WoTC Interview with Rob Heinsoo

[Ariosto]

An emphasis on "balance" usually indicates a concept of "what D&D is" already notably different from what it was originally designed to be.

My point is that the next "edition" may sweep away your concept as well. On what grounds could you complain? Who is in a position to define D&D?

The answer is "the trademark holder," if you have some vested interest in always buying the latest product labeled "D&D."

If instead you just really like 4E as a particular game, then accept that (A) you've got it; and (B) you won't be able to get it brand new by the same brand name after it's replaced by whatever 5E turns out to be.

 

[Runestar]

Yes, because talking about the problems of an edition you worked on equals saying it sucks.

For me, it was not so much that they pointed out flaws in 3e, but that until the announcement of 4e, those "flaws" were pretty much being trumpeted as "features". Or at least, the designers simply pretended that nothing was amiss and continued to feed us the same broken (by their definition) material.

Monsters not sufficiently differentiated? Didn't stop them from creating more high-cr npcs with tons of SLAs (in essence, spellcasters who simply look like fiends). Or tacking on save-or-die abilities. Or the other stuff that 4e denounced.

I dunno - it smacks somewhat of hypocrisy for me. You deliberately don't say anything bad about 3e when it was still financially viable, then when it suits your purpose to do so, you start criticizing every flaw you can find with 3e (be it real or perceived) just to make 4e seem superior by comparison.

 

[Branduil]

I agree with most of what he has to say, which is why I like 4e.

 

[Remathilis]

Well, it clearly explains why 4E feels so video gamey. Like video games all characters are designed to be balanced/fair with regards to the others.

Personally I am fine with that variance. After all if you can one day be capable of casting Wish/Miracle, you are the most powerful classes in the game. How can a fighter or rogue match that? They can't, and aren't supposed too.

So it will be interesting to see how weakened spellcasters are, and how powered up the fighter types are, to make everyone equal.

I'm going to guess you didn't play the thief in those editions, or the fighter, for that matter.

There is an inherent problem with the "imbalance" method game-design that drives me batty: once you figure out the "trick" the game looks a lot more narrow than those so called "bad options" allow.

Kamikaze Midget I believe coined (or at least helped popularize) the term "accidental suck" which to me means "a trap that looks like a good option/alternative, but instead of adding any sort interesting twist, it just cripples your character to the point he is no longer doing what he's supposed to be good at". A ranger with Iron Will, Toughness and Survivor is a much weaker ranger than the one who took Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot and Weapon Focus: Longbow. The illusion of choice exists (look at all those feats!) but to the experienced player (and not even an uber-optimizer, just someone who can weed out bad choices from good) the game becomes narrow.

D&D has always had these hidden traps: thieves gain nothing at high level to begin to compensate for powerful magic like Heal, Teleport, or True Seeing. No fighter can deal the massive damage potential of Cone of Cold, Harm or Disintegrate (not to mention the one-hit kills anything of SoD spells). Wizards (and clerics to an extent) having suffered through levels of 1-spell a day, throwing daggers and maces, and "cleric heal me!" filling your actions finally get to cut loose and be powerful spellcasters. Still, the fun comes at someone else's expense; the fighter and thief are marginalized.

Seriously, isn't better to keep the fighter having fun at high levels and the wizard having options at low levels? You know, so that the fighter doesn't dominate the low-level game and the wizards dominates the high-level game?

The same is true of racial choices (really, unless you know you were hitting that level limit or desperately wanted to dual-class or play a paladin, why NOT elf or half-elf?) spell choices (who really picked affect normal fires over burning hands?) even skills (max ranks in Use Rope!) or feats (the aforementioned ranger). Oh, and don't EVEN get started in multi-classing; if your race/class combo allowed it, why NOT multi-class in AD&D?

Is 4e perfect? Well, since it was written by men and not plumbed from the mind of a celestial being, I'd say no. Is it better tat ironing out some of those "accidental suck" elements and making the game choices wider? I say yes.

 

[I'm A Banana]

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.

It's weird to me that I'm usually halfway between the rock and the hard place on these conversations.

Ol' Rusty needed fixing. In a game that depends on items for balance, a monster that can blast apart your items also blasts apart the balance. The balance is there for a reason -- to keep the PC's having fun with their characters, so no one just wants to seppukku and the game remains something that's as much fun for the item-hound as for the DM.

You can't prevent human error, but you can certainly make a monster ability more limited in scope, so as to facilitate actually using the dang thing without boning the party.

I'm not necessarily a tremendous fan of how 4e does a lot of this adjusting, but I agree that it should have been done. My major issues with Heinsoo's positions are that he seems to believe the game he designed was the only game that could have been designed that would have met all his goals -- the way the 4e team chose was the only way that everyone could've had fun. That really isn't true. People had fun with the old school Rust Monster just fine. If you can figure out why that is, and design to THAT, you have a game that is fun.

I mean, I'm no savant, but any DM who cancels his game because the wizard didn't show up is a DM who was being a dink -- the bottleneck was too tight, or the DM valued the wizard to highly, or whatever. That's not evidence for the wizard being over-powerful, that's evidence for the DMing advice of "never just have one way out of a situation" being not prominently enough emblazoned in the guide, perhaps.

 

[Mallus]

An emphasis on "balance" usually indicates a concept of "what D&D is" already notably different from what it was originally designed to be.

Balance has always been a concern. The only thing that's changed are the methodologies used (and, I'd argue, their level of success, but that's another story...).

 

[Ariosto]

"Seriously, isn't better to ..." recognize that "better" and "fun" are matters of opinion?

There are reasons the game was designed as it was, and elements (neglected in 3E and 4E) that contributed to the richness of the original design.

That design's success is the reason 3E and 4E are called "D&D." So many people had (and continue to have) FUN playing those "worse" old games that the name can help sell new ones.

An emphasis on "balance" usually indicates ... was a carefully chosen phrase. There are different things getting balanced in different ways in very different games.

My point is that the next "edition" may sweep away your concept as well.

 

[Ariosto]

I am perhaps learning to loathe the word "fun."

 

[kibbitz]

Seriously, isn't better to keep the fighter having fun at high levels and the wizard having options at low levels? You know, so that the fighter doesn't dominate the low-level game and the wizards dominates the high-level game?

Treebore's presence already says NO, and I'm sure there's enough like-minded people out there You probably will have seen these refuting statements (or some variation of) used in favour of the imbalanced game before:

1) I/my friend(s) played high level thieves/fighters, we still had fun and didn't feel marginalized.
2) We love playing as weak wizards at low levels, relying on smarts and cunning to evade death.
3) Casters don't dominate the game as much as you claim, they are limited by spell slots/rest/magic resistance, etc.

And seriously, they may not be wrong. I'm sure there's enough people out there who are fine with the imbalances and feel that it adds to their game rather than detracting from it. That's perfectly fine. I do wish that people who like the game this way would stop using the "balanced like a videogame" bit though, since videogames also suffer from the variance of the kind that Treebore likes, barring games featuring PvP

 

[Ariosto]

"And seriously, they may not be wrong."

People might not be wrong when they say they have fun playing D&D? Seriously?

From Men & Magic (1974):

Top level magic-users are perhaps the most powerful characters in the game, but it is a long, hard road to the top, and to begin with they are weak, so survival is often the question, unless fighters protect the low-level magical types until they have worked up.