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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rechan" data-source="post: 4936706" data-attributes="member: 54846">You're on the right track.Namely it's this:1) MMOs are eating a lot of D&D dollars/time. 2) Video games do SOME things well. What should WotC do? Adapt. They couldn't, however, say "Let's make a tabletop MMO". Because, just like video games do some things well, they also do some things BADLY. And some things they do well just would not translate well to the tabletop. For instance, Aggro. Aggro is a huge system where anything the character does is computed as a threat, and suddenly the monsters automatically attack the person with the most aggro. Not only is that A) very complicated, but B) ignores the fact there's a DM there making decisions for the monsters.What the designers did was this: They looked at Video games and said, "What are some things they are doing WELL that D&D could also do?" But they didn't stop there. I had lunch with Rodney Thompson, and he told me that guys at WotC play all kinds of games. Indie RPGs, boardgames, etc. So it's easy to see this influence their design: they looked at all other kinds of games - board games, indie RPGs, M:tG, etc, and said "What does this do well that could work for D&D? What can we learn from this?" And the thing that many miss is this: WotC also asked themselves, "What does D&D do well?". They emphasized that, while casting off what the designers felt D&D didn't do well, or that that got in the way of what the designers felt D&D and other things did well. So what you end up with is something that is very refined, very focused. Structurally, it looks like a Tower (instead of something that looks like a House, with its many subsystems and different features). Now, the designers are branching off, and hanging things off this core Tower. For instance, the AW/Encounter/Daily system and how it interacts with the multi-class system. Now they're playing with the power system (The Psion, the Mokn). Now they've started to play with the multi-class system (see the Spellscarred, or the Dhampyr, or the weapon focused multi-classes). There's one last thing I want to point out. About five years ago, Monte Cook said in a blog post that one of the mechanical things they hardwired into 3e was System Mastery. They took inspiration from M:tG, where you have some subpar cards, some better cards, and it was a Reward for the player to discover what those choices were and use them. So toughness was meant to be a subpar option from the get-go. Whirlwind attack was meant to be not as strong as other options. It was up to the player to figure this out. This was the 3e designer's philosophy. Whether you agree with this or not, this is how they designed the system. But, if I were to say, "3e is just like M:TG", I do not think I would be right. Even though the designers explicitly looked at something that M:tG did (and did well) for inspiration.</blockquote>

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