Rotations

I see a lot of talk on Youtube about Pathfinder 2 having "rotations" for maximum character damage output, where characters repeat the same sequence of powers over and over again.

Wait, is D&D 4 still a thing in 2020?

I kid, and I do not play Pathfinder 2, but I have some experiences to share on the subject. We had that same "power rotation" issue in D&D 4 but at least in that game, positioning and the map mattered a huge deal in damage output. There was also a "passive healing" in the careful use of controllers to stop or hinder enemy attacks - reducing the damage output of the other side.

Without a map and just powers? We played D&D 4 like that too, and it got tiring for some players to be shouting the same power names over and over again like they were some Pokemon where the only word they knew was their own name. Green flame blade! Green flame blade!

People would walk by our game room and stare at us like we were all insane.

D&D 4, of course, broke apart terribly as the levels went higher and the expansions ruined the game, with Wizards even revising the entire game and Monster Manual in the Essentials line - and still requiring the original books. Such is the legacy of MMO-like designs, they are easily calculated, exploited, fragile, and get boring and repetitive as time goes on. This is why MMOs completely change classes on a rotation, nerfing and buffing to drive interest, and repeating an "evergreen" cycle of changes as the game goes on.

You can't do that with a book. And if you do, you are doomed to follow the D&D 4 route of continually releasing expansion books to keep the game changing and interesting. And doing what they do these days with "temporary power" systems that are only good for one campaign book, such as a Desert Adventures book introducing campaign-only tweaks and powers for all the classes that change the balance and feel - for that campaign only. They do this in MMOs all the time with "potency" or "azurite energy" or some other silly grindable number like some sort of Zynga-Facebook daily stamina game of the 2010 era.

Yes, mechanical interest is a part of game design. It breaks apart some when Internet forum figures out your best-path map and everyone is expected to play one way. And then the job of the referee goes from managing the world to "tricks to stop power rotations to keep things interesting." This is what happened in D&D 4 for us as well, I started to develop encounters with the sole purpose of breaking up power rotations - and they do this in MMOs too. Nope, you are all on a raft of flaming barrels going down the rapids! Dodge the logs!

We went from playing the game to fighting it.

It was worse on the referee's side, because after a while players figured out I was trying to screw with them by breaking up their best rotations, and then they started to find ways not to get into these encounters and fight enemies on neutral ground where the rotations could come into play.

We went from fighting the game to trying to outwit each other's encounter setups.

All in service of some fake concept like game mechanics. It got tiring, like some Cold War game of cat and mouse between submarine commanders, with the rules being the battleground. Our campaign ended up with us trying to develop a simpler set of rules that did the same thing, but that never worked out. We bought into the power-rotation and battle-chess system, and it burned us out.

Mind you, this is D&D 4 and not Pathfinder 2, but the story feels similar enough for the thoughts to come up again. Maybe they can manage the beast this time, and I need to read in further - but my Pathfinder 1 books prevent me from buying into another edition. Also D&D 5 is good enough for many, and I have that.

Also, if I am doing fantasy, I have a wonderful choice of B/X systems where I can sidestep the entire power rotation concept and focus on the story, characters, and action. I am a bit skeptical these days of MMO-style RPG designs that are too tightly designed and easily min-maxed, and prefer the simple - and me and my players will fill in the rest.