D&D (2024) Do players really want balance?

[Maxperson]

Yes, this is how I can tell that Transformers films are better than The Seventh Seal; or that The Hunger Games is a better novel than The Wind Up Bird Chronicle.

The Hunger Games reads better than the Bible, but the Bible is the best selling book ever.

 

[tetrasodium]

The Hunger Games reads better than the Bible, but the Bible is the best selling book ever.

Poor comparison though. I tried to look up some numbers to make a point about edition numbers & found sources that suggest about 5 billion copies of the bible sold, six billion copies of the King James bible in circulation & that there are over 1000 individual editions of the KJV bible dating back to the 1600s.

If anything the bible sales numbers comparison does a great job of demonstrating just how important everything d&d that came before 5e is to the popularity & sales of 5e. With the importance of that link between d&d and it's past highlighted it gives solid support for the importance of supporting playstyles other than 5e's OneTrueWay like those that depend on some degree of attrition treasure resource management & so on

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Which is why there are different types of beverages and different games to play. On the other hand Elkhorn beer (a localish brew a friend of mine) never gained a wider audience because it was, shall we say, an acquired taste. Nothing wrong with that.

Anyway, I've said all I have to say on this topic.

Think you misunderstood. I was saying that too.

Some people have very specific interests and this game not meeting that taste may say nothing about quality. Other games probably do a better job for them.

 

[Hussar]

The Hunger Games reads better than the Bible, but the Bible is the best selling book ever.

But, The Hunger Games are only popular because of marketing. The quality of the story, writing or anything else is secondary at best because people are apparently incapable of understanding that the thing they like isn't very good, but, rather, they are just being led by the nose to liking something inferior. If only we would accept that The Hunger Games is an inferior product, we could then improve on it and sell even more.

Just like those fifteen thousand Tolkien lookalikes did so much better than Tolkien. Because, obviously, Tolkien is only popular because of marketing. And that Shakespeare guy? Whoosh. Fantastic marketing of mediocre work. If only they'd listen to me, Romeo and Juliet would be so much better.



Meh, I've been playing the "inferior game" since day 1. Everyone has told me how crap D&D is and that Game X is just so much better and does things so much better. RIFTS is better. Warhammer is better. Vampire is better. GURPS is the superior game. So on and so forth. If only people weren't so stuck on D&D...

Forty years and counting now for me.

Like I've been saying for a while now. If people would stick to only speaking for themselves and stop trying to speak for the "hobby", a lot of these conversations would be a thousand times more productive. I mean, sure, I think 5e D&D is too high magic. I would very much like some dials that I could turn to turn down the magic level. But, I'm not going to pretend that my low magic D&D is somehow the game that WotC should be producing and if only they'd do that, then we'd see a golden age of gaming that makes right now look like nothing.

 

[Oofta]

Think you misunderstood. I was saying that too.

Some people have very specific interests and this game not meeting that taste may say nothing about quality. Other games probably do a better job for them.

I see said the blind man.

Obviously different games will work better for different people and there is no one true "best" since quality is in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I see said the blind man.

Obviously different games will work better for different people and there is no one true "best" since quality is in the eye of the beholder.

Yeah and for the purpose.

I don’t want 5e/2024 to be a hard core simulation. I want it to play quicker and easier than 3e/4e but have more dials than 1e. For me that purpose it works…but I get it when folks want something else 100%

 

[pemerton]

If only we would accept that The Hunger Games is an inferior product, we could then improve on it and sell even more.

I don't think there's any plausible universe in which (say) The Wind Up Bird Chronicle sells as much as The Hunger Games. If you think that settles the question of quality between them, well all I can say is that we disagree.

I mean, according to a Penguin publishing website, Hardy Boys books have sold over 70 million copies: The Hardy Boys Does this tell us that the Hardy Boys novels are better than (say) At Swim-Two-Birds? (I can't get sales figures for this, but I suspect they're less than 70 million. I also expect that the percentage of books bought that are then actually read is higher for the Hardy Boys than for Flann O'Brien.)

I'd implore you to consider that how you rate a film or novel is a complete mess of cherry picked comparative criteria, weightings with no basis and subjective evaluations.

Based on what criteria? I remember a study done a while back. People were asked to taste, and rank wine, not knowing anything about the wine at all. Unless it was a person's job as a professional wine taster, people choose the low-to-middle cost wines. It wasn't until they were shown the label and the price that they deemed the more expensive wine higher.

Those people who judged wine for a living? They knew what qualities to look for, what made a wine expensive. Because they knew what made a wine more expensive, they ranked the expensive wines higher. Quality is in the eye of the beholder.

I'm not saying anything about wine. I don't claim to know very much about wine.

My post was about films and novels, which I know a bit more about. And the claim that the best indicator of value in a film or novel is how many people pay to read/watch it is, in my view, absolute nonsense. The idea that there is nothing to be said about the quality of the Hardy Boys beyond 70 millions copies being sold is ridiculous.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

My post was about films and novels, which I know a bit more about. And the claim that the best indicator of value in a film or novel is how many people pay to read/watch it is, in my view, absolute nonsense. The idea that there is nothing to be said about the quality of the Hardy Boys beyond 70 millions copies being sold is ridiculous.

The issue is that this approach to TTRPG design assessment relegates it to the realm of the subjective. And neither side can be right in that reality, so we can't have that.

 

[pemerton]

The issue is that this approach to TTRPG design assessment relegates it to the realm of the subjective. And neither side can be right in that reality, so we can't have that.

I don't agree that every alternative comparison beyond sales is subjective - at least, if "subjective" means not amenable to reason or analysis.

Just to give a simple example: the change to how to hit number and armour class are calculate in D&D, that was inaugurated with 3E, seems to me to be a straightforward improvement. It eliminates weird stuff like a +1 ring or +1 armour operating by way of subtraction to a number.

Establishing a uniform progression table for all PCs is also an improvement: it means that rules that refer to levels or HD operate the same for all PCs, and opens the door to more rules that treat level or HD as an input. Whereas in AD&D and B/X, these rules operate weirdly, because of differences from character to character as to what a level actually means (and that's before we get to multi-classsing).

 

[Hussar]

I mean, according to a Penguin publishing website, Hardy Boys books have sold over 70 million copies: The Hardy Boys Does this tell us that the Hardy Boys novels are better than (say) At Swim-Two-Birds? (I can't get sales figures for this, but I suspect they're less than 70 million. I also expect that the percentage of books bought that are then actually read is higher for the Hardy Boys than for Flann O'Brien.)

But, the Hardy Boys is not trying to be a better novel. The books are written for an entirely different audience for an entirely different purpose. Trying to compare them on the basis of "great literature" misses the point entirely. And that's what people are complaining about here when people try to paint D&D's success as merely marketing or first to post.

D&D isn't trying to be the "best game ever". It's not trying to be "the most innovative game ever". It's not trying to be a lot of things. What it IS trying to be is a broadly appealing RPG that can be appealing to the broadest audience possible. THAT'S the design goal of the game. And it's a design goal that it hits square on the head.

Just like the Hardy Boys are meant to appeal to a broad swath of young readers with a broad swath of tastes and reading capabilities. X or Y might be better written, might be better novels, but, they are not better designed for achieving what the Hardy Boys set out to achieve.

That's the problem whenever these "design" discussions come up. People refuse to define what they think the design goals are. So, because they refuse to define those design goals, they make claims about this or that being poorly designed and it winds up everyone talking past each other.