D&D 5E Why the claim of combat and class balance between the classes is mainly a forum issue. (In my opinion)

[Ahnehnois]

That's perfectly fine. That's a particular playstyle/agenda. (I'll make no claims on its popularity vs. other ones.) However, in the line of your "balance should be a DM thing" I would still think it would be better to have classes be balanced and then let the individual DM "unbalance" them according to his fancy.

I think it would be better to create the classes without thinking about the issue one way or another, and let the DM decide what his goals are and what kind of balance if any he wants. My contention is that absent a strong (and fairly unusual) imperative driven by a competitive playstyle, it's irrelevant. I've yet to see a campaign be derailed by not having enough of it, but I've certainly seen the negative consequences of homogeneity and inappropriate metagame mechanics.

And, as many have noted over the years, what's balanced in my game almost assuredly won't be balanced in yours, so trying to write something that's balanced for both of us is something of a fool's errand.

 

[Ratskinner]

Ron Edwards had certain views and wrote most of the columns for the Forge. The Forge itself was about encouraging people to publish RPGs. Burning Wheel (which I believe to be the third most successful company that emerged via the Forge after only Evil Hat (Fate) and Bully Pulpit (Fiasco)) in no way appears to be in line with GNS theory or look like a stereotypical Forge Game.

erm?....hang on a minute there. Burning Wheel is a darling of folks looking for a "Narrativism" example. (I can't say I fully agree with them, but still.) [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has cited it to me several times.

 

[Imaro]

Also to touch on what [MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION] posted earlier in the thread, here is the introduction on the Forge boards for Evil Hat when the board was first created... It appears the board was, for the most part created to promote Evil Hat's non-FATE games and that FATE in fact already had a Yahoo group dedicated to it for discussion, and while Evil Hat doesn't seem to object to discussion of FATE on the boards they again clearly make a call out that looking at FATE with "a special Forge eye applied to it" is an, if not special, not necessarily ordinary (compared to their yahoo group) case. It doesn't seem that FATE was actually created on the Forge boards either... since this board opened in 2004 and the first edition of FATE was published in 2003.

A quick hello and thank-you to the Forge for its continued support of Evilhat Production games -- in particular Fate and Pace (but I'll tip my hat to Texorami as well). If you're looking for our games, you can find them on http://www.evilhat.com/

While Fate has its own discussion group on Yahoo, our smaller games do not, and it's my hope that this forum will provide a context for those discussions. I expect Fate, with a special Forge eye applied to it, to be discussed here as well.

I'm still pretty young to my intentions regarding this forum. Stay tuned to see future posts about our more specific goals for bringing the Evil Hat to the Forge! (Suggestions, of course, welcome.)

 

[Neonchameleon]

Ron Edwards was the face, of the Forge... plain and simple.

OAN... Evil Hat retired their presence at the Forge in 2008... the latest edition of Fate (FATE core which is the one I believe you are erroneously, or not, citing as 2nd in popularity to D&D) was published in 2013... that means it hasn't been a "Forge game" by your definition for over five years... Unless you are now arguing that any publisher who has ever set up a message board on the Forge site has his games forever labeled as "Forge games".

I'm citing Fate as a system. Dresden Files has outsold Fate Core 2:1 so far.

And yes, every publisher that used the forge resources came out of the Forge. Spirit of the Century, the prior version of Fate, was produced in 2006 - so it's definitely Forge by your definition. And Fate Core is the next version of the same system.

Of course The Forge has been closed for over a year and a half now (Ron Edwards made the final post in June 2012) so by your definition there are no forge games. So why are you worried about a closed down historical footnote and a message board no one can post on?

 

[Ratskinner]

I've yet to see a campaign be derailed by not having enough of it, but I've certainly seen the negative consequences of homogeneity and inappropriate metagame mechanics.

I will say that I have on several occasions. I was running a 2e campaign that just about imploded because of a Bladesinger, and more recently I saw a homebrew OSR game collapse because of a horribly broken Dwarf class. There have been others.

And, as many have noted over the years, what's balanced in my game almost assuredly won't be balanced in yours, so trying to write something that's balanced for both of us is something of a fool's errand.

I certainly agree that attempting to create some sort of "perfect" balance would be impossible to do with a game like D&D which is serving so many different playstyles and game types.* However, I don't think much is actually gained by abandoning the idea of balance entirely. Certainly a sort of general balance amongst the (at least core 4) classes is possible, IMO.


*If we knew that all D&D was being played as "dungeon porn" with very little plot and activity outside of highly gamist dungeoncrawling, that would be different.

 

[Neonchameleon]

erm?....hang on a minute there. Burning Wheel is a darling of folks looking for a "Narrativism" example. (I can't say I fully agree with them, but still.) @pemerton has cited it to me several times.

The first time I heard of Burning Wheel IRL it was by an indie-gamer (an Indy-exclusive one as far as I know). And described using the words "Trad as ". It really doesn't fit the other games I know of that come from the community round The Forge.

 

[Imaro]

I'm citing Fate as a system. Dresden Files has outsold Fate Core 2:1 so far.

And yes, every publisher that used the forge resources came out of the Forge. Spirit of the Century, the prior version of Fate, was produced in 2006 - so it's definitely Forge by your definition. And Fate Core is the next version of the same system.

Of course The Forge has been closed for over a year and a half now (Ron Edwards made the final post in June 2012) so by your definition there are no forge games. So why are you worried about a closed down historical footnote and a message board no one can post on?

FATE as a system wasn't designed on the Forge... it was first published in 2003

Because it's the basis of your entire, IMO flawed, argument concerning what type of game FATE is...

 

[Ratskinner]

The first time I heard of Burning Wheel IRL it was by an indie-gamer (an Indy-exclusive one as far as I know). And described using the words "Trad as ". It really doesn't fit the other games I know of that come from the community round The Forge.

No argument from me, personally. I just keep getting told about how wonderful and Narrativist it is. My personal take is that its far too complicated/rigorous for me. I've come to really value a certain "sloppiness" in the rules. I think it lends a necessary flexibility to the play at table.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't think we were citing particular mechanics to discuss. We instead have two rather blanket claims:

"I don't care about balance"
"Pursuing balance introduces elements which I find objectionable."

Now, I don't see how both can be true. To me this sounds much more like someone attempting to take a moral high ground of assumed neutrality to promote their actual position.

To be clear, I'm perfectly okay with saying "I don't like balanced games" or "Balanced classes don't fit my playstyle" or any similar thing. There are playstyles/agendas for which that is a perfectly legitimate concern. That's fine, but then you can't say you don't care about it, because well, you do, you object to it.

I feel one can be nuetral on balance, or even in favor of balance, but also recognize it can be taken too far or there are btter and worse ways to achieve. That was my only point. So i can not care about balance, but start to if the pursuit of balance affects my enjoyment of the game.

 

[billd91]

This. People who claim not to care about balance should be neutral on the subject. And positive about it because if what they are saying is accurate it helps many of us while not hurting them.

For a brand new game? Maybe so. But for a new edition of an already existing game? Not necessarily. It depends on what the changes in balance costs the game - and it will cost something. The changes in structure 4e brought may have brought a particular kind of balance you favored, but it basically made it a different game as well. And it wasn't a game I (and a lot of other people) wanted to play as D&D.