DaveMage
Slumbering in Tsar
See, that's something I don't like. I don't like the idea that at some point, character advancement by level simply ends.
WoTC Interview with Rob Heinsoo
- Thread starter Shroomy
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See, that's something I don't like. I don't like the idea that at some point, character advancement by level simply ends.
RefinedBean
First Post
See, that's something I don't like. I don't like the idea that at some point, character advancement by level simply ends.
Ahhh.
Well, that's just a problem with level-based systems in general, in my opinion. There's always a cut-off point, whether it's a hard cut (4E's "nothing beyond 30") or a soft one (3E's "We kinda-sorta worked out some epic level rules for you").
Maybe now that the GSL has been loosened, someone will come up with an alternate rules system that gets rid of the 30-level cut-off.
Keefe the Thief
Hero
Since we´ve had the video game and board game comparisons already, could somebody
- refer to New Coke
and
- say something about Magic the Gathering?
The comments look incomplete without it.
- refer to New Coke
and
- say something about Magic the Gathering?
The comments look incomplete without it.
I'm running two 4e campaigns, with a couple of players who play in both. PCs are 8th and 6th level. One has a Ranger and a Warlock, and he's said on several occasions that he finds the two classes very different to play. (They're also both strikers, so role isn't everything).
It's very interesting to contrast the changing experience of the levels in 4e. From running these two campaigns, it's very evident that the characters are growing throughout the heroic tier. First level characters aren't incompetent by any stretch of the imagination, but they don't have the options of 8th level PCs. There's a big difference between 2 at-wills, 1 encounter and 1 daily and 2 at wills, 3 encounters, 2 dailies, 2 utilities and various item powers!
We can already see that paragon will be a big shift to what the PCs can do. Action points will become a lot more important, and there are a host of other powers and abilities that begin in those levels to really let the PCs know they've reached those levels.
Epic? Let you know in another year's time.
Cheers!
Obergnom
First Post
We just finished our Heroic Tier Campaign, running from level 1 to 10. The game did not feel stagnant at all, I would compare it with going from level 3 to level 7 in 3e, but with the players getting 9 instead of 4 level ups.
For me, as a DM, that was great because it removes that feeling of the PCs power growing too rapidly. On the players side, if I would have ever created a 3e campaign running 33 session with them only leveling up 4 times, they would have been very unhappy...
Both rituals and mounts give a true sense of where the characters arein terms of power, right now. One of them owns a hippogriff, escentially granting overland flight, another one rides a rage drake (which makes him feel quite "epic") and being able to pay for the weaker rituals easily gives more of that "magic tool box" effect back to the game.
For me, as a DM, that was great because it removes that feeling of the PCs power growing too rapidly. On the players side, if I would have ever created a 3e campaign running 33 session with them only leveling up 4 times, they would have been very unhappy...
Both rituals and mounts give a true sense of where the characters arein terms of power, right now. One of them owns a hippogriff, escentially granting overland flight, another one rides a rage drake (which makes him feel quite "epic") and being able to pay for the weaker rituals easily gives more of that "magic tool box" effect back to the game.
One thing that's striking to me is the emphasis on removing options, even when it's presented as providing them. Players always had the option of starting characters at 4th level or retiring them at 14th. When the "kernel" was relatively simple and modular, players could modify the game in all sorts of ways -- including, of course, with "official" supplements. Plenty of folks have altered things along 4E lines, by their own choice.
Now, it's supposedly the company's job to prevent people from playing old-style 1st- or 21st-level characters. Set aside number-crunching mechanical details and compare this basic attitude to the quite different one expressed in the seminal work published in 1974.
From design to marketing, there's a question either lurking or looming: whose game is it?
Arneson and Gygax designed the original. Gygax designed AD&D, and, whatever his position in the company, D&D remained "Gary's game" in the eyes of the public. Holmes, Moldvay, Marsh, Cook and Mentzer were pretty clearly working not so much on their games as on new presentations of the game.
Then new ownership came in, and Gygax was out. TSR was not in WotC's league as far as interest in market research, but the firm solicited a lot of player input as to what the second edition of AD&D should be like. David "Zeb" Cook was not in the position of creative control that Gygax had enjoyed; 2E was not really "his" (or anyone's) personal expression. It was the first truly "corporate" version of D&D.
TSR owned the trademark, but in a sense the fans owned the definition of the game. That was but a very tenuous sense, to be sure, and while I pretty much missed out on the "edition war" of the 1990s that was in part because I had already lost interest in new releases from TSR. They were in a sense slapping older-edition players with the "let us tell you the proper way to have fun" line.
The origin may be a chicken-or-the-egg question, but there was a significant departure -- and a lot of players were on board with the company. The latter could hardly have kept churning out "splat books" if the former were not buying. Eventually, the supplements would transform the game pretty radically for those who used the whole kit and caboodle.
The core rules, though, remained pretty darned recognizable. The "no difference" line was baloney (and the "improved" one just a matter of opinion) even then, and the objective differences alone are plenty to warrant a preference for 1E or 2E. However, enough fundamental matters remained the same that one could without too much trouble use material from 1996 (assuming one found some worth using) with the rules-set of 1976 -- or vice-versa. There was a foundation of common concepts expressed in mostly the same language.
So, for 26 years (1974-2000) "D&D" was at its heart a reference not merely to a trademark but to a game about as objectively definable as many others. It was from the start meant to be just a start, a framework to be reshaped and built upon from campaign to campaign. That was part of the tradition.
With 3E, tradition lost its primacy and became just one consideration among many. Everything was negotiable -- among the new designers. They were designing their (and the company's) game.
Already with 2E, the process had been turned upside-down. It was not a matter of someone creating something just for fun and then finding that it had a market. There was no Muse (What is the name of the patron Muse of RPGs, anyway?) demanding that it be written; the demand was from Corporate, for a product. Tradition was respected because it was thought to sell.
Wizards held onto that idea rather loosely. I think part of why is that the designers were a new generation, their image of what was definitive of D&D shaped by TSR's 2E-era marketing. There's a feedback loop when folks who "drank the Kool-Aid" are put in charge of making it. That's also going on in the market. The folks still buying the product make up a demographic self-selected for not considering the latest stuff crap. How many former customers have been lost? How many potential customers might have bought the older model?
Maybe WotC's market research breaks that loop. The bottom line, though, is not about fidelity to "D&D" as anything but a trademark. 3E established that one thing that sold was treating D&D players not as fellow hobbyists but as consumers. The "pros" are not just guys lucky enough to get paid for writing game material; they Know Better than You. And that's a good thing, because supposedly writing D&D stuff has turned into something as expertise-dependent as designing computer operating systems or interplanetary rockets. Who designs "game engines" if not engineers?
So, after the terrible Rust Monster Disaster of 2006 (Oh, the humanity!) they swore "never again." Too many 3E games were crashing and burning, endangering not only the players but hapless bystanders. How to prevent such tragedies due to human error? By designing the system to lock operators out of the loop at critical decision points. No more "patches" -- rewrite it from scratch.
Now, it's supposedly the company's job to prevent people from playing old-style 1st- or 21st-level characters. Set aside number-crunching mechanical details and compare this basic attitude to the quite different one expressed in the seminal work published in 1974.
From design to marketing, there's a question either lurking or looming: whose game is it?
Arneson and Gygax designed the original. Gygax designed AD&D, and, whatever his position in the company, D&D remained "Gary's game" in the eyes of the public. Holmes, Moldvay, Marsh, Cook and Mentzer were pretty clearly working not so much on their games as on new presentations of the game.
Then new ownership came in, and Gygax was out. TSR was not in WotC's league as far as interest in market research, but the firm solicited a lot of player input as to what the second edition of AD&D should be like. David "Zeb" Cook was not in the position of creative control that Gygax had enjoyed; 2E was not really "his" (or anyone's) personal expression. It was the first truly "corporate" version of D&D.
TSR owned the trademark, but in a sense the fans owned the definition of the game. That was but a very tenuous sense, to be sure, and while I pretty much missed out on the "edition war" of the 1990s that was in part because I had already lost interest in new releases from TSR. They were in a sense slapping older-edition players with the "let us tell you the proper way to have fun" line.
The origin may be a chicken-or-the-egg question, but there was a significant departure -- and a lot of players were on board with the company. The latter could hardly have kept churning out "splat books" if the former were not buying. Eventually, the supplements would transform the game pretty radically for those who used the whole kit and caboodle.
The core rules, though, remained pretty darned recognizable. The "no difference" line was baloney (and the "improved" one just a matter of opinion) even then, and the objective differences alone are plenty to warrant a preference for 1E or 2E. However, enough fundamental matters remained the same that one could without too much trouble use material from 1996 (assuming one found some worth using) with the rules-set of 1976 -- or vice-versa. There was a foundation of common concepts expressed in mostly the same language.
So, for 26 years (1974-2000) "D&D" was at its heart a reference not merely to a trademark but to a game about as objectively definable as many others. It was from the start meant to be just a start, a framework to be reshaped and built upon from campaign to campaign. That was part of the tradition.
With 3E, tradition lost its primacy and became just one consideration among many. Everything was negotiable -- among the new designers. They were designing their (and the company's) game.
Already with 2E, the process had been turned upside-down. It was not a matter of someone creating something just for fun and then finding that it had a market. There was no Muse (What is the name of the patron Muse of RPGs, anyway?) demanding that it be written; the demand was from Corporate, for a product. Tradition was respected because it was thought to sell.
Wizards held onto that idea rather loosely. I think part of why is that the designers were a new generation, their image of what was definitive of D&D shaped by TSR's 2E-era marketing. There's a feedback loop when folks who "drank the Kool-Aid" are put in charge of making it. That's also going on in the market. The folks still buying the product make up a demographic self-selected for not considering the latest stuff crap. How many former customers have been lost? How many potential customers might have bought the older model?
Maybe WotC's market research breaks that loop. The bottom line, though, is not about fidelity to "D&D" as anything but a trademark. 3E established that one thing that sold was treating D&D players not as fellow hobbyists but as consumers. The "pros" are not just guys lucky enough to get paid for writing game material; they Know Better than You. And that's a good thing, because supposedly writing D&D stuff has turned into something as expertise-dependent as designing computer operating systems or interplanetary rockets. Who designs "game engines" if not engineers?
So, after the terrible Rust Monster Disaster of 2006 (Oh, the humanity!) they swore "never again." Too many 3E games were crashing and burning, endangering not only the players but hapless bystanders. How to prevent such tragedies due to human error? By designing the system to lock operators out of the loop at critical decision points. No more "patches" -- rewrite it from scratch.
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Obergnom
First Post
Maybe because I am a physicist or maybe because I am a big fan of Blizzards way of designing games. (Love Starcraft and Diablo 2 for being balanced), but I firmly belive that game design is a complicated craft, requireing solid math skills.
If anything, I think the designers should do better in the math department...
Starcraft and Diablo are what they are. This is being advertised as Dungeons & Dragons. If 5E turns out to be Diablo 5, what are longtime D&D 4E players likely to say?
It doesn't really matter, unless what they say is, "Right on! I'm a big Diablo fan, so of course I think D&D should be as much like Diablo as possible."
And if Diablo 6 looks like, say, Ultima? Same deal with Diablo 5 fans.
It doesn't really matter, unless what they say is, "Right on! I'm a big Diablo fan, so of course I think D&D should be as much like Diablo as possible."
And if Diablo 6 looks like, say, Ultima? Same deal with Diablo 5 fans.
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DaveMage
Slumbering in Tsar
Thank you for making this point.
I knew something was missing from the sweet spot discussion and this is exactly it. This option gave us flexibility with regard to starting PC power that is somewhat different with 4E.
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