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

[fectin]

Of course there's a good reason: they haven't written it yet.

[infected slut princess]

Mearls kept locking himself in his office and fapping all day when he should have been getting some work done

[brized]

The text of both books received a level of review and oversight that sets a new standard for D&D. We added an entire additional cycle of design and editing to ensure that the books were as close to perfect as humanly possible. The layout and visual design was the result of hours spent carefully handcrafting the books. That extra time proved to be a huge boon, as the designers had the chance to go through each book page by page to make sure everything fit perfectly.

With how many many instances of sentences running over columns and pages there are in the PHB, I'd hate to imagine what the previous version looked like. That is, if Mearls isn't lying through his teeth.

[Dogbert]

Earlier editions of D&D were notable precisely because you could crash The Man's coronation and bitchslap him in front of the entire military until he grovelled for the privilege of being your personal French maid.

I wasn't talking about the way d&d used to be or the way it's meant to be, I was talking about what d&d is now. Half the game is basically already here and I don't think the DMG is going to do a 180º to 5E's mission and vision, so chances are, that's what 5E is now, and that's how it's going to be until a 6E comes out (when and if).

If you will never succeed at Willow's Disappearing Pig Trick, if a peasant mob with torches and pitchforks will always be a danger to you, if as an individual your effective CR is 1/4 your character level, then the game is now Shadowrun. It is what it is, we're no longer talking about a zero-to-hero game because you'll never be "heroic" in the Hellenic sense of the word.

Worst part of it? Everyone's tickled pink with that particular fact because 9 out of 10 GMs can't devise high-level plots to save their lives and hated the mid-endgame with a passion, so chances are that new feature is here to stay.

"You better start drinking it black, Acme's taking the cream now."

[Lago PARANOIA]

Dammit, virgil and Dogbert, stop with that asinine Shadowrun comparison. Not being able to take on The Man is such an obvious default that anyone can make a huge list of games where that's also the assumption. Thus a comparison of 5E D&D to, say, Call of Cthulhu or WHFB or Mouseguard would be just as valid if that's your fucking point of comparison. Why not say that Star Wars is similar to My Big Fat Greek Wedding because both movies use speech-enabled human characters?

[Dogbert]

Dammit, virgil and Dogbert, stop with that asinine Shadowrun comparison.

Fine, Dark Heressy then. Happy now?

I wasn't even considering cyberpunk genre conventions, just assumed power levels (and yeah, even that doesn't apply if we take 4E's Post-Cyberpunk approach).

[Username17]

Dammit, virgil and Dogbert, stop with that asinine Shadowrun comparison.

Fine, Dark Heressy then. Happy now?

I wasn't even considering cyberpunk genre conventions, just assumed power levels (and yeah, even that doesn't apply if we take 4E's Post-Cyberpunk approach).

Dark Heresy is also a shitty model. Yes, in Dark Heresy you are always a never scum and a Hive Tyrant will always drop kick you through the uprights and a Dominatrix will never even notice that you exist. But 5e doesn't do that. In 5e you never outgrow Orcs, but there's never really anything beyond you either. The Dragon never outgrew the militia of the village.

In short, it's very much not like Shadowrun or Dark Heresy, where the player advancement cap kicks in long before you achieve toughness parity with a siege tank - it's simply that every fucking thing in the game on both sides of the DM screen is made out of bullshit. The most powerful ability in the game is just the power to show up with a couple dozen disposable mooks with basic weapons. That in turn let's you steamroller pretty much any threat in the game.

That isn't how Dark Heresy or Shadowrun or any 'you can't beat the man' games roll.

-Username17

[Mistborn]

Out of curiosity do we still think that next is going to bomb? I know last year everyone was convinced that it would do poorly because it's rules suck, but if the TTRPG fanbase IRL is at all like the one online I don't see how that could be a factor. Books are out right now and it seems like 5e has yet to be buried by bad word of mouth as predicted.

[Username17]

Out of curiosity do we still think that next is going to bomb? I know last year everyone was convinced that it would do poorly because it's rules suck, but if the TTRPG fanbase IRL is at all like the one online I don't see how that could be a factor. Books are out right now and it seems like 5e has yet to be buried by bad word of mouth as predicted.

Hard to say. 4e was terrible and performed terribly, but none of us suspected that it had done nearly as badly as it had until it had been out for nearly a year. Between the 4vengers and WotC's glowing announcements of various odd metrics of success (such as the number of printings, or breaking the record for pre-orders), most people assumed that 4e was doing 'well enough.' Pathfinder was presumptively fighting for the number two slot against various licensed games. The idea that 4e could have fallen an order of magnitude below sales goals didn't become a respectable idea until the lawsuit filing and 'hundreds of thousands.'

I would expect it to be a while before the success or failure of DDN can be determined. But I haven't noticed WotC bragging about sales figures, and they did just delay the DMG release until after the list of Christmas layoffs is written up. So they aren't exactly acting confident. It certainly doesn't look like they have a Pathfinder killer on their hands - something I remind you they could have at any time by just releasing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition. I don't see anything like the 4vengers or the goonsquad shaping up to defend 5th edition from the haters. We haven't had even one forum invasion by a 5e convert group. Hell, we haven't had one poster come in to tell us how grrreat 5e was over and over. Fucking bear world can manage that.

When I talk shit about any game, even unplayable crap like Unknown Armies and Scion, I expect to get a poorly thought out drive by rebuttal. 5e dissing generates nothing.

I don't think this edition is bombing as hard as 4e did. But they are not exactly falling over themselves to put expansion materials on shelves, so maybe it is.

-Username17

[Ghremdal]

There are some defenders on the GitP forums, but its slowly dawning on people that 5e is not what was advertised.

[ishy]

Well I did see Mearls bragging about 5e sales (top of the amazon list etc.)

On a different note: a Monster Manual review

Some highlights:

There are, though, a few uninspired wastes of a page in the book. Take, for example, the entry for the Cyclops and compare it to the entry for the Hill Giant. They're very nearly the same creature, with hit point totals very close to each other and quite literally the same two attacks doing nearly identical amounts of damage, but the Cyclops isn't very good at hitting things with ranged attacks. Aside from some remarkably similar descriptive text, that's about it.

That said, the saving throw numbers to avoid the nasty abilities and spells of the higher level monsters are rather unattainable even with their reduced range, and there's little opportunity for players who have bad saves in those categories to avoid those powers. Many players are just going to have to resign themselves to a life of eating dragon breath or petrification - which isn't a particularly appealing fate nor fun gameplay.

I guess some people see D&D as low level play only, if you still get 4.5/5 even though you point out high level monster don't work.

[virgil]

Dammit, virgil and Dogbert, stop with that asinine Shadowrun comparison.

Fvck. You. It was a single fvcking off-hand comment that I had said a grand total of once before you decided to denounce it with shitty logic.
EDIT: I wasn't even making a fvcking comparison.

[GnomeWorks]

Looks like the DMG has been delayed.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

I go to TRS to try to figure out what the Church of 5 likes so much about this.

From what I gather, it's houserules. Yes, every edition of D&D runs on houserules. But in 3e if you houseruled something to be more Randumb PC Death Lolz, you'd get called out on it. And 4e math was held together by duct tape as it was, and killer GM tweaks just made everything take longer.

But 5e gets their creative juices flowing for all the stupid stuff they love like fear checks, friendly fireballs, and random harlots that turn out to be mimics.

[Username17]

That's a good point, I'd forgotten about the Amazon self congratulations. I would say that's pretty similar to the 4e announcement of a third printing. It sounds good, it's provable, but it doesn't actually say much of anything about how many units have been sold from a relative or absolute standpoint. Also it's something they could arrange to happen months in advance so that the ad copy is finished before the event occurs.

Very conspicuously absent of course, are any statements of numbers or comparisons to other products. Right now, 5e looks like 4e did at this stage, but without anybody telling me that I am going to switch to 5e because it is the future and everyone is going to.

My prediction is still that 5e will do better than 4e, if only because 4e underperformed everyone's expectations so severely that I still don't have a place in my predictive model for a new edition of D&D doing that badly.

-Username17

[GnomeWorks]

Right now, 5e looks like 4e did at this stage, but without anybody telling me that I am going to switch to 5e because it is the future and everyone is going to.

While the game looks like shit, it at least seems like their marketing people figured out how to pull their heads out of their asses. That alone will probably account for 5e not doing as poorly, if I had to make a guess.

[fectin]

Mearls on twitter:

"Next Basic Rules Update: Depends on work flow for DMG, but expect DM material to launch with DMG."

"Destructive smite spell in paladin listing should refer to destructive wave in spell descriptions"

"Stealth/Hiding: These rules intentionally rely on DM judgment to adjudicate. DM has to judge situations, whether PC can hide."

"padded and ring are bad, cheap armors meant for militia, poorly equipped warriors, not really aimed at PCs."

"We've heard of issues with druids, but we'll be looking at them in our feedback surveys starting in early 2015"

All inside a few minutes.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I think that 5E D&D implodes faster than 4E D&D. 5E D&D has like three advantages over 4E D&D: the game system is slightly less stupid, it's not being released at the height of one of the worst recessions in decades, and its head designer is better at spewing fanboy-titillating buzzwords.

Aside from that, 4E D&D went to the presses with more advantages. They had a larger design team, a more aggressive release schedule, a better promised digital toolset, cost proportionately less, better celebrity cred, and also had their best campaign setting -- Forgotten Realms -- at the height of its popularity.

5E D&D having a scheduling delay of two months with the second-most important book in the edition shows that it's being managed into a ditch and the design team doesn't have a clear strategy. 4E D&D managed to do that. It was a stupid strategy, mind, but at least they had a clear vision and knew how to achieve it. Mike Mearls still seems to be under the impression that he's doing a playtest. Seriously, just look at fectin's post. Mike Mearls shouldn't be promising fixes or implementations of basic rules. He should be hyping the hell out of the next setting. When's the next campaign setting coming out? Or the next adventure path? Or the next slate of new spells and feats?

[Krusk]

My B on 2e. I hardly played it and just guessed at authorship. As for monsters, my comments were based on the trend of this thread. My own experiences aren't enough to actually draw real conclusions from.

Point stands. Just because Someone did Something, does not mean that Mearls will do it too.

Mearls on twitter:
"Next Basic Rules Update: Depends on work flow for DMG, but expect DM material to launch with DMG."

This reads to me like they didn't actually have any of the books ready for release, but someone got tired of the BSing and gave him a hard date to work with. "We ship or we announce you are fired and 5e will be at least a year delayed while we get a new design team".

So he got PHB out, and then managed to plead to get a push back for a second book once he showed people the feedback its recieved. (Generally ignored, and low sales)

How is the DMG not already written?

--
Personal note. I brought my 5e players handbook to my regular 3e game and like 2 people even cared to leaf through it. They spent like 15 minutes, but after I kept explaining "Those are optional" or "The DM is supposed to just make some shit up" they stopped pretending to care.

It gets harder and harder to keep pathfinder at bay every week. I'm looking forward to my FLGS sales rankings for this month, to see where 5e falls. Can "new edition release bump" put it past PF finally? I have some doubts.

[Harshax]

What the hell is a Legendary Action and why do they seem so completely mundane?

Is it suppose to be some MtG style interrupt mechanic?

[GnomeWorks]

What the hell is a Legendary Action and why do they seem so completely mundane?

I think it's just some set of things they tacked on to creatures that are supposed to be more awesome to let them do cool things but not terribly often. Sort of like action points from 4e, or monster powers with that die-roll recharge mechanic, I guess?

[Lago PARANOIA]

This is way, waaaaay too late of an observation but the other huge problem with 5E D&D deciding to embrace bounded accuracy is that a problematic monster at one range of play is going to be problematic at any range of play.

3E and 4E D&D had its share of overpowered, nominally low-level monsters, too. Lantern Archons, Ravids, Needlefang Drakeswarms, GIANT FUCKING CRABS, etc.. However, they often ceased to become problematic after a certain point in the game. 4 ghouls is probably too lethal of a challenge for a level 3 party but 16 ghouls is a reasonable one for a level 7 party.

Not so in 5E D&D. If there's an overpowered monster then the DM is forced to risk an unexpected TPK, heavily houserule the monster, or just plain not use it. This creates too many landmines in the Monster Manual. Check out the 5E D&D subforum on a certain website. The intellect devourer thread is like 15 pages, one of the biggest there. And that's like one monster out of Lord knows how many.

[RobbyPants]

While the game looks like shit, it at least seems like their marketing people figured out how to pull their heads out of their asses.

How so? What do you mean?

[GnomeWorks]

While the game looks like shit, it at least seems like their marketing people figured out how to pull their heads out of their asses.

How so? What do you mean?

Do you not recall the shit they pulled at the 4e announcement at GenCon in... what, '07?

They pissed a lot of people off with that crap.

[Krusk]

Instead of saying stupid troll-esque things that piss people off, like "f you if you like gnomes" they say generic things like "we have a book for sale".