D&D (2024) Do players really want balance?

[pemerton]

I think that if you're properly immersing in the character you're doing the latter. Granted, the external reasons probably contribute to how the character feels.

I think the way that you're describing this tends to blur [irl=[URL]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/4/]the[/URL] actor/author stance distinction[/url]:

*In Actor stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have.

*In Author stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions based on the real person's priorities, then retroactively "motivates" the character to perform them. (Without that second, retroactive step, this is fairly called Pawn stance.)​

That is, I think you are tending to assimilate Author stance to Actor stance, unless the Author stance is Pawn stance.

I have no particular objection to that assimilation, as I'm not persuaded that the distinction between Actor and non-Pawn Author stance is (i) all that clear in practice, or (ii) all that interesting.

 

[pemerton]

How? The game remained very compatible from the beginning all the way to the end of 2e. Lore was pretty compatible too for the most part.

The lore of 2nd ed AD&D is also pretty compatible with more recent versions of D&D.

What I'm talking about is the actual procedure and logic of play.

In the classic version of the game, the key function of exploration is for the players to be able to make informed choices about what encounters to trigger (this is the player-control over scene-framing, by choosing which doors to open and by choosing how hard to push against the wandering monster clock), and to be able to identify what loot there is to collect and remove from the dungeon (which is the game's win condition). So the ideal is a player-driven game, played by default in pawn stance. Exploration is not an end in itself - it's the key means that the players have to learn the state of the "board" (ie the GM's initially-secret map-and-key), and thus to exert the control over play that the game expects.

The game has PC-build and action resolution rules oriented towards this: rule for finding doors, listening at doors, and opening doors; rules for finding and disarming traps; potions and wands for detecting doors, traps, treasure etc (all written to work in a reasonable fashion on a dungeon scale).

Beginning in the early-to-mid 80s, and utterly consolidated by the time of 2nd ed AD&D, the play of the game has changed completely. The PC build and action resolution rules remain much the same (as you note) but for the addition of NWPs. But the way the game is actually played isn't the same at all: the GM controls the flow of information and the sequence of imaginary events. Causal connections between events are no longer mediated via the map-and-key method (which imposes a strict if artificial logic on things) and instead via the GM's imaginings about a "living, breathing" world.

why do they bother to provide an explanation for said dungeons' presence in the world at all, as the vast majority of them do?

In the classic game, it's largely a fig leaf or "lampshade" to have the fiction make a modicum of sense. But it's not more than that.

I mean, look at the intro text for a module like Tomb of Horrors, White Plume Mountain or Ghost Tower of Inverness. Look at Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. These modules evoke some basic fantasy tropes, but they don't actually make sense in any naturalistic way (I mean, why would Iggwilv build a treasure chamber with six symmetrical entrances that have to be opened in sequence; and if she can make doors that teleport you away when they are opened, why not just teleport you to the middle of the Sea of Dust, or to a desert island somewhere?). They are puzzles to be solved.

You can look at some late-80s/early-90s ICE modules for MERP and RM to see what a slightly more naturalistic dungeon might look like. One obvious point of comparison is that the ICE ones tend to be more boring! Whereas whatever one makes of the WPM nonsense, it's not boring to play through.

The move from a focus on player-directed, map-and-key puzzle-solving play; to GM-directed "living, breathing" world play; is a fundamental one. It shifts the mainstream of play away from what could reasonably be called a type of wargame to something completely different. Such that, from my perspective, 5e D&D has much more in common with what you prefer, than what you prefer has in common with the classic game.

Real life with fantastic elements.

Dramatic things can still happen in a setting that mostly operates like the real world with fantastic elements. The rules or the DM certainly don't need to force that drama either, it can just emerge from player decisions through their PCs, using information the PCs have available.

On this, I agree completely with @Hussar. The dramatic things happen because they are written into the fiction - whether random tables that trigger (say) attacks by stirges, or the eruptions of volcanoes - or whether the GM plans for this person to do this wild thing pursuing this mad agenda, that will drag the PCs into the maelstrom.

If the only information the players have available is the sort of information that a typical person in a pre-modern society had available to them, then we wouldn't expect much drama. In fact we'd expect events to be much more intimate and mundane - but D&D is not a particularly good vehicle for that sort of RPGing. (Due to features both of its PC build rules and its action resolution rules.)

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Depends on what you consider a "real answer," but I would personally consider that a Microsoft answer: technically correct and completely useless.

My answer, which of course is the only objectively correct answer, is that most players do actually care about balance of particular forms (mostly, not feeling shortchanged relative to their peers and not feeling overwhelmed by the difficulty of the dangers they face in-game), but there are two important caveats.

Firstly, a lot of people care but don't understand, if that makes sense. They have an intuitive sense that something isn't quite right. That intuitive sense can actually be quite sharp, but in many cases it is beneath the level of words and figures. When that happens, they just feel a vague sense of something-not-right-ness without being able to actually point to anything or call out any patterns etc. This is mostly caused by long-term systemic imbalances between classes, e.g. LFQW type stuff.

Secondly, "feeling overwhelmed by the difficulty of the dangers they face" cannot be simplified into "they want to always win" nor "they want real danger" etc. Because, as I noted earlier, most players are not actually that excited by consequences that just dead-end stuff. Yes, that consequence adds tension when it is up in the air, but as soon as the coin actually falls on that side, the tension is gone and the release is rather unsatisfying.

You are right in your response to my post conditionally.

There would be no reason to state that there isn’t a consensus if people did not act like balance is universally preferred or some
Kind of moral imperative.

When someone says vanilla is objectively better than chocolate I just can’t agree even if I agree. I have played plenty of asymmetric wargames for example. There might be different conditions of winning for a side with different forces that are not balanced.

When I played a 1e thief (a poorly designed
Class!) I got dopamine from stealing treasure, going unnoticed and playing a role. Not that it was nearly as effective as a
Specialized fighter.

Some sort of balance matters to me. But if you tell me I did not enjoy AD&D and did enjoy 4e because the latter had better balance I say you are having a hard time in seeing past what maybe you want to see.

It’s ok to like different things but I think it is quite odd to assume everyone values thing A to the extent that it trumps B every time. In fact to lean into some tropes and fiction, it may be that perfect balance is not a help.

Of course there is a wide range of preferences! It should go without saying.

 

[Baron Opal II]

I get what you're saying, but, the problem is, in real life, crossing Antarctica, for example, is filled with tedious monotony. It's an endless slog across a frozen wasteland where you basically doing the exact same thing, day after day, until you reach your goal.

Well, yes. That's why you don't focus on that. You focus on the stark beauty of the frost fields at first, and then mention the dark clouds on the horizon. You deal with the storm, the intense cold that freezes exposed flesh, the stepping on snow that covers a hidden crevasse.

The drama doesn't come from calm situations, it comes from using foresight to equip for terrible situations and environments. And then using your preternatural abilities and sorcerous magic. Which had better last until the end of the storm. After everything calms down, you see the snowdrifts have moved, uncovering an uncharacteristic patch of green in the distance.

And then the dire penguins attack!

My point being the real world provides examples of adventure and drama far more than poking at things in a hole in the ground.

 

[Distracted DM]

I count AD&D dual wielding as "cheese", in the sense that it's a poorly-thought through rule that should be describing a relatively marginal fighting style difference, but that actually hugely changes the effectiveness of a melee-oriented character.

Much like playing a Krynn minotaur :'D
I remember them getting crazy bonuses...

 

[Micah Sweet]

Much like playing a Krynn minotaur :'D
I remember them getting crazy bonuses...

My favorite fantasy Klingons!

 

[pemerton]

Much like playing a Krynn minotaur :'D
I remember them getting crazy bonuses...

-2 WIS, CHA; +2 STR, CON, and max 20 for both.

Arguably a bit broken.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't think it's reasonable to assume that the theories you state, even if assumed true, would account for anything more than a small fraction of the community. Given that at certain critical mass groups stop vetoing. That in an perpetually online world, with Pathfinder books on Walmart shelves, ignorance isn't all that compelling. That games for other systems fill up far slower on Reddit's r/lfg sub, to the point where people have complained elsewhere online.''

Talk to people around here some time with extent 5e groups. As how many of them have other people in the groups that have more than the vaguest idea of other games existing. It requires active attention to the hobby beyond the D&D sphere to know that it exists, let alone what your options are. If you think the people that do that are at all common when viewing the D&D populace as a whole, I think you're very much in error; there is still an enormous amount of D&D players who effectively, live in a bubble.

When we bring up things like these, we seem to be arguing that 5e would be slightly less popular. That the gorilla would be slightly smaller, maybe 600 lbs instead of 800 lbs. These reasons you state aren't going to account for the majority of 5e players even in their "best case."

No, we're arguing that a significant amount of 5e overwhelming success may very well have less to do with any overwhelming attraction of the system as-exists than a lot of other factors outside that. I will flat-out say that an extremely mediocre system would be plenty capable of maintaining a great degree of success with the extent visibility and network access that D&D has. Because most people will hit it first, and once hitting it, tend to stay in it unless they actively dislike it.

I don't mean to dismiss anything. Just pointing out that we are nibbling at the edges with these theories, instead of actually explaining the popularity. In all likelihood, 5e's popularity is because a lot of people have fun playing the game. We know this, because they actively seek out chances to play it.

And I'm saying ascribing it heavily to the quality of the game is operating beyond the available information. "Having fun playing it" is a low bar; large amounts of that can have fairly little to do with the system. As I said, that simply requires the system not actively put them off.

Why so many seem to care what system others play is beyond me. But here we are, discussing why others very much, or couldn't possibly, like 5e.

No, we're discussing whether the success of a system actually says that much about its quality of design. Not the same thing. There could be plenty of people who actively like 5e; Oofta has certainly said so in this thread.

But the usual implication is that its success is based on that design, and that requires ignoring some pretty heavy contributing factors; as some has said, it uses success as a demonstration of quality, and there's too many other examples of products where that's clearly not really true of. You can reliably say a really successful product is unlikely to be actively bad, but past that there's waaaay too many other factors frequently in play.

I think this is 100% true. Not everyone will, or should, like 5e. WotC made it for broad appeal. It should surprise no one that the sole TTRPG designed with broad appeal in mind - has the most broad appeal. But yet we bicker about why 5e has broad appeal.

I'll be blunt here: if you think D&D5e is the only game designed with broad appeal in mind, you don't have enough experience with other RPGs. This is not to say all, or even most, have that true about them, but D&D is not some isolated example here. Others exist. What they don't have is decades of visibility and a massive network to go with it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think the way that you're describing this tends to blur [irl=[URL]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/4/]the[/URL] actor/author stance distinction[/url]:

*In Actor stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have.​

​

*In Author stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions based on the real person's priorities, then retroactively "motivates" the character to perform them. (Without that second, retroactive step, this is fairly called Pawn stance.)​

That is, I think you are tending to assimilate Author stance to Actor stance, unless the Author stance is Pawn stance.

I have no particular objection to that assimilation, as I'm not persuaded that the distinction between Actor and non-Pawn Author stance is (i) all that clear in practice, or (ii) all that interesting.

On the other hand, that seems to blur together Actor stance and IC stance as I traditionally saw them used. Actor stance was very much able to be played with the purpose of producing various affects and overall results. The distinction between that an Author had more to do with doing things outside the normal direct influence of the PC.

 

[pemerton]

On the other hand, that seems to blur together Actor stance and IC stance as I traditionally saw them used. Actor stance was very much able to be played with the purpose of producing various affects and overall results. The distinction between that an Author had more to do with doing things outside the normal direct influence of the PC.

What you are calling Author stance is something I am used to being seen called Director stance:

*In Director stance, a person determines aspects of the environment relative to the character in some fashion, entirely separately from the character's knowledge or ability to influence events. Therefore the player has not only determined the character's actions, but the context, timing, and spatial circumstances of those actions, or even features of the world separate from the characters.​

One reason I don't find stance especially interesting as any sort of litmus test is that it's very common to find people who insist they are Actor-only to also use Author-stance (that is, they don't distinguish deciding as the character would and *deciding for some meta-reason and then retroactively motivating the character) and to also use Director-stance (eg they make up stuff that their PC knows or remembers, normally related to the PC's background, and thereby determine "feature of the world separate from their characters", namely, whatever it is that the PC knows about or remembers).