Will the Magic System be shown the door?
- Thread starter Mark CMG
- Start date
Arkhandus, I feel that your system based on recharge times is pretty good at reconciling the per encounter and more long-term spellcasting issues, but it has one major problem: It would be quite complex and probably a major chore to track all the recharge times for every individual spell cast - much, much more of the hassle than tracking spell slots, which not insignificant numbers of people find too arduous already.
Mercule
Adventurer
Lord Tirian said:
I would agree with that whole list. I also don't particularly want to change any of those.
Really, my "one ultimate answer" would be slots (or, more likely, points) that can be used to prepare spells very much like the current system, but add a mechanism for "digging deep" to cast something that isn't already "hung".
If I could get the DCs to pan out, I have a thought for a skill-based system: hang as many spells as you like, but each hung spell ups the DC to cast or hang any additional spells. Eventually, the DCs for hanging will be prohibitive, thus capping it. Slots/points can be used for simplicity. This sort of system has several advantages: It leaves the "resource management" in for people who want it. Those who don't are free to use just spontaneous (not custom, just unprepared) magic. The system makes more sense than just slots, too. As an added bonus, thematic elements could be added in, like having hung spells detectable and/or dispellable. It also opens the door for "botched" castings.
I think something like that would be Vancian enough to feel like D&D, but provide enough options to please most players.
MoogleEmpMog
First Post
Ultimately, the debate about what to keep when you change editions boils down to two things:
1. What will appeal to existing players.
2. What will appeal to new players.
My position? Existing players are a questionable market no matter what.
People stuck with 1e over 2e for reasons as empheral as being offended at the name changes to demons and devils, or preferring the Gygaxian writing style of the 1e DMG to the straightforward 2e style - apparently, considering the much greater success of 1e's core books vs. 2e's core books, a LOT of people did that. Despite very few mechanical changes (and most of those clarifications). Changing even relatively minor aspects can lose major portions of the customer base.
Because RPGs do not require new published material to remain useable (and in the case of D&D 3e, and now, with OSRIC and the like, D&D 1e, will continue to GET new published material), a person who has already bought the books for one edition never need buy another, unless he likes it better or his playgroup requires it of him. NOT changing the system much means those players have even less incentive to upgrade; their existing books may remain perfectly usable, or they may see no reason to switch.
Finally, according to the only market research of significance ever published in this industry, player churn is actually quite high. New players come in and old players leave on a regular basis, with only a comparative handful continuing to play for many years. So, designing for the existing playerbase means, potentially, designing for people who will mostly be moving on anyway, or may have already done so.
These three issues, even apart from the financial shenanigans, the market flooding, the poor customer relations and the questionable management, would seem to explain a great deal of AD&D 2e's failure.
On the flip side, let's look at making significant changes to a system.
This will invariably annoy some existing customers. Some will not buy the system and will stick with the previous edition, others will buy a competing system (possibly, in the OGL era, a system based off the previous edition), and others will leave the hobby. On the flip side, it will please other existing customers. Once they're used to the new system, they will prefer it. (At this point, I'm not even discussing the quality of the mechanics; unless you're talking HYBRID, you'll always encounter defenders of even the clumsiest or most unfun rules.) These existing players will have an incentive to change: for them, the new system is a substantial upgrade over what they're currently playing, and it's an upgrade they can make without abandoning brand loyalty.
Returning players are those who currently don't play your game but played it before. Changing mechanics gives them an incentive to look at your new version, to decide if it fixed what they didn't like before - as 3e, by all accounts, brought back a lot of players who had drifted away during 2e. Some will inevitably like the new version even less, others will like it better, perhaps even enough to come back.
New players (who will, eventually, become the majority of your customers - either because you've failed and lost too many existing players, because you've succeeded and brought in lots of new blood, or simply due to player drift) do not care either way about the way the mechanics were. They care about how much fun the mechanics are to someone new, how easy they are to learn, and how well they mesh with expectations from other sources.
Those sources could be video games, books, movies, comics, whatever - but to have enough of an interest in fantasy to want to play D&D, they must come from SOMEWHERE. If you do a better job of modelling the way magic works in fantasy media, you potentially appeal to a new player. What existing gamers are familiar with, again, really doesn't matter. What matters is what will get new players - and keep them as long as possible.
I would say, if you're not going to change something as significant as the magic system, there's no point in changing editions at all. Combat, arguably the heart of D&D, was revamped heavily for 3e, at once clarified, streamlined and given more depth (perhaps too much). 3e also created an entire subsytem (skills) to cover all other mechanical aspects of the game. Only class, levels and magic are of comparable significance, and I don't think you can make a strong case that changing classes and levels makes the game more appealing to people who've never played an RPG before - both are actually FAMILIAR elements to electronic gamers, and allow for faster, easier character creation so you can get into the game sooner.
There are a LOT of changes I'd like to see made to D&D. I personally don't like classes, for example; I DO like levels, but I like 1-99 better than 1-20. I don't like high fantasy; I'd rather see humanocentric sword and sorcery or JRPG/anime technofantasy. Nonetheless, I wouldn't agitate for those changes (although appealing to a broader range of fantasy subgenres WOULD be on my list of changes for a new edition) - they would make the game harder, not easier, for new players to get into.
Changing the magic system would, IMO, make it easier and more comfortable for new players. So, that's the Big Change I would make with 4e. I wouldn't sweat the people, like myself, who would buy it, mine the mechanics, and pop them into a homebrew or another system that changed more from D&D; nor would I sweat the people who evaluated the changes and decided to stick with a previous edition. My concern, my SOLE concern, would be attracting the most new players, from the most backgrounds, and keeping them the longest.
1. What will appeal to existing players.
2. What will appeal to new players.
My position? Existing players are a questionable market no matter what.
People stuck with 1e over 2e for reasons as empheral as being offended at the name changes to demons and devils, or preferring the Gygaxian writing style of the 1e DMG to the straightforward 2e style - apparently, considering the much greater success of 1e's core books vs. 2e's core books, a LOT of people did that. Despite very few mechanical changes (and most of those clarifications). Changing even relatively minor aspects can lose major portions of the customer base.
Because RPGs do not require new published material to remain useable (and in the case of D&D 3e, and now, with OSRIC and the like, D&D 1e, will continue to GET new published material), a person who has already bought the books for one edition never need buy another, unless he likes it better or his playgroup requires it of him. NOT changing the system much means those players have even less incentive to upgrade; their existing books may remain perfectly usable, or they may see no reason to switch.
Finally, according to the only market research of significance ever published in this industry, player churn is actually quite high. New players come in and old players leave on a regular basis, with only a comparative handful continuing to play for many years. So, designing for the existing playerbase means, potentially, designing for people who will mostly be moving on anyway, or may have already done so.
These three issues, even apart from the financial shenanigans, the market flooding, the poor customer relations and the questionable management, would seem to explain a great deal of AD&D 2e's failure.
On the flip side, let's look at making significant changes to a system.
This will invariably annoy some existing customers. Some will not buy the system and will stick with the previous edition, others will buy a competing system (possibly, in the OGL era, a system based off the previous edition), and others will leave the hobby. On the flip side, it will please other existing customers. Once they're used to the new system, they will prefer it. (At this point, I'm not even discussing the quality of the mechanics; unless you're talking HYBRID, you'll always encounter defenders of even the clumsiest or most unfun rules.) These existing players will have an incentive to change: for them, the new system is a substantial upgrade over what they're currently playing, and it's an upgrade they can make without abandoning brand loyalty.
Returning players are those who currently don't play your game but played it before. Changing mechanics gives them an incentive to look at your new version, to decide if it fixed what they didn't like before - as 3e, by all accounts, brought back a lot of players who had drifted away during 2e. Some will inevitably like the new version even less, others will like it better, perhaps even enough to come back.
New players (who will, eventually, become the majority of your customers - either because you've failed and lost too many existing players, because you've succeeded and brought in lots of new blood, or simply due to player drift) do not care either way about the way the mechanics were. They care about how much fun the mechanics are to someone new, how easy they are to learn, and how well they mesh with expectations from other sources.
Those sources could be video games, books, movies, comics, whatever - but to have enough of an interest in fantasy to want to play D&D, they must come from SOMEWHERE. If you do a better job of modelling the way magic works in fantasy media, you potentially appeal to a new player. What existing gamers are familiar with, again, really doesn't matter. What matters is what will get new players - and keep them as long as possible.
I would say, if you're not going to change something as significant as the magic system, there's no point in changing editions at all. Combat, arguably the heart of D&D, was revamped heavily for 3e, at once clarified, streamlined and given more depth (perhaps too much). 3e also created an entire subsytem (skills) to cover all other mechanical aspects of the game. Only class, levels and magic are of comparable significance, and I don't think you can make a strong case that changing classes and levels makes the game more appealing to people who've never played an RPG before - both are actually FAMILIAR elements to electronic gamers, and allow for faster, easier character creation so you can get into the game sooner.
There are a LOT of changes I'd like to see made to D&D. I personally don't like classes, for example; I DO like levels, but I like 1-99 better than 1-20. I don't like high fantasy; I'd rather see humanocentric sword and sorcery or JRPG/anime technofantasy. Nonetheless, I wouldn't agitate for those changes (although appealing to a broader range of fantasy subgenres WOULD be on my list of changes for a new edition) - they would make the game harder, not easier, for new players to get into.
Changing the magic system would, IMO, make it easier and more comfortable for new players. So, that's the Big Change I would make with 4e. I wouldn't sweat the people, like myself, who would buy it, mine the mechanics, and pop them into a homebrew or another system that changed more from D&D; nor would I sweat the people who evaluated the changes and decided to stick with a previous edition. My concern, my SOLE concern, would be attracting the most new players, from the most backgrounds, and keeping them the longest.
JohnSnow
Hero
Couldn't have said it better myself MoogleEmpMog. I agree wholeheartedly that a Fourth Edition almost calls for a new magic system. Combat's been largely fixed in 3e. A few more things could be tweaked, but nothing substantive enough to call for a new edition.
Magic, on the other hand...
On that topic...
Sure, but it's a pretty long list. Let's see...
- There's a disconnect between spellcaster staying power and time in the field. The "it's 10:30 in the morning and we're done adventuring for the day" problem. Making players leave and come back "tomorrow" takes out the feel of going on an adventure to "clean out the evil goblin lair." That's just dumb.
- There's a tendency to "go nova" and burn through your spells way too fast. People claim spell slots force casters to play smart, but many will just overpower half as many encounters (or less) and then whine about not having any fun until everyone else agrees to rest. Which they eventually do, especially if the whining character without slots is the walking bandaid...err, cleric.
- Scry-Buff-Teleport, need I say more?
- The long string of higher-level, un-fun, plot-breaking spells all exist because Fifth-level spells used to be the apotheosis of game play, and therefore putting spells like "Raise Dead," "Teleport," or "Commune" at 5th-level made sense. Since then, we've had to invent spells that made you deader than dead, and deader than that. And cures for those. Ad nauseum. It's gotten silly.
As I've said before, D&D has more levels of "dead" than The Princess Bride.
And that was a movie that played the concept for LAUGHS. Which leads me to believe D&D has slowly, but surely, become a parody of itself. And the magic system is largely to blame.
I could go on. But I think I'll stop there.
Magic, on the other hand...
On that topic...
Mark CMG said:
Sure, but it's a pretty long list. Let's see...
- There's a disconnect between spellcaster staying power and time in the field. The "it's 10:30 in the morning and we're done adventuring for the day" problem. Making players leave and come back "tomorrow" takes out the feel of going on an adventure to "clean out the evil goblin lair." That's just dumb.
- There's a tendency to "go nova" and burn through your spells way too fast. People claim spell slots force casters to play smart, but many will just overpower half as many encounters (or less) and then whine about not having any fun until everyone else agrees to rest. Which they eventually do, especially if the whining character without slots is the walking bandaid...err, cleric.
- Scry-Buff-Teleport, need I say more?
- The long string of higher-level, un-fun, plot-breaking spells all exist because Fifth-level spells used to be the apotheosis of game play, and therefore putting spells like "Raise Dead," "Teleport," or "Commune" at 5th-level made sense. Since then, we've had to invent spells that made you deader than dead, and deader than that. And cures for those. Ad nauseum. It's gotten silly.
As I've said before, D&D has more levels of "dead" than The Princess Bride.
And that was a movie that played the concept for LAUGHS. Which leads me to believe D&D has slowly, but surely, become a parody of itself. And the magic system is largely to blame.
I could go on. But I think I'll stop there.
Last edited:
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