The Man Keeping the Martial Down

[Quertus]

There are several well-known old systems that had a ton of "life path" in their character creation rules.

Based largely on random rolls, you could start the campaign with a demigod and his closest friends, ie his half-blind hunchbacked diseased toadies, for PCs.

Cue obligatory "Thor and the sentient potted plant" reference. I ignored it earlier, but your "demigod and..." reference forces me to make my obligatory comment that "balance" is neither a synonym for, nor required for, "fun".

You are both pretty er right. You just have blatantly different self-definitions of what a "game" is.

For Quertus, a game is any activity that brings him (what passes for him) enjoyment. So he "enjoys" the complex calculus of making a character that is neither too strong, nor too weak, fun for him to play and challenging and new and clever. For him, that is a "game." So there is absolutely a character creation minigame, being a discrete portion of the overall role-playing experience.

For Max_Killjoy, a game has to have an opponent, stakes, and potentially a victory/defeat outcome. the RPG is game, even though he is not competing with his teammates, because they, collectively, have an opponent (the NPCs), stakes (whatever the quest elements are) and a victory/defeat outcome (win the quest, die and start over). Each one of the in-game minigames have the same criteria. However, character creation, except in the most abstract way definable, does not have those criteria.

Except, you know, for Quertus, they do. His opponent is himself, his stakes are his potential enjoyment, and his victory/defeat is "do I enjoy or not enjoy this character". For Max, those are too abstract to qualify.

I would compare the character creation minigame here, to doing a sudoku or crossword puzzle. Are those games? If they are, then character creation is a minigame. If you don't consider puzzles games, then character creation is not a minigame.

Neither of you are wrong.

No victory! No defeat! the Forum discussion minigame continues!

Now, here's my take on it. I don't consider character creation a minigame because personal stakes are too abstract for me to qualify it, so I side on Max's side of the argument. But I absolutely respect and understand Quertus' take as well.

In my experience though, people with Quertus' take seldom stop at "can I beat my own expectations with this character" and often slide into "is my character better and/or cooler than the rest of the characters" which is where it becomes a problem and unnecessarily adversarial and potentially self-destructive. Not saying Quertus has or is, just saying, I see the potential trap.

Thank you for your insightful reply. I must confess, I am selfishly saddened that it looks better designed to explain my PoV to Max than to explain his PoV to me, but I think I get that Max's (and your) definition of "game" (and, pursuant to that, "stakes") are too narrow to include the character creation minigame as a "game". Whereas I can classify "find the character sheet" as a minigame, complete with timers and betting at some tables.

So do you think failing 19/20 times is a good thing?

That's kind of where I disagree with AMFV, I dont like character creation that you can fail, its hard enough to get a decent group together for a game, I dont want it to be over before it even began because people failed to make the characters that they wanted to play or that the group needs.

No, I don't.

I find it most regrettable that my "stretch goals" for understanding human psychology etc etc generally leave 19 out of 20 of my characters unplayable / uninteresting / whatever, regardless of the underlying system used. I would love to have a higher success rate.

Now, the "gaining system mastery" minigame, where 100% of your first X characters / MtG decks / whatever are something my brother or the Playground would declare "unplayable"? That is learning, that is a winnable minigame. Once you see the elephant, you have the option to build "successful" characters. I find that a much more acceptable state.

Unless, of course, you are one of the players I patterned Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named, after. If you are one of them, you have never seen the elephant, and will probably never "win" the character creation minigame (or the "playing the character competently" / "making choices for the character" minigames, or...). In which case, I really don't know what to tell you.

I will probably never win the "play competently" minigame in the Warhammer universe. And I would be OK with that if I could play Tzeentch, so as to have (closer to) equivalent narrative capability as the other players. Instead, I play Warhammer to spend time with friends, be told a story, etc - not for "normal" RPG reasons.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Now, the "gaining system mastery" minigame, where 100% of your first X characters / MtG decks / whatever are something my brother or the Playground would declare "unplayable"? That is learning, that is a winnable minigame. Once you see the elephant, you have the option to build "successful" characters. I find that a much more acceptable state.

Unless, of course, you are one of the players I patterned Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named, after. If you are one of them, you have never seen the elephant, and will probably never "win" the character creation minigame (or the "playing the character competently" / "making choices for the character" minigames, or...). In which case, I really don't know what to tell you.

I will probably never win the "play competently" minigame in the Warhammer universe. And I would be OK with that if I could play Tzeentch, so as to have (closer to) equivalent narrative capability as the other players. Instead, I play Warhammer to spend time with friends, be told a story, etc - not for "normal" RPG reasons.

Creating a competent, useable character should not, in my opinion, be in question. It should be the default, and a strong one at that. This includes both mechanics and personality. You should have to work to create a character that doesn't fit the game. If this is a "minigame" you have to get better at, the system is already a failure. Creating competent characters is a precondition for play, not part of actual play. You shouldn't be able to fail at it.

So far, my players (even the brand new ones) have a 100% success rate at creating competent 5e characters by the simple method of choosing what fits the broad archetype of the class.

[Gallowglass]

Thank you for your insightful reply. I must confess, I am selfishly saddened that it looks better designed to explain my PoV to Max than to explain his PoV to me, but I think I get that Max's (and your) definition of "game" (and, pursuant to that, "stakes") are too narrow to include the character creation minigame as a "game". Whereas I can classify "find the character sheet" as a minigame, complete with timers and betting at some tables.

Another point of view would be, its not a matter of my definition being too narrow, but yours being to broad. So broad that the term "game" loses any useful meaning as a tool in the "communicating with others" minigame. Sometimes, precision is a good thing.

If I define a taco as "a type of sandwich" and you don't, then when I say "let's go get a sandwich" and take you to taco bell, we've lost the game.

(we also lost the getting dinner minigame because anytime you eat at taco bell, you've lost)

[Rhedyn]

Creating a competent, useable character should not, in my opinion, be in question. It should be the default, and a strong one at that. This includes both mechanics and personality. You should have to work to create a character that doesn't fit the game. If this is a "minigame" you have to get better at, the system is already a failure. Creating competent characters is a precondition for play, not part of actual play. You shouldn't be able to fail at it.

So far, my players (even the brand new ones) have a 100% success rate at creating competent 5e characters by the simple method of choosing what fits the broad archetype of the class.

I also agree with this. Sure the character creation mini-game is always something any RPG has if you can build characters, but the harder that mini-game is, the greater the barrier to entry is for the game. I wouldn't say a hard mini-game means the game is necessarily bad. For example, GURPS 4e is an object good RPG. Players still have to know that dumping every character point into the "Broadsword" skill is a bad idea. Not every game has to be like Savage Worlds, which is fairly flexible, but also really difficult to make a bad character for.

[Quertus]

Creating a competent, useable character should not, in my opinion, be in question. It should be the default, and a strong one at that. This includes both mechanics and personality. You should have to work to create a character that doesn't fit the game. If this is a "minigame" you have to get better at, the system is already a failure. Creating competent characters is a precondition for play, not part of actual play. You shouldn't be able to fail at it.

So far, my players (even the brand new ones) have a 100% success rate at creating competent 5e characters by the simple method of choosing what fits the broad archetype of the class.

2e, the best RPG ever, certainly made creating a competent character (by 3e's low standards) quite trivial.

Of course, most 3e players don't recognize the value of a bag of flour, and some even question the 10' pole, or 50' of rope. So these 3e characters would still seem quite incompetent by 2e standards.

Can a game offer customization without the the opportunity to fail? It's an interesting question.

I read an article where a restaurant owner did a test run before opening their new restaurant. Customers combined ingredients that didn't go together. They did not process and remember (correctly) that "they failed" at character food creation, they only understood that they didn't like it. To cater to human perception, and unwillingness to pay for failing, he had to limit his menu to compatible items. So rather than just a "toppings" section, there were separate toppings for "fish tacos" than for spaghetti (or whatever).

So, yes, I think one could make character creation mechanically a "customization" minigame, rather than a pass/fail minigame. I reserve judgement on which method is "better".

But personality? I think it's pretty safe to say that most personalities fail for most adventures - this is why explaining the hooks in session 0 is a good idea, IME.

[Quertus]

Another point of view would be, its not a matter of my definition being too narrow, but yours being to broad. So broad that the term "game" loses any useful meaning as a tool in the "communicating with others" minigame. Sometimes, precision is a good thing.

If I define a taco as "a type of sandwich" and you don't, then when I say "let's go get a sandwich" and take you to taco bell, we've lost the game.

(we also lost the getting dinner minigame because anytime you eat at taco bell, you've lost)

I mean, Google returned about 4 million results for "character creation minigame", so I don't think it's exactly a novel concept which the human population is incapable of comprehending or anything. I will say that, given the top few search results, it looks like the industry may be about a decade behind me in actual usage. Shrug. But it looks to me like referring to the "character creation minigame" is more like an "ice cream sandwich" or a "pizza sandwich" than calling a taco a sandwich.

Still, yes, language could become more precise, and just as "Software Engineer" is seen by the snooty as being as wrong as "Sanitation Engineer", sure, some day we may need more precise verbiage to describe the character creation minigame. If opinion shifts that way, and y'all are ahead of your time in that regard, you could easily view my definition as "too broad". Shrug.

Either way, it shouldn't prevent communication, just cause a bit of a calibration hiccup, and a call for precise language / definition of terms. (EDIT: which you did, by explaining that your definition of "game" was too narrow to accept character creation as a minigame. Now we just need new words to describe that, uh, "minigame", that doesn't involve "game"?)

[Florian]

Creating a competent, useable character should not, in my opinion, be in question. It should be the default, and a strong one at that. This includes both mechanics and personality. You should have to work to create a character that doesn't fit the game. If this is a "minigame" you have to get better at, the system is already a failure. Creating competent characters is a precondition for play, not part of actual play. You shouldn't be able to fail at it.

So far, my players (even the brand new ones) have a 100% success rate at creating competent 5e characters by the simple method of choosing what fits the broad archetype of the class.

*Shrugs*

Certainly depends on what you think the game to be all about. There's a difference of heroes doing stuff and folks becoming heroes because they did stuff, when you can understand and accept that difference.

[PhoenixPhyre]

*Shrugs*

Certainly depends on what you think the game to be all about. There's a difference of heroes doing stuff and folks becoming heroes because they did stuff, when you can understand and accept that difference.

Doesn't matter. Competent is defined at the system level, so the default should be that the characters are exactly as competent as the system assumes they should be (within small bounds).

Otherwise you're setting new people up for failure, and that's bad design if you actually want people to play the game.

[Max_Killjoy]

Creating a competent, usable character should not, in my opinion, be in question. It should be the default, and a strong one at that. This includes both mechanics and personality. You should have to work to create a character that doesn't fit the game. If this is a "minigame" you have to get better at, the system is already a failure. Creating competent characters is a precondition for play, not part of actual play. You shouldn't be able to fail at it.

Exactly.

If character creation is deliberately set up to have failure to create a viable enjoyable character as an outcome, then it's already broken.

[AMFV]

So far, my players (even the brand new ones) have a 100% success rate at creating competent 5e characters by the simple method of choosing what fits the broad archetype of the class.

Which is one of the advantages of systems like 5e, or AD&D or Castles and Crusades. They're easy to start with and don't really have a high barrier to new players. I enjoy a lot of aspects of those games as well. But I also like to be able to play the games with more complex systems and more strategy involved in building of characters

That's great, but it has nothing to do with RPGs.

But it does have a bit to do with my understanding of competitive events.

Which misses the point by a mile.

The point is that the constant need to rank and rate and anoint the greatest reminds me of that nonsense in sports, whether it comes from observers or not. It's not enough that some players are or were great... "we" must know who is the greatest. (insert eyeroll emote here)

Well if you have a system where you can win or lose, then people are going to inevitably try to figure out who won "more" either by winning more times or doing it more decisively, it's part of games. The fact that this is present in the character creation minigame is more evidence that there is a game.

Believing you're winning at character creation is like believing you're winning at tape. It's ridiculous.

Hardly.

There is never a character-creation minigame.

Blatantly false by any definition of the word game that I am aware of.

I have the same reaction to any other mechanical build, from the simplest to the most complex. It's not an achievement, and quite often it's a simply a relief to find something that fits the character, especially in any version of D&D.

That's actually a part of the "mini-game" finding the option that fits the character as well as the best mechanical option. You want to have the character concept as preserved as possible while having the character as mechanically competent as possible. That's a big part of the challenge involved in the game.

That's not "winning" or "losing" in any real sense, that's just the process of building a character. Some systems make it easier or harder, some systems make it functionally impossible, but it's just the process.

If I earn a higher score in basketball or a lower score in golf, I'm winning. If I finish solitaire in less moves or at all, I'm winning. Just because this game is part of another game doesn't remove the fact that there are success fail conditions.

That's where the whole "winning character creation" thing falls for me... if that player is "winning", then who is "losing"? Is the point to map the character in your head into the system, etc, as you lay out above... or is the point to "win", to make a more powerful character than everyone else and "beat" the game before it ever starts? (Never mind the total silliness of the idea of "beating" an RPG.)

Both are involved, you "beat" the game by having a character that fulfills its role as well as it possibly can.

Simply put, the purpose of the character creation rules in any RPG system is to enable any appropriate character or concept to be translated into the mechanics of the game, in a balanced manner, and enable enjoyable gameplay with that character. If a player "wins" or "loses" character creation, then the system and/or the GM have failed.

That is one of the purposes of character creation rules in every RPG, but that need not be the only purpose.

In a not-exploitatively-designed game the big guns and small guns would be different tools which are the correct thing to use in a roughly even number of circumstances.

WHO IS BEING EXPLOITED? Me, who is having fun playing the system? Is it exploiting me by how much fun I'm having. I'm super confused about this.

Now I do agree that there should be options that are useful for different situations, but even then if you're trying to use big guns for a small guns situation... then you're using the wrong tool and are failing.

I've built a ton of characters in various systems, characters that I'll never get to play, or use as NPCs.

It's basically enjoyable along the same vein as crafting something in your spare time, or upgrading your own PC, or repairing your own car, or whatever, insert what you might enjoy along those same lines.

But that doesn't make it a game.

It does when you have a limited number of resources and win lose conditions. Building a shed in your spare time isn't a game, seeing how fast you can put up the shed is. Upgrading your own PC isn't a game, seeing how little money you can spend for the most power can be. Repairing your own car isn't a game, but seeing how many cars you can repair in an hour is.

All you need to add is a few things to make the thing into a game.

For Max_Killjoy, a game has to have an opponent, stakes, and potentially a victory/defeat outcome. the RPG is game, even though he is not competing with his teammates, because they, collectively, have an opponent (the NPCs), stakes (whatever the quest elements are) and a victory/defeat outcome (win the quest, die and start over). Each one of the in-game minigames have the same criteria. However, character creation, except in the most abstract way definable, does not have those criteria.

All of those things exist in the character creation mini-game. You have an opponent (the rule system itself), you have victory and defeat conditions (if you can build the character you want to and make it effective within the rule system). The problem is that Max is refusing to accept that there could be "win-lose" conditions in character creation and scoffs at the idea. By any definition of the word game, the character creation mini-game is a game.

Edit:

Doesn't matter. Competent is defined at the system level, so the default should be that the characters are exactly as competent as the system assumes they should be (within small bounds).

Otherwise you're setting new people up for failure, and that's bad design if you actually want people to play the game.

Which is why 3.5e was a failed edition, and why nobody tried to create a version of it after the designers created a different sort of game.

[Willie the Duck]

Doesn't matter. Competent is defined at the system level, so the default should be that the characters are exactly as competent as the system assumes they should be (within small bounds).

Otherwise you're setting new people up for failure, and that's bad design if you actually want people to play the game.

To a fair degree, I will agree. Although there is an argument that that is done mostly by stripping away choice. For example, 3e, as distinct from 5e, allows you to dedicate your skill allotments to non-adventure-beneficial* skills such as profession skills like farmer, craft skills like cooper, or performance skills like harpsichord. Mind you, I personally think that makes 5e a better industry leader/game meant to introduce new people. However, I'm also for other systems (particularly those meant for non-beginning TTRPG players, and preferably with a whole bunch of signs and warnings and a chapter about weighing for-flavor and for-adventure-winning build decisions) retaining those options. Especially if PCs and NPCs are built using the same mechanisms.
*usually, and yes one can conjecture scenarios where basket weaving I more important to succeeding at an adventure that stealth or Use Magic Device, but will likely be rare

[PhoenixPhyre]

To a fair degree, I will agree. Although there is an argument that that is done mostly by stripping away choice. For example, 3e, as distinct from 5e, allows you to dedicate your skill allotments to non-adventure-beneficial* skills such as profession skills like farmer, craft skills like cooper, or performance skills like harpsichord. Mind you, I personally think that makes 5e a better industry leader/game meant to introduce new people. However, I'm also for other systems (particularly those meant for non-beginning TTRPG players, and preferably with a whole bunch of signs and warnings and a chapter about weighing for-flavor and for-adventure-winning build decisions) retaining those options. Especially if PCs and NPCs are built using the same mechanisms.
*usually, and yes one can conjecture scenarios where basket weaving I more important to succeeding at an adventure that stealth or Use Magic Device, but will likely be rare

And I would say that for what 3e intended to do, as measured by what they said in the books, 3e's design was an utter failure. This is also evidenced by what actually came out of it (ie not what they claimed). 3e made the promise that any of these classes would work. They didn't. They made the promise that Toughness was a valid choice for a bonus feat and roughly on par with a decent spell. It isn't. Etc. They (intentionally or not) left giant holes in their design that people could fall in and get hurt (metaphorically speaking). If a business did that physically, that'd be a tort lawsuit waiting to happen. Here, it's a design failure. And an objective one.

The system should help you do what the system considers important. If combat is important, everyone should be competent in combat as a baseline. If basketweaving is important, set that as a baseline. Being able to "customize" (ie decide not to take) core competencies for the system just leads to people failing and blaming the system, very rightly. It's a form of false choice, of either incompetence or malice on the part of the designers. If the system (as it claims) is about adventurers doing adventuring things, then making the default be "incapable and unable to contribute" (which it did) is just plain bad design.

And as far as personalities go (@Quertus), 5e's Background system provides enough information that if you take any of the provided options a party can work. They give motivations to be adventuring, they give hooks for DMs to play on, they give places for other characters to work in. Most importantly, they all work toward the system's goals--making adventurers who go out and do adventuring things. Nothing can stop someone from making an ill-fitting character, but you can set good defaults.

And @AMFV, D&D is not a competitive game. At all. That kind of thinking is toxic to the trust necessary between players and between players and the DM. If you're thinking in terms of winning and losing you've already lost and I don't want you anywhere near a table I'm in. Games can handle large power disparities. What a cooperative game cannot handle is people who try to turn it into a competitive one. It's a violation of the essential social contract.

And people made "different versions of 3e" by throwing away the parts that you're lauding here. Pathfinder made multiclassing a net negative. Almost all of the variability is within-class, not between-class. 4e and especially 5e threw away the "win at character creation" game almost entirely. Because the designers rightly realized that it was totally toxic for anything other than a solo "dress-up doll" exercise. And contrary to your statement, 5e alone is more popular than 3e ever was at its peak. More players, more PHBs sold, more games going. All without the mass of questionably-edited, poorly-curated splats or the "minigame" mentality. In fact, ther 5e PHB has been at or near the top of the Amazon Best Seller list since it came out. It likely sells more in a year than most of the 3e splats did in the entire run. D&D has never been more popular, and it coincided with a significant change in mindset. By working with players, not catering to the "git gud noob" elitists who want to laugh at those poor fools who don't know that Fighter is a trap.

[Max_Killjoy]

Which is one of the advantages of systems like 5e, or AD&D or Castles and Crusades. They're easy to start with and don't really have a high barrier to new players. I enjoy a lot of aspects of those games as well. But I also like to be able to play the games with more complex systems and more strategy involved in building of characters

If character building involves strategy, then it's running a risk inherently -- any system with D&D-like leveled progression has this issue where you have to look way down the road and plan out the character, to anticipate most of the abilities the character will have, when and how they'll be picked up, etc. Even 5e has this issue to some degree, especially with how the multiclassing rules work. (Maybe the character should start out as class X, but it's far less "optimal" to start add class Y later than it is to add class X because of the things you pick up when adding this class second vs that class second.)

But it does have a bit to do with my understanding of competitive events.

Character creation is not a competitive event.

Well if you have a system where you can win or lose, then people are going to inevitably try to figure out who won "more" either by winning more times or doing it more decisively, it's part of games. The fact that this is present in the character creation minigame is more evidence that there is a game.

If the character creation system can be "won" or "lost", then it's already broken. There's no game there, just the failure of the character creation rules to actually do their job.

That's actually a part of the "mini-game" finding the option that fits the character as well as the best mechanical option. You want to have the character concept as preserved as possible while having the character as mechanically competent as possible. That's a big part of the challenge involved in the game.

...

If I earn a higher score in basketball or a lower score in golf, I'm winning. If I finish solitaire in less moves or at all, I'm winning. Just because this game is part of another game doesn't remove the fact that there are success fail conditions.

...

Both are involved, you "beat" the game by having a character that fulfills its role as well as it possibly can.

...

It does when you have a limited number of resources and win lose conditions. Building a shed in your spare time isn't a game, seeing how fast you can put up the shed is. Upgrading your own PC isn't a game, seeing how little money you can spend for the most power can be. Repairing your own car isn't a game, but seeing how many cars you can repair in an hour is.

All you need to add is a few things to make the thing into a game.

...

All of those things exist in the character creation mini-game. You have an opponent (the rule system itself), you have victory and defeat conditions (if you can build the character you want to and make it effective within the rule system). The problem is that Max is refusing to accept that there could be "win-lose" conditions in character creation and scoffs at the idea. By any definition of the word game, the character creation mini-game is a game.

Any character creation system for an RPG that has "win" and "loss" states, or can otherwise be mistakenly perceived as a "minigame", is already broken, and potentially toxic to the actual gameplay that would follow.

Which is why 3.5e was a failed edition, and why nobody tried to create a version of it after the designers created a different sort of game.

Because a lot of players aren't mistaking character creation for a "minigame", and worked around the faults in the system...

...and because a lot of other players mistook the cumulative faults in the character creation for a "minigame" and can't let go of the idea of building the most OP character as some sort of nerd-macho exercise in one-upping other players.

[Rhedyn]

2e, the best RPG ever, certainly made creating a competent character (by 3e's low standards) quite trivial.

Idk if I would place 2e D&D over DCC RPG let alone say it is the best RPG ever.

[awa]

Idk if I would place 2e D&D over DCC RPG let alone say it is the best RPG ever.

also which second edition. The splat books added late in second edition run radically changed how the game played on a fundamental level

[Max_Killjoy]

And I would say that for what 3e intended to do, as measured by what they said in the books, 3e's design was an utter failure. This is also evidenced by what actually came out of it (ie not what they claimed). 3e made the promise that any of these classes would work. They didn't. They made the promise that Toughness was a valid choice for a bonus feat and roughly on par with a decent spell. It isn't. Etc. They (intentionally or not) left giant holes in their design that people could fall in and get hurt (metaphorically speaking). If a business did that physically, that'd be a tort lawsuit waiting to happen. Here, it's a design failure. And an objective one.

The system should help you do what the system considers important. If combat is important, everyone should be competent in combat as a baseline. If basketweaving is important, set that as a baseline. Being able to "customize" (ie decide not to take) core competencies for the system just leads to people failing and blaming the system, very rightly. It's a form of false choice, of either incompetence or malice on the part of the designers. If the system (as it claims) is about adventurers doing adventuring things, then making the default be "incapable and unable to contribute" (which it did) is just plain bad design.

I think that's what some don't understand.

A game, in presenting a "piece", is making an implicit promise that said piece is useful within the game.

3.x blatantly broke that implicit promise, over and over again, with every trap option and "suboptimal" base character class. CCGs with junk cards break that promise, over and over again. Some video games break that promise depending on how they present things.

And as far as personalities go (@Quertus), 5e's Background system provides enough information that if you take any of the provided options a party can work. They give motivations to be adventuring, they give hooks for DMs to play on, they give places for other characters to work in. Most importantly, they all work toward the system's goals--making adventurers who go out and do adventuring things. Nothing can stop someone from making an ill-fitting character, but you can set good defaults.

Agreed, it should take real effort to "fail" at character creation, not to "succeed". If an RPG can be lost before the campaign even starts, that's a bug. Not a feature, a bug.

And @AMFV, D&D is not a competitive game. At all. That kind of thinking is toxic to the trust necessary between players and between players and the DM. If you're thinking in terms of winning and losing you've already lost and I don't want you anywhere near a table I'm in. Games can handle large power disparities. What a cooperative game cannot handle is people who try to turn it into a competitive one. It's a violation of the essential social contract.

And people made "different versions of 3e" by throwing away the parts that you're lauding here. Pathfinder made multiclassing a net negative. Almost all of the variability is within-class, not between-class. 4e and especially 5e threw away the "win at character creation" game almost entirely. Because the designers rightly realized that it was totally toxic for anything other than a solo "dress-up doll" exercise. And contrary to your statement, 5e alone is more popular than 3e ever was at its peak. More players, more PHBs sold, more games going. All without the mass of questionably-edited, poorly-curated splats or the "minigame" mentality. In fact, ther 5e PHB has been at or near the top of the Amazon Best Seller list since it came out. It likely sells more in a year than most of the 3e splats did in the entire run. D&D has never been more popular, and it coincided with a significant change in mindset. By working with players, not catering to the "git gud noob" elitists who want to laugh at those poor fools who don't know that Fighter is a trap.

And the "But my character creation minigame!" crowd comes across as exactly that -- "hur hur, git gud noob" types who are looking for a reason to point and laugh when someone tries to play a Fighter, using the toxic idea of a "minigame" during character creation to fig-leaf what's actually just abusing faults in the system to get an advantage over other players.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I think that's what some don't understand.

A game, in presenting a "piece", is making an implicit promise that said piece is useful within the game.

3.x blatantly broke that implicit promise, over and over again, with ever trap option and "suboptimal" base character class. CCGs with junk cards break that promise, over and over again. Some video games break that promise depending on how they present things.

Agreed, it should take real effort to "fail" at character creation, not to "succeed". If an RPG can be lost before the campaign even starts, that's a bug. Not a feature, a bug.

And the "But my character creation minigame!" crowd comes across as exactly that -- "hur hur, git gud noob" types who are looking for a reason to point and laugh when someone tries to play a Fighter, using the idea of a "minigame" during character creation to fig-leaf what's actually just abusing faults in the system to get an advantage over other players.

For all we differ about what makes a good game, we're in total agreement here.

[Max_Killjoy]

For all we differ about what makes a good game, we're in total agreement here.

If I were going to play some version of D&D, it would be 5e, because at least there I can concentrate on the hard work of getting the character into the system, and not have to simultaneously watch for pitfalls and cracks in the system, or worry that the guy across the table is abusing those cracks in the system while telling himself he's "winning" some game that doesn't even exist to excuse that abuse.

[Kyutaru]

You are both pretty er right. You just have blatantly different self-definitions of what a "game" is.

I'm sliding in here with the AD&D 2nd edition view. A game is composed of moments of enjoyment that all that prework enable. A good system has the ability to create more of them, epic encounters and dicey tension where the fate of the world is riding on your shoulders. Death is as much a part of the game as character creation. Success and failure are both desired and make the other that much more impactful. Like playing an MMO, the pleasure of beating a difficult dungeon is enhanced when said dungeon kicked you around the first few times and forced your group to collaborate and come up with a way to move forward. The boss fight is that much more sweet if you wiped to him seven times. Granted, in D&D You're not supposed to be dying -that- often but the more difficult the challenge the more rewarding the clear. Sometimes folks even just go pure roleplay mode and forge a narrative based on how the dice fall. In that sense, sufficient randomness promoting both success AND failure is necessary for the story to change at all.

For me, AD&D is like reading a choose your own adventure book. Not all of the endings are good, not all the reasonable choices end favorably, and that's perfectly alright because by the time you finish a run you are entertained and ready for another.

[FaerieGodfather]

"If it's not spellcasting, it's not magic" is a broken notion stemming from some wonky worldbuilding and whanot in D&D.

I wouldn't even call it "worldbuilding" so much as there's a disproportionately vocal segment of the fanbase that refuses to distinguish between the game rules designed to represent parties of adventurers and the fictional reality of the fantasy worlds they're supposed to occupy.

I mean, we can argue all day about whether or not the rules were supposed to be used that way-- that would make 3.X the only version of D&D to do so-- but it's pretty clear from years of these discussions that they cannot be used that way and still produce a world that looks like any D&D world that exists or that anyone actually wants to play in.

[AMFV]

And I would say that for what 3e intended to do, as measured by what they said in the books, 3e's design was an utter failure. This is also evidenced by what actually came out of it (ie not what they claimed). 3e made the promise that any of these classes would work. They didn't. They made the promise that Toughness was a valid choice for a bonus feat and roughly on par with a decent spell. It isn't. Etc. They (intentionally or not) left giant holes in their design that people could fall in and get hurt (metaphorically speaking). If a business did that physically, that'd be a tort lawsuit waiting to happen. Here, it's a design failure. And an objective one.

Obstacle courses. Those have holes you can fall in, intentionally put there. I'd love to see you sue them. Also THEY DID NOT PROMISE THAT. They didn't explicitly say otherwise, which I'd have liked, but the idea that having two things in a game present means that they are of equal utility to all styles of play is absurdist.

So can we get off this moralist crusading argument? It's composed of about 99% BS, you don't fall in a hole and get injured if you write toughness on your character sheet, you're just marginally less effective in a game, if that is in some way emotionally traumatizing to you, you should seek psychiatric help, because that's barely noticeable on the blips of things that are going to happen to you.

The system should help you do what the system considers important. If combat is important, everyone should be competent in combat as a baseline. If basketweaving is important, set that as a baseline. Being able to "customize" (ie decide not to take) core competencies for the system just leads to people failing and blaming the system, very rightly. It's a form of false choice, of either incompetence or malice on the part of the designers. If the system (as it claims) is about adventurers doing adventuring things, then making the default be "incapable and unable to contribute" (which it did) is just plain bad design.

Hardly, obstacle courses are not badly designed if they are difficult, video games are not badly designed if they are difficult. Now there should be games that are not and preferring that is not a problem, but it's not some kind of egregious design failure to have games that are difficult and it isn't a moral failing to occasionally want to do that.

To put this in video game terms, there are times when I want to play Battletoads and there are times when I want to play more relaxing games like Sonic the Hedgehog. I like that both options exist, and trying to think up a difficult game concept isn't bad design at all.

And @AMFV, D&D is not a competitive game. At all. That kind of thinking is toxic to the trust necessary between players and between players and the DM. If you're thinking in terms of winning and losing you've already lost and I don't want you anywhere near a table I'm in. Games can handle large power disparities. What a cooperative game cannot handle is people who try to turn it into a competitive one. It's a violation of the essential social contract.

If I were playing at your table I wouldn't try to "turn the game into a competitive one" because the game you're playing isn't a competitive one. If I go to a table with people who I know love that competitive aspect I wouldn't be turning the game into a competitive game, I'd be participating in their version of the game. Both versions can exist without any problems. There is a different social contract at work in both.

In fact if you were to go to a competitive table and just create an unoptimized character and complain the whole time, it would be you who was violating the social contract.

By working with players, not catering to the "git gud noob" elitists who want to laugh at those poor fools who don't know that Fighter is a trap.

I'm not a "git gud nub" elitist. I'm somebody who realizes that we can have Dark Souls as well as other less challenging games. And that we are richer for having both options. It is possible that 5e is more popular, I'll concede that is possible, even though it's my least favorite edition (not because it's badly designed but I just feel that if I want the kind of game it presents I'll just play AD&D or an OSR game, which mostly cover the same ground for me.)

Character creation is not a competitive event.

Depends entirely on your table. Also there are literally on this very forum character creation competitions like Iron Chef (and the three hundred offspring of that), ToS, and a few others. It can clearly be a competition.

If the character creation system can be "won" or "lost", then it's already broken. There's no game there, just the failure of the character creation rules to actually do their job.

A character creation system can have more than one job. I agree that it is possible to design a character creation system where balance and ease of use is the primary goal. And that's fine. I play games like that as well. But it is also possible to create a system where tests of skill and rules knowledge are a part of it, and that's als

Any character creation system for an RPG that has "win" and "loss" states, or can otherwise be mistakenly perceived as a "minigame", is already broken, and potentially toxic to the actual gameplay that would follow.

Not really, it's just better for a different sort of game.

Because a lot of players aren't mistaking character creation for a "minigame", and worked around the faults in the system...

...and because a lot of other players mistook the cumulative faults in the character creation for a "minigame" and can't let go of the idea of building the most OP character as some sort of nerd-macho exercise in one-upping other players.

Did like a D&D nerd punch you and take your lunch? Cause you are really taking this personally. I don't "one-up" other players, except for in games where that's part of the fun, like talking smack on each other and stuff is part of the game. But I also recognize that there are other games where that isn't appropriate.

A game, in presenting a "piece", is making an implicit promise that said piece is useful within the game.

Yes, Scouts in Stratego are promised to be as useful as Marshals or Spies, Pawns are promised to be as useful as Queens, Rooks, or Bishops and the 2 of Clubs is promised to be as valuable in spades as the Ace of Spades. Your claim is patently false. There are dozens of games where this is not the case, in fact in most competitive strategic games it is not.

Agreed, it should take real effort to "fail" at character creation, not to "succeed". If an RPG can be lost before the campaign even starts, that's a bug. Not a feature, a bug.

Only a bug if it's not the intended outcome. And you repeatedly putting your fingers in your ears and screaming "IT'S NOT A GAME! IT'S NOT A GAME!" doesn't make it any less of a game.

And the "But my character creation minigame!" crowd comes across as exactly that -- "hur hur, git gud noob" types who are looking for a reason to point and laugh when someone tries to play a Fighter, using the toxic idea of a "minigame" during character creation to fig-leaf what's actually just abusing faults in the system to get an advantage over other players.

I'm not looking to lord it over other players or gain an advantage. In fact I've explicitly stated that sometimes I do things that are disadvantageous deliberately to challenge myself or get to experience more of the character creation minigame. And if I was playing that kind of game with a new player I'm not going to insult them, I'm going to help them build the best character they can so that they can enjoy the minigame as much as I do. Now if they don't enjoy it, maybe they should play a different game, but if they do then we can both enjoy the game together.

Now if the player won't take advice from people and insists on playing a straight fighter, then either they should find a game that facilitates that, or they should be okay with being less optimal (some people are cool with that). There are certainly tables where people play game systems that don't involve character creation minigames, and I've played (and would enjoy still playing) at those tables. But I can also enjoy the other style of play. Why can't you accept that there are styles of play that you don't enjoy that others may?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Obstacle courses. Those have holes you can fall in, intentionally put there. I'd love to see you sue them. Also THEY DID NOT PROMISE THAT. They didn't explicitly say otherwise, which I'd have liked, but the idea that having two things in a game present means that they are of equal utility to all styles of play is absurdist.

So can we get off this moralist crusading argument? It's composed of about 99% BS, you don't fall in a hole and get injured if you write toughness on your character sheet, you're just marginally less effective in a game, if that is in some way emotionally traumatizing to you, you should seek psychiatric help, because that's barely noticeable on the blips of things that are going to happen to you.

They present all characters of level X as being equally valid and present that as the default assumption. So yes, they'd have to explicitly say that they intended it to be imbalanced. Otherwise they're either incompetent or malicious. Obstacle courses are explicitly marked as such. The entrance to a business is not. And character creation (as presented) is merely the prelude to the game, it's not the game itself. So it's much more like the entrance to a business, not an obstacle course.

Hardly, obstacle courses are not badly designed if they are difficult, video games are not badly designed if they are difficult. Now there should be games that are not and preferring that is not a problem, but it's not some kind of egregious design failure to have games that are difficult and it isn't a moral failing to occasionally want to do that.

To put this in video game terms, there are times when I want to play Battletoads and there are times when I want to play more relaxing games like Sonic the Hedgehog. I like that both options exist, and trying to think up a difficult game concept isn't bad design at all.

You seem to not understand that TTRPGs are a completely different thing than video games or other sports. It's not about difficulty, it's about creating traps for people who want to start. To use another analogy, it's handing people who come to your archery range sabotaged bows (because that way they'll learn to look for that!). You've made choices that make actually playing the game itself harder. That's fake difficulty, and that's bad design. Real difficulty is fine, fake difficulty is fake and bad. If Dark Souls had an option to make a left-handed character and presented it as a cosmetic option, but hidden in the code was the fact that a left-handed character got +X bonuses (or -X maluses) to everything, that would be bad design as well.

If you want to have a difficult game that has such minigames in it, say so upfront. That fixes everything. But 3e did not do so and that's the problem. If they'd have said in the PHB "yeah, some of these options are traps and you'll have to pay attention" or "if you choose the right class options at the beginning you win the game before it begins", it would still be a totally screwy design but it would at least be consistent. The only options for the 3e developers are incompetence and/or malice. I'm going for incompetence. They didn't understand what they built well enough to determine that it had substantial flaws until much later, and then they doubled-down on that and fed the fire.

[Willie the Duck]

And I would say that for what 3e intended to do, as measured by what they said in the books, 3e's design was an utter failure. This is also evidenced by what actually came out of it (ie not what they claimed). 3e made the promise that any of these classes would work. They didn't. They made the promise that Toughness was a valid choice for a bonus feat and roughly on par with a decent spell. It isn't. Etc. They (intentionally or not) left giant holes in their design that people could fall in and get hurt (metaphorically speaking). If a business did that physically, that'd be a tort lawsuit waiting to happen. Here, it's a design failure.

Oh, I agree that 3e made a hash job of the endeavor. 3e seemed to be very primordial in exactly what goals it was attempting to serve. I'm not convinced that system master was ever a real intended goal so much as giving as much breadth of options as possible. Nor really that the intended goal is really all that important. And I recognize that I have been traipsing back and forth between 3e, point buy games like GURPS/HERO, and broadly theoretical system mastery and/or open-option games and it might be hard to follow. Hopefully this weekend when my time is completely my own I can write a tighter analysis.

Character creation is not a competitive event.

If the character creation system can be "won" or "lost", then it's already broken. There's no game there, just the failure of the character creation rules to actually do their job.

Any character creation system for an RPG that has "win" and "loss" states, or can otherwise be mistakenly perceived as a "minigame", is already broken, and potentially toxic to the actual gameplay that would follow.

I want to point out that it has been consistently you, not AMFV, that has been framing the 'character creation minigame' as a competitive event with winners and losers where players are in competition with other players. AMFV has been consistent in explaining that he considers this minigame one where one competes with oneself and/or a theoretical goal of perfection.

[AMFV]

They present all characters of level X as being equally valid and present that as the default assumption. So yes, they'd have to explicitly say that they intended it to be imbalanced. Otherwise they're either incompetent or malicious. Obstacle courses are explicitly marked as such. The entrance to a business is not. And character creation (as presented) is merely the prelude to the game, it's not the game itself. So it's much more like the entrance to a business, not an obstacle course.

Did they? They didn't say that, it's not written in the text. You have made that assumption but again we have the designer of the game saying that was NOT their assumption, so you are reading something into the text that isn't there. Also I might go to a business where to get in you have to go through an obstacle course. I would certainly go to a business where you had to hike up a mountain to get to it. That's a pretty cool gimmick.

You seem to not understand that TTRPGs are a completely different thing than video games or other sports. It's not about difficulty, it's about creating traps for people who want to start. To use another analogy, it's handing people who come to your archery range sabotaged bows (because that way they'll learn to look for that!). You've made choices that make actually playing the game itself harder. That's fake difficulty, and that's bad design. Real difficulty is fine, fake difficulty is fake and bad. If Dark Souls had an option to make a left-handed character and presented it as a cosmetic option, but hidden in the code was the fact that a left-handed character got +X bonuses (or -X maluses) to everything, that would be bad design as well.

I agree that hiding difficulty curves and the minigame is probably not the right option. I've said that multiple times. I've not been praising 3e, except to say that I enjoyed the minigame and I've explicitly said that I would have preferred if they said that up front. And what I was discussing was a possible game where that was stated up front, just adding the minigame that exists in 3e (intentionally or unintentionally) to classes that did not have it in 3e.

If you want to have a difficult game that has such minigames in it, say so upfront. That fixes everything. But 3e did not do so and that's the problem. If they'd have said in the PHB "yeah, some of these options are traps and you'll have to pay attention" or "if you choose the right class options at the beginning you win the game before it begins", it would still be a totally screwy design but it would at least be consistent. The only options for the 3e developers are incompetence and/or malice. I'm going for incompetence. They didn't understand what they built well enough to determine that it had substantial flaws until much later, and then they doubled-down on that and fed the fire.

That wasn't much later though. Monte's statement was early in the game's legacy, later on he changed his mind and decided that had been the wrong approach. I think that they should definitely have included something like "Creating powerful characters is difficult and requires a good understanding of the game, read the rules and you shall be rewarded." That sort of thing as a preface to the character creation bit.

[FaerieGodfather]

The difference between an "obstacle course" and D&D chargen is that an obstacle course is a competitive event where the other players are the enemy and victory is defined by using your superior knowledge to defeat them.

D&D, for the most part, is a cooperative event with no defined victory condition and in which the purpose of your performance is to enhance the other players' performance or at least their enjoyment of the game.

It's all well and good to have an enjoyable character creation minigame, but when that minigame takes place at the expense of the actual game being played at the table, your design philosophy and execution are fatally flawed. 3.X is very much that game, and saying that it's better that way marks a person as someone who fundamentally fails to grasp the nature of D&D as a group activity and doesn't have any business playing D&D with other people.

The "git gud scrub" mentality has its place in less cooperative games, but in D&D it just makes you a toxic impediment to others' enjoyment.

[Quertus]

And as far as personalities go (@Quertus), 5e's Background system provides enough information that if you take any of the provided options a party can work. They give motivations to be adventuring, they give hooks for DMs to play on, they give places for other characters to work in. Most importantly, they all work toward the system's goals--making adventurers who go out and do adventuring things. Nothing can stop someone from making an ill-fitting character, but you can set good defaults.

I would love an example of a 5e "always works" character personality, to compare to some of my old modules / parties.

Agreed, it should take real effort to "fail" at character creation, not to "succeed". If an RPG can be lost before the campaign even starts, that's a bug. Not a feature, a bug.

Then every RPG I've ever played is riddled with bugs, because my "need to take a 20 at character creation" is independent of the RPG played.

Know any RPGs that don't have that bug?

[Max_Killjoy]

Did they? They didn't say that, it's not written in the text. You have made that assumption...

"Sorry you assumed that the burgers in my restaurant were made with food-grade beef. What, you think you see a sign anywhere in here promising that it's fit for human consumption?"

[Willie the Duck]

The "git gud scrub" mentality has its place in less cooperative games, but in D&D it just makes you a toxic impediment to others' enjoyment.

By working with players, not catering to the "git gud noob" elitists who want to laugh at those poor fools who don't know that Fighter is a trap.

some sort of nerd-macho exercise in one-upping other players.

And the "But my character creation minigame!" crowd comes across as exactly that -- "hur hur, git gud noob" types who are looking for a reason to point and laugh when someone tries to play a Fighter, using the toxic idea of a "minigame" during character creation to fig-leaf what's actually just abusing faults in the system to get an advantage over other players.

I feel like we've invented here a Bro-Chad gamer who may or may not have ever existed*. Can anyone point to a specific time when someone pointed and laughed (really or metaphorically) at them for not creating a good enough character, and can they tie it to a cultural trend surrounding 3e? Even if this was ever the case, were they ever really in a position of power?
*In any real numbers. Yes, we have all met 'that guy' in gaming circles, with slight variations on what made their own specific 'that guy'
their own specific flavor of toxic.

I ask because, despite agreeing with team 'yeah 3e had some serious problems' crowd, it's really hard to treat said crowd as the beleaguered minority or victim status group. People still playing 3e is a dwindling niche group whose numbers have been in freefall since 5e came out (and since Pathfinder 2e playtest seems to have done-not-well). Outside of here and Piazo forums, they aren't exactly the big dogs on campus anywhere. 5e is god-king of gaming and rejection of all system master games (looking at how many of them from the 90s are on life support these days) seems to be at a near all-time peak.

This is really coming off as very high-school-ish. With one set of nerds feeling bullied, lashing out at other nerds, and not realizing that that makes them bullies. Seriously, once you have to start denigrating your opposition with 'they say 'hur hur' and can't spell'-isms, and keep denigrating them as elitist and toxic, exactly how are you the good guys in any sense of the word? I'm not even sure that there are any pure 3e aficionados present, given AMFV's nuance on the matter, but I think an outsider's reading of this thread would be, 'oh yeah, a bunch of 5e fans got together and verbally denigrated a strawman 3e fan for their sadistic amusement, all-the-while claiming both moral superiority and yet somehow victimhood status.'

[Max_Killjoy]

I want to point out that it has been consistently you, not AMFV, that has been framing the 'character creation minigame' as a competitive event with winners and losers where players are in competition with other players. AMFV has been consistent in explaining that he considers this minigame one where one competes with oneself and/or a theoretical goal of perfection.

By promoting character creation as a supposed "minigame" that players need to "develop skill in", he's unavoidably implying a gap between players in that skill, and unavoidably implying a win-loss scale that puts one player ahead of another.

Furthermore, the results of character creation have ongoing effects on the subsequent actual gameplay, that unavoidably advantage the enjoyment of those players who quote-unquote "win" character creation over that of those who quote-unquote "lose" character creation when a system is full of "challenges and complexity" (that is, traps and bad options).

It's not like character creation is just this thing done in isolation. Even if some (including me) enjoy creating characters for its own sake, the default assumption has to be that the characters will be played, and treating character creation as if it were a "minigame" that's there to "challenge" players means that players then have to deal with the consequences of the outcome of that supposed "minigame".

[Kyutaru]

"Sorry you assumed that the burgers in my restaurant were made with food-grade beef. What, you think you see a sign anywhere in here promising that it's fit for human consumption?"

When it's regulated and against the law to do otherwise, yes. And yet even this area is plagued with shortcuts and redefined terms such that McDonalds gets away with murder.