From the WotC Boards: Mearls on 'Aggro'

[RigaMortus2]

Word of Warcraft is a PnP game? I was under the impression it's a video game.

Yep, it is both...

World of Warcraft RPG

http://www.warcraftrpg.com/home.html

Also, IIRC, Warcraft was one of the designers homebrew D&D settings. They approached TSR and tried to sell them on the idea, TSR didn't go for it, so that is how they came up with Warcraft in the first place (the first Warcraft, the RTS, not the MMO). So really, WoW technically is (or at least WAS) D&D.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You presume wrong.

By 'everyone' I mean, 'Everyone involved in this conversation.'

You should re-read the thread, then.

 

[Driddle]

Have we made 10 pages yet? As much fun as this has been, it's probably time to move on to the next highly controversial issue.

Hmmm.... Anyone have an idea what that next highly controversial issue might be? I'm betting a nickle it's going to be dice color.

(Thanks to this thread, "aggro" is now one of my top-17 hated words, right after "asparagus.")

Think peaceful thoughts.

 

[Celebrim]

So, I'm thinking that there is a gradient here. If you are against any mechanical suggestions for how monsters act, then, yah, you won't like that they tried it. But you might not be carrying such a hard line. You might be more willing to have some more mechanically defined guidelines for some creatures that the players can then use to strategize. Not me, but it doesn't seem like an inherently bad idea. Therefore, I think it's fine that they played around with it and it doesn't worry me. I suspect if they told me that they had experimented with a mechanic which was just like WoW I'd be more concerned. And maybe some others in the 'they shouldn't have tried it' camp will be less concerned when they hear that WotC didn't try a direct port.

Anyway, not really interested in a lengthy argument. Just trying to point out that the debate might not be framed quite as clearly for everyone else as it is for you. (emphasis added)

If there is any misframing of the debate going on, it isn't necessarily by people on 'my' side of the debate. If you read Gloombunny, Wolfspider, and myself I think it is pretty clear that we aren't concerned with keeping the game free of 'WoW' influences. The dumb idea just happens to be associated with video games. It's a dumb idea all the same, no less or more so because of its source.

IMO, the charges that 'my' side of the debate is trying to poison the well by bring up MMORPGs or that we are trying to close debate on the subject by bring up MMORGPs, are really themselves attempts to poison the well and close debate. It's like bringing up Godwin's Law in an attempt to win the debate.

No one is suggesting that they should have rejected the idea out of hand because it comes from a computer game.

You'll notice that I put some of the words of your quote in bold. Just so we are clear, guidelines and suggestions are not rules. Guidelines and suggestions by there very nature are flexible and subject to interpretation, DM judgement, and circumstance. (One obvious difference between suggestions and rules, is that you can't program suggestions into a computer. A computer needs rules. It can't interpret and use its judgement.) There are indications that they are keeping guidelines and suggestions about how to run a monster in the game, and there are and will be very few complaints about that.

The implication of them dropping an aggro system is that at one time they had a mechanical resolution for pervasively determining which monster attacked which character, and that system could be deterministically manipulated as part of core game play. We have no idea what the details of that, and I for one never assumed that the system had been ported directly from anything else computer game or otherwise. However, I think I never cared what the details were. It's a bad idea because figuring out that sort of thing is what DMs are for, and they'll do it far better than any mechanical system.

 

[Celebrim]

You should re-read the thread, then.

FYI, I just did.

If you can point me to the post where the poster says that he wishes that they didn't drop the rules that they tested from the game, I'd appreciate it. I didn't see anyone saying, "I'm glad they tried it, but I wish they didn't drop it from the game because it sounds like a really good idea."

 

[Driddle]

Have we made 10 pages yet? As much fun as this has been, it's probably time to move on to the next highly controversial issue.

Hmmm.... Anyone have an idea what that next highly controversial issue might be? I'm betting a nickle it's going to be dice color.

(Thanks to this thread, "aggro" is now one of my top-17 hated words, right after "asparagus.")

Think peaceful thoughts.

Are you suggesting that maybe we should all just take a deep breath, pitch camp and heal up for the next combat scene? Lovely idea! You, sir, are a jeeeeeenyus!

Clerical healing for everyone!

 

[Celebrim]

No, the argument is not "it's good that they tested an aggro mechanic", it's "it's good that they're testing new ideas, regardless of where the idea comes from".

1) I don't see anyone here saying 'It's not good that they test new ideas', or even 'It's not good that they test ideas that come from video games'. Nobody is arguing with that. Rather it is indeed that we are arguing, 'It's not good that they tested an aggro mechanic.'

2) It is a good idea to test new ideas, but merely being a new idea doesn't mean it is an idea worth testing. Many new ideas are bad ideas, and you shouldn't waste time testing obviously bad ideas.

3) Aggro is not in fact a new idea. It is a new idea in D&D. Merely because it is a new idea doesn't make it worth testing. 'New' doesn't mean good. Some new ideas should be tested, and others shouldn't. Some new ideas have problems that aren't immediately obvious. Others, like the idea in question, are obviously bad because they are designing fun out of the game and being rigid and inflexible for no good reason.

"It's good that they are not rejecting ideas out-of-hand because they're inspired by a video game. This idea failed, but other may succeed."

No one is suggesting that they reject ideas out-of-hand because they're inspired by a video game. However, ideas that are obviously intended to deal with problems and constraints unique to video games, and which don't apply in a pen and paper 'platform', and which are obviously counter to a good design philosophy should be rejected out of hand as a needless waste of effort (at best).

And again, how can you be against a game system of which you have no details?

How can you be for a game system which the designer rejected as bad? The better question is, "Why didn't the designer foresee just how unfun this would be ahead of time?"

That's pure speculation. D&D already has mechanics that affect how other creatures behave, so it can't be inherently wrong, can it?

D&D has no mechanics which from round to round determine where NPCs should move or how they should act. Spells like 'Fear' and 'Charm Person' and class features like 'Taunt' and 'Turn Undead' are relatively rare exceptions to the normal freedom allowed to players and DMs to run thier characters how they deem best. You probably could find some people who object to even these as inherently wrong, but that's not what is being discussed right now. The point is that extending the interference of the rules in to participant freedom of choice and making play more mechanistic is a bad idea at the level of overall design philosophy, irrespective of the particular implementation.

 

[Remathilis]

Are you suggesting that maybe we should all just take a deep breath, pitch camp and heal up for the next combat scene? Lovely idea! You, sir, are a jeeeeeenyus!

Clerical healing for everyone!

You know talking (or quoting) yourself is the first sign of insanity, right?

 

[Charwoman Gene]

Damn! Mearls Why Are You Dropping The Aggro Rules!!!!!!!!!!

Nooooooooooooo!

 

[Silent Cartographer]

So true.

Heheh, agreement entirely accepted in the spirit it was offered...

If you think them trying something that you don't want them to do is reassuring, you come down on one side of the debate. If you think them trying something that you don't want them to do is not reassuring, you come down on the other. But basically everyone agrees that the unseen mechanics were bad, if only because the designers said so. No one is speculating particularly over what those mechanics were.

I think that's a pretty good summation. I am extremely skeptical that any sort of threat-point aggro scheme would work well in D&D. Even if they did test something like that, however (which Rodney Thompson has debunked), it still wouldn't bother me.

However, I personlly don't want them to do anything in particular in regards to 4E design. I'm a 'hopeful' agnostic on 4E, since I have a long-running 3.5 campaign in full swing, have no plans to run anything else anytime soon, and am happy with the current level of product support I already have.

If WotC is out looking under rocks in their effort to design 4E, some folks don't want certain rocks flipped because they represent personal sacred cows (demons and devils and bears, oh my!), or they fear undesired forms of gameplay (respawn times in the monster statblocks, lol!). There are also some folks with no dog in that hunt that have no problem tilling the whole mess over en masse, worms and all.

Thorough and methodical makes me warm and fuzzy just on principle, and insulate me from appeals to fear.

4E will rise or fall under it's own merits when it eventually comes out; the dead-ends and rabbit trails they followed to get there are only interesting to me in a very meta-design sort of curiosity. In the meantime, I will endevor not to confuse methods with results.