D&D 5E With Respect to the Door and Expectations....The REAL Reason 5e Can't Unite the Base

Crazy Jerome said:

In BW, the big difference is the advancement, I think, and the way the advancement itself feeds back into the cycle itself. It's theoretically possible to advance in BW slowly without failure, but that would be some extremely improbable rolls combined with some long-term training. In practice, players are going to risk failure often, because trying something risky is the best way to come out ahead, whether you succeed or fail.

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That's my analysis at this point, as well.

Crazy Jerome said:

... If you want to see the reward cycle overtly, try Mouse Guard sometime. MG is nothing but the heart of BW with color changed to map to the source material, and some GM structure provided to help a novice learn the system. (Well, that and beautiful presentation and organization.)

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I'd love to. The only problem is that AFAICT, I'm just about the only guy in my area even vaguely interested in any rpg other than D&D and its variants. At least my current group lets me indulge in a one-shot occasionally.

Imaro said:

I gues I can just agree to disagree with you and Balesir... Though I would definitely love to see what percentage of casual players as opposed to the hardcore type that tend to frequent boards like this are concerned with the level of optimization you all and neonchameleon are speaking of. I dont have any hard evidence but I would guess it's not a majority.

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What level of optimization are we talking about though?

We've seen in this thread that taking some people consider a wizard choosing an Int stat boost item is optimizing. That putting your every 4 level stat boost into your prime stat is optimizing.

Are you saying that casual players would never do either of those?

See, there is a real disconnect here. Imaro, you and others seem to think that the game only has problems if we spend hours on the charops boards and deliberately set out to exploit the system. However, it's already been shown that basic, fundamental, and fundamentally simply character choices can fairly easily cause balance issues.

No one is talking about combing through fifteen splat books to come up with the perfect combo. We're talking about the ability to recognize why a fireball in 3e is not terribly effective (considering the actual damage output and comparing it to the creatures you face) compared to a plethora of non-direct damage spells.

AD&D had this baked right in. Sleep was outright better than any other 1st level spell. But, you were only going to get to cast a couple per day, and by the time you could cast more, the spell wouldn't affect anything. So, you got a big ticket "I Win" card, but only a couple of times. The fighter, OTOH, could plow through lots of encounters and come out ahead. Everyone's happy.

3e chucked that out the window by VASTLY expanding the caster lists, allowing easily crafted magic items BAKED RIGHT INTO THE CLASS, and making it trivially easy to bypass the per day limitations on casters.

And they didn't really boost the non-casters terribly much. A 2e fighter outdamages a 3e fighter significantly until double digit levels. And this is in a system where monsters have about 1/2 as many hit points. So, no, you don't see a whole lot of balance complaints in earlier D&D about casters vs non-casters, because there weren't a lot of balance issues. There were other issues - the casters sitting on their thumbs for much of a session because they had nothing to do - but balance wasn't the primary issue.

Imaro said:

I gues I can just agree to disagree with you and Balesir... Though I would definitely love to see what percentage of casual players as opposed to the hardcore type that tend to frequent boards like this are concerned with the level of optimization you all and neonchameleon are speaking of. I dont have any hard evidence but I would guess it's not a majority.

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Yeah, I don't have any evidence, either. That's why I didn't make any claims about percentages or anything. Well, that and because I was off on a tangent about the appeal of RPGs...

...to get back to the point you want to discuss: if there's an excessively over- or under-powered option in a game, that's a bad thing, regardless of what percentage of the gaming public might be inclined to intentionally abuse it (though I'd go so far as to assert that percentage is /not/ 0), or what percentage might just stumble upon it by accident (which in the case of more outre builds probably does approach 0). If the best defense of a bad option is that no one will ever use it, there's clearly no reason to have it in the first place.

Ratskinner said:

Most folks who bother to discuss it see FATE playing somewhere along the Sim vs. Nar axis. It can quite freely move back and forth along those poles, IME. To me, that makes a lot sense. Fudge was fairly Sim, and FATE is basically a Fudge variant with the Narrativist Aspects/FP stuff tacked on. Different groups will place different emphasis on it.

Its sounding like (from this thread and all the others I've been reading) BW plays along the same axis, but tends strongly towards the Narrative end of things.

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Sounds right to me.

But I think - the only way to find out is to play! And it's a lot of fun, too.

Imaro said:

I'm not Ahnehnois... but isn't this sort of like asking why everyone in the world doesn't train and focus to become the top in their profession... their livelihood and the livelihood of their families depend on it so why isn't everyone trying to become the best at whatever they do all the time in real life?

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The stakes involved and the probability and risk of failure. The stakes involved in D&D are "If you fail you will not live to see tomorrow" mixed often enough with "If you fail your home town will be razed to the ground, and everyone you care about enslaved". That's what I call motivation!

The stakes on the other hand for not focussing to become the top of your profession are much much more nebulous. And the rewards for doing other things are greater - you aren't in immediate danger. Spending time with your family is more likely to be desirable when you don't have a goblin army preparing and that if you don't defeat is going to kill you and your spouse and enslave your children.

Not optimising in character means you simply aren't taking the stakes seriously. Which is much more justifiable in real life.

Ahnehnois said:

Wait, what? Where? I have lots of gamism. My current houserules allow far more tactical depth and competitive play than any published version of D&D. Where would you get this idea? Open-ended and noncompetitive doesn't preclude gamism.

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All games are competative. It's part of the point. Step on up. Challenge yourself.

Exactly. Why would you want a system that restricts people's ability to do that in the name of "balance"?

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Could you unpack why you think this is the case please? Especially when it relates to in character choice.

Well, we've seen plenty of posts (and even a thread) to the effect that the entire 3.X and PF fan bases are irrelevent.

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Normally in response to the unconstrained gravedancing done by 3.X and Pathfinder fans who want the ground of 4e ploughed over and salted. And I don't think anyone's said they are irrelevant. Merely that you need to produce a product so much better than Paizo does at what Paizo does that it's almost impossible.

There was also an entire game released under the D&D label that took the same approach, and lost a majority share of the market to weak competition. Pretty sure that's not just me.

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They never thought the fanbase was irrelevant. Merely that everyone had the same issues with it.

Imaro said:

I gues I can just agree to disagree with you and Balesir... Though I would definitely love to see what percentage of casual players as opposed to the hardcore type that tend to frequent boards like this are concerned with the level of optimization you all and neonchameleon are speaking of. I dont have any hard evidence but I would guess it's not a majority.

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I'm not actually talking about hard optimisation. Loading your spell book down with conjurations because they ignore SR is not exactly hard optimisation.

Neonchameleon said:

Normally in response to the unconstrained gravedancing done by 3.X and Pathfinder fans who want the ground of 4e ploughed over and salted. And I don't think anyone's said they are irrelevant. Merely that you need to produce a product so much better than Paizo does at what Paizo does that it's almost impossible.

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This in particular. Why would the Pathfinder fanbase change for a game that is going in a different direction to 3.5, if not as far from that direction as I'd like. A watered-down version of Pathfinder isn't going to shift many of it's fans, and it's not going to appeal to many of the people who dislike fundamental parts of the whole 3.x paradigm. If you get rid of enough to appeal to the second group, the first don't seem likely to decide it's what they want.

Imaro said:

The whole point of making a character is to create your own goals, killing monsters may be an ends to said goal but I don't see the default goal being kill monsters and take their stuff in D&D...

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If killing monsters is a means to achieve the character's goal, then optimising for killing monsters is optimising to achieve those goals. That just makes it a sub-goal, but it's still rational for the character to optimise for it.

Imaro said:

Otherwise why a Diploomacy skill? Why feats that have no combat application like linguist?

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OD&D - and everything up to the original Oriental Adventures for AD&D, in fact - didn't have anything similar to "Diplomacy skill" or "linguist feats". Even in the later editions they are tacked-on elemets with no proper systems support; the closest it gets is 4e's "Skill Challenges", and I'd hardly call that "comprehensive support". The primary systems support in D&D is and has always been for killing things and taking their stuff; that is the basis on which I say it is the "default" or "vanilla" expected goal (or sub-goal).

Imaro said:

I think you're projecting that goal as the default goal of D&D?

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No, I don't think so - I'm looking at what the D&D systems support and inferring from that what the main focus of play is expected to be. Of course, some folk might deliberately go against expectations, but going against expectations and then complaining because your goal is not that best supported seems to me to be quite bizarre behaviour (not to mention remarkably self-centred).

Imaro said:

SOO then you've answered neonchameleon's question right here... the goal of every character is not to optimize to kill monsters.

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Imaro said:

What is "vanilla" D&D?... and no, again character's exist for the reason that a player chooses for them to exist... that's always been a part of D&D.

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Taking these two comments together, the idea of roleplaying games in general is indeed that the player may select any goal they choose for their character. But systems are tools - they may be used to structure and determine how resolutions are made for a roleplaying game. It would seem sensible to select a system that supports the sort of resolutions that would be expected when pursuing the goals the players have set for their characters. D&D primarily supports resolutions concerned with killing things and taking their stuff; a large proportion of the rulebooks deals with resolutions of just this sort. It seems to me sensible to select D&D as your system when the goals the players choose would be expected to be pursued by killing things and taking their stuff. If all or most of the players choose very different goals, it makes much more sense to use another system - one more suited to the goals selected. Not to say that some "twiddling around the edges" can't be accomodated quite easily, but if every player in the group wants to have goals of peace and prosperity to all gentlebeings then I would be selecting another game system than D&D to run the campaign by...

Imaro said:

Killing things can be the goal and/or a way to accomplish said goals but the default, IMO, is whatever you want your character's goal to be. This, IMO, is very much a playstyle thing as opposed to something the game can set for you.

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My experience is that character goals are best selected in one of two ways; either:

1) The system is selected and then players select character goals, the expected routes to achieving which are supported well by the ruleset chosen, or

2) The players, preferably in collusion (since roleplaying when the "team" of characters all have highly disparate goals tends to be an exercise in frustration) select character goals of their choosing. A system is then selected based on what system is thought best to support the expected means of achieving those goals.

Selecting a system and then having players select goals that are poorly supported (or completely unsupported) by the mandated system leads to very poor play experiences, IME. That hasn't, apparently, stopped people from trying, but there it is. When they insist on trying, find it an unsatisfactory experience and then demand that the system needs to be changed to fit their chosen goals, however, my gut response is usually in the "roll my eyes or get testy at their short-sighted selfishness" region.

Neonchameleon said:

All games are competative. It's part of the point. Step on up. Challenge yourself.

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You must have had a fun time playing house as a small child. I don't think all games are competitive; and I don't think that it's the point of many of the others (and certainly D&D is not your typical game).

Could you unpack why you think this is the case please? Especially when it relates to in character choice.

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Imagine you're playing with a rules-free system. One player wants to play a peasant farmer turned militia leader. Another wants to play a divine being. Another wants to play a peasant farmer that hasn't turned into a war hero. Another wants to play a gag character. Those concepts are unbalanced, absent mechanics.

Forcing those concepts into a system of class, race, ability scores, etc. is already limiting. There is certainly no need to force those concepts into one common class design; if anything a positive step for the game would be to open up the concepts above so people can play what they want (regardless of whether one character could destroy another one in a cage fight or some other fallacious "balance" test).

Normally in response to the unconstrained gravedancing done by 3.X and Pathfinder fans who want the ground of 4e ploughed over and salted.

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Which in turn is a response in kind to the negativity that accompanied its original release.

And I don't think anyone's said they are irrelevant. Merely that you need to produce a product so much better than Paizo does at what Paizo does that it's almost impossible.

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I hardly think it's impossible; Paizo has largely been constrained by the desire to maintain "compatibility" and has limited resources; WotC could go in and change the basics and improve them and still keep their audience (i.e. what they did with the 2e-3e revision). I don't think I'm the only one that wishes they would use that opportunity more productively than they have thusfar.

They never thought the fanbase was irrelevant. Merely that everyone had the same issues with it.

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I think it's more about them believing that they had to bury the OGL version of the game to sell their non-open version and trying to find any reason possible to kill the game. It could have just as easily come out very differently. It may be a case of wishful thinking on their part; believing that a small group of people on their message boards (which I used to frequent but abandoned) represented the community, but even if they genuinely believed that everyone had the same issues, I'd say they've been pretty convincingly proven wrong.

Bluenose said:

This in particular. Why would the Pathfinder fanbase change for a game that is going in a different direction to 3.5, if not as far from that direction as I'd like. A watered-down version of Pathfinder isn't going to shift many of it's fans, and it's not going to appeal to many of the people who dislike fundamental parts of the whole 3.x paradigm. If you get rid of enough to appeal to the second group, the first don't seem likely to decide it's what they want.

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Network Externalities?

Seriously, D&D (whatever version) has always been the 800lb gorilla. I mean, if I had my druthers, I probably wouldn't even be playing D&D, but right now refusing to play D&D is the equivalent of not role-playing for me. 3e/4e doesn't matter to me as a player (although I have some preferences as a DM, depending on the campaign.) The big problem (as I see it) is that currently there are (at least) three different "cultures" of D&D growing in the petri dish. The really big problem for Wizards right now is that this is the first time since probably the early '90s when "We're playing D&D" doesn't automatically mean "the current edition."

WotC has got to be in bit of a panic over losing that market dominator status (or at least its inviolability). I'm fairly certain that D&D losing its status as THE rpg would doom it as a Hasbro product line. 5e doesn't have to absolutely seduce the PF/3e players, but it has to get them back in line long enough to try it out. (This holds true for all the cultures in the petri dish.) If enough groups of all editions are playing Next, at least temporarily to try it out, then maybe it will get enough momentum going to become "the" game again.

If it fails in that regard, I expect this to be the "farewell" edition of D&D. I would expect a rather small catalog of the more profitable products/lines, followed by a shelving of D&D for Hasbro to use the IP and maybe resurrect the game later.

Tony Vargas said:

...to get back to the point you want to discuss: if there's an excessively over- or under-powered option in a game, that's a bad thing, ...

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I agree, but I think that one of the keys of D&D design is that you also don't want to obsess overmuch on balance. In part, I think, because D&D seems to cover so much ground and get played in so many different ways. I feel that some of the complaints and problems 4e are the result of going a little too far in the "balance" direction. What I don't know, is whether that's a result of the balance itself, or just a side-effect of the manner in which 4e was balanced. Some of what we've seen so far about 5e gives me hope that we may have a chance to find out.