Min/Max Boards
Creative Corner => Game Design => Topic started by: Nytemare3701 on October 28, 2013, 10:39:52 PM
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I have been thinking more lately on the state of my hardcover books, errata, and the meaning of "official" due to the recent conversation in fun finds 5. The line is drawn at every gaming table to allow or prohibit different tiers of books, from the Core Only DMs to the Everything Goes MinMaxapalooza, and I came to a few observations of my own.
• Drawing the line is entirely ok. Things aren't balanced as well as they could be. Broken shit happens. I don't trust WoTC with their own product.
• Errata is given a bad reputation because it is a change to the book they sold us, the book that we as consumers to be a complete and competently made product. The problem is that the team making the game is much smaller than the group breaking it. Errata WILL happen. The real problem here is that the delivery method is flawed to the point of feeling illegitimate. When they put out a PDF of errata, I either need to keep them with my hardcover, memorize them, or physically alter my hardcover book to include them. None of these are any better than if I had just houseruled them in the first place.
These led me to the same conclusion. The decision to allow or disallow books is one for each group to make, but the balance of a book shouldn't be the issue. Errata should be freely available, implemented painlessly, and supported with real data. This is why my tabletop games will no longer be hardcovers, and I will not be supporting games that do not implement their books with E-Book friendly formatting and E-Book based Errata. I know people love the feel of a hardcover at the table, but it's holding the genre back by being a static ruleset that can't be fixed when broken. If Hardcovers had removable pages (like a binder) then it would be fine, since errata'd pages could be traded out at will (barring formatting and pagesize issues). This is what E-Books excel at though.
I understand the fears of the companies that don't want digital formats and want to sell a physical product. I understand the desires for the physical book. I understand the tradition. What I don't understand is it being treated as the proverbial golden calf. It's broken. We have the technology to fix it. Digital sales are not going to destroy your industry, and you have the capacity to sell a superior product because of them.
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There are other problems with living rulebooks though. Changes need to be propagated, remembered and implemented. Depth of rules means that for the most part, the game runs with the general rules knowledge internalized, and it gets increasingly hard to keep the same mental versioning across your group as you stack errata. Many errata affect only small parts of the game individually, which makes them hard to bring to mind.
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There are other problems with living rulebooks though. Changes need to be propagated, remembered and implemented. Depth of rules means that for the most part, the game runs with the general rules knowledge internalized, and it gets increasingly hard to keep the same mental versioning across your group as you stack errata. Many errata affect only small parts of the game individually, which makes them hard to bring to mind.
That's going to be a problem with ANY system that undergoes balance changes. As long as something changes, you WILL have to acknowledge that change to the rules and internalize it eventually, or be playing a fundamentally different game from those who do. Digital distribution makes these changes relatively painless in comparison to the same changes on a hardcover, and with the right delivery methods they can actually have a value added effect on the product. Imagine a patch program that can be run on your E-Books, changing the needed areas without downloading the file all over again. It's not a stretch, since that's pretty much how video games patch. If you own a legitimate copy of the book, you get your patches. If you don't, then you have to go manually download them from whatever illegitimate source you would normally get your PDFs of the books.
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I mean the problem is with calling attention to changes. D&D is primarily operated by humans interpreting the rules after all, and taking Pathfinder for an example, even after GMing it for a year, I'm still making rule system mistakes where there is some unannounced change between it and 3.5, nevermind the internal changes.
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I mean the problem is with calling attention to changes. D&D is primarily operated by humans interpreting the rules after all, and taking Pathfinder for an example, even after GMing it for a year, I'm still making rule system mistakes where there is some unannounced change between it and 3.5, nevermind the internal changes.
@Interpretation: It wouldn't be so if the rules were better defined. If the definitions are lacking, then smoothly implemented errata fixes that. In fact, the things we normally love to see (explicit intent from the designers) are easily added to digital formats in the form of spoiler blocks.
@Memorizing rules: Patch notes are your friend. If it is a game you regularly play, read the patch notes. The human brain is MUCH better at absorbing minor changes than it is at trying to memorize a 3 page errata document.
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You make some good points here, but I wonder if it would be okay if softcover rulebooks that included major updates were released periodically (let's say annually) while splatbooks with pretty, pretty pictures were still released in hardcover?
For massive damage?
--Dither
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You make some good points here, but I wonder if it would be okay if softcover rulebooks that included major updates were released periodically (let's say annually) while splatbooks with pretty, pretty pictures were still released in hardcover?
For massive damage?
--Dither
Hardcover books without usable information are basically just picture galleries. In fact, they are worse because you CAN'T use them for reference anymore, as the provide incorrect information, which is worse than no information at all. As for softcover releases...Are you willing to pay whatever costs they want to charge you for a shitty softcover of a book you already own, which you only bought in the first place because you wanted a hardcover for the feels? They sure won't be releasing them for free, and annual updates don't lend themselves to bite-size easily absorbed patch notes. Instead you get effective overhauls that the community already addressed long ago, meaning relearning the rules every year.
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See, you say that... "for the feels," but I'm pretty sure people can still look stuff up faster from a single, physical reference book than they can on their smart phones and their hyper-linked PDFs.
I'm not saying ebooks *aren't* the way of the future, but my Player's Handbook sees use every week at the game table because I can flip to the page I need faster than my players can scroll through the website.
WotC put out some nice softcover books for the Essentials line, which are really transport-friendly.
Also, who's saying "incorrect" or "unusable" information? It sounds like you're just assuming the product quality of print products is inferior. Is a hard copy worthless because there's a typo in a table on Page X, or because errata released two years *after* that contradicts the original wording of a prestige class feature?
Again, as I said -- you make a lot of really good points. I think you may be overselling your point a bit.
--Dither
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See, you say that... "for the feels," but I'm pretty sure people can still look stuff up faster from a single, physical reference book than they can on their smart phones and their hyper-linked PDFs.
See, that's the problem. Right now the digital copies we have are poorly formatted versions of physical ones. They were still physical first, and don't take advantage of the digital format. The fact that they were physical books FIRST, then digitized as an afterthought or for more distribution is what's keeping them from being formatted optimally. Sidebars and pretty pictures make E-Readers cry since they just can't format them right.
Also, I use my PDFs MUCH faster than physical books, provided they are FORMATTED RIGHT. Even the ones that have searchable text are many times faster than my physical book, since I can CTRL+F, type Wealth By Level, then hit enter a hell of a lot faster than most people can look it up in the index, then flip to that page.
Also, who's saying "incorrect" or "unusable" information? It sounds like you're just assuming the product quality of print products is inferior. Is a hard copy worthless because there's a typo in a table on Page X,
Of course it's inferior. Unless it was printed PERFECT the first time, then every errata after that point is by definition a correction of those errors. It's not about a typo here or there. It's about the MASSIVE balance issues that inevitably pop up in almost every multiplayer game in existence.
...or because errata released two years *after* that contradicts the original wording of a prestige class feature?
Unless the errata is worse for some reason (and I don't mean worse for your character, I mean worse for the game), then that contradiction should happen. The errata are corrections to problems, not new content. D&D (and most tabletop RPGs for that matter) live in this weird-ass bubble that other games don't seem to even consider, one where fucked up rules are just part of the game. This is why things like The Oberoni Fallacy (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Oberoni_Fallacy) have appeared.
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See, you say that... "for the feels," but I'm pretty sure people can still look stuff up faster from a single, physical reference book than they can on their smart phones and their hyper-linked PDFs.
See, that's the problem. Right now the digital copies we have are poorly formatted versions of physical ones. They were still physical first, and don't take advantage of the digital format. The fact that they were physical books FIRST, then digitized as an afterthought or for more distribution is what's keeping them from being formatted optimally. Sidebars and pretty pictures make E-Readers cry since they just can't format them right.
Also, I use my PDFs MUCH faster than physical books, provided they are FORMATTED RIGHT. Even the ones that have searchable text are many times faster than my physical book, since I can CTRL+F, type Wealth By Level, then hit enter a hell of a lot faster than most people can look it up in the index, then flip to that page.
Problem: that is a flaw with e-readers. Books should not be intentionally designed to look like the most ugly block of text ever for the sake of an easily-designable PDF. :/
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See, you say that... "for the feels," but I'm pretty sure people can still look stuff up faster from a single, physical reference book than they can on their smart phones and their hyper-linked PDFs.
See, that's the problem. Right now the digital copies we have are poorly formatted versions of physical ones. They were still physical first, and don't take advantage of the digital format. The fact that they were physical books FIRST, then digitized as an afterthought or for more distribution is what's keeping them from being formatted optimally. Sidebars and pretty pictures make E-Readers cry since they just can't format them right.
Also, I use my PDFs MUCH faster than physical books, provided they are FORMATTED RIGHT. Even the ones that have searchable text are many times faster than my physical book, since I can CTRL+F, type Wealth By Level, then hit enter a hell of a lot faster than most people can look it up in the index, then flip to that page.
Problem: that is a flaw with e-readers. Books should not be intentionally designed to look like the most ugly block of text ever for the sake of an easily-designable PDF. :/
This is what dynamic formatting excels at. If you don't have uninterruptible blocks of text (I'M LOOKING AT YOU TABLES IN IMAGE FORMAT) then you can optimize it for any given digital device.
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You directly said 'don't include pictures'. I take issue with that. :|
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You directly said 'don't include pictures'. I take issue with that. :|
The SRD includes no pictures, but has links to access the images for all the creatures on every creature block.
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That's not a particularly attractive way of doing things, which defeats the point of pictures. Aesthetics should not be utterly sacrificed for the sake of easy editing. If your rulebook looks like a particularly bland textbook, it's unappealing.
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That's not a particularly attractive way of doing things, which defeats the point of pictures. Aesthetics should not be utterly sacrificed for the sake of easy editing. If your rulebook looks like a particularly bland textbook, it's unappealing.
I consider it unappealing that the aesthetic choices used for hardcovers make them unwieldy and awkward on most digital formats. My example of the SRD stands, since you could easily do a full page picture entry in a PDF or other digital format, followed by dynamically formatted text. The only reason they don't do this in paper formats is printing and space concerns. This isn't an issue in a digital format. Which would you prefer, a Full page pinup style picture of your balor, or the one put on the side of the page with the text wrapping around it?
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Full page because better picture quality is likely (literal image quality, not better drawing).
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Full page because better picture quality is likely (literal image quality, not better drawing).
Exactly. That's what a digital format offers, as a hardcover is currently offering the text-wrapped version.
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This isn't relevant to digital format. I'm saying keep the nice formatting, sacrifice some ease of use and usability. Just because it's digital doesn't mean you can make it ugly.
I don't care about digital or not, I only care about the visual outcome (also avoiding page bloat).
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The easiest solution is to just not worry about errata. If there is a problem that bad, it probably is either being kept in check or been houseruled to work in a less broken or more functional way. If it is really that big of a problem. The eventual coming of an errata then for whatever that problem thus was becomes moot as you really can just categorize the errata as the same kind of houseruling problem solving you might've already done when the problem first came up.
Personally, hardbacks just come off as functional enough to not need to bother with an e-book unless the book isn't physically available, and even so, a perfectly formatted e-book is merely shaving off no more than a matter of seconds on the look-up time compared to with a hardback making such a hypothetical change/update hardly worth the effort. And then e-books aren't really the most profitable venture especially when you take into account the vast majority of any D&D or similar systems is already up on places like the SRD or dndtools or ect. It is all literally a google search away no matter what some one is looking for.
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The easiest solution is to just not worry about errata. If there is a problem that bad, it probably is either being kept in check or been houseruled to work in a less broken or more functional way. If it is really that big of a problem. The eventual coming of an errata then for whatever that problem thus was becomes moot as you really can just categorize the errata as the same kind of houseruling problem solving you might've already done when the problem first came up.
Oberoni fallacy. (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Oberoni_Fallacy)
Personally, hardbacks just come off as functional enough to not need to bother with an e-book unless the book isn't physically available, and even so, a perfectly formatted e-book is merely shaving off no more than a matter of seconds on the look-up time compared to with a hardback making such a hypothetical change/update hardly worth the effort. And then e-books aren't really the most profitable venture especially when you take into account the vast majority of any D&D or similar systems is already up on places like the SRD or dndtools or ect. It is all literally a google search away no matter what some one is looking for.
Hardbacks are functional enough to do a specific job. Show a static ruleset with no changes, in an aesthetically pleasing collectible format. It's not a matter of seconds, it's a matter of having every book in your collection in a searchable format, with up to date errata on hand, so everyone is working with the exact same information, at the highest level of balance available thus far.
This isn't relevant to digital format. I'm saying keep the nice formatting, sacrifice some ease of use and usability. Just because it's digital doesn't mean you can make it ugly.
It's VERY relevant. If you digitize, formatting is MUCH easier. If you use hardcover, you cannot digitize without making constant compromises to both the aesthetic and the information. Page limits (due to printing cost), text formatting (due to shoving in the pictures in between the rules text), the text formatting (locked in place with image tables that prevent any form of dynamic formatting from functioning).
I don't care about digital or not, I only care about the visual outcome (also avoiding page bloat).
We established that you can have neat and orderly rules information on a page following a full art version of the illustrations. Page bloat simply doesn't exist in a digital format, since if you are printing said pages, you generally aren't printing them for the pictures, so you actually end up with LESS pages overall due to better formatting. If you ARE printing for the pictures, then you have your pictures on their own page, where you aren't ALSO printing text.
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-Cut for getting ridiculously long.-
I'd like to redirect you to what even got me to post in the first place (also, page bloat is an issue if you write things with only digital constraints in mind, pictures or no >_>)
See, you say that... "for the feels," but I'm pretty sure people can still look stuff up faster from a single, physical reference book than they can on their smart phones and their hyper-linked PDFs.
See, that's the problem. Right now the digital copies we have are poorly formatted versions of physical ones. They were still physical first, and don't take advantage of the digital format. The fact that they were physical books FIRST, then digitized as an afterthought or for more distribution is what's keeping them from being formatted optimally. Sidebars and pretty pictures make E-Readers cry since they just can't format them right.
Also, I use my PDFs MUCH faster than physical books, provided they are FORMATTED RIGHT. Even the ones that have searchable text are many times faster than my physical book, since I can CTRL+F, type Wealth By Level, then hit enter a hell of a lot faster than most people can look it up in the index, then flip to that page.
What you basically say right here is to not include formatting that includes... oh, pictures.
Hell, by this point you don't seem to be arguing for an e-book at all. You're arguing for a wiki. Because you seem to be saying 'don't include pictures with the text, everything should be neatly separated, have more and more and more pages'.
Also for some bizarre reason, you're attached to PDFs. Really.
You know, I think I'd much rather have a static, non-errata'd hardback where the book looks good than have an e-book I must keep updating, that's basically walls of text broken up occasionally by a page that's a single picture. Because you seem to be arguing for something that's ugly and has a bit of convenience (errata is inserted into it rather than separate) instead. Since Ctrl+F is only much good if you know exactly what you're looking for, spell it right, and the first result or first few results happen to match what you're looking for. Otherwise you have no speed improvement over just looking in the index.
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There's no reason there couldn't be a stripped down, bare bones reference version alongside the "pretty" one. The current SRD fills this role, and there are game guides that you can buy. I can readily see the utility of this sort of thing. In the digital world, there's no space consideration.
I've been looking at playing White Wolf again -- a hilariously poor designed product line, seriously, it's almost willful in its badness -- and I think that's driven a bit of a kneejerk reaction against "prettiness." I'd like my books to be readable, thank you, and also easy to reference. Really, the high water marks for pretty gaming books are Mouseguard and DC Adventures. Anything busier than that needs to go back to the editor.
For character creation I find digital documents much more convenient. There's a lot of flipping back and forth and going through a dozen books at a time. At least that's the case in D&D, but it's true in many systems as well. It's easier to have 8 books open on my computer or tablet than it is to have to buy a bigger desk.
Sorry for the tangent, but really is the only motivation for the OP errata? B/c really there should never be that great a need for errata. I don't find myself referencing errata all that often, but maybe there's a lot more of it out there than I think there is.
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For character creation I find digital documents much more convenient. There's a lot of flipping back and forth and going through a dozen books at a time. At least that's the case in D&D, but it's true in many systems as well. It's easier to have 8 books open on my computer or tablet than it is to have to buy a bigger desk.
Eww, tablets. Too small. :(
I find having lots of books open easier than lots of documents. I keep track of them better... XD
Sorry for the tangent, but really is the only motivation for the OP errata? B/c really there should never be that great a need for errata. I don't find myself referencing errata all that often, but maybe there's a lot more of it out there than I think there is.
Well, that seems to be the entire cause of the OP. The ability to search it seems more of a tangent, and implies that you're really bad at using the index for it to grant such a huge improvement. :/
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What you basically say right here is to not include formatting that includes... oh, pictures.
Having pictures isn't the problem. Having uneditable, unsearchable image-style tables and sidebars all over your pages and pictures preventing dynamic formatting is the problem. This is why I advocated pictures on seperate pages.
Hell, by this point you don't seem to be arguing for an e-book at all. You're arguing for a wiki. Because you seem to be saying 'don't include pictures with the text, everything should be neatly separated, have more and more and more pages'.
I'm arguing for my book about rules for playing a game to prioritize said rules, actually HAVING the content they intended, up to date and accurate, instead of being static and cut down due to printing restrictions.
Also for some bizarre reason, you're attached to PDFs. Really.
Using it as shorthand for digitally distributed e-book format. I would prefer a better format.
You know, I think I'd much rather have a static, non-errata'd hardback where the book looks good than have an e-book I must keep updating, that's basically walls of text broken up occasionally by a page that's a single picture. Because you seem to be arguing for something that's ugly and has a bit of convenience (errata is inserted into it rather than separate) instead. Since Ctrl+F is only much good if you know exactly what you're looking for, spell it right, and the first result or first few results happen to match what you're looking for. Otherwise you have no speed improvement over just looking in the index.
You make it sound like text is an eyesore on its own. There is an entire system devoted to making text clear and readable. It's called formatting.
I've never said it has to be ugly. I said I want it to do provide the FUNCTION a rulebook provides: giving me the rules to the game I'm trying to play. CTRL+F is good for searching for just about anything. Basic keyword searches take all of 5 seconds to do, and can be done equally fast on a book you are opening for the first time as a book you know by heart. If SPELLING is seriously an issue with searches, then learn to SPELL. That's not the designer's problem, that's a problem with the consumer failing to meet the bare minimum criteria to find information in the digital age. As for the speed of a search vs index, I still stand by my statement that I can much more efficiently use a computer to find any given section of the rules, ESPECIALLY across dozens of books, than I can with physical books.
There's no reason there couldn't be a stripped down, bare bones reference version alongside the "pretty" one. The current SRD fills this role, and there are game guides that you can buy. I can readily see the utility of this sort of thing. In the digital world, there's no space consideration.
The problem here is that the very existence of static formats causes a divide between those who have up to date rules and those who don't. See every MMO patch ever, also see below.
Sorry for the tangent, but really is the only motivation for the OP errata? B/c really there should never be that great a need for errata. I don't find myself referencing errata all that often, but maybe there's a lot more of it out there than I think there is.
You are unwittingly hitting the nail on the head here. There isn't errata that often in tabletop gaming, because errata is a dirty word for tabletop designers. It's blatantly admitting they published a physical product that they fucked up on, and have to give you a sheet of paper LISTING ALL THEIR FUCKUPS and expect you to follow them. That's not mature behavior. Video games have patches, not errata. Patches are continual improvement of the existing product, something that everyone MUST have or they can't play with the rest of the people playing, because they would be playing with an older, inherently less balanced ruleset.
Just imagine for a moment if a game company not only didn't use patches, but itemized and released a list of their failures in design.
• Marines do 20 more damage than intended, please go to your config.ini and change the "MarineGaussRifleDamage" field from 50 to 30.
• Tooltips are incorrect for more units than we care to count. Use your best judgement about what the unit really does.
90% of the players proceed to ignore said errata, since it's too much of a bother to implement, and they prefer having better marines anyway, balance be damned.
10% of the players take the time to implement the errata, but don't agree on what the tooltips mean. This leads to countless threads and flamewars about RAW vs RAI.
None of this would happen if rulebooks were living documents that were updated regularly and supported by the companies that make them. If I buy a book promising me rules to play a game, I want it to contain ACCURATE RULES TO PLAY THE GAME, not a bunch of poorly formatted & compromised rules they tried to shove into their pagecount during the editor's crunch.
Remember the 4E tool that was supposed to contain all the rulebooks as long as you payed their subscription service? Make a program that has purchasable E-Books that are continually updated through the service.
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Spelling can also include cultural differences, e.g. colour vs color and grey vs gray. 'Spelling something wrong' can also mean searching for something by name but not knowing how the NAME is spelled, because the name isn't part of the language itself. :/
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Spelling can also include cultural differences, e.g. colour vs color and grey vs gray. 'Spelling something wrong' can also mean searching for something by name but not knowing how the NAME is spelled, because the name isn't part of the language itself. :/
You will have many of those same problems in the index as well, and you will find out if cultural differences are present the first time you hit search for such a word.
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Spelling can also include cultural differences, e.g. colour vs color and grey vs gray. 'Spelling something wrong' can also mean searching for something by name but not knowing how the NAME is spelled, because the name isn't part of the language itself. :/
You will have many of those same problems in the index as well, and you will find out if cultural differences are present the first time you hit search for such a word.
Because clearly minor differences in spelling will radically alter the alphabetisation of an index. :eh
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Spelling can also include cultural differences, e.g. colour vs color and grey vs gray. 'Spelling something wrong' can also mean searching for something by name but not knowing how the NAME is spelled, because the name isn't part of the language itself. :/
You will have many of those same problems in the index as well, and you will find out if cultural differences are present the first time you hit search for such a word.
Because clearly minor differences in spelling will radically alter the alphabetisation of an index. :eh
It is if you are used to languages that uses things like K for C sounds. This is extremely tangential though, as you still can't check the index of dozens to hundreds of books at the same time, much less actually have the space for them at a given table.
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90% of the players proceed to ignore said errata, since it's too much of a bother to implement, and they prefer having better marines anyway, balance be damned.
You just answered your original question.
90% of tabletop players don't really want errata. Most of them actually revel on the inbalances and poor wordings. Whole campaigns if not whole settings and spin-offs have been done on the basis of absurd interpretations and extrapolations and other things the designers never intended or imagined.
Instant errata erases all of that.
It also happens that the company would need to have a bunch of extra costs with servers and coding teams to keep all the stuff cleaned up properly.
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90% of the players proceed to ignore said errata, since it's too much of a bother to implement, and they prefer having better marines anyway, balance be damned.
You just answered your original question.
90% of tabletop players don't really want errata. Most of them actually revel on the inbalances and poor wordings. Whole campaigns if not whole settings and spin-offs have been done on the basis of absurd interpretations and extrapolations and other things the designers never intended or imagined.
Instant errata erases all of that.
It also happens that the company would need to have a bunch of extra costs with servers and coding teams to keep all the stuff cleaned up properly.
Right, so this is the crux of the issue then. If you are making a game, which is more important? Having a solid product that people trust, or people having a good laugh at your shitty product? If people need your product to be bad for them to play, something is wrong.
As for costs, digital distribution is inherently cheaper than the equivalent hardcover distribution method. The profit margin from that alone would more than cover the cost to keep a download server running for patches to text files. This isn't exactly a supercomputer dishing out multi-GB game patches.
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90% of the players proceed to ignore said errata, since it's too much of a bother to implement, and they prefer having better marines anyway, balance be damned.
You just answered your original question.
90% of tabletop players don't really want errata. Most of them actually revel on the inbalances and poor wordings. Whole campaigns if not whole settings and spin-offs have been done on the basis of absurd interpretations and extrapolations and other things the designers never intended or imagined.
Instant errata erases all of that.
It also happens that the company would need to have a bunch of extra costs with servers and coding teams to keep all the stuff cleaned up properly.
Right, so this is the crux of the issue then. If you are making a game, which is more important? Having a solid product that people trust, or people having a good laugh at your shitty product? If people need your product to be bad for them to play, something is wrong.
As for costs, digital distribution is inherently cheaper than the equivalent hardcover distribution method. The profit margin from that alone would more than cover the cost to keep a download server running for patches to text files. This isn't exactly a supercomputer dishing out multi-GB game patches.
'Solid product that people trust' might be a bit overkill. 'That people enjoy' is a better goal. It does not need to be absolutely perfect for people to be able to enjoy it. It doesn't mean they're laughing at you if they take the balance issues to extremes for the fun of it.
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As long as it has enough crazyness and allows players to fulfill their power fantasies of crushing/dominating everything on their path, a lot of people out there will actually choose the inbalanced ruleset. Not just D&D, but plenty of other tabletop games and countless computer games.
Digital distribution is cheaper for the company yes. But for the player, computers/toys pads and e-readers are expensive and not that convenient to bring to the table, and electricity isn't free either. Thus the hardcover ends up being cheaper for the consumer in the long run.
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It does not need to be absolutely perfect for people to be able to enjoy it. It doesn't mean they're laughing at you if they take the balance issues to extremes for the fun of it.
There sure is a lot of evidence to the contrary on these forums, since balance is a huge concern that is constantly being fought over, and we make fun of WoTC relentlessly for their balance failures.
As long as it has enough crazyness and allows players to fulfill their power fantasies of crushing/dominating everything on their path, a lot of people out there will actually choose the inbalanced ruleset. Not just D&D, but plenty of other tabletop games and countless computer games.
Since when did "Our game sucks, but that's ok because people don't care if our game is balanced" hold up in any form of game design? When I buy a game, one of the few assumptions is that it's supposed to be balanced for all involved, or that being unbalanced isn't important to the gameplay. If a social contract (which is in itself a form of houserule, since they are different between groups, encompass different restrictions, etc) is required for your game to function, then your game is BROKEN. Once again, Oberoni comes into play.
Digital distribution is cheaper for the company yes. But for the player, computers/toys pads and e-readers are expensive and not that convenient to bring to the table, and electricity isn't free either. Thus the hardcover ends up being cheaper for the consumer in the long run.
The same argument can be made for every technological advance ever. I'm not saying every game ever has to switch to digital distribution. I'm saying that I'm not buying another game as a hardcover book, because it makes absolutely no sense for me to do so.
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It does not need to be absolutely perfect for people to be able to enjoy it. It doesn't mean they're laughing at you if they take the balance issues to extremes for the fun of it.
There sure is a lot of evidence to the contrary on these forums, since balance is a huge concern that is constantly being fought over, and we make fun of WoTC relentlessly for their balance failures.
This is the worst possibly sample. :|
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It does not need to be absolutely perfect for people to be able to enjoy it. It doesn't mean they're laughing at you if they take the balance issues to extremes for the fun of it.
There sure is a lot of evidence to the contrary on these forums, since balance is a huge concern that is constantly being fought over, and we make fun of WoTC relentlessly for their balance failures.
This is the worst possibly sample. :|
It's a sample of people who are proficient enough with the game to understand exactly how broken it is. That sample is rather hard to find elsewhere.
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It does not need to be absolutely perfect for people to be able to enjoy it. It doesn't mean they're laughing at you if they take the balance issues to extremes for the fun of it.
There sure is a lot of evidence to the contrary on these forums, since balance is a huge concern that is constantly being fought over, and we make fun of WoTC relentlessly for their balance failures.
This is the worst possibly sample. :|
It's a sample of people who are proficient enough with the game to understand exactly how broken it is. That sample is rather hard to find elsewhere.
I think that reinforces that errata like this is unnecessary, since the sample of people that can understand how broken the game is happens to be so damn tiny and will just break the errata anyway. >.>
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Also note that what is described here already exists as an adjunct to a game. The PFSRD (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/) is exactly as described.
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Also note that what is described here already exists as an adjunct to a game. The PFSRD (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/) is exactly as described.
And the PFSRD is amazing. Unfortunately, it's not exactly what is described here. It's not dynamically formatted, they still use tables that fuck up e-books, it's not in a format that can be easily transferred TO an e-book, and is also under restrictions about what can be posted on it due to PF licenses.
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It's a damn webpage. You are obsessing over e-books when there's an easy alternative to hand. It's not perfect but it's not really like anything ever is. :|
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It's a damn webpage. You are obsessing over e-books when there's an easy alternative to hand. It's not perfect but it's not really like anything ever is. :|
Nothing is ever perfect, but that doesn't ever mean we stop trying. This is just another kind of minmax :-P
The webpage thing leads right back into video games. Being required to connect to patch isn't a big deal. Being required to connect every time you want to play at all IS.
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Ctrl+S is your friend.
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There's two things here. One is having nice, easy to use electronic docs. I view this as to some extent inevitable, and in all ways a good thing. To the extent that RPGs have moved away from clunkiness and difficulty of play and towards making it easier to get to the good stuff at the gaming table, this is (tautologically) good.
The other thing, which Nytmare seems positively obsessed about is errata. First off, I don't understand why stealth errata is a good thing. Errata should be clearly called out. In fact, it has to be in a tabletop game since there's no computer that's making the adjustments (side note: every game I've ever played includes patch documentation, it's common practice, I don't even know what those comments were meant to indicate).
Secondly, errata is bad. It should be used exceedingly sparingly. Until game designers figure out how to swoop in and modify all of our games and our builds to take it into account, and scrub our brains of the old rules while they are at it, it should be avoided. I have played very little 4E, but I found their constant tweaks (seriously, their errata was like 100s of pages long, wasn't it?) enormously frustrating. There is a hue and cry when these things happen in many video games (viz. Diablo 3), and with good reason. It is a headache and unsettles the game, forcing potentially important games (e.g., a character build no longer works). And, that's regardless of the format of the rulebooks.
Finally, I don't see how "living rulebooks" would solve RAW v. RAI flamewars. If they have this magical pixiedust quality, then sure, sign me up. Given that these fractious debates arise about un-errata'ed material all the time, I fail to see how this has been elevated to the status of cure all.
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The other thing, which Nytmare seems positively obsessed about is errata. First off, I don't understand why stealth errata is a good thing. Errata should be clearly called out. In fact, it has to be in a tabletop game since there's no computer that's making the adjustments (side note: every game I've ever played includes patch documentation, it's common practice, I don't even know what those comments were meant to indicate).
I agree that Stealth errata is terrible. Patch notes should be clearly stated. My statement about itemizing your failures was in regards to companies NOT fixing them afterwards.
Secondly, errata is bad. It should be used exceedingly sparingly.
This is a very dubious statement, one which I take exception to. Errata is nothing more than officially published corrections to erroneous information. See Balance Patching VS Errata below.
Until game designers figure out how to swoop in and modify all of our games and our builds to take it into account, and scrub our brains of the old rules while they are at it, it should be avoided. I have played very little 4E, but I found their constant tweaks (seriously, their errata was like 100s of pages long, wasn't it?) enormously frustrating. There is a hue and cry when these things happen in many video games (viz. Diablo 3), and with good reason. It is a headache and unsettles the game, forcing potentially important games (e.g., a character build no longer works). And, that's regardless of the format of the rulebooks.
This isn't a problem with errata. This is a problem with balance patches. Yes, those things tend to overlap, and sometimes people use them interchangeably. It doesn't mean that all errata is automatically bad though. If a portion of your customers say "this isn't worded clearly, how does it work?" you figure it out and clarify it in the next round of errata. Doing so creates a unified ruleset for people to play with, with no inconsistencies from table to table. If you want to play it another way, that's what houserules are for.
Finally, I don't see how "living rulebooks" would solve RAW v. RAI flamewars. If they have this magical pixiedust quality, then sure, sign me up. Given that these fractious debates arise about un-errata'ed material all the time, I fail to see how this has been elevated to the status of cure all.
See above.
Coming back around to the original point: They are selling a set of game rules, which the consumer expects to work, and a player going from table to table generally expects to function similarly, being the same rules. If one table reads the rules entirely differently than another, you are no longer playing the same game. In that case, what has been sold isn't a book full of rules, it's a book full of fluff disguised as rules, and everyone is (as one of our more vocal once said) playing Magical Tea Party, because the rules aren't actually rules.
I share a Honda (D&D Edition) with a bunch of people. It starts (The rules function for the average uninformed player), but it doesn't run very smoothly unless I drive it just right. (There are inconsistencies in the rules and houserules are common), and if I push it over 60 the suspension gives out entirely (Optimization breaks the game in half). Therefore I not only refuse to perform maintenance on my car (By accepting official clarification on rules that are ambiguous), I will argue that the workarounds I use and special driving techniques I've developed to drive the car (houseruling any and all ambiguous rules and creating builds that rely on said ambiguities to function) should be the standard for all drivers of this Honda.
I think that reinforces that errata like this is unnecessary, since the sample of people that can understand how broken the game is happens to be so damn tiny and will just break the errata anyway. >.>
"Science isn't about being right, it's about becoming progressively less wrong."
Happy New Year!
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I think that reinforces that errata like this is unnecessary, since the sample of people that can understand how broken the game is happens to be so damn tiny and will just break the errata anyway. >.>
"Science isn't about being right, it's about becoming progressively less wrong."
But it's not less wrong, it's just wrong in a different way with different things. Because the people who're concerned with errata are the ones who're concerned with finding how to break the game, nothing really gets improved, just pointed at someone else.
It's like if I start with a fork and all the complaints are that it's too easy to stab things, so my fork becomes a spoon. And now it's too easy to eat soup.