The whole bastion system is for their upcoming VTT, so they can sell you microtransactions for furniture and decorations. There is a reason that they keep hiring people from the video game and especially mmo industry. The Bastions are condense and concise little side areas that they can easily program into the VTT as "player homes".
That is why they want it in the core books. The marketing campaign is pushing it for micro transactions. It has been around since AD&D and it is a way for players to make more in-depth characters, but 5e never cared for henchmen or acolytes before. Why now? Money.
There are a couple major issues there (1) if it is off limits for DMs, then its never going to appear in the VTT and (2) DMs are really the only people who would be buying those kinds of microtransactions as the DM is going to need the map of the Bastians not players.
@sanderpio8234 Strongholds yes. Bastions no. The biggest difference is Bastions are magic item farms the DM can't touch, while strongholds are places where the characters live and needs to be defended. But I agree there isn't any connection with the VTT. Unless it's the magic items.
Considering that WotC has been saying repeatedly that they are trying to replace flesh and blood DMs with AIs and turn D&D into a microtransaction hell, being anti-DM makes sense.
After reading a few Call of Cthulhu modules and a few Pathfinder 2e modules I came to the conclusion that WotC has not a single ****ing clue of how to write an adventure, feels like they did it wrong on purpose to have the DM working to fix it, most people just dump most things and just keep the dungeon maps. Which... I payed to save some time not to have to work more.
The worst thing about Eve of Ruin for me is that I do not like to lie as DM. The players rely on me to build the world for them, and if I back track or swap out some lore or story, it will confuse and irritate them, rather than make them think they’re experiencing a solid twist. They’ve got the first part of the rod, which grants Commune, and the first thing they asked their god was “Can we trust these NPCs?” I’ve led them on with a woolly answer, and now they’ve got a Scroll of Mind Reading, they will be asking further questions next session. I won’t be able to keep this twist until later in the adventure. And nor should I. If the players are suspicious, and have their characters perform actions to investigate, they should be rewarded with the truth being revealed. To do otherwise will just make me come across as a DM more concerned about telling the story as written, than letting them be the main characters in their story. And that, to me, is how my players Have Fun.
You sound like a really good DM!! I haven’t run anything with Vecna yet, but I finished DMing my first game and I feel like the trust I’ve established with my players is way WAY more important than following any narrative beat. The idea of players asking the right questions, doing the work to investigate things and rolling well too, only to be met a lie from the DM…idk. It feels like a video game where the player character was going to lose, no matter how well they fought or decision they made right before the cutscene. It doesn’t feel fun.
the thing that pisses me off about the 5e is the mindset where we need rules to protect the players from DMs abusing their power...but any idea that the player could abuse their power is meet with an attitude that this is a) an individual problem that needs to be solved by talking to the player and not rules and b) a DM's fault anyway, which will be solved by disempowering the DM, somehow. Example: DM cannot interact with Bastion because DM cannot be trusted to not burn it down "for the story". But a PC can now piss on the king, kidnapp his daughter and hide into Bastion and argue king cannot lay siege on the Bastion because DM cannot interactr with the Bastion. And if you raise concern about such scenario, you're told it's your fault for not entertaining the player enough for them to not do this.
Agreed. I’m not going to attack a bastion for no reason. But player or DM I don’t like “I win” buttons. My current players don’t use their tavern in that manner, but I have absolutely played with people that would - and I’d have a conversation and it may get tempers raised and while I believe they would have seen reason, WotC throwing up a shield doesn’t help.
You're absolutely correct, but I'd make one refinement to what you said. It's not that it stifles the DM. It's the it stifles the GAME WORLD. The king is an independent agent in the world. The king ought to do what the king would do if he were a real person in the situation he's in. Unless your bastion has some kind of crazy mythal that brainwashes everyone in the world into never wanting to attack it, the king is going to attack it because the king would do that. When the DM makes the king siege your bastion, the DM is just making a logical course of events occur. If the DM makes a tarrasque eat your bastion out of nowhere, the DM is just being a jerk. I think destroying the fundamental concept of an RPG for the sake of stopping jerks isn't worth for some crazy reason. And it's not going to work anyway because jerks are jerks. The tarrasque will just wait outside your bastion to eat you when you leave instead, or whatever gaming of the rules the DM can pull off.
2:11 "Off limits" my grognard ass! And I say this as someone who's DMed 1E strongholds on numerous occasions. They were NEVER safe, and my players would never suggest it could--or should!--be otherwise. You may take me to task for saying it, but here goes: the 1E and D&D 2024 approach to PC residences is that between a responsible adult and a spoiled child. I swear, when I first heard that comment, my first thought was a player going, "Nyah, nyah, DM, you can't hurt me!" 12:13 The fact that, after giving the matter genuine thought, a gaming YTer is even posing the question unironically is frankly DEPRESSING. If I could (and did) toss out whole sections of Gygax's DMG, so can any other DM across the decades, from the Brown Box to the present. It all comes down to one realization: the rules are the servant, NOT the master. . .and for DMs to proceed from there with equanimity, fairness, grace, a sense of adventure, and above all, fun. But beneath it all is the indispensable firmness that the DM's table is indeed theirs.
making bastions unsafe actually makes protective warding spells useful for the players. I want my players to feel rewarded and vindicated for setting up alarms and traps in their home base
These little changes being made in effort to rub all the edges away from D&D to make it as unoffensive to as many people as possible is leading to it being a much harder game for new players of ttrpgs to understand IMHO. Great video.
2 месяца назад+6
I found the whole bastion being off-limits to players to be weird and off-putting. Hell, as a player if I have a castle I want it to be invaded at some point and be able to defend it. Then someone pointed out that it might be a thing related to Hasbro's VTT and having players spend money on digital stuff to personalize their bastion and not have the DM be able to mess with that a and suddenly it made a lot more of sense.
A large part of the D&D community has never run a game and never will. They don't understand how entitled they can sound to someone that has spent hours upon hours preparing a scenario for his or her friends. Every time a player runs a game, even if it is a one shot, they change into someone more appreciative. There are tons of people out there saying "I always wanted to play D&D but I never met a Dungeon Master". There are not many of us out there and if TTRPG companies keep trying to cater too much to the players there will be even less. There is a point when every DM can say "screw this" and walk away from the hobby. This is not to say there are not bad DM's out there and I've played almost as much as I've run games myself but there needs to be a balance and not just give the keys to the car to the players.
WotC isn't designing a tabletop rpg, they're designing a consumer product. Because they are not interested in what is good for the game, and what is not, they do not and will not care about how it feels to try and run their product from a DM's perspective. Rule 0, while may have good intention behind it, is written in a condescending and tone-policing way. This is how all of their books have been written since the beginning of 5e. Sorry, if I'm "refereeing" your game, the rules that I decide to implement are up to me. They are not a group discussion and are not up for debate. I will have a session zero and determine what tone and flavor of rules I want to have with my players, i.e encumbrance, character death etc. But, once I've established what is and isnt allowed, thats it. Yes, if I make a mistake regarding how a core rule is meant to work, I am more than happy to correct that mistake. That's not the intent they have behind Rule 0. It gives players the impression that they should be able to ask for a rule change that they disagree with because "everyone should be having fun, and the rules dont matter if you need to change them to make sure fun is happening". Contrast this with how older editions DMG's were written. They gave the DM rules for how things should work, but then often had several blue box texts of "Optional rules and variants". That's much different than how the newer books are written which seems to be, "hey if we missed something or weren't clear just handwave it". They can't seem to decide if game systems should be codified or just handwaved to focus on narrative. WotC's DnD has no identity whatsoever. The DM is part of the game, too. If he isn't having fun, the game is a failure and you will have nobody buying your adventures and supplements and shoddily written "settings" books. (which have been a complete joke so far in 5e). I dont understand the constant DM sneering and snickering they put directly into their books. Your product dies without a user base, and youll have no user base if this continues. I understand there are horror stories and bad DM's, but thats not the majority of the playerbase. Stop creating bogeymen and tilting at windmills.
It's right along with the whole removal of rules on homebrewing campaigns from the new DMG. It focuses on the idea that you need to buy something from them to run.
I am sure Hasbro hates how much power DM's have over their bottomline. If they de-power DMS and empower players it would pave the way for much more avenues of income as they would start purchasing more as they get more involved in the ruling. End game is probably something like AI DM's in a virtual platform. Get the income streaming per table from 1DM that pays to everyone.
You can imagine the situation where someone's character dies, only to have them quickly pay WoTC and show their DM a "Certificate of True Resurrection" on their phone and demand that their character immediately revive with full HP.
I don't know about anyone else, but I feel like a key stepping stone in my DM'ing journey was going from knowing when to disregard the rules, to knowing when you HAVE to ignore rules so that the game will function. I don't ignore rules to screw my players over, in fact I probably err on the side of caution more than I should in such matters, but I have had horror story DM's so I get both sides of this. That said WotC consistently choose to create products that will sell to players (power creep, dating back to Xanathar's and Tasha's) instead of creating rules expansions that will make the lives of DM's easier. Never mind the fact that DM's buy ALL the WotC products and players don't. It's a conscious decision to market products to players, even though without DM's there would be no more games.
@@aetherkid What DMs need to remember is that there is no shortage of amazing TTRPGs out there, some of which deserve our time much more than D&D. Let players go and use AI DMs, we on the other hand will always have games to play with people interested in playing good games. A couple of my favorites being Cyberpunk RED, Lancer, PF2e, and though I haven't run it yet Fabula Ultima.
I didn’t realize that was part of bastions, but as a player, I wouldn’t want to exclude my DMs from that portion of the game. They’re my friends. I want them to have fun with all the parts of the game the same way I get too. And when I DM, I wouldn’t want to be excluded from a mechanic of the game either. If anything, it feels like doing that just feeds the antagonism WOTC seem so worried about.
I think there’s an argument from WotCs side that many players are playing pick up / disposable D&D. Like an LFR game or random match making. And in that context - their DM and their fellow players are not friends. A player in that style wouldn’t want a random DM burning down their bastion. I like that Adventurer’s League and RPG nights at FLGS exist. And using structured rules and no house rules in that environment makes perfect sense. I don’t think it’s a good idea to design the game with that kind of “play once and never see these folks again.” mindset.
Yeah, the "Why care" segment is it, for me. I have been in this thing for 15 years, 6 of which as a professional in the industry, I *know* I can do what I want. But the son of my GM, who is very young and playing with us possibly for the first time, does not unless me, his father and the other people in the group show him that there's an alternative narrative to WotC's.
The right frame of mind is that a lot of people play dnd with DMs that they don't know in the internet. And that's why they are going to put so much effort in the session 0 guidelines in the next DMG. It doesn't make sense to me because I play with my friends, I'm not a "scheming ditactor" because doing so would hurt not only the fun of my games but also my friendships. But maybe it does make sense to those who play online with strangers on tts and discord
As a DM who has done equal parts both, this is exactly it. To your close friends its really largely a pointless conversation of boundaries that normal people with normal relationships aren't going to need, but for DMs playing with complete strangers because their friends at the time aren't into D&D, it can be an important conversation to avoid people issues leading to you wasting prep time because Player A said something that made Players B and C mad and Players D and E are player A's friends and the whole game just collapses. It's resources for establishing boundaries between everyone in a group of less acquainted individuals rather than being a hardline "MUST" for every single group. If you don't need them, you don't need them. They're just providing them for those that find them helpful.
Great points. I'll add several more. WotC's disregard for DMs is deep and abiding. WotC's designers seem to be unconcerned that with every new supplement they make the role of DM harder. The text you point to encourages a culture of player entitlement than many DMs complain about. Limit a class or ancestry in your campaign world and watch out for the rotten fruit that will be inevitably be tossed your way. How many sub-classes are we up to with the new book 49? How is a DM keep in mind the specific abilities each character has so that they can construct an adventure to be challenging? The expansion of classes, ancestries, backgrounds etc create a management and organization issue for any DM who doesn't want to pay for or can't afford a D&D Beyond subscription. It seems like their basic design ethos is to make being a DM harder not easier. In the long term, I think that will drive more players to AI DM or just playing video game versions of D&D.
There’s a whole page about not being a dick to your DM. It gives more defence of DMs than previous editions have. A borderline god having the capacity to work around low level divination magic should be expected. Making it as if it’s a railroading technique for weak DMs is absurd to me. No part of the new DMG denies DM authority. This feels like a take that relies on only having heard critiques of the new DMG and not having looked at it in person.
I hate that I'm late here. The rule about not gauging an NPC's honesty and attempting to convince them at the same time may be chokingly overbearing in a lot of game styles, especially for throw away encounters. But, those tools and that mindset seems really helpful for navigating a complex social encounter that was constructed as a game challenge and not just a story moment. There's this unspoken, maybe even invisible tension at every DnD table between a collaborative story telling experience and a challenge or game designed by the DM for the players. Typically combat seems to be solidly in the realm of a game, and casual or low stakes social encounters seem to be in the realm of collaborative story telling. I think high stakes social encounters can feel like gray areas, and not enforcing some kind of structure enables social classes like bards to take the encounter and run. Imagine a prestige social event including the royal court and the BBG. It may be tempting to imagine and insight check as just watching him talk, but maybe it involves dropping info in an insightful way to try to provoke a reaction, maybe doing so without some effort would show your hand. Doing that while also attempting to make your case or frame an idea like it was his seems fair to call too much. This encourages the party to approach a social situation from multiple angles and encourages them to engage with the setting. It also creates a tense atmosphere where a failed roll matters, but not just in a "oops he's hostile now" way. To me, for a lot of stuff outside of combat and general vibes, it seems like the devs have these ideas in their head for how the game should run and have just outright failed to convey that, beyond little snippits of design that point in one direction or the other.
Forgive me when else am I going to get to say it. A wizard is never late nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to. Okay memes aside. I can certainly see wanting to rein in a bard in social situations. If that’s what was on their mind, I think players would naturally try to pass a turn to give the bard and cleric (high wisdom - high insight) the run of the encounter. You could put a time limit or skill limit (each player may use Diplomacy only once) to encourage non charismatic/wise characters to participate. But just like a fighter play stares at the harpy flying helplessly even though they have a bow, I worry many players would be hesitant to fail in a timed or round limited encounter and just take help actions. Yeah I would expect any game developers to present A vision on how a game might be played. And to their credit they’re more freeing in the DMG. And experience players will already know the DM can alter things or throw them out but a new player may be caught unaware. Which is why people do session 0 of course, but it’d be ideal in my opinion if the book said “this is a baseline. The DM may change things to fit genre, table or engagement. Thanks for commenting!
I'm not really into the projection of authoritarianism over DMs, by giving them more tools. Anybody who uses any tools for long enough knows when you don't need certain tools anymore, but they helped you anyway. I'd scoff at someone who offered me a bike with training wheels, or to go bowling with the bumpers up, but I understand how they help others, and probably helped me once too.
The ever present conflict between individual GM autonomy and creativity, and the rules as written and intended has been present in this hobby virtually from the outset. In the very beginning, the old white box days, the rules were at best incomplete and at worst frustratingly inconsistent. We borrowed from any and every source available, and made up our own tables, rules, and best practices. With the growing popularity of the hobby, and tournament style play, the issue came to a head. Tournament play required consistency and uniformity, and so Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was born, as an attempt to clean up and codify the rules. Some loved it, some hated it, depending on how far it strayed from the way your table preferred to play. I can still recall people in the hobby grumbling about "The One True Way" back in 1977. I guess the more things change, the more they remain the same. The technology is updated, but the core issue of my imagination versus their imagination, my preferences versus their design, has never, and can never, be fully resolved. Which is why we have so many different TTRPGs today.
It's been an interesting experience to have my first campaign last a number of years now, and even from the beginning not pay too much attention to the rules outside general guidelines. I've watched actual plays, but I also have played video games, roleplayed, and written a book trilogy, so all the peices of understanding narrative and the social aspect fit together nicely. knowing how MTG has been going has left me looking at WotC and wondering if they've just been throwing out people with experience just to try and get profit margins better. ultimately I know that I can continue without them just fine, but that feeling of lost first time experiences for people still lingers
The 2nd and 3rd had plenty of tables that were useful in adjucating the rules. You didn't have to abide by them, but you didn't have to improv either. The removal of those and all the videos for rule-breaking builds that "will make your DM cry" are evidence that between 4e & 5e WotC turned the game from cooperative to combative.
Putting this in a context where they are positioning for a world where the game is played through dnd beyond or some proprietary vtt with a virtual, ai powered dm, then this all makes sense
Yeah. That’s the writing on the wall all other things aside would I like to be able to have a DM on demand? Yes. Would I find it preferred to a human interaction? I don’t think so. But that’s me. I enjoy the other people at the table or on fantasy grounds laughing along and I enjoy seeing the shocked look on a DMs face when we surprise them.
Structuring turn orders standardizes things. This and other things like it are there to ensure continuity and consistency of experience, that a player who goes into 10 games by different DMs, even if a lot is different, there are some things which should always be the same. If some fundamentals like how leveling up works, how turn order works, can work the same in every game, it provides a grounding for all the areas that are different. Bastions - the moment anyone tells me, the DM, "No, you can't interact with the bastion or do anything to/with it, only I the player can say what happens with it and how it engages the world or setting", my answer is "Oh. Well, this doesn't exist in my setting/world. I have a few different homebrew systems which I can interact with and are part of my world if you are interested", I will not play games of "Player, May I?"
Thanks for saying this. I expressed skepticism at these rules as soon as I heard about them, but the way you and the comment below presented it helped me see it in a new light.
Rule zero is important but WotC know that telling us we can do whatever we want and also wanting to convince us we have to spend hundreds of dollars on their largely pointless materials to make the game work is counterintuitive. They're not interested in improving the game, they're interested in selling you their books / VTT, their market isn't gamers, it's consumers.
I have since gotten the DMs Guide and I'm about 1/3 of the way through it. For anyone concerned, yes, it is fine despite the pile of salt I threw at it - literally and figuratively.
I was gonna ask if you got the new DMG before this was recorded, lol. I think it does a GREAT job of telling DMs how to deal with a good bit of the nonsense players can throw at them (within the rules or otherwise).
@@CooperAATE It does. Having read through it so far, and considering that along with the PHB, it feels like WotC is almost talking to players and DMs separately. "Hey players, we're on your side. We won't let the DMs bully you!" "DMs, shhh. We know. Here's how to deal with the Players."
WotC adventures are obsessed with running as a linear story and fall apart if a group deviates from them. Try running something high level like planescape or vecna and go off rails? Well the story says the world is fucked. They are written as a novels about the WotC characters and villains, the PCs are there to witness it unfold. Structuring out of combat actions into turn based actions is obviously for the sake of vtt/ai dm implementation. The same people who considered 4e's power card format to resemble a mmo's actions should be raising their voices about now.
Based on the reddit stories of DnD that I have listened to for the last 4 years, I beginning to get the inclination that a lot of DMs just are either inexperienced at or incapable of dealing with conflicting rules or "broken" spells/items. The rules updates that I see being added in DnD seem to reflect complaints from new or poor DMs who can't rectify the issues at their table. They might just be lacking the creativity to counter a players use of something in a non-standard way. Instead of teaching DMs how to cope with creative players, they just re-write abilities/spells and create rules to stifle the players choices. It seems that 99% of the DM complaints I hear are "such and such (spell/ability/item) is broken/OP, so I banned it." Instead, the DM should be looking for a creative way to counter/play along with that player and not discourage them. This is something that cannot be ruled in the DMs guide without subwaying (worse than railroading). A good DM can railroad in a way where you don't even notice the tracks and the players' decisions do have some effect on the narrative, without completely nuking it. Subwaying it where you are so boxed in you can even see the walls around you.
“Instead of teaching DMs how to cope with creative players use of something, they just rewrite abilities/spells and create rules to stifle players choice.” - this. I should have said that and saved myself a lot of editing work.
Exactly! It's brutal to get your carefully crafted character concept and build destroyed by your GM due to lack of experience, creativity and/or the communication skills to make it work in a way, everyone at the table enjoy. I'm hoping my GM will get and read the new DMG soon... 🤞🏽
The game has been trending towards rules over rulings for a while. Remember, 1e had barely any rules, 3.5 supposedly had volumes on how to adjudicate, 4e was meant to be balances and rules codified, and 5th (2014)... wot? Walks back on it all to be simplified, intuitive, and generally "make it up as you go along". Not to mention that this generation (including mine, being born in 81) has consistently lived in a world that is predominantly "video gamified" and you expect everything to behave on rails.
hear me out: maybe a full price 50e ttrpg published by the biggest company in the industry, who commands much more resources than indie rpgs that somehow manage to avoid many of the same pitfalls, that's likely to be most people's first game and sadly a lot of people's only game, should have much less "conflicting rules" in the first place. maybe it should not have extremely situational items and spells competing for slots with extremely universally useful items and spells at the same spell level or rarity tier. maybe it should offer some support to the GM for when players use things in non-conventional ways instead of only detailing how things work in combat and nothing else. maybe the spells should include examples of how they can be used out of combat and how a DM could rule it. maybe the people saying that dnd ought to have better written rules arent weird hategoblins, but tired GMs who wish the biggest game in the industry wouldn't need to make them look for twitter posts from the game designer to clarify its poor rules syntax, and to make up almost everything but combat
The rules are not there to restrict anybody. They are in place to provide both players and a DM with clear understanding of what they can expect and a common language to communicate about the world they cocreate. Thinking about rules as benign restrictions is falling straight into the WotC mindset.
Look... Hasbro and Wotc are not the future of D&D... Unless you want an environment that will limit creativity and you like dancing to the tune of a Company exploiting an IP for profit only. The future is with us, the passionate players who don't need dndbeyond or the bloated new rules designed to make dndbeyond necessary to even play. We do not have to go along. I gave up my dndbeyond subscription and there are a host of rules sets out there that work. Retro clones, Shadowdark, five torches deep, Dark Albion, LOTFP, etc. etc. etc. All of them basically a version of DND. All of them highly creative and playable. My games have improved the farther I have left WOTC in the past. I think too many people give WOTC to much power as if we have to accept what they are doing to play and that's just not the truth. You can be playing your best D&D right now without ever needing WOTC or their products.
I’ve got some lightning stuff on my holiday wishlist. We’ll see what I get. I think I need a directional light so it doesn’t reflect reflect off the glass cabinet behind me. In some of my first videos it does and it causes a lot of reflection. You’re right I need something.
Great video! IMHO the fact that some versions of D&D lack comprehensive rules for certain aspects of play (downtime, crafting, social interactions, etc.) isn't because they don't support those aspects, but because they expect the GM to be able to handle those aspects in an ad-hoc manner. Conversely, the reason IMO that so much of the rules have to do with combat isn't that D&D is a tactical wargame (necessarily), but because that is the mode of play that most benefits from systematic and reproducible protocols. When I've had players who prefer a social game asking for more in-depth rules for social encounters, I said no... Why? Because, according to my idiosyncratic style of GMing, you need to talk your way through social encounters. If the player insists on roll-play instead of role-play, then I tell them that I'm not going to invest much energy into creating 2D and 3D NPCs for them to interact with... Why? Because I don't see it as rewarding or even consistent to manifest a persona with hopes and fears and a funny voice, only to have them lobotomized by a random Crit on a Player's Charisma check. That's why I prefer games that have less rules in the right places.
I will respectfully disagree that having gaps in the rules are a good thing. The option that you have as a DM is to go "I'm not using this part of the rules in my games.", and if a player is making a stink about it respond with "Cool, so when are you running your game? Would love to play in it." When there's no rules for something, then it's just make stuff up and hope that people are on the same page. In your example of using social interactions, if you have a player that just isn't good at social interactions, they can't play a character with a high charisma without those die rolls, so no playing any of those roleplaying roles. I'm glad none of your groups have had that, but I've been in a few where the socially inept wanted to play a socially adept character and needed to lean on what you would call 'roll play'. It still was a worthwhile investment to flesh out the NPCs for everyone, because the players still interacted with the NPC information and more importantly, everyone at the table was having fun with it. Most of my campaigns have a darker tone so the NPC's weren't funny, but the table was having fun.
If you ask for a roll, expect the possibility of a crit. But to never ask for a roll in a social encounter straight up punishes the character who took proficiency in those skills. The other side of the fence where you just make no fun NPCs sounds so depressing for both you and your players.
@justanghozzst8218 That's why I let them know ahead of time not to build into the social mechanics. In fact, I get rid of Charisma as a stat, replacing it by dividing Dexterity and Agility. That way, players aren't wasting their specializations on something that will never be used.
@@leadpaintchips9461 That's great for you and your table. And I'm happy, for your sake, that 3E and subsequent additions exist, which have rules for just about everything. For me and my table, on the other hand, we prefer the flexibility of having fewer rules in the right places :-)
@@Matt_Volk The thing about those rules, is that you can ignore them. Nothing is binding you to have those in your games. It's why I chopped out a fair bit of 3E, because they were detracting from the fun of the table and why any competent system have details while also being one of the first things in their DMG (or system equivalent) being 'this isn't a law book, just suggestions' while also giving a look behind the design of the system. The systems that don't have those rules in them? They're inferior systems that want the DMs to fill in their blanks. You were making blanket statement about rules and the communities, while applying your limited experiences to it.
As a designer of anything the desire to see your work used only for good can lead you down a path paved with good intentions, but terrible consequences antithetical to your original goal. In this case it feels like they want to force bad DMs antagonizing their players *have to* give their players some nice thing. You can't control what people do with the tools you give them, trying to has quite rarely been good or effective and even more seldom, both. I think it bears saying that players aren't going to enjoy a game with a bad DM and you *should not* in any way encourage people to play and spend time with a DM actively malicious to them. I am sure there are other interpretation of what WotC designers are signaling, but if you have to say anything to the effect of 'we made this so DMs can't do anything with it' that is willfully encouraging players to refuse to engage with good DMs at the best, and at worst tacitly saying players should play with bad DMs by doing this (one trick bad DMs hate but can't stop you (look ok I figure the joke helps with the rather sobering tone of this assemblage of words)). Associating your game and brand with that kind of experience by engaging with it in this way I'd wager will leave a sour taste with at least a few newer players trying to enjoy the hobby. Possibly neutering the ability of new DMs to realize they can do things outside of the Iron box they've put up. If you want to stop players from having bad experiences you aren't going to do that very effectively by trying to force bad actors to be good. You should be trying to enable players to better spot the warning signs of a DM that's toxic, and encourage them to leave games they aren't having fun in. Support players in finding better DMs and support DMs trying to build better experiences. Disempowering bad DMs by giving players better experiences with DMs you do support would go a long way towards solving the issue. I'm rambling but TL;DR if you aren't having fun in a game, you should be able to talk with your DM and *collaborate* to try and have a better time. If your DM doesn't care if you have fun, it's time to GTFO.
Wizards doesn't care about DMs at home, it's like Magic The Gathering, they don't care about players at home. They care about "the scene" in which they are paid in some way. They don't care if 20 awful perv murderhobo edgelord furries show up to D&D, all they care about is that they sell 20 tickets/subscriptions. You, the DM in this setting, can suck it up. Unfortunately, this "tournament standard" aspect is often imported into home games and some people demand people run home games the way it would be run at an official event by a Wizards sanctioned DM. This is an issue where once you separate the person who gets to take the money from the person who has to do the work, you wind up with the person taking the money sticking the person doing the work with burdens they would NEVER agree to be stuck with if they had to do the work.
I mean, you're supposed to be playing with your friends, people that you like, not insufferable children trying to be the main character. If you guys can't agree on fun is going to be, then they need to find another dm and/or you need to find new players. It's how human relationships work.
The turns outside of combat thing makes a lot more sense if you are trying to position this to be something software can easily parse. Most software and I dare say AI lacks the flexibility to be able to keep.multipke things going at the same time and to retcon back and say, ok while Jimmy was doimg x, Sarah was doing y.
I just play my game and don’t pay any attention to anything official it’s all made up anyway, I can see it being disappointing as an institution kind of thing, or maybe because it influences players. But it comes down to my table my rules. I just take what I need.
Quick thing, might wanna check some noise-cancelling feature on your microphone or recording software, it cuts off your words at the tail end and is a little distracting.
Basic and AD&D were very flexible, but people complained that they needed more rules. Then they added rules on each Edition up until 4th. Then with 5e the game became flexible again, and again people complains and ask for new rules. It seems the cycle begins anew. I like 5e a lot, I do think it is an improvement on Basic and AD&D. Maybe at the next cycle we will get an even better game. Cheers!
Well I think it comes down to wanting rules but also wanting rules to be easy to understand. Having rules for how far you can jump is good but it’s annoying when the rules for it are burdensome
@@azurewraith2585 We need a book that gave DMs guidelines on how to adjudicate and create rules. I don't know how that could be done. Star Wars 1e & Mage: the Ascension never managed to teach that to players and GMs regarding the Magic System, and we ended up with rotes instead.
What exactly rules people needed for ADND? I think it has more complexity even than 5e. And, about 3.5, you want to say that 3rd edition wasn't flexible?
@@N5O1 What I meant for the rules people needed are all the rules they added with AD&D2e. What I mean by flexible is that there are less rules written, and the DM has more freedom to homebrew new ones for their table without going against written rules. Cheers!
another take is the handling of dm authority , how many times have you seen a DM hand authority over to players? Describe your home - the kingdom your from ?, usually its just your description or gear. I like the idea of a stepping stone to world building for players . But yea uh downside is possible.
Well, maybe.. just maybe, the Devs are extrapolating from what they feel they would do as DMs ... it feels that this fits their general kind of behavior as devs...
Like. Subscribe. Comment to push your channel let the YT-Algorithm do its thing. Imagine Gandalf was not "allowed" to face the Balrog because some game designers need to push their narrative railroad. In the end to the storytelling DM the "Gandalf faceing the doom of Moria" was an epic encounter. The emotional peaks of this encounter lasted well beyond it too. Even bad things; sad things can be good for the game. You be the arbiter of your game at your table. The time spent is with friends is the best time you got: Have fun
This video's statements all both true and completely intentional on the part of WotC. Have a like, sir. WotC is attempting to make the DM job so unpleasant and unforgiving that people give up on the DM job itself and wait for an AI on a VTT to do the job instead. The Bastion mechanic seems like something from a video game because it's intentionally a mechanic for the video game they are making. They don't want creative free thinkers (traditional DMs) to be the leaders of the gaming troupes out there, and have been pushing player entitlement under the guise of "player agency" for quite a few years now. Why are they doing it? Because they want the customer base to be 100% players. They want nobody else to create any adventure/support material. They just want simple, casual, consumers. Better: people who buy books and don't even read them. Or buy virtual "books" and skins for a VTT because that's even a cheaper means of profit generation. There is no respect there. There is only a will to sell and find the suckers to buy. Obstacles to this can and will be shoved forcefully out of the way. Especially those who've been through edition changes before and know what to expect and all the dirty tricks. This is also the reason we've seen underlying disparagement of older editions lately, from the OGL debacle to THAC0 The Clown to the awful preface and foreword of The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons (as well as the disclusion of Gods, Demigods, and Heroes therein). It's all to burn non-WotC D&D creators and the OSR, which are functionally the same thing to WotC - people making D&D that aren't them. If they get to the point where the public considers D&D to solely be a VTT, they will have effectively won as they can own that platform/hobby from bow to stern. I point any and all new people wanting to start up a D&D group to Basic Fantasy RPG. Basic/Expert (B/X) D&D is widely regarded by those in the know as the best starter D&D and Basic Fantasy adds every necessary evolution of game mechanics that should be applied to a D&D game that has come out since B/X was written in 1981 to, ostensibly, a clone of B/X. No attack matrices (THAC0, descending AC), no alignment, and (in BFRPG 4E) no OGL. No race as class either, but that's not an advancement as OD&D had separate race from class (but I'm getting off on a tangent). No attempt at profit either. The game is free online and sold at cost from pretty much all outlets you can buy it, including it's scads of support material. Even now you can buy the core book of BFRPG 4E for eight dollars and change. Or not and just download the game legally and print it on your home printer. It's a one-book D&D in 200 pages. Every last bit of the published BFRPG material is compatible with it because that's the secret of the OSR (well, the real OSR). Everything is trying to be TSR D&D, and therefore everything is compatible. Like an overpriced module that came out for OSE? BFRPG compatible. Some dungeon written in 2010 for Labyrinth Lord or Sword & Wizardry? BFRPG compatible. X1 The Isle of Dread? BFRPG compatible. The Castles & Crusades Arms & Equipment guide? You get the picture.
@@Gangrel442003 The reasons why I will never touch 5e include WotC stuff and also I hate 5e. Tales of the Valiant is basically 5e. I will play a Cairn or Basic Fantasy RPG or something
I see the problem, but I don't have to play with such players nor do I have to play by their new rules. WoTC can say all they want, but I can just ignore it. If they piss off all the DMs, who's gonna DM? Their AI? Sure. Let those players have fun with that. Anyone willing to respect DMs and play an actual rpg instead of a bare bones video game can just move away from WoTC.
I really think you're imagining this to be worse than it is. Peril in Pinebrook is a small book for new/younger players, so naturally it dumbs down Rule 0 to be all about fun and cooperation. You talk like they've completely thrown out the idea of the 2014 DMGs rule 0 with PiP, when PiP is an adventure module and not a core rule book. You might be right; the new 2024 DMG might change the wording of rule 0 to be less about DMs arbitrating and more about making sure everyone is in agreement, but that remains to be seen (I don't have my hands on the book yet.) Even if the wording does change, is that such a bad thing? Is it a detriment to the game to say to DMs "You're number one priority is making sure this collaborative roleplaying game is collaborative and fun"? I can't comment on the Crown of Lies because I'm currently playing Eve of Ruin so had to skip that part (thanks for neglecting to put a spoiler warning btw.) The Rogue comment is one throwaway joke in an article filled with them that pokes fun at how restricting movement turns the tables on an encounter. DMs and players both know that there are many things a player can do to make an enemy much easier than initially expected, often to a DMs annoyance. I just don't read the line "Frustrating to Dungeon Masters but fantastic for your party" as a malicious jab at DMs, more an advertising quip to show how strong the new rules updates are. The PBH "out of combat turns" really just feels like they're saying "don't try to do too much at once; one thing at a time." It's telling players who read the PHB that they should try one thing before doing something else. If they said "there's no limit to the number of actions you can take outside of combat" or "you can try any check you want" you'd have tables of new players asking to roll 5 different things all at once simultaniously when they enter a dungeon room. Bastions being "off-limits" to the DM seems to me more like "This is the player's personal thing, don't mess with it without a reason." Bastions especially seems like an odd one to point to, as it's very clearly written to be both a collaboration between DM and Player as well as a tool for introducing players to a slice of what it's like to DM. It's also another one of those things that I don't think we can really say how WotC are handling until we've actually got the wording in the book, because that's where the real issues would be; that's where 99% of people are going to be getting information about how DMs and Players should treat these rules.
I hope you’re right. To me, viewing it in context of the other editions, this is the most controlled and prescribed I’ve seen the game. Maybe 4th but that was so different it’s hard to compare.
@DMwaDJ nah dude it's your deesser nose cancelling or something, when the start of almost every word gets cut off and you sound like you're on the other end of a 2004 Skype call, something needs to be done
I'm afraid that Hasbro/WoTC are trying to destroy the hobby as we know it. They want AI DMs and a game that is basically monty haul for players, with no challenge in the name of $$$s. DMs are the lifeblood of the hobby and many things that players think they want, are actually destructive and lead to games that are basically pointless. Also, all this standardisation of turns etc is because they want people used to that, for their VTT. I am not against VTTs; I have been using them since 2009, but it terrifies me that an unscrupulous corporation is walling off the feeder game for our entire hobby, for profit via their VTT. WoTC have never understood D&D. To them it's a tactical wargame, just like Gygax originally designed it to be. But many newer players got hooked on the hobby through Critical Roll, where roleplaying actually matters. We have moved on from Gygax's narrow idea of what roleplaying games are to co-op storytelling. I call on everyone that loves roleplaying to boycott WoTC and all of their products.
that's why I don't like 5e. I hate its community, it's just a bunch of rule lawyers who reject rule 0, and playing the game if it were generic table top game, like a gloomhaven, or monopoly. I don't like this, that's why I prefer playing OSR systems, they not only give you more options for creativity, but also the community in its majority is more creative and use the "rule of cool" over the rule book
Same, and also non-dnd systems being significantly cheaper and, typically, easier to run. Being a d&d DM is a TON of work but I don't get that same feeling running Cairn
I'm trying to decide if this is paranoia or just click-bait. In case it's the former... The new wording on rule zero is only laying out the reasoning for it. The notion that the reason to change the rules is to make the game more enjoyable for everyone. I just can't imagine anyone realistically objecting to that notion unless they're some power-hungry autocrat or completely unable to read and interpret the wording for some reason.
"As long as everyone agrees" assumes everyone will agree. There are plenty of situations where even those who are reasonable disagree. And if you want 100% consensus you're going to be waiting for a long time. Thus, the DM's role as referee or arbiter.
The whole bastion system is for their upcoming VTT, so they can sell you microtransactions for furniture and decorations. There is a reason that they keep hiring people from the video game and especially mmo industry. The Bastions are condense and concise little side areas that they can easily program into the VTT as "player homes".
That is why they want it in the core books. The marketing campaign is pushing it for micro transactions. It has been around since AD&D and it is a way for players to make more in-depth characters, but 5e never cared for henchmen or acolytes before. Why now? Money.
There are a couple major issues there (1) if it is off limits for DMs, then its never going to appear in the VTT and (2) DMs are really the only people who would be buying those kinds of microtransactions as the DM is going to need the map of the Bastians not players.
Parroting the same trash as everyone else.
I don’t see any link between bastions and VTT’s. Bastions exist since the early days of DnD.
@sanderpio8234 Strongholds yes. Bastions no. The biggest difference is Bastions are magic item farms the DM can't touch, while strongholds are places where the characters live and needs to be defended.
But I agree there isn't any connection with the VTT. Unless it's the magic items.
Considering that WotC has been saying repeatedly that they are trying to replace flesh and blood DMs with AIs and turn D&D into a microtransaction hell, being anti-DM makes sense.
After reading a few Call of Cthulhu modules and a few Pathfinder 2e modules I came to the conclusion that WotC has not a single ****ing clue of how to write an adventure, feels like they did it wrong on purpose to have the DM working to fix it, most people just dump most things and just keep the dungeon maps. Which... I payed to save some time not to have to work more.
The removal of DM agency. Who would have thought...
The worst thing about Eve of Ruin for me is that I do not like to lie as DM. The players rely on me to build the world for them, and if I back track or swap out some lore or story, it will confuse and irritate them, rather than make them think they’re experiencing a solid twist.
They’ve got the first part of the rod, which grants Commune, and the first thing they asked their god was “Can we trust these NPCs?” I’ve led them on with a woolly answer, and now they’ve got a Scroll of Mind Reading, they will be asking further questions next session.
I won’t be able to keep this twist until later in the adventure. And nor should I. If the players are suspicious, and have their characters perform actions to investigate, they should be rewarded with the truth being revealed. To do otherwise will just make me come across as a DM more concerned about telling the story as written, than letting them be the main characters in their story. And that, to me, is how my players Have Fun.
I'm just going to straight up have Kas in the game. The crown of lies is a dumb idea. Having a frenemy in Kas is waaaay more interesting.
You sound like a really good DM!!
I haven’t run anything with Vecna yet, but I finished DMing my first game and I feel like the trust I’ve established with my players is way WAY more important than following any narrative beat.
The idea of players asking the right questions, doing the work to investigate things and rolling well too, only to be met a lie from the DM…idk. It feels like a video game where the player character was going to lose, no matter how well they fought or decision they made right before the cutscene. It doesn’t feel fun.
the thing that pisses me off about the 5e is the mindset where we need rules to protect the players from DMs abusing their power...but any idea that the player could abuse their power is meet with an attitude that this is a) an individual problem that needs to be solved by talking to the player and not rules and b) a DM's fault anyway, which will be solved by disempowering the DM, somehow.
Example: DM cannot interact with Bastion because DM cannot be trusted to not burn it down "for the story". But a PC can now piss on the king, kidnapp his daughter and hide into Bastion and argue king cannot lay siege on the Bastion because DM cannot interactr with the Bastion. And if you raise concern about such scenario, you're told it's your fault for not entertaining the player enough for them to not do this.
Agreed. I’m not going to attack a bastion for no reason. But player or DM I don’t like “I win” buttons. My current players don’t use their tavern in that manner, but I have absolutely played with people that would - and I’d have a conversation and it may get tempers raised and while I believe they would have seen reason, WotC throwing up a shield doesn’t help.
You're absolutely correct, but I'd make one refinement to what you said. It's not that it stifles the DM. It's the it stifles the GAME WORLD. The king is an independent agent in the world. The king ought to do what the king would do if he were a real person in the situation he's in. Unless your bastion has some kind of crazy mythal that brainwashes everyone in the world into never wanting to attack it, the king is going to attack it because the king would do that. When the DM makes the king siege your bastion, the DM is just making a logical course of events occur. If the DM makes a tarrasque eat your bastion out of nowhere, the DM is just being a jerk. I think destroying the fundamental concept of an RPG for the sake of stopping jerks isn't worth for some crazy reason. And it's not going to work anyway because jerks are jerks. The tarrasque will just wait outside your bastion to eat you when you leave instead, or whatever gaming of the rules the DM can pull off.
Simple Dms will not use bastions in their games.
2:11 "Off limits" my grognard ass! And I say this as someone who's DMed 1E strongholds on numerous occasions. They were NEVER safe, and my players would never suggest it could--or should!--be otherwise. You may take me to task for saying it, but here goes: the 1E and D&D 2024 approach to PC residences is that between a responsible adult and a spoiled child. I swear, when I first heard that comment, my first thought was a player going, "Nyah, nyah, DM, you can't hurt me!"
12:13 The fact that, after giving the matter genuine thought, a gaming YTer is even posing the question unironically is frankly DEPRESSING. If I could (and did) toss out whole sections of Gygax's DMG, so can any other DM across the decades, from the Brown Box to the present. It all comes down to one realization: the rules are the servant, NOT the master. . .and for DMs to proceed from there with equanimity, fairness, grace, a sense of adventure, and above all, fun. But beneath it all is the indispensable firmness that the DM's table is indeed theirs.
making bastions unsafe actually makes protective warding spells useful for the players. I want my players to feel rewarded and vindicated for setting up alarms and traps in their home base
These little changes being made in effort to rub all the edges away from D&D to make it as unoffensive to as many people as possible is leading to it being a much harder game for new players of ttrpgs to understand IMHO. Great video.
I found the whole bastion being off-limits to players to be weird and off-putting. Hell, as a player if I have a castle I want it to be invaded at some point and be able to defend it. Then someone pointed out that it might be a thing related to Hasbro's VTT and having players spend money on digital stuff to personalize their bastion and not have the DM be able to mess with that a and suddenly it made a lot more of sense.
A large part of the D&D community has never run a game and never will. They don't understand how entitled they can sound to someone that has spent hours upon hours preparing a scenario for his or her friends. Every time a player runs a game, even if it is a one shot, they change into someone more appreciative. There are tons of people out there saying "I always wanted to play D&D but I never met a Dungeon Master". There are not many of us out there and if TTRPG companies keep trying to cater too much to the players there will be even less. There is a point when every DM can say "screw this" and walk away from the hobby. This is not to say there are not bad DM's out there and I've played almost as much as I've run games myself but there needs to be a balance and not just give the keys to the car to the players.
WotC isn't designing a tabletop rpg, they're designing a consumer product. Because they are not interested in what is good for the game, and what is not, they do not and will not care about how it feels to try and run their product from a DM's perspective.
Rule 0, while may have good intention behind it, is written in a condescending and tone-policing way. This is how all of their books have been written since the beginning of 5e. Sorry, if I'm "refereeing" your game, the rules that I decide to implement are up to me. They are not a group discussion and are not up for debate. I will have a session zero and determine what tone and flavor of rules I want to have with my players, i.e encumbrance, character death etc. But, once I've established what is and isnt allowed, thats it. Yes, if I make a mistake regarding how a core rule is meant to work, I am more than happy to correct that mistake. That's not the intent they have behind Rule 0. It gives players the impression that they should be able to ask for a rule change that they disagree with because "everyone should be having fun, and the rules dont matter if you need to change them to make sure fun is happening". Contrast this with how older editions DMG's were written. They gave the DM rules for how things should work, but then often had several blue box texts of "Optional rules and variants". That's much different than how the newer books are written which seems to be, "hey if we missed something or weren't clear just handwave it". They can't seem to decide if game systems should be codified or just handwaved to focus on narrative. WotC's DnD has no identity whatsoever.
The DM is part of the game, too. If he isn't having fun, the game is a failure and you will have nobody buying your adventures and supplements and shoddily written "settings" books. (which have been a complete joke so far in 5e). I dont understand the constant DM sneering and snickering they put directly into their books. Your product dies without a user base, and youll have no user base if this continues. I understand there are horror stories and bad DM's, but thats not the majority of the playerbase. Stop creating bogeymen and tilting at windmills.
It's right along with the whole removal of rules on homebrewing campaigns from the new DMG. It focuses on the idea that you need to buy something from them to run.
This is a much bigger issue! I had no idea theyd done that!!!!
I am sure Hasbro hates how much power DM's have over their bottomline. If they de-power DMS and empower players it would pave the way for much more avenues of income as they would start purchasing more as they get more involved in the ruling. End game is probably something like AI DM's in a virtual platform. Get the income streaming per table from 1DM that pays to everyone.
You can imagine the situation where someone's character dies, only to have them quickly pay WoTC and show their DM a "Certificate of True Resurrection" on their phone and demand that their character immediately revive with full HP.
@@Matt_VolkJesus Christ my brother just don't play! You guys keep making stuff up to make yourself mad. It's schizophrenic
@@EricWalkerswildride LOL
I don't know about anyone else, but I feel like a key stepping stone in my DM'ing journey was going from knowing when to disregard the rules, to knowing when you HAVE to ignore rules so that the game will function.
I don't ignore rules to screw my players over, in fact I probably err on the side of caution more than I should in such matters, but I have had horror story DM's so I get both sides of this. That said WotC consistently choose to create products that will sell to players (power creep, dating back to Xanathar's and Tasha's) instead of creating rules expansions that will make the lives of DM's easier. Never mind the fact that DM's buy ALL the WotC products and players don't. It's a conscious decision to market products to players, even though without DM's there would be no more games.
That is also why they want to create AI DMs. Another layer of protection between WOTC and players will be gone.
@@aetherkid What DMs need to remember is that there is no shortage of amazing TTRPGs out there, some of which deserve our time much more than D&D. Let players go and use AI DMs, we on the other hand will always have games to play with people interested in playing good games.
A couple of my favorites being Cyberpunk RED, Lancer, PF2e, and though I haven't run it yet Fabula Ultima.
I didn’t realize that was part of bastions, but as a player, I wouldn’t want to exclude my DMs from that portion of the game. They’re my friends. I want them to have fun with all the parts of the game the same way I get too. And when I DM, I wouldn’t want to be excluded from a mechanic of the game either. If anything, it feels like doing that just feeds the antagonism WOTC seem so worried about.
I think there’s an argument from WotCs side that many players are playing pick up / disposable D&D. Like an LFR game or random match making. And in that context - their DM and their fellow players are not friends. A player in that style wouldn’t want a random DM burning down their bastion.
I like that Adventurer’s League and RPG nights at FLGS exist. And using structured rules and no house rules in that environment makes perfect sense.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to design the game with that kind of “play once and never see these folks again.” mindset.
Also forgot this part in my response…
Thanks for watching and commenting!
Yeah, the "Why care" segment is it, for me.
I have been in this thing for 15 years, 6 of which as a professional in the industry, I *know* I can do what I want. But the son of my GM, who is very young and playing with us possibly for the first time, does not unless me, his father and the other people in the group show him that there's an alternative narrative to WotC's.
As corporate tabletop games like D&D and Warhammer try to exert more control over their game ecosystems, they inevitably turn into board games.
The right frame of mind is that a lot of people play dnd with DMs that they don't know in the internet. And that's why they are going to put so much effort in the session 0 guidelines in the next DMG. It doesn't make sense to me because I play with my friends, I'm not a "scheming ditactor" because doing so would hurt not only the fun of my games but also my friendships. But maybe it does make sense to those who play online with strangers on tts and discord
As a DM who has done equal parts both, this is exactly it. To your close friends its really largely a pointless conversation of boundaries that normal people with normal relationships aren't going to need, but for DMs playing with complete strangers because their friends at the time aren't into D&D, it can be an important conversation to avoid people issues leading to you wasting prep time because Player A said something that made Players B and C mad and Players D and E are player A's friends and the whole game just collapses.
It's resources for establishing boundaries between everyone in a group of less acquainted individuals rather than being a hardline "MUST" for every single group. If you don't need them, you don't need them. They're just providing them for those that find them helpful.
That is also why they want to create AI DMs. Another layer of protection between WOTC and players will be gone.
To be fair. There are a lot of players out to ruin the DM fun and mess up their plans.
So if a player wants her Bastion to be based on 120 Days of Sodom, then it’s off limits? lol.
Great points. I'll add several more. WotC's disregard for DMs is deep and abiding. WotC's designers seem to be unconcerned that with every new supplement they make the role of DM harder. The text you point to encourages a culture of player entitlement than many DMs complain about. Limit a class or ancestry in your campaign world and watch out for the rotten fruit that will be inevitably be tossed your way.
How many sub-classes are we up to with the new book 49? How is a DM keep in mind the specific abilities each character has so that they can construct an adventure to be challenging? The expansion of classes, ancestries, backgrounds etc create a management and organization issue for any DM who doesn't want to pay for or can't afford a D&D Beyond subscription. It seems like their basic design ethos is to make being a DM harder not easier. In the long term, I think that will drive more players to AI DM or just playing video game versions of D&D.
There’s a whole page about not being a dick to your DM. It gives more defence of DMs than previous editions have.
A borderline god having the capacity to work around low level divination magic should be expected. Making it as if it’s a railroading technique for weak DMs is absurd to me. No part of the new DMG denies DM authority. This feels like a take that relies on only having heard critiques of the new DMG and not having looked at it in person.
I hate that I'm late here.
The rule about not gauging an NPC's honesty and attempting to convince them at the same time may be chokingly overbearing in a lot of game styles, especially for throw away encounters. But, those tools and that mindset seems really helpful for navigating a complex social encounter that was constructed as a game challenge and not just a story moment. There's this unspoken, maybe even invisible tension at every DnD table between a collaborative story telling experience and a challenge or game designed by the DM for the players. Typically combat seems to be solidly in the realm of a game, and casual or low stakes social encounters seem to be in the realm of collaborative story telling. I think high stakes social encounters can feel like gray areas, and not enforcing some kind of structure enables social classes like bards to take the encounter and run.
Imagine a prestige social event including the royal court and the BBG. It may be tempting to imagine and insight check as just watching him talk, but maybe it involves dropping info in an insightful way to try to provoke a reaction, maybe doing so without some effort would show your hand. Doing that while also attempting to make your case or frame an idea like it was his seems fair to call too much. This encourages the party to approach a social situation from multiple angles and encourages them to engage with the setting. It also creates a tense atmosphere where a failed roll matters, but not just in a "oops he's hostile now" way.
To me, for a lot of stuff outside of combat and general vibes, it seems like the devs have these ideas in their head for how the game should run and have just outright failed to convey that, beyond little snippits of design that point in one direction or the other.
Forgive me when else am I going to get to say it. A wizard is never late nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.
Okay memes aside. I can certainly see wanting to rein in a bard in social situations.
If that’s what was on their mind, I think players would naturally try to pass a turn to give the bard and cleric (high wisdom - high insight) the run of the encounter. You could put a time limit or skill limit (each player may use Diplomacy only once) to encourage non charismatic/wise characters to participate. But just like a fighter play stares at the harpy flying helplessly even though they have a bow, I worry many players would be hesitant to fail in a timed or round limited encounter and just take help actions.
Yeah I would expect any game developers to present A vision on how a game might be played. And to their credit they’re more freeing in the DMG. And experience players will already know the DM can alter things or throw them out but a new player may be caught unaware. Which is why people do session 0 of course, but it’d be ideal in my opinion if the book said “this is a baseline. The DM may change things to fit genre, table or engagement.
Thanks for commenting!
I'm not really into the projection of authoritarianism over DMs, by giving them more tools. Anybody who uses any tools for long enough knows when you don't need certain tools anymore, but they helped you anyway.
I'd scoff at someone who offered me a bike with training wheels, or to go bowling with the bumpers up, but I understand how they help others, and probably helped me once too.
The ever present conflict between individual GM autonomy and creativity, and the rules as written and intended has been present in this hobby virtually from the outset. In the very beginning, the old white box days, the rules were at best incomplete and at worst frustratingly inconsistent. We borrowed from any and every source available, and made up our own tables, rules, and best practices. With the growing popularity of the hobby, and tournament style play, the issue came to a head. Tournament play required consistency and uniformity, and so Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was born, as an attempt to clean up and codify the rules. Some loved it, some hated it, depending on how far it strayed from the way your table preferred to play. I can still recall people in the hobby grumbling about "The One True Way" back in 1977.
I guess the more things change, the more they remain the same. The technology is updated, but the core issue of my imagination versus their imagination, my preferences versus their design, has never, and can never, be fully resolved. Which is why we have so many different TTRPGs today.
It's been an interesting experience to have my first campaign last a number of years now, and even from the beginning not pay too much attention to the rules outside general guidelines. I've watched actual plays, but I also have played video games, roleplayed, and written a book trilogy, so all the peices of understanding narrative and the social aspect fit together nicely.
knowing how MTG has been going has left me looking at WotC and wondering if they've just been throwing out people with experience just to try and get profit margins better.
ultimately I know that I can continue without them just fine, but that feeling of lost first time experiences for people still lingers
The 2nd and 3rd had plenty of tables that were useful in adjucating the rules. You didn't have to abide by them, but you didn't have to improv either. The removal of those and all the videos for rule-breaking builds that "will make your DM cry" are evidence that between 4e & 5e WotC turned the game from cooperative to combative.
Putting this in a context where they are positioning for a world where the game is played through dnd beyond or some proprietary vtt with a virtual, ai powered dm, then this all makes sense
Yeah. That’s the writing on the wall all other things aside would I like to be able to have a DM on demand? Yes. Would I find it preferred to a human interaction? I don’t think so. But that’s me. I enjoy the other people at the table or on fantasy grounds laughing along and I enjoy seeing the shocked look on a DMs face when we surprise them.
Structuring turn orders standardizes things. This and other things like it are there to ensure continuity and consistency of experience, that a player who goes into 10 games by different DMs, even if a lot is different, there are some things which should always be the same. If some fundamentals like how leveling up works, how turn order works, can work the same in every game, it provides a grounding for all the areas that are different.
Bastions - the moment anyone tells me, the DM, "No, you can't interact with the bastion or do anything to/with it, only I the player can say what happens with it and how it engages the world or setting", my answer is "Oh. Well, this doesn't exist in my setting/world. I have a few different homebrew systems which I can interact with and are part of my world if you are interested", I will not play games of "Player, May I?"
Thanks for saying this. I expressed skepticism at these rules as soon as I heard about them, but the way you and the comment below presented it helped me see it in a new light.
Rule zero is important but WotC know that telling us we can do whatever we want and also wanting to convince us we have to spend hundreds of dollars on their largely pointless materials to make the game work is counterintuitive. They're not interested in improving the game, they're interested in selling you their books / VTT, their market isn't gamers, it's consumers.
It's what they told us in 3.5, and people spent on _all_ of that with only some slight grumblings.
I have since gotten the DMs Guide and I'm about 1/3 of the way through it. For anyone concerned, yes, it is fine despite the pile of salt I threw at it - literally and figuratively.
I was gonna ask if you got the new DMG before this was recorded, lol. I think it does a GREAT job of telling DMs how to deal with a good bit of the nonsense players can throw at them (within the rules or otherwise).
@@CooperAATE It does. Having read through it so far, and considering that along with the PHB, it feels like WotC is almost talking to players and DMs separately.
"Hey players, we're on your side. We won't let the DMs bully you!"
"DMs, shhh. We know. Here's how to deal with the Players."
@DMwaDJ yeah, and they kinda have to be on both sides. They support players, and the DM is one of those
Who needs a DM? That is their goal.
WotC adventures are obsessed with running as a linear story and fall apart if a group deviates from them. Try running something high level like planescape or vecna and go off rails? Well the story says the world is fucked. They are written as a novels about the WotC characters and villains, the PCs are there to witness it unfold.
Structuring out of combat actions into turn based actions is obviously for the sake of vtt/ai dm implementation. The same people who considered 4e's power card format to resemble a mmo's actions should be raising their voices about now.
Based on the reddit stories of DnD that I have listened to for the last 4 years, I beginning to get the inclination that a lot of DMs just are either inexperienced at or incapable of dealing with conflicting rules or "broken" spells/items. The rules updates that I see being added in DnD seem to reflect complaints from new or poor DMs who can't rectify the issues at their table. They might just be lacking the creativity to counter a players use of something in a non-standard way. Instead of teaching DMs how to cope with creative players, they just re-write abilities/spells and create rules to stifle the players choices. It seems that 99% of the DM complaints I hear are "such and such (spell/ability/item) is broken/OP, so I banned it." Instead, the DM should be looking for a creative way to counter/play along with that player and not discourage them. This is something that cannot be ruled in the DMs guide without subwaying (worse than railroading). A good DM can railroad in a way where you don't even notice the tracks and the players' decisions do have some effect on the narrative, without completely nuking it. Subwaying it where you are so boxed in you can even see the walls around you.
“Instead of teaching DMs how to cope with creative players use of something, they just rewrite abilities/spells and create rules to stifle players choice.” - this. I should have said that and saved myself a lot of editing work.
Exactly! It's brutal to get your carefully crafted character concept and build destroyed by your GM due to lack of experience, creativity and/or the communication skills to make it work in a way, everyone at the table enjoy.
I'm hoping my GM will get and read the new DMG soon... 🤞🏽
The game has been trending towards rules over rulings for a while.
Remember, 1e had barely any rules, 3.5 supposedly had volumes on how to adjudicate, 4e was meant to be balances and rules codified, and 5th (2014)... wot? Walks back on it all to be simplified, intuitive, and generally "make it up as you go along".
Not to mention that this generation (including mine, being born in 81) has consistently lived in a world that is predominantly "video gamified" and you expect everything to behave on rails.
@@DMwaDJ😂😂😂
hear me out: maybe a full price 50e ttrpg published by the biggest company in the industry, who commands much more resources than indie rpgs that somehow manage to avoid many of the same pitfalls, that's likely to be most people's first game and sadly a lot of people's only game, should have much less "conflicting rules" in the first place. maybe it should not have extremely situational items and spells competing for slots with extremely universally useful items and spells at the same spell level or rarity tier. maybe it should offer some support to the GM for when players use things in non-conventional ways instead of only detailing how things work in combat and nothing else. maybe the spells should include examples of how they can be used out of combat and how a DM could rule it. maybe the people saying that dnd ought to have better written rules arent weird hategoblins, but tired GMs who wish the biggest game in the industry wouldn't need to make them look for twitter posts from the game designer to clarify its poor rules syntax, and to make up almost everything but combat
4:51 I'm not sure if that's the most comfortable or least comfortable way to play a game.
The rules are not there to restrict anybody. They are in place to provide both players and a DM with clear understanding of what they can expect and a common language to communicate about the world they cocreate. Thinking about rules as benign restrictions is falling straight into the WotC mindset.
Look... Hasbro and Wotc are not the future of D&D... Unless you want an environment that will limit creativity and you like dancing to the tune of a Company exploiting an IP for profit only. The future is with us, the passionate players who don't need dndbeyond or the bloated new rules designed to make dndbeyond necessary to even play. We do not have to go along. I gave up my dndbeyond subscription and there are a host of rules sets out there that work. Retro clones, Shadowdark, five torches deep, Dark Albion, LOTFP, etc. etc. etc. All of them basically a version of DND. All of them highly creative and playable. My games have improved the farther I have left WOTC in the past. I think too many people give WOTC to much power as if we have to accept what they are doing to play and that's just not the truth. You can be playing your best D&D right now without ever needing WOTC or their products.
Great video!
Could I make a suggestion? A back-light, set at a low angle.
Your hair and chair blend into the background.
I’ve got some lightning stuff on my holiday wishlist. We’ll see what I get. I think I need a directional light so it doesn’t reflect reflect off the glass cabinet behind me. In some of my first videos it does and it causes a lot of reflection. You’re right I need something.
@ You do great work and I’m glad to hear you are experimenting.
The challenge of making the frame not detract from the painting is real 😂
Yea yes yessssss yeeeeeeeehhahhhhhhh yyyuuppp you are the one who gets it
Great video! IMHO the fact that some versions of D&D lack comprehensive rules for certain aspects of play (downtime, crafting, social interactions, etc.) isn't because they don't support those aspects, but because they expect the GM to be able to handle those aspects in an ad-hoc manner. Conversely, the reason IMO that so much of the rules have to do with combat isn't that D&D is a tactical wargame (necessarily), but because that is the mode of play that most benefits from systematic and reproducible protocols.
When I've had players who prefer a social game asking for more in-depth rules for social encounters, I said no... Why? Because, according to my idiosyncratic style of GMing, you need to talk your way through social encounters. If the player insists on roll-play instead of role-play, then I tell them that I'm not going to invest much energy into creating 2D and 3D NPCs for them to interact with... Why? Because I don't see it as rewarding or even consistent to manifest a persona with hopes and fears and a funny voice, only to have them lobotomized by a random Crit on a Player's Charisma check.
That's why I prefer games that have less rules in the right places.
I will respectfully disagree that having gaps in the rules are a good thing.
The option that you have as a DM is to go "I'm not using this part of the rules in my games.", and if a player is making a stink about it respond with "Cool, so when are you running your game? Would love to play in it."
When there's no rules for something, then it's just make stuff up and hope that people are on the same page.
In your example of using social interactions, if you have a player that just isn't good at social interactions, they can't play a character with a high charisma without those die rolls, so no playing any of those roleplaying roles. I'm glad none of your groups have had that, but I've been in a few where the socially inept wanted to play a socially adept character and needed to lean on what you would call 'roll play'. It still was a worthwhile investment to flesh out the NPCs for everyone, because the players still interacted with the NPC information and more importantly, everyone at the table was having fun with it. Most of my campaigns have a darker tone so the NPC's weren't funny, but the table was having fun.
If you ask for a roll, expect the possibility of a crit. But to never ask for a roll in a social encounter straight up punishes the character who took proficiency in those skills. The other side of the fence where you just make no fun NPCs sounds so depressing for both you and your players.
@justanghozzst8218 That's why I let them know ahead of time not to build into the social mechanics. In fact, I get rid of Charisma as a stat, replacing it by dividing Dexterity and Agility. That way, players aren't wasting their specializations on something that will never be used.
@@leadpaintchips9461 That's great for you and your table. And I'm happy, for your sake, that 3E and subsequent additions exist, which have rules for just about everything. For me and my table, on the other hand, we prefer the flexibility of having fewer rules in the right places :-)
@@Matt_Volk The thing about those rules, is that you can ignore them. Nothing is binding you to have those in your games. It's why I chopped out a fair bit of 3E, because they were detracting from the fun of the table and why any competent system have details while also being one of the first things in their DMG (or system equivalent) being 'this isn't a law book, just suggestions' while also giving a look behind the design of the system.
The systems that don't have those rules in them? They're inferior systems that want the DMs to fill in their blanks.
You were making blanket statement about rules and the communities, while applying your limited experiences to it.
As a designer of anything the desire to see your work used only for good can lead you down a path paved with good intentions, but terrible consequences antithetical to your original goal. In this case it feels like they want to force bad DMs antagonizing their players *have to* give their players some nice thing. You can't control what people do with the tools you give them, trying to has quite rarely been good or effective and even more seldom, both.
I think it bears saying that players aren't going to enjoy a game with a bad DM and you *should not* in any way encourage people to play and spend time with a DM actively malicious to them. I am sure there are other interpretation of what WotC designers are signaling, but if you have to say anything to the effect of 'we made this so DMs can't do anything with it' that is willfully encouraging players to refuse to engage with good DMs at the best, and at worst tacitly saying players should play with bad DMs by doing this (one trick bad DMs hate but can't stop you (look ok I figure the joke helps with the rather sobering tone of this assemblage of words)). Associating your game and brand with that kind of experience by engaging with it in this way I'd wager will leave a sour taste with at least a few newer players trying to enjoy the hobby. Possibly neutering the ability of new DMs to realize they can do things outside of the Iron box they've put up. If you want to stop players from having bad experiences you aren't going to do that very effectively by trying to force bad actors to be good. You should be trying to enable players to better spot the warning signs of a DM that's toxic, and encourage them to leave games they aren't having fun in. Support players in finding better DMs and support DMs trying to build better experiences. Disempowering bad DMs by giving players better experiences with DMs you do support would go a long way towards solving the issue.
I'm rambling but TL;DR if you aren't having fun in a game, you should be able to talk with your DM and *collaborate* to try and have a better time. If your DM doesn't care if you have fun, it's time to GTFO.
Well said.
Wizards doesn't care about DMs at home, it's like Magic The Gathering, they don't care about players at home. They care about "the scene" in which they are paid in some way. They don't care if 20 awful perv murderhobo edgelord furries show up to D&D, all they care about is that they sell 20 tickets/subscriptions. You, the DM in this setting, can suck it up. Unfortunately, this "tournament standard" aspect is often imported into home games and some people demand people run home games the way it would be run at an official event by a Wizards sanctioned DM.
This is an issue where once you separate the person who gets to take the money from the person who has to do the work, you wind up with the person taking the money sticking the person doing the work with burdens they would NEVER agree to be stuck with if they had to do the work.
I mean, you're supposed to be playing with your friends, people that you like, not insufferable children trying to be the main character.
If you guys can't agree on fun is going to be, then they need to find another dm and/or you need to find new players. It's how human relationships work.
The turns outside of combat thing makes a lot more sense if you are trying to position this to be something software can easily parse. Most software and I dare say AI lacks the flexibility to be able to keep.multipke things going at the same time and to retcon back and say, ok while Jimmy was doimg x, Sarah was doing y.
I just play my game and don’t pay any attention to anything official it’s all made up anyway, I can see it being disappointing as an institution kind of thing, or maybe because it influences players.
But it comes down to my table my rules.
I just take what I need.
Quick thing, might wanna check some noise-cancelling feature on your microphone or recording software, it cuts off your words at the tail end and is a little distracting.
Basic and AD&D were very flexible, but people complained that they needed more rules. Then they added rules on each Edition up until 4th.
Then with 5e the game became flexible again, and again people complains and ask for new rules. It seems the cycle begins anew.
I like 5e a lot, I do think it is an improvement on Basic and AD&D. Maybe at the next cycle we will get an even better game.
Cheers!
Well I think it comes down to wanting rules but also wanting rules to be easy to understand. Having rules for how far you can jump is good but it’s annoying when the rules for it are burdensome
@@azurewraith2585 We need a book that gave DMs guidelines on how to adjudicate and create rules. I don't know how that could be done.
Star Wars 1e & Mage: the Ascension never managed to teach that to players and GMs regarding the Magic System, and we ended up with rotes instead.
What exactly rules people needed for ADND? I think it has more complexity even than 5e.
And, about 3.5, you want to say that 3rd edition wasn't flexible?
AD&D 1e and 2e were the best rule systems created for a ttrpg
@@N5O1 What I meant for the rules people needed are all the rules they added with AD&D2e.
What I mean by flexible is that there are less rules written, and the DM has more freedom to homebrew new ones for their table without going against written rules.
Cheers!
another take is the handling of dm authority , how many times have you seen a DM hand authority over to players? Describe your home - the kingdom your from ?, usually its just your description or gear. I like the idea of a stepping stone to world building for players . But yea uh downside is possible.
Well, maybe.. just maybe, the Devs are extrapolating from what they feel they would do as DMs ... it feels that this fits their general kind of behavior as devs...
Based
Well said! Subbed!
Like. Subscribe. Comment to push your channel let the YT-Algorithm do its thing.
Imagine Gandalf was not "allowed" to face the Balrog because some game designers need to push their narrative railroad.
In the end to the storytelling DM the "Gandalf faceing the doom of Moria" was an epic encounter.
The emotional peaks of this encounter lasted well beyond it too.
Even bad things; sad things can be good for the game.
You be the arbiter of your game at your table. The time spent is with friends is the best time you got: Have fun
Off limits lol, the giant tribe about to siege that shit
It's crazy to me that anyone would still buy wotc products.
Yeah that extra wording for new players are impacted how they play and damaged their freedom to play
DM's are vestigial organs for the new edition. AI will handle everything soon enough.
There's a reason I play Call of Cthulhu, instead.
This video's statements all both true and completely intentional on the part of WotC. Have a like, sir.
WotC is attempting to make the DM job so unpleasant and unforgiving that people give up on the DM job itself and wait for an AI on a VTT to do the job instead. The Bastion mechanic seems like something from a video game because it's intentionally a mechanic for the video game they are making. They don't want creative free thinkers (traditional DMs) to be the leaders of the gaming troupes out there, and have been pushing player entitlement under the guise of "player agency" for quite a few years now. Why are they doing it? Because they want the customer base to be 100% players. They want nobody else to create any adventure/support material. They just want simple, casual, consumers. Better: people who buy books and don't even read them. Or buy virtual "books" and skins for a VTT because that's even a cheaper means of profit generation. There is no respect there. There is only a will to sell and find the suckers to buy. Obstacles to this can and will be shoved forcefully out of the way. Especially those who've been through edition changes before and know what to expect and all the dirty tricks.
This is also the reason we've seen underlying disparagement of older editions lately, from the OGL debacle to THAC0 The Clown to the awful preface and foreword of The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons (as well as the disclusion of Gods, Demigods, and Heroes therein). It's all to burn non-WotC D&D creators and the OSR, which are functionally the same thing to WotC - people making D&D that aren't them. If they get to the point where the public considers D&D to solely be a VTT, they will have effectively won as they can own that platform/hobby from bow to stern.
I point any and all new people wanting to start up a D&D group to Basic Fantasy RPG. Basic/Expert (B/X) D&D is widely regarded by those in the know as the best starter D&D and Basic Fantasy adds every necessary evolution of game mechanics that should be applied to a D&D game that has come out since B/X was written in 1981 to, ostensibly, a clone of B/X. No attack matrices (THAC0, descending AC), no alignment, and (in BFRPG 4E) no OGL. No race as class either, but that's not an advancement as OD&D had separate race from class (but I'm getting off on a tangent). No attempt at profit either. The game is free online and sold at cost from pretty much all outlets you can buy it, including it's scads of support material. Even now you can buy the core book of BFRPG 4E for eight dollars and change. Or not and just download the game legally and print it on your home printer. It's a one-book D&D in 200 pages. Every last bit of the published BFRPG material is compatible with it because that's the secret of the OSR (well, the real OSR). Everything is trying to be TSR D&D, and therefore everything is compatible. Like an overpriced module that came out for OSE? BFRPG compatible. Some dungeon written in 2010 for Labyrinth Lord or Sword & Wizardry? BFRPG compatible. X1 The Isle of Dread? BFRPG compatible. The Castles & Crusades Arms & Equipment guide? You get the picture.
I will never touch 5e again.
Go with Tales of the Valiant as an alternative. Don't give these people a dime of your money ever again.
@@Gangrel442003 The reasons why I will never touch 5e include WotC stuff and also I hate 5e. Tales of the Valiant is basically 5e. I will play a Cairn or Basic Fantasy RPG or something
I see the problem, but I don't have to play with such players nor do I have to play by their new rules. WoTC can say all they want, but I can just ignore it. If they piss off all the DMs, who's gonna DM? Their AI? Sure. Let those players have fun with that. Anyone willing to respect DMs and play an actual rpg instead of a bare bones video game can just move away from WoTC.
I really think you're imagining this to be worse than it is.
Peril in Pinebrook is a small book for new/younger players, so naturally it dumbs down Rule 0 to be all about fun and cooperation. You talk like they've completely thrown out the idea of the 2014 DMGs rule 0 with PiP, when PiP is an adventure module and not a core rule book. You might be right; the new 2024 DMG might change the wording of rule 0 to be less about DMs arbitrating and more about making sure everyone is in agreement, but that remains to be seen (I don't have my hands on the book yet.) Even if the wording does change, is that such a bad thing? Is it a detriment to the game to say to DMs "You're number one priority is making sure this collaborative roleplaying game is collaborative and fun"?
I can't comment on the Crown of Lies because I'm currently playing Eve of Ruin so had to skip that part (thanks for neglecting to put a spoiler warning btw.)
The Rogue comment is one throwaway joke in an article filled with them that pokes fun at how restricting movement turns the tables on an encounter. DMs and players both know that there are many things a player can do to make an enemy much easier than initially expected, often to a DMs annoyance. I just don't read the line "Frustrating to Dungeon Masters but fantastic for your party" as a malicious jab at DMs, more an advertising quip to show how strong the new rules updates are.
The PBH "out of combat turns" really just feels like they're saying "don't try to do too much at once; one thing at a time." It's telling players who read the PHB that they should try one thing before doing something else. If they said "there's no limit to the number of actions you can take outside of combat" or "you can try any check you want" you'd have tables of new players asking to roll 5 different things all at once simultaniously when they enter a dungeon room.
Bastions being "off-limits" to the DM seems to me more like "This is the player's personal thing, don't mess with it without a reason." Bastions especially seems like an odd one to point to, as it's very clearly written to be both a collaboration between DM and Player as well as a tool for introducing players to a slice of what it's like to DM. It's also another one of those things that I don't think we can really say how WotC are handling until we've actually got the wording in the book, because that's where the real issues would be; that's where 99% of people are going to be getting information about how DMs and Players should treat these rules.
I hope you’re right. To me, viewing it in context of the other editions, this is the most controlled and prescribed I’ve seen the game. Maybe 4th but that was so different it’s hard to compare.
I can't get too worked up about what Hasbro does to D&D, because there are too many other great ttrpgs out there
My personal favorites are pathfindr 2e and mork borg but some of the community hacks of dnd 5e are really cool.
Подавление шума съедает часть слов, местами тяжело слушать. В остальном - хорошее видео
Bro I'm sorry but you seriously need to fix your audio
Anything specifically? Like is the volume low? Or is there a buzz I’m not noticing or something?
@DMwaDJ nah dude it's your deesser nose cancelling or something, when the start of almost every word gets cut off and you sound like you're on the other end of a 2004 Skype call, something needs to be done
Yes ! I found the video really interesting but the sound quality was off. Thanks for bringing the subject of the rule 0 dissapearance
Thanks! I’ll see what I can do
It sounds like it’s the noise gate!
I'm afraid that Hasbro/WoTC are trying to destroy the hobby as we know it. They want AI DMs and a game that is basically monty haul for players, with no challenge in the name of $$$s. DMs are the lifeblood of the hobby and many things that players think they want, are actually destructive and lead to games that are basically pointless. Also, all this standardisation of turns etc is because they want people used to that, for their VTT. I am not against VTTs; I have been using them since 2009, but it terrifies me that an unscrupulous corporation is walling off the feeder game for our entire hobby, for profit via their VTT. WoTC have never understood D&D. To them it's a tactical wargame, just like Gygax originally designed it to be. But many newer players got hooked on the hobby through Critical Roll, where roleplaying actually matters. We have moved on from Gygax's narrow idea of what roleplaying games are to co-op storytelling. I call on everyone that loves roleplaying to boycott WoTC and all of their products.
that's why I don't like 5e. I hate its community, it's just a bunch of rule lawyers who reject rule 0, and playing the game if it were generic table top game, like a gloomhaven, or monopoly. I don't like this, that's why I prefer playing OSR systems, they not only give you more options for creativity, but also the community in its majority is more creative and use the "rule of cool" over the rule book
The problem is not 5e. The problem is with the community and the developers who enable them.
Same, and also non-dnd systems being significantly cheaper and, typically, easier to run. Being a d&d DM is a TON of work but I don't get that same feeling running Cairn
If you don't like the entirety of the people who play 5e, the problem is probably coming from -you-
I'm trying to decide if this is paranoia or just click-bait.
In case it's the former...
The new wording on rule zero is only laying out the reasoning for it. The notion that the reason to change the rules is to make the game more enjoyable for everyone. I just can't imagine anyone realistically objecting to that notion unless they're some power-hungry autocrat or completely unable to read and interpret the wording for some reason.
"As long as everyone agrees" assumes everyone will agree. There are plenty of situations where even those who are reasonable disagree. And if you want 100% consensus you're going to be waiting for a long time. Thus, the DM's role as referee or arbiter.
We can make a better ttrpg than DnD.
they already exist, even wots and tsr already made good alternatives for 5e
@, we can do better still.
Wow from referee to have fun..... Well that bolds badly for players
You guys know this is a game right?
You know you didn't have to watch the video, right?