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

[Zardnaar]

Yup, I said as much upthread. 5e just NAILS that level of complexity for my son and it's absolutely perfect for him, simple enough that a young teen can grasp it but complex enough that he can nerd out about it for hours. I'm afraid that the general trend with 5.5e is going to start to push 5.5e out of that sweet spot though, especially when new 5.5e splatbooks come out.



Yup I remember spending so much time thinking "come on guys, you're supposed to be the HEROES!" as a teen DMing 2e in the 90's, when I learned to sit back and let the players be Cugel the Clever from Jack Vance's Dying Earth books (a huge inspiration for D&D and still the best example out there of the tone that works best wtih D&D) instead of trying to herd them through Lord of the Rings things went sooooooooooo much more smoothly.

My personal thery is due to 5.6 added complexity they platelet a few years back. They're not trying to hard for more newbies but keep the established players happy.

Or add complexity and D&D beyond handles the crunch for you.
Either way.

5.5 probably hits my desired sweet spot but it's not for some of my players.

So we will use 2014 and use 2024 as errata. Short term anyway.

 

[Hussar]

But I remain of the view that popularity is not a metric for quality or aesthetic value: which was the point of my comparison of The Hunger Games to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; and of The Hardy Boys to At Swim-Two-Birds.

But, when your design goal is to be as broadly played as possible, and you achieve that goal by actually being played by as broad of a spectrum of people as possible, then popularity is absolutely meeting your design goal.

 

[pemerton]

But, when your design goal is to be as broadly played as possible, and you achieve that goal by actually being played by as broad of a spectrum of people as possible, then popularity is absolutely meeting your design goal.

Sure. Didn't I post something like that?

That doesn't tell us that popularity equals quality. Which is what I was responding to.

 

[Hussar]

Quality is one of those nebulous words that means pretty much whatever what someone wants it to mean in the moment. OTOH, achieving actual design goals is something that can be fairly objectively pointed to. So, while sure, popularity might not measure quality, whatever that means, it certainly does measure the achievement of design goals.

 

[pemerton]

We have to parse opinion and fact here. The definition of fact, in case it's in dispute;

"a thing that is known or proved to be true."

Lets, also, look at the definition of opinion;

"a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge."

Under these definitions, barring further evidence, every comment you made here is an opinion. From you "improving" something, to something being "unintended." Even the last statement about plausibility is, you guessed it, an opinion.

Remember that calling an opinion "fact" does not make it so. Which means that you are still well within the realm of subjective. And my initial statement remains true.

Either way, if you'd like to continue to call your opinions "facts" I won't intervene any more.

Well, when I use fact I use it the sort of way that is standard in twentieth and twenty-first century analytic philosophy: along the lines of a state of affairs that obtains independently of being the object of a mental state or attitude.

You seem to think I can't know it to be true that +1 means subtract 1 is clunky game design. I don't agree: I think that is knowable.

Likewise, I can know that adding numbers to compare to a target number is, as a general proposition, quicker and easier than either consulting a look-up table (AD&D) or mucking about with THACO (AD&D 2nd ed).

Of course these are generalisations of tendency, along the same sorts of lines as humidity makes hot days more uncomfortable: maybe there is someone for whom this is not true, or some atypical occasion that doesn't fall under this generalisation. Nevertheless, it's more than just subjective opinion: it's a useful rule of thumb that generalises pretty widely.

The same for these sorts of features of game design.

 

[pemerton]

Quality is one of those nebulous words that means pretty much whatever what someone wants it to mean in the moment.

The idea that there are no meaningful properties other than those amenable to mathematical analysis is the beginning of the end!

I mean, you live in Japan. The idea that there's nothing to be said about the beauty of some of the gardens, or the temples, or the castles, or the landscapes, in comparison to (say) a corrugated iron dunny or a pile of lawn clippings or a typical suburban street in Doncaster isn't plausible.

 

[Oofta]

The idea that there are no meaningful properties other than those amenable to mathematical analysis is the beginning of the end!

I mean, you live in Japan. The idea that there's nothing to be said about the beauty of some of the gardens, or the temples, or the castles, or the landscapes, in comparison to (say) a corrugated iron dunny or a pile of lawn clippings or a typical suburban street in Doncaster isn't plausible.

But beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Therefore, a subjective judgement.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Therefore, a subjective judgement.

Sounds like you've talked yourself out of any discussion that's not about math.

 

[Oofta]

Sounds like you've talked yourself out of any discussion that's not about math.

Just stating the obvious. That calling something objective does not make it so. Which is not a comment on gaming one way or the other.

 

[pemerton]

Just stating the obvious. That calling something objective does not make it so.

Likewise calling is subjective does not make it so.

But beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

This is a folk saying and an aphorism. It's not an argument, nor a self-evident truth.