D&D 4E Comment about 4E designers loving D&D

[Minicol]

I think

When the designers put together 3.X, they didn't fully account for this oddity in the numbers, and so caused the 'sweet spot'. In 4e, the designers have noted this fact, and are building the game to suit. Hence, they have eliminated the 'accident of math'.

I might be completely wrong, of course.

I do not share that kind of opinions. To me, Maths are meaningless. The game should be about something else. Give the players an adventure that is more than a battlemap for minis, with a PLOT, with serious villains, with ... adventure. THAT matters to me.

So if the game is about revised maths ... I am not interested, and I absolutely guarantee that the only player in my group will be the one math teacher. Incidentally, he happens to be our resident munchkin / rules lawyer.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I do not share that kind of opinions. To me, Maths are meaningless. The game should be about something else. Give the players an adventure that is more than a battlemap for minis, with a PLOT, with serious villains, with ... adventure. THAT matters to me.

So if the game is about revised maths ... I am not interested, and I absolutely guarantee that the only player in my group will be the one math teacher. Incidentally, he happens to be our resident munchkin / rules lawyer.

I don't believe these two goals are at all at odds, or mutually exclusive. Lots of people, myself included, care more about the plot, the characters, and the setting than they do about the numbers.

But it's also true that if the numbers and game systems work better, the game runs more smoothly, and it's therefore easier to play, and easier and more fun to focus on the other elements.

A good game has both solid systems and room for creativity. Improving one doesn't have to harm the other, and in fact can help it.

 

[MerricB]

But it's also true that if the numbers and game systems work better, the game runs more smoothly, and it's therefore easier to play, and easier and more fun to focus on the other elements.

To expand on Mouseferatu:

Imagine a game where combat was both sides rolled a d6. Whoever rolled higher killed the opponent... I'm not sure that system would allow great sword & sorcery adventures. Well, not if you wanted to have combat be anything important to the game. (Good game for a non-combat campaign, I've got to say!)

System matters - however, for many people you don't need a really refined or complex system. You do need one that meets your basic needs. And then there are players who *do* need a more refined system.

Cheers!

 

[Winterthorn]

Let's be realistic here.../snip/... "Don't tell me it's better. Show me why it's better." I've never forgotten it. Graded against that scale, that's where WotC is getting a failing grade on 4e IMO.

I've worked in sales too, and what you said is QFT. All we have from WotC is blah, blah, blah with pretty pictures. Not so much as a wee morsel of flesh for us goblin-geeks to chew on.

I'd rather go hungry, than be tortured by vaporous blog quotes. How about WotC staying quiet until they actually have some preliminary drafts to share? Why not release just the preliminary 4E rules for fighters and a race or two, at the Gencon announcement, as a sample for us all to toy with. Official 4E news should come with official sample rules we could play with - and otherwise they should stay silent until they have something to show for their efforts.

In fact I have been hanging around the the Magic side of Wizard.com because of some new interest on my part, and I can tell right-off-the-bat that over there nothing is offered unless there is something of substance to show and share. The D&D side of WotC should follow the MTG side when it comes to marketing savvy!

We need a smarter sales pitch for 4E - a sales pitch that includes working samples/something of substance!

Btw: the bit about negative marketing - slagging the old known (3E) rather than selling the new unknown (4E) - I loathe that type of tactic by businesses. I'm not persuaded by it as a consumer - it's a major turn-off for me if ever there was one. What's next for us regarding 4E, bait and switch? (Yes, I'm grumpy.)

And those quotes a number of posts up, from J. Wyatt and J. Tweet, bother me. Why were they even working on 3E if they didn't like it? How is it possible to do a good job on something that requires heartfelt inspiration and creativity while hating it? If flaws are discovered in hindsight then the hindsight itself should be admitted and not ignored with language suggesting they felt along that the game was garbage to them.

Ugh! Everytime I come online regarding 4E I end up reading quotes and opinions that just drive me bananas!

**sigh**

Until I see real-ware, rather than vapor-ware, I'm not convinced of anything regarding 4E.

 

[Blessed Kitten]

Why were they even working on 3E if they didn't like it?

This comment makes it sound as if you have never worked on a large creative project.

I think there is an almost universal experience for people who do this sort of work, that no matter how much you care about a project, how much effort you put into and how great the finished result is, you always look back at it and see every possible way in which it could have been better.

In fact, I'd argue that if you don't look at your beloved creations and have trouble seeing anything but the flaws and immediately wish for a chance to do it better, you either are not very good at what you do or just don't care.

 

[Winterthorn]

This comment makes it sound as if you have never worked on a large creative project.

I think there is an almost universal experience for people who do this sort of work, that no matter how much you care about a project, how much effort you put into and how great the finished result is, you always look back at it and see every possible way in which it could have been better.

In fact, I'd argue that if you don't look at your beloved creations and have trouble seeing anything but the flaws and immediately wish for a chance to do it better, you either are not very good at what you do or just don't care.

Actually I have never worked on a large creative project the size of a whole rules system like D&D, but have done many creative things and works on a smaller scale. I understand that when working creatively one seeks to make improvements, or may look back at a completed work and say, "gosh, I want to fix that part over there..."

But I guess fatigue, it's past 3am for me, is playing on me -- I'm interpreting a possibility of contempt for past work rather than critique... That they didn't like what they were doing but had to do it anyways for a paycheck. Maybe I'm over-reaching, but a sweeping cast-off remark like "3E is inherently unbalanced" has the authorative tone of gospel, and it is not a thoughtful reflective critique of a past labour of love - certainly not the kind of remark I would use. Far better to have said "4e is going to be more balanced because we learned over the years of many games that 3E had genuine balance issues, and we'll incorporate changes to address them in the new edition." For a ENWorld member to say what J. Wyatt said I would just ignore, or read if there was some interesting exposition to explain the remark, but coming from a WotC employee, that is not cool with me.

Well, I take things at heart, including my hobbies, and flippant opinions from WotC employees regarding the direction of products that support my interests do not inspire me. They were enthusiastically pushing a good product for many years, now within the space of one month they say, in veiled language if not directly, that 3E is bad. Well many of us spent a lot of $$ on what we preceived was decent gaming material, and now we are made to feel that we made the wrong decision even have invested anything at all in 3E. At least, remarks like Wyatt's and Tweet's suggest to me they knew for years we were wasting our time and money (as DM I bought a lot of material - but not all)... The more I think of it, the more I question the sincerity of anyone from WotC working on D&D.

Ok, I'm tired. I gotta sleep...

 

[hong]

Well, I take things at heart, including my hobbies, and flippant opinions from WotC employees regarding the direction of products that support my interests do not inspire me. They were enthusiastically pushing a good product for many years, now within the space of one month they say, in veiled language if not directly, that 3E is bad. Well many of us spent a lot of $$ on what we preceived was decent gaming material, and now we are made to feel that we made the wrong decision even have invested anything at all in 3E. At least, remarks like Wyatt's and Tweet's suggest to me they knew for years we were wasting our time and money (as DM I bought a lot of material - but not all)...

Did we use all that gaming material? If so, we did not waste our time and money.

 

[CharlesRyan]

[James Wyatt comments on 4E] . . . I wonder how the designers of 3.0 feel about comments like this?

First of all, to separate James and the bulk of the WotC R&D staff from "the designers of 3.0" is a false separation. While I don't think James did substantial work on the 3.0 rulebooks (I think he joined R&D at the tail end of 3.0 development), he, and most of the people now working on 4E, contributed heavily to 8 years of 3E design, worked and played in the 3E game space, shaped 3.5, and so on. If you think of 3E as anything beyond the core 3.0 rulebooks, then James is one of the designers of 3E.

Secondly, I think professional D&D designers are more keenly aware than anyone that the technology of game design is constantly evolving. Every good idea leads to an even better one, especially after years of play experience. As Blessed Kitten points out, in large-scale creative endeavors, no project is every complete and perfect in the eyes of the creators.

I've been in RPG design since 1990. I've published stuff going all the way back to then that I'm extremely proud of. But were I to tackle the same projects today, I'd do them very differently. That's not "bashing" my old work, it's simply part of the natural evolution of game design. Any designer that doesn't recognize that evolution is either stuck in a rut or has an ego problem--and I haven't sensed those issues with any of the designers I've worked with at WotC.

 

[Rechan]

Let's be realistic here.../snip/... "Don't tell me it's better. Show me why it's better." I've never forgotten it. Graded against that scale, that's where WotC is getting a failing grade on 4e IMO.

Except they can't. The mechanics aren't refined yet. Everything they let drip out freaks people out.

As it was said earlier by Mearls:

Warning--this is going to be unbelievably abstract. When I take a broad, 10,000-foot view of 4e, I'm struck by how tightly integrated the system is. More game elements "talk" to each other than ever before. That's why for the longest time, we spent so much time cranking on the core rule elements and gave short shrift to more ancillary rules like, say, item saving throws (and yes, that's a fictitious example, but you'll see why in a moment).

On balance, this tight integration is good for D&D--although it's not a necessary precondition for a great game. Some terrific hobby games have rules that are sprawling, chaotic messes, including the one I fell in love with back in the early 80s. But that tight integration is why I can turn a 3e gamer into a 4e gamer in less than an hour, and why the action zips around the table at a pretty good clip.

But there's a small downside to that tight integration: it makes it hard to reveal just part of the system. If I showed you phantom steed, for example, the first three lines of the rules text would each require explanation...and those explanations would lead to reasonable questions on your part...and those answers would lead us elsewhere, and...well, you get the idea.

One of the reasons we designers are being opaque is absolutely that we're saving some "reveals" for the preview books next year, and more generally we're trying to give a solid, sustainable stream of info. But the other reason for the opacity is much more prosaic: It's hard to show just one part of this system. Like Mister Rogers said: "Everything grows together, because it's all one piece."

So what they're doing right now is reassuring the chicken littles that "Yes, we are aware we're changing the system, but we also care about the game, so we're not going to intentionally screw it up."

Take Wyatt's most recent blog post:

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?"

Instead of just saying "WOO IT'S GUNNA BE AWESOME", Wyatt is pointing out, "Yes, I'm aware that this system can be like a computer game, mashing buttons. Thus I'm trying to prevent that."

If Wyatt didn't give a damn, if they just wanted to milk your money, they'd just write a bunch of crap, slap 4e on the cover and say "We know you'll buy it, here, we crapped on the pages. Enjoy, now keep buying stuff."

Seriously. What do people expect WotC to do?

 

[Maggan]

If they didn't love the game, they wouldn't want to hack it. Hence, for example, my Iron Heroes hack page.

That just proves that you hate Mike Mearls and all his works.

Why else improve on the game?

/M