I completely agree with all of the above. Particularly as I’ve been exposed to RPG systems with a more cinematic approach to play, I’ve become a fan of the idea that character death should be possible, but only if the player and the DM both agree that it’s appropriate for the story (and for the character).
A heroic, cinematic character death (or even a cinematic TPK) is the sort of thing that players will talk about (in a positive way) for years afterwards, whereas “my fighter died because Nameless Orc #5 critted him with a greataxe” doesn’t make for a good story, IMO.
My recollection was that the players liked critical hits mostly because it meant they could be doing more damage to monsters; they tended to not think too much about it cutting both ways, as it were.
I remember making up my own critical hit and fumble rules for 1E. I even had hit location as part of it. Because I thought it was cool. And yeah, it went for both players and monsters.
I am not sure but it seems WotC had advertised they would give a response to this about an hour ago but apparently cancelled it. I saw one mention that this is the second time they have avoided talking about this.
I am mostly on the sidelines here but I gotta say OGL 1.1 seems insanely awful for anyone other than WotC. I get they want a piece of the action but it seems they can outright take someone’s work and not pay them a dime. WotC seems to be wrecking the very thing that makes D&D work so well. They will absolutely spur competition with this move. Maybe they will make a little more in the short term but I cannot see it working for them in the long term.
Some email going around supposedly from someone in the biz at WotC/Hasbro saying that the management basically doesn’t care, they’re watching D&D Beyond subs to see if people are quitting, the staff first just got any guidance about it yesterday, etc.
Also, they lost relentlessly positive D&D Youtuber Ginny Di! She’s telling people to cancel their DDB accounts. See, that’s how you know when you messed up.
Thanks to being friends with several game designers (all of whom worked at WotC at some point), I have a number of game designers on my Facebook friends list. Most of them have been making posts on the topic – all of them are somewhere between disbelief, career uncertainty, and annoyance, and some are using the hashtag #dontsign.
There are a large number of phenomenal game systems and settings; however, they require players (and GMs) to accept a different style of play and different objectives in the player experience. If you play MouseGuard, you won’t have powerful characters that can defeat an opponent through force. If you are running Paranoia, you are intentionally trying to undermine other characters (in the most hilarious way possible); if you are doing Scum and Villainy, you are working against a clock to build your trade/smuggling/criminal empire; if Call of Cthulhu is your game, you are trying to investigate some mystery or seal a portal against an implacable cosmic threat before being driven insane or killed incidentally by said creature or its cultists. If players are used to a game that is basically a tabletop version of an MMO where they can survive indefinitely or reboot as they like, they probably won’t care for higher stakes games where making an error—or even just being unlucky—can make for serious consequences or character death but those kinds of games get pretty boring from a narrative and characterization standpoint because nothing really matters.
That is reasonable enough, but the real purpose of “DM fiat” (i.e. dictatorial gamemaster authority) is because as the game master your real role is to curate the experience of the game for the players. While the scenario is a framework for the players to play out their story, the rules are really just there to give them an understanding of consequences and boundaries but not to constrain the GM from making choices to enhance the entertainment (or pathos, or whatever) of the game. Ultimately, you don’t really need rules except to provide structure, and in a GM-less game like Fiasco where players are collaboratively constructing a story, you don’t even have quantified abstractions like stats or hit points; the players trust each other to play “fairly” (or unfairly, as the case may be, because this is a game that describes itself as being about “people with powerful ambition and poor impulse control) and the focus is in creating a powerful, amusing, or outrageous story, not trying to collect treasure and ‘win’ the scenario.
I agree with all of what you said later in the paragraph. I do want to clarify here.
I played under DMs where DM Fiat meant “because I’m the DM, that’s why” when they were called on something that wasn’t fun or broke the rules.
I also run for adults who want to be entertained. They are fun with some puzzles or riddles or connecting the dots in a mystery but they don’t want to do FATE or Fiasco and have to come up with story elements. That’s fine! I don’t mind running it. I’m trying to make sure we all have fun!
Yeah, I saw it. I am doubtful, since it is anonymous. Upper management doesnt share stuff like that with line employees.
Large creators would get their own contract with WotC.
But yeah, WotC has announced they are delaying their Official announcement.
Yep. That is, IMHO- the DM’s job- to entertain his players. I want to get one seat of the pants combat/encounter and at least one good laugh per session.
I don’t understand this at all. The DM inevitably so tells the game. This isn’t checkers. This is group storytelling. What you’re saying here seems like an appeal to rules lawyering. If I were running a game, I would shut that down regardless of the system.
I can see that…and I guess most people are not really all that flexible in the experiences they want.
I also think that, for lack of better words, the zeitgeist back then was different. We, as kids, accepted lesser power and suffering real loss in D&D games and even liked it that way.
That is not a old geezer bashing the current youth. I just think the zeitgeist has changed. Back then we were on top of the world and the world seemed our oyster. Today’s youth is so beaten down and the world so much more cynical with college cost being insane and rent being insane and so on and so forth that the youth are just sick of it and want to feel powerful for a change…and so they want something like 5e. Yes MMOs and video games might have some effect but I think it is more that they are just beaten down and don’t want to experience the same crap while gaming.
Paranoia…ahhhh memories. I don’t think, and we never considered it a ‘real’ TTRPG game. we just did it as a break and had a blast doing it never taking it remotely seriously. I also had a friend who was a TERRIBLE DM…he always took an him vs the players mentality and wanted to ‘win’ by beating us. He knew he was bad and so didn’t do it. But he made a great…and I mean GREAT Paranoia DM
