Chainsaw Mage
First Post
If you were to invite me over to your house for an evening of Monopoly, I would have a pretty good idea of what you meant and what I could expect. After all, the game is virtually unchanged since the Great Depression. Granted, there are variant themes—Star Wars Monopoly, Simpsons Monopoly, Canada Monopoly, NFL Football Monopoly, Insert-Your-Local-City-Here Monopoly—and variant rule sets (I fondly recall playing Monopoly City with my daughter last summer and building sewage treatment plants on her properties to devalue them). Yet these variants are all so similar to the original game that there is little, if any, new knowledge or instruction necessary to play. This seems pretty standard stuff in the world of board games; as Bob Herzog of KoDT so wisely opined, “What’s wrong with picking a set of rules and stickin’ with it? It’s worked for chess for like five hundred frickin’ years, hasn’t it?”
(I know that even as some of you read those words you are about to press REPLY and point out that chess has in fact had significant rule changes since its inception. Take it up with Bob Herzog. My response would be that when a game’s life is measured in centuries rather than decades some rule changes are permitted.)
Getting back to you inviting me over, suppose that you told me we were going to play Dungeons & Dragons. You know what? I quite literally would not know what you meant.
My mind would race through the myriad possibilities: three book OD&D? AD&D 1e? AD&D 2e without PO? With PO? Mentzer boxed set D&D? Moldvay/Cook B/X D&D? D&D 3.0? 3.5? 4e? Essentials? Perhaps one of the numerous tribute/variant rule sets, such as Labyrinth Lord? Pathfinder? Castles & Crusades? Add your own version of the game here; I am well aware that I have barely scratched the surface.
Which is, of course, my point.
And don’t even get me started on house rules. Whereas house rules in Monopoly are highly unlikely to be game breakers (“We don’t do the whole auction thing”), house rules in D&D can virtually change the game into something different from what a player expects (“House rule: No elves or paladins.”).
Not long ago I lurked on an RPGnet thread in which an amusingly feverish debate was raging over whether Pathfinder “was D&D”. The issue may seem largely semantic, of course. Depends on how one defines “D&D”.
Which is, again, my point.
When we say “Dungeons & Dragons,” what exactly are we referring to? I’ll grant you, the Castle Ravenloft board game carries the “Dungeons & Dragons” logo, while Castles & Crusades does not. But would anyone outside of a corporate attorney serious argue that the first is truer to Gygax and Arneson’s vision than the second?
You think about these kinds of things long enough and you start to wonder if “Dungeons & Dragons” really exists as anything more than a trademark or a series of highly balkanized, largely incompatible games. But then you start to ask yourself: Does it even matter?
I mean, seriously, who cares if “Dungeons & Dragons” is so diluted as to be virtually meaningless on its own? Pick the version you like and identify with it. Don’t ask me if I want to come over and play “D&D”; ask me if I want to come over and play “Advanced D&D, Second Edition, set in Greyhawk, with minimal house rules, no kits, and two or three ideas from the Player’s Option series.” Granted, the non-gamer’s eyes will glaze over, but I’ll know exactly what you mean, and I’ll be there, baby (unless I’m planning on staying home that weekend to play Dead Space 2).
So maybe it doesn’t matter how diluted the brand becomes, and how fragmented the game happens to be. Maybe we just need more clarity when discussing it. After all, gamers have no problem sifting through the vast range of variations of D&D (or whatever other RPG tickles their fancy).
Ah, but perhaps that’s a problem. Gamers, gamers, gamers. What about non-gamers? Or new gamers? (I mean, if you think about it, every new gamer starts out life as a non-gamer). What about attracting them? I can imagine the same person who says “Sure!” to an invitation of Monopoly will stare at me with horror and begin backing away slowly if I say, “How about a one-off game of D&D 3.0 set in Planescape using pre-gens?”
This has always been a problem (or a feature—take your pick) of RPGs: their arcane nature. And don’t let anyone convince you that D&D was “mainstream” back in the early eighties. Nonsense. I was there. It was well-known, yes. But mainstream? Tell you what—when you walk into your staff room at work and everyone is discussing D&D, then you can call it mainstream. That wasn’t happening in the early eighties, and it certainly isn’t happening now.
Even in the heyday of the early eighties, when the game was selling like crazy, it was nowhere near to being a mainstream product. There were cool kids and nerdy kids, and believe me, only the nerdy kids played D&D. Everyone else had heard of it, but it was sort of like Warhammer Fantasy Battles or Magic: the Gathering today. Well-known, and a hot seller, but something that the majority of people did not do. NFL Football and Monopoly are mainstream. Harry Potter and NASCAR are mainstream. Hot Wheels cars and reality television programs are mainstream.
D&D is not, and never was.
Even back in the early eighties the game was mysterious, arcane, and fragmented. I distinctly remember a divide (an early “edition war”) in my elementary school between the people who played “Expert” (the Cook D&D rules) and people who played “Advanced” (the Gygax 1e rules). One group of nerds heaped scorn upon the other. And no one else really understood--or cared--what the heck we were arguing about. They were too busy getting drunk at parties while making out feverishly to Michael Jackson's Thriller.
In the end, I suppose the very complexity of RPGs naturally makes brand dilution more likely over time. Whether this actually matters or not is something I will leave to folks much wiser than I.
(I know that even as some of you read those words you are about to press REPLY and point out that chess has in fact had significant rule changes since its inception. Take it up with Bob Herzog. My response would be that when a game’s life is measured in centuries rather than decades some rule changes are permitted.)
Getting back to you inviting me over, suppose that you told me we were going to play Dungeons & Dragons. You know what? I quite literally would not know what you meant.
My mind would race through the myriad possibilities: three book OD&D? AD&D 1e? AD&D 2e without PO? With PO? Mentzer boxed set D&D? Moldvay/Cook B/X D&D? D&D 3.0? 3.5? 4e? Essentials? Perhaps one of the numerous tribute/variant rule sets, such as Labyrinth Lord? Pathfinder? Castles & Crusades? Add your own version of the game here; I am well aware that I have barely scratched the surface.
Which is, of course, my point.
And don’t even get me started on house rules. Whereas house rules in Monopoly are highly unlikely to be game breakers (“We don’t do the whole auction thing”), house rules in D&D can virtually change the game into something different from what a player expects (“House rule: No elves or paladins.”).
Not long ago I lurked on an RPGnet thread in which an amusingly feverish debate was raging over whether Pathfinder “was D&D”. The issue may seem largely semantic, of course. Depends on how one defines “D&D”.
Which is, again, my point.
When we say “Dungeons & Dragons,” what exactly are we referring to? I’ll grant you, the Castle Ravenloft board game carries the “Dungeons & Dragons” logo, while Castles & Crusades does not. But would anyone outside of a corporate attorney serious argue that the first is truer to Gygax and Arneson’s vision than the second?
You think about these kinds of things long enough and you start to wonder if “Dungeons & Dragons” really exists as anything more than a trademark or a series of highly balkanized, largely incompatible games. But then you start to ask yourself: Does it even matter?
I mean, seriously, who cares if “Dungeons & Dragons” is so diluted as to be virtually meaningless on its own? Pick the version you like and identify with it. Don’t ask me if I want to come over and play “D&D”; ask me if I want to come over and play “Advanced D&D, Second Edition, set in Greyhawk, with minimal house rules, no kits, and two or three ideas from the Player’s Option series.” Granted, the non-gamer’s eyes will glaze over, but I’ll know exactly what you mean, and I’ll be there, baby (unless I’m planning on staying home that weekend to play Dead Space 2).
So maybe it doesn’t matter how diluted the brand becomes, and how fragmented the game happens to be. Maybe we just need more clarity when discussing it. After all, gamers have no problem sifting through the vast range of variations of D&D (or whatever other RPG tickles their fancy).
Ah, but perhaps that’s a problem. Gamers, gamers, gamers. What about non-gamers? Or new gamers? (I mean, if you think about it, every new gamer starts out life as a non-gamer). What about attracting them? I can imagine the same person who says “Sure!” to an invitation of Monopoly will stare at me with horror and begin backing away slowly if I say, “How about a one-off game of D&D 3.0 set in Planescape using pre-gens?”
This has always been a problem (or a feature—take your pick) of RPGs: their arcane nature. And don’t let anyone convince you that D&D was “mainstream” back in the early eighties. Nonsense. I was there. It was well-known, yes. But mainstream? Tell you what—when you walk into your staff room at work and everyone is discussing D&D, then you can call it mainstream. That wasn’t happening in the early eighties, and it certainly isn’t happening now.
Even in the heyday of the early eighties, when the game was selling like crazy, it was nowhere near to being a mainstream product. There were cool kids and nerdy kids, and believe me, only the nerdy kids played D&D. Everyone else had heard of it, but it was sort of like Warhammer Fantasy Battles or Magic: the Gathering today. Well-known, and a hot seller, but something that the majority of people did not do. NFL Football and Monopoly are mainstream. Harry Potter and NASCAR are mainstream. Hot Wheels cars and reality television programs are mainstream.
D&D is not, and never was.
Even back in the early eighties the game was mysterious, arcane, and fragmented. I distinctly remember a divide (an early “edition war”) in my elementary school between the people who played “Expert” (the Cook D&D rules) and people who played “Advanced” (the Gygax 1e rules). One group of nerds heaped scorn upon the other. And no one else really understood--or cared--what the heck we were arguing about. They were too busy getting drunk at parties while making out feverishly to Michael Jackson's Thriller.
In the end, I suppose the very complexity of RPGs naturally makes brand dilution more likely over time. Whether this actually matters or not is something I will leave to folks much wiser than I.
