Was 3rd edition fundamentaly flawed?

[howandwhy99]

Are you really saying that you don't understand how (a) playing on the basis of what your character would do and (b) playing on the basis of guessing what the DM wants you to do or will respond positively to, differ?

Not at all. I do not play "plot" games where we need to guess what the DM wants us to do. I prefer games where we as players choose what to do. But I do not presume to tell the DM how the world operates.

These are totally different concepts and the common assumption that the latter somehow facilitates the former - much less your apparent view that they're the same thing - has always seemed bizarre to me. It is people who make that assumption that owe everyone else an explanation, not the other way around, because on the face of it it's a non sequitur.

From puzzling this out, I don't think we're understanding each other. I expect the players to learn how the world works from being in that world. As a player I expect the same. How is this guessing what the DM wants us to do? We do as we please. The world, like our world, operates according to its own rules as consequence.

To explain further, I consider gaming the rules to be thinking OOC. Instead of thinking about the world to beat a foe or conquer a land or whatever, I think about the rules. Moreover, I tend to speak using the rules instead of just saying what I'm going to do. Rulespeak and rulethink. Rather than having the game opaque so I can think like the character and speak like the character. Not that it's required, but the play encourages it rather than encouraging thinking about the rules.

 

[howandwhy99]

'Gaming the DM' is also called metagaming; ie, using personal real-world knowledge that your character could not possibly possess to weigh things to your advantage.

Would this be like making dynamite or guns, etc.? I can see that, but most GMs will simply have those elements operate differently than in this world. However, keeping enough of the game world like our own enables players to use their real world knowledge to overcome the challenges of the game and win. Win just like we win or lose in the real world.

Examples: I know that my DM Bob loves elves. He reveres them and thinks that they are the greatest thing since sliced bread. He never says anything bad about elves and defends the race against anyone who does say something bad about elves. In having gamed with Bob for a number of years, I have noticed that elves are never the bad guys.

Now, we go to the current game that night. Bob has an adventure in which we find ourselves having to choose between two apparently equal bad guys: Greenleaf the Elf and Cooksgrits the Halfling, in fight. We can bring down ONE of them, but that will ensure the other one will get away. If we choose wrong, we lose the Foozle or whatever we're after and have to go through all sorts of trouble to get it back.

my character, Conray the rogue, has no reason on God's green earth to choose one over the other based on the information that has been presented to us. Bob has been a crafty DM and we have no clues as to which of these people is the real bad guy. It's a pure crapshoot as to which one to go after.

Or is it?

Since I-the-player know there is no way in Hell that Bob will let Greenleaf be a bad guy, I seemingly casually choose Cooksgrits to shoot at in the fight, finally killing him. I check Cooksgrit's body and Gasp! There is the Foozle we need! I chose correctly. People at the table congratulate me on my luck. I-the-player know there was no luck involved at all: I have successfully 'gamed the DM'.

This is a good example, but I'm not sure how it would play out differently in any game system. In 3e would you roll a Sense Motive check? Or what? I prefer figuring out who the enemy is through roleplay vs. rolling numbers, but I can certainly see how the DM is making an error here.

Maybe I'm not clear enough on what I mean, but it is a gestalt shift after playing games where only rules are required to be referenced by the players as well as the DM. Thanks for giving an example of play, but I don't see how knowing or not knowing the rules as a player would alter this.

 

[Samnell]

You're confusing complexity and difficulty of use. You can make a very complex game that's easy to use, and part of that comes from focusing on the metadesign issue of "how to get results into the user's hands with minimum user interaction with the rules". This is important to computer software, and it's important to game design.

Yes, and 3e is a stunning success at this. It could use a few nips and tucks, but that's quite obviously at least not what WotC wants us to think they're doing and probably isn't what they're actually doing either. Considering they're bragging about ripping out entire sections of fairly good 3e rules and replacing them with nothing, WotC is clearly not aiming for ease of use. They're not giving us magic item creation rules, for example. The system we have been promised there is "make it up".

You've tried to claim that there's nothing wrong with the rules if some of us find them to be too much time and effort to use, and implied that there's something wrong with those using the rules instead. You can't hide behind "oh, it's just a matter of taste" at this point.

There will always be people who do not have the time to use the rules, no matter how simple they are. I'm not one of them, so to be honest I care not one bit. The only question at all here is where the line of time commitment should be drawn, which is an issue of personal preference.

Which would mean something if I made the same characters all the time using the same races, classes and templates. But I like to keep things fresh.

So you go out of your way to make things harder on yourself.

Also, what Hong said about system mastery is bang on. I don't want to have to master a system in order to use it.

Really? You don't want to know how a system works? Learning that a high roll is always good is at least rudimentary rules mastery. Why don't you just play freeform and diceless? You don't need a system if you don't want a system. Every system will invariably include rules mastery. Then going out of one's way with design choices to punish it is perverse.

A good game should come to me with my desired results on a silver platter alongside a couple ounces of scotch and some dark chocolate. I shouldn't have to wrestle a system to the ground to get it to function.

Do you want someone from WotC to come to your home every week and dandle you on their knee while they run the game for you too?

Constructing mid- to high-level NPCs from races, classes, and templates. Ad-hoc encounter balance. Anything that forces me to do research in order to implement it.

With your demands, the only system that can possibly satisfy you is no system at all. I don't have to go back under the hood again and again to design high-level NPCs from any number of races, classes, or templates. I do it once and it's done. It's all basic math. When you're doing something ad hoc you must accept that you're winging it and the consequences thereof.

But your objection seems to be that you have to crack a book to do something. This is unavoidable for a system of the complexity you have said you want. You will never be able to memorize all the rules.

Whatever. I give up. You've told me at least three mutually-inconsistent sets of expectations. 4e is being designed with some of them in mind, and good for you. Have fun with it. It's being designed with almost none of my gaming needs in mind, and in fact repudiates several. Or as Monte put it: "the designers currently working on the game have very different opinions than I do regarding game play."

 

[Nifft]

IMHO 3e doesn't just reward system mastery: it severely penalizes lack of it. This is not an inherently good or bad thing in itself, but rewarding system mastery leads to a certain kind of culture around a game, and I don't think that is the culture we need to grow the hobby.

IMHO it's a bit early to be complaining about what WotC has or hasn't done in 4e.

Finally, IMHO 3e has several areas of tight coupling which need to be undone. Wealth is a big one in general, but the particulars of what magic items you need to have to even be in the game are more of a problem. The assumption of easy access to every spell in the book -- and thus the use of insta-kill effects as "conditions" above a certain level -- is another pair of assumptions that are hard to extricate.

So yeah. There are fundamental flaws which should be fixed. I'm sure there are other flaws, but I can't see them clearly thanks to these big ones dangling in front of me. Hopefully 4e will get these out of my way so I can focus on the next set of problems.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Anthtriel]

Yes, and 3e is a stunning success at this. It could use a few nips and tucks, but that's quite obviously at least not what WotC wants us to think they're doing and probably isn't what they're actually doing either. Considering they're bragging about ripping out entire sections of fairly good 3e rules and replacing them with nothing, WotC is clearly not aiming for ease of use. They're not giving us magic item creation rules, for example. The system we have been promised there is "make it up".

"Make it up" is a pretty good rule system actually. You should try it sometime.
It only requires a good DM, who has a fundamental understanding of the rules system (you know, rules mastery) and maybe good players, who don't freak out when something goes wrong and you retroactively need to change it (It's a good feeling when a player tells you after the session that his character's ability xy is broken and should be nerfed. Sadly that often happenend with offical supplements).

If nothing else, "Make it up" has one advantage: It doesn't pretend to be an idiot-proof system that actually doesn't work half of the time. Like level-adjustment. Or templates. Or multiclassing. Or CR. Or all the other flaws that hopefully will be corrected in 4E.

(You might get the impression that I have no respect for 3E and it's designers. That's untrue. 3E improved upon 2E in many, many ways, it's only natural that new mistakes would be made.)

There will always be people who do not have the time to use the rules, no matter how simple they are. I'm not one of them, so to be honest I care not one bit. The only question at all here is where the line of time commitment should be drawn, which is an issue of personal preference.

Given that I would be hard pressed to come up with a system that requires more time than 3E, I'm pretty sure where that line will be drawn.

Really? You don't want to know how a system works? Learning that a high roll is always good is at least rudimentary rules mastery. Why don't you just play freeform and diceless? You don't need a system if you don't want a system. Every system will invariably include rules mastery. Then going out of one's way with design choices to punish it is perverse.

How is applying a template and advancing a monster, an almost purely mechanical process, rules mastery? Knowing how a system works means knowing how monsters, abilities, etc are designed, which means that you have less need for applying templates and the like.
When Mike Mearls needs a monster, he doesn't search for a template, he just makes it up on the spot. And comes up with a good result. That's what understanding a system means.

 

[BryonD]

Finally, IMHO 3e has several areas of tight coupling which need to be undone. Wealth is a big one in general, but the particulars of what magic items you need to have to even be in the game are more of a problem. The assumption of easy access to every spell in the book -- and thus the use of insta-kill effects as "conditions" above a certain level -- is another pair of assumptions that are hard to extricate.

I agree with this.

However, what I've read so far makes me think that 4E will be more linked.
I will readily admit that this information isn't enough to really make the call. But simplification seems to be bringing with it fewer moving parts and more stuff "linked".

As another example, I'd like to see HD control fewer aspects of monsters. But it sounds like monster level will control monsters more tightly than HD does now.

 

[BryonD]

Except that characters (especially in 4E) are not just doing it for the first day, but for years.

Um, you are the one that said the difference at higher levels should be the same as at first level. First level is day 1. Higher levels is the years part. At day 1 they are the same, after years the basketball player gets much better than the non-player.

In your example, that would mean you have one guy who spent all his life playing basketball, and one guy who spent all his life playing soccer, with both playing each other's sport from time to time. The soccer player would lose most of the time in basketball against the other guy and vice versa.
When they turn 17, both are considered level 1, and are already quite proficient in their speciality. As both become more athethlic, they become better in both areas. And though they spend more time with their speciality, they are already quite good in their speciality, so progress takes longer than in the area they are relatively weak at.
So during all their life, the effective distance between them at both sports probably stays about the same.

Again: HUH???

I assure you that a professional basketball player will school a professional soccer player at basketball much more than a high school basketball player will school a high school soccer player. By a great amount.

The diminishing returns is only going to limit how much better he gets in year 5 compared to year 4. The total difference will continue to grow.

And that is a strictly simulationist argument. The whole "leveling up" thing doesn't make much sense to begin with, so even if there were a minor conflict, it wouldn't matter much to me.

Leveling is a fundamental part of the issue. If it doesn't make sense to you then you are going to have a hard time in a discussion based fully on the idea.

 

[Anthtriel]

Um, you are the one that said the difference at higher levels should be the same as at first level. First level is day 1. Higher levels is the years part. At day 1 they are the same, after years the basketball player gets much better than the non-player.

No, level 1 is year 18. A level 1 fighter and a level 1 wizard start at completely different points. In your example they start at the exact same point.

I assure you that a professional basketball player will school a professional soccer player at basketball much more than a high school basketball player will school a high school soccer player. By a great amount.

Fine then, take the high school basketball player compared to the high school soccer player who never played basketball before. It's just a matter of setting the starting point.

The diminishing returns is only going to limit how much better he gets in year 5 compared to year 4. The total difference will continue to grow.

The total difference in time spent will be less and less important because of diminishing returns. If t is time, then skill earned over time would be a function similar to root(t).

Leveling is a fundamental part of the issue. If it doesn't make sense to you then you are going to have a hard time in a discussion based fully on the idea.

There is no one clear cut definition of what leveling actually means, everyone seems to have a different opinion on it. That makes arguing about it somewhat difficult. We don't really know how adventurers would progress by fighting monsters, because no such thing exists.
Thus as long as it doesn't require too much suspension of disbelief it should be fine. That's all I'm saying.

 

[Nifft]

However, what I've read so far makes me think that 4E will be more linked.
I will readily admit that this information isn't enough to really make the call. But simplification seems to be bringing with it fewer moving parts and more stuff "linked".

Huh, I thought they said they were reducing the number of magic items, and targeting the "big six" in particular. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

As another example, I'd like to see HD control fewer aspects of monsters. But it sounds like monster level will control monsters more tightly than HD does now.

Aren't they fungible, though? Can't you replace them with different levels? (Maybe not, I may have the most up-to-date information...)

Cheers, -- N

 

[Plane Sailing]

Do you want someone from WotC to come to your home every week and dandle you on their knee while they run the game for you too?

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