D&D 5E Final playtest packet due in mid September.

[Ratskinner]

Well, it's more "the problem doesn't exist in my games and I'd have to be convinced that it exists in any significant number of other people's". It's also "You're ignoring other problems in pursuit of this one". My contention is increasingly that the pursuit of balance has caused more problems than it's fixed.

Count me as one who's witnessed balance issues, plenty enough to think its very important as a design consideration. I will say, though, that for a game like D&DNext, I'd only expect what I'd call "rough" balance. When characters of different classes function in qualitatively different ways mechanically, I don't see how "perfect" balance would be achieved or measured.

However, I have played several games where the characters are de facto mechanically balanced (using unified meta mechanics, etc.) I can't say that I've witnessed any problems resulting from balance in those situations. I'm far from convinced that seeking a balanced game causes problems at the table in anything near the magnitude that wildly imbalanced games do.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Mistake 1
Mistake 2
Mistake 3
Mistake 4

Gawd, I've had actual paying jobs that required less responsibility.

And I think you've missed Mistake Zero. Don't design the game to require such level of responsibility from DMs. Or at least try not to. Plopping out book after book of new options and requiring the DMs to perform the stink test? Not cool. And not something that every game I've played requires, so I know it's possible for them to do better.

 

[billd91]

Gawd, I've had actual paying jobs that required less responsibility.

And I think you've missed Mistake Zero. Don't design the game to require such level of responsibility from DMs. Or at least try not to. Plopping out book after book of new options and requiring the DMs to perform the stink test? Not cool. And not something that every game I've played requires, so I know it's possible for them to do better.

But who really wants to play a role playing game that isn't open-ended as far as options go? That's part of the freedom of playing a game in which, in many ways, anything goes. And whenever you allow options, there is a good chance that, no matter how reasonable they seem encapsulated within themselves, they may conflict or synergize with other options in unexpected ways.

The solution isn't to require the game designers to close the system or thoroughly test every possible combination. The former gives us the limitations of the computer RPG or MMO, where the entirety of the game is constructive and if it isn't deliberately constructed it can't exist, the latter puts pressure on the designers to add nothing at all because the overhead cost of doing so just grows. The solution is for everyone involved, DMs and players, to approach the addition of new elements reasonably, rationally, collaboratively, and experimentally. If the experiment doesn't work - adjust the it until it does.

 

[Ratskinner]

It always did come off like a novel (or more like a TV show) to me. But as to your opinion, I'd have to ask "compared to what?". Were there other games at the time D&D was created that did a better job of emulating fantasy novels?

So there needs to be something better at it for me to say it didn't succeed? I don't think that makes sense. But I'll elucidate.

Firstly, look at the predecessors of the game, namely wargames. Early D&D characters and mechanics don't have "literary" traits that function the way literary characters do, they have "tactical wargame" traits that function like tactical wargame figures do. Characters in literature die to serve dramatic purposes, characters in D&D die in random ways while failing a save. Speaking of failing saves, consider poison. In literature (and in life), poison is (usually) a long drawn out affair with lots of suffering and long-term debilitation, problems to solve and drama all around....in Old-School D&D: miss save-die-"Who wants his stuff?" When you start to examine the mechanics, very few of them function in anything like what you'd expect to see from a similar situation in a novel. Certainly, in some cases, that's just a matter of efficiency for the game table. (At the very least, we're changing media from book to rpg.) However, in a lot of them, that's not the case. (Or at least, if they were trying to make a novel-simulator, they could/would have easily done it differently.) The interplay of characters and the world is different and things aren't driven by dramatic needs (not that I'm saying they should be) story arcs are either happenstance or railroaded, etc. I've recently been playing some of the older stuff with my group and its...well its not really good at reproducing that sort of literary story (not that the new stuff is necessarily much better).

In any endeavor that takes place of multiple events and/or long periods of time (like D&D or sports) humans will see or invent stories, even if they aren't really there. Its part of how we see the world. But that doesn't mean the game itself was doing that.

I doubt it. D&D was (and still to some extent is) a very rough product, a foray into previously unexplored territory.

On that, I agree.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

As a DM, this, to me, was mistake 1. Just, because it would be more fun, doesn't negate your responsibility as a DM to the game as a whole and the other players. My reply would have been for the player to stick with the original character that night. I would look it over and ensure it will fit the campaign and at the power level.

I believe it is my responsibility to write an interesting adventure and adjudicate the rules. I don't think it's my responsibility to tell people what they can and can't play within those rules. I believe it's the rules responsibility to make sure the game is fun and balanced no matter what people play.

Besides, my philosophy is "If we aren't having fun, then why are we playing?" It's pretty much my primary rule when DMing. If someone comes up to me and says "I'm not having fun", regardless of the reason, I'm going to work to correct it. It might not be possible. But allowing someone to change characters is easy to do and the least I can do to make sure someone has a good time.

Also, I've tried to say no to it before. It doesn't turn out well. People assumed I'd say yes and didn't even bring their old character or actually threw out the character sheet once they finished their new character. So, the choice was to tell them to go home or allow the new character a couple of times. If that doesn't happen I've had people literally threaten to leave the game if I didn't let them switch characters. To them, character creation was nearly as fun if not MORE fun than the actual game. So, if they played too long without being able to go through the character creation process, they got bored.

Mistake 2 was allowing sources you were not familiar with
Mistake 3 was realizing there was material you were unfamiliar with still allowing the character in play rather than having the player hold off

Oh, I was familiar with every source. I bought every WOTC book on release day. I likely hadn't finished reading through all of them. Heck, I STILL haven't finished reading through most of them. I didn't have time. I wasn't going to have my lack of time cause less fun for other people, however. I normally read through the feats in new books almost immediately, mind you. But I'd forget the details of them quickly if I wasn't actively playing a character who took them. So, when I read a feat, my thought process was normally something like "Oh, that's the new feat from the Complete Warrior. I can't remember exactly what it does, but something about trading attack bonuses for damage."

But even if I made the player hold off(see above as to why that was troublesome in and of itself), I STILL likely wouldn't have looked up the feats even given a week. I would spend the time doing things I'd rather be doing like watching tv or playing video games. I'd show up at the next session and say "Oh, sorry, I still haven't had time to look through your character, maybe next week".

Also, even if I did spend the time to investigate the character in detail(which I did a couple of times when I was bored) by looking up every feat, every spell, every class feature, I'd STILL miss 50%(or more) of the overpowered things people brought into my game. This is because most broken things weren't readily apparent. They'd often involve combinations of feats and class features that seemed benign on their own but only when combined together did their power show itself. I didn't make a habit of sitting down and running a combat for the character to see how they actually worked, so they'd go unnoticed until they showed up at the table. It felt like a waste of time to spend an hour or two looking up feats and trying to get a feel for a character only to be surprised by the character and have to ban it anyways.

Mistake 4 allowing the character and not telling the player that the allowance would be provisional and you reserved the right to a) deny the character or b) require changes/nerfs if the character proved unbalanced.

That goes without saying. There was an unwritten rule that EVERYTHING in my game could be changed by me at any point. I didn't need to reiterate it. Though, my goal was to avoid denying any character or nerfing any rule unless ABSOLUTELY necessary. Simply doing 10 average points of damage more per round than everyone else wasn't something to nerf or ban over.

Sorry, this was on you as a DM and to a lesser extent your player for springing it on you at the last minute. However as the DM, it, ultimately, rested on you to delay the character entering and you ignored the opportunity to have the player to do so which led to the same problem with other players and the game getting out of hand.

I believe my responsibility as a DM really begins and ends at the table. I'm here to run whatever adventure I most recently bought at the gaming store for the 4 or 5 hours we've allotted to play. I don't write my own adventures because that takes too long. I certainly don't want to spend any time going over people's characters to make sure they aren't broken.

I want people to be able to have just as much fun playing my D&D game as they would playing WoW or City of Heroes. One of my players used to play City of Heroes and would make an average of 5 new characters a DAY. The fact that they only introduced new characters once every 4 or 5 sessions was considered a win for me.

Frankly, double checking game math and balance sounds a lot like work to me. As soon as D&D becomes work, it isn't worth it.

 

[billd91]

So there needs to be something better at it for me to say it didn't succeed? I don't think that makes sense. But I'll elucidate.

Firstly, look at the predecessors of the game, namely wargames. Early D&D characters and mechanics don't have "literary" traits that function the way literary characters do, they have "tactical wargame" traits that function like tactical wargame figures do. Characters in literature die to serve dramatic purposes, characters in D&D die in random ways while failing a save. Speaking of failing saves, consider poison. In literature (and in life), poison is (usually) a long drawn out affair with lots of suffering and long-term debilitation, problems to solve and drama all around....in Old-School D&D: miss save-die-"Who wants his stuff?" When you start to examine the mechanics, very few of them function in anything like what you'd expect to see from a similar situation in a novel. Certainly, in some cases, that's just a matter of efficiency for the game table. (At the very least, we're changing media from book to rpg.) However, in a lot of them, that's not the case. (Or at least, if they were trying to make a novel-simulator, they could/would have easily done it differently.) The interplay of characters and the world is different and things aren't driven by dramatic needs (not that I'm saying they should be) story arcs are either happenstance or railroaded, etc. I've recently been playing some of the older stuff with my group and its...well its not really good at reproducing that sort of literary story (not that the new stuff is necessarily much better).

The fundamental difference here, between literature and the sequence of events the game produces, seems to be the notion of authorship. Is it really less of a story if the authorship decisions are made collectively and through random generation? It may not be "good" literature (whatever that means) as far as most readers might be concerned.

In any endeavor that takes place of multiple events and/or long periods of time (like D&D or sports) humans will see or invent stories, even if they aren't really there. Its part of how we see the world. But that doesn't mean the game itself was doing that.

If that's really true, we do see stories in the events that transpire, then does it matter? It doesn't really matter if the random number generator indicated that Korak the barbarian scored a critical hit and killed the orc chief rather than a single author's decision. The fact is it happened and the players will tell stories of that moment when they reminisce about past campaigns over beer for years to come.

 

[Greg K]

And I think you've missed Mistake Zero. Don't design the game to require such level of responsibility from DMs. Or at least try not to. Plopping out book after book of new options and requiring the DMs to perform the stink test? Not cool. And not something that every game I've played requires, so I know it's possible for them to do better.

Core rules I agree. Once you get to *optional* rules. No. People have different ideas of what D&D is. Some people want traditional fantasy. Some want Star Wars Cantina. Some want complete way out gonzo. Some people focus on dungeoncrawls and hack and slash others on sandbox. Some want traditonal D&D "vancian" spellcasting others want spontaneous casting or spell points. It has been this way since the beginning. You had Gary and, for 3e, Sean K Reynolds saying that there is no place for a detailed critical hit location system, yet Dave Arneson, one of the original creators, did have such as system and published it in Blackmoor.

With so many divergent ways to play, the designers gave us a toolkit (how good is up for debate) with options not meant to work together or not appropriate for every person's campaign. Some players and DMs (to play on your earlier post) forget about the term *optional* or just don't want take the responsibility and then complain rather than tailor things. Yet, the DM's Guide tells DMs they will have to adjust things to their own tables, because the designers don't know each individual table, their playstyle (e.g. are they powergamers that minmax?, do they build organically?), what supplements they use, the party make up, etc.

Sorry that you don't want to take responsibility for the game at your table. You would not be a DM that I would want to play with (nothing personal. I take responsibility for the game that I run and expect other DMs to do the same. That goes beyond adventure creation (which for me is based upon my players characters rather than Dungeon of the week) and includes both deciding what options are appropriate for the style and power level I want to run and vetting characters to be appropriate).

I would rather have to put up with the stink test which is often subjective. Personally, I despised the majority of WOTC supplemental 3e player material and alternative mechanics- often for aesthetic reasons and some for mechanical balance. Most of the WOTC player material and variants that I use come from the DMG and UA and outside of them, I ban pretty much everything else WOTC player based and alternate mechanics in favor of third party offerings. Yet, a lot of people like the WOTC stuff and don't have issues, because it fits their style while others encounter issues.
However, the stink test allows them to produce material for a variety of campaign power and style preferences and people to choose and customize to their preferences. In my opinion, that makes DMs taking responsibility ability for choosing what they want for their games is worth it rather than designing simply for what you think is good or balanced or what I think is good or balanced and forcing us into a certain style of D&D.

 

[Ratskinner]

Except that in Chess, the two players are competing against one another, while in D&D, they are (generally) on the same side. D&D characters are more comparable to chess pieces (which have wildly disparate power levels and functions), while the two sides of white and black are more comparable to the players and the DM's NPCs. Obviously, if one were to run a PVP game, the relative power levels of PCs would take on a new meaning.

Sure, I'm just responding to you're claim:

I've seen that argument before and I don't understand it. Yes, choices you make during play will matter, probably more so than those you make when creating a character.

In response to...

The game changes to another form of system mastery, it's not 'how you built your charatcer' but how you play him....

I mean, surely you must admit that the chess players start with equal resources and its how they utilize them that makes the game? Consider players A & B who are simultaneously playing master C, if that helps. I have played several games now where PCs are mechanically equally potent (and symmetrical), but the play at table makes the difference (both narratively and/or strategically). I'm not saying that D&D should necessarily go that way (most of those games are pretty far afield of D&D). However, if a game functions such that character build decisions do not trump character play decisions for efficacy, I think it can still satisfy those who desire system mastery and those who desire balance. Additionally, players who are learning system mastery during play, will have an easier time catching up if they desire.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

But who really wants to play a role playing game that isn't open-ended as far as options go? That's part of the freedom of playing a game in which, in many ways, anything goes.

I don't. Other than GURPS, Hero System, or a couple of other generic games(and even those are debatable), I've never seen one that *IS* open ended.

When I sat down to play D&D for the first time, I was told "Here is the list of classes, here is a short description of what abilities you get with each class...which one would you like to take?" No one ever said, "This game is D&D...you can be whatever you want! Just write down what you want to be and that's what you are."

Actually, that's a little false. My VERY first game of D&D I was told "Ok, we are all playing using premades since I am running you through the Dragonlance Chronicles. You are Laurana. Here is your character sheet. The game is D&D...the idea is you pretend to be the character you are given and act in character for them."

I've NEVER considered roleplaying to be open-ended. In fact, in pretty much every way, roleplaying was described to me by what you were NOT allowed to do. As an example:
"This is D&D, it's a fantasy game where all sorts of mythological creatures exist but the world is in medieval level technology so there are no cars or computers or anything. You play a character which you generate using these rules. You choose a class from this list and gain its abilities. You choose a race from this list and gain its abilities. Then, after that, you make up a personality for your character and the goal is to think like he would. Make decisions using only what he knows and his likes and dislikes. If you make decisions using out of game knowledge or act in a way that your character wouldn't, we call that metagaming. It's bad."

The solution isn't to require the game designers to close the system or thoroughly test every possible combination. The former gives us the limitations of the computer RPG or MMO, where the entirety of the game is constructive and if it isn't deliberately constructed it can't exist

I've heard this argument about 100 times and it always seems rather silly. How does having a limited selection of races and classes make the game suddenly become a computer game? D&D has ALWAYS had a limited selection of races and classes and/or feats. Even in 3.5e there is a limit. Most games don't let you make up your own feats. If there isn't a feat to do something, it's likely impossible.

The irony, of course is that these computer RPGs that you don't want D&D to become like have the structure they do because they were trying to be like D&D. D&D has a limited set of races and classes, so do the RPG computer games that came after it, since they were attempting to emulate it.

And a limited choice of races and classes doesn't suddenly make D&D a computer game. In D&D, I can visit every city in the entire world, the DM gets to make up what they look like. In a computer game I can only visit the cities that were programmed into the game. In D&D, people I talk to can intelligently answer questions I ask them and can interact in a realistic way. A computer game can't do that. In D&D, the monsters can react to our tactics in a meaningful and intelligent way. Computer games can't do that well. The DM can, if they choose, make up new classes or races and add them to the game if they feel it's appropriate. Even players can ask and possibly get access to things that weren't originally in the game if they want to. In a computer game, nothing new appears without waiting for an expansion pack.

Seriously, what difference in choice do you have when creating a character for any of the old Gold Box D&D games compared to a 1e D&D game being run with the rules out of the book?

the latter puts pressure on the designers to add nothing at all because the overhead cost of doing so just grows. The solution is for everyone involved, DMs and players, to approach the addition of new elements reasonably, rationally, collaboratively, and experimentally. If the experiment doesn't work - adjust the it until it does.

I'd rather no new material be generated than a book full of stuff that I have to spend work to allow in my game. I don't want to spend $30 or $40 on a new book only to have to have my next 4 or 5 sessions of my game ruined as one character proves to be overpowered, so we errata his abilities only to have the next session ruined because we didn't errata them enough only to have the next session ruined because now that we've errataed his abilities the player is no longer having any fun and is complaining all session, and so on.

The reason I spend $30 or $40 on a book is so that they can do all that work for me.

 

[Ratskinner]

The fundamental difference here, between literature and the sequence of events the game produces, seems to be the notion of authorship. Is it really less of a story if the authorship decisions are made collectively and through random generation? It may not be "good" literature (whatever that means) as far as most readers might be concerned.

I think there are other differences as well, that make the two sequences of events very distinguishable. Those differences are what answer the question as to whether something is more of less of a story simulation of a novel, actually, not the authorship method. There are other games out there that are specifically designed to generate stories. They do things like create arcs of action that rise to a climax, put characters against each other to test various theses and drives, etc. I have played a few, and they (can) do a fair job of recreating (usually a specific type/genre) of story, film, etc.

Now, that doesn't mean that things like an action arc or moral dilemmas can't or don't occur in D&D. DM's can generate or enforce them, sometimes players can highlight them, etc. IMO, they are not (usually) driven from within the rules, and they do not look like novels when they occur.

If that's really true, we do see stories in the events that transpire, then does it matter? It doesn't really matter if the random number generator indicated that Korak the barbarian scored a critical hit and killed the orc chief rather than a single author's decision. The fact is it happened and the players will tell stories of that moment when they reminisce about past campaigns over beer for years to come.

It can/does if we are trying to simulate novels. Then we are looking to achieve stories that match what we see there. My contention is that the sequences of events are easily distinguishable. I would contend that the D&D stories you mention here are more like sports memories than they are like fantasy novels, w.r.t. their origination.

And that's fine, good even. I'm not actually trying to besmirch D&D in any way here.