They are never really balanced.
They typically ship broken.
They get stale.
Successful MMOs follow an evergreen model for character builds, and things constantly change to maintain interest, and the changes create interest in playing the game. The style of play typically remains the same, this is the tank, this is the healer, this is the damage person, but the "of the moment" style of play and the power rotations (tailored for specific encounter types) never really stays the same.
Now, in B/X games, you typically only have one "build" - which is the class, which is why these things get play tested and worked over, and B/X tends to stick with what worked before and the character class is a tried and true thing that remains similar no matter what game you play: Old School Essentials, Basic Fantasy, Labyrinth Lord, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and so on.
B/X builds are classes.
In the games derived from the D&D 3, 4, and 5 lineage, including Pathfinder, you start to notice some of the MMO character build tropes work their way into the game. You pick a class - but you are not done. You pick feats and special class features. You make choices every level to tweak your class. You get more feats. Your powers morph and change, and you are expected to know which choice is the best. Well, you could go to the Internet and copy someone else's build to min-max, and that is what happens in many cases too. The "best build" in many cases becomes a community choice, spread through online forums, and to be a good player you are expected to make the same choices and conform.
Why would you pick less-optimal choices?
Well, yes, roleplaying considerations, but don't you want to be a good player and the best at what you do? You see this in MMOs, you pick a class and power set that the current player base thinks "sucks" and good luck convincing anyone that you should be in their group. The world of pen-and-paper is a lot different, but there are times in my games I saw players walk into the game with a printout in hand and copied a forum build choice for choice and pretend they came up with the magic combination.
Trouble is, I read the same forums and pointed that broken build right out. Some players are fans of a game because they know how it is broken and can exploit the imbalance, I can't blame them - they want to do good and look good in front of others - but somehow I feel using the rules to your advantage isn't the way. We all use the rules to our advantage, that is life; but if that is the main reason you play a game, I feel something is missing.
There are times I want the rules out of the way and the players and story to shine through.
Many games ship in a broken state, and pen-and-paper games are no exception. I remember our run closely following D&D 4, and then getting errata for each of the dozens of books in that game weeks after the books release, having the online tools updated, and the book quickly became worthless except to record the broken state the game shipped in. You could still just play "by the book" but the game thrived on overwhelming you with choices, and the best and most broken choice was always quickly found by the community, abused in store play, and quickly nerfed in the errata.
Pathfinder did a better job by playtesting the heck out of their rules, which is why I was a fan of that game. Still, they had issues, and the D&D 3 model combined with the dozens of books approach made the game unwieldy and unplayable for us. They were fun to collect, but not to play.
The stale feeling is also interesting, because one could say that B/X never changes so is thus the most stale. At least with a new edition of a D&D or Pathfinder, things change up and the evergreen model applies. There are new things to learn. There is excitement. This is true, and this also appeals to a certain type of player. But there is also something to sticking with what works and focusing on the story, and not the character build and mechanics. Part of me loves B/X because really, anything I buy is mostly compatible with each other, every game plays the same with a couple small tweaks, and I can be a part of B/X communities and online discussion by really talking about any of the games.
B/X is like the Unix of RPGs. Boring, not slick and glamorous, provides basic functionality, but it pretty much well powers everything and runs the world. It is also extendible like crazy, and custom distributions of Linux and other variants can provide that excitement and rush of something new. Players of commercial RPGs look forward to new editions of the game that change everything. Players of B/X get the same game presented in different ways, with new ideas bolted on to a framework that is already working and proven.
The excitement in B/X is when someone takes the same thing and presents it in a compelling way that opens our eyes and excites us to the new possibilities.
With Old School Essentials, do I have to box up all my old Labyrinth Lord books, expansions, and adventures? No, I don't. They all pretty much well work the same and the adventures are mostly compatible. I could play Barrowmaze with Dungeon Crawl Classics if I wanted to. I could convert Mutant Future over to play with Old School Essentials.
No, I am not interested in the evergreen model anymore outside of MMOs, and I feel a new edition of D&D coming soon since it feels like D&D 5 is in the "experimental expansions" phase where they break the game and try new things before tossing it all out and printing new books. Beyond the first three books we never really bought into D&D 5, and we didn't even buy Pathfinder 2 - but no shade thrown on those who love those games. They just weren't for us, and they are good games.
I just have a full shelf of Pathfinder 1st Edition books I will never use again and I am looking to sell off, and same with D&D 4. This is the legacy of an evergreen game, you get into this consumerist mentality where you need to keep buying books and then throwing them all away. To keep an evergreen game going, they constantly need to be throwing out the past. And oh yeah, you are going to need new adventures with that shiny new edition too, because, you know, everything has changed again.
With B/X it is the complete opposite. Everything I buy I can use for the most part with whatever cool new version of B/X that comes out next. Also, what works is what we know and understand. There isn't the excitement of chasing builds and new rules, but a settling into the story and world that B/X players tend to enjoy more than the mechanics of the current version of the game.
No comments:
Post a Comment