WotC Blogs II

Rich Baker's blog said:

Howdy, folks!

It's Monday morning here in sunny Seattle, and this week I'll be shifting from work on monsters over to work on the Player's Handbook. Basically, it's time to start making it look more like a polished, finished book, so James Wyatt and I will be knocking out a writing pass over the next several weeks.

Now, before anyone panics: That doesn't mean that we're finished or that playtesting is completed or that we don't need any more input from you. All it means is that we're ready to get the manuscript to a more polished and better organized state. In a sense, this is the last stage of "design" and most of what follows will be development and editing. We expect there will be significant changes that follow this writing pass, but we're pretty confident they'll be changes of the "delete this power, add a new power" or "change these numbers" or "let's adjust this particular subsystem" or "hmm, let's adjust our keywording" sort. In other words, the sort of changes you can make to a manuscript without tearing it to pieces and starting over from scratch.

We'll be attacking the system we've got for months still with more playtesting, development, and editing, looking for weak points. Folks participating in our open playtesting will help us do exactly that.

Click to expand...

Sir Brennen said:

Oh, great. Extraplanar beings get to playtest before anyone else

Click to expand...

Greg Bilsland's blog said:

When I arrived at Wizards of the Coast a few weeks ago for my first day of work, I knew nothing of 4th edition’s imminent release. I was summarily informed that design of the new edition was not only underway, but that development and playtesting had commenced. After taking one taciturn moment to consider how my knowledge of the game (which I fully intended to apply to my new job) was now obsolete, I fell fully into the grip of excitement. Fourth edition had finally arrived, and I couldn’t wait to hear more.

Until recently, I had resisted the urge to visit upon my psyche the cruelty and malice of the Doomsday (and related) threads. I decided that in the interest of maintaining the excitement and enthusiasm for my new job, I should ignore the effrontery and hullabaloo that resounded on many of the online forums. Constructive criticism—even positive feedback—ran aplenty, like rivers of milk and honey flowing into the land called 4th edition. And yet ignorant of my forthcoming masochistic purpose, I could no longer turn a blind eye to the swelling posts on the Doomsday thread, and the many thousands of views that had instilled this fiendish thread with unholy power.

Contrary to my narrative thus far, though, this blog’s intention is not to lay a mantle of blame or point an accusatory finger. Instead, I hope to redress misconceptions and offer a glimpse into the electric atmosphere that has charged R&D with ecstasy in the wake of the 4th edition announcement.

As a recent acquisition of Wizards, I have not yet acquired the creative, emotional, and spiritual investment in 4th edition that gleams within the eyes of so many of my co-workers. Arriving as a new employee at the advent of 4th edition, I had a relatively objective perspective on the revision, to which the rest of R&D had poured their sweat, blood, and tears. I remained excited yet critical.

I would liken the atmosphere here in R&D to that of a carnival following the GenCon announcement. The staff excitedly discussed fans’ reactions to the announcement and to the motes of game information that began to drift through cyberspace ether. And as all this occurred, I gained a nascent understanding of two very important concepts: first, the people at R&D are indeed mortal and subject to corporal feelings, such as joy and grief, and second, 4th edition was shaping up to be a damn good game.

It’s easy to become wrapped up in one’s own opinion of rules. DnD has a lot of rules that a person can equivocate over. Before getting a job at Wizards, I prided myself on being a wellspring of rules minutia. However, that pride only bolstered my strong opinions, many of which manifested in drastic rule adaptations. DnD became to me a personal Six Million Dollar Man—I looked at it and thought, “I can rebuild it. I have the technology (my imac). The game will be better, stronger, faster.”

And then to my surprise, they rebuilt it, and they made the game better, stronger, faster. During my first few weeks at Wizards, I proffered a steady stream of questions, generally to the effect of: “How did you change ____?” My co-workers endured my Inquisition not only with tolerance but eagerness. I remember specifically asking Logan Bonner about the 3.5 problems with level adjustment and challenge rating. With a wry grin, he replied, “Challenge rating, what’s that?”

As I reached deeper and deeper into 4th edition’s primordial gelatinous ooze, I uncovered revision after revision—rule after rule—that I had personally changed in my own games. Everything on my “wish list,” aspects of the game I had changed or wanted to change but lacked the time and energy, had been addressed and in virtually every case, modified to something that made me offer an excited, “Really??”

The receptiveness that the R&D staff has demonstrated to the suggestions, ideas, and concerns from the Wizards and En World forums has astonished me. With regularity, a post or thread online will spawn a heated discussion in the office byways and in some cases, become a significant factor in a decision for the change or placement of content. To say that the RPG community does not have a say in the direction and substance of the game would be a grave misnomer.

I praise those RPG community members who, despite their grief over the passing of 3.5, have managed to foster constructive criticism and suggestions. And I wag my finger at the naysayers who attack not only the game but the people who built it. The people in R&D—we at R&D—are the same as you. We have strong opinions about the game; that’s part of the reason everyone is working so hard to change it into something amazing, something of which we can be proud. I’ve seen remarkable enthusiasm for 4th edition from those who have invested their time designing it. And while every individual might not have the opportunity to speak in person with one of the 4th edition architects, I can say with confidence that anyone who attests that 4th edition is a “money grab,” or just a “3.75 edition,” need only speak to one of those architects to realize the truth: that 4th edition will be the best yet because the people working on the game, like the fans, love Dungeons and Dragons.

Click to expand...

James Wyatt's blog said:

One is something I alluded to on my personal blog the other day, which was about my experience playing a warlock in World of Warcraft. I like the class, but when I play that character too long, I get tired of pressing the same buttons in the same order every single fight. The only things I vary are (a) which curse to use, which only changes if I'm fighting a spellcaster, (b) whether to default to Shadow Bolt or my wand after I do my three DoTs (which depends on my mana), and (c) whether to put some Drain Manas in there (depending on whether the mob has mana and how my stores are doing). Frankly, it gets boring.

There have been iterations of Fourth Edition where we've had the same problem. Fundamentally, it's a problem you encounter whenever your resources are perfectly renewable. Some characters in Tome of Battle have that problem, although with combat in D&D being more dynamic than PvE combat in WoW, there are always things that encourage you to mix up your pattern. But you tend to default to using your best power, then your next-best, and so on down the line.

For that matter, NPC spellcasters in 3e have much the same problem, and PC spellcasters can fall into it as well. For an NPC who doesn't care about resource management, it's simply the best strategy to lead off with the best spells and work on down the levels. Heck, that's why our new stat block format lists higher-level spells first.

When you have the right balance between powers that refresh all the time and powers that are more limited, the game becomes more interesting. Strong power design also helps. When some of your powers are per-day, you're constantly asking yourself, "Is this the fight where I break out this big gun?" When your powers are well-designed, you also ask the question, "Is this the right round to use this power?"

Look at the 3e barbarian. At low-level, rage is a once-per-day ability. The key question for the 3e barbarian is which fight is the one to rage in. (Unfortunately, that usually translates to, "Is this the fight where I get to have fun?") As he gets higher level, it becomes more like a per-encounter resource, and he uses it every encounter. It lasts long enough to cover the whole encounters, so it's actually no longer an interesting choice. It's more like a default state. If it were better designed, the barbarian would be asking himself, "Is this the right round to start raging?"

Click to expand...

It's funny. I actually had to go and ask Chris Perkins and Andy Collins this morning what people mean when they're asking whether Fourth Edition characters will be "more powerful" than Third Edition characters of the same level. I assumed the question was relative, and it made no sense to me. 4E characters will be just as challenged by encounters of their level as 3E characters would be if 3E encounter design actually worked. The power level, from that mindset, is the same.

That just shows how immersed I am in 4E, I guess. Andy explained that what he thinks people want to know is whether characters will have more hit points and do more damage. Purely a question of raw numbers, rather than of what those numbers mean in the world.

Given that 3E is inherently unbalanced—low-level characters are too weak and high-level characters are too powerful—I guess the right answer is that low-level characters will be more powerful and high-level characters will be less so. Everyone will be balanced, because we've erased the accident of math.

When it comes to sheer numbers, though, I guess the answer is that we've worked hard to adjust the scale of the math so that the numbers feel right. The math of the system would work the same if our baseline weapon damage were 3d6 as it would if the baseline weapon damage were 1d6, assuming that everything scaled properly from that baseline. But the 3d6 baseline would make all the numbers feel inflated, and 4E characters would seem a lot more powerful than their 3E counterparts. So we've tried to set the baselines at a level where the numbers will feel comparable to historical numbers. Even if fireball no longer does 1d6/level.

We have not gone the route of some well-known TCGs. Magic does single points of damage. Pokemon does damage in units of 10. Yu-gi-oh does damage in units of 100. Duelmasters uses units of 1000. It's all basically the same math, but inflated so the numbers feel different. We could do that in D&D. Heck, anyone could. Add a 0 to the end of all your numbers, and see how that feels. That won't be 4E.

Oh, and ability scores—that was the other thing Andy said. I think the answer is the same: low-level characters will look better, and high-level characters will look worse. But only when you compare them to 3E characters decked out with magic items. Shifting emphasis away from magic items means that raw numbers will look higher across the board.

But I still have a hard time grasping the fundamental nature of the question. The real answer is that characters will be balanced, across 30 levels.

Click to expand...

Glyfair said:

Greg Bilsland has posted a lot on being the "new guy." The one tidbit is "CR, what is that?" However, he also addresses the affects the community has on 4e and attacks on the WotC designers.

Click to expand...

Mercule said:

That's exactly what my fear of the per encounter model has been. Not the entirety of my concerns, but a huge chunk. I just hadn't thought of putting it that way. Usually, I equate the phrase with randomly hitting buttons in a fighting game and hoping for a killer combo, but either meaning works for my concerns.

Click to expand...

Garnfellow said:

I understand it's a blog, but that is one terribly written entry -- I don't mean the sentiment, I mean the mechanics of the writing. Someone get the new guy a copy of Strunk and White.

Click to expand...

Given that 3E is inherently unbalanced—low-level characters are too weak and high-level characters are too powerful—I guess the right answer is that low-level characters will be more powerful and high-level characters will be less so. Everyone will be balanced, because we've erased the accident of math.

Click to expand...