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General Tabletop Discussion
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Pros and Cons of going mainstream
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<blockquote data-quote="dkyle" data-source="post: 6051927" data-attributes="member: 70707"><p>You know, I don't think I've ever seen an experienced, adult RPG player describe a recent gameplay experience as possessing a "sense of wonder", in any system, including old editions of D&D.</p><p></p><p>I don't think "sense of wonder" has anything to do with game mechanics or design. It's rose-tinted nostalgia for childhood where mechanics quite literally didn't matter, because kids are perfectly happy with pure make-believe. "Sense of wonder" happens when the world is a mystery because the processes used by the DM to run it are a mystery.</p><p></p><p>But I think, as RPG players get older and more experienced, <em>that</em> mystery simply doesn't work any more. We see past that. Succeeding or failing at things simply because the DM said so loses any meaning. Lack of coherent rules makes trying to plan frustrating and meaningless.</p><p></p><p>To be clear, I'm not making any statement on the relative merits of editions of D&D, but rather on the lack of usefulness of "sense of wonder" for evaluating game systems. It's tangential to mechanics, and inextricably tied up in our own very personal experiences and expectations.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="dkyle, post: 6051927, member: 70707"] You know, I don't think I've ever seen an experienced, adult RPG player describe a recent gameplay experience as possessing a "sense of wonder", in any system, including old editions of D&D. I don't think "sense of wonder" has anything to do with game mechanics or design. It's rose-tinted nostalgia for childhood where mechanics quite literally didn't matter, because kids are perfectly happy with pure make-believe. "Sense of wonder" happens when the world is a mystery because the processes used by the DM to run it are a mystery. But I think, as RPG players get older and more experienced, [i]that[/i] mystery simply doesn't work any more. We see past that. Succeeding or failing at things simply because the DM said so loses any meaning. Lack of coherent rules makes trying to plan frustrating and meaningless. To be clear, I'm not making any statement on the relative merits of editions of D&D, but rather on the lack of usefulness of "sense of wonder" for evaluating game systems. It's tangential to mechanics, and inextricably tied up in our own very personal experiences and expectations. [/QUOTE]
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