Game Fundamentals - The Illusion of Accomplishment

[Steel_Wind]

Well, I know that I always WANTED to play those high level things, but, it just never happened. I'll agree that I probably didn't feel cheated, but, when it was pointed out to me that I probably only used about 2/3 of the rule set, it did kinda "click" with me when 3e was released.

3e made it pretty explicit that the entire rule set was meant to be used.

Steel Wind - your assumption that the player base has aged considerably isn't really supportable. For one, the readership of Dragon, for example, remained about 20ish for more than a few reader polls, including two done by Paizo. The average age of a gamer isn't likely all that much different than it was twenty years ago.

Although, you'd think, if the player base was much older than before, that more open ended campaigns would be the norm since isn't it generally thought that younger people lack the stability and attention span?

Now? It has aged, yes, but not to the degree it had in the late 90s. The player acquisition model for AD&D was broken by M:TG in the mid to late 90s and new players dried up. The average only has to change one or two years for the underlying demographic disaster to be higlighted.

The gamers who were there got older and churnd out - and the ones coming in slowed to a trickle. And that was the end of TSR.

In order to restructure for 3.xx - they aimed to attract a mass of players who had left AD&D in first and 2nd ed back to the game - at the same time as re-starting their new player acquisition model.

It worked brilliantly.

Anyways - if you want to have this argument - go have it with Ryan Dancey and Monte Cook. They are the people who made the changes to the XP system for precisely the reasons that I have described.

 

[ggroy]

Now? It has aged, yes, but not to the degree it had in the late 90s. The player acquisition model for AD&D was broken by M:TG in the mid to late 90s and new players dried up. The average only has to change one or two years for the underlying demographic disaster to be higlighted.

The gamers who were there got older and churnd out - and the ones coming in slowed to a trickle. And that was the end of TSR.

In order to restructure for 3.xx - they aimed to attract a mass of players who had left AD&D in first and 2nd ed back to the game - at the same time as re-starting their new player acquisition model.

Today some may argue that their "new player acquisition model" may possibly be broken again, due to WoW and other MMORPGs.

 

[Hussar]

Anyways - if you want to have this argument - go have it with Ryan Dancey and Monte Cook. They are the people who made the changes to the XP system for precisely the reasons that I have described.

Ryan Dancey specifically EXCLUDED older gamers from his model when designing 3e. Anyone over 35 wasn't included in the market research.

When you say older, how much older are you talking about? Do you mean teens to early 20's or teens to mid thirties? If it's the former, then fine, I'll totally agree. But, I'm not sure the player base really has aged all that much.

3e was designed around the idea of a campaign lasting 1-2 years because that's what they learned in the market research, that that was the average length of a campaign. We don't really know what the average length or playtime was in 1981 because there's nothing but anecdotal evidence at best.

Lke Nifft, you're talking about the mechanical reward of XP/character development. This is one interesting aspect of the game, but not the crucial one (and in any event hard to compare between more modern games, where it tends to be built into the character development rules, and a game like AD&D where character development depends less on levelling and more on gaining access to magic items, castles etc - it seems plausible to me that players in traditional AD&D games get funky new magic items at something like the same rate that players in a 4e game get access to new powers).

I think awesomeapocalypse has identified the social rewards as the most fundamental, and the rate of delivery of these has not changed.

That I would likely agree with actually. The thing is though, the thrust of the OP was about the mechanical awards of the system, not the social rewards.

 

[Nifft]

Good point about options for mechanical rewards. But I think awesomeapocalypse's point about social rewards is a deeper one. In a face-to-face RPG, I think the social rewards are probably the deeper source of player gratification.

Interestingly enough, the rewards I'm talking about -- Exalted's stunt system and the WFRP group reward system -- are both social and mechanical.

Your complaint about the superiority of one or the other is moot. You can have both.

There's no need to set up a false dichotomy.

Cheers, -- N

 

[pemerton]

Interestingly enough, the rewards I'm talking about -- Exalted's stunt system and the WFRP group reward system -- are both social and mechanical.

Your complaint about the superiority of one or the other is moot. You can have both.

There's no need to set up a false dichotomy.

I wasn't meaning to. I was just suggesting that even in games without the sorts of mechanics you talk about, the social rewards can come thick and fast.

With the mechanics you're talking about, the social rewards are integrated with the mechanical system in a way that appeals to a particular set of player preferences - what I called upthread "engaging the mechanics to influence the gameworld". I think the OP has mistaken games that support this particular approach to play for games that are aimed to a peculiar extent at ego-gratification.

 

[pemerton]

The thing is though, the thrust of the OP was about the mechanical awards of the system, not the social rewards.

Agreed, but I think the OP might be misunderstanding the rewards received from playing a P&P RPG.

 

[jmucchiello]

Comparing people who like things different than you do.. to rats pushing buttons for feed is so gracious I cant believe it and yes that is exactly the right analogy for this thread.

I think you taking this too literally. I don't there is a 100% Ego-Gamer in existence. There are just players for whom the "Ego-Gamer" tag is dominant among many other traits that make up "gamers". C'mon, are telling me you've never been at a game and just been in the mode to beat stuff up? I generally don't like a hack and slash game but sometimes, sometimes I show up to game in the mode for fast and furious combat. I've pressed the button. Everyone has.

Too many people in this thread are taking the premise of this thread as an absolute.

Press the button! More Goblins, DM! My dice grow cold!

 

[Ariosto]

The 1e AD&D M-U table ended at something like 26th level or some such, but like every other table it carried instructions for going on.

Only to another 1 hit point per 375,000 experience points. The spell progression ended at 29th level, to-hit and saving-throw progressions at 21st.

In OD&D, "There is no theoretical limit to how high a character may progress" -- but the instructions for continuation range from arguably implied (or arguably implying something else), to absent, to possibly just more confusing than nothing at all. Supplement I added spell levels, among other things, with no statement that they were meant for high-level NPCs, but the word in The Dragon was increasingly on keeping PC levels from getting too high.

That meant chiefly racking up the difficulty of gaining levels.

 

[jmucchiello]

Now that you mention it, I've never cast an 8th level spell in 1e, and maybe not even as the DM running an NPC. I do remember casting 'Reverse Gravity' as a player, and few other similar spells, but those are I think 7th level.

Around when 3e came out I looked back on 1e and decided that 7th and higher level spells in 1e were supposed to be descriptive, there only to fill out the world and what magic "is". There was no expectation that players would ever cast those spells. They were just there to finish the spell system. In fact, I hope Gygax created them for the fun of creating them. Some of those spells are more whimsical than other Flaming Chariot of Sustare, the Bigsby spells, etc. They paint a definite picture of what high level magery is about. For folks who say D&D is its own genre, this is one of the key elements of old style D&D.

But player's casting them? Do you think anybody had cast even a handful of them in actual game play before the PHB was released in 78? I doubt it. The original systems always had charts with ellipses. That is where 3e dropped the ball. They assumed folks wanted to be able to play the whole game. But I think the game makes more sense when there is always more stuff beyond. At least 3e had the Epic Handbook, for better or for worse. What do you do when you hit 30th level in 4e? They removed the ellipses.

But I think I've gone off topic....

 

[Hussar]

One man's ellipse is another man's oval.

I see what you're saying, but, I can definitely understand the idea that the mechanics are there to be used. What's the point of having them in the mechanics otherwise? If they aren't meant to be used, they're basically forcing a particular setting upon the game.

Which is fine if the game is meant to be played in a single setting, but, D&D has always been generic enough that not everyone's setting should look the same (or sometimes even close). Sure, a lot of those spells are iconic, but, like a lot of the iconic elements of D&D, they are very much background, rather than foreground.

I don't think either approach is particularly wrong. Totally a different strokes thing.