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Yes. Balance is a measure of ratios. You can use whatever units you like, as appropriate for the situation. It seems like you're trying to be reductionist, here. That's not what balance is. Balance, as it relates to game design, is complex. It is in its infancy, as is the field as a whole. It...

The same could be said of anything. "Fun isn't a property of the game. It's a propery of the DM and the group." "Believability isn't a property of the game. It's a property of the DM and the group." "Depth isn't a propery of the game. It's a property of the DM and the group." Those are all...

Are we not supposed to find this pretentious? Do you really believe your game so unique, and such a special snowflake, that mechanics established by a group of design professionals - mechanics playtested to function well for the vast majority of groups - are wholly useless to you? By the way...

I think it would be cool to get some accomplished game designers in here to evaluate how true this is. I expect that very few of them would agree that they don't bother aiming for balance and instead somehow reach it by accident. Also, aiming for "fun" in a game almost invariably involves aiming...

Let's not, and say we did, hmm?

Actually, I see it falling under "criticism and comment", much in the same way that periodicals like Mad magazine often feature cover illustrations based heavily on pop culture artwork and icons, including art and likenesses ostensibly protected by copyright under normal circumstances.

Neither of these are criticisms of the game. They are criticisms of the community, perhaps, but even then they're myopic. By the way, blaming 4e fans for being oversensitive? Really? You're talking about a group of people who checked out 4e and thought, "Hey, this is rad!" only to show up on...

Software packages and other digital tools. The concept of creating a comprehensive suite of programs to facilitate a specific system's ease of play, even if that ended up being only half-realized. It was the first time it had ever been tried, and accordingly it stumbled a number of times. But...

I believe firmly that the exact opposite is the case - that claiming that the division in the community is 4e's fault is an exercise in willful ignorance. The community was split well before that, but it only had a single game to rally around. There was plenty of discontent, but not much in the...

Except that we have absolutely no example of any tabletop RPG company doing the above any better. WotC is literally the only publisher to have tried most of these. There's no way that you can say, with any degree of confidence, that mixed (and mind you, it is mixed) success in the above projects...

I imagine it's getting a lot harder to justify support of the VTT with a number of other groups working on similar projects (Roll20, Tabletop Forge, Maptool, etc.) and the D&D VTT's primary draws (4e tool integration) with an uncertain lifespan due to the edition transition. They're probably...

Since that was me, I'll chip in here - it doesn't really matter what your favorite edition is. That was the point. Literally every edition of D&D (and nearly every other tabletop roleplaying game out there) can be similarly lampooned, with very little effort. They can all be framed in a way that...

Most fantasy literature doesn't work the way any edition of D&D does. Excellent. Now tell me your favorite edition of D&D so that I can similarly and childishly lampoon it.

Of course they are. So? Yes, yes, it's all subjective. As I've pointed out, though, using "It's all subjective!" to try and end a discussion over whether one game is superior to another is just as bad as using "This is objectively better!" to try and do the same.

Notice that I purposefully avoided the use of the word "objective". I'd prefer to eschew in favor of the words "useful" or "practical". I'm not saying that it's possible to objectively judge whether games are better or worse than each other (though, honestly, you probably could if you came up...

It's easy to pick at the idea that games can be judged objectively, because from a very real standpoint, it cannot be definitively said that something is better than something else; good and bad have mutable definitions. However, these criticisms are little more than academic. For nearly all...

I don't have any personal stake in this except as someone who wants to see the hobby move forward, but the following needs to be said: If you are just reading this thread out of mild curiosity, go look at the app right now. Go do it. Stop reading, go look. This is real development, real...

Yeah, but only from those who feel they are entitled to everything their patron saint touched simply by virtue of playing a hobby game and talking about it on the internet. Just because Gygax had a hand (of undisclosed size) in it does not make it public property, or make someone a...

Ability to withstand extended punishment is a trope of the fantasy and action genres as a whole. It's not solely characteristic of the super hero genre. You don't fight those minions until you are high level yourself. Very few examples of fantasy media depict what could be considered high level...

I agree that minions are there in part to make the PCs feel awesome, but that's not an example of "super hero" gaming. Cutting down mooks left and right during a fight is a staple of basically every fantasy franchise, ever. In fact, if you think about it, it was sort of weird that there really...