When did We Stop Trusting Game Designers?

[Spatula]

Now, a thought hit me. What would happen if Mike Mearls had written either of these two bits in a recent Dragon magazine? There would be a mad rush of vitriol being spilled all over the forums. How dare he dictate my campaign world to me, would be the rallying cry.

Yet, EGG flat out dictates your world to you and no one raises an eyebrow. Zeb Cook does the same thing and is lauded by some for maintaining the mystery of magic items.

At what point did game designers go from "Guys who want to make my game better" to "Those bastards who are trying to ruin MY game!"?

There's no change; if net access was as widespread back then as it is now, you'd have the same heated arguments about rare & precious magic items vs magic item shops that you get now (along with the other old arguments concerning playstyles). Hell, go to Dragonsfoot and ask the 1e diehards what they think of David Zeb Cook.

Back in the stone age you only had contact with your own group - who probably shared your tastes - and only interacted with the gamer world at large via conventions or letter columns in magazines. Now everyone gets to talk to everyone else and it's no surprise that there are disagreements.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Well, Umbran pretty much summed it up, in my opinion.

'Trust is earned.' Yes, indeed. Hence, there are writers, designers and so on, I've come to expect good things from. And there are some from whom. . . I expect something else entirely, as of a certain point in each case.

The rest? I'll judge their capability with such work by, well, the work they do. When I see it.

 

[Ahglock]

Seth Godin has some interesting thoughts on that. Essentially, he believes people should post with their real names and stand by their words for just the kind of reasons described above.

I know some people on Yoggie have requested their username changed to their real names. It can be easy to see that people would attach more weight to posts attributed to real names than pseudonyms.

Well, now I'm tempted to post under a real name, and be a big jerk. Just not my real name, the real name of someone i don't like would work.

 

[Ahglock]

Buying Magical Items

As player characters earn more money and begin facing greater dangers, some of them will begin wondering where they can buy magical items. Using 20th-century, real-world economics, they will figure there must be stores that buy and sell such goods. Naturally they will want to find and patronize such stores. However, no magical stores exist.
Before the DM goes rushing off to create magical item shops, consider the player characters and their behavior. Just how often do player characters sell those potions and scrolls they find? Cast in a sword +1? Unload a horn of blasting or a ring of free action?
More often than not, player characters save such items. Certainly they don't give away one-use items. One can never have too many potions of healing or scrolls with extra spells. Sooner or later the character might run out. Already have a sword +1? Maybe a henchman or hireling could use such a weapon (and develop a greater respect for his master). Give up the only horn of blasting the party has? Not very likely at all.
It is reasonable to assume that if the player characters aren't giving up their goods, neither are any non-player characters. And if adventurers aren't selling their finds, then there isn't enough trade in magical items to sustain such a business.
Even if the characters do occasionally sell a magical item, setting up a magic shop is not a good idea. Where is the sense of adventure in going into a store and buying a sword +1? Haggling over the price of a wand? Player characters should feel like adventurers, not merchants or greengrocers.
Consider this as well: If a wizard or priest can buy any item he needs, why should he waste time attempting to make the item himself? Magical item research is an important role-playing element in the game, and opening a magic emporium kills it. There is a far different sense of pride on the player's part when using a wand his character has made, or found after perilous adventure, as opposed to one he just bought.
Finally, buying and trading magic presumes a large number of magical items in the society. This lessens the DM's control over the whole business. Logically-minded players will point out the inconsistency of a well-stocked magic shop in a campaign otherwise sparse in such rewards.

You know this kind of proclamation I like.

1. It gives a guideline.
2. It gives reasons for said guidelines.

With both 1 &2 you get to see potential pitfalls and decide whether or not its a good idea for your game to do it anyways.

I'd of added to those reasons, why the heck would you risk life and limb in such a dangerous profession as adventurer in a dark dungeon when you can just knock over ye old magic shop. A place has 1,000s to maybe millions of gold in inventory and it isn't getting robed on a daily basis? Okay the really high end shops I can understand they will have insane security, but the corner magic store with 25,00-50,000 in inventory probably has good security, but not fight your way through a dungeon good security. Maybe we play shadowrun too much but my players would be like wait,this shop has what??? Forget the kidnapped princess we can totally rob this place.

Hence thanks to the advice and some reasons backing up the advice I can after seeing the potential pitfalls decide not to let magic shops in my games. With a different player set, I might decide a different way. But at least a potential problem was pointed out to me.

 

[eyebeams]

What I am interested in is how the reaction to game designer pronouncements has changed over the years. Prisoner6 makes a perfect test case example of what I'm talking about. The view, that I've seen espoused more than a few times, is that previous designers were "talented amateurs" who were only interested in producing a "good game experience" while current designers are only interested in hammering your pocketbook as hard as they possibly can.

Well, this idea fails right out of the gate. Creatives in larger companies don't usually make royalties and in smaller ones, they'd be better off doing something other than game design for money.

The thing that's difficult for people to accept is that there really is such a thing as professional knowledge in this field, and that there are things in this industry that work in very specific ways, once you get past the hobby publishing niche.

For example (and in reference to what's above), there are very few instances of "Let's make a book just to fill a release slot!" In large companies there are always more ideas for books than the budget can handle. WotC is a little different in this regard because marketing is more tightly integrated into design. It's probably the only company that can order the creation of a book called "Dragon Magic" for no other reason than books with "Dragon" and "Magic" in the title sell well. They're also the only guys who would mandate annual versions of core books for the same reason, or DDI.

But barring these sorts of things, you have proposals coming from creative staff and then, marketing and creative teams butt heads about what actually goes on the release schedule. The initial idea almost always comes from a designer/creative, not a Man in a Suit. The Man in a Suit just decides which of these ideas people might actually buy. In many, many cases the Man in the Suit *is* the creative guy, and is really looking more at how he can sell what he was going to do anyway, or decide which of a number of things we wants to do, would be a good idea for him to do.

This kind of insight isn't necessarily going to gain the most traction in any online discussion, however, because it lacks the dramatic flair of accusing game designers of being ripoff artists. And thanks to this, anybody so accused has the choice of doing nothing and letting a consensus build around a falsehood, coming in as a target, or simply relaying most things to a guy who is paid to tell you nice things abut the company.

What is most troubling from a writer/designer perspective is that the online medium kind of makes talking about RPGs a decidedly different thing than playing them, to the point where trusting what people have to say about games on a forum like this one can actually be a mistake. When I was writing for Mage: The Ascension this was a serious issue, because the fan community had become practically monopolized by people who didn't play the game. Compare this with letters and APAs, which included pauses long enough for things to naturally spring from play. Your last D&D session would inform things more than the pressure to say something about gish-builds *now*.

The fact of the matter is that most gamers use the Internet to get stuff, not talk about stuff -- so what you're left with is a community consisting of a subset of gamers that is inspired by gaming, but for which the central activity of gaming is often in the theoretical. Forums have evolved around this to devote space to documenting play, but this has its own problems, due to time and social pressure from the medium.

This means that after a while, due to company policy or self-directed searching, creatives in the field usually look for information that hits our interest: supporting and improving gameplay within a particular creative direction. I have a my own gaming group to listen to and when I can, other groups to observe face to face (I spent a few years observing and documenting games as a third party, fr example) and there are a number of online play venues I anonymously visit. The conclusions I get from this are not always going to conform to any out-of-play consensus developed here or anywhere else. This isn't spectacular but the rewards express themselves over the long run.

 

[xechnao]

Well, this idea fails right out of the gate. Creatives in larger companies don't usually make royalties and in smaller ones, they'd be better off doing something other than game design for money.

The thing that's difficult for people to accept is that there really is such a thing as professional knowledge in this field, and that there are things in this industry that work in very specific ways, once you get past the hobby publishing niche.

For example (and in reference to what's above), there are very few instances of "Let's make a book just to fill a release slot!" In large companies there are always more ideas for books than the budget can handle. WotC is a little different in this regard because marketing is more tightly integrated into design. It's probably the only company that can order the creation of a book called "Dragon Magic" for no other reason than books with "Dragon" and "Magic" in the title sell well. They're also the only guys who would mandate annual versions of core books for the same reason, or DDI.

But barring these sorts of things, you have proposals coming from creative staff and then, marketing and creative teams butt heads about what actually goes on the release schedule. The initial idea almost always comes from a designer/creative, not a Man in a Suit. The Man in a Suit just decides which of these ideas people might actually buy. In many, many cases the Man in the Suit *is* the creative guy, and is really looking more at how he can sell what he was going to do anyway, or decide which of a number of things we wants to do, would be a good idea for him to do.

This kind of insight isn't necessarily going to gain the most traction in any online discussion, however, because it lacks the dramatic flair of accusing game designers of being ripoff artists. And thanks to this, anybody so accused has the choice of doing nothing and letting a consensus build around a falsehood, coming in as a target, or simply relaying most things to a guy who is paid to tell you nice things abut the company.

What is most troubling from a writer/designer perspective is that the online medium kind of makes talking about RPGs a decidedly different thing than playing them, to the point where trusting what people have to say about games on a forum like this one can actually be a mistake. When I was writing for Mage: The Ascension this was a serious issue, because the fan community had become practically monopolized by people who didn't play the game. Compare this with letters and APAs, which included pauses long enough for things to naturally spring from play. Your last D&D session would inform things more than the pressure to say something about gish-builds *now*.

The fact of the matter is that most gamers use the Internet to get stuff, not talk about stuff -- so what you're left with is a community consisting of a subset of gamers that is inspired by gaming, but for which the central activity of gaming is often in the theoretical. Forums have evolved around this to devote space to documenting play, but this has its own problems, due to time and social pressure from the medium.

This means that after a while, due to company policy or self-directed searching, creatives in the field usually look for information that hits our interest: supporting and improving gameplay within a particular creative direction. I have a my own gaming group to listen to and when I can, other groups to observe face to face (I spent a few years observing and documenting games as a third party, fr example) and there are a number of online play venues I anonymously visit. The conclusions I get from this are not always going to conform to any out-of-play consensus developed here or anywhere else. This isn't spectacular but the rewards express themselves over the long run.

Mike Mearls was advocating the importance of the optimization boards and indie forums for his formation to design for D&D.

On a different take -the one regarding innovation-, I believe, theory is very important. It is an effective communication method that lets us loose ourselves to perceive things not so immediate in the practical field due to our subjective bias. Theory helps you acquire a different perspective or approach that helps innovation very much if you do want to innovate. If you want to adjust or fix something then not so much I guess.
So if I want to create a new game, then I better come here to just hear the problems people are generally talking about. If I want to try to change the game they are talking about then I better go practical and see what can be done or not be done with this game.
Sometimes a game system is limited in its ability to establish certain things and people do not immediately realize this and thus the debate they build cant really help that much in the end. It wont ever be revelating but to arrive to the conclusion of the weight of the inherent limits of the system and thus the need to address things with a totaly new system. Of course proliferation -for example the one that started with 2e- wont let things settle down and help you arrive to such a conclusion.

 

[eyebeams]

Mike Mearls was advocating the importance of the optimization boards and indie forums for his formation to design for D&D.

Sure. How important do you think that was compared to playtesting and internal review?

On a different take -the one regarding innovation-, I believe, theory is very important. It is an effective communication method that lets us loose ourselves to perceive things not so immediate in the practical field due to our subjective bias. Theory helps you acquire a different perspective or approach that helps innovation very much if you do want to innovate. If you want to adjust or fix something then not so much I guess.

I'm not against theory at all. I'm against the 90+% of theory discussion that disguises itself as unvarnished fact when it comes from one guy who is unhappy with his gaming group but instead of telling them, looks for intellectual and moral support online -- the common "agony aunt" scenario you can find on many fora.

So if I want to create a new game, then I better come here to just hear the problems people are generally talking about. If I want to try to change the game they are talking about then I better go practical and see what can be done or not be done with this game.

The problems people are talking about are not necessarily informed by things that happened in anybody's game. In fact, I'd go as far to say that in most cases, the relationship between a given instance of play and anything here ranged from cloudy to nonexistent.

I'll give you one example ripped from 3e. There is a huge difference between the way wizards and sorcerers work in a typical game session compared to how they work as builds, because of the vagaries of player competence and scenarios. Sorcerers end up being far better than they look on paper.

Sometimes a game system is limited in its ability to establish certain things and people do not immediately realize this and thus the debate they build cant really help that much in the end. It wont ever be revelating but to arrive to the conclusion of the weight of the inherent limits of the system and thus the need to address things with a totaly new system. Of course proliferation -for example the one that started with 2e- wont let things settle down and help you arrive to such a conclusion.

To me, this shows how faith in a certain kind of discourse leads people the wrong way. Groups develop distinct relationships with games, and not only is some agreement here about a system's "limits" hardly the last word, it may not even be representative of most people's experiences -- and it may even be factually dodgy. For example, because early 3e marketing told you that 2e became an ultra-Byzantine system divided among too many books, and because enough people here repeat that, you've taken that on faith and passed it along -- but as a line, 3e and 3.5 included an even greater rate of expansion, and 4e is projected to be comparable. See http://6d6fireball.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/imagesdndbloat-large.jpg

But more to the point, even though in reality few people bought every book and used every rule option, there's a tendency to take this as an axiom for discussion's sake, because otherwise, you can't argue the issues around a game line's size on this forum. In fact, the real relationship between gamers and this material was, and always has been mediated by them in a variety f ways -- and many of them worked pretty well. Unfortunately, these highly individual perspectives don't allow consensus building, so they have less value to the community than making broad statements about "proliferation."

In any event, you are right that you can't come to conclusions, but the demographics and social dynamics of the medium bear much responsibility for that.

 

[Psion]

I don't know when it full stopped (probably somewhere around 4e or late 3.5), but I know where the decline began.

When I wrote my first house ruled ranger class in 1e that patched over the dichotomy between the ranger's fluff and crunch (i.e., lack of any special benefit in wilderness proficiencies back in 1e when it was supposedly an expert in wilderness lore.) It was then I began to have the confidence to make the game into the game I wanted it to be.

The hallmark of late 3.5 (with books like Weapons of Legacy, Tome of Magic, and Bo9S, and continuing into 4e) was the first time in D&D's history at least (long predated in Traveller by TNE) that I felt the designers were actively working at making the game into something I didn't want it to be. Before this in D&D at least, most of the time the designers were doing 90% of what I felt needed to be done and I just needed to make little tweaks.

 

[Hussar]

Garnfellow and others - ok, so maybe my choice of wording was a bit unfortunate. Then again, everyone else seems to get the point and go one with it. Why this need to jump up and down?

I noticed something, I posted what I thought was maybe a trend based on what I observed. This observation sort of flows with other observations but, also flies in the face of others. That's the point of conversation.

I NEVER SAID I WAS PRESENTING FACTS. Good grief. I pointed to examples where the designers specifically dictate your setting to you and then point to examples where if later era designers did the same thing, they'd be crucified. Heck, people are actually DEFENDING the 2e DMG. Like I said, if someone at WOTC wrote that today, people would be screaming bloody murder.

So, yes, I do think there has been a shift in how we react to what the designers say. People on the boards have become unremitingly negative about every single pronouncement. Then again, I suppose I saw the same thing before 4e as well. There would be people who would have nothing positive to say about any 3e book too.

So, yeah, I guess I'm in the "blame it on the medium" camp on this one.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yet, EGG flat out dictates your world to you and no one raises an eyebrow. Zeb Cook does the same thing and is lauded by some for maintaining the mystery of magic items.

They never were in my group, that's for sure. How the game was supposed to be didn't matter -- it mattered how we played. All sorts of variations on the rules were done for the sake of fun and convention. What Zeb and Gary told us was sacrosanct, we kicked dirt all over.

3e was one of the first editions to really tackle how people actually play, rather than how they should play. And for that, WotC needs to know how we ACTUALLY play.

At what point did game designers go from "Guys who want to make my game better" to "Those bastards who are trying to ruin MY game!"?

They're not trying to ruin my game but when they fail to improve it, with all their research and noble goals, they fail more colossally than Gary or Zeb ever failed.