The New Design Philosophy?

[Umbran]

I would much prefer a design philosophy that asked this: "How can we best simulate all the classic fantasy books and mythology in D&D?"

The problem is that this is by no means a simple task. The genre is extremely broad, in terms of flavor and power levels represented.

It also dodges the question - do new players really want to emulate "classic fantasy"? This is an important question, in a business sense. Back in the 1970s, it was reasonable plan. But today, is it true? How many of the prospective new players have even read classic fantasy? Compare that to the number of them who have played CCG and computer games...

 

[DeadlyUematsu]

My imagination has to conform to a strict set of "what is fantasy" guidelines?

Err, you're already playing a game (if you're playing D&D, that is) that has a strict set of "what is fantasy" guidelines. Kind of funny that you called him on this.

 

[The Shaman]

I'll admit I don't have it in front of me, and I read it yesterday while getting ready for work, so I might have misread the part about other ogres? I'll check tonight.

I also didn't see the line about "more powerful than their occidental cousins" - could you be looking at the 2e MM by chance?

Re-reading your earlier post, I noticed something else:

As for [the ogre mage]'s manipulative abilities... I still never really saw it as this crazy mastermind people say... The real thing I see it doing, is slipping into a town unnoticed with it's polymorph then stealing a few women and children to keep as slaves, charming them so they don't run away, and other more... hedonistic... reasons.

Then the PCs show up, get into a brawl with its lesser ogre thugs, and to get away it blows it's cone of cold wad and gasses off somewhere.

My personal opinion is that many gamers saw the word "ogre" in the name and assumed dumb brute, or perhaps slightly less dumb brute. In fact its intelligence ranges from eight to sixteen (average to exceptional), and as noted its abilities are not geared toward combat but toward infiltration and manipulation.

I agree that some ogre magi would definitely use their abilities as you describe, particularly toward the lower end of the intelligence spectrum - on the other hand, I preferred to run the monster toward the higher end of the range, much like a less refined rakshasa.

That brings up another point, raised by Hussar and ThirdWizard - other monsters fit the same niche. That's true, but I disagree with Mike Mearls (and by extension Hussar and ThirdWizard) that this is necessarily a bad thing. For me, the ogre mage reflected a oriental sensibility drawn from its oni roots, and so that's how I tended to play the monster, as distinct from more occidental monsters.

I think there is too much focus on the stats, and not enough on how to play the monster so that it is distinctive from the other critters with similar abilities.

 

[Glyfair]

I also didn't see the line about "more powerful than their occidental cousins" - could you be looking at the 2e MM by chance?

No, that's the line from Greyhawk, the initial appearance of Ogre Magi in D&D.

 

[Scribble]

Err, you're already playing a game (if you're playing D&D, that is) that has a strict set of "what is fantasy" guidelines. Kind of funny that you called him on this.

I dissagree. I don't think it really has a strict set of "what is fantasy" guidelines at all. It has options and options and the ability to be customized. I'd prefer not to be pigeon holed into fantasy has to equal fat little halflings and elf hating dwarves.

 

[Kerrick]

What do you mean rated on their own merrits? How do you judge what a power level is unless you have something to balance it against? That would be like telling somone it's 4 inches long without ever showing them a ruler.

Upper Krust's CR system. A guy named UK (over on the House Rules forum, some of you may have heard of him) came up with a system whereby you can rate monsters based on their abilities, in discrete numbers. Now, to be fair, I don't know how he came up with those numbers in the first place - he may well have rated them against PC abilities, in which case I just stuck my foot in my mouth - but I can say this - his ratings are very accurate, a lot moreso than WotC's "Well, we'll add +1 for this ability, and +1/2 for that one," or "An ambusher's CR should be from 1/2 its HD to its HD." (that second quote is from the MM, p 302).

I don't really agree with this. There are plenty of challenges in the game. People still die from fireballs and swords and poisons and arrows and dragons and all sortsa stuff.

But where's the FUN stuff? Where are the rust monsters, the save-or-die poisons, the deadly level drain? Granted, such things should be used sparingly, but the game's become so watered down that things like fireballs and swords and such are just "ho-hum" dangers that every adventurer faces.

I concede there is some degree of loss of variability and flavor from streamlining a monster that is not unambiguously a good thing, even if I support the approach overall.

That was the point I was trying to make, but I didn't quite get it right. :/

We used to use rust monsters to remove unwanted (read too powerful) magical gear from the game. If the Dm used a RM, we knew SOMEONE's sword was too powerful... Now, we could use them without stopping game to re-armor the fighter.

But it still has no reason for being besides "Take away the party's gear." And really, d20 characters are far too reliant on their gear - I've seen it again and again on various forums, the complaint that "the gear defines the character," not the other way around. This isn't to say that I don't agree with the rust monster needing an overhaul - its rusting ability was far too powerful - but now it's a slightly less powerful creature with no niche beyond DM fiat.

Again I'm compelled to ask if you are serious? Level drain is frigging deadly. Get hit by a Spectre, bam you take 10 hp damage (in addition to whatever damage the attack caused) and a -2 penalty to all important rolls (and incidently the Spectre gains 10 hp) at level 7 (where it is a standard challenge) your dead if it touches you 4 times. There is no save and few ways of getting resistance to level drain.

Death ward, a 4th level cleric spell. Which, incidentally, you get at 7th level.


To the person who told me that if I didn't like the changes to the system, I should go find another game (I can't find the quote - it might have gotten edited):

I've been playing D&D for 17 years, through all three (or four, or whatever) editions. I've been designing new material for almost that long, so if I find something I don't agree with, I change it. I'm not going to turn my back on a game that I've been playing for more than half my life just because I don't agree with a few rules changes. Hell, if I thought that, I wouldn't even be posting here - I would have dumped my books and moved on to something else.

And that, IMO, is a big problem with gamers these days - if they find something they don't like, that they think is "broken" (whether or not it really is), they don't change it - they piss and moan about it on various boards. And the designers give in to them without considering whether or not it really IS broken, simply because they're more interested in the fanbase and the bottom line than good design, and because of the "vocal minority". The rest of us, who think that the rule in question works just fine, aren't going to speak up, because we have no reason to.

90% of the time, the fault lies either with the players, who browbeat their DMs into allowing every book they can lay their hands on into the game, whether or not the material is balanced for that type of campaign, or the DMs, who are either incompetent to start with, or simply inexperienced or ignorant of the rules and allow the players to get away with things that they shouldn't (and then THEY go to the forums and say that their players are taking advantage of them). It goes to the point Henry made - if it's WotC, it's official and it should be allowed in the game, regardless of the DM's say-so. And the DMs apparently feel that they can't say no to their players - I've seen it time and again, especially on the WotC boards. "My player took XXX broken combo - what do I do?" Or "My player wants to make XXX broken spell - should I allow it?" They don't know how to put their foot down and say, "No, you can't do that," or don't want to for fear of offending their players, or simply believe in the philosophy of "If it's WotC, it's official, and it should be allowed in the game."

 

[I'm A Banana]

CAUTION: Unapologetic Snark Below

I would abandon this game in a heartbeat if I had to emulate fantasy literature. What kind of boring old fart wants to do that? No, I want to emulate flashy graphics and stirring quests of videogames, where heroes can be shown and not just described on the page! And since I'm the one with the disposable income, no family, no rent, all my food provided for me....guess who is voting more often with their gaming dollar? Guess who WotC is going to court? Cheap old farts who "know the value of a dollar" so well they refuse to spend it, or punk kids like me who like spikey hair and pierced paladins and pokemon and who spend more to get it? Kids with soccer practice and play practice and part-time jobs and hours of homework who don't have time to sit around alone in a room reading the monster manual like some sort of cloistered nerd-child. The question isn't "which design philosophy should WotC have?" It's "Which design philosophy are they being PAID to MAKE?" You want your precious purple unicorns and mysogynist barbarians to be the wave of the future? The moment some old Conan novel sells more than the latest manga from Shonen Jump, or can bring in more income than a month's subscription to WoW, you'll get it. 'Till then, you're just angry penniless hobos, missing an arm from the War, who refuse to accept that the past is dead and never coming back and the future of gaming belongs to adventure stories, not dungeon crawls, and that doesn't mean it's dumb or juvenile or simplistic.

Now that the snark has passed, I'll merely chip in with my 100% support of FireLance's post:

What I find strange is the assertion that standardizing the rules so that their effects can be better understood and anticipated is seen as removing edge and color from the game. Perhaps it does reduce some types of "fun" - the fun of using the rules to create effects that were unanticipated, for example. However, it doesn't reduce the types of fun I find in the game - the fun of solving problems, the fun of tactical combat, the fun of pretending to be braver, nobler, kinder, more capable and more heroic than I am in real life.

This whole debate reminds me of a passage in Madeline L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time, where life was compared to a sonnet. I haven't got the exact quote, and the best I could find with Google is as follows:

"It is a very strict form of poetry is it not?
There are fourteen lines, I believe, all in iambic pentameter. That's a very strict rhythm or meter, yes?
And each line has to end with a rigid rhyme pattern. And if the poet does not do it exactly this way, it is not a sonnet, is it?"
"You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it?"
"Yes. You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you."

The same goes for games.

The Sonnet Philosophy is a golden one. I'd love to tweak a system that works infinately more than I'd love to force a malfunctioning, random, gimped system into some semblance of coherence. d20, 3.x, and the future of the game, definately should adhere to the idea that focus on what makes D&D fun is good. Breaking my treasure and ignoring half of a monster's write up as nonsensical or too complex is pretty much wasting space without making me have fun.

(it should probably also be said that I'm NOT the kid in the snarky section, just that such a beast might very well be the one telling WotC what to do)

 

[Glyfair]

I would abandon this game in a heartbeat if I had to emulate fantasy literature.

I'll note Gary had a Sorcerer's Scroll column on just this topic, stating that novels and games have different goals and you need to take that into consideration.

 

[Scribble]

I also didn't see the line about "more powerful than their occidental cousins" - could you be looking at the 2e MM by chance?

Definitely not the 2e book. I will look again tonight.

Re-reading your earlier post, I noticed something else:My personal opinion is that many gamers saw the word "ogre" in the name and assumed dumb brute, or perhaps slightly less dumb brute. In fact its intelligence ranges from eight to sixteen (average to exceptional), and as noted its abilities are not geared toward combat but toward infiltration and manipulation

I agree that some ogre magi would definitely use their abilities as you describe, particularly toward the lower end of the intelligence spectrum - on the other hand, I preferred to run the monster toward the higher end of the range, much like a less refined rakshasa. .

They might have? I was never a huge fan of the OM to begin with. Just never fit in with my games I guess.

My point about the lair filled with slaves was that since the MM mentioned you'd find them in remote areas... it makes me think of this OM living in a cave decked out in elegence stolen from humans with drugged up (charmed) slave women around him at his beck and call... (almost like that scene at the begining of The Shadow... But replace Alec Baldwin (what HE done lately???) with an Ogre Mage...)

But that's what *I* saw... which is the thing about flavor text... it can be wildly different from one person to the next, which is why I can't dissagree with a redesign based on my visualization of a monster. (Kind of like when I see a movie based on a book I've read.)

The New (unofficial) OM doesn't really match the flavor I had in my head either but that's the point. That doesn't invalidate the new monster at all. Mr Mearls was showing us what an OM would look like if he designed it today. Maybe HE always envisioned the thing as a leader among Ogres, and therefore that's why intimidation made more sense then Charm...

Which brings me to...

That brings up another point, raised by Hussar and ThirdWizard - other monsters fit the same niche. That's true, but I disagree with Mike Mearls (and by extension Hussar and ThirdWizard) that this is necessarily a bad thing. For me, the ogre mage reflected a oriental sensibility drawn from its oni roots, and so that's how I tended to play the monster, as distinct from more occidental monsters.

I think there is too much focus on the stats, and not enough on how to play the monster so that it is distinctive from the other critters with similar abilities.

I can agree that a discussion of how to play the monster distinctive from other similar monsters is a good idea. To a degree. I'd rather not see people feel as if they're being forced into a particular concept of flavor, but a suggested role would be cool...

As for the stats, I think there definitely SHOULD be a big focus on the stats. The numbers and math problems are the essesnce of the "game" aspect of the game. The flavor is what everyone else adds to it.

I'm not a fan of removing all fluff at all. I love it, and pull ideas from it, but again, since flavor is so wildly different from one person to the next, the thing I need the deigners doing is tinkering with the actual math and rules to make sure things work fairly, and cut down on all the silly "That doesn't make sense!" arguments in the game...

 

[Lanefan]

What I find strange is the assertion that standardizing the rules so that their effects can be better understood and anticipated is seen as removing edge and color from the game. Perhaps it does reduce some types of "fun" - the fun of using the rules to create effects that were unanticipated, for example.

Exactly the problem, and well put.

"It is a very strict form of poetry is it not?
There are fourteen lines, I believe, all in iambic pentameter. That's a very strict rhythm or meter, yes?
And each line has to end with a rigid rhyme pattern. And if the poet does not do it exactly this way, it is not a sonnet, is it?"
"You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it?"
"Yes. You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you."​

The same goes for games.

Disagree. One person's game might write a sonnet, another an epic, a third some free verse. As long as it's poetry, the rules should be flexible enough to allow it to be written.

Lane-"my game writes limericks"-fan