A problem with new school as of 3.x and later. Or is it a problem?

What do you think is better and why?

A game with a focus on choice of character building options or a game with a focus on game options?
I see these as two different paths in game design. Old school D&D was more of the later, new school more of the former.
Gameplay is different as practically one excludes the other at some points.
In old school everyone more or less knew most about the game characters: what they could achieve. In new school the game is more about the joy of discovering the new, unknown character builds.

In 3.x and 4e adventures do not usually analyze the character options as prerequisites for the various adventure options. It is mostly up to the players to make effective builds versus the challenge ratings and this is mostly dependent to the game rules than the adventure and the adventure options.
In old school one could correspond the character options,as for example equipment or the party decisions, with the adventure options. In new school it is very hard to go with the same approach- for example thinking of all the various possible feats and skills to model the adventure options around this is impossible. This is why challenge ratings are necessary in the design and the ability to effectively play the game. But it is a different game: a game of "deck" building rather than a game of having sorted out your options and thinking of what you want to do with them in regards to the adventure itself.

In case anyone does not agree with this distinction of old school versus new school let me say that tabletop rpg design is effectively nothing more and nothing less than the game's mere interface. In tabletop everything in theory is possible so what we are buying from a published game is the interface it has come up with. So what matters is interface: different interfaces will usually result in different game in practice. All the same options may be there but the different interface is what makes the difference.

I'd argue it's a false dichotomy, at least as far as the game in actual play. It's true that planning adventures for a game is going to be a different process depending on how many different options are considered available to the players, but published adventures are usually easily breakable no matter the edition. For example, many adventures don't adequately take into account that character motivations can vary.

Once you get into the realm of doing your own adventures, of course, edition just doesn't matter. There may be a minigame of "deck building" with players, or not, but there just isn't any less thought given to the specifics of PCs and what they can do, or what their players like to do. Even in 4e, which is about the utmost of design in the sense of trusting the I can't count the number of times I've seen advice thrown around like (for 4e) "you should use more minions if you have controllers in the party, and they'll be more annoying if you don't" or (for 3e) "rogues in your group are not going to have any fun if you use a lot of undead."

I've seen "deckbuilding" characters in 1e and 2e, and my life has been full of adventures customized to the PCs in 3e and 4e. I think this is really a question of adventure design rather than game design proper. The hurdles facing someone trying to make an adventure useful for as many groups as possible, no matter the game (be it D&D or not)... they're considerable, no matter the edition.

When I speak of adventures I do not mean it from a DM's point of view only but rather of everybody players included.
When a player has to think what next feat or skill should he take rather just where he may find a sword or the money to buy one, the feeling and outcome is somewhat different. And this involves the DM as well, as the DM has to go with the pace of the players. And thus the game more or less changes.

Published adventures I do not count. These are immune to my argument as they are kind of a railroad already by themselves. Campaigns based on locations and settings have to deal though with what I am talking about, from my experience at least.

There's a difference between "having lots of options", and having the paradigm of 3e where some options were intentionally made more powerful than others, in order to promote 'system mastery'.

In my opinion, having lots of options available, at least in supplements to the game, is almost a necessity for a game like D&D, where the intent is to have huge numbers of players playing huge numbers of campaigns over many years. Too few options, and people are likely to get bored.

When it comes to system mastery, though, it is my opinion that it is a blight on 3e, and probably the single worst element of that system (worse even than the excessive prep times that are almost required at high-level). Amongst other things, it makes it extremely difficult for new players to sit at the same table as old hands, without one or other group coming away feeling very unsatisfied.

Unfortunately, while 4e has made some improvements in this area - rebalancing things a lot, and removing a lot of 'bad' options - a lot of the mentality of system mastery remains. And so we get threads like the recent "How do I tell someone his character sucks?" thread. Frankly, I don't want to have to worry whether my character reaches someone else's arbitary standard of acceptability - mostly, I just want to play, and not end up gimped because I haven't invested hundreds of hours crunching the system.

delericho said:

mostly, I just want to play, and not end up gimped because I haven't invested hundreds of hours crunching the system.

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I agree. This is my single biggest problem with DnD. It really drains my love for the game a great deal, so much so that I've come close to giving it up for good.

delericho said:

There's a difference between "having lots of options", and having the paradigm of 3e where some options were intentionally made more powerful than others, in order to promote 'system mastery'.

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I do not think that this is something different from what I am trying to say here. If for example we think of the problem that there is no way to be able to consider each game feat as prerequisite or something you could have to deal with on the different challenges of the campaign we would not be defining the problem as 'system mastery' or 'accidental suck' first place. But essentially it is the same problem, I think -or at least has the same cause or source and this is about the design of the game.

xechnao said:

What do you think is better and why?

A game with a focus on choice of character building options or a game with a focus on game options?
I see these as two different paths in game design. Old school D&D was more of the later, new school more of the former.
Gameplay is different as practically one excludes the other at some points.
In old school everyone more or less knew most about the game characters: what they could achieve. In new school the game is more about the joy of discovering the new, unknown character builds.

In 3.x and 4e adventures do not usually analyze the character options as prerequisites for the various adventure options. It is mostly up to the players to make effective builds versus the challenge ratings and this is mostly dependent to the game rules than the adventure and the adventure options.
In old school one could correspond the character options,as for example equipment or the party decisions, with the adventure options. In new school it is very hard to go with the same approach- for example thinking of all the various possible feats and skills to model the adventure options around this is impossible. This is why challenge ratings are necessary in the design and the ability to effectively play the game. But it is a different game: a game of "deck" building rather than a game of having sorted out your options and thinking of what you want to do with them in regards to the adventure itself.

In case anyone does not agree with this distinction of old school versus new school let me say that tabletop rpg design is effectively nothing more and nothing less than the game's mere interface. In tabletop everything in theory is possible so what we are buying from a published game is the interface it has come up with. So what matters is interface: different interfaces will usually result in different game in practice. All the same options may be there but the different interface is what makes the difference.

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So, where would you see the problem?

Are people having less fun in one paradigm? Or do some people prefer one over the other? Do more people prefer one over the other?

Personally, I love if I don't have to worry too much about the character abilities. But does this fit into your distinction? 3E and 4E can be very different about this. A 3E party without a Cleric needs very different adventures than one without one. A 4E group without a Cleric poses no problem, even one without a Leader doesn't really need adjustment.

But both are the same in the regard that the players have a lot of "build options" they can choose independent of what the DM hands out to them or what they experience in game.

xechnao said:

When I speak of adventures I do not mean it from a DM's point of view only but rather of everybody players included.
When a player has to think what next feat or skill should he take rather just where he may find a sword or the money to buy one, the feeling and outcome is somewhat different. And this involves the DM as well, as the DM has to go with the pace of the players. And thus the game more or less changes.

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I'm not sure I follow the premise. Different in what way that actually counts as exclusive?

To use my own experience, when running D&D I tend to run much as I always have: a mix of "here's what would logically be the opposition in the area" and "here's the selection of critters that would be fun for the players to go up against." It's just changed as something that involves CRs and XP budgets instead of "hey, 2nd level is a good time to start throwing in more bugbears."

From the players' perspective, I see little change. Mechanical choices are now more meaningful, but roleplaying choices are no less so; the guy who muses over what feat to take is still also interested in finding out more about the sealed noble manses he just learned about, or foolishly setting up a tense romantic triangle, or getting more training in how to ride a wyvern. Players who weren't previously interested in roleplaying now have more to do in later editions, but they weren't roleplayers before the shift of the rules.

About the most notable change I've seen is that there's generally a little more encouragement for player characters to pitch in defining the environment, making requests for specific things they're looking for. The presence of new feats or abilities that can be trained means they're looking for specific, colorful trainers more often. Of course, even that is true only if you weren't previously using the "PCs must find NPC trainers and spend a ton of gold if they want to go up a level" rules of older editions... otherwise it's not too different.

But otherwise, I simply haven't seen too much change in player's attitudes toward the game. Some styles of play are more empowered in specific editions, but that seems to affect their choice of what they want to play rather than their actual style of play. The actual style of play is something I see as being far more susceptible to real-life changes: having children will affect someone's gaming habits a lot more than whether they have a choice between 1-2e and 3-4e.

Barastrondo said:

From the players' perspective, I see little change. Mechanical choices are now more meaningful, but roleplaying choices are no less so; the guy who muses over what feat to take is still also interested in finding out more about the sealed noble manses he just learned about, or foolishly setting up a tense romantic triangle, or getting more training in how to ride a wyvern. Players who weren't previously interested in roleplaying now have more to do in later editions, but they weren't roleplayers before the shift of the rules.

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My own experience has differed somewhat.

On the one hand, and to a certain extent, merely defining things in the rules has served to constrain players' thinking about some things.

For example, without the Improved Disarm feat, no player in one of my games would ever even consider attempting a disarm, despite it being allowed in the rules. (Conversely, the character who did have the feat would always attempt the disarm. Either way isn't a great thing to see.) And, similarly, when coming up with any sort of cool and imaginitve move, there was always a temptation to think "that should be a feat"... from which they quickly leapt to "you must have feat X to do this."

In that regard, 4e is even worse (for us) - by tying down yet more cool and imaginitive options in the powers system, the game has effectively reduced the range of options that will even be attempted - if you don't have a power that does it, it probably never occurs to you to even attempt it.

(Again, that was just our experience with 4e... and I should also note that that experience was extremely minimal - we played enough to decide it wasn't for us, and left it at that.)

At the same time, I have found that the more "mechanically interesting" the characters were, and the more options that were available, the less interest my players had in developing a character, or in interacting with the game world. Again, to a certain extent, they aren't so much playing their character the noble knight, lauded far and wide in song... they're playing a Paladin 7/Noble Knight 3, with the Expertise, Power Attack and Improve Sunder feats.

(It also didn't help that system mastery meant that the range of characters that were actually played dropped off quite rapidly as they got to grips with the system, so that we started essentially just rotating the character sheets with each new campaign.)

Again, this was just my observation, and it only applied to a certain extent, but I certainly found I was more satisfied with the roleplaying aspect of the game with Vampire: the Masquerade (and then the earlier editions of that) than with D&D 3e, even with the same group of players and DM.

It's almost as if the group collectively only had a certain amount of head-space for the game - and so the more interest there was in the mechanics, the less there was available for the roleplay aspect. (Luckily, we have found that both SWSE and WFRP provide an excellent middle-ground for us. So that works quite well. )

delericho said:

Again, this was just my observation, and it only applied to a certain extent, but I certainly found I was more satisfied with the roleplaying aspect of the game with Vampire: the Masquerade (and then the earlier editions of that) than with D&D 3e, even with the same group of players and DM.

It's almost as if the group collectively only had a certain amount of head-space for the game - and so the more interest there was in the mechanics, the less there was available for the roleplay aspect. (Luckily, we have found that both SWSE and WFRP provide an excellent middle-ground for us. So that works quite well. )

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Yeah, you absolutely cannot discount headspace. It can vary so much based on communal inspirations, past experiences of what worked and what didn't, even if you're playing on a weekend or a weekday, or whose house you're playing at. Having heavily different experiences with different settings and game systems is probably inevitable.

You know what's hard in this hobby? Generalizations. I tell you.