Looking Forward to D&D Next Part 1

So now that DDXP is over with, and the WotC development team has shared their ideas with us on how they foresee the next iteration of the game working I’ve finally got some stuff to say about it.

From everything the dev team said, it sounds like D&D Next will be going back to the yesteryears of D&D in it’s feel and implementation, and that a whole lot of the mechanics that were established in the 4th edition of the game are going to be removed.

Now, I’m a huge fan of 4th edition, as evidenced by the other (admittedly sporadic) posts on this blog, and the sometimes 3-4 games of it I run on a weekly basis.

But to anyone that has DM’ed, played in or even read older editions of the game, 4e doesn’t really feel like Dungeons and Dragons.

But as far as a game goes 4e made huge advancements in balance, approachability, rule stability and tactical combat that most of the current D&D community do not want to see go away.

Now D&D Next is in the works, and it appears that it will hew closer to 3rd edition and 2nd edition then to 4th edition. That doesn’t mean, however, that we 4th edition fans are going to be left out in the cold. 4e taught the devs, and in fact the whole industry, some very important lessons about tabletop games. In the following posts I’m going to cover some of the lessons that I think should have been learned, and hopefully show how that lesson could be applied to D&D Next.


The first lesson after the jump.


Lesson 1: Combat Balance is Good, but not All Important
One of the things I loved so much about 4e is how balanced the system is. 4e put intra-character combat balance above all else, and as a result many of the gripes from editions past were put to rest (like Linear Fighters, Quadratic Wizards).

In addition the math of the combat system was not only better balanced but almost fully exposed - supposedly allowing players to not fall into traps, and for DMs to better understand how to tweak the system to their liking without destroying game balance.

But it was a good friend and old DM of mine that described the major problem with placing combat balance on your top priority list. What he said to me was, “... 4th edition is a well oiled gaming machine, nobody could argue that point. The problem is, I just don’t feel like I’m running it anymore, and I’m just not interested in playing that kind of game.”

With placing combat balance highest on the list of priorities, the game unintentionally made combat the most important part of the game. Sure, the PHB and DMG never explicitly stated that role playing and storytelling was not allowed, or that it should take a back seat to combat statistics. In fact, very little is actually said about RP at all in the core books taking the approach that mechanics should be completely separated from the fluff of the game world.

For those of us that have been playing for a while, this complete separation of mechanics and fluff was strange but we learned to love it as a liberating experience - we could describe this stuff how we wanted, and make these fiddly bits mean anything.

But for new players who had no prior experience playing a roleplaying game, and no notion of what the RP part of the game meant or those players that don’t like to (or cant) imagine what mechanics could/would mean in the game world, loosing the RP guide of the books proved problematic. To them, the game became an endless string of numbers, code words and tiny single line canned descriptions.

This posed a problem to the rest of us too. Now you’ve got a whole generation of gamers that are “trained” to look at the game more like a board game, that are uncomfortable thinking outside the box of the designed rules. The more experienced, RP oriented, crowd can feel like their attempts at RP or creating a rich story are stifled by a "built in" gamist mindset and a strict ruleset that can only be “spiced up” by descriptions.

Worse, because all the math was so exposed and the players are so intimately aware of it, there is an understood way to play and any tweak to the system the DM would make on the fly could be seen as “cheating.” If I had a nickel for every time someone at my game table said something along the lines of “Well, I guess you ARE the DM so it’s TECHNICALLY in your power to change that, but the rules say...” I would be a rich man. You know who you are...

As a result of such an explicit and tight set of rules mathematics, the DM might feel they are shackled by the system, as it basically runs itself.


What to take away from this lesson:
Older editions taught us that having classes that are unbalanced against one another can create a situation were some players feel like they are being overshadowed. Especially for the gamists among us.

Fourth edition proved that  intra-party balance has a positive effect on the fun of the table, giving everyone something to do all the time. Even for those people that want a more story driven game, having a balanced system only helps tell a better story. However, it is important to note that placing so much emphasis on combat balance, without supporting it with in game world examples or story, can lead to a view that combat numbers are the most important aspect of the game.

In addition, exposing the math of the system so blatantly does help balance the game, but it can also destroy some of the trust that players share with their DMs, and it does nothing to help the new players and less imaginative players; which, in turn, can damage the verisimilitude of the game world even further.

So what about D&D Next?
In D&D Next, using a more narrative style of writing, coupled with a bit more veiled mechanical system and plenty of leeway for adding your own twist to what’s written the devs could create a game that is just as balanced and open to reflavoring as 4th edition, while also keeping the “base” descriptions of actions interesting and story driven.

As long as the devs and DM’s have a strong mechanical base, and solid math to base new rules on, the game should run just as smoothly as 4e while capturing the DM/player interactions of older editions.

Tune in next time for Lesson 2: Codification can Constrain the Imagination. And let me know if I’ve gotten this lesson all wrong, or if you agree with it. Just like the D&D Next devs, I love the feedback!