Promises, promises...what WotC said, and actually did, with 4E

[Dinkeldog]

"The game will remain the same."

Wait, you don't still kill things and take their stuff?

 

[Monkey Boy]

Well they also said from the get go that they dropped the idea of splitting the racial stuff up over various levels, and went with a you get most race stuff at 1st level theme...

I think it kind of still does matter because different paths and feats and powers and stuff are open to you.

This is in no way how it was explained to us in by WOTC in the first place. This is no different to how 3e presented races.

I consider races a promise broken, not that I am upset. The race rules, which I am sure were written may appear in a supplement down the track.

 

[rounser]

Look at the Warlock- what connection does teleportation and mind control have? Nothing except a flavor based one- they both relate to the feywild as WOTC has envisioned it. But they go together like peanut butter and chocolate when mixed by competent game designers. The whiners denied us the possibility that wizards could have similar elegant merging of flavor and mechanics, instead guaranteeing that the wizard class boiled down to "generic wielder of elemental damage types." All because they don't like proper nouns. Fools, all of them.

I disagree, the kind of thinking you're displaying here is IMO what's gotten the game into this mess.

"Crunch before flavour" is it's name, and it's a scourge. The idea is that you go "oh, this would be a cool crunch ability" and then tack on some contrived, afterthought flavour, and then tack on a contrived name to label it, then pretend it has a right to exist. It hasn't, the flavour doesn't make sense, neither does the name, and everything is bass-ackwards, cart-before-horse, mythologically void, contrived arbitrariness. It just happens that mythological resonance is D&D's lifeblood in terms of vibe and atmosphere, and this kind of game design just haemorrhages it away, turning the game into a cypher that has nothing to do with anything else but itself.

Just because it's obviously a design direction doesn't make it right. It just makes it ubiquitous and really annoying. I'm not advocating design purely from genre flavour (that wouldn't work in terms of balance or playability), but the pendulum has been swung too far the other way, IMO. There has to be a compromise....or at least, more of a compromise than is being demonstrated.

 

[pemerton]

"Crunch before flavour" is it's name, and it's a scourge. The idea is that you go "oh, this would be a cool crunch ability" and then tack on some contrived, afterthought flavour, and then tack on a contrived name to label it, then pretend it has a right to exist. It hasn't, the flavour doesn't make sense, neither does the name, and everything is bass-ackwards, cart-before-horse, mythologically void, contrived arbitrariness. It just happens that mythological resonance is D&D's lifeblood in terms of vibe and atmosphere, and this kind of game design just haemorrhages it away, turning the game into a cypher that has nothing to do with anything else but itself.

Isn't the Beholder a paradigm example of "crunch before flavour"?

 

[Branduil]

Isn't the Beholder a paradigm example of "crunch before flavour"?

Shhhh.

Don't forget the gelatinous cube.

 

[rounser]

Isn't the Beholder a paradigm example of "crunch before flavour"?

How do you know it wasn't the other way around, with the creator going "eyeball monster...right, eyeballs have to do something" (flips through spells) - which would make it the exact opposite: Crunch slave to flavour.

Going "right, need a monster which disintegrates and dispel magics the party" would have been the opposite to that, the crunch-over-flavour version of the beholder. The 3E MM is full of them. IMO much of the flavour in that book is poor, and it's easy to understand why the digester, yrthak and destrachan come across as so unaesthetically appealing in terms of flavour when you understand what apparently were their origins - something like "need a sonic monster, CR3".

Don't forget the gelatinous cube.

Are you just assuming, or have you read an article somewhere? "Jello monster" is a pretty strong flavour concept, as is "dungeon trash removalist", even if it is quirky, somewhat silly flavour. But D&D has plenty of quirky monsters. They don't get much screentime, unlike certain quirky core races and classes (thank you 4E).

But if the gel cube is an exception, the exceptions prove the rule. For every 1E monster which fits this description, there's heaps more that are the precise opposite. The crunch-before-flavour thing seems to be a recent versions problem, mainly. The designers didn't really seem to have a penchant for balance back then.

 

[fuindordm]

When they first started talking about Paragon Paths, they sounded really cool. IIRC, they intended them to be open to all classes, but each one would work especially well with two or three classes. I still remember the "Prince of Knaves" title and wishing I could see it.

Instead, the PPs we actually got lock you down even more in your primary class, and some have requirements so restrictive that not even multiclassed characters can get into them.

But worst of all: they give you two attack powers. They're not really better than those the primary class give in most cases, just different--and with a pathetic link to the supposed theme of the PP. The abilities PPs grant don't even feel like icing on the cake--they feel like WotC said "So, you like being a fighter? Here, have some more!"

That's probably my biggest disappointment with respect to previews vs. the actual product.

 

[Branduil]

How do you know it wasn't the other way around, with the creator going "eyeball monster...right, eyeballs have to do something" (flips through spells) - which would make it the exact opposite: Crunch slave to flavour.

Going "right, need a monster which disintegrates and dispel magics the party" would have been the opposite to that, the crunch-over-flavour version of the beholder. The 3E MM is full of them. IMO much of the flavour in that book is poor, and it's easy to understand why the digester, yrthak and destrachan come across as so unaesthetically appealing in terms of flavour when you understand what apparently were their origins - something like "need a sonic monster, CR3".

Are you just assuming, or have you read an article somewhere? "Jello monster" is a pretty strong flavour concept, as is "dungeon trash removalist", even if it is quirky, somewhat silly flavour. But D&D has plenty of quirky monsters. They don't get much screentime, unlike certain quirky core races and classes (thank you 4E).

But if the gel cube is an exception, the exceptions prove the rule. For every 1E monster which fits this description, there's heaps more that are the precise opposite. The crunch-before-flavour thing seems to be a recent versions problem, mainly. The designers didn't really seem to have a penchant for balance back then.

Can I sig this?

Anyways, I think when the more-fluff-oriented editions have silly stuff like jello monsters, it kind of negates the idea that being crunch-centric results in silly, unbelievable fluff. To me anyways.

 

[rounser]

Anyways, I think when the more-fluff-oriented editions have silly stuff like jello monsters, it kind of negates the idea that being crunch-centric results in silly, unbelievable fluff. To me anyways.

That accusation of hypocrisy there is a canard, you know. You're just trying to sidestep the issue by pretending that because the other side occasionally has bad flavour for whatever reason (bad taste?), it's okay for your side to do it in spades, to the nth degree, as a matter of course. As the seemingly default game design strategy. Well...I think you're wrong.

There are many monsters with bad flavour that are unrelated to this argument. C.I.F.A.L's, for instance. It doesn't defuse my point - if you leave flavour as the afterthought, and the thing that gets compromised, then generally you reap what you sow. I notice the difference, maybe you don't.

 

[Cadfan]

Not only do you hate coloured dragons as a legacy mechanic, but now you're bashing those generic wielders of elemental damage types! Your readiness to reinvent D&D knows no limits!

This is true.