Skill at Role-Playing

[Neonchameleon]

I think this makes it a perfect example - no part of the premise was that the hole existed in *all* editions. They made a new system, and guess what? There were bugs. This is surprising exactly how?

The problem wasn't that there were bugs. The problem was that the bugs show up under very basic smart play. I didn't spot them all on my first read through - but I did spot that the Wand of Cure Light Wounds was a gamechanger. And playtesting really should have spotted the saving throws.

Perfect the enemy of good?

You go make up a ruleset from scratch, and make it *perfect*, such that there are no such holes - behaviors that seem reasonable, but end up broken. I double-dog dare you!

(I feel it is a safe dare. If you try and fail, my point is made. If you try and succeed, well, then we get an awesome new game!)

No. Overdetailed and overambitious is the enemy of good.

A game does not have to do everything. But what it does do it should get right. 3.0 put in worldbuilding and economic rules that simply don't work. If they weren't going to test them they should have left them out. It's pretty easy to put together a system that says "DM can arbitrate." The problem 3.0 has with economics is that it took things out of the DM's hands by default while making them worse than most DMs would make it.

13th Age, for example has no serious economic rules and this is not a failing of the game. By putting detailed economic rules in (as opposed to suggested sale prices) and having those rules really work badly, the content provided there was worse than useless.

 

[RedSiegfried]

Wow, three pages and nobody's mentioned the Oberoni Fallacy yet? I must have missed it.

 

[Umbran]

The problem wasn't that there were bugs. The problem was that the bugs show up under very basic smart play.

Well, here is the problem - "smart play" is largely defined by what gets a lot of bang for your buck under the rules. You don't choose to buy a notebook full of scrolls until *after* you realize that the rules make it possible, and that it is very economical.

I think that we should differentiate between natural play and smart play. Natural play is the stuff you'd try to do just because it makes sense in the fictional framing. "I draw my sword and try to stab it," is entirely natural, an common thing someone would try to do. "I go out and buy three dozen scrolls," isn't really something you expect folks to try to do, just as a part of generic fantasy. I find it an issue if a bit of natural play is really broken, and I'm less concerned with play that comes after attempts to optimize are broken.

A game does not have to do everything. But what it does do it should get right. 3.0 put in worldbuilding and economic rules that simply don't work. If they weren't going to test them they should have left them out.

I think this is a "hindsight is 20/20" thing. Today, in an age where we have RPG playtests that have tens of thousands of people, "testing" means something very different than what it did in 2000. Or, perhaps a bit of armchair QA-analysis. It is very easy, now, to say they *should have* caught it. But, have you ever tried to really test an entire RPG system, with only a handful of people?

Taking a cue from software development - you will generally only catch failures for which you have an explicit test case. If, during the playtests, nobody really thought of trying that action - it was not *natural* play - then, yeah, they'd miss it.

13th Age, for example has no serious economic rules and this is not a failing of the game.

Yeah. Note how 13th Age had the opportunity to learn from 3.0's mistakes?

 

[Neonchameleon]

Well, here is the problem - "smart play" is largely defined by what gets a lot of bang for your buck under the rules. You don't choose to buy a notebook full of scrolls until *after* you realize that the rules make it possible, and that it is very economical.

I think that we should differentiate between natural play and smart play. Natural play is the stuff you'd try to do just because it makes sense in the fictional framing. "I draw my sword and try to stab it," is entirely natural, an common thing someone would try to do. "I go out and buy three dozen scrolls," isn't really something you expect folks to try to do, just as a part of generic fantasy. I find it an issue if a bit of natural play is really broken, and I'm less concerned with play that comes after attempts to optimize are broken.

And here you're creating a semi-arbitrary distinction.

But even if we go with your distinction, I will absolutely say "I try to buy the most cost-effective equipment I can afford" and "I try to learn and have ready as many spells as possible" are 100% expressions of natural play.

See my Wand of Cure Light Wounds example. If that thing is on the market at less than half the price of a +1 sword it is highly un-natural play to not try and pick some up (or one of the alternatives) for the party. It's lots of healing in one little happy stick at a bargain price. The 3.0 economy once again falls to natural play with just a very little knowledge of the world.

And then there's the saving throw system and the way Save or Suck and Save or Die trumps hit point damage. Natural play for a wizard is to want spells that will make the enemy stop hitting you.

Why didn't it get picked up? Because of learned unnatural play due to Gygax and Arneson's system. Where Save vs Spell (i.e. Fireball) was much much harder than save vs Poison (i.e. Stinking Cloud). If you play 3.0 using the unnatural tactics picked up from 2E it actually works pretty well. Come into it cold and try natural tactics with the economy presented, the bear druid, or wizards who try to prevent the enemy hitting back and it breaks accidentally.

I think this is a "hindsight is 20/20" thing. Today, in an age where we have RPG playtests that have tens of thousands of people, "testing" means something very different than what it did in 2000. Or, perhaps a bit of armchair QA-analysis. It is very easy, now, to say they *should have* caught it. But, have you ever tried to really test an entire RPG system, with only a handful of people?

Do I have the budget for 3.0?

And the simple answer is Gygax did. Admittedly oD&D is the best playtested game in the history of RPGs. But that's because Gygax learned his playtesting from and with wargamers and wasn't afraid to de facto errata. oD&D was playtested by wargamers playing to win. There are few RPG designers

Taking a cue from software development - you will generally only catch failures for which you have an explicit test case. If, during the playtests, nobody really thought of trying that action - it was not *natural* play - then, yeah, they'd miss it.

And taking a cue from software development you send your testers out to try to break the software. This is what the 3.0 playtesters simply didn't do. 3.0 works on the use case expected by the designers - which involves carrying forward a lot of learned behaviour patterns from 2e.

Yeah. Note how 13th Age had the opportunity to learn from 3.0's mistakes?

Note how e.g. Marvel Super Heroes didn't. And it doesn't have those problems either.

 

[Starfox]

...there's no conceivable chance on Greayhawk that our first level Ranger from a remote farm in the middle on nowhere could have any knowledge whatsoever on just what an Illithid is.

The entire premise of the Knowledge skill system says that there is such a chance. If you picked a very unusual skill like Knowledge (dungeoneering) and managed to beat the difficulty, you do indeed know about illithids. To say one didn't would be to negate the entire point of taking knowledge skills.

The skeleton example is even more revealing. Skeletons are CR 0, so the Knowledge skill to ID them is 10, a roll anyone can try without skill ranks. On top, skeletons are (in most worlds) very common and also iconic and famous, reducing the DC by another 5 (or even more). The chance that a first level character with Int 10 and no other qualifications would know of then is 80%.

This is the point of having knowledge skills - you move game knowledge out of the players and into their characters. It gives the GM another way to present the world, through in-character knowledge. A GM is of course free to not use this skill, but it is a big change to the flow of the game, a return to old skool where player knowledge was the key and not PC knowledge.

 

[Dandu]

That's a great point, and a false point (read on please). We all live on the honor system somewhat as players of this game, specifically as extremely experienced and advanced players of the various versions of our game. Even the best of us can't seem to help but allow a little player knowledge slip into that new character, even though there's no conceivable chance on Greayhawk that our first level Ranger from a remote farm in the middle on nowhere could have any knowledge whatsoever on just what an Illithid is... It seems to be an innate part of the game when we start that new adventure, say with a player who's trying to DM that first time. They may be brand new characters, but we swoop into that group of skeletons, swapping out of swords for clubs or sticks like veterans. Alot of the learning curve is ignored.

Would you also say that it is metagaming if, say, a level 1 PC pulls out garlic when confronted with a vampire?

 

[Bleys Icefalcon]

Would you also say that it is metagaming if, say, a level 1 PC pulls out garlic when confronted with a vampire?

Not neccesarily.... even early cultures had their legends about Vampires. What's to say there weren't scary stories told around the campfire when they were young? My intimation was that at times we (and I admit to complete guilt here, personally) use knowledge in our head, that wouldn't necesarily be in our character's head.