From the WotC Boards: Mearls on 'Aggro'

[I'm A Banana]

Aggro and Morale are not the same things. Aggro refers to how a given creature determines who to attack. Morale is simply a system for determining when a creature realizes it cannot win and then acts accordingly.

Any Morale system that forces a creature to run away at a certain point dictates the creature's actions as much as the Knight's Challenge aggro method does.

Just showing that mechanics that dictate a creature's actions were in D&D long before Aggro popped up in MMO's.

But it seems this thread is more about people who think that MMO's are somehow inherently tainted and that D&D should remain pure without touching it, and those that think that any idea deserves the ol' college try.

My sympathies do not lie with those who already have an assumed bias.

 

[SteveC]

I wonder...is the objection to aggro/morale rules not the rules themselves, but rather that they would become rules that the players would learn and "game" (for lack of a better word)?

I wouldn't have a problem with a rule that said "creatures tend to flee after taking 75% damage," but having a player tell me that's what my critters were doing would bother me.

I already have a rule for aggro for my intelligent opponents: gak the mage. This only doesn't happen when said gaking puts the character at extreme danger. It would seriously tick me off if a player told me that my monster must charge by the other six characters to attack the wizard based on that aggro rule.

I think that's the major problem...does that make sense?

--Steve

 

[Celebrim]

But it seems this thread is more about people who think that MMO's are somehow inherently tainted and that D&D should remain pure without touching it, and those that think that any idea deserves the ol' college try.

My sympathies do not lie with those who already have an assumed bias.

Thinking that any idea deserves "the ol' college try" is a bias. It's a bias against discrimenatory behavior, as if discrimenation were a bad thing. But, discrimenating between two ideas isn't necessarily a bad thing despite the fact that we most frequently encounter the term in a negative context. We engage in this sort of preselection all the time for good and sufficient reasons. There are some ideas that we conclude aren't worth trying. There are some experiences that we conclude are so negative that they aren't worth having. Sometimes we answer the question, "How do you know unless you try?", with "No. It's obvious. I don't need experiential knowledge to affirm what I know."

A good designer is a good designer in part because they can discrimenate between a large number of ideas and select from the very broad space of possible solutions, one or two worth trying. A good designer sees the root problem and looks at how to address it. A good designer needs to do that because in the real world, you don't have unlimited time for play testing. A designer that can detect and discrimenate against bad ideas at minimum saves his company money, and generally produces a superior product. The closer your first approximation is to a good solution, the better off you are not just in terms of reduced cost of development, but in the likelihood of finding a good solution, and the elegance your final solution is likely to have.

My bias against this idea has nothing to do with not liking computer games. It has to do with understanding pen and paper games and computer games and knowing why the things that work well in one work, and hense whether or not they would work in a different environment. Each 'platform' has advantages over the other. Taking something intended to correct the deficiences in one (say 'readied actions' in pen and paper games or 'aggro' in computer games) and apply it to the other platform where that deficiency doesn't exist is ridiculous.

'Aggro' rules and core gameplay based on the manipulation of same may be perfectly good design in an MMORPG that doesn't have robust collision detection (for whatever reason), or exactitude in tactical position (because of latency), or any number of other problems to correct. Certainly it seems to work for WoW. But that in no way indicates that it is something worth adopting to a completely different situation. A good designer who thought that the core issue 'aggro' was designed to address (for example, allowing a tank to be a tank) needed to be addressed in a PnP would be better off looking amongst the tools we already have in PnP games and seeing if something can be used.

 

[Imp]

Any Morale system that forces a creature to run away at a certain point dictates the creature's actions as much as the Knight's Challenge aggro method does.

No it doesn't, morale failure is much more flexible (unless, of course, it's not) – it doesn't dictate where exactly that creature has to run to, it doesn't have to dictate how it runs, whether it surrenders, etc., whereas a knight's challenge dictates many creatures' attack paths. That said I personally am agnostic about "aggro mechanics" as long as they're simple, flexible, and don't generate particular player expectations. I'm not particularly in favor of them because it seems like it would generate a lot of extra dice rolls for little gain, in other words, I doubt PnP aggro would satisfy any of those qualities, but the knight's challenge didn't especially bug me.

Don't really see the need for piling on the designers for trying something and not going with it, myself. Shrug.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The uninformed MMORPG bashing makes me miss the good old days of uninformed anime bashing.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Thinking that any idea deserves "the ol' college try" is a bias. It's a bias against discrimenatory behavior, as if discrimenation were a bad thing. But, discrimenating between two ideas isn't necessarily a bad thing despite the fact that we most frequently encounter the term in a negative context. We engage in this sort of preselection all the time for good and sufficient reasons. There are some ideas that we conclude aren't worth trying. There are some experiences that we conclude are so negative that they aren't worth having. Sometimes we answer the question, "How do you know unless you try?", with "No. It's obvious. I don't need experiential knowledge to affirm what I know."

This is all true, but I don't agree that it has anything to do with the examination of the aggro mechanic.

Even though I detest Aggro mechanics, I admit that there is a perfectly good reason for the people at WotC to try out those idea. They are a familiar system that offers possible new tactical options for Defender characters. That is enough to make them worth a second look.

Now, rules like "give all characters the abiity to spontaneously regenerate from residual cellular matter after they die" are well beyond the realm of consideration, and a designer doesn't need to think twice about that kind of decision.

However, I think that aggro/taunt mechanics are worth the second look the WotC people gave them, and I just disagree that their rejection was somehow "obvious". After all, who knows? Maybe looking at a flawed, but still functional idea will lead to new ideas that work great. I have seen far more improbable creative leaps.

 

[king_ghidorah]

I think it's sad that they even had to consider incorporating computer game "aggro" mechanics.

Was Merls & Co. testing the possibility because the latest generation of DMs is so brain-addled that they can't imagine what a combat opponent will do without a bunch of programmed rules? Or because there are so many players now who expect their enemies to respond like they do online?

Makes me wonder what other MMO-think they've already embraced -- or hopefully, discarded.

Or maybe they were facing the fact that even though 3.x fighters are much more interesting and flexible than earlier OD&D Fighting men, or 1st/2nd edition fighters, they still have a hard time doing their job-- being the protective barrier between the weaker characters and themselves. The idea that the fighters form the front rank behind which others use magic and ranged attacks is easy to have monsters just ignore. Even though it should really take some concentrated work to break past a shield wall or a pair of armed defenders without consequences.

A simple idea would have been a mechanic to make attackers have to attack the front rank defenders. A simple, but apparently bad idea from their playtest. Might have worked in a miniatures game or a wargame, but not right for a RPG. So they threw out the idea and came up with something else.

Why this distresses people is baffling. Every job and project i have ever worked on has had a moment where we had a "great" idea that, in retrospect, turned out to be really stupid. Seems a normal part of human decision making.

 

[king_ghidorah]

I suddenly realize what the "points of light" reference means!:

Computer screens shining in darkened rooms around the world as gamers lose track of the hours while playing World of Warcraft.

Why the computer-game-bashing? It's just another gaming hobby. Not your bag? Great.

Frankly, your reaction to computer gaming is similar to the reaction most non-gamers I know have toward role-playing-- that it's terrible waste of money and time that can be spent on "real" pursuits. The tone of great superiority to MMO players is baffling.

IMNSHO gaming is gaming is gaming -- card, board, RPG, LARP, CRPGs... and bashing on the kind of gaming that doesn't float your boat seems a strange pursuit, and infused with a sense of superiority that seems out of line when you consider you are comparing people's entertainment and hobbies.

 

[Thundershield]

Why the computer-game-bashing? It's just another gaming hobby. Not your bag? Great.

Frankly, your reaction to computer gaming is similar to the reaction most non-gamers I know have toward role-playing-- that it's terrible waste of money and time that can be spent on "real" pursuits. The tone of great superiority to MMO players is baffling.

IMNSHO gaming is gaming is gaming -- card, board, RPG, LARP, CRPGs... and bashing on the kind of gaming that doesn't float your boat seems a strange pursuit, and infused with a sense of superiority that seems out of line when you consider you are comparing people's entertainment and hobbies.

Merely quoting for the truth of it.

As a D&D player and CRPG player, I have thought about why the designers decided such a mechanic was relevant in the first place.

I didn't want to look at it solely as a D&D player or as a CRPG player, as that would either have me whining about how they were making it "not D&D anymore" or nodding like a fanboy and thinking "that's what tanks are supposed to do".

Instead I came to this conclusion: MMORPGs have a tendency to take the roles of the classic fantasy party and boil it down to easy-to-work-with simplicity. As a D&D player, I'd think "what is a fighter", but I'd neglect the equally-important question "what is a fighter supposed to do". In 3E, any monster could simply ignore the supposed tank and go straight for the squishies as the Fighter had no way of keeping the monster's attention on him, meaning his boatload of hit points only meant he was a less desirable target.

I realize that moving away from the pure-bred D&D inclination of designing stuff based solely on concept is something that might rub some grognards the wrong way, but let's face it: That's the inclination that's made the Fighter as hopelessly useless in high-level play as they are today. Any monster with a grain of wits goes for the Wizard first, then the Cleric or Rogue, and lastly the Fighter. Great job holding the monster back, Bob.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I wonder...is the objection to aggro/morale rules not the rules themselves, but rather that they would become rules that the players would learn and "game" (for lack of a better word)?

That's only part of it.

I wouldn't have a problem with a rule that said "creatures tend to flee after taking 75% damage,"

That's not aggro. That's a suggestion.

but having a player tell me that's what my critters were doing would bother me.

That would bother me too.

I already have a rule for aggro for my intelligent opponents: gak the mage.

That's not aggro. They'll gak the mage even if they get initiative and the mage hasn't acted yet. They're not forced to gak the mage either (if for whatever reason circumstances make that a bad idea).

It would seriously tick me off if a player told me that my monster must charge by the other six characters to attack the wizard based on that aggro rule.

If a hard-coded aggro rule said they had to do that, I would be ticked too. (Same if the monsters "had" to charge the fighter because he used his taunt ability.) I would be ticked off if either the players said that (but I could tell them to cut that out) but would be more ticked off if the rules said I had to do that, and even more ticked off if the rules were complex and hard-coded.