Recently I have been involved in a few mini-debates about society and individualism and how the two interrelate. Forgive me for this being fairly U.S.-centered, though there are certain gloabl elements that permeate the concept.
I remember in the "good old days" when some classes were "better" than others, though each had a niche. I also remember the challenges faced were often quite harsh (lots of Save or Die effects), and even the rules often simply left things to DMs to adjudicate, which could also be quite severe ("You're dead").
Outside the gaming world, this concept was mirrored in sporting events and movies and everyay life. The world seemed a bit more survival of the fittest, where as a child, one was encouraged to do one's best, adn to be both a good loser adn a gracious winner, as applicable. These were certainly my childhood influences, and there was a fairly large amount of competition in everyday life.
In recent decades, I have noticed a trend toward "fairness" and what I'll call delineation (essentially making lists that rank things, all sorts of things, everything). It seems we simultaneously want to make sure there is a level playing field for all, and exactly how good everyone is at something.
To the first point, witness how many kid's sport leagues either do not keep score, or give everyone a trophy or have rules spelling out exactly how much or how little playing time must be given to each player. On the flip side, many sports can no longer end in a tie; when we keep score, we must know who is better.
To draw a parallel with DnD, recent editions have worked to make every class equal, and there is a wealth of published opinion and analysis of exactly how "balanced" each class is. There is also now a severe recommendation of how to parse encounters, and what EL each "should" be. Additionally, there are now far fewer oportunities to die; how many spells or poisons have Save or Die effects now? Only a handful, and apparently even those are being phased out.
It seems that the game designers are striving for exact parity among options and guidelines to make things seem risky, but not too risky, which to me seems to mimic a charge I have heard leveled about U.S. (and to a greater extent, U.K.) society. Sciety wants to push a quasi nanny-state where there is little true risk and where everyone is pretty much the same. People can express themselves differently, but should not be capable of achieving much more or less than others.
So am I calling 4E a socialist plot? No, I am just curious how changing societal mores affect our leisure habits. I would also question how the "socialization" of a game purportedly about a small group of individual heroes affects the entertainment value, and whether one's perception of individualism colors that judgement. Anyone else interested in what is probably a far too intense examination of "just a game"?
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I disagree with you both on the general level (how society has evolved) and the special (how the game has evolved). In the interest of sparing this board another long, off-topic discussion, i will not go into any detail about the former, but only briefly cover the later.
The game is, and never really has been, intra-group competition. There have been (sorry) twits who have tried to play it this way, but cooperation between members of a group/warband/whatever has always been more or less assumed. Therefore, its really never been about "who is best". The focus on balancing classes against each other comes from the very simple reasoning that its not much fun for the "best" if there are five other "best" right next to him - thus making multiple sweet spots necessary, simply to make sure people are enjoying the game as much as they can, and thus keep buying products.
I'll touch this when I find my trusty 10' pole.
The game is, and never really has been, intra-group competition.
I presume you meant "isn't", but no worries, I make a lot of typoes too. I really did not mean to imply that the players compete against each other (though we do know people who play that way). You are correct in that it is a cooperative game. But a good game generally isn't about simply who deals the most damage or who is the best. The best games I have played in have allowed each person to shine.
To give an example, my previous DM was exceptional at working each character's backstory into the plot, and he designed his games so that there were story arcs where each character was the star for a few sessions. This combined with encounters calling for different skill sets allowed each person to contribute and be the "hero" on a regular basis. Some adventures called for spellslingers, some called for gritty combat, some for stealth, and so on.
Of course, that has often been the case with DnD. Different scenarios call for different skill sets. SOme skill sets may be used more often than others, meaning that a character with those skills might be "better" in the game. My point is that in earlier editions, there wasn't a lot of emphasis on each character being equally good in combat or equal to every other character. Much of the fun was seeing how those characters could work together to defeat an enemy and what unusual talents could be brought to bear. I bet an level by level analysis of each character type in 1st edition would reveal gross inequities of "power", but I also know a lot of people had fun with different character types, and a lot of people preferred one type, mainly for its role, not its power.
In today's edition, it seems there is a very strong emphasis on making sure each character type is equal at every step along the way. One could look at many of those character optimization threads on other boards, or look to games like WoW, where patches are continually released tweaking power levels of each type. I furhter surmise that this emphasis on equality has to do with the pervading sense of a need for enforced equality throughout society.
It would not be off-topic to speculate on why, since I believe games often reflect society. DnD developed from wargames which were quite popular in post-WWII cold war society. With the dispersal of that threat, and the emphasis on sheltering and entertaining children, I believe there was a concurrent shift in our gaming. I am quite curious as to your reasons for disagreeing with me, and would gladly entertain the debate here. I'll even try to be less long-winded. :)
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Good posts Stick and good topic. There is definitely something socialist with the way the game is being structured now. As D&D is a simulation of a fantasy life and not a board game like chess or checkers I am against all roles being equal. I think the classes perform well at different times. The classic example is wizards and fighters. At low level the fighter shines and the wizard fears for his life then it changes at higher levels. This is why there are so many notable high-level wizard NPCs but few fighters and demographically so many low level fighters but few wizards. Eh. Who knows.
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I think it's an interesting intellectual exercise, but little else (and that sounds way more condescending than I intend it). Everything you mentioned can easily be marginalized by a serial snapshot of Western history from a cyclical viewpoint. Today's issues are nothing new, historically--there may be, selectively, more of the same issues, simply because there are more people, but we notice seemingly-more issues because we are now effectively in view of each other, real-time, 24-7; all this does is accelerate the historical cycle. What I think 4e will look like isn't indicative of a global, or at least cultural, trend, but it might be said to be inclusive of the gradual cyclic return within Western culture.
First, thanks Benoist and mortellan for seeing something similar to what I have observed. I certainly believe there is a correlation between leisure activities and societal values. I am also grateful for those who disagree adding their ideas. I do consider this primarily an intellectual exercise.
I am curious about the serial snapshot of Western history, though. I agree there are cyclical evolutions of societies, but I cannot recall any industrialized societies with no rivals with an emphasis on fairness coming from all strata. I am also curious when in the past there has been an obsession with games of chance being scrupulously fair for all parties, and when all competition was viewed as between equals. Rather than get into a give-and-take evaluation of past societies, I would suggest that perhaps Western society has grown so large (or perhaps dense would be a better term), that just maybe a new(ish) phenomenon is taking place. I used socialism as a descriptive term, due to the focus on equality of all, but I hardly believe 4e is truly Socialist.
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I think the best way to sum it up is that today's generation of kids are more spoiled than ever. So if you are making a game targeted at them (and 4th edition definitely is), then you have to make sure that everyone's character is equal, there is very little risk of death or other setbacks, and they need to pwn everything they see with little difficulty and little need to stop to rest. Since every class needs to be balanced, they all need 30 levels of powers, which means that there is precious little space in the first PHB for classes and races. So many core classes are left out, so they can conveniently charge you again for PHBII to get the rest of the game. That's basically how 4.0 is shaping up. It's bad news all around.
Don't hold back, tell us what you really think! :D
But it's not a "socialist" shift, it's more of a "create and feed an addiction" shift. By emphasizing "balance" and "fun" over everything else, you create a kind of "high" which leads to, really a kind of product addiction - and a power escalation within the game, unfortunately.
Wait, you have an issue with the game being focused on "fun?" Isn't that the "point" of the "game?"
This also speaks to the main issue here. I disagree that the move to balance the classes and the game in general is a negative. Ultimately, we (the players) are sitting down once a week to have some fun. I find that it is (much) less fun to sit and watch one player mop up all the challenges because his class is overpowered. The goal of balancing classes is to encourage a spread among the players' choices (instead of a clumping on the one "best" class), ultimately leading to a diverse party. Remember, balanced doesn't mean "identical," and there are certainly still niche activities for each class (traps and locks for rogues, healing for clerics, etc.) As to the idea of EL and "appropriate" encounters, remember that the DM is supposed to be having fun, too, which happens when s/he challenges the party without swamping it so that a story or adventure can be told collectively, not as a competition. It only makes sense to work out an easy system to help this happen.
As a High School teacher, I have to disagree with the statement that today's kids are more (or less) spoiled than generations in the past. Certainly, their interests are different, and WotC is (wisely) adapting its product to account for this.
I agree that there are some societal leanings towards shifting away from competition and scorekeeping, which fails our kids in some ways (this is one we are moving towards making interscholastic sports mandatory at my school). It is extremely valuable to learn to win and lose gracefully. The shift I see in D&D, however, is towards spreading fun equally and preventing frustration.
o
Working at a summer camp with 8 - 10 year olds we had a tough time getting several of them to be gracious winners and losers. They would always argue with judges' calls and would exclaim how 'unfair' it was. We tried to encourage an ethos of trying one's best, but being congratulatory towards one's opponents.
I agree that 3E (and hopefully 4E) are just plain more fun in less time than 2E, and I like that (3E compares favourably with Basic D&D in my experience, at least at low levels). I like being able to judge monsters and PCs on a comparable scale, and I enjoy getting to use more abilities and powers. It's less of a slog than 2E used to be... but YMMV.
SHOULDN'T mean "identical" - but, at least just before the shift to 3.5, the Living Campaigns I was involved with (LC, LA, and the former Procampur now Legends of the Shining Jewel), it seemed to mean just that - you had basically three characters running around - Magic-User/Fighter, Fighter/Cleric or - more common, Rogue/Fighter. Yes, they had different classes in the mix, but the feats and functions - and even STATS - were so close as to be interchangeable; character NAMES didn't even mean anything.
Inetersting that this is your example. It turns out that the Fighter is one of the least "balanced" classes in the game and the one in the most need of some retooling (which I believe it gets in 4th Ed.). As a fellow gamer once told me, "You're a fool not to pick up at least one level of fighter, just for the hit points and feat." I note that all your examples are Fighter/--. The goal of balancing is to get away from the identical characters and provide an impetus for diversity.
As you mentioned, the focus of the game is the party, but I think that requiring a rogue, a cleric, a fighter, and a wizard in every party leads to monotony, boredom, and players leaving to play video games! If my players want to run a party made up entirely of sorcerers, why not? With balanced classes, it might be possible.
I agree that D&D is more work to for the DM, but I think it's actually more fun, too. You get to tell the story you want, know what's going on behind the scenes, play many characters instead of just one, etc.
Ultimately, though, we've gotten away from the discussion of the OP. We can argue the effectiveness and utility of balancing classes and CR, but the point is that the designers developed the concepts to increase everyone's fun, not, IMHO, because society is moving toward a neo-fascist-egalitarian model in which everyone is forced to be equal and no one ever loses (my exaggeration).
o
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Wait, you have an issue with the game being focused on "fun?" Isn't that the "point" of the "game?"
I think we can all agree that the point of a game is to have fun.
What has changed, it seems to me, is how the fun is achieved, and the expectations it creates from those participating to the game. On that side of things, there's been a definite shift during the last 30 years.
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Ah, but they're balancing the POWER; the original game tried to balance their UTILITY, making it essential for everyone to work together as a team (and requiring most or all "core" classes to be represented in play); the current rules essentially make it a "collection of individuals" not a "team" (unless the DM or players FORCE the issue).
Giving people specific niches in which they work, and from which they cannot really branch out is the superior approach?
You darned commie!
When I DM i make sure the party is 'balanced' otherwise you have one character marching around doing everything. If the party is balanced then the rogue is the best trapmonkey and sneak, the cleric is the best healer and undead-botherer, the fighter is the best combatant and athlete, the mage is the top problem-solver and artillery.
If you have an unbalanced party then the badass characters takeover other characters' roles; leading to bored, frustrated players.
As for comparing to earlier systems - ThacO and suchlike were so unwieldy that any possible superiority in defining roles or whatever is not about to tempt me back.
DND was an anachronism even when it was released, it holds no great mirror to society. I'm not sure i really recognise the world of the OP anyway. Kids today are expected to grow-up faster and harder than I ever had to.
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Wait, you have an issue with the game being focused on "fun?" Isn't that the "point" of the "game?"
Hello, Arcesilaus. It's nice to see fellow teachers here.
I'm an unofficial "old coot," having been playing AD&D since 1980. For me as a player, the best, most memorable campaign moments have happened when my character hasn't been having a lot of "fun," as the folks over at Wizards are defining it.
Levelling up is fun. Buying magic items is fun. So let's do them a lot.
But memorable? Those have been the times when a character has died, or been imperilled at the mercy of a single die roll, because of either heroic or foolish decisions. It's been the aftermath of a climactic fight that resolved something major in a long-running campaign.
Rather than fight-fight(fireball)-fight(sneak atack)-fight-fight(charm), I'm become a big fan of the sessions that look like plan-plan-plan-compile-execute.
Nobody else has to agree with me. But I do feel that the emphasis on maximizing the short-term fun, and minimizing the dreary planning and dreadful "roll-well-or-die" experiences, is marginalizing my experience.
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Levelling up is fun. Buying magic items is fun. So let's do them a lot.
But memorable? Those have been the times when a character has died, or been imperiled at the mercy of a single die roll, because of either heroic or foolish decisions. It's been the aftermath of a climactic fight that resolved something major in a long-running campaign.
These are my most memorable experiences with the old editions of the game as well. When I ran OD&D for the first time and all the characters got killed by a ghoul in B1, when all our party died in a AD&D2 DragonLance game because we were too trusty towards a mischievous NPC...
I remember most fondly the very first game sessions I played solo with my cousin as the DM. He was running me through T1 - The Village of Hommlet (AD&D 1E), and I had five of six characters die before one made it to level 2. That day was a real achievement to me. I was really, really proud of myself. The lethal sessions I played previously were not frustrating at all. On the contrary: they were quite fun! That was the danger of the game to see my character die because of my lack of planning, or because of unforeseen events. When I made it to level 2, I could really say that I made it because of "me", the player, how I played my character, and so on: that was a real reward.
Today, this notion of "fun" is all but gone from the rulebooks. You can still play D&D that way, for sure, but that's definitely not how the designers define the fun of the game these days.
Ah, but they're balancing the POWER; the original game tried to balance their UTILITY,
Thank you; that is a far more eloquent expression of one of hte points I was trying to make.
One thought that recently occurred to me is that perhaps we are seeing a cycle shift back to DnD roots, but with the quantification and gality that are today's values. The original game was developed from wargames adn required strategy to defeat enemies. It appears many of the rules changes are being made for the sake of combat encounters, so that all characters are equal in combat.
Why the emphasis on combat? I suppose straight up combat encounters are the "easiest" way to play DnD (and coincidentally relate directly to games like WoW). It is also the "easiest" way to judge a character's power level.
I remember in the 90s, AD&D underwent a paradigm shift where role-playing was strongly emphasized, to the point where some campaigns were held in which combat was very rare. I think this idea filtered into 3e design, with the development of skills and non-combat feats. Guidleines were established to encourage and reward RP, and many designers suggested giving story awards rather than simply XP for defeating an enemy. Even the language changed, to "Defeating" and enemy rather than killing him.
However, I also believe it is very difficult to codify story awards and develop rules to reward role-play. At some point, the suggestions turn into RAW law, and the game tells one how to role-play. Perhaps 4e is moving back to more combat-based encounters (the delve format, etc.) and working to develop egalitarian combat rules, while leaivng all the RP to DMs. Essentially, it does seem to mirror WoW, where the "important" stuff is defeating monsters, but players RP on their own, when they are so inclined.
As for my personal opinion, I again see a lot of emphasis on ensuring each character is an equal-opportunity killing machine, and if the game is merely about a collection of individuals, then perhaps this is for the best. I prefer to play as a "team", though sometimes with very individual activities. I also think I am very much an outlier, as I categorize myself as a Role-Playing Tactician. It appears the new edition is headed, as CEBRown pointed out, toward being a game for individuals, and not so much for a group, unless the players make an effort to be a group.
Gyah... TOO many points to comment on...
Agreed.
I will say this, the players in my group mostly date back to 1e/2e. As a result, the idea of each player needing a specific amount of individual gear in 3.5 does not work well. Instead, gear goes to who needs so that they can best help the party.
As a reuslt of trying to balance classes in 3.5 across the board, some odd imbalances occur. For example, in my current AOW game, the battle dancer does less damage than the ninja/sorcerer. This is one case where the inidividual class XP tables of 1e/2e allowed for a better variance of power (at the expense of easy multiclassing) that 3.5 does not allow.
I am not advocating the older system, rather I think a lot of the changes that were made in 3.0/3.5 (an now 4.0) were done so to prevent players from feeling left out. Unfortunately, any some cases it created just that effect.
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The thing with magic items is that you just can't control who gets what, because the players decide for themselves. Unless you cut down on the availability of items by making them class or race specific, you just can't put a sticker on an item saying "it's for the bard, not you, fighter!"
That's why incidentally, there can't be a perfect balance of the game just through its rules' design (the very concept, in fact, is absurd).
That's part of the shift in the nature of the rules of D&D too, by the way: this notion that balance might be achievable by the rules-as-written, thus excluding the whole interactive aspect of the game, the fact that the game is about people around a game table, that these people and the way they interact with each other has a HUGE impact on the balance of the game itself. The balance of the rules plays just a small part in the balance of the game.
That notion too is all but gone today.
I think this idea filtered into 3e design, with the development of skills and non-combat feats.
I think those came about because every other game of note had them except for D&D, which was largely seen as 'all combat all the time' since that was the only way you had to advance your character unless you had a GM that gave out XP for roleplaying or completing story goals or finding a way to solve the problem without slaughtering things by the dozen.
I remember well one game in 'the early days' where we did something different: we snuck into a kobold lair or something, retrieved the Dingus and made it back to town without a single casualty on either side. It was tense, fun and interesting RP. At the end of the session we found we'd be getting no XP for six hours worth of RP because we didn't kill any kobolds. Certainly a bad way of doing things, but I'd say that was probably typical.
The emphasis on class balance isn't so much a social shift or devolving from aberrant nanny-state (I started to ask if you were Nisarg; he's the only person I've ever heard use that term seriously) silliness as it is a realization that it's a bad thing that one or two classes come to so totally dominate play that everyone else is punished for not particularly caring about playing a wizard or cleric or whatever. If I want to play a figher, I shouldn't wind up sidelined at 12th level watching the wizard clean up the battlefield with his mass AOE spells and then playing his meat-shield when he screws up and takes on something he can't handle alone.
Sploooooorrrrrrtttttccccchhhhhhh!