D&D General GenCon TV: Celebrating D&D

[overgeeked]

Very curious what that means.

Me, too. It wasn’t expanded on.

 

[TiQuinn]

Yeah. Definitely. Some of my favorite bits were them talking about being beholden to backwards compatibility and therefore not being able to reverse AC in 2E despite it being easier and obvious. The other was them talking about not listening to players when designing because the things players want end up ruining the game, such as too much power, too many hit points, too many magic items, etc. It was really great to hear them all talk about the behinds the scenes stuff.

What’s amazing to me is based on the restrictions they had, I’m all the more impressed with what they created.

 

[TiQuinn]

What was Peter doing? It was his show, right? He should have taken control of the conversation and given Rob and Andy time.

Sounds like any number of meetings that I’ve been in with a weak meeting lead and lots of derailments.

Sounds like Peter dropped the moderator ball on this…and after he’d been so adamant that no one talk about the acquisition of TSR.

 

[TiQuinn]

This time, I think 2 of the 3 players simply did not understand their remit.

Who in the world were these players?!

 

[Shardstone]

Some interesting tidbits. Some was obvious, some was already widely known.

✦ Two designers hit on the idea of at-will, encounter, and daily powers at the exact same moment during a meeting.

✦ The game was designed to be more accessible (layout and text).

✦ The game was designed to be familiar to WoW players (everyone has something interesting to do and party roles).

✦ The game was designed because Hasbro wanted to kill the OGL and get subscriptions through Gleemax.

✦ The designers of 4E did not know about the attempt to kill the OGL. Both Rob and Andy said they'd have designed the game differently if they'd known.

✦ The coders were told to make their individual bits and pieces in whatever coding language they knew and not worry about integration, the higher ups would sort that out later.

✦ Consultants were hired to oversee the coding angle and integration. They were let got after a few days when they told Hasbro it wasn't going to work.

✦ D&D 4E won a stack of Ennie Awards.

I never want to hear ANYONE say that 4E wasn't trying to be a TTRPG MMO again. The designers admitted it!

 

[TwoSix]

I never want to hear ANYONE say that 4E wasn't trying to be a TTRPG MMO again. The designers admitted it!

As a 4e partisan, I never quite understood why other 4e fans would act otherwise. (Although the argument that party roles predate MMOs and were an evolution of D&D roles is certainly true.)

Borrowing from one of the most successful fantasy games of all time, right when it was at the height of its popularity, is an obvious good thing. We should want our crunchy TTRPGs to be designed with at least some of the rigor found in video game design.

 

[overgeeked]

I never want to hear ANYONE say that 4E wasn't trying to be a TTRPG MMO again. The designers admitted it!

The context and specifics are important here. They were told to make it “familiar to WoW players.” They were not told to design a tabletop MMO.

ETA: The elements they mentioned were explicit class roles in combat, despite them being in D&D from the start. Making everyone effective in combat. And giving everyone something interesting to do every round. To me, that’s simply good game design for a monster-fighting game like D&D. That’s nothing you wouldn’t see in a boardgame. It’s nothing unique to MMOs or WoW.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The 4e one was very enlightening.

 

[Shardstone]

The context and specifics are important here. They were told to make it “familiar to WoW players.” They were not told to design a tabletop MMO.

ETA: The elements they mentioned were explicit class roles in combat, despite them being in D&D from the start. Making everyone effective in combat. And giving everyone something interesting to do every round. To me, that’s simply good game design for a monster-fighting game like D&D. That’s nothing you wouldn’t see in a boardgame. It’s nothing unique to MMOs or WoW.

Tomatoes tomahtoes man. MMO design theory was on the brain.

 

[MockingBird]

Where can you watch the 4e one?