Balance - Is it necessary?

One of the most common criticisms leveled against D&D 3.5, both by 4e cultists and by those who folow a clever exploitation of a loophole in a license agreement, is that it was "unbalanced". I once posted on the Wizards forums that balance was irrelevant to the enjoyment of role-playing game, and I felt a lot of anger, from many posters who claimed that balance was essential and that the over-powered cleric class in 3.5 had ruined gaming for them, so from now on they would be sticking to WOW.

I am talking about balance in that specific form ie. the balance that ensures that no one class (if you are using a system that has classes) is stronger than the others. It seems that the makers of 4e were very much alive to the complaints because they changed the game so that all the character classes used the same mechanics to affect the game world in ways that had different flavours. I imagine this makes it easier for the game's designers to regulate the balance between different classes. Of course this sparked howls of complaint from the legion of newly proclaimed OD&Ders, and from those who follow a clever exploitation of a loophole in a license agreement. The classes were all the same, they bellowed. "We want them all to play differently".

It seems to me that the problem is looking for balance in the first place, or more accurately, the problem is defining balance in such a narrow way. To my mind a game is balanced if all the players around the table have the same amount of fun. With the obvious proviso that fun is directly proportional to creative input by the players themselves.

The need for balance, in the narrow sense complained of, is really sparked by a sense of competition between the players. It is no  surprise that most of the complaints I notice online seem to come from younger gamers, who, it must be said, have a different view of the hobby to the crusty old bearded ones. I must say I am with the old farts on this one. RPGs are fun because they can provide new and refreshingly different experiences each time you play. If you are going to use classes in a system and not leave distinguishing the characters up to the players, then those classes need to be as different as possible, including their "look and feel" and the way they play, both imaginatively and mechanically.

Balance in a game is not achieved by leveling them all out.

RPGs Cant stand alone

Here's my view: No role-playing game can exist (for any meaningful length of time) without providing its audience with a series of short-cuts (a secret passage if you will) into an underlying literary or mythological source.

Fantasy literature is very popular. It has increased in popularity steadily since the 1920's. So has its volume. There may be many reasons for its appeal. There certainly are many theories. But that is a topic for another day. For present purposes accept what I say: "People like reading fantasy and find it very absorbing."

A role-playing game, in any form, combines (in proportions which vary from game to game) two elements: An avenue of intimate access to the mythological source (more intimate than would be the case simply reading a novel), and a game that allows friends to have fun around a table and measure whether they are doing well or badly at the game.

When Gygax and Arneson started conceptualising D&D they were already gamers in the second sense as were many others who contributed to the earliest rpgs. Their genius was conceving the channels between game and fantasy literature and providing a mechanism that captured some of the more popular elements of the fantasy mythology and bringing them into living rooms all over the world. When they began playing the game and word started to spread, what fanned the flames was the love that the potential audience had for the fantasy genre. I believe that if G&A had been hard sci-fi fans or detective novel fanboys, we would have no RPGs and I would not be writing this. Sure, certain popular culture phenomena have a wide enough appeal to sustain a game for a time, like Star Wars or Coen Brothers films, but for how long?

Now for the next step in my tortured logic. For so long as the mythological base remains popular the success of a specific role-playing game will be determined by its ability to give its players a level of access to that mythology which is as unfettered as possible. When role-playing games start to ignore the mythological layer on which they teeter and to see themselves as the mythology itself, they begin to die.

I will try and be less theoretical and apply this to examples in the next post.