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

[MichaelSomething]

An encounter with two guards at the city gate isn’t fun. Tell the players they get through the gate without much trouble and move on to the fun. Niggling details of food supplies and encumbrance usually aren’t fun, so don’t sweat them, and let the players get to the adventure and on to the fun. Long treks through endless corridors in the ancient dwarven stronghold beneath the mountains aren’t fun. Move the PCs quickly from encounter to encounter, and on to the fun!

 

[Bedrockgames]

An encounter with two guards at the city gate isn’t fun. Tell the players they get through the gate without much trouble and move on to the fun. Niggling details of food supplies and encumbrance usually aren’t fun, so don’t sweat them, and let the players get to the adventure and on to the fun. Long treks through endless corridors in the ancient dwarven stronghold beneath the mountains aren’t fun. Move the PCs quickly from encounter to encounter, and on to the fun!

Just to be clear, that isn't the kind of thing I had in mind. This is an example of loudness wars approach to fun I mentioned earlier

 

[Oofta]

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.

I play games to have fun. Not sure why else you would play a game.

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.

So in other words, you do things to achieve your goals. Like I said, my goal when I play a game is to have fun. You can't design a game for everyone.

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 "

I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. All I can say is that D&D is not a niche game. It's designed to appeal to the broadest possible audience that want to play the style of game evoked by D&D and other similar games.

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.

But those things you mention "long-term strategy and problem solving ... " are not fun for me. They are design patterns that you can implement. They may be what you want out of a game. I don't. In any case if you enjoy those types of activities then those activities will be ... wait for it ... fun for you. The goal remains making a fun game.

It seems like you want to insert things that you find enjoyable and then say the game doesn't meet your personal needs because, gasp, they focused on what is actually fun for most people even though it's different from what you want. No game can be right for everyone. Obviously every game focuses on different gameplay experiences so that their target audience will have fun playing the game.

But I really don't see what any of this has to do with the price of tea in China. Or the thread topic.

 

[Oofta]

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.

If I were developing a word party game it would look different than D&D. I would still design that word party game with the goal of being it being a fun game. Obviously it's targeting different experiences.

Does any of this have an actual point other than to just argue?

 

[FarBeyondC]

If I were developing a word party game it would look different than D&D. I would still design that word party game with the goal of being it being a fun game. Obviously it's targeting different experiences.

Does any of this have an actual point other than to just argue?

Why would the word party game look different from D&D if the goal in designing both was to make a fun game?

 

[bloodtide]

I started with D&D. The Red Box. Trying to save the cleric from the evil wizard Bargle. So I consider myself that type of gamer, and DM: whatever I say goes and I utterly don't care about the rules. Though BECMI D&D, much like 5E did not have rules for "much" anyway.

I often bring up the "second order" type things when discussing D&D. So many games add so much "second order" to a game under all sorts of other words "gentile mans agreement, homebrew, theme, session 0, or whatever.

So...so..so many will complain endless about "the game rules" and how the game is "broken", when it's THEIR style of playing that is at fault and the cause.

Take the beyond classic Mundane vs Magic:

Player "Flying monsters? My mundane pure melee warrior has no ranged attacks? So what do i do for the whole battle?"

DM-"Sucks to be you. Mundane characters suck. Just sit back, do nothing and be quiet while the magic characters play."

VS

Mundane Player: "Humm..wonder if we will EVER encounter something like an anti magic field?'

DM-"ABSOULUTELY NOT! NEVER! It would be SO WRONG to force the player of a magic using character to EVER just sit back and do nothing even for just one round. Er..um...oh, I mean anti-magic is super rare."

Mundane Player ".........

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I started with D&D. The Red Box. Trying to save the cleric from the evil wizard Bargle. So I consider myself that type of gamer, and DM: whatever I say goes and I utterly don't care about the rules. Though BECMI D&D, much like 5E did not have rules for "much" anyway.

I often bring up the "second order" type things when discussing D&D. So many games add so much "second order" to a game under all sorts of other words "gentile mans agreement, homebrew, theme, session 0, or whatever.

So...so..so many will complain endless about "the game rules" and how the game is "broken", when it's THEIR style of playing that is at fault and the cause.

Take the beyond classic Mundane vs Magic:

Player "Flying monsters? My mundane pure melee warrior has no ranged attacks? So what do i do for the whole battle?"

DM-"Sucks to be you. Mundane characters suck. Just sit back, do nothing and be quiet while the magic characters play."

VS

Mundane Player: "Humm..wonder if we will EVER encounter something like an anti magic field?'

DM-"ABSOULUTELY NOT! NEVER! It would be SO WRONG to force the player of a magic using character to EVER just sit back and do nothing even for just one round. Er..um...oh, I mean anti-magic is super rare."

Mundane Player ".........

I mean...

The rules of the game still make this a problem? Like I'm not sure this argument is as strong as you think it is. You aren't wrong, there absolutely is a stylistic problem here. But it's also a problem within the rules themselves, for several reasons. AMFs are rare and, generally, punish everyone, not just the spellcasters. (Consider that most Fighters depend on magical arms and armor to be able to fight, at least in 3e/PF, which I assume is your primary reference point here.) In both 3e/PF and 5e, AMF is an extremely high-level effect, an 8th level spell in 5e, a 6th level spell in 3.5e. Things that can fly appear quite early in both games; from what I can see, the cocatrice is a CR 1 creature with flight.

So, while style matters here...so do the rules. The rules make it easy to invalidate the mundane character. They make it a nuclear option (including the "fallout affects everyone" sense) to invalidate the magic-using character.

Rules designed differently, rules that made it both easier and less dramatic to nix magical characters, and both harder and more dramatic to nix mundane characters, would be much less affected by such stylistic problems. You can't eliminate the problems, but you can make things better.

 

[ReshiIRE]

I play games to have fun. Not sure why else you would play a game.

To experience a cool story? To explore different facets of themselves? To test their abilities when it comes to game design? To understand how it may feel to be like another person, in a pretend manner? To engage with and learn about others through a unique form of roleplaying? To roll dice rocks? To partake in a group activity because your friends are doing so, and you're interested in it?

Like yes - the end result of all of these is, in some manner, 'fun', but they're all very different kinds of fun, and different things about a TTRPG's design brings about said fun - and appeal to different people. They are more complex, more freeflowing, than just playing for fun. Not that is a bad thing - but certainly, it is no-where near the only reason people play.

Not to be insulting, but I find it difficult to believe you don't think others have different reasons for playing games. That seems really difficult to believe.

 

[tomBitonti]

What we keep coming back to is that D&D wasn't ever designed as a cohesive game. I would argue that it still isn't; all WotC have done is take that lack of design and enshrine it as a feature, not a flaw...and I think they might be right! (The closest they got to a fully designed D&D game was 4e, and look what that got them).

Additional text omitted. Bravo!
TomB

 

[Paul Farquhar]

An encounter with two guards at the city gate isn’t fun. Tell the players they get through the gate without much trouble and move on to the fun. Niggling details of food supplies and encumbrance usually aren’t fun, so don’t sweat them, and let the players get to the adventure and on to the fun. Long treks through endless corridors in the ancient dwarven stronghold beneath the mountains aren’t fun. Move the PCs quickly from encounter to encounter, and on to the fun!

It might be fun. It could be played for comedy, or to establish that the city is an oppressive police state, for example.