D&D General Does WotC use its own DMG rules?

[Micah Sweet]

If there was an "encounter guru/czar" at WOTC whose job was to check all encounters headed for publishing and validate them against the DMG guidelines we might have some real consistency. I am pretty sure this is not any one person's job though so in addition to different people working on creating all of these encounters there are also different editors paying varying levels of attention to this particular detail so my guess is that adherence will vary quite a bit from book to book.

Using their own rules has never really been a strength with WOTC. Going back to 3.5 there were posts in this very forum going through the monster manuals and checking the math and discovering that many of the creatures did not adhere to their own published monster design rules. 4E had problems in some of the very first products with monsters being way too strong for their level.

If your own staff, presumably working with the people who wrote these things, cannot follow them, how seriously should anyone else take them as rules/guidelines for their own campaign?

Seriously enough for folks to keep throwing money at them, it seems.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Ultimately the encounter building rules are intended to be loose guidelines - that's how they're treated by official adventure writers for wotc.

Wotc obviously doesn't want to market their DMG by saying "yeah the encounter rules don't work, build your encounters based on vibes" since people want a functional product, not a loose guideline.

This is why I have a hard time not seeing most marketing as just fancy lying.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I want to hear what their actual design perimeters and intentions are. I've been asking for that for years now.

Where? Other than here? Yeah you keep mentioning it here, but we all know full well that ain't going to do a thing. Are you actually sending emails to WotC and the like? Or just griping about it is here over and over?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Just to remind people up-front here, I know a very limited amount about 5e, so I will not reference it at all here.

Given 4e's XP Budget system worked great and 5.0's CR system worked only marginally better than the absolute wild mass guessing of 3e's CR system, I don't really think "exception-based design" is at fault for making CR as much art as science. 4e was remarkably reliable. Not absolutely so, because dice will be dice and players make the characters and parties they want to make etc., etc., but dramatically moreso than either 3e or 5.0.

I'd argue that 4e made a far more strong attempt to keep monster design within the same bounds than any other D&D system I've seen; that's not saying it did not have exception based design, but at the same time, I kind of think it didn't want to; by which I mean as much as possible (and this was more true with later monster design than earlier) monsters were built to the same metric, even though they had to do so to at least some degree ad-hoc.

To describe that as "not the case" with prior editions is an understatement for the ages.

I think that made an enormous difference in why 4e's encounter mostly worked, and 3e's (especially as you advanced in level) was a trash-fire. It was, to some extent, despite it being exception based, but that's because to the degree they could they absolutely hosed down that factor.

If anything, the only game you mention here that even remotely approached "monster design rules that had to be followed" was 4e...and even then only to a pretty limited degree.

Encounter building in 3e was one of the single worst aspects of DMing it. I've lost--not joking--three 3e(/PF1e) DMs over the years very specifically due to encounter-building burnout. No other part of DMing it was anywhere near as time-consuming, vexing, and inconsistent.

Interesting. I'll never say that the 3e encounter building worked after a few low levels, but it was not what drove me out of the system; it was having to deal with the million special-case moving parts during actual play as the levels advanced. Life was too short.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Where? Other than here? Yeah you keep mentioning it here, but we all know full well that ain't going to do a thing. Are you actually sending emails to WotC and the like? Or just griping about it is here over and over?

I'd like them to throw in design comments in the text. No unheard of in RPGs, and I really appreciate it when I see it.

From what I've heard, they've actually done a somewhat better job of this in 5.5. Good for them, even though I don't care for most of their design choices personally.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Where? Other than here? Yeah you keep mentioning it here, but we all know full well that ain't going to do a thing. Are you actually sending emails to WotC and the like? Or just griping about it is here over and over?

We save that kind of thing for the thread about the new Ravenloft novel's cover.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I'd like them to throw in design comments in the text. No unheard of in RPGs, and I really appreciate it when I see it.

From what I've heard, they've actually done a somewhat better job of this in 5.5. Good for them, even though I don't care for most of their design choices personally.

I actually meant where have you been letting WotC know this is what you want, other than just stating it here? Have you been sending them emails or hitting them up on Twitter about what you are looking for? Because there's pretty much nothing the folks at WotC take from what we post here.

 

[Minigiant]

I'd like them to throw in design comments in the text. No unheard of in RPGs, and I really appreciate it when I see it

Most RPGs are not as harshly attacked as the top RPG in their category.

D&D, Vampire, Shaadowrun...

The fans come with knives.

Where as other RPGs just, if there any good, typically get a lot of praise and very little vocal criticism on the design processes and goals.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I actually meant where have you been letting WotC know this is what you want, other than just stating it here? Have you been sending them emails or hitting them up on Twitter about what you are looking for? Because there's pretty much nothing the folks at WotC take from what we post here.

Why would a giant corporation bother to respond to my email for them to reveal their design "secrets"? What's in it for them?

 

[Emerikol]

Given 4e's XP Budget system worked great and 5.0's CR system worked only marginally better than the absolute wild mass guessing of 3e's CR system, I don't really think "exception-based design" is at fault for making CR as much art as science. 4e was remarkably reliable. Not absolutely so, because dice will be dice and players make the characters and parties they want to make etc., etc., but dramatically moreso than either 3e or 5.0.

I found 4e was written encounter wise to be way too easy for my groups.

If anything, the only game you mention here that even remotely approached "monster design rules that had to be followed" was 4e...and even then only to a pretty limited degree.

Encounter building in 3e was one of the single worst aspects of DMing it. I've lost--not joking--three 3e(/PF1e) DMs over the years very specifically due to encounter-building burnout. No other part of DMing it was anywhere near as time-consuming, vexing, and inconsistent.

I was talking about systematization. 4e was exceptions based. 3e was a broad system. The Designers complained of all the tinkering they had to do to get their monsters to adhere to the demands of the 3e system. And exceptions based system is to some degree is always going to be more art than science. 1e and 2e were exceptions based systems. And I was talking about monster creation NOT building encounters from already existing monster blocks.