D&D 5E Game Design and Pizza Analogies

[DMZ2112]

I thought Damage on a Miss was what happened to my marriage when I'm not 100% accurate with my urination aim.

I think you're all off base, here, and Mercurius has the right of it. What this forum really needs is a thread on D&D5 Game Design and Peeing on Loved Ones Analogies.

...It took me some time to realize this was not, in fact, what Mercurius said. I may have gaped, horrified, at the screen for several seconds.

 

[Savage Wombat]

I think you're all off base, here, and Mercurius has the right of it. What this forum really needs is a thread on D&D5 Game Design and Peeing on Loved Ones Analogies.

...It took me some time to realize this was not, in fact, what Mercurius said. I may have gaped, horrified, at the screen for several seconds.

Dude, it's PIzza, not PEEzza.

 

[DMZ2112]

Dude, it's PIzza, not PEEzza.

Man, I tried so hard to make that pun work, you don't even know. I am somewhat gratified that you have failed at least as badly as I would have.

 

[Umbran]

And this time, to not make the same mistake, he handed out a survey to his customers so that he is sure to make what they want.

Except, he didn't just hand them out to the people in the shop. The fact that survey was going out was made pretty widely known outside the shop, and folks only had to give him an e-mail address to get a sample of some of the new pizza ideas he had. Reports are that ten thousand and more people at least got samples...

 

[Obryn]

Dude, it's PIzza, not PEEzza.

Hey, look, folks! I found something even worse than pizza analogies!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Does using my chopsticks to steal your knife and fork count? What if they're cool lightsaber chopsticks?

I think it DOES count.

...but now I'm wondering how tough it is to eat pizza with chopsticks. I'm pretty handy with them for a Westerner. Hmmm...maybe if I rolled up the slice?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Hey, look, folks! I found something even worse than pizza analogies!

So now we can talk about the pissing contest between Peezo and Whizzers of the Coast?

 

[Lokiare]

Canadians don't call "Canadian bacon" ham. We call it back bacon.

Nobody calls "American cheese" cheese because it'd be insulting to actual cheese (many good varieties of which are indeed produced in the US).

To contribute to the actual topic ... where the metaphor falls apart for me is that when me and my friends order pizza (which we've done on multiple occasions, including during D&D sessions), and can't all agree on what toppings to get (which is pretty much every time) ... we just order multiple pizzas and get on with our game, rather than make everyone settle for a compromise pizza.

Wait, are you telling me you don't like pasturied processed cheese (like) spread made from a vat of chemicals and infused with neuro toxins instead of being grown organically? huh. Well I guess everyone has their tastes.

As to your second part, yep I agree. Which is why they just need to get 5E out the door and call it D&D: Simple. Then produce something like a 4.5E with fixes and updates and call it D&D: Tactics. Maybe reprint and bug fix OD&D and 1E/2E and call it D&D: Classic or something.

Then produce adventures that can be crossed for all of them. For D&D: Tactics each square on a map is 10'. For the others its 5'. It would tell you what monsters are in each room, but not tell you specifics or stats. You would get that out of your book. It might say 2 Goblin Cutters, 3 Goblin Hexers, and 1 Goblin Charger and if you weren't playing D&D: Tactics you would just say "ok, 6 goblins with funny names". Its all very simple, but WotC refuses to do simple or good business practices...

 

[Lokiare]

Okay, so I really do think pizza analogies are terrible, but I've seen that I'm not allowed an opinion due to my lack of credentials.

Ahnehnois - I'm so super duper not interested in edition sniping.


Surveys are the context, along with the designers' statements about them.

More to the point, though, if it's "no comment" versus loud minority of objectors, I'm going to side with the developers in pursuing their design vision.

For the most part I found the surveys misleading and unhelpful. For instance there was a question around the 2nd or 3rd packet that asked how much you liked the Thief's back stab ability. It had 5 dots you could check from "loved it" to "hated it". However it didn't ask any questions about why you didn't like it.

For instance I put hated it, not because it wasn't a good mechanic, but because the math didn't work out and a highly optimized Thief should never use the mechanic because it was better statistically to take a normal attack with advantage. So they didn't get any real or useful information. In fact they changed it up in the next packet to a completely different mechanic. The surveys were riddled with this. They also asked what each persons favorite edition was instead of going with what everyone likes, they likely used that to filter responses.

In other words it was a biased and not very useful metric.

"You don't like chemicals in your food do you? Well sign this petition to remove sodium chloride from the food!"

 

[Lokiare]

Sadly, you could apply this same comment to music, films, sports, debates on Evolution versus creationism, and pretty much all of human activity...


It could also be my formerly frequenting the WotC forums, which would produce a very different (and arguably biased) sampling. 5e detractors are a bit more mixed here.

Fixed that for you. Both sides use science equally. PM me for details.