The New Design Philosophy?

[Melan]

But is ensuring that no "game balance accidents" happen such an overwhelmingly important design goal? Isn't this direction the gaming equivalent of "warning, knife may be sharp" labels?

I question the implication that game balance is all that important - or at least important enough to trump every other design priority a game may have. One of the appeals of roleplaying to me is precisely the fact that is is an unpredictable experience, where shared imagination and collective negotiation, if you will, results in the unexpected and the wondrous. This aspect, in my eyes, should be encouraged, not taken out to the shed and shot in the back of the head. And nonstandard monsters are a vital part of it.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

I think the problem is unpredictability when you don't want unpredictability, or if you don't fully understand the implications of the unpredicability (if you are an inexperienced DM, for example). I have nothing against highly specialized, oddball and unpredictable monsters. I'm a sufficiently experienced DM that I can probably guess at what the effect of such a monster would have on whatever party I'm DMing for, so I would be able to make an informed decision whether to use it or not. However, for the sake of those who are not, I think these monsters ought to come with warning labels.

And, there are players and DMs who don't want things to be too wild or strange - those seeking to emulate specific fictional universes, or the "real" world, perhaps with a slightly mythical feel, for example. Certain monsters may be considered inappropriate for those settings.

That again points in the direction of either adding a lot of handholding and warning labels to the more complex matters in D&D to the core rules, in order to keep new gamers from getting too confused (which would be in order for more parts than just the "oddball monsters" in the MM, in my opinion), or creating a "basic" game that is still essentially D&D, just with most of the more complex and potentially confusing things cut out and left for the "advanced" version of the game. Weird, I have this déjà vu coming on...

Alternatively, we have two examples of how to make two oddball monsters more conform with a focussed rules mentality (even though it still escapes me how adding more bookkeeping and adding an even more weird effect than metal rusting away immediately (i.e. "healing rust damage") can be "simplifying" the rust monster for newbies, for example ), which is obviously lauded by those who would like those two monsters focus more on combat versatility, and discarded by those who see the original flair of the monsters in question being drained away.

I for my part would prefer the "basic game" strategy being used to better effect. I can live with warning labels and better decription of the "Behind the Rules" mindsets, too. I don't want to see everything streamlined down to "CR-adjudicated combat encounters with classes/templates tacked on for versatility", as I have enough work statting up important NPCs already..I don't need more work having to do so with monsters, too. Additionally, I believe new gamers will have it easier with monsters coming out of the MM complete with ALL abilities they could have, instead of monster do-it-yourself-kits with assembling instructions on how to modify them for taste.

 

[Melan]

By the way, has anyone examined how new gamers react to "inappropriate" monsters like rust monsters or ogre mages? Do they dislike encounters which don't conform to the new design philosophy WotC employees and various posters on messageboards seem to advocate lately*? I really wouldn't know because I game with people roughly my age (24 to 30 in our group). I remember that we didn't care about game balance at all when we started; we eagerly experimented with game-breaking things because it was fun.

What I mean to ask is... is this expectation of balance over all a need present in gamers entering the hobby, or is it a learned trait?

*Last two or three years; IME. Before 3.5, this attitude didn't seem so commonplace.

 

[FireLance]

By the way, has anyone examined how new gamers react to "inappropriate" monsters like rust monsters or ogre mages? Do they dislike encounters which don't conform to the new design philosophy WotC employees and various posters on messageboards seem to advocate lately*? I really wouldn't know because I game with people roughly my age (24 to 30 in our group). I remember that we didn't care about game balance at all when we started; we eagerly experimented with game-breaking things because it was fun.

What I mean to ask is... is this expectation of balance over all a need present in gamers entering the hobby, or is it a learned trait?

*Last two or three years; IME. Before 3.5, this attitude didn't seem so commonplace.

I don't think it's a "new gamer" thing. I cut my gaming teeth on Basic D&D (the set with the solo adventure in which the fighter PC encountered a rust monster), and I still like the new design philosophy.

If your experience is that there has been an increase in players expecting balance, that could simply be because they wouldn't have played D&D before that, and would have spent their time on computer and video games instead. I admit that I do not have the data to back it up, though.

 

[vulcan_idic]

Once upon a time, all gamers were new gamers and many monsters such as the rust monster and ogre magi have their origins in those early days invented by some of those very new gamers who were running them for other new players. Sometimes these new ideas worked out well, sometimes they did not.

FireLance has no difficulty using oddball monsters as he can gauge at a glance the effect they are likely to have in a given situation. As he says, "I'm a sufficiently experienced DM..." how was that experience gained? How do the new gamers become experienced?

By trying things and finding out what works and what doesn't. Not every game will be a perfectly created storyline, tightly run, action packed and thrillingly played - sometimes a game flops. That's OK. It's no one's fault - mistakes are expected of everyone as part of human nature, we are not infallible. We learn from those mistakes to make the next game better and more enjoyable - in the process taking steps to become that "experienced DM" or "experienced player". Those are the experiences that make us experienced.

It seems to me that American culture, at least, currently has difficulties with perfectionism. We protect our children to the point where they are unprepared for the world because they have never experienced it. We're so paranoid about germs that we weaken our immune systems by minimizing contact with germs to such an extent that they fail to form antibodies to common infectious agents, while at the same time promoting the evolution of those bacteria towards resisting those antibacterial agents we use to fight them. We don't want our children to make the same mistakes we did, in fact, ideally we want them to make no mistakes. The problem with this is that we learn a whole lot more from our mistakes and failures than we do our successes, so in preventing children from making their own mistakes we also prevent them from learning from them. The problem people have with oddball monsters and "balance" and "warning labels" and "handholding", I think, is an outgrowth of this difficulty with not wanting our "children" - i.e. the next generation of gamers - to have to make the same mistakes we did and have to go through the really bad gaming experiences we did when we were young, so they can just have the fun part. Of course then they can't learn from those mistakes to learn to judge the difficulty of a particular encounter on their own and instead rely on a Challenge Rating to do it for them, because they've never done it another way. While a Challenge Rating is a good tool, it's no replacement for that gut feeling that tells you when something is likely to work or not.

This also seems to interact with our current seeming desire for instant gratification and general lack of patience. We don't want to boil potatoes, and mash them by hand when we can take flakes, add water, nuke them for 3 minutes and stir.

None of this is intended to say any of these trends is good or bad, simply an observation of general tendencies that I see in American society in general and how they interact with the hobby as a whole and this topic specifically.

But that's just my thoughts, maybe others think differently.

 

[Scribble]

Scribble, please limit your ogre mage discussion to the other thread.

This thread did have ogre mage discussion in it for a while, but it was split off into another thread for a reason.

Thanks.

Plane, I had no intentions of continuing that subject. I was simply apologizing for misquoting something in my argument. That's all.

 

[FireLance]

While I don't disagree with what vulcan_idic said, I'd like to state for the record that I got my experience without ever using a rust monster. I made enough mistakes just using regular monsters.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

And that's most likely the root of the whole thing...I'm not sure if you intend to imply that using a rust monster as an encounter was an error (or is one), I certainly agree that it could be one, depending on ones group and game make-up. As vulcan_idic pointed out already, that's a matter of experience more than of proper CRs, streamlined or nerfed powers or anything else. I never made the experience that it was an error when I used one in an encounter, and as such I don't have any aversions against it. But the experience of how it could be an error can only be made by actually using it a few times, and learning from it. Now, if all the oddball stuff and rough edges are smoothed down to one narrow standard, how much different is using e.g. a rust monster from a druid with rusting grasp, or a wizard with desintegration?

I don't know, maybe I'm simply too much of an old fart, but sometimes it seems to me the new design philosophy is to make D&D run as smoothly and as option-rich as a video-game out of the box, with all the good and bad consequences that kind of design can have..which can be a good or a bad thing, heavily dependent on the individual taste and preferance, and which clearly splits the opinions. Myself, I can't say I fancy it.

 

[Hussar]

It is a game of wild imagination and improbable strangeness, right? In short, fantastic and unpredictable. Or is that considered bad game design in today's environment?

Sure, of course I agree with that. That's what templates/character levels/advancement rules/etc are for.

This point was made in another thread. The only way we got tougher monsters previously was to create a new monster. Thus we have how many versions of goblin?

The mechanics are there to make a general creature into a fantastic niche creature. Why ignore those mechanics and just make new creatures? If I want a puppet master type creature, why not take an existing creature and then tweak it. Why waste space in the monster manuals recreating the wheel every time.

Say I want to make a puppet master mastermind creature. I could take a minotaur, stock fantasy brute that it is, slap on a few levels of Thrall of Baphomet, perhaps an abyssal template and some levels of bard and I now have a fantastic puppet master. I don't need a "puppet master minotaur" entry in the monster manual. OTOH, if I want a big bad brute, I use a stock minotaur, perhaps slap a few levels of barbarian on him and away I go.

It has absolutely nothing to do with ignoring the richness of setting and everything to do with actually using the tools we have. What purpose does an ogre mage serve, for example? It's a poor example of a master mind creature. I can create a better one using the tools given to me in 3.5 - one that will not be a one trick pony, nor be so overpowered in a single attack.

Why is it a bad thing to use the tools we have?

 

[wayne62682]

Why is it a bad thing to use the tools we have?

I agree totally. My guess is because the newbies are not creative enough to do it on their own, and WotC is changing the "design philosophy" to accomodate them by having variants for every little thing so they don't HAVE to be creative.

It's like was said: It seems like they're trying to make D&D more of something you can play right out of the box, as it were, without needing to spend the time to customize things to suit your purposes. This is also why there are so many base classes now.. because people were not really creative enough to come up with (and then try to balance) hybrid classes like the Beguiler or the Duskblade, or modified classes like Warmage. Now, I find the new base classes to be a good idea, but I could do without explicit rules for umpteen types of the same monster to fulfil various roles. Give me the basic creature and let me apply templates or classes (or hell, make up my own things) to make it "unique" and fit into the role I want it to.