Apparently Monte Cook thinks we're assholes.
Post from Zak S' blog about balancing options by making their overuse boring.
He talks about a hypothetical equipment write up for a musical instrument where if you pass a minor dex check you get a bonus on cha checks with npcs who can appreciate music.
This is of course a very simplistic write up, but it fits Zak's high DM Fiat gaming style which is fine for a hobbyist who writes gaming stuff primarily for his own group.
He talks about how we're terrible people because we'd think it's horribly unbalanced (ok, not us specifically, but people who think that way) and says that it's balanced because if everyone takes it it becomes boring.
This is of course not balance, but disincentivization. Two entire different things which occasionally perform similar functions. I maintain that if you're going to write up musical instruments this way, then every character who cares about social interaction should take one, boring or no, because maximizing your chances of success is something people would realistically do, especially if the result of failure might be death.
None of this is particularly notable, because we all know that Zak S designs in a very different way from people here, and kind of thinks everyone who posts here is a jackass (myself included if only because of this post).
What's notable is Monte Cook's comment:
So basically, Numenera was designed by a man who thinks it's appropriate to ask people to pay money for a ruleset he designed based on his and his friends' circle jerk groupthink and that anyone who wants solid rules must be an asshole.Monte Cook wrote:"Now the people who'd say this are awful."
Exactly. This is the sort of second guessing, look out of lawyers and loopholes kind of design I just don't want to do anymore. The epiphany actually came to me in the middle of a panel at a convention. Someone was asking a bullshitty question about some crazy loophole that no one I'd ever let in a game would consider and I said, "I don't want to design games for assholes anymore." It was supposed to be one of the defining hallmarks of 5e, but I don't know if that happened. But it is basically where the philosphy for the Numenera rules came from.
I kind of wonder what Monte and Zak think of chess players given their opinion of people who want solid rules for rpgs.