[EDITION WARZ] Selling Out D&D's Soul?

[Sound of Azure]

I don't know about baby Jesus, but the resurrection of this thread sure makes me cry...

You said it.... All of these Edition Wars type threads are annoying.





AND I just bumped this one.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Unfortunately, with regards to tabletop RPG's, he's mostly wrong. If there's a beastie that doesn't fit in most games, it is badly desgined.

Badly designed to sell books, perhaps. But this does not mean badly designed for the game. Sells the most =/= the best, and of use to a select group =/= the worst.

RC

 

[Odhanan]

You said it.... All of these Edition Wars type threads are annoying.

AND I just bumped this one.

Well, in defense of people who enjoy this thread and people who still post in it, myself included, one might argue that you're not forced to look at it, let alone post in it!

 

[I'm A Banana]

Once again you slip into the fallacy of claiming that your personal preferences represent some sort of objective truth applicable to all gamers.

Sorry. Append "for my game" at the end of that. Because, really, that's all any of us have -- our games. And they are so very diverse that no generality can cover them.

But just because people don't like something doesn't mean they don't like something for a dang good reason.

And if enough people don't like something, that reason is not an absolute mathematical truth, but it is a perspective truth. There's not a whole lot of difference between Pol Pot is evil" and "Pol Pot is evil according to my socially construed system of morality" other than that enough people share that system of morality to say "Pol Pot is evil" without anything other than agreement in most circles.

This should all be quite self-evident. I'm not dictating to you what your opinion should be, rather I'm describing an opposing viewpoint. Saying that viewpoint isn't universal doesn't make your opinion (or that pithy phrase of the person you're quoting) *right*.

If collective player base of the game doesn't use the rust monster very often, then the rust monster is a poorly designed monster, even if some people use it a lot. If the collective human morality says that Pol Pot is evil, then for most intents and purposes, Pol Pot is evil, even if some people think he was a morally upstanding human being.

This is all semantics. If a beastie doesn't fit into the majority of games, then the beastie is a poorly designed beastie for the majority of games, and thus should be changed until it does fit into the majority of games or kicked out of the game, because it's just eating up precious page space until then.

This is no different from saying: "If the beastie doesn't fit in the game, it's poorly designed."

There will always be people for whom generalities do not hold. The point is to hit in the middle of the bell curve as a game, because that will lead to a better game, with less wasted page space.

Badly designed to sell books, perhaps. But this does not mean badly designed for the game. Sells the most =/= the best, and of use to a select group =/= the worst.

No, badly designed for the game. If the beastie doesn't fit in the game, it's badly designed for the game. Who determines if the beastie fits in the game? The players and DMs, who all have different games. Thus, the majority determines what is well-designed for the game.

After all, the goal of game design is to make people want to play the game.

See, OldGeezer and The Shaman get it backwards, and in doing so, subtly insult those who form opinions different than theirs, implying that they just make a snap judgement without considering the point. Unfortunately, this doesn't hold true except in a narrow selection of circumstances. Most people don't snap to random judgements based on little or no information, and then seek justification for their quickly-formed opinions. Most people come to their conclusions after briefly judging the situation and coming to a conclusion. It's not that it's badly designed because we don't like it. We don't like it BECAUSE it is badly designed (for us) -- specifically, if it doesn't fit in our games, it's doing nothing for us except taking up space that could be better spent on something that does fit in our games. And if it's badly designed for most of the people who play the game, then it's badly designed for the game, which should want to get people to play it.

I mean, think of the monk. Arguably, the monk is poorly designed, because it doesn't fit in a large array of games that don't like to use Asian themes. It seems to happen, however, that the monk's tenuous-at-best connection to Asian flavor was good design, because a lot of people use the monk, some using Asian themes and some not. But if the connection was tighter, if it used highly loaded Asian symbology, it might be significantly more poorly designed, because it would exclude the monk from those games (in theory, the majority) which don't use a lot of Asian motifs.

 

[Hussar]

Badly designed to sell books, perhaps. But this does not mean badly designed for the game. Sells the most =/= the best, and of use to a select group =/= the worst.

RC

I'll agree with the first bit there RC. This is ground we've covered before, so I'll not do it again. Suffice is to say that just because something is very popular doesn't make it well designed. OTOH, it doesn't hurt.

However, the second bit I do disagree with. If something is of use to a small subset of the group and is ignored by the rest, then there is something wrong with that thing. Assuming of course that the subset is significantly small. If it's 49%, then I would say that it is fine. However, if only 2% of a group finds a use for X, then it needs to be replaced by something that is more useful. If something isn't being used, then there is likely a reason why. Granted, the reason could be that it just hasn't been discovered by the larger group yet. However, after a couple of decades, I think that if a larger use could have been discovered for the Rust Monster, we would have seen it.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Hussar, that is a common fallacy. The merit of a thing is not determined based on popularity.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Hussar, that is a common fallacy. The merit of a thing is not determined based on popularity.

True. Otherwise teen pop would be objectively great music. And that just can't be true.

 

[Fifth Element]

Hussar, that is a common fallacy. The merit of a thing is not determined based on popularity.

That depends on your definition of "merit". If the entire purpose of the thing was to be popular (ie, used by a lot of players), then popularity indicates its merit. It serves its purpose.

If by "merit" you mean some subjective judgement of quality based on some unstated criteria, than I can agree with you.

 

[Hussar]

I'm obviously with 5th Element here. RC, you can talk about something having merit, but, if no one uses it, AND, after thousands of game hours (probably hundreds of game years actually), no one STILL uses it, whatever "it" is, has very little merit.

Yes, I'm sure that some people have used the rust monster and had a blast with it. That doesn't make it a good monster. That means that some people are very good at spinning straw into gold. However, for a game element to be "good" should not require a large effort on the part of the DM in order to use it. It should be pretty much self evident as to why it should be used.

A pit trap is good. It serves the function for which it is in the game. It can surprise the party, provide an interesting challenge, simply block off certain areas of an adventure, or provide entrance into others. The secret door in the bottom of the pit in S1 is a good example. But, in any case, a simple pit trap is a game element that can be used at almost any level, by any DM, in a multitude of situations. And, additionally, it HAS been used in a multitude of situations. It's merit is shown by the fact that it is utilized frequently.

A monster like a rust monster, which is almost never used (how many modules feature a rust monster that you can think of? I can think of 2.) and has abilities which make it use problematic for some DM's (again, not all) is taking up space that could be given to something which can be used in a broader context.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

A monster like a rust monster, which is almost never used (how many modules feature a rust monster that you can think of? I can think of 2.) and has abilities which make it use problematic for some DM's (again, not all) is taking up space that could be given to something which can be used in a broader context.

This, again, describes probably 1/3rd or more of published D&D monsters: almost never used, abilities that make it problematic to use for some (or many) DMs...you're not advocating we cut back the monster manuals, are you?

By the way, I'm not sure inclusion into many official adventures and completely uncomplicated use are good determinants of a monster's usability or its "right to exist" as it is. Simply means there is something for every DM in D&D.

So stop bashing my beloved rust monster already, and go pester the...the...catoblepas, or something.