"This time will never be different"

[subplotkudzu]

 mnemex and I have been having a pleasant geek out discussing the pros and cons of 4E (most of which is spinning castles out of clouds since we haven't actually seen the rules yet) and I find that once again the problems with the latest edition oof D&D aren't so much with the core books as with the splatbooks. 

I mean, taken on it's face 2E was not that bad a system, especially for 1989. It was far from perfect, but it was a fine clean up of a sprawling legacy system. I happily ran it for 5 years with tweaks and mods, which is more than I can say for a lot of games. It's biggest error was that the designer listened to the players of the legacy system too much and kept things that should have been scrapped. It didn't start to break until after the 4th splatbook - complete fighter, wizard, cleric and rogue were all acceptable in their kits and advice (complete rogue really did have some good ideas for an all rogue campaign), but the drive for more newer better tougher broke the game system. If someone came to me saying that they were running a 2E corebook game with soome world specific kits I'd play in a heartbeat. In fact, I've done so - Rebecca's Spelljammer game started that way, and 40yearsagotodayran a very enjoyable 1 shot with the 2E rules well after 3E came out.  

3E was and is a fine system. It gutted the interior of D&D and rebuilt it so that the house looked the same from the outside, had the same rough layout but with better load bearing support, new wiring, new plumbing and so on. It's 90 to 95% of what I'd want from a game trying to do what D&D does. I've never played the game higher than 13th level, but when I did run 5 sessions of a 12-13th level campaign it worked just fine. Again, the system didn't break until the splatbooks with their ever widening array of prestige classes that fall prey to newer better tougher and, in so doing, broke the game system. But I'm still running 3E, and don't see myself changing.

In between these we had the execrable 2.5 and the unnecessary 3.5 (in which most of the "fixes" were just reversing the original teams design decisions - I want stat buff spells to be strategic, thank you, and it doesn't bother me that Hiram can wake up at dawn, cast Cat's Grace and have +4 Dex until midday. 40yat never thinks of casting the spell anyway....) 

To me it's clear that the problem isn't with the core engine, it's with the splatbooks. So any attempt to "Fix" problems in 4E will be undermined by the progression of splatbooks that make up the publisher's cash flow model. That led to mnemex's quote that titles this post. 

My main question, which I have posed in A&E before, is why do GMs let this happen? Just because there is an ever widening array of splatbooks, why do DMs let in prestige classes that will break the game? It's not impossible for a DM to just say 'no' when someone asks for something new that doesn't fit. It's also possible to build your own prestige classes specific to you game world - hell, it's preferable. 

My second question is more of a hope: does anyone think that WotC will have enough internal editing to make sure that their 4E splatbooks (and I know they can only control their own content) won't break the game? Or do we think that declaring the game broken after 10 years and promising to "fix" it with 5E is part of their strategy?

Comments

[mylescorcoran]

I think it's in part a question of game master's willpower. Some players will brings things to the table that they've found in this book or that book, and try to persuade the DM to let them use it. Sometims it's just easier to cave.

Solid world building and defining the campaign setting helps here. In Joe Blogg's Vaguely Remembered Realms, a grab bag of any and all core and prestige classes can creep in as there's no strong thematic restriction on such choices. In a well defined setting with player buy in there's less room for such cruft.

I think limiting a game to just what's in the core books is a good solution, but it does throw away a lot of interesting things, and the question of balance between the core classes in the original 3.0 may put some people off.

I don't expect WotC to be that careful about not breaking the game. It's too easy to add stuff and it gets increasingly difficult to balance everything as the edifice of interactions grows and grows.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

I think limiting a game to just what's in the core books is a good solution, but it does throw away a lot of interesting things, and the question of balance between the core classes in the original 3.0 may put some people off.

Of course, I never hesitated to tweak the corebook for specific settings (which is why the Emirikolian Sorcerer is better than the standard one). I also add my own prestige classes with interesting things stolen and put it. It's the adding things wholesale - "being easier to cave" that astounds me. Maybe I just take GMing too seriously.

I think it's also that my games are short and focused. Emirikol has had 12 Sessions. Russia and Arabia combined have had 16. It makes it easier to keep the line when everyone is on their first character in each setting... no wait, I stand corrected, Kriz1818 is on her second in Arabia, but I built them both and they're pretty basic. But still, that's 15 PCs all told with only 2 prestige classes, both just starting.