Quote from: BedrockBrendan;912028Is 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.

Bedrock's Maxim: Any tabletop RPG design discussion of sufficient length will eventually turn into a debate over the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

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

This, Ishtar's Teats, this.

So Mearls is telling us that instead of Live Playtesting, designers were engaging only in forums.  This explains much.
Now he's telling us that after games are released, designers can watch 20-somethings with colored hair and marine glasses play the game ironically to find out what it's like.  This explains much more. (As Justin said, namely that he's unaware of the linear flow of time).

Say what you want about Zweihander and whether or not it desecrates WFRP's grave, the guy playtested the fucker for 5 years.

Kenzer and Jolly, Loz and Pete, Sine Nomine, Zak, Washbourne, Cakebread and Walton, hell all the Modiphius boys and girls, to name a few - these are all active gamers who play their own games.

WTF is Mearls drinking?  He needs to switch.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;912036Bedrock's Maxim: Any tabletop RPG design discussion of sufficient length will eventually turn into a debate over the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

You're worse than Hitler.

Quote from: Cave Bear;911821You know, I kinda want to record audio of my game sessions but then make little animatics to go along with it. I like drawing character portraits and illustrating the highlights of game sessions. I should put the drawings to audio and do simple tweening animations and transitions. Maybe have little characters hopping around like Arc System's Blazblue Radio (https://youtu.be/CooR-GvnWLo).

Thats crazy enough it just might work.
On a related note still haven't gotten a group together to play test your game at all my life has been stupid.

Quote from: Mistwell;911908Click on that second link I posted, at the end of the post.  Tell me again how it's not spectator friendly.

Thanks i never even noticed it.

Quote from: Anglachel;911938Extremely 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.

Same i cant stand most sports nfl nhl fifa ect.
But i can get a huge thrill from watching the likes of the Pokemon world tournament, or league of legends pro scene or my new love overwatch.

Quote from: Omega;911948Or 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.

Definatly you need to see through a lot of data to find what was actually going on.

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.)

Quote from: Omega;912002Or they try to play Gurps with it.

What madness is this next6 you will have peaple thinking there are games other then dnd and gurps

Quote from: Justin Alexander;912035Two 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.

I see that comment and raise you a video.
A damn entertaining one at that.
 [video=youtube;ziteaVKe6pE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziteaVKe6pE[/youtube]

Quote from: kosmos1214;912053Thats crazy enough it just might work.
On a related note still haven't gotten a group together to play test your game at all my life has been stupid.

Life has been pretty stupid on this front as well, so don't feel bad.

I've also been scratching out ideas and compiling notes for a rewrite. If you would like to hear some of those ideas, please let me know. I am eager to bounce them off of somebody.

Quote from: Cave Bear;912055Life has been pretty stupid on this front as well, so don't feel bad.

I've also been scratching out ideas and compiling notes for a rewrite. If you would like to hear some of those ideas, please let me know. I am eager to bounce them off of somebody.

Sure im in for the long hall throw them at me.
You still have my email right?

Quote from: kosmos1214;912056Sure im in for the long hall throw them at me.
You still have my email right?

That I do! Will send you some thoughts right away, if you don't mind taking a look at them.

Quote from: Cave Bear;912058That I do! Will send you some thoughts right away, if you don't mind taking a look at them.

Yeah i probably wont get to them for a few days but ill get back to you as soon as i can.

Just not a huge fan of watching other people play. Sooooo....I guess this wouldn't work for me on almost any level.

Quote from: CRKrueger;912043WTF is Mearls drinking?  He needs to switch.

He's obviously right, look how 5e is doing.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;912063He's obviously right, look how 5e is doing.

He's very not-right about the videos of sessions being a factor.

Again, temporal mechanics. Whatever this is or what it will be good for, it didn't create 5e. It might inform the decision on where they are going. I'm not sure if I like it or think it will be successful, but hey, they are engaging with the gaming public and trying to see if things are working like they expected. It's not a replacement for playtesting, but as a supplement it probably doesn't hurt.

All I'm reading in mr. Mearls statement is : the way rpgs are played is not the way they are discussed in public forums, emphasis is not placed on the same things. People can wank for hours on forums about rules, but once play starts it's not really there. I really don't think there is much to see beyond that.

And the part about how people can now see how a rpg  is played is a good point. Yes your game is more likely to look like an Acquisitions Incorporated game than a heavily scripted and edited Ashes of Valkana game.  But as far as I'm concerned it still looks better than the "what is a roleplaying game" drivel that you can find in most game manuals.

Quote from: kobayashi;912105All I'm reading in mr. Mearls statement is : the way rpgs are played is not the way they are discussed in public forums, emphasis is not placed on the same things. People can wank for hours on forums about rules, but once play starts it's not really there. I really don't think there is much to see beyond that.

And the part about how people can now see how a rpg  is played is a good point. Yes your game is more likely to look like an Acquisitions Incorporated game than a heavily scripted and edited Ashes of Valkana game.  But as far as I'm concerned it still looks better than the "what is a roleplaying game" drivel that you can find in most game manuals.

I think as a tool for showing how to use the system or explaining role playing as a concept, they make sense. It is using them as a design tool that makes me wary. There I think they are subject to some of the same illusions of consensus that forums create. The reason people are paying attention to this statement and reading into it, is they view it as possibly leading to the same mistakes they made with 4E---which a lot of us think stemmed from overconfidence in RPG theory (which Mearls mentions he got into) and in forum discussions as representing what most groups are thinking. What you see on a play vid isn't necessarily a good indication of how most people are playing and they made knowing that an audience is watching (and many are edited). The bigger issue I think is what I mentioned before: game designers mistaking themselves for social scientists. Just because you watched a bunch of play vids, doesn't mean your analysis of them will be accurate or (worse) produce a viable model/theory of play and design. To me the statement reads like: okay theory rooted in forum discussions were off, but play vids are the real deal. I could be wrong. But those were my immediate and honest reactions.

I see your point but I have, let's say, a more "charitable" view of his statement, being : what people say is important in rpgs when you read forums has nothing in common with what happens at the (or at least some) table(s).

But your point remains valid, a gaming vid cannot be a good basis for designing a game but rpg forums fare no better in my opinion. Like any community on the internet, the rpg forums are mostly a toxic cesspool (I just read the ENworld thread following Paizo annoucements about Starfinder : 90% of it is people basically whining).

What interests me about all these gaming vids is not what happens at the table but how much people enjoy watching them. Because scripted or not, people seem to love watching gamers enjoying themselves and enjoying the game. That's less depressing than reading threads after threads of "If you play this your a poopiehead", "Designer X sucks balls", "Wotc raped my dog, really, I have pictures", "Only morons can play system X", "The ranger in D&D5 sucks, let me show you these charts I made".

Take two people who haven't heard of rpgs : show the first one an Acquistion Incorporated game and let the second one only read threads on any rpg forum. Then, in all honesty, tell me which one will want to play rpgs.

So, when Mr Mearls says "it shifts the design convo away from "How do we design for forum discussions?" to "How do we design for play?", all he means, in my opinion, is "stop designing games as a tiny fraction of the community wants us to make them".

But as I am a participating member of the internet rpg community myself I'm probably talking outta my ass.