Quote from: Daztur;1072407I think you're referring to the dumbest thing ever written by a WotC dev: https://4thmaster.wordpress.com/2014/06/26/ivory-tower-game-design/

I had never seen that before and think I'm actually dumber having read it. Monte Cook deliberately designed a game in such a way that players were rewarded for system mastery by offering choices that are sub-optimal in certain situations? What does that even mean? If anything, this little essay just makes me pity all the powergaming munchkins I encountered playing D&D 3.X. While I used to feel disdain, now I think they might have been playing the game right, according to Monte.

Does this mean 3.X isn't a roleplaying game? The implication is that it's somehow a collectible card game.

Quote from: Lynn;1072401I think he's quite good, but ultimately he's working for Paizo and Paizo has a very specific kitchen sink style - or I should say, "Seattle Style" with copy-cat anime weapons and smirking 90s tattooed hipsters trying but not succeeding at cool.

The sad part of it is, mechanically, Reynolds' is terrible.  Has no idea of proportions, doesn't know perspective, and uses an excellent sense of colour to cover it up.  He's a terrible artist, he should be a colourist.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1072319What's wrong with that? It looks like a way to balance bad feats and good feats better. Though at a glance it looks a lot more involved and cumbersome to actually go through and apply.

When you start assigning point costs to each Feat you should basically just start GMing GURPS or Hero.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1072437The sad part of it is, mechanically, Reynolds' is terrible.  Has no idea of proportions, doesn't know perspective, and uses an excellent sense of colour to cover it up.  He's a terrible artist, he should be a colourist.

I don't know enough about art to say how good or bad Reynolds is.  I do know that I got tired of his stuff really fast.  He's the last person I'd want a game to have dominate their art, short of someone so awful that even I can see it.

Quote from: Brad;1072433I had never seen that before and think I'm actually dumber having read it. Monte Cook deliberately designed a game in such a way that players were rewarded for system mastery by offering choices that are sub-optimal in certain situations? What does that even mean? If anything, this little essay just makes me pity all the powergaming munchkins I encountered playing D&D 3.X. While I used to feel disdain, now I think they might have been playing the game right, according to Monte.

Does this mean 3.X isn't a roleplaying game? The implication is that it's somehow a collectible card game.

It means they deliberately made stuff bad and hid the good stuff so like a good chessmaster a player with "system mastery" can discern the right move through all of that.

Though the comparison of a character to a deck of cards in MTG is apt.

Quote from: S'mon;1072388I know in 2013 I wasn't keen on switching to a new edition. By 2015 I was happy to. I don't know about PF fans but I expect many will be happy to switch. But surely it is extremely unlikely that PF 2e will bring over many 5e D&D fans, or new players. So all it can achieve is splitting the PF player base.

My points was people were negative during 5e beta, but then it was successful. Maybe the same will happen with Pathfinder?
Then again I could be wrong about the negativity in 5e beta.

Quote from: Daztur;1072407Right it's an onion of fail. ...
I think you're referring to the dumbest thing ever written by a WotC dev: https://4thmaster.wordpress.com/2014/06/26/ivory-tower-game-design/.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1072454It means they deliberately made stuff bad and hid the good stuff so like a good chessmaster a player with "system mastery" can discern the right move through all of that.
...

That Monte Publicly admitted as much is incredibly stupid... 3.5 was just bad design by any standard then.

Quote from: Daztur;1072407This also shows why PF is running into trouble. PF1 was basically 3.5ed with some new bells and whistles but you just can't keep on adding those forever.

PF got away with turning the dial to 11 because of 4e.  Now they have to double correct for PF2; once to clean up /streamline thier tacked on additions, and once to clean up core 3.5 issues. But it seems that they are just trying to mix and match stuff that they think would be cool, rather than doing a true clean sheet redesign...

Quote from: S'mon;1072388I know in 2013 I wasn't keen on switching to a new edition. By 2015 I was happy to. I don't know about PF fans but I expect many will be happy to switch. But surely it is extremely unlikely that PF 2e will bring over many 5e D&D fans, or new players. So all it can achieve is splitting the PF player base.

This is what I think will happen - it won't be an instantly killing blow, but a few years on we'll be hearing about layoffs and "restructuring of focus".

5E's success is due to it being able to deliver the D&D experience while being significantly easier for new people to pick up as a game, than either 4e or 3.x.

It was an objectively better product than the last two editions. (For most - and the proof is in the sales.)

For PF2 to work, it has to be objectively better than PF1. Otherwise not enough people will switch, and Pazio will begin to hemorrhage their player base.

Things are made even worse for Pazio by 5e doing so well. Because whatever they do will not only be measured against the first PF, but 5e as well.

Which is why in my OP I though they should either go for a bold paradigm shift for PF2 - or start dual stating...

Paizo spend 2 years before the announcement not really working on PF1, so by then our PF group had ran and burnt ourselves out on 5e and then switched to a new system.

Paizo dropped the PF ball to focus on 2e and 2e has managed to draw no interest from our group. A couple of us like hating it a little.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1072437The sad part of it is, mechanically, Reynolds' is terrible.  Has no idea of proportions, doesn't know perspective, and uses an excellent sense of colour to cover it up.  He's a terrible artist, he should be a colourist.

And I think that goes back to the work that Paizo wants. They've come up with a pseudo-cartoon style that they like, plus so much of it is obviously done as single art pieces that are then layered together like the bad art used on cheap DVD cases. Id like to see some of his work that has nothing to do with Paizo.

Quote from: Lynn;1072484Id like to see some of his work that has nothing to do with Paizo.

Looks pretty much the same:

https://www.waynereynolds.com/fantasy-art-gallery-2

There's a fair amount of stuff he's done for WotC (and a couple others) there.  Looks like he's been the cover artist for a lot of Eberron stuff.

Quote from: Malfi;1072385That's because I also trust the folk in paizo know more or less what they are doing.

I'mmm pretty sure they don't.

Quote from: Jaeger;1072467For PF2 to work, it has to be objectively better than PF1.

Which it never will be.

Quote from: Jaeger;1072467Things are made even worse for Pazio by 5e doing so well.

Which is their only real competition.

Quote from: Jaeger;1072467they should either go for a bold paradigm shift

Which would alienate fans.

Quote from: Jaeger;1072467or start dual stating.

Which would double the complexity of creating support products.

They are literally making the same mistakes which cost Hasbro the market and gave them their window of opportunity.

PF2e should have been backwards compatible like PF was. Sure eventually most groups stopped using 3.5 material, but that backwards compatibility helped PF get off the ground.

Backwards compatibility is imo highly overrated. My anecdotal evidence is that most who play and rune Pathfinder usually don't use 3.5. material. I'm not saying no one converts from 3.5 to PF. Not enough imo for PF 2E to be backwards compatible. This time around they need more than " 3.5 thrives as a sales pitch. "

Quote from: Brad;1072433I had never seen that before and think I'm actually dumber having read it. Monte Cook deliberately designed a game in such a way that players were rewarded for system mastery by offering choices that are sub-optimal in certain situations? What does that even mean? If anything, this little essay just makes me pity all the powergaming munchkins I encountered playing D&D 3.X. While I used to feel disdain, now I think they might have been playing the game right, according to Monte.

Does this mean 3.X isn't a roleplaying game? The implication is that it's somehow a collectible card game.

Yeah, it's really dumb but it also reeks of bullshit. I mean, "no man, we totally didn't make some options better than others by accident. It was all part of our genius plan." Seriously?

Quote from: jhkim;1072457Even as a simplification, I don't think this is right. The key is that there are usually multiple trends going on at the same time. As I would put it,

70s design had a lot of D&D imitation, with inconsistent assumptions. I think Runequest was the most influential in setting the pattern for skill-based games, as standards started to arise.

80s design had some heavy rules, but also a lot of variety. It was failing market as the D&D boom faded. There were some rules-heavy games like Champions and GURPS, but also key others like Pendragon, Ghostbusters, Ars Magica, and Star Wars D6.

90s design standardized around Shadowrun and World of Darkness - medium-heavy rules and dice pools. Second ed D&D came out. Most games conformed to a similar pattern, and modules added more story - which was preplotted into acts and scenes. Metaplot for game worlds was introduced.

00s design saw the simultaneous rise of D20 and the reaction of Forge games, both of which were a reaction against the White Wolf story trend. D20 shifted more focus onto system mastery and game play which intensified in 4th edition, while Forge games tried to create alternative story games to the perception of railroading in dramatic games like White Wolf.

10s design saw some the rise of OSR along with more mainstreaming of story games with the introduction of Apocalypse World and the spread of FATE. 5th ed saw more OSR influence into D&D.

That's more or less what I was saying, just expressed better.

For the 80's design it was all reacting to D&D like you said but I think even if it wasn't rules heavy, being "more realistic" than D&D was a big focus for a lot of games in that decade. No HPs some attempts at more realistic advancement etc. etc.

For the 90's I should've mentioned metaplot but I think I've blanked that out. In any case a focus on "plot" in general.

For the 2000's both were reacting against the plot-heavy 90's. The Forge basically actually make a game that accomplished that WoD/SR set out to do with some Forgey stuff feeding back into 4ed. Also both there's a big emphasis on character with 3.5ed massive heaps of character options and indie games focusing much more on character than the world, with the world going from a richly detailed background against which your PCs often didn't matter that much to an often pretty thin sound stage that could be shifted around to meet the need of the PCs. But they're certainly better at being story focused than 90's games.

Then yeah, the rise of the OSR with that feeding back into 5ed.

Bit hard to see where we're going next. Most of the squacking about the OSR is from the fading Forgey wing of the hobby and that's not what we're going to see more of in the future. And with 5ed hard to see where a strong reaction against it is going to come from since even the people who don't want to play it aren't generally much more negative than "yeah, it's OK I guess." It'll be something OSR-influenced even if stuff that's strictly OSR (i.e. able to run a TSR-D&D module without any conversion) eventually wanes.

Quote from: sureshot;1072500Backwards compatibility is imo highly overrated. My anecdotal evidence is that most who play and rune Pathfinder usually don't use 3.5. material. I'm not saying no one converts from 3.5 to PF. Not enough imo for PF 2E to be backwards compatible. This time around they need more than " 3.5 thrives as a sales pitch. "

Think that backwards compatibility is important in terms of ease to learn. Something as crunchy as PF only became as popular as it did because people came in already knowing 3.5ed and then just had to learn a bit more to play PF. Having to learn a whole new crunchy system from scratch if PF2 deviates too much from the 3.5ed baseline is going to make a lot of people nope out.