Quando pensamos nesta sala, pensamos que os assuntos deveriam de fato interessar aos jogadores. Queriamos algo novo e diferente, também queriamos que as informações fossem úteis e amplamente discutidas. Nosso interesse é transformar aos poucos este fórum em algo de fato bem produtivo.
Para isso precisavamos iniciar bem esta sala, principalmente para mostrar a seriedade de nosso trabalho. Então nosso primeiro entrevistado deveria ser alguém de peso.
Como a entrevista é de fato longa. Vou posta-la em 2 partes.
A próxima parte sera postada na próxima semana.
Por enquanto espero que aproveitem e curtam a primeira parte da entrevista com Guy Fullerton, o homem que esclareceu por muito tempo as principais regras e dúvidas que giravam no mundo de D20 minis.
Segue a entrevista.
Papa: Since you have agreed to the interview, lets do it.
I will ask you some questions, and you may answer all or some of it.
Soon I get your answers I will probably make some question about that same answers. And we will finish the interview in 2 turns, ok?
Guy Fullerton: Yes, that sounds good.
Papa: Also, if you think some of my questions must be made to another person that is not you, simply says so, and we ignore that. And finally, my English is very bad, so if you don´t understand some question, please excuse me.
Thanks, Papa
Guy Fullerton: I have one request: If you are going to translate my answers, can you also print my answers in english?
Papa: No problem about that. My english it´s too bad that you became afraid of a bad translate?
Guy Fullerton: Oh, no. I'm no really worried about that.
I'd like to tell some of the US and Canada players about the web site and show them the interview.
Papa: Ok. Let´s go. Since when you became involved with estrategic games?
Guy Fullerton: I have been playing role playing games and strategy games since about 1981, starting with the D&D Basic Set when I was 10 years old. Through high school and college, I played a wide variety of role playing games and computer games. In my adult years, I've played Chainmail, Star Wars Minis, and 3e D&D. Currently, I only have time for one main game: D&D Minis. But I occasionally find time for casual games like Carcassonne and Puerto Rico.
Papa: How was work in Wiz and why you left?* here they say you left, if not ignored the last part.
Guy Fullerton: Working with the people from Wizards of the Coast was (and still is) an amazing experience. They are very friendly, helpful, and smart, and they care a lot about the games they make. They are gamers just like us.
To be clear, though, I didn't actually work *at* Wizards of the Coast. My Net Rep "jobs" weren't real jobs. My real job is software engineering at Apple Inc. The Net Rep roles for D&D Minis and Star Wars Minis were essentially small side jobs. I didn't get payed in the traditional sense for the Net Rep roles. I have more details about my former Net Rep roles on my Gleemax page in the "Who is this Guy?" blog entry:
http://www.gleemax.com/Comms/Pages/Communities/DisplayProfile.aspx?userid=11104&blogid=2626
It's true that I am no longer the D&D Minis Net Rep, but I am still involved with D&D Minis in several official and non-official ways. I still help write the official clarifications articles for recent D&D Minis sets, and I still write other articles (including Commander's Notebooks) for the WotC D&D Minis web site. I am also the Content Coordinator for the D&D Minis section of the Judge web site: judge.wizards.com. (I wrote almost all of the D&D Minis Rules Advisor test, for example.)
I stopped being the D&D Minis Net Rep because the role became too demanding. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that - with a growing family - my free time got reduced to the point where the Net Rep role became a chore instead of being fun. The Net Rep role is responsible for officially answering questions on the D&D Minis forums, writing the FAQ/Errata/Clarifications document, and keeping track of issues to be dealt with by WotC R&D. That's a *lot* of work, especially right after a new set or map was released; people would ask 20-30 questions per day on the forums, and they would sometimes argue too much. The arguing and occasional rude remarks made the role less fun, too.
Papa: When you changed yourself in the “Miniatures Guru”?
Guy Fullerton: I don't understand this question, sorry.
Papa: heheheh. Sorry about that. I will reformulate the question. When you became an expertise in rules of DD20minis. How did work the process?
Guy Fullerton: Here's the long story:
I joined the WotC forums in 2001, around the time Chainmail came out because I was very excited about that game. I was very active on the Chainmail forums, answering rules questions (unofficially, of course), discussing warbands, strategy, and so on. Occasionally, somebody would ask a question that was impossible to answer, or somebody would find a contradiction in the rules. To get those issues resolved, I started sending emails to the WotC customer service email address (which has been replaced by a web-based mechanism) in hopes that we could get an official response. The WotC customer service people put me in contact with WotC designer Jonathan Tweet in order to get the questions answered and to make sure the issues were fixed in the Chainmail rulebook and FAQ. During this time, I also had a few email and forum discussions with WotC designer Rob Heinsoo and WotC developer Mike Donais, who also worked on Chainmail. Eventually, Chainmail got canceled, but my interactions with the WotC designers and developers showed them that I was pretty good at discussing rules and answering rules questions.
Then in 2003 when D&D Minis was released, I continued being active on the forums, including unofficially answering other players' rules questions. In late 2003, WotC decided to have an official D&D Minis Net Rep, and they asked me if I would be willing to do that job. I said yes, of course! My responsibilities included answering rules questions on the forum and writing the FAQ & Errata. Since then, I've officially answered approximately 10,000 rules questions on the forums.
Every time I answered a question - especially a controversial one - people might scrutinize my answer, ask followup questions, or challenge the ruling. Every time I wrote a FAQ Q&A, people pointed out any details I missed. Some people even enjoyed trying to catch me in a mistake! So I learned quickly that I needed to be very precise, thorough, and clear. I learned to consider all options. I learned that even strange theoretical rules combinations are usually possible in real games. I *had* to know all the rules backwards and forwards, otherwise I couldn't do the job efficiently. And I had to be efficient because I was answering questions in my spare time, often during a free minute or two while I was working at my real job. Answering thousands and thousands of questions gave me a thorough understanding of even the strangest parts of the D&D Minis rule book.
So if you want to be a rules expert, I suggest that you answer a few thousand rules questions, lol
Papa: – More than once your answers about the rules have been contested and even so when the players need a final answer they ask that to you. How did you see that?
Guy Fullerton: Well, when I was the Net Rep, my answers were official. So my answers were right regardless of whether someone wanted to contest them. However, official answers can (and did) change, so feedback sometimes resulted in a changed answer.
Even though I am no longer the Net Rep, some people still ask for my opinion about rules questions because I have a very good technical understanding of the rules. From time to time, I still provide answers on the forums, though they aren't official anymore.
Papa: I think one of the greatest challeges in the rules, it´s the mount and rider rules. I see in the wizard´s forum a lot of people who are looking for answers, and here in Brazil happen the same. And this time,Guy´s answers are not oficial ones, so a lot of trouble has arise at the time. Did you think Wiz have precipite in print so simple rules, when the game is clearly one of the most complex, especialy if we consider the great number of pieces and habilities in game?
Guy Fullerton: I'll respond two different ways:
1) I don't have any proof of this, but I believe it's very hard for WotC to justify putting lots of effort into the skirmish game. Most people buy D&D Minis for the role playing game, not for skirmish, and the role playing game is really the main focus of the D&D team at WotC. As a result, I don't think the WotC designers and developers get to put as much time and effort into the skirmish game as they'd like to. And since D&D Minis isn't really a big-cash-prize oriented game (at least compared to Magic, Dreamblade, and other games), it doesn't make sense for WotC to invest tons of effort into the skirmish game; they are going to sell lots of D&D Minis regardless of whether the skirmish players occasionally get frustrated with the rules.
On top of that, there are thousands of active skirmish players who play a lot more games than the WotC R&D staff will ever be able to play.
So the skirmish community will always be better at finding rules problems (and understanding the metagame) than a small WotC R&D team. WotC could spend 10x as much effort working on the skirmish rules, and the skirmish community would *still* find rules problems that WotC had not noticed.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not going to make any excuses for WotC about the quality of the original mount rules. Even a little bit of play testing (by people who didn't write the rules) would have revealed some of the obvious problems. Also, the lack of wording consistency between the booster insert and the rulebook was silly. The mount rules should have been better, and the final mount rules shouldn't have taken so long to get published. (But I also understand that 4th Edition D&D is a much higher priority for them right now, so I can understand why they might not have had a chance to deal with the mount rules promptly.)
2) I believe it's possible for a complex collectable game to be made from very simple rules. Dreamblade is a great example of that. The Dreamblade rules are really quite simple and short, and Dreamblade offered far fewer minis than D&D Minis did, yet Dreamblade offered better strategic depth, in my opinion. So I believe the mount rules *could* have been very simple, and still have been fun and interesting. I hope that the upcoming 2008 rules for D&D Minis will help prove that simpler rules can still produce a great game.
Papa: The game has more than ten collection, with hundred of pieces, even so, only a small part of it are really taken to the game. You think that´s intentional?
Guy Fullerton: A lot more minis get played than you think. Just because people on the forums only talk about a small number of minis *doesn't* mean other minis aren't played. People (myself included) don't always play "tier-1" minis every game. I play "casual" warbands frequently, as do many other players. Don't forget that lots of "bad" minis get played in sealed & draft events, too.
But if you are talking about top-level competitive constructed play, not all minis are good, and that's okay. Top-level competitive constructed play is all about identifying the best of the best, so players will gravitate to (and talk about) the strongest warbands and minis.
There is also strong evidence that the community simply overlooks some of minis that are "tier-1". A great example is Scott Evans's 2007 Constructed Championship warband that included a Warpriest of Vandria and four Xen'drik Champions. He finished in the top 8 even though most people thought the Warpriest of Vandria and Xen'drik Champions weren't "tier-1." Another example is 2004 Constructed Champion Brian Mackey's discovery of the Frenzied Berserker + Inspiring Marshal combo. Until he revealed that warband on the forums well into the Aberrations era, people incorrectly assumed the Frenzied Berserker was not "tier-1". So there are probably more great minis out there waiting to be discovered.
Papa: Well, I completly agree with that. I´m like to play with diferent kind of wbs, and sometimes i´m called crazy because of this. But one great deed i´m made it´s became a champion of souths brazilian championship and take 13 place in national brazilian championship with an wb with 3 tiefling warlocks, who was the real treat of my warband, even with LblackD and WWL. But true must be said: I´m defeated most of the time.
But in the game terms we have an aditional element who has an great importance. Maps. Thieve´s quarter and dragondown grotto, was the best example of the importance of maps in play. So, can we say that a map can transform minis in tier-1 warband?
Guy Fullerton: I think the opposite is true: The maps don't turn tier-2 minis into tier-1 warbands. The maps turn tier-1 minis into tier-2 warbands.
Na próxima semana a parte final da entrevista, onde Guy fala sobre a vinda do 2.0 e eu questiono a frustração que aconteceu entre jogadores e a Wizards no período da nova coleção.
Abraços, e até lá!
Papa[/b]
Qui Jan 24, 2008 1:33 pm