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[D&D 5E] Playtest of Chaos (Post-Playtest Discussion)

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Posts

  • oxybeoxybe Entei is appaled and disappointed in you Registered User regular
    I ain't having no quitters on my team! We can get through this!

    When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons, what the hell am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Xi Rhox lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I’m gonna get my mages to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!

    By which I mean this module is a lemon and we need to apply more fire to it.

    you can read my collected ravings at oxybesothertumbr.tumblr.com
    -Weather Badge
  • DenadaDenada Registered User regular
    Anialos wrote: »
    Yup! No way we live through this. None.

    This is almost 100% certain. Particularly because there's a trap somewhere in this dungeon that I'm not modifying. I would say more, but that would ruin the "fun."

  • NealnealNealneal Registered User regular
    Speak for yourselves...Kelmon plans to make it out fully healthy and carrying the bodies/dust piles of his allies.

  • oxybeoxybe Entei is appaled and disappointed in you Registered User regular
    SO MANY THINGS TO INTERACT WITH!

    I JUST WANNA PUSH ALL THE BUTTONS!

    you can read my collected ravings at oxybesothertumbr.tumblr.com
    -Weather Badge
  • DenadaDenada Registered User regular
    Welp, I think we've seen everything 5E has to offer at this point. Unless you guys find some way to bring Kelmon, Herman, and Ibilid back from a watery grave, I'm going to call this playtest done.

    So what are your final impressions of 5E? Strengths? Weaknesses? What about the Caves of Chaos and the Mud Sorcerer's Tomb? Would you consider those good adventures, iconic adventures, or both?

  • NealnealNealneal Registered User regular
    edited February 2013
    Final Impression of 5e: This is a game for people who aren't me. I won't be following the playtest any longer and good luck to Wizards because this is a pile of crap that I don't think is salvagable at this point.

    Nealneal on
  • DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    edited February 2013
    A fitting iconic end!

    DevoutlyApathetic on
    Nod. Get treat. PSN: Quippish
  • NullzoneNullzone Registered User regular
    Just...curious, are you entirely basing your impressions of the game on a pair of deathtrap adventures created way back in first edition?

    Have you tried anything tamer?

  • NealnealNealneal Registered User regular
    I've run it/played it with my home group and it is annoying to run and unfun to play in my opinion.

  • NullzoneNullzone Registered User regular
    That's fair haha, I just wasn't sure if you had played anything other than the stuff in the packet which is honestly a poor showing for a clean slate game :P

    It's very clear to me that the game is focused first on drawing in the old guard and second on just being all around good; I'm not particularly fond of it either.

  • ElldrenElldren Is a woman dammit ceterum censeoRegistered User regular
    Nullzone wrote: »
    Just...curious, are you entirely basing your impressions of the game on a pair of deathtrap adventures created way back in first edition?

    Have you tried anything tamer?

    Well they are in the playtest packet

    Clearly somebody thinks they provide the appropriate impression of the game

    fuck gendered marketing
  • oxybeoxybe Entei is appaled and disappointed in you Registered User regular
    do note that this is a death trap adventure they updated and revised with the sole purpose of being a quick entry into playtesting how 5th ed is supposed to work at high levels. this isn't just Denada picking an adventure at random: this is WotC's deliberate decision to include it as part of the playtest material with the purpose of testing how the gameplays.

    on the flipside, we don't really need to try anything "tamer". if anything, something "tamer" won't let us get a feel for 5th ed.

    i can roleplay in any system, but roleplay alone doesn't tell me if a system is good or not. i play in a weekly pathfinder game, but i'm not going to say it's because i find pathfinder to be the bee's knees... i find the system to be as flawed as 3.5 (in slightly different ways at time, mind you) and i have no love for it. i keep playing pathfinder because the group is awesome and we've been gaming for about 7 years together now. good company is hard to find and they're good company.

    going back to the playtest, we got a taste of character creation, leveling up (Xi was initially a level 1 character who leveled to 14), combat, exploration, skill use, traps, etc... as badly written as the module was, the system did not do much to appeal to me.

    you can read my collected ravings at oxybesothertumbr.tumblr.com
    -Weather Badge
  • NealnealNealneal Registered User regular
    edited February 2013
    I wanted it to be good. I really did. I had the second playtest packet printed up all professional like for the players in my home group. I was just so happy that things seemed to be moving in a direction we would like. We feel like it's been going backwards ever since. As the Mud Sorcerer's Tomb began to wear on, I regretted staying in this pbp, but Denada is so awesome that I had to see what he'd do with it. The difference between Kelmon and Amon'kul (see signature) as sword and board fighters was ridiculous. Amon'kul feels powerful, Kelmon felt useless most of the time. He smacked a golem pretty good and through sheer luck happened to have the right weapon to fight the mummies, but I never felt engaged with him.

    Nealneal on
  • ElldrenElldren Is a woman dammit ceterum censeoRegistered User regular
    It felt like every single puzzle or encounter required you to have the correct magic to solve. I don't know if that was deliberately left that way for 5e or if it was just lazy design/redesign, but neither of those options give me any confidence in the game and its development

    fuck gendered marketing
  • oxybeoxybe Entei is appaled and disappointed in you Registered User regular
    yeah the high point of the playtest was being GM'd by Denada. many props to you for doing this!

    you can read my collected ravings at oxybesothertumbr.tumblr.com
    -Weather Badge
  • DenadaDenada Registered User regular
    Heh, thanks. I'll be honest, I'm kind of glad most of you failed those saves. I was as ready (if not more ready) to be done with the playtest as you guys were.

    It's been a really interesting contrast for me, though. At the same time that I was running this playtest I've also been running a Gamma World PbP and the difference has been really exceptional. The next edition of D&D is shaping up to be something that I would not want to work with. There's just not anything I can get out of this system that I can't get in a better way elsewhere.

  • XagarXagar Registered User regular
    I'll admit I didn't read the rules too carefully, but is there ever any reason for a melee dude not to trip the badguy and punch him a couple times with advantage?

  • DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    Judging a system by the example adventures included is more than fair as a measure of the kind of adventures are intended to be run with the system.

    In Next's case the answer appears to be: Shitty ones.

    Nod. Get treat. PSN: Quippish
  • Der Waffle MousDer Waffle Mous Blame this on the misfortune of your birth. New Yark, New Yark.Registered User regular
    Finally, the sweet release of not having to put up with this crap anymore.

    I was actually kinda disappointed I didn't get petrified earlier on.

    Steam PSN: DerWaffleMous Origin: DerWaffleMous Bnet: DerWaffle#1682
  • oxybeoxybe Entei is appaled and disappointed in you Registered User regular
    not really no, barring the calculated kill strike or alpha strike (in essence a strike that you know can finish off an enemy if you put all dice towards damage or if the entire party bum rushes one guy, and even then the first PC to hit with melee should probably do a trip to let his buddies hit better.)

    5th ed allows you to split your movement before and after your attack action, this means you can (as Xi did) move > attack > move. since it lacks anything akin to a "full round action" like 3rd ed, your standard action is generally your most powerful thing for the turn.

    if you can trip on that attack action, you're cutting off an enemy's ability to come at you and do his one powerful thing in your face and if you do a tripping retreat, his one counter attack will be at disadvantage. do note that only the three dice version is really worth doing since that removes the enemy's full move to get up. the one and two dice versions only make it require 5ft of movement to get up.

    but either way, you're giving up about 10 damage to basically immobilize a melee enemy.

    while Xi was slightly hurt in the golem fight and badly injured in the mummy fight, in both situations the only attack that connected was their first hits, thanks to how easy it is for a monk to max his def to about 20ish, then add disadvantage.

    going back to judging the system by the adventure, the adventure allowed us to test:

    Exploration
    Ease of Rule Adjudication (ask Denada about this more then us players)
    Non-standard party composition in a published module
    Skill Use & Stat Rolls (both to do a task and in response to abilities)
    Combat Rules
    Character Building at levels above 1
    Character Leveling (Xi was initially a level 1 character for the caves of chaos adventure)

    while it's a general agreement with the people involved with this playtest that the adventure was shitty (and i'll be honest: generally speaking i'm not a fan of published adventures), we were still able to test the rules, which was the point of a playtest.

    my final verdict is... not interested. while i know that this isn't the final product, it's a clear indication of the direction they're going in barring some rather radical design changes.

    you can read my collected ravings at oxybesothertumbr.tumblr.com
    -Weather Badge
  • NullzoneNullzone Registered User regular
    Judging a system by the example adventures included is more than fair as a measure of the kind of adventures are intended to be run with the system.

    In Next's case the answer appears to be: Shitty ones.

    I've gotten the sense from lurking in CF for a while that many of the folks who were playing this game are pretty seasoned roleplayers, probably moreso than me even, and get into that aspect even more than I do. So I was curious to measure my experiences with Next vs someone who put a higher stake in that sort of aspect than I might, and I got what I came for.

    Don't get me wrong, I wasn't trying to go all britneyfan on you guys - it was a mere curiosity as to how much your experience was being colored by the nature of the adventures, vs objective examination of the game system itself. Based on the other commentary above, there's plenty of both, which kind of makes me feel better about my mostly negative opinion of the system.

  • DenadaDenada Registered User regular
    Like I said before, being able to run Next and Gamma World side by side really made things clear for me. Everywhere that Next tries to do something well, Gamma World actually does something well.

    Let's compare rules adjudication, using a simple scenario:

    Bluffing the Guards
    Octzi needs to pretend to be an alien so that he can get onto their spaceship and find out what's going on in there. He's stopped by a couple of guards, so he needs to bluff his way in. Luckily, he just watched a bunch of DVDs about these aliens, so he knows something about their culture. He's trying to make them think he's a scientist who brought some salvage with him.

    In Gamma World I gave him a +2 bonus to his Interaction and Science checks when dealing with the aliens because he watched those DVDs. This took about 5 seconds of thought, because I knew what the DCs would be, what his bonus to those skills were, and how much of a benefit I wanted him to have. It worked out perfectly, being just enough of a bonus to push him over the edge a few times, without making the scene a cake-walk.

    In Next I'm honestly not sure what to do. How high is he going to roll on his Skill Die, if he has the appropriate skill? Is a +2 even going to matter? And if I give him Advantage instead of a flat bonus, is that going to make things too easy? Or is it going to make any difference at all? I want him to be roughly 10% better at what he's trying to do, but I have no way of knowing if that's what I'm going to get.

  • ChrysisChrysis Registered User regular
    Ah, so that's what the watery grave business was all about. That sure was a thing.

    Thanks to Denada for running it, it was good times. Not because of the system mind, I think I'll stick to running the 40K ones myself. At least there dying a messy death is supposed to be the norm.

    Tri-Optimum reminds you that there are only one-hundred-sixty-three shopping days until Christmas. Just 1 extra work cycle twice a week will give you the spending money you need to make this holiday a very special one.
  • Der Waffle MousDer Waffle Mous Blame this on the misfortune of your birth. New Yark, New Yark.Registered User regular
    Yeah!

    Its a credit to your GMing skills that it was as entertaining as it was.

    Steam PSN: DerWaffleMous Origin: DerWaffleMous Bnet: DerWaffle#1682
  • tzeentchlingtzeentchling Doctor of Rocks OaklandRegistered User regular
    That death trap was... anticlimactic. Very amateur DM hour/bad design, seemingly made so the DM can say "I win!". "Rocks fall, everyone dies" is not the fun way of going about building even a death trap dungeon.

  • DenadaDenada Registered User regular
    That death trap was... anticlimactic. Very amateur DM hour/bad design, seemingly made so the DM can say "I win!". "Rocks fall, everyone dies" is not the fun way of going about building even a death trap dungeon.

    Yeah it is absolutely one of the worst gotcha-traps I've ever seen. Hahaha, you didn't say you were avoiding the rug! Now you're dead and I win!

    By the way, if you guys had avoided the rug, there was another trap in there that had the effect of putting one of you to sleep for one year. And if you manage to avoid that the information you get is false anyway.

  • LockedOnTargetLockedOnTarget Registered User regular
  • AnialosAnialos Collies are love, Collies are life! Shadowbrook ColliesRegistered User regular
    Thanks for running this @Denada, I'll definitely not be playing Next anytime soon. All 13th Age for me!

  • tzeentchlingtzeentchling Doctor of Rocks OaklandRegistered User regular
    Denada wrote: »
    That death trap was... anticlimactic. Very amateur DM hour/bad design, seemingly made so the DM can say "I win!". "Rocks fall, everyone dies" is not the fun way of going about building even a death trap dungeon.

    Yeah it is absolutely one of the worst gotcha-traps I've ever seen. Hahaha, you didn't say you were avoiding the rug! Now you're dead and I win!

    By the way, if you guys had avoided the rug, there was another trap in there that had the effect of putting one of you to sleep for one year. And if you manage to avoid that the information you get is false anyway.

    It's like, compare that trap to the (semi-spoiler for Tomb of Horrors)
    sphere of annihilation in the mouth of the demonic door in Tomb of Horror. Both traps will kill you if you're not cautious. This trap could potentially be escaped, if you had the right items or spells (which nothing else in the dungeon could have prepared you to have). But there was no way for this trap to be obviously avoided, no reason for the trap to be there, and it plays no real part. The sphere, on the other hand, plays off the fact that the party must advance through the tomb, and doorways with potential magical darkness beyond are not uncommon. Being reckless and just going forward will in fact get one killed for good reason. There's also clear ways to avoid or acknowledge the trap, even for non-spellcasters, ways that aren't totally uncommon (great use for that 10-ft pole).

  • tzeentchlingtzeentchling Doctor of Rocks OaklandRegistered User regular
    For an alternate way out, considering that the trap was sprung by the rug, one could make it so that destroying the rug (say, with a torch) might free the people trapped inside. That's an easy way of "fixing" it so that people outside could help.

  • AegeriAegeri Tiny wee bacteriums Plateau of LengRegistered User regular
    Nullzone wrote: »
    Just...curious, are you entirely basing your impressions of the game on a pair of deathtrap adventures created way back in first edition?

    Have you tried anything tamer?

    Why should that matter? Wizards are giving this out as a playtest and using these adventures as representative. If I was to make an adventure like this and the players fail, would you turn around and complain that it wasn't fair as it wasn't an official adventure?

    Honestly, their shitty game design and equally bad adventure design goes hand in hand with this editon. Even 4es worst adventures didn't have anything on the scale of bullshit like this. Not a single adventure assumed you absolutely had to have a specific subset of abilities - conveniently found only on casters, how iconic! - or outright completely die without a chance to a single roll.

    I am unsure if I would have changed the adventure here or just did as Denada did and go with rules as written.

    The Roleplayer's Guild: My blog for roleplaying games, advice and adventuring.
  • AnialosAnialos Collies are love, Collies are life! Shadowbrook ColliesRegistered User regular
    It's like they took the worst of the bullshit encounters from Lair Assault then toned down the character power and turned up the "kill them" nob to 11. Then instead of having it as a special "challenge" mode for those that like pounding roofing nails through their tingly bits, decided it should be the play test material. Hmm, yes, this will make me play your "D&D Next" WoTC, how clever of you.

  • ChrysisChrysis Registered User regular
    It's gratifying to know, that in a room full of bullshit traps, I somehow chose to jump up and down on the trigger for the biggest one.

    Tri-Optimum reminds you that there are only one-hundred-sixty-three shopping days until Christmas. Just 1 extra work cycle twice a week will give you the spending money you need to make this holiday a very special one.
  • XagarXagar Registered User regular
    If only the Portable Rogue had been thrown on the rug.

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