I should've been clearer. There's two types of convention play:

1: One-shots and short series. These generally entail sitting down with a pre-set module, often pre-gen characters, and just enjoying the game for what it has to offer. A good DM makes these sing, and a poor one is usually tolerable for the four-hour slot. Consistency from table to table on rulings and such isn't a big deal.

2: "Living Campaigns". These are ongoing campaigns, played from one convention to another, with new adventures being published all the time. Often, they have tweakable encounters to be adapted to the player's level, which is important because the PCs are continuous. You make your own character, and play them throughout the campaign, often with randomly sorted players (generally, you try to get similar advancement levels, just to keep things fair, but otherwise, it's not uncommon to sit down at a table with six strangers and go at it).

In Living Campaigns, consistent rules structures are not just a good idea, they're VITAL. I wasn't trying to be derogatory with the term 'fiat'--one of my favorite games ever is Mage: the Ascension, which is pretty much ALL ST fiat, with a handful of guidelines, as far as how the magic system works. But fiat-heavy games, for a Living Campaign, is sort of like having a regular home-game with a DM with multiple-personality disorder. You can't build your character to actually do something if you never know how his ability to do that thing is going to actually work. And that's just if you get all "good GMs who just disagree with one another about the rules". Being a rules lawyer is sometimes the only defense against an actual BAD convention judge.

And this is important, again, because these aren't just some PC you created for this event alone, or got handed to you. Your character is literally the result of hours of time and considerable cash investment. Let's say I go to a small, local convention three times a year, playing six slots each time. 18x4 hours = 72 hours a year. Six slots is typically about $25 after the general entry fee. So just local gaming con play will entail $75 a year. And it's not unheard of to play the same character for five years or so of con-going. Of course, if you travel to the Big Event cons--Origins, GenCons, Dragon*Con--then your costs go way, way up.

Putting that kind of investment at risk because your character is suddenly rendered impotent by a rules disagreement is the sort of thing that turns people off of going to conventions at all. I've lost characters to bad turns of the dice, or because of tactical errors, and that's acceptable. But incompetent GMs are another matter entirely. Now, if the rules are solid, I can go into rules-lawyer mode and make sure that I get out of the table with my character and sanity intact. But if we lack that, then I end up in a situation where I have no defense at all.

I just filled out the first survey about D&D Next, and I think I managed to sum up my likes and dislikes pretty well with the following "optional comments" blurb:


I have certainly been convinced that healing is a problem as written. Everything else does a good job of encouraging players to be cautious and creative about picking fights... and then infinite healing shows up and says "Why bother doing anything else?" If they can fix that, though, I'll be very happy.

[@Freemage] Ah, that explains everything. We've both have had bad experiences at opposite ends of the GMing spectrum. I haven't ran or played in a rules lite game that wasn't a blast. Compared to several traditional games that were at best not fun and at worst were complete train wrecks.

I can see how the large investment in a single character can be an issue with a living campaign. You never know if you are going to get Monty Haul or Mr. I Live to Inflict Pain and Suffering as a GM.

To bring it back to D&D Next, I can't wait to get home and fill out the survey since the new edition is moving in directions that I really like. I'm not sure what it will do for living campaigns, but I can see it bringing back some mature GMs that consider running to be a craft and not a rules engine/trivia test.
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TAZ

There's a very good article by Rodney Thompson out today regarding what they call their "Bounded Accuracy" design philosophy. It specifically addresses the thing that immediately stood out to me about D&D Next—the fact that players' chances to succeed at tasks do not constantly increase with level. To wit:


Thompson also lists some of the benefits of this (drastic for D&D) design change. I'm not going to go into all the explanation, but here are the bullet points:

• Getting better at something means actually getting better at something.
• Nonspecialized characters can more easily participate in many scenes.
• The DM's monster roster expands, never contracts.
• Bounded accuracy makes it easier to DM and easier to adjudicate improvised scenes.
• It opens up new possibilities of encounter and adventure design.
• It is easier for players and DMs to understand the relative strength and difficulty of things.
• It's good for verisimilitude.

I really recommend reading the whole article. It's honestly like someone at WotC read the E6 D&D houserules and said "This is what we're doing, guys."

Yeah, weren't the rising attack bonuses, tied to level, introduced with 3e? I don't remember having them in 1e or 2e, but I could be wrong. I like that they are gone. It helps keep the characters human-level -- heroic, if you like, but still human -- as opposed to the superhuman power levels they had in 3e and 4e.

Feels like a zero sum game to me. They just moved the emphasis from chance to hit per attack to damage per attack.

I never really played any edition earlier than 3e, but my understanding is that THAC0 basically served this purpose. Technically that number went down, but it's the same basic principle—the same character finds it much easier to hit a kobold at 10th level than at 1st level.

Correct, THAC0 granted bonuses that were tied to class and level. The math was moved, but not substantially changed.

I wouldn't call it that, really. Even aside from WotC's apparent overall move away from a total focus on combat (read: running away from 4e), I think this is a net positive. You still want bonuses to hit—all the damage in the world doesn't help you if you don't hit very often.

But while my high-level fighter might be able to dispatch a kobold in a single blow—maybe more than one with Cleave-like feats—that doesn't change the fact that kobolds are annoyingly hard to hit. Previous editions didn't reflect that very well, though—with just a few levels, my chances of hitting something like a kobold went up enormously. Kobolds lose their character—they aren't sneaky, agile and dangerous. They're suddenly incompetent.

With this scheme, they're still dangerous, and maybe more importantly they still feel like kobolds when you fight them. And that's a valuable change.

I hope Wizards really steps up their product. This is the first time they are going into a new edition where they are not the biggest selling RPG. Hopefully it's a kick in their pants to produce a great product.