D&D General GenCon TV: Celebrating D&D

[Scribe]

Frankly the whole thing is a set of red flags.

Maybe, but my professional life is in software, and frankly "use whatever" would have been a massive.

 

[TiQuinn]

Watching the 4e show right now, and so far my biggest takeaway is just let the damn designers build the game. Clearly, there were several business edicts being handed down that hamstrung this team, such as the propensity for secretiveness, therefore minimal outside playtesting.

 

[TiQuinn]

Overstatement of the night in the 4e round table - “We keep talking about World of Darkness and there may be some people on the stream getting impatient about that…” - Wade Rockett

Ya think??? I don’t have the chat replay on but there had to have been people going nuts in chat.

 

[overgeeked]

No idea about the AD&D one as I haven't watched it yet.

I just watched the AD&D round table. It was good. Mostly people reminiscing about their experiences playing AD&D, how they got into the hobby, a bit about the Satanic Panic, etc. Nothing much about design (as to be expected). One thing that stuck out was the comments on the "incomplete" nature of the rules and prevalence and/or necessity of house rules. I'll always think of house rules as a feature not a bug. Always. It was great to see them commenting on how that made the game theirs and how needing to fill in those blanks started a generation of game designers. There's something to be said for making the audience work a little bit for their meal.

 

[TiQuinn]

“Program your stuff in whatever you know and at the end, we’ll patch everything together” - Rob Heinsoo on WotC’s approach to Gleemax development.

 

[TiQuinn]

Final thought on the 4e discussion: If I never see Derek Guder on a panel again, it’d be too soon. I hope one day someone has him on a show to talk about something he made, and some obnoxious guest just talks over him the entire time.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

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 have long suspected (and mentioned it on this forum) that wizards got burned by lack of experience on software development, but this is nuts. I mean if one is going to the expense of hiring consultants one hires them first.

 

[Oofta]

I have long suspected (and mentioned it on this forum) that wizards got burned by lack of experience on software development, but this is nuts. I mean if one is going to the expense of hiring consultants one hires them first.

I've seen many systems developed by "consultants". They're not pretty, unless you have someone really competent in charge who knows how to code it's some of the worst code I've ever seen because they just don't care. They just want to get the job done as fast as possible and they know they get paid whether it's a massive clusterf*** or not, after all they won't have to maintain it.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I've seen many systems developed by "consultants". They're not pretty, unless you have someone really competent in charge who knows how to code it's some of the worst code I've ever seen because they just don't care. They just want to get the job done as fast as possible and they know they get paid whether it's a massive clusterf*** or not, after all they won't have to maintain it.

Still better than: "design in whatever language you want, we will put it all together later..."

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I've seen many systems developed by "consultants". They're not pretty, unless you have someone really competent in charge who knows how to code it's some of the worst code I've ever seen because they just don't care. They just want to get the job done as fast as possible and they know they get paid whether it's a massive clusterf*** or not, after all they won't have to maintain it.

Not arguing that but if one is going to bring them in anyway then consult first. Given that Wizards had no experience in software hiring consultants to come up with an actionable plan and may be headhunt a software architect and project manager would not have been a terrible move. Better then hiring a bunch of coders and telling them develop your bit in whatever language/platform they liked.