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D&D Historian Ben Riggs on TSR's Salaries in the 1990s
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8507355" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>I don't think it's really the latter in all cases because what you're describing is not uncommon in game design generally, and the "singular vision" thing is largely a myth outside of stuff which genuinely is small press/indie with a single author. If you look at videogames this is particularly obvious (even smaller ones but which aren't just one person) - a lot of the time people attribute what's great about a game to a single individual - indeed they're almost desperate to do so - but in reality, it tends to be at least several people who are responsible for what is actually good about it, and AAA games which are truly great tend to have several people doing a remarkable job at the very least. </p><p></p><p>Mass Effect would be a good example of this - fans have been desperate to locate the "genius" behind what made ME great, and whilst a lot of people tried to pick Drew Karpyshyn, his independent work rather casts doubt on that, and it seems more like at the very least you have Casey Hudson who originated the entire concept, Preston Watamaniuk who was lead designer on all three games, Wall and Hulick who did the music, a guy whose name is escaping me who single-handedly wrote most of the Codex entries and also acted as the internal-realism guy (people seem to think Karypshyn did this, he did not), and Christina Norman, who changed the combat gameplay and made it actually-good (ME:LE basically backported a bunch of her stuff to ME1 I note). Obviously a videogame is a lot larger, but you'd definitely expect back and forth on design - and for good gameplay, that's actually helpful.</p><p></p><p>However I totally agree re: you parenthetical point. I don't think it's a problem to go back-and-forth and so on, some of the best games ever designed were made that way, and the vibe of 5E <em>isn't</em> one of committee-compromise (imho), but you <em>need</em> to come to the playtesting with a solid build of the game.</p><p></p><p>And 5E did not.</p><p></p><p>I think this partly has to be management/leadership issue at WotC, perhaps in part because MtG works so differently, given it's happened two, arguably three times now and also I would argue happened with non-D&D RPGs, like the SW ones, so you could increase that number further - d20 Modern was desperately underbaked too, even if it never got fixed. So maybe WotC are just starting design on stuff too late, and or pushing it out too early? Maybe they always have and always will?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 8507355, member: 18"] I don't think it's really the latter in all cases because what you're describing is not uncommon in game design generally, and the "singular vision" thing is largely a myth outside of stuff which genuinely is small press/indie with a single author. If you look at videogames this is particularly obvious (even smaller ones but which aren't just one person) - a lot of the time people attribute what's great about a game to a single individual - indeed they're almost desperate to do so - but in reality, it tends to be at least several people who are responsible for what is actually good about it, and AAA games which are truly great tend to have several people doing a remarkable job at the very least. Mass Effect would be a good example of this - fans have been desperate to locate the "genius" behind what made ME great, and whilst a lot of people tried to pick Drew Karpyshyn, his independent work rather casts doubt on that, and it seems more like at the very least you have Casey Hudson who originated the entire concept, Preston Watamaniuk who was lead designer on all three games, Wall and Hulick who did the music, a guy whose name is escaping me who single-handedly wrote most of the Codex entries and also acted as the internal-realism guy (people seem to think Karypshyn did this, he did not), and Christina Norman, who changed the combat gameplay and made it actually-good (ME:LE basically backported a bunch of her stuff to ME1 I note). Obviously a videogame is a lot larger, but you'd definitely expect back and forth on design - and for good gameplay, that's actually helpful. However I totally agree re: you parenthetical point. I don't think it's a problem to go back-and-forth and so on, some of the best games ever designed were made that way, and the vibe of 5E [I]isn't[/I] one of committee-compromise (imho), but you [I]need[/I] to come to the playtesting with a solid build of the game. And 5E did not. I think this partly has to be management/leadership issue at WotC, perhaps in part because MtG works so differently, given it's happened two, arguably three times now and also I would argue happened with non-D&D RPGs, like the SW ones, so you could increase that number further - d20 Modern was desperately underbaked too, even if it never got fixed. So maybe WotC are just starting design on stuff too late, and or pushing it out too early? Maybe they always have and always will? [/QUOTE]
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