WoTC_krg posts on game design theory

[Scholar & Brutalman]

(To moderators - not sure where to post this.)

I've only just read some of Robert Gutschera's (WotC_krg) Gleemax blog. He's a mathematician that's employed by Wizards R&D development. This is tangentially related to 4e - mostly he's talking about MtG - but I found these interesting both from the theory standpoint and from seeing how Wizards R&D tends to think about game balance.


The two Game Developers Conference Costing Talks (Part 1, Part 2) are all about working out costs for items/powers/units in a game. The second talk includes an interesting opinion about class vs point-build RPGs:

Systems like Magic with a good balance between a) and b), so that you can mix and match colors or play with just a single color, are very appealing when done right. They are also very difficult to get right. Balancing a class-based RPG (where you are forced to play a single “color”) is hard enough; balancing a pure point-buy RPG (where you can put any card you like in your “deck”) is very difficult, and has arguably never been done successfully. These systems appear to offer great variety, but in practice tend to degenerate to a single viable character build.

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.

 

[Firevalkyrie]

(To moderators - not sure where to post this.)

I've only just read some of Robert Gutschera's (WotC_krg) Gleemax blog. He's a mathematician that's employed by Wizards R&D development. This is tangentially related to 4e - mostly he's talking about MtG- but I found these interesting both from the theory standpoint and from seeing how Wizards R&D tends to think about game balance.


The two Game Developers Conference Costing Talks (Part 1, Part 2) are all about working out costs for items/powers/units in a game. The second talk includes an interesting opinion about class vs point-build RPGs:

I think he's right. In the point buy system that I'm most familiar with (Mekton Z's MCS), the optimal mecha design goes something like this:

- start with the smallest frame and absolute least number of servos you can get by with.
- Add the heaviest armor those servos will bear, at the highest quality grade the campaign allows (as a Mekton GM, I've basically outlawed Gamma-grade armor on the grounds that it makes any weapon that does less than 8 kills in a single hit absolutely worthless).
- Add the largest gun (or beam weapon, if allowed) that your mek can handle with both hands. If space efficiency is allowed, abuse it to the fullest extent possible, because it's extremely cheap (1/2 construction point per space reduced). Next, add the largest melee or energy melee weapon allowed by your campaign.
- Use the best control system your campaign allows.
- Same with propulsion. If gravitics are available, use them even if you have to reduce your overall move allowance to get them; they have a number of advantages over all other modes of propulsion including lack of fuel and inertialess turning.
- Throw on enough maneuver verniers to reduce your maneuver value to -0.

There is some variation on this optimal design, but not very much.

 

[Scribble]

Thanks for posting this... Reading his blog I think I see where the design theory for 4e comes from, and why a few of the changes are being made.

 

[Irda Ranger]

I think he's right. In the point buy system that I'm most familiar with (Mekton Z's MCS), the optimal mecha design goes something like <snip>

Master of Orion II had a similar problem with its "build your own race" engine and its "build your own ships" engine. Certain combos were so overwhelmingly powerful it wasn't fun. This is why I don't have a problem with "strong archetype" classes. Even if they aren't exactly what you wanted to play, they're usually more fun, and well designed, than anything you can make using a pure point-buy system.

 

[Irda Ranger]

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).

 

[Ahglock]

some point buys have an optimal build, some don't.

Mekton does have an optimal build but its a narrow focus point buy system.

Hero Games there isn't an optimal build because its so open. Not saying its balanced its terribly abusable, but its more like there are a bajillion optimal builds. Its a game that requires more DM intervention on the character creation aspect of the game than any other i have encountered. But it can be worth it, since you can end up with the character you want to a degree that class based systems frequently can't match.

 

[FadedC]

My issue with point based builds is usually that there may be multiple good builds but that often people just seem to have less flavor. Things like a ranger or druid being able to make friends with animals are kind of cool and very much in flavor, but few people are ever going to spend points on that.

 

[KingCrab]

I didn't know they hired Mathematicians. I think I picked the wrong job.

I'm very glad they do have people devoted to balance. It's important to get things right from the beginning (especially since there's not going to be a 4.5).

 

[Corinth]

In theory, RPGs are not things with a confined space of gameplay. In practice, they are- the scenario delineates the borders of gameplay, and to do anything useful you must stay within those boundaries. So yes, you can apply concepts and principles to RPGs; the fact that there is now a full generation of console, PC and now MMORPGs proves that this is indeed the case. (It also proves that a confined gameplay space is what common folk expect, desire and flock to in their gameplay by the millions- of people and dollars.) WotC would be stupid not to play to that fact and their strength.

 

[Orius]

I'd generally assume that having someone do the number crunching is a good thing. Yes, D&D essentially can approach infinity with some of the options available, given the open-ended nature of the game, and the limitlessness of human imagination. But crunching the basic calculations used in most common game situations is probably useful.