Now, about the OP itself: I think Frank's analysis is probably right.  From a point of view of rules-design, Iron Heroes did seem to be crap.

Which is why I had confidence in Mearls at the time. IH was full of enthusiasm, didn't seem to give a shit about game balance, and followed NONE of the rules that people in the Forge wanted RPGs to look like.

So while you're right, Frank, that Mearls' design in IH was really pretty piss-poor from the point of view of things like balance and masterful "gamist" design, it was this very thing which led me (erroneously) to believe that Mearls would be a faithful guardian of the wacky wonderfulness of D&D.  I never saw the stab in the back that was 4e coming.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;415235Second, that "10 years to do stuff" meme is a load of bullshit that people really have to stop saying.  It can apply to completely technical activities, like playing tennis or guitar. It does NOT apply to creative activities like writing songs or books or RPGs.

For quite a large number of musicians, their best work was frequently done before they got their big break (ie. before they became famous).  The common pattern is their best written material frequently ends up on the first few albums.  After that well runs dry, they end up having to produce new crap on demand, which is frequently mediocre in comparison.

Not exactly easy to come up with good new material, when one is under pressure from record company bureaucrats, managers, fans, etc ... to produce a second encore in a very short period of time.  Their older material, may very well have been stuff they had written over a 10+ year time period previous to "becoming famous".

I haven't looked at Mearls' early d20 material from 2000-2003.  Wonder if it was any better (or worse) than his later stuff.

I love it how people now gang up to pretend Frank's OP is about IH's lack of balance and nothing else.

Indeed. It's a hatchet job on Mr. Mearls. Although i kinda agree about IH. I bought it because i heard such good things about it, read it and then thought what the fuck? I get tokens for being hit? Magic? Bwah! The magic section looked like it was from a Forge ashcan edition.

Quote from: Windjammer;415243I love it how people now gang up to pretend Frank's OP is about IH's lack of balance and nothing else.

What else is it about?

Quote from: ggroy;415241I haven't looked at Mearls' early d20 material from 2000-2003.  Wonder if it was any better (or worse) than his later stuff.

I'm not a Mike Mearls fan, but check out Portals & Planes (one of FFG's Legends & Lairs sourcebooks for 3E) that he wrote. I have found it to be a pretty solid reference work for planar adventuring.

Quote from: One Horse Town;415248read it and then thought what the fuck? I get tokens for being hit? Magic? Bwah! The magic section looked like it was from a Forge ashcan edition.

LOL I didn't care for the magic section personally. That's another thing I'd do in a second edition: just take magic out completely. It was added (and thus rushed) on the insistance of Monte Cook, who told Mike Mearls that the customers of the game would want some magic in there. I think he was wrong. Maybe keep it for monsters/NPCs, but for PCs, that kind of defied the point of the game in the first place.

As for the Armiger (with the token pool you gain from being hit), I love it, personally. To me, the tokens represent the abuse you're taking and then redirecting at your opponent. Ever fought a bully, being slapped/insulted over and over, turning red in your face, until you finally explode and punch him in the face, exploding his nose in the process? Well, I have. That's what I think of when I think of the Armiger. It's my favorite class of the game, I think.

I loved the artwork, and the concept of lots of fighter and rogue variations with little magic. But I never could get my friends to play, so I have no idea if it's fun at the table or not.

Quote from: Windjammer;415243I love it how people now gang up to pretend Frank's OP is about IH's lack of balance and nothing else.

Yeah, that's a weird one. Almost the entire post is about how things are clunky and punish players for being creative or playing in character. And Benoist goes on about the evils of game balance, when the few game balance problems I really dwelled on include such masterful pieces of writing as:

• Armigers basically can't use their abilities, because they require their enemies to behave irrationally to get tokens.
• Arcanists get the equivalent of powerful 7th level spells at first level.
• Arcanists of mid to high level who actually do attempt to cast the spells that are unlocked at higher level (which have no guaranty of being any better than the ones they could use at first level), they will die.

Those are pretty fucking serious balance problems, but they weren't the focus of my wrath. Hell, I could have brought up the fact that Iron Heroes went to print with single feat infinite damage loops that required you to take the feat, and then... um... use it. At all. Oh, and it went off automatically every time you hit with a melee attack. Is condemning that kind of bullshit suddenly an "obsession with game balance"? What the fucking hell?

Quote from: RPGPundit   Now, about the OP itself: I think Frank's analysis is probably right. From a point of view of rules-design, Iron Heroes did seem to be crap.

Which is why I had confidence in Mearls at the time. IH was full of enthusiasm, didn't seem to give a shit about game balance, and followed NONE of the rules that people in the Forge wanted RPGs to look like.

So while you're right, Frank, that Mearls' design in IH was really pretty piss-poor from the point of view of things like balance and masterful "gamist" design, it was this very thing which led me (erroneously) to believe that Mearls would be a faithful guardian of the wacky wonderfulness of D&D. I never saw the stab in the back that was 4e coming.

I saw Mearls' baleful influence on things as soon as he made the Knight for the PHB2. Iron Heroes was admitted to be unfinished. Reading through it, it's totally clear that no one has given a second glance to any of the subsystems. That nothing really holds together and there is no master plan. And his own excuse was that it wasn't finished. That yes, he had sent a product to print to sell to people for actual money that he knew wasn't actually ready.

But here's the thing: he had been given a job at WotC. People who pay actual money instead of peanuts and drycleaner coupons. So I could totally empathize with someone who simply walked from whatever bullshit no-money projects they were working on to go take a job with the five hundred pound gorilla. That makes perfect sense to me. I would respect the decision to finish the contracted projects you were working on first a bit more, but I've lived on the ramen diet enough to understand walking away. And I've been there from the other side, when someone just fucking leaves in he middle of a project and you either get someone new to hop in and do rewrites of a document he is just now seeing for the first time or you just go with whatever the fuck is there, and neither answer is good. So I get the publisher going to print with Iron Heroes even in the sorry state it was in.

But here's where he lost me: the Knight. His first big project for WotC. And... it sucks. Its abilities don't synergize, the code doesn't make any sense, and the central ability is a very under-explained MMO-style "hate grabbing" mechanic. It is, in short, unfinished.

And that's where he lost me. At the point where he said that he was dropping everything to go make real money doing real work for the 500 pound gorilla... and his stuff still looked like someone had scribbled some drunken ideas on a cocktail napkin and then tried to leave without paying the tab while other people were still puzzling over whether and how it worked.

So when people say "Sure, the Skill Challenge rewrites Mike Mearls has done were shitty and unfinished, but remember Iron Heroes?" I am left with my mouth hanging open like a cartoon dog. Yes I fucking remember Iron Heroes. It was shitty and unfinished, just like everything he has done since!

-Frank

Quote from: Seanchai;415221I thought his mission was to smear Mearls as much as humanly possible

Most people online are relatively harmless.

It may be a different story if there was a "John Hinckley" or "Mark David Chapman" type who really hated Mearls, who ends up stalking and shooting Mearls dead with a gun and subsequently fleeing the scene.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;415255Is condemning that kind of bullshit suddenly an "obsession with game balance"? What the fucking hell?

Yes, it is. I'm guessing you've never played a Melnibonean Noble with a buddy playing a Nadsokor Beggar in a Stormbringer game?

If you can accuse Mike Mearls of something, in my opinion, it's to be an hypocrite in regards to rules balance, in the sense that he often gives the impression of endorsing the "rules balance über Alles" wholeheartedly, while his designs are not consistent with that "philosophy." That would be an accurate criticism.

Quote from: Benoist;415258Yes, it is.

Seriously? Condemning infinite damage loops that you trigger automatically every time you "declare a melee attack" is an "obsession with balance?" Really? That's your final answer?

QuoteI'm guessing you've never played a Melnibonean Noble with a buddy playing a Nadsokor Beggar in a Stormbringer game?

I have played RIFTS. Ars Magica too, which I think handles the Powerful Sorcerer/Lowly Goatherd party much better.

-Frank

I don't know enough about IH to have an opinion about it, but I do appreciate the self-important grandiosity of the OP.

The way Trollman sticks the boot into Mearls, you'd think he was publishing games rather than merely labouring to tear actual writers down by attacking their old projects.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;415266Seriously? Condemning infinite damage loops that you trigger automatically every time you "declare a melee attack" is an "obsession with balance?" Really? That's your final answer?

That's not like you said "hey, this combo is really something that ought to be houseruled," no. You are saying that the game is broken, unplayable, and just can't do anything right across the board, carrying this logic through all sorts of details about its rules. You completely dismiss actual play, completely dismiss all other components of role playing games to purely concentrate on the rules and the rules only as the determining factor of whether a game can even possibilibly carry out a positive game play experience, no matter who the people are and how they're playing the game, as some sort of objective, true rule of game design, and that, my friend, definitely qualifies as an obsession for theoretical RULES (not game, rules) balance, yes.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;415266I have played RIFTS. Ars Magica too, which I think handles the Powerful Sorcerer/Lowly Goatherd party much better.

-Frank

My point is that some people, many people as a matter of fact, do not need absolute rules balance to be a design goal of the game to have a great time with said game. Note that I am not saying that rules balance can't be a tool in the arsenal of a game designer, but this isn't an end in and of itself, no. Just a mean, an approach to game design. There are multiple ways to approach game design, and multiple individual gamers who each find different games entertaining in different ways at their game table.

Your take that rules balance is the be-all, end-all of game design is just pure bullshit. It may be what you personally want out of a game, and appreciate at your game table, but it is not an objective "has to be that way, or you're a deluded moron" fact. That's my point.

Quote from: Hairfoot;415272The way Trollman sticks the boot into Mearls, you'd think he was publishing games rather than merely labouring to tear actual writers down by attacking their old projects.

Two things.

1. That's the whole point of Frank's ethos in the last post (a propos Mearls' work on 3.5 PHB 2). Mearls is happy to produce unfinished stuff for people to put their own hard earned money to. Mearls got no problem to charge for that stuff. Frank does, both as regards his own work and that of others. Frank still designs stuff, and lets you have it for free. Shadowrun Horror (the boardgame), the Tomes for D&D 3e co-authored with K, the rewritten Matrix rules for Shadowrun 4.01, etc etc. It's all pristine stuff, and Frank doesn't charge you money for it. Does that make him any less of a designer? Not in my book. Especially not when he has been professionally producing stuff in the past for customers to pay for.

2. I think of the OP in this thread (and others Frank authored over the years) as akin to Borges' gem about Pierre Menard. Borges realized one day that 90% of all the great literary master pieces of the West came about a writer sitting in his closet one afternoon, getting ONE brilliant idea and then writing a 500 page novel about it. Borges says, 'fuck that, I'm just going to give you the one idea - and dress it up inside an imaginary book I never wrote... heck, make that: one idea dressed up as an imaginary review of an imaginary book I pretend someone else wrote'. Reading Frank's reviews, it seems to me just because his work there doesn't opt for the format "160 pages rehashed splat, that'll be 29.95 please" makes it any less insightful or useful. Especially not when compared to that trainwreck of IH, which is all about a guy going "hey, I have this one, maybe two cool ideas... how can I spam that into an unworkable 300 page manuscript that people pay money for?". Heck, there's more actual insight into d20 design buried under that OP here than in the entirety of that IH core book.