The MAYA Design Principle, or Why D&D's Future is Probably Going to Look Mostly Like Its Past

Imaro · Jun 4, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
Try parsing the sentence again, factoring out the nots: /if/ you ONLY every played D&D, 4e might fail the MAYA test for you. Or, alternately, if you had played a lotta different games, 4e likely passed the MAYA test for you.

Point being, 4e did a lot of radical, "new," 'narrativist'/'gamist'/'dissociative'/etc things that, in fact, lots of games other than D&D had been doing for decades. D&D is an industry laggard when it comes to innovation, in other words.

I assumed that the MAYA test would be whether it felt familiar as D&D... I have played a ton of non-D&D games but I don't think they factored in much on whether 4e felt familiar or not when I cracked open 4e and got ready to run a D&D game. YMMV and all that of course.

Tony Vargas · Jun 4, 2019

Imaro said:
I assumed that the MAYA test would be whether it felt familiar as D&D...

Could very well work that way, yes! I was thinking that very thing.
For me, finding certain 4e sub-systems familiar from other game - in particular, from another game I particularly liked - was enough to slide it under the 'acceptable' line. But, if you /played/ other games, but kept expectations about D&D compartmentalized from those experiences, or, if you /tried/ other games, and didn't much care for them, any familiarity gained with their innovations would be meaningless (or, in the latter case, a negative) if D&D later copied them.

Joshua Randall · Jun 4, 2019

10 years ago implying that 4e was "not D&D" was part of the edition war.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

= = =

P.S. The absolute best thing you can do to get better as both a DM and a player, of whatever your favorite edition of D&D, is to play games that are radically different from D&D. Not just the historical antecedents like Champions, Runequest, and BRP; but the indie darlings like Fate, Apocalypse World, Cortex; and whatever storygames make a splash at Origins and GenCon this year.

In a weird way doing the above has made me appreciate D&D more than ever. (Particularly 4e, which sneaks in a lot of Narrativist stuff it never gets credit for.)

HJFudge · Jun 4, 2019

Joshua Randall said:
10 years ago implying that 4e was "not D&D" was part of the edition war.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

= = =

P.S. The absolute best thing you can do to get better as both a DM and a player, of whatever your favorite edition of D&D, is to play games that are radically different from D&D. Not just the historical antecedents like Champions, Runequest, and BRP; but the indie darlings like Fate, Apocalypse World, Cortex; and whatever storygames make a splash at Origins and GenCon this year.

In a weird way doing the above has made me appreciate D&D more than ever. (Particularly 4e, which sneaks in a lot of Narrativist stuff it never gets credit for.)

Being able to pull interesting concepts from a wide variety of sources and integrate into the core of whatever system you are running is a skill that seperates a great GM from a good one. Its not easy to do, but it can really enhance the experience at the table. It is not easy to do, and some concepts/systems make it more/less difficult, but in any system and for any edition, the best GMs use a variety of tools.

If you've never played anything but a specific system, you simply won't have well of knowledge/experience you need to be able to draw on in order to do this. So whilst you might be a Good DM, its just not ever gonna be the same as playing with a Great one.

Tony Vargas · Jun 4, 2019

Yeah, it's nice being all cosmopolitan and having multiple systems in your history.

There's something to be said for the dedication of learning one system deeply to the exclusion of others.

Heck, one edition...
...for instance, you don't constantly let wrong-edition rules into your current-edition games. I had that issue so bad by the time Champions was in it's 4th edition that I called it "versionitis."

Nagol · Jun 4, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
Could very well work that way, yes! I was thinking that very thing.
For me, finding certain 4e sub-systems familiar from other game - in particular, from another game I particularly liked - was enough to slide it under the 'acceptable' line. But, if you /played/ other games, but kept expectations about D&D compartmentalized from those experiences, or, if you /tried/ other games, and didn't much care for them, any familiarity gained with their innovations would be meaningless (or, in the latter case, a negative) if D&D later copied them.

Pretty much I play lots of different RPGs. I've run multi-year campaigns in over a dozen* very different systems from Aftermath through Uni-system. I choose a system that matches the gameplay (genre/power level/game play expectation)I want for a particular campaign. 4e wandered far enough from my D&D expectation to be a poor match and didn't provide enough of a unique/superior game play to usurp any other go-to rule set or get added to my rotation on its own merits.

* Off the top of my head: Aftermath, Ars Magica, Pendragon, Champions, Danger International, Conspiracy-X, Teenagers from Outer Space, D&D 1e, 2e, 3.5e, FASA Star Trek, Mystic Masters, Runequest 3e

Tony Vargas · Jun 4, 2019

Nagol said:
didn't provide enough of a unique/superior game play to usurp any other go-to rule set or get added to my rotation on its own merits.
* Off the top of my head: Aftermath, Ars Magica, Pendragon, Champions, Danger International, Conspiracy-X, Teenagers from Outer Space, FASA Star Trek, Mystic Masters, Runequest 3e

To be fair, at least two of those aren't any better than D&D. ...and I don't recognize Mystic Masters or Conspiracy-X, so maybe even 4.

Nagol · Jun 4, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
To be fair, at least two of those aren't any better than D&D. ...and I don't recognize Mystic Masters or Conspiracy-X, so maybe even 4.

No functional system is "better" than any other, merely different and I seek them out because of those differences. Each of the games listed is "better" for me in its niche than any other I've examined. All the games listed offer solid functional rule sets that I have turned to several times in the past and are on my go-to list for future consideration.

Mystic Masters is one of the "little game" versions of Champions 3e (I've run multi-year campaigns in 2e, 3e, and 4e). Conspiracy-X uses the Uni-system engine which also powers All Flesh Must be Eaten, Witchcraft, and a couple other games.

Tony Vargas · Jun 5, 2019

Nagol said:
No functional system is "better" than any other, merely different

That's very politic of you. But part of my reaction to your list was "oh, right, Aftermath! I have to remember to add that to my reply on the 'games you dropped after one bad session' thread." And, as far as licensed Star Trek games go, Space Opera did it better w/o the license - and also made that same list as downright unplayable.
JMHO.
It's funny what very different experiences people can get from the same RPG.

Mystic Masters is one of the "little game" versions of Champions 3e (I've run multi-year campaigns in 2e, 3e, and 4e).

Oh, right, I was trying to remember a separate game called that. I can't say I was impressed, in several places it seemed to pull some unnecessary hand-waving, in others it tried too hard.

Conspiracy-X uses the Uni-system engine which also powers All Flesh Must be Eaten, Witchcraft, and a couple other games.

Ah, AFMBE I've heard of, sounded good, never got around to trying it, though...

evileeyore · Jun 5, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
Mistwell Predicts?

The Mistophecy; which if I recall correctly was: "You will all play 4e and enjoy it."

Joshua Randall said:
P.S. The absolute best thing you can do to get better as both a DM and a player, of whatever your favorite edition of D&D, is to play games that are radically different from D&D.

Not only will you become a better gamer, but you will likely discover a much better system and abandon D&D for the terrible game it is.