Name a "bad" rule that doesn't have bad math tied to it and show it to be objectively bad.
Heh, "prove a rule is objectively bad without using objective analysis." Right. Ask me to prove whether an omnipotent god could create a stone so heavy he couldn't lift it, while you're at it.
Anyway, by your own admission, above, there are objectively bad rules involving bad math.
Rules can be objectively bad. QED.
Alignment is not objectively bad.
By itself, no, it's not. Alignment has been criticised in D&D as stifling RP. Lack of alignment rules have also been criticized, in 4e, as stifling RP. I think we can see how much sense those arguments make.
Vancian casting is not objectivley bad.
Nope, it's not. In a game where everyone is a vancian caster, balance among characters - by carefully balancing spell choices - is achievable. Playability is actually pretty good, fire-and-forget spells give you some drama and some round-to-round variety in character abilities, such abilities can be fairly powerful without being too easilly systematically abused. Fight-by-fight and day-to-day balance is an issue, the system lends itself to exploitation by frequent resting, or, conversely, to 'hording' and under-performing. In an all-vancian game, those pitfalls are bad, but they can be worked around.
Combine vancian casting with other power frameworks with very different resource sets, though, and you have a system that becomes balanced only at some tense, perhaps wholly theoretical point. Even with a great deal of balancing effort (on both the design and play ends), such a system is so poorly balanced that 'bad' is a pretty fair thing to call it.
Superior casters are not objectively bad.
As with vancian, in some sort of Harry Potter RPG, wizards being superior to muggles is no big deal, just part of the sub-genre/setting. But, in a game were casters are one among several player options, and clearly the best option, yes, that superiority is bad. Objectively so. At most, you might argue that it's the inferiority of the other options that is the 'objective bad.'
Those are all subjective likes and dislikes.
Indeed. It is entirely possible to like something that is objectively bad or dispise something that is objectively good. I'm terribly fond of 1st-edition Gamma World. It is a terrible game by any reasonable measure. That can't stop me from having fun with it. Indeed, lampshading it's flaws makes it even more fun. Does that mean game companies should be falling all over themselves putting out games with contradictory rules? No. It just means I have a soft spot for an old game.
"Confronted with the mess of dysfunctional 'dramatic systems' in Storyteller, that's exactly what I did. Tell me what you're trying to do. I'll pick the attribute and ability that sound about right and make up a difficulty. You still have to live with the eff'd-up dice mechanic that makes you more likely to botch the more skilled you are, but aside from that, we're ignoring most of the system's failings in a fairly breezy way."
You just described every WoD, Shadowrun 2nd Ed, and D&D game I've ever enjoyed.
I'm not surprised. It's just a way in which experienced DMs can cope with poor (or even just overly complex) systems without making it too much of a headache for their players. Good DMs don't want to give their players rules headaches.
"WotC is one-upping WWGS by cutting to the chase and not even presenting a bad system for you to override, just go straight to the back-up plan. Like a building without stairs or elevators, /just/ a fire-escape. Hey, you can get to your apartment, just climb in the window."
This is the single scariest thing about D&D Next to me. It feels like in order to not make a bad system, they are instead going to make no system and tell you to make it yourself. At that point, why am I buying books? If I am coming up not just with the NPCs, plots, and setting as a DM but with the rules as well why not just cut out the middle man and make the game I want to play with my friends?
The scariest thing is that it almost makes sense. You interview a lot of good DMs. You find that they wing a lot of stuff instead of using bad or complex sub-systems presented in less than stellar rule sets. You decided that winging it instead of using rules is "Good DMing." You decide to make a game with no rules.
Flawlessly logical.
And how is anyone gong to talk you out of something that is so logical and elegant and /easy/?
Roleplaying is (in part) about making improvised decisions. Selecting decisions from a list isn't roleplaying. It's another kind of game masquerading as roleplaying - at least during the part of the game where you're primarily selecting from lists of menu options.
It's the difference between, for instance, D&D 4E and Mordheim. In Mordheim, you cannot improvise actions - you must choose from a list. That's what makes it a miniatures skirmish game, not a roleplaying game. In D&D 4E Combat, at least theoretically, you can do anything you like. Practically, I found this was rarely the case. People in games I saw tended to use menu selections at least 9/10 times they're called upon for an action, if not more.
Detroit figured that quality was less important (not un-quantifiable, just less important) than a well-known name or or a cool look or a hearty "vrooom!" They found out how wrong they were.
Irrelevant. Cars are not RPGs. With a car, if you have a part that breaks down 10x faster than all other parts, it is OBJECTIVELY inferior.
I remember some old D&D characters "breaking down" a lot faster than others.
Yes, but "breaking down" was a matter of opinion, not facts. You do not need balance between classes for a good game. I enjoyed playing fighters in every edition. 3e fighters were my favorite. I played them in groups with spell casters and in groups without spell casters. Never did I feel useless. I was not as strong as a caster, but so what. I still contributed a hell of a lot and had a great time.
This is the same thing every single person I know says. No one cared what casters did, heck even when I present the arguments as they are suggested on this site most of my friends won't even accept that anything was broken. Even if they do accept that some things were broken their simple response is, "who cares", or, "but that makes sense". These are people that actively play both editions or play just one of the two editions(some play just 3.5 and some play just 4e). Most of the things my fellow players find issue with have absolutely 0 to do with balance. It's with things like the grapple rules, or charging, or drinking potions and what that costs as an action or what it provokes. Things like that are what my players care about. So long as what the characters are doing make some sort of sense they don't really care that much about the balance complaint's people scream about on here.
This is exactly what I've experienced, too. I see so much talk about the unbalance of casters, and 5 minute workdays, and alignment on these forums but I never hear anybody complain about these things while playing. The things sleepsintraffic mentioned like grappling and potion taking are much more along the lines of what I commonly hear around a table.
Same here. We had complaint about rules, there are things we do not like and tryed to houserule, but balance was never the problem. We never faced the "I win button" problem. Sometimes it happened, but that was the moment the wizard was cool. But wizard can use his cool uber spell once, twice maybe. That's all. All the other time was time for other to shine.
Heh, "prove a rule is objectively bad without using objective analysis." Right. Ask me to prove whether an omnipotent god could create a stone so heavy he couldn't lift it, while you're at it.
Anyway, by your own admission, above, there are objectively bad rules involving bad math.
Rules can be objectively bad. QED.
Right. There are some very few objectively bad rules that deal with bad math. I'm talking about vancian casting, alignment and other "bad rules." The ones that don't have bad math. The ones people like you CLAIM are bad rules, but can't actually prove as bad. Can you prove objectively that those are bad rules? I think not. Those rules are good or bad based only on the subjective likes or dislikes of the people playing the game.
Nope, it's not. In a game where everyone is a vancian caster, balance among characters - by carefully balancing spell choices - is achievable.
And I maintain that it is not objectively bad in a game where not everyone is vancian caster. High balance is only good for the games where the players want high balance. In games where the players don't care if the classes are balanced against each other or not, high balance rules are bad rules.
Playability is actually pretty good, fire-and-forget spells give you some drama and some round-to-round variety in character abilities, such abilities can be fairly powerful without being too easilly systematically abused. Fight-by-fight and day-to-day balance is an issue, the system lends itself to exploitation by frequent resting, or, conversely, to 'hording' and under-performing. In an all-vancian game, those pitfalls are bad, but they can be worked around.
Thise pitfalls are bad to you, but you cannot prove that they are objectively bad. To many groups they are not bad at all.
Combine vancian casting with other power frameworks with very different resource sets, though, and you have a system that becomes balanced only at some tense, perhaps wholly theoretical point. Even with a great deal of balancing effort (on both the design and play ends), such a system is so poorly balanced that 'bad' is a pretty fair thing to call it.
For those who feel that way, sure. For those who feel that it is a good thing, "bad" is not a pretty fair thing to call it.
As with vancian, in some sort of Harry Potter RPG, wizards being superior to muggles is no big deal, just part of the sub-genre/setting. But, in a game were casters are one among several player options, and clearly the best option, yes, that superiority is bad. Objectively so. At most, you might argue that it's the inferiority of the other options that is the 'objective bad.'
If it is objectively bad, then you can show an absolute proof that cannot be denied. I want to see that proof.
And I maintain that it is not objectively bad in a game where not everyone is vancian caster. High balance is only good for the games where the players want high balance. In games where the players don't care if the classes are balanced against each other or not, high balance rules are bad rules.
Maxperson, you usually come across as a person arguing for inclusion, so I'm surprised this is an argument you made. High balance rules are, by your usual stance, good rules, because they work the best for the most people. People who don't care about balance don't care, and people who do are served by the balanced rules.
And I maintain that it is not objectively bad in a game where not everyone is vancian caster. High balance is only good for the games where the players want high balance. In games where the players don't care if the classes are balanced against each other or not, high balance rules are bad rules.
Maxperson, you usually come across as a person arguing for inclusion, so I'm surprised this is an argument you made. High balance rules are, by your usual stance, good rules, because they work the best for the most people. People who don't care about balance don't care, and people who do are served by the balanced rules.
I'm in the middle for my personal preference. 4e was fun, but too balanced for my tastes and 3e was very fun, but too unbalanced. I would like to see 5e be somewhere in the middle.
That said, I'm not arguing for inclusion OR exclusion in this thread. I'm arguing the subjectivity of most rules. A rule isn't good or bad simply because a person may or may not like it. Such feelings only makes it good or bad for them. If you liked 3e and it's rules, it was a good game with good rules. If you didn't, it wasn't.
And I maintain that it is not objectively bad in a game where not everyone is vancian caster. High balance is only good for the games where the players want high balance. In games where the players don't care if the classes are balanced against each other or not, high balance rules are bad rules.
Maxperson, you usually come across as a person arguing for inclusion, so I'm surprised this is an argument you made. High balance rules are, by your usual stance, good rules, because they work the best for the most people. People who don't care about balance don't care, and people who do are served by the balanced rules.
What about people who do care about balance, but don't like it? Have we heard from them? Is this another issue where inclusivity is impossible because there is one faction that demands another faction be denied what they need to be included?
I have to admit that these discussions can be pretty discouraging.
Tony is arguing that vancian casting be banned from the game because it's imbalanced when included alongside other options. Others absolutely demand vancian casting. Why can't a balanced version of vancian casting be acceptable to both. 4e is pretty well-balanced, and the wizard is basically vancian. Give the wizard a more vancian feel and both should be happy.
Max's insistance that everything is so subjective nothing can be judged a good or bad idea is certainly 'inclusive,' but it's also lacking in discernment. Clearly there are some bad ideas out there, and 5e shouldn't let them ruin the game. But every idea can be developed and implemented in a variety of ways. Rather than reject an idea with a bad proposed implementation, or accept all ideas without thought, can't we look at the germ of each idea and find a good implementation?
What about people who do care about balance, but don't like it? Have we heard from them? Is this another issue where inclusivity is impossible because there is one faction that demands another faction be denied what they need to be included?
I have to admit that these discussions can be pretty discouraging.
Absolutely inclusivity is impossible in every endeavor you will ever engage in. People are different and no matter what you do or say, someone else will not like it. When it comes to RPGs, there will be large groups that like and dislike virtually every rule. A game designer needs to figure out what his goals are and make the game aimed at certain groups and that excludes certain other groups. You just can't please everyone.
5e's module idea will either be very good or else an umitigated disaster. It all depends on how they go about it. They will not be able to include modules that please the 4e fans and 3e fans both, at least not without making the books so large and expensive that the game fails on price alone. Essentially it would be like releasing two editions.
What I see happening is a core rule set that is balanced as its own game. Neither 4e completely, nor 3e completely, but something of a middle ground. Then there will be small 1/2 to 3-4 page blurbs that will allow the DMs to alter aspects of the game. In the same manner as the 3e Unearthed Arcana did. Most of those optional rules took up very little space, but the entirety of that book also didn't offer extreme changes from the standard rules and they took up very few pages per optional rule.
If it is done right, they will maintain most of their 4e fans and pick up many of the 3e hold overs. The nature of people being what it is, they will still lose people who liked 4e and don't want to switch and fail to gain those who absolutely love all that 3e has to offer. Done wrong and they will lose a hell of a lot more and fail to bring over very many at all.
Max's insistance that everything is so subjective nothing can be judged a good or bad idea is certainly 'inclusive,' but it's also lacking in discernment. Clearly there are some bad ideas out there, and 5e shouldn't let them ruin the game. But every idea can be developed and implemented in a variety of ways. Rather than reject an idea with a bad proposed implementation, or accept all ideas without thought, can't we look at the germ of each idea and find a good implementation?
But how do you tell a genuinely bad idea from one that just has a lot of people who THINK it's bad? The sheer amount of argument, debate and blind rhetoric on both sides of virtually every major rule in virtually every edition shows that it can be hard, if not impossible to tell if a rule that doesn't have bad math in it is bad or good.
What about people who do care about balance, but don't like it? Have we heard from them? Is this another issue where inclusivity is impossible because there is one faction that demands another faction be denied what they need to be included?
Absolute inclusivity is impossible in every endeavor you will ever engage in. People are different and no matter what you do or say, someone else will not like it. When it comes to RPGs, there will be large groups that like and dislike virtually every rule. A game designer needs to figure out what his goals are and make the game aimed at certain groups and that excludes certain other groups. You just can't please everyone.
Yet that's exactly what Hasbro or WOTC is trying to do. But it can't be quite as bad as you make it sound, because everyone they're aiming for has played D&D at some time, D&D may have changed a lot but it hasn't changed completely, clearly there's some common ground. It's not absolute inclusivity, just within a large sub-set of a small market.
But how do you tell a genuinely bad idea from one that just has a lot of people who THINK it's bad?
Anything from common sense to market surveys to exhaustive "analysis" and testing, I suppose. Like any other product. Some of you seem to have the quantitative skills and game theory to take a stab at that sort of thing, though I wouldn't care to. I've got some hard-won common sense, though, and some of these deeper arguments do defy it. I get the impression there's a lot of arguing to be right or not be wrong, rather than discussion to figure out what is right.
And, WOTC has their sales figures and whatever research they've done, and a team of pros. Seems to me they shouldn't throw all that away just because good or bad is "subjective."
