One of the things occurring to me as I mused about the way my favorite hobby has changed over the years is that the process of "building" a character has become much more important. Frankly, back in the old days character cration was pretty simple. Now character building has become much, much more complex, with all the skills and feats to choose from. Point Buy introduced another dramatic change, giving players near complete control of their primary stats. Easy magic item creation and the assumption of Magic Mart provide even more options for players, who can now control their equipment far more than ever before. Optimization, while always present to some extent, has really taken off in 3.0 and its successors.
Which led me to think if the "game within the game" of character building, something that some players do with considerably more skill (or are at least willing to put considerably more time into it) than others, was starting to overwhelm the other aspects of the game. To wonder if success in adventures was now being determined more by a player's choices in character building than by the decisions they make during game play.
I actually don't believe this to be true. At least it is not in my game. No matter how much my players optimize, it isn't that difficult for me to optimize their encounters by the same amount to provide the same level of challenge. Success is still determined by how well they play, and, of course, by the luck of the dice that night.
I've gotten the impression, though, that many other games aren't that way, and that some players expect to be rewarded for their character building skills by having an easier time of it during adventures, and seem almost to feel like they can, by the skill of their builds, almost guarantee success and eliminate the randomness of the dice. for those groups and people, the character building "game" may indeed have become important than what happens in the adventure.
I'm curious what other people's opinions are on this.
When 3.0 was first announced, many of my friends prognosticated that D&D would become more like Magic: The Gathering.
A decade or so later, I can't say they were wrong.
When 3.0 was first announced, many of my friends prognosticated that D&D would become more like Magic: The Gathering.
A decade or so later, I can't say they were wrong.
St least they didn't make us buy the new feats, spells and magic items in packs of collectible cards. :)
On second thought, some folsk would argue that is almost precisely what they did with the numerous splat books, some of which presented options clearly superior to those in the core game. Paizo has thus far avoided that, for which I thank them.
Well, in my games, character building takes a backseat to story. I spend as much time with my players discussing where they'd like to see their characters story go as I do with my books. Optimization isn't really a problem either, as I can often find something to challenge them as well. And I'm one of those DM's who will tweak the numbers mid-encounter (if you don't like it, too bad; you aren't part of my group so I don't care). My player's are fine with this, and quite enjoy our sessions.
But what they were selling was the strategic combination of short rules chunks. You can play the "solo game" now by sorting your options, just like it was fun to build a M:tG deck.
I'm not saying this is a bad thing. It's sometimes great! But it isn't for everyone, either, and it is not central to the RPG experience, which creates some dissonance.
But what they were selling was the strategic combination of short rules chunks. You can play the "solo game" now by sorting your options, just like it was fun to build a M:tG deck.
I'm not saying this is a bad thing. It's sometimes great! But it isn't for everyone, either, and it is not central to the RPG experience, which creates some dissonance.
It's actually kind of my point that for some people it has indeed become "central to the RPG experience". Just look at how fiercely people debate optimal builds in these threads. The whole DPR Olympica thing.
I agree with you that it's not central to my gaming experience. I'm just not sure I'm even in the majority anymore.
Well, in my games, character building takes a backseat to story. I spend as much time with my players discussing where they'd like to see their characters story go as I do with my books. Optimization isn't really a problem either, as I can often find something to challenge them as well. And I'm one of those DM's who will tweak the numbers mid-encounter (if you don't like it, too bad; you aren't part of my group so I don't care). My player's are fine with this, and quite enjoy our sessions.
+1 As GM, if you aren't moving the goalposts around to keep the game challenging and interesting you aren't doing your job. I can't understand the attitude that you are somehow "screwing the players" if you adapt in order to ensure that the game is fun for everyone.
The system runs fine if you either have a group that embraces the system and has no problem treating the game as a build-fest/boardgame, or on the flip side you have a group of players that (most likely) have an unspoken understanding that they are very off hand with the rules.
It's when you have mixtures of those two polarities, and no one is bringing up the "unspoken rules" on what they expect out of play that you get a lot of unintended friction.
This is a very important point. How fun the game experience is for you depends largely on who you play with and whether you like the way they play. It's probably very frustrating to be an optimizer in a group that could care less about optimization. And probably no fun at all to be someone who doesn't care to invest the time in systems mastery and just wants to show up and play being a hero in a group that prefers optimization to the max. Finding the right group for you is critical.
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I agree that the approach of your group is the most important. As long as everyone mostly agrees then there are few problems. The problems arise, as can be seen in many threads, when you try to mix optimizers and non-optimizers. Then you start getting complaints that some people aren't holding up their end in combat or conversely some characters kill everything before anyone else can contribute.
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If you look solely at D&D, then this is probably true. Character creation has become a more complex process. If you look at the wider hobby, it's not true. There were highly complex cahracter creation systems in the 1970s, there are simple ones now.
Valid point. My favorite character creation system of all time was Traveller, which literally was a game in and of itself. There is a bit of a difference, though, most of those old-style games still did not give you as much control over character creation as current PF does, or permit as much optimization. In Traveller, for example, everything was controlled by die rolls, and you had very little control. Optimizers would hate it with a passion.
I was, however, just talking about the PF/D&D continuum of games.
I believe it is partly due to the progression of a player, so when they first play a system, they are going for the roleplaying experience to provide the juice, but over time as that gets old, you look for other aspects of the game to carry you through and the focus changes to character development. As part of that, optimization is not far behind, unless you make a conscious decision to counter the urge. Overall, my instinct is to change the system when you start to see some of the negatives where people become polarized.
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I believe it is partly due to the progression of a player, so when they first play a system, they are going for the roleplaying experience to provide the juice, but over time as that gets old, you look for other aspects of the game to carry you through and the focus changes to character development. As part of that, optimization is not far behind, unless you make a conscious decision to counter the urge. Overall, my instinct is to change the system when you start to see some of the negatives where people become polarized.
I'd have argued that the opposite happens in most cases. First, the idea of the different kinds of power appeals, and so the player is first interested in the game by how to build a character. Then, over time, that allure fades and what keeps the game going strong is the desire to roleplay.
That is true depending on the perspective of the player. All I can state is when I first started playing I definitely wanted more power, but I didn't really care how that was obtained, or whether it was optimized. Just keep on feeding it to me. So maybe roleplaying wasn't the best way to describe it. But as I learned the system, I knew what was important to character development to get powerful more quickly, and I knew what choices were bad for the character, so I started to metagame, and roleplaying choices became secondary.
Another way to describe it is to start of with a simple system, where character optimization is not paramount, so roleplaying rules the day. But as the the game becomes stale you look for a more complex system to add more realism or to add a new aspect to your roleplaying. This allows your characters to become more distinct. Eventually you get burned out trying to have the system replicate your initial experiences, and then the emphasis may only be roleplaying, because any system without it, just becomes a board game.
I have only been playing since 3.5 and here is what I think.
I think adjusting the difficulty of the game to the players is a good idea as well. I may start off a little bit easy because when I gm it is not good to have a tpk after the first encounter waiting for everyone to finish up characters that does not sound fun. If you tell them that if they optimize they will end up with facing tougher from the start then they will not be easy to encounter.
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Well isn't a huge part of that the removal of minimum requrements to play races/class and a more common use of point buy for stats?
In the old days you'd roll 3d6 for your stats straight down the line (if you were a MAN) or some other dice method (if you were a little girl) and then look at your stats and go, "Well it looks like I got a Cleric" or something like that.
You can still do that with Pathfinder. I've done it before, it's really fast short of buying equipment normally and can actually be a lot of fun.
The newer games make it a lot easier to come up with a concept and then work towards creating it rather then just getting some framework and running with it quickly.
Well isn't a huge part of that the removal of minimum requrements to play races/class and a more common use of point buy for stats?
In the old days you'd roll 3d6 for your stats straight down the line (if you were a MAN) or some other dice method (if you were a little girl) and then look at your stats and go, "Well it looks like I got a Cleric" or something like that.
You can still do that with Pathfinder. I've done it before, it's really fast short of buying equipment normally and can actually be a lot of fun.
The newer games make it a lot easier to come up with a concept and then work towards creating it rather then just getting some framework and running with it quickly.
I hadn't thought of the removal of minimum requirements for classes. I remember that getting that 17 in Charisma for a paladin, or all those 15s for a monk in first edition was hard. On the one hand that was very frustrating if you really, really wanted to play a paladin or monk, but on the other hand it made it that much more awesome when you finally did roll one up.
We still roll for stats, and I like the anticipation of seeing what the dice will give me. It's like Christmas morning. Will Santa give me a shiny new paladin, or a sneaky little rogue, or a brilliant wiazrd? It's all good. I generally don;t care what kind of character I play, so long as I'm playing. They can all be awesome experiences.
I actually do not use most of the munchkin things I think up of but that does not mean coming up with munchkin stuff is not fun its just not what I usually play. I try not to take my minmaxing to an extreme either like the only time I started with a 20 for stats was when I rolled dice and got an 18 and made an elf rouge in 3.5.
If you look solely at D&D, then this is probably true. Character creation has become a more complex process. If you look at the wider hobby, it's not true. There were highly complex cahracter creation systems in the 1970s, there are simple ones now.
Indeed. When I was a teenager, I used to spend ungodly amounts of time making characters for Champions. Making a Pathfinder character is pretty simple by comparison. (Except for buying equipment -- that always takes me a long time, for some reason.)
If you look solely at D&D, then this is probably true. Character creation has become a more complex process. If you look at the wider hobby, it's not true. There were highly complex cahracter creation systems in the 1970s, there are simple ones now.Indeed. When I was a teenager, I used to spend ungodly amounts of time making characters for Champions. Making a Pathfinder character is pretty simple by comparison. (Except for buying equipment -- that always takes me a long time, for some reason.)
I have seen equipment take a long time really espicially when starting at higher than level 1. Heck sometimes I buy the big six just becuase I want to play and do not want to have to read through all of the other mostly useless magic items they take so long.