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<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 7613271" data-attributes="member: 177">Yeah, I know.&nbsp; There are limits to all analogies.&nbsp; I was kind of thinking of it as the published game is kind of the genetic line.&nbsp; Individual tables are the individuals of the species.&nbsp; Eventually, the genetic line dies out (they stop publishing) when there aren't enough tables around to support the line going forward.&quot;Intelligent design&quot; isn't just &quot;design by someone who is intelligent in a general sense&quot;.&nbsp; It is, &quot;Design by someone who knows what they are doing.&quot;&nbsp; And what science and principles of rpg game design we have are really very recent - like, 21st century.&nbsp; Historically, RPG designers haven't had sufficient theory vetted by empiricism to really say they know what will work in the world at large.&nbsp; It isn't their fault - the information simply didn't exist.&nbsp; The bandwidth for feedback simply wasn't large enough until after 3e was published.&nbsp; I think history supports me in this - if games were intelligently designed, they'd all be very fit, and would succeed.&nbsp; But gaming history is filled with games that just didn't cut the mustard. That shouldn't be true if intelligent design was the rule.Thus, historically, game designers may have been well-intentioned, but lacking in support - they had to make lots of guesses, shots in the dark.&nbsp; And that's kind of what nature does.&nbsp; Random shots n the dark, some of which work, and others which don't.This even held for 4e, where they were rather specifically designing to deal with some problems they thought were important, only to find out that while the results were pleasing to some, it was a solution to a problem that didn't drive most folks' buying and playing.The pattern of guessing only really changed with 5e - and they changed it not by having the right intelligent design, but by setting it up in a playtesting incubator, and rapidly iterating on the design with feedback bandwidth the likes of which hadn't really been applied before.&nbsp; Basically, they made an isolated population, and ran it through many generations quickly, and came up with a new species - kind of like what happens when you get an isolated population of an animal, and it speciates.So, while it is bending the ideas a bit, evolution may not be a wholly bad analogy for 5e's development.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 7613271, member: 177"] Yeah, I know. There are limits to all analogies. I was kind of thinking of it as the published game is kind of the genetic line. Individual tables are the individuals of the species. Eventually, the genetic line dies out (they stop publishing) when there aren't enough tables around to support the line going forward. "Intelligent design" isn't just "design by someone who is intelligent in a general sense". It is, "Design by someone [I]who knows what they are doing[/I]." And what science and principles of rpg game design we have are really very recent - like, 21st century. Historically, RPG designers haven't had sufficient theory [I]vetted by empiricism[/I] to really say they know what will work in the world at large. It isn't their fault - the information simply didn't exist. The bandwidth for feedback simply wasn't large enough until after 3e was published. I think history supports me in this - if games were intelligently designed, they'd all be very fit, and would succeed. But gaming history is filled with games that just didn't cut the mustard. That shouldn't be true if intelligent design was the rule. Thus, historically, game designers may have been well-intentioned, but lacking in support - they had to make lots of guesses, shots in the dark. And that's kind of what nature does. Random shots n the dark, some of which work, and others which don't. This even held for 4e, where they were rather specifically designing to deal with some problems they thought were important, only to find out that while the results were pleasing to some, it was a solution to a problem that didn't drive most folks' buying and playing. The pattern of guessing only really changed with 5e - and they changed it not by having the right intelligent design, but by setting it up in a playtesting incubator, and rapidly iterating on the design with feedback bandwidth the likes of which hadn't really been applied before. Basically, they made an isolated population, and ran it through many generations quickly, and came up with a new species - kind of like what happens when you get an isolated population of an animal, and it speciates. So, while it is bending the ideas a bit, evolution may not be a wholly bad analogy for 5e's development. [/QUOTE]

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