I personally
like big changes in editions.
What's the point, otherwise?
I'm disappointed when I pick up the BRAND NEW EDITION of an older game, read through it, and see that it's practically unchanged from the version previous to it.
I don't like thinking,
"Wow, you could have just stuck two pages of errata in the back of the prior edition's rulebook, and left the rest alone, and you'd have this."
No matter how much you change a game, it's not like the old versions, the old physical books that people already own, suddenly disappear and can no longer be used to play. So changing a lot is good, I think. If you hate the changes, you can always stick with the previous edition.
Games like
Warhammer,
Champions, and
Earthdawn come to mind. The "second edition" of those games actually requires some serious
effort to even FIND any substantive changes in the new books. Shuffling around the contents, changing a bit of formatting, adding some flavor text here and taking away some there, clarifying two or three confusing rules slightly, and slapping a new cover on it doesn't make a new "edition" to me.
(Although I guess, in all fairness, that's more than enough to qualify a book as a new edition in most other fields of publishing, and no one bats an eye. I just expect
game systems to evolve more, I suppose.)
I love the (ostensible)
4E concept of,
"What if we boiled this game down to its most basic, fundamental concepts, the things which we consider essential to the core identity of the game, and then entirely re-envisioned a new game based on those, but created from our mindset of TODAY?" rather than the
"Let's just take what we already have, which was invented 10-20+ years ago, and throw a new coat of paint on it" idea.
I personally like
The Dark Knight a lot better than I'd like it if they'd just kept making Batman movies based on the old Adam West TV show, with new scripts and an occasional change in a cast member when necessary, but the same old theme and creative vision.
The artistic sensibilities of the population
change, dramatically, from generation to generation. If a "new edition" of a creative, interactive form of entertainment like an RPG isn't following along, at least a bit, with those changes, then it just feels stale to me. That's what I meant about not liking the "feel" of the "classics".
It's not that those are bad games, AT ALL. They're amazing games, wonderful games, games which at the time they were invented were incredibly creative and interesting. They were superb for their time, and as a foundation upon which all further development in the field has come, they should be revered. I couldn't get behind anyone who said,
"Lulz, 1st Ed. AD&D sucks, dude. It's totally crappy compared to what we have now. Why would anyone ever like that game?" But at the same time, I'd be pretty disinterested if the newest edition was still extremely similar to Mr. Gygax's old work.
The Wright Brothers were brilliant, and we always owe them the respect and homage they deserve. But I'm going to keep flying in
Boeing 747's or whatever the modern aeronautical engineers build next year, not in a replica of the first Kitty Hawk plane.
Not that these aren't good games. They are! Even minor improvements on a game which was already awesome still equals a great game. When I read the
Earthdawn or
Warhammer Fantasy second edition books, I admit that I'm a bit let down that they're not MORE radically altered from the originals, but they're still VERY GOOD GAMES. I'd still love to play them.
I just want to see more really NEW ideas for game system design. Things that make me think,
"Wow, I've been reading gaming books for 20+ years, and I've never seen a rules mechanic or setting idea like that before. That's REALLY creative!"
I guess I just like to see old baggage discarded. All of these games, including
4E D&D, seem to carry over old concepts which never really worked very well, just because that's "part of the game" or for the sake of tradition, or simply because the designers haven't thought of anything better (or perhaps anything better which they aren't SURE won't screw up other parts of the game).
Like
Exalted, say. I start reading the
Exalted stuff, and I think,
"There are some COOL ideas here! This is a really neat idea for a game." But then, it's still tied to a mostly-unchanged version of the old Storyteller system, which was pretty darn mediocre even when it was new. New wine in old wineskins is wasted.
Pathfinder is another example. The folks at Paizo are truly
exceptional game creators. They really have some outstanding, world-class talent over there. I love their products, their innovative ideas for making the metagame more engaging and easy to deal with, their writing style, their art style, and the sheer amount of content they put out in such a short period of time. They've got crazy potential as a game company.
But I haven't bought a single RPG product from them, outside of the system-neutral
Game Mastery line (which is really, really cool), and I doubt that I will anytime soon. Because I want them to make their
own game, not just throw some pretty Paizo paint all over
3rd Edition D&D and CALL it a new game.
Pathfinder could be a radically phenomenal game line, if it wasn't still stuck on the idea that being a
3E-clone was the way forward.
Paizo has
plenty of independent cred now, on their own, without needing to ride the piggyback of
WotC's game anymore. If they built their own new game from scratch, I'll bet it would be incredibly cool and would sell like hotcakes. But a lot of people still love the
D20/OGL thing, so more power to them, I suppose.
Don't get me wrong . . . I thought
3rd Edition (and
3.5 when it came out, too) was basically
God's Gift to Gamers at the time. I was madly in love the first time I read the
D20 system and its major revision(s). Compared to what came before, the sheer elegance of the game was beautiful. The
OGL was an incredible boon to gamers, as well, as the amount of top-notch creative content that was able to be published, all more or less compatible to a core system, was (and still is) a really revolutionary and awesome thing.
But I think it's jumped the shark, frankly. I think its flaws are glaring, and no one's going to be able to patch over them, not even Monte Cook, and not even Paizo. And while I'm pretty darn pleased with
4E, for the most part, it still doesn't leave enough baggage behind, in my opinion. (Actually, I
adore 4E, I'm really into it, but I still thirst for
more innovation.) I have finally come to the conclusion, I think, that the inherent limitation of having to
be D&D is going to prevent
D&D itself from ever taking the kind of leap needed to push forward into truly next-gen RPG design.
I see Paizo and its contemporary peers as our best hope, but to me, they're wasting their time with this
OGL/3.5-clinging. Obviously, it's working for them, and tons of players love it, so perhaps my perspective is a poor one. But if people
like the folks at
Paizo, or
Malhavoc, or
Green Ronin, or
Goodman, or the recently-liberated Mr. Tweet and Mr. Noonan, were to really sit down to tackle the task of making an
entirely new kind of roleplaying game, learning from all of the mistakes of what's been done before, but not trying to carry forward any old vestiges of the systems we've grown up on, not even trying to
pay lip service to the idea . . . I think
that would be a hobby-shaking game.
I think that if some of the big time names in the industry sat down and asked, "
With our previous work, how much of what we implemented was just done because that's pretty much the way it had always been done, or because our bosses told us we couldn't change it, and how much of it was because that was honestly the BEST idea we could possibly come up with, independent of previous influences?" and then set about building a new model of gaming which was not tied to any of the classic RPG systems at all, then we'd see some incredible stuff.
I think that a lot of the flaws in the games that the best designers we have now originally wrote are largely there because they were hold-overs from prior ideas, which the more recent game creators haven't been able (due to pressure from their corporate overlords, or lack of development time, or whatever) to really discard and replace with original concepts.
I think that I can say that Monte Cook and Jonathan Tweet and the others like them are the best and the brightest, and have the greatest potential to create the
Next Best Thing in gaming, even while criticizing highly the very systems that they were largely instrumental in building. Because I think that many of the broken bits in those games were simply artifacts of less informed or out-dated designs, and not really the fault of the innovative people whose names are on the more modern books.
All technology improves with successive iterations, and roleplaying games are a technology, too. I want to see some games in which there's no evidence that parts of the system were chopped together using a bronze adze, just because that's the best tool that Grandpa had available.
When are we going to see a true FIRST EDITION of something that impacts the gaming community as much as
Dungeons and Dragons did back in the day? Many of the people writing gaming books today are amazingly talented, creative, and brilliant. When are we going to see THEIR true brainchild, rather than merely an endless succession of sequels and revisions and reskins and adaptations and incrementally-increasing version numbers?
I am the consumer, and THIS is what I want. There are a hell of a lot of full, flowing wallets behind me, too. Take heed, game publishers! We
want to give you our money. But I'm not paying you for
Kitty Hawk Plane, Seventeeth Edition. I can house-rule some broken old game myself. No more new wine in old wineskins!
When I start seeing more and more corporatespeak, directed
at the consumers, from the heads of gaming companies, when the president of
WotC is delivering soulless soundbytes that sound like they came out of
Dilbert strips, and even Bill Slavicsek's column in
Dragon is full of buzzwords and doublespeak, I get a little sick inside. We're
gamers, and just because many of us
are highly educated, business-savvy professionals these days, it doesn't mean we want to be talked to like we're in a shareholder's meeting by the people
who make our games!
I want you to tell me why your game is cool, not why your business model is profitable.
I want to know that those creative minds slaving away at my favorite hobby are doing everything they can to make the
best games possible
for gamers, not just trying to appease the suits who sign their checks, or meet some projected numbers expectations. I don't care if that's even
true or not, really. But you'd better work a little harder at
fooling me, if you want me and the many gamers like me to remain loyal and keep putting our dollars into your company.
I'm going to keep buying from
WotC for now, because they still put out the stuff that, given the options I'm currently aware of, I like the
most. But the day that another game studio comes along and starts producing game materials of equal quality, but higher innovation, my support is going to them, and
quick.
I know a lot of people hate MMO comparisons, and hate Blizzard, and hate
WoW, and I get all of that.
I'm not terribly pleased with any it, myself. But
D&D (and the legion of
D&D-clones) is like
EverQuest, circa 2001-2003 or so. It's a good brand, for now. It's the king of the jungle. It's the default. But wait until the
"World of Warcraft" of tabletop RPG brands comes along. Who is going to
be that "Blizzard"?
The talent exists. The market exists.
But who is doing it? Where can I offer up my gamer's heart, and point my wallet, next?
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