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    Default How the Game Design of D&D Gives New Roleplayers a Good Experience

    Introduction
    Let me start by making it clear that I'm talking about features of D&D which few RPGs that aren't D&D clones possess, regardless of edition. Some editions have additional virtues or quirks which make them better or worse to players of varying skill levels, but I'm not discussing them here. Perhaps someone who is more familiar with the individual versions of D&D could go over them, but that person is not me, and the point they'd be making isn't the one I intend to.

    With that out of the way: I've often heard people complaining about how this, that, or the other part of the D&D systems are "for noobs," rather than the "real gamers" who, in their minds, make up the core fanbase for RPGs and D&D in specific. Without getting into the specifics of said arguments, I think it's worth looking at the game as a whole to see how well these claims stand up. My conclusion is that D&D has a number of entrenched systematic features which make it suitable for people who have never played an RPG before.

    Now, before I get flamed into oblivion, let me explain myself, starting with the statement that this isn't a bad thing. A point that is lost on people making the above arguments is that making a game more accessible to new players is not inherently bad, or even inherently opposed to keeping it engaging for experienced gamers. Specific implementations of that goal cal do so, but they shouldn't be taken as indicative of the goal itself.
    There are also some very good reasons why D&D was, is, and should be designed to be easy for new players to get into. The first and most basic should be the most obvious: When Gygax first designed the first proto-D&D Chainmail variant, literall no one had played an RPG. Yes, there were various media with this, that, or the other aspect of RPGs, but that's true of literally everything humanity has ever invented. D&D was the first work to feature all of those elements together and use them the way it and all following tabletop RPGs do. It needed to be designed in such a way that people with no RPG experience could understand it. But that was then, and this is now. Why would D&D continue to "pander" to new players?
    The answer is simple. When most people who have never played a tabletop RPG before think of the medium, their first thought will be "D&D". If they decide to try them out on a lark, for one reason or another, D&D is one of the likeliest games for them to pick up. If D&D is not accessible to new players, WotC would have a hard time selling sourcebooks, adventures, and so on to a significant chunk of its potential market...and more relevant to the hardcore gamers, the overall RPG market would be much smaller. Without D&D allowing a well-known and relatively easy entry point into the hobby, not nearly as many people would have gotten into it. Even if most of them are "casuals," these additional players make the hobby better for everyone, if only because WotC has more money to spend developing new products.

    But now that I've explained why D&D is noob-friendly, I should explain how I came to that conclusion.

    1. Alignment
    This is the single most prominent noob-helping feature of D&D, as well as being mostly unique to the system. Now, bear with me for a few paragraphs. Alignment, as it is handled in D&D, is almost completely absent from games where the form of "alignment" used isn't one of the core themes of the game. Take the World of Darkness, for instance; each gameline has a stat which represents, essentially, the humanity of a given individual, and struggling to maintain this humanity is a major part of roleplaying in the World of Darkness. On the more clinical side, we have GURPS, which has individual elements of what D&D calls alignment—kindness, honesty, sadism, curiosity, and so on—split up into completely different traits.

    The alignment system is, to put it bluntly, a mess. If you don't believe me, look at all of the arguments on this forum over where things fall on the scale. (Also, please don't turn this into one, even though I'm about to say:) The system is maddeningly vague, dependent on individual interpretation more than anything else. It's essentially composed of four boxes and the space in between. I was arguing with someone on another forum over alignment and if it was a good way of representing people; whenever I brought up someone that didn't fit well into the boxes—someone with both lawful and chaotic tendencies on different subjects, for instance—their response was essentially "Shove it in neutral". If you want to play a character with any nuance beyond the basic boxes, neutral is your only option.
    And what is this alignment system used for? A handful of spells, a base class and a fraction of others scattered through the sourcebooks, restrictions on who be what, and two of the most problematic books in 3.5. Oh, and the fact that this system required labeling every being in the game system as "good" or "bad," which is arguably the greatest flaw of the system.
    And yet, aside from a brief experiment in an even more limited system, the Gygaxian alignment chart has been unchanged since the earliest days of proto-D&D (or at least the earliest publications of D&D). It's practically a staple of the series, as much as the titular dungeons and dragons are. Why?

    To answer that question, we need to look at the alignment system from a different perspective. Let's consider a player new to this whole role-playing thing. The average non-tabletop-gamer has a better chance of having some basic experience with basic roleplay-gaming than they would have 40 years ago (if only in a "paragon/renegade" sense), but still nowhere near the breadth of options a typical tabletop game allows. The alignment system is a roleplaying guide for people who don't understand the first thing about roleplaying. It's enough to get them started thinking about how their characters think differently than they do, and about how their characters act differently than their heroes do. At the same time, it's not confining, which means that the players can work freely within their self-defined personalities without notable restrictions from their alignment (barring a cruel DM or a chosen alignment which clashes with their personality). And for all the forum arguments over alignment, if no one at the table is trying to screw over anyone else, alignment doesn't cause any serious roleplaying problems even at higher levels of roleplaying. (Well, unless you're trying to inject some moral ambiguity, but hopefully no one interested in such a campaign would break out detect evil to short-circuit the situation.)

    2. Levels and classes
    D&D has, and has always had, a strict leveling system. You gain power in distinct increments, with a more-or-less predetermined set of abilities gained. Contrast this with other RPGs, which either lack an explicit character progression system or use some form of point-based progression system. In the tabletop market, classes and levels are almost entirely exclusive to D&D and its clones. This may seem peculiar; why hasn't D&D changed to a more flexible system? Well, the answer is simple.
    Level systems have a few advantages over non-level systems for new players, some of which are mentioned here. Essentially, level systems like D&D's and those of many video games reduce the risk of decision paralysis, because there are fewer decisions to worry about. The presence of clearly-defined classes with definite roles helps reduce decision paralysis even further, by giving each player a small set of goals to build towards. At the same time, the wide availability of little customization options—gear, feats, skills, and in many cases some set of class features—come together to allow some room for advancing your fighter or rogue or what-have-you, instead of advancing a fighter or rogue or whatever.

    Having class features distributed the way they are also shapes a proper learning curve (which is more or less true of any progression system, but less true the more choice players have on what abilities they gain). Look at a typical class feature list, or how the spells available to a spellcasting class change as they gain levels, or even most (though not all) feat chains. Low-level abilities, spells, and feats usually provide the basic tools of a build, but tend to be simpler than high-level ones. Low-level spells never include weaker but equally complex versions of complicated spells like polymorph or [I]gaseous form[I], even when we get weaker but mechanically near-identical versions of spells like cure critical wounds and polar ray. Feat chains usually start with small bonuses (+1 AC) before giving abilities which drastically change the tactical options available. As for classes, I could go through basically any class with features beyond bonus feats and spells and go into how the low-level abilities are simpler to learn and understand, while the complex ones are shunted into higher levels.
    The same is true for the DM, incidentally. Low-level monsters rarely have many special magical abilities, and most that do only have a limited number of "gimmicks" (e.g, blink dogs' blinking, ghouls' paralysis, the invisibility of pixies, quasits, and imps); these monsters are easy enough for a new DM to figure out how to use in an encounter. Most of these gimmick monsters don't even require the DM to look up the rules on a given spell, as long as rules disputes don't come up; it's easy enough to understand the implications of invisibility, or a creature described as going through walls to steal stuff. You don't get complicated monsters with a dozen options each turn until the higher levels.

    On a side note: The presence of classes in and of itself is notable. Most RPGs lack explicit classes, and a few (like Shadowrun) have more or less de facto classes (e.g, rigger, decker, mage) which can be blended or ignored, but D&D forces each character to play a role. Different editions give more or less freedom to customize a class, or to mix classes, but there is still a main path to follow. Of course, this makes it much easier for an inexperienced player to pick up the rulebook and decide what to play.

    3. Setting
    Most RPGs fall into one of two categories. The first are explicitly-generic RPGs, like GURPS and FATE. The second has a reasonably-distinct setting which the games are intended to take place in; this category includes Shadowrun, Paranoia, Traveler, and of course anything in the Warhammer or 40k universes. (Universe?) D&D is one of few to stand in between; while there are standard settings (e.g, Greyhawk or Faeurn), they are sold separately, with the core books providing little to no detail beyond what anyone with knowledge of Standard Fantasy could put together. What lore there is focuses on one specific aspect—one deity, one monster, one race—and perhaps the direct relations that specific aspect has with other specific aspects—enemies and friends and progenitors.
    This is the best of both worlds for an inexperienced RPG group. On one hand, those snippets of lore are enough to direct how players' characters think about various events or characters (e.g, an elf grumbling about how their orc-blooded NPC guide is sure to betray them, a cleric of Kord getting into brawls) and inspire adventures and campaigns for the DM (e.g, an adventure around a wizard recreating owlbears or a campaign for the Lost Eye of Grummsh). On the other, they don't tie anyone's hands with what is or isn't possible, or with what doesn't or does exist. This has its own advantages and disadvantages in various situations, but for the inexperienced group the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

    There's also another note to make about the setting; while most published settings have their own unique quirks, focuses, and so on, the majority of the lore found in non-setting-specific books closely fits the Standard Fantasy Setting. Granted, part of this is due to the effect D&D itself had on fantasy, but it's also an intentional choice on the part of the creators of D&D. (I mean, I assume it is. It could just be a carryover from Chainmail that no one ever thought twice about in the past few decades...but I'm inclined to think that the former is more likely.) It makes the game easier to get into if you know what elves, dwarves, orcs, and dragons are without needing to even pick up a book, and if the DM can expect people to understand the tropes in play implicitly.

    And yes, there's nothing in the books saying that you can't play differently. But most people don't, especially if they're newcomers to the game or the hobby as a whole. They'll take the little pointers the books give them, plus their pre-existing notions of a fantasy setting, and run with it in more or less the direction the designers intended.

    4. Adventure Structure
    This gets into the nitty-gritty a bit, and we again encounter a factor which depends on the DM running the game as much as the game itself. But again, we can see that the game still heavily influences the results, in this case through it mix of examples, tools, space devoted to it, etc. Oh, also the literal name of the game. I hope we can all agree that the game of D&D is focused on adventures centered around raiding various locations (frequently something along the lines of ruins, caverns, fortresses of doom, and...prisons), defeating enemies, finding treasure, and perhaps seizing or destroying a MacGuffin.
    Why is this adventure template more suitable for an inexperienced group than most? First off, it's based around motivations which are easy to understand—kill the bad guys and/or get rich. Including a little of both lets just about any PC get motivated enough to want to go along, if the DM is even a bit competent (and the players aren't actively disruptive). They're also easy to set up; you need little more than a map, a list of monsters and traps, a list of rewards, and a hook.

    Conclusion
    I could go on into nittier, grittier, and weaker territory, dissecting more and more features which make D&D friendly to new players, but I feel I've made my point as well as I'm going to. As for other conclusion-ey things, like a take-home message or a summary, I covered most of that in the introduction/disclaimer section. So...um...I'm bad at this.
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    Default Re: How the Game Design of D&D Gives New Roleplayers a Good Experience

    This thread's not getting the attention of deserves. You're absolutely right. The hobby would die without new players, and d and d is a great system for them.

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    Default Re: How the Game Design of D&D Gives New Roleplayers a Good Experience

    I don't really agree.

    I don't think that alignment is a helpful tool at all. Making a character a distinct person is one of the most intuitive things in roleplaying because the concept already exists in everyone's head. If anyone is familiar with basically any form of media at all then the idea of a someone "playing a character" is already a thing. We get this from TV, movies, CRPGs, and so on. If anything, alignment hinders RP because new players tend to think they're playing badly if they're not forcing themselves into an alignment straitjacket.

    I do agree that the idea of levels and classes can be a bit easier to understand, but I think those benefits are buried by the fact D&D actually isn't a particularly easy system to learn, mechanically. There's a fair bit of crunch to it, and it's quite easy to cripple yourself with trap options. Take the Toughness feat in 3.5. It's easy for a new player to look at that feat and go "Well I want to be tough!". Realizing it's a bad choice requires a decent grasp on the system in general. And that's not even getting into things like equipment lists. The mechanics can also be fairly unintuitive by themselves. One common thing I see is the DM going "The goblin stabs at you with a spear". The intuitive response is "I try to dodge!", and then you have to stop and explain to them what armour class is, and how it represents your built in defenses, etc etc.

    I agree that not having a built in setting is a benefit for D&D, but a problem that D&D brings to the table is that you can't make just any sort of world with it. D&D settings come with built in assumptions that can be quite unintuitive to a new player. Things like "Once you get to level 6 or so your character is literally a superhuman that can fight dozens of ordinary people at once.

    ---

    Contrast this with something like Dungeon World, which is explicitly designed for the purpose of being newbie friendly.

    The players have choices to make at character creation, but most of them are picking single options from very short lists. "Choose your defenses: Chainmail (1 armour, 1 weight) and adventuring gear (1 weight) or Scale Armour (2 armour, 3 weight). The hardest choice is picking your stats, but you have stat arrays to assign and all the information you really need is "As a fighter you probably want str to be your best stat".

    In play all the players need to do is describe what their character is doing, and the GM will decide when their actions trigger a move. And describing what you're doing is so much simpler and intuitive than messing around with the mechanics.

    ----

    I haven't organized this post very well because it's late and I want to go to bed. But I also just had this thought: D&D requires you to simultaneously learn roleplaying and a tactical fantasy war game. The latter isn't required for the former, and mixing the two together makes learning the former harder. And D&D doesn't really provide you with any help on the former part. The early editions don't even care about roleplaying, and the later editions assume you'll work it out yourselves.

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    Default Re: How the Game Design of D&D Gives New Roleplayers a Good Experience

    Quote Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold View Post
    1. Alignment
    I respectfully disagree. I find that even if a new player has written 'lawful good' on their character sheet then the only time it'll be important is when an ability targets it. Generally players much prefer to decide how their character plays outside of any in-game moral system, and the fact remains that the easiest thing to do with alignment is to punish players with it. There's a reason very few games have alignment (and those that do either don't use a moral one, or have a character's alignment develop in play). Now, Pendragon has it's moral system front and centre, but it's more ingrained in the system than it is in D&D and is centered around a bunch of sliders (so you have several pairs of morals, and each pair sums to 20) which essentially act as 'decision making when unsure' and an extra bunch of skills.

    2. Levels and classes
    I'll agree here. Although I loathe classes with a passion (before I lost the USB stick it was on my homebrew system had a complete lack of classes) it does make it simpler for players when they can pick a role and not have to worry about whether they should have put those 5 points in jousting rather than stringed instruments. It's not impossible to introduce new players with classless systems, but you're much more likely to use something like d6Fantasy or Pendragon than GURPS. Just beware that d6Fantasy requires players to make their own spells.

    3. Setting
    I would agree with this, except that I think d6Fantasy is a better system and it's just slightly more versatile than D&D while still fitting that 'standard fantasy setting' vibe.

    [QUOTE]4. Adventure Structure[QUOTE]

    No comment, because me and the standard D&D adventure aren't in the same bookstore.

    In conclusion: I see what you mean, but respectfully disagree.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zelphas View Post
    So here I am, trapped in my laboratory, trying to create a Mechabeast that's powerful enough to take down the howling horde outside my door, but also won't join them once it realizes what I've done...twentieth time's the charm, right?
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    Default Re: How the Game Design of D&D Gives New Roleplayers a Good Experience

    Yeah, I'm going to throw in with the other reply-ees here:


    Alignment is dumb and useless for new players. It requires the GM to be able to make sure that everyone plays nice together by giving people what LOOKS like 9 options, when in reality, you really don't want them picking about half of them. It's really not a useful idea at all to give new players the idea that they could play a Neutral Evil character, for example.

    Classes and Levels are, however, quite useful, yes. Point buy stuff is an express ticket to option paralysis for a lot of new players.

    Setting is not really a big win either - unless we're operating on the assumption that "generic fantasy" is a useful thing, which isn't really something I can agree with.

    Adventure structure... no, not really. The Dungeon Crawl is a good format for a new _GM_, I guess, but I don't think there're actually that many people who pick up D&D and go "Yeah! I'm going to get my friends together and run this for them!" and even if that IS the situation we're imagining, there are so many things that are BAD about D&D in this regard that it is totally counterbalanced. What I think _IS_ important is that a game give you a clear idea of what characters DO in it. Because that is super duper crucial. D&D scores a B- in this category, IMHO, because it pays too much lip service to the idea that you can just do whatever, rather than providing a clear focus on what the game is really good at.

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    Default Re: How the Game Design of D&D Gives New Roleplayers a Good Experience

    I've gotta ask though - how many gamers think that a system being accessible to newbies is a bad thing? The classic line for a well designed game is "Easy to learn, but difficult to master." Many classic games are like this and add greatly to the longevity. (Chess/Go/etc.)

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    Default Re: How the Game Design of D&D Gives New Roleplayers a Good Experience

    Quote Originally Posted by CharonsHelper View Post
    I've gotta ask though - how many gamers think that a system being accessible to newbies is a bad thing? The classic line for a well designed game is "Easy to learn, but difficult to master." Many classic games are like this and add greatly to the longevity. (Chess/Go/etc.)
    I think a lot of people don't think about it. They look at something like classes and say "Why do I have this needless straightjacket that prevents me from building my Special Snowflake Sword Wielding Wizard the way I want to?!" and fail to consider the benefits. I think this might've been what the OP was driving at, even though I disagree with a lot of his assertions.

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    Default Re: How the Game Design of D&D Gives New Roleplayers a Good Experience

    Quote Originally Posted by Airk View Post
    I think a lot of people don't think about it. They look at something like classes and say "Why do I have this needless straightjacket that prevents me from building my Special Snowflake Sword Wielding Wizard the way I want to?!" and fail to consider the benefits. I think this might've been what the OP was driving at, even though I disagree with a lot of his assertions.
    I'm a veteran and I actually still prefer classed systems, though I like the ones which are highly customizable.

    A pure point-buy system with any significant crunch inherently can't have good balance between characters. Classed systems can through niche protection & the way certain OP combinations are locked behind class walls. It also allows for greater asymmetry between characters. (Not to say that classed systems inherently have good balance - D&D itself besides 4e has some degree of caster/martial issues - just that such balance is possible with classes.)
    Last edited by CharonsHelper; 2017-01-12 at 04:21 PM.

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    Default Re: How the Game Design of D&D Gives New Roleplayers a Good Experience

    Quote Originally Posted by CharonsHelper View Post
    I've gotta ask though - how many gamers think that a system being accessible to newbies is a bad thing? The classic line for a well designed game is "Easy to learn, but difficult to master." Many classic games are like this and add greatly to the longevity. (Chess/Go/etc.)
    Of course. My big problem with GURPS is that, although it has the Advantages/Disadvantages/Skills to run anything, that leads to almost 400 options for a new player after I've pruned down the list to those I'm allowing.

    I think that RPGs have an additional problem in that you, at least theoretically want a small range of ability if you pour all your resources into one area, but enough options that it doesn't feel like every knight is the same (in other words you essentially want a high floor for specialists, coupled with a low ceiling. This is why a well designed class system is much better balanced than a well designed point buy system, although I've still not seen balance better than Fate's (or FUDGE's) system where the skill list is developed based on what's actually important to the game. I plan to play a Fantasy game using Fate at some point where instead of having skills/approaches/professions or whatever you decide on your character's religion, and then have to use that religion's virtues (currently planning on 6 per religion) as your skills.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zelphas View Post
    So here I am, trapped in my laboratory, trying to create a Mechabeast that's powerful enough to take down the howling horde outside my door, but also won't join them once it realizes what I've done...twentieth time's the charm, right?
    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    How about a Jovian Uplift stuck in a Case morph? it makes so little sense.

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    Default Re: How the Game Design of D&D Gives New Roleplayers a Good Experience

    Quote Originally Posted by CharonsHelper View Post
    I'm a veteran and I actually still prefer classed systems, though I like the ones which are highly customizable.

    A pure point-buy system with any significant crunch inherently can't have good balance between characters. Classed systems can through niche protection & the way certain OP combinations are locked behind class walls. It also allows for greater asymmetry between characters. (Not to say that classed systems inherently have good balance - D&D itself besides 4e has some degree of caster/martial issues - just that such balance is possible with classes.)
    I find niche protection easier with point-buy character creation because it makes it so much easier for the players to define their own niche. As for balance, what precisely do you mean by that? If you're talking about the PCs facing off in an arena, then a class system has the potential to be more balanced, especially if there are no (or only a few) real build choices besides class. The more options players have in creating their characters, the harder it is (and the less important it is) to maintain that kind of balance.
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    Default Re: How the Game Design of D&D Gives New Roleplayers a Good Experience

    Quote Originally Posted by JoeJ View Post
    I find niche protection easier with point-buy character creation because it makes it so much easier for the players to define their own niche.
    That's not the system then - that's the players being nice and allowing everyone their own niche. The system itself is doing nothing for niche protection. (And it only works if players intentionally gimp themselves at times to do so.)
    Last edited by CharonsHelper; 2017-01-12 at 06:07 PM.

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    Default Re: How the Game Design of D&D Gives New Roleplayers a Good Experience

    Quote Originally Posted by CharonsHelper View Post
    That's not the system then - that's the players being nice and allowing everyone their own niche. The system itself is doing nothing for niche protection. (And it only works if players intentionally gimp themselves at times to do so.)
    No, it's the system having enough options that nobody can be the best at all of them. Points that you put into being a super detective, for example, are points that you didn't spend on being a super martial artist.

    And what do you mean they "gimp" themselves?
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    Default Re: How the Game Design of D&D Gives New Roleplayers a Good Experience

    Quote Originally Posted by JoeJ View Post
    No, it's the system having enough options that nobody can be the best at all of them. Points that you put into being a super detective, for example, are points that you didn't spend on being a super martial artist.

    And what do you mean they "gimp" themselves?
    That's assuming that everyone has equal skill levels and that the system has sufficient asymmetry. It also assumes that each branch of the asymmetry is equal (that's where caster/martial in D&D has issues and is the most common way balance can suck in class systems).

    You can almost always have group balance if everyone is equally skilled at building. What's difficult is to build a system where niches of mediocre building characters are protected from optimizers. Point buy does nothing to help that. In addition, there is no protection against potential OP combos which the designer didn't intend/expect, while classes make them generally more difficult to pull off.

    So basically point-buy has all of the potential balance issues of classes, and a double helping all their own.
    Last edited by CharonsHelper; 2017-01-12 at 06:58 PM.

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    Default Re: How the Game Design of D&D Gives New Roleplayers a Good Experience

    Quote Originally Posted by CharonsHelper View Post
    That's assuming that everyone has equal skill levels and that the system has sufficient asymmetry. It also assumes that each branch of the asymmetry is equal (that's where caster/martial in D&D has issues and is the most common way balance can suck in class systems).

    You can almost always have group balance if everyone is equally skilled at building. What's difficult is to build a system where niches of mediocre building characters are protected from optimizers. Point buy does nothing to help that. In addition, there is no protection against potential OP combos which the designer didn't intend/expect, while classes make them generally more difficult to pull off.

    So basically point-buy has all of the potential balance issues of classes, and a double helping all their own.
    I'm not understanding your point. If one player isn't very good at creating the character they want, the other players should help them out, but that's completely unrelated to giving each PC their own niche.

    I've seen class systems where characters routinely excel at what's supposed to be another character's niche (D&D 3.x being a prime example). I haven't seen that problem in point systems. I'm not saying it never happens, but I've never seen it.
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    Default Re: How the Game Design of D&D Gives New Roleplayers a Good Experience

    As far as I understand his argument is a mixture of Jacks versus Specialists and that not everything is I equal worth in every game (which is true, occasionally Charisma is useless, occasionally Combat Reflexes isn't worth the 15CP).
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    Default Re: How the Game Design of D&D Gives New Roleplayers a Good Experience

    Quote Originally Posted by JoeJ View Post
    I'm not understanding your point. If one player isn't very good at creating the character they want, the other players should help them out, but that's completely unrelated to giving each PC their own niche.

    I've seen class systems where characters routinely excel at what's supposed to be another character's niche (D&D 3.x being a prime example).
    I'm never going to argue that 3.x has great balance. It has bunches of issues, mostly caster/martial ones. (where the asymmetry between the two fails horribly) But that has nothing to do with classes vs point buy.

    I have never found a point-buy system that I couldn't break if I wanted to.

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    I've run RuneQuest, Exalted, Cyberpunk 2020, Call of Cthulhu, AD&D 2nd ed, Toon and Gurps for beginners in the hobby and I fail to see how the D&D game design is superior in any way, shape or form.

    It's like someone trying to sell me the idea that McDonalds is the best way to start as a connoisseur of burgers because they know their marketing. Heck they giver their burgers fancy names like Big Mac or Big Tasty and therefore it's like classes with their niche protection even though it's just burger, bread and garnish.....the levels are small, medium and large and therefore makes the ordering experience easier for the new connoisseur and it all comes in neat and quantifiable cardboard boxes.

    If you eat at their place their setting is bland as bollycocks.

    So D&D is just like McDonalds, it's probably the biggest burger franchise in the world but it leaves a lot to be desired and I wouldn't recommend it in particular as there are a lot of systems are just as fun or even more fun. So don't let the corporate propaganda machine brainwash you and don't insult the intelligence of new players, they are just as capable of learning other systems than D&D.

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    Default Re: How the Game Design of D&D Gives New Roleplayers a Good Experience

    Quote Originally Posted by RazorChain View Post
    I've run RuneQuest, Exalted, Cyberpunk 2020, Call of Cthulhu, AD&D 2nd ed, Toon and Gurps for beginners in the hobby and I fail to see how the D&D game design is superior in any way, shape or form.

    It's like someone trying to sell me the idea that McDonalds is the best way to start as a connoisseur of burgers because they know their marketing. Heck they giver their burgers fancy names like Big Mac or Big Tasty and therefore it's like classes with their niche protection even though it's just burger, bread and garnish.....the levels are small, medium and large and therefore makes the ordering experience easier for the new connoisseur and it all comes in neat and quantifiable cardboard boxes.

    If you eat at their place their setting is bland as bollycocks.

    So D&D is just like McDonalds, it's probably the biggest burger franchise in the world but it leaves a lot to be desired and I wouldn't recommend it in particular as there are a lot of systems are just as fun or even more fun. So don't let the corporate propaganda machine brainwash you and don't insult the intelligence of new players, they are just as capable of learning other systems than D&D.
    Lol - is it just me - or within the realm of we nerdy outcast TTRPG players - the 'connoisseurs' who are too good for D&D and look down their noses at those who play it - does anyone else find their whole existence just seems fascicle?
    Last edited by CharonsHelper; 2017-01-12 at 10:43 PM.

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    Default Re: How the Game Design of D&D Gives New Roleplayers a Good Experience

    Quote Originally Posted by CharonsHelper View Post
    Lol - is it just me - or within the realm of we nerdy outcast TTRPG players - the 'connoisseurs' who are too good for D&D and look down their noses at those who play it - does anyone else find their whole existence just seems fascicle?
    What can I say...I come from a country where McDonalds failed and they closed up the last shop in 2009.

    And no I played D&D for 13 years and sometimes my group plays some D&D for a nostalgia factor and we have fun....but sometimes it's like seeing a movie again that you thought was great when you were a child but you watch it when you are adult and realize it is a piece of turd. It was much better in hindsight.

    What I am saying is there is a lot of good systems out there and D&D is in no way superior to those other systems nor more beginner friendly.

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    Quote Originally Posted by CharonsHelper View Post
    I have never found a point-buy system that I couldn't break if I wanted to.
    I've never found a car I couldn't crash if I wanted to either. But why would anybody want to?
    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
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    Quote Originally Posted by JoeJ View Post
    I've never found a car I couldn't crash if I wanted to either. But why would anybody want to?
    Because that's how you WIN an RPG, of course!
    Imagine if all real-world conversations were like internet D&D conversations...
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    Quote Originally Posted by Arbane View Post
    Because that's how you WIN an RPG, of course!
    Ah, of course. And since you already won, there's no need for anybody to invite you back next week.
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    Default Re: How the Game Design of D&D Gives New Roleplayers a Good Experience

    I will say for alignment, it does give a quick and easy way of getting a general disposition on a character, which is really helpful

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    Quote Originally Posted by CowardlyPaladin View Post
    I will say for alignment, it does give a quick and easy way of getting a general disposition on a character, which is really helpful
    Not in DnD world it doesn't....I tried to play Chaotic Evil but got an unlucky streak in my random killing spree and killed a lot of evil people so suddenly my character was Chaotic Good!!!!

    DnD Logic: Killing Evil = Good

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    Default Re: How the Game Design of D&D Gives New Roleplayers a Good Experience

    Quote Originally Posted by JoeJ View Post
    I've never found a car I couldn't crash if I wanted to either. But why would anybody want to?
    Yay straw-man!

    I enjoy optimizing. It's part of why I like RPGs. I generally enjoy optimizing weird concepts to get them up to snuff or power-gaming support roles. I don't want to break the game. But it's also tiring to have to constantly pull my punches to avoid doing so.

    I'd rather be able to build whatever I want without worrying about destroying the game for myself & my fellow players.

    But at least I'm into the process enough that I'm aware of what I'm doing. In some ill balanced systems, I've known players who have basically stumbled into a broken combo and then start breaking the game. They nor anyone at the table really realized that it's happening (since they were more casual players), but it still left a bad taste in their mouth for the system in general.
    Last edited by CharonsHelper; 2017-01-13 at 08:45 AM.

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    I don't buy it. More specifically, the four points listed are of questionable value in making the game accessible, and there are plenty of things that aren't listed that make it a lot less accessible to new players than any number of other games. Point by point:
    • Alignment: I'd agree that for people who aren't new players Alignment is usually basically worthless. Even for new players though it's not a great system, providing a handful of sloppily defined character archetypes that work less well than just pointing people towards literary archetypes. 5e's Ideal, Bond, Flaw mechanic is stronger here, but even that isn't great. Meanwhile outside of D&D there's plenty of stronger frameworks.
    • Levels and Classes: I'd agree that having the packages in the form of classes can help. However, these are ubiquitous - point buy games frequently have example builds for representing archetypal characters, and these can be picked up without learning a bunch of class specific features. On top of that, as soon as a new player wants to go outside the bounds they get to deal with the multiclassing rules. Said rules tend to be some combination of convoluted and full of trap options, whereas in a system that isn't class based it's a non-issue. What these mechanics really excel at is allowing for more mechanical complexity per option for fewer options at a given game complexity, and that's not particularly friendly to new people.
    • The Setting: D&D basically takes the technique of having a setting full of esoteric things to learn (see: The Great Wheel), full of unfamiliar names, that doesn't map well to fantasy outside of D&D. It then doesn't explain the setting well, instead having it as an implicit background force that drops disconnected snippets every so often. We're all used to the setting so it seems easy, but for new people? It's not particularly approachable. Meanwhile these generic games frequently have setting builds of some sort, there's plenty of systems that are built to fit a setting that was originally in other media that players are likely to be familiar with, etc.
    • Adventure Structure: Dungeon crawling is pretty easy to get into, and I'd actually agree with this being a point of accessibility. It's also the microsetting associated with dungeon crawling that is approachable - the implicit D&D setting as a whole is a gonzo fantasy setting full of bizarre stuff to learn. The microsetting of a dungeon is an enclosed area full of hostiles and hazards. That's never been a particularly complicated concept to get one's head around, and given the ubiquity of videogames it's now a concept that almost every player has probably already interacted with in game form. On the other hand, this does mean you get to spend a lot of time dealing with the mechanics, and D&D has a long history of poorly expressed mechanics that work in needlessly convoluted ways.


    That gets me into the crunch side. I'd argue that the crunch is where most people experience difficulties with RPGs - acting is familiar, storytelling is familiar, and there's no shortage of amateur writers. Similarly the idea of playing a character who tries to solve problems has been hammered in by videogames, which are (again) super ubiquitous, particularly among people likely to try an RPG. Massive, convoluted rules sets? Those are a bit rarer. In my experience it's much easier to find players for rules light games, and if a rules heavy game is happening it at least helps to have it be one which isn't just messy. D&D has a lot of quirks that contribute to the mess. Namely:
    • Gradual building. There's 40 years of accumulated mechanics, and while D&D changes a lot more between editions than is common, this doesn't extend to dropping things viewed as key, which leads to a lot of design relics accumulating.
    • Among these design relics is the tendency towards multiple scales for different mechanics. Attributes are on one scale, attribute modifiers on another, difficulty on another, spells on another, levels on another, so on and so forth. How much this happens varies by edition - 3e is particularly bad in this regard (class skills, cross class skills, saves, and a few other things can be added to the list). We're used to it, for new players it's a lot to remember.
    • Book length. D&D has three core books instead of the one used almost everywhere else (where even the exceptions rarely pass two), and the core rules total almost 1000 pages for the last three editions. Earlier editions are shorter, but then you start running into Gygax and his general ineptitude in explaining rules. There's no winning here.
    • Accounting. D&D loves it some accounting. Take money - you start dealing with hundreds of gold, in a system where each gold is a hundred copper. That gives you 5 digits to track, where you track it as the amount of pieces carried in four or five separate denominations. The experience system also starts out dealing with hundreds, and quickly grows. There's encumbrance rules where items need an explicit weight and you're always maintaining a total. There's ammunition tracking, consumable items, fading light sources, etc. As a game dedicated to dungeon crawling with a focus on resource management this all makes a lot of sense. It's not bad design. It's just not new player friendly.
    Last edited by Knaight; 2017-01-13 at 12:52 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by CharonsHelper View Post
    Yay straw-man!

    I enjoy optimizing. It's part of why I like RPGs. I generally enjoy optimizing weird concepts to get them up to snuff or power-gaming support roles. I don't want to break the game. But it's also tiring to have to constantly pull my punches to avoid doing so.

    I'd rather be able to build whatever I want without worrying about destroying the game for myself & my fellow players.
    That's not a problem with any of the point-buy games I'm familiar with. It is a problem with a few of the class/level ones. What game did you have to pull your punches in to keep from breaking it?

    Quote Originally Posted by CharonsHelper View Post
    But at least I'm into the process enough that I'm aware of what I'm doing. In some ill balanced systems, I've known players who have basically stumbled into a broken combo and then start breaking the game. They nor anyone at the table really realized that it's happening (since they were more casual players), but it still left a bad taste in their mouth for the system in general.
    The only game I've ever seen that happen with is D&D 3.x (including Pathfinder).
    Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
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    Quote Originally Posted by JoeJ View Post
    That's not a problem with any of the point-buy games I'm familiar with. It is a problem with a few of the class/level ones. What game did you have to pull your punches in to keep from breaking it?
    GURPS and HERO, to start.

    It's common in HERO to limit powers, because the limitations of the point budget just don't do it.

    But even with that, a player who knows the system well can easily create a character that outshines one created by a less-well-versed player.

    In their defense, though, usually these optimizations are things that at least make some kind of sense, as opposed to the hoop-jumping that 3.x optimizers do.

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    Quote Originally Posted by JoeJ View Post
    That's not a problem with any of the point-buy games I'm familiar with. It is a problem with a few of the class/level ones. What game did you have to pull your punches in to keep from breaking it?
    As kyoryu says.

    Plus Shadowrun. M&M. Chthulhutech. Call of Cthulhu. Vampire games (SOOOO easy to break). A couple others I've skimmed but not played.

    If you're good at mathing at all - point-buy systems are ridiculously easy to break.

    Again - probably not broken as hard as casters can do in D&D (at high level - the balance even in 3.x isn't too bad until 9ish - better in Pathfinder though it starts to crack around then too) - but that has nothing to do with classes vs point-buy. That has to do with D&D's caster/martial issues - which are due to the spell system being inherently OP vs martials.
    Last edited by CharonsHelper; 2017-01-13 at 03:10 PM.

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    Default Re: How the Game Design of D&D Gives New Roleplayers a Good Experience

    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    GURPS and HERO, to start.

    It's common in HERO to limit powers, because the limitations of the point budget just don't do it.

    But even with that, a player who knows the system well can easily create a character that outshines one created by a less-well-versed player.

    In their defense, though, usually these optimizations are things that at least make some kind of sense, as opposed to the hoop-jumping that 3.x optimizers do.

    I can't think of a system that gives much in the way of options and customization, and yet is immune to pernicious extremes of optimization.

    A game like HERO is, IMO, far more transparent in how builds work and what can be done with the options, with fewer traps and fewer munchkinisms, than something like 3.x -- there aren't that many secrets, and those that exist are more clearly examples of ridiculous cheese.

    The tricks and gimmicks of 3.x optimization are more of a "secret alchemy", creating an unlevel playing field based on mastery of system arcana, and opening up more potential for surprises popping up in the GM's face at game time.


    Of course, there's also the issue of players maybe acting in good faith and not looking to ravage the system for some cheesy gimmick advantage over their fellow players or the GM.
    Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2017-01-13 at 02:21 PM.
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