Source of power creep

[AeroDm]

Exploiting power creep and other min-maxing is just chasing illusions, as the DM always, always can compensate by adjusting his monster builds. As a player you cannot "win" over the DM. The only thing you can do is shut out your fellow players in your own party by being overpowering...

So long as everyone in the party min-maxes (or aims for sub-par) to the same extent this is true. The problem becomes when two or more players become so disparate in terms of power that they cannot both be effectively challenged at the same time. Then the DM is forced to either treat the players differently or not engage (i.e. challenge too much or not challenge enough) one of the players.

 

[Lanefan]

(1) Modern game design *is* different than older game design because the RPG industry has become more of an industry.

This right here is the root of the problem (and yes, power creep is a problem and was even back in 1e). A hobby became an industry, and the results of that change very much represent a double-edged sword.

This isn’t to say that RPG sales weren’t substantial and that a lot of money wasn’t made back in the day, but a lot of sales were driven by it being new and unique. Today, there is substantially more competition which leads to monetization strategies being built into the game. Sometimes that strategy is just a great game that people will want to buy, sometimes it is embedding accessories like miniatures, sometimes it is transferring to a subscription model, or whatever. Any of those can be good or bad (well, I guess the “great game” one can’t be bad).

Now, not surprisingly, profitability is an important aim of the industry and profitability is linked pretty heavily to people buying your stuff. As I argued, an easy way to encourage that is by making your new stuff better than the old stuff. This leads to obsolescence and rules bloat which eventually bulk up the system until a clean slate feels required. If you look at the progression from 3e to 3.5 to 4e to Essentials (of which I enjoyed each step) I think it is fair to claim that they did just that: wiped the slate clean to bring the game back to a simpler foundation and then commenced to build upon it once again.

You missed the very similar step from 2e to 3e; 2e had also bloated itself into oblivion.

This isn’t necessarily bad, the game needs that from time to time, but each slate-wiping tends to leave some people behind. Since each iteration of the game is great, the chunk of folks that linger back is not insignificant. As a result, even if the hobby as a whole is growing, the installed base for any iteration of the game might not be growing as fast or may even be declining.

True only if one assumes that a) only the newest version of the game will be supported, and b) the new version will not be backward-compatible with what came before - both of which are (sadly) exactly what has happened in the 2e-3e and 3e-4e jumps. But if those assumptions can be proven false then a company can draw in new blood while still at least attempting to retain the customers it already has.

Games, in my opinion, are more fun when people are allowed to go out and do their absolute best. Power creep makes it so that we can’t let people do that without the game breaking. Now, the best reason to have a DM instead of a CPU is that a DM can handle those types of issues more dynamically than a CPU, but that isn’t a strong argument for why he or she should have to.

Power creep doesn't always break the game but it certainly doesn't always fix it either. I'm not sure I see RPGs as a type of game where one needs to be always able to "do [one's] absolute best", but I do see them as a type of game where within the confines of the system one needs to be able to do what one wants safe in the knowledge that whatever you do will be playable in the campaign you're in.

Lan-"is it still power creep if it fails its move-silently roll"-efan

 

[delericho]

I think power creep is inevitable across the lifespan of an edition. Only by 'completing' a system can the power level be kept constant. Of course, since it's new crunch that brings people back to buy new books, no publisher that wants to stay in business will ever complete a system... until it's time for the next edition at least.

Because of this, if you're really concerned about power creep, my advice would be to 'freeze' the ruleset at the start of your campaign - state at the outset that this set of books will be used, and going forward no new supplements, and no revisions, or anything but the most vital of errata will be added to the game.

 

[Tuft]

Games, in my opinion, are more fun when people are allowed to go out and do their absolute best. Power creep makes it so that we can’t let people do that without the game breaking.

"Do their absolute best" sounds to me like min-maxing. In my experience, min-maxing usually leads to one-trick ponies. These can be defeated in two ways: either simply scale the opposition, as I wrote previosly in the thread, or by adding a greater variance of challenges. If suddenly a majority of the encounters are non-combat, then the min-maxed combat monster is the one with the short end of the stick.

 

[Tuft]

So long as everyone in the party min-maxes (or aims for sub-par) to the same extent this is true. The problem becomes when two or more players become so disparate in terms of power that they cannot both be effectively challenged at the same time. Then the DM is forced to either treat the players differently or not engage (i.e. challenge too much or not challenge enough) one of the players.

Exactly. All that the min-maxer has won is either ruining the game for himself (too easy) or for the non-min-maxer (too hard)...

 

[Crothian]

I do want to do so. People only consider new material if it is attractive material. The easiest way to make it attractive is to make it more powerful than the stuff that already exists. This makes that other stuff obsolete. Over time, this obsolescence makes entire monster manuals and character classes obsolete if they are not also updated and supported. In light of people's expectation that their gaming dollar returns adequate value, this is a real problem.

Is power creep the easiest way to make new books attractive? I don't know, I'm not a game designer. I'd love to hear from some of the RPG writers we have around here on that issue.

How does a monster become obsolete? Sure that might be more powerful versions of it but a creative writer or DM can always find a way to make a monster challenging and fun. It also looks like you are specifically talking D&D here with word choices like monster manual and classes. Are you referring to the one game or does your theory apply to all games?

Proper design can mitigate (but probably not do away with) power creep and ensure that game material has a longer useful life.

Do you have examples of what you would consider proper design?

Finally, part of the fun for many people is the ability to compete or trying to make an effective character. The system should be constructed to withstand and even award such competition.

Are there games out there that don't do this? I've yet to play a game that players could not make effective and fun characters. Who is the competition between? Player and player, player and DM, player and system?

 

[AeroDm]

You missed the very similar step from 2e to 3e; 2e had also bloated itself into oblivion.

(Snip: Good stuff)

Definitely. Late 2e was exceptionally bloated. I just picked the 3e to Essentials progression because it is a chunk of game system design time that people are largely familiar with.

I think I agree with pretty much everything else you said and found it to be useful nuance.

 

[AeroDm]

How does a monster become obsolete? Sure that might be more powerful versions of it but a creative writer or DM can always find a way to make a monster challenging and fun. It also looks like you are specifically talking D&D here with word choices like monster manual and classes. Are you referring to the one game or does your theory apply to all games?

I did not intend for it to be limited to D&D but that is the RPG I am the most familiar with so it will inevitably be more applicable of D&D than anything else. The article actually has almost nothing in common for this thread but for its, as Umbran pointed out, sensationalist hook, so I'm mostly whinging it here. But a monster becomes obsolete when it no longer serves as an adequate challenge under its governing rule set. Does this mean it can be made "not obsolete" just by using it against characters of a lower level? Sure, you bet. But that is a "see the tree and miss the forest" style fix.

Do you have examples of what you would consider proper design?

The actual article dealt with why power creep emerges (not whether or not it is bad) and how, for the most part, it is the result of really positive things and positive goals. So again, whingin' it. I'd say that the introduction of stacking in 3e was the start of excellent game design. It introduced a natural obsolescence that was part of the game and allowed the DM to provide big rewards that had modest impact. You could spend levels seeking out a +5 sword and because it was replacing the +4 sword you got by casting a spell each combat, the incremental power boost was more modest than the reward felt. Now we eventually learned that +1 or +2 from a dozen sources still tends to break the game, but it was a tremendous first step.

 

[Tuft]

But a monster becomes obsolete when it no longer serves as an adequate challenge under its governing rule set. Does this mean it can be made "not obsolete" just by using it against characters of a lower level? Sure, you bet. But that is a "see the tree and miss the forest" style fix.

Just increase some appropriate numbers on the monster's stat sheet...