[quote="FrankTrollman]
The problem with this claim is that 4e D&D had the highest number of pre-orders of any D&D book. Some of that is doubtless just the change in internet culture and the way people buy things between 2000 and 2008. But a significant factor has to be that when WotC told people that they were releasing a new edition of D&D with better underlying math, that is a thing that people wanted.
And then the
reality of 4e was that Skill Challenges were a mathematical fail parade and once that became clear to people the sales of the edition sank like a stone. Meaning that bad math killed the edition just as the promise of good math led to strong pre-orders of the same edition.
-Username17[/quote]
Frank, no one isn’t saying the 4E doesnt suck math-wise. Past is past.
The issue is when people start thinking you can sell an RPG based purely or primarily on math. Because seriously 40% of Americans even say outright that they hate math:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/de ... americans/
The first thing a customer sees when they enter a store is the covers. Do you want to turn half of them off by making the cover scream MATH instead of DRAGON?
The first thing a customer asks when talking about a game is generally “is its fun” (aside from “how much?”). Do you really think telling them it has good math answers the question instead of a sincere “Yes I played it before its fun!”
Math is an implicit expectation. It is not ad copy and it does not sell. Themes and art is what moves books.
Now, its true that crunch can affect game experience and that can affect review scores and word of mouth sales. But crunch is only part of the experience. Few people bought The Lord of the Ring boardgame because it looked boring and only had cardboard cards. When Shadows of Camelot came out however people played it because it had plastic catapults and knights.
Bling in fact matters even during play.
Finally, and I think probably most shockingly to Denners, is the reality that most RPG books that are bought are never actually used. The reason why so many books “get away” with bad rules is because the people who buy them rarely end up using them. Most hobby games - boardgames, minis, and RPGs - are often only played once before being forgotten for next month’s new toy.
It is fine from a design perspective to want good math. But from a business perspective using math as an ad copy is marketing suicide, pushing math as a talking point to customers interested in gameplay is obnoxious, and it is a complete denial of the nature of the business to presume that even “crunch” is the most important thing to selling a game. When its played a game is a combined experience, not a math problem. And when it isnt - which is extremely often - its a showpiece. At worst, such a “Math Works” attitude turns into a designer ego problem where they attempt to control and dictate the customers and in the process turn them off your product entirely.