The Truth About 4th Edition.

[Oni]

The Escapist : The Truth About 4th Edition: Part One of Our Exclusive Interview with Wizards of the Coast

Interview over at the Escapist with Andy Collins and Liz Schuh. Nothing earthshattering, but it might interest some of you all.

 

[kilamanjaro]

Awesome! Thanks for the link!

 

[Windjammer]

Good grief.

I like playing 4E but this interview reminded me how much it was designed to contravene what I look for in a game. In fact, if you exchanged the name "Andy Collins" for "Chris Pramas", I bet this interview would be castigated as straight flamebait/hatemail towards 4E.

Let's see:

1. MMO'isms rampant to ease over the WoW crowd into 4E? Check.
2. Young people suffer from short attention spans and couldn't possibly cope with rules texts at the complexity level of Red Box D&D? Check.
3. Current as much as prospective D&D players typified as sociopaths who see nothing to be gained from the game when it isn't their turn? Check.

Seriously, this is easily the worst ever way to explain (and by implication, promote) the design goals of this edition. Boy do I miss the days when Rob Heinsoo gave answers to such question. His ruminations made you feel warm and proud of playing this game.

Of the three, it was 3. that rubbed me the wrong way most. Here's the relevant excerpt from the interview:

Q: What did you learn from Eurogames?


AC: Some of it was that and some of it was simply a measure of - as professional game designers, we look at all games for lessons. Certainly, the lessons we learn from online games are going to be the most obvious ones because they have a lot of people familiar with the sources, but there's also lessons about turn management from European board games, interface ideas from card games.
We try to look at all sorts of games for "What can we learn? What makes this game work well? Or not work well? And how could we adapt that, how should we adapt that to the roleplaying game format?"

Q: That's awesome. Can you give an example of something you learned from, for example, a European board game?

AC: One of the things that I like a lot about Euro board games is their presentation of rules and turn formats. They try to be very upfront about, y'know, "Here are the win conditions for the game. Here is what you do in your turn. Here are some graphics that show how you interact with the game board," that sort of thing. That's a little esoteric, I realize. Some of these are a little hard to put in words. They're the kind of things that you understand it when you see it.

Greg Tito: So, games like Settlers of Catan, where there's a defined, "Here's what you can do on your turn," were inspirations?

AC: Right, understanding how much attention should you be paying to the game when it's not your turn - that's a very interesting balance to make. There are some games that are ... when it's not your turn you can get up and walk out of the room and come back in 20 minutes. There are other games where you are all playing a Solitaire game at the same time. Some of the old-style rail games are like that.
Even Dominion, a game that I love a lot, has been called - and rightly so - by a number of people, like four people playing a Solitaire deck-building game simultaneously. And there are places where D&D has been like that. Where when it's not your turn, as long as the monsters not attacking you, you go play Xbox or what have you. We didn't want a game that was quite that far in that direction so we really worked to experiment with places where, "OK, you need to be more active, at least more away, when it's not your turn."

Here's a little secret, Andy. D&D is a cooperative game. Your point of comparison isn't Carcassone, let alone Dominion. It's games like Arkham Horror you should be looking at for inspiration. A group of players gets together and pulls off a collective gigue in the face of escalating tension.


Wow, just wow. Someone please help me to erase my memory of that interview. It tarnished my active appreciation of 4E.

 

[Dannager]

Good grief.

I like playing 4E but this interview reminded me how much it was designed to contravene what I look for in a game. In fact, if you exchanged the name "Andy Collins" for "Chris Pramas", I bet this interview would be castigated as straight flamebait/hatemail towards 4E.

Let's see:

1. MMO'isms rampant to ease over the WoW crowd into 4E? Check.
2. Young people suffer from short attention spans and couldn't possibly cope with rules texts at the complexity level of Red Box D&D? Check.
3. Current as much as prospective D&D players typified as sociopaths who see nothing to be gained from the game when it isn't their turn? Check.

Seriously, this is easily the worst ever way to explain (and by implication, promote) the design goals of this edition.

I'm really confused as to where you drew these observations from. I didn't see any of that in this article. I saw Andy a) explain that, as game designers, they need to look at other games for both inspiration and in order to see where their next audience might be coming from, and the reality is that games like WoW are now a significant chunk of that, b) that everyone has a lowered tolerance for information that is difficult to absorb; life simply has a different dynamic to it than it did thirty years ago, especially when it comes to socialization, and c) that games need to strive to engage the player for the duration of the time the game is being played, not just for two minutes out of every ten.

These are not shocking, depressing, or even worrisome observations. They are realities, they are presented reasonably, and the clear purposeful acting upon these observations is very much to WotC's credit.

 

[Oni]

Wow, just wow. Someone please help me to erase my memory of that interview. It tarnished my active appreciation of 4E.

Sorry...

 

[darjr]

I fail to see where your conclusions were drawn from windjammer. I don't see it in the snippet you gave.

 

[bagger245]

If WOTC admits that they took WOW as an inspiration, then why do we still have 4e fanboys getting agitated when someone compares 4e to WOW? Is being associated to WOW such a bad thing? To me WOTC is correct in taking influence due to the current generation.

~ Please avoid using language aimed primarily at demeaning others. Thanks: Admin ~

 

[Dausuul]

I'm really confused as to where you drew these observations from. I didn't see any of that in this article. I saw Andy a) explain that, as game designers, they need to look at other games for both inspiration and in order to see where their next audience might be coming from, and the reality is that games like WoW are now a significant chunk of that, b) that everyone has a lowered tolerance for information that is difficult to absorb; life simply has a different dynamic to it than it did thirty years ago, especially when it comes to socialization, and c) that games need to strive to engage the player for the duration of the time the game is being played, not just for two minutes out of every ten.

Agreed. Moreover, I vehemently dispute the idea that WotC should only look at a narrow genre of games for inspiration. That way lies a game that caters only to an ever-narrowing hardcore fanbase, left behind by the rest of the world... a peril D&D has been dancing along the edges of for a long time.

Creativity thrives when it draws on a broad spectrum of experience. WotC designers should be looking at everything from World of Warcraft to chess to Monopoly, and I'm glad to hear that they are, not that I particularly doubted it.

 

[ggroy]

Nothing really new in this article, other than confirming a few things which have been conjectured previously by others.

Move along.

 

[Drkfathr1]

I find it shameful that Andy stated that he wouldn't be able to understand how to play the game by reading the old Blue Book now.

I mean wow. Really?

I'm older now too, but I don't feel like I've lost my attention span, or somehow become less intelligent.