TRPG General Chat

6:00 AM

> A similar process applies to elements of the game that might be too good. Are too many players choosing a particular option? Do people who choose that option like it and find it balanced? Do DMs hate some particular rule or game element even as players love it? We’re likely to change something only if players report that it’s too good, if it’s a popular option with players, and if DMs have issues with it.

ok, so it sounds vaguely like they'll release larger-scale errata. Fighter sucks? We'll release... (unclear, either updates for Fighter class to make it not suck, or a class that is like Fighter but doesn't suck)

GMNoob

@JonathanHobbs That's all in the DMG for now. I suspect they will use Dungeon magazine type thing for more extra options.

Magician

@JonathanHobbs Ah, but some people play ~~monk~~ fighter and report they like it, so it must be fine.

GMNoob

@JonathanHobbs From what I gather, it will be a new book called, "Classes that don't Suck", and it will include a new fighter, and other unsucky things.

@Magician It's a funny thing about surveys. You can actually ask people and find out if 20% find it sucky or 80%.

Magician

I remember reading that article's promises of thoroughly playtesting errata and going "As opposed to bloody what?"

doppelgreener

Ok. So. We have two separate things here which I thought were interrelated. (a) D&D 5e wanted to be All The Things. One of its major stated goals from before the playtest even came out was that it would have a core system, and then a suite of stuff you could unplug from it and plug into it. From this, you could turn D&D into basically anything, and play any kind of thing. No sight of that yet. I was dismayed when it didn't really even surface in the playtest, like they'd forgotten about it.

(b) Living Rules, which just means: we'll release errata to fix things, and new material, including possibly classes which supercede and improve upon bad classes by doing the same thing but better. This is what they've always done, though, so it doesn't need a fancy name.

Magician

6:06 AM

@GMNoob The majority of players don't have an understanding or interest in game design and so wouldn't have the first clue whether or not a given element of the game has negative impact on it. Surveys can only take you so far.

doppelgreener

So Living Rules is unrelated to the modular play system goal. Except insofaras they'll be releasing new material, if they release modular systems.

GMNoob

@Magician D&D does not care if something fits into some ivory tower game design ideal. It cares if people are having fun and enjoy the game. That's sort of the whole point. Only a small minority of people care if the rule is ideal, and more care about how the game feels and is fun. This is part of the pushback I get whenever I tried to get numbers behind the game.

@JonathanHobbs Right

@JonathanHobbs It seems you have a different view of what modularity is than me. Read the interview I posted just after the oracle linked the question.

doppelgreener

@GMNoob What is it?

Magician

@GMNoob Fun emerges from the rules. Bad rules hinder fun. Saying "we don't need good rules, we have fun rules" is ignorant, at best.

doppelgreener

@GMNoob That's not an ivory tower game design ideal. That's a practical, reasonable thing to expect from a game. Lots of games achieve it quite well, and it's bad not to. Consider 3e: the game rules allowed you to put a fighter, a monk, and a cleric in the same party. Those same rules mean the cleric will out-fighter the fighter, and the monk might be crap depending on the encounters you face. The DM needs to put in extra work to make sure people maintain having fun. This is bad.

A well-designed game would make everyone feel useful and have fun, and the DM won't have to spend significant amounts of effort to make players not feel worthless compared to that guy gating small armies into the battlefield.

GMNoob

6:12 AM

@magician stop shifting the argument. You said people don't know game design so surveys are useless. People do know if they are having fun or not.

doppelgreener

@GMNoob The point here is: there is a better ideal than "people are having fun." Sure they are, but you also need to have a game design goal of things being fun and good.

4e achieved that goal reasonably well. The classes were pretty close in power levels. (Some sucked.)

Classes shouldn't be shitty. If they're well-designed, that just makes it even easier for people to have fun.

GMNoob

There are more theories on what makes good game design than there are games

doppelgreener

@GMNoob I strongly doubt that

♦ D&D 5e Deconstruction

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