Legends and Lore - The Temperature of the Rules

[LurkAway]

Now I'm confused. The article linked to is a 4E article, any 5E involved is pure speculation. And the OP did not ask the question in regard to any edition.

I assumed that everyone assumed/speculated that Mearls and then Montes articles are about 5E. How do you think it pertains to 4E? It talks about the basics and theoretical foundation of game design, and 4E is already designed.

You asked a bunch of questions, then reminded me that you didn't like my answers.

I'm sorry, but if it had been someone else, I probably would have at least tried to go a little further, like I tried with S'mon (in which case we agreed to disagree). With you, it reminded me too much of the Roles thread that went absolute nowhere. I'm more than willing to cite irreconcilable differences and just leave it as that.

 

[Anselyn]

Well, let's be honest here - WotC will never satisfy everyone. Period. Full stop.

But they need to be satisfying more people than they are now.

 

[Umbran]

But they need to be satisfying more people than they are now.

Whether or not they "need" to do anything is not really for us to decide, is it? We (mere consumers of product) lack skin in the game giving us the right, and lack business information giving us the ability, to say what "needs" to happen.

And, even if we accept they need to satisfy more people, "satisfy everyone" is impossible, and so is a non-starter as a design goal. "Satisfy more people" is too ill-defined to be useful. Neither has enough information to turn into game design changes.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I assumed that everyone assumed/speculated that Mearls and then Montes articles are about 5E. How do you think it pertains to 4E? It talks about the basics and theoretical foundation of game design, and 4E is already designed.

The design process for 4E is ongoing. New approaches to the basic rules were presented through Essentials. New class structures, new role-bending concepts, etc. have been published. It is not unthinkable that these thought exercises that Monte is going through are both for the continuation of design in 4E and for future editions of the game.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The design process for 4E is ongoing. New approaches to the basic rules were presented through Essentials. New class structures, new role-bending concepts, etc. have been published. It is not unthinkable that these thought exercises that Monte is going through are both for the continuation of design in 4E and for future editions of the game.

It seems kind of odd to me to assume that, were the very foundations of 4e to be questioned and revised, culminating in some release of revised core rules, they would continue to call it "fourth edition."

I guess they could, of course, but while Essentials challenged the basic structure of the original PH (to much outcry and alarm, it should be said), it didn't shake the fundamentals of the game system in the ways that this article is talking about.

At a certain indistinct point in the future, there will come a point where the current rules of the game don't embrace the ideas embraced in the 4e PH. If, at that point, the new game is still called "fourth edition," those words will be pretty empty of useful meaning.

 

[Anselyn]

Whether or not they "need" to do anything is not really for us to decide, is it? We (mere consumers of product) lack skin in the game giving us the right, and lack business information giving us the ability, to say what "needs" to happen.

And, even if we accept they need to satisfy more people, "satisfy everyone" is impossible, and so is a non-starter as a design goal. "Satisfy more people" is too ill-defined to be useful. Neither has enough information to turn into game design changes.

You are entirely correct. However, this seems to be a rather unnecessarily obtuse tack to take in this discussion.

I think that we can certainly opine if not decide what WOTC should do. This would be a rather odd no-go area for this site.

I suppose in reply to your "WotC will never satisfy everyone", I could have commented that therefore they should just give up the unequal struggle and close? That would be as helpful - as your reply.

However, I presume that a public company with N customers would rather like to have N+1 customers. I don't think that's too fanciful a supposition. As a background to this, perhaps I should have pointed out Mongoose Matt's State of the Mongoose suggesting that /4e is currently third in the sales running.

Now, while I agree that WoTC can't satisfy all the people all the time, I find it immensely reassuring that both Legends & Lore and Rule-of-Three is willing to suggest that there are areas for improvement in the current rules. You might even conclude they want to satisfy more customers.

 

[pemerton]

One "side" insists that they won't come back, but it almost seems as if they forgot that some of us left 3E and yet others skipped it entirely.

I agree that this point is often missed. I'm an example of someone who had no interest in playing 3E, and who came back to D&D because 4e offered something different.

Now the impact on WotC's bottom line isn't as great as that comment might suggest, because altough I didn't play 3E I still bought a number of 3E modules and supplements to get ideas, scenarios, etc for the game I was running (Rolemaster - which doesn't have quite the publishing schedule that WotC does).

But still, my collection of WotC purchases has increased at a greater rate in the 4e era, and I also have several players who have DDI subscriptons, 4e rulebooks etc who weren't buying those things when I was running Rolemaster for them.

The +1 per 2 levels may very well be gamist, but I do see valid ways to describe it in a simulationist manner.

Here I think there is some confusion or terminological cross-purposes between you and [MENTION=6685059]LurkAway[/MENTION].

By "simulationist" mechanics, I'm pretty sure that what LurkAway means is what the Forge calls "purist-for-system simulationism" - that is, mechanics that model the internal causal processes of the gameworld, therefore exhibiting that causal logic in play.

Although your description of why an Epic wizard has a +15 to break down doors makes perfect sense, and is how I understand what is going on in the gameworld, it is not really simulationist in the purist-for-system sense. The mechanics aren't exhibiting ingame causal logic. Indeed, the very same mechanic - a uniform level bonus to skill checks - represents something different for each of the wizard's skills (with Arcana, for instance, it's not the subtle use of enhancement magic but rather greater learning and proficiency in the magical arts) and something different for different PCs (for a fighter, the +15 to athletics checks means something different from what it means for the wizard).

What your description of the +15 bonus does do is show that there is no trouble, in adjudicating 4e, in explaining what is happening in the fiction that is reflect by the action resolution mechanics. The game is therefore not "gamist" in the pejorative sense used by some ENworlders - meaning roughly, I think, that the mechanical outcomes have no fictional meaning. (This use of "gamist", it might be added, has nothing to do with the way the word is used by The Forge.)

 

[BryonD]

What your description of the +15 bonus does do is show that there is no trouble, in adjudicating 4e, in explaining what is happening in the fiction that is reflect by the action resolution mechanics.

I absolutely agree that this, and off the top of my head everything else I find lacking in 4E, can be described and justified in a vacuum.

To me the real problem (at least this specific problem) has NOTHING to do with that the wizard can and does have a +15. The problems are that EVERY character of that level has the same +15 bonus and there is no such thing as making that character WITHOUT the +15 bonus.

 

[GreyLord]

Well, let's be honest here - WotC will never satisfy everyone. Period. Full stop.

Oh...but they can give it great shot and perhaps make something that will appeal to a majority that still would/will play.

For example...let's say they come out with a simple base game...sort of like the OSR type games...but then with options you can make it into either a 3e or 4e game...your choice.

I think that actually has a pretty broad appeal!

PS: Though perhaps the ideas to integrate it with Fantasy Football may not really be given much thought...but imagine the MASS appeal it could have with that. Then again I'm pretty certain most people here are really happy that integration isn't going to happen (at least 99.9% probably not going to happen).

 

[Crazy Jerome]

There has always been a subset of people, willing to play D&D but not quite satisfied with it, whose basic disagreement with D&D is that it is a class and level based system--and they want it to change to acommodate their desires, keep classes and levels, and deliver something that classes and levels really can't do. They might as well ask for WotC to make all their blues and greens more red.

Then there are people, with a little more insight into the nature of their wants, who want to be playing "D&D" (because it is most popular, will have the most players, whatever), but realize that classes and levels will never satisfy them. As one might expect, their reactions are considerably varied.

None of the above can ever be satisfied with a version of D&D that most fans would recognize as D&D. Of the ones that are left, it is in WotC's best interest to accommodate as many as they can. The limits here are of talent and resources in the design team and practical trade-offs in the size of the audience for certain wants. (For example, they'll never entirely satisfy me with skills. You could build a version of D&D that would be D&D to most people and satisfy me, but there aren't enough people that share my preferences on skill systems to make it practical to bother doing so.)