3.5X Edition's Biggest Design Problem

[Josh_Kablack]

1146627433[/unixtime]] More likely, they'd try to crank as much stuff out as possible in an effort to milk the market while it's still hot.

As a matter of fact, the path to gaming "success" in the 20th century was something like this:

1. Invent a great game
2. Have it rejected by publishers
3. Self-publish (or have a friend publish) and distribute for a few years (in some cases decades)
4. Get bought out by Hasbro (sometime you get bought out by someone who later got bought out by Hasbro

This is the short version of what happened with all of the following games:

Monopoly
Scrabble
Yahtzee
Gettysburg (and other Avalon Hill games)
Magic: The Gathering (this one is unique in that is was actually sold to a game publisher the first time around)
Dungeons and Dragons

[Crissa]

Now, getting bought by Hasbro is a valid business model - games only sell really well while they are 'new' and 'hot' - so there is a limited growth time. Hasbro at least keeps the existing products on the market; either by publishing themselves, or licensing to those who can make a profit doing so.

But RPGs are about a balanced game, and game design for an RPG is the same as game design for the rules and core of any game. This takes a combination of math, number science, and creative writing - a bit of art, and a bit of non-art.

While there are a 'few' companies which manage to spend alot of money and make a product they can be proud of - and Bell Labs still exists, by the way, they make money off of patents instead of actual products - they are the minority, and once they miss a cycle or their investors need/want their money back ahead of the cycle, they're done for.

Why do you think the largest companies are not the companies which put out the best practices and products?

-Crissa

(please don't tell me games aren't mass-market like video games. More people have a game in their home than a video console by a long shot, and even roleplaying games are everywhere... From training setups which cost thousands of dollars to little kiddy games. The core of the hobby-game is dwindling, yes, but it powers a much larger market.)

[RandomCasualty]

1146685829[/unixtime]]
(please don't tell me games aren't mass-market like video games.

Classical games are mass market. Board games like monopoly or chess, and card games like poker. RPGs are not.

I mean lets face it, they're just not mainstream. There's a lot more D&D exposure than ever before, but you just don't see huge followings for D&D. It's still a relatively small niche hobby.

People from all sorts of walks of life can regularly play and enjoy video games. D&D is generally pretty much played by the nerdy crowd. There was a time when video games were that way, but I think that pretty much changed with the mass market appeal of consoles.

[fbmf]

1146687614[/unixtime]]

People from all sorts of walks of life can regularly play and enjoy video games. D&D is generally pretty much played by the nerdy crowd. There was a time when video games were that way, but I think that pretty much changed with the mass market appeal of consoles.

As I often tell my co-workers, the preferred term is geek, not nerd.



Game On,
fbmf

[power_word_wedgie]

1146685829[/unixtime]]But RPGs are about a balanced game, and game design for an RPG is the same as game design for the rules and core of any game. This takes a combination of math, number science, and creative writing - a bit of art, and a bit of non-art.

Actually, I wouldn't even put balance as one of the top three customer requirements for a RPG. The top three are:

1) Game is of Customer Interest: In fact, the game topic has got to be of significant interest that the customer is willing to spend the money to buy the game. "Engineers in the Office" RPG isn't going to do well.

2) Fun: Once the person has bought the game, they've got to have fun playing the game. After a while, if people notice that, though the game topic looks interesting, that your gaming company follows it up with a boring game, then people will stop buy the product "for the box" so to speak.

3) Price: Yeah, a game may gain a customer's interest and be fun, but if it involves a $500 initial investment and $250 of monthy royalties to continue to play the game, not many people are going to buy the game.

Really, for RPGs, balance is really more of a "should-have" than a "must-have." In traditional board games, game balance is a "must-have." In RPGs, players interact as a group to overcome challenges that they run across and thus balance, while it is definitely nice to have, really isn't mandatory. In traditionals board games, it is a competition between the various players and thus you have to start the players are the same level or at least have different victory conditions to balance the game.

[Crissa]

Balance is a must-have if you want your game to last on the market longer than a cycle.

Putting aside D&D, which games were printed in 1985 which were also printed in 2005?

Hero, Gurps, and Palladium. Now, admittedly the last one actively skips the 'balance' question by putting it outside of character creation, but the two prior are dedicated to balance.

It really is a 'should-have'. All the games which becomes classics - from board games to power-fantasy RPGs (which are what we play) - have a sense of balance.

And that's what was in 3.0 that's missing from 3.5. There's not even an attempt to balance; or even explain what belongs between the highly unpowerful of the various ECLs and the core wizard and druid.

-Crissa

[dbb]

I think you're really saying the same thing, honestly.

If a game is not "balanced" to a playable degree, it's very likely that the game will not be "fun" over the long term. Sure, it may be fun in the short term for the people who win -- as 3.x has been enormous fun for druids and wizards -- but ultimately that gets boring even for the "winners".

The problem can be delayed for quite a while by making the game sufficiently complex to master that it isn't easily or quickly recognized where the imbalances are. (Hero, for instance, actually maintains a fair number of legacy imbalances -- the canonical one being that bricks get a much better bargain for their points than energy projectors or martial artists do -- but the game system is sufficiently compex that it takes considerable expertise to separate those points out from the context of the individual games they appear in.)

--d.

[RandomCasualty]

1146705132[/unixtime]]
The problem can be delayed for quite a while by making the game sufficiently complex to master that it isn't easily or quickly recognized where the imbalances are. (Hero, for instance, actually maintains a fair number of legacy imbalances -- the canonical one being that bricks get a much better bargain for their points than energy projectors or martial artists do -- but the game system is sufficiently compex that it takes considerable expertise to separate those points out from the context of the individual games they appear in.)

Honestly, I'd say D&D falls into this category too.

The fact is that most groups never figure out about polymorph abuse because it's too complex to read. I still recall the one time a wizard in my game tried to shapechange into a dragon of some kind, and then concluded that shapechange sucked.

[power_word_wedgie]

1146705132[/unixtime]]I think you're really saying the same thing, honestly.

If a game is not "balanced" to a playable degree, it's very likely that the game will not be "fun" over the long term. Sure, it may be fun in the short term for the people who win -- as 3.x has been enormous fun for druids and wizards -- but ultimately that gets boring even for the "winners".

The problem can be delayed for quite a while by making the game sufficiently complex to master that it isn't easily or quickly recognized where the imbalances are. (Hero, for instance, actually maintains a fair number of legacy imbalances -- the canonical one being that bricks get a much better bargain for their points than energy projectors or martial artists do -- but the game system is sufficiently compex that it takes considerable expertise to separate those points out from the context of the individual games they appear in.)

--d.

Really, it's enormous funs for those who lose at the power curve as well. My three favorite classes to play are rogue, sorcerer, and fighter. None of those classes even comes close to being the most powerful classes. I like the rogue because the skill selection allows me to carve together a unique character. I love the sorcerer because I love playing spell-casters that blast their way and only have to keep track of a limited amount of spells. I love the fighter because they're easy to set up and you know your tricks. Thus, really it is more about what a person considers to be fun versus what their character's relative power is. To say that a player can only have fun playing clerics and druids because they are ahead on the power curve is a fallacy IMHO. And in fact part of the reasoning may be part of the complexity that you mentioned earlier.

[dbb]

Sure, it's not only fun for clerics and druids. It's just that the Big Three are the classes that are most likely to be "fun" for the people who play them -- in the sense of being effective characters -- because they cover more of the spectrum of character effectiveness.

If you're playing in a game with a Halfling Fighter and a multiclassed half-elven Cleric/Wizard and a half-orc Bard, you'll probably be an effective character by that standard whatever it is you do. And if you don't care about being an effective character at all, you'll have fun as long as you do whatever it is you do care about.

But I think Crissa is ultimately correct to say that balance is important, because over the long term and over the total population of RPG players, a game which is strongly imbalanced will run into more situatations where some of the players aren't able to both do what they think is fun, and also play effective characters. Balance isn't the only important thing -- but it is important.

--d.

[power_word_wedgie]

1146700977[/unixtime]]Balance is a must-have if you want your game to last on the market longer than a cycle.

Putting aside D&D, which games were printed in 1985 which were also printed in 2005?

Hero, Gurps, and Palladium. Now, admittedly the last one actively skips the 'balance' question by putting it outside of character creation, but the two prior are dedicated to balance.

However, without having (a) a game that will interest the public, (b) fun, or (c) price, you aren't even going to last a market cycle. Game store aren't even going to want to carry your Engineer RPG or your extremely balanced RPG at $1000 a pop for the core rule book. And, like you said, Palladium is wickedly unbalanced to the core and it's been around for a while.

So, I agree that you "should" try to be balanced, but really you can be successful with your RPG game without balance. It will be more difficult, but balance isn't an absolute requirement.

As for the assessment of 3.0 being balanced and 3.5 is not, I'll just say that I'll agree to disagree. The cleric was the big boy on the block then and now in terms of power - heck with the buff spells alone they more powerful then than now.

[power_word_wedgie]

1146706863[/unixtime]]Sure, it's not only fun for clerics and druids. It's just that the Big Three are the classes that are most likely to be "fun" for the people who play them -- in the sense of being effective characters -- because they cover more of the spectrum of character effectiveness.

If you're playing in a game with a Halfling Fighter and a multiclassed half-elven Cleric/Wizard and a half-orc Bard, you'll probably be an effective character by that standard whatever it is you do. And if you don't care about being an effective character at all, you'll have fun as long as you do whatever it is you do care about.

But I think Crissa is ultimately correct to say that balance is important, because over the long term and over the total population of RPG players, a game which is strongly imbalanced will run into more situatations where some of the players aren't able to both do what they think is fun, and also play effective characters. Balance isn't the only important thing -- but it is important.

--d.

You see, that's the whole thing. I'm not trying to be the more effective character - I'm concerned about trying to be the more effective group. I'm just saying that I'm not alone in that assessment. Actually I play clerics all the time because other players in the gaming groups would rather play rogues and fighters. If given a chance, I'd rather play rogues or fighters, but I'm trying to make the group more rounded.

Really, for me, the balance issue really only comes up for NPCs - I'll agree that you can make harder challenges with clerics and druids than any other class.

[dbb]

It's not about being the more effective character -- well, sometimes it is, but not always.

It's about being an effective character at all. The game as it is presents a number of different possible characters, and some of them just aren't any good at various points on the power spectrum. Sometimes that won't be a problem. Sometimes it will. The more unbalanced the game is, the more often it will be. It won't be a problem for everybody and it won't be a problem all the time, but it will be a problem.

--d.

[power_word_wedgie]

Ok, we're not talking about being the "3" Intelligence wizards, we're talking about being sorcerers, rogues, and fighters. Yeah, I fully agree that they're not as powerful as the cleric and druid. But to say that they're not effective at all is one heck of a stretch. Especially when the characters work together in a gaming group as a team.

[dbb]

I'm not saying they aren't effective at all. Here's what I'm saying:

some of them just aren't any good at various points on the power spectrum

That isn't to say that they can't literally do anything whatsoever. They can do something, even if it's just suck up attacks and flail helplessly at monsters until they die. It's just that you'll get a lot more bang for your buck, regardless of what role in the party you're filling, with a different character class.

Or, to put it another way: a group of even modestly optimized characters that consists of three clerics would almost certainly rather have another cleric than, say, a fighter. That's a problem.

--d.

[power_word_wedgie]

But the thing is that you can do better working together as a team. What's as bad as a cleric buffed up? The fighter buffed up by the cleric. Yeah, if I was going through a dungeon only as a fighter or with a group of four fighters, we're going to suffer. But that's not what happens in gaming groups. And really the four cleric group is a fallacy onto itself. On paper, I agree, it looks powerful. It's just that I haven't seen too many groups that employ this tactic. Put another way, how many groups have you gamed with where everyone was a cleric in the group? Do individuals in your gaming group never play rogues, sorcerers, or fighters any longer?

[Hey_I_Can_Chan]

Game store aren't even going to want to carry your Engineer RPG or your extremely balanced RPG at $1000 a pop for the core rule book.

Why not?

See, for $1,000 a pop, the game is going to be superhuman in its production values, playtested like mad, and be, generally, quite spiffy.

For $1,000 it becomes an investment--like a car or a computer--that you will use to have fun and let you do things the way you want to do them.

I just counted the books on my 3.0 and 3.5 fantasy game shelf. I have 53 that cost me more than $20. That means I've paid over $1,000 to make this system go. Unfortunately, I bought a used car from my sneaky, deaf Uncle Willy for $60 and I've had to spend another $1,000 trying to get it run right. And it still doesn't work. And Uncle Willy's still trying to sell me a new bumper while I'm screaming at him that the car can only go above 40 MPH heading downhill.

[Josh_Kablack]

1146700977[/unixtime]]
Putting aside D&D, which games were printed in 1985 which were also printed in 2005?

Hero, Gurps, and Palladium.

I'd like to point out that HERO has gone through two major ownership changes since 1985, and it technically wasn't being published as a comprehensive system - it was only being used as the engine for a number of games (Much like Storyteller or d20 today).

So while you're not wrong, it appears that SJGames and Palladium have had the longest running success in the industry and anyone wishing for long term viability in the field should probably study their business models. However Palladium seems to currently be going belly up, so that may not be a great example. Anyone care to venture a guess what SJGames has been doing right over the long haul....?

[PhoneLobster]

Game store aren't even going to want to carry your Engineer RPG or your extremely balanced RPG at $1000 a pop for the core rule book.

OK now this is getting silly.

Do you guys seriously think that for instance the mere minor improvement of something like having moderately smarter writers and editors and a bit of functional play testing actually is going to see a 10 or 20 times rise in prices on the shelfs?

3.0 had better testing and writing standards as well as being produced by an otherwise more needlessly inefficient company at the time and it was no more expensive.

I'm going to suggest that with a world wide market as big as the one D&D has now, has had in the past and could potentially have in the future that there is a great deal of room for improvement before the profit margin between the production and the price on the shelf sees anything more than an insignificant dent.

I mean they could totally take on ten or twenty extra staff without blinking. If they can't then they are in WAY more financial trouble than I had imagined, or that any competant company in their enviable monopoly position should be.

Alternately, as I said they could do things like take their existing expenditure and you know, require their writers to sit down for like oh gee a whole DAY OR TWO and read the other "current" rule books cover to cover.

Simple improvements like that are cheap to free and I'd like to see them.

[RandomCasualty]

1146715918[/unixtime]]
I mean they could totally take on ten or twenty extra staff without blinking. If they can't then they are in WAY more financial trouble than I had imagined, or that any competant company in their enviable monopoly position should be.

It actually wouldn't be too hard if they wanted to. All they'd have to do is work on only one book at a time. Instead of hiring a bunch of low grade writers, they'd just put all their money into one good writer, someone like Frank, and put their faith in that person to write a good system.

In the long run they wouldn't be spending that much more money on their books, they'd just have less of a selection. Though becuase there are fewer books, this means that more people will be buying the books that are out there.

Honestly most of their problem IMO seems to be employing too many writers at once.

[dbb]

1146714686[/unixtime]]
Anyone care to venture a guess what SJGames has been doing right over the long haul....?

Lots of material, low barriers to entry? You need four other Forgotten Realms books to get full use out of Players Guide to Faerun. You don't need anything other than GURPS to get full use out of GURPS Celtic Myth, and you can get very good use out of it even if you don't have that.

I suppose the corallary is that if you have enough of their sourcebooks, you'll eventually try their core game, and then you'll buy even more of their sourcebooks. It hasn't worked on me -- I have a shelf full of GURPS books but have never owned a copy of the GURPS rules -- but I can see how that could work.

--d.

[Crissa]

1146714686[/unixtime]]I'd like to point out that HERO has gone through two major ownership changes since 1985, and it technically wasn't being published as a comprehensive system - it was only being used as the engine for a number of games (Much like Storyteller or d20 today).

Ownership problems aside, almost every year between those two dates a HERO game could be bought.

The problem that Palladium is facing is that it hasn't put out a new game in several years, and their licensing attempts sadly failed. SJGames continues because it has a dedicated owner (just like HERO's dedicated writers) and publishes based upon demand and desire of their consumer base. (They also publish other things, which bring in money. Risk == Rewards.)

But hey, finally my point hits home - you have paid $1000 for D&D, and what did you buy?

Of course you can find balance with your Fighters, Rogue, Soreror set just as you can with your Wizard, Druid set. But never the twain should meet. And a happy game does not end with, 'I can't let you do that, even if we're reading it right.'

D&D went from RPG back to cops-and-robbers recently, and there's a reason children stop playing games without balanced rules...

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty]

1146777010[/unixtime]]
D&D went from RPG back to cops-and-robbers recently, and there's a reason children stop playing games without balanced rules...

Not cops and robbers. D&D has become Magic: the Gathering. The whole flaw with cops and robbers is that there were no rules. D&D certainly has rules and we know what they are, they're just designed towards creating imbalances.

Basically in magic,you started out playing all sorts of crazy decks, because you weren't quite sure what worked. And it was fun because everyone's deck more or less sucked. Then you started gradually developing better and better decks, until it became apparent that only a few deck archetypes actually worked well enough to be considered competitive. Gradually the game moved from being a casual game among friends to being a cutthroat competition between two brutally efficient killer decks.

And that's where D&D is at right now. There are a select few builds which can compete with other top tier builds. And like M:tG, the more you learn about the game, the more cutthroat and competetive it becomes. With each new set or book that comes out, the game adds more and more options and killer builds become even more potent.

And sometime you long for those innocent days when everything felt more even because people hadn't yet discovered those uber combos. That's how 2nd edition was for me anyway... nobody really knew what they were doing, so you saw people making fun characters as opposed to killer characters. But seriously, I think for all of us, the innocence is gone. We know just way too much about the game to go back to that.

And oddly, a cops and robbers style game, where the rules are flexible and non-concrete, tends to promote most people to roleplay more than a well defined crunchy game. Simply because the C&R style game can maintain the rules innocence of its players. Though like C&R games like that can really devolve into arguing matches if someone feels the DM is treating them unfairly. Since those are fundamentally DM games.

Though it does sometimes ask the question,

"Do codified rules actually make RPGs more fun?"

[Desdan_Mervolam]

There is a very big, very important difference between Magic and D&D: Magic is competitive, D&D is not. There is a pressure to have at least one cheesy power deck in your box among the vanity and theme decks because if nothing else, every once in a while, you want to win. D&D is different because there really isn't a way to win, and seeing the game as a competition against the DM or other players is one of the few ways you can not be playing the game right. You don't HAVE to play characters based on cheesy power combos or rules loop hopping because the power of your enemies is supposed to be based upon the power of your party.

-Desdan

[Username17]

Not cops and robbers. D&D has become Magic: the Gathering. The whole flaw with cops and robbers is that there were no rules. D&D certainly has rules and we know what they are, they're just designed towards creating imbalances.

Do we?

A Druid transfforms into a Dire Wolf, what happens?
Now she turns into a Giant Octopus, what happens?

Lately the rules have become so complex, so contradictory, that I don't think anyone knows what they say or mean. Certainly no living human has actually read all published 3.5 material - it's like the frickin GATT treaty. Noone knows what text might be hidden away somewhere.

Lately people have to start claiming that a surface in difficultterrain is neither a "difficult surface" nor an "obstructed surface". Because that's the only way to make the Knight class not negate his own ability to attack. Natural language has been thrown out the window and basic tasks are no longer resolvable with the basic rules.

WotC latched onto the idea quite some time ago of "balance through ambiguity" - that is that if you answer question two ways, a DM can choose to go with whichever way is less broken. The classic example is Octopus Fu or Dire Wolf Fu, both are broken in different ways - so by having people be able to claim that both are the rules, you can try to make a player figure out how to break it both ways in order to actually break the game.

Which pretty much puts as in Cops and Robbers mode.

-Username17