D&D 5E 5E: A chiropractic adjustment for D&D (and why I'm very hopeful)

[Thaumaturge]

That's a good analogy. I think you can value both, though. I think Freud was amazing and a very important figure. I don't think most of his theories are worth the paper they are written on. I don't see a contradiction there.

I agree. I made the analogy because this sounds almost exactly like discussions from my undergrad years about Freud. Without Freud's bad theories we wouldn't have modern psychotherapy. That doesn't make his theories not bad. Neither does it make him a villain. Many, many people end up falling into one of those two camps.

Nuiance is hard.

That doesn't entitle all their game design to special "you can't say bad things about it!!!!!" respect. Period. It just means that people should[n't] say they weren't important, that they didn't matter.

I'm assuming this is what you meant. If not, I can edit this all away.

Thaumaturge.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm assuming this is what you meant. If not, I can edit this all away.

Thaumaturge.

Er yes, whoops, will edit my post!

 

[Li Shenron]

If Shakespeare had only written Hamlet, he'd be "Oh that guy who wrote Hamlet, right..." and yeah, would definitely NOT be a particularly important figure in the history of English writing.

Yes he would

Literature is full of people who are historically important for one work (even if they wrote more, which few remember). Hamlet alone would be worth the recognition.

Because we wrote a lot of masterpieces, Shakespeare is not merely "a particular important figure in the history of English writing", but clearly the figure in the history of English writing, likely among the top 10 writers of whole humankind, and in D&D terms he's at least the demigod of literature and poetry

 

[Thaumaturge]

Yes he would

Literature is full of people who are historically important for one work (even if they wrote more, which few remember). Hamlet alone would be worth the recognition.

Part of that, though, would be context. Part of the context is the Great London Fire of 1666. People would read Hamlet and assume other amazing work had been lost in the fires (as we do now, even with a giant body of work). There would people pinning for his lost works (as I do for his Don Quixote play). There would be mystique surrounding him, which would make him historically important.

We can all just go dig up copies of Dangerous Journeys.

Thaumaturge.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yes he would

Literature is full of people who are historically important for one work (even if they wrote more, which few remember). Hamlet alone would be worth the recognition.

Because we wrote a lot of masterpieces, Shakespeare is not merely "a particular important figure in the history of English writing", but clearly the figure in the history of English writing, likely among the top 10 writers of whole humankind, and in D&D terms he's at least the demigod of literature and poetry

I disagree, very strongly, because as noted by Thaumaturge, because without the context of the body of Shakespeare's work, and in fact it's entirely possible Hamlet would have been largely dismissed or forgotten. I mean, don't you know your literary history? Even WITH Shakespeare's body of work, Hamlet was seen as a poor piece of work in the late 1700s (and loved largely for it's show-y-ness before that!), and could easily, as a single work, have been forgotten at that time.

It's totally wrong to think Hamlet has always been well-regarded, and works that go through a period of being poorly regarded frequently largely disappear, or cease to have influence. They may later be excitingly rediscovered, or may be rediscovered but that may interest only a tiny group of specialist literary historians or the like.

Further, Shakespeare profoundly influenced the English language (and, I would argue, the culture of English-speaking countries and even some non-English-speaking ones), and the vast majority of that influence is in his other works, not in Hamlet. Without all that, he could easily have been lost to history or regarded as a very minor figure, less important than, say, Marlowe (!!!).

 

[SteveC]

Further, Shakespeare profoundly influenced the English language (and, I would argue, the culture of English-speaking countries and even some non-English-speaking ones), and the vast majority of that influence is in his other works, not in Hamlet. Without all that, he could easily have been lost to history or regarded as a very minor figure, less important than, say, Marlowe (!!!).

I was going to say that if all Shakespeare had written was Hamlet, he would likely be remembered as Christopher Marlowe, which is to say largely not remembered.

I think this is an interesting turn for this kind of discussion: bringing in the larger body of work for a designer, which is usually not something that's really discussed. Gives me a lot to think about, so huge kudos to that.

When I think about what Gary did, it was amazing: he essentially introduced the world to a new hobby. At the same time, a lot of great designers took RPGs and ran with them in other directions. So that's an extremely important thing to do, but it's not everything.

I think the central point of all of it is this: do you believe that game design has progressed and developed since Gygax's day? Some people would say "absolutely not!" and believe that it is a silly idea to begin with. Personally as someone who's a little older (and started gaming very young) I believe that RPG design has progressed a lot since it began, and good design today has learned a lot from the early days.

I play a lot of board games, and the advance of rules design is much easier to see there: games by the same designer introduce mechanisms to address issues that come up in the earlier games, and game design simply gets better. That's not so say that, say, Settlers of Catan isn't a great game, but Klaus Teuber's later games are simply better due to the things he learned.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

(snip) When I think about what Gary did, it was amazing: he essentially introduced the world to a new hobby. At the same time, a lot of great designers took RPGs and ran with them in other directions. So that's an extremely important thing to do, but it's not everything. (snip)

For me, Gary was an outstanding entrepreneur and it was his entrepreneurial genius that led him to synthesise the ideas of Dave Arneson et al (including his own) and get OD&D and then AD&D to market. And in doing that, he essentially created the TTRPG hobby and had a major effect on the videogaming industry.

But I don't rate him as a game designer because his work as a designer was poor, particularly when you consider the disasters that were Cyborg Commando and Dangerous Journeys (and LA was a bit of a dud also). And it still surprises me that someone so steeped in wargaming was unable to fashion a logical and coherent combat system for AD&D despite all the playtesting of OD&D.

Nevertheless, I do take my hat off to his entrepreneurship to get this whole thing started.