Write this game for adults

[ExploderWizard]

So its true to an extent the morris has been exaggerating when he keeps using that line...

Not by very much. A strong dislike for the tone of the writing is simply that. It is a separate issue from the content of the rules. A game is entertainment, and in entertainment presentation matters. If the presentation ticks you off then that puts a bad taste in your mouth for the actual content.

When writing an rpg product, don't underestimate your audience. Chances are good that the children interested enough to read the rulebook in the first place are capable of reading on an adult level. If the reading expands the vocabulary of the reader so much the better. Education is a good thing and not to be purposefully avoided merely because the content is supposed to fun. Education and fun are not mutually exclusive.

 

[Gaming Tonic]

Perhaps we should extend that rule to editions, because summing up everything 4e says on dragonborn as "if you want to be scaly" is hyperbole to the point of insulting. As you said yourself, you are free to disagree, but there is a lot more content to dragonborn than "if you want to be scaly", so if you disagree, I would appreciate that disagreement be based on its merits, not absurd hyperbole.

There is a lot more content in the PHB, and the many supplements, articles, etc. that have followed. It is silly to think that anybody would state all that has been put out about 4E and it is clear what was meant by the "scaly" comment. Not everyone uses the dragonborn background, origin, racial history, etc., but I bet in almost every game they have scales. Morrus was saying there is no reason to be rude or insulting, which the comments he responded to were. The absurd is not getting along as a community when we are already a small group and not showing each other any respect.

 

[Ranes]

Let's all nibble on a chill munchie. Morrus had a basis - simply in terms of 4e copy - for what he said but the way he paraphrased it left him vulnerable to accusations of editionism, perhaps because it could be said to have been a tad glib. However, let's also keep some perspective. When it comes to people being passive aggressive about edition preference, Morrus is definitively not that guy. Everything he does in relation to this website and forum speaks to that.

So there's no call for any kind of Mexican standoff. Indeed, to borrow a line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which is never a bad idea:

"Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who. This is supposed to be a happy occasion."

 

[Sunseeker]

Alright lets put it this way.

Some people want to play tree-loving folks with pointy ears for no other reason than the fact that they love trees and pointy ears.
Some people want to play scaly dragon-people for no other reason than they think that's cool.

While I disagree with Morrus's feelings about 4e writing as I feel he is taking from an incredibly limited selection of the text, the fault here is not 4e's. All 4e has done by creating these bullet points for races and classes is acknowledged the different reasons people may want to play that race. These reasons existed long before they were made into bullet-points and listed in the 4e PHB.

Some people have always liked to play elves for no other reason than they like pointy ears. Some people have always liked to play dwarves because they love the "fat beared drunk" stereotype. Some people have always liked to play halflings because they like the idea of a character who is not an adventurer by nature but is perhaps too curious for their own good.

Some folks play humans because they want to play an idealized representation of themselves in the game world, and be a hero where they cannot be one in real life.

Some folks just like scales. 4e acknowledged that there are different reasons that people play different classes. Some of them are deep, some of them aren't. We can't honestly expect people to only play races on the basis of some deep psychological attachment to the concept.

Some folks just like dragons. Given that this is Dungeons and Dragons, nobody should find that the least bit surprising, especially not the fact that some folks want to find a way to play one.

 

[Libramarian]

Alright lets put it this way.

Some people want to play tree-loving folks with pointy ears for no other reason than the fact that they love trees and pointy ears.
Some people want to play scaly dragon-people for no other reason than they think that's cool.

While I disagree with Morrus's feelings about 4e writing as I feel he is taking from an incredibly limited selection of the text, the fault here is not 4e's. All 4e has done by creating these bullet points for races and classes is acknowledged the different reasons people may want to play that race. These reasons existed long before they were made into bullet-points and listed in the 4e PHB.

Some people have always liked to play elves for no other reason than they like pointy ears. Some people have always liked to play dwarves because they love the "fat beared drunk" stereotype. Some people have always liked to play halflings because they like the idea of a character who is not an adventurer by nature but is perhaps too curious for their own good.

Some folks play humans because they want to play an idealized representation of themselves in the game world, and be a hero where they cannot be one in real life.

Some folks just like scales. 4e acknowledged that there are different reasons that people play different classes. Some of them are deep, some of them aren't. We can't honestly expect people to only play races on the basis of some deep psychological attachment to the concept.

Some folks just like dragons. Given that this is Dungeons and Dragons, nobody should find that the least bit surprising, especially not the fact that some folks want to find a way to play one.

Oh of course. The idea of wanting to play a dragonborn to look like a dragon, or to play an elf to be quick, quiet, and wild is not in itself weird.

Acknowledging that in the PHB -- presenting it as advice on how to choose a race -- is weird. It serves no purpose. Just describe what the races are like in regular paragraphs, and let people formulate their own reasons for preferring one over the other.

 

[Sunseeker]

Oh of course. The idea of wanting to play a dragonborn to look like a dragon, or to play an elf to be quick, quiet, and wild is not in itself weird.

Acknowledging that in the PHB -- presenting it as advice on how to choose a race -- is weird. It serves no purpose. Just describe what the races are like in regular paragraphs, and let people formulate their own reasons for preferring one over the other.

I disagree. Sometimes I have trouble choosing a race, and a suggestive sentence emphasizing a particular attribute of a race that I may not have considered can be helpful. And it's not like it took up a particularly large amount of space, and it did cover a fairly wide range of reasons for playing a dragonborn in those lines.

I don't feel it was necessary, but I don't agree that it's weird or useless.

And in any case, contrary to Morrus' absurd hyperbole, the PHB did spend a good half a page expounding upon the Dragonborn(and every other race), then there is of course, the additional material found in the Dragonborn racial book.

 

[renau1g]

I'd like to have the core rule books written for adults.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh2sWSVRrmo]Children - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Libramarian]

We are thinking of the children. Many of us think they would also prefer a book written for adults.

 

[Hussar]

Most people don't recognize the difference, because they haven't bothered to learn. It's not all that useful of a skill, unless you write. However, most people can sense the difference between, say, newspaper writing and something a bit more or less engaging. For example, very few people tolerate fiction written at an 8th grade level. Heck, most 8th graders can't even stand it. (That would be around age 14 for you folks not in the USA.)

Furthermore, it is perfectly possible to write "convoluted" material that says nothing in particular, and not because of the grade level. Universities are full of it, as are many marketing pamphlets.

The valuable skill is consciously choosing the grade level for your audience and writing in that. Writing at a higher grade level conveys nuance. With a lot of work, you could convey this nuance in a lower grade level, but it will take a lot of text.

Do you think anyone here had trouble following what I just wrote?

Pulled this one out while perusing the thread.

Umm, J. K. Rowlings would like to have a word with you. As would Stephen King and pretty much most mainstream novelists. Because most of them? Yup, 8th grade reading level.

/edit

Phew, finally pushed through.

Ok, first off. If you want D&D Next to be written at the level of Young Adult Fiction, you would be okay with graphic representations of rape, sex, substance abuse, and a variety of other elements because I can guarantee you that a 30 second perusal of your local library's Young Adult Fiction (13 yo to 20 ish) section will find novels with every one of those.

The days of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys are a LONG way behind us. Let's not forget that The Hunger Games is a YA fiction novel about children being forced to murder other children for the entertainment of the masses. D&D has NEVER been written to this level. The old World of Darkness books would be considered YA fiction now.

Eight grade reading level? Insulting to readers? Yeah right. It's pretty obvious you folks haven't been reading a whole lot of YA fiction for a long time.

Do we really want D&D to be this graphic? I'd go so far to say that YA is too much. We should be writing for a more family audience.

Now, as far as language goes, I'd peg an 8th grade reading level at about right. Most mainstream novels are written at about this level of complexity. You can certainly encapsulate any concepts you care to talk about within that framework without any real difficulty. When you start getting higher up, all you do is make it more opaque, not more informative, or even more interesting. There's a reason Steven King routinely sells millions of copies and someone like James Joyce doesn't. The books are accessible without being too simplistic.

 

[pemerton]

I started with the Basic Set in 1979 when I was a 12 year-old Tolkien-o-phile and then quickly moved on to AD&D in 1980. The 1E books were written by adult wargamers for a literate demographic of bright high schoolers and college students. I still have my near-pristine PHB, MM, DMG, D&D, and FF. Why did I keep them all of these years even though my actual playing of D&D waned considerably?

Two reasons: 1) AD&D was an important childhood touchstone; 2) the books were aimed at an educated, reasonably sophisticated demographic, not a grabasstic hoard of zit-popping button mashers. From time to time I still pull out one or more of my books and read through them for sake of entertainment and nostalgia because they were that well written. The same cannot be said of the lifeless dreck WotC churned out for 4E.

Maybe I'm just a zit-popping button masher, but I've never felt any desire to read (say) the AD&D Monster Manual for sheer entertainment. It's full of long lists of stats, plus multiple prose paragraphs in which are buried long lists of stats.

Here is the 4e MM entry for spectres:

Insane and unfettered by the memories of its past life, a specter exists only to snuff out the living. It appears as a ghostly, twisted apparition.​

That is as interesting and informative about a spectre as anything in the AD&D MM or the Moldvay Expert rulebook (I don't have the AD&D entry in front of me, but my recollection of it is that it mostly discusses the spectre's immunity to various weapons and spells, and the level draining effect of its touch).

Here is part of the 4e MM entry for spiders:

Spiders are sacred to the evil goddess Lolth. Long ago, before she became the Demon Queen of Spiders, Lolth was a deity of fate who wove the strands of mortal destiny; it’s said she created the art of weaving after watching spiders make their webs.​

I don't remember anything that interesting in the spider entry in the AD&D MM. (Phase spiders, the most interesting part of the entry, are barely elaborated upon.)

The only really interesting entries in the original MM that I can recall concern demons and devils (obviously!), the tribal names for orcs and hobgoblins (which in the case of orcs went on to form the basis for the holy symbols of their pantheon), and the sahuagin entry. The only problem with the sahuagin entry is that it builds up this rich social structure for a humanoid race that is niche at best. Imagine if we'd been given that sort of detail about hobgoblins, or some other more mainstream humanoid race. Perhaps something like this:

Goblins form tribes, each ruled by a chieftain. The chieftain is usually the strongest member of the tribe, though some chieftains rely on guile more than martial strength.

Hobgoblins rule the most civilized goblin tribes, sometimes building small settlements and fortresses that rival those of human construction. Goblins and bugbears, left to their own devices, are more barbaric and less industrious than hobgoblins. Bugbears are dominant in a few mixed tribes, but hobgoblins tend to rise above their more brutish cousins unless severely outnumbered.. .

Hobgoblins once had an empire in which bugbears and goblins were their servants. This empire fell to internal strife and interference from otherworldly forces—perhaps the fey, whom many goblins hate.

Hobgoblins developed mundane and magical methods for taming and breeding beasts as guards, laborers, and soldiers. They have a knack for working with wolves and worgs, and some drake breeds owe their existence directly to hobgoblin meddling. All goblins carry on this tradition of domesticating beasts.

Given their brutal magical traditions, hobgoblins might have created their cousins in ancient times: Bugbears served as elite warriors, and goblins worked as scouts and infiltrators. The disintegration of hobgoblin power led to widespread and diverse sorts of goblin tribes.​

(Which, for the curious, is from the 4e MM. And even uses "whom" rather than "who" when the grammar of the sentence calls for it. And also paragraphs.)