Mearls: The core of D&D

[Crazy Jerome]

That's because Gilbert & Sullivan were traditionally Warhammer players.

Thanks to you, I now have a totally new image of the typical Warhammer session. And it involves players singing ...

 

[DEFCON 1]

Shouldn't it have been obvious based upon their most famous opera The Space Marines of Penzance?

 

[Umbran]

Sorry, Umbran, but that last line seems pretty wonky to me.....unless you assume that the players are making this choice because doing so is smart.

No. I assume players make their choices for their own reasons. Maybe they make it because it is smart. Maybe they make it because they decide character is driven by anger, or fear. Maybe there's some other reason.

I am assuming, however, that there's generally significant uncertainty of what's ahead. The 15 minute workday is dependent upon two things: that the PCs can bring all their resources to bear in a short time period, and that they feel it is safe for them to do so.

Unless, of course, your point is that, for good game-play, players ought to make choices that they know are unwise.

No. My point is that good game play requires the possibility of bad choices, and that there be some decision point regarding spending resources. If you cannot run out, that removes a point of decision - you can't screw up by spending it too soon, or keeping it in reserve too long.

 

[Raven Crowking]

No. I assume players make their choices for their own reasons. Maybe they make it because it is smart. Maybe they make it because they decide character is driven by anger, or fear. Maybe there's some other reason.

Making a move you know to be unwise, because you "decide [the] character is driven by anger, or fear" is still making a move you know to be unwise.

The 15 minute workday is dependent upon two things: that the PCs can bring all their resources to bear in a short time period, and that they feel it is safe for them to do so.

This is true. I worded it somewhat differently, but the difference in words doesn't make a difference in intent.

My point is that good game play requires the possibility of bad choices, and that there be some decision point regarding spending resources.

Agreed. But, I would not simply say "the possibility of bad choices"; I would mandate "the possibility of bad choices with the intent to make good choices." IOW, the possibility of error.

Good game play in chess is not sacrificing you queen just, 'cause, you know, it's a bad choice. The player must be striving to deal with, as you way, unknowns, and must be able to make errors in so doing. In a really good game, most (but not all) errors should be recoverable with additional effort.


RC

 

[Umbran]

Agreed. But, I would not simply say "the possibility of bad choices"; I would mandate "the possibility of bad choices with the intent to make good choices." IOW, the possibility of error.

For my point, that's over-specifying

Good game play requires choice, period - some will be good and some will be bad. If the scenario is specifically designed to remove the choice, well, they can't have good (or bad) game play, about it, now can they? And they can't have a reason/intent behind a choice if there's no choice. So, choice comes first.

Good game play in chess is not sacrificing you queen just, 'cause, you know, it's a bad choice.

Yeah, well, I wanted to avoid the suggestion that good game play in RPGs is purely a question of tactical or strategic value. I was being intentionally broad.

Goading the BBEG into attacking you may not be a good choice in the typical tactical sense, but if you do it because there's a budding romance between your character and another potential target, it may make for darned great RPG game play. IMHO, at least.

 

[Raven Crowking]

So, you were just agreeing with me, then. Funny, I didn't get that from your earlier post.

(Shrug)

All good then, I guess.

 

[Gryph]

There were styles of play for which the 15-minute day became a pronounced phenomenon in 3e, but it's incorrect to conclude that there weren't elements of a 15-minute day in earlier editions that could appear. In those editions, it was running out of hit points (and the means to heal them) that tended to trigger the effect. If the first fight or two of the day ground out too many hit points and the party healers couldn't compensate, the day could be pretty short.

You identify some factors that contributed to a 15-minute day style of play, but those were never the only factors involved. The primary issue is finite resources and how the players evaluate those resources (a major issue with casters going nova on the 'worthwhile' spells in 3e and calling it a day). In 1e/2e, the most limiting resources were hit points and healing spells. 3e alleviated some of that with easy access to healing wands and potions, leaving the issue mainly to high DC, encounter ending spells. 4e healing surges and the relative difficulty of bringing in external healing puts the game back in the realm of healing/hit points being the major factor in 15-minute day play styles.

My D&D group in the early 80s called it the 5 minute day. It was a reference to how fast we could burn through the healer's cure spells. Our pronounced preference for multi-class clerics and druids was a player attempt to extend the adventuring day.

3e having a 15 minute work day was an improvement, barely.

 

[SabreCat]

Coming up with a list of necessary and sufficient qualities for anything is hard--ponder the essentialist question, "What makes a tiger a tiger?" It's going to be even muddier when you try to do so with something that's a human invention, abstract, and different across time (/editions) and social groups. Anything you add to the list will have a counterexample. Many things you leave off the list will leave your audience wondering where they went.

The best Mearls can hope for in an endeavor like this is statistical, methinks. If you polled not WotC R&D, but as many self-described D&D players as you can find, and picked out the most common themes of their responses, you might come up with a list of stuff that tends to be important to people's concept of D&D. And I don't know if even that would prove to be useful for design--marketing, maybe.

 

[Lanefan]

My preferred solution to this issue in AD&D would be to have a first level spell (a cleric spell would be a good fit for D&D, I think) that grants no bonus but enables a weapon to count as magic. Then the cleric could bless the fighter's sword (which is what clerics do) and the fighter could beat up the gargoyle (which is what fighters do).

A minor tweak to Shillelagh (Druid-1) takes care of this, and has a nice benefit-drawback built in: benefit = fighter gets a magic weapon thus can hit the gargoyle, drawback = that weapon is a club with which said fighter may or may not be proficient...

Lanefan

 

[pemerton]

Its a modified version of a quote from The Incredibles.

"And when everyone's super, no-one will be." ~ Syndrome

Special/interesting is relative to what is considered normal.

Just as a point of fact, the original was:

"If everyone's special, no-one will be." ~ Ayn Rand (as I recall, from Atlas Shrugged)

a parallel sentiment from The Gondoliers by Gilbert and Sullivan: "If everybody is somebody, then nobody is anybody." (1889)

I knew that you got the quote from the Incredibles. I didn't know that it has been endorsed by Ayn Rand, although that's hardly surprising. In Glibert and Sullivan I assume that it's intended as a gentle mockery of Victorian social mores, but I could be wrong about that - G&S isn't really my thing.

But this doesn't actually answer my question, what is the evidence in favour of it? For example, its crucial to some variants of Buddhism that a life free of suffering, and involving only pleasurable experiences, it not only conceivable but attainable. Why should I prefer Ayn Rand over the Buddha as a theorist of valuation?

Because the norm in that case is the average person on the street. The fact that you are emotional close to them makes them special.

Well, there are some moral traditions that take the view that every person on the street is special, and that it's an error (of lust, or pride, or moral imagination, perhaps) not to treat everyone as one treats one's friends and family - eg Socrates, perhaps Plato, most mainstream religions, many consequentialists.

Are they obviously wrong? I don't think so.

In both those cases, after the first few times, when that becomes the norm, those artefacts will start to lose their glitz and the fact that the characters have an "epic destiny" will become cliche.

Again, what's your evidence for this?

For example, would I cease to enjoy Graham Greene's novels if everyone wrote as well as Greene? Would I cease to enjoy Tolkien's fantasy if all fantasy novels were as readable and engaging? I don't think so - in fact, I make a point of reading almost no fantasy, because most of it is in my view not very well written, and I try to avoid reading mainstream novels that aren't at least in the ballpark, as far as quality is concerned, of Greene's lesser works.

When I have the chance to visit great galleries, I don't make sure to also study up on bad paintings and sculptures so that my tastes won't become jaded by seeing mostly quality works.

Of course, the value of positional goods depends upon the contrast that exists between my {car, house, suit, tie, whatever} and yours - but not all goods are positional goods. Not even all consumer goods are, or need be, positional goods. And I would hope that for many people, their relationships with their fellow humans aren't merely or primarily positional goods. And you haven't given me any reason to think that magic items or epic destinies in D&D are (typically, or always) positional goods. Nor have you given me any reason to think that they are the sort of good which will cause jading of taste with excessive exposure.

In my experience, the value of magic items and epic destinies in fantasy RPGing is a factor of (i) their contribution to buffing the PC, and (ii) their contribution to enabling the player of the PC to engage the gameworld. The first of these is typically the immediate source of pleasure. The second is what gives an item or a destiny staying power as an element of the game. And it seems to me that the 4e designers have a goal of making sure that both these sources of value are present in epic destinies and at least some magic items.

But even if one thinks that the designers have failed at this goal, it wouldn't follow that the value of items or destinies comes from the contrast players draw between them and other fictional elements.