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Author Topic: A rant on Tasha, 5e, and we are not in OSR-land anymore  (Read 13983 times)

Eric Diaz

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Re: A rant on Tasha, 5e, and we are not in OSR-land anymore
« Reply #15 on: November 28, 2020, 05:11:06 PM »
Another thing to consider... It didn't HAVE to be this way, EVEN IF they want to attract new players.

WotC could just HIRE some great game designers* and have the best books around. Something like GURPS splatbooks, things that are useful even if you don't play the "core" system. Maybe some awesome NEW settings.

* freelancers, I guess. I am amazed they "lost" Robert J. Schwalb somehow, SotDL is superior to 5e in many points IMO.

I heard the 4e DMG 2 was full of great ideas... and believe me, I'm no 4e fan.

I'm probably being a stickler here. But things like the ToC in Tomb of Annihilation (or the lack of distances in CoS) should not happen, IMO.
« Last Edit: November 28, 2020, 05:18:14 PM by Eric Diaz »
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Mishihari

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Re: A rant on Tasha, 5e, and we are not in OSR-land anymore
« Reply #16 on: November 29, 2020, 12:47:15 AM »
I thought the McDonald's analogy was pretty good.  I remember in one of my marketing classes there was a statement by a McDonald's exec, roughly, that "We're a real estate company, not a food company."  In other words, their product is good enough that you'll eat it when you're hungry, but no better, and their real goal is to be right there when you want some food right now.  Similarly, 5E is, IMO no more than an okay game (feel free to disagree if you like, that's not what I'm arguing at the moment) but if you want a game right now, you can find one.  It makes business sense for WOTC to focus resources on making 5E pervasive rather than trying to make it a better game.

Lynn

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Re: A rant on Tasha, 5e, and we are not in OSR-land anymore
« Reply #17 on: November 29, 2020, 01:37:29 AM »
I picked up Tasha's and read through it.

Maybe if Xanathar's hadn't come out, I'd have a greater sense of value with  Tasha's. Xanathar's seems to have a lot more value for everyone and, at least to me, fill in some holes. I wish that Tasha's did have a bit more 'system' to it when it came to the obvious psionics sub-classes.



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jeff37923

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Re: A rant on Tasha, 5e, and we are not in OSR-land anymore
« Reply #18 on: November 29, 2020, 08:17:34 AM »
I agree with the OP.  I said something similar in the other thread.

I think the game and the 5E community have been going in the wrong direction - which wouldn't matter so much but if feels at time so predominant that it's strangling everything else around it.

5E and its community have been trying to kill off anything not 5E through their Organized Play in FLGS for years now.
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Dimitrios

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Re: A rant on Tasha, 5e, and we are not in OSR-land anymore
« Reply #19 on: November 29, 2020, 09:55:23 AM »
How can people play through dozens of campaigns without knowing what a "session zero" is... or realizing they can make their own rules and create their own stuff? It is in the DMG, after all!

Recalling from years ago when I was browsing that epic thread at Enworld where Gary Gygax was answering questions: the subject of the world of Greyhawk came up. I forget his exact words, but they were to the effect that he was surprised by how successful it was, and that before someone else suggested it, the idea of trying to sell a pre-made campaign world had never even occurred to him, because he just took it for granted that everyone would want to make their own.

Those of us who like to tinker with rules and make own own stuff might always have overestimated how popular that aspect of the hobby is.

Mercurius

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Re: A rant on Tasha, 5e, and we are not in OSR-land anymore
« Reply #20 on: November 29, 2020, 12:34:31 PM »
McDonalds is a good analogy, I think, but what I'm trying to express does not have much to do with quality... it is more like ubiquity + ignorance. How people can be experts in 5e without ever hearing about DCC (or CoC or GURPS for that matter). And, look, I cannot say any of those games are 100% better than 5e. I just think it is incredibly USEFUL to learn about RPGs, not only 5e D&D.

Heck, even reading Moldvay's Basic - a 50ish-page book - sounds infinitely more useful than getting a 200+ page book with new ideas on how to use your bonus action. If you want something more current, Shadow of the Demon Lord, DCC RPG...

The campaigns bother me the most, because I tried running them, and it is a hassle. While the character options are somewhat balanced and play-test (but yes, there is some power creep and caster supremacy gets worse and worse), there are essential parts of the campaigns that have obvious mistakes (railroading, misunderstanding hexcrawls, etc.). But, I mean, people are still running them and enjoying, so...

I hear you and feel your pain - but again, you and I are not the drones WotC is looking for. They're looking at their new Millenial player base, and upcoming Gen Zers who know nothing of Moldvay or THACO or the OSR. They might eventually.

In that sense, the McDonalds analogy might work insofar as both McDs and D&D are the "gateway drugs" to fast food and RPGs, respectively.

Many people stop at McDonalds because it is cheap and, frankly, tasty in a junk food way. Some try other fast food joints and restaurants, perhaps gradually fine-tuning their tastes. A smaller percentage get into cooking and start making their own burgers.

But the majority of people stop somewhere before that, and settle on their "brand" - be it McDonalds, Five Guys, or D&D. It is a small percentage that get into boutique games or even creating their own.

So while I agree that people are only enriched by going deeper than D&D (or 5E), I also understand why they--especially casual players--just stick with the official material.

EDIT: here is another analogy: a body-builder with strong arms who refuses to train his legs... ever. Nice arms, but training your legs would be really helpful overall.

I don't think that quite works, because it implies that 5E-only folks are "doing it wrong." Or rather, if we want to use the analogy of body-building, I think the equivalent is someone who just goes to the gym 2-3 times a week for 45 minutes to maintain a decent physique, but doesn't get into it in any great depth.

Chris24601

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Re: A rant on Tasha, 5e, and we are not in OSR-land anymore
« Reply #21 on: November 29, 2020, 07:02:57 PM »
Honestly, I think it’s less a matter of 5e players “playing it wrong” as it is the 5e development team is “teaching it wrong” (and perhaps deliberately so).

I mean “session zero” and “you can change the rules” is stuff that should be front and center in the core books, not in a supplement released five years after the fact.

I mean, 4E gets a lot of flak, but one of the things it’s generally gotten praise for is it’s DMG and the solid advice it offered new DMs on things like player motivations (how to recognize, engage their interests and what to watch out for), lots of guidance on how to improvise (including the famous Page 42) and other issues commonly run into when getting a campaign off the ground.

That they knew how to do it for 4E and then set that aside for the anemic effort to teach new DMs in 5e implies a deliberate effort to change the way DMs set up and run campaigns and the way players approach the rules that might be great for keeping people hooked on buying your adventure paths and using only official options rather than homebrewing what you need.

mightybrain

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Re: A rant on Tasha, 5e, and we are not in OSR-land anymore
« Reply #22 on: November 29, 2020, 07:49:31 PM »
I think the problem isn't with the content as such, but the general idea that these are considered player options rather than DM options. I'm of the view that the DM creates the world and the players play within it. If the DM's world only has humans and elves then those should be the only options on the table. Ideally, the DM should pick the races, the gods, the classes, the magic items, the spells, and so on. Obviously the DM should take player preferences into account when pitching the game. But letting the players pick and choose from all the options always seems to result in a party that looks like the cast of Fraggle Rock, with every size shape and colour of the rainbow.

Chris24601

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Re: A rant on Tasha, 5e, and we are not in OSR-land anymore
« Reply #23 on: November 29, 2020, 09:11:09 PM »
To be fair, presuming that anything in the core book is allowed isn’t unreasonable and presenting new races and classes as player options has been the standard in D&D for 20 years now.

Conceptually, they’re player options because they’re rule elements players will be interacting with if the DM allows their use. This is why it made a lot of sense in 4E where it continued 3e’s magic mart approach to buying/crafting magic items to have moved the magic item section to the PHB instead of having it in the DMG (whereas 5e’s choice to go back to AD&D’s approach to magic items made it sensible to put it back in the DMG... basically, 3e was the only edition where magic items were presented in kinda the wrong place).

Also, to be fair, not every group ends up with a freakshow menagerie even if those options are available. My ruleset includes options for everything from sprites to giants to dragons; but the vast majority of playtesters have chosen humans, dwarves and elves with only a few picking less traditional options (and even then mostly in the fairly typical options from other games; malfeans/tieflings, orcs, a golem/warforged and, while it’s rare for D&D, a Palladium fan picked a wolfen beastman, which is a basic race in Palladium Fantasy).

That might just be the nature of the people playtesting, but when a solid 75% are picking races even OSR purists would be allowing (human, elf, dwarf) and 20% of the rest have appeared in at least one PHB (or other fantasy system equivalent) in the last 20 years... it’s hard for me to put much stock in the “unless we ban it we’ll get a freakshow” mentality.

Steven Mitchell

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Re: A rant on Tasha, 5e, and we are not in OSR-land anymore
« Reply #24 on: November 30, 2020, 08:12:17 AM »
The 4E DMG was the worst book of the three!  The advice was what sunk it. It gave advice on two broad fronts, both mutually incompatible with each other and the way 4E is meant to be played.  Basically, it was Robin Laws hired to write his usual "make it up as you go" pablum mixed with old-style but excessively dry and phoned-in D&D boilerplate--as if someone scanned the 1E DMG and reduced it to a Power Point slide for a product that didn't conform to the original.

The DMG should help the DM run the game.  Not D&D in general, but the game as presented in the PHB and the MM.  The 5E DMG isn't great.  (It's quite uneven, being notably useful in a few places, completely worthless in others, and just odd most of the way through--better content but even more than normal WotC lousy writing.)  Still, it is a vast improvement on the 4E DMG for the simple reason that it is more focused on 5E than the 4E guide was on 4E.

Chris24601

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Re: A rant on Tasha, 5e, and we are not in OSR-land anymore
« Reply #25 on: November 30, 2020, 09:00:52 AM »
And yet the people I know who first game DMing a go during 4E all found the guidance very helpful to them. Maybe because just about everything outside of the combat engine in 4E was geared very much towards “make it up as you go along.”

The 4E DMG presented the idea that you only need rules detailed enough for the task at hand. For combat that meant unless it was a set piece battle, it was suggested that a one-sided mook fight be resolved with a check or two (we traditionally used one to see if we could dispatch them stealthily and one to see if we lost any hit points while doing so) or even just hand waved as nothing more than a bit of flavor text.

It left most social interaction and exploration to simple ad hoc rolls and GM improvisation because as any OSR GM knows... that’s all those sections really need and, generally, the less mechanics are involved on the player end, the more engaged the players will be. This was how everyone in my area ran it to great effect.

What DIDN’T mesh with the advice given were the early adventure modules which were still being written with a 3e mindset. If you’re judging “meant to be played” off of those then I could see the disconnect.

But I don’t know of a 4E fan who considers those adventure modules to be anything other than garbage and most definitely NOT indicative of how 4E was meant to be played. Fortunately the 4E DMG made setting up your own adventures a snap so we just created our own adventures and settings in line with the DMG’s advice.


Torque2100

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Re: A rant on Tasha, 5e, and we are not in OSR-land anymore
« Reply #26 on: November 30, 2020, 12:19:12 PM »
I think part of the reason why D&D players are so reluctant to change 5e, so fixated on having an "official" ruling for everything is an extended hangover from 3rd edition.  3rd edition really suffered from one of the worst cases of "House of Cards" game design I have ever seen.  tl;dr; 3rd made it really hard to go in and change anything in the system because all of the rules were co-dependent. The knock on effect was that groups were very heavily punished for doing any part of the rules "wrong."

I still like 5e even if I'm likely going to give "Tasha's Big Book of Things the Playerbase" figured out years ago a pass.

Razor 007

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Re: A rant on Tasha, 5e, and we are not in OSR-land anymore
« Reply #27 on: December 01, 2020, 12:53:37 AM »
4 years ago, I returned to the hobby after a longggg hiatus.  D&D 5E was already 2 years into its run, and I was complaining that they hadn't already released a MM2.  People kept telling me how great it was that WOTC had embraced a slow release schedule.  It was seen as being some kind of noble endeavor.  Well, 4 years later; we are now 6 years into D&D 5E, and it's grown into a pretty big edition of D&D.  Eventually, it happened anyway.
« Last Edit: December 01, 2020, 12:55:44 AM by Razor 007 »
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HappyDaze

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Re: A rant on Tasha, 5e, and we are not in OSR-land anymore
« Reply #28 on: December 01, 2020, 08:44:24 AM »
Well, 4 years later; we are now 6 years into D&D 5E, and it's grown into a pretty big edition of D&D.  Eventually, it happened anyway.
In terms of overall quantity of material released, it is still a small edition of D&D. In comparison with other game lines released in the last 10 years (excepting Pathfinder), it is a fairly big line. However, some Modiphus lines can challenge it, and even Torg Eternity has 14 hard cover books (and 4 more set to drop this month) released since 2017.

JeffB

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Re: A rant on Tasha, 5e, and we are not in OSR-land anymore
« Reply #29 on: December 01, 2020, 08:49:27 AM »
The 4E DMG was the worst book of the three!  The advice was what sunk it. It gave advice on two broad fronts, both mutually incompatible with each other and the way 4E is meant to be played.  Basically, it was Robin Laws hired to write his usual "make it up as you go" pablum mixed with old-style but excessively dry and phoned-in D&D boilerplate--as if someone scanned the 1E DMG and reduced it to a Power Point slide for a product that didn't conform to the original.

Robin Laws was not involved in the 4E DMG. James Wyatt was principal author. AFAIC, 4E's DMG, is the best DMG written to actually teach a DM how to run the game. 5E, 3E, 2E, and even 1e (though my personal fave) all pale in comparison in this regard. And generally the best parts of the 5E DMG, are lifts (sometimes word for word) from the 4E DMG.

Robin Laws contributed to the 4e DMG2.