Pandering a Game: Doomed to Fail?

It's always seemed silly to me for a company to try and pander its products to people who aren't the target audience, and to try and be something that it isn't.

Let me explain with a short preface.

I've got nothing against any edition of the game, per se. Several of the choices made in the name of D&D4 are a little silly, sure, and very many of them are misguided or just plain dumb. But it's not a bad game for what it is. It doesn't have any more than superficial similarities to Dungeons and Dragons, but that's not the point.

The point, and this is something I posted in a blog comment last night, is that trying to market something like role playing games as board games and video games is doomed to fail. And here's why.

Role playing games aren't goddamn board games. And they're not video games.

Board games are something that you can pick up and play, and then put away again. They're always the same, so there are strategies you can use to overcome the static obstacles or the other players, depending on the game. The rules always stay the same, unless it's a game like Nomic where the rules of the game are that the rules change. But Nomic is a complex example. For us, the archetypal board game will be Monopoly. Everybody knows what Monopoly is. The rules are always the same, the objective is always the same. You need a group of people, the board, the playing peices, and the dice. And then you play for a pre-determined amount of time until somebody "wins" and then the game is over.

I have nothing against fantasy-themed board games. As a matter of fact, on my floor right now is a half-played game of Descent: Journeys in the Dark. It looks similar to this:

It's got board peices, and cards, and little figurines, and static character sheets and stuff. It's like a game of Diablo, or like an entire D&D campaign squished into one 2-5 hour sitting.There's nothing wrong with this game, because it knows what it is. It's not trying to be a grand roleplaying game, because it's certainly not. It's a small-scale tactical miniatures combat game with a fantasy veneer. And it's great fun. But it's not a roleplaying game.

And video games are pretty awesome as well. When I'm not at work, running errands, spending time with my girlfriend, or writing, I'm generally playing something with my brother, my cousin, or both. One of the games we've been playing recently is called League of Legends. It looks like this:

It's bright, and colorful, and features explosions and magic missiles and all kinds of interesting stuff. It's a great game about tactics and teamplay, since if you don't work together and utilize your character's abilities to the utmost, then you're going to lose. And it's really great fun to pit our team against theirs, and see who comes out on top. Sure, character customization isn't the greatest, as you can only choose from a handful, but combine that with the items you can buy from the shop, and you can find a playing style that closely matches your ideal, and then utilize that to steal victory from your foes.

But board games and video games aren't roleplaying games. I know it sounds obvious, but if you state the inverse, it becomes: Role playing games aren't video games or board games.

I know it sounds crazy, but I think it really bears repeating. Role playing games aren't flashy. They don't have static challenges to overcome. They shouldn't require specialized equipment, like dungeon tiles and twelve thousand miniatures and sixteen "splatbooks" or "expansion packs" to play the fucking game. They don't need art on every page, and they don't need to keep making modules and campaign settings and other extraneous horseshit to tell you how to play the game. We don't need you to package games without the fucking dice and instead give us fifteen metric fucking feet of fucking tiles.

We want you to make a game that doesn't require a computer to do the math for us, and a game that lets us
1) Understand the system in fifteen minutes
2) Expand it ourselves
3) Make a character in under a fucking hour
4)Make shit up
5)Ignore stuff without worrying that it'll "break the game"

D&D has succeeded marvelously on all those points, constantly, right up until its last edition. An edition that is so bad that not even half of the people who were playing 3rd edition bother to play it. Great job, folks. Way to know your target market. See, you could read over the book and understand it on the first read through of just the player's section. You know that you need to roll 3d6 and pick a class and then buy stuff, and that you roll 1d20 to attack and 1d6 for damage. Done. That's seriously it. Everything else, you either make up, or maybe roll underneath your attribute on a 1d20. The system is over. I seriously know everything I need to know to run a game of Labyrinth Lord, Swords and Wizardry, or whatever right now. No prep time.

4th edition is horrible about every one of those. And make no bones about it, those are the important damn parts. The system itself is complicated, and has the important bits spread across nearly 200 pages. You can't hardly expand it, since making anything up other than a single power or magic item would mean that you have to figure out what the right damage range is, whether the magic item should be level 15 or 14, whether the spell you just made up should do 1d8 or 1d6+1 and whether it renders the other attack spell irrelevant... horseshit. Let me just make stuff up. I crave a looser system where I haven't got to whip out a calculator or understand what the holy fuck [W] + 2 means in an attack power, or how goddamn far five squares is, or what the holy flippin' difference between shift an opponent three squares and move an opponent three squares means. Holy shit, I thought we were playing a role playing game!

Good god, how I've digressed.

If you read until the end, I'll be surprised. Not even I read this far. But let me end this with just a quick statement:

"If you want to make a good role playing game, don't punish the creative people. We're the ones that keep the game going, not the idiots who don't know how to play without reading a module."

Alright, Mr. Rude.

Somehow, fautus left a comment which isn't showing up on my blog, which is fine, because it's still in my email. Here it is, his response to my post yesterday:

There are two problems here two start with: 1) egregiously offensive claims of superiority, and 2) rhetorical fail. 

1) Egregiously offensive claims of superiority

You don't get to decide what "fantasy" is. If you don't like a RPG, fine, say so, but you don't get to claim that it is or isn't fantasy. Similarly, you don't get to say that you (or you and your mates, as is usually the case in the OSR) are the arbiters of what is or isn't role-playing; you don't get to say you're better at it because you don't roll dice for intimidate. That's rude.

2) Rhetorical fail
The piece of text you quote (from me) above is my response to a strong claim made in the OP, that D&D 4e is only about combat because all the rules are about combat. My response was to point out to the OP, and to Paladin in Citadel, that D&D 4e has more non-combat rules than OD&D, and that by the rhetoric of the original post, OD&D is more about combat than 4e. As an example I gave stealth and social skills checks.

There is no claim intended that this makes D&D4e better, or that you can't adjudicate stealth in a system without stealth rules. It's a response to a rhetorical claim, pointing out how stupid it is. That is all.

The logic of the OP and Paladin in Citadel was:
1) a game that is only about combat is not role-playing
2) D&D4e rules are entirely about combat
3) therefore D&D4e is not role-playing

Putting aside the extreme rudeness of claiming to be able to define what role-playing (or "good" role-playing is), this rhetoric is bullshit, because it's obvious on an even cursory examination of any D&D rule system that the further back you go, the more combat focused the game gets. Hence my comment about a glorified wargame with some acting tacked on.

Now, it seems that in response to this there is an alternative claim being made, that the more non-combat rules there are, the less the game is about role-playing.

To which, I say - shifting the goalposts much? I also say - what is with this OSR obsession on setting the boundaries of role-playing for everyone else? And I also say: if you can't see how to turn a skill or stealth check into a role-playing opportunity you're not being very imaginative. And I finally say: if you make up a rule on the spot to adjudicate stealth or social checks (morale, anyone?) then you aren't running a system without rules for stealth - you're running a system with arbitrary, shit rules for stealth. Which simultaneously hoists you on your own petard, and gives you a shit stealth resolution method to boot.

Finally, I didn't say "it's not fair to tell me that just because I disagree with you, I'm wrong." I said it's rude to tell me that because I disagree with you I don't understand the game, which is exactly what Paladin said. It's a hallmark of the adolescent debating style of the OSR, incidentally. But that's another story. 

Firstly: You're confusing two different things. One, my claim that 4th edition isn't fantasy, and two, my claim that relying on the game mechanics to tell you what to do in every situation isn't the same as freeform roleplaying.

On the first point, sure, I'll concede that it's not very nice of me to say that 4th edition isn't fantasy. But it certainly doesn't feel like fantasy to me. Of course, this is entirely irrelevant to the discussion at hand, so you'll have to pardon me if I don't feel like defending my differing tastes in fantasy.

The second point, of course: I certainly can claim that relying on game mechanics to tell you what your character is doing isn't roleplaying, because it isn't. It's that easy. See how fun that was? It's really a fairly old argument, if you weren't aware, and very famous. Essentially, when the dice determine the outcome of a situation that one could have handled with "role-playing," then it's not roleplaying any more than rolling up your characters' stats is roleplaying. Hell, I'll even go so far as to admit that if you roll "Interrogate" and succeed, you can roleplay out the scene where you successfully interrogate the guy. But you'll notice that regardless, when you're roleplaying you're not rolling dice. The dice and you are on a separate level of play, if you will, and your social interactions don't need to be affected by the dice.

And this is beside the point. You're arguing that because I said that game mechanics aren't needed to tell you how to roleplay, that therefore I am the absolute judge of roleplaying. That's a very rude claim to make. I don't believe that adding more systems weight to the game to handle things that don't need mechanics enhances your experience, and I certainly don't believe that it's a shit resolution. You don't need rules for everything, and there are some things that, when they have rules, are a little bit silly. To use your example of stealth, I fail to see how asking the player where he hides and then deciding if the guardsman on patrol sees him is a shit resolution system. It's almost the exact same thing you do when you roll dice, except that it cuts out the part where there's random chances of failure and success and replaces them with actual thought.

I know it can be hard to think that other people have different opinions, and it can be hard when some of them aren't nice people, or when they're having a bad day. But see, it's for sensitive souls like yourself that I find every other sentence being "but that's ok," or "I've got nothing against GAME X but I dislike SYSTEM Y." In this case, it's "I don't like having systems for social mechanics, stealth, or anything else that can be handled without dice." It's really that simple.

In your system, for example, we'd roll opposing SOCIAL dice (or whatever), and then the highest guy would win the argument, or something. Then, sure, you could roleplay out what happened according to the results of the dice, but why bother with the results of the dice? I know you're probably going to take this out of context, but older editions of D&D didn't have systems adjucating social interactions or roleplaying or whatever because you don't need game mechanics for them, not because they're ignored entirely. You could argue that older editions had more combat focus by the comparitive number of rules, but honestly, I'm not sure that's true. I have the 4th edition books, and the entire Monster Manual, most of the Player's Guide, and an inordinate chunk of the DMG are entirely about combat, terrain, and powers. But I digress.

One more bit, then I've got to go: It's entirely fair to tell you that because you disagree with me that you don't understand the game, because what we're disagreeing on is whether or not older edition games are primarily about combat, and whether the newest edition of game is combat focused. These aren't really up for debate, as the documents are still around, and able to be inspected. As a comparison, I've read complaints on various forums about the length of combat in 4e. Does that or does that not speak to its focus, that people are unsatisfied with combat resolution because it takes up nearly the entirety of play?

As a final thought: If I've missed anything, feel free to let me know. As I've said before, I welcome your thought, but try and make them a little more mature next time. I'm tired of having adolescent arguments with people who don't understand the difference between my opinions and facts.

Hear, hear!

I would like to point out a very good statement by a fellow old-schooler at Discourse and Dragons:

All I'm trying to say here is that the whole thing is a damn shame. It's my game too, and I really dislike what has been done to it and the shameless use of classic art recently to sell their lame excuse for D&D.

 Wizards has dropped the ball so goddamned bad that not even half of the community that was playing its 3rd edition have jumped ship. They've completely dropped production on games that are still selling, that still have interest in them in order to focus on their bizarre miniatures/roleplaying game that I really hesitate to call fantasy. They're flooding their own market with low-quality books, and promoting a dependant playstyle where they control everything about your game, from the settings to the "adventure paths" down to the damn rules. It's absolutely insane.

Like the quote above says, the game isn't D&D. This is not an opinion. There is almost nothing intact from old games save the very most superficial similarities. You roll a d20, and there are dwarves, elves, and halflings. There are fighters and clerics and paladins and wizards. And that's where the similarities end. There is absolutely no way you can convince anybody that it's the same game.

I can't place where I got the quote, but it was something about how "the guys who designed 3rd edition are good at rules design, but have no idea what fantasy is." And that's doubled for 4th edition. It's a very tight, rules-heavy system, and some people are into that. But I can't think of a single more boring game than one where your every action is defined either in terms of one of twelve hundred pre-defined combat powers or one of like five skill challenges.

Some people like it, sure. But it sure as hell isn't for me.

Allow me to rebut a post real quick that sums up the gist of the problems with these differing perspectives.

paladin in the citadel, you can't have it both ways. You're claiming that the degree to which a system encourages combat can be deduced from the amount of rules devoted to combat, and whether xp can be obtained from non-combat actions.

It is obvious that earlier editions of D&D had the most focus on combat in the rules. From within the rules as written, how can there be a focus on non-combat methods for getting treasure (for xp) if there are no rules for adjudicating stealth or social interaction? 

The answer, of course, is that the amount of such rules doesn't tell you how much a system encourages combat. By which measure, you can't say that 4e encourages combat.

Alternatively, you can drop your original claim. But you just look silly claiming that a wargame with some acting tacked on is somehow not primarily about combat.

Oh, and have you noticed this argument style of yours, "you disagree with me"="You don't understand the game" or "You are doing it wrong"? You might like to ask yourself how that is helping you make your points.

Firstly, we have a claim that earlier editions of D&D had the most focus on combat in the rules because the system didn't have a method for adjucating stealth or social skills. This reminds me of an enworld thread, where the original poster claimed that being dead didn't have any penalties. Hey, Sherlock, being dead means you're dead. You can't do anything, you're dead. If you need the rules to spell out for you what, exactly, happens when you're dead, then you're either being willfully ignorant, or you are a genuine idiot. And the same thing is here.

Do you know how to adjucate stealth? It isn't by having a pre-formed skill system where you roll dice and then say, "You managed to hide or something." Describe the area, and then let the dude decide where to hide at, and then you go from there. Similarly, with social skills. Your character doesn't have social stats because hey, guess what, you don't need them. You don't roll dice to decide if the dude believes you, you do something called "roleplaying."

Apparently, real roleplaying comes from having systems that do everything for you, so that you just roll dice and then your character does cool stuff. Apparently, roleplaying = rollplaying, to use a horrible phrase. Apparently, the more the game tells you how to play and what to roll in every situation, the more free you are and the better the system is.

But before I digress too heavily, let me point out that the fact that older editions of D&D don't tell you how to roleplay or to hide from things doesn't mean that 4e doesn't encourage combat. Or, to put it in simpler terms: These two things are unrelated.

Guess how you encourage behaviors. Protip: It's by rewarding people for your desired actions. The rewards you get in roleplaying games are experience and treasure. They both make your character stronger. In older editions, 80% of your experience was from treasure. 20% was from slain monsters. This means, in case your head is fuzzy and full of shit, that avoiding monsters and stealing their treasure when they weren't looking, or talking them into giving it to you, or distracting them and luring them away was the best way to get it. Which means that non-combat methods were the safest and easiest ways to get treasure, which is where the majority of your experience will come from. This is leaving aside the fact that treasure is its own inherent reward, of course.

Alternatively, in 4e, you get experience for killing dudes, and then a tinier amount for completing quests or using skill challenges. Other bloggers have detailed this better than I have, and I'll update my post when I figure out the url. But, essentially, you're rewarded for slaying as much as you can, and then you get a much smaller chunk from doing what the DM wants you to do and for rolling a series of dice how the DM directs you to. Sounds a lot like 4e encourages combat, since it's the primary way to gain experience.

And then of course, the obligatory, "It's not fair to tell me that just because I disagree with you, I'm wrong." In this case it is, since you're making claims while getting the facts wrong. Congratulations, you're wrong. Older editions of D&D actually encourage looting, not killing, and 4th edition encourages killing almost exclusively. You can't damn argue facts. This is not opinion.


Like I said above, there's nothing inherently wrong with liking a different style of play. I'm actually a pretty tolerant dude. But 4th edition encourages combat to the extent that it's nearly the only method of reward and older editions do not. We're talking rules as written here, not individual DM decisions, since I've heard of those DMs in older edition games who reward their players primarly for combat and for story and 4th edition DMs who only reward for completing quests. This is irrelevant, and on par with your decision that your version of Monopoly is better than mine because your group decides to give out $300 instead of $200 when you pass Go.

Character Building?

Thank God I took three levels in Ropeclimb Bowthief.

One of the things that always bothered me when playing WoW, LoTRO, and especially WAR (because WAR was my favorite, see), was that people refused to call their characters that. They were never characters, they were always "toons". "Gotta reroll my toon", one guy would say, or "Just rolled up a new toon today, trying out Choppa," or "Don't play Bright Wizard, I know a guy that has a BW toon and he hates it."

I never understood it. Why would you pick possibly the dumbest name for a "character" and then compulsively call it that? I understand the part about "rerolling" (since it comes directly from D&D, something that the average mouth-breathing MMO player may not know) but not about "toons."

And so my confusion extends to this obsession with "character building." I've complained about Enworld before, but why is it that everybody and their mother wants help building characters? It's dozens of people not asking about cool character concepts or interesting personality traits, but how to make the most powerful character in combat with a certain example. And people will respond,

Oh, start out with 3 levels of Cudgelmaster Nogginbane and then pick up a couple ranks of Swank and then multiclass into Tremulous Spidereater so you can have a base attack bonus of +7 and be able to jump at least 20 miles into the air as well as gain a +70d3 damage bonus against anything with two or more legs.

Or something along those lines. I dunno. And it doesn't really make sense to me. When did roleplaying a game about looting stuff and splitting skulls turn into this wierd competitive mathematics? I'm not playing Labyrinth Lord so that I can try and put together the most classes so that I can deal more damage than you, I'm playing it because I like you, and I want to hang out. That's it.

It's not interesting to me to do differential mathematics with a side of trigonometry every time I sit down to roll up a new half-orc fighter. I'm working on my degree in electrical engineering, the last thing that sounds good after a long day in classes is, hey, more math! Yes, please let me flex my wonderful system mastery so that you can know where exactly to get a +5 coincidence bonus to your attack rolls that stacks with other attack rolls. It's right here in Player's Handbook VII, did you not pick it up? HEATHEN.


Reminds me of some advice I heard recently, on the Atlanta D&D pickup forums. A guy was asking what books he needed to play 4e, and some dude sagely said, "All of the players handbooks not connected to a specific campaign guide."

Oh, all ten of them? Player's Handbooks 1-4, and then all of the "X Power" books, so Divine Power, Martial Powers 1 and 2, Arcane Power, and Primal Power. You need ALL of these to play 4th edition? Isn't asking me to pick up 9 books at $30 apeice a little much? Who is spending $270 to play a game revolving around pieces of paper and plastic dice?


But I digress.

The game shouldn't be about character building, can't be about character building, especially since in this case, your character is a collection of powers and skills with a thin veneer of character by way of explaining how in the holy shit you thought to combine 5 levels of Paladin with 6 levels of Sorcerer.