Design and Developments: Dirt, Rocks and 10' halls

[occam]

You didn't just make the rules text more concise, you also made it more vague, in ways that would be bound to spur thread after thread about RAW vs. common sense.

I think the dev team's ability to write concise and clear rules/instructions needs a bit of work:

If any creature enters a doomspore's square (or uses a standard action to kick or poke at it, if within reach), a doomspore releases a cloud of spores that provides concealment to all creatures within its own and adjacent squares. Furthermore, a bloodied creature caught in the cloud is subject to a Fortitude attack (+10, 1d10 poison) at the beginning of its turn or when it moves into the affected area.

You dropped one of the three possibilities in the original text: What if you're in the cloud when it's set off, but then move out before the beginning of your next turn? With the original text, you're affected, but with your revision, you're not.

In addition, a target hit by a doomspore is weakened and takes ongoing poison 5 (save ends both conditions (Save?); creatures with immunity to or resist poison 5 are immune to the weakened condition also). Isn't that implicit?

It's not implicit. It could be defined elsewhere under a definition of poison resistance/immunity, but if you take this rules text on its own, without the extra verbiage it would be possible to interpret the rules in such a way that resistance negates the damage, but allows the weakened effect. So the options are:

1. spell it out here
2. spell it out in a definition elsewhere, forcing a lookup if someone is confused
3. hope that people use "common sense" to interpret the rule the way it was meant

I'm not advocating for any one of those options in particular. I don't much like the constant repetition of rules clarifications, either, but avoiding lookups and/or rules arguments has its value.

 

[occam]

This cloud (and its effects on a bloodied character) persists for the remainder of the encounter (or for 5 minutes).

So do we have an answer for the question of "How long does it take for per-encounter abilities to recharge?"?

 

[helium3]

A team of professionals is never going to design an elegant, rules-light, fast-moving system, because play-testing would be over quickly, and then they'd all need to justify their jobs to Human Resources.

I disagree. The designers simply need to believe that's the kind of game that must be created.

 

[Scribble]

I think we may be encountering the downside of having professionals design our games. Sure, we can be sure that the math will be accurate, but we can't be sure that the time constraints and resources that on on real-world players will be taken into account. After all, when it's your job to play a game, you can afford to participate in a system that requires hours of prep and moves at a snail's pace. In fact, it's in your best interests to create such a system, because it keeps you in your job of playing and testing games! A team of professionals is never going to design an elegant, rules-light, fast-moving system, because play-testing would be over quickly, and then they'd all need to justify their jobs to Human Resources. That's why all the real innovations in game design have either been done by amateurs, or by people who weren't employees and didn't need to answer to anybody higher up on the corperate food chain.

Just because you're designing something doesn't mean your job is safe... It's only safe if people are buying your products. I'd think it would be in your best interest to create a game that's fun to play and has a lot of options.

 

[helium3]

So while it may not be impressive, the concept is a first for the DMG. Which have never really included anything interesting in this vein before, except traps. I guess maybe there was a brief note about weather effects...

But this sort of material IS in the DMG, it's just not organized the way it apparently is in Iron Heroes.

Let me put it like this. In the DMG, if I want to get suggestions on how to handle a cave-in I have to know (or be able to figure out) that I have to look at the section on Dungeon Terrain. If I want suggestions on how to handle an encounter on the deck of a ship in the middle of a raging typhoon I have to know (or again figure out) that I need to look in the section on weather.

With the Zones schema (did I actually just use that word?) I suppose all I have to know is that I need to look in the section on zones to find all rules pertaining to the various types of zones. Of course, not all information that was in the section on weather or dungeon terrain is going to be in the section on zones, so now we have multiple locations in the DMG that I have to look at if I want to find all information about a specific thing.

And with that, I think I've completely gone off track now. What was the topic of this thread again? I'm pretty sure it wasn't about how best to organize the DMG for optimal rates of information retrieval

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Sounds cool, though the scale gets a bit silly. I mean, architecturally, how many buildings (especially medieval/ancient ones) had lots of 10' hallways and 10x10 rooms, let alone larger ones?

 

[helium3]

So... to paraphrase... you're glad its in, but you're still complaining about it.

Nah. Really I'm just envious of all the fan-worship Mearls seems to be getting these days.

 

[davethegame]

I think we may be encountering the downside of having professionals design our games. Sure, we can be sure that the math will be accurate, but we can't be sure that the time constraints and resources that on on real-world players will be taken into account. After all, when it's your job to play a game, you can afford to participate in a system that requires hours of prep and moves at a snail's pace. In fact, it's in your best interests to create such a system, because it keeps you in your job of playing and testing games! A team of professionals is never going to design an elegant, rules-light, fast-moving system, because play-testing would be over quickly, and then they'd all need to justify their jobs to Human Resources. That's why all the real innovations in game design have either been done by amateurs, or by people who weren't employees and didn't need to answer to anybody higher up on the corperate food chain.

Good job generalizing game designers everywhere. Elegant, rules-light, fast-moving systems are much harder to create than you think, and need just as much (if not more) playtesting. You also seem to imply that the designers at WotC have oodles of time that they're trying to pad out by... adding more rules complexities?

WotC designers also have to deal with constant applicants who want to take their job. Part of being in a corporation is that they have constant oversight, so if they were just stretching things out, they'd get caught much faster than a freelancer.

I may not like game designers who have corporate benefits and health insurance, but that's because of jealousy, not because they do shoddy work

 

[Scribble]

But this sort of material IS in the DMG, it's just not organized the way it apparently is in Iron Heroes.

Let me put it like this. In the DMG, if I want to get suggestions on how to handle a cave-in I have to know (or be able to figure out) that I have to look at the section on Dungeon Terrain. If I want suggestions on how to handle an encounter on the deck of a ship in the middle of a raging typhoon I have to know (or again figure out) that I need to look in the section on weather.

With the Zones schema (did I actually just use that word?) I suppose all I have to know is that I need to look in the section on zones to find all rules pertaining to the various types of zones. Of course, not all information that was in the section on weather or dungeon terrain is going to be in the section on zones, so now we have multiple places locations in the DMG that I have to look at if I want to find all information about a specific thing.

And with that, I think I've completely gone off track now. What was the topic of this thread again?

It's changing the way we think about terrain though.

Think about if you had a section for various special attacks, a section for regular attacks, and a section for various armors... But nothing correlated into a single monster...

It's roughly the same idea. Instead of having to flip through the various sections of the
DMG in order to piece together a fun terrain effect, the terrain is going to be already assembled. Like a monster manual but for terrain. You look through the book and find the terrain you want. All the stats already made up for you.

Makes life a little easier.

 

[helium3]

It's changing the way we think about terrain though.

Think about if you had a section for various special attacks, a section for regular attacks, and a section for various armors... But nothing correlated into a single monster...

It's roughly the same idea. Instead of having to flip through the various sections of the
DMG in order to piece together a fun terrain effect, the terrain is going to be already assembled. Like a monster manual but for terrain. You look through the book and find the terrain you want. All the stats already made up for you.

Makes life a little easier.

Eh, sounds reasonable enough if well implemented. It'll be interesting to see how they organize the DMG this time around. Never seems like they get it right.