DMG/Sourcebook wish: Game Theory

[odigity]

Am I the only one who would love to see a chapter in the DMG (or even an entire sourcebook) just discussion all of the foundational game design theory WotC must have developed in the process of designing and testing D&D? We spend half our time here just reverse-engineering an understanding of the underlying principles, and we clearly enjoy it (at least I do).

[Galen]

While I would like to see something like this, I wouldn't want it taking precious DMG real-estate.

[Ghost Nappa]

While I would like to see something like this, I wouldn't want it taking precious DMG real-estate.

This.

Maybe they could have it as like a free documentary online?

[MaxWilson]

Am I the only one who would love to see a chapter in the DMG (or even an entire sourcebook) just discussion all of the foundational game design theory WotC must have developed in the process of designing and testing D&D? We spend half our time here just reverse-engineering an understanding of the underlying principles, and we clearly enjoy it (at least I do).

I expected this to be a thread on multiagent decision-making, Pareto Optimality, Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, elections, and Nash equilibria. :-)

"When dividing up treasure, it is provable that there is no fair method for dividing treasure when there are more than two members in the party, for the following definition of 'fair'..."

[Gnomes2169]

As a Youtube video, sure. As part of the DMG, NOPE. I want all my nice things first, I can get my director's commentary later.

[silveralen]

Well... I could definitely see parts of it when discussing the DM creating custom classes or rules. After all, understanding how the game was built makes it easier to add on to in an appropriate manner.

[Selkirk]

yeah i would love to see this as a series of blog posts/articles on the wotc website. i mean we can gather bits and pieces here and there from interviews...and in fairness the design team was pretty open when discussing the game during the 'next' phase. however, 5e turned out to be something much better than what they were discussing with 'next'(which was almost survey level stuff).

[thereaper]

Between Forcecage, Knock, Moon Druids, Mordenkainen's Mansion, Simulacrum, the lack of any scaling for non-proficient saves, and some of the Wizard subclasses, I'm fairly certain that WotC did not employ much in the way of testing or game theory for 5e, let alone enough to justify inclusion in the DMG (which is quite sad, since some parts of this edition were obviously crafted with a lot of love; but many others were clearly phoned in).

[Selkirk]

i think they did do a lot of testing(the playtest ran for like 2 years) ...now how you implement the testing is a different thing :D. as to game theory...i find the game to be very well thought out and for the most part balanced-but there are going to be balance issues no matter how long they tested it. and some(not all) of the weaknesses in the game have to do with dealing with a system that has a 40 year legacy. dmg will make design choices clearer...

[Gnomes2169]

... Knock...

Wait... Why Knock? A rogue (or anyone with proficiency in thieves tools) can do the same thing in the same amount of time in almost every case, and knock only works that quickly if the wizard expends a level 2 spell slot for it. If you cast it as a ritual, it takes 100x as long, and even then you are only opening a single lock or deadbolt, and it is releasing a noise audible for 300'.

Meanwhile, the rogue/ person with the criminal background has picked the third fail safe 9 minutes ago and is sneaking into the safe without alerting the guards.

So... I'm really not seeing it. If the object was a DC 20 locked chest and had Arcane Lock on it (raising the DC to 30), then I guess knock is useful to turn off the Arcane Lock for 10 minutes... But that's all you can do with knock in this situation without expending a spell slot, and you'll still need to pick the lock itself. If you try to cast knock as a ritual again, the arcane lock will be back by the time you finish casting your second knock, and you'll just end up doing nothing but suppressing the arcane lock again.

[rlc]

I expected this to be a thread on multiagent decision-making, Pareto Optimality, Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, elections, and Nash equilibria. :-)

"When dividing up treasure, it is provable that there is no fair method for dividing treasure when there are more than two members in the party, for the following definition of 'fair'..."yeah, we did the exercise with splitting up $100 in a college class once and i was the guy who said i'd take the 99 and the other guy could have 1...he didn't accept.

[MaxWilson]

yeah, we did the exercise with splitting up $100 in a college class once and i was the guy who said i'd take the 99 and the other guy could have 1...he didn't accept.

People tend to rebel around the 80% mark. If you'd offered him $25 he probably would have taken it, but it was worth $1 to him to punish you for being unfair.

[Totema]

This kind of thing sounds ideal for a series of web articles on WotC's main site, frankly. Not sure how it would fit into any kind of book.

[rlc]

People tend to rebel around the 80% mark. If you'd offered him $25 he probably would have taken it, but it was worth $1 to him to punish you for being unfair.

It's free money (if it were actual money, that is). $1 is more than what you had before the exercise.
Apparently saying that in class made me sound like a statistician.

[Laserlight]

It's free money (if it were actual money, that is). $1 is more than what you had before the exercise.
Apparently saying that in class made me sound like a statistician.

There are cultures where the guy getting $1 would have agreed with you and accepted the deal. Weestern European/North American just isn't one of them.

[Gnome Alone]

Yeah, to me it'd be worth not getting a dollar, that I wouldn't have otherwise, in order to say "no, you shouldn't have 99 times more money than me, you snotball."

That whole experiment is fascinating. I can't imagine not just looking at the other guy and going, "So, 50/50?" and being done with it. Simple, fair, and only a lunatic would say no. It'd creep me out trying to put the screws to someone and seeing if I could get away with getting $72 or something.

[MaxWilson]

It's free money (if it were actual money, that is). $1 is more than what you had before the exercise.
Apparently saying that in class made me sound like a statistician.

And most Americans would typically spend that $1 to punish you for being a jerk. The behavior is called "altruistic punishment" and it's quite interesting. You pay a cost to punish someone even though you derive no tangible benefit from doing so; but it decreases the chance of him being a jerk to someone else down the road, so it's a net benefit to society even though it's a cost for you, hence "altruistic."

[Gnome Alone]

It's not even spending if you don't have it already, right? I'm not sure that it would always qualify as "punishment," altruistic or otherwise. Por ejemplo: To me, it's a thing about my own dignity; same reason I ain't gonna pick up some pennies if you sneer and throw them at my feet or something.

[thereaper]

Wait... Why Knock? A rogue (or anyone with proficiency in thieves tools) can do the same thing in the same amount of time in almost every case, and knock only works that quickly if the wizard expends a level 2 spell slot for it. If you cast it as a ritual, it takes 100x as long, and even then you are only opening a single lock or deadbolt, and it is releasing a noise audible for 300'.

Meanwhile, the rogue/ person with the criminal background has picked the third fail safe 9 minutes ago and is sneaking into the safe without alerting the guards.

So... I'm really not seeing it. If the object was a DC 20 locked chest and had Arcane Lock on it (raising the DC to 30), then I guess knock is useful to turn off the Arcane Lock for 10 minutes... But that's all you can do with knock in this situation without expending a spell slot, and you'll still need to pick the lock itself. If you try to cast knock as a ritual again, the arcane lock will be back by the time you finish casting your second knock, and you'll just end up doing nothing but suppressing the arcane lock again.

The fact that Thieves' Tools proficiency is so easy to get is also a problem (though the bigger issue is that getting expertise with them requires only a single level of Rogue).

Let's look at it this way. In a game where the Wizard and Rogue's abilities are balanced against each other (they aren't, but let's pretend the Wizard isn't already stronger for the moment), then for every time the Wizard can do the Rogue's job, the Rogue must be able to do the Wizard's job in order for balance to be maintained.

Can the Rogue cast Polymorph? How about Wind Wall? Fireball? Dispel Magic? Fly?

With Arcane Trickster, you might get one or two of those, but you won't get anywhere near the Wizard's full bag of tricks. The Wizard, on the other hand, can simulate many or even most of the Rogue's tricks. Therefore, something is wrong.

One of the main reasons 4e was actually able to attain balance (whether you liked it or hated it) was because it acknowledged the issue and made an attempt to actually enforce class roles. 5e has made only token attempts to do so, and as a result we still see primary casters with things they shouldn't have access to, such as summons (in mechanical terms, most summons are basically a melee substitute, which means they can only be balanced if you build the class around them) and lockpicking.

[Theodoxus]

You do realize that lockpicking isn't game breaking in and of itself. Having multiple characters/ways to achieve it isn't broken. On top of that, using Knock is typically not optimal - it'll either alert dungeon denizens, town guards, or at the very least, the neighbors, that something untoward is happening.

I'm not particularly worried about any of the other problems you listed either - even without a hodge podge hackneyed homebrew 'correction', they all work as intended. There is this constant cry and hew about how these spells are bad - yet they're all discussed in a vacuum. In actual gameplay, these don't work that way.

[MaxWilson]

Knock isn't a ritual spell anyway.