Quote from: StormBringer;581107Completely wrong.  It's only conditionally correct when applied to boardgames.  This sort of nonsense is what gave rise to the Forge.

No, he's right. That it gave rise to the forge doesn't make him less so, a correct theory can be put to good and bad use. Setting design goals and creating mechanics to emulate those is the right way to do it. I guess where the forge went wrong was when poor old Ron utterly failed to grasp what roleplaying was about and replaced mechanical design goals with his stunted social vision instead.

Quote from: The Traveller;581150No, he's right. That it gave rise to the forge doesn't make him less so, a correct theory can be put to good and bad use. Setting design goals and creating mechanics to emulate those is the right way to do it. I guess where the forge went wrong was when poor old Ron utterly failed to grasp what roleplaying was about and replaced mechanical design goals with his stunted social vision instead.

Design goals are great, but they do need to account for what the customers want. 4E met most of its design goals, but in doing so drove away a number of existing D&D players. You also have to account for why things that appear to detract from the "goal" of a game like D&D are deemed essential or fun by many players. For a game like D&D narrow design goals are a bad idea. For a game like "Draco-Warriors: The Optimized Weeabo Heartbreaker" you narrow design is okay because you are appealing to a specific demographic of the gaming community. "good design" in isolation from considerations like who actually plays the game is somewhat meaningless.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;581157Design goals are great, but they do need to account for what the customers want. 4E met most of its design goals, but in doing so drove away a number of existing D&D players. You also have to account for why things that appear to detract from the "goal" of a game like D&D are deemed essential or fun by many players.

D&D didn't have a goal in its earlier iterations though, it was just "the game". It is unique in that it wasn't just first to market, it created the market from nothing.

In that regard I don't think releasing new versions was ever a good idea for D&D, its strength always lay in the vast amount of resources available, not the depth of its system. Commercial considerations played a far greater role, everything else took a back seat, making it a poor example of good design on many levels.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;581157"good design" in isolation from considerations like who actually plays the game is somewhat meaningless.

No, its not, good design is good design. As has already been outlined, the success of a game in terms of sales quite often has little to do with the variables that make a game well designed. If you're aiming for a target market, those are your design goals. If you aren't that doesn't neccessarily mean your game is badly designed.

Quote from: The Traveller;581150No, he's right. That it gave rise to the forge doesn't make him less so, a correct theory can be put to good and bad use. Setting design goals and creating mechanics to emulate those is the right way to do it. I guess where the forge went wrong was when poor old Ron utterly failed to grasp what roleplaying was about and replaced mechanical design goals with his stunted social vision instead.

The major problem is "In a nutshell good  design is when you design for something to happen and it happens the way  you want it to."  Good design is when you make a (flexible) mechanic that increases enjoyment of the game.  If you can't tolerate the idea that people aren't going to play your game exactly they way you intended, perhaps RPG design isn't up your alley (third person 'you', of course).  I don't think Edwards' mis-step is entirely accidental; it seems to be the outcome of that kind of game design.  "Good design is easy to contemplate when your arguments aren't bogged  down by people who don't want the same thing you do" only means you should be writing a game for you and your friends exclusively; that was another modus operandi over at the Forge.  Write for that one tiny audience that has the exact tastes or preferences you do.

And of course...

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;581157Design goals are great, but they do need to account for what the customers want. 4E met most of its design goals, but in doing so drove away a number of existing D&D players. You also have to account for why things that appear to detract from the "goal" of a game like D&D are deemed essential or fun by many players. For a game like D&D narrow design goals are a bad idea. For a game like "Draco-Warriors: The Optimized Weeabo Heartbreaker" you narrow design is okay because you are appealing to a specific demographic of the gaming community. "good design" in isolation from considerations like who actually plays the game is somewhat meaningless.

I fully agree, design goals should be the first step.  It should be "What do I want this game to do?", not "What mechanics will enforce my exact vision of how to play?".  Specific elements will follow from that overall design.  

"I want to emulate a low magic, semi-mythical fantasy world where humanoids are abundant, but true monsters are rare and powerful" naturally implies "No fireballs" (or whatever else).  Magic would be difficult to learn, and even harder to use.  High skill costs or xp/level for magic use, and high chances of disastrous miscasting.  Even divine magic would be unreliable, as the gods have abandoned the world to its fate millennia past.  All that flows from the low magic setting without having to address the crimes of previous shitty GMs in the rules.

Quote from: talysman;581035The heavy lifting is done by the structural rules, most of which are conditionals (if you are a magic-user, you can prepare and cast spells.)

Quote from: The Traveller;581059Surely that would be a mechanic too?

Nope. A mechanic is something you, the player, physically do: roll dice, add, subtract, push tokens around. A structural rule is something that governs how the fictional world works: who can use this or that tool, which spells affect this or that target.

There can be hybrid rules, like "a magic-user can prepare and cast a number of spells per day of each level, as listed on this table." This tells us that magic-users are able to cast spells, but it also tells us to keep track of spells cast as a resource.

Quote from: StormBringer;581162The major problem is "In a nutshell good  design is when you design for something to happen and it happens the way  you want it to."  Good design is when you make a (flexible) mechanic that increases enjoyment of the game.  If you can't tolerate the idea that people aren't going to play your game exactly they way you intended, perhaps RPG design isn't up your alley (third person 'you', of course).  I don't think Edwards' mis-step is entirely accidental; it seems to be the outcome of that kind of game design.  "Good design is easy to contemplate when your arguments aren't bogged  down by people who don't want the same thing you do" only means you should be writing a game for you and your friends exclusively; that was another modus operandi over at the Forge.  Write for that one tiny audience that has the exact tastes or preferences you do.

Again, this is a forge problem, not a theory problem. It was not possible for Ron to leap out of the fireplace like some ghastly slobbering father christmas to impose his will on any table, let alone every table. Call it a delusion if you will, but pointing to them is like pointing to Hiroshima and saying nuclear power is bad.

Mind you I agree that echo chambers are stupid, one of the reasons I like this place. My reading of the comment is that one should pursue one's own vision rather than try to pander to everyone's desires, which is the best way to avoid design by committee.

Quote from: StormBringer;581162I fully agree, design goals should be the first step.  It should be "What do I want this game to do?", not "What mechanics will enforce my exact vision of how to play?".  Specific elements will follow from that overall design.

The bone of contention here seems to be "enforce my exact vision". I agree with what you're saying, but I guess its up to MGuy to clarify what he means really.

Quote from: talysman;581163Nope. A mechanic is something you, the player, physically do: roll dice, add, subtract, push tokens around. A structural rule is something that governs how the fictional world works: who can use this or that tool, which spells affect this or that target.

There can be hybrid rules, like "a magic-user can prepare and cast a number of spells per day of each level, as listed on this table." This tells us that magic-users are able to cast spells, but it also tells us to keep track of spells cast as a resource.

Hrm. To me a mechanic is anything that defines or delineates what a player can or cannot do in a game world with their character. So saying "only magic users can use magic" is structural right up until you write it down as a solid rule, then it becomes a mechanic. Differing definitions I suppose.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;580942As much as we like to think it does?  The reason I ask is because two of the most popular versions of D&D were arguably the worst designed from a presentation and mechanical standpoint.

Let's be honest, 2e was much better presented and mechanically sound than 1e, yet 1e walks all over it as far as continued support and gamers.  And 4e was much better designed over 3e in terms of balance, presentation, and work the DM had to do.  And 4e is getting walked all over by 3e and the OGL.

Perhaps it's just that "mechanically sound", "balance", and making less work for a DM aren't the things that define good RPG game design or an enjoyable game experience.

Quote from: The Traveller;581164Again, this is a forge problem, not a theory problem. It was not possible for Ron to leap out of the fireplace like some ghastly slobbering father christmas to impose his will on any table, let alone every table. Call it a delusion if you will, but pointing to them is like pointing to Hiroshima and saying nuclear power is bad.

Certainly.  I don't think game design/theory is a problem in and of itself.  Fairly often it takes the Forge path, however, because individual designers think they know how the game should be played and design for that.  The designer can't show up at your table, it's true, but heavy-handed design principles to insure no one can play it wrong can have much the same feel.

QuoteMind you I agree that echo chambers are stupid, one of the reasons I like this place. My reading of the comment is that one should pursue one's own vision rather than try to pander to everyone's desires, which is the best way to avoid design by committee.

Keep the vision foremost, but be ready to make some changes for your audience.  There are extreme examples of single vision and design by committee that serve as cautionary tales against too much adherence to one or the other.

QuoteThe bone of contention here seems to be "enforce my exact vision". I agree with what you're saying, but I guess its up to MGuy to clarify what he means really.

I use it as a broad example, so if MGuy meant something different, I withdraw my comments towards him specifically.  The sentiment is still more common than not, I think.

Quote from: StormBringer;581170The designer can't show up at your table, it's true, but heavy-handed design principles to insure no one can play it wrong can have much the same feel.

Why would anyone waste their time playing something they didn't enjoy, though? Even then designers can be as heavy handed as they want, and nothing will stop houseruling from taking place. I regularly strip out the rules of games and replace them with my own, I've some fairly serious Fading Suns surgery sitting on my hard drive, love that setting, can't deal with the rules. Or more likely the game will join the very tall stack of forgotten RPGs.

Quote from: StormBringer;581170Keep the vision foremost, but be ready to make some changes for your audience.

If you want to make sales a design goal, then yes, but not having sales as a design goal doesn't automatically imply bad design. It just means different aims. The guy that did Phoenix command didn't have playability as one of his goals, but from what I can tell, he achieved what he set out to. Its a different story when someone is ignorant of this and expects the whole world to fall in line with their vision of course, then you run into forgeism.

Quote from: The Traveller;581160No, its not, good design is good design. As has already been outlined, the success of a game in terms of sales quite often has little to do with the variables that make a game well designed. If you're aiming for a target market, those are your design goals. If you aren't that doesn't neccessarily mean your game is badly designed.

my point is if you are trying to build a game with broad appeal like D&D, then a narrow design goal is bad design (even if it is "good design" in isolation) because one of the key goals of such a game is broad appeal. I have nothing against theory or design goals (i have my own set of design principes i abide by in fact). But the danger of it is you can forget what you are making the game for in the first place: for peope to play it. So i think considering your target audience is always part of good design (even if the target audience is just you and your buddy steve). If there is a disconnect between your deign goal and the needs of your target audience, you have a potential problem (which is I think the big lesson of 4E: solid design goals, solidly executed, but not aligned with the needs or desires of their existing target audience).

I think what I am getting at is there are mechanical design goals (i.e. I want to make a game that offers up super fast, super deadly combats) and considerations about who will be playing the game in the first place. You have to weigh both because as you playtest, the two sometimes come into conflict and it is important to know why. For example I may make a game that is deadly and fast, but somethilng about my deadly and fast mechanic keeps irking the people who otherwise enjoy my game. Te mechanic itself is siund in principle and meets the stated design goal of being deadly and fast, there is just some other expectation among my deadly and fast audience that i am missing. Good design doesnt matter until it hits the road. It can be good design all day long in the workshop but if te people you want to play it, dont like it, there is a problem....and the fix may even be to add mechanics that go against your stated design goal because it turns out people find it more fun.

I will take a game that is fun to play any day over one that looks better on paper but doesn't excite me at the table. I think sometimes too much investment in some vague notion of "good design" can lead to the later. Good design exists, just not in a vacuum.

Quote from: The Traveller;581173Why would anyone waste their time playing something they didn't enjoy, though? Even then designers can be as heavy handed as they want, and nothing will stop houseruling from taking place. I regularly strip out the rules of games and replace them with my own, I've some fairly serious Fading Suns surgery sitting on my hard drive, love that setting, can't deal with the rules. Or more likely the game will join the very tall stack of forgotten RPGs.

Agreed on Fading Suns.  Awesome material, terrible rules.  

But the point of "...for something to happen and it happens the way  you want it to" is that the designer is going to have the perfect set of rules, and no one will need (want? dare?) to change anything about them.  If something needs to be changed, they have failed as a designer.  Obviously, that is pure nonsense, but that is where this comes from.  It goes back to what I said in another thread:  there has been a trend for a number of years to consider RPGs as games first and foremost, and games have rules which can be 'improved' or 'perfected'.  Of course people will houserule, no reasonable gamer expects a set of rules to be complete and infallible.  But for that kind of designer, it's a gallstone in the mind, a constant reminder that their rules weren't 'perfect'.

QuoteIf you want to make sales a design goal, then yes, but not having sales as a design goal doesn't automatically imply bad design. It just means different aims. The guy that did Phoenix command didn't have playability as one of his goals, but from what I can tell, he achieved what he set out to. Its a different story when someone is ignorant of this and expects the whole world to fall in line with their vision of course, then you run into forgeism.

I don't think 'sales' so much, just 'distribution'.  It's great if you want to make a set of rules for just your group and want to talk about it on the interwebz.  But if you want anyone outside that group to play it, then you really have to account for people with different tastes.  If you have an enthusiastic audience built up from playtests, beta documents, and word of mouth over your skill based game and how it implements various abilities, it's a bad time to have a 'vision change' and go to class/level. Or change the skill system from 10 ranks to 100 ranks.  Or whatever.

For instance, Lord Vreeg can do pretty much anything he wants with Celtricia, he already knows the group that will be playing it.  If he wants to expand beyond that group, I would assume he is savvy enough to understand there will be some changes that need to be made.  Even something simple, like making sure there are not unspoken assumptions in the rules descriptions.  All the way up to the more complex stuff, like 'no one wants to do integral calculus for hit determinations' (not actually part of Celtricia).

So, there is 'vision' and there is 'target fixation'.  Knowing the difference is not an easy task, and there are no bright lines to divide those, either.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;581157Design goals are great, but they do need to account for what the customers want.

No Brendan bad. You're straying away from the point here. You're a designer (doesn't matter what you design) you have a goal (doesn't matter what that goal is) if your design helps you reach that goal your design was good. If what you did failed to reach the desired goal then it is bad. As far as RPGs it doesn't matter whether people "liked" it but rather if it produces the results you want in practice and avoids producing results you don't want.

Quote from: talysman;581163Nope. A mechanic is something you, the player, physically do: roll dice, add, subtract, push tokens around. A structural rule is something that governs how the fictional world works: who can use this or that tool, which spells affect this or that target.

If you redefine mechanic and "structural rule" as these things then game designers don't make mechanics they make"structural rules" because the game designer is never going to be the one doing your math, rolling your dice, or pushing your tokens around.

Quote from: TristramEvans;581167Perhaps it's just that "mechanically sound", "balance", and making less work for a DM aren't the things that define good RPG game design or an enjoyable game experience.

I think people are relating "good game design" to "enjoyable game experience". The first doesn't necessarily lead to the second nor does the latter necessarily suggest that the former is true.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;581177I will take a game that is fun to play any day over one that looks better on paper but doesn't excite me at the table. I think sometimes too much investment in some vague notion of "good design" can lead to the later. Good design exists, just not in a vacuum.

The thing about design is you can have design goals all over the place. If I have a design goal that is "Appeal to people X" if I fail to do that then I need to redo my design because I've done it badly. "Good Design" doesn't necessarily lead to everybody having a good time it means you've designed something that reaches your target design goals. Worrying about reaching a broad audience is a design goal (a broad one) and it doesn't get you far because you need to ask yourself then "what kind of audience do you want to appeal to?" and then "what does that audience want?".

This is an interesting thread indeed ....
It has resulted in some thoughts for me:

Have i made my own games too simple, and for nothing, even?
No, since i have strived to make the games i wanted to play myself, with the simple but good rules i would have preferred when i used to buy several rpgs ...

But, what is the topic here, really?
It so often seem to refer to D&D, but i have yet to see comparisons between editions of Shadowrun or any of the Vampire variants.

The question is "Does good game design really matter?", but the answer to that seems to already have been given, as in "No" or rather "Far from as much as the game designers seem to think.".
But, looking closer, this seem to apply to D&D, that has a history to rely on, rather than skill, but how is it with other games that doesn't have as much history, not to mention any new rpgs?
You'd better look at those games too, and not just stare yourself blind on D&D, if you truly want the answer to that question.

Setting trumps system...but it helps to have a good system.

When I look at the success of Vampire, Shadowrun or Deadlands, I am seeing really engaging settings with functional systems (some with barely functional sub-systems), but players and GMs are so engaged with the world and characters that system issues are secondary.

But many people love GURPS and HERO which have no setting, so who knows?