The Bastardization of the Game: Edition Purity versus Edition Innovation

[Wombat]

Wombat's First Axiom of Gaming: Match the rules to the setting, rather than the setting to the rules.

In other words, decide the kind of game you want to play and then find what will match it. This often means "house-ruling" the system, sometimes nigh unto the point of being unrecognizable as the base set of rules.

I am trying to think of a set of rpg rules (outside of my first year of gaming) that I didn't notably modify -- certainly I did it with OD&D, Traveller, RuneQuest, Ars Magica, 3e and 7th Sea; now I am modifying SotC/FATE like crazy.

May name is Wombat -- games fear me.

 

[Jack7]

Well, that's... borderline insulting.

Its' been my experience that people get offended or insulted or whatnot by whatever somebody else writes, or says, no matter the intent of the writer or the speaker, if they so desire. And the opposite is just as true. Somebody is gonna adore ya no matter who you are or what you say or do. People read in what they wish, or out what they don't.

That fact never affects my paycheck, nor do I care.
It's just part of living.

Somebody isn't gonna like what you say, right or wrong, say it quick or say it long. And somebody is gonna think you're genius, whether you are or not.
C'est la vie. I still eat pretty good and sleep at night.

Maybe you're just in the wrong medium. I wouldn't think too much of reading this same screed on a blog, for example. As an opening post on a messageboard, it's an impenetrable wall of text.

I'll take your advice under advisement. And if the market won't bear me, I'm pretty fair with lions and tigers as well.

But if you like blogs I gotta couple of those too.
Drop by and shoot me a line or two.

Maybe I'll learn something new.

 

[Desdichado]

Its' been my experience that people get offended or insulted or whatnot by whatever somebody else writes, or says, no matter the intent of the writer or the speaker, if they so desire.

That's not my experience. My experience, though, is that if you throw a possible passive aggressive swipe in your posts, like, "well, if you think my posts are too long, that's OK; I get it that attention spans are short on the internet" or whatever it was you said exactly, that that's likely to strike someone as insulting. But, no, not anything you write, regardless of intent, is going to come across as insulting.

Anyway... blogs? Any links?

 

[Ariosto]

The basic concept of "playing an edition" did not really occur to me until the tail end of the '80s.

The first practical manifestation was some people who refused to play MegaTraveller. There were also preferences for either 3rd edition RuneQuest or 1st/2nd, but they were not such a big deal as far as I encountered them.

Those made some sense to me, especially MT versus "Classic", as I could see the significance of the differences and the practical issues involved in trying to mix some elements from one into the other. (Character generation systems would have been a pretty simple swap, albeit the results were notably different.)

What really blew my mind was the attitude among some D&Ders that it mattered much which books the DM used, that the boxed sets and the two editions of AD&D were three truly separate games.

Up until then, I was accustomed to thinking in terms not of "edition" but rather of "Bill's game" or "Susan's game". All sorts of elements -- not only from various D&D books but from more disparate sources -- had in my experience been freely combined. That was, from what I had seen, standard operating procedure.

These days, I am not much inclined to replace or radically change basic procedures. If I find myself doing much of that, I think I might be better off switching to another rules set -- partly because playing "game designer" can be such a tempting distraction from actually playing the game! It's a fascinating solitaire entertainment, but the group is better served with time and energy devoted to the setting and scenarios.

Where bits from other games come in handy is in areas they treat especially well. It depends on the interests of the group what may warrant additional rules.

I find myself less interested in exploring various game systems now than back when the hobby was not only new to me but still in a pioneering stage. Mechanical novelty does not enthuse me so much any more. That I have both more game experience and more life experience may also contribute to a confidence in using the tools at hand -- and finding a smaller toolkit adequate.

I have shifted away from OD&D, with a lot of tinkering, to 1st edition AD&D, with very little in the way of codified "house rules", as my main basis for D&D-style play. I no longer find the same enchantment in (e.g.) The Arduin Grimoire that I once did, although I may draw from such sources the occasional monster or magic item.

 

[SKyOdin]

Jack7, I don't think the problem people are having with your posts is the length necessarily. I regularly read forum posts that are as long or longer than this. However, your writing is very poor, which makes reading your opening posts very difficult.

While you often put forward these posts as essays of a sort, they completely lack the structure of a good essay. Instead of placing your thesis statement at the beginning of your post, you buried it in the second half of your post. Instead of putting your main point and arguments at the beginning, you spend the first half of your post (about three or four paragraphs) saying: "I don't personally engage in edition wars, but as an outside observer I have a theory as to why they happen." All around, your writing is very bloated and meandering; you use four sentences when one would do, and you have a strong tendency to go off of tangents unrelated to your point. As it is, even after reading your entire post, I still don't see how you think edition purity/innovation is related to the recent edition wars.

While I believe you when you say that you enjoy writing these posts, you should understand that doesn't change the fact that they are hard to read.

 

[Ariosto]

Now, I am a notable "edition warrior" in the sense that I resist the pressure from some quarters to accept some changes as either insignificant or somehow objectively better. The problem really boils down to a commercial decision to use the term "edition" in a most eccentric way (due to the perceived value of a trademark divorced from former referents).

There is a point beyond which it is very, very much more meaningful to speak of playing (say) "RuneQuest" rather than "Tunnels & Trolls". Avalon Hill's unpublished "RuneQuest: Slayers", or the alternate "T&T" included in the tin along with Fiery Dragon's 7th Edition, would be so much a different game as to make the usage confusing.

Game Designers' Workshop encountered that confusion with the game initially billed as "Traveller: 2300", and quickly remedied it by changing the title (to "2300 AD"). The later Traveller: The New Era featured mechanics and assumptions nearly as different (much more than in MegaTraveller), depending for apparent continuity on the Third Imperium setting (thrown into civil war in MT, in ruins in TNE). GDW at that point was using a common game system (originated in Twilight: 2000, if memory serves) for all its RPGs.

If one happens to like The New Era altogether very much, and Classic Traveller very little, then the "bait and switch" may be simply an improvement (and about time). If one considers the (antebellum) Third Imperium setting most important, and prefers GURPS mechanics, then GURPS Traveller may be the bee's knees. If one was never into the Imperium at all, then the Classic rules set may remain what Traveller means.

The first part of the problem is that (for commercial reasons) things go beyond "tastes like chicken" to a claim that something is chicken. The second part is that some folks get emotionally attached to the notion, and object when others say that even the flavor is quite something else -- never mind the lack of feathers and presence of scales.

"Tinfoil" may be a fine colloquialism, but aluminum in fact has different elemental properties that could be important in some applications.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

I'm someone who doesn't believe in purity.

When I was GMing 3.x I used stuff from other d20 games (Iron Kingdoms, Arcana Evolved, Star Wars d20 and others) in my D&D games. I used ideas or structures from the 1st ed stuff I liked, adapted.

Right now I play and GM 4th, but other than a few houserules to change rules I don't care for, I play it pretty straight. Although I adapt stuff from the settings book in my homebrew - my game has both Dragonmarks and Spellplauge even though it isn't Eberron or FR.

When I GM Hero (my primary game) I play 5th ed with elements from 4th and 3rd edition, and there is a 6th on the horizon which I won't play, but will probably adapt lots of stuff from.

In general if I see an ideal, a rule, and item or whatnot that I think would work in my game, I use it.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Voted for #2.

However, isn't your question really a variation on "Us vs. Them"? Or even "Entrenched Position A vs. Entrenched Position B"?

 

[Sylrae]

I put that my game is anything but pure.

While it vaguely resembles 3.5e, we have called shots, There are a number of Revisions I get from Project Phoenix, 4e, Pathfinder, My own Work, and a few random sources on enworld or the wotc forums for a couple things. Then there are spells and some wondrous items that come from 2e sources.

And all this is my temporary game while I work on my own game system slowly in my spare time. It's mostly worked out in my head, but I dont have mountains of free time so its taking a while to type it all up.

 

[Jack7]

Jack7, I don't think the problem people are having with your posts is the length necessarily. I regularly read forum posts that are as long or longer than this. However, your writing is very poor, which makes reading your opening posts very difficult.

I write for a living SO. Or that's part of how I make my living. For every editor and publisher and client who thinks I'm ingenious, there's another who rejects what I write. Hell, I've even been both rejected and published by the same editor and publisher (who got one piece I submitted under one of my pseudonyms and told me I was a rotten writer, and should go study some more, and accepted by the same guy under another pseudonym who then told me I was brilliant - ain't that queer how that works?) That’s just part of the game. But enough folks (even those who sometimes say they don't like what I'm hockin) pay me enough money for what I do that I do alright. And for every one of you guys who say I can't write, or my writing is poor, or whatnot, others visit me, even here, and say, "that was extremely well said,” or “have some experience, I couldn't have said that better," or so forth and so on. Some folks say they understand exactly what I'm saying; a few say, "I don't get it." But I’ve heard that about other writers too. Heck, I've even heard folks say, "I don't get Shakespeare," or “I don’t get Tolstoy.”

And so I reckon they don't. It happens. That's life, sorry, not much I can do about that folks. Say it as often as you like, I'm afraid I have no Jedi mind powers of explanation greater than anyone else's powers of understanding. You get what you get. And I don't much care if you don't, or ya do (get it that is). It doesn't bother me any. I'm not losing any money on the deal, unlike with some of my investments.

But I'm not gonna change what I'm doing or the way I say it just because you say I oughtta. I got a lot of other people telling me the exact opposite. So you can take it or leave it, I'll be fine either way. I mean you’re welcome to keep saying it, but as far as I’m concerned it's just one of them things that happens on the internet. Part of the environment. Anywho that's the best I got for ya on that one.

However, isn't your question really a variation on "Us vs. Them"? Or even "Entrenched Position A vs. Entrenched Position B"?

I reckon everything is to some degree or another, though that's only one way of looking at the problem I think. But let me put it this way, if you innovate or change things around, even a little, then you're changing things around. But the only way for a thing to be unchanged, or pure (in the sense of “untampered with”) is to not change it around. So if you don't change things around, then it's like not being pregnant, and if you do, it's like being pregnant, a little or a lot, it still has the same effect. Because the change has already been made. Or put another way, if you change things even a little from their original form, then you've changed things. There's no almost changed or changed to no real effect (‘cept in quantum physics, and maybe international currency exchanges – and I’m not always sure I trust the exchange rates), there's either changed or not changed. And that's what I'm talking about. What I was saying in the post. And since I suspect that when it comes to role play gaming, given the nature of role play gaming, it is by design a gaming system intended to spur on modification, the idea of edition purity (and therefore edition hyper-arguments over which edition is the most pure, or the most innovative, or changed/changeable from X – X being point from which change was first noticed) seems non-sequitur to me. That was my point. (I can however see arguing and debating the basic idea of “in what direction do we want to see this change, and/or how quickly – that’s a separate argument. Or set of arguments.)

Now exactly how, or to what degree a person goes about changing a thing (the exact process), that's another matter too I reckon. It's still a kind of bastardization process (which I got no argument with per se, most useful things are bastardized because that often leads to flexibility and new capabilities) no matter how it is undertaken. But my suspicion remains that RPGs are by their very nature and structure meant to be bastardized. It prevents stagnation, especially when it comes to overall and on-going game development.

In general if I see an ideal, a rule, and item or whatnot that I think would work in my game, I use it.

I hear ya. Nothing beats working for being practically useful.

The first part of the problem is that (for commercial reasons) things go beyond "tastes like chicken" to a claim that something is chicken. The second part is that some folks get emotionally attached to the notion, and object when others say that even the flavor is quite something else -- never mind the lack of feathers and presence of scales.

I'm not sure I entirely get your exact point, but I sure like the imagery. Anything with scales, feathers, and that tastes like chicken can’t be all bad. And it made me laugh. So I enjoyed it.

The basic concept of "playing an edition" did not really occur to me until the tail end of the '80s.

Yeah, when there weren't any real editions or attached ideas about editions in D&D or RPGs it didn't much matter to most of us. I guess you gotta have enough models and manufacturers of a thing that preferences develop deep enough to concern people enough to argue about it.

One thing that struck me about this while ruminating on it a bit was the fact that I'm also an inventor. If I see a product that I like but think can be improved, I'll take it apart, study it, and then make the necessary modifications to improve it and/or do it my way. So, maybe modifying things, and modifying things myself is part of my mindset. Now I'm not saying that this is peculiar to me, or to inventors of one kind or another. Just saying that maybe those who are prone to modifying the things they find in the world are prone to doing that very thing. And maybe Role Play Gamers, the majority of them anyways, are in one way or another generally built that way too. (That role-play gamers prefer fluid rule-sets rather than stagnant rule-sets. For instance chess is a stagnant rule set with a huge variety of built in moves and actions. But role play games have by comparison very fluid rule-sets, at least most rpgs used to be that way, then I think they underwent a process of rules-calcification, and are now moving back to being, if not fluid, then at least gel-like in flexibility.)

That they (the process of invention and re-invention, and role play game modification) are related ways of viewing or operating in the world. A similar or maybe even related psychological outlook or Weltanschauung. I can't say for sure, but it's just a suspicion. And I'm not much for basing real findings on internet polls, but let's just say I was pretty confident the numbers would play out pretty much like they did.

Anyway... blogs? Any links?

Well, yeah Hobo, but I'm not sure you'll like em any better. They are after all still me. So good luck with that one. And because of work I' haven't updated em much lately. Sorry, just the way it's been lately.

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Well, I’m gonna go visit the observatory before it gets to be too late to do a little moon watching. Good clear night. Moon still up.

Later gators.