Why use D&D for a Simulationist style Game?

[pemerton]

According to the Sorcerer text, a ‘Kicker’ is “an event or realisation that your character has experienced just before play begins” to acts as a catalyst. Whoop-ee-doodaa! It’s not as if RQ or Pendragon or Ars Magica ever laid out any provision of those things, is it!?

The two editions of AM that I own are the 1st and the 3rd. Neither has "kickers" or anything analogous.

Whether you choose to think the techniques are different to those provided in other games, they are not objectively so.

I'm not sure what the test for "objective" difference is. But Jonathan Tweet (designer of Ars Magica and Over the Edge) regards "fail forward" as a distinct technique. He attributes it to Ron Edwards and Luke Crane, and in the 20th anniversary edition of Over the Edge says that, in retrospect, it should be incorporated into the system; and in 13th Age he advocates its use.

Jonathan Tweet's view that Luke Crane and Ron Edwards came up with a new technique, that he had not identified in his earlier games, is good enough for me.

All written after the publication of his Sorcerer game, of which none of these ‘innovations’ were acknowledged.

So you think it's a bad thing that someone's ideas, and familiarity with his/her material, grows over time?

It didn’t work because his categories, which were essentially lifted from Jonathon Tweet’s Everway <snippage> fall down on so many exceptions to the rule.

Edwards has a detailed discussion of the relationship of his ideas to those of Jonathan Tweet and John Kim that anyone can read who wants to do so. I'm not sure what exceptions you have in mind. I believe you when you say that you don't find his essays helpful for your gameplay, but that is certainly not true for me.

they caused more tension and conflict in the gaming community than the collective worth of the games their movement spawned. How many of them are truly played with the same community levels of D&D or CoC or any other? How can people claim these games are less well designed than the ones they push?

The designers of RM, RQ, et al all marketed their games on the basis that they are better designed than D&D. (I'm not sure who you have in mind as saying that his/her game is better designed than CoC - Ron Edwards, at least in what I've read, has only praise for the design of CoC. I already cited him upthread describing it, along with Pendragon, as an "outstanding" game.)

WotC promoted 3E as better-designed than 2nd ed AD&D. I've seen dozens of people on this forum asset that Pathfinder is better designed than D&D (4th edition). I don't see why D&D should be immune from having others claim that their game is better designed.

At one time Rolemaster/MERP was the second biggest RPG after D&D. But I've likewise read dozens of posts on this forum, indeed in this very thread, deriding the design of RM.

As to whether the "indie" RPG movement spawned games of any worth, I agree with Jonathan Tweet, Rob Heinsoo and others that it did: the main ones I know personally are Burning Wheel, HeroWars/Quest, 4e D&D, Marvel Heroic RP and Dungeon World. I think these are pretty good RPGs.

 

[pemerton]

AD&D was consistent in that it always used the same rules for the same stuff. A level 5 priest was a level 5 priest, whether it was a PC or NPC, and a longsword always dealt 1d8 damage.

Just as a point of clarification: in 1st ed AD&D the stat requirements for class membership are different for PCs and NPCs; some NPC fighters are incapable of gaining levels; 0-level humans don't get CON bonuses to hp; non-human NPCs (orcs, trolls, ogres, giants etc) don't get the same STR bonuses to hit and damage as do classed PCs and NPCs; it is optional for those same NPCs to deal the same damage with their weapons as do classed PCs and NPCs; and NPC half-orcs attack on the monster to hit table rather than on the table appropriate to their class.

 

[pemerton]

The first RPG I ever personally experienced was 1E. To me, at that time, it was obvious and completely intuitive, that 1E D&D was "simulating" being a character in a fantasy epic tale.

<snip>

The goal is being that guy in an otherwise natural feeling world that behaves in a reasonably consistent manner based on the alternate truths that define it.

I don't think this distinguishs 1st ed AD&D from any other version of D&D, RQ, RM, Burning Wheel, HeroWars, etc. Any fantasy RPG involves "simuating" being a character in a fantasy epic tale.

That doesn't mean that all those games are the same, in design or intended play experience or actual play experience. But you can't distinguish them in terms of which ones do, and which ones don't, set out to have the players "simulate" being a character in a tale of epic fantasy, or set out to have the player "be that guy in an otherwise natural-feeling world".

I hate it when one brilliant move does not solve a problem then and there because the skill challange says 3 more successes are needed.

Interestingly, this is exactly the same reason why the classic sim game designers and players hate hit points: because no matter how good the attacker's attack, the opponent can't be killed if s/he still has hit points left after the damage is rolled.

For my part, understanding how skill-challenge style mechanics work (mostly extended contests in HeroWars/Quest) actually helped me understand how hit points can be part of a viable combat resolution system.

 

[BryonD]

I don't think this distinguishs 1st ed AD&D from any other version of D&D, RQ, RM, Burning Wheel, HeroWars, etc. Any fantasy RPG involves "simuating" being a character in a fantasy epic tale.

That doesn't mean that all those games are the same, in design or intended play experience or actual play experience. But you can't distinguish them in terms of which ones do, and which ones don't, set out to have the players "simulate" being a character in a tale of epic fantasy, or set out to have the player "be that guy in an otherwise natural-feeling world".

I would completely argue that a persistent dedication to that as a primary goal *does* distinguish some of those games from others.
Again, I'm not claiming that 4e rejects the idea of "being the character". That would be absurd. But in the cases I listed, amongst others, it openly embraces the idea that "anti-sim" is better. Again, I'm not claiming that this is anything other than a matter of taste. But you can't have it both ways either. If you are only going to look at it in the most broad of terms ("involves 'simulating'") then you can't claim any real merits for any game. They are all equivalent but the conversation doesn't tell you anything. If you start turning over the rocks and looking at the mechanics, such as the very short list of typical examples I gave, then you start seeing how the games very much do become distinguished from one another.

Interestingly, this is exactly the same reason why the classic sim game designers and players hate hit points: because no matter how good the attacker's attack, the opponent can't be killed if s/he still has hit points left after the damage is rolled.

For my part, understanding how skill-challenge style mechanics work (mostly extended contests in HeroWars/Quest) actually helped me understand how hit points can be part of a viable combat resolution system.

This I completely buy. I mean, from an ogre's PoV one good strike with his club will kill a normal human. One good strike = 1 success. A fighter with 10 times the HP means the ogre needs 10 successes. There is an analogy to be seen there.

Before anyone ever heard of 4E I had events in my 3E games that could be called "skill challenges" and though the specifics were different, I think anyone would reasonable agree the core idea is there. There was mystic shamanistic ritual that the party had to endure in an orc encampment. They were put inside a tent with various burning herbs. As smoke filled the tent everyone started making CON saves. The ones how got through gain status and some perks, the ones how didn't suffered great harm. One PC actually died.

I also recall an event that involved getting through a mountain pass during a blizzard.

There are plenty of cases where the narrative nature of the event makes these mechanics work. But as I used to always say, the mechanics should follow the narrative, not the other way around. You and I had this debate back when it mattered and we never agreed. As a default mechanic it becomes very unsatisfactory for me. Because there are plenty of time when it really doesn't fit. You can't always say X success or Y failures is the answer. Or, I should say, if "simulating being a character" in a quasi-naturalistic world is you highest goal, there are times when this is a substandard option.

Anything I dislike about 4E can, and almost certainly does, have specific circumstances in which it does work within a 3E (or other system) game that I would love. If it just so happens that the narrative leads to that mechanic. If a particular fighter goes through a ritual or just experiences a crazy event, or through 1 of 10,000 possible explanations he gains the ability to self heal, then I WANT that guy to be able to bounce back 4E style. Maybe a thieves guild has a magic door they use to test members and it always changes itself to challenge the person trying to open it.

But the point is, being able to show examples where the mechanics happen to fit the narrative doesn't come close to saying that the mechanics are a good foundation for consistent use throughout the system. At least, not if your goal is dedication to never being "anti-sim".

 

[TrippyHippy]

The two editions of AM that I own are the 1st and the 3rd. Neither has “kickers” or anything analogous.

Yes it does. It’s called ‘providing a backstory and reason to adventure’. Pretty much every RPG has had something like that ever since D&D. To then stick a formal label on such a thing and call it an ‘innovation’ is no such thing at all.

I’m not sure what the test for “objective" difference is. But Jonathan Tweet (designer of Ars Magica and Over the Edge) regards "fail forward" as a distinct technique. He attributes it to Ron Edwards and Luke Crane, and in the 20th anniversary edition of Over the Edge says that, in retrospect, it should be incorporated into the system; and in 13th Age he advocates its use.

Jonathan Tweet's view that Luke Crane and Ron Edwards came up with a new technique, that he had not identified in his earlier games, is good enough for me.

It’s a shame that these others never saw fit to acknowledge the innovations present in Ars Magica, however, and openly scorned Rein-Hagen’s Vampire:The Masquerade. Over The Edge tends to get a lot of credit from the Forge community, but largely because it fits into their own preconceived ideas of what innovation is. The actual stated purpose of OtE’s game system (a variation of the D6 system in most respects) was to be a simple system - and was never claimed to be something ‘revolutionary’. Tweet criticises his own work in relation to new games all the time, and all power to him for doing that. It doesn’t legitimise these games as being special or superior in design though.

So you think it’s a bad thing that someone’s ideas, and familiarity with his/her material, grows over time?

No, I think people who make self-aggrandising claims are bad. If their work was so influential, you’d think they’d have the confidence to let other people make these claims about their games, rather than writing essays in their own books and websites about it.

Edwards has a detailed discussion of the relationship of his ideas to those of Jonathan Tweet and John Kim that anyone can read who wants to do so. I'm not sure what exceptions you have in mind. I believe you when you say that you don’t find his essays helpful for your gameplay, but that is certainly not true for me.

I don’t find essays that are broadly saying “your gaming experiences are invalid; I know more about your own game experiences than you do” are especially useful. I’m sure you can find quotes from Ron Edwards on all sorts of things, however, as he wrote an awful lot of opinion, but his own games - Sorcerer and Trollbabe - are nothing like as impressive as he has frequently claimed them to be.

The designers of RM, RQ, et al all marketed their games on the basis that they are better designed than D&D. (I'm not sure who you have in mind as saying that his/her game is better designed than CoC - Ron Edwards, at least in what I've read, has only praise for the design of CoC. I already cited him upthread describing it, along with Pendragon, as an "outstanding" game.)

WotC promoted 3E as better-designed than 2nd ed AD&D. I've seen dozens of people on this forum asset that Pathfinder is better designed than D&D (4th edition). I don't see why D&D should be immune from having others claim that their game is better designed.

At one time Rolemaster/MERP was the second biggest RPG after D&D. But I've likewise read dozens of posts on this forum, indeed in this very thread, deriding the design of RM.

The issue is not whether Ron endorses games or what preferences anybody has - it’s how he chooses to arbitrarily categorise them - and deride people or groups or game design for not playing in the manner he sees fit.

As to whether the “indie” RPG movement spawned games of any worth, I agree with Jonathan Tweet, Rob Heinsoo and others that it did: the main ones I know personally are Burning Wheel, HeroWars/Quest, 4e D&D, Marvel Heroic RP and Dungeon World. I think these are pretty good RPGs.

Of these, two are hardly indie games, unless you consider Margaret Weiss/Marvel and WotC to be independently owned in any way.

HeroWars/Quest was originally written in 2000 and, despite being cited by The Forge as a game they like, was actually commissioned primarily to play in the Glorantha setting due to ownership complications of the RuneQuest game at the time. It wasn't an ‘indie’ game as such - although it wrote a lot about narrativism in relation to it’s design as opposed to RQ. It is notable that many gamers awaiting on the upcoming Guide to Glorantha (systemless by design) are choosing RQ6 as their game system of choice again, rather than HeroQuest. I’d be interested to see how HeroQuest fares in future publications, seeing that RQ is largely under the charge of Moon Design again. I would say the same thing about D&D4e and Dungeon World in the light of 5e’s release.

In the case of Burning Wheel, well personally, I don’t like it at all. I have attempted to play it, but find a lot of it’s mechanics counter-intuitive and flatly not worth the effort. I did like Marvel Heroic, and recognise some ‘indie’ ideas in it, but the best thing about it was that it didn’t waste any effort in trying to make claims about how revolutionary or brilliant it’s system was - it just got on with explaining how to play it in a fun way. Unfortunately, that game’s license has now gone the way of the dodo - ironic enough if you still think it was ‘independently’ owned.

In the case of 4E, flatly, it largely goes to the heart of what I feel was wrong with the ‘indie movement’ - narrow, inflexible game precepts and an arrogant assertion that gamers had somehow been playing the game wrong all the years before. If that is the indie movement’s ‘legacy’ claim then I thoroughly endorse that view…but now it’s been superseded by 5E. In short, what legacy?

 

[pemerton]

It’s called ‘providing a backstory and reason to adventure’.

I don't think this is a very precise description of what a "kicker" is. It's not this particular feature of "kickers" that makes Edwards' claim them as innovative. What Edwards claims to be innovative is the fact that the kicker is not just backstory but an immediate crisis in which the PC is located - so it's a type of player-authored scene-framing that the GM is obliged to incorporate into the opening fiction of the game.

Mearls has discussed the innovative nature of the "kicker", as well as developing it in a slightly "old-school" direction:

So, years ago Ron Edwards (I think) introduced the idea of kickers and bangs in Sorcerer. I own Sorcerer, read it, and thought I understood them. . . .

o a lot of this stuff is basic RPG theory and covers some now fundamental methods to put characters into motion. The big reveal for me is that, for the past few campaigns, I've been unhappy with how the story has progressed. . . . So, yesterday, to kick off my Greyhawk Temple of Elemental Evil campaign, I trotted out a set of Traveller-style rules I built with an eye toward kickers and bangs. The rules lack significant mechanical impact on a PC. Instead, they build kickers right into the character's background. We ended up with some really interesting characters with lots of reasons to push the story ahead. The kickers it produced also suggest a number of bangs that can come up in play.​

One of the distinctive aspects of a "kicker", as opposed to a "plot hook", is a more general aspiration of "story now" RPGing - narrow entrance, wide exit; or, tight framing that doesn't dictate outcomes. Edwards emphasises this in a post that Mearls links to in the blog I've just quoted from:

I am warning the user from providing a Kicker that only gives the protagonist one reasonable thing to do. "My house is burning down," has pretty much only one reaction: get out of the burning house. "Guys are coming to kill me," is the same: defend yourself and try to turn the tables.

(Whereas "A guy tried to kill me with a hatchet on the bus" provides a more surrealistic or offbeat or perplexing problem beyond the actual physical danger.)

Thus the Kicker style I am aiming at, with that particular admonition, is that for which different people might have their characters react to differently. Otherwise you end up with the typical non-Narrativist character hook: "I'm a merc. A guy hired me to kill Bobby G." Well, duh, he's going to kill Bobby G now. So what?

None of this has anything to do with what I am perceiving you to be asking about: the description of a character's action or reaction in the Kicker itself. There is nothing wrong with this, at the most basic level. Including, "I barely got away from the guy by hurling myself out the emergency exit, when we took a corner at 45 mph," could easily be added to the hatchet Kicker.

However, permitting or encouraging such additions hits a practical problem very, very swiftly - players turn in elaborate short stories, essentially "playing before they play" in the way people have done for decades. You get reams of colorful events with ... as it turns out ... no entry into the act of role-playing. The reactions have been made and the Kicker is, for all intents and purposes, over before play has begun.

Therefore if I were to see Kickers with characters' actions and reactions as part of the text, I might be very picky about how much of that material would be acceptable.​

It’s a shame that these others never saw fit to acknowledge the innovations present in Ars Magica

Here is a passage from Edwards' "Right to Dream" essay in which he acknowledges an innovation present in Ars Magic:

High Concept play can be divided neatly into those which are greatly concerned with "the big story" and those which are not. Historically, the latter used to be the most common: Call of Cthulhu, Jorune, or more recently Dread and Godlike, in which "the story" only refers to a record of short-term events and set-pieces. However, following the spearhead for this type of game text, Ars Magica, now the long-term story-type is more common.​

Over The Edge tends to get a lot of credit from the Forge community, but largely because it fits into their own preconceived ideas of what innovation is. The actual stated purpose of OtE’s game system (a variation of the D6 system in most respects) was to be a simple system - and was never claimed to be something ‘revolutionary’.

Here are some quotes from Over the Edge (1997 revised edition, as reproduced in the 20th anniversary edition):

Page 4
Over the Edge emphasises role-playing and story-telling over number-crunching. The mechanics are exceedingly easy and open to interpretation. . . . [C]omplex mechanics invariably channel and limit the imagination . . . When I look at the player characters that my friends have invented in my games, and I review the adventures they have had, they stand out as people and events that I had never before seen in role-playing games . . . [T]he rules in any game are a boat that takes you to the shore you want to reach. . . . [Y]our boat [in OtE] is a purely functional construction without the elaborate detail and complications. It is my hope that the boat's simplicity will encourage you to concentrate on your goal (enjoyable role-playing) without getting caught up in the vehicle (the rules).

Page 192-93
Role-playing is unusual among art forms in that the artists are also the audience. When you run a game or a character, you are doing it for your own enjoyment and that of your friends, not for a separate audience. . . .

The Literary Edge by Robin D Laws
OTE is, among other things, an attempt to further the development of role-playing as art. . . . [T]he GM is not a "storyteller" with the players as audience, but merely a "first among equals" given responsibility for the smooth progress of the developing story. . . . In roleplaying . . . the GM is oten called on to say "no" to players' desires for their characters . . . But GMs should also be prepared to say "yes" to players when a suggestion inspires new possibilites for the storyline. . . . The GM is not a movie director, able to order actors to interpret a script . . . Instead, he should be seeking ways to challenge PCs, to use plot developments to highlight aspects of their characters, in hopes of being challenged in return. . . . Think of all yur actions as GM as literary devices. . . . When viewing role-playing as an art form, rather than a game, it becomes less important to keep from the plaers things their characters wouldn't know. . . . For years, role-players have been simulating fictional narratives the way wargamers recreate historical military engagements. They've been making spontaeous, democratized art for their own consumption . . . Making the artistry conscious is a liberating act . . . Have fun with it, and enjoy your special role in aesthetics history - it's not everybody who gets to be a pioneer in the development of a new art form.​

I see at least two motifs in what I have quoted. First, there are quite deliberate claims about the distinctive and innovative character of OtE as a system - Tweet describes the uniqueness of the PCs and events he has seen, and Laws refers to the game's role in further developing RPGs as an art form.

Second, there are characterisations of the nature of RPGing and the function of RPG rules that are typical of the "indie" movement (eg Vincent Baker) and that are quite relevant to a discussion of when/how games can be played in a sim fashion. Tweet talks about rules as a vehicle, and Laws talks about GMing as the deployment of "literary devices". That is, the system is seen not in a process-sim fashion as a model of the fiction, but rather in a metagame fashion as a device to be used by the game participants to determine what the content of the fiction is to be.

OtE didn't invent such approaches, of course: you can see Gygax describing them in his DMG, most clearly in his discussion of saving throws, but it's also there in his discussion of XP, of the action economy and (perhaps to a lesser extent) of hit points. But he didn't make those discussions the centrepiece of his design, and as various posters on these boards have testifid over the years (eg [MENTION=6698278]Emerikol[/MENTION]) those features of Gygax's rulebooks were regularly ignored - hence why many D&D players saw F/R/W saves as a sensible rationalisation of the saving throw rules, rather than the radical transformation that I regard them as being.

But OtE is distinctive in making this sort of approach to the game an overt centrepiece that can hardly be ignored in playing the game.

Tweet criticises his own work in relation to new games all the time, and all power to him for doing that. It doesn’t legitimise these games as being special or superior in design though.

Here is Tweet on pp xv-xvi of the anniversary edition of OtE:

New Game Tech
. . . Free-form, story-oriented roleplaying has come a long way in twenty years. . . .

Fail Forward
A simple but powerful improvement you can make to your game is to redefine failure as "things go wrong" instead of "the PC isn't up to the task." Ron Edwards, Luke Crane and other indie RPG designers have champions this idea, and they're exactly right. . . .

Sorcerer's Kicker
Each PC's first session starts with some compelling event that the character cannot ignore. . . . The player invents his own kicker.​

The passage on "fail forward" is reproduced almost word-for-word on p 42 of the 13th Age rulebook.

My view is that if Tweet regards certain designs as innovative ("new game tech"), and as improvements that he includes in his new games and retrofits to his old games, then there is a good chance that he is right. I don't think he is just being modest and failing to claim credit for things that he already invented.

I’m sure you can find quotes from Ron Edwards on all sorts of things, however, as he wrote an awful lot of opinion, but his own games - Sorcerer and Trollbabe - are nothing like as impressive as he has frequently claimed them to be.

I don't really see why this matters. Many people don't think that Gygax's games - even AD&D - were as impressive as he claimed them to be. Even if that's a minority opinion on AD&D, it's a very widely held opinion on Dangerous Journeys, which is as full of self-aggrandising descriptions in its intro material as any RPG I've read.

I don’t find essays that are broadly saying “your gaming experiences are invalid; I know more about your own game experiences than you do” are especially useful.

I don't think that Edwards is broadly, or narrowly, saying "your gaming experiences are invalid." He does claim to be able to help you improve your RPGing experience; if you don't agree, then the solution is pretty simple: ignore his advice!

That's just a special case of the general rule that, if you are going to read critics, you should read ones who speak to you. The world is full of literary critics, theatre critics, music critics, RPG critics etc.They have widely varying views. Many critics loved the film "Sideways"; I found it largely uninspiring and a bit insipid. The critics mostly preferred the second to the first Wolverine movie; my taste is the opposite, although the weight of serious opinion is strong enough the other way that no doubt I will one day give the second movie another chance.

I can't remember what led me to Edwards' "system matters" essay - I followed some chance link around 10 years ago. As someone who had thought about system for a long time (GMing Rolemaster, and discovering both its strengths and its many limitations, can do that), I found that essay, and the other ones on the site, hugely insightful. They have made one of the single greatest conributions to my GMing of anything that I have read, and for me that is the bottom line measure of whether or not something written about RPGing techniques is worthwhile. They improved my Rolemaster game; they laid a solid foundation for my 4e game; they helped me make sense of my Dying Earth and HeroWars rulebooks; they led me to Vincent Baker's blog and to a forum post by Paul Czege about scene-framing which both described my own GMing techniques back to me and helpd me to improve them. Edwards' posts also distilled GMing problems that had afflicted both my own game (hence enabling me to correct them) and other games that I had played in (hence enabling me to avoid them).

I've got little doubt that many of the leading personalities of the Forge would find my 4e game dull and shallow - mechanically clunky by their standards (but quite tolerable for someone who has 19 years of Rolemaster under his belt) and thematically simplistic. But that's fine - I'm not playing with them, I'm playing with my friends of many years. That doesn't mean that I can't benefit from their insightful advice.

The issue is not whether Ron endorses games or what preferences anybody has - it’s how he chooses to arbitrarily categorise them

The categorisations are not arbitrary. They are reasoned. The reasoning may not be perfect in all cases: it rarely is, particularly where criticsm is concerned.

As I posted upthread, I don't think Edwards' categories are all that salient on ENworld, although I do think that some ENworld discussions would be improved by greater recognition among participants that "immersion" is not the only reason people play RPGs, and that when White Plume Mountain or ToH or Against the Giants were written the main goal of play was not "immersion" but "beating the dungeon". (In Edwards's terminology, the two contrasting agendas here are some form or other of simulationism, and gamism.)

But the fact that some critic's categories are not relevant to some participants in the hobby does not make them arbitrary. My own background in RPGing is pretty mainstream, and I found the categories interesting and useful. I also have a lot of sympathy with Edwards's claim that narrativist or gamist goals will inevitably cause tension within simulationist play: in the case of high concept play, there will be balance-of-power issues between GM and players; in the case of purist-for-sim play there will be the issue that [MENTION=8900]Tony[/MENTION]Vargas noted upthread, that the system won't reliably deliver the challenge or the story that the gamist/narrativist player wants. This sympathy is grounded on my own experiences as an RPGer, and reasoned projection from those experiences.

On the other hand, I think that Edwards exaggerates the contrast between gamist and narrativist play. A game like The Dying Earth bring this out, in my view: he classifies it as narrativist even though it doesn't satisfy his formal definition (which is, in my view, too narrow) and even though it can be seen as gamist in the same fashion as parlour games like charades and dictionary, the idea being to amuse your friends with witty quips. But I don't think this matters a great deal, especially as Edwards himself notes that a number of RPGs lend themselves to either gamist or narrativist play, depending upon the direction in which the participants take them (he names T&T and the original Marvel Super Heroes game; I think 4e and The Dying Earth could be added to the list).

As to whether the “indie” RPG movement spawned games of any worth, I agree with Jonathan Tweet, Rob Heinsoo and others that it did: the main ones I know personally are Burning Wheel, HeroWars/Quest, 4e D&D, Marvel Heroic RP and Dungeon World. I think these are pretty good RPGs.

Of these, two are hardly indie games, unless you consider Margaret Weiss/Marvel and WotC to be independently owned in any way.

Vincent Baker is thanked in the acknowledgements for MHRP, and its indebtedness to earlier games based around free descriptors as the mechanical core, and scene-based conflict resolution, is pretty obvious. The influence of this sort of design, especially the latter, on 4e is equally obvious, and Heinsoo noted the influence of indie games on 4e's design in a pre-release interview:

No other RPG’s are in this boat. There might not be anyone else out there who would publish this kind of game. They usually get entrenched in the simulation aspect.

Indie games are similar in that they emphasize the gameplay aspect, but they’re super-focused, like a narrow laser. D&D has to be more general to accommodate a wide range of play.​

As a general rule, the influence and significance of an avant-garde cultural movement isn't judged by how many people actually paid attention to its immediate outputs. I mean, how many people have actually looked at or admired even a reproduction of DuChamp's "Fountain"? That doesn't mean that dada, and related movements like the surrealists, have had little influence on our contemporary culture.

HeroWars/Quest was originally written in 2000 and, despite being cited by The Forge as a game they like, was actually commissioned primarily to play in the Glorantha setting due to ownership complications of the RuneQuest game at the time. It wasn't an ‘indie’ game as such - although it wrote a lot about narrativism in relation to it’s design as opposed to RQ. It is notable that many gamers awaiting on the upcoming Guide to Glorantha (systemless by design) are choosing RQ6 as their game system of choice again, rather than HeroQuest. I’d be interested to see how HeroQuest fares in future publications, seeing that RQ is largely under the charge of Moon Design again. I would say the same thing about D&D4e and Dungeon World in the light of 5e’s release.

I don't understand what this passage is trying to say.

For instance, why do you say "despited being cited by The Forge as a game they like, [Hero Wars] was actually commmissioned to primarily play in the Glorantha setting". What is the force of the "despite"? Everyone who knows of HeroWars knows it was written for Gloranthan play. Ron Edwards knows it was written for Gloranthan play, and talks about this in his discussion of the system (and also in his comparisons of it to Runequest; which - by the way - he describes in his "Right to Dream" essay as one vehicle, together with CoC, for "perhaps the most important system, publishing tradition, and intellectual engine in the hobby - yes, even more than D&D.")

And what is the significance of the fact that Glorantha players prefer some other system? Or that more people play 5e than DungeonWorld? Is that meant to show that the games spawned by the indie RPG movement are of little collective worth? Is your metric for worth "widely played"?

In the case of Burning Wheel, well personally, I don’t like it at all. I have attempted to play it, but find a lot of it’s mechanics counter-intuitive and flatly not worth the effort.

<snip>

In the case of 4E, flatly, it largely goes to the heart of what I feel was wrong with the ‘indie movement’ - narrow, inflexible game precepts and an arrogant assertion that gamers had somehow been playing the game wrong all the years before.

Is your metric for worth "I don't like it at all"? Many people find Rolemaster not worth the effort. Does that mean Rolemaster is of little worth?

As for 4e, can you point me to these "arrogant assetions" in the rulebooks? Do you mean James Wyatt's suggestion to skip colour encounters, like casual chats with gate guards? Is you metric for a game being of worth that you like the designer chatter?

It is hard to find a RPG book more opinionated, more full of admonitions to play one way rather than another, than Gygax's DMG - which tells both Monty Haul gamers and purist-for-system simulationists that they've been playing the game wrong all the years before. And the 2nd ed PHB is full of attacks upon system optimisers and hard-core gamist players (ie precisely the sorts of players who invented D&D!).

If that is the indie movement’s ‘legacy’ claim then I thoroughly endorse that view…but now it’s been superseded by 5E. In short, what legacy?

It seems that you yourself have strong views on how people should design and play RPGs. Is the difference between you and the Forge that you have a popular majority on your side?

 

[Manbearcat]

Yes it does. It’s called ‘providing a backstory and reason to adventure’. Pretty much every RPG has had something like that ever since D&D. To then stick a formal label on such a thing and call it an ‘innovation’ is no such thing at all.

This is incorrect.

I don't think this is a very precise description of what a "kicker" is. It's not this particular feature of "kickers" that makes Edwards' claim them as innovative. What Edwards claims to be innovative is the fact that the kicker is not just backstory but an immediate crisis in which the PC is located - so it's a type of player-authored scene-framing that the GM is obliged to incorporate into the opening fiction of the game.

This is 100 % correct.

I don't have the time nor the inclination for much more commentary than that right now. But, outside of authorial rights being granted to the player, "providing a backstory and reason to adventure" shares nothing in common with the "kicker" technique.

Oh, and Sorcerer doesn't suck. Its a good game and it does what it sets out to do (which is pretty much the point of the Forge as a thinktank for RPG design).

 

[Hussar]

Trying to wheel this thread back around, and avoid the low level edition warring that seems to be brewing here.

I look at a simulation as a model for describing what happens when you do something. Newtonian physics might be an abstraction, sure, but, it does describe pretty well why someone might yell at me from across the room when I break wind, even silently. (Well, it might be Newton's fault, or it might be that bean burrito I had last night, or possibly a collusion of both. )

In any case, a simulation model in order to actually BE a simulation model has to tell you how something happened. And we do see this in arguments over D&D. The idea of rules as physics for example means exactly this. The rules model what happens in the game world.

My problem with that is, the rules have never actually done it. Take combat as a good example. Bob the fighter attacks an orc and misses. Now, in the game, all that's happened is Bob failed to achieve a particular number. But, what happened in the game world? Well, we really don't know. Did Bob whiff, did he bounce off armor, did the orc parry the attack, did the orc use its shield? Who knows? The rules certainly doesn't tell us anything other than the attack failed.

The same thing is true when the attack succeeded. All we know is somehow Bob managed to reduce the orc's HP. How he did so, again, is entirely up in the air since the mechanics are silent on the issue.

In a simulation model, all those questions get answered. The degree of detail might vary, but, at least there are answers there. That's what a simulation should do - provide answers. But D&D mechanics never actually manage to provide any answers really.

Earlier it was mentioned that the multiclassing rules are good simulations. Really? Simulating what? Bob the fighter carves his way through a bunch of orcs, gets the pie and goes back to the Keep. He has killed and looted and done enough stuff that the game judges him to be second level. Upon gaining second level, he takes a level in Wizard/Magic User (take your pick, depending on edition). What happened in the game world? He has done absolutely no training, and has had no contact with any wizards, yet, now he somehow gains the abilities that would normally take years of training to gain. After all, had he started out as a first level wizard, he would have had to spend many years becoming that wizard. But, he spends two weeks killing orcs, and that makes him a magic user? How?

The rules, again, are silent on the issue. There is no how there. If there's no how, then what makes it a simulation?

One thing I do agree with [MENTION=44640]bill[/MENTION]91 about though is this. D&D is a great game for emulating the works of E. R. Burroughs. An alien being with superpowers arrives on the scene, stronger, faster and better than anyone around him, and proceeds to climb his or her way to the top of the heap, gaining wealth and fame along the way. Sounds exactly like a D&D character to me.

 

[billd91]

In a simulation model, all those questions get answered. The degree of detail might vary, but, at least there are answers there. That's what a simulation should do - provide answers. But D&D mechanics never actually manage to provide any answers really.

Maybe you're asking the wrong questions of it.

Earlier it was mentioned that the multiclassing rules are good simulations. Really? Simulating what? Bob the fighter carves his way through a bunch of orcs, gets the pie and goes back to the Keep. He has killed and looted and done enough stuff that the game judges him to be second level. Upon gaining second level, he takes a level in Wizard/Magic User (take your pick, depending on edition). What happened in the game world? He has done absolutely no training, and has had no contact with any wizards, yet, now he somehow gains the abilities that would normally take years of training to gain. After all, had he started out as a first level wizard, he would have had to spend many years becoming that wizard. But, he spends two weeks killing orcs, and that makes him a magic user? How?

The rules, again, are silent on the issue. There is no how there. If there's no how, then what makes it a simulation?

The rules don't have to answer every possible simulation-oriented question under the sun. But how does Bob get to be able to cast a cone of cold as a multi-classed wizard/<something else>? He starts out on his magical journey as a neophyte caster and learns weaker magic before he can master more powerful magic. His skills build as he gains in level until he's finally able to master that particular spell and - like a single classed wizard - he doesn't get to take shortcuts (which is where 4e cuts out a lot of the ambition toward simulation). What the rules aren't doing is explaining all of the details between here and there. That's up to the player and DM.

You seem to be getting hung up on the label simulation and think it has to be at some particular level of granularity. But it doesn't. Any expectations of granularity are entirely imposed by the assumptions of the viewer.

 

[TrippyHippy]

This is incorrect.



This is 100 % correct.

I don't have the time nor the inclination for much more commentary than that right now. But, outside of authorial rights being granted to the player, "providing a backstory and reason to adventure" shares nothing in common with the "kicker" technique.

Oh, and Sorcerer doesn't suck. Its a good game and it does what it sets out to do (which is pretty much the point of the Forge as a thinktank for RPG design).

Well, I have the Sorcerer game, including the Annointed version, and I see no mechanic whatsoever that actually differentiates it. Indeed, no actual mechanic at all. I am tired of people trying to assert that simple story motivations are in any way new, and that anybody who dares to interpret these things differently is ‘incorrect’. The ‘immediacy’ of the situation is irrelevant - it’s no different to saying ‘five orcs run attack you - what do you do next’ in effect, or the other bazzilion reasons why people already justified playing their characters in interactive fantasy worlds for thirty years prior to Sorcerer.

And for the record, I am not arguing that Sorcerer ‘sucked’ - it has a neat central mechanic, it’s playable, and the presentation format is attractive - merely that it wasn’t as revolutionary as people claimed it to be (including the author).