How Important is OBQ in an RPG like D&D?

[Tony Vargas]

OBQ = Out of Box Quality; can you play the game exactly as it's published with no problems? Does it need errata? Do you need to change or add rules to get it to work?

1 = not important at all

5 = Very important

 

[Andor]

Get it right. 4e lost a lot of points with me when some of the rule examples in the PHB clearly referred to an earlier draft of the rules.

If I want to play a beta that was shipped too early, I'll buy a computer game. If you're going to kill a tree, don't let it die in vain. Sell a finished game, not a work in progress.

 

[Agamon]

Aim at 5, hope for 4.

 

[El Mahdi]

This time around, I'd think it's of paramount importance. After the mistakes of the past, after the errat treadmill of the last edition, and after having a prolonged and in-depth public playtest of the system, they need to have this right, right out of the box, this time. I don't think the fan/customer base (as a whole) will accept anything less this time around.

 

[Mokona]

I will mod 5e but I voted "5" because 4 contained "4, important, but I don't mind errata, if it's prompt & logical" (emphasis added).

4th edition had too much errata. I hated all the 4e errata. I want 98% less errata in D&D Next.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I don't want to put down money for a poor quality product.

That said, the substance of a D&D rulebook is the ideas. Operational details are determined at the table regardless of what's written. Giving you tools to succeed is the goal, not telling you how to play.

So I think that D&D is very robust to having specific mechanics of text written poorly.

The bigger reason for out of box quality is to attract new players and earn the respect of people who don't already play the game. The quality of my game is determined more by me than by the books I use.

I answered "2".

 

[Stormonu]

Errata will happen, and that makes things better than they are, but the game I get should be playable without having to change or add whole swathes of the game midstream.

Sadly, 4E is the only D&D game that has failed this test for me.

 

[Ratskinner]

variable response

I voted 5, but I'm more concerned with the "core" or "basic" game being "perfect". The basic game is supposed to be a really simple stripped-down version...that should be pretty easy to write without major errors. If there's a lot of modules with possibly complicated interactions, I can see a few errors of the "we didn't think of that" kind. (Although I'd prefer the system be as DM-fixable as possible.) In a work of this size, there are bound to be a few typos. However, I am driven a little bit nuts by rewrites of entire classes or powers or spells to fix large balance or other issues that simply should have been caught beforehand. There is plenty of material out there from the OGL that can be used to model rules that are harder to "break." I should be able to play this game out of the book 30 years from now in the retirement home without having to dig up some website with an ancient pdf of the collected errata 'lest my game explode.

If big errata must be issued, they should be issued formatted so that I can print them on sticker paper and patch them into the books.

 

[Oni]

I said important, but not vital, because one person's out of the box is another person's fixer-upper. A big company should have a high degree of polish on their products and the end result should work well, but the idea that it should work exactly perfectly for everyone straight out of the box probably isn't realistic in a hobby so prone to tinkering and changing things (often before they've even tested to see if the original rules work in the fist place).

 

[Vegepygmy]

"1," says I. We're talking about a tabletop role-playing game, not the latest computer game. Real D&D players don't need everything handed to them on a silver platter; they can insist on doing it themselves.