As a game designer, the more tools you give to the players, the more options you provide, the more combinations and sequences you allow, the more you’re chipping away at your game’s human experience. The more things players need to compute, manage, or plan, the less they really interact with each other socially.
In chess, the players usually don’t talk at all — there are way too many scenarios and moves to consider. In MTG, some players talk, but not that much — there’s a lot to keep track of. In Gloomhaven, since it’s collaborative, the players do interact — but there are long periods of silence at the table when each one is busy considering which initiative to pick, which action combo to select, depending on which room they’re in and which monsters they’re facing.
I played enough Gloomhaven to retire my Brute and start playing a Beast Tyrant, but I’m convinced my Brute could have been much more effective in combat. Hardcore players would have looked at my deck and character sheet, and said, “This sucks. You need this perk, and you need to add two of those things in your attack deck, and you need to pick that third level action card and always couple it with that fourth level card… and then you’re gonna kick some serious butt.”
Dicebreaker have a nice video on YouTube in which they explain why they loved Old School Essentials. No skills! No feats! Just say what your character is attempting to do, and roll the dice! They’re absolutely right. It’s liberating. 5e can be so complex sometimes, it’s almost Gloomhaven — the DM rolls dice for the monsters, and nothing else. Players already have all the information, all the DCs they need, in their feats’ descriptions. The DM is only there to witness.
If there is a way — any way — to do something in a game, somebody’s gonna find it. I mean, these guys are relentless. You have to admire that.
If there is a way to finish Scenario number 15 in just 8 rounds in Gloomhaven, somebody’s gonna do it.
If there is a way to build an invincible wizard in D&D, somebody’s gonna do it—
Look at good old Mille Bornes. There isn’t an infinity of choices there: you can only ever have 6 cards in your hand; you want to hold on to any Remedy Cards you happen to draw — spare tire, gasoline, repairs — but also want to keep a few Hazard Cards up your sleeve (so to speak) to be able to slap them on other players when they make too much headway. And you want the biggest Distance Cards, of course.
“Another 100 miles? Here’s a Speed Limit for you. Boom!”
“You bastard. I’ve got an Accident right here with your name on it.”
“Slap it on Julie: she’s at 525 miles already!”
“She’s got the damn Safety.”
“I hate you!”
I said it before and I’ll say it again: in D&D and in any other tabletop role-playing game, the most important part of your build is you. Not which feats or Archetype or subclass you pick. You. Your personality. Your attitude. Your sense of humor. Your ability to gracefully accept failure, and perhaps even overplay it a little, just to make everything more dramatic.
Viari was a memorable character, not because of Dual Wield Mastery, not because of Supreme Sneak, but because of the player himself: Patrick Rothfuss.
Optimization is a marketing gimmick. There are more players than there are DMs — so why not give more agency to the players? why not sell more books directly to the players?
Wizards of the Coast may be putting some DMs in a tight spot by doing that. Indeed, if something is in this or that book, why wouldn’t you accept it at your table? It’s like if an actor showed up on a movie set and said to the director, “I can jump 200 feet. I can do it once in the film.” But the shoot is Schindler’s List, and there is no 200-foot jump anywhere in the script…
I’m still DMing in an old-fashioned way. I’m the one who spends 300 hours building terrain and painting minis, so I get to decide.
Want an example? Here’s one: invisibility no longer exists in my game, except for some very specific monsters. The spell, invisibility, doesn’t exist, and Potions of Invisibility are merely a legend.
Why? Here’s why.
Between 2007 and 2013, I ran a campaign based on the HBO’s Carnivàle, and the party’s wizard had the ability to make himself and up to 3 of his friends invisible. As soon as a remote possibility of danger arose, that’s the first thing they always did. “Okay — we’re all invisible.”
After three or four years of that, I decided to give them a taste of their own medicine; the coven of witches knew they were coming, and all 12 witches were invisible, too. They had left all the doors ajar, just not enough for anyone to be able to slip through: whenever a door moved, a witch targeted that area with attack spells.
But it proved to be one of the most boring fight scenes I ever ran in my entire life.
A month later, a curse deprived the wizard of his mass invisibility spell. Good riddance.
When this whole “Carnivàle” campaign ended, I started a new miniatures campaign — something I hadn’t done since 1987. And I thought: if I start buying and painting minis again, I don’t want invisible characters or monsters. Your miniature is here but this monster can’t see you but you can see the monster but not this other monster there which is invisible too but I’m still putting the miniature on the table because I worked 9 hours on it…
My point is, if you don’t want to suffer through something tedious and painful — don’t. Aren’t you the one who invests most of your time in this thing? You also deserve to have fun; you’re not there just to roll dice for the monsters.
Invisibility is a pain in your ass? No more invisibility!
Invincible Tortle wizards cramp your style? No Torles in your world!
The Players Handbook / Dungeon Masters Guide divide was bad for business, because players didn’t buy the DMG. In 1985 when Unearthed Arcana hit the shelves, both players and Dungeon Masters snatched it — a win for TSR.
Now, every new sourcebook is marketed towards players and DMs. Always.
But DMs still have the last say.
I can imagine a new D&D player who buys three different books at $30 a pop, reads them all, studies them, places sticky notes throughout, and then builds the most awesome, the most perfectly optimized character… and when they find that elusive group to play with, the DM says, “This race doesn’t exist in my world, neither does that Archetype—”
What a bummer for new players, right? They bought three books, studied them thoroughly, and for what?
Perhaps we’re seeing the beginning of a D&D schism: WotC vs individual Dungeon Masters. Maybe one day individual DMs are gonna be the game’s biggest problem.
In MMORPGs, that split does not exist, because the Dungeon Master is the video game company itself — a bunch of servers stacked in a datacenter somewhere. If the company “publishes” a new race, a new feat, it’s automatically approved, and allowed everywhere in the game; there are no fussy individual Dungeon Masters to say, “Actually, my world doesn’t have that.”
Unless you are an Adventurers League DM, you really don’t have to allow anything you don’t want at your table. Hell, I got rid of invisibility, and no longer allow multiclassing, either, because switching careers all the time is Warhammer, not D&D — you were a pedlar, then a bodyguard, then a bounty hunter, then a slaver, then a mercenary captain, then a judicial champion, and finally, a witch-hunter? What the bejesus is going on? Who does that?
So — is there a way to reconcile the two sides?
In my opinion, those two sides can be mutually exclusive in a good way.
My nephew plays in 4 or 5 different games of Minecraft. One game is just for building castles and stuff all by himself. Another game is to interact with his friends and have a good time. Another one is to get bullied by powerful (i.e. adult) players wielding “hacked” superweapons. Et cetera.
Same goes for D&D. If you have fun building optimized / invincible characters, have at it, go crazy, build 10 of them if you want. That’s an entire long weekend of pure fun, all by yourself.
But then, come game day, you can play that Miniature Giant Space Hamster with 1 Hit Point, and if you are a really great player, the Space Hamster’s gonna steal the show, and be way more memorable than any dragon tamer pirate ranger.
The short answer is: You Can Do Both.
The long answer is: sooner or later, you’ll have to be able to do both.
You claim to be a veteran tabletop role-player, don’t you? That’s great. But you have to be able to play puny roles, too.
In Pendragon, I once played another player’s squire. It was my choice. I wasn’t forced to do it. Some of the other guys at the table made fun of me, because we were young, and full of testosterone — but I don’t regret playing this character: it was an awesome, formative experience.
In Nephilim, I once played an entire game as a rat. My human host had died in combat, and we were right in the middle of the desert, with no other humans to possess. So, instead of losing lots and lots of precious Vitae, I reincarnated into a nearby rat — and played the rest ot the adventure like that. Another player (whose host had survived the desert encounter) carried me in his backpack. Later in that adventure, I had to fight a ferret. A normal ferret. And it was hard. I still remember that combat. When my rat finally killed the ferret, it was more satisfying than cutting down a goddamn Mind Flayer!
In Star Wars, I once played a protocol droid. No combat skills. Just talk. So, I talked a lot.
In Bloodlust, I once played a magical scimitar. My human wielder was played by another guy, and I constantly had to deal with him and try to make him do what I wanted, and go where I wanted to go. Like Elric with his evil, sentient sword.
Optimize all you want, build fine-tuned characters, but if you aspire to become a well-rounded tabletop role-player, one day or another you’re gonna have to play somebody else’s henchman — or scimitar — or Space Hamster — or droid. You have no choice; it’s like medicine; you’ll have to perform every procedure at least once, or they won’t give you a degree. Yes, that includes at least one rectal exam⸻
Again — and in conclusion — why not do both?
Things are not gonna change. We get a new sourcebook every 4 months. We’ve got more numbers to crunch, and so we crunch more numbers: we keep trying to emulate what AIs do, instead of getting better at what humans do, and optimizing that.