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Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 6175516" data-attributes="member: 3400">If that's the case, I don't know what rock you've been hiding under or how you've missed the threads on them or discussions elsewhere. They've been going since before 2004 when you signed up and have continued on the entire time you've been here. "That same person" has been around for a long time. We were running TSR's AD&D modules back in 1981 as well as our own creations. If the adventure looked cool, we ran it. If we had a cool idea, we ran it. It wasn't one or the other. Some DMs did have distinct preferences but we mixed up who was running the game often enough that we had a lot of opportunity for diversity.Let's not mix too many things up here. There actually has been a shift in philosophy as far as publishing the D&D rules goes and Skip Williams is one of the people we can thank (or rage at) for it. Despite being as much a D&D grognard as anyone else can claim in this industry, he was a primary advocate for laying comprehensive rules out for the players to know so they can make rational decisions within those rules. This gets at Majoru Oakheart's jumping distance post (in another thread, I think, I've been reading a bunch lately that all blend together). If the PC has an idea how far he can jump, he can make a rational decision when faced with a gap without having to ask a DM who may or may not have a good grasp on that topic. The rules are already out there and in his hands. I believe that philosophy has governed the rules published as of 3e and 4e but not really for 1e or 2e.The idea of a balanced encounter, however,  has always been around - it just had a looser definition. An even less scientific one compared to the definitions in 3e and then 4e. And yes, the definition has become more scientific as the editions have progressed in the 2000s, but as a critic of focusing on the technique exclusively, I'm not sure it has actually let to better games. More advanced techniques in game design, maybe, but that doesn't necessarily make for a better game.It is true, though, that public policy is based on statistics like the 2.5 kids - it just doesn't reach down to the individual family level as much as it deals in broader aggregates. If families have an average of 2.5 kids, then 2 families can be expected to involve 5 kids, 10 families involve 25 kids, and so on. Those kids of statistics will help school district and city planners look at the growth in population and estimate when (or if) they need to build more schools. Game designers don't have that luxury. They have to design around the dynamics of a single group of players, thus the need to estimate how many players there probably are in the average group, how long the group lasts playing the same game, and so on.</blockquote>

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