D&D 5e has failed

[codeGlaze]

[quote="Hiram McDan] fiance would be interested to read that. Her D&D group is made up entirely of attractive and socially well adjusted Portland hipster girls.

That doesn't actually refute it ... in how many communities could she find such a group?[/quote]I personally can count a dozen (at least) "well adjusted" AND/or attractive people in my clan o' gamers who are some seriously hardcore nerds. Several of us were even 'cool kids'.

So, really, this self absorbed negative worldview that people construct from poor social interaction/demographic saturation/circumstance is bullshit and full of holes.

edit:

Many. Roleplaying games and related activities certainly aren't for everyone, but they're not for nobody either.

There is a caveat; the vast majority of gamers aren't into hardcore number crunching and theorycrafting like Gaming Den, or Brilliant Gameologists, or the D&D Charop boards, and they're not into deeply immersive, method acting roleplay like all those World Of Darkness groups that I avoid. Most gamers sit down once every couple of weeks to play, have a good time, then put their books away and do other shit until it's time to game again. We know this because:

A) WotC's estimate from the 2010 GAMA show is around 1.5 million actively playing tabletop RPG's, and counting up the membership of the various gaming related forums, you get around 350-400,000 active accounts in total, even generously assuming that none of these are the same people posting in different communities, only about 27% of the hobby gives enough of a shit to talk about it online.

B) When you try talking about Gaming Den shit with your real life group, they change the subject to work or sports or something.

So if you consider casual gamers to be real gamers, and you should, then you can find many communities where conventionally attractive and hip people are happy to sit down and play RPG's. In my experience, all you need to do is invite people.

Damn your sweet bard's tongue.

[MfA]

I personally can count a dozen (at least) "well adjusted" AND/or attractive people

The context was an all female group of hipsters ... ignoring gender for a moment I was also not talking about individuals, but the groups.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

I went to a Barnes and Noble today and checked out the RPG Section looking for the new 5E Material.

On the Main Row, I see the 4E Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master's Guide. Peppered in are the Pathfinder RPG Core book. Above is a strange new Star Wars RPG game. Along the same row is a collection for Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 and the 2E Monstrous Manual. There is an adventure book advertised as working for D&D 3.5, 4E, and

Up on the top row (out of regular eye vision) is the 5E Player's Handbook and an adventure for 5E.

Now keep in mind that the books themselves don't necessarily do a good job of advertising which edition they belong to.

If I were a brand new person to D&D, I would be very confused by what I saw today. 5E is a disaster.

[Mistborn]

I know at least the Barns and Noble I visited had basically a full shelf dedicated to Pathfinder, with D&D taking up parts of the shelf above it.

[Seerow]

I went to a B&N last week and decided to check out their Tabletop Game selection.

Only to find out that they no longer had one.

[Ravengm]

So uh. Previews for the DMG.

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/news/extra-life

Is it just be, or is there no price listed for any magic items? That seems like a terrible decision, even if it's just in a table at the beginning of the chapter or something.

[Dogbert]

Is it just be, or is there no price listed for any magic items?

From previous articles, supposedly the game no longer accounts for magic item possession as a requisite of level progression, and the PHB gives you an AD&D low-magic approach saying magic items are not for sale because they're oh-so rare and invaluable (so we can assume magic item creation may not be out of the table, but probably on the AD&D side that mixes prohibitive crafting times, MTP, and DM fellatio).

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm all for non-sellable, randomly generated magical items but I'll be the first one to admit that it is, from a marketability standpoint, probably a bad move for D&D. Players have had the expectation of being able to select their magical items out of a catalog or out of an officially approved source without having to kiss up to the DM for almost 15 years now. I don't like it, but it's baked into the cake now. And if I was going to wean players off of that expectation I would never do it in an edition of D&D in which (a privileged minority of) players topped out in power at around Puma Man level.

[mean_liar]

I always found inaccessible magic items to be really jarring to verisimilitude. "Where did these come from and who made them and how" shouldn't just get the SHHHHHHHHHH treatment.

[Dogbert]

Players have had the expectation of being able to select their magical items out of a catalog or out of an officially approved source without having to kiss up to the DM for almost 15 years now.

I know, right? It's no longer the 80's, players' mentality has changed and, try as they might, you can't just put the genie of Player Agency back in the bottle.

And then, trivialities like common sense have never stopped Mearls in the past, have they?

[Lago PARANOIA]

"Where did these come from and who made them and how" shouldn't just get the SHHHHHHHHHH treatment.

If the game requires you to undergo a DM-supervised questing phase as part of the magical item creation ritual, then this issue goes away. If you undergo the same amount of effort and storytelling for a +5 Holy Avenger whether you quest for the ingredients (perhaps by travelling to Valhalla and shedding a demigod's blood in honorable combat and later by gathering adamantine shards) or quest for the ready-made sword (by fulfilling a famous ghost paladin's last request and being bequeathed the sword) then from a metafictional and game balance perspective it doesn't really matter what tables choose. They end up working like the process of acquiring 3E D&D artifacts, whereupon most people just forget about them and content themselves with loot from the default acquisition system unless the table decides to make the campaign about getting one.

However, the in-universe explanation as to why there are Excaliburs and Masamunes lying about then becomes 'because someone else already did the creation quest' instead of 'they just do, OKAY?'.

[nockermensch]

It doesn't make economic sense. Even if magic items can't be reliably made and require poetical and/or nonsensical items, they still need to be priced as art objects.

A market where a handful of crazed artisans produce a number of one-of-a-kind artifacts every year and then trade them to a clique of filth rich people exists and is called Haute couture.

And what's worse: D&D usually posits worlds that are literally built on countless ruins full of magical stuff. It doesn't make sense that there's not a market for something as common as a magic weapon.

[Lago PARANOIA]

A market where a handful of crazed artisans produce a number of one-of-a-kind artifacts every year and then trade them to a clique of filth rich people exists and is called Haute couture.

And as with most fine artwork they don't follow any generalizable pricing mechanisms. What drives the price of a Rembrandt? Certainly not the resources or the technical skill or the marginal utility; there are plenty of arguably superior paintings to the best of his artwork that sell for much less and plenty of arguably inferior paintings to the median of his artwork that sell for much more.

So what exactly would the price of a Holy Avenger be? If I said that it was available from a royal treasury for 200,000 gp in 2E Greyhawk but 120,000 gp in 2E Forgotten Realms, is that a bullshit price? What if the Greyhawk one was found for 5000 gp? Or 500,000 gp? If none of those are bullshit and you get an answer of 'it depends on the particular campaign setting', then what's to stop a DM from putting it out of a reasonably attainable price range?

And what's worse: D&D usually posits worlds that are literally built on countless ruins full of magical stuff. It doesn't make sense that there's not a market for something as common as a magic weapon.

Why would that be weird? If Rowlings or Kishimoto told you that there have only been about 20 magically enchanted items intended explicitly for melee combat (like swords and axes and shit) forged in the Potterverse and Narutoverse in the past 80 years, would you find that nonsensical? What would your basis for saying 'bullshit, there are way more magical swords than that'? And keep in mind that those are settings with magic much more available to the plebes than any of the D&D ones.

[mean_liar]

I'm down with creation quests, but I can't help but be disappointed that these various upgrades would just limited to just tchotchkes. Climb the mountain, learn to cajole the air spirits to let you glide... I don't see why a cloak that does the same is okay, but the ability to do so without the cloak is not.

There's no way these things wouldn't be traded. Hell, even a GP value would allow trades. Are +1 swords so precious that a warrior with a +3 sword will retain that +1 sword? There really is no market? It just doesn't make sense. If it was all Holy Avengers and artifacts and unique hard-to-price items - such as a Rembrandt - then markets are all over the place. But there are going to be low-end magic items, and that means... something.

Anyway, I don't think creation quests is how DnD5e will do it, but I'm often wrong. Perhaps they'll add in pricing later.

[Lago PARANOIA]

But there are going to be low-end magic items, and that means... something.

Why would or should it mean anything? 3E D&D posits that if a middle class laborer (i.e. trained hireling) is making 110 gp a year then they're doing very, very well for themselves. A +1 chain shirt costs 1100 gp -- and it's easy to imagine that in-universe the marginal utility of +1 to AC, -1 to ACP, and being harder to damage doesn't really make up for that huge leap in price. Even for one of the humblest magical items available the pricing economics on that just screams 'fine art/government military hardware pricing' to me.

[mean_liar]

I'm with you there, but the fact is that 1000gp+ is something that an adventurer would be willing to spend for that slight adjustment. Adventurers are the purchasers of that kind of stuff.

You really think there's a solid in-game reason why low-end magic items would exist yet not be bought or sold, or so onerous to create as to preclude selling yet somehow discoverable with some commonality in monster lairs? It just seems to be too much of a stretch. They're going to be bought and sold, and GMs could probably use a pricing guide to help them along. Sure, muck with it for reasons, but a guideline couldn't hurt. The total absence of that in the preview seems to hearken back to ADnD, and that doesn't seem like a step forward to me.

[virgil]

"Where did these come from and who made them and how" shouldn't just get the SHHHHHHHHHH treatment.

If the game requires you to undergo a DM-supervised questing phase as part of the magical item creation ritual, then this issue goes away.

It doesn't go away though. Making a basic magic sword should be objectively/drastically easier than making a Flamebrand, which should be easier than making Masamune. To say otherwise is the same logic that brings us 4E's icy floors that require DC 15+level skill checks to balance on. Once you do this and are able to make the upper echelon gear, then your player agency should allow you to make the simpler items without it taking an entire game session.

Magic item crafters are a thing in literature, including protagonists, and doubly so for PCs, so the archetype is certainly there and well established in the D&D genre. You can have a class of magic items that require non-PC appropriate time investments, but I don't see the advantage in making all gear be MTP unless your goal is to make the campaign Low Magic

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm with you there, but the fact is that 1000gp+ is something that an adventurer would be willing to spend for that slight adjustment. Adventurers are the purchasers of that kind of stuff.

What's so special about the 1000gp price tag? What determines that price? If I refused to pay more than 500 gp or sell one for less than 2000 gp, what are my expectations on getting an offer? It seems the best you can do is try to make that revolve around the magic item creation time vs. price of crafters who undertake such a venture, but those are arbitrary benchmarks. You could just as easily make the required capital reflect, say, minimum caster level.

Those aren't mere rhetorical questions; 3E D&D does a half-assed if acceptable job trying to make prices of its non-luxury symmetrical goods (cheese blocks, shirts, chicken) revolve around the aggregate demand of its peasantry and middle class. So questions like 'why does ale cost such-and-such price compared to wine' can at least have vaguely reasonable answers.

If I was doing this system, though, I would tie weapon availability and power to some metagame factor like quest difficulty and thematic availability. For example, you should expect to find with relative frequency +1 longswords in treasure piles from the beginning of the game. Questing for a flamberge (either to find or make one) would be around a 7th level adventure since it involves snatching griffin eggs and collecting the combat sweat of hound archons. Etc..

Making a basic magic sword should be objectively/drastically easier than making a Flamebrand, which should be easier than making Masamune.

I disagree. Look at it this way: macuahuitls are more difficult for a Briton-confined blacksmith to make than katanas. That doesn't make them a better weapon. If you accept that there are weapons in the real world that are simultaneously more capital and labor-intensive yet shittier in function than the competition, then why should we believe that it's necessarily hard to craft Masamune than a +1 longsword and that you can rank magical items in such a way? I mean, would you think that it was weird if someone announced that in Dark Sun a +1 adamantine bastard sword was unavailable for any price but a +5 flaming shocking quarterstaff was theoretically available for PC purchase without DM intervention? Why or why not?

You can have a class of magic items that require non-PC appropriate time investments, but I don't see the advantage in making all gear be MTP unless your goal is to make the campaign Low Magic

Whoa whoa whoa. A game world where this facet of magic item creation is true doesn't necessarily mean Low Magic. Harry Potter and Naruto are very low on crafted, let alone named weapon kit and I wouldn't call either of those settings Low Magic.

At any rate, a discussion of the proposed advantages of this paradigm is kind of beyond the scope of this thread. Don't you remember the 30+ page discussions we had on this topic a couple of years ago?

[mean_liar]

The "arbitrary benchmarks" you're looking for are exactly the things that a DMG ought to provide, hopefully derived through playtesting.

It's interesting here that you're taking that Zack guy's position with respect to magic item availability, in that (my understanding of his position is) a hole in the rules is more valuable than rules in some instances, because that hole is where narrative control belongs to the GM+players. I'd personally prefer to see a pricetag with an explicit caveat that I believe is common to 3e+ DnD ("magic item shops may/may not exist, these are guidelines, adjust to suit") than a hole.

...

Do you have a link to the other thread, or a title for it? I'd like to peruse it.

[Username17]

Do you have a link to the other thread, or a title for it? I'd like to peruse it.

Link

Warning: Long thread is long.

-Username17

[nockermensch]

I disagree. Look at it this way: macuahuitls are more difficult for a Briton-confined blacksmith to make than katanas. That doesn't make them a better weapon. If you accept that there are weapons in the real world that are simultaneously more capital and labor-intensive yet shittier in function than the competition, then why should we believe that it's necessarily hard to craft Masamune than a +1 longsword and that you can rank magical items in such a way? I mean, would you think that it was weird if someone announced that in Dark Sun a +1 adamantine bastard sword was unavailable for any price but a +5 flaming shocking quarterstaff was theoretically available for PC purchase without DM intervention? Why or why not?

The problem is teleportation and plane shift eventually transforming wielders of +1 longswords into potential buyers for Masamunes. The different lands of D&D are actually pretty much all adjacent, once you get past 9th level. This means that if there's a far away land with adamantine mines and mystical forgers producing weapons that are at the same time cheaper and better than those made elsewhere, then the demand for these weapons will come from all the world (or, if the weapons are awesome enough, from all the multiverse). If their supply is in any way limited, their price must go up, until it's somehow balanced against shittier weapons that can be forged anywhere.

[hamstertamer]

Players have had the expectation of being able to select their magical items out of a catalog or out of an officially approved source without having to kiss up to the DM for almost 15 years now.

I know, right? It's no longer the 80's, players' mentality has changed and, try as they might, you can't just put the genie of Player Agency back in the bottle.

And then, trivialities like common sense have never stopped Mearls in the past, have they?

I've never played with anyone that thought they could "select their magical items out of a catalog or out of an officially approved source" before.

[name_here]

Players have had the expectation of being able to select their magical items out of a catalog or out of an officially approved source without having to kiss up to the DM for almost 15 years now.

I know, right? It's no longer the 80's, players' mentality has changed and, try as they might, you can't just put the genie of Player Agency back in the bottle.

And then, trivialities like common sense have never stopped Mearls in the past, have they?

I've never played with anyone that thought they could "select their magical items out of a catalog or out of an officially approved source" before.

Meanwhile, I have.

[Lago PARANOIA]

It's interesting here that you're taking that Zack guy's position with respect to magic item availability, in that (my understanding of his position is) a hole in the rules is more valuable than rules in some instances, because that hole is where narrative control belongs to the GM+players.

Oh, go soak your head. 'A hole in the rules' is a fucking equivocation and you know it.

This means that if there's a far away land with adamantine mines and mystical forgers producing weapons that are at the same time cheaper and better than those made elsewhere, then the demand for these weapons will come from all the world (or, if the weapons are awesome enough, from all the multiverse).

Whoa whoa whoa. Where's this assumption that magical item crafting is primarily a fungible resource allocation problem coming from? If to craft a Holy Avenger you need to bathe a stick of adamantite in the blood of a hero that redeemed themselves from the forces of evil, you can't just go to the Blood Mines and get yourself a rod. If you need a branch of darkwood kissed by three nymphs and four dryads in order to make a Staff of the Magi, that might be a quest in of itself.

I've never played with anyone that thought they could "select their magical items out of a catalog or out of an officially approved source" before.

3E D&D and 4E D&D worked exactly like this. You got a pile of fungible tokens at certain intervals and could trade them in for magical items that were outlined in the PHB/DMG/officially approved sources without having to ask the DM first.

[Kaelik]

Whoa whoa whoa. Where's this assumption that magical item crafting is primarily a fungible resource allocation problem coming from? If to craft a Holy Avenger you need to bathe a stick of adamantite in the blood of a hero that redeemed themselves from the forces of evil, you can't just go to the Blood Mines and get yourself a rod. If you need a branch of darkwood kissed by three nymphs and four dryads in order to make a Staff of the Magi, that might be a quest in of itself.

So anyone who can brow beat both Nymphs and level 3 Paladins can just go ahead and make infinity of those really easy. Way easier than the level 3 party questing for the items.