WotC Dave posts about "Prison Break" Playtesting

[mach1.9pants]

In my limited experience, Rugby is just Hockey on Grass.

(To explain this, there's an old joke. Hockey isn't one sport, it's two: kicking someone's arse and skating.)

LOL, sorry for the thread hijack, but when I first read that I thought- 'WTF hockey is played on grass?'
Then, once again we are divided by a common language, you mean ICE hockey not hockey.....sorry I am a bit slow tonight

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

Eerrm do they often kick the ball in american football?

The Chicago Bears do. Every fourth play, in fact. *Sigh*

 

[vagabundo]

In my limited experience, Rugby is just Hockey on Grass.

(To explain this, there's an old joke. Hockey isn't one sport, it's two: kicking someone's arse and skating.)

Here is an old irish war game.

To be honest all the hurlers I've met have a bit of a screw loose. It is a scary game to watch. The hurls themselves and the Slitar (ball) are very heavy and hard (1d8 and 1d6 respectively)

 

[pedr]

The Chicago Bears do. Every fourth play, in fact. *Sigh*

Darn it, I was going to make that dig. (Go Giants )

 

[OakwoodDM]

A wizard hit two enemies in the same round and twice as much damage to the first as the second.

That reminds me a lot of the speculation from back when it was first revealed that spells could crit, that area spells would only be able to score crits on an enemy they're centered on...

Or they used an area effect spell, and hit the Ref defence of one and missed the other, causing half damage.

In my limited experience, Rugby is just Hockey on Grass.

And in my limited experience, American Football is just Rugby made easier, with lots of stopping and 40lb of padding per person. (for reference, see Giles' quote in the Buffy episode "Some Assembly Required" [at least I think it's that episode])

 

[eleran]

And in my limited experience, American Football is just Rugby made easier, with lots of stopping and 40lb of padding per person. (for reference, see Giles' quote in the Buffy episode "Some Assembly Required" [at least I think it's that episode])

You've been reported to the EU Weights & Measures Ministry for not using metric weight measurements in your comment.

 

[infax]

And back on topic :

I really liked that questionaire. It shows attention to many different aspects of the game. Question 6, in special, should help assuage many ENWorld posters' fears that "the game just won't feel the same".

The questions on the playtester's impressions on most/least powerful or intersting monster/PC are interesting. They may help capture some of the subjectiveness of those aspects of the game.

I wonder if we'll be soon learning what are all those hinted at abilities ('Go Bears', 'Van Halen Rules', 'Hi Mom'). It wasn't so long between learning there was a 'I'm Batman' power and learning (superficially) what it was.

Oh! And I make mine Merlin The Tuna's words:

That's what I like to hear. Good stuff out of Dave, and a whole mess of thanks go to Scott for taking the time to not only dink around on ENWorld, but to then mention it to Dave and get us some info on it.

 

[TerraDave]

David Noonan was refering to this thread:

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=214526&page=1&pp=30

If you somehow missed it.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

A wizard hit two enemies in the same round and twice as much damage to the first as the second.

That reminds me a lot of the speculation from back when it was first revealed that spells could crit, that area spells would only be able to score crits on an enemy they're centered on...

Actually, I think it's a lot more likely that it was a spell that hit one enemy but not the other. In Saga edition if you roll an attack roll that hits over one person's reflex defense but misses another then one takes full damage, the other takes half.

Seems likely that this is what happened given that the damage to one is exactly half the other.

 

[Najo]

I agree entirely.

The fact that they are working so hard and are feeling stress indicates that 4e is doomed because they're behind the ball.

Of course, if they were working at a comfortable pace, and not feeling particularly stressed, that would indicate that 4e is doomed because they aren't trying hard enough.

I demand that all blog posts by designers indicate the precise level of stress and effort necessary to comfort me about the designer's progress and work ethic. Perhaps an Olympic scale could be used. I rate WOTC_Dave's current stress level at about an 8.7. It should be a more comfortable 7.0 before I will be satisfied.

All game design ends up in crunch time, and many good games come out of it. The nature of games and their open possibilities causes it, and the pressure of deadlines is good to the process. It changes how the developers and designers think and makes them look at the core essentials differently.