Quote from: Steven Mitchell on March 01, 2023, 10:34:21 AM
"Too complex" doesn't mean "too complex to understand or play."  It's shorthand for "The complexity is not well chosen."

3E went from something I enjoyed well enough to something that I didn't over time.  To be fair, though, I don't think it's over complicated.  However, it is a great example, to me, of what people mean when they talk about "complexity budgets" in games.  As in, you only get so much complexity.  Where and how you use it matters.  Naturally, I think that part of the problem with 3E is that the designers didn't budget their complexity.  They just put in whatever made sense to them.  Pulling back on a little complexity here or there, because some hardnose complexity auditor made them justify each inclusion, would have probably meant the game kept almost its entire feature set, with notably less complexity.

And that's pretty well true of 3E as a whole.  Designed somewhat well, developed reasonably well, edited for typos fair, edited for content, poor.  Which is why 3.5 would have been a lot better received if they had simple backed away from some of the complexity that wasn't adding enough bang for its cost, and then done a better game editing job on the final product.  Would have been backwards compatible, too.  The fact that 3.5 did remove some "not worth it" complexity got overrun by all the nit picky complexity introduced for no good reason.  Of course, game editing is hard work, and they wouldn't have been able to sell a new set of books while pretending that they didn't put out a new version.

Some really good insight here, but I do have to disagree with one little thing.  The designers didn't accidentally include too much complexity.  They did it on purpose.  One of the stated goals for Monte Cook (as he revealed in his infamous interview) was to reward system mastery.  And, I think in his mind and the minds of lots of players and designers, that meant making the mechanics of the game sizable enough that players really have to dedicate time and effort to choose the "best" options (or, at least, options that are not radically less powerful or impactful as the other available choices).  Now, I'm not saying that rules density equals a requirement for system mastery (look at "Go," a game with a handful of rules, but one that is incredibly difficult to master).  But I think that Cook and others did think that way, or at least they were only capable of creating the need for system mastery via rules bloat (I've never understood the praise Cook gets as an RPG designer... he's competent, but not a "master"  craftsman or anything).  So I think that what you describe is accurate, except for the motivation.  And that motivation is part of what soured those of us who grew up on TSR D&D towards WotC from the beginning.  And then there was 4e...

Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 01, 2023, 07:34:49 PM
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Some really good insight here, but I do have to disagree with one little thing.  The designers didn't accidentally include too much complexity.  They did it on purpose.  One of the stated goals for Monte Cook (as he revealed in his infamous interview) was to reward system mastery.  And, I think in his mind and the minds of lots of players and designers, that meant making the mechanics of the game sizable enough that players really have to dedicate time and effort to choose the "best" options (or, at least, options that are not radically less powerful or impactful as the other available choices).  Now, I'm not saying that rules density equals a requirement for system mastery (look at "Go," a game with a handful of rules, but one that is incredibly difficult to master).  But I think that Cook and others did think that way, or at least they were only capable of creating the need for system mastery via rules bloat (I've never understood the praise Cook gets as an RPG designer... he's competent, but not a "master"  craftsman or anything).  So I think that what you describe is accurate, except for the motivation.  And that motivation is part of what soured those of us who grew up on TSR D&D towards WotC from the beginning.  And then there was 4e...

Yeah, this is what I remember too ol Monte saying. And it did sour me. Took me too long to realize the why but you hit the nail on the head.

I for one fully support D&D going super gay woke, I'm talking having Crawford and his husband do a self insertion for a gay wedding for the cover of the 6E Player handbook.  Removal of character classes, you can build whatever character you want, slimmed down combat rules with modules enforcing social settling of conflict, Orcs are the smartest bestest ever and elves and dwarves fuck like minks and are totally into each other.  I want to see D&D get burned down to the ground by listening to the moronic left.  The sooner D&D goes broke, the sooner the IP will be sold to someone who ain't woke.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on March 01, 2023, 07:34:49 PM
Some really good insight here, but I do have to disagree with one little thing.  The designers didn't accidentally include too much complexity.  They did it on purpose.  One of the stated goals for Monte Cook (as he revealed in his infamous interview) was to reward system mastery.  And, I think in his mind and the minds of lots of players and designers, that meant making the mechanics of the game sizable enough that players really have to dedicate time and effort to choose the "best" options (or, at least, options that are not radically less powerful or impactful as the other available choices).  Now, I'm not saying that rules density equals a requirement for system mastery (look at "Go," a game with a handful of rules, but one that is incredibly difficult to master).  But I think that Cook and others did think that way, or at least they were only capable of creating the need for system mastery via rules bloat (I've never understood the praise Cook gets as an RPG designer... he's competent, but not a "master"  craftsman or anything).  So I think that what you describe is accurate, except for the motivation.  And that motivation is part of what soured those of us who grew up on TSR D&D towards WotC from the beginning.  And then there was 4e...

I don't really disagree with any of that.  I wasn't really addressing motivation, though I can see how it would seem that I was.  Rather, my point is that unless complexity is actively and consciously policed, it will grow out of control.  An attitude of, "it doesn't matter, just throw it in there," versus, "throw it in there on purpose," isn't functionally different from my perspective.  Well, except that as you allude, someone with the former might hesitate when play testing and thoughtful review of the results didn't match expectations.  Except that they didn't do a good job with either the testing or the review--ergo we are back to it just didn't matter.

Better motivations might have made a big difference in the 3.5 changes, however.  Assuming that the WotC sales plan could have been overcome.

I think Cook is an OK designer and a very good developer.  What he needs, however, is a good editor and a good boss to throw the brakes on when his imagination runs away with things.

I think it's good to remember that 3.0/3.5 were wildly successful and popular, ran for years, sold a ton of books, and is still regularly played. So don't confuse not liking design choices with them being poor design choices.

Quote from: Grognard GM on March 01, 2023, 09:41:47 PM
I think it's good to remember that 3.0/3.5 were wildly successful and popular, ran for years, sold a ton of books, and is still regularly played. So don't confuse not liking design choices with them being poor design choices.

Of course they have some good design choices.  In a game that big, it's not all or nothing.  There's two different standards when discussing these things though:

1. Does it do what it sets out to do such that people can use it as intended? 
2. How well does it go beyond that?

The first tells you if people used it and enjoyed it.  By that token, 3E is a mixed bag.  It pretty much works as intended for levels 1-7 (whatever one thinks about that intention), sort of does if you keep it under tight control and/or house rule it a lot around levels 8-13, and then rapidly breaks down after that.  If that sounds harsh, well remember that most D&D games tend to do better in the earlier levels.  So it isn't like 3E is grossly poor by that standard.

The second is constructive criticism on what could have been.  to me, the most damning thing of the whole 3E arc is how slapdash 3.5 forward was handled.  Yeah, they did some things that worked better.  But they achieved that by throwing a lot of stuff against the wall to see what would stick.  It's effective, but there's nothing "thoughtful" about it at all.

D&D being a kind of hybrid RPG/Tactical Wargame was actually my favorite part of 3.0/3.5

If I just wanted an RPG I'd choose...well, most things that aren't D&D. But some rpg wedded to minis and tactical map positioning? That was kind of neat.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on March 01, 2023, 09:59:22 PM
So it isn't like 3E is grossly poor by that standard.

I definitely find 3e to be grossly poor at high level compared to every other D&D edition. It really is a standout.

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on March 01, 2023, 07:47:14 PM
I for one fully support D&D going super gay woke, I'm talking having Crawford and his husband do a self insertion for a gay wedding for the cover of the 6E Player handbook.  Removal of character classes, you can build whatever character you want, slimmed down combat rules with modules enforcing social settling of conflict, Orcs are the smartest bestest ever and elves and dwarves fuck like minks and are totally into each other.  I want to see D&D get burned down to the ground by listening to the moronic left.  The sooner D&D goes broke, the sooner the IP will be sold to someone who ain't woke.

Bold added by me. What's kind of funny is that the OG editions (1E and 2E) did make note of concepts like parley in encounters and that not every encounter had to be a fight. Sometimes you wanted to save your resources for a later battle.

I know that's not what you meant, of course, but the juxtaposition amuses me.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 03, 2023, 08:02:46 AM
Bold added by me. What's kind of funny is that the OG editions (1E and 2E) did make note of concepts like parley in encounters and that not every encounter had to be a fight. Sometimes you wanted to save your resources for a later battle.

I know that's not what you meant, of course, but the juxtaposition amuses me.

All Combat All The Time is something I associate with WoTC D&D - 3e, and especially 4e. 5e rowed back on it a bit, but  it's still more combat-centric than OD&D in the core.

Quote from: S'mon on March 03, 2023, 08:29:07 AM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 03, 2023, 08:02:46 AM
Bold added by me. What's kind of funny is that the OG editions (1E and 2E) did make note of concepts like parley in encounters and that not every encounter had to be a fight. Sometimes you wanted to save your resources for a later battle.

I know that's not what you meant, of course, but the juxtaposition amuses me.

All Combat All The Time is something I associate with WoTC D&D - 3e, and especially 4e. 5e rowed back on it a bit, but  it's still more combat-centric than OD&D in the core.

Well, if combats take most of your gaming time to resolve, it would seem that way, regardless of what you tried to do.  Which granted, feeds into the way people handle things, the same way that needing to save resources encourages you to save them.  My point being, that you could take a party of, say, AD&D 1st level characters through the Caves of Chaos, and then do the same with a party of 3E 1st level characters.  Level them according to the rules.  Have all the role play decisions be exactly the same (somehow despite the incentives).   And you'd still spend a lot more of your game time in the latter in combat, even running away and negotiating.

"Whaddya mean we gotta talk to this lynx?? The last monster we talked to ate half of the party!"

Quote from: Baron on March 03, 2023, 02:55:01 PM
"Whaddya mean we gotta talk to this lynx?? The last monster we talked to ate half of the party!"

This is where monster knowledge comes into play. Some monsters can be negotiated with, others cannot. Some can be outwitted easily, others... well, you might wanna play it straight with them.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 03, 2023, 04:09:29 PM

Quote from: Baron on March 03, 2023, 02:55:01 PM
"Whaddya mean we gotta talk to this lynx?? The last monster we talked to ate half of the party!"

This is where monster knowledge comes into play. Some monsters can be negotiated with, others cannot. Some can be outwitted easily, others... well, you might wanna play it straight with them.

This is where what the PC knows vs what the Player knows comes into play. Your PC might (and quite often does) know way less than you do.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 03, 2023, 04:09:29 PM

Quote from: Baron on March 03, 2023, 02:55:01 PM
"Whaddya mean we gotta talk to this lynx?? The last monster we talked to ate half of the party!"

This is where monster knowledge comes into play. Some monsters can be negotiated with, others cannot. Some can be outwitted easily, others... well, you might wanna play it straight with them.

Geez, you challenge ONE winged lion chick to a riddle contest, and they never let you forget it!