D&D 5E What is Quality?

[James Gasik]

I'd argue that this was a "too many cooks" issue.

At the time, WotC was having rolling layoffs and shortly thereafter all the designers who worked on 3rd edition were gone. Some of the folks who had primarily been setting writers, or adventure writers moved into positions where they were directly overseeing the development of rules, and most of those rules were coming in from freelancers.

I was in a meeting with Ed Stark and we were looking at a book (which shall remain unnamed) where we looked at a specific rule from one of the later books and he became irritated that the rule literally broke their internal design guidelines but slipped through anyway.

Another one of the primary R&D people basically saw D&D characters as superheroes, so you could pretty much count on that person's stuff being overpowered.

While I don't know the specific rule, I can think of a few that fit the bill, like "if you can no longer qualify for a prestige class, you lose it's benefits" or the Polymorph Subschool.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm having a very hard time reconciling "it's good" and "it's flawed, but here's a house rule to fix it" applying to the same mechanic.

What about "it's good, but it could be even better"? As is there's no real problem with this hypothetical rule or system as is, but someone's found a way to improve on it nonetheless.

 

[Maxperson]

lol wut?

Has that ever happened in human history? The bolded bit. This seems like a mega-internet take that you'd never dare say in person because people would laughing at you too hard.

I think to an extent it happens quite a bit. When I was much, much younger and I had the time to build settings from the ground up, I would often sideline races and classes, invent new ones, or alter some fundamental rule a bit and then write fluff to explain the difference just to give the setting a different feel(variety's sake). Sometimes it worked out well. Sometimes it flopped. I think there are a fair number of people who want to make a unique setting for the sake of being different(variety's sake).

 

[Lanefan]

Of course they can. I can consider a game good, and not change it because it's meeting my needs. May not be perfect, but it's good enough.

If, on the other hand, I am actively making a change, it's because the irritation caused by a rule that is not meeting my needs being large enough to engage with effort to correct. At that point, representing the rule as "good" when it's obviously irritating enough to change for you is something I find somewhat irrecocilable.

Ah, there's a difference perhaps: sometimes something in the game might already be meeting my needs just fine and I'll change it anyway, just for the hell of it or to experiment with something.

Irritation with a rule is by no means the only motivator for change.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Let's make this really specific:

IMO, Inspiration is a good rule.
IMO, tweaking it so the burden is off the DM and instead, the players award their own Inspiration (limited to once per trait per session), makes it a better rule.

Where is the issue in any of this?

The change is a major redesign of the rule. In D&D terms, moving something from the GM's authority to the player's authority -- to the point that other suggestions to do so are often strongly objected to (and this one is, as well, given how often it's contested on these boards) is a pretty large change. This isn't an incremental improvement, it's a redesign the makes the rule be fundamentally different.

So, if it's a good rule, but improving it requires a fundamental change to the rule, I'm kinda stuck reconciling this. It's not like you've given the rule a nudge, you've effectively rewritten the entire rule.

 

[Ovinomancer]

What about "it's good, but it could be even better"? As is there's no real problem with this hypothetical rule or system as is, but someone's found a way to improve on it nonetheless.

Not much of a problem. Unless it requires extensive changes, in which case I'm questioning the initial claim.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Ah, there's a difference perhaps: sometimes something in the game might already be meeting my needs just fine and I'll change it anyway, just for the hell of it or to experiment with something.

Irritation with a rule is by no means the only motivator for change.

Sure, but that's kinda off to the side -- design iterations are often like this and usually aren't actually satisfied with the status quo but are looking for improvement. A claim that one would just randomly change rules to see what happens is rather outside the scope of the discussion, but there's no consideration of good or improvement involved.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

The change is a major redesign of the rule. In D&D terms, moving something from the GM's authority to the player's authority -- to the point that other suggestions to do so are often strongly objected to (and this one is, as well, given how often it's contested on these boards) is a pretty large change. This isn't an incremental improvement, it's a redesign the makes the rule be fundamentally different.

So, if it's a good rule, but improving it requires a fundamental change to the rule, I'm kinda stuck reconciling this. It's not like you've given the rule a nudge, you've effectively rewritten the entire rule.

I'm honestly surprised that you are pushing the "major redesign" and "fundamentally different" angle.

1. The DMG (p 241) establishes precedent with a Variant that allows players to award inspiration to other players. In fact, it is called "Only Players Award Inspiration"
2. The players are already playing according to their TBIFs anyway, all they need to do is say so when one comes up and they can take their inspiration without the DM's blessing at our table. It's rather elegant with no heavy lifting required.
If everyone is playing in good faith, which is what I consider baseline for even stepping to the table, this is a boon to play efficiency.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm honestly surprised that you are pushing the "major redesign" and "fundamentally different" angle.

1. The DMG (p 241) establishes precedent with a Variant that allows players to award inspiration to other players. In fact, it is called "Only Players Award Inspiration"
2. The players are already playing according to their TBIFs anyway, all they need to do is say so when one comes up and they can take their inspiration without the DM's blessing at our table. It's rather elegant with no heavy lifting required.
If everyone is playing in good faith, which is what I consider baseline for even stepping to the table, this is a boon to play efficiency.

The option is a major redesign as well. I'm not looking at this as "there's a precedent" I'm looking at it as to what it's actually doing in game design. Moving a resource from GM fiat (with all that entails) to player determined with only very light oversight up to 4 times a session, that's a very large change on the design front. It takes a maybe resources and turns it into a reliable resource (which is itself a large change). It takes an authority that's traditionally and otherwise seated strongly with the GM (rewards come from the GM) and moves it to the player side. That's also huge.

As for players playing according to BIFTs -- not in evidence. In fact, a large number of respondents on this board have said they don't even pay attention to them. And that's because the whole BIFTs/Inspiration are bolt on and very shallow as presented. They're intriguing on the D&D side (if that's you major experience in RPGs) because they're something rather different from the traditional, but they're really weak example of things other games have been crushing all along. And the basic presentation of them (ie, no options) is very weak. The GM advice goes from "ignore this" to "award however you like." And it's all GM overhead -- something else the GM has to manage and execute on alongside all the other bits. This is the basic design of this rule, and it's not great. Not great at all. It's actively bad compared to things it could have done. It's actually actively bad compared to the houserule.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Ah, yes, I only meant to suggest doing it across something like 5E’s lifetime and not some madhouse mid-campaign mixups.

It likely would have been better conveyed if I included the intended implication of [overall/campaign] variety’s sake rather than give the impression I thought the variety of rules themselves was the hook.

Ahh okay that makes way more sense, thank you for clearing it up!

The thing is on the internet you just never know lol.