Tab Clear?
Them's fightin' words!
Squeak!
Interestingly, DnD was not mentioned on Hasbro's website. Do they try to disassociate themselves from the brand for some reason?
I didn't know that about Hasbro's site -- how interesting. I'd guess they are keeping D&D (with a slightly controversial history) at arm's length from Hasbro's squeaky-clean family-friendly image.
They probably don't want to be too close if some wackos started convincing people that roleplayers are psychotic devil-worshippers.
"Monopoly? Yeah, that's ours. D&D? Hmmm... I'll get back to you."
I still think my 3.5e = wine and 4e = coke analogy was awesome, even if no one besides me recognizes its brilliance. Someday the grandchildren of everyone posting here will proclaim that I only had one valid insight in my whole stupid life, and this was it... Just you wait.
I think it's brilliant... really :)
Squeak!
I still think my 3.5e = wine and 4e = coke analogy was awesome, even if no one besides me recognizes its brilliance. Someday the grandchildren of everyone posting here will proclaim that I only had one valid insight in my whole stupid life, and this was it... Just you wait.I think it's brilliant... really :)
Squeak!
You are the wind beneath my wings.
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Well, I don't have the same confidence that you have. WotC has a track record of not significantly playtesting high level play, or at least ignoring any perceived problems that turn up in high level play. They did it with 3.0. They did it with 3.5. What makes you think this time will be different? They either push it out the door because they don't have time to fix things before they start working on their next line of splatbooks, or they leave it unfinished intentionally because it sets the stage for a "need" for another edition a few years down the road. If you buy into 4th edition, you are staying on the "New edition, lots of splatbooks, new edition" train. You can stay on it. I'm getting off here.
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Interestingly, DnD was not mentioned on Hasbro's website. Do they try to disassociate themselves from the brand for some reason?I didn't know that about Hasbro's site -- how interesting. I'd guess they are keeping D&D (with a slightly controversial history) at arm's length from Hasbro's squeaky-clean family-friendly image.
They probably don't want to be too close if some wackos started convincing people that roleplayers are psychotic devil-worshippers.
"Monopoly? Yeah, that's ours. D&D? Hmmm... I'll get back to you."
Hasbro Exec: "Don't worry folks. Just think of D&D as our crazy uncle."
Well, I don't have the same confidence that you have. WotC has a track record of not significantly playtesting high level play, or at least ignoring any perceived problems that turn up in high level play. They did it with 3.0. They did it with 3.5. What makes you think this time will be different?
The fact that it was explictly mentioned that one of design goals of 4E was to make the game smoother at high and epic levels.
The fact that it was explictly mentioned that one of design goals of 4E was to make the game smoother at high and epic levels.
Which it's needed for years, of course.
I've felt for years playability started declining by about 12th level, and I've seen claims as low as 7th.
Interestingly, 1e and 2e never got that criticism. I imagine the preponderance of abilities, feats, and powers that 3/e introduced altered the game's structure more than the designers thought.
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Well, I don't have the same confidence that you have. WotC has a track record of not significantly playtesting high level play, or at least ignoring any perceived problems that turn up in high level play. They did it with 3.0. They did it with 3.5. What makes you think this time will be different?The fact that it was explictly mentioned that one of design goals of 4E was to make the game smoother at high and epic levels.
... and we have seen high level critter stats. They look much simpler to run than the current batch.
It's all good guys, at the end of the day...They have their D&D, we have our D&D, and we are all still hamsters. Where's the downside?
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It's all good guys, at the end of the day...They have their D&D, we have our D&D, and we are all still hamsters. Where's the downside?
The downside of being a hamster.
CEO
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When you are making game products, you do your absolute best to make sure it isn't broken or have any fatal flaws. But no matter how much you playtest, putting your product into the hands of thousands and thousands of gamers over the course of a couple of years will find flaws that you never dreamt about.
I remember with Magic: The Gathering, we playtested pretty extensively for about 3 years, but once 10 million cards hit the scenes in the first release, we were shocked at some of the things which popped up. Which led to banned and restricted lists. Thankfully, most folks played the tournament play rules and so you could revise the rules on the fly to a degree.
But RPGs aren't like that. I think that the whole polymorph rules change that Wizards put on their website was the first time I can remember D&D getting a running rules change outside of an edition change (or mini edition change such as 3.5). I guarantee that there will be flaws in 4e that everyone will be b*@!&ing about in the future. Just like the PFRGP will fix some things only to have others pop as people start putting it through its paces. It isn't bad game design or shoddy playtesting. It is just the way things work for games. You can't get it perfect and you can't see every possible problem. So they slip through. You just hope that they aren't so bad that they turn large groups of your fans away.
One of the reasons for the large open playtest of the PFRGP is to try to head off any problems by having the largest possible group actually playing with the rules. We'll see how that turns out!
-Lisa
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... or they leave it unfinished intentionally because it sets the stage for a "need" for another edition a few years down the road.I don't believe that for a second. So you're saying Monte Cook, who designed 3.0, would ever leave something unfinished intentionally? Or that Mike Mearls, who did great stuff while working with Monte's Malhavoc, signed some kind of "whatever you do, don't finish it"-contract? Along with all those other RPG greats like Dave Noonan, Jonathan Tweet and Skip Williams?
You have to understand those guys love D&D like noone else. They live and breathe it. But people make mistakes. Monte himself agreed that several of the changes made with 3.5 were things he wished he'd thought of himself.
I'm sure they tested high-level D&D vehemently. And for the most part it does work - if you only use the core books. But it was impossible to test everything, because much of the material that polluted high level play simply did not exist yet.
I'll admit that's one of the main draws 4E has on me now - it's a fresh start. Maybe in a year or two, we'll be back where we are now. But right now, all I can think about is that soon the days will be gone that my cleric player, when preparing his spells, digs into his bag and pulls out seven books...
Well, maybe they didn't do it intentionally, but "fixing" high level play was obviously put on the back burner, and was never "finished". I guess it was more important to push it out the door and start on Complete Warrior and the rest. You seriously don't expect me to believe that if they really played a few sessions with 15th level characters, that they didn't realize they needed to reduce all the various modifiers flying around or do something to make it a little simpler? I'd say it didn't matter much to them because they figured they'd already be working on the next edition by the time most PC's reached high levels. That is exactly what happened.
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When you are making game products, you do your absolute best to make sure it isn't broken or have any fatal flaws. But no matter how much you playtest, putting your product into the hands of thousands and thousands of gamers over the course of a couple of years will find flaws that you never dreamt about.
It's like writing PC software in the days before web updates, when we had to test & debug like crazy people before we could burn a Gold Master CD (or *cough*floppy disk*cough*) and release the code to manufacturing.
And we still couldn't find & fix *every* bug.
BTW Lisa, I was one of the early Alpha M:TG purchasers at WorldCon 1993 (ConFrancisco). Nobody anticipated the impact of that game -- we took over half the con suite with constant M:TG playing. Memories...
Well, maybe they didn't do it intentionally, but "fixing" high level play was obviously put on the back burner, and was never "finished". I guess it was more important to push it out the door and start on Complete Warrior and the rest. You seriously don't expect me to believe that if they really played a few sessions with 15th level characters, that they didn't realize they needed to reduce all the various modifiers flying around or do something to make it a little simpler? I'd say it didn't matter much to them because they figured they'd already be working on the next edition by the time most PC's reached high levels. That is exactly what happened.
Note that there appears to be some quote funkiness here. This was the only text that I think you wrote, but if I missed something point it out please. That said ...
You're missing that the stated campaign length in 3E (and presumably 4E) was 1 year. The XP tables and rewards were balanced so that an average group playing once a week will reach 20th in a year. It's true in software, and it's true in game design. After release your product goes through a level of scrutiny an order of magnitude above and beyond anything tests can discover. I think you're strongly mistaken in your implication that 3E was purposefully released unfinished.
If problems cropped up in PRPG would you accuse Paizo of purposefully leaving it broken so they can later release a splat to fix it?
Cheers! :)
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Well, maybe they didn't do it intentionally, but "fixing" high level play was obviously put on the back burner, and was never "finished". I guess it was more important to push it out the door and start on Complete Warrior and the rest. You seriously don't expect me to believe that if they really played a few sessions with 15th level characters, that they didn't realize they needed to reduce all the various modifiers flying around or do something to make it a little simpler? I'd say it didn't matter much to them because they figured they'd already be working on the next edition by the time most PC's reached high levels. That is exactly what happened.Note that there appears to be some quote funkiness here. This was the only text that I think you wrote, but if I missed something point it out please. That said ...
You're missing that the stated campaign length in 3E (and presumably 4E) was 1 year. The XP tables and rewards were balanced so that an average group playing once a week will reach 20th in a year. It's true in software, and it's true in game design. After release your product goes through a level of scrutiny an order of magnitude above and beyond anything tests can discover. I think you're strongly mistaken in your implication that 3E was purposefully released unfinished.
If problems cropped up in PRPG would you accuse Paizo of purposefully leaving it broken so they can later release a splat to fix it?
Cheers! :)
They assumed that your PC's would be 20th level if you met every week, and had a certain number of encounters of a certain CR per session. This was what they thought most groups played like. The truth is that you can only play this much under ideal conditions, which rarely happens. In real life people miss sessions, they play only twice a month to free up weekends for other things, or campaigns die after a few months for various reasons. They started working on 4th edition less than two years after the release of 3.5, so many groups that started first level characters after 3.5's release had just entered high level play when work on 4th edition had started. I realize that Paizo can't succeed with the goal of maintaining backwards compatability and make high level play a good deal more managable at the same time. They would have to revamp and power down all spells after 4th level, plus reduce the reliance on buckets of magic items and lots of buffs running at the same time to be on par with powerful high CR monsters. They can't do that and keep backwards compatability. What they can do is tweak stuff to make things a little easier, especially on the DM. They seem to be doing a pretty good job of that, and they are still in the alpha stage. I would rather have a tweaked 3.5 that runs a bit smoother than go with the dramatic shift towards extremely minis-centric, gamist play that 4th edition has taken.
Most people I know didn't restart their game when 3.5 came out, they just converted over. Some were at the start of a new campaign, others in the middle, and others still at the end. From the moment 3.5 came out people were playing at the high levels.
And my question wasn't regarding PRPG's treatment of high levels. I was questioning whether you'd feel alright making that same accusation against Erik Mona or James Jacobs. It doesn't matter what you're claiming they left unfinished because there were other books to write.
Again, you are off base in your suggestion that 3E's high level play is cumbersome because the designers didn't care to make it not so.
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If they actually, seriously playtested high level characters in 3.5, how could they not see how cumbersome it could be? Somehow, somewhere they dropped the ball. They either had to not playtest high levels play much (I recall reading somewhere that some of the designers admitted to this, but since I don't have a direct quote, I'll leave it as hearsay), pretend it was okay, or push it out the door to meet the deadline even if it wasn't ready. I wouldn't accuse Eric or Jason of leaving Pathfinder unfinished if it is still cumbersome to play at high levels because their hands are tied by the backwards compatability goal. There is only so much they can do to tweak a system built by someone else.
As even Lisa stopped in here to say, there is just no way to find every problem in a game system. And as someone else pointed out, just using the 3.5 PHB things aren't that dicey. It's when you get into combing a few books that things begin tp fall apart. Heck my group played 3E since release and even some of our bigger power gamers have never tried some of the stuff I've seen people abuse online. A game like DnD simply has too many options to ensure that every possible permutation works well.
If you want to say someone screwed up during the design of 3E, sure I'll grant you that. I'm sure someone will screw up designing 4E, and PRPG as well. These games, I'm sure I don't need to remind you, are made by people, people prone to mistakes (as all people are.)
Until we can get the One True Game designed by Master Computer himself, we'll have to settle for these pale imitations.
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You don't have to use lots of splatbooks to see how cumbersome running high level 3.0 or 3.5 can be. After a few sessions of using only core rules, it becomes readily apparent. It's the elephant in the room. If you open your eyes, you can't miss it. They either didn't playtest high level much (a very likely possibility) or just chose to ignore it because it was too much work to fix. Either way, it really doesn't matter now. I just hope they do a good job with Pathfinder.
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Who you choose to play with and their style of "gaming" affects the game far more then the game system, in my experience. YMMV.
Nothing stops a game quicker than mixing a "rules" gamer into a group of "role-players" who want to move the game on. No matter what the system. That to me is the bigger issue to discuss.
I can (and have) played rules-lite, rules-medium, and rules-heavy versions of DnD. Each has their time and place.
I, personally, am glad to have more options than ever.
I certainly don't begrudge anyone who says "this ain't for me". I still haven't got my head completely around robots with swords and shields either. :-)
Pete
It's all good guys, at the end of the day...They have their D&D, we have our D&D, and we are all still hamsters. Where's the downside?The downside of being a hamster.
LOL! Being a hamster is no joke. It is an enterprise for the bold, the brave, the...fuzzy.
Take to the skies boo! Take to the skiiiiieeeeeessss!
You don't have to use lots of splatbooks to see how cumbersome running high level 3.0 or 3.5 can be. After a few sessions of using only core rules, it becomes readily apparent. It's the elephant in the room. If you open your eyes, you can't miss it. They either didn't playtest high level much (a very likely possibility) or just chose to ignore it because it was too much work to fix. Either way, it really doesn't matter now. I just hope they do a good job with Pathfinder.
I think the real problem is the lateral transition from 2nd Edition to 3rd Edition, which is why I'm glad they tried to built a new system but maintain iconic D&D things. For example, the ghoul has 2 HD because the old ghoul had 2 HD. So many things were kept the same way in 3rd Edition, just because, which is what I think was their greatest mistake.
This is what lead to wizards that can unleash super powerful spells, but can do it only X times per day? Well, that doesnt mean much if the group rests a lot. Or the wizard gets a staff. Or the wizard writes some scrolls. Or the wizard takes Extra Spell.
Now, classes have abilities that are all drawn in largely the same way, mechanics-wise. No one has to suck at low-level just to overpower the rest of the group. No one has to have lots of extra stuff just because they are supposed to be a heal-bag.