http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/867/867920p1.html

a look at D&D Insider …

-Ben.

Bens last blog post..Design Log: The Black Art of High APL Encounters

Yes, I agree with you, my game design lecturer just kicked in for a minute.

Dave T. Games last blog post..An Instruction for All Xbox Live Users

I try the play the game as is only during the time I learn it. Then tinkering starts. I used to be one inflexible stickler for rules. But as I grow more confident of my inherent understanding of what is fun for the majority in a game I happily and aggressively house rule…

Of course, I get player buy-in, we document this in an easy to find place, and we challenge the proposed House rule with a ‘is it needed? Does it add value? Is it more fun?’

Hmmm great material for a future post.

Dave, fair enough. Power creep can occur due to unexpected synergies when you build laterally. But isn’t that still an increase in power even if it isn’t by intent? It seems to me that as powers increase in a game, maintaining balance becomes harder too.

I just don’t see any way to expand upon a game system without eventually disturbing the balance. In the end it will always be up to the game master to act as a sanity check. I’d be curious if anyone out there ever plays without at least one house rule. I try but there always seems to be something.

Jim Daviess last blog post..Demoing Changeling: the Lost

When you don’t add power to a game everything becomes variations of flavor of the same cookie. The CCG market moves very fast so they build up in power with each new expansion because there is little value to a CCG player in getting more of the same just with different art work.”

Hmmm, I wouldn’t agree with that.

There’s not necessarily a raw increase in power (though that happens too), but an increase in options. There are some games that choose to explore new portions of design space, creating side/sub-systems when the core system is maxed out.

However, “power creep” is going to happen in an exception based system because of emergent properties. The more options there are, the greater chance that it will interact with an existing exception to create greater power than expected.

There are examples on both sides, of course, but I wouldn’t accept that forced power creep is inevitable.

Dave T. Games last blog post..An Instruction for All Xbox Live Users

Thanks for the welcome. Alas I believe the power creep spiral is inevitable in any game that you build upon unless you ware willing to only build out and not up. It’s the same problem most CCGs suffer from.

When you don’t add power to a game everything becomes variations of flavor of the same cookie. The CCG market moves very fast so they build up in power with each new expansion because there is little value to a CCG player in getting more of the same just with different art work.

With RPG design they can only build horizontally for so long before flavor isn’t enough to sell new product. They will have to build up in power or they’ll lose the attention of their market. 4e will be no exception. At the end of the day WotC is here to make money.

The real question is scalability. Will the system build up as well as out? How long can they do that before it becomes unbalanced?

In my opinion, they aren’t doing anything new here. Many of the new techniques they are using have already been run through the gambit in other game systems. While D&D may be getting a face lift it really doesn’t sport any new features you can’t find somewhere else.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been playing a different game system and someone at the table said, “Geez, I wish D&D had this rule.” Lately I’ve been able to counter those remarks with, “Actually, in 4e it will.”

The true test of it’s legs will be in the running and only time will tell. But the great elephant of the table top adventure is not likely to stumble much if it does at all. Death, taxes, Microsoft and D&D. Some things you can always count on.

Jim Daviess last blog post..Demoing Changeling: the Lost

- to everyone else -
Some of the discussion about older versions of D&D vs newer ones reminded me of something silly. There was a druid of Rhiannon class printed up in one of the Dragon magazines I had back during 2e. I remember wanting to play it because it sounded like fun. I didn’t see anything that was -really- obviously overpowered. Maybe a touch more oomph than a base class but it would equal out if I just didn’t take a kit (druid kits were… odd to say the least anyway). So I took it to a DM and asked if I could play it. 2-3 minutes later, his eyes bugged out and he said NO in no uncertain terms. I was confused and asked why. He points at the class write-up and says “They get hit dice up to 16th level! They’d have way more hit points than anyone else.” Now of course this is just amusing. I never did get around to ‘porting them to 3e though. I think by the time I understood it well enough to do so I was disillusioned with 3e in general and had forgotten.

As for the roleplay vs rollplay debate and where 4e will stand on it once it’s up and ready to run, in the end it may not matter too much. I disagree with the idea that the core books need a particular setting to give you anything useful to sketch out a background. Even just a simple list of feats based on the type of area you come from would be useful and fit in. A desert survival feat for example. Kind of a single feat that rolls in bonuses to survival, bonuses to rolls to endure environmental problems in that environment (heat stroke, etc) and you’re done. Sketch out these for a few different types of areas. A paragraph or two on how to adapt other feats to represent a character’s background (you grew up in a monster infested area so you get skill focus in a knowledge appropriate to that monster type and your first rank of that knowledge skill only takes one skill point whether it’s cross class or not - or, you grew up among a tribe of primitive plains hunters who didn’t use mounts, take run or endurance early on, etc). This sort of thing is easy. It’s like 5-10 minutes of thought.

The thing -I- think you’d need to do to make something like that really work the way it should though is make them a separate kind of feat. Call them Background Feats. Then make sure everyone gets bonus background feats at times when you think they should (1st level and if you have any made up that are appropriate for later levels, maybe some bonus ones later on too). Unless you’re running a social game where background is very important and provides it’s own kind of power then I think background stuff really needs to be a bonus. Otherwise you risk having problems where your munchkin types pull even farther ahead of your roleplayer types than they would already.

Overall it’s not that it can’t be done. It’s not that it can’t be done in a generic way. It’s not that it can’t be done easily. Mainly this just hasn’t been the game they’ve thought you were buying from them. Maybe they’ll change their minds on that for 4e and maybe not.

I just doubt the core game will have them.

@Greywulf: All my players are actually munching on their first true 4e characters. Before we start the new campaign, we’ll play Keep on the Shadowfell as an intro adventure and one player even suggested that players switch characters between each other from one game session to the next to get a feel of the character mechanics…. which I found brilliant.

Good debate going on here, folks!

I’m still very much on the love-hate roundabout with 4th Edition. There’s a tonne of stuff I see that I love (not least, the new spell/powers mechanics), and I can’t wait to get my grubby mits on the books themselves. All this talk of 4e being the new old-school just makes me drool all the more; it might just be the kick in the butt my own gamer group needs. RPG’ing has died here at Greywulf Towers, with our last session having been cancelled for various reasons three times now. Gah!

Roll on 4e and New Enthusiasm.