Mearls: Abilities as the core?

[tuxgeo]

< snip >
Yep... I'm calling "new edition announcement" at GenCon

OK, you have that corner of the possibility space nailed down; I'll go contrary to that and call "new setting announcement" for GenCon 2011.
WotC still has Rich Burlew's setting from the setting search last decade; perhaps it's time for that to see the light of day?

 

[Mark CMG]

Str = ???
Dex = Reflex
Con = Fortitude
Int = ???
Wis = Will?
Cha = Will?

Personally, I tie Str & Con to Fortitude, Dex and Int to Reflex, Wis and Cha to Will. Recently I've broken out Prince Valiant (1989) for our group for a short campaign. In that system you have Brawn for most physical task adjudication and Presence for most non-physical. Two ability scores, some skills that can assist in such tasks (Arms adds to Brawn for combat, for instance, while Oratory adds to Presence for some diplomatic situations).

You know, I think part of the angst (all sides and in between) going on right now is that game design is finally moving firmly into the realm of mature design.

DMs/GMs/Referees/Facilitators have been using the ability scores to adjudicate situations in roleplaying games of all stripes since the very start. This is nothing new. How that is codified in the rules has changed over the years, not necessarily evolved, simply been tried in varying manners, but this isn't a matter of maturity or immaturity in game design. I'd also disagree with the assertion that how something works within the rules can be opaque since having the rules is meant to produce the opposite effect. The motivations behind creating particular rules might be undefined but their effect on gameplay is transparent.

 

[AeroDm]

When he mentioned "sub-contractor" mechanics, my understanding was that he was talking about different ways to model the same thing. Your CON is a measure of your toughness. Your saving throws/Fort defense are a completely different measure of your toughness, which are possibly influenced by your CON, but have separate mechanics and separate ways to boost them.

To me, the best example of this is avoidance mechanics in 3e. You had your AC, your touch AC, your AC vs incorporeal attacks, your Reflex save, and maybe a miss chance from displacement/blur/etc. You can take a feat or equip a magic item to improve a subset of the above, but that has no affect the others. As I read him, Mearls is saying, why have all of these similar but separate mechanics for what is essentially the same thing?

I didn't read it that way (I'm certainly open to being wrong though, so explain away). Mearls gave an example of a character interacting with poison and he acknowledged that you could "make a saving throw versus poison, a Fortitude save, or suffer an attack against Fortitude defense." He continues, "You already have a Constitution score. While your Constitution modifier can factor into a save or defense, why bother with that step? Why not just use your Constitution score as a defense and your modifier as a saving throw?"

So Mearls is saying that the derivative mechanics like Fort save or Fort defense, which depend on Constitution, should be removed and just use straight Con. Fort Save and Fort Defense are the sub contractors.

Later in the article he suggests "Mechanics that improved your defenses or saving throws become situational benefits to your abilities." So, hypothetically, you'll have a feat that is +2 vs poison and when you encounter poison you use your Con and your +2 vs poison feat.

My comment was that some of these will become so fundamental that they are worth "putting the subcontractor on salary" or recording it on the character sheet. The first example I see is AC (which is probably Dex + Armor + Shield + Class) which will come up often enough that it isn't worth looking down and adding up a bunch of little fiddly bits.

 

[AeroDm]

You know, I think part of the angst (all sides and in between) going on right now is that game design is finally moving firmly into the realm of mature design. That means that some parts of the functioning thing are, for most practical purposes, opaque to the user. At its far end, you get the #2 pencil--usable by a mature 4 year old, but unmakeable by any single being on the planet. (We are a long way from that. We've just finally started down that road. )

It is the difference between, say, a 1967 Mustang or early '70 VW Beetle versus any modern car. Someone interested in motors and willing to work could pretty much maintain about everything in one of those early version that they could physically handle. Lifting the engine out might for a complete rebuild might have pushed it, but I'm sure a few managed even that. Nowadays, you've practically got to be a specialist, and even so, there are some pieces that you'd really rather not touch.

And in not a few game systems for a long time, being willing to get under the hood was more or less the price required to participate, in some ways. Unless you wanted your game to spend a lot of times on blocks, out in front of your house ... (oops, analogy started to run away with me.)

There were people who didn't like Armor as AC, from the very beginning. There still are. But there are very few that play D&D for any length of time, think about it some, but still don't understand why it is the way it is. And most of them are bloody obtuse.

We are starting to hit an era of design where you can use something without understanding it, and it will just work. The huge problem, of course, is that then when it breaks, you'll have to spend that much more time understanding it to get it fixed--or you'll have to get someone else to fix it for you.

That is a really neat perspective and I dig it.

In my mind, though, I think more sophisticated game design should be *easier* to communicate and let people get under the hood. D&D has near 40 years of proof that the audience loves to house rule. If they are moving towards a system that makes the rules more opaque, then something wrong is happening.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'd also disagree with the assertion that how something works within the rules can be opaque since having the rules is meant to produce the opposite effect. The motivations behind creating particular rules might be undefined but their effect on gameplay is transparent.

We aren't that far apart, I don't think, though there is some disagreement. The border between opaque motivations of design and transparent or opaque effects on gameplay depends on how you look at it. I'd say that some of the effects on gameplay are transparent, but the whole point of "emergent" properties is that they aren't immediately transparent before they are useful.

But I agree that, still being the early going of this phase, there isn't much that will remain opaque after considered use.

As for the six basic attributes or variations thereof, any simple design will be somewhat transparent. It can't be anything else. OTOH, I'd say that any more complicated design that works with the simple design, solves the relevant issues, and isn't simply two or three compatible systems bolted together (wth Balesir's caveats noted)--will necessarily have some complicated design underneath--regardless of how well it hides this complication in play and on the obvious effects. It will have emergent properties.

If one could achieve this goal soley with existing traditional design elements, someone would have by now. An assertion, I know.

 

[RangerWickett]

I'd love a system that works sorta like one Old School Hack I played, where you have stats that affect your non-combat skills, but your attack bonus and damage rolls are completely unmodified by ability scores. A fighter hits things well, and it doesn't matter if he's a fast fighter, a strong fighter, or a smart fighter. He'll always have attack bonus +X and damage modifier +Y.

In a 5e-or-whatever ruleset, his ability scores might modify what weapons he's good with, what special attacks he can use, and what skills he can weave into combat (acrobatics, athletics, surgical precision, bluffing, etc.). But stop forcing players to design specific types of characters if they want to be able to hit things.

If I want to play a 4 Wisdom cleric whom the gods really like even though he's a terrible priest, and if the GM's okay with that character, why should the rules inhibit it?

 

[Crazy Jerome]

That is a really neat perspective and I dig it.

In my mind, though, I think more sophisticated game design should be *easier* to communicate and let people get under the hood. D&D has near 40 years of proof that the audience loves to house rule. If they are moving towards a system that makes the rules more opaque, then something wrong is happening.

"Simple" and "Easy" aren't the same thing. In this case, what you'd probably get are a lot of things that are relatively easy to understand, but not necessarily simple to tinker with. You might have a few that skewed the other way. Then you'd have whole sections that were all simple and easy and others that were neither.

All man-made, complicated systems that aren't simply a mess do this. As you break things into "black" and "white" box design (black being closed, but preferably with a readily understood interface), what becomes particular difficult for some people is understanding the mappings between the boxes. Individual boxes (or small sets of related boxes), however, become far easier to monkey with.

Note the quote that Mearls led with. As you take things (that don't belong) away from a given box (black or white), you simplify the design and use of that box, until it does exactly what it is supposed to do, very reliably. What is less often noted with that quote is that taking away responsibility from a box that shouldn't have it--implies that other boxes can exist and take over those other responsibilities.

Edit: I should note here that, of course, true "black boxes" aren't possible in game system rules printed on paper. Everyone can see the whole thing right there on the page. What is possible, however, is imposing on yourself the discipline of black box thinking during design, so that the different parts of the whole are appropriately "coupled".

 

[rogueattorney]

Mearls' imperfect understanding of any edition prior to 3e rears its ugly head again, and in this case it's a pretty blatant misconception...

In the beginning, your abilities gave you a bonus to experience points and that was it.

This is false. In the 1974 rules, the three abilities tied to the three classes (strength - fighting-man, intelligence - magic-user, and wisdom - cleric) mainly gave you experience point bonuses. (The exception was that intelligence also determined how many languages your character spoke.)

The other three ability scores gave you assorted bonuses that anyone familiar with subsequent editions of D&D should be acquainted with, Con gave you hit point bonus, Dex gave you missile fire bonus, and nearly two pages were given over to Charisma's effect on npc reactions and morale.

This misunderstanding clouds many of his suppositions and conclusions that follow, namely that,

If you go back to 1974 and look at the basic rules of D&D at that time, all of the basic, administrative stuff in the game had been solved via ability scores.

He's not coming up with a universal D&D. He's using misconceptions of the game's history to re-re-re-reinvent the wheel.

EDIT TO ADD: Wouldn't it be nice if there were some way for people who don't have access to the old rules (people like Mearls, apparently) to access them, perhaps after paying a nominal fee, let's say $5.00 or so? Wouldn't that just be great?

 

[KidSnide]

I'd love a system that works sorta like one Old School Hack I played, where you have stats that affect your non-combat skills, but your attack bonus and damage rolls are completely unmodified by ability scores. A fighter hits things well, and it doesn't matter if he's a fast fighter, a strong fighter, or a smart fighter. He'll always have attack bonus +X and damage modifier +Y.

In a 5e-or-whatever ruleset, his ability scores might modify what weapons he's good with, what special attacks he can use, and what skills he can weave into combat (acrobatics, athletics, surgical precision, bluffing, etc.). But stop forcing players to design specific types of characters if they want to be able to hit things.

If I want to play a 4 Wisdom cleric whom the gods really like even though he's a terrible priest, and if the GM's okay with that character, why should the rules inhibit it?

I played in a similar game (OK, maybe it was the same game...) and it was fantastic. I think the strong connection between ability scores and combat effectiveness is one of the great weaknesses of 3e and 4e. Because these ability scores are so important to a character's combat effectiveness, it greatly limits the ability to create unusual builds without seriously undermining the ability to accomplish anything worthwhile. If my character takes the wizard class surely that should be enough to be a reasonably effective wizard? Why is an Int of 18+ also mandatory?

As a quick hack, I've wondered if 4e would be improved if all characters had a fixed ability modifier for attack rolls in their primary class (or classes in a hybrid design), while damage bonuses, effect bonuses and multi-class attacks depended on the ability scores as normal.

-KS

 

[Sammael]

Making the ability scores super-important works only at low levels (1-5) and then only in extremely low-magic games (which Mearls is obviously fond of, given his Iron Heroes legacy).

I am much more in favor of a nice, streamlined (and somewhat abstract) skill system (which is why I built one), since I am a big proponent of the fact that ability scores should only matter until a character becomes learned enough to be able to overcome (or improve upon) his or her heritage.

All in all, a completely wrong turn in the thinking, AFAIC.