How Important is OBQ in an RPG like D&D?

[Kingreaper]

OBQ = Out of Box Quality; can you play the game exactly as it's published with no problems? Does it need errata? Do you need to change or add rules to get it to work?

1 = not important at all

5 = Very important

5.

I don't mind errata to fix weird edge cases; power combos that were eventually found to result in something massively cheesy and overpowered, etc.

But the game needs to be completely playable without the errata. The errata should be something you look at only when you stumble across (or have an optimising player dig up) so deep, hidden, bug.
Then you note down the relevant changes to fix that issue with the feats/powers that caused you trouble, and carry on, never really needing to refer to the errata again.

If you need the errata all the time? That's just a shoddy quality game.

 

[Votan]

Rereading the topic called to mind an example: Savage Species.

This was a book that came out just before 3.5, and it was an amazing read. The basic principle-putting monsters and PCs under a more common framework to unite the two concepts-was a true advancement for the game, one of the biggest of the 3.X era. It eliminated the counterintuitive methods of generating feats and skills for monsters, and introduced many great new options for nonhuman PCs. My players immediately dived in and started with it, and we've had tons of fun. I played an anthropomorphic owl when I got a turn, which was a trip and one of my best characters. SS also advanced my understanding of monster and NPC design as a DM, and bolstered everyone's sense that the game was fair and that all characters-player and non-were meaningful.

The out of box quality of this book was pretty poor. It's got cool art and great ideas, but all kinds of unbalanced races and classes, and a bunch of feats and spells that don't jive with other supplements. It's full of errata. The 3.5 conversion was not complete. The monster classes were a nice concept, but were horribly designed, with abilities divided in a completely inequitable way among the available levels. The monster class concept was revisited, but many of the rules were ignored and never referenced in any true 3.5 supplements.

In other words, it sucked, but it was still great.

Now, this isn't the ideal I would shoot for, but I think it is illustrative of what D&D and D&D products are about.

You have identified the one case where I would be okay with some rules issues. Games (or supplements) that open up new and imaginative ways to game get a lot of forgiveness for rules issues.

AD&D 1E, Vampire (the original white wolf game), and Traveller are all paradigm setting games that had a fair number of issues. But I will forgive a lot for a game that radically changes how I game.

But that is a lot to aim for in a flagship game. I'll be very forgiving of rules issues if they accomplish something that amazing.

 

[Ahnehnois]

You have identified the one case where I would be okay with some rules issues. Games (or supplements) that open up new and imaginative ways to game get a lot of forgiveness for rules issues.

AD&D 1E, Vampire (the original white wolf game), and Traveller are all paradigm setting games that had a fair number of issues. But I will forgive a lot for a game that radically changes how I game.

But that is a lot to aim for in a flagship game. I'll be very forgiving of rules issues if they accomplish something that amazing.

It's a very high bar I'm (we're?) implicitly setting. I'll take mechanical problems and editing errors in exchange for brilliant ideas. Brilliant ideas are hard to come by.

Then again, I likely won't put down money for an rpg book unless I expect it to change the way I run my game. And I like my game fairly well the way it is. So that's the bar.

 

[Siberys]

4. It implies to me that there will be problems - which I expect - but that they'll be worked on, constantly. As they should be. Nothing is ever perfect, and this speaks to me that they actually /care/.

I seem to be one of the only people who like 4e's constant errata. I remember when I played 3.x and people complained about the /lack/ of consistent, regular errata.

They should avoid fixing things with feat taxes or similar "spend a player resource so things work out" approaches, though. Expertise feats were capital-L Lame.

 

[Stormonu]

BTW, how about errata and a second printing?

I wouldn't want to have two PHBs in the same table that say different things about rules. That's why Errata=spelling fixes only is best, IMO.

I never bothered to even look at errata until late, late 3E (didn't even know it existed in 1E or 2E). Even then, I usually ignored it. Haven't used errata for any other RPG game I can think of either - it's usually not worth the bother. That's not to say I don't use house rules - but usually those are flavor changes or additions, not signs that something's wrong with the game.

On the converse side, we used the Skill Challenge DC change and Stealth rule update (that sounds weird saying that) for 4E as soon as it was available to fix some issues we had in the game. I didn't like doing that, but felt the changes were necessary to incorporate. Beyond that, 4E worked "as intended", but was definitely not my cup of tea.

--------------------------
Trying to think back to any mechanical things I had to change in 1E/2E/3E that didn't work out of the box...

1E - Ditched the grappling/overbearing rules, never implemented psionics (but that was an optional system)
2E - Weapon specialization for Fighters only (Complete Fighter seemed to indicate it was for Fighter, Ranger, Paladin)
3E - Dodge (dropped the "versus one attack"), Natural spell (banned it)

Of course, the highest level game I played to was somewhere around 14-15th, so I didn't see much of the higher level stuff in play, and don't care to.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Thanks to everyone who voted and posted!