Zero Buzz on 5E...Is It Dead Out The Gate?

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Sun Jun 29, 2014 7:38 am

Wiseman wrote:The elemental planes are interesting though, although I'll admit I'm hard pressed to come up with reasonable adventures in them that don't involve wizards (or archivists) building an obscure lair there.

You should check out the Book of Elements. It's a Tome-style sourcebook for the Elemental planes and has a great section full of adventure seeds that really help bring the Planes to life.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Sun Jun 29, 2014 7:41 am

That page is actually blank, probably because that's the old wiki. This is the wiki you're looking for... move along.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sun Jun 29, 2014 11:13 am

DSMatticus wrote:Planescape is a shitty setting with a great pitch. The fundamental idea of urban adventure at the center of the multiverse interspersed with infinite plane hopping is sweet, but the actual implementation shat out into the books is pretty dreadful.

Isn't that, wrong? Your argument from that premise was sound, but the pitch of Planescape leads inevitably to a game where the PCs are safe at home (because Sigil is safe) and can murder-hobo through an infinity of infinities without consequence or any hope of ever changing or achieving anything at all. Only you're a sheep-centaur rather than an Elf.

The Planescape modules and books ended up destroying the setting inside the city (of ineffectual groups who ... don't even fight, but sometimes talk like they might) because nothing they could do outside Sigil would mean anything. And once those groups were destroyed they ... just made more groups who also did nothing.

OK, that's the setting, I suppose. Pitch as "use the planes for low level adventure" without a safehouse is just where you find any legit planes monster and die. The safehouse has to be part of the pitch and that prevents it working anyway.

Serial games I guess, no consequences or plots or recurring maps, villians, or environments, like TOS Star Trek. But then you don't want a city, you want a Book of the Infinite Plains.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Sun Jun 29, 2014 11:59 am

I'm absolutely certain that part of the reason that Planescape gets so much hate is the 'lexicon' that they tried to include, and GMs who insisted it be followed, burk.

angelfromanotherpin · Sun Jun 29, 2014 12:52 pm

One of my friends noticed that Wizards was looking for a new lead editor two weeks before their flagship product releases. He thought it was a bad sign, I'm not so sure, but I thought I'd bring it up here.

http://company.wizards.com/about/career ... ers-view=1

edit: link

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Jun 29, 2014 12:52 pm

It's berk. It's Cockney, berk = Berkley hunt = [EDITED]. Now pike off.

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Sun Jun 29, 2014 4:34 pm

angelfromanotherpin wrote:One of my friends noticed that Wizards was looking for a new lead editor two weeks before their flagship product releases. He thought it was a bad sign, I'm not so sure, but I thought I'd bring it up here.

http://company.wizards.com/about/career ... ers-view=1

edit: link

And again they are seeking to hire someone to run a major product line, one that should generate millions of dollars of revenue per year, and they are not willing to pay relocation.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sun Jun 29, 2014 5:11 pm

And again, they want:

10,000 hours of game play and experience.

That's one weekly 8-hour session for the past 24 years, assuming you didn't have to skip for holidays or jobs or somesuch.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Sun Jun 29, 2014 5:53 pm

deaddmwalking wrote:I'm absolutely certain that part of the reason that Planescape gets so much hate is the 'lexicon' that they tried to include

Have no idea what that is but the whole concept of plane hopping is as sour a tatse as Ravenloft jsut going to the mists, and well the Manual of the planes tell s you pretty much how to make you own "other dimensions" so why need a whole damn setting for that? because when you add it to Spelljammer and force the multiple world philosophy you can sell grandpas Buck Rogers game to people or at least force the company you run to pay you to license it and make products from it and steal money in the form or royalties on the IP.

so management wanted a "world" to act as the MotP and assign it to Zeb, and he had to make it. Then Monte Cook masturbates at the thought of it and D&D is drug into the depths of shit and stupidity ever sense.

it is shit, created for shit reasons, and enjoyed by shit designers, all because of shit management. that is why Planescape gets "hate".

Cyberzombie · Post by **Cyberzombie** » Sun Jun 29, 2014 7:33 pm

deaddmwalking wrote:I'm absolutely certain that part of the reason that Planescape gets so much hate is the 'lexicon' that they tried to include, and GMs who insisted it be followed, burk.

PS became popular because it gave people a nice excuse to play a githyanki or some other weird planar creature, and it let a lot of people explore exotic planar environments that you previously rarely ever got to. It was hard for the DM to ever veto any weird character concepts, because hey, it was planescape and that shit was weird. Further, because you got to basically teleport around the multiverse, it was easy to just play that random CN guy who kills whoever he doesn't like and nobody ever finds out what you did.

The main reason Planescape got hate was because if you wanted to do anything other than be mass murdering treasure-gatherers, you were basically out of luck. In theory you could get anywhere from Sigil. In actuality, infinite planes and requiring a portal to get anywhere was the settings tools of forcing you on rails.

When the adventure was done, nobody would probably hear of what you did because the infinite planes and all. So while most settings at least let you be "Those guys that killed that dragon" or "Those guys that got knighted", in planescape, probably nobody ever heard of you unless the place you visited had some strong connection with Sigil for whatever reason. While this was a benefit for PCs that just wanted to go on an NPC killing spree, it was a turn-off for people that wanted their characters to have an actual reputation. Everything you did outside Sigil was basically meaningless. Nobody would ever hear of it, and you'd probably never go back there again after the quest was over. All that mattered was how much treasure you pulled.

PS seemed almost deliberately designed as a central hub for organized play events. Since it gave you an easy way for different adventures to mix and match, and allowed you to easily use material from any of the other settings. But I guess it was just too weird even for Organized RPG groups.

ACOS · Post by **ACOS** » Sun Jun 29, 2014 9:19 pm

As I see it, PS has 2 1 ways to be played that isn't guaranteed to end in tears:
(1) You never leave Sigil, except for the occasional mcguffin, and simply play Faction politics; and even then, you have to keep your scope to a level that doesn't ire LoP
(2) base the campaign in a border town, with a very tightly defined plot; and never see Sigil except for the occasional mcguffin

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sun Jun 29, 2014 11:56 pm

Most of my Planescape experience comes from Torment, but it seems like Planescape really isn't about fighting at all and if you do get into a fight you screwed up somewhere.

Planescape works when you can network. It's a game about spreading your preferred philosophy as if it were a multi-level marketing scheme.

Because while you can't accomplish all that much by fighting, you can totally rearrange the universe through propaganda.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 12:29 am

One friend who likes Planescape (and 2Ed in general, but more in the sense of "I grew up on AD&D and it's what I'm used to" than "I'm just a total shit") tried to explain what makes it special, once.

"D&D basically always gets to the point where the PCs are bigger than everyone else and you can't have any kind of political game because they can just instantly go to plan B: kill it. Planescape changes that. You're supposed to stay low-level, and basically you'll do political stuff and deal with factions and this week you'll have a demon boss who won't just eat you because he'll be destroyed for it, but next week it's an angel boss who has no hard feelings about the previous demon boss."

Which sounds like a grand idea and all, I can see how someone would want Planescape to be that, and how people might play it out like that... but that's not how it's actually written in the books you get.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 2:33 am

Further, with everything social handled by 'what seems reasonable', it would absolutely require a good GM to make the game fun. And if you have a good GM, you can make almost anything fun.

I think the game succeeds not on it's own merits, but rather on the ability of others to breathe life into the setting.

Cyberzombie · Post by **Cyberzombie** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 3:11 am

deaddmwalking wrote: I think the game succeeds not on it's own merits, but rather on the ability of others to breathe life into the setting.

That's generally the truth of all RPGs. I mean if you look at the non-D&D RPGs that have become big, it's almost always due to setting. Rifts, white wolf, Shadowrun, all games with awful rules that people adore because of the setting. Even GURPS has setting source material that even non-GURPS players can enjoy reading.

While there's a lot of complaining about bad RPG rules, it's almost never bad rules that causes a game to do terrible, but rather bad settings.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 3:54 am

That's an interesting posit, Cyberzombie.

I wonder though, if bad settings are strongly associated with bad rules because of general designer incompetency. 4e D&D has a Clayton's setting, and also dysfunctional rules because there were a bunch of ass-hats writing it all.

Like, the minimalist setting of 3e's limited "back to the dungeon" Greyhawk fluff don't seem to hurt sales, and yet something like Blue Rose seems to have done better when they threw the setting out and presented the rules as True20.

It could easily be that good rules and good fluff are the sign of people who understand the game, care about it, and hold better personal standards than just keeping a chair warm at the office.

The fact that most rules are crap is ... maybe just a natural condition of an open-ended fantasy world simulator run on a handful of dice. Shadowrun's flawed, but it's not as bad as a bunch of other games, it does work for most starting characters doing what they're told they can do.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 6:31 am

Josh_Kablack wrote:And again, they want:

10,000 hours of game play and experience.
That's one weekly 8-hour session for the past 24 years, assuming you didn't have to skip for holidays or jobs or somesuch.

The thing that kind of blows me away about this is that despite the fact that I used a 1st edition Fiend Folio as a coloring book back in the 80s, I might not qualify. I played a couple of 2nd edition games in the 80s and 90s, but most of what I played was Shadowrun, Vampire, or Champions. Even when I played fantasy, I mostly used various off-brand rulesets. I don't think branded D&D was a major part of my RPG diet until 3rd edition came out.

I know some seriously hard core roleplayers, and I am one myself. I have written multiple book-length D&D supplements. And I don't think I meet their experience requirements or know anyone who does. Obviously, someone read Outliers: The Story of Success, but without adapting the rule to the realities of the hobby it's just nonsense.

I have no idea whether I could pass a basic and advanced test of D&D brand awareness. I am of the opinion that any brand awareness test that I couldn't pass is essentially insane, but considering the insanity elsewhere in that person spec I would not be surprised. I remember them showing the rules awareness test that Mike Mearls supposedly passed, which was both bogus and sad.

-Username17

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 6:52 am

It just says 10K hours gameplay experience. That could mean D&D, which is hard to meet. Or it could mean "RPGs in general", which is still pretty steep, but not as bad. Or it could mean "any games - board, RP, war, video". Or fuck, they could mean 10k hours of playing their playtests for Next, in which case... anyone who has done that is not someone you would want to actually meet.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 8:33 am

I am probably fairly typical of any intense gamer of my age. I played in high school, and have played a lot in college. But my total hours played (in any sort of TTRPG) still comes out to something like a thousand hours. We might call it two thousand if we count my GM prep time (but probably not, because after the first 200 hours or so I developed a strategy of making settings rather than plots so that I would not require very much prep-time at all past the 20-30 hours of initial campaign design). Even someone who is a decade older (and gamed just as much as a professional as I do now as a college student) and got started a decade earlier would be unlikely to hit more than eight thousand hours. 10,000 hours of gameplay just isn't feasible with the logistics of TTRPGs. Even if you've got a full twenty years to play with, you'd still need to be gaming close to ten hours a week on average. Who games that much, for that long? Are they trying to recruit exclusively from people 40+ years old? That's how old you have to be for even the most extreme of reasonable gaming schedules to produce that much experience.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 10:33 am

Cyberzombie wrote:
deaddmwalking wrote: I think the game succeeds not on it's own merits, but rather on the ability of others to breathe life into the setting.
That's generally the truth of all RPGs. I mean if you look at the non-D&D RPGs that have become big, it's almost always due to setting. Rifts, white wolf, Shadowrun, all games with awful rules that people adore because of the setting. Even GURPS has setting source material that even non-GURPS players can enjoy reading.

While there's a lot of complaining about bad RPG rules, it's almost never bad rules that causes a game to do terrible, but rather bad settings.

But it follows that in a lot of cases, the 'love' is due to the GM running things well, and the 'hate' comes from the GM running things poorly.

That's different from 'appeal'. There are settings that people WANT to love when they first encounter them - but what happens next depends on implementation.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 1:40 pm

Reading comprehension, people.

It says "gameplay and experience." I mean, Frank's probably read it right, because it's still four years of a 40-hour work week plus weekend games, so doing anything else with your life is out, but people who've worked full time in the industry since 2009 are in.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 2:44 pm

tussock wrote:Reading comprehension, people.

It says "gameplay and experience." I mean, Frank's probably read it right, because it's still four years of a 40-hour work week plus weekend games, so doing anything else with your life is out, but people who've worked full time in the industry since 2009 are in.

So that means Robin D Laws, basically?

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 5:16 pm

5th Basic will ahve more 9th level spells than 7th or 8th level.

. http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx ... l/20140630 .

in order to give the cleric something to do other than heal, they gave the cleric some of the wizard spells and no longer offer them to the wizard.

Races: The dwarf, elf, and halfling each feature two subraces: hill dwarves and mountain dwarves, high elves and wood elves, and lightfoot halflings and stout halflings.

this jsut defeats the purpose of Basic. subraces is an advanced thing as it is more customization that is needed for Basic. you jsut need the race, not any damn subraces. subraces shoudl be the module that gets added if you want when you get the PHB, same for the subclasses.

i wonder if they understand the difference between basic and starter?

Basic always has inferred Beginner as in B.A.S.I.C. you don't want all this extra shit in it for beginners. starter is where all those sub-this and sub-that should appear. starter is where you spend $40 to see if you will like the edition before spending the $200 on the full books.

being basic will be free, they really have no need for a starter anyway as basic will be updated throughout the year to include more than PHB info.

Greg Leeds just must love the shape of Mearls mouth, cause sucking his barrel cock has got to be the only reason such an idiot that doesn't understand these things could still have a job. no wonder they are looking for an editor, because 4th is going to come out so screwed up, that nobody should buy books that will be errata'd within a month of them all being put out. i would call the initial run unedited and unchecked and beta dead tree stock.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 5:48 pm

Seriously, I am in the 40+ demographic. And I started gaming at 13 years old. And I spent parts of the college years with weekends consisting of Friday Night to Sunday Afternoon gaming "sleepovers"......

And despite all that I probably don't quite have 10,000 hours of actual play of RPGs. And the edges of the RPG industry are so flaky and shaky that I'm not actually sure what I could count as experience.

To Wit:

Friday, I'm having some folks who worked on 1e Exalted, two other guys who each have successful kickstarter campaigns for their indy boardgames, and another guy who has sold a handful of PF modules via Drive-Thru RPG over for my Indpendence Day cookout. Does arguing with these guys about where NEXT rule design went wrong and how it could be improved over burgers and beerz count as experience? It's not verifiable, but it's a damn sight more relevant to RPG development than my verifiable period of WotC via Adecco paid employment as a WizO was.

So yeah, that qualification is going to eliminate all but 3 sorts of people:

1. Liars. Our best hope as fans is that one of these gets the position.

2. Industry insiders who can count their day job as experience. Given the sales trends of the last edition and a half and the likely projections for NEXT, one of these getting the job does not bode well for the future of D&D.

3. People who are so obsessed with RPGs that they have difficulty functioning in any other social context; like an office. These sorts of people are not going to be able to get product to the table and are going to hit a continue the death spiral of not getting necessary resources from the parent company resulting in shrinking sales resulting in less resources.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 6:20 pm

I'm pretty sure the listing is a sham and the job has already been promised to whatever local crony happens to have the resume they copied their list of 'requirements' from.