D&D 5E Tedium for balance. Should we balance powerful effects with bookkeeping?

[MichaelSomething]

Man, we fall on the same side often enough, you have to know that Wizards is not remotely interested in providing a game that is even remotely 'simulationist'.

Any number of things could be brought up to reflect the fact that the game is pretty much nonsense at this point.

Demand, meet supply.

 

[Scribe]

Oh, I know. I'd just like them to be honest about it.

I think its even worse than a question of honesty. I think the concept is not even a thought, like its not even a consideration.

You would have to build your own framework really to even begin to get a game like what you want. Wizards is going the opposite direction, as you know, I'm sure.

 

[Incenjucar]

Isn't that the whole point of the game? That the player make decisions to affect the fiction in the way they desire? In order to come to the conclusion that they want, a player needs to understand the fiction and how to manipulate it?

Also, I thought "skilled play" was something we were supposed to like around here??

Gatekeeping based on personal ability is like the opposite of my thing. I've spent years developing games for people with various personal challenges.

 

[mamba]

Whether or not something is "tedious bookkeeping" is subjective.

it certainly is

If a lot of people don't like it, then you can change the rule,

that kinda was the idea, apart from me not seeing it changing regardless

although I would appreciate if a point was explicitly made in the book about how verisimilitude is meaningless in D&D and that rules only exist to facilitate "fun" for the largest possible group of people, which means it's not going to be a good fit for everyone. Basically, be honest about dropping the big tent and stop pretending they're everything to everyone.

this seems to have been settled already, whether we like it or not. I also do not see the spell components we have as all that important to verisimilitude, most of them are literally jokes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

it certainly is


that kinda was the idea, apart from me not seeing it changing regardless


this seems to have been settled already, whether we like it or not. I also do not see the spell components we have as all that important to verisimilitude, most of them are literally jokes.

The idea of needing materials to work magic, however, is not a joke.

 

[Lanefan]

There is no need to exclude anything. However gating a plot behind a resource the party does not have is bad design.

I disagree. Gating somethng behind resources a party doesn't have means you get two adventures for the price of one: the quest to find and-or obtain that missing resource, followed by the original adventure they needed it for.

But I have never seen the wizard voluntarily taking plane shift.

Do Wizards even get Planeshift? I thought it was a Cleric spell.....

 

[Lanefan]

The poll is a bit loaded in that bookkeeping is consistently described as "tedious", when such is not always the case.

For components, I handwave any component that doesn't have a g.p. cost listed in the spell write-up (unless the caster has somehow lost a bunch of other gear); but if there's a cost listed then that cost has to be paid and the component has to be tracked.

The most common example IME is the 100+g.p. pearl required for casting Identify. They're always looking for pearls.

Also, things like this are a bit of a money sink, which it sounds like 5e in particular could use.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The poll is a bit loaded in that bookkeeping is consistently described as "tedious", when such is not always the case.

For components, I handwave any component that doesn't have a g.p. cost listed in the spell write-up (unless the caster has somehow lost a bunch of other gear); but if there's a cost listed then that cost has to be paid and the component has to be tracked.

The most common example IME is the 100+g.p. pearl required for casting Identify. They're always looking for pearls.

Also, things like this are a bit of a money sink, which it sounds like 5e in particular could use.

That's why I didn't vote.

 

[mamba]

The idea of needing materials to work magic, however, is not a joke.

agreed, but then we are back to it mostly being tedious the way D&D does it, at least to me. What percentage of people do you think track them and what percentage just flat out ignores them?

Is a rule that is supposed to limit something and gets ignored by a significant part of the audience any good as a rule? My answer to that is no, which is why I would prefer other methods

 

[Oligopsony]

Isn't that the whole point of the game? That the player make decisions to affect the fiction in the way they desire? In order to come to the conclusion that they want, a player needs to understand the fiction and how to manipulate it?

Also, I thought "skilled play" was something we were supposed to like around here??

Relevant blog post:

What Is Tested?

When designing a dungeon, one question you should ask yourself is: What am I testing for? Math tests challenge your math skills. Drinking...

goblinpunch.blogspot.com

There’s a lot of different player cognitive skills your game sessions might reward: system mastery, knowledge of world lore, lateral thinking, number crunching, remembering that you have a game scheduled, and so on. As phrased the post you’re responding to claims too much, but I suspect the meaning is just that bookkeeping and working memory is just one of the skills they don’t want to focus on. Everybody makes choices about this kind of thing; when the OSR line about skilled play comes up it even is a specific rejection of certain kinds of skills (like system mastery in order to create a strong character) in favor of others (applying lateral thinking to the in-universe situation.)