand (and think it's good) to have games be as flexible as possible. Ultimately with a system like 4E, which has an incredibly deep combat system at its core if I am running DnD 4E: It's for the combat system. If I am not going to run a combat heavy DnD game, then I am not going to be running DnD at all and will do something else (like when I gave up 3.x I went to Call of Cthulhu and never looked back). Therefore, I want to ensure encounters are the most interesting that I can manage. You can't do that when you give absolute freedom - but you can give a limited amount of freedom if you think about everything carefully enough.

For example in my campaigns pre-computer explosion, both games had entirely non-linear "objectives", while still being in a linear framework. Players could encounter or entirely skip certain places or things, depending entirely on what they chose (or chose not) to do. This was labor intensive and my players already missed a lot of encounters in both games, but the satisfaction of giving them far more freedom was worth it. At the same time that "Freedom" came at a cost of still requiring me to carefully make encounters that would be interesting.

I long since lost interest in "Oh man, just throw 5 kobolds at the party and call it a day". It was boring, unimaginative and in the end I thought "Why not just give them the XP anyway and not waste anyone's time?". I began thinking more about "What does this encounter add? What does it do differently? Is it narratively important? Introduce a new NPC? Make the PCs have to think in a new or novel way?" etc. If I could make an interesting encounter combining traps, new creatures my players hadn't encountered before or a strong narrative element (like an important NPC they need to interrogate/save/etc) then I added it. If I ever felt tempted to just have "random doods because I need an encounter" I culled it and just ended the session early (which was surprisingly rare for me to do actually).

I started regularly getting interesting combats that had cool moments in just about all of them: Or were at least a novel or different challenge. It was an immense amount of work - which is why I could never pull off being a truly linear game - but the encounters added to the narrative in many cases and by removing "Cruft" encounters I avoided the general complaint of "Long, boring combats". Because I didn't have the whole "boring combat part", even if they sometimes were long. You can't design tons of random encounters (or just encounters) for a non-linear game ("Design" being a rather tenuous description) and expect quality encounters consistently that can avoid the major pitfalls of DnD.

In 3rd edition for example, I would need to spend hours carefully crafting encounters around magic users (this was pretty much 99% of my prep work every encounter) and they would get broken anyway (because the sheer number of rules was impossible to keep up with, and there is no consistency in mechanics). In 4E 99% of my prep work was making an encounter unique and awesome - not getting around groups or particular characters in the party. But still that was a huge amount of work, which only got worse as you got to epic because suddenly the amount of stuff you had to work with got lower and lower. 4E is not a system that thinks a battle on an open farm at level 20+ is still interesting. Yet Wizards epic (actually high levels in general) support was miserable and that's pretty much why I have not gone back to 4E since.

I can't imagine putting the time I did into making interesting encounters and making hundreds of them, so I much prefer to be semi-linear - but still story driven - as opposed to making non-linear sandboxes. Given that I feel 4E when ran this way would run into the problem of "long, boring combats that don't do anything except pass time" compared to my method, which really minimized the amount of encounters my players thought were outright entirely boring, I'll stick to my method.

Now if I'm running Call of Cthulhu on the other hand, no way am I going to run that in such a directed linear fashion as I would 4E. Different games promote different approaches better, who would have honestly thought!?

Tox · May 2012

Mr_Rose wrote: »

On intimidation in combat, I always thought it was a bit off that you had to specifically try to scare opponents off, instead of them just seeing you exploding heir mate's head and booking it because fuck that noise.

Accordingly, I wouldn't mind some sort of morale system in 5e; anyone know if that's likely? Or even just a "passive intimidate" score...

That's a good place for DM fiat. And I've had DMs do that, and as a DM I've done that. Personally, it doesn't always work, and over half the time the PCs try to chase them down anyway.

I think they toyed with having a Morale System as an optional rule for DMs to use to help them find a good point at which the monsters GTFO.

Also there are things you can get (Yakuza theme, off the top of my head) that let you do an Intimidate check as a free action when you drop an enemy.

Talonrazor · May 2012

Fantastic post, Aegeri and an important lesson to all GMs about encounter creation.

RiemannLives · May 2012

Vanguard wrote: »

Mikey CTS wrote: »

@Vanguard How the fuck long are we going to have to hear you go on and on about Burning Wheel in the D&D 5e thread? It's getting old. If you want to talk about Burning Wheel and how IT'S BETTER THAN EVER POSSIBLE SYSTEM EVER!!1!1! then I think you should make a thread about that and stop shitting all over this one.

I'll wait to be infracted for this comment.

Can you point me to the comment where I said any of that? This tangent came as a result of SJ claiming game mechanics do not add flavor.

I provided examples from systems that did. One of them (I did mention more than one) happened to be BW. Misdirected rage much?

If we're limited to talking about 5E and 5E only, it's a pretty short discussion since we don't have all that much information yet. And since the game is still very much in the "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" phase of development, it only seems natural to bring other game systems to the conversation about what we hope, expect, and do not want.

well I think you really should make clear more often your previous statement that you have never played 4th ed D&D (edit: misremembered here where your other Burning Wheel > D&D screed was. I meant you should have made it clear in D&D chat)

So when you start making sweeping statements about flavor mechanics for spells and such you are basing your statments about D&D on either older editions than what everyone else is talking about (without stating you are doing so, and you frequently are giving the impression you are talking about 4th ed from experience) OR you are just theorycrafting.

poshniallo · May 2012

Counterspin wrote: »

But theme isn't fluff. Fluff is the description of something within the boundaries of the game world. I've played D&D characters whose classes have changed over the course of the game, without making any real differences in their fluff presentation. In my 4e game, I allowed people to use the mechanics for races from newer rule books, races that didn't exist in my setting, but they had to use one of the existing races as the fluff.

One could happily hook up any of the mechanics for race in 4e to human and make it work with a little thought. If mechanics and fluff were wedded together, that wouldn't be possible.

I hate to go all debate-ish on you, but what you've done there is define 'fluff' as 'all the stuff you can do that aren't mechanics'.

Vanguard · May 2012

RiemannLives wrote: »

Vanguard wrote: »

Mikey CTS wrote: »

@Vanguard How the fuck long are we going to have to hear you go on and on about Burning Wheel in the D&D 5e thread? It's getting old. If you want to talk about Burning Wheel and how IT'S BETTER THAN EVER POSSIBLE SYSTEM EVER!!1!1! then I think you should make a thread about that and stop shitting all over this one.

I'll wait to be infracted for this comment.

Can you point me to the comment where I said any of that? This tangent came as a result of SJ claiming game mechanics do not add flavor.

I provided examples from systems that did. One of them (I did mention more than one) happened to be BW. Misdirected rage much?

If we're limited to talking about 5E and 5E only, it's a pretty short discussion since we don't have all that much information yet. And since the game is still very much in the "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" phase of development, it only seems natural to bring other game systems to the conversation about what we hope, expect, and do not want.

well I think you really should make clear more often your previous statement that you have never played 4th ed D&D (edit: misremembered here where your other Burning Wheel > D&D screed was. I meant D&D chat)

So when you start making sweeping statements about flavor mechanics for spells and such you are basing your statments about D&D on either older editions than what everyone else is talking about (without stating you are doing so, and you frequently are giving the impression you are talking about 4th ed from experience) OR you are just theorycrafting.

What? I made like two statements about 4E, one of which was prefaced by the fact that I have not played it.

Every other time I referenced the game system I was referring to or I clarified when asked. Maybe you could stop assuming things?

Neither of my two claims require intimate knowledge of the system. The first, that there is little difference between the feel of daily powers, spells, and what used to be class specific abilities, is pretty easy to spot just by reading the rules. There is a wealth of reviews of 4E that talk about this.

The other was a claim that healing surges can act like a second wind.

Neither of these are baseless theorycrafting.

Antimatter · May 2012

Der Waffle Mous wrote: »

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4dreye/20120502

So I get it. Many of you want to see more respect shown to the depictions of genders in our product. You'll get no argument from me on this point. I, too, get sick of DD cups and chainmail bikinis. I'll admit it: many artists have a love affair with beautiful objects (including me—remember, I mentioned this earlier about myself). It is tough to get an artist to give me an image of an "ugly" character without actually asking for it. They inherently want to give me something beautiful. Does that mean we're always stuck with amazingly beautiful people in amazingly awkward poses in stereotypical roles? No, we have opportunities to show more diversity and realism.

I'm sick of DD cups and chainmail bikinis. DD cups and overly small corsets are where its at.

What? That's still sexist? My core demographic of older adult males doesn't think so about this beautiful object.

Al Baron · May 2012

Yes, 'beautiful object' doesn't sound creepy at all.

poshniallo · May 2012

That, like so many other WOTC articles, is face-palm worthy.

He's like Spinal Tap or something.

Counterspin · May 2012

poshniallo wrote: »

I hate to go all debate-ish on you, but what you've done there is define 'fluff' as 'all the stuff you can do that aren't mechanics'.

The goal was to use some examples of what I view as "fluff" in an attempt to tease out how you use it. Fluff isn't stuff you can do, it's how you describe what you do. "1d10 damage to a creature within 10 ft" is a thing you can do, a mechanic. Describing that effect as a magic dart or a ghostly eagle is fluff.

Vanguard · May 2012

Counterspin wrote: »

poshniallo wrote: »

I hate to go all debate-ish on you, but what you've done there is define 'fluff' as 'all the stuff you can do that aren't mechanics'.

The goal was to use some examples of what I view as "fluff" in an attempt to tease out how you use it. Fluff isn't stuff you can do, it's how you describe what you do. "1d10 damage to a creature within 10 ft" is a thing you can do, a mechanic. Describing that effect as a magic dart or a ghostly eagle is fluff.

I know I'm opening a can of worms, but this definition is too neat.

When the system demands that you role dice, is that fluff or mechanics? Both, I would argue. The dice you roll, the way success of failure is determined--those are the mechanical sides of things. However, rolling dice is only meaningful in the context of a situation. The situation is a product of the implied setting and the collective imagination of the group.

Example: a low-level character with the skill scaling a cliff is going to need to make Climb checks. Would a high-level character need to roll to scale that same cliff if they have the skill and the appropriate gear? No. At some level, the risk of failure is so small that rolling the nice is neither meaningful nor interesting. The resolution of this action can be delegated entirely to description based on how experienced you are.

By your definition this is fluff. I just don't see how it could be when it's so obviously based on the crunchy bits of your character.

My dictionary of terms:

Crunch: The mechanical side of things.

Fluff: The imagined side of things.

Flavor: The intersection of the fluff and the crunch.

SageinaRage · May 2012

Hey, so I haven't really kept up with the news on 5e for a couple months. Anything interesting or concrete come out?

Antimatter · May 2012

SageinaRage wrote: »

Hey, so I haven't really kept up with the news on 5e for a couple months. Anything interesting or concrete come out?

Monte is gone, high level classes equal, sexism still in the system

Vanguard · May 2012

Antimatter wrote: »

SageinaRage wrote: »

Hey, so I haven't really kept up with the news on 5e for a couple months. Anything interesting or concrete come out?

Monte is gone, high level classes equal, sexism still in the system

Also, actual open-playtests soon.

Denada · May 2012

SageinaRage wrote: »

Hey, so I haven't really kept up with the news on 5e for a couple months. Anything interesting or concrete come out?

Monte Cook quit. Public playtest is coming soon. Fighters should be the best at fighting.

I think that's about it.

SageinaRage · May 2012

Well I do like when fighters are good at fighting.

SJ · May 2012

Vanguard wrote: »

This is a silly argument. They are not entirely apart from one another.

Let's say you are designing spell mechanics and you include rules for varying degrees of failure. This decision effects the flavor of magic in your game. Suddenly, it's dangerous.

Or let's say you're writing fluff for a world and you decide that magic is unpredictable and dangerous. When you design the mechanics, you keep this in mind, and the fallout from failed casting reflects this.

Or let's say that you describe your magic as dangerous, but none of the mechanics support this. The flavor of the game is off because there is dissonance between the crunchy side and the fluffy side of the game.

Mechanics support the flavor and vice versa.

Once again, I could turn all of these into various kinds of farming and their resultant effects on your crops and sales. Because mechanics and flavor are completely independent of one another.

Penny Arcade

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