The Gaming Den

Zinegata wrote:The first thing a customer sees when they enter a store is the covers. Do you want to turn half of them off by making the cover scream MATH instead of DRAGON?

People don't PRE-ORDER an RPG book based on the cover. I'll tell you the reason my RPG group pre-ordered the 4E core books: it was the "next" DND, and it was promised to be "more balanced" by having the math "just work". Those were the reasons. We hadn't even seen the covers.

Zinegata, you are missing the entire point of the hype behind 4e. It wasn't that people wanted an edition touted as having solid math behind it because they loved math. Quite the opposite. People wanted the complex problems solved of balancing quadratic wizards with linear warriors, and they didn't want to think about the goddamn math or have to have mathematical mastery in order to not suck. That's why it was "The math just works", indicating that you weren't having to put in the effort, the rule set already worked for you. You don't have to give a fuck about the math because "it just works".

Do you get it now? 4e was hyped and sold as a more solid rule set and upgrade to solve 3e's persistent problems. What problems? Its crunch problems.

How do you not remember this? Were you a child back then? I don't mean that as an insult. It was almost a decade ago. I'm just trying to figure out why this is such a mystery to you.

EightWave wrote:

Zinegata wrote:The first thing a customer sees when they enter a store is the covers. Do you want to turn half of them off by making the cover scream MATH instead of DRAGON?

People don't PRE-ORDER an RPG book based on the cover. I'll tell you the reason my RPG group pre-ordered the 4E core books: it was the "next" DND, and it was promised to be "more balanced" by having the math "just work". Those were the reasons. We hadn't even seen the covers.

Lol, you mean the same 4E cover that got a bit of a "sexist cover" controversy and saw a big spike in the pre-orders after they were shown?

Or how about the 7th Sea Kickstarter which raised over a million dollars?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jo ... nd-edition

Note how the cover image is bigger than the blurb?

It would actually be quite helpful if people actually walked into an actual game store or online store for once before trying to pretend they understand how said shops actually work. Humans are very visual-dependent creatures. That is why successful shops put the cover of their games everywhere:

https://www.coolstuffinc.com/

Besides which, "next D&D" is not marketing based on math either.

That's marketing based on system familiarity - meaning that people were sold on the idea that its a successor (and therefore compatible) with previous editions. Saying that 4E sold "because it's D&D" does not prove that it sells because of the math; if anything it further diminishes the importance of math in the marketing.

erik wrote:Zinegata, you are missing the entire point of the hype behind 4e. It wasn't that people wanted an edition touted as having solid math behind it because they loved math.

You do realize that I keep saying that "good math is an implicit expectation"; which is pretty much everything that you said in one paragraph but summarized in just five words?

And I suppose you missed all the conspiracy theories and how math was a public/official/guerilla talking point that yet somehow never made it to the most prominent advertising space for the game - which is the book cover which has the pretty art instead; while the blurbs are all about the themes and ideas of D&D?

Zinegata, I am legit confused how you have managed to memory hole the entire 4e marketing campaign. I am not going to discuss it with you anymore because so many people have told you that this is an event that happened that your incredulity is no longer possible to accept as sincere.

What I will point out is that several companies have experimented with radically increasing the fluff to crunch ratio of books. Silver Marches for 3e DnD, Runner Havens for SR4, and so on. Companies do this because fluff is faster to write and easier to edit. But it's been a failure every time. It's cheaper to make those books but sales were so bad that companies abandoned the project every single time.

-Username17

Those "implicit expectations" can become very explicit selling points indeed if it eventually becomes obvious that many of them aren't being met by the old version of your product, a situation D&D has rather routinely found itself in over the years. E.g., I didn't know that "And it doesn't start on fire" was going to be the killer phone feature of 2016, but it became a pretty obvious selling point after the first million or so Notes got recalled.

Even 5e has a decent amount of crunch in their books. The ratio isn't great, but new 5e books do come with new races, spells, feats, and often sub-classes.

That said, I also think 4e's marketing campaign, coupled with how godawful it was in play, may have actually seriously diminished the market's desire for working math. That is, I think people may have believed 4e when it said the math worked, and when the game still sucked, came to the conclusion that games with a lot of math just weren't very fun, even if it's good. 4e's marketing slogan was based on the reaction to the level of system mastery required to get good use out of 3.X, and then 4e not only failed to solve that problem but was also generally awful, which could have cemented in people's minds the "no more math" approach that seems to be flourishing now. I'm not convinced that poor math games are now dominant in both mindshare and actual play solely because of a lack of well-designed and well-marketed competition. I fear the desire for a good system may have taken serious brand damage from 4e.

Zinegata wrote:Or how about the 7th Sea Kickstarter which raised over a million dollars?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jo ... nd-edition

Note how the cover image is bigger than the blurb?

At this point you have reduced yourself to legit arguing that pictures are bigger than words and therefore words don't count. You are either two years old, or arguing in bad faith, either way there's no reason not to block you.

Chamomile wrote:Even 5e has a decent amount of crunch in their books. The ratio isn't great, but new 5e books do come with new races, spells, feats, and often sub-classes.

That said, I also think 4e's marketing campaign, coupled with how godawful it was in play, may have actually seriously diminished the market's desire for working math. That is, I think people may have believed 4e when it said the math worked, and when the game still sucked, came to the conclusion that games with a lot of math just weren't very fun, even if it's good. 4e's marketing slogan was based on the reaction to the level of system mastery required to get good use out of 3.X, and then 4e not only failed to solve that problem but was also generally awful, which could have cemented in people's minds the "no more math" approach that seems to be flourishing now. I'm not convinced that poor math games are now dominant in both mindshare and actual play solely because of a lack of well-designed and well-marketed competition. I fear the desire for a good system may have taken serious brand damage from 4e.

To support this claim: the perception of 4e as more of a tactical board game than a legitimate TTRPG.

Chamomile wrote:Even 5e has a decent amount of crunch in their books. The ratio isn't great, but new 5e books do come with new races, spells, feats, and often sub-classes.

That said, I also think 4e's marketing campaign, coupled with how godawful it was in play, may have actually seriously diminished the market's desire for working math. That is, I think people may have believed 4e when it said the math worked, and when the game still sucked, came to the conclusion that games with a lot of math just weren't very fun, even if it's good. 4e's marketing slogan was based on the reaction to the level of system mastery required to get good use out of 3.X, and then 4e not only failed to solve that problem but was also generally awful, which could have cemented in people's minds the "no more math" approach that seems to be flourishing now. I'm not convinced that poor math games are now dominant in both mindshare and actual play solely because of a lack of well-designed and well-marketed competition. I fear the desire for a good system may have taken serious brand damage from 4e.

Both 4e and Pathfailure marketed themselves as being more balanced than 3.5. Neither actually were, but I would not be surprised if the appetite of the RPG consumer is much less whetted for a more balanced game now than it was twn years ago before being burned by those two.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:

Chamomile wrote:Even 5e has a decent amount of crunch in their books. The ratio isn't great, but new 5e books do come with new races, spells, feats, and often sub-classes.

That said, I also think 4e's marketing campaign, coupled with how godawful it was in play, may have actually seriously diminished the market's desire for working math. That is, I think people may have believed 4e when it said the math worked, and when the game still sucked, came to the conclusion that games with a lot of math just weren't very fun, even if it's good. 4e's marketing slogan was based on the reaction to the level of system mastery required to get good use out of 3.X, and then 4e not only failed to solve that problem but was also generally awful, which could have cemented in people's minds the "no more math" approach that seems to be flourishing now. I'm not convinced that poor math games are now dominant in both mindshare and actual play solely because of a lack of well-designed and well-marketed competition. I fear the desire for a good system may have taken serious brand damage from 4e.

Both 4e and Pathfailure marketed themselves as being more balanced than 3.5. Neither actually were, but I would not be surprised if the appetite of the RPG consumer is much less whetted for a more balanced game now than it was twn years ago before being burned by those two.

-Username17

There is some idiot on gitp who talks about how unbalanced games are good because they let you play at a variety of different power levels.... because people at gitp are so stupid they don't understand the concept of "character level" and what it actually does.

Using "4e sucks" as basically their primary argument that balance is bad and unbalance is good because it's more interesting.

So yeah, I could definitely see balance being a less good marketing move, regardless of how it affects actual quality.

Kaelik wrote: There is some idiot on gitp who talks about how unbalanced games are good because they let you play at a variety of different power levels.... because people at gitp are so stupid they don't understand the concept of "character level" and what it actually does.

Using "4e sucks" as basically their primary argument that balance is bad and unbalance is good because it's more interesting.

So yeah, I could definitely see balance being a less good marketing move, regardless of how it affects actual quality.

The easiest way to dismantle that position would be to posit that by their definition a more interesting version of Monopoly would involve the following "classes":

[*]Monk: Starts with 20$, cannot purchase properties until they have Passed Go five times. Cannot establish monopolies, and if they purchase a 3rd property of a colour, a 4th train line, or 2nd Utility, must immediately Auction it to the first bidder.
[*]Fighter, Bard: Starts with 80$, cannot purchase properties until they have Passed Go four times. Cannot establish monopolies, and if they purchase a 3rd property of a colour, a 4th train line, or 2nd Utility, must immediately Auction it to the first bidder.
[*]Sorceror, Paladin: Start with 120$, cannot purchase properies until they have Passed Go three times. Cannot establish monopolies, and if they purchase a 3rd property of a colour, a 4th train line, or 2nd Utility, must immediately Auction it to the first bidder.
[*]Ranger: Play as normal
[*]Wizard: Start with 400$, otherwise play as normal.
[*]Cleric: Start with 400$, roll 3d6 when deciding move, and discard one dice; otherwise play as normal.
[*]Druid: Start with 800$, roll 4d6 when deciding move, and discard two. May roll opposed Movement rolls when landing on an other Player's property, if they roll higher than the property owner they do not have to pay.

Of course, I have my suspicions that they'd regard the above as a superior version of the original game "because unbalace is more interesting".

Zinegata wrote:

erik wrote:Zinegata, you are missing the entire point of the hype behind 4e. It wasn't that people wanted an edition touted as having solid math behind it because they loved math.

And I suppose you missed all the conspiracy theories and how math was a public/official/guerilla talking point that yet somehow never made it to the most prominent advertising space for the game - which is the book cover which has the pretty art instead; while the blurbs are all about the themes and ideas of D&D?

Honestly, having to disprove to the people within my wider gaming circle who had bought the "the math just works" kool-aid was one of the most trying parts of talking to my friends about 4e when it was still on store shelves.

The fact that they were parroting the notion, without having actually seen any mathematical evidence to prove their statements, was an example of the advertising hype for 4e successfully pulling the wool over the eyes of nearly ever purchaser of 4e.

I'm honestly going to have to assume that you never heard the hype being used about 4e, but even as far back as 2010, people on TGD were debunking that notion. It's not some idea that got invented recently by people on TGD.

So, I agree with Zinegata that people didn't go for 4e because of the math. And it's not because I deny the existence of the marketing campaign.

I disagree that people's excitement about "the math just works" is actually about math. Because ask anyone what that means and they'll either give you marketing bullshit or shrug. It's about the system just working.

Cervantes wrote:Because ask anyone what that means and they'll either give you marketing bullshit or shrug. It's about the system just working.

Mike Judge speaks louder than a thousand paragraphs

A prevalent problem regarding math is that, like plenty other hobbies, tabletop RPGs are huge cults of personality, and the personalities in turn are hacks who profess Math Is Bad, problem that stacks with the large percentage of mouth-breathers unable to distinguish their respective tables' social contracts from a game's actual rules.

"It just works" played a part in 4E's ad campaign because back then we were still in the (end of the) age of trad systems, back when math was still a thing. Still, it's all cycles, and just like the Bad Old Days preceeded the Trad age which preceeded Rules Lite only to go all the way back to the Bad Old Days with the OSR, trad games will come back if you wait long enough for gamers to grow sick enough of viking hats and demand systems that police them.

Having said this, I do acknowledge Bear World as the to-go game for misery tourism emulation, which is exactly what you'd be looking for if you wanted to run a game of cyberpunk (not post-cyberpunk, mind you, just cyberpunk, by which I mean stories starred by losers and otherwise victims in worlds that embody an even shittier, future version of noir).

For how many years have Dota 2/Starcraft 2/LoL been receiving math updates?

Good math is simply hard even when designing computer games with much more limited options. If big companies with large teams struggle to get it right, it's unrealistic to expect for small tabletop companies to pull good math for tt rpgs where there's simply a lot more variables.

Also take in account tabletop wargames. Basically every edition of warhammer (40k or not) has been renowed for high inbalance of a sort of another. And tabletop wargames only need to worry about direct combat abilities. They still can't do good math.

Again, it takes a big company like Blizzard years/decades refining a system just to deliver a limited combat simulator when you have a computer backing you up in real time.

However just adding numbers pulled out of your ass is drastically simpler and still will get you some money, and they'll keep coming back for more, so I guess they value math after all. It's simply a matter of cost-efficiency. Doing a tabletop rpg with good math with the variety one expects of, say, D&D 3.5, would be an huge investment and have a really hard time getting you back your money.

maglag wrote:For how many years have Dota 2/Starcraft 2/LoL been receiving math updates?

For however many years they tweak damage/proc/cooldown/yer mum codes in the aim of balance?

And there was a game that had the complexity of 3.5 and had (at the time) good, elegant math. It was called 3.0 and it made money hand over fist. It's not hard, it's just hard for the lazy pieces of shit in the industry, since all the math nerds make Eurogames or vidya or work in pursuits with real money.

Mask_De_H wrote: And there was a game that had the complexity of 3.5 and had (at the time) good, elegant math. It was called 3.0 and it made money hand over fist. It's not hard, it's just hard for the lazy pieces of shit in the industry, since all the math nerds make Eurogames or vidya or work in pursuits with real money.

3.0 had "good, elegant math"? Here's what I remember:
-Bards with armor/shield proficiency but no way to ignore ASF.
-Rangers with only track and one favored enemy at first level, then absolutely nothing at 2nd and 3rd levels.
-Ogres being CR 2 with 4HD, 26 HP with +8 club greatclub 2d6+7.
-Bull's strength and friends being random rolls.
-Do you have a wizard/sorceror to buff the party with haste+polymorph? No? Then gtfo.
-"Once per day a succubus can attempt to summon one balor with a 10% chance of success." Such mathematic elegance! A CR 9 enemy that one time out of ten brings in an ally with twice her CR!
-Although the 3.0 Balor only has 13 HD at CR 18, so yay? Still more than enough to curbstomp a level 9 party, but would be kinda of a joke for an actual level 18 party.

Maglag, most of your examples have nothing to do with math, or offer nothing to contradict that there was some fairly elegant math based game design.

So the 3.0 ogre being straight out better than any 2nd level 3.0 fighter/barbarian is elegant math design? (raw numbers)

Or the succubus turning out into a TPK 10% of the time? (statistics)

Rewarding the players for spamming bull's strength until they roll max? (more statistics)

Haste and polymorph completely pushing you off the numbers you're supposed to have available? (mages casting two max level spells per turn, polymorph getting +texas to stats all the time)

Several monsters being heavily under-HD so they drop like flies to any HD-based effect from a proper level PC?

Maglag, it's like you're claiming that because your toes cannot grip tools well, that you don't have opposable thumbs.

Yes, some creatures and spells were better designed than others. Some creatures were stupidly balanced or created, but that doesn't change that by and large attacks, damage, hit points, saves, etc. were well modulated to create something where you could gauge challenge ratings (i.e. how you know that some creatures are heavy hitters and others are appropriate).

The correction of THAC0 was a big improvement. Weapon sizes and threat range vs. crit modifiers were crisp. The mapping of expected encounters vs. level ups was clearly well considered. Likewise the determination for CR from multiple opponents, and being able to quantify at what point you are expected to simply overpower challenges and have them no longer pose a meaningful threat. Those are examples of math applications. They had a vision for what they wanted, and used math to generate game output meeting those expectations.

Your misplaced concern about mages casting 2 spells per turn means you probably never played 3e. I never saw that being a problem, and I played oodles of campaigns, some on up to teen levels. It was rare that I wanted to burn a spell in order to drop 3 other spells in 2 rounds. That's typically overkill and a waste of resources until high level at which point, who cares? I've already got contingency and other crap by then. Whereas giving warriors the ability to basically pounce was pretty solid aid to the non-casters. I prefer the 3e version over the 3.5 "fix".

Your concern about ogres is also weird, since those are an example of a good CR challenge. The problem was that PCs made weak challenges, and should probably have been CR = level -1 thanks to the action economy imbalance.

Your concern about ability buffs being random is bizarre. If someone wants to burn additional spells to roll max... uh, whatever. Did that really ever cause problems anywhere? It's a spell with random but predictable output, like a lot of other spells. Hhow is this a math failure? "More statistics"... What are ya smokin?

Bards having ASF wasn't a math problem. They had some "bardy" spells that were without somatic component (Shout, Suggestion, Tongues) which worked always, whereas their "wizard" like spells were limited just like wizards. Anyway just get your damned celestial chain shirt and shut up about it.

I will grant that comparable game expectations broke down around level 12+, and that was likely due to lack of playtesting of higher levels.

I will also grant that polymorph was a fuckup. But that doesn't negate the entire rest of the game.

Math criticisms and failures would be stuff like
• Iterative attacks having diminishing returns wasn't appropriate for high level play
• WBL failure. Non-casters require too much expensive equipment to remain relevant with bonus-only items.
• Starting HD didn't leave adequate granularity for sub-adventurer simulation.

erik wrote:The problem was that PCs made weak challenges, and should probably have been CR = level -1 thanks to the action economy imbalance.

In addition to action economy, the quadratic cost of magic items means you quickly lose the ability to challenge the party with PHB race/class combinations without blowing up the treasure tables.
[quote='erik"]The correction of THAC0 was a big improvement. Weapon sizes and threat range vs. crit modifiers were crisp.[/quote]Those still aren't "the math" those are game mechanics. "The math" are things like how BAB deviated by half a RNG across classes just by leveling up, AC values within a party could easily differ by a full RNG by level 8, or spells like Glibness. The mechanics of 3E were an elegant replacement of AD&D 2e mechanics (except for turn undead, which accidentally suffered total existence failure). Replacing THAC0, save vs. wand, bend bars/lift gates checks, percentile thief skills, nonweapon proficiencies, and semi-official critical hit rules with "Roll a d20, add a modifier, compare to a target number, try to roll high" was a fantastic idea, but the actual numbers that system put out were fucked after about level 5.

erik wrote:The mapping of expected encounters vs. level ups was clearly well considered. Likewise the determination for CR from multiple opponents,

On the one hand, yes, those tables were supremely elegant and mathematically rigorous. On the other, they were completely useless because they were purely aspirational and "the math" they contain does not represent reality, like, at all. You don't even have to do ridiculous things like try to calculate how many house cats it takes to have the same EL as a Pit Fiend, you can just look at how the action economy means two EL-2 creatures are significantly better than a solo creature, especially if they're casters. Every discussion of determining CR of a new monster, EL of an encounter with particularly synergistic combinations of creatures or environments, if a Pit Fiend's EL changes after he gets prep time to cast buffs or if it's CR already takes those buffs into account, if you get XP for killing giant scorpions as a flying archer, or any of the other ways that the CR system breaks down gets a response that boils down to "IDK, just guess, man ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" because that's all you can do.

Glibness doesn't do that in 3e. It's a 3.5 special. Many of the changes in 3.5 are mathematically unsound. Virtually all of them are.

-Username17

erik wrote: Yes, some creatures and spells were better designed than others. Some creatures were stupidly balanced or created, but that doesn't change that by and large attacks, damage, hit points, saves, etc. were well modulated to create something where you could gauge challenge ratings (i.e. how you know that some creatures are heavy hitters and others are appropriate).

So your definition of elegant math is outputing the wrong results about 50% of the time, fascinating.

erik wrote: The correction of THAC0 was a big improvement. Weapon sizes and threat range vs. crit modifiers were crisp. The mapping of expected encounters vs. level ups was clearly well considered. Likewise the determination for CR from multiple opponents, and being able to quantify at what point you are expected to simply overpower challenges and have them no longer pose a meaningful threat. Those are examples of math applications. They had a vision for what they wanted, and used math to generate game output meeting those expectations.

Since the vision was fighters suckorz and wizard ruloz, it's still bad math because the books never warned the players about the premise.

erik wrote: Your misplaced concern about mages casting 2 spells per turn means you probably never played 3e. I never saw that being a problem, and I played oodles of campaigns, some on up to teen levels. It was rare that I wanted to burn a spell in order to drop 3 other spells in 2 rounds. That's typically overkill and a waste of resources until high level at which point, who cares? I've already got contingency and other crap by then. Whereas giving warriors the ability to basically pounce was pretty solid aid to the non-casters. I prefer the 3e version over the 3.5 "fix".

You didn't even need to burn spells, just buy some super cheap boots of speed you noob. And yes casters could dominate an encounter with a well aimed spell thanks to all the elegant mathematic, but haste meant casters were never in real danger of failing anything because anything that managed to survive that first spell probably wouldn't be able to survive the next. Whereas the fighter got to stab again at -5 and -10, yay for elegant math!

erik wrote: Your concern about ogres is also weird, since those are an example of a good CR challenge. The problem was that PCs made weak challenges, and should probably have been CR = level -1 thanks to the action economy imbalance.

So you do agree the math just falls apart when you start peeking.

Also notice how the ogre has only a +1 Will save, so still easy caster fodder.

erik wrote: Your concern about ability buffs being random is bizarre. If someone wants to burn additional spells to roll max... uh, whatever. Did that really ever cause problems anywhere? It's a spell with random but predictable output, like a lot of other spells. Hhow is this a math failure? "More statistics"... What are ya smokin?

I had a 3.0 group once that seriously went "ok, drop buffing spells on everybody. Hmm, rolled a bunch of 1s, rest to recover spells and let's try again tomorrow" all the time. Which considerably slowed down sessions.

erik wrote: I will grant that comparable game expectations broke down around level 12+, and that was likely due to lack of playtesting of higher levels.

It started failing much earlier.

erik wrote: I will also grant that polymorph was a fuckup. But that doesn't negate the entire rest of the game.

It does negate a good chunk because half the reason polymorph is broken is that monsters have said texas stats for no good reason.

erik wrote: Math criticisms and failures would be stuff like
• Iterative attacks having diminishing returns wasn't appropriate for high level play
• WBL failure. Non-casters require too much expensive equipment to remain relevant with bonus-only items.
• Starting HD didn't leave adequate granularity for sub-adventurer simulation.

Those are just even more math failures from 3.0. Bad outputs are still bad even if the formulas look pretty.

EightWave wrote:You don't even have to do ridiculous things like try to calculate how many house cats it takes to have the same EL as a Pit Fiend, you can just look at how the action economy means two EL-2 creatures are significantly better than a solo creature, especially if they're casters.

1) The Rules say no amount of Housecats ever represents the same challenge a Pit Fiend though?

2) Yeah, one EL X creature is frequently as good or better than 2 EL X-2 creatures, because the output of their actions can be more than double, and they can be immune to a focus fire that would reduce the pairs output.

The problem is that when that happens, players die, so everyone feels bad. When your choice is a Pair of Maraliths or a Pit Fiend who stun locks the party to death with Blasphemy, the party feels bad when they get TPKed, so the Pit Fiend goes into the pile of "bullshit" and the Maraliths "Count"

When an equal level pouncer or closet troll kills a person in one round, that's called "Bullshit" but when two lower level pouncers pounce different people (or even the same person) and they survive and win that "counts."