D&D General Rules, Rulings and Second Order Design: D&D and AD&D Examined

[Clint_L]

When I compare D&D to the rules for Dungeon World (and hopefully someone who actually plays DW and knows what they are talking about more than I do can weigh in), some obvious differences jump out.

1. Combat is much less constrained, and basically is handled similarly to other kinds of "moves." In other words, it is more narrative. If what you want is more of a pure storytelling/role-play experience, then this is going to be way better, and I'll bet it is much faster paced. However...I like getting out my miniatures and building a Dungeon set, or whatever. So for me, this potential feature becomes a flaw.

2. Adventure building is, interestingly, a bit more constrained in the sense that the game actually helps you build an adventure. Plus, players are more empowered to contribute to the story. I like this. A lot. There is also more consistency in how moves are resolved, unlike skill checks in D&D, which have far more DM discretion built into them.

3. World building is unconstrained, but again there is a lot more help built into the rules.

My takeaway is that if it weren't for criterion 1, I might prefer DW. I hope to get a chance to play it! But given that #1 is really important at a lot of tables, D&D has a built-in advantage.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think focusing on fun is a perfectly fine way of thinking about things. It may lead to further conversations about what is meant by fun, but I think generally speaking, it means being aware whether everyone at the table is having a good time and being responsive to that (in design I think it can mean different things but noting whether people are enjoying themselves and having fun is very useful to observe in playtest in my opinion). Where it can go off the rails I think is when you try to artificially maintain a level of fun at all times in the game, not realizing you need the peaks and valleys for contrast. It can be like the loudness wars in music.

So you would agree with the above, that if you ask your significant other, "Where would you like to eat tonight?" then an informative, effective answer is, "Somewhere good"?

Because that's my problem here. Responding to, "Where should we eat?" with "Somewhere tasty" is useless. Obviously! You should obviously pick something that tastes good! But what does "tastes good" mean? Each of us has different taste. Different places produce the same food different ways--e.g. even within the narrow space of "burger restaurant," I may vastly prefer the taste of fries from Restaurant A but vastly prefer the actual burgers from Restaurant B. (For me personally, I prefer Arby's curly fries but generally prefer burgers from Burgerville, or Carl's Jr. if BV isn't available.)

Instead, you need to start earlier. What do you want to eat? Burgers? Tacos or tex-mex? Chinese? Pizza? THen at that point you can, as said above, start talking about the tastiness of various things. Or if you're cooking for yourself, you need to pick a recipe and then make that recipe tasty.

Starting from "make something fun" gets you nowhere. You need a destination first, and then you can work on making both that destination and the journey to it as fun as possible. Starting from "make something tasty" gets you nowhere. You need something you're going for. Perhaps you fully improvise the whole way along--I've done that, more than once, when I had to figure out something to make and just had a cabinet full of random bits. Did I want to produce something tasty (and nutritious)? Absolutely! Was I solely cooking for what tastes good? Not at all! I was navigating a difficult challenge: make a meal out of these ingredients, and no others. I had several goals: timeliness (gotta get the food on the table before people riot...or at least before they go to bed), flavor, nutrition, practicality, efficiency. To have prioritized taste above all else would have ruined the effort, even though I certainly agree that making the food edible is essential! (In the end, I ended up making a slightly unorthodox pork stew using various miscellaneous canned vegetables and vegetable purees we had on hand. It was pretty good for being only half an hour from "dear God what are we going to eat tonight" to serving it up.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think focusing on fun is a perfectly fine way of thinking about things. It may lead to further conversations about what is meant by fun, but I think generally speaking, it means being aware whether everyone at the table is having a good time and being responsive to that (in design I think it can mean different things but noting whether people are enjoying themselves and having fun is very useful to observe in playtest in my opinion). Where it can go off the rails I think is when you try to artificially maintain a level of fun at all times in the game, not realizing you need the peaks and valleys for contrast. It can be like the loudness wars in music.

Okay. So what comes of that focus? Say you are designing a game. What does "focus on fun" tell you to DO?

 

[Bedrockgames]

Okay. So what comes of that focus? Say you are designing a game. What does "focus on fun" tell you to DO?

It means what I just typed. You need to pay attention to how much fun people are having playing the game in playtest, pay attention to areas of the game that seem to dramatically cause issues with people having fun, and adjust accordingly. It is a broad principle and not the only goal people should have, but it is very easy to overlook paying attention to fun when you are focused on other things (for example it is easy to get caught up in whether the mechanics are emulating the feel you want, or if the system is producing the style of play you are interested in, and not see people aren't enjoying the game even though it ticks off 7 other categories of thing you are measuring). I think if fun is your focus, it just means are putting things like whether the game is a blast to play, ahead of more theoretical considerations (even if you are still considering those things).

 

[Oofta]

When I compare D&D to the rules for Dungeon World (and hopefully someone who actually plays DW and knows what they are talking about more than I do can weigh in), some obvious differences jump out.

1. Combat is much less constrained, and basically is handled similarly to other kinds of "moves." In other words, it is more narrative. If what you want is more of a pure storytelling/role-play experience, then this is going to be way better, and I'll bet it is much faster paced. However...I like getting out my miniatures and building a Dungeon set, or whatever. So for me, this potential feature becomes a flaw.

2. Adventure building is, interestingly, a bit more constrained in the sense that the game actually helps you build an adventure. Plus, players are more empowered to contribute to the story. I like this. A lot. There is also more consistency in how moves are resolved, unlike skill checks in D&D, which have far more DM discretion built into them.

3. World building is unconstrained, but again there is a lot more help built into the rules.

My takeaway is that if it weren't for criterion 1, I might prefer DW. I hope to get a chance to play it! But given that #1 is really important at a lot of tables, D&D has a built-in advantage.

If you're interested in DW, you may want to check out the videos linked in this post that @Aldarc researched for me. DW is a very different system.

 

[Oofta]

I think the people arguing that fun is a poor goal would disagree with your analogy. You’ve already decided on steak, and a good-tasting steak is fairly well defined.

The equivalent to telling someone to “make a game that’s fun” is if you ask your spouse where they want to eat and they reply “somewhere good.” It’s not really new information.

If you’ve already decided to make a game about exploring mega dungeons, then you’ve already decided what kind of fun you want, and so focusing on that starts to be a worthwhile exercise.

I'm assuming we're talking about the general fantasy genre. There are many games that do this, not to mention other editions of D&D. So we've absolutely decided on eating steak.

I don't see how any of this addresses the thoughts in the OP. But saying "focusing on making a game fun results in unfun games" is just odd word salad that means nothing. But I'm done discussing this detail unless someone can explain how "attempting to achieve a goal is a terrible way to achieve a goal" means, it's not productive.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The phrase used is "focusing on 'fun' alone leads to worse results". I think that bupkiss.

Okay. Why? There are many priorities in game design. Considering fun alone, and nixing all other possible concerns, is very likely to cause significant issues.

What else are you supposed to focus on?

An excellent question! Unfortunately, there is no single answer. There is no formula for good design. It'd be pretty cool if there was, but there isn't. Instead, you have to do a mix of three things: choose something you think players will find worth doing, read others' work and seeing what stuff they decided players would find worth doing, and talk to people you think would be interested in the kinds of things you'd like to make and find out what they already think is worth doing.

When you're cooking a steak you're focusing on making the best tasting steak possible.

Sure. But if you simply sear it and taste it, you can't learn that deglazing with balsamic vinegar after you're done cooking takes the flavor into the stratosphere, because you'll never bother with this ingredient that is horribly not-tasty on its own (The Vinegar Tasters notwithstanding.) This is the fundamental problem with any method like this, what is apparently in marketing terms called "A/B testing": the problem of local maxima. Every direction away results in locally worse outcomes, so you can't tell whether there are other, equally-valid but distinct maxima elsewhere, nor whether the maximum you have is global (if one even exists.) In mathematics terms, strict optimization along these lines is a "naive" algorithm. You need further tools, thing s truly beyond "

Want to discuss how to make the game more enjoyable for the majority of people? Fine. We'll continue the conversation.

But the only reason I can see to use phrases like this is to basically say that the current design approach is bad. So how about this. How about we talk about the concepts in the OP? Talk about where we need hard and soft rules? Because the other stuff? It's just making up nonsense to distract from actually discussing how you achieve the goal of making the game fun.

I do think the design approach is bad. That doesn't mean I think the design is bad (really, the worst I would call it is incomplete.) Which is another part of my point here.

And as for that last bit, this is exactly the OPPOSITE of what I want. I'm saying that announcing "just make the game fun 4head" IS distracting from actually discussing how you achieve the goal of making the game (more) fun. Because you discuss how to make the game (more) fun by talking about the destinations you're aiming at and how you mean to get there, not by saying 'Well just do the most fun thing. Done." "Just design for fun" is by intent a conversation-ender, not a conversation-starter. It terminates analysis, pushes discussion into the ineffable (and thus often into infuriating and intractable debates about philosophical notions), and just generally is counterproductive.

Instead, one should start from an actual design goal, like "gameplay focused on long-term strategy and problem-solving through logistics, resource and personnel management, battlefield diplomacy, and carefully mapping/documenting the environment." Or, "gameplay focused on naturalistic reasoning used to predict future outcomes based on understanding the mechanics of play and collecting (potentially incomplete) knowledge about relevant things, people, or events." Or, "gameplay focused on high-action adventure, through dynamic encounters, irreducible tactical decision-making*, and player-driven motivators." These are design goals. And you can almost certainly guess which games I'm referencing with those goals, because whether their implementation was good, bad, or indifferent, they really did have goals and really did pursue them.

*Meaning, choices that cannot be reduced to mere calculations.

 

[Staffan]

The phrase used is "focusing on 'fun' alone leads to worse results". I think that bupkiss. What else are you supposed to focus on? When you're cooking a steak you're focusing on making the best tasting steak possible.

The thing is that the things that make a steak taste good are, generally speaking, not the same things that make an apple pie taste good, and the desired tastes of the two are generally not all that similar either. So "make it taste good" is not a particularly useful instruction in a recipe.

So you first need to decide what type of experience you want from your food (or from your game). Then you work on making the best type of that food (or game), and hopefully you'll enjoy a meal that tastes good (or game that is fun) at the end.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It means what I just typed. You need to pay attention to how much fun people are having playing the game in playtest, pay attention to areas of the game that seem to dramatically cause issues with people having fun, and adjust accordingly. It is a broad principle and not the only goal people should have, but it is very easy to overlook paying attention to fun when you are focused on other things (for example it is easy to get caught up in whether the mechanics are emulating the feel you want, or if the system is producing the style of play you are interested in, and not see people aren't enjoying the game even though it ticks off 7 other categories of thing you are measuring). I think if fun is your focus, it just means are putting things like whether the game is a blast to play, ahead of more theoretical considerations (even if you are still considering those things).

Okay. How do you make games that are "a blast to play"?

Again, I have repeatedly said that fun is important. So if your argument is predicated on, in summary, "you've forgotten to actually make the game fun," then I agree with you. Games need to be fun! But "make the game fun" is not a design goal.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Okay. How do you make games that are "a blast to play"?

Really the answer to that is you have to work at getting good at making games. This is like asking how focusing on writing songs that are moving is done. No one doubts that is one of the major priorities of song writing. But it isn't like having that as a priority provides you with a set of steps for writing music. And there are steps you can follow, there are things you can look for and theories you can learn, but it ultimately comes down to writing songs and testing them before an audience. I think game design is somewhat similar. Whatever school of thought you come from, whatever methods you are using to design your game, the big thing that should shape how you design is what works at the table, and what works at the table is going to be what people find fun about the game. By designing games with table play in mind and prioritizing things like playability, I think that is probably the most important thing. But I don't I can tell you how to design a game that is fun and playable, other than saying you need to truly keep an eye on how people react to the system at the table itself.

Again, I have repeatedly said that fun is important. So if your argument is predicated on, in summary, "you've forgotten to actually make the game fun," then I agree with you. Games need to be fun! But "make the game fun" is not a design goal.

Sure it is, if you are prioritizing it. For example you may have a mechanic that is broken on paper (overpowered, underpowered, busts the math somehow, etc). Balance is usually going to be a design goal, even if it isn't the design goal. But if you are prioritizing fun at the table, the overall level of excitement and engagement it produces, and you notice that despite being a broken mechanic people really seem to have fun with it, then in my mind that is designing with fun as a goal. Now the issue with fun is it is vague, and fun can vary from person to person. So it isn't as precise. But that doesn't mean it can't be a goal or can't be the most important thing in one's design.

Would I say my sole goal is fun? No. Would I say my design goal is fun? I think that is one way of putting how I approach design. I would probably use different language, but I think it is a reasonable statement.