WotC Blogs II

[Glyfair]

David Noonan has posted an entry that covers a lot of ground, without giving any details. Of course, the second part explains why.

Daily Work: We've got some nifty new rules for hazards/traps/obstacles/whatever-you-wanna-call-'em. As an adventure designer, I love them--but we'll see (and actually some of you will tell me) how they work at the table. After a few hours playing with the new tools, I'll tell you this: the hardest part of creating a cool hazard/trap/obstacle is the creative gruntwork. Conceiving it is harder than implementing it. That's probably how it should be.

The other thing I like about it is that it rewards teamwork--just as combat does and just as the social stuff I talked about last week does. There's a lot of teamwork in this game. Anybody else think it's incongruous that an intensely social, teamwork-driven game is supposedly played by a bunch of introverts? We may have gotten a bad rap at some point.

Why It's Hard to Leak Stuff: Warning--this is going to be unbelievably abstract. When I take a broad, 10,000-foot view of 4e, I'm struck by how tightly integrated the system is. More game elements "talk" to each other than ever before. That's why for the longest time, we spent so much time cranking on the core rule elements and gave short shrift to more ancillary rules like, say, item saving throws (and yes, that's a fictitious example, but you'll see why in a moment).

On balance, this tight integration is good for D&D--although it's not a necessary precondition for a great game. Some terrific hobby games have rules that are sprawling, chaotic messes, including the one I fell in love with back in the early 80s. But that tight integration is why I can turn a 3e gamer into a 4e gamer in less than an hour, and why the action zips around the table at a pretty good clip.

But there's a small downside to that tight integration: it makes it hard to reveal just part of the system. If I showed you phantom steed, for example, the first three lines of the rules text would each require explanation...and those explanations would lead to reasonable questions on your part...and those answers would lead us elsewhere, and...well, you get the idea.

One of the reasons we designers are being opaque is absolutely that we're saving some "reveals" for the preview books next year, and more generally we're trying to give a solid, sustainable stream of info. But the other reason for the opacity is much more prosaic: It's hard to show just one part of this system. Like Mister Rogers said: "Everything grows together, because it's all one piece."

Logan Bonner has posted a bunch on the miniature game update:

I like the new rules for the minis game. The previous version had a lot of things that were unlike the RPG in an annoying way (morale, always attacking the nearest) and a faction system that left us with too many minis of creatures PCs wouldn't fight (which is a problem for people who buy minis for RPG play, but also leaves minis players with a bunch of birds and crap).

The new rules are different from the RPG in the ways they need to be, but not in ways that just seem "un-D&D." Many of the monsters are converted from the MM1, and they aren't super different from the MM versions. (They usually need to be simplified a bit.) The RPG monsters look more like minis monsters. There are several reasons for this, the most important being that monsters don't use PC rules anymore. They're more focused on carrying out their specific shticks. This dovetails with encounter design: We have more monsters, so each one needs to be more focused.

The really cool thing about designing minis is the set of concerns that doesn't exist in the RPG: the metagame. You're not only thinking about whether a monster's abilities make sense for its theme, you're also thinking about warband building, making something different from the minis that came before, and considering the rarity and point cost.

Steve Schubert gave me some good guidelines about levels/point values to assign to minis based on how many minis we expect people to use out of each pack when playing sealed games. When I was working on a high-point-value mini, I made it the kind of creature that can be the centerpiece of a warband and can really mess with the battlefield.

The new factions are pretty cool, too. They're kind of a loose guideline, assigned based on both theme and mechanics. It's interesting when you find a monster that fits with two seemingly dissimilar categories, like blue (civilized) and green (wild). We don't have a Magic-style "color pie" worked out for the factions, but there are some commonalities members of a faction will share. I'm curious to see how these evolve.

In other minis news, I got a set of Desert of Desolation repaints from Chris Tulach. The paint jobs all look good. I probably can't talk much about them, but there's one that will definitely be highly sought-after. There's only one that is kind of boring IMO.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Originally Posted by David Noonan's blog

There's a lot of teamwork in this game. Anybody else think it's incongruous that an intensely social, teamwork-driven game is supposedly played by a bunch of introverts? We may have gotten a bad rap at some point.

I think the bad rap is that all introverts are extreme introverts who would rather isolate themselves from others. I like this summary of introverts:

Introverts, in contrast, are reserved, thoughtful, and self-reliant. They are not necessarily asocial, but they tend to have smaller circles of friends, and are less likely to thrive on making new social contacts.

I think that sums up a large portion of the gamers I know, including myself.

Reserved does not mean they won't talk to people, but rather they won't just walk up to someone and start a conversation. They will need a reason to talk to someone first. Gaming provides that common interest that people less extroverted may have trouble discovering.

Self-reliance does not mean a person cannot be part of a good team, but a team of introverts will often be different in that there may not be a clear division between leader and follower. It will likely be more collaborative, with each member more open to allowing others to contribute based upon strengths and skills. The downside is that it often takes more time to reach a decision because each member is more likely they feel they have something to contribute.

D&D is ideal for this type of introvert and that is why there seems to be a large proportion of more introverted people playing.

 

[Glyfair]

Mike Mearls updates cover a lot of ground, but not much 4E info. The following quote my give some clues, but if so you are a better mind reader than me

Here's a tidbit: we're working on multiclassing right now. One of my directives to the dev team was that I'd like to play a CENSORED ranger/cleric/wizard in a playtest. We'll see if we make that work.

As reported elsewhere, Peter Schaefer's latest entry covers classes and races.

Today's success: Finishing the set of characters for the playtest and giving them back to Dave. The exercise gave me a chance to see what all the races and classes are doing in the game, and two things stuck:

Races' special traits complement their suggested classes without being exclusively useful to those classes. Being really lucky, for example, works with the halfing rogue really well, and being durable is perfect for the dwarven fighter. But they're still useful for other race/class combinations - who doesn't want a little extra luck or endurance? There are places where I wish there were a little more combined functionality, and we'll look into that as the development cycle progresses.

Classes can perform the same role without looking like clones. This is imperative, given the assertion that there are four roles worth naming and more than four classes. Two classes sharing a role should look and feel different in play. That was a goal during the recent development, but it's possible that more differentiation is necessary. So a recent in-house playtest suggests, and it's a definite priority.

 

[Andor]

Is it just me, or given the amount of work they obviously have still to go, does the May release date seem ambitious?

 

[an_idol_mind]

Is it just me, or given the amount of work they obviously have still to go, does the May release date seem ambitious?

We've got no idea as to how much work they've actually finished so far. Stuff like making a ranger/cleric/wizard work could just be testing the limits of a system that's already in place, or it could be trying out something entirely new. The news so far has been vague enough that we really have no idea how far along they are.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Is it just me, or given the amount of work they obviously have still to go, does the May release date seem ambitious?

Yeah, this does worry me a bit. Personally, I would like to see a timeline where the entire mechanics (and therefore the PHB) was "finished" with at least a year's time left for tweaking and at least a 4 month long massive playtest with another 2-3 months left before printing to incorporate feedback before printing.

From the sounds of their blogs and such, they are having meetings for the last couple of weeks on how to modify feats, traps, assigning abilities to classes, and the like. It sounds like they plan on having the PHB "finished" by the end of next week. This leaves about 6 months from now until print date. Assuming play tests last around 4 months, they could still be on schedule though.

 

[Jhaelen]

Is it just me, or given the amount of work they obviously have still to go, does the May release date seem ambitious?

Since they'll be able to continously 'patch' the pdf versions of their print releases, maybe they aren't as concerned about release dates than they were in the past...

 

[Glyfair]

Blogs have been focusing on non-4E stuff for a while, but a few bits are in Chris Perkins' & Logan Bonner's latest entries.

I'm getting better at making minis, I think. I'm writing 8.25 minis a day on average, which is still probably slow, but that was in a week when I was learning how to make them. I'll need to do additional passes on them, and they'll need close scrutiny from Rob H. and Steve S. I got some info from Rob about what his ideas were for some of these minis (mostly ones that weren't in the MM1—or in D&D at all). Steve hooked me up with concept art. I've made some notes for things that don't look so great, but most of the art is good. There's a spider that uses transparent plastic. Sure hope the sculpt works out! (One of the things about minis is that there are far more stages where things can go wrong and totally ruin a mini. The art can be bad, the rules can be bad, the sculpt can be bad, the paint can be bad... there's less control than on the RPG side.)

This week I need to meet with the art directors and start putting together cover art orders for products appearing in Sep–Dec 2008. If we start the process now, we can have cover art to show in the product catalog, which comes out in about 4 months. Adventure covers are always a bit tricky because they depict scenes from adventures that haven't been written yet. In each case, we work from a one-paragraph summary of the adventure describing the overall adventure goal and the major villains involved. For example, we know that one of our 4E adventures revolves around the schemes of a fomorian king, so he'll probably end up being the subject for that particular cover illustration.

On the subject of playtest packages, David Noonan is leading the effort to get a playtest package ready to send to outsiders. We're also close to figuring out how many playtest groups will receive this package, as well as what information we want to get back from playtesters (and the format in which we want to receive that information). When we've settled all that, we'll be posting something on D&D Insider with the particulars.

While not directly 4E related, Chris' has an observation about adventure names:

I spent two whole days last week writing copy for the Summer 2008 and Fall 2008 product catalogs. Normally we try to spread the work around, but everyone else was wrapped up in 4E products. Everyone except James Wyatt, who was on vacation (lucky guy). The most fun part about writing the catalog copy was coming up with adventure names to replace such endearing placeholder titles as "Paragon Adventure #2." Have you ever noticed that most of the "classic" TSR adventure modules are named after locations? The Lost Caverns of Tsojacanth. White Plume Mountain. Tomb of Horrors. The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. The Temple of Elemental Evil. Keep on the Borderlands. Ravenloft. Wherever possible, I'd like to adopt this approach for 4E adventures and focus on location, location, location.

 

[Sir Brennen]

On the subject of playtest packages, David Noonan is leading the effort to get a playtest package ready to send to outsiders.

Oh, great. Extraplanar beings get to playtest before anyone else

 

[Intrope]

Oh, great. Extraplanar beings get to playtest before anyone else

It's all part of the Pact with Asmodeus to insure 4e's success!

(why else would he be getting a promotion? )