Gaming Generation Gap

[coyote6]

Or, take GURPS. It goes the other way. It would be a great system to run your "Livingstone" campaign, but, high octane action? With that combat system? I don't think so.

Hey now. I ran pretty much nothing but GURPS High Octane Action for more than a decade, with 3e; I think 4e might be simpler still. Granted, there were rules options we used, point totals were high, and I incorporated/created/swiped some karma/luck/action point rules. But there were plenty of 4 PC vs. 25 ninja fights.

But that's just evidence that systems are generally pretty flexible; it certainly isn't the default GURPS experience (though we didn't actually consciously set out to design that sort of game; it's just what we ended up with and evolved into). But I digress . . . some more!

I'll admit that I can't tell super hero illustrations apart at all, even though I can recognize Kentaro Miura's works on sight and I know when some random american artist is just ripping off Tite Kubo's style.

Really? You can't tell Bill Sienkiewicz from Rob Liefeld from Alex Ross? I mean, I can understand not recognizing artist X if you don't read comics, and there are plenty or artists with similar styles. But there are also tons of artists with vastly different styles; it doesn't seem that different to me from reconizing that Ghost in the Shell is not quite the same style or same artist as Pokemon.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Really? You can't tell Bill Sienkiewicz from Rob Liefeld from Alex Ross? I mean, I can understand not recognizing artist X if you don't read comics, and there are plenty or artists with similar styles. But there are also tons of artists with vastly different styles; it doesn't seem that different to me from reconizing that Ghost in the Shell is not quite the same style or same artist as Pokemon.

Looking at those galleries, I can sorta tell them apart, but I'll admit it is rather difficult partly because they are all drawing the same kinds of things...

Of course, my comment was more a reference to my own ignorance of the medium and its artists than an actual criticism of comic book art. I don't read comic books, so all their art just kinda blends together...

A big difference, though, between American comic book art and Japanese manga art is that the connection between artist and subject matter is must stronger in manga. I bet there have been hundreds of artists who have drawn Batman, but only Akira Toriyama has ever drawn the art for Dragonball. As such, I think it leads to somewhat greater diversity of art styles in manga (since artists are not as shackled to drawing characters the same way that previous artists have), and it certainly makes it easier to remember who has drawn what.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

I actually have a perfect picture regarding the anime/manga thing.

I once had someone claim that "ALL ANIME IS THE SAME," in a very rage-y fashion. So I took some time editing pictures, and eventually just gave up and found a picture that says everything I would need to.

http://i25.tinypic.com/2ypb6zm.jpg

 

[Imaro]

This may seem sort of off topic, and it definitely refers to earlier posts in the threads, but when considering more recent fantasy books such as Perdido Street Station, Neverwhere, Stardust, etc. ... I've noticed a trend where most of the protagonists are not bad to the bone, killing machines but are in fact pretty sub-par in the killing department and tend to get by on other attributes of their characters.

I guess when considering this aspect of more modern fiction (as well as certain myths and folktales where heroes rely on cunning, charisma, trickery or knowledge instead of a blade or fireballs) in contrast to Sword & Sorcery or even Classic High Fantasy I find D&D 4e doesn't tend to incorporate the tropes and stylings of more modern fiction (with the possible exception of some manga and some anime) or the aforementioned folktales and myths... and that it's default and supported playstyle kind of actively opposess it ... I thought that 3e/3.5 was a general, if stumbling step in the right direction, but 4e seems to have dispensed with many of the proto-mechanics, trappings and ideas I had hoped would grow to allow these things as part of gameplay. just wondering what other's oppinions are on this?

 

[Fallen Seraph]

This may seem sort of off topic, and it definitely refers to earlier posts in the threads, but when considering more recent fantasy books such as Perdido Street Station, Neverwhere, Stardust, etc. ... I've noticed a trend where most of the protagonists are not bad to the bone, killing machines but are in fact pretty sub-par in the killing department and tend to get by on other attributes of their characters.

I guess when considering this aspect of more modern fiction (as well as certain myths and folktales where heroes rely on cunning, charisma, trickery or knowledge instead of a blade or fireballs) in contrast to Sword & Sorcery or even Classic High Fantasy I find D&D 4e doesn't tend to incorporate the tropes and stylings of more modern fiction (with the possible exception of some manga and some anime) or the aforementioned folktales and myths... and that it's default and supported playstyle kind of actively opposess it ... I thought that 3e/3.5 was a general, if stumbling step in the right direction, but 4e seems to have dispensed with many of the proto-mechanics, trappings and ideas I had hoped would grow to allow these things as part of gameplay. just wondering what other's oppinions are on this?

I somewhat disagree, while certainly they won't be sub-par in terms of killing in 4e. The opposite is also true in 4e you can pick any class and have some non-combat capabilities and not have to rely on other classes to do such things. In general too, I have just found 4e better for non-combat with less-Skills, Rituals, Skill Challenges. But that isn't there or here when talking specifically about classes.

 

[jmucchiello]

I actually have a perfect picture regarding the anime/manga thing.

I once had someone claim that "ALL ANIME IS THE SAME," in a very rage-y fashion. So I took some time editing pictures, and eventually just gave up and found a picture that says everything I would need to.

http://i25.tinypic.com/2ypb6zm.jpg

I don't enjoy anime in general and have uttered that phrase although I don't think I've said it in rage. About the only picture in that sample that you need to tell me is from an anime is the first one in row three, the old man looking into the teacup. That looks like a western animation cell. Otherwise, the rest of the pictures all look like anime animation cells.

 

[MichaelSomething]

This may seem sort of off topic, and it definitely refers to earlier posts in the threads, but when considering more recent fantasy books such as Perdido Street Station, Neverwhere, Stardust, etc. ... I've noticed a trend where most of the protagonists are not bad to the bone, killing machines but are in fact pretty sub-par in the killing department and tend to get by on other attributes of their characters.

I guess when considering this aspect of more modern fiction (as well as certain myths and folktales where heroes rely on cunning, charisma, trickery or knowledge instead of a blade or fireballs) in contrast to Sword & Sorcery or even Classic High Fantasy I find D&D 4e doesn't tend to incorporate the tropes and stylings of more modern fiction (with the possible exception of some manga and some anime) or the aforementioned folktales and myths... and that it's default and supported playstyle kind of actively opposess it ... I thought that 3e/3.5 was a general, if stumbling step in the right direction, but 4e seems to have dispensed with many of the proto-mechanics, trappings and ideas I had hoped would grow to allow these things as part of gameplay. just wondering what other's oppinions are on this?

Why am I not surprised that you brought this subject up?

Well people believe that 4E is the best option for such non-combat situations like a poetry contest, as shown in this poll I made.

Then again, if you really want to run complex non-combat challenges, you may want want to consider RPGs other then D&D.

Of course, I think 4E (or any RPG) system can do what you want it to do if you're willing to work for it. Even get the ladies. BTW, you never thanked me for solving the lack of crunch to reflect your character's sexual capabilities.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm not sure if this is really a problem to be honest. I'd rather a game focused on doing something really, really well, rather than try to be everything to everyone and doing a piss poor job of most of it.

The problem with that side of the coin is that what that game wants to do really, really well, is still only wanted at maybe 5% of the game tables out there. Probably, more than 50% of those gametables houserule the thing to hades and back again.

A game that does one thing really well basically fragments your potential market into competing lines, because people won't learn more than one or two game systems, or diminishes your market into a tiny tiny piece of the whole (which, itself, is pretty tiny). It's also true that the segments are getting smaller as the genre gets bigger: people love Anime-style fantasy, but won't play anything that smells like the nostalgia of 40-50 year olds reminiscing about LOTR. A different crowd follows the "fairy tale" feel of Gaiman, or the "reality through the distorted lens" of Meiville. A lot of people will read or watch both (I like everything on that list!), but what they won't do is read 600 pages of rules for playing RPG's in each of those styles, especially as getting a game together in the first place is such a tremendous challenge.

The difficulty with this isn't necessarily an insurmountable challenge, but to confront it directly means to drastically change what the hobby looks like over the next decade or so. The real challenge is in finding a new system that works before the old system gives way from underneath you.

D&D has done well primarily because it was the first, the most popular, and it has been able to balance other people's archetypes with its own fairly easily (the "d20 + mods vs. DC" core mechanic is, as True 20 showed, pretty flexible). That success has carried it for 30 years and could probably carry it a good deal farther, but like spamming the same attack over and over again, it looses it's effectiveness. We've seen essentially the same model four times in a row now. It's worked, but it can't stay this way forever, and I bet D&D is already feeling the groaning of its aged system, even as 4e tries to take the game in new directions.

I don't want to sound like one of those "THE SKY IS FALLING" Death of TableTop chicken little types, but the grain of truth in their wild speculation is that D&D can't keep doing the same thing and expect the same results as the world changes around it. The tabletop needs to adapt, and that is going to mean a lot of big changes. What the future looks like is hard to say, but it certainly isn't the same thing that the last 30 years have been.

...and on the topic of my pokemans:

I don't enjoy anime in general and have uttered that phrase although I don't think I've said it in rage. About the only picture in that sample that you need to tell me is from an anime is the first one in row three, the old man looking into the teacup. That looks like a western animation cell. Otherwise, the rest of the picture all look like anime animation cells.

I really wish I had the resources to make a collage of images from "western animation," because I wouldn't say that Sin City, Wallace & Grommit, Indie Canadian cartoons, most of what's on Adult Swim, and Spongebob Squarepants are the same thing at all, but you could probably find visual similarities. The truth is that all of them are closer to certain types of other nations' animation than they are to each other. Maybe the best example I can find is The Animatrix, that compilation of animated shorts based on the world of The Matrix. A lot of very diverse styles come together in that.

That's not to remove culture from the equation, of course. There are real differences in art style between many Japanese animators and many American animators and even many Korean animators or Canadian animators (you can probably tell which animation bits were outsourced on many shows without a whole lot of guidance). Lots of difference of purpose and the like as well.

"I don't like most anime" is kind of like saying "I don't like most comic books." It's quite possible you legitimately don't like some of the more common elements (say, heavily stylized "humans"), but the thing is diverse enough to make the categorical dismissal more than a little naive.

And, anyway, to tie it back into the point above, everyone wants different stuff in their games. If D&D chooses one style, it'll alienate everyone else. If D&D tries to be diverse, it will tend to be generic and bland and un-inspiring. It's loose-loose. The only hope is to re-define the battlefield.

 

[jmucchiello]

As I was saying before, I would like it if D&D had official support within the D&D brand and ruleset itself for kinds of fantasy other than pure traditional medieval fantasy.

For example, D&D could have some options that would support something like the Star Ocean series of videogames. These games are still all about characters running around fantasy settings killing monsters and taking their stuff, with the one difference that some of the characters happen to be have beamed down to the planet on an away mission for an organization similar to Star Trek's Starfleet (a version of Starfleet where you can major in swordplay or sorcery). So, it would play a lot like traditional D&D, except characters might wander between planets, use beam weapons, or get caught up in a space dogfight.

Okay, I must be crazy because I don't see anything that prevents you from creating a campaign and running it like this. It takes two seconds to define how beam weapons works. Transporters are already supported by magic items with unlimited use teleportation. Space dogfights are no different from aerial combat between large monsters. (There was even a d20 modern article in Dragon (while it was still print) involving space combat IIRC.)

I wish I could remember who posted it but a couple years back someone on these boards was describing a cool event in a game. A character died at an inconvenient time and the DM didn't want the players to pull out and head back to town so he could be raised. The plot made it hard for a replacement character to jump in. So in a flash of inspiration (or insanity) the DM took the player aside and said (paraphrased) "You wake up in the clone cell, the computer quickly briefs you on your mission and brings you up to speed on what was happening before you died. You find yourself at an airlock, exiting Alpha Complex. You walk out onto a terrraformed planet climbing up a small hill in front of you. As you reach the top you see the other operatives standing around the corpse of clone-1." Conflating classic Paranoia with D&D is a crazy concept. He's turned the adventuring party from fantasy archetypes to futuristic holo-deck style characters pretending to be fantasy archetypes.

Alternatively, a few options to emulate something like the Wild ARMS series of videogames would be nice. Again, the Wild ARMS games play a lot like normal D&D, except the characters all use firearms, there is a slight wild-west flavor, half the dungeons they go into are ancient spaceships, and demons know how to control nanotechnology. Actually, a great DM I used to play with told me he once ran a campaign that was very strongly inspired by the Wild ARMS series. It would be nice if the game itself did a better job of supporting that.

Again, there is nothing inherently difficult about putting firearms into D&D. There were many campaign settings made by 3rd party publishers during the 3e era who included firearms in their games. Ancient spaceships have been in D&D since S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. I'm still not seeing what more you need WotC to do to support a Wild ARMS campaign. A simple Dragon article on DDI for firearms covers it completely.

Actually, the whole idea that a fantasy setting is in fact the product of some kind of post-apocalyptic future Earth is pretty common in some of the major source material for D&D. Vance's Dying Earth and Terry Brooks' Shannara books both feature that idea, as well as several others I could name. I mean, I quite clearly recall a scene in The Sword of Shannara where the main characters are attack by a giant robot that was left over from the wars that destroyed the older civilization of Earth. The idea of "lost technology" that can be found and used is a pretty major idea across countless anime and videogames as well...

I've already mentioned that combining D&D and post-apocalyptic future is in the 1e DMG. In 4e fighting robots is dead simple. What is the difference between a manticore and a giant robot with missiles? So you have to add the "non-living" attribute to the manticore. That's it. Using the manticore stats as is and describing the monster as a robot should make the players think you have stats for a robot.

All of this is window dressing. Instead of saying, "You enter a damp cave. A patchwork of luminous fungus lights the rough rock walls that extend far into the distance," you could say, "You enter a metal corridor. Recessed lamps illuminate the smooth surface of the walls that extend far into the distance."

Generally, a few options within a PHB or DMG for guns, beam swords, cars, spaceships, robotic monsters, and various other trappings of modern and futuristic settings is all I really want.

As I said, this could be covered in a single DDI article. I think you should be emailing WotC customer support asking them to include something like this in PHB3.

Why shouldn't there be more direct support for that kind of thing, then?

No one said there shouldn't be more direct support. In fact the only reason there isn't direct support I would guess is the WotC designers are use to the idea that people can just make this stuff up themselves. You need to convince them that direct support for guns is wanted by their player base.

Still, I guess it is worth mentioning again that this whole discussion started out as my response to someone saying that D&D could be seen by people of my generation as the embodiment of all the fantasy videogames and such that we grew up playing.

How old are you? Could this just be an issue of players of your generation just haven't fully integrated into the design and development groups at WotC? Maybe the support you want will happen automatically in 5-10 years when WotC has more writers and designers from "your generation". If this is truly a generational thing then you just need to wait for the generations to pass. Just remember this thread when some kid is posting the D&D doesn't do what he wants it to do based on the MMOs he's played on his cellphone.

"People try to put us... down."

 

[Imaro]

Why am I not surprised that you brought this subject up?

Well people believe that 4E is the best option for such non-combat situations like a poetry contest, as shown in this poll I made.

Then again, if you really want to run complex non-combat challenges, you may want want to consider RPGs other then D&D.

Of course, I think 4E (or any RPG) system can do what you want it to do if you're willing to work for it. Even get the ladies. BTW, you never thanked me for solving the lack of crunch to reflect your character's sexual capabilities.

Uhm... ok, so did you actually have an opinion on this as it pertains to 4e's bridging the generation gap with more modern-fictional sources?

Edit: Or is your point still that bridging this particular aspect of the gap is best handled by games that don't address it and instead leave creating any mechanics involved in it for the DM (novice or experienced) to create out of thin air?

Instead of rehashing that old argument why not examine games based off more modern fantasy, such as the Buffy, Song of Fire and Ice, Angel, Dresden Files, Supernatural, etc. rpg's and how they address such things... and whether said design could perhaps add something to D&D... oh yeah, I forgot, if I want those type of mechanics I should go play those types of games right?