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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5876356" data-attributes="member: 42582">It's probably worth noting that Gygax has quite a lot to say about "balance" in both his PHB and his DMG. It's not as if the goal of "comparably effective playing pieces" had its origin in 4e design.But anyway, it's trivial to think of games that aren't balanced in the 4e sense (of comparably effective playing pieces) and yet which many people still think are worth playing. Classic Traveller. Runequest. Burning Wheel. Each of these has some or other version of a lifepath system which, either by random roll (in Traveller and Runequest) or deliberate choice (in Traveller and BW) can produce very different degrees of mechanical effectiveness in a starting PC.Part of good design in this sort of game, though, is setting things up so that the mechanically less effective PC has something to contribute. Traveller achieves this in part via role specialisation. There are so many varied specialisations that can be required, that even an overall weak PC might be able to bring something unique to the party. BW achieves this through making considerations other than mechanical success in attempted tasks a key focus of play (it is being tested in ways you care about rather than succeeding in tests that tends to matter in BW). Both BW and RQ also have rules that result in those with smaller numbers advancing more quickly than those with bigger numbers, so that initial gaps in effectiveness are, to some extent at least, likely to close over the course of play.Basic D&D, in my view, is prone to produce PCs with wide gaps in mechanical effectivenss, without any offsetting considerations: better PCs actually advance faster (due to the XP bonus for high stats); most PCs are trying to perform the same tasks (fighting monsters, exploring dungeon corridors and rooms); and the game emphasises succeeding at challenges over being challenged, given that the penalty for failure is typically death. (I just reread the two samples of play in Moldvay Basic, and in what is probably an hour or so of play two PCs die - one to a failed poison save during exploration, and one in combat).This may be a viable model for a game, but it's going to produce a very different play experience from RQ, Traveller or BW. In fact, it helps explain where a game like Tunnels & Trolls came from - it is being more self-conscious about the lottery-like silliness of Basic play - and it also helps explain how games like Traveller and RQ could present themselves as being "more serious" than D&D.The way in which a game approaches the issue of mechanical balance, and makes it signficant or not in play, can tell us a fair bit both about the approach(es) to play for which it is designed, and the approach(es) to play that it will support.In my view the worst approach to balance is in a game like 2nd ed AD&D, which aspires to the "seriousness" of Traveller or RQ, but has the same lottery-like approach as Basic D&D (PC advantage sets up positive feedback loops, and mechanical success rather than mechanical engagement is what is rewarded in play), and simply assumes that those players stuck with less effective PCs will nevertheless enjoy (or at least tolerate) the experience because they can sit ineffectually at the table sucking up "the story" and nattering away in funny voices.EDIT: There is also an approach to action resolution, emphasised both in some classic D&D play and also, I think, in quite a bit of contemporary "old school" approaches, that downplays the significance of the PCs' mechanical capabilities altogether. Meaning that balance, to the extent that it matters, emerges out of freeform play and resolution rather than the formal action resolution mechanics. I doubt that this will be a terribly big feature of D&Dnext, however. Even where D&Dnext is likely to make a more self-conscious effort to have players engaging the fiction (as via the skill rules or the "combat advantage" rules), I think this will be more like Burning Wheel - engaging the fiction to get bonuses to mechanical resolution - than like White Plume Mountain, in which engaging the fiction is a freeform alternative to engaging the action resolution mechanics.</blockquote>

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