Isn't Mearls overdue for the traditional WotC Xmas firing?

People watching other people play games (that they could be playing themselves) has been a thing for some while. Consider Stampy Cat.

A long time back I listened to a Mongoose Traveller podcast where they took the time to discuss rules at appropriate moments. I found it an excellent way to get to know the rules in association with reading the book. I felt at the time, and continue to, that it's been a lost opportunity for companies to advertise their games and facilitate rules comprehension. Consider how software companies like Microsoft use walk-through videos to explain functionality. It's not rocket science to do such videos and if I was publishing a game I'd be sure to have a video for each major rule mechanic.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;911784Back in the day (hack kaf wheeze) there was this thing called PLAYTESTING.

Arneson ran BLACKMOOR for 2 years before showing it to Gygax, and we KNOW the rules were not static.  Gygax ran GREYHAWK for over a year before D&D was published, sometimes seven days a week, and we know THOSE rules were not static.

I'm convinced that somewhere in v. 3 or so, RPG writers stopped playing the damn rules they actually wrote.  That MUST be the case with Star Wars d20, because there are multiple places where the effect of the rule directly contradicts its description.  No, I don't remember, and I can't be arsed.

What is this play testing you speak of?

Critical Role is amusing sometimes but the average viewer might fail to realize that all of the participants are actors. They see the show, go buy the game then sit down to play only to realize that they didn't read the fine print : THE COOL ACTORS NORMALLY SEEN PLAYING THIS GAME HAVE BEEN SECRETLY REPLACED WITH SHLUBS FROM THE OFFICE.

Those completely unfamiliar with actual play may not know that the quality of play depends on what the participants put into it even more than the quality of the game itself.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;911782...TRPGs are not spectator-friendly. I went on my own Twitter rant specifically to counter Mearls', hammering on this point. You can watch and be fully engaged with soccer, baseball, and other spectator-friendly games and sports. You can't with TRPGs; you have to play to be engaged.

Extremely disagree with this. I am bored to tears by watching soccer or baseball or most other sports...but i can watch Critical Role with no problems. If actual play is done as well as by Mercer and his crew, than it is highly spectator-friendly...and i am engaged more than in any sports (maybe excluding a very very good Tennis match).
And i'd say the "you have to be engaged"-line is as applicable to sports in any case. I'd rather play tennis/soccer/what have you than watch it. So that's not a very good counter-argument in the first place.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;911784I'm convinced that somewhere in v. 3 or so, RPG writers stopped playing the damn rules they actually wrote.  That MUST be the case with Star Wars d20, because there are multiple places where the effect of the rule directly contradicts its description.  No, I don't remember, and I can't be arsed.

Or at the very least one designer isnt paying attention to what the other designer on the same book is doing.
TSR near its end was not playtesting much, if at all by mandate of Williams. And White Wolf near the end sure as hell wasnt.

And hate to say it. But all the playtesting in the world IS useless if the designer ignores it, or listens to the wrong feedback, or tries to cater to ALL feedback, or all of the above, ad playtestium.

And to add to that, all the playtesting in the world will only tell you if the system is self-consistent and whether it creates odd balance issues or interactions (if the playtesters can successfully think like the general gaming population and break the game in the same ways as they would). What is won't do is predict how the gamer population will react to the system, what they will do with it, or whether it is what they want*. For that, watching people game is at least trying to address the issue. Whether it is the right way of attempting this remains to be seen.

*Using 3e as an example, more playtesting would have caught the spellcaster-mundane imbalance that lead to the tier system being a recognized issue in the game. It would not have caught the issue that the designers and gamers had differing opinions regarding PrCs and how they should work, or whether wealth by level and magic item allotments were hard and fast expectations.

I think thats part of why 5e works so well overall. It went through a long process of playtesting by the public and those parts that were feel often the most well honed. While those that werent sometimes feel occasionally a little... ord.

After the fact "fixes" have so far felt not so great. (Ranger)

Quote from: Willie the Duck;911973And to add to that, all the playtesting in the world will only tell you if the system is self-consistent and whether it creates odd balance issues or interactions (if the playtesters can successfully think like the general gaming population and break the game in the same ways as they would). What is won't do is predict how the gamer population will react to the system, what they will do with it, or whether it is what they want*. For that, watching people game is at least trying to address the issue. Whether it is the right way of attempting this remains to be seen.

Not all playtesting is created equal. Most playtests, I see just focuses on rules and for adventures the balance of individual encounters. An acquaintance of mine is playtesting a set of rules based on 5e in this manner. He is aware of the how things flow and hang together. He has given considerable thought to this area and done a lot of work with it, but in my opinion it will not be properly playtested by the release date he wants.

However to do it "right" requires more time, a LOT more time a least a year of steady play with a variety of groups. Because for RPGs and RPG related products to properly playtests you have to test it under a variety of conditions. And there will be a tension throughout between what you want the product to be versus how people actually treat it. You can't ignore how people use it, but there is a limit before it is altered so much that is becomes something different than what the author intended.

Next doing this level of playtest means that experience has an outsized impact. I been refereeing for 30 years, so I got a pretty good idea of what to look for and what just normal player griping about the outcome of the game. For example if you have a playtest session where everybody is rolling 1s and 2s the whole damn session, I don't care how stellar your rules are, most players will come away with a negative first impression of your game or product. While it never that extreme, you have to keep an eye out for when the gripes a result of bad luck.

In the end, sometime to get the return on your time and budget, you make do with the time you have. Because of the roleplaying aspect, RPGs are very fuzzy games to behind with. A group that cooperates closely and employs superior tactics and techniques could ace an adventure that will result in a TPK for a less organized group.

In my book, the award for most outstanding playtest is the Dungeon Crawl Classic RPG by Goodman Games. Those guys playtested long and they the playtest right. The result was a superior game for its niche.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;911973What is won't do is predict how the gamer population will react to the system, what they will do with it, or whether it is what they want*.

Daniel's Maxim of Gaming is that regardless of the playstyle, tone, setting or genre a game was designed for, the first thing the player base will do is try to play D&D with it (cf. Fantasy HERO, BRP Classic Fantasy, Cortex+ Fantasy Heroic Roleplaying/The Old School Job, etc., etc.)

Wasnt it the designer of Cyberpunk 2020 that complained that the players werent playing the game as intended?

Quote from: daniel_ream;911998Daniel's Maxim of Gaming is that regardless of the playstyle, tone, setting or genre a game was designed for, the first thing the player base will do is try to play D&D with it (cf. Fantasy HERO, BRP Classic Fantasy, Cortex+ Fantasy Heroic Roleplaying/The Old School Job, etc., etc.)

Or they try to play Gurps with it.

Quote from: daniel_ream;911998Daniel's Maxim of Gaming is that regardless of the playstyle, tone, setting or genre a game was designed for, the first thing the player base will do is try to play D&D with it (cf. Fantasy HERO, BRP Classic Fantasy, Cortex+ Fantasy Heroic Roleplaying/The Old School Job, etc., etc.)

Well maybe, but the designers of 3e expected people to play 2e, the next generation with it, and people not only didn't do that, but absolutely ripped them a new asshole for it not working well at the playstyle that the designers had no idea people were going to use it for. And then the designers said, "okay, okay, you want an extremely balanced game and are willing to give up sacred cows like vancian casting and 20 levels of play here you go. You'll like this, right?" and then had then had themselves another new asshole ripped into them for 4e. No wonder, as Omega said, they spent a lot of time figuring out what people wanted for 5e (and the complaints have been mostly tame--balance for a specific class like ranger or mechanic like save progression, a little kvetching about it not having a distinct feel of its own).

I agree with Mearls' assessment of where 3E and 4E went off the rails into rules-heavy theorycraft. I disagree with watching live play on the internet played any role in addressing the excesses of rules-heavy D&D. 5E returned the game to 'the play is the thing' because the polling data collected by WotC, and the huge D&D Next playtest, revealed that char-op number-crunching wasn't nearly as popular as online forums had led many in the industry to believe.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;912021Well maybe, but the designers of 3e expected people to play 2e, the next generation with it, and people not only didn't do that, but absolutely ripped them a new asshole for it not working well at the playstyle that the designers had no idea people were going to use it for. And then the designers said, "okay, okay, you want an extremely balanced game and are willing to give up sacred cows like vancian casting and 20 levels of play here you go. You'll like this, right?" and then had then had themselves another new asshole ripped into them for 4e. No wonder, as Omega said, they spent a lot of time figuring out what people wanted for 5e (and the complaints have been mostly tame--balance for a specific class like ranger or mechanic like save progression, a little kvetching about it not having a distinct feel of its own).

I think with 4E the problem was the internet was still new to a lot of folks, and WOTC didn't realize how much noise a small group of people can make about a problem most people don't have. Another issue was I think they lumped the people calling for tweaks and changes to reduce some of the optimization madness in with the people calling for radical overhauls of the system.

Is there a maxim/law yet that all design discussions eventually become debates over 4th edition D&D? If not I'd like to finally have my name attached to one.

Two observations:

(1) Unless we're positing game designers with time machines, there are some weird assertions of cause-and-effect in there.

(2) The idea of designing games that play great on heavily edited Youtube video shows and Twitch streams makes my head hurt.

That would be like a board game designer saying, "I really want to focus on making sure this game plays great on Wil Wheaton's Tabletop." or a video game designer saying, "I'm less concerned about people having fun while playing this game than I am in making sure that it makes for entertaining Twitch streams."

There's nothing wrong with Critical Role or Tabletop. But designing games with that sort of play in mind is like arguing that all action figures should be designed around using them in animatronic films.