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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BryonD" data-source="post: 5779661" data-attributes="member: 957">Are you aware I worked with Wulf Ratbane (aka Ben Durbin) on Trailblazer and other stuff including Grim Tales before that?  I don't want to imply any claims I don't deserve.  Those products are his design and he gets the credit.  But I spent many hours being critical of his ideas (hard to imagine that, right?)  and proposing alternatives.   (There are also quite a few other ENWorlders on the credit page and they deserve at least as much credit as me, probably more)But Ben and I talked a great deal about "3.75" and different elements of what makes a great game. (And I'm still not a fan of his unified spell casting system.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  )To me balance means two key things:1) Every player has a chance to shine2) You have a sense of how well things should probably go for a typical party in a given situation with everything else being equal.  (And that is my definition.  The 3E definition goes for more mechanical balance than that.  But not so much that it it becomes unappealing to me.)Despite the popular preconception, I'm very confident that WotC isn't going to comb through feedback and find things that are shouted the most and loudest.  (not that I think you think so either).  WotC is going to design *I* by their own judgment.  Of course they will take a lot of feedback.  And they will use it.  But they are not going to print posts, sort them and weigh the stacks.  They are going to gloss over 99% of the crap and find some gems of insight from one person here and one person there.  (Not to say there won't be some ideas that gain popular support and end up in the game).  But any key design idea is going to be limited to appealing to some plurality.  They do need to aim for pleasing multiple groups which exceed simple plurality.  And the feedback that lends itself to that will be golden.I really think there are some predictable results of different design approaches.  I think an exclusively more complex game will have a lot more fans than an exclusively simple game.  I think that a game that assumes that the DM to handle a lot of complex stuff will have a lot more fans than a game that presumes the DM needs to be sheltered from expectations. I think these things are true because the very best implementations of games within those system will be the gold standard of what the game can be.  And not everyone needs to be a DM.But once you have that high level system, you can offer tools and dials and short cuts for providing a more simple system for those who want it.  And you should even get some synergy there because some people will simply stop with settings that work for them and others will gradually layer in complexity as their comfort grows.I strongly agree that games should NEVER be a "headache" or "work".  But they should also avoid locking the game in at some low standard of avoiding headaches.  To me prepping 3E is awesome fun.  And I know that I am far from alone in that.  So the headache avoidance changes in 4E don't give me any headache avoidance value, but take away from the play quality in the trade.  Thus I don't play.  And a lot of other people don't play.If they go down that road again, they will get the same result.Keep in mind that there were quite a few quotes from pre and early 4E to the effect that losing BryonD as a fan was not a surprise and an acceptable loss.  (And I'm perfectly fine with that)  They believed that they were tons of people who don't play TTRPGs and would convert.  I said years ago that the portion of the population willing to sit at a table with other people an pretend to be an elf is pretty much fixed and chasing new people outside that segment was a pipe dream.  I was roundly criticized on these boards for those comments and many people told me that anyone was a potential gamer, they just needed a good entry point.  And, for the record, those people are still completely wrong on that claim.  If anything the conventional wisdom is that the TTRPG market shrank during the 4E era.  That may be true.  And I DON'T blame 4E.  I think that "fixed portion" remains fixed but those people have more and more alternates to choose from.  But certainly effort chasing outside that was wasted.The big problem WotC does have though is that they just spent the past 3.5 years treating one segment of their fan base as a golden child.  Going back to being part of a larger group of equals may never be acceptable for a portion of that group.  The question is, how big is that portion.  Hopefully it is small.The advantage of complex system is they can be simplified and have short cuts in a million different ways.  You have a lot more options for trimming things out of a large block of wood than you do for trying to stand new additions onto a small block.No you are correct.And I am very interested in seeing how *I* evolves.  But if I was going to wager, I bet I'm playing Pathfinder in 2014.There is no one at Paizo who is as good a pure mechanics as Monte Cook.  And when Mearls worked for Monte I used to joke that Mike was "the talent".And I still think that.  In my personal assessment there are two top tier designers who stand alone.  Mearls is one of them.  (Steve Kenson is the other)   There are a lot of great designers out there.  And Monte is at the top of that second tier.  Paizo has some guys down in that second tier.But Paizo has creativity that is unmatched.  And they have a dedication to keeping their mechanics tied to being the thing they model that I love.  I think Bulhman is ok at design.  But he clearly never forgets that the mechanics are about making that thing come to life.  I'll take that combination over a Mearls focused on "the math works" ANY DAY.And even without being tethered to the math, as I hope and presume *I* will not be, the creative powerhouses work at Paizo.  and *I* will need to be BETTER than what I have now.I'm interested.  I'd LOVE to go from my current awesome to even better.  So I'm looking with great interest.  But don't place any big bets yet.</blockquote>

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