06-01-2012, 01:36 PM
Well, I can't sell the game to you but I can say why it might be appealing to me.
I dabbled in roleplaying games a bit in my high school days but never actually played D&D. (mostly D6 Star Wars, Gurps, and a few other misc games) Fast forward a number of years and my old gaming buddy and I decide to try out role playing again. The wives are interested as well as my bother/sister in-laws. After a bit of research, we decide to give 4e a try since we wanted a professional product with an established setting and it was marketed as being less complex than previous editions (a bonus since the 3 women had never role-played).
However, despite playing every few weeks for a year, our interest quickly waned. The short-answer reason is that the game was too focused on tactical combat. 95% of the character sheet was devoted to combat stats and 95% of our gameplay was devoted to combat encounters. Instead of using our imaginations and coming up with creative solutions, we stared at a grid while trying to decide which of our power cards to use.
While 5e will probably still not be an ideal system for me, at least they addressing a lot of the problems we had with 4e:
The grid is no longer required
At Will/Encounter/Daily power system is gone
More emphasis on fluff/description
Skills are decoupled from a given attribute (allowing more creative application)
Magical items are more rare/special and no longer an integrated part of character advancement
Character advancement has been scaled back to prevent excessively big numbers at high level
No more tracking a bunch of +2 and -2 modifiers (replaced w/ new Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic)
The Background and Theme mechanic add more depth to characters while still having an impact on the crunchy side of things
Combat rounds are faster and combat encounters are resolved quicker
These are just the things that come to my mind. However, it seems that most people posting on the internet who love 3.5 or Pathfinder claim they see no reason to convert. People who love 4e seem to be posting that they really dislike the new system. Thus, I am thinking 5e is aimed at people like me who tried 4e and didn’t like it but are turned off by the more complex 3.5 and Pathfinder rules.
I dabbled in roleplaying games a bit in my high school days but never actually played D&D. (mostly D6 Star Wars, Gurps, and a few other misc games) Fast forward a number of years and my old gaming buddy and I decide to try out role playing again. The wives are interested as well as my bother/sister in-laws. After a bit of research, we decide to give 4e a try since we wanted a professional product with an established setting and it was marketed as being less complex than previous editions (a bonus since the 3 women had never role-played).
However, despite playing every few weeks for a year, our interest quickly waned. The short-answer reason is that the game was too focused on tactical combat. 95% of the character sheet was devoted to combat stats and 95% of our gameplay was devoted to combat encounters. Instead of using our imaginations and coming up with creative solutions, we stared at a grid while trying to decide which of our power cards to use.
While 5e will probably still not be an ideal system for me, at least they addressing a lot of the problems we had with 4e:
The grid is no longer required
At Will/Encounter/Daily power system is gone
More emphasis on fluff/description
Skills are decoupled from a given attribute (allowing more creative application)
Magical items are more rare/special and no longer an integrated part of character advancement
Character advancement has been scaled back to prevent excessively big numbers at high level
No more tracking a bunch of +2 and -2 modifiers (replaced w/ new Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic)
The Background and Theme mechanic add more depth to characters while still having an impact on the crunchy side of things
Combat rounds are faster and combat encounters are resolved quicker
These are just the things that come to my mind. However, it seems that most people posting on the internet who love 3.5 or Pathfinder claim they see no reason to convert. People who love 4e seem to be posting that they really dislike the new system. Thus, I am thinking 5e is aimed at people like me who tried 4e and didn’t like it but are turned off by the more complex 3.5 and Pathfinder rules.