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New WotC column by Mike Mearls talking about one of the aims for the core of the new game system: the one-hour D&D game session/adventure.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120319

I'm...  not sure I like where this XP budget idea is going.

The XP Budget doesn't sound any different than the various recommendations in older D&D including OD&D, and AD&D 1st (treasure type, n/a per level, XP per HD, etc).

The devil will be in how it is presented in their supplement. If it is presented as an iron law rather than a guidelines then that will cause issues rather than the numbers and rules themselves. The best way of doing that is to make sure there are a handful of published adventures that don't follow the numbers but make sense in the context of the location or plot.

I like the idea of the 1-hour adventure. However, this can be done with every version of D&D in existance as long as the DM follows the KISS principle. The downside of the 1-hour adventure is that it is too short of a time to get a lot of depth in unless you concentrate on only one or two encounters, it is like speed dating for RPGs.

Quote from: estar;522371The XP Budget doesn't sound any different than the various recommendations in older D&D including OD&D, and AD&D 1st (treasure type, n/a per level, XP per HD, etc).

The devil will be in how it is presented in their supplement. If it is presented as an iron law rather than a guidelines then that will cause issues rather than the numbers and rules themselves. The best way of doing that is to make sure there are a handful of published adventures that don't follow the numbers but make sense in the context of the location or plot.

I agree. The big problem with this (whether it is xp budget or the cr/el guidelines in 3E) is it encourages too much uniformity from able to table. If it can easily be ignored tyat is great. But i think it is much better to provide gms with a thorough explanation of encounters and challenging pcs over the course of a chapter, than reduce it to some wonky formula.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;522387I agree. The big problem with this (whether it is xp budget or the cr/el guidelines in 3E) is it encourages too much uniformity from able to table. If it can easily be ignored tyat is great. But i think it is much better to provide gms with a thorough explanation of encounters and challenging pcs over the course of a chapter, than reduce it to some wonky formula.

What if they complemented the "XP budget" guidelines with random encounter tables as well, and leave the choice of method completely up to the DM from there, with tips and advice too, of course?

Quote from: Benoist;522389What if they complemented the "XP budget" guidelines with random encounter tables as well, and leave the choice of method completely up to the DM from there, with tips and advice too, of course?

I think that wouldbe fine. I would really like them to give an overview of the various methods for handling encounters and what playstyles each one works best for. A nice section on how to properly manage random encounters and why you might want to use them (beyond just supplying encounter charts) is a good idea. Not taking  sides but giving a good account of the various schools of thought. Either approach can work depending on what you like,  but alot of people just assume a balanced encounter is the only real viable option these days, when there are some valid reasons to allow for overwhelming and underwhelming encounters.

 my worst experience was during 3e when too many gms were structuring their entire adventure around the CR chart in the dmg. That really sucked the life out of the game for me.

My sense is mearls gets this though. He seems to be someone who grasps that there are different styles of play out there and one spot where 4e went wrong was pushing a single approach to the game.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;522387than reduce it to some wonky formula.

4E tried doing this by reducing encounters down to a precise XP budget formula, but fell short for the most part.

With each post by Mearls and Cook, I am becoming more interested in the new Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG from Goodman Games.  

I had an email chat with GG a few months ago and he said that DCC was written for him alone and if other people enjoyed it, that's cool. There is something far more engaging in that concept than WotC's attempts to please everyone.

The D&D fan community is screaming "Dance Monkey Dance!" and the WotC bosses are screaming "Sell Fucker Sell!" so I don't envy Mearls in the slightest.

This is bullshit. I play 1E AD&D on a regular basis and you can't even complete a satisfying encounter in an hour. For a solid adventure I would guess at least 4 hours. No less.

Quote from: AnthonyRoberson;522476This is bullshit. I play 1E AD&D on a regular basis and you can't even complete a satisfying encounter in an hour. For a solid adventure I would guess at least 4 hours. No less.

My 2E encounters can run fifteen minutes or less. I would be hard pressed to do a whole adventure inside an hour, but i could certainly run several encounters back to back in that time. Of course some threats will simply take longer than others.

Quote from: Benoist;522363New WotC column by Mike Mearls talking about one of the aims for the core of the new game system: the one-hour D&D game session/adventure.

While I think it is great to be able to play a session in an hour if one wants to, this makes it sound like 5e is going to be like 4e, mainly designed around the needs of D&D Encounters-like play instead of around campaign play. The more it is aimed at meeting the needs of non-campaign play, the less likely it will be useful to those of us who have no interest in that style of play.

Quote from: RandallS;522480While I think it is great to be able to play a session in an hour if one wants to, this makes it sound like 5e is going to be like 4e, mainly designed around the needs of D&D Encounters-like play instead of around campaign play. The more it is aimed at meeting the needs of non-campaign play, the less likely it will be useful to those of us who have no interest in that style of play.

As a building block of reference I don't mind speed of play accomodating the one hour adventure. If the resource management is so structured then its borked and I won't like it.

Quote from: AnthonyRoberson;522476I play 1E AD&D on a regular basis and you can't even complete a satisfying encounter in an hour.

It depends on the players.

Most of my 0e/S&W combats run at least 1/2 hour, but I run convention events so the players don't know each other and many have little experience with Classic D&D or haven't played in years.

I think it's a good concept for designers and GMs to keep in mind without necessarily taking it too literally. I personally would jump at the chance to play an episodic campaign or series of one-shots with structured sessions clocking in around two hours.

Quote from: The_Shadow;522495I think it's a good concept for designers and GMs to keep in mind without necessarily taking it too literally. I personally would jump at the chance to play an episodic campaign or series of one-shots with structured sessions clocking in around two hours.

Oh, I agree that its a great concept for the designers to keep in mind (as I want a fast-playing game, especially combat), but given what I've seen from 3.x and 4e that often means the designers structure the entire game by not presenting any alternatives or by presented the structure in a way that many players take as the way the game must be played.

Heck, M74 could probably be used for 60-90 minute adventure sessions, but i certainly did not and would not design the game around that. I just worry that WOTC will.

Quote from: Kaz;522369I'm...  not sure I like where this XP budget idea is going.

XP budgets aren't going to go away: They're too useful for building level-appropriate adventures.

I do like the fact that he's talking about spending the XP budget in different ways. It's the first thing I've heard out of WotC in half a decade that even begins to suggest that My Precious Encounters(TM) might finally be on the way out.

OTOH, I don't see any practical way in which you can normalize the XP budget in the way that he suggests: Four goblins fought one at a time is easier than four goblins fought all at once. What makes for a good monster load in a single encounter doesn't work as well spread out over a half dozen encounters; and what feels right spread out over half a dozen encounters is usually going to be a TPK if it's all piled into a single encounter.

Quote from: jeff37923;522386I like the idea of the 1-hour adventure. However, this can be done with every version of D&D in existance as long as the DM follows the KISS principle. The downside of the 1-hour adventure is that it is too short of a time to get a lot of depth in unless you concentrate on only one or two encounters, it is like speed dating for RPGs.

I find this to be true with the exception of 4th Edition: A single combat in 4th Edition simply takes too long to resolve unless you're completely softballing the encounters. (And even moderately softballed encounters don't work well in 4th Edition due to the lack of strategic attrition.)

Seriously, guys, I think this is the best article presented so far, and proves to me Mearls is starting to get it as far as what kind of stuff should be written there.  The nitpicking on this thread, though, isn't helping.

The guy wasn't talking about "xp budgets" or forcing one-hour games on people.  He was talking about exactly what all of us talk about on here all the fucking time:  D&D SHOULD BE EASY TO PLAY, and quick-playing.  

That is, by god, a message I desperately want them to hear.  That you can't waste hours on building characters, and it shouldn't take an hour to fight two goblins (or if it does, that should be an epic and memorable life-event of the campaign, and not a standard operating procedure because your fucking combat rules are too goddamn complex and every move is taking 20 minutes while people figure out where there are attacks of opportunity they can use and who the fuck is "bloodied" or not).

Trust me, Mearls knows that he needs lots and lots of random encounter tables. He's been told.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;522598Seriously, guys, I think this is the best article presented so far, and proves to me Mearls is starting to get it as far as what kind of stuff should be written there.  The nitpicking on this thread, though, isn't helping.

The guy wasn't talking about "xp budgets" or forcing one-hour games on people.  He was talking about exactly what all of us talk about on here all the fucking time:  D&D SHOULD BE EASY TO PLAY, and quick-playing.  

That is, by god, a message I desperately want them to hear.  That you can't waste hours on building characters, and it shouldn't take an hour to fight two goblins (or if it does, that should be an epic and memorable life-event of the campaign, and not a standard operating procedure because your fucking combat rules are too goddamn complex and every move is taking 20 minutes while people figure out where there are attacks of opportunity they can use and who the fuck is "bloodied" or not).

Trust me, Mearls knows that he needs lots and lots of random encounter tables. He's been told.

RPGPundit

If I could give you experience points I would.  What I got from the article is quick play like what we all used to do in high school on lunch break or study hall. Seriously for people like myself or the groups I play with TIME and SIMPLICITY (at the start at least) are paramount, with kids and whatnot in the mix.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;522506XP budgets aren't going to go away: They're too useful for building level-appropriate adventures.

I would not mind them nearly as much if they were start out by saying something like:

QuoteNot all campaigns are concerned about level-appropriate encounters. For example, if you run a sandbox campaign you are placing encounters in specific locations without any idea if the PCs will even visit those locations, let alone what characters will be there or what levels those characters will be when they have the encounter, so you would not be trying to design level-appropriate encounters. If, however, to are designing a specific series of encounters for a adventure for a specific group of characters you may wish to design level-appropriate encounters. XP Budgets are a useful tool for designing level appropriate encounters. Note, however, that XP Budgets cannot replace common sense and GM experience. Level-appropriate encounter design is a art, not a science that can be reduced to number-crunching with complete success.

That's a quote I would agree with.  But really, words are cheap.

If they put in xp budgets, and then they put random encounter tables, then they're really serving both worlds.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;522598Trust me, Mearls knows that he needs lots and lots of random encounter tables. He's been told.

Let's hope he listens.

Quote from: RPGPundit;522598Seriously, guys, I think this is the best article presented so far, and proves to me Mearls is starting to get it as far as what kind of stuff should be written there.  The nitpicking on this thread, though, isn't helping.

The guy wasn't talking about "xp budgets" or forcing one-hour games on people.  He was talking about exactly what all of us talk about on here all the fucking time:  D&D SHOULD BE EASY TO PLAY, and quick-playing.  

That is, by god, a message I desperately want them to hear.  That you can't waste hours on building characters, and it shouldn't take an hour to fight two goblins (or if it does, that should be an epic and memorable life-event of the campaign, and not a standard operating procedure because your fucking combat rules are too goddamn complex and every move is taking 20 minutes while people figure out where there are attacks of opportunity they can use and who the fuck is "bloodied" or not).

Trust me, Mearls knows that he needs lots and lots of random encounter tables. He's been told.

RPGPundit

I agree with your reasoning.

I think the idea of a one hour game gets as far away from the design ideals, intentions, structual paradigms, and future relevancy of roleplaying games as any 4e/OSR split.

To put this in the proper terminology, I can play 'Melee/Wizard/tFT' in an hour.  If I want to play a roleplaying game, more time needs to be invested in a 'game session'.  
I have severe reservations.  I understamd the reasoning and even understand this is not the new ideal, just a certain perspective on it; but I don't think it is a viable unit of play time to aim for.

Quote from: RPGPundit;522748If they put in xp budgets, and then they put random encounter tables, then they're really serving both worlds.

I agree that would be nice -- perhaps along with the 2e info on creating your own random encounter tables for your own areas. However, given WOTC D&D's track record, I would be happy just to get something strongly worded enough that players can't easily point to XP Budget rules and claim that any encounter not build strictly according to those rules is "bad GMing", "against the rules", etc. as players far too successfully did with the 3.x encounter design info.

Quote from: LordVreeg;522821To put this in the proper terminology, I can play 'Melee/Wizard/tFT' in an hour.  If I want to play a roleplaying game, more time needs to be invested in a 'game session'.

You should actually read the article: That's literally exactly what Mearls says in it.

Quote from: LordVreeg;522821I agree with your reasoning.

I think the idea of a one hour game gets as far away from the design ideals, intentions, structual paradigms, and future relevancy of roleplaying games as any 4e/OSR split.

To put this in the proper terminology, I can play 'Melee/Wizard/tFT' in an hour.  If I want to play a roleplaying game, more time needs to be invested in a 'game session'.  
I have severe reservations.  I understamd the reasoning and even understand this is not the new ideal, just a certain perspective on it; but I don't think it is a viable unit of play time to aim for.

The article isn't talking about it in the literal sense but the figuratively like Pundit says with the added bonus of doing something less than a classic session that still means something to the overall campaign, if you just have that hour or so.

Quote from: RandallS;522822I agree that would be nice -- perhaps along with the 2e info on creating your own random encounter tables for your own areas. However, given WOTC D&D's track record, I would be happy just to get something strongly worded enough that players can't easily point to XP Budget rules and claim that any encounter not build strictly according to those rules is "bad GMing", "against the rules", etc. as players far too successfully did with the 3.x encounter design info.

A punch to the jaw is more effective technique here then any text from a designer.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;522889

Quote from: LVTo put this in the proper terminology, I can play 'Melee/Wizard/tFT' in an hour. If I want to play a roleplaying game, more time needs to be invested in a 'game session'.

You should actually read the article: That's literally exactly what Mearls says in it.

Umm. No.  I read the article, Justin.  
My comment is that I can play a very Wargame-based RPG in an hour, but if I want to play roleplaying game, I believe more time needs to be invested.

This is the comments that deal with the session length and that make a nod towards the longer ideal.  

Quote from: MEARLSOf course, I don't expect everyone to give up how they've been playing D&D for years to focus on running one-hour adventures. By focusing on this benchmark, however, we create a starting point that we can use to expand to longer sessions of play. It's much easier to create a game that supports a one-hour session, and then use that to build out to two-hour, four-hour, or day-long gaming.

Ideally, focusing on the adventure as the basic unit of DM design also helps us cover different campaign styles.

I do not think the One Hour session will be beneficial at all.  Mearl's comment is to change the base level of design around this 1 hour session, and is made after a very simple, level one game, and everyone with a whit of experience knows that in every iteration of the game, higher level means larger and slightly more complicated combats.  I fear this is just another 'Dumbing-Down'. Trust me, I have a lot of very long term games that we sit down with a few glasses of wine and talk gaming, and I sort of count it as a session.  On top of that, I play 1.5-3 hour sessions online every single week.

I, like many here, design games.  Some have been run for decades.  I Am all for moving to a more modular format of the game, one that allows for simpler rules and one that allows for advanced rules to be added in to add complexity and thus the rules-balance axis to the direction the GM wants.

I think aiming for the basic game unit to be an hour will limit the scope of the rules and the roleplay a little too much.  I totally agree with Mearls that the adventure is a great unit/balance-axis to base the rules on, but that needs more than an hour to get rioght.  I'd personally aim for the session to be aimed at adults, the way those first adventure-based rules were, who will spend 2-6 hours at a session.  The way most of my 'adventures' are set up, and the way I think the rules balance should be aimed at, they are more like 20-30 hours of play adventure arcs (within larger story arcs).  

But that is me.

OMG!!! "Basic unit of game design: the adventure."

I missed that somehow. Do you think that means the Encountardization is dead? I would fucking KISS Mearls if that's the case.

Quote from: Benoist;522940OMG!!! "Basic unit of game design: the adventure."

I missed that somehow. Do you think that means the Encountardization is dead? I would fucking KISS Mearls if that's the case.

Yes, that is the good part of what I took out of it.

I like the idea of a system tailored to accommodate pickup sessions and casual adventuring - something you could break out over a lunch break, or something like that. D&D has become all too caught up in being this fiddly thing for the RPGA balance fetishists and the charop crowd, and has huge barriers in place before beginners. Here at least, 4e was a step in the right direction from the bloated monstrosity of 3.5, and Essentials from 4e, but there is still a way to go.

Trimming down the rules into a logical, cohesive system also helps regular campaigns; you get more bang for your most important budget, time. We have found this a definite advantage after we switched to more rules-light gaming. In 3e, as much as we liked it, we'd go through only a few complex encounters in one session; nowadays, even if we only have five hours for a session, we can fit all that planning, action and exploration into that time. Things progress.

I don't know if 5e will succeed in its goals; from the design articles I have browsed, it still looks in desperate need of streamlining. Like the designers can't help but complicate the rules as a default, or present relatively simple rules in a way that looks overcomplicated. But still, this is a good starting point.

When I first started gaming, I was still at school, and we used to run sessions of Marvel Super-Heroes, Palladium FRP, AD&D 2e and Paranoia in our lunch breaks.

If the 80s designs hadn't supported a reasonable amount of play in an hour, it's pretty likely I would never have got in to role-playing properly. So yeah, I support this design goal.

Quote from: Melan;523000Like the designers can't help but complicate the rules as a default, or present relatively simple rules in a way that looks overcomplicated.

Well, keep in mind these guys work for an almost-Fortune 500 company.  The monetary goal is to sell a fuckton of product, (which conventional wisdom says splatmill, which means crunch) the design goal is to make a game that theoretically doesn't need any of it past the basic book.

I don't envy the dance they're doing.  :D

I wish people would remember that Paizo is the Empire that Adventures Built.

Quote from: CRKrueger;523027Well, keep in mind these guys work for an almost-Fortune 500 company.  The monetary goal is to sell a fuckton of product, (which conventional wisdom says splatmill, which means crunch) the design goal is to make a game that theoretically doesn't need any of it past the basic book.

I don't envy the dance they're doing.  :D

I wish people would remember that Paizo is the Empire that Adventures Built.

I agree, but I also have been espousing a theory of simple base game design (something a bit more complicated than 0D&D, but not by much) with a matrix of 'advanced rules' about 6 wide and 2 deep.

Roleplay/meta-Social/Milieu-combat/equipment-magic-technology/urban-skills/feats.

Basically advanced rules that graft onto the basic rules engine, in a pick and choose presentation that basically just gives the GM ideas for house rules, since we all know the GMs will do that anyways.  There are a lot of ramifications but it would basically, from a big picture sense, allow D&D to avoid the 'we play this type of game instead of that type' that it fell into in the latest iteration and allow it to own both.

and then they should do the same modular approach to locale and adventure creation.

But again, my opinion.

Quote from: Grymbok;523007When I first started gaming, I was still at school, and we used to run sessions of Marvel Super-Heroes, Palladium FRP, AD&D 2e and Paranoia in our lunch breaks.

If the 80s designs hadn't supported a reasonable amount of play in an hour, it's pretty likely I would never have got in to role-playing properly. So yeah, I support this design goal.

Yup, its exactly the same with me.  We got quite a lot of play into near-daily lunch-hour games.

RPGPundit

Quote from: LordVreeg;522937I think aiming for the basic game unit to be an hour will limit the scope of the rules and the roleplay a little too much.

Since that isn't what Mearls wrote, I'm forced at this juncture to conclude that you're illiterate.

Thus, of course, further written communication with you regarding this topic would be pointless.

Ciao.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;523616Since that isn't what Mearls wrote, I'm forced at this juncture to conclude that you're illiterate.

Thus, of course, further written communication with you regarding this topic would be pointless.

Ciao.

Right.
Hubris blinds you, Justin.  Mearls says that he's trying to benchmark a system that makes the adventure the base unit of DM design; and one that aims for a complete adventure in an hour.  Try adding logic to your literacy; it will do wonders to your comprehension.

Meanwhile, I will mull this over. I, like others here, did play in school during hour breaks, so my point as not that this is impossible or that it can not be; my point is that I don't think creating a game when this is the base unit for game session design is the best idea.

Of course it makes sense to build that.

It is MUCH easier to create the core of a game where you can actually make characters in 10 minutes, and play for an hour or two and have a fun time doing it; and then add to that whatever might be necessary for ongoing long campaigns; than it is to create a game where character creation takes two hours and it takes you 90 minutes to run a battle encounter with three kobolds, and then try to make that work as a drop-in casual game system.

RPGPundit

Consider, for example, the huge number of long-term campaigns that have been run using B/E D&D.

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