Atlatl Jones
Explorer
It's occurred to me that the design processes for each of the past couple editions have had different basic goals, leading to different ways of going about things.
From 2e to 3e, the goal was to rationalize and standardize the D&D game. 2e was a jumbled mishmash of independent subsystems that all worked in different ways. 3e was designed to bring them all together into a coherent, logical whole. The d20 system was born, monsters worked the same way as characters, and detailed rules were created so DMs no longer needed to make up stuff on the fly to get around vague or absent rules.
One side effect of this was that the designers created a game that was a bit too complicatd, and didn't yet fully understand the emergent properties of what they had created, so there were balance problems.
From 3.0 to 3.5, the goal was to make the D&D game more balanced. Broken spells were fixed (mostly), classes were rebalanced (mostly), and new options were created to patch the flaws of character design, like multiclass spellcasters. But aside from tweaking for balance, the core of the game was fundamentally the same.
From 3e to 4e, the goal seems to be to make the D&D game more fun to actually play, in practice. The designers understand now not only what isn't balanced, but what parts of the game make it less fun. They also understand when the "rationalized" parts created in 3.0 hurt the game, like CR and EL calculation, and mathematical item creation guidelines.
More attention has been paid to how the game plays, how DMs and players actually use it.
The overall goal is to improve the D&D gaming experience, from preparation to play. The previous editions were obviously also interested in how the game played, but didn't address it directly. Instead, they looked at it through the proxies of "coherent, logical system" and "game balance."
From 2e to 3e, the goal was to rationalize and standardize the D&D game. 2e was a jumbled mishmash of independent subsystems that all worked in different ways. 3e was designed to bring them all together into a coherent, logical whole. The d20 system was born, monsters worked the same way as characters, and detailed rules were created so DMs no longer needed to make up stuff on the fly to get around vague or absent rules.
One side effect of this was that the designers created a game that was a bit too complicatd, and didn't yet fully understand the emergent properties of what they had created, so there were balance problems.
From 3.0 to 3.5, the goal was to make the D&D game more balanced. Broken spells were fixed (mostly), classes were rebalanced (mostly), and new options were created to patch the flaws of character design, like multiclass spellcasters. But aside from tweaking for balance, the core of the game was fundamentally the same.
From 3e to 4e, the goal seems to be to make the D&D game more fun to actually play, in practice. The designers understand now not only what isn't balanced, but what parts of the game make it less fun. They also understand when the "rationalized" parts created in 3.0 hurt the game, like CR and EL calculation, and mathematical item creation guidelines.
More attention has been paid to how the game plays, how DMs and players actually use it.
The overall goal is to improve the D&D gaming experience, from preparation to play. The previous editions were obviously also interested in how the game played, but didn't address it directly. Instead, they looked at it through the proxies of "coherent, logical system" and "game balance."
