A discussion of metagame concepts in game design

[The Crimson Binome]

On the other hand, if he actually tried to impose his playstyle, and made players defend their decisions as character-knowledge-driven, I suspect his tables wouldn't stay full.

Hence why he would want to house rule those issues out before the players get to them, so they aren't put into a position where they had to defend anything. Which, tangentially, is why it doesn't matter how you argue whether HP are observable in-game, since the DM has already decided that they are; and thus, the players won't need to justify acting on that information.

More generally, the whole "rules as physics" approach really works well to ensure that players are never forced to deal with meta-game mechanics. If your fighter was actually living in a world where they knew that they could perform Come And Get It exactly once per day, and that it would always work that one time, and everyone else in the world knew that, because that's how the world works and this experiment gives consistent results, then that absurd world could be played entirely in-character. The trade-off, of course, being that it produces an absurd narrative.

Likewise, if he house-ruled away all the mechanics he dislikes, he might have trouble recruiting players. Not necessarily because they disagree with him philosophically, but because they just want to play the game they know. (Well, and because if you want martial powers to be at-will, you have to either trivialize them, or massively buff everybody else. I don't think most people would enjoy the result as much as they enjoy more mainstream RPGs.)

Yes, for right or wrong, house rules have a severe stigma attached to them which are likely to turn away players. That's why it's such a betrayal that they would market this game as being for everyone, and then fail to support anything but a very middle-of-the-road audience of players who don't care. Anyone with a strong opinion on any topic - the kind of player who might actually care enough to change rules that they didn't like - is left without the framework or authority to do so, because other players are likely to see those changes as illegitimate.

 

[Lanefan]

It's your last parenthetical point that is what I was getting at. It's not that players would refuse to play with him once they know his philosophy; most of them probably just say "Whatever, man...". I would be surprised if very many of them care whether or not they stay in actor stance, or worry if they are metagaming, etc. I know I've had loads of fun with DMs with whom I strongly disagree on philosophy. The differences very rarely have an impact on what happens at the table.

Agreed.

On the other hand, if he actually tried to impose his playstyle, and made players defend their decisions as character-knowledge-driven, I suspect his tables wouldn't stay full.

Disagreed. Provided he's taking reasonable steps to ensure player knowledge = character knowledge (e.g. DMing the solo scout in another room so the rest of the players remain as unaware of its fate as their PCs are) I'd be surprised if this posed a problem at all.

Likewise, if he house-ruled away all the mechanics he dislikes, he might have trouble recruiting players. Not necessarily because they disagree with him philosophically, but because they just want to play the game they know. (Well, and because if you want martial powers to be at-will, you have to either trivialize them, or massively buff everybody else. I don't think most people would enjoy the result as much as they enjoy more mainstream RPGs.)

Maybe.

If the really big changes are made up front and presented as "here's my game, wanna play in it?" there will of course be some who are interested and some who are not, but those who are interested up front are likely to remain so throughout.

If the really big changes are made in mid-campaign then while the initial player uptake may be higher there'll be more drop-off as players decide one change or another is a deal-breaker, leading to a more fractured campaign.

Lan-"and given that he says he has no shortage of players I guess he's doing something right"-efan

 

[Guest 6801328]

That's why it's such a betrayal that they would market this game as being for everyone, and then fail to support anything but a very middle-of-the-road audience of players who don't care.

Yeah...well...in general I don't give much credence to the whole "WotC promised me the moon and all I got was this t-shirt" complaint.

I know some fans of previous editions (or parts of previous editions) feel like WotC "betrayed" them for various reasons, but it seems to me that people interpret their "promises" with unreasonable expectations, and then feel like promises were broken when those hopeful interpretations turn out to be incorrect.

And in cases where they really did say, "We're going to do X" and then failed to do X, I would assume it was more that they realized X was untenable and regretfully changed their minds, as opposed to having intentionally misled people with marketing hyperbole. Product development goes that way sometimes.

I mean, just look at the reactions to the Ravnica announcement. You'd think the sky was falling.

Personally I'm glad they try to give updates and previews, rather than keep it all secret until launch in order avoid accusations of betrayal.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Yeah...well...in general I don't give much credence to the whole "WotC promised me the moon and all I got was this t-shirt" complaint.

I know some fans of previous editions (or parts of previous editions) feel like WotC "betrayed" them for various reasons, but it seems to me that people interpret their "promises" with unreasonable expectations, and then feel like promises were broken when those hopeful interpretations turn out to be incorrect.

And in cases where they really did say, "We're going to do X" and then failed to do X, I would assume it was more that they realized X was untenable and regretfully changed their minds, as opposed to having intentionally misled people with marketing hyperbole. Product development goes that way sometimes.

I mean, just look at the reactions to the Ravnica announcement. You'd think the sky was falling.

Personally I'm glad they try to give updates and previews, rather than keep it all secret until launch in order avoid accusations of betrayal.

[MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] - Regarding your betrayal comment due to WoTC focusing on the middle.

I'd argue that your lack of acceptance (not the same as understanding - I think you understand very well) of how markets work is probably the cause of your strife and not WoTC. Once you're running a business, you're doing statistics on the market. Once you're doing statistics you're looking at the middle 50 and folks that are one standard deviation away from the middle 50 for whatever you're marketing because that's where you're going to make most of your money. If you're not in that grouping then it's not the company that's the problem. You need to find the product where you're in that middle 50 plus 1 stdev in order to be happy.

Of course, from any marketers viewpoint by aiming at what they're aiming at, they're marketing "to everyone".
[MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] regarding the Ravnica thing.

I just don't get the folks that hate the idea of using M:tG settings as fodder for D&D. While it's not my first choice of settings were I to select one to be done, I think it's a really good idea when two settings are going to be released to do one classic setting and one that's entirely new in order to expand the brand. If they already have access to the IP and it increases awareness of M:tG all the better.

Personally, I've not touched a M:tG deck for about 10 years. However, there were many times where the flavor text on the cards made me wish they did a tabletop setting book for a RPG. It'll probably be great.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I'd argue that your lack of acceptance (not the same as understanding - I think you understand very well) of how markets work is probably the cause of your strife and not WoTC. Once you're running a business, you're doing statistics on the market. Once you're doing statistics you're looking at the middle 50 and folks that are one standard deviation away from the middle 50 for whatever you're marketing because that's where you're going to make most of your money. If you're not in that grouping then it's not the company that's the problem. You need to find the product where you're in that middle 50 plus 1 stdev in order to be happy.

Of course, from any marketers viewpoint by aiming at what they're aiming at, they're marketing "to everyone".

Maybe they were malicious, or maybe they were just incompetent, but either way they failed to deliver on the promise. It wouldn't have been hard to design a game that would have been more inclusive. They should have just owned up to the fact that they were intentionally excluding certain groups.

Deceptive marketing counts as malicious practice, in my book.

 

[Shasarak]

Elephants aren't bipeds, and don't have legs with the proportions of giants' legs in most fantasy.

A Bipedal T-Rex can get to be three times heavier then an Elephant.

And even accepting that a T-Rex does not look like a Fantasy Giant, that is still a lot of weight supported by two legs.

I live in Australi. If there are land arthropods in Australia the size of D&D giant scorpions, I've never heard of them.

Biology is not my strongest suit, but this webpage reads to me like it's pretty sensible, and it suggests that 4 kg is towards the upper size limit for a land arthropod.

You should probably be aware that your "normal" sized arthropds are giant for the rest of the world.

 

[pemerton]

1. Gravitational forces assuming 1G constant will not prevent really large things from flying given enough lift and thrust. Similarly it will not prevent large bone and muscle mass creatures from evolving given the right circumstances.

2. Whether or not something is magical or not really depends on whether or not your sensibilities allow for something to exist in a conventional physics sense or not. (e.g. This huge dragon isn't airflow optimized and his wings aren't large enough to provide lift or gliding control so it has to be magic.. )

I'm not sure what your point is.

I'm not a biologist or a physicist, so I rely on what I read in the papers. From what I've read, a dragon in D&D - the depiction of which has been fairly constant for 40-odd years - does not have wings sufficient to generate the lift needed to get it off the ground. Yet we know that it can fly. Hence, either, (i) gravity is different or (ii) fluid mechanics is different or (iii) it doesn't really make sense to think of the world of D&D using such scientific categories as gravity and fluid mechanics. I think that (iii) is the most obvious and straightforward answer.

On evolution: I can't think of any published D&D world where dragons evolved. They were created (whether by Tiamat and Bahamut, or in some other fashion) or perhaps came into being as primordial entities. More generally, nothing I've ever read in any D&D setting book or monster manual makes me assume that living things in D&D evolve, or have their nature and being determined by the biochemical processes that operate in the real world. Upthread someone ( [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]? [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]) referred to "life force". If such a thing exists in D&D worlds, that's enough to indicate that these are not worlds in which real world biology and biochemistry obrain.

A Bipedal T-Rex can get to be three times heavier then an Elephant.

And even accepting that a T-Rex does not look like a Fantasy Giant, that is still a lot of weight supported by two legs.

So are you saying that D&D giants are biomechanically possible? The only form of giant I've ever heard that suggested of is fire giants because of their heavier build and thicker legs relative to their height.

You should probably be aware that your "normal" sized arthropds are giant for the rest of the world.

Again, are you saying that giant scorpions of the D&D sort are possible? My undertanding is that land arthorpods in the real world of that size would have both exoskeleton issues and respiration issues.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm not a biologist or a physicist, so I rely on what I read in the papers. From what I've read, a dragon in D&D - the depiction of which has been fairly constant for 40-odd years - does not have wings sufficient to generate the lift needed to get it off the ground. Yet we know that it can fly. Hence, either, (i) gravity is different or (ii) fluid mechanics is different or (iii) it doesn't really make sense to think of the world of D&D using such scientific categories as gravity and fluid mechanics. I think that (iii) is the most obvious and straightforward answer.

Why would you leave out the official quote I provided for you that a dragon being magical in combination with the wing strength is how it flies. It makes it appear that you argue disingenuously when you do things like this. Dragon flight, being possible only through magic, does not need to have different gravity, different fluid mechanics, or a need to think that D&D doesn't have an approximation of physics.

 

[Shasarak]

So are you saying that D&D giants are biomechanically possible? The only form of giant I've ever heard that suggested of is fire giants because of their heavier build and thicker legs relative to their height.

Of course they are biomechanically possible. That is what the physics says.

Again, are you saying that giant scorpions of the D&D sort are possible? My undertanding is that land arthorpods in the real world of that size would have both exoskeleton issues and respiration issues.

What kind of respiratory system does a DnD Arthrod have? Maybe you are imagining the wrong sort.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Maybe they were malicious, or maybe they were just incompetent, but either way they failed to deliver on the promise. It wouldn't have been hard to design a game that would have been more inclusive. They should have just owned up to the fact that they were intentionally excluding certain groups.

Deceptive marketing counts as malicious practice, in my book.

or maybe, they were just targeting the 70% of the market that lies within 1 stdev of their market center and you were in the other 30%?

Sometimes the simplest answer isn't deception, it's perception.