D&D General New Interview with Rob Heinsoo About 4E

[pemerton]

Is a game obligated to be playable by everybody?

No.

 

[pemerton]

I would love to see WOTC design a tutorial the way FU has done, where you match piecemeal mechanics into game action scene by scene. I think you could do that, but I also think you'd start to ask some questions about certain design decisions.

100% on that last clause (beginning "but I also think . . .").

 

[pemerton]

The more complex the system, the less accessible it is.

I'm not sure. Or, at least, I think there's more nuance possible.

Outside of RPGing, chess seems like an easy example of a complex game that is, nevertheless, reasonably accessible - there are primary school kids around the world learning how to play it, competing against one another in tournaments, etc.

In the context of RPGing, The Green Knight is mechanically very simple, and my kids picked up the mechanics very easily, but the reasoning about the fiction necessary to do well is more complicated and also benefits from experience with FRPGing tropes, and my kids were pretty quickly hosed in play. Agon 2e is mechanically more complex but not as demanding in play in the same way - it has much more scope for the players to project their own vision onto the fiction - and my kids found that much easier (and more fun) to play.

When it comes to 4e D&D, it seems to me that the design of the game makes understanding and integrating your mechanical bits with others mechanical bits a significant part of play. Is that more complex than (say) reasoning one's way through The Green Knight? I dunno, they're hard to compare. But for someone who isn't good at, or doesn't enjoy, understanding and integrating mechanical bits, then 4e D&D is likely to be a poor experience.

 

[overgeeked]

What do you propose as a game that doesn't exclude anyone? (I mean, if we're going to extremes, let's go).

I don’t think pointing out that having lots of math limits accessibility is going to extremes.

 

[overgeeked]

Or in a TTRPG example, the game Mutants and Masterminds, where making a character is a lot more complex than 5E, but I still find it way more tolerable to play than 3rd Edition because most of its complexity is front-loaded--that is, the complicated system of powers and traits you use to build your character.

I played M&M for years. 1st through 3rd. Even freelanced on it. That was the game that finally broke me. I just could not deal with that level of crunch anymore.

 

[Chaltab]

I played M&M for years. 1st through 3rd. Even freelanced on it. That was the game that finally broke me. I just could not deal with that level of crunch anymore.

It occurs to me I've never actually played M&M as a player, only as the GM, so I probably handwaved a bunch of stuff to make it easier on myself.

Edit: I've been hoping for the past 10 years or so that they'd release a 4th Edition that includes some of the QOL improvements from more modern games but alas, not yet.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

The best example I know is Mage Hand Press's Warmage. Gets a few cantrips, a scaling buff to cantrip damage (which puts the cantrip damage in the same tier as Warlock Eldritch Blast + Agonizing Blast), but no spells, just some invocations that add riders to the cantrips and some spell-like abilities.

one of those things I think could have evolved from 4e would be if you look at the psychic classes having at will and power points that can augment those power at wills and then the slayer/knight getting add +1w encounter powers to really play with keeping things close to AUED but still in balance...

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think you lose more than you gain by having a Fighter at all. You'd have an easier time selling the Battlemaster as a base class than a subclass.

And I think, at least at this time, far too many D&D fans would refuse to accept a game that lacked a Fighter than you'd gain from such a move. Dramatically, overwhelmingly more, in fact.

We've already seen what people can do just with misinformation. Actually deleting the Fighter--whether or not that would be a productive idea in game design terms--would be a catastrophe of epic proportions. I really, really wish I didn't have to say that. But I can't see any other possibility in light of what happened with 4e.

I vaguely recall that Warlock and Sorcerer were originally introduced as simpler options to Wizards. :-/ More pew-pew, less "which spells should I prepare and hope are useful today?" But they managed to be complicated in their own ways.

The problem is, by still having a broad spectrum of potential options, but both (a) getting fewer of them and (b) getting to use those options less frequently, both the Warlock and the Sorcerer actually cry out for more optimization than the Wizard, not less. You need to be absolutely sure that every spell and metamagic/invocation you pick is going to be useful, consistently, or else you've been hobbled for an entire level, perhaps more. (And given how stingy DMs are with XP IME and from what I hear from others...)

Much as I like the idea of the à la carte design of the 5e Warlock, I find it really hard to pick from the grab bag, especially with the various prereqs and such, and the choices all seem even more arbtirary than the broad spell catalogue. Which you also have to deal with!

Yeah. The idea of Warlock seems simpler, but the actual practice is merely shuffling the complication away from day-by-day play and into chargen-play. Running a pregen Warlock would be a breeze relative to a Wizard because you have far fewer choices to make and what choices you do have are, usually, pretty straightforward. By comparison, levelling up a Wizard is a breeze because you have no class features and just pick two new spells you don't know from the list of highest-level spells you can cast. Sorcerer is kind of in the middle, less build-complicated than Warlock but more build-complicated than Wizard, less in-play complicated than Wizard but more in-play complicated than Warlock.

5e Sorcerers might be the simplest option for a caster, but it's still much more complicated than most martials, at build time and play time.

I have often thought about how to go about building a truly, genuinely simple spellcaster. Taking leaves from the Battlemaster, actually, though not copying the exact Expertise Dice subsystem. My checklist of requirements is:

• No "memorizing" spells. You just have a set of them available all the time. If you have a set of pick-able magic actions, whatever you've picked, you can always do it so long as you have the juice.
• No lengthy list of flexible options. If there are choices, it's "pick half of these 8 things" or "choose 1 of these 4 things as your core focus." Save flexible alternatives for a subclass.
• Basic "do a magic thing" action, almost like an upgraded merger of various cantrips (mage hand, prestidigitation, minor illusion, etc.)
• "Magic burst" effect that you can use X/SR, probably half proficiency or full proficiency. Charges may be used to power other things, and subclasses might hook into other stuff (e.g. a haemomancer using their own HD to fuel their magic)

That would produce an actually simple spellcaster.

 

[Cadence]

I don’t think pointing out that having lots of math limits accessibility is going to extremes.

I totally sympathize that it's annoying finding lots of numbers scattered across a busy character sheet and parsing which of them apply, as is required in some editions of the game. Please simplify that and don't make me track down eight numbers!!! I totally see that as a turn-off to some people!

But once someone has found the numbers? Mentally adding up a set of one-digit integers (say damage from a magic missile or dragons breath or 4d6 drop low) is literally elementary (school). I will happily work to accommodate someone who literally can't do it for some reason (just like I will accommodate those with aphantasia who can't do TotM or with a visual impairment who can't do miniatures). But it feels just as odd to me to ask designers to restrict a game to nothing above third grade math as to restrict the rule book to a third grade reading level.

That being said,even as a mathy person, I don't think we need the Villains & Vigilantes carrying capacity formula kind of thing popping up everywhere.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I totally sympathize that it's annoying finding lots of numbers scattered across a busy character sheet and parsing which of them apply, as is required in some editions of the game. Please simplify that and don't make me track down eight numbers!!! I totally see that as a turn-off to some people.

But once someone has found the numbers? Mentally adding up a set of one-digit integers (say damage from a magic missile or dragons breath or 4d6 drop low) is literally elementary (school). I will happily work to accommodate someone who literally can't do it for some reason (just like I will accommodate those with aphantasia who can't do TotM or with a visual impairment who can't do miniatures). But it feels just as odd to me to ask designers to restrict a game to nothing above third grade math as to restrict the rule book to a third grade reading level.

going back to 1995-1997 I was learning and running 2e...

my first 2 campaigns (both I was DM) we had things written as THac0 17 +6 to hit +8 to damage 1d8.

then two new players came in and said "We add it all up front" and that same line would read Thac0 17/11 1d8+8 (the 11 is 17-6)

so just before 2000, when we met people who called skills and power and combat and tactics 3e we saw people that did both... but 2 players would list Thac0 17 +2 str +1 spec +2 mag +1 mast damage 1d8 +2 spec +1 mast +2 mag +3 str...


We would watch every single fight every single roll as that person rolls "I got a 14 +2 is 16 +1 is 17 +2 is 19 +1 is 20 against a thac0 17 so I hit a 0 at 17 -1 at 18 -2 at 19 and -3 at 20... so I hit a -3"
yes this was a man in his late 20s/early 30s....

edit: so you could compair that to "I rolled a 14 so I hit a -3" when the adjusted thac0 of 11 was written down.