Should game designers remain neutral when designing D&D?

[Obryn]

I suspect any version of D&D is going to exclude things that aren't D&D. As I understand it, Fate is already a pretty playstyle-neutral version of what it is. So are many other 'generic' rpgs. I think the OP was suggesting that D&D should be a generic game as well, given the breadth of its audience.

But yes, it's impossible for a set of rules to be neutral on the issue of what the rules themselves mean. The neutrality I'm getting at is with regards to things like genre conventions, tactical balance, and of course the basic elements of plot, character, and setting.

Oh, I see what semantic game you're playing.

Yeah, you have fun with that. I'm not going to do this dance.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Oh, I see what semantic game you're playing.

Yes, I deviously constructed an argument wherein Fate (and MHRP and so on and so on) is not a style of D&D.

There is plenty of room to improve on the type of playstyle issues I was getting at; it's hardly a dodge.

 

[Obryn]

Yes, I deviously constructed an argument wherein Fate (and MHRP and so on and so on) is not a style of D&D.

There is plenty of room to improve on the type of playstyle issues I was getting at; it's hardly a dodge.

Nope, it's the redefinition of D&D to fit (and only include) your narrow physics sim playstyle. So, like I said, have fun with that. I'm done humoring those sorts of arguments.

The neutrality I'm getting at applies to all playstyles, but not to people who don't accept the fundamental precepts of the game; I don't think there's any box big enough to capture people who are trying to use the physics engine as something other than a physics engine. And indeed, that's why I advocate making it clear that that's what the rules are and removing extraneous or metagame elements, to avoid such conflicts.

 

[pemerton]

The neutrality I'm getting at applies to all playstyles, but not to people who don't accept the fundamental precepts of the game

I think if you are designing a game that has, almost since its inception, been played using a wide variety of approaches of which "physics engine" is only one; and you begin from a fundamental precept that the rules should be a physics engine; then your are not being neutral!

I suspect any version of D&D is going to exclude things that aren't D&D.

And I suspect any version of a physics-engine game is not going to be D&D either, given that D&D has never been an exclusively physics-engine game (and even 3E, the version that came closest, still had non-physics-engine elements such as XP and levels on the PC build side, hit points on the action resolution side, and challenge-based rather than fiction-based encounter design guidelines, on the GMing side).

As I understand it, Fate is already a pretty playstyle-neutral version of what it is. So are many other 'generic' rpgs.

Fate playstyle neutral? I guess you could play narrativist LotR or narrativist Star Trek. But when the OP talked about playstyles I didn't get the sense that what was meant was genre. I thought that what was meant was things like the relationship between mechanical resolution and ingame events; the relationship beween mechanical resolution and pacing, and the effect of the first on the second; whether the game supports robust "win" and "loss" conditions, and how transparent these are to players, and how many workarounds there are when you're on the losing trajectory; etc.

As always, given that there are approximately a billion RPGs out there that do what you want - GURPS, RQ, RM, HARP, C&S, HarnMaster, heck Burning Wheel with a bit of drifting aer just the ones I think of off the top of my head - I don't understand why you feel the need to lament that D&D hasn't become a clone of those games. I also don't understand how you reconcile your need to lament with your conviction that D&D, at its core, really is a "physics engine" game. At a certain point oughtn't we to conclude that a sheep is not a poorly-designed goat but it's own thing?

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Yes, but those are neutral decisions. Characters die as easily as people die. They are as heroic as people are. Magic is as magical as it really would be.

That isn't neutral though. On a scale of "Impossible to kill the PCs" to "The PCs die from a light breeze" you are choosing "PCs die to one sword strike in the right place". It might be the "default" because it's the one people are already familiar with, but it isn't "neutral". To be neutral, you'd need to write it in such a way that the game doesn't even decide how easily anyone dies, it just lets each DM decide on their own. It would be the only way to stay completely neutral.

And since the rules are observable laws, the DM (who does not, as far as we know, exist in the real world) can use them to create any set of outcomes. If he wants tougher characters, he uses the language of the rules to describe how tough they are, and provides a rationale that could range from naturalism (your character is a Dunedain and thus is tougher than any real person) to fatalism (your character is destined for great things and is harder to kill).

But the laws of physics say that someone's skin would have to be made out of stone in order to be able to survive the kind of damage that most D&D characters take. The laws of physics say that if someone's skin was made out of stone they wouldn't be able to move.

There is no fate or luck in the real laws of physics so no one could survive because of those reasons if your rules used the laws of physics.

In a game based on the real laws of physics it would mean that you could not gain hitpoints or survive any well placed attack on you since that the way real skin, muscles and organs work. There would be no valid excuse for surviving and it would prevent all playstyles that want PCs to survive more than one attack.

The rules saying a level 1 character has 10 hit points, that's a play style. The rules describing how hard a character with 10 hit points is to kill, that's not.

I'm really confused by this statement in particular. What is the difference between saying a level 1 character has 10 hitpoints and weapons do 10 points of damage and saying a 1st level character has 5 hitpoints and saying weapons do 5 damage? Both are functionally the same thing. In both games 1st level people die in one hit.

They are both describing a playstyle where 1st level PCs die easily. In order to change the playstyle you need to either change the hitpoints or the damage done by weapons. Then you create a new tone(either more or less "heroic" or "superhuman"). However, by setting a number for both hitpoints and for damage you are setting the tone for the game and therefore setting the playstyle. Games with low hitpoints where you can easily die will have less fighting because of how deadly it is. Characters will be much more willing to negotiate or find an alternate means to resolve a dispute. Games where a weapon can barely scratch a PC will cause them to fight first and ask questions later way more often. Neither choice is "neutral", however.

I also find it problematic that you think reality and heroism are compatible. Is there no such thing as a hero? Are there no wondrous things in this life?

In real life "True Heroism" is impossible. To me, heroism involves running into a room filled with 20 armed thugs and defeating them all without a scratch. In real life no one does that. The laws of physics prevent it. Only in action movies and our imagination.

In real life, the 20 people gang up on even the best fighter on the planet and beat him up. Or they kill him with one bullet that is impossible to block or dodge.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Yes, I deviously constructed an argument wherein Fate (and MHRP and so on and so on) is not a style of D&D.

There is plenty of room to improve on the type of playstyle issues I was getting at; it's hardly a dodge.

The problem is that Fate IS a style of D&D...if we define D&D as a Medieval Fantasy Game with Elves, Dwarves, Dragons, Magic, and High Adventure. Which is about the only thing all the editions of D&D have in common.

Within that framework there are nearly infinite permutations of rules that will still qualify as D&D(IMHO) but will have completely different playstyles. Fate fully qualifies as one of those permutations. Though, it's not the one I'd pick since it is a little too far out of my playstyle.

I can play D&D with Hero System, GURPS, Palladium Fantasy, Fate, 13th Age, and likely a number of other games. D&D just gets to be D&D because it is made by WOTC.

 

[XunValdorl_of_Kilsek]

In a word, no.

In multiple words, hell no.

The entire RPG ecosystem is built on the basic premise of, "Here's a cool way we thought we could pretend to be an elf/vampire/alien/demon/human/sentient mushroom. Maybe you'd like it too!"

That said, any project as big as D&D Next is obviously going to have some compromises from within relating to the designers' personal tastes. And when one designer isn't willing to compromise, that designer is going to not end up contributing much to the project. There's a reason Monte Cook left the D&D Next development process very early in the proceedings --- because it's clear he was looking for something much more freeform and slightly less traditional than "D&D," and we as the gaming community now have another great gaming option in Numenara because of it.

But in my opinion it's some pretty wishful thinking to believe that D&D Next won't be influenced, possibly heavily so, by the perceptions and biases of the people creating the game. I'm going into the D&D Next launch fully in mind that it's probably going to have a lot of "Mike Mearls" in its design. I don't particularly care for "Mike Mearls" design, so I'm not holding my breath that D&D 5e is going to blow me away.

You want an RPG catered EXACTLY to your tastes, go make your own.

Don't have enough time, desire, or expertise, you say?

Dang, guess you'll just have to pay money for one, and hope that the designer(s) include more of what you like, and less of what you don't.

So D&D should be designed to cater to just one playstyle and screw all others?

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

So D&D should be designed to cater to just one playstyle and screw all others?

This is what I've been trying to say. It HAS to because any rules they create actually CAUSE a playstyle if followed precisely. 1e has a different playstyle than 2e which is different from 3e which is different from 4e. They have a decent amount of overlap, but the rules for each edition create a different playstyle. They all cater to their OWN playstyle and screw all others.

However, people have been very adept at selectively changing, dropping, and plain forgetting rules in each and every edition to make the game fit their preferred playstyle better. They've also been written with enough wiggle room to at least slightly adjust their playstyle within a given range.

Sometimes your playstyle fits a game close enough that you overlook the parts of the game that don't work with your playstyle. Other times it is so different that you can't make it work no matter what you do.

I know this better than other people because I don't really HAVE a playstyle. I literally use whatever playstyle the rules and adventures give me. My playstyle changes based on the game or edition I'm running. I try not to force my playstyle into a game and instead let it inspire me with its idea of a fun game. If its playstyle doesn't appeal to me, I simply don't run or play the game.

 

[Ahnehnois]

That isn't neutral though. On a scale of "Impossible to kill the PCs" to "The PCs die from a light breeze" you are choosing "PCs die to one sword strike in the right place". It might be the "default" because it's the one people are already familiar with, but it isn't "neutral". To be neutral, you'd need to write it in such a way that the game doesn't even decide how easily anyone dies, it just lets each DM decide on their own. It would be the only way to stay completely neutral.

I think you answered your own question, and I do agree with this perspective. Ideally, this would have been manifested with the sort of "dials" originally proposed for 5e. I think the appropriate method for writing the game would be to describe the real world and then clearly explain how to adjust key parameters in order to change the tone to fit one's needs. Perfectly neutral? No. But I don't think it gets any more neutral than that.

But the laws of physics say that someone's skin would have to be made out of stone in order to be able to survive the kind of damage that most D&D characters take. The laws of physics say that if someone's skin was made out of stone they wouldn't be able to move.

I think that's a pretty gross overstatement. I don't narrate damage as metal blades bouncing off a fighter's stone skin. The point I'm getting at is that as-is, damage is a nebulous consolidation of factors (including physical harm and also some combination of fatigue/skill/luck, and who knows what else). I think it would be better to have a clear mechanical representation of when a character is physically harmed, and then have other mechanics for other things.

I don't think the point of a health system should be to reduplicate the "it's just a flesh wound" scene from Monty Python.

There is no fate or luck in the real laws of physics so no one could survive because of those reasons if your rules used the laws of physics.

Well, that's pretty debatable, isn't it (though I think I agree, I suspect the majority of the world does not)? But there's also no DM here in real life. As constructed, D&D postulates a set of rules, and a DM that operates outside of those rules, which is why he can manipulate them to decide character creation parameters, say when and how mechanics are engaged, and apply changes to them to reflect circumstances.

To say that the rules are a simulation engine is not to say that your individual game must be. Quite the contrary. I'm saying that the rules should clearly serve one and only one purpose, and the DM should take care of the rest. The amount by which the DM chooses to alter, subvert, or ignore those laws of physics/rules of the game can vary according to an individual group's tastes, which is why I'm calling this "neutral".

And indeed, the d20 constellation of games is not bad at all at doing this. The tone of a D&D 3e game is substantially different than of a Modern, CoC d20, Star Wars, or other d20 game. Yet, they're all using fundamentally the same mechanics (d20 + modifiers vs DC, ability scores, skills, feats etc.). And even two D&D games can be quite different in style.

In a game based on the real laws of physics it would mean that you could not gain hitpoints or survive any well placed attack on you since that the way real skin, muscles and organs work. There would be no valid excuse for surviving and it would prevent all playstyles that want PCs to survive more than one attack.

Again, this is an exaggeration. Clearly, you have not worked at a military hospital (I have). Sometimes people do survive significant wounds and keep going; the human body changes dramatically in life or death circumstances. Other times, they don't. However, I still think that as above, it's not difficult to "dial up" (or down) durability, lethality, and the level of challenge the characters face if the game is written to do that.

I think the original bit above about needing to write the game so that these parameters have defaults, but the defaults are not assumed, is important. To some extent, D&D does this already. For example, 3e has a default array for minor characters, and a standard array for "heroic" characters. It's clear that those are defaults, however I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of characters are not built with those numbers. There's no reason the same logic can't be spread around.

In real life "True Heroism" is impossible.

See, [MENTION=11821]Obryn[/MENTION] thought it was unfair of me to even suggest that. But apparently not.

To me, heroism involves running into a room filled with 20 armed thugs and defeating them all without a scratch. In real life no one does that. The laws of physics prevent it. Only in action movies and our imagination.

In real life, the 20 people gang up on even the best fighter on the planet and beat him up. Or they kill him with one bullet that is impossible to block or dodge.

There's no reason why various law of physics mechanics can't be used to create such a scenario. However, I don't think presenting that as the default would be very "neutral" at all. Do you?

To me, that sounds like a high level fighter walking into a room of low-level mooks, or a demigod of legend walking into a room of normal humans. It does not sound like one normal human walking into a room of other normal humans. If you want that, I think it falls to your DM to create player characters that are well outside the norm of what a typical person is, which certainly is something that most people do to some extent. I've never had any trouble creating those sorts of experiences even using very "gritty" d20 mods, but I hardly think that a new player picking up the game out of the box should get that outcome by default.

The problem is that Fate IS a style of D&D...if we define D&D as a Medieval Fantasy Game with Elves, Dwarves, Dragons, Magic, and High Adventure. Which is about the only thing all the editions of D&D have in common.

Within that framework there are nearly infinite permutations of rules that will still qualify as D&D(IMHO) but will have completely different playstyles. Fate fully qualifies as one of those permutations. Though, it's not the one I'd pick since it is a little too far out of my playstyle.

I can play D&D with Hero System, GURPS, Palladium Fantasy, Fate, 13th Age, and likely a number of other games. D&D just gets to be D&D because it is made by WOTC.

Well, that's an interesting take on it. If you want to define D&D as anything of a constellation of games that can recreate certain fantasy tropes, that's fine. Those games are fundamentally different however, and I hardly think that one published game could ever split the differences between them. So in that sense, I think many other people posting to this thread have agreed that neutrality is simply impossible.

 

[Desdichado]

Well, that's an interesting take on it. If you want to define D&D as anything of a constellation of games that can recreate certain fantasy tropes, that's fine. Those games are fundamentally different however, and I hardly think that one published game could ever split the differences between them. So in that sense, I think many other people posting to this thread have agreed that neutrality is simply impossible.

The same can be said for various products that have worn the actual name of D&D over the years. You want playstyle support variability, try using OD&D without any supplements, and then compare that to late era 3.5 with all supplements on. Or heavily tactical 4e with lots of supplements.

You want high variable setting assumptions? Play back to back Blackmoor and Dark Sun, followed by Eberron.

D&D has always been a big tent. It becomes very arbitrary and difficult to define what are the "fundamental precepts" of D&D that have to be included vs. those that separate it from some other roleplaying game. And you can't even go by whether or not it includes the name D&D, since you could make very convincing arguments--and find plenty of people to support the position that Labyrinth Lord or Pathfinder are more D&D than 4e. If you can do that, why not Fate, or MHRP too?