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<blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 6010722" data-attributes="member: 54877">My objection to the game designer going hard on marrying mechanics to story is that 90% of the time, I'm utterly unimpressed with the story half of the marriage.&nbsp; That is, I think good game designers have, on the whole, been pretty lousy story tellers, and vice versa.&nbsp; It's one of the reasons that game design is part art.&nbsp;Of course, when it really clicks and hits, you get something nice.&nbsp; However, this seems to be predicated on some designer (or maybe two or three game authors working as a team) hitting gold.&nbsp; Somehow, I don't think WotC is going to approach D&amp;D as, &quot;Hire a bunch of talented people, and then let them each write their solo vision of D&amp;D, ocassionally tag-teaming with another person.&nbsp; Publish.&nbsp; See what fans enjoy.&quot; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin&nbsp; &nbsp; :D"&nbsp; data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />&nbsp;Despite contradictions the last time I said something similar, I still maintain that it's possible for a committee to do good engineering.&nbsp; It's not likely that they will sustain the art half of the equation.&nbsp; &nbsp;Maybe the answer is that the in-house folks at WotC should be doing the engineering, but outsource the story parts to a lot more people?&nbsp; If we give you mechanic X, what kind of story can you marry to that?&nbsp; Then publish that and see what sticks?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Crazy Jerome, post: 6010722, member: 54877"] My objection to the game designer going hard on marrying mechanics to story is that 90% of the time, I'm utterly unimpressed with the story half of the marriage. That is, I think good game designers have, on the whole, been pretty lousy story tellers, and vice versa. It's one of the reasons that game design is part art. Of course, when it really clicks and hits, you get something nice. However, this seems to be predicated on some designer (or maybe two or three game authors working as a team) hitting gold. Somehow, I don't think WotC is going to approach D&D as, "Hire a bunch of talented people, and then let them each write their solo vision of D&D, ocassionally tag-teaming with another person. Publish. See what fans enjoy." :D Despite contradictions the last time I said something similar, I still maintain that it's possible for a committee to do good engineering. It's not likely that they will sustain the art half of the equation. Maybe the answer is that the in-house folks at WotC should be doing the engineering, but outsource the story parts to a lot more people? If we give you mechanic X, what kind of story can you marry to that? Then publish that and see what sticks? [/QUOTE]

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