An open letter to Randy Buehler

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Very good analysis, rounser.

Really? Where is the analysis part. I miss how he explains how he reached his conclusions. And that's sometimes that I seem to be missing way too often - you can state all you want.

I could also say:
D&D is like a movie. If you apply "pop-corn cinema" logic to it, you will create a compelling game that the players will understand. Of course a D&D game needs to structured in acts, needs a compelling villain, and a twist.

Character building is very much like a deck. You pick different abilities - be it feats, spells, skills, and they represent the options you have in any type of encounter (combat or non-combat)
A difference to decks might seem that you also pick "quirks" or personality traits that don't have a mechanical representation, but they are like flavor choices on how you describe your cards - heck, it could be just the colors used in the artwork.

There is little here that really explains why I think so (my Deck example might actually be going to far). It might serve as explaining how I feel on a certain matter, but not why. And the why is the part seems to be the critical part in a real analysis! In other words, anyone that already agrees with you will continue to do so, but anyone who doesn't things "Okay, what is he talking about again? How did he come to this conclusion? Why could he be right? Where could he be wrong?"

 

[Samuel Leming]

And yet, and yet, and yet...the 4E DMG is a superb book in places, the best yet in terms of practical advice in some ways, so someone over at WOTC "gets it". How did the design direction go so far and uncompromisingly in the direction it did, though? It's all so ideologically extreme, like the result of giving an extremist political party dictatorship powers, and seeing the unexpected side effect result of their ideologies come into play. And when can we vote the current "ruling party" of D&D out of power?

Check out this thread for a link to a recent interview with Mike Mearls. It should shed quite a bit of light as to how that happened. Not so much the why though. Time will tell.

Sam

 

[AllisterH]

Er, the reason why I say 3E is CONSTRUCTED and 4E is LIMITED isn't because of the exception based design (which applies to BOTH Constructed and Limited)

It refers to how they play....


Constructed, is all about the build. You start off with almost limitless choices but you quickly realize many choices are sub-optimal and when it comes to the actual GAME itself, what determines victory isn't how well you actually play the game but how well you BUILT the deck and understand the metagame.

Limited starts off with a much restricted pool of choices. However, in actual games, one actually has to have SKILL in playing magic to win.

That's why I consider 3E Constructed and 4E Limited.

As for the "it was better back in the day"

Please, do I even NEED to remind people of the munchkinism that is the Complete Book of Elves. In the entire history of 3E and the short time of 4e, there has NEVER been a TSR/WOTC product that was SO obviously pandering to the munckins that I find any criticism of "3e and 4e are too build focused" a complete lark.

 

[rounser]

Er, the reason why I say 3E is CONSTRUCTED and 4E is LIMITED isn't because of the exception based design (which applies to BOTH Constructed and Limited)

I understood what you were referring to, I just don't think it's a useful way to think about D&D, nor very interesting or relevant. The games are apples and oranges. D&D's relationship with splat is very different to M:tG's relationship with cards.

 

[Fenes]

Really? Where is the analysis part. I miss how he explains how he reached his conclusions. And that's sometimes that I seem to be missing way too often - you can state all you want.

I could also say:
D&D is like a movie. If you apply "pop-corn cinema" logic to it, you will create a compelling game that the players will understand. Of course a D&D game needs to structured in acts, needs a compelling villain, and a twist.

Character building is very much like a deck. You pick different abilities - be it feats, spells, skills, and they represent the options you have in any type of encounter (combat or non-combat)
A difference to decks might seem that you also pick "quirks" or personality traits that don't have a mechanical representation, but they are like flavor choices on how you describe your cards - heck, it could be just the colors used in the artwork.

There is little here that really explains why I think so (my Deck example might actually be going to far). It might serve as explaining how I feel on a certain matter, but not why. And the why is the part seems to be the critical part in a real analysis! In other words, anyone that already agrees with you will continue to do so, but anyone who doesn't things "Okay, what is he talking about again? How did he come to this conclusion? Why could he be right? Where could he be wrong?"

Well, it shows his thinking clearly enough for me. As does your example, by the way. And I don't really need explanations why something is fun or not. I share more of rounser's views than yours. That doesn't make either of you right or wrong. But it's rather pointless for either of you to try to show me how you came to your conclusions, since you both start out with very subjective views, mainly, with what you have fun with. All I care about is what view I share more.

A big part of the current mess is that too many people confuse "explaining what I think is fun" with "proving dissenting people are having badwrongfun" - both while writing, and reading posts. And of course can't accept "That's fun for him" or "that's what he needs from a game/product/rules mechanic" as valid views.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Well, it shows his thinking clearly enough for me. As does your example, by the way. And I don't really need explanations why something is fun or not. I share more of rounser's views than yours. That doesn't make either of you right or wrong. But it's rather pointless for either of you to try to show me how you came to your conclusions, since you both start out with very subjective views, mainly, with what you have fun with. All I care about is what view I share more.

A big part of the current mess is that too many people confuse "explaining what I think is fun" with "proving dissenting people are having badwrongfun" - both while writing, and reading posts. And of course can't accept "That's fun for him" or "that's what he needs from a game/product/rules mechanic" as valid views.

Well, I for one are interested why other people think why something is fun - because I might "miss" out fun to-be-had, and on a more general note, I like to know how people think. Of course, sometimes I also like to know why people don't like something, and try to explain why I do not agree.

I agree that this too often leads to the "badwrongfun" accusations. But it doesn't have to be that way.

 

[Fenes]

Well, I for one are interested why other people think why something is fun - because I might "miss" out fun to-be-had, and on a more general note, I like to know how people think. Of course, sometimes I also like to know why people don't like something, and try to explain why I do not agree.

I agree that this too often leads to the "badwrongfun" accusations. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Well, I think rounser's post rather clearly shows why he considers something fun, and why he considers something not fun, especially with regards to the flavor/mechanics relation, and the perceived imbalance in favor of mechanics and effects.

 

[Hussar]

My personal beef with Rounser's interpretation is this:

I think that the exception-based rules model can work for D&D...really well. But the temptation to create mechanics for mechanic's sake, resulting in abominations with no flavour reason for existing, like the "warlord", is seemingly too strong.

is far too extreme a point of view. (I know, irony, thy taste is good) There are all sorts of ways you can take a warlord and make it make sense in game. The idea of a character who inspires other characters to do things through his force of personality is hardly stretching anything. About the worst thing you can say about warlords is the name.

Heck, in 3e, if you gave bard a decent BAB and some bonus feats, you'd have something that approximates pretty darn well a warlord. The Truenamer I had in one campaign worked EXACTLY like a warlord as another example.

But, no matter how many examples are brought up, no matter how much people say that it DOES fit with D&D, Rounser has flat out decided that it doesn't fit. No matter what. There's no room for conversation there. It's done.

For years, we've seen D&D try to do the Flavour First approach to games. Stronger in earlier editions and weaker in 3e, but, still Flavour First. And IT DOESN'T WORK. Thirty years of doing this and every time it results in the same thing - broken mechanics with piss poor balance that destroy games.

How many times are people going to get told that the way to take control of the game is to ban all splats before we accept that flavour first is a BAD IDEA? By and large, every splat out there tries to go flavour first. And the power creep just gets worse and worse. Orb spells anyone? There's a flavour first idea - conjurers who can create orbs of matter/energy and hurl them at their enemies. Sounds cool right? Until you realize that you've just made spells that make evocation pretty much pointless.

We've done it. We've done it over and over again. Same thing. Same input in, same output out.

 

[rounser]

is far too extreme a point of view.

No. It's not. Simulating fantasy tropes is what game was built on. Just because your side is in control of the game doesn't make "crunch first" anything other than gratuitous suspension-of-disbelief destroying nonsense that at the very least should be optional, and kept out of the core.

How many times are people going to get told that the way to take control of the game is to ban all splats before we accept that flavour first is a BAD IDEA?

You just need a compromise between the two extremes. Just because flavour trumping crunch entirely is bad design doesn't imply that crunch trumping flavour entirely is good design. It's bad design as well - perhaps worse in the case of D&D, because D&D can survive in the face of bad crunch in the core, but perhaps not bad flavour there.

The pendulum's swung one way, now it's swung the other. In places, IMO 4E has it (the right balance between flavour and crunch), but IMO it gets it wrong in prominent enough places to ruin the feel of the thing overall.

 

[carmachu]

Because he's worked himself up FROM R&D to Digital Gaming. Randy started as a "tester/gopher" for M:TG cards, worked himself up to lead designer on a couple of sets, then became LEAD DEVELOPER of all M:TG.
The guy is a gamer made good.

And thats great for him.

But not so good for us D&D customers. He's got alot of street cred, so to speak, magic wise. I see nothing yet that makes me want to have him around RPG's....