[Monte Rant] Designers who think they're above roleplay

[Victim]

How many people think they can play any character or monster if just suddenly handed the sheet as well as someone who has studied the abilities and played the character or a similar one? I don't. Granted, the experienced player could be stupid, but, other things being equal, experience will be an important factor. Experience is one of the reasons why outsiders or dragons often die too quickly. The party has lots of experience with their characters but the DM usually doesn't have so much with the monsters.

In other words, actual play experience matters.

 

[Skald]

I personally feel that coming up with a good, imaginative product, specifically an RPG product, does require a combination of both a good degree of familiarity with the rules system that will be used, as well as an ability to present the ideas around those rules in an entertaining and logical manner. These two traits don't necessarily have to be in the same person either (say, two friends work on a game, with one fellow being the writer while the other develops the rules). Being familiar with alternate rules systems can also be useful.

As far as playtesting goes, I would say yes just as a default precaution for Quality Control. This doesn't only apply to rules systems either, but also the ideas as well. This could be thought of as editing a novel, in a sense. If the rules are akward while the story is good, or if the reverse is true, then the customer will have to do the other half of the work the author/developer should have done in the first place. Now granted, no one will please everyone on matters of quality, but playtesting does go a long way to smooth out both rules and story consistency.

Ed Greenwood effectively playtested his Forgotten Realms for what, 20 years before TSR got a hold of it? This is why the setting still sells so well, even without any rules issues becoming involved.

For those of you familiar with Maidenheim, yes, I do playtest the setting with my friends, to achieve a consistency in the themes and story as well as to smooth out any rules issues. One of the shining moments for me as the writer is when my friends can read the books and setting material and just get it without asking me for more specific details. This tells me that the ideas have been presented clearly, and that the material can be introduced smoothly to add background flavor into the game. We're all older guys (28+) and they know not to try and toot my horn just to keep the peace, so any questions they do have they certainly will bring up.

I hope this answers your question.

 

[Ace]

For what it's worth, I suspect that the percentage of game designers playing D&D and writing for D&D/d20 is higher than back in the days of 2nd Edition.

(When I came to work for TSR in 1994, there were no D&D games to get involved in. None. So I had to start one.)

I think you are right and your rant, IMO spot on.

Thinking about it The Wick's recent attempt "What is That Smell" illustrates both Montes point and mind. It was IMO a mediocre module made by someone who doesn't really play D&D and wrote for it only for the money.

I think (without evidence of any kind) that there is a fair amount of D&D stuff written and D&D games played as a second or third choice.

A lot of the writers might rather be writing for "Game line of choice" or players playing something else but as they say Third place game beats oh a lot of other stuff .... Including Fishing <G>

 

[Ace]

How many people think they can play any character or monster if just suddenly handed the sheet as well as someone who has studied the abilities and played the character or a similar one? I don't. Granted, the experienced player could be stupid, but, other things being equal, experience will be an important factor. Experience is one of the reasons why outsiders or dragons often die too quickly. The party has lots of experience with their characters but the DM usually doesn't have so much with the monsters.

In other words, actual play experience matters.

Probably right but a good playtest covers up a lot of ills.

 

[Victim]

Playtesting won't make up for poor design. Well, it might, but then the playtesters are doing most of the work. If the essential elements of the adventure aren't going to work, then it will pretty much need a rewrite. For example, let's say that Lord of the Rings is an adventure for 12th level characters that involves fighting a war on multiple fronts, escorting 1st level NPC classed characters, and throwing the item into Mount Doom. The adventure includes all the stuff in the journey, key places for battles, the impact PCs can have against armies, etc. Then the players get ahold of it. "I've been to Gondor, right? Gandalf has studied there stuff? Sweet, in 2 days I can teleport everyone there, saving lots of time and leaving the hunters for the ring behind in the Shire." "Okay I cast Windwalk on the group, and we fly into Mordor at 1000ft. I can maintain the effect for all day, if we find a place to land so I can renew the spell. Gandalf, you can make sure we have that opening, right?" "okay, now that we've taken care of that ring bother, let's go track down those wraiths before they do any more damage. What do you mean they died when we threw the ring into Mount Doom? That was easy."

The adventure would have to pretty much be completely redesigned from the ground up.

 

[JESawyer]

Re: Fair enough...

I suppose there was a bit of confusion on the term 'play'. I though you were referring to recreational play, but now i see you lump playtesting under the same umbrella. Its a relevant difference, as one of the (IMO wrong) assumptions made is that a designer must LOVE to play the game as oppossed to simply doing so in a pragmatic design context; my bad....

I believe that searching for problems often doesn't yield good results, as odd as that may sound. I've found that most problems are exposed through ordinary gameplay -- not vignettes that are designed to examine one particular facet of the system. When you're looking right at something, especially when it's in its "intended" context, the obvious merits and flaws of that particular thing are going to be, well... obvious.

The goofy ways that people have found to mangle the D&D system typically aren't discovered by simply staring at individual rules and hammering them; it's usually some player goofing around with his or her character's abilities and suddenly realizing, "WOW, I CAN MAKE A MONK TOTALLY SCREW UP THE GAME WITH THESE ITEMS! HEE, HEE!"

I'm a fan of one of the big messages in Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions: revolutions occur when a flaw is found in a paradigm through mundane, rote use. That's why "ordinary" playtesting is useful. There are problems I've perceived in D&D 3E during play that I never would have understood simply by repeatedly reading through the books or hammering rule #253.

 

[MulhorandSage]

Well, I thought Monte hit a bullseye the first time I read the piece, and my opinion hasn't changed on rereadings. I've always found that gaming jazzes the design process, and I know I don't design as well as I do when I'm actively gaming.

Another thing I wish authors did more is verse themselves in the classic literature of the genre. The best authors are well-versed in classic fantasy and science fiction; the one thing I like most about Gary Gygax's work is how evocative it is of the styles of certain authors whose work has been ignored by the modern canon (like Clark Ashton Smith). It was gratifying to see the recent poll where so many people expressed appreciation for Fritz Leiber. We don't need to necessarily need to clone the classics, but a greater appreciation for how the pulp masters perfected their craft would do many designers an enormous amount of good. And it wouldn't hurt some gamers either.

Scott Bennie

 

[ConcreteBuddha]

Well, just to add my random thoughts:

1) If I memorized the core books (theoretical knowledge), and wrote some rules or an adventure using those books only (theoretical knowledge), I would have no idea how they functioned in the real world (real-world application).

Analogy: If I memorized every treatise on Chemistry (theoretical knowledge), and wrote a theory (theoretical knowledge), it may or may not function in the real world (real-world application).

I understand that analogies are not proper logical analysis tools, however, the point is still (slightly) valid.

2) Game testers only have the power to tell a programmer if there is a bug in the software, they do not have the power to tell the programmers the game sucks. It is the responsibility of the game designer and programmers to make a 'good' game. Game testers are the peons of the computer world. If programmers and designers did not play games as part of their job description, game testers cannot take up the slack because they have no power in the heirarchy. Game testers are not the same as the editors of books. Editors actually have some power.

I'm assuming this idea is paralleled in the RPG business. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Joe Average playtester has the ability to say, "Hey Monte! Your <blank> sucks! All gamers are gonna hate that!"

And yet, my friends say, "Damn, this feat you made, Triple Fork Fighting, is crap! And the Goat Disciple? WTF were you thinking?!?"

 

[WizarDru]

I'm assuming this idea is paralleled in the RPG business. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Joe Average playtester has the ability to say, "Hey Monte! Your <blank> sucks! All gamers are gonna hate that!"

AFAIK, your assumption is wrong. Many changes were made to 3E during playtesting that were EXACTLY these kind of changes, such as the Paladin being a core class, because the playtesters thought that certain things didn't feel like D&D, even if they worked from a mechanical basis. 3E underwent many dramatic changes based on playtester input...and labeling something as lame was part of their job (after all, if they didn't do it, the customers would, later on...)

I would agree that for module testers, this sort of thing is less likely, and the same would apply to game settings (but mostly due to their lack of emphasis on mechanics).

 

[Wicht]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Maybeee yall should reread this?

Take a chill pill. You might be a market Darwinist others may think waste flows down hill. It is all a matter of opinion.

By all means play what you like but in the interest of good sportsmanship try what someone else likes too.

Chill pill taken, I was cranky yesterday, I admit it, but I still think that accusing people who prefer D&D of being unimaginative is a bit much on your part.

if a game designer prefers his Orc and Reindeer game to D&D and refuses to play D&D that is his business and I don't care. But to then turn around (and do what you basically did) and complain about people who don't have the taste (or imagination) to appreciate and play what he considers a better game thus forcing him to do work he does not enjoy, is just sour grapes. Many people are stuck doing work they do not like but it is childish and immature to blame it on the consumer.