Was AD&D1 designed for game balance?

[ExploderWizard]

Also realize that 4e has orders of magnitude more playtesting behind it than 1e.

I don't think so. The number of post release adjustments suggests otherwise. 4E took the route of a lot of software companies with thier product, meaning that release =open beta.

The skill challenge mess, revised stealth rules, etc., paint quite a different picture.

 

[bardolph]

I don't think so. The number of post release adjustments suggests otherwise. 4E took the route of a lot of software companies with thier product, meaning that release =open beta.

The skill challenge mess, revised stealth rules, etc., paint quite a different picture.

Just open your 4e Player's Handbook and turn to the page "Playtester Credits."

Then do the same for your 1e books.

 

[The Shaman]

After all, it doesn't really matter what we're doing -- so why should we even know?

"Mischief moves somewhere near and I must blast it with my magic!"
"First you are swathed head to foot in the intestines of fresh killed owls."
"We go to the image expander; there we will explode the ghost to the macroid dimension."
"Until work has reached its previous stage nympharium privileges are denied to all."
"I become drunk as circumstances dictate."

"I rolled an 18!"
"For what?"
"How should I know?"

Could someone please drop some XP on Ariosto for me, and I'll return the favor another time?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Right, and wrong.

The game balance that happens at the table is an emergent property.

The game balance that is designed into the rules is not an emergent property.

Also realize that 4e has orders of magnitude more playtesting behind it than 1e.

Right, and wrong.

The game balance that happens at the table is an emergent property.

What is designed into the rules of an RPG is not game balance, but tools intended to make it easier to achieve balance at the table. It is an error to imagine that both (1) you cannot plan for an emergent property (i.e., the balance that occurs at the table, and (2) you can engineer that emergent property into the game.

Clearly, as has been demonstrated in many fields, one can plan for emergent properties, and one can safeguard against other emergent properties. The "balance" that 4e largely has, that 1e certainly has far less of, is safeguards against certain types of "balance" that the designers viewed as undesireable. For example, the balance that was promoted in the earliest versions of the game.

Both 4e and 1e attempt to restrict the emergent balance into channels that the authors/designers thought "fun". 4e's definition of "fun" is just far narrower than that of 1e.

Just open your 4e Player's Handbook and turn to the page "Playtester Credits."

Then do the same for your 1e books.

This isn't necessarily relevant.

X playtesters over Y time, playing Z hours per day can provide far better playtesting than X+A playtesters over Y-B time, playing Z-C hours per day. Moreover, the way that the feedback is utilized, and the agenda of the designer(s) are at least as important.

I bet I could list more playtesters for RCFG than for 4e if I liked. What do you think that would prove? The answer is simple: The number of listed playtesters simply isn't relevant without other data.



RC

RC

 

[Hussar]

Clearly, as has been demonstrated in many fields, one can plan for emergent properties,

What has been demonstrated in many fields is that one can plan for emergent properties AFTER those properties have been identified. You've got the cart before the horse. If game balance is an emergent property, then you would have to play and play until you reached that balance and then reverse engineer backwards to create a game which would result in that property.

In other words, you couldn't actually design for balance in the first place. I suppose this does fit rather well with the evolution of 1e - a rough collection of rules put together and then massaged until something like balance was achieved at one table.

The problem is, as soon as you deviated in any way from how the game was played at Gygax's table (or a rather small number of tables mostly played by the same people), balance fell apart because it was designed in reverse. You can achieve balanced play in 1e, but only by playing in a fairly narrow, restricted way.

3e, OTOH, was very rigorously playtested. Balance wasn't based on the end result. They looked at numerous tables and designed to how people were actually playing, rather than trying to dictate to the players how the game should be played. IMO, 4e took a similar approach but mostly seemed to focus on the RPGA play.

A mistake IMO that has caused much of the backlash against 4e.

In case you think I'm being unduly harsh on 1e, remember the vast numbers of claims from 1e adherents who tell all and sundry, whenever this sort of thing comes up, that we were playing the game wrong. Ariosto claims strongly that the mega-dungeon was the presumed style of play. RC and the Shaman have also both claimed numerous times that certain playstyles are not the intent of 1e. RC has claimed that no one will ever clean out dungeons for example. That no one will ever discover everything in a dungeon, thus keeping leveling slower.

I've seen claims that the DMG is absolutely verbotten to the players and anyone allowing players to see the DMG is playing wrong. That the game was meant to be low magic with magic items being about as common as hen's teeth. On and on.

Heck, now we're being told that 1e was as rigourously playtested as 4e. Come on. Do you honestly believe that? If it was, why was the final edit of the rulebooks so bad, with rules scattered throughout several books and sometimes written in language that continues to baffle to this day? I know there is a strong bent here to proclaim all things 1e superior to everything that came later, but, really?

 

[Ariosto]

The core material in AD&D1 was from D&D. That was a lot less radical than designing whole new games for 3e and 4e!

Play of D&D thus informed the revision that was AD&D. I don't know to what extent PHB and DMG material got tested in tournaments (or elsewhere) prior to publication, or what (if anything) player feedback on the preview combat tables published in magazines had to do with final developments.

I am sure that too few fresh eyes examined the typeset books before full production, though. The organization (or lack thereof) of the DMG, combined with its sheer volume, made it difficult to digest enough quickly to catch errors and inconsistencies. As well, the amount of clarification and elaboration -- by comparison with which, the old game seemed unfinished -- made such a profound immediate impression that it was hard to find fault.

There's a telling difference between game cultures in the responses, I think. D&Ders in 1979 were well accustomed to filling in gaps on their own, and to changing or ignoring whatever baffled, or otherwise did not suit, them. They were already playing the D&D game -- so the AD&D manuals were less Canon than Commentary. Where AD&D presented problems was chiefly in new material; one could (and might be predisposed to) plug in old material, or ignore what had not even been there to ignore before.

I wonder about the subsequent influence of developments in computers, at least on different generations of gamers. From Nintendo's rejuvenation of the console video game field to the present, both that and the more general personal computer field have clearly had had direct influence -- in many ways -- far wider than that of D&D (or perhaps any non-digital game, for that matter).

The relationships are a bit different even in that field than in the heyday of the Atari 5200 and Commodore 64. Meanwhile, the tabletop historical wargames that informed so many D&D players in the 1970s (especially the hex-and-counter variety) have become largely obscure.

 

[Garmorn]

Sniped before and after

There's a telling difference between game cultures in the responses, I think. D&Ders in 1979 were well accustomed to filling in gaps on their own, and to changing or ignoring whatever baffled, or otherwise did not suit, them. They were already playing the D&D game -- so the AD&D manuals were less Canon than Commentary. Where AD&D presented problems was chiefly in new material; one could (and might be predisposed to) plug in old material, or ignore what had not even been there to ignore before.

Yes but lot of players by 82 started in after 80. This trend increased. Also the starting age seems to have increased. How many old times started in Junior or Senior High School? Most of the people I gamed with in the 80's started with AD&D and where over 20 at the time they started. We wanted a finished product not the incomplete one that TSR put out. House rule became common in those groups because of the poorly designed or written rules in the original core books. We ignored level limits, dual classing, race/class limits because they made no since. We did not have the Dragon Magazine very often just the books. The one time we got it there was a big Rant from GG about if you don't do it my way then you are not playing D&D.
We just ignored the arragants of such a stuip statement.

 

[Ariosto]

Yes but lot of players by 82 started in after 80.

That seems likely, both because of the more widely distributed (than OD&D and Holmes) Basic/Expert sets and because of AD&D itself being more attractive as a complete game (versus one book per year, 1977-79).

Also the starting age seems to have increased.

I see the opposite. Although Gygax played with his children (and someone else introduced me), the D&D scene seems to me mainly to have filtered down from the 30-something wargamers to the college clubs, then to high-schoolers. At last, Moldvay Basic explicitly targeted the younger generation ("Adults, Ages 10 and Up"). Mentzer was more mindful generally of the needs of people teaching themselves from the book, and especially of those with a lower level of reading proficiency -- and also brought in the art of Elmore (following Otus and Sutherland).

We wanted a finished product not the incomplete one that TSR put out.

Yes, I think that was increasingly common. Old hands more commonly saw AD&D as not just complete but comprehensive!

 

[MerricB]

I'm pretty sure that the basic system of AD&D had received more playtesting (not more varied playtesting) than did the basic system of 4e.

However, the entire AD&D package I'm pretty sure was never playtested. There are too many elements that smack of "a good idea at the time" and weren't ever used in play - and certainly not all at the same time.

Cheers!

 

[ExploderWizard]

Just open your 4e Player's Handbook and turn to the page "Playtester Credits."

Then do the same for your 1e books.

I will clarify. Quantity does not always equal quality. It really doesn't matter if a system has thousands of playtesters or not. What is important is the results of the overall playtesting effort. A system requiring major overhauls and patches post release has experienced playtest fail. A larger credits section just means there are even more people who either were not listened to, or should be ashamed of themselves.