D&D 360 Article: Living Around D&D

[charlesatan]

Though in part I'm bothered by the "the things that has influenced my work on 4E D&D most is my home campaign." Dude, you may be a game designer, but what makes you thikn the way you play is representative of how the rest of us play, such that changes based on your house rules are right for the rest of us? That's the height of arrogance.

Where else would they get them? It's not like we have an empirical formula for obtaining the best rules. We just have guesses and playtesting to go on (and designers will only be able to playtest the rules they implement).

And guess what, people play D&D differently. Your right answer might be someone else's wrong answer. So might as well stick with the one you've playtested with. =)

 

[king_ghidorah]

You expected them to say "the things that influenced my work on 4E D&D most is this campaign I heard a guy was running in Omaha"?

Fun nostalgia, much of which I share.

Though in part I'm bothered by the "the things that has influenced my work on 4E D&D most is my home campaign." Dude, you may be a game designer, but what makes you thikn the way you play is representative of how the rest of us play, such that changes based on your house rules are right for the rest of us? That's the height of arrogance.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Actually, I'd expected them to say: "we've been playing close attention to how many groups play their games over the years, and surveyed thousands of gamers about what works and doesn't work in the game; most of the ideas for changes comes from these observations."

They can playtest the new mechanics in their home campaign and I have no issue. But sensing a problem in the home campaign is a sample size of one, and I for one would like to know there is a reasonable sample size to establish problems before they begin fixing things. How do you tell the difference between fixing a mechanic that is a problem in all campaigns and fixing a mechanic that is a problem in most campaigns without a metric to say that your home campaign is representative of a large percentage of all the other home campaigns out there? You can end up fixing problems that aren't broken, but only appear to be so because they are broken in your home campaign.

 

[howandwhy99]

Man, why does everyone knock on Dungeonland? That and the Land Beyond the Magic Mirror are my two favorite 1st edition adventures!

I hear ya. Maybe it's because D&D is a Brand and wild fluctuations in branding are generally bad? I'd love to reinstate crazy, childish, and silly back into the game. Why appeal to only one taste or age group?

Yeah. That Gary Gygax had no idea what he was doing!

No