Today, I learned I’m a “Johnny.”We can look at Mark Rosewater's Making Magic
Looks at PC designs of the last 30 years.
Yep, checks out!
Today, I learned I’m a “Johnny.”We can look at Mark Rosewater's Making Magic
The particular irony was Monte Cook describing toughness as a Timmy feat. Toughness looks like an "eat your greens" feat; it's never flashy but if it worked it would be decently powerful (which 3hp wasn't). This doesn't mean there are no Timmy feats or even weaker Timmy feats in 3.0; Great Cleave will lead to absolutely awesome results once in a blue moon but most of the time just doesn't trigger. But Toughness is almost as far from a Timmy feat as I can picture.It is true that Timmy cards are not that good. That is what Monte seemed to describe.
But the key part was that they where flashy and non-linear.
I'd entirely agree with this. There is just so much in 3.0 that looks "good enough and moving on".And I honestly don't trust Monte's after the fact justification.
I suspect it was more of a sliding scale of (a) they didn't know which options where good and bad, and (b) they decided not to care, so they didn't try to know.
This resulted in less work for designers. Someone points out a problem in your feat design? You can blow them off, because you state that the feat being a bad feat isn't your problem any more.
Something being less work for designers makes me suspect they are an excuse to do worse work.
In comparison, MtG's personas where more work for designers. And as a CCG, they have some pay-to-win in its blood (but not too much), and constrained choice (for more casual players).
Today, I learned I’m a “Johnny.”
Looks at PC designs of the last 30 years.
Yep, checks out!
Today, I learned I’m a “Johnny.”
Looks at PC designs of the last 30 years.
Yep, checks out!
There's other types that the Magic devs talk about, notably Vorthos and Melvin.
It's important to know that the "types" are not hard categories. Basically nobody is just one of them. They're just shorthands for the variety of ways players play or enjoy the game.
One of my long time friends has essentially played the same Wizard PC- down to the spell list- across every campaign we’ve played in together, except for a 4Ed game and a supers game in which that was not an option.The closest RPGs get to a Spike would be the min-maxer who blindly follows character builds, with a small number of skilled players being the ones who come up with the builds, but even then it's not exactly the same thing.
The original intent iirc was options and removing restrictions.
From what I heard they didn't playtest past lvl 10 and they playtested like they were playing advanced 2E.
Some of those restrictions existed for a reason.
My friend was not really a rules lawyer, but his spell list was damned close to the optimized lists you’d see online. And Fireball was a favorite.Let me guess -- he's a rules lawyer who likes to cast fireball?
I disagree entirely.The Problem was (IMNSHO) was bad game design and testing.
The Problem was (IMNSHO) was bad game design and testing.
I disagree entirely.
The alleged "problem" with 3e was all the "forum meta" and online culture that had people using 3e in ways it absolutely, positively was not designed for.
All this "CodZilla" nonsense, and tiers, and other forum jargon. . .that cleanly divided 3e players into two camps:
1. People who used online message boards and whose play style changed to incorporate powergame strategies from online.
2. People whose gaming styles didn't change due to online powergame tricks, either because they didn't care, or weren't online.
I knew a few people who tried to use all this forum talk stuff in actual games, they were insufferable and nobody wanted to game with them, because they were so upset that everyone else was playing to have fun. . .and not using optimal "builds" and other cheesy strategies. People who had played 1e and 2e and now were playing 3e the same way found 3e to work many times better, faster, and cleaner than AD&D ever was.
3e had only a closed playtest at WotC, among players who had been playing AD&D 1e and 2e for years. It was pretty clearly designed and tested with that play style in mind.
The vast majority of the people I played 3e with, especially in the early years of the 2000's, loved it as a clean, straightforward, intuitive improvement over AD&D.
So many of the 3.5e changes seemed completely superfluous, and only to further complicate the game, and I'd only learn later they were carefully worded rule patches for something someone had done at some point to break something by intentionally misreading the rules.
It was a wonderfully written and well tested game. . .that after its release was met with a completely different and very hostile player culture than the one it was tested with.