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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9082265" data-attributes="member: 6790260"><p>Grouping these together 'cause all one topic. There are games that strive for this. And it's...often pretty bad, because there are three key pitfalls:</p><ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The "hacker problem," aka "Matrix stuff" <em>a la</em> Shadowrun. If you have totally siloed-off rules for different classes, and <em>need</em> to fill each silo, it's borderline impossible to keep that interesting for everyone at the table. Either the hacker stuff is superfluous so bringing one is crap, or it's too important to neglect which means everyone gets to sit around and <em>watch</em> the hacker be awesome for half an hour. If there's a sweetspot, I've never seen it happen. Works <em>great</em> in solo/duo games though, where such focus isn't so out of place. Note that it doesn't need to be <em>hackers</em> specifically. A pure-fantasy game could have Mediums that have exclusive right to negotiating with spirits--same problem, different clothing.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The over-breadth problem, aka "D&D Wizard"/"Magicrun." Magic, consistently, gets designed to do too many things all at once. And when you find the rare unicorn that breaks that pattern, either it makes magic genuinely pretty trivial (and thus has the same problems as "hackers/etc. are useless" as above), or people <em>constantly and tediously</em> complain that that's what the game does, even though it actually doesn't. Any single individual player might accept a particular form of limit on "magic," but for players collectively, it needs to be all things to all people and thus gets eternally pushed toward omnipotence (do all the things real real good) or impotence (do all the things <em>crappily</em>.) Note that "real real good" often gets demoted to "crappily" by saddling powerful magic with horrifically awful side-effects or costs, which leads to...</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The "Spotlight instability" problem. Spotlight balance is inherently unstable. Even if you actually do balance each of the Rol--er, <em>Paradigms</em>, shall we say--so that each one truly is incommensurate and essential, it will almost always be the case that one of the roles will be demonstrably <em>most</em> important, which might vary from table to table. Once that is identified, the entire group has a perverse incentive: Keep the spotlight on the most important character as much as possible, and avoid allowing it to fall on anyone else <em>ever</em>, especially in any way that might have negative consequences. And I'm not actually convinced that it is possible to make each of the, ahem, <em>Paradigms</em> truly 100% incommensurate-and-essential.</li> </ol><p>This is why I am fully convinced that the only way to create a rich but approachable, deep but user-friendly RPG experience is to ensure that <em>every</em> character always has something meaningful to contribute to every "pillar" of play. "Pillar," of course, being the common term nowadays for the core design focus(es) of a game: the specific mechanical (as opposed to conceptual) things the game is "about," so to speak, the stuff the designers decided was sufficiently interesting to be worth writing mechanics about. (That they are specifically manifested through mechanics is what makes "pillars" different from my hypothesized "game-design-purposes" I've mentioned before: "pillars" necessarily must follow after you've decided which game-design-purpose or -purposes you wish to pursue.)</p><p></p><p></p><p>Sure, for a variety of reasons. Oftentimes, because it substitutes "keep throwing yourself at something until you succeed" for actual difficulty. Die and reroll, die and reroll, die and reroll, die and reroll, di--oh, wait, you <em>survived</em> to level 3? Wow! Hey, now you can actually DO stuff. That's why DCC invented its funnels, which are excellent game design, but they do inherently move away from some of the stuff you describe. Because they recognize that the original style's (intentional) "just keep failing, often in ways beyond your control, for 3-6 business weeks" is just...neither fun, nor particularly enriching or engaging, for a significant chunk of people, once they realize that there really isn't that much tension involved.</p><p></p><p>It's not that the oldest of old school style is dead, <em>per se</em>. It's that it had to evolve to survive, and in evolving, it became a new but related species. One that retains many, many traits of its forebears--moreso than any other branch of the cladogram--but which still had to change <em>somewhat</em> or else, as you say, go extinct. Such is the way of things; not survival of some weird abstract "most fit" thing, but survival of the thing fit for the context it finds itself in.</p><p></p><p></p><p>3e also had PB, so I'm not sure what your point is there. It was also an extremely common house-rule, even <em>before</em> 3e, to give first-level characters max HP; I want to say that was an explicit official variant rule in 3e. 4e HP work very differently so we can't draw direct comparisons, but the <em>effect</em> of the rules was more or less comparable to maxed HP at first level. 3e was the edition that introduced XP uniformity. Really only that fourth point is semi-unique to 5e. 4e also had all races with +2 to two stats; it evolved later to be +2 to one specific stat, and +2 to player's choice of two specific other stats. You also had far less of a gap between races; 5e dragonborn suck mechanically, that's why they've gotten <em>repeated</em> reworks now, whereas 5e half-elves are <em>amazing</em>, etc. So I kinda have to line-item veto your fourth bullet: For many tables species <em>can</em> be innately better, sometimes to a pretty significant degree (e.g. if you have Variant Human, Half-Elf, Gnome, and PHB Dragonborn as your PCs' races, you're gonna notice some pretty major power gap.) <em>But</em>, if most players pick the other common options (e.g. Variant Human, Half-Elf, High Elf, Tiefling), you probably won't notice that much of an issue at all.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Moving so you are five feet away from a blazing gasoline fire means you receive 1/25th the energy it outputs. That does not mean that being five feet away is now <em>safe</em>. I assert a similar issue here. Yes, we have moved further away from the "almost anything can happen" local-scale unpredictability, but local-scale unpredictability is still extremely high, and as a consequence, players are strongly encouraged down narrow, predictable paths on the broader scale. Avoid, subvert, exploit: rules are a danger and a yoke, not a platform nor a backstop.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Hence why most folks who see value in balance bristle when we hear talk of "perfect" balance and terms like your "linearity" and "predictability."</p><p></p><p></p><p>Personally, I disagree. Instead, it was actually transparent about what kind of task you were signing up for if you decide to design something. People have gotten this bizarre notion that game design is <em>easy</em>; it is not. 4e actually told people the truth about how challenging game design can be. They interpreted that honesty as being told they shouldn't do it--when what they were actually being told is, "don't do it <em>unless you're ready for a lot of work</em>."</p><p></p><p></p><p>Oh, I totally have--or, at least, I have seen plenty of stuff from folks arguing that it should be so. It's just phrased differently, because the edition warriors successfully portrayed "balance" as a four-letter word. The well has been so thoroughly poisoned, no one can claim they <em>like</em> balance. To do so is to commit debate suicide; you will instantly be dismissed as either an idiot who likes making bad games nobody actually enjoys, or a fussy, persnickety, unsatisfiable malcontent. (Both of these I have regularly experienced on this very forum, and the latter, in toned-down form, was the specific reason why 5e's designers claimed they weren't going to preview the "Tactical Combat Module" that then never actually appeared.)</p><p></p><p>Because "balance" <em>must</em> be hated, but people still have many of the same issues as before, they have to circumlocute. "Fairness" is a common proxy. You'll also see people talk about options being boring if they're weak. "Overpowered" is still perfectly acceptable, even though it necessarily requires that someone have a standard of balance and a belief that it needs to be enforced. (See, for instance, the consternation over Twilight Cleric, Hexblade dips, and <em>silvery barbs</em>. Or, for a rather pointed example, the bloody firestorm over the UA "Spell Versatility" feature for Sorcerers. You don't have people saying "<a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/spell-versatility-is-gone-rejoice.676481/" target="_blank">Spell Versatility is GONE. Rejoice!</a>" and explicitly adding, "No stepping on the Wizard's toes with a stiletto heel for you." unless they genuinely believe that the game as it is is actually balanced and deviating from it would be unbalanced.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9082265, member: 6790260"] Grouping these together 'cause all one topic. There are games that strive for this. And it's...often pretty bad, because there are three key pitfalls: [LIST=1] [*]The "hacker problem," aka "Matrix stuff" [I]a la[/I] Shadowrun. If you have totally siloed-off rules for different classes, and [I]need[/I] to fill each silo, it's borderline impossible to keep that interesting for everyone at the table. Either the hacker stuff is superfluous so bringing one is crap, or it's too important to neglect which means everyone gets to sit around and [I]watch[/I] the hacker be awesome for half an hour. If there's a sweetspot, I've never seen it happen. Works [I]great[/I] in solo/duo games though, where such focus isn't so out of place. Note that it doesn't need to be [I]hackers[/I] specifically. A pure-fantasy game could have Mediums that have exclusive right to negotiating with spirits--same problem, different clothing. [*]The over-breadth problem, aka "D&D Wizard"/"Magicrun." Magic, consistently, gets designed to do too many things all at once. And when you find the rare unicorn that breaks that pattern, either it makes magic genuinely pretty trivial (and thus has the same problems as "hackers/etc. are useless" as above), or people [I]constantly and tediously[/I] complain that that's what the game does, even though it actually doesn't. Any single individual player might accept a particular form of limit on "magic," but for players collectively, it needs to be all things to all people and thus gets eternally pushed toward omnipotence (do all the things real real good) or impotence (do all the things [I]crappily[/I].) Note that "real real good" often gets demoted to "crappily" by saddling powerful magic with horrifically awful side-effects or costs, which leads to... [*]The "Spotlight instability" problem. Spotlight balance is inherently unstable. Even if you actually do balance each of the Rol--er, [I]Paradigms[/I], shall we say--so that each one truly is incommensurate and essential, it will almost always be the case that one of the roles will be demonstrably [I]most[/I] important, which might vary from table to table. Once that is identified, the entire group has a perverse incentive: Keep the spotlight on the most important character as much as possible, and avoid allowing it to fall on anyone else [I]ever[/I], especially in any way that might have negative consequences. And I'm not actually convinced that it is possible to make each of the, ahem, [I]Paradigms[/I] truly 100% incommensurate-and-essential. [/LIST] This is why I am fully convinced that the only way to create a rich but approachable, deep but user-friendly RPG experience is to ensure that [I]every[/I] character always has something meaningful to contribute to every "pillar" of play. "Pillar," of course, being the common term nowadays for the core design focus(es) of a game: the specific mechanical (as opposed to conceptual) things the game is "about," so to speak, the stuff the designers decided was sufficiently interesting to be worth writing mechanics about. (That they are specifically manifested through mechanics is what makes "pillars" different from my hypothesized "game-design-purposes" I've mentioned before: "pillars" necessarily must follow after you've decided which game-design-purpose or -purposes you wish to pursue.) Sure, for a variety of reasons. Oftentimes, because it substitutes "keep throwing yourself at something until you succeed" for actual difficulty. Die and reroll, die and reroll, die and reroll, die and reroll, di--oh, wait, you [I]survived[/I] to level 3? Wow! Hey, now you can actually DO stuff. That's why DCC invented its funnels, which are excellent game design, but they do inherently move away from some of the stuff you describe. Because they recognize that the original style's (intentional) "just keep failing, often in ways beyond your control, for 3-6 business weeks" is just...neither fun, nor particularly enriching or engaging, for a significant chunk of people, once they realize that there really isn't that much tension involved. It's not that the oldest of old school style is dead, [I]per se[/I]. It's that it had to evolve to survive, and in evolving, it became a new but related species. One that retains many, many traits of its forebears--moreso than any other branch of the cladogram--but which still had to change [I]somewhat[/I] or else, as you say, go extinct. Such is the way of things; not survival of some weird abstract "most fit" thing, but survival of the thing fit for the context it finds itself in. 3e also had PB, so I'm not sure what your point is there. It was also an extremely common house-rule, even [I]before[/I] 3e, to give first-level characters max HP; I want to say that was an explicit official variant rule in 3e. 4e HP work very differently so we can't draw direct comparisons, but the [I]effect[/I] of the rules was more or less comparable to maxed HP at first level. 3e was the edition that introduced XP uniformity. Really only that fourth point is semi-unique to 5e. 4e also had all races with +2 to two stats; it evolved later to be +2 to one specific stat, and +2 to player's choice of two specific other stats. You also had far less of a gap between races; 5e dragonborn suck mechanically, that's why they've gotten [I]repeated[/I] reworks now, whereas 5e half-elves are [I]amazing[/I], etc. So I kinda have to line-item veto your fourth bullet: For many tables species [I]can[/I] be innately better, sometimes to a pretty significant degree (e.g. if you have Variant Human, Half-Elf, Gnome, and PHB Dragonborn as your PCs' races, you're gonna notice some pretty major power gap.) [I]But[/I], if most players pick the other common options (e.g. Variant Human, Half-Elf, High Elf, Tiefling), you probably won't notice that much of an issue at all. Moving so you are five feet away from a blazing gasoline fire means you receive 1/25th the energy it outputs. That does not mean that being five feet away is now [I]safe[/I]. I assert a similar issue here. Yes, we have moved further away from the "almost anything can happen" local-scale unpredictability, but local-scale unpredictability is still extremely high, and as a consequence, players are strongly encouraged down narrow, predictable paths on the broader scale. Avoid, subvert, exploit: rules are a danger and a yoke, not a platform nor a backstop. Hence why most folks who see value in balance bristle when we hear talk of "perfect" balance and terms like your "linearity" and "predictability." Personally, I disagree. Instead, it was actually transparent about what kind of task you were signing up for if you decide to design something. People have gotten this bizarre notion that game design is [I]easy[/I]; it is not. 4e actually told people the truth about how challenging game design can be. They interpreted that honesty as being told they shouldn't do it--when what they were actually being told is, "don't do it [I]unless you're ready for a lot of work[/I]." Oh, I totally have--or, at least, I have seen plenty of stuff from folks arguing that it should be so. It's just phrased differently, because the edition warriors successfully portrayed "balance" as a four-letter word. The well has been so thoroughly poisoned, no one can claim they [I]like[/I] balance. To do so is to commit debate suicide; you will instantly be dismissed as either an idiot who likes making bad games nobody actually enjoys, or a fussy, persnickety, unsatisfiable malcontent. (Both of these I have regularly experienced on this very forum, and the latter, in toned-down form, was the specific reason why 5e's designers claimed they weren't going to preview the "Tactical Combat Module" that then never actually appeared.) Because "balance" [I]must[/I] be hated, but people still have many of the same issues as before, they have to circumlocute. "Fairness" is a common proxy. You'll also see people talk about options being boring if they're weak. "Overpowered" is still perfectly acceptable, even though it necessarily requires that someone have a standard of balance and a belief that it needs to be enforced. (See, for instance, the consternation over Twilight Cleric, Hexblade dips, and [I]silvery barbs[/I]. Or, for a rather pointed example, the bloody firestorm over the UA "Spell Versatility" feature for Sorcerers. You don't have people saying "[URL='https://www.enworld.org/threads/spell-versatility-is-gone-rejoice.676481/']Spell Versatility is GONE. Rejoice![/URL]" and explicitly adding, "No stepping on the Wizard's toes with a stiletto heel for you." unless they genuinely believe that the game as it is is actually balanced and deviating from it would be unbalanced. [/QUOTE]
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