WotC "dumbs-down" stuff? What's bad with it?

[Ranger REG]

3E was a great experiment that failed,

Failed who? I mean you and who else? :\

 

[Tharen the Damned]

The thing is, the WOC developers and designers not only have to cater for the vocal minority on these boards but for all those "unspoken masses" out there.
As I see it, the people on these boards mostly belong to the faction of mid twenties to mid thirties. People who play since ages and mostly have a good understanding and opinon how rolplaying games should be played and how the rules should cater to the type of game you want to play. Even the gaming novices on these boards get a lot of ideas and feedback how the game can be played.
But what about those who never ever heard of ENworld and do not post on other boards?
The casual once in a while gaming group or the teenage (no slight intended to teenagers) gamers who watched LotR and want to play stuntman Legolas? Or the gamers who first played through World of Warcarft and Shadows of Amn and now come to pen and paper games?
They are by far the majority of D&D buyers, not the ENworlders. And WoC has to cater to them too, especially to them.
So what some of us find annoying (like the power attack or the encounter format) might be the product of a market research by WoC. I do not think that WOC can or will "dumb down" things on us.
Don't get me wrong, I do not think that there is a right or wrong way to play D&D. And I honestly think that most WOC designers and developers love the game as we do. But WOC has to sell the game and so has to "improve" the game to appeal to as many people as possible.

 

[hong]

Failed who? I mean you and who else? :\

His army, of course.

Ph33r the grognard army!

 

[jasin]

3E was a great experiment that failed,

In what way did it fail? What needed to have happened for you to consider it a sucesss? Is there any other RPG you consider a success?

 

[Hussar]

I understand that this happened with the remake of Ravenloft: a bunch of non-combat encounters (one might call them "role-playing") were turned into combat encounters. I heard about 3 that stand out as glaring.



Yes, it makes perfect sense to marginalize and ignore the people who remember when and why D&D was an actually great game. That way the increasingly dwindling numbers of tabletop RP'ers can peacefully buy D&D 4.8374E in four years and wonder why everybody is quitting to go play World of BoreCraft.

Meanwhile, I'll be 'sourly' enjoying a game of D&D that is consonant with the original intentions and design goals of the game.

Note: I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with genuinely enjoying 3E. If you're enjoying it, that's great. I gave it a very fair shake and found that it tends, due to its structure, to drain the fun out of the game. And fun is what the game has to deliver to keep people playing. 3E was a great experiment that failed, and all the problems constantly being hashed out here about balance, simplicity, bloat, power creep, screwy PrCs, endless errata, etc. are a direct result of 3E's design philosophy and approach.

I'm rather curious about the failure as well considering that more people are playing D&D now than have in decades. If this is failure, I'd hate to see what success is.

 

[Justin Cray]

Can somebody please dumb down Bo9S for me? Me barbarian, me hit stuff, but like tactics feats too.

 

[hong]

Can somebody please dumb down Bo9S for me? Me barbarian, me hit stuff, but like tactics feats too.

Bo9S is actually pretty simple, you just have to be in the right frame of mind. Having the maneuver cards pdf from the WotC site also helps.

The maneuvers your character has gained in build are the cards you start with.

At the start of each battle, construct a deck of cards; these are the maneuvers you'll have readied.

Each time you use a maneuver, tap the card. It stays tapped for the rest of the fight except as stated below.

When you refresh a readied maneuver (details depend on your class), untap the card. You may also have a feat that lets you refresh all maneuvers.

At the end of the battle, all your cards untap.

Easy!

 

[Hussar]

Ok, Hong, that made me giggle. Nice.

As a point though, I'm kinda wondering how, say, Tome of Magic is a dumbing down of the game. Meh, I don't buy books because I want to do more work as a DM. I buy books because I want someone else to do the work for me. Why the heck would I buy books to ADD to my workload?

The biggest shift I've noticed in the past couple of years from WOTC is that they have finally taken notice that DMing is work and most people have zero interest in stuff that makes the job more difficult. I look at my Scarred Lands stuff, love it as I do, but, I realize that if I actually want to run a SL campaign, none of the books are of any use. All they do is give me the start point, I have to do all the work myself.

Y'know what, for forty or fifty bucks for a game book, they can bloody well do the work for me.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

3E was a great experiment that failed, and all the problems constantly being hashed out here about balance, simplicity, bloat, power creep, screwy PrCs, endless errata, etc. are a direct result of 3E's design philosophy and approach.

You know, except for the part where Third Edition is wildly successful and continues to dominate the roleplaying games industry to an incredible extent.

Some bloody failure.

 

[Maggan]

3E was a great experiment that failed, and all the problems constantly being hashed out here about balance, simplicity, bloat, power creep, screwy PrCs, endless errata, etc. are a direct result of 3E's design philosophy and approach.

I have a theory. If D&D was a prefectly balanced set of rules, with clear and distinct wording of every paragraph, and with no power creep in supplements, no bloat, and errata and all that ...

... then the game would be dead in six months.

What would there be for the gamer to improve? What would there be for the gamer to discuss? How could we build a community if we didn't have any disagreements over rules?

What would be the basis of our existence?

No RPG is perfect, and should one come along ... it'd die a humiliating death, since no one would be interested in tinkering with it, to put things right.

Please note that I think it is a pipe dream wishing for a D&D that is perfectly balanced. The game has a history of screwy rules and supplements and power creep and errata that goes way back before D&D3e was even considered ...

... and in a way, I think that is what constitutes some of its success.

/M