Legends and Lore: Modular Madness

[catastrophic]

In that case, why change anything? Why not just take the 4e dark sun approach, and recognize that the differences are mainly thematic, or focus your efforts t change on more fruitful areas, like monster, adventure, and campaign design?

 

[Sammael]

In that case, why change anything? Why not just take the 4e dark sun approach, and recognize that the differences are mainly thematic, or focus your efforts t change on more fruitful areas, like monster, adventure, and campaign design?

Possibly because they wish to attract more customers, and 4e Dark Sun did not manage to do that (or at least not as much as they were hoping)?

 

[Crazy Jerome]

However, while I am a bit fuzzy-headed this morning, isn't it rather confusingly worded this week?

... (feat and skill quote) ...


I think this means that the functional game effects of feats and skills will be integrated into core class definition - (perhaps as class abilities?). Hence, the choose your "feats and skills" phase of charcter design would be eliminated. Thus, they are both removed and not-removed. Clear??

I'm not sure what it means. It sounded to me that what you said was what they wanted to do from a design perspective, but they had too much pushback on people wanting to use feats and skills to customize. So then they moved towards feats and skills stacking in some of those packages, but not "too much" because of power issues.

If I read that right, this is the first time I outright disagree with something he has said in the series of articles. That approach is doomed to failure, because it is trying to please too many audiences by meeting everyone halfway. "Have feats and skills that don't do much so that we can squeeze them in to balance but still let people customize their characters in ways that don't do much ..." I'm not seeing how that is viable.

 

[KidSnide]

Isn't the Dark Sun example the kind of power creep that is trivial to handle by doing a "Red Queen" on it? If the players hit too well, increase monster AC, if they do too much damage, increase HP, if they are too hard to hit, increase monster to-hit, etc. It's the most basic adjustment you can make...

Adjusting *all* parameters of an encounter is definitely within the DM:s powers.

Not necessarily. As described, a Dark Sun game could have higher to hit and damage rolls, but not higher defenses. That would make Dark Sun combat faster and more swingy than vanilla D&D combat. A designer could also adjust typical Dark Sun monsters to create nastier attacks with weaker defenses. (This could also create an interesting side effect - if everything is more fragile than damage becomes proportionately more useful than effects.) Just because two different sets of math are both balanced, doesn't mean that they generate the same results.

Anyway, the list of Dark Sun abilities included wild talents. Extra powers isn't just adding +2 to everything.

-KS

 

[MacMathan]

I believe also that it is a reference to the original Dark Sun setting where the characters started off more powerful to make up for the lethality of the setting.

I don't know if it is a good design idea but it is in keeping with the original version of the setting.

 

[Jack Daniel]

Oy, Mike is killin' me here.

The whole point to making a simple and streamlined core game would be the low threshold to entry for new players! *That* approach makes sense!

If the "standard" core game keeps the complexity of (say) 3rd edition, it'll just plain fail to grow the base.

It's much easier for advanced players to add complexity than it is for less experienced players to strip it out.

I'm sorry to see MM backpedal in the face of all the anti-simplicity, anti-grognard (and apparently anti-newbie, anti-big-tent) howling on the WotC forums. *OF COURSE* posters on the WotC forums want things to stay they way they are; that's why they're already over there!

 

[howandwhy99]

I know Mr. Mearls is the head of rules development and his articles have focused a lot on the system end of the game. Plus, the modularity of design he's talking about is a kind of call for more flexibility and diversity of rule creation. Groups could have more choices about the particular game and campaign they will engage in, while still having a robust rule set supporting their desired ends. That's all well and good.

When it comes to thematic elements and settings and adventures and whatnot though, I think we've entered the realm of the story team. Perhaps someone could point out a column by the head of the story development team? Not new story elements, but a writer talking about how they decide on great elements of story design. I guess "Design & Development" does this a bit.

What I'm getting at is great authors are as difficult to find as great rule designers. Magic: the Gathering was made by a pretty darn smart mathematician, but he's not the guy I would want authoring the next Dark Sun or Eberron. If they really want to attract larger, more diverse audiences, then I'd say court successful authors (and I don't mean simply contracted properties). Powerful writing is a honed skill and really could be harmonized with such a modular rule set as is being suggested. And when all the artistic elements of the book, visual arts, lettering, mapping, typography, and all the rules are focused on evoking the story element, then new audiences begin to see individual works as uniquely theirs.

I know branding and uniformity of art and layout are the current norm. But with a more customizable core rule set we would get the opportunity for a more customizable story design as well. Imagine a book that looks, reads, and is illustrated as an old AD&D product. How about the original Planescape 2E products? Imagine a new work by a professional author who, without worrying about the rules, writes his or her unique story into an adventure or setting supplement, which is then configured by the rules designers for its unique play. Weiss's Dragonlance, Greenwood's Forgotten Realms, and other D&D novel series really were bred out of new ways to play D&D. Okay, so I'd love to see a Thieves' World supplement myself, but I think the key here is knowing what the D&D game does well at its core. In a word, for me its heroism, which is pretty big and goes beyond genre fantasy. From such a focused core game, then supplements could tap into the fictional works attracting readers already falling within this scope.

I like the modular rules idea, but I don't want to ignore the story side. Such an expansionary design change would allow Wizards to better compete in the aesthetic sphere for attracting new players too.

 

[catastrophic]

Possibly because they wish to attract more customers, and 4e Dark Sun did not manage to do that (or at least not as much as they were hoping)?

So again, we're back to the notion that all this arcahic, needlessly complex, almost impossible to balance stuff is going to get WOTC sales from some mighty all-spending demographic, and yet, not alienate the people who actually buy their books- people who like balance, like coherent systems, and if anything want 4e to be more streamlined, not less, and want content of the kind they like, such as themes.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I like the modular rules idea, but I don't want to ignore the story side. Such an expansionary design change would allow Wizards to better compete in the aesthetic sphere for attracting new players too.

I thought a previous week explicitly said almost exactly what you're saying. Layering a good setting and fluff atop solid math is the best of all possible worlds.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Here's sort of a brainstorm:

Skills Are Weapons.

You go to attack the orc! You can choose to use a sword, or an axe, or a spear, or your bare hands, or a club, or whatever...each weapon has slightly different properties, bonuses, and penalties.

You try to convince the orcs not to eat you! You can choose to use diplomacy, or intimidation, or bribery, or deceit, or whatever...each skill has slightly different properties, bonuses, and penalties.

You are running away from the orcs! You can choose to use stealth (to hide from them), athletics (to run faster than them), endurance (to run longer than them), or whatever....each skill has slightly different properties, bonuses, and penalties.

In this model, feats can add breadth. They customize based on what you can use. Use a feat to train in a new weapon, a new interaction skill, or a new exploration skill (or possibly a new defense mode for any of those).

Feats, in this model, are the natural place for multiclassing, though perhaps not as a "feat tax." I don't need to take two feats to use a spear. I take a feat, I can use the spear. I should need only one feat to use another class's ability. I take a feat, I can use the ability.

What the properties, bonuses, and penalties are would depend on the system used for task resolution. If we take D&D's "d20 vs. DC + damage/hp" model and apply it to exploration and interaction, we can have something like...

Swords
Proficiency: +3
Damage: 1d8
Quality: Versatile

Diplomacy
Proficiency: +2
Persuasiveness: 1d10
Quality: Cautious (helps your social defense)

Stealth
Proficiency: +3
Speed: 1d4
Quality: Hidden (you are hidden when you successfully use this skill)

....or whatever.