I'm terrible at nesting lots of quotes within a single post, so I'm going to try to answer a variety of comments without quoting. If I mess anything up, well, you can yell at me.
Fusangite: I find your ideas interesting and compelling, and would like to sign up for your newsletter. I really like breaking down player actions into player expectations, and looking at what drives/shapes those expectations. Interesting stuff.
Eyebeams: Two points, and they tie together.
RPGs as broad and flexible, as opposed to narrow and focused.
I think this one is a value judgement, or a dial that a designer can tune to fit his tastes. I happen to like broad, adaptable games. The best Mage game I ever played was one set in the Renaissance with background ripped wholesale from Ars Magica, run years before the Sorcerer's Crusade was released. One of the best D&D adventures I ran used mass combat rules and rules for siege warfare. Another one was almost pure roleplay and tactical planning that didn't involve the rules beyond a few Craft checks.
OTOH, when I think back to the sessions of Feng Shui and Dying Earth that I've played and ran, I'm always struck at the rules we used, and the ones we ignore. In Feng Shui, everyone wants to use the stunt rules to do cool and whacky things. The initiative system, the damage system, even the special kung fu maneuvers, most of these never came up in play. Dying Earth is similar: half-way through the first session, we were using the social interaction rules in every scene, but every other rule in the game had been dropped for a much simpler roll d6s and beat a target number system that I created on the fly.
"Gamers are bad at gaming."
I'd reverse this one: game companies are bad at telling gamers how to use their games, and I think this ties into the broad v. narrow rules debate. When a game tries to do everything, it lacks focus and makes it much harder for players and GMs to figure out what to do with it. A strong, well-supported core story can really help this, but few games clearer and repeatedly communicate their core stories.
Even worse, mainstream games in the 1990s were very, very bad at giving people realistic expectations of what an RPG can be. TSR in particular did a good job of telling people that the D&D they wanted to play was Bad Wrong Fun.
I have in my lap a copy of DMGR 1, the first DM-centric sourcebook for AD&D 2. This book has become an icon of sorts to me. It's the poster child for breeding bad DMs, unhappy players, and frustrated gaming groups. I think that a sizable portion, though not anywhere near a majority, of AD&D players suffered because of this book's unrealistic take on what makes D&D fun. Here's some quotes:
On "hack-and-slash" gaming:
"At first, most players love the thrill of battle. But all fighting eventually degenerates into boredom."
On the "righteous roleplayer" player type:
"This should be the preferred playing style, and is usually incorporated with other styles since it is essential that a fair amount of role-play place in order to create a believable game."
There's a very clear message here, and it's repeated throughout the text: using the rules is bad. Fighting monsters is bad. Spending an hour roleplaying the process of renting a room at an inn is good. Running a game where the PCs are spectators to your grand story is good.
These are obviously, as best, judgement calls that vary from group to group. Yet, they're presented as gospel. You play D&D to adopt a character and roleplay him out, while avoiding the rules and icky combat as much as possible. That not only isn't useful, it sets people up for disappointment. If you read this book back in 1991 and were convinced it was right, you had maybe a 5% chance of finding a group that would actually live up to what you were told is an acceptable gaming experience.
I think that, throughout the 1990s, this was a common mistake in RPG publishing. The industry as a whole was so intent on out-Vampiring Vampire that customers were either given unreasonable expectations of what to expect from a game, or they were told that the style of game they wanted was worthless. No wonder so many people (myself included) stuck with 1e.
Stuff like Robin Laws's work is a good first step, but there's still lots more that needs to be done. Stuff like the Fantastic Locations maps show us that D&D is more fun when battles take place in larger, more open areas with lots of options for movement and tactics. It took the gaming world 5 years to figure that out! That "innovation" has been hiding in the rules for all that time, yet if you look at adventures from WotC and d20 companies, you see room after room drawn in the 20 x 20 foot, 2e, non-tactical style.
All of this ties into why I find parts of Ron's theories interesting and useful, and why the Forge is good. Even if you don't fully understand what GNS is, you can think, "I want my design to emphasize this "gamist" style of play that seems to match what I want to do. How do I communicate that to the end user?"
As an aside, "teaching" players and GMs how to run a good Iron Heroes game played a big part of the design. All of the classes are good at fighting, and all the classes were fighting styles, rather than game roles or setting elements. It's almost impossible to build a PC who is useless in a fight - you have to try rather hard to do so.
This turned off people who didn't want to play a game with lots of crazy battles, but that to me was a good thing. Such people would not have been happy with Iron Heroes! There was no point in trying to sell them on the game.
Fusangite: I find your ideas interesting and compelling, and would like to sign up for your newsletter. I really like breaking down player actions into player expectations, and looking at what drives/shapes those expectations. Interesting stuff.
Eyebeams: Two points, and they tie together.
RPGs as broad and flexible, as opposed to narrow and focused.
I think this one is a value judgement, or a dial that a designer can tune to fit his tastes. I happen to like broad, adaptable games. The best Mage game I ever played was one set in the Renaissance with background ripped wholesale from Ars Magica, run years before the Sorcerer's Crusade was released. One of the best D&D adventures I ran used mass combat rules and rules for siege warfare. Another one was almost pure roleplay and tactical planning that didn't involve the rules beyond a few Craft checks.
OTOH, when I think back to the sessions of Feng Shui and Dying Earth that I've played and ran, I'm always struck at the rules we used, and the ones we ignore. In Feng Shui, everyone wants to use the stunt rules to do cool and whacky things. The initiative system, the damage system, even the special kung fu maneuvers, most of these never came up in play. Dying Earth is similar: half-way through the first session, we were using the social interaction rules in every scene, but every other rule in the game had been dropped for a much simpler roll d6s and beat a target number system that I created on the fly.
"Gamers are bad at gaming."
I'd reverse this one: game companies are bad at telling gamers how to use their games, and I think this ties into the broad v. narrow rules debate. When a game tries to do everything, it lacks focus and makes it much harder for players and GMs to figure out what to do with it. A strong, well-supported core story can really help this, but few games clearer and repeatedly communicate their core stories.
Even worse, mainstream games in the 1990s were very, very bad at giving people realistic expectations of what an RPG can be. TSR in particular did a good job of telling people that the D&D they wanted to play was Bad Wrong Fun.
I have in my lap a copy of DMGR 1, the first DM-centric sourcebook for AD&D 2. This book has become an icon of sorts to me. It's the poster child for breeding bad DMs, unhappy players, and frustrated gaming groups. I think that a sizable portion, though not anywhere near a majority, of AD&D players suffered because of this book's unrealistic take on what makes D&D fun. Here's some quotes:
On "hack-and-slash" gaming:
"At first, most players love the thrill of battle. But all fighting eventually degenerates into boredom."
On the "righteous roleplayer" player type:
"This should be the preferred playing style, and is usually incorporated with other styles since it is essential that a fair amount of role-play place in order to create a believable game."
There's a very clear message here, and it's repeated throughout the text: using the rules is bad. Fighting monsters is bad. Spending an hour roleplaying the process of renting a room at an inn is good. Running a game where the PCs are spectators to your grand story is good.
These are obviously, as best, judgement calls that vary from group to group. Yet, they're presented as gospel. You play D&D to adopt a character and roleplay him out, while avoiding the rules and icky combat as much as possible. That not only isn't useful, it sets people up for disappointment. If you read this book back in 1991 and were convinced it was right, you had maybe a 5% chance of finding a group that would actually live up to what you were told is an acceptable gaming experience.
I think that, throughout the 1990s, this was a common mistake in RPG publishing. The industry as a whole was so intent on out-Vampiring Vampire that customers were either given unreasonable expectations of what to expect from a game, or they were told that the style of game they wanted was worthless. No wonder so many people (myself included) stuck with 1e.
Stuff like Robin Laws's work is a good first step, but there's still lots more that needs to be done. Stuff like the Fantastic Locations maps show us that D&D is more fun when battles take place in larger, more open areas with lots of options for movement and tactics. It took the gaming world 5 years to figure that out! That "innovation" has been hiding in the rules for all that time, yet if you look at adventures from WotC and d20 companies, you see room after room drawn in the 20 x 20 foot, 2e, non-tactical style.
All of this ties into why I find parts of Ron's theories interesting and useful, and why the Forge is good. Even if you don't fully understand what GNS is, you can think, "I want my design to emphasize this "gamist" style of play that seems to match what I want to do. How do I communicate that to the end user?"
As an aside, "teaching" players and GMs how to run a good Iron Heroes game played a big part of the design. All of the classes are good at fighting, and all the classes were fighting styles, rather than game roles or setting elements. It's almost impossible to build a PC who is useless in a fight - you have to try rather hard to do so.
This turned off people who didn't want to play a game with lots of crazy battles, but that to me was a good thing. Such people would not have been happy with Iron Heroes! There was no point in trying to sell them on the game.
