Was AD&D1 designed for game balance?

[Raven Crowking]

Well, how about:
Game balance means that no class or skill is substantially more powerful or useful than another, from creation on through progression to higher level. Challenges (monsters and problems) should be appropriate for the characters facing them.

That's definitely not Gygaxian balance.

Here's my stab at Gygaxian balance defined:

Game balance is the result of player choices and player skill interacting with the milieu.

Game balance means that every class or skill is substantially more powerful or useful than another, within a specific range of situations, so that all players have a role to play. Balance is achieved by the players choosing from among their options to have strong abilities in a variety of situations.

Balance is important as regards at least the following points:

1. Player options are balanced through the course of a campaign. This means that players should have the chance to create multiple characters, and to trade low-survival start-up options for the potential of great reward later.

2. Related to the above, player skill should be rewarded. If a player can opt for a harder starting option, it is desireable to reward that player with greater ability with success. A system that forces all players to play characters with equal abilities is unbalanced, because it seeks to negate player skill.

3. Balance of the campaign milieu (i.e., so-called "Gygaxian naturalism") trumps character balance or encounter balance. This is necessary to allow the players context for game decisions.

4. It is up to the players to determine what encounters they should engage in, and up to the players to determine how they should engage in them. It is not only okay, but appropriate, though, for the DM to use traps or tricks to cause unwary players to face tougher challenges (including challenges that are far beyond thier ability to defeat).

5. Challenges (monsters and problems) should be appropriate for the characters facing them only in the event that the DM imposes the challenges (as in a tournament setting); otherwise the players should have the option of trying harder encounters for greater rewards. It is appropriate for players to be able to face challenges beyond those that the DM feels they can beat, and reap greater rewards if they have managed to devise a plan to do so.

6. The DM must provide opportunities, but not guarantees. Guarantees are unbalanced because they negate player choice and/or player skill.

Failure to achieve the above principles fails to create a balanced playing experience.​

RC

 

[Scribble]

That's definitely not Gygaxian balance.

Here's my stab at Gygaxian balance defined:

This is a breakdown of the methods used to achieve balance. You mention balance being achieved by doing several of these steps, but never actually seem to define what you consider "balance."


I think the primary difference between earlier and later editions is that the later games try to achieve balance by making the game numbers fair and level throughout the entire game, while the former editions attempted to "average them out" in the end. (IE at some points your class might be better suited to the task at hand then another class, but this is made up for by that class being better in areas you aren't.)

I do think the former idea of how to achieve balance still exists in the new games, just to a lesser extent.

 

[Raven Crowking]

This is a breakdown of the methods used to achieve balance. You mention balance being achieved by doing several of these steps, but never actually seem to define what you consider "balance."

Better go back and read again.

"Game balance is the result of player choices and player skill interacting with the milieu."

Also, please be careful here about "what you consider", as my attempt is to parse out Gygaxian balance, not Crowkingian balance.


RC

 

[Bullgrit]

That's definitely not Gygaxian balance.

LOL! Oddly enough, it is game balance as directly defined by Gygax, on this very forum:

[Game balance] covers character creation, means that no class of skill is substantially more powerful or useful that other. This continues on through character progression to higher level or greater degree of skill.

Balance extends to monsters and problems as well. As with characters, the challenge faced should be balanced for the characters facing them.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/31466-game-balance-2.html#post487833

Bullgrit

 

[Scribble]

Better go back and read again.

"Game balance is the result of player choices and player skill interacting with the milieu."

RC

That's not a definition though. That's a statement of methods used tom achieve balance. You still haven't indicated what balance IS. (At most that's a simple definition of game play in general.)

 

[Raven Crowking]

Let's keep the context:

Game balance is really broader than the options allowed for oin the poll.

So, we can hopefully see, this is not Gygax defining game balance, but discussing some points of game balance. Nor should "no class of skill is substantially more powerful or useful that other" be taken to mean "no class of skill is substantially more powerful or useful that other" in all situations. An examination of the 1e PHB and DMG shows, quite clearly, that Gygax felt otherwise.

(You can look at the poll options to see what Gary felt was not sufficient to define "Balance":

Game balance means equal "power" in character creation.
Game balance means "viability" for each character. Combat power does not matter.
Game balance means no death is arbitrary and there's nothing more to it.
Game balance refers to the ratio between the whim of the GM and the freedom of the characters.)

He also says

As long as there are challenges for the party that don't leave them a heart monitor away from death every encounter, each player can contribute, no one player dominates, and the "bad guys" / opposition are not push overs, I think you have what ammounts to as "balanced" a game as possible.​

is "a mighty good summation" in his book.

 

[Raven Crowking]

That's not a definition though. That's a statement of methods used tom achieve balance. You still haven't indicated what balance IS. (At most that's a simple definition of game play in general.)

No, it is a statement of what balance IS.

Gygaxian balance is process-oriented, not end-state oriented. Outside of the process of the game, balance doesn't exist. There is no end-state balance. This is why "Game balance is really broader than the options allowed for on the poll."

Gygaxian balance is based on his wargaming roots:

[In war games, ]Game balance is usually maintained through the principle of strength vs. cost. Individually, units have clearly identifiable advantages or weakness. These in combination determine the unit’s relative strength and thus its cost. In theory, a small number of strong units are balanced with a larger number of weaker units if the cost of the two groups is the same.

In the greater context, a player will have a mix of units at his disposal. Dependent on the tactical situation, the mix of units may have an effective value greater than or less than the sum of its parts.

Game balance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If one reads Gygax's advice to players in the 1e PHB, or in KotB, or the similar advice found in modules like B1, it becomes clear that the players in any given milieu share a large burden in maintaining "game balance" both on the basis of the choices made in play, and in preparing for play (including both character generation/selection and equipment selection). The DM is deliberately presenting an environment that attempts to trick the players into unbalanced play. Superior players will not take the bait, or, better yet, will manage to discover ways to "defeat" the "unbalanced" encounters.

This is, in Gygaxian terms, what "superior play" is.

In Gygaxian terms, balance is what good play falls into....treading the narrow line between "too easy" and "too hard" on the basis not of the DM setting up the world to make this line all there is, but on the basis of the players being skilled and canny enough to recognize the line and walk it with care.


RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Another way to look at it is that WotC balance is an inherent property that, quite often, doesn't survive actual game play, whereas Gygaxian balance is an emergent property that doesn't exist until game play creates it.


RC

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

LOL! Oddly enough, it is game balance as directly defined by Gygax, on this very forum:http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/31466-game-balance-2.html#post487833

Bullgrit

But his game was so very clearly not balanced that way in and of itself. He might have intended for the DM to make that happen, but since a DM was not included in any box set I ever saw, relying on DM adjudication was a fools errand. Incidentally, the vision of some sort of Gygaxian Mini-me packed in each box is making me chortle with glee.

Power and utility of different classes, even by the RAW, is radically different at any given time point, and the aggregate of a typical campaign will vary tremendously with how much time you spend at certain character levels, accidents of loot distribution, or any number of other factors. This is true to some extent with all games, but far, far less so in modern iterations.

And they certainly weren't balanced the way I saw them played, either, which was quite a different thing than RAW. Before 3e, I don't think I ever experienced two games that were played with the same rules, regardless of which books were technically on the table. The DM had a metric ton of adjudicating to do constantly. Personal style of the guy behind the screen had immense effects on even the fiddliest bits of the gameplay experience of everyone involved, far more so than under recent rules.

And that's just staying within the rules. Beyond the burden deliberately placed on them by the rules, there are significant social effects on how the game runs. In my misspent youth, social pressures required young DMs to re-write the rules constantly or risk the proto-nerd-rage of their fellow suburban kids or the full blown drama of hormone-afflicted high school students.

The vast and terrifying variance in table-to-table experience is probably what pushed designers to a more "simulationist" or constrained set of rules when 3e rolled around. Canalizing the experience from table to table creates more shared experiences and controls partially for the vast and yawning gulfs of experience that separate DMs.

This seems like designers responding to an inherent lack of balance in the game as a whole. In video games, that would have happened quickly since the designers have direct, mathematical access to play experience. In a tabletop game, you have generational effects. Each designer probably brought a radically different aggregate experience of "D&D" to the table when it came time to make 3e. It just makes sense to standardize under those conditions, and since the single largest sources of variance were DM skill and fiddly rules, you standardize the fiddly rules and obviate the need for as much DM adjudication.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Another way to look at it is that WotC balance is an inherent property that, quite often, doesn't survive actual game play, whereas Gygaxian balance is an emergent property that doesn't exist until game play creates it.


RC

Ah, but only the right kind of game play creates it. Small deviations create huge balance flubs. A butterfly flaps its wings and an entire campaign goes down the tubes.

I never met a group that managed a balanced 1e/2e game in half a dozen years of trying.