Proposal 1 - dragon#364 made legal

covaithe · Nov 16, 2008

I may be in a minority here, but I for one really hope that we don't allow all or even most of the books WotC put out for 4e. I sympathize with people who have the money and interest to get all the material and play with it all, but... Well, it's their job to keep coming out with more and more content, regardless of whether its been playtested really well or is a good match, balance-wise, for earlier content. I see our mission here as providing a mostly stable persistent world for people to game in over the long haul; it's not a place to experiment with lots of sexy rules. An unbalanced feat or power in this world is a lot bigger problem than it is for a one-off face-to-face game. I'm also afraid that having lots of sources available will make it harder to DM, as DMs will find it harder to plan for what their players are capable of doing.

But I may be worrying over nothing; I do that sometimes. I suppose time will tell.

Atanatotatos · Nov 16, 2008

Well, covaithe, I may agree or not with what you said, but I though we were talking about a small number of free articles at the moment so...

covaithe · Nov 16, 2008

You're right, of course, Ata. It's just that I haven't yet had time to carefully read the proposed articles yet, so I don't have anything meaningful to say directly about that. And god forbid I should keep my mouth shut when I have nothing to say, so....

I'll read them soon, honest.

Atanatotatos · Nov 16, 2008

Anyway, covaithe (by the way, if I sounded like I wanted to rush you or be confrontational, that wasn't my intention), to answer your point: I recognize the fact that approving more books poses some difficulties for the DMs, but consider this: If at least one or two judges own the book (otherwise it wouldn't be approved anyway, I guess), they will check the character making use of new options; since most action post include a brief description of the effects of powers and whatever actions (as well as the templated character sheet) it is not STRICTLY necessary for a DM to own the book in question; it would be preferrable, sure, but he can run pcs fine anyway.
On the side of players, I don't find this to be an issue; sure, if one player has more options than the other he might have an advantage, but if they're balanced there shouldn't be much diffence: the difference between an "optimizer" using only core and a regular player using ten different books will always be greater.
Finally, if time, resources and effort are an issue, we should still distinguish "necessary" books from "superfluous": for example, I'm sure A LOT of people will want to play Swordmages, Drows, and Genasi, so saying that not approving FRPG will be an unpopular choice is an understatement. If we wait a year, or more, for books like Martial power, well, that should be much less of an issue.

garyh · Nov 16, 2008

covaithe said:
I'm also afraid that having lots of sources available will make it harder to DM, as DMs will find it harder to plan for what their players are capable of doing.

Regarding this, players have to write their powers out fully in their L4W character sheet, so - for example - a swordmage player would have their aegis described on their sheet, and thus a DM would be able to work with it even without having the FRPG.

stonegod · Nov 16, 2008

covaithe said:
I may be in a minority here, but I for one really hope that we don't allow all or even most of the books WotC put out for 4e. I sympathize with people who have the money and interest to get all the material and play with it all, but... Well, it's their job to keep coming out with more and more content, regardless of whether its been playtested really well or is a good match, balance-wise, for earlier content. I see our mission here as providing a mostly stable persistent world for people to game in over the long haul; it's not a place to experiment with lots of sexy rules. An unbalanced feat or power in this world is a lot bigger problem than it is for a one-off face-to-face game. I'm also afraid that having lots of sources available will make it harder to DM, as DMs will find it harder to plan for what their players are capable of doing.

This is the main philosophical difference between LEW and LEB: One has only SRD and player-created content; the latter allows WotC content on an approval basis. I don't necessarily see L4W needing to fork due to this choice, but I feel that opening up to new material is something that was put in when L4W was founded. But the key thing is not to autoallow anything (except errata, but that's somewhat debatable).

ukingsken · Nov 16, 2008

It seems to me that a lot of it will eventually come down to the community opinion as a whole. Yes maybe it will be a little frustrating for some DM's if they don't own the book but garyh is right in that everything you need to adjudicate the powers etc should be in the templated sheets anyway.

And you're right too Covaithe, on some level WoTC runs a business and some of their material may get pushed through for business reasons. But having bought every 4ed release so far I will say I have seen much less broken-ness then was present even in early 3rd edition. On a whole WoTC seems to be doing a better job play testing and dealing with balance issues.

So since I want to avoid only replying and not contributing I think that really it's more important to consider material on a flavour basis then the rules side. If something is obviously rules broken, well yeah dont allow it. But for the gaming experience its much more important that the new material jives with our living flavour. Besides if something is allowed and turns out to be broken you can always remove it later. A few people might get angry but as a whole the community would appreciate the work being done to keep the game balanced.

covaithe · Nov 16, 2008

Yikes, I appear to have kicked an anthill here. No, I have no desire at all to split L4W. I don't think it would be even possible unless WotC were to reverse course and release an SRD. Yes, the decision was made long ago to allow non-public content in L4W, and I'm perfectly happy with that. The question is just about how much, and which content. Do we try to drink from the firehose of WotC publishing, or just take drips and drabs here and there? Presumably the answer is something in between, but I think it's worth talking about the philosophical basis that we use to evaluate content for approval, as well as the actual content itself.

garyh's point is well taken; the fact that our character sheets are detailed is a pretty good reassurance that DMs will be able to handle things even if they don't own the books. In fact, because we put the whole text of powers on our char sheets (*), it enables us to use more content, which encourages people to buy more books. Are you listening, WotC lawyers? It's advertising, not copyright infringement!

(*) or nearly -- guys, honestly, we don't need the full text of Prestidigitation on every wizard's char sheet, do we?

elecgraystone · Nov 18, 2008

garyh said:
The minotaur article (and by all indications from designer comments, any future bugbear article) takes away Oversized. That's kind of a big deal, in my book. Maybe give existing characters the option of being grandfathered in (keeping Oversized, but not being allowed to use material from said article either)?

The minotaur article is a big problem for me. Instead off adding to the MM races (like the other dragon race articles) it changes them. This ends up giving you TWO official minotaur races and one is dragon subscription only. Neither is 'more' right and the article isn't errata so doesn't automatically override it.

Lets face it, someone without the dragon subscription is only ever going to have one official minotaur and it has Oversized. If the new article becomes 'official' for L4W, you make it so the race can't be used unless you get dragon. None of the races are like that, since the new and old races still work together. It's a mess. :-S

Atanatotatos · Nov 18, 2008

Well, it's quite simple. I'm not a subscriber so I haven't read the article, nut it's sufficient to allow feats and other new options (if we want) and keep the oversized feature, ditching the substitution ones. After all, I think everyone will be happier that way.