The most influential ttrpg lesson I learned was in 2010 when World of Warcraft overhauled it’s talent trees. People (incl. me) HATED it b/c it “removed” tools we used to optimize our characters like “+1 to Dodge” and replaced talents w/ weird stuff like “you can Blink twice”. 1/8

The lead dev was vocal on forums & twitter about game design & I remember seeing his response & rationale for the changes:
Anything players overwhelmingly picked from the old trees they just, gave you. It wasn’t “fun” to pick the +1 Dodge, you did it cuz you felt you had to. 2/8

The fun was in picking ways to alter your play style or add weird perks. The fun wasn’t “you’re better at doing [core gameplay]” it was “here’s a way to shake [core gameplay] up”. 3/8

It’s been ten years since the talent tree overhaul and I still think about that epiphany, sitting on my bed going “wait shit he’s right” reading his posts. 4/8

And I think that’s 100% in line w/ my TTRPG tastes/design. The character build options to give +1Str, or add numbers or w/e have never appealed to me. I don’t like the math being in my hands b/c choosing “you’re better at doing [mechanic]” options isn’t fun. 5/8

I lose my shit, however, at options for “you just DO this thing” or “you do [mechanic] WEIRD now” because it’s a way to shake things up in a fundamentally different way than “you receive a +1 dodge bonus to AC”. 6/8

I get that numerical mechanic adjustments are part of how the system of the game informs the results of your actions, yes, but that’s boring. Bake that into the game, don’t expect me to choose it. 7/8

Anyway, I’ll probably keep thinking about this forever if given the chance so I’ll close this thread out by saying buy my games they’re full of “you just DO this now/you do this WEIRD now” stuff: http://RiverhouseGames.itch.io  8/8