By the time 3rd ed had come out, I hadn't played an AD&D game for about two or three years. I'd given up on it and craved more rules. I appeased my need for rules by playing Role(rule)master(monster) and GURPS. Then third edition came out and I was like, "OMG! RULES!"
That enthusiasm faded quickly.
It took me awhile to realise it but I actually didn't want more rules. I started to miss the variety and complexity and imagination that came with improvised play. Most of all, I missed the fun. I just wasn't enjoying playing third edition. By the time Pathfinder was even a thought process in Paizo's collective brain processes, I had given up on third edition and roleplaying altogether. I briefly delved into light systems like FATE but so few people played them that I could never really get enthused about them.
Then fourth edition came out and I was like, "OMG! Less rules!" Things were simplified but there was still packs of flavour and options. For the most part I liked fourth edition and actually probably did more gaming with it than I have any other system or edition. But then I started to notice something that I had previously overlooked. People were theorycrafting out the whazoo. As players started to drop off and games started to get harder to find as everyone and their dog were moving to Pathfinder, I realised more and more that theorycrafting was the most predominant aspect of play, regardless of edition or game system.
I briefly got into doing theorycrafting myself in an effort to get more involved in fourth edition as Pathfinder, to me, was the Devil Incarnate and represented everything in a system that I didn't want. Not only that but I found the players to generally be the type of players that I didn't want to play with either. For awhile it satisfied me to build exotic fourth edition characters that min/maxed everything in pursuit of the ultimate goal: to break the system. Much like white hats the idea was that you need to break it in order to fix it.
Then games dried up completely and I was left with a choice: join the Pathfinder revolution or don't game at all. I chose not to game at all.
And then... RAY OF GLORIOUS HOLY LIGHT... D&D Next was announced *holy ahhhhing*.
So I immediately got on that bandwagon and played every playtest with lots of people. It was fun and exciting to see everything change and progress and give feedback to the designers. For awhile at least. The initial rush of enthusiasm from other people quickly faded and I found more and more that people were comparing Next to Pathfinder and complaining that it didn't give them Pathfinder. So I eventually broke down and played Pathfinder. And hated it. After about ten sessions with a really great group of people, I gave up entirely. I just wasn't having fun.
And that brings us to the present. The division that people believe 4th-edition brought about in the fanbase and that resulted in the Pathfinder revolution is, I believe, not a division between systems but between playstyles. Pathfinder is the theorycrafter's and min/maxer's dream whilst I'm finding that the biggest criticisms of what we've seen so far in 5th-edition, is from these very same people. The division in the playerbase, I believe, is between people who place a great deal of importance on theorycrafting and between others who place a great deal of importance on creativity, imagination and fun through improvised play at the table.
I believe that, from what I've seen so far, 5e caters to the latter playerbase while not really appealing to the former. This is what I see in all the arguments across numerous forums. That the divide is between these two ideals and not necessarily between systems. The systems are merely representative of each different playstyle rather than being superior in one way or another to the other.
And that brings me to my hatred of theorycrafting. I believe it began in 2nd edition AD&D with Player's Options. It was a trend that developed due to AD&D not having enough rules to cover every possible scenario and a desire for players to have those rules. From the creativity of players developed the entire notion of theorycrafting. Some people went down that road and found it to their liking whilst others did not. Third edition catered to this desire, fourth edition tried to, Pathfinder captured the essence of it, and 5th edtion is a departure from it.
It is, to me at least, therefore that I proclaim that theorycrafing is the very bane of good game design. A good design facilitates fun and enjoyment and creativity and imagination at the table. I don't care if X + Y = C when it should equal D. I care that X + Y = a fun night of gaming. And to me, theorycrafting is the exact opposite of fun. If a system has me walking away from a session with a smile on my face, then the designers have succeeded in what I believe is their primary goal.
So far, 5e is delivering on that goal. It remains to be seen if it continues this trend as I've only witnessed and experienced what most other people have, that being basic & starter, but I am hopeful for the future. Pathfinder nuts can have their "fun" whilst I can have mine. And for that, I am grateful to the designers of 5e.
And yes, this probably should've been a blog post 
Great post, akaddk! I agree with you wholeheartedly on this subject. Theorycrafting is nuts. All that matters is whether a game is fun to play. So far, my experience has been that Next/5e is fun to play. More so than any previous edition of D&D I have played.
Theorycrafting MAKES the game fun.
In two ways - the first, in ensuring it's designed WELL. This sort of theorycrafting can, and probably should, go on entirely in the background - it's the sort of thing that, for instance, fixed 4e's monsters later in the edition, by making them universally have less health and defences and do more damage, making the combats feel less grindy and the game generally more fun without making it particularly more difficult. This is one reason why a LOT of math wonks, are math wonks - because even relatively small errors in the maths can make a huge difference in the gameplay - and among other things, the grindy combats were what put a bunch of people off 4e. If they'd not been grindy from the start, the edition would have been more successful than it was.
The second, because theorycrafting is in itself, fun. I enjoy building characters, finding synergies, and seeing what the system can, in theory, do. So do a lot of other people.
So yeah, whilst I can see your point (i.e. too much emphasis on tonnes of rules is bad), I basically entirely disagree with the conclusion you've drawn from it. Theorycrafting IS good game design and vice versa, and slight errors in theorycrafting on the part of the designers can turn a game from grindy to great, from dull to interesting, from easy to impossible.
You can't write a game without writing it in theory first. Then you test it (sometimes in play, sometimes in theory) and you refine it, and continue that cycle until it's ready, or release date, whichever is the sooner (sadly).
Oh my, yes.
I think theory crafting is akin to modeling. It's fine. But I always play with the models after - that's the fun part.
Then along came Legos. What what! And they sort of perfectly melded modeling and play.
5E does that for me. It melds the two - getting some class feature feels good in and of itself, and not merely a prerequisite to some later build.
Designing an encounter or adventure feels more like writing something cool than mathing out stats and checking boxes.
I think you're missing the OP's point, thespaceinvader.
Theorycrafting done by the designers to make a better game = good.
Theorycrafting necessitated at the player level by an overly intricate rules set = bad.
...
Disclaimer: I make no representation whether I agree with that philosophy or not. I'm just clarifying it
thespaceinvader wrote:
thespaceinvader wrote:
In some situations, theory crafting is good - IE, "how can I make this system do more so we have more options of play?" - useful for Homebrewers (who are merely semi-trained quasi-professional designers)
In others, it's horrible: "How can I use these rules to make something that can reach out of the game and kill the DM?" - the response of players who think they can power-burn through the story-line and get the ultimate treasure at the end.
I disagree 100% I have tons of fun playing at the table and theorycrafting away from it. I can enjoy theorycrafting with many systems and I think 5e will be one of them.
DemoMonkey wrote:
I disagree with the OP. Theory crafting (min maxing? and complex rules for combat ?) is not the bane of good game design at all. You can have a great complex game, with min maxers doing their best to break it, and yet still have an awesome play experience. Complex rules do mean you need to put more time into learning it, which is a definite downside. But it's not the bane of good game design. Shadowrun is pretty complex but an awesome fun game. Conversely I get the impression something like Dungeon World would be too simple/rules light for me to enjoy.
The real bane of the game - what makes for a bad play expereince at the table - is an unfavourable mix of player types, eg: two high end powergamers tryign to play with three pure roleplayers. That gets messy because of the power imbalance, which if the DM doesnt sort out by way of magic items and other tricks, will tend to result in an inadvertant TPK and end to the campaign.
I agree pretty much with everything you said. And I really hope this edition doesn't end up being one that even warrants a CharOp sub-forum. Mapping out your characters all the way to max level with a list of which feats to take in what order and having a wish list of magic items the DM is obligated to give you needs to be a thing of the past. And before anyone jumps on me, I will be perfectly okay if the DMG has options that enable that kind of play, as long as it's not the default assumption of the game.
I think the OP would benefit from a solid, up-front definition of the term "theorycrafting." Because I've seen it used a lot of different ways by a lot of different people, and probably a few different ways by the same person, and possibly a few different ways by the OP himself in this very thread.
If we're talking about mathing it out rather than seeing how it plays at the table, I think theorycrafting gets an unfair rap. Oftentimes, the play experience can obscure the underlying problems more than it reveals them. You played the fighter, and had a great time? Is that because this particular game session playe to his strengths, because you were in a good mood, because the problems with the class don't bother you personally, or because they don't exist at all? Even with a larger data set--a hundred people playing fighters on a hundred game sessions--you're going to find it difficult to compile that data in a useful way, not least because each individual observation is going to be colored by the same sorts of extraneous factors and because people are notoriously bad at understanding (much less explaining) why they do or do not like things. You need real-world experience to reality check your theorycrafting, but you need theorycrafting to make sense of your real-world experiences, and to keep them honest.
If we're talking about min-maxing generally, it's a playstyle. If Pathfinder is any indication, an extremely popular one. One I don't care much for (I'll do it, but I'd rather play in a system that doesn't go out of its way to reward spending more time at it), but one that should not be dismissed by a company that wants to make money. Don't give enough options, and there's a substantial chunk of players out there who will balk. Give more options, and it's pretty well impossible to avoid the fact that people are going to min-max. 4e tried to square the circle, let the min-maxers and those who don't care play at the same table because it's much easier to build a decent character and much harder to build a real monster, but it didn't really work. 5e seems to be trying to split the baby, and I'm getting the impression that a good number of people are balking on both sides (some say the characters aren't customizable enough and the system is too shallow, others say the options that have been given must be banned for various reasons). If you really want to get away from it, I'd recommend branching out from D&D. Fate is a solid option, and one that's getting a lot more popular IME as people wear-out on the excesses of pathfinder in that department.
If we're talking about min-maxing at the expense of immersion/fiction (rollplaying as opposed to roleplaying), I have to point out that the two are not mutually exclusive. For starters, that kind of theorycrafting is mostly done away from the table, where the rolEplaying can't occur anyway. But more to the point, I think it represents a player mentality largely distinct from the system itself, and one that can be discouraged with more rules as easily as with fewer. That is, give such a player fewer rules so that he no longer has any materials with which to min-max, he might leave the game and go to pathfinder. Give him more rules that actually encourage him to engage with the fiction rather than the numbers, and he might be more fun for you to play with. To my mind, old school failed to effectively support improvisational, fiction-based problem solving through absence of rules as thoroughly as the last two editions failed to support it through excessive rules. My experience with lighter systems has been that overcoming the challenges has more to do with reading the DM's mind than with immersing yourself in the fiction--whether an idea is a good idea to solve a problem depends on 2 parts "guess whether the DM will try to mechanically implement it in a way that makes it a good idea," 2 parts "guess whether the DM will succeed at mechanically implementing it in a way that makes it a good idea," and only one part "would it actually be a good idea in the fiction?" If you want to say that's because I had bad DMs, so be it, but I don't believe that DMs who have a less than perfect grasp of the physical rules of their world or the mechanical impacts of their decisions are a rarity.
By all means, fun should be the guiding principle of all game design. But I wouldn't underestimate the importance of theorycrafting both by the designers and the users to increasing that fun. Whether X+Y=C or D can impact your fun, even if you are unaware of its influence, and players aren't likely to thank you for taking that equation away from them.
Gazra wrote:
spaceinvader wrote:
JohnLynch wrote:
Theory crafting has its place. The problem when its used and expect it to have any relationship to how games actually take place. And I really disbelieve it has anything to do with a 3e / 4e division.
Everyone has their own reasons for disliking 4e. Martial abilities felt too much like magic. The AEDU design wasn't as fun as the more traditional vanician design for many. The lack of rules for exploration and socializing, as opposed to the gazillion combat abilities. The constant errata. The higher power level - all races started off with (effectively) magic powers to them. The enforced roles of Leader, Striker, Defender, and Controller, so that you couldn't customize the classes to the style of play you wanted. Feelings of homogony.
Many also have strong dislike of 3e / Pathfinder. Imbalanced classes. High level of system masteries creating wildly different expectations in the game. Millions of feats, powers, and abilities creating a large investment if you want to get involved in learning the game - we want to play, not do homework before playing. Accusations of caster domination. Feat taxes. MAD classes. Complex rules.
In short, there's lots of reasons why people prefer (or, rather, dislike) one edition or another. Some consider them features, others not. You really can't blame theory crafting on either, though, since all editions have theory crafters. Hells. Every game has them. Doesn't matter if its D&D, World of Darkness, Mutants and Masterminds, Warhammer, you name it. People will go in forums, or at the table, or whatever, and decry something because it doesn't work in some theoretical white room match.
And it is an active problem. You'll have people bringing in things from old editions to complain about new ones without seeing the changes.
In truth, theory crafting is a thing with everyone in any game.
Mephi1234 wrote:
akaddk wrote:
thespaceinvader wrote:
Cennedi wrote:
viper5 wrote:
Polaris wrote:
Mephi1234 wrote:
Seems to me the OP mainly has a grudge against Pathfinder.
Good news- I see 5th edition being flexible enough to cater to all sorts of players. Haven't we learned that no one way of playing D&D is better than any other? And that includes Pathfinder players.
viper5 wrote:
akaddk wrote:
Just to clarify... I played many many 3e games without theorycrafting too and they were lots of fun.
The system tends to push you into theorycrafting to a certain degree but it's playable too without it, especially if you house-rule a little and eliminate some pre-requisites for stuff here and there.
I still like 3e and would play it in a heartbeat if invited to a group.
But 2e is still my D&D of choice.
The version which better handles the playstyle I like best.
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Yes! Just like mechanical engineering is the bane of good aeroplane design!
kalil wrote:
I don't think the act of theorycrafting in and of itself is bad. Finding glaring problems in the system and pointing them out is actually healthy in my opinion. The issue I take with it is when someone discovers one of these broken things and attempt to put it into play "because RAW".
Being an engineer (ME), you don't want a game to resemble engineering, trust me. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around what theorycrafting is supposed to be, if it is some sort of "white room experiment", I agree those aren't very useful (terrible in physics also, see the Titanic). What I like about 5e is that I have seen a burst of creative energy around it.
Gazra wrote:
PrawnPower wrote:
Azzy1974 wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
I think 5E suffers the same problem of previous editions when considering hindsight and addressing known issues. It is a struggle over tradition versus innovation. Sure play style comes into play, but that should be a well known fact and part of the design should create bridges to get to where you want to go. If 5E is to be the flagship for years to come, then it will based on those bridges.
akaddk wrote:
Gazra wrote:
akaddk wrote:
I'm ambivalent because i don't want to have to jump through all kinds of hoops to get a character to do what i want (playing PF and you need 7 prereqs just to Whirlwind attack) but i really did enjoy creating unique builds in 3e/4e.
Sturmunddrang wrote:
Brimleydower wrote:
Sturmunddrang wrote:
Cennedi wrote:
I actively participate in my gaming forums regarding theorycrafting, although I think some can take it too far. They can get into abstract, nebulous notions that are pointless beyond as a mental exercise.
I disliked 3e, and PF. I liked 4e, and so far, I'm liking 5e even more.
akaddk wrote:
Theorycrafting, in practise, is designing a tabletop role playing game under the assumption that there is no referee. You will hear this from the dedicated Theorycrafters on this board: "But you can't depend on the DM! OBERNI!!!!"
It's treating design for RPGs as if it were the same design process as a computer game. They are not. They are tangentially related.
It is making assumptions about gameplay that simply cannot be applied to a tabletop RPG, and then designing the game to capitalize on them. It's great design for a board game or a computer game, where the design space is quite small, but a tabletop RPG is a totally different animal.
JonWake wrote:
h347h50 wrote:
Sturmunddrang wrote:
In any D&D edition, I start with a character concept, then face whatever mechanical process prepares them for the game.
Sometimes that process brings out new ideas and helps me make the character more engaging to play and play with. I find more enduring interest in personality or story concepts, not ability or mechanical concepts (I love backgrounds and the trinkets table), but either can help.
Other times the path from imagination to game engine is fraught with red tape, rules limitations, and mechanical puzzles to be solved to pose what you want in the game's language.
What I understand as theorycrafting - discovering and building a playstyle with synergies and tactically exploiting them during play - can be fun, but in my XP games built around it make the process from mind to mechanics much more of a wrestling maneuver. Theorycrafting games involve carefully selecting and pruning your collection of subrules (ie spell cards, units, character feats and powers) are more often card games (ie Magic or Dominion), because arranging bits of rules text works best with pre-written pieces of information that you can continually rearrange. Much less convenient to write and rewrite them on sheets, rely on a printer to do it for you, or buy peripherals to lessen the work.
As fun as the game can be for some folks, D&D-edition branding probably held 4e back; it could have been a game mainly sold in a box with cards and a wipe-off battlemat and been its own game. The 3-4e paradigm of carefully crafted characters conflicts with the older paradigm of permanent ability score changes during play, level-drain, and save-or-die, which were designed around the idea that characters are swiftly made and disposable.
Likewise, I feel D&D's definition of characters as 6 general scores for interacting with whatever the DM imagines similarly disagrees with the kind of involved rules used by a game that would challenge its players' mechanical mastery (similarly, the involved resolution mechanics in some of D&D's older editions did it no favors, either).
JonWake wrote:
h347h50 wrote:
I miss the days when Oberroni and Stormwind ruled.
I was part of the group initially in 4th that complained about the poorly scaling attack bonuses (fixed in PHB2) and monster math (fixed in MM3 and on). I, like Polaris, remember being told that it wasn't a problem in play, which is interesting because it implied that I didn't actually play it to see the problem (one of the first games my group played was a level 21 descent into Hell). I was told that the poorly scaling attack bonuses were to make up for the bonus damage players got from their encounters/dailies, and to counter-balance the bonuses gained from coordination and the Leader role. While I didn't do much talking elsewhere, I distinctly remember this in the initial couple of months.
I also remember having the last laugh when the Expertise feats showed up (which many of the "true roleplayers" then derided as unnecessary feats).
As for the topic at hand, it's an interesting concept, that the difference between 3E and 4E groups is how much fun you have with fiddling with the rules outside of the game. I'm not sure I 100% agree with it; I'm a big 4E fan and I fiddled a lot, but I did fiddle more during the age of 3E. 4E was difficult to tinker with; to make a class, one had to create (or at least pick) dozens of powers, but people did it.
As for the more vague side discussion about more balanced games being less fun, I'm often awed at the common refrain I see where people think just because perfection is impossible means it shouldn't be strived for. There is a thing called "perfect enough", but that's different for everyone. I prefer a system that doesn't require DM system mastery, because even DMs have to start somewhere and I want a group of 5 new players to be able to pick one of them to be a DM and not have the game result in no fun (I've experienced both; my first 3E games were fun with new players and a new DM; my first L5R game and Star Wars d20 were not fun with new players and a new DM).
akaddk wrote:
CVB wrote:
CVB wrote:
Cennedi wrote:
CVB wrote:
CVB wrote:
Okay I am going to describe my own playstyle OP and you tell me which side I'm on....
1. I like a modest number of choices in character design and advancement. 5e is about right. 3e/PF is too much.
2. I do not min/max. I do make the best choices I can within the limits of my character concept.
3. I care a lot about immersion. I want my mechanics to have Narrative Mechanical Unity. That means I hate dissociative mechanics. I hate DoaM.
4. I want a traditional D&D healing system with maybe a slight nod to 4e. Just because thats what I like.
I love to discuss the theory of roleplaying. I believe models can help us to understand a lot of things. So I support people's efforts to classify gamer tastes in the quest to provide what those gamers want.
I mostly loved D&D all the way through to 4e. I did looking back think 3e was too much of a good thing. I hated 4e. I like 5e overall but because of the healing and some of the mechanics it's not perfect by a mile.
So given all of that.... where do I stand on the theorycrafting debate?
I'd like for the OP to answer specifically but of course others are welcome to chime in as well.
Xeviat-DM wrote:
JonWake wrote:
I often have more fun theorycrafting about games then i do playing them.
I like math.
Gunthar wrote:
Gunthar wrote:
I'd even go so far as to say that any game that could run itself or be ran by a computer is a game that I am 100% sure I would never ever want to play. I'd just play a computer game instead. All D&D brings to the table as a game is player improvisation and DM adjudication. Without heavy doses of both, why not just play a computer game?
Emerikol. wrote:
Gunthar wrote:
Gunthar wrote:
mellored wrote:
JonWake wrote:
JonWake wrote:
Theorycrafting is an important part of DESIGNING game at the very least. A lack of good theorycrafting when designing a game just results in the game being a complete mess(see the trainwreck that 3e was that ended up needing an entire edition reboot to fix, whihc still didn't even accomplish that).
Rastapopoulos wrote:
Cennedi wrote:
Cennedi wrote:
Rastapopoulos wrote:
Gunthar wrote:
4e did nothing to stop DM Fiat though. The biggest thing 4e did was give players options that didn't depend on the DM being ina good mood and only making you roll 2 skill checks at a penalty instead of 4.
Gunthar wrote:
EnglishLanguage wrote:
I'm still waiting on the OP to answer me.
I think most of us are talking past each other because of a million different viewpoints on what theorycrafting means. I admit to being confused on the issue.
If it means applying knowledge of playstyles to game design then I'm for it.
If it means min maxing then I'm in favor of it in moderation.
But what does it mean?
Cennedi wrote:
EnglishLanguage wrote:
akaddk wrote:
CVB wrote:
akaddk wrote:
powerroleplayer wrote:
mellored wrote:
EnglishLanguage wrote:
Cennedi wrote:
Zappy wrote:
Azzy1974 wrote:
ankiyavon wrote:
Cennedi wrote:
Cennedi wrote:
RustedKitsune wrote:
Theorycrafting is something some people like to do. There are folks that just find the highest level of satisfaction in crunching the data and getting results. It's in their blood. They are mathemeticians and scientists at heart. I understand that does no appeal to all of us, including myself, but there are a few who find real pleasure in it.
So in short, people are going to theorycraft because it's what they like to do. There's no reason they should stop.
Edit: Now them being loud and pushy about it is another matter. They should still be decent human beings.
Cennedi wrote:
akaddk wrote:
Emerikol. wrote:
Cennedi wrote:
Azzy1974 wrote: