When did We Stop Trusting Game Designers?

[Fifth Element]

Seems to work for OSRIC....

Does anyone make a living off of OSRIC? I honestly don't know, but I rather doubt it.

 

[WizarDru]

^_^ The key word, of course, is “decent”. Meaning simply much better than I ever expected, even if they largely blindly ape commercial systems rather than truly aiming for best-of-breed. I was thinking of Gnome and KDE specifically. Which last I looked had reached that “decent” mark.

I was mostly just curious, since for now my familiarity is limited to the current version of Ubuntu Linux (which is what my Dell Mini9 shipped with) and I was curious what are considered the 'best in breed' these days. I haven't played with generic Gnome or KDE in a couple of years.

 

[Lost Soul]

To be honest. I think my negative view of game designers started back in 2E. I was much younger back then and my favorite world then and still is Dragon Lance. I saw support for it completely shrivel up and die out and the reason for it from the talking heads was always the same. "DL does not sell as a D&D world." I really felt that some people in the office had an agenda and they were trying to stamp out my game. By the end of TSR i was pretty much ambivilant about TSR's demise. I still read Dragon and such but by that time I had moved onto other games. I was very glad that WOTC bought TSR and resurrected D&D. The owner of WOTC (the guy who created Magic: The Gathering. That little card game that TSR believed would never work.) was a fan of DL and worked hard at bringing it back. Suffice it to say that DL did arrive at 3E and every one in my gaming group rejoiced. It really seemed like WOTC was on the right track.

Now I am just not sure. There are Major Changes with the new 4E. These are just not different from 3E but they are SIGNIFICANTLY different from any previous edition. It's alot like seeing a Ferrari being made into a family sedan and still being marketing as a sports car. Something just dosen't jive. For this I do blame game designers because they designed the game. I just don't trust the quality of the work as much as I used to. When they provide a high quality product that stands up over time I'll gladly back them. All of my fondest memories of modules are all either basic or 1E such as Ravenloft, Keep on the Borderlands. The Isle of Dread, Palace of the Silver Princess, original DL series of mods, Against the Giants series and a few others. I cannot say that there are and 2E or 4E modules that inspire fond memoires. The 4E modules have been very uninspiring so far to say the least.

 

[LostSoul]

I like 4e.

I also trust the designers. Not to say I won't make changes for my own game, but I think what they've done works well.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Seth Godin has some interesting thoughts on that. Essentially, he believes people should post with their real names and stand by their words for just the kind of reasons described above.

I know some people on Yoggie have requested their username changed to their real names. It can be easy to see that people would attach more weight to posts attributed to real names than pseudonyms.

That's an interesting concept.

But to keept it on topic.

I've never "trusted" game designers to know what's fun for my group.

Back in the day I had a campaign in a city state called (oh so cleverly by my younger self) the City Scape and it was simply, The Dungeon. A Fallen demi-god used it to test heroes to pass them on to further trials by the name of Smitty, an old bald wrinkling man who was always able to use those resevers of primal energy to take care of any would be thieves. Go into the dungeon or go home.

For those times when playing D&D, gold pieces were of astonishing levels. I had Moot Fruble, an alchemists (From one of the old Bard Games expansions) that could pretty much make any magic item, but didn't want his time wasted. It was 50K in gold just to get his attention.

I've often used a mix of rules, official, house, and unofficial, to make the game as close to mine as I could.

 

[Darrell]

The rest of your post such as "typesetting", a term that should be deprecated in this day and age of printing processes, has little to do with designers and the ability to support older editions.

Dude, call it 'typesetting,' 'formatting,' or whatever you want (in the publishing business, from what I can tell from my friends who are in said business, 'typesetting' is still proper terminology), people still have to be paid to do it. This has everything to do with the ability to support older editions, since a company (any company, not just WotC) has to decide if supporting said editions will be financially worth the while.

Freelancers are the current model WotC set up and mentioned with the latest round of layoff in that they plan to outsource "things". Who says design or writing cannot be outsourced to freelancers just as could things like editing, etc?

Again, outsourced or not, it still has to be paid for. Personally, I'd rather see a lot of support for B/X D&D, but WotC isn't going to pay money out of their yearly budget for a freelancer to write a B/X module jst to suit me when they could pay that same money to that same freelancer to do the next 4e splatbook. It just isn't going to happen.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

To be honest. I think my negative view of game designers started back in 2E. I was much younger back then and my favorite world then and still is Dragon Lance. I saw support for it completely shrivel up and die out and the reason for it from the talking heads was always the same. "DL does not sell as a D&D world." I really felt that some people in the office had an agenda and they were trying to stamp out my game. By the end of TSR i was pretty much ambivilant about TSR's demise. I still read Dragon and such but by that time I had moved onto other games. I was very glad that WOTC bought TSR and resurrected D&D. The owner of WOTC (the guy who created Magic: The Gathering. That little card game that TSR believed would never work.) was a fan of DL and worked hard at bringing it back. Suffice it to say that DL did arrive at 3E and every one in my gaming group rejoiced. It really seemed like WOTC was on the right track.

Now I am just not sure. There are Major Changes with the new 4E. These are just not different from 3E but they are SIGNIFICANTLY different from any previous edition. It's alot like seeing a Ferrari being made into a family sedan and still being marketing as a sports car. Something just dosen't jive. For this I do blame game designers because they designed the game. I just don't trust the quality of the work as much as I used to. When they provide a high quality product that stands up over time I'll gladly back them. All of my fondest memories of modules are all either basic or 1E such as Ravenloft, Keep on the Borderlands. The Isle of Dread, Palace of the Silver Princess, original DL series of mods, Against the Giants series and a few others. I cannot say that there are and 2E or 4E modules that inspire fond memoires. The 4E modules have been very uninspiring so far to say the least.

I like 4e.

I also trust the designers. Not to say I won't make changes for my own game, but I think what they've done works well.

You guys confuse me. Maybe you two could make an "Edition Duel" - the survivor gets to keep his user name?

 

[Carnivorous_Bean]

If, as was suggested earlier in the thread, trusting game designers means that you'll buy a book by them sight unseen, just because it has their name on it, then I'm afraid I've never trusted any of them, and probably never will.

There have been maybe 2 occasions when I've bought a game book sight unseen. Otherwise, I've got to thumb through it, or at least read about 5 or 6 independent reviews of it that suggest it's what I'm looking for, before I'll shell out any cash for it.

 

[Lost Soul]

You guys confuse me. Maybe you two could make an "Edition Duel" - the survivor gets to keep his user name?

That's funny. I wrote what I did not to start an edition duel because I think 4E is a radical departure from the D&D concept as a whole. Every class having a total of 12 powers. Magic items with a "daily" use. All monsters being on a similar footing in terms of powers and abilities. Hit Points of party members being very close to each other due to fixed numbers. A wizard being just as skilled as a fighter in weapons with the only difference being physical strength. Saving throws being completely different, etc.
I just don't see how you can honestly compare 4E to any previous edition and decide that one or the other is "better" because it seems to me to be a whole different animal. It would kind of like comparing dogs and cats. Some owners will prefer one pet to another but comparisons really aren't fair becuase the animals are so different from one another. I liken this comparison to 4E and all previous editions. 4E dosen't seem to me to be an attempt to clear up or expand upon previous rules. It seems to be a very different game that happens to have the Dungeons & Dragons logo slapped on it.

 

[Mkhaiwati]

At what point did game designers go from "Guys who want to make my game better" to "Those bastards who are trying to ruin MY game!"?

It happened when Santa became a stalker.

He knows when you are sleeping, or awake. He knows if you have been bad or good.

That is just creepy.