RPG Skill Lists

Most contemporary RPG systems have a list of skills characters can possess. These can range from simple checklists of a few general areas, to vast indexes of possible fields.

Most RPG systems can be categoriesed as one of three levels of RPG skill specificity. Broad skills cover whole categories of thematically related skills that may or may not realistically be related. Moderate skills cover smaller areas, but still include a variety of different specialties. Narrow skills cover an even smaller range, usually limited to a specific application of general abilities.

To illustrate, let's look at what skill sets might look like for the two most common RPG skill fields, combat and social interaction. Games with broad skills might have a single skill called "Melee" or "Influence" that cover the entire category with a single statistic. Moderately specific games might have a number of different skills, like "Diplomacy," "Intimidate," "Sword," or "Polearm." Games with truly narrow lists might have dozens of categories of each - "Public Speaking," "Interrogation," "Rapier," and "Guisarme-Voulge."

Some games use a mix of different levels, indicating the system's intended focus. A hack-and-slash dungeon crawler-might have 20 combat skills and one social skill, whereas a highbrow narrative system might have the reverse.

Other systems mix various levels by allowing or requiring specializations within broader categories. Various incarnations of D&D and WoD have allowed players to advance general combat skill, but include some abilities or rules grant special bonuses for using their weapon of choice. Some variants of the FUDGE system ignore the distinction entirely, allowing players to make up skills/traits as narrow or specific as their GM will allow.

However, I'm more interested in the values and advantages of the different categories.

Broad skill categories seem to be on the upswing - most indy RP systems these days use very limited skill lists, providing a basic mechanical outline and assuming the players can just roleplay the specifics as they like. Dungeons and Dragons cut its skill list in half for 4th Edition, going from 36 core skills to 18. Broak skill lists are probably the most mechanically elegant, because they streamline character creation and gameplay at little cost of mechanical relevance.

The advantage to moderately specific skills is not one of mechanics, but one of characterization. While some argue that roleplaying should be the responsibility of player rather than the rules, I've always been a big believer in encouraging characterization through the system itself. I think it is important to provide rules that allow a character sheet to show the difference between the Green Arrow's skill at archery, Batman's skill with batarangs, and the Punisher's skill with guns. (Yes, that's a geeky example. Yes, I'm mixing Marvel and DC characters.)

Narrow skill list have always been pretty rare, except as optional specializations. GURPS is the only system I'm familiar with that uses truly specific skills as the core list. The GURPS skill list is somewhat absurd, containing over 350 entries and a wide variety of everyday skills including Accounting, Economics, Administration and Finance. Even if these are distinct skill sets in real life, I can't imagine that level of specificity serving much purpose as a roleplaying mechanic.

I'm looking into some ways of trying to find a balance between mechanical elegance and creative freedom. I think the best option may be a variant of the systems that involve general proficiencies with optional specializations.

GDS2 Chronicles: The Final Challenge

Tonight the fifth and final Great Designer Search 2 challenge begins. Of the four remaining contestants, one will get eliminated and three will get flown up to Renton for a job interview.

I'm currently sitting at the bottom of the four, so this is the round that I really need to make count. Mark Rosewater has emphasized that my card design skills are top notch, but I'm failing to present a clear and cohesive vision for my set.

I've been working on how best to do this, and here's what I've come up with for my write-up so far:

I think that "a peaceful world converting tools into weapons" is a good thematic concept for Utopia in the same way that "a world where destructive natural forces have made civilization impossible" was a good concept for Zendikar. But Zendikar wasn't known for its complex societal ideas - it was known as "Adventure World."

I need a simple, resonant, saleable theme for Utopia to complement its more complicated ideas. My answer is to make Utopia the "City Set." Ravnica used a city as its flavor backdrop, but it was too full of multicolor and guild themes to represent idea of a "City World" in gameplay.

The final challenge's assignment is to design an intro deck for our set. On the one hand, I think it really plays to my strengths - I can design a fun deck made of interesting cards as well as anyone. On the other hand, they already know my strengths: I need to show the Vision that I have so far failed to demonstrate.

GDS2: Utopia and Crutches

Color identity is my favorite aspect of Magic, so it's not surprising that my original set concept was about exploring the color pie in new ways. I wanted to depict the rarely-seen aspects, and the concept of a peaceful world adapting for war provided a framework for integrating these ideas into the gameplay of Magic.

This is not, however, an easy concept to design for. I struggled with whether or not it was doable at all, until I eventually settled on using enchantments as a mechanical touchstone to tie things together. The problem was that I quickly came to lean on enchantments too heavily, and they usurped the focus of my set. It was so much easier to design good "enchantments-matter" cards than "weaponized paradise" cards that it completely overran my submission.

Rosewater addressed this by deftly kicking the "enchantments-matter" crutch out from under me and telling me to start jogging. With the same update, my existing mechanics were condemned to the scrap heap and I was given four days to design 18 commons to show off my set's mechanics. Hoo boy.

I should mention that I don't think this was necessarily bad for my status in the GDS2. I was given clear instructions and a very difficult challenge, which is pretty much the perfect situation for trying to prove myself as a designer. It did make the process rather stressful, though.

On Wednesday, I narrowed my colors down to blue or black. On Thursday, I invented the Gold counter mechanic and shifted my focus towards black. I came up with the idea of life-payment Mercenaries late Friday and powered through the submission itself over the weekend. There was not as much time for playtesting or direction changes as I might have liked.

The end result is far from perfect, but I'm very satisfied with it. The mechanics are somewhat questionable, but they show my ability to adapt with feedback and convey a unified flavor. I made good use of collaboration with the online community, and I think it shows. I have no idea whether I will be eliminated this week, but I hope that I have demonstrated enough potential that some questionable mechanical decisions will be excused.

GDS2 Chronicles: Epiphany

I have all of my best mental breakthroughs at 2:00 AM. Really, I don't know why I bother trying to make serious decisions at any other time of day.

I've been very conflicted about the whole "Weaponized Paradise" theme for my Great Designer Search set. On the one hand, I feel like it's a very interesting concept with a lot of depth and available design space. On the other hand, it's very open-ended and difficult to implement. Feedback has been largely positive, but I agree with the concerns that the idea may be *too* high concept. I'd even gained some confidence with a few cool mechanics, but had been struggling with whether the idea was strong enough for a set. I considered just letting the theme go despite my interest in it.

Tonight's epiphany was that the best course of action is to give a set both a textured philosophical theme and a simple mechanical one. Invasion block's themes were "an epic worldwide conflict centuries in the making" and "multicolor." Zendikar had "adventure world full of deadly peril" and "lands." Now we have Scars of Mirrodin, with "a world corrupted by ancient evil" and "artifacts."

"Weaponized paradise" is the exact theme I need to drive the flavor of the set and determine how I want it to feel. But I also need a more basic mechanical concept to ensure synergy and focus my design. "Enchanments" is a strong (if obvious) choice that evokes a certain "powerful magic we had lying around" concept, but I'm not attached to the idea yet.

I'm pretty ecstatic about this breakthrough, though, and feeling like I'm back on track.

I've put up my page on the GDS Wiki here, but it tends to update a few days behind my thought processes on this blog.

The Ethics of Trading

I love trading Magic cards. Acquisition is part of the game's appeal, and trading allows me to acquire new cards without spending cashy moneys. The last two evenings, I've turned quite a profit at my local game store, turning piles of old rares I wasn't using into spiffy cards for my Cube, EDH decks, and trade binder.

This raises a bit of a dilemma for me, as I occasionally criticize people like trade-guru Jon Medina who put a lot of effort into gaining value on their trades. I consider many of the strategies used in such trades to be unethical and bad for the game. Of course, Medina considers himself to be an ethical trader who makes an effort not to rip people off, so there's clearly a range of perspectives here.

After putting a bit of thought into it, I came to the following conclusion: For people like Medina, the bottom line is for both people to walk away from the trade happy. If both parties are satisfied, the deal is ethical. My standards are a bit higher. Let me illustrate with a story, embellished from a true story:

A casual player returns to Magic after many years and starts getting back into the game. He puts together an EDH deck and brings it down to the local cardshop. One of the regulars notices a Wasteland in the guy's deck and figures he can pick it up for cheap. "I'll trade you this Strip Mine for it," he offers, "The mine is strictly better, but I can use that Wasteland in an legacy deck." They make the trade and both walk away happy - the newbie has gotten a better card for his deck and the regular has made some easy money.

A week later, the player goes up front to see if he can get another Wasteland, and discovers that they are worth $25 to the Strip Mine's $2. He feels betrayed and ripped off by the people who claimed to help him out and decides not to trade any more. A while later, he stops showing up at the card shop at all.

For me, getting people satisfied with the deal at hand isn't enough for the trade to be ethical: People need to know the value of their cards. Yes, that value is subjective and largely "made up" by the happenstance of the market, but it is real value nonetheless. I'll happily walk away with a $25 card for a stack of 20 bulk rares, but only if I've been open and honest about the value of the cards involved.

Scrubs and Playing for Fun

My post "Playing to Win versus Playing for Fun" is probably the worst article on this blog. It's a subject I have strong feelings about, but they can be difficult to articulate. I'm going to take another crack at the subject, focusing on a different aspect of the issue.

Today my roommate was playing Storm of the Imperial Sanctum (a DOTA-ish game on Starcraft 2) and an opponent called him a "scrub" for choosing a character rather than playing on random, as the opponent had. I can only dream that one day that person will learn the irony of their words.

The term "scrub" refers to someone who tries to impose their view of the "right" way to play on other people. A scrub is someone who considers any tactic that can defeat them to be "unfair," or even, bizarrely, "noobish." They can be found in all walks of casual and professional gaming, whether they're complaining about grabs, rushes, combos, or builds.

Obviously, if you're playing to win (at a tournament or the like), scrubs should simply be ignored. The difficulties arise when people are playing for fun and have strong preferences in how they enjoy a game.

TV Tropes says, in its infinite wisdom:

"What ultimately makes the Scrub undesirable isn't the rulesetting; it is the attitude. What distinguishes the Scrub from someone who is simply trying to make their game fun without having to invest hugely into skill progression is that the Scrub believes that his way is the only proper way to play the game."

Wanting to play a game a certain way at your kitchen table should not automatically be considered scrubbish. There's a big difference between "Don't play character X because he's cheap," and "I don't enjoy playing against character X." The latter should be respectfully considered. The former should be ignored, or ideally retrained into the latter. This is not to say that any whim of your friends should be taken as law.

Obviously, different people within a group will often have different expectations and desires, but this is true in all areas of life. If you can decide where your group wants to go for dinner, hopefully you can figure out how they prefer to game.

Hard and Soft Game Politics

Some people dislike competetive multiplayer gaming because they feel that the politics overshadow game skill. Other feel like multiplayer politics can be a fun strategic skill themselves. I appreciate the skill required to deal with a group of opponents, but can also understand frustration at getting ganged up on unfairly or losing to another player's poor decisions. Thus, I propose a distinction between two different types of politics within multiplayer gaming:

Hard politics are the spoken deals, alliances, and threats. "Don't attack me for two turns and I'll kill him," "If you leave me alone I'll let you have Europe/Park Place/whatever," or "Look at how powerful Devon is, we all need to gang up on him at once." The use of hard politics often includes mutually beneficial deals, vague threats, and chicken-little-style fear mongering.

Soft politics, conversely, are political decisions made within the scope of the game: Piling up your military to indicate a threat, or choosing to remain unthreatening rather than commit your full power to the board. Soft politics are all about shaping perceptions through gameplay.

Personally, I love soft politics. Considering the reactions of other players adds a whole new level to strategic thinking. The "right play" may well be a bad choice if it would draw too much ire from your opponents. Hard politics are not inherently bad, but they have much more potential to be problematic. Games like Risk and Twilight Imperium often slow to a crawl as everyone makes treaties with their nearby opponents. Some games or groups try to discourage this by banning "table talk," but this is hard to enforce and can easily ruin a friendly atmosphere.

Soft politics develop naturally, but the impact of hard politics needs to be considered in game design. I find Risk almost unplayable because treaty-making is both so necessary and so game-slowing. On the other hand, games like Munchkin work with the hard politics, making scheming, temporary alliances, and constant backstabbing are part of the fun.

Starting at "Heroic" - RPG Character Power Level

Many RPG systems have various tiers of character power. D&D 4E has Heroic, Paragon, and Epic levels. Savage Worlds has Novice, Seasoned, Veteran, Heroic, and Legendary characters. Even GURPS suggest starting point values for characters who are Average, Exceptional, or Heroic, all the way up to Godlike.

What power level characters start at is a huge thematic decision for a campaign, and in some cases for the system itself. For example, the original D&D was a much grittier system where a first-level character was basically a commoner with a sword who could easily get killed by a random orc or goblin in a fair fight. However, D&D 4E is explicit about the fact that even first-level characters are the best and brightest of the world, heroes in their own right with skills and powers beyond the ken of common soldiers and guards.

Games vary quite a bit in how powerful starting characters are, but they mostly fall into three categories:

1) Average - Normal people, who will be faced with exceptional circumstances and become special, or even heroic. This is an increasingly-rare starting point in RPG systems, and isn't the default for any system I can think of.

2) Exceptional - The best athletes, warriors, and scientists, but not yet heroes in their own right. Many systems have characters start out this way, including World of Darkness.

3) Heroic - Powerful characters with some adventuring under their belt, but a long way to go. This is the default for D&D, and the suggested starting point for GURPS campaigns.

I vastly preferred D20 Modern's advancement system to that of its partner D&D 3E, and it wasn't until I started playing GURPS that I understood why. D20 Modern starts characters at the "Exceptional" level, as individuals with great potential but no fixed heroic path. Characters take level in basic classes like "Strong Hero" and "Smart Hero" before they can advance in more specific roles like "Martial Artist" or "Mage." This was always much more thematically appealing to me than D&D's system where a level one Wizard was still an established adventurer with battle magic at the ready.

This realization came to me when I started running GURPS games and figured out how much I preferred running 100-point "Exceptional" starting characters to the 150-point "Heroic" suggested level. Personally, I find the story of seasoned cops and novice hedge-mages becoming heroes to be the most compelling starting point for a campaign. Of course, I'm much more likely to change things up in either direction for experiments and one-shot games.

My thesis here is not that some starting power levels are universally better than others, but rather that each has thematic implications that should be taken into consideration. Here are my opinions on what to consider before choosing a system/power level for you next campaign:

Average

For the most part, players don't want to roleplay ordinary people. The only time I would suggest using this power level is for horror games when you really want the characters running scared, normal people in trapped circumstances beyond their control. Otherwise, let your characters be more awesome than this. Few modern systems default to this level, but many have rules for it or can easily be adapted.

Exceptional

This is the place to start if you want to run a long-term campaign with interesting characters and story development. It allows characters to be awesome and grow into heroes in a meaningful manner. On the other hand, it may not be the best choice for many short campaigns or action-centric games where heroes need to hold their own from the very beginning. World of Darkness and Savage Worlds default to this level, and GURPS is well-suited to it.

Heroic

This is the traditional starting-point for action RPGs and casual games. It allows characters to "get right to the good stuff," using their rise to heroics as backstory rather than gameplay. D&D 4E starts here and GURPS 4E suggests it as the default level.

Personal preferences aside, these are all viable routes - just be sure to pick the right one for your campaign.

Starcraft II and Hard Mode

For those of you who have been living in a cave for the last few months, Starcraft II came out this week. It is an excellent sequel to one of the greatest videogames of all time, and makes stunning leaps forward while maintaining the spirit of the original. But I'm not going to talk about that: I'm going to talk about the fact that it has difficulty levels.

The original Starcraft had a single player campaign of 30 missions of increasing difficulty, but there were no alterable levels of difficulty. However, like many contemporary games, the SC2 campaign can be played at a variety of levels from "Casual" to "Brutal." This shift reflects changes in both how videogames are designed and the specific nature of the Starcraft franchise.

Setting a good difficulty curve is a very important aspect of linear game design. You have to ensure that the game remains challenging but fun as the player becomes more skilled, while accounting for different levels of talent, experience, and learning speed. Difficulty levels have become one of the primary tools the game industry uses to allow different players to challenge themselves.

SC1 managed to create a single-player campaign that effectively taught players the game while leading them through the increasingly-difficult challenges, culminating in a final battle where you had to use your full knowledge of all three races. It was able to spend most of the first campaign introducing us to the game because no one had played anything like it before. Some of us had played Age of Empires or Command and Conquer, but they couldn't compare to this new game that used three races based on completely different principles with no common units.

Starcraft II has a much wider variety of experience to appeal to, ranging from players new to the franchise to tournament players who've been making their living off Starcraft for years. Sequels and other games within well-established genres are much more likely to need difficulty levels to account for different levels of playskill. As videogames continue to develop as an industry, more and more games fall into this category.

However, difficulty levels afford another advantage: Increased replayability. While the single difficulty of SC1's campaign was fine for almost anyone the first time through, playing the early missions again was easy enough to quickly become tedious. On the other hand, even a player who has played SC2's campaign all the way through on "Hard" will be challenged within the first few missions of "Brutal." This is a good reason for even completely novel games to include difficulty levels.

One interesting method is to allow players access to harder difficulty levels only after completing the game. On the surface this may feel like unnecessary restrictions that prevent veterans from a challenging first playthrough, but I can see certain advantages. Resident Evil 4 is one of my favorite examples of a perfectly-wrought difficulty curve, and uses the unlockable "Professional" difficulty to continue the game's curve, transitioning smoothly from the end of Normal to the beginning of Professional.

3 DnD Tropes that Have Outlived their Usefulness

Now, I don't want to sound like I'm insulting Dungeons and Dragons. It was the first major RPG, and has kept pace with the industry over the years. However, no first attempt is perfect, and a few of D&D's imperfections have influenced RPG design longer than they should. This is my short list of RPG tropes that have outstayed their welcome.

1) Rolling for Statistics

I'm not sure who first thought, "Hey, what if some players had to start with characters that were randomly worse than those of their friends?" but I'm surprised at how enduring the practice has been since then. Fortunately, most systems are finally edging away from this method. Even D&D has largely abandoned this concept, listing it as one method among several in 3rd Edition and an openly-discouraged option in 4th.

I understand that the concept has some visceral and nostalgic appeal keeping it alive, but it's such stunningly bad design that it really needs to die out. Rolling dice for hit points at each level is a particularly egregious variant.

2) Overcomplicated Experience Systems

Let's look at a quick sample of the 3rd Edition D&D combat experience rules: First, look up the challenge rating for each of the opponents faced. Then, use these to figure out the total challenge rating for the encounter. Consult a table comparing the CR of the encounter and the average level of the heroes to determine the total experience for the encounter, then divide that experience between the heroes evenly. And even though you've already scaled the experienced based on the heroes' level, it's set up so that each level requires exponentially more experience to advance.

Now let me suggest an alternate system I came up with off the top of my head: You get one point of experience for overcoming minor obstacles or encounters, three points for difficult ones, and five points for defeating important opponents or completing major campaign goals. Characters level up every 20 points.

I get that there are reasons to use systems more complicated than the one I suggest, but lots of games still use ridiculously complicated systems that require multiple tables, multipliers, and scalers. These systems are fine for computer and console gaming where the numbers are crunched automatically, but are overcomplicated and completely unnecessary for tabletop RPGs.

#3) Loot-Based Economics

My first two points are easy targets - anyone can attack bad game mechanics. Looting is much more of a sacred cow, fundamental to many game designs. "Kill monsters, steal treasure," is one of the basic principals of the fantasy RPG.

In my experience, though, few things hurt drama or willing suspension of disbelief as much as looting corpses. It makes perfect sense in certain circumstances (post-apocalyptic settings, killing dragons with treasure hoards) but you don't see many books or movies where the heroes rifle through the pockets of every mook they kill.

Looting is a fine concept for "gamist" systems that aren't trying to emphasize storytelling or realism, but it has been far too widely-used in RPG design. Noble paladins shouldn't have to strip-search fallen opponents for loose change.

Flavor and Board Games

Anyone can design a fair game. I'll make one now: "We each roll a normal, six-sided die and whoever rolls the highest wins. In the event of a tie, we reroll." The challenge of game design is not to make balanced games, but to make fun ones.

Fun is extremely complicated, though. You've got to incorporate challenge, satisfaction, progress, unpredictability, and dozens of other variables which various people can respond to very differently. One of the factors that people often forget, however, is "flavor" - the aesthetic choices of name and identity that give reason to a game's mechanics.

Mechanically, Go strikes me as a much better game than Chess. Chess isrepetitive and quickly becomes more about memorizing move sequences than original strategizing, whereas Go is organic and plays out very differently each time. Go has more strategic depth and more big-picture creativity in its gameplay. Yet Chess fascinated me for years (including a solid amount of tournament play) and Go never managed to maintain my interest long enough to fully learn the rules.

I eventually figured out that it was the iconography of chess that made the difference: The mere fact that the pieces were identified as soldiers, knights, and royalty makes the game more interesting. You can bemoan that someone has killed your queen, or grin as you slowly force their king into a corner. The flavor may be cursory, but it gives you an emotional identification with the game that Go lacks. I've heard vague explanations of supply lines and armies, but Go never felt like anything other than stones on a board.

A lot of very poorly designed board games have become classics solely on the basis of their flavor. Clue is a silly little game of guess-and-check, but throw in a murder with a variety of suspects and weapons and you've got an interesting narrative. Monopoly is so flawed that no one plays by the official rules (does anyone actually bid for property?) but has stuck in our cultural consciousness because it's about buying property and paying rent. And Risk is an agonizing game that brutally punishes any attempt at action, but it's about taking over the world!

I don't think any of these games would have caught on if they were just about collecting unlabeled "points" or generic "spaces." Something worth thinking about.

Edit: By complete coincidence, I appear to have criticized Monopoly on its 75th Anniversary. Happy Birthday!

RPG Design and D&D 4E

Dungeons and Dragon's 4th Edition has been somewhat controversial among gamers since its release two years ago. Of course, there were also hardcore gamers upset about 2nd Edition, 3rd Edition, 3.5, and all the way back to the original D&D/AD&D split. So, are the complaints about 4th edition legitimate criticisms of a turn for the worse, or simply a stubborn resistance to change?

I'm not discussing the specifics like choices about which races/classes made the cut and which didn't, or whether classes and powers are balanced. I'm more interested in the design philosophy behind the changes. D&D has chosen to focus on its strengths. The thing is, as the most widely-played tabletop RPG out there, this focus has alienated a portion of its players who liked it for other reasons.

To explain all this, I'm going to have to backtrack a little. My first D&D books (purchased in middle school) were 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Having read through those books more recently, I can tell you that from a modern RPG design perspective they are laughable. Each basic attribute effects a half dozen traits, including various bonuses, percentages, and fixed caps. The chapter on equipment spends three pages discussing the subtle differences between 23 different types of polearms, which include the Glaive, Guisarme, Glaive-Guisarme, and Fauchard-Fork. Previous editions were even worse, with dozens of percentile tables for things like door-breaking attempts and 1-2 damage grappling attacks.

Third Edition was the first to be published by Wizards of the Coast after TSR went under, and it is the first edition that can really hold up as a contemporary tabletop RPG. Each basic attribute adds a single fixed bonus to applicable situations, and all checks and attempts are done with the same type of die. Classes level up at the same time, are theoretically balanced, and don't have random level caps for each race. Players can customize their characters with skills and feats, something that is now taken for granted as part of a standard role-playing experience. While there are still old-school gamers out there who will endlessly argue the superiority of previous editions, there is no question in my mind that 3rd edition was better than all before it and the first "modern" D&D system.

Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition (or 4E) streamlines the game even further. Combat spells and special attacks are merged into a single "power" system that is used by all classes. The skill levels are simply "yes" and "no," rather than having new characters divide up to 50 skill points between 30 skills. Specialized high-level classes are now a basic part of advancement rather than an optional rule for specific campaigns. While this is largely a continuation of the advancements made in third edition, many people feel that 4E goes too far, blurring the classes together and making the whole thing feel "videogamey."

From a pure design perspective, I have to say that 4E feels a lot more elegant. The skill system dropped a lot of extraneous complexity while sacrificing very little gameplay. The classes all advance similarly and consistently, instead of the weird starts and stops of third edition. The presence of rituals and healing surges means that groups don't have to stick to fighter/caster/healer compositions to keep up. The rules for combat are much cleaner, which is good, because there aren't many rules for anything else.

D&D has always had a rules focus on combat. The important thing to realize is that this is not because they consider roleplaying unimportant, but because they consider rules for roleplaying unimportant. The philosophy seems to be that if you want to play an interesting and compelling character, you don't need a bunch of numbers and scores to define that - design fun rules for combat and advancement and let the players take care of the rest. To my eyes, 4E is the culmination of this design philosophy, and that is why so many people have problems with it.

Some players like to have their character's personality on paper. My love for systems like Savage Worlds and GURPS comes from the fact that I can look at a character sheet and go, "ah, this character is honorable but hindered by a rigid moral code," or "this character is a powerful warrior but struggles with social situations and alcoholism." Personally, I really like systems that encourage characterization by providing rules for traits and hindrances. But that means D&D isn't the system for me anyways, and they shouldn't be trying to cater to my preferences.

As the most popular and well-known tabletop RPG, Dungeons and Dragons has a lot of different types of players to keep happy. Even within a single roleplaying group, there will be people with a variety of different playstyles to appease. Many people who might prefer systems like World of Darkness of FUDGE will end up playing D&D because that's what their friends play.

4E is a better designed system than any previous version, and one that focuses best on the core strengths of Dungeons and Dragons. But as an RPG that must cater to more players than any other, it remains to be seen whether or not that was the right choice.

Playing to Win versus Playing for Fun

This subject has been brought to the forefront of my mind by some recent debates over the Magic variant Elder Dragon Highlander. EDH is an interesting case because it is a variant of a naturally competitive game that was explicitly created to be a casual experience where the goal is fun rather than victory. However, it retains the fundamental competitive format of Magic - the game ends when one player wins by eliminating all of their opponents.

This tension is far from unique to EDH - it exists to some degree in many (if not most) games we play:

a) The internal goal of the game is to achieve victory (often by defeating our opponents)

b) The external end goal for us in playing the game is to have fun and enjoy ourselves

Almost all "classic" boardgames are played this way - Clue, Monopoly, Scrabble, Chess, etc. These games are designed to be fun within the paradigm of everyone trying to win. Our competitive nature becomes the driving force that keeps the game moving forward.

The problem is that in discussion, the relationship of these goals is often misunderstood. Many people fail to realize that playing to win is something done in the service of fun, not an end in itself. Equally many can forget that competition itself is an important part of that fun for most players.*

So, understanding competition as means to achieving fun, what does this mean for the current EDH Debate? Well, players who are used to victory being the end goal of gameplay (as in tournaments) need to adjust their expectations and behavior to fit the end goal of an enjoyable game. However, it also means that casual players need to keep in mind that competition is part of that enjoyment, and for some people it is the most important part.

This doesn't mean that they'll be able to play with each other - their different ideas of "fun" may be too far apart to reconcile. In a format as infinitely customizable as EDH, I think the only solution is for people to find groups that enjoy a similar level of competition. But both sides should recognize that they're just playing in different ways, and putting more focus on victory is not a better or worse way of having fun.

*Obviously, this all breaks down if (b) isn't true. Sometimes we're playing for money, and sometimes we're just trying to put our little brother in his place. In these cases, we have a different end goal superseding "have fun."