WoTC_krg posts on game design theory

[Wulf Ratbane]

Was he a mathematician? If he was, they didn't hire him solely as that, so my point still stands.

In fact, the fact that they are not resting on their laurels but instead thinking even more deeply about this edition that the previous one would seem to bear that out.

Fair enough. My point is that it should come as no surprise that there are mathematicians working inside WOTC, any more than it should be surprising that they have Art Directors and Marketing Managers and Lawyers and Pressmen.

To a very large degree, game design is math. (Depends on the game, of course, but most games involve at least some element of probability.)

I'll concede you the point that the D&D team seems to be availing themselves of the brain trust "across the aisle" more than usual.

But there is a really cool, well-developed, very strong "design culture" inside WOTC. They don't treat it as a game.

 

[Cadfan]

I keep saying, there is no RPG Development house in the world that takes game design as seriously as WOTC,

Only because the board game people got Reiner Knizia first.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Only because the board game people got Reiner Knizia first.

He is great.

 

[Cadfan]

He is great.

But he probably wouldn't be a very good RPG designer. Every round we'd have to pick a new class, and we'd have to bid against the rest of the party for our per encounter actions.

The auction mechanic would be simple, elegant work of art. Naturally.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

But he probably wouldn't be a very good RPG designer. Every round we'd have to pick a new class, and we'd have to bid against the rest of the party for our per encounter actions.

I'd love that. I love inter-player conflict games. (aka Weasel Games, aka F--- Your Buddy games.)

The auction mechanic would be simple, elegant work of art. Naturally.

He's also a mathematician, of course.

Beauty is math...

 

[Hussar]

Thinking about this for a few minutes helps me realize why some aspects of 4E design bother me.

When K. Robert Gutschera "does his thing" he has to limit the space in which he is operating. Studying Chess is easy because when you get to the edge of the board, you stop. Tabletop RPG's don't work like that. There is no edge of the map. There is an infinite "game space" and an infinite number of possible actors acting within that space (all of the NPC's - individuals, organizations, gods, etc.).

Also, the game never really ends. You could play a character for as long as you live, if you wanted to and the DM was willing.

For all these reasons, Tabletop RPG's are the games most similar to "real life." We get in arguments about "gamism" vs. "realism", but if you look at all possible games you could be playing (checkers, Wii baseball, WoW, etc.) how many of them have rules for falling damage, drowning, bluffing at cards, encountering monsters, weather generation, gods, demons, alternate planes of exists, etc. etc.

Tabletop RPG's are the closest game to "real simulation" yet invented, with the sole possible exception of "massive electronic RPG's" (like Oblivion) that are just trying to recreate the tabletop RPG in a new medium.

What I'm getting at is that for a corporate culture that grows up around the idea of balancing a game within a confined space, many of those mental tools and rules of thumb they've established for themselves will not apply well to a game existing within an infinite time and space. I see that it's a problem in their thinking about Encounters. Does everyone remember that article where WotC claims to have "discovered" that encounters don't always happen in one room, but an encompass several rooms, as monsters react to sounds and sights they can perceive? Did anyone else read that and go "Huh? We've been doing that since the 70's; where have you been?" Their thinking has expanded a bit now (yay! progress!), but they're still thinking too small. Like drunks looking under the lamplight, they can't model an infinite game space, so they don't bother looking for ways to design a game that works well in one.

I trust that someone at WotC is aware of this though, and caries around a little card to remind himself that D&D is not like the other games they design for. Hopefully this will help them realize which game elements can be mathed and modelled, and which ones should be more "emulationist." This will create a game that can scale from small-party dungeon clearing to world-shaking events (as any campaign claiming to be "Epic" should).

I understand what you're saying here Irda Ranger, but, when the dice hit the table, I'm not so sure that this is really true. Yes, the game can potentially do anything, but, I'm thinking that there is a very large space where most gamers work inside of.

For example, most D&D games won't let my PC develop an M1 tank for example. Nor could I invent an airplane or, usually, an internal combustion engine. Most DM's won't allow for gunpowder, although, there is a sizable minority that do, thus we see some nods towards allowing black powder weapons and the like in the game.

Yes, I could use that Plane Shift spell to jaunt into whatever plane, but, unless the DM has some reason for me to do so, I'm not likely going to do it. It's not like I'm going to show up at the gaming table tomorrow and say, "Hey, let's blow off this adventure and go lark around in the Abyss for a while." If I give my DM the heads up, he might get around to setting an adventure in the Abyss, but, most DM's aren't going to wing that.

Are RPG's far more open than traditional games? Certainly. But, I'm not sure if they are really as open as people say they are. There's an awful lot of modules out there that aren't all that incredibly different. Dungeon crawling is still pretty fun. I don't think there's a problem for assuming a certain number of activities that will come up for most groups and leaving the outliers for later.

 

[Irda Ranger]

There's an awful lot of modules out there that aren't all that incredibly different.

Ergo why I either don't play pre-written modules, or only use them as a basis to further development.

I don't think there's a problem for assuming a certain number of activities that will come up for most groups and leaving the outliers for later.

If you mean "Stormwrack 4E can wait", agreed. My concern is that a rule will be developed that hurts the ability to scale the game to new "non-dungeon crawl" adventures later.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Beauty is math...

Sort of... math is beauty and insanity. But the beautiful kind of insanity.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Scribble]

Hmm. Doesn't this part of the quoted article seem to describe exactly what the 4e designers are doing with classes (making each class be able to do what the others can do--disarm traps, heal, fight with equivalent BAB, etc.) and to be highly critical of this approach?

I think it's the opposite really.

I kind of think 3e fell into that trap actually. The idea was to make it so if it could be done by something/someone in the game, then your character was able to do it.

What was the Rogue? Just a specialist in something everyone could already do. He had a lot of skills.

The Paladin was just a fighter and a cleric basically...

It's one thing I think that was sort of missing from the earlier editions. In 1e and 2e when you were a thief, it meant something all together. (You were the one that could pick locks, climb walls, move silently...) Not just that you were better at something then other people.

In 4e I think they're mixing the two ideals.

They're trying to consolidate the system, but make what each type of character can DO with the system unique, and special. (like a special little snowflake.. awwww....)


The Paladin will smite.

The Rogue will strike.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Note that if it’s trivial to use multiple colors, or if different colors have nothing unique about them, you don’t have a color wheel (except maybe artistically). Also note that your players and your more junior designers will want to push in the direction of making it easier to use multiple colors, and letting each color have the cool things the other ones have. Don’t succumb.

In regards to Irda Ranger's concern, I think the answer is that sometimes, for artistic reasons, the lead designer has to succomb in precisely the way the engineer tells him not to. OTOH, it's better to make a conscious decision to buck what the engineer tells you, rather than to just get wildly "creative". As I've said in other topics (and other forums), my concern about 4E is that it will be "overly engineered" to the point where the artistic concerns of playing a wide open RPG are stifled. Sometimes, the guy with the creative, gut idea is incredibly correct--and his insight is to see what engineering will plod along and eventually confirm about D&D 7E.

Engineering of the game should be full-bore, all encompassing, no stone left unturned. The artistic guys should likewise be giving the engineers fits. Then someone at the top has to balance the two .