Avoiding "Glut" (Maneuvers, tricks and other options)

[kevtar]

A splat book may have half a dozen really cool class ideas and ten great new feats; but if you're also getting 96 pages of other stuff you don't want is it really worth it?

Lanefan

I agree, there have been a LOT of classes published in each edition over the years, but that hasn't bothered me as much because I'm not choosing a class as often as I might be choosing a manuever or trick (or as much as I had been choosing powers). For me, quality is really at the heart of the "glut" problem (and of course, that is subjective, so it is difficult to avoid). I don't mind "splat" books and the like. In fact, I enjoyed a number of books that were produced in 3.5 because I thought they (for the most part) continued to produce new, distinctive elements to the game. 4e started out that way, then it hit a dry spell, and picked back up with things like the book about the Feywild. So quality is key. A diversity of good things is well... good, but a diversity of things - with only a few of them being good - is glut. Complicate that situation with a mandatory decision at every level (e.g. you must pick a maneuver, trick, etc...) and you've got players wading through a lot of options, but only picking a few because they are the high quality items - which only exacerbates the issue.

For me, it's not just the number of elements that are presented, but its the number of elements that provide an added, distinctive quality to the game. The question is, how can 5e provide a game experience that offers a wide variety and choice and customizable complexity and continue to publish new game material while avoiding glut?

 

[hanez]

Spell glut is just as awful if not worse. Let both sides be just as glutty or cut the magic down just as much. Face it, glut equals power and if one person gets glut and another doesn't you can't balance them.

Disagree. When I played wizards in 3.x I loved MILLIONS of choices for my spells, I stayed up at night reading just trying to find the one spell I'd pick next level. At the same time I have players who just want to get better and more powerful with their axe, and want to ignore all the other stuff.

Which isnt to say magic should be complicated, and martial should be simple. Instead, there should be a complicated (vancian) magic class like the wizard, and a simple one that just blasts at will. There should be a simple martial class like the traditional D&D fighter and a complicated one like the 4e fighter.

I hope 5e will provide options to turn your simple D&D fighter into the complicated (more like 4e) one. Perhaps the simple version kept taking the feats to boost his hitpoints, attack damage and attack frequency, while the complicated one uses feats to pick powers. This would be the best of both worlds for me.

 

[delericho]

Glut happens. Feats, themes, backgrounds, spells, tricks and races will all become a giant unwieldy pile if 5e is successful.

Yep, this.

To stay in business, WotC-D&D need to produce new books (or sell DDI subscriptions), and the best selling books (most attractive DDI offerings) will be those giving lots of new "power options" to players. There's a reason every edition since 2nd, and most other successful RPGs, sell endless splatbooks - players buy them in large numbers, so they make money.

You certainly could create a much more elegant, streamlined system that doesn't bloat in this manner because the core is wonderfully flexible (thus negating the need/benefit of lots of extra stuff). Problem is, once the core books were out and had sold a heap of copies, there's nothing more to sell. Nothing to sell means no money coming in; no money coming in means no jobs for the designers and the cancellation of the line.

To be successful long-term, an RPG must inevitably bloat itself to destruction.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Yep, this.

To stay in business, WotC-D&D need to produce new books (or sell DDI subscriptions), and the best selling books (most attractive DDI offerings) will be those giving lots of new "power options" to players. There's a reason every edition since 2nd, and most other successful RPGs, sell endless splatbooks - players buy them in large numbers, so they make money.

You certainly could create a much more elegant, streamlined system that doesn't bloat in this manner because the core is wonderfully flexible (thus negating the need/benefit of lots of extra stuff). Problem is, once the core books were out and had sold a heap of copies, there's nothing more to sell. Nothing to sell means no money coming in; no money coming in means no jobs for the designers and the cancellation of the line.

To be successful long-term, an RPG must inevitably bloat itself to destruction.

This is true. Game quality suffers to benefit the industry at the expense of the hobby.

 

[Wiseblood]

Yep, this.

To stay in business, WotC-D&D need to produce new books (or sell DDI subscriptions), and the best selling books (most attractive DDI offerings) will be those giving lots of new "power options" to players. There's a reason every edition since 2nd, and most other successful RPGs, sell endless splatbooks - players buy them in large numbers, so they make money.

You certainly could create a much more elegant, streamlined system that doesn't bloat in this manner because the core is wonderfully flexible (thus negating the need/benefit of lots of extra stuff). Problem is, once the core books were out and had sold a heap of copies, there's nothing more to sell. Nothing to sell means no money coming in; no money coming in means no jobs for the designers and the cancellation of the line.

To be successful long-term, an RPG must inevitably bloat itself to destruction.

Excepting DDI, If DDN is my cup of tea I will probably re-subscribe unless the articles and content are found lacking.

 

[erleni]

I have nothing against power bloat as long as the quality of the material is good. And I damn want powers for martial characters in 5e.

 

[eamon]

Yep, this.

To stay in business, WotC-D&D need to produce new books (or sell DDI subscriptions), and the best selling books (most attractive DDI offerings) will be those giving lots of new "power options" to players. There's a reason every edition since 2nd, and most other successful RPGs, sell endless splatbooks - players buy them in large numbers, so they make money.

You certainly could create a much more elegant, streamlined system that doesn't bloat in this manner because the core is wonderfully flexible (thus negating the need/benefit of lots of extra stuff). Problem is, once the core books were out and had sold a heap of copies, there's nothing more to sell. Nothing to sell means no money coming in; no money coming in means no jobs for the designers and the cancellation of the line.

To be successful long-term, an RPG must inevitably bloat itself to destruction.

Not necessarily. Or at least; there are ways of mitigating it. I'll bet lots of people know the card-game dominion, which currently has lots of options and expansions. Yet, the effect of that bloat is quite limited as in each individual game only a small set is ever used. Similarly, in RPG's settings and the like aren't bloat; they don't cause overuse.

Another alternative is to limit the amount of content. If you do want to release new options that aren't mutually exclusive to old ones, then you can choose to release few options that interact in an interesting way with existing content, rather than hundreds of unrelated minor specializations. In other words, keep the number of choices down even where you do release new choices. A splatbook needs to appeal to lots of customers, but you can do that by letting the feat or power appeal to lots of customers rather than writing lots of hyper-specialized feats or powers appealing to tiny segments of the customers. Less but higher quality new content helps.

Finally, you can suggest default balancing rules for the DM; i.e. each player can use core books and no more than 2 splatbooks per character. Alternatively, each player can propose a splatbook and the entire party gets to use material from all proposed splatbooks. In any case, the choice is simplified by being hierarchical: first choose the splatbook, then the details.

Finally, rather than release an aggravating constant stream of almost irrelevant errata, you can see that as a business opportunity, and fix only urgent problems by errata but instead re-release revisions of the base periodically (e.g. 3.5).

Sure, there will be some bloat. But just because it's unavoidable doesn't mean you can't mitigate it or reduce the extent of bloat.

 

[Raith5]

I know where the OP is coming from, but things being equal I would rather a surplus of choices rather than too little. I like being able to chose a range of powers that fit with my character concept and intersect with other members of my party - even if I dont use them.

That said I like the idea of cutting down the number of powers and feats - some are way too specialised. My favouriteover specialised ability is a 4th ed feat theat enables attacks by a Flail to gain a +2 to bonus to a target using a shield - what a waste of a feat.

For me the bigger issue than the number of choices with regards to powers, is having rules that more clearly enable combat powers to be used in non-combat situations - maybe use Cleave to add a flourish to an intimidate check for example.

 

[DEFCON 1]

To be successful long-term, an RPG must inevitably bloat itself to destruction.

And for a campaign to be successful... DMs and players need to learn to suck it up and police themselves.

If the game is becoming unwieldy and bloated because there's just "too much stuff" to sift through... is that the game's fault or their own for allowing all that other material through the gates?

Don't blame WotC because you can't set guidelines or resist the urge to bring in every shiny new thing that gets published.

 

[grimslade]

Glut creates criminal role players? Unable to 'police themselves'?

Glut creates a morass where it is difficult to separate the cruft from the useful. Glut happens during the life span of an edition, but how the glut is packaged makes all the difference. If two years into the next edition I want to run an urban campaign in a large homebrewed city, how many splat books do I and my players need to go through to separate the wheat from the chaff? Not even to use, just to decide what is in or out. Keeping the criminal bloat riff raff out as we 'police ourselves'.

Just don't use it is fantastically useless advice. How can we help WotC package rules bloat so that is can be used by some and discarded by others?