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Gygax on Realism in Game Design
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<blockquote data-quote="Iosue" data-source="post: 6010180" data-attributes="member: 6680772"><p>The mistake you are making here is believing that AD&D represented D&D in its "ideal" form to Gygax. The game Gygax played was essentially OD&D with the Greyhawk supplement and some house rules. AD&D, OTOH, was written for the market. He through all those rules in there because there was <em>demand</em> for those rules, not because he personally thought they should be in there. One might think of original D&D as what Gygax wanted people to play as a gamer, but AD&D's existance was heavily tied into the business of TSR. The Advanced title and single by-line saved money that would go to Arneson. Dungeons & Dragons had exploded at GenCon, and they needed common rules for organized play, preferably rules that could handle corner-cases. Gygax's last product for TSR was Unearthed Arcana, a book written less because it represented what Gygax thought D&D needed, but to pull TSR out of the financial whole it was in.</p><p> </p><p>So while it's counter-intuitive, AD&D is not the place to go to see Gygax's Platonic Ideal of Game Design, particularly that of D&D.</p><p> </p><p></p><p> </p><p>He did. When those sets came out, Gygax was still top dog at TSR, and he worked closely with both Moldvay and Mentzer. IIRC from Mentzer's posts on Dragonsfoot, while Gygax was listed as the author and Mentzer the editor, in fact it was the other way around. In fact, the word came down from Gygax himself that in writing BECMI, Mentzer was not to use anything from AD&D.</p><p> </p><p></p><p>I can see where you are coming from, but can't agree at all. While Gygax did express such sentiments about AD&D (since he was looking for it to be TSR's primary cash cow), he expressed quite <em>the opposite</em> in the rules of OD&D, as well as implicitly endorsing such houseruling freedom (by editorial control) of the two Red Box Sets.</p><p> </p><p>And I agree with others that AD&D's heyday in terms of mass popularity were in the 1980s, also coincidentally when the D&D line was also well-supported. When you get into the 2e era, the D&D line was practically dead. They capped it off with Rules Cyclopedia, and then started cannablizing it for 2e.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Iosue, post: 6010180, member: 6680772"] The mistake you are making here is believing that AD&D represented D&D in its "ideal" form to Gygax. The game Gygax played was essentially OD&D with the Greyhawk supplement and some house rules. AD&D, OTOH, was written for the market. He through all those rules in there because there was [I]demand[/I] for those rules, not because he personally thought they should be in there. One might think of original D&D as what Gygax wanted people to play as a gamer, but AD&D's existance was heavily tied into the business of TSR. The Advanced title and single by-line saved money that would go to Arneson. Dungeons & Dragons had exploded at GenCon, and they needed common rules for organized play, preferably rules that could handle corner-cases. Gygax's last product for TSR was Unearthed Arcana, a book written less because it represented what Gygax thought D&D needed, but to pull TSR out of the financial whole it was in. So while it's counter-intuitive, AD&D is not the place to go to see Gygax's Platonic Ideal of Game Design, particularly that of D&D. He did. When those sets came out, Gygax was still top dog at TSR, and he worked closely with both Moldvay and Mentzer. IIRC from Mentzer's posts on Dragonsfoot, while Gygax was listed as the author and Mentzer the editor, in fact it was the other way around. In fact, the word came down from Gygax himself that in writing BECMI, Mentzer was not to use anything from AD&D. I can see where you are coming from, but can't agree at all. While Gygax did express such sentiments about AD&D (since he was looking for it to be TSR's primary cash cow), he expressed quite [I]the opposite[/I] in the rules of OD&D, as well as implicitly endorsing such houseruling freedom (by editorial control) of the two Red Box Sets. And I agree with others that AD&D's heyday in terms of mass popularity were in the 1980s, also coincidentally when the D&D line was also well-supported. When you get into the 2e era, the D&D line was practically dead. They capped it off with Rules Cyclopedia, and then started cannablizing it for 2e. [/QUOTE]
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