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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 9820022" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/a0f63395865b.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> Anatomy of Failed Design: the Baneguard<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210124191750/https://dungeons.fandom.com/wiki/Bane_Guard_(4e_Class)" target="_blank">D&D Wiki Link</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj0ChLVTpaA" target="_blank">Hello everybody, and welcome to a very special Intermission Post!</a> Normally we’d continue on reviewing classes for the Frank & K Tomes, but while we’re on the subject of classes I wanted to briefly pivot over to one of the author’s most well-known creations in the wider Internet.Anatomy of Failed Design is a review style on the Gaming Den popularized by Frank Trollman. <a href="http://www.tgdmb.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=53716" target="_blank">As explained by Maxus,</a> one of the forum regulars, the series “dissects the failings of a particular subject and tries to put a finger on Where It Went Wrong, as a lesson in ‘How Not to Do It.’” While the Bane Guard isn’t part of the Tomes nor even the same system, it remains an important piece of Gaming Den history.To give some background context, most of the Gaming Den was particularly irate at the changes to D&D made in 4th Edition. Not content to just criticize the system, Frank Trollman sought to make a class for it in an attempt to prove that he has a better grasp of it than the designers at Wizards of the Coast.<a href="http://www.tgdmb.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=112037#p112037" target="_blank">Here we can see Frank (since renamed Username17) going into detail on his design philosophy for creating the class in response to someone questioning his decisions.</a> Frank more or less says that he “jovially [has] no respect whatsoever for the arbitrary restrictions that the 4e designers put on themselves.”However, while 3rd Edition D&D is a system in which Frank has much experience in reading and playing, 4th Edition was an entirely new battlefield to the man. In order to create original material that builds upon the system, one must immerse themselves in it on its own terms and have a lot of experience in how other people engage with it. This is why playtesting is so important, and also bringing in the participation of other tables and players with the work. The last part helps bring in previously-unseen insights and exploits that the creator and their home group can miss.Failed Design Sin #1: Frank did not playtest the Bane Guard.I am not experienced with the rules of 4th Edition, so I brought in a “design committee” of sorts who do have experience in weighing in on where the Bane Guard went wrong. First off, I’ll start with one of my gamer buddy friends who wishes to have their name retracted but who still gave permission to quote. I bolded particularly parts I feel are significant to highlight:While my friend didn’t do a holistic overview of the entire class, already it sounds like there’s several problems with it off the bat. And speaking of roles, it has no real role protection in that it sounds like the Fighter can already do what it can do but better.Failed Design Sin #2: The class’ flavor and intended role isn’t reinforced by the mechanics.I then reached out on Something Awful’s Traditional Games subforum, which has a large 4e fan community, in order to get some deeper dives. Critiques are reposted with permission:Here we see some similar concerns raised, but what really stands out is the discussion of Threatening Reach, where the Baneguard effectively gives the class something that is restricted to precious people options on both the PC and NPC/monster side. This demonstrates a lack of understanding and experience with why certain mechanics are at appropriate tiers of power.Failed Design Sin #3: Handing out level/tier-inappropriate powers.This too was something I caught: the class needing Dexterity but having proficiency with heavy armor is the kind of thing that would be sub-optimal/unnecessary in 3rd and 5th Edition, so it sounds like this is also the case with 4e. Also a similar discussion in how the class doesn’t work as advertised, being a “Controller dressing as a Defender,” which is similar to what Buddy said about it not feeling like a Defender.Failed Design Sin #4: Giving the class unnecessary abilities (heavy armor) that clash with its ideal build (Dexterity).Nothing much else for me to add right now.Some rather harsh language in places, but is pretty timid by the standards of Frank and the Gaming Den themselves, so like they say: "If you can't take the heat, get outta the kitchen!"Failed Design Sin #5: Even people who haven’t touched the system in a long time are sounding air sirens when reading your work.Similar critiques to others: too many at-wills, can’t fill the role of Defender, skewed action economy.Failed Design Sin #6: Don’t overwhelm players with unnecessary options.The “crit 50% of the time” is definitely surprising to me, given that in pretty much every Edition of D&D such hits were powerful because of how rare they are.In addition to Admiralty Flag pointing out the options paralysis on the player’s side, Torches Upon Stars points out how several mechanics are also unclear for a potential DM.Failed Design Sin #7: Unclear mechanics.Sage Genesis points out several errors where certain abilities (Adaptive Combat, Hostile Diversion, Mole’s Grasp) are improperly defined or missing key information, indicating that the class didn’t get an editing pass.Failed Design Sin #8: Get an editor, for the love of God, get an editor!Forgive me for the wall of text quotes, but I wanted to get a diverse analysis of people.We’ve all made bad homebrew. Heck, among those gamers who get their work published, we’ve even written works that we’re not so proud of and would’ve done things differently if we could go back in time. It happens to all of us. But what made the Bane Guard blow up and become one of the most enduring memories of Frank’s egotistical method of game design was in how he and his fanbase responded to it. <a href="http://www.tgdmb.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=257064#p257064" target="_blank">He more or less claimed that he made the class bad on purpose as a means of making fun of the system’s designers, and that people making fun of it are actually the ones being trolled.</a><img src="https://media1.tenor.com/m/DCP6i715ATUAAAAC/crying-meme.gif" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />The supposed “it’s badly done on purpose” deflection didn’t prevent Frank from making future edits to the class. I don’t have the original version, but apparently the initial marking mechanic for the Bane Guard was so poorly worded that it apparently prevented the class from attacking or using its powers at all. If it was meant to be a no-thought joke class, why not keep this mechanic in? An unintentionally-worded mechanic can upend an entire build; that’s comedy gold right there!Failed Design Sin #9: Frank responds poorly to criticism, the reaction outliving the work itself.Thoughts: As someone who chose to play Pathfinder in the 3e/4e Edition Wars, the only real critique I can give on the Bane Guard is that it feels odd to make a base class one that aligns with the Faerûnian God of Fascism. In addition to being a much more specific concept than a generic fantasy archetype, the Bane Guard is pretty firmly aligned on the Evil side of the equation, which isn’t suitable for lots of campaigns.Thoughts So Far: Say what you will about 3rd Edition Min-Maxers and Character Optimization Guidebook writers, they are a very cerebral bunch that spend vast amounts of free time combing through sourcebooks to mix and match rules made in isolation to discover unexpected consequences and combos. Such a service is invaluable for game design, and given 3rd Edition’s intentionally-obfuscated balance by Monte Cook and others, their work was a necessary one to illuminate to new players what to look out for and whether or not a certain class, feat, spell, etc actually did what they conceived for the mental image they had in their head.While Frank Trollman has his share of critics, he did have an appreciable fanbase among the CharOps community even outside the Gaming Den. There are mid-Aught posts on various forums where one can find posters saying something to the effect of “I don’t like his personality, but he is an excellent game designer” or “his homebrew and world-building are thought-provoking exercises, even if a tad on the powerful side.”And Frank does have some good ideas: the Tome Fighter is perhaps my favorite work of his, and while we’ll cover them later I did like his treatise on coming up with lower-level adventures in other planes of existence. This was written at a time when D&D portrayed such planes as “you must be X level to ride this adventure.”But the Frank Trollman who wrote such material is not the Frank Trollman who wrote the Bane Guard, or even the Frank Trollman of later years. Namely, his big ego made him a worse game designer over time. When you not only insist that you cannot ever be wrong, that you’re the only one of worth in your field and don’t work well with others, and surround yourself with unquestioning fans who take your side almost all the time, this hinders your growth as a creator. Not only that, it eventually turns away even your own fans, as the quality of your work degrades. In fantasy literature we’ve seen this happen with Terry Goodkind, author of the Sword of Truth series. Like Trollman, Goodkind had contempt for all other fantasy writers and novels, didn’t list any other works in his preferred genre as good or inspirational sources, and took all criticism as a personal attack. Even his fans who didn’t mind his plot or author tracts at first eventually petered off over time, realizing that the initial spark in the Sword of Truth series was now gone.While the Bane Guard is perhaps the most visible example of Trollman’s Designer Decay, it marked the start of a shift in public perception of him and the Gaming Den as “intelligent yet acerbic game theorists.” Out of curiosity I input various related search terms into popular social media platforms for the Tome and its authors. For the following examples, I chose one of the Internet’s favorite hellsite of the current era: Reddit. Trollman is quite predictably the most relevant result, as K is now a digital ghost and has a super-generic username. The most relevant threads remember Trollman for helping leak Catalyst Game Labs’ embezzlement and not paying freelancers for their labor, which was actually a decent thing for him to do. But when it comes to his and K’s actual work, <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/2oe0rh/did_the_tome_of_awesome_by_frank_k_modification/" target="_blank">his magnum opus is actually much more distant in terms of views and upvotes.</a> Rather, Trollman’s remembered as <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/e02c1o/comment/f8bihri/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button" target="_blank">the guy who wrote the Baneguard class to prove that he’s a better designer than WotC staff,</a> and couldn’t take criticism when people made fun of his disasterpiece. People generally don’t speak of him as a Rick Sanchez anti-social genius anymore. On forums such as EN World, <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/is-5th-edition-too-big-for-there-to-be-a-6th-edition.667330/#post-7807929" target="_blank">they remember him and the Gaming Den at large as the people who believe that 5th Edition is a vaporware product,</a> even at a time when Critical Role is a household name. The Frank and K Tomes are but a more distant legacy, of some innovative-looking homebrew for an Edition that the gaming public has since moved on from.If we can learn anything from this, it’s that caustic criticism and “vendetta game design” aren’t the only, or even best, tools for improving one’s craft. It also requires self-awareness and humility, that no matter how good or beloved you are, that the creative process is a continual journey of self-improvement, that no creator is an island, and that diverse outside perspectives are invaluable.Join us next time as we get back to our regular programming!</blockquote>

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