Mearls: The core of D&D

[Dannyalcatraz]

I didn't know that it has been endorsed by Ayn Rand, although that's hardly surprising.

How do you mean that?

what is the evidence in favour of it?

It is a statement of the importance of contrast: like, how can you tell what brightness is if there is no darkness. Or the concept that the concept of good presupposes the existence of evil.

Very old idea.

 

[pemerton]

How do you mean that?

Well, without wanting to push further against board rules, I'll put it this way: Ayn Rand is not known for her anti-elitisim.

It is a statement of the importance of contrast: like, how can you tell what brightness is if there is no darkness. Or the concept that the concept of good presupposes the existence of evil.

Very old idea.

I understand that it is a statement about the importance to value of contrast. I am asking what the evidence is in favour of it. It is not self-evidently true. There are many repsectable theories of value that deny it. And the most practically influential of contemporary theories of value - namely, economics - does not claim that all goods are positional goods.

It's against board rules to explore the implications of the truth or falsity of this claim for politics and society more broadly. But my point is (i) that it is not self-evidently true (being rejected, after all, by many reputable theorists of value), and (ii) that no evidence has been adduced that it is true of the value, to participants in RPGs, or magic items and/or epic destinies. Personally, I think the reason that such evidence hasn't been adduced is because it doesn't exist. As I explained upthread, I think the value of these things to game participants comes from elsewhere.

And why does this matter? Well, in my view the slogan encourages designers to incorporate unnecessary and unhelpful suckage into their PC build rules. It's fine to have as an explicit goal of a game that players can "win" or "lose" when it comes to building a PC - as 3E apparently did - although personally I have little interest in playing that game. My claim, though, is that it is perfectly possible to have valuable and valued build choices which are not positional goods in this fashion.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think we are confusing ethics with game preferences here. In real life i agree with the statement that everyone is special (which is probably about as far as we can go on that subject here) but at the game table i prefer the possibility of making better or worse characters. These are two very different things. One is a statement about a person's inherent value, the other is a matter of preference and is a statement about characters ability to kill make believe monsters. For me i think 4e addressed a legit problem (the mega brokeness of certain builds in 3e and some balance issues between classes) by going too far in the other direction.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I understand that it is a statement about the importance to value of contrast. I am asking what the evidence is in favour of it. There are many repsectable theories of value that deny it.

The concept of democracy, for one, rejects the idea of any citizen being anyone special. All people are equal.

Also, there's this:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz4hPbHIZ6Y]YouTube - ‪Malcolm Gladwell Outliers‬‏[/ame]

Anyway, kings are just commoners born luckier, and pithy quotes from corpses mistake didactic points for enlightenment, and magic items could probably use a boost in the "Why do I want to use this?" category.

My idea was to make them all bonuses rather than requirements -- you MIGHT find a +1 sword, and it MIGHT give you +1 to attacks with swords, but this is a bonus for excellent performance, not an entitlement.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Note that "everyone is special" has a mutable meaning, and people aren't always clear in context which one they mean. In a lot of religious or philosophical traditions, it boils down to: "Worthy of respect as a human being," or something very similar. That is, by virtue of being human and not, say, a rock or a turnip, you classify in the "special" category.

Then there is the more modern conception of, "everyone has some special, super, stupdendous thing that they contribute that is unique to their personality in its own special way." I've tried to make a neutral rendering of that version, but am not sure that I quite succeeded. This one is very much in dispute, with the counter-point being something like, "Most people are 'just folk' -- worthy of that inherent respect thereof, that being all that is needed to get it, but not likely to be heroic or any other 'special' quality that you care to name."

Two of the more common tropes explaining player character powers both side with the idea that everyone isn't special in that latter sense, albeit for different reasons:

1. PCs are called out as specifically special is usually saying that they have something beyond that inherent dignity that marks them--fate, favored by the gods, whatever.

2. PCs are like everyone else, but eventually are special by what they learn, do, and become. Other people might have been special, but aren't.

 

[Stoat]

My idea was to make them all bonuses rather than requirements -- you MIGHT find a +1 sword, and it MIGHT give you +1 to attacks with swords, but this is a bonus for excellent performance, not an entitlement.

IMO, the +X whatever item should be taken to a nice farm and left to live there with the nice farmer. I don't think there's anything exciting, interesting or mystical about a +1 sword, a +2 shield, a doodad that gives you a +3 to all your saves, etc., etc., etc. It's just a naked mechanical bonus.

I like 4E's idea that every item has some special property in addition to its bonus. The implementation of that idea was pretty uneven, but I'd rather see WotC develop the game in that direction.

 

[Redbadge]

I'm not a big fan of the 15-minute adventuring day, and it completely baffles me that the designers of 4E included a mechanic which, for the first time ever, mandates a short adventuring day.

I just thought of the alternative that you seem to advocate, and would give it a playtest, except the outcome is obvious.

The alternative to having healing surges, of course, being not having healing surges. My theoretical playtest with each character having 0 healing surges would inevitably lead to 1 encounter and then an extended rest (assuming they survived the encounter and the only non-magical way to restore HP is by taking extended rests).

In fact, it seems your statement is the exact opposite of what healing surges actually do, which is to allow the adventurers to participate in many more encounters (i.e. a full adventuring day).

Edit: Sorry, meant for [MENTION=55271]Beginning of the End[/MENTION]

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

OK, good we got that cleared up!

 

[I'm A Banana]

MO, the +X whatever item should be taken to a nice farm and left to live there with the nice farmer. I don't think there's anything exciting, interesting or mystical about a +1 sword, a +2 shield, a doodad that gives you a +3 to all your saves, etc., etc., etc. It's just a naked mechanical bonus.

I like 4E's idea that every item has some special property in addition to its bonus. The implementation of that idea was pretty uneven, but I'd rather see WotC develop the game in that direction.

It's not a bad idea, but it's largely unnecessary in a world where you don't automatically get +1 swords just to keep up with the math. Because the choice then isn't between a +1 sword and a flametongue sword, but between a +1 sword, and NO +1 SWORD.

That said, I'm a fan of weapon quirks. The last magic weapons I rolled for the party included an evil, magic-hating longsword, an oversized morningstar that was sacred to a goblin god, and a brace of anti-magical darts.

 

[pemerton]

at the game table i prefer the possibility of making better or worse characters.

I've got nothing against that as a preference - although, like I said in my previous post, I personally don't have much interest in playing that game.

What I object to is the claim that this is an inherent requirement - that I can't have a game in which PCs are valuable, or worth playing, without the possibility of building a crappy PC.

Two of the more common tropes explaining player character powers both side with the idea that everyone isn't special in that latter sense

Sure. And this is especially true for fantasy RPGs, I think, because of the pre-modern tropes associated with Tolkienesque fantasy fiction, and the particular variety of modernism associated with Howard-esque fantasy fiction.

But I think this is tangential to the point about epic destinies and magic items - which isn't about value within the fiction, and the reliance of that value on contrast, but about value to the players in the real world, and the reliance of that value on contrast.