4e / GSL WoTC Interview with Rob Heinsoo

[Agamon]

Originally Posted by NMcCoy

Ooh, sequel to Three Dragon Ante. Shiny.

Yeah, that's awesome!

[Jack Colby]

Wow, it is amazing that the magic-using classes survived and were popular for 30 years when they just weren't any fun!

Really, I see what he was saying there, but it is just one view. Personally, I see fun as being directly tied to satisfaction, and being satisfied with a game or game mechanic/rule doesn't mean it has to be without negative consequences. Struggling and still succeeding is often more satisfying and fun than not having to struggle for anything.

For example: Wizards starting with one spell (unlike other classes) and running out of magic quickly at low levels can be very satisfying... while having endless, weak, at-will powers (like every other class, but renamed "spells") can be dull and un-fun. There is no universal fun-o-meter out there to measure these things, so don't let WotC convince you that they have one.

I like 4E and am in a game of it now, but this whole idea that features of earlier editions were unquestionably bad and needed to be replaced is just silly. It shows ignorance if they are honest opinions, and are just meaningless marketing language otherwise.

[Treebore]

Well, it clearly explains why 4E feels so video gamey. Like video games all characters are designed to be balanced/fair with regards to the others.

Personally I am fine with that variance. After all if you can one day be capable of casting Wish/Miracle, you are the most powerful classes in the game. How can a fighter or rogue match that? They can't, and aren't supposed too.

So it will be interesting to see how weakened spellcasters are, and how powered up the fighter types are, to make everyone equal.

[Kamikaze Midget]

Personally, I see fun as being directly tied to satisfaction, and being satisfied with a game or game mechanic/rule doesn't mean it has to be without negative consequences.

Dogs are a lot of fun, but they smell funny, slobber, bark loudly, have to be fed and watered, have bodily functions that are tough to deal with, and, eventually, die, making you very sad. Most people don't have fun with smelly, slobbery, barking, costly, messy, and mortal dogs. I have this suspicion that if the 4e team were to design a dog, it would be more like a fuzzy roomba that could play fetch. "It does everything you want a dog to do, with none of the problems of a real dog!"

Which is, really, missing the point.

Heck, 4e itself is a lot of hassle. Coordinating a schedule for six people of a similar playstyle to each spend at least $30, and meet in one place for about 5 hours, after buying enough accessories in the form of Dungeon Tiles and Minis to be able to diagram the encounter....that's a TREMENDOUS amount of effort.

That certainly doesn't mean that 4e isn't fun, though.

[Plane Sailing]

Originally Posted by Kamikaze Midget

Re-stating it: "If you're a new player who wants to have fun playing the game, it doesn't make any sense to have magic get used up quickly."

That is totally BS, and I think he knows it.

It seems to have been a strange thing for him to say, considering that D&D has been the premier RPG since its inception, and hundreds of thousands of new players have had fun playing the game with just such a set-up!

edit: ninja'd by Jacky Colby. Although he didn't have to be a very sprightly ninja

[DaveMage]

Originally Posted by Treebore

Well, it clearly explains why 4E feels so video gamey.

Not video-gamey - just more gamey. We already knew this, but the "fantasy world simulation" portion of previous editions was reduced and more game-like elements were increased.

Sounds like they wanted to make a game that everyone shares in the experience in a similar way. Nothing wrong with that - except that is NOT what I want from D&D (though I realize others prefer this).

And, as has already been brought up, this article reminded my of one of the things I hated about the 4E previews - that this (4E) style of game is *fun* and the other (1E/2E/3E) editions aren't. Clearly, what Rob H. thinks is "fun" with D&D is not the kind of "fun" I want from D&D.

C'est la vie.

Ironically, though, if they had pushed the gamist elements just a bit further, maybe they could come out with a really good D&D-based board game like (but better than) Talisman/Descent/Runequest etc. that I'd probably be intererested in. I'm just not interested in it for my D&D RPG experience.

[Treebore]

Originally Posted by DaveMage

Not video-gamey - just more gamey. We already knew this, but the "fantasy world simulation" portion of previous editions was reduced and more game-like elements were increased.

Sounds like they wanted to make a game that everyone shares in the experience in a similar way. Nothing wrong with that - except that is NOT what I want from D&D (though I realize others prefer this).

And, as has already been brought up, this article reminded my of one of the things I hated about the 4E previews - that this (4E) style of game is *fun* and the other (1E/2E/3E) editions aren't. Clearly, what Rob H. thinks is "fun" with D&D is not the kind of "fun" I want from D&D.

C'est la vie.

Ironically, though, if they had pushed the gamist elements just a bit further, maybe they could come out with a really good D&D-based board game like (but better than) Talisman/Descent/Runequest etc. that I'd probably be intererested in. I'm just not interested in it for my D&D RPG experience.

Yeah, I guess gamey is more precise, since you also find such design in board games and CCG's, etc...

Yes, such gamey flavor isn't what I look for in my D&D, which, ironically, is why I no longer play D&D.

I am much happier with wizards being the most powerful class on the field, or Druid, or Cleric. I don't want my fighter doing quasi magical stuff, I want my fighter to be a fighter. I want my thief to be a thief. When I want them able to do magical stuff I cross class to a spell casting class.

One thing I do commend about 4E though, they put a limit on just how good you can get. 30th level.

[DaveMage]

Thinking about it more, 4E seems to be similar to a stagnant mid-level 3E game (which, I think, is the intent - preserve the sweet spot). I wonder how 3E D&D would be if there were no level gains, and everyone simply played the equivalent of a 10th level character for their entire career. Since that's in the so-called "sweet spot", I imagine one could have a good RPG play experience for a long while just at that level.

However, I would think that the game would become stale faster than if you had the variety of lower/higher level play.

What will be interesting to hear from 4E fans, is their play experience going from 1 to 30 with different classes/characters. Will the 1-30 play experience of separate classes be too similar? Or is there enough variety so that once you've gone levels 1-30, it's a completely different experience with a new class, and thus still worth the time?

Originally Posted by Treebore

One thing I do commend about 4E though, they put a limit on just how good you can get. 30th level.

See, that's something I don't like. I don't like the idea that at some point, the game simply ends. That's like a board game. I don't mind if a company doesn't want to support a game beyond a certain point, but at least leave it open-ended (as 1E/2E/3E are) so that creative DMs at least have the tools to play beyond official support. (Or, you can do the 1E/2E XP progression, where it simply takes a long time to advance levels past a certain point.)

[ProfessorCirno]

Every time a developer says "We did this so you can have FUN!" I wince.

As someone else said, you should never make "We can just fix it later" a part of your design. Never.

My problem with many of his examples regarding spellcasters is my same problem that I have with just about every example of spellcasters being "too powerful" that're out there: The fighter is a new player who doesn't understand the game, and the wizard has been playing since he was old enough to roll dice. Somehow the wizard knows everything that is to come and has full knowledge of the best spells, while the fighter can't tell the difference between Toughness and Power Attack.

I agree that monks and bards (and other classes along the line) suffered most from having no definable role. I'm also strongly intrigued by the "multiple power acuisition schemas," as I think that's what the powers system suffers from the most.

In the end, I think Rob and 4e developers overall HAD some good ideas, but the implimentation was not that great. I think the two big issues with their implimentation is that they approched it badly. First, they said "What's fun," when fun differes hugely between everyone in the known universe. Second, they said "Let's see if we can make this different" instead of "Should we make this different?" I think Kamikaze put it best when he quoted Jurrasic Park on it.

[RefinedBean]

Originally Posted by DaveMage

See, that's something I don't like. I don't like the idea that at some point, the game simply ends.

Well, the game doesn't end, just character advancement by level.

[DaveMage]

Originally Posted by RefinedBean

Well, the game doesn't end, just character advancement by level.

See, that's something I don't like. I don't like the idea that at some point, character advancement by level simply ends.

[RefinedBean]

Originally Posted by DaveMage

See, that's something I don't like. I don't like the idea that at some point, character advancement by level simply ends.

Ahhh.

Well, that's just a problem with level-based systems in general, in my opinion. There's always a cut-off point, whether it's a hard cut (4E's "nothing beyond 30") or a soft one (3E's "We kinda-sorta worked out some epic level rules for you").

Maybe now that the GSL has been loosened, someone will come up with an alternate rules system that gets rid of the 30-level cut-off.

[Keefe the Thief]

Since we´ve had the video game and board game comparisons already, could somebody
- refer to New Coke
and
- say something about Magic the Gathering?
The comments look incomplete without it.

[MerricB]

Originally Posted by DaveMage

What will be interesting to hear from 4E fans, is their play experience going from 1 to 30 with different classes/characters. Will the 1-30 play experience of separate classes be too similar?

I'm running two 4e campaigns, with a couple of players who play in both. PCs are 8th and 6th level. One has a Ranger and a Warlock, and he's said on several occasions that he finds the two classes very different to play. (They're also both strikers, so role isn't everything).

It's very interesting to contrast the changing experience of the levels in 4e. From running these two campaigns, it's very evident that the characters are growing throughout the heroic tier. First level characters aren't incompetent by any stretch of the imagination, but they don't have the options of 8th level PCs. There's a big difference between 2 at-wills, 1 encounter and 1 daily and 2 at wills, 3 encounters, 2 dailies, 2 utilities and various item powers!

We can already see that paragon will be a big shift to what the PCs can do. Action points will become a lot more important, and there are a host of other powers and abilities that begin in those levels to really let the PCs know they've reached those levels.

Epic? Let you know in another year's time.

Cheers!

[Obergnom]

We just finished our Heroic Tier Campaign, running from level 1 to 10. The game did not feel stagnant at all, I would compare it with going from level 3 to level 7 in 3e, but with the players getting 9 instead of 4 level ups.

For me, as a DM, that was great because it removes that feeling of the PCs power growing too rapidly. On the players side, if I would have ever created a 3e campaign running 33 session with them only leveling up 4 times, they would have been very unhappy...

Both rituals and mounts give a true sense of where the characters arein terms of power, right now. One of them owns a hippogriff, escentially granting overland flight, another one rides a rage drake (which makes him feel quite "epic") and being able to pay for the weaker rituals easily gives more of that "magic tool box" effect back to the game.

[Ariosto]

One thing that's striking to me is the emphasis on removing options, even when it's presented as providing them. Players always had the option of starting characters at 4th level or retiring them at 14th. When the "kernel" was relatively simple and modular, players could modify the game in all sorts of ways -- including, of course, with "official" supplements. Plenty of folks have altered things along 4E lines, by their own choice.

Now, it's supposedly the company's job to prevent people from playing old-style 1st- or 21st-level characters. Set aside number-crunching mechanical details and compare this basic attitude to the quite different one expressed in the seminal work published in 1974.

From design to marketing, there's a question either lurking or looming: whose game is it?

Arneson and Gygax designed the original. Gygax designed AD&D, and, whatever his position in the company, D&D remained "Gary's game" in the eyes of the public. Holmes, Moldvay, Marsh, Cook and Mentzer were pretty clearly working not so much on their games as on new presentations of the game.

Then new ownership came in, and Gygax was out. TSR was not in WotC's league as far as interest in market research, but the firm solicited a lot of player input as to what the second edition of AD&D should be like. David "Zeb" Cook was not in the position of creative control that Gygax had enjoyed; 2E was not really "his" (or anyone's) personal expression. It was the first truly "corporate" version of D&D.

TSR owned the trademark, but in a sense the fans owned the definition of the game. That was but a very tenuous sense, to be sure, and while I pretty much missed out on the "edition war" of the 1990s that was in part because I had already lost interest in new releases from TSR. They were in a sense slapping older-edition players with the "let us tell you the proper way to have fun" line.

The origin may be a chicken-or-the-egg question, but there was a significant departure -- and a lot of players were on board with the company. The latter could hardly have kept churning out "splat books" if the former were not buying. Eventually, the supplements would transform the game pretty radically for those who used the whole kit and caboodle.

The core rules, though, remained pretty darned recognizable. The "no difference" line was baloney (and the "improved" one just a matter of opinion) even then, and the objective differences alone are plenty to warrant a preference for 1E or 2E. However, enough fundamental matters remained the same that one could without too much trouble use material from 1996 (assuming one found some worth using) with the rules-set of 1976 -- or vice-versa. There was a foundation of common concepts expressed in mostly the same language.

So, for 26 years (1974-2000) "D&D" was at its heart a reference not merely to a trademark but to a game about as objectively definable as many others. It was from the start meant to be just a start, a framework to be reshaped and built upon from campaign to campaign. That was part of the tradition.

With 3E, tradition lost its primacy and became just one consideration among many. Everything was negotiable -- among the new designers. They were designing their (and the company's) game.

Already with 2E, the process had been turned upside-down. It was not a matter of someone creating something just for fun and then finding that it had a market. There was no Muse (What is the name of the patron Muse of RPGs, anyway?) demanding that it be written; the demand was from Corporate, for a product. Tradition was respected because it was thought to sell.

Wizards held onto that idea rather loosely. I think part of why is that the designers were a new generation, their image of what was definitive of D&D shaped by TSR's 2E-era marketing. There's a feedback loop when folks who "drank the Kool-Aid" are put in charge of making it. That's also going on in the market. The folks still buying the product make up a demographic self-selected for not considering the latest stuff crap. How many former customers have been lost? How many potential customers might have bought the older model?

Maybe WotC's market research breaks that loop. The bottom line, though, is not about fidelity to "D&D" as anything but a trademark. 3E established that one thing that sold was treating D&D players not as fellow hobbyists but as consumers. The "pros" are not just guys lucky enough to get paid for writing game material; they Know Better than You. And that's a good thing, because supposedly writing D&D stuff has turned into something as expertise-dependent as designing computer operating systems or interplanetary rockets. Who designs "game engines" if not engineers?

So, after the terrible Rust Monster Disaster of 2006 (Oh, the humanity!) they swore "never again." Too many 3E games were crashing and burning, endangering not only the players but hapless bystanders. How to prevent such tragedies due to human error? By designing the system to lock operators out of the loop at critical decision points. No more "patches" -- rewrite it from scratch.

[Obergnom]

Originally Posted by Ariosto

The "pros" are not just guys lucky enough to get paid for writing game material; they Know Better than You. And that's a good thing, because supposedly writing D&D stuff has turned into something as expertise-dependent as designing computer operating systems or interplanetary rockets. Who designs "game engines" if not engineers?

Maybe because I am a physicist or maybe because I am a big fan of Blizzards way of designing games. (Love Starcraft and Diablo 2 for being balanced), but I firmly belive that game design is a complicated craft, requireing solid math skills.
If anything, I think the designers should do better in the math department...

[Ariosto]

Starcraft and Diablo are what they are. This is being advertised as Dungeons & Dragons. If 5E turns out to be Diablo 5, what are longtime D&D 4E players likely to say?

It doesn't really matter, unless what they say is, "Right on! I'm a big Diablo fan, so of course I think D&D should be as much like Diablo as possible."

And if Diablo 6 looks like, say, Ultima? Same deal with Diablo 5 fans.

[Obergnom]

I was just giving examples of balanced games... actually you could add a lot of board games as both good or bad examples of "good" game design. I did not say they should make D&D like those games, just that I think balance is very important and require a lot of skill.

[DaveMage]

Originally Posted by Ariosto

Players always had the option of starting characters at 4th level or retiring them at 14th.

Thank you for making this point.

I knew something was missing from the sweet spot discussion and this is exactly it. This option gave us flexibility with regard to starting PC power that is somewhat different with 4E.