Should D&D (or any other RPG) actually attempt to be "All Things to All People"?

[Rechan]

I prefer the Purpose Built system myself, too. But I feel that too many people find ONE system and refuse to budge, and that pretty much gets in the way.

The problem I see as far as D&D is concerned, is D&D is the most popular RPG. So it's going to have the most people under that umbrella. It's the gateway RPG. Even people who don't play RPGs know D&D. So it has to at least facilitate more than one thing, so that people understand that RPGs can be more than one thing.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

There are a bunch of "universal" game systems. D&D has never been one of them.

The "universal" game systems -- GURPS, Hero, FUDGE, Mutants and Masterminds to name a few -- end up being toolkits to design an RPG for a specific campaign experience and have little individual flavour. The lack of flavour is a necessary condition for their universality, but it has its drawbacks. There is little to inspire a scanario/campaign structure in the game itself and guidance for play structure is pretty limited.

I adore Hero and am willing to put the extra work into a campaign to use it when I think it's warranted, but make no mistake it takes a lot of extra work to build the constraints and guidance for player expectation, character design, and genre emulation to hit the notes I want struck by any particular campaign.

I think that's fair- and HERO is my favorite system, bar none.

However, I'll also say that there are 60+ other RPGs on my shelf, mostly purpose-built for the campaign world or playstyle they support, and but for a Supers game, they generally do a better job overall than HERO in a given genre...until someone wants to do something "outside of the box" in that game.

When it comes to genre fusion, its really, really hard to beat the toolbox systems for handling the situation with balance and flow.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

To be frank, you're never going to make most of these folks happy, especially if you try to please more than one group at a time.


All of the remaining list is pretty easy, and most editions of D&D managed it just fine.

I agree with Whizbang, except of the remaining list, I think that third party support is not required. It is one possible way to deliver sufficiently wide and varied content and support (and a good one), but not the only way. And I don't think having community support is a requirement at all. Do all the other stuf, and the community support will appear.

 

[Jack Daniel]

D&D does not need to be all things to all people.

But it would be nice if it could at least be as much as it used to be.

Which is to say, de facto, more than it is now.

 

[WheresMyD20]

I think that from a business perspective there's going to be pressure to have as large a customer base as possible. I think, though, that trying to be all things to all people just ends up forcing compromise after compromise on an RPG system (or video game, or movie, or any other form of entertainment). At some point, you're just going to be left with a bland product.

I wonder sometimes if it would be best to split D&D into two or more product lines. For example, you could take the Greyhawk setting, split it off from the D&D product line and give it its own old-school game system (possibly even just use 1e with a few tweaks, like getting rid of THAC0 and using ascending AC) and market it as the "Greyhawk RPG".

 

[Hussar]

When D&D first came out, it was pretty much all things to all people because, for all intents and purposes, it was all there was. Yes, yes, I know, there were other RPG's, but none came even close to the penetration that D&D had.

Fast forward a couple of decades. Now, we have all sorts of purpose built games that are, quite honestly, really, really good. Stuff that if you want to play in that genre for years, you certainly can. Why do D&D Horror (Ravenloft) when there are a bajillion great horror games out there? Why do D&D Medieval Reality Sim when there are other games out there that do that job so much better?

D&D should focus on what it does really, really well.

I do think that WheresMyD20 has a good point. Why keep shoehorning a system into settings where a revised system would work better?

So, no, I don't think that "The One Game" is ever a productive goal. Stick with the tool that works the best for whatever you're trying to do.

 

[Lanefan]

D&D does not need to be all things to all people.

But it would be nice if it could at least be as much as it used to be.

Which is to say, de facto, more than it is now.

Largely agreed.

That said, within the overall fantasy/sword-and-sorcery genre* I think D+D should try to cover all the bases or at least as many as it can; I think it did so reasonably well at one time but not so much now.

* - as opposed to sci-fi, western, modern, etc. - those aren't what D+D does.

Lanefan

 

[Balesir]

I prefer the Purpose Built system myself, too. But I feel that too many people find ONE system and refuse to budge, and that pretty much gets in the way.

I agree, and I think this is increasingly a problem. It almost seems as if there is a preference not to find a system that fits, but rather to wrest D&D into being whatever is the preferred mode of game for each (diverse) group.

I find myself wishing that 4E D&D had been published, its system fundamentally unchanged, under any title but D&D. That way, I would have a system I enjoy unburdened by constant pressure to turn it into something I almost certainly would prefer not to play.

 

[Umbran]

But I feel that too many people find ONE system and refuse to budge, and that pretty much gets in the way.

Back in high school, I had a friend who ate a pretty restricted diet - steak, hamburgers (without buns), french fries, and a few other things. Not for any health reason. He just didn't like other foods, he was a really picky eater. Intellectually, I could understand it, but I have to admit that deep down I did not grok having such stringent requirements that he had issues eating at his friends houses.

It is much the same with this issue. I can understand having a game you like. But flat refusals to play anything other than one game befuddle me to a certain extent. I guess it is a different set of priorities, but it is hard to true understand that set.

 

[Umbran]

• It would have to support as many game styles as possible: Gamist, Narrativist, Simulationist, Actor/Author/Director, etc.
• It would have to be simple enough for beginners, yet complex enough for later players (or be "modular" or "scalable" enough for both).
• It would have to present robust combat and out-of-combat actions, without becoming unwieldy.
• It would have to allow for a broad range of character concepts without being "unbalanced."
• It would have to support both minis-based encounters, as well as free form.
• It would have to support some form of community/"living" play.
• It would need to have a feasible third-party licensing structure.

The last two items on your list to me don't seem to be features of the game, proper. They are features of the business that produces the game. Those items are slipping from the game being all things to all people, to the company being all things to all people. That's a taller order.

I'm primarily a purpose-driven game kind of guy. My experience has been that games that try to be too many things end up doing them all poorly. I think a game can be pretty broad, but there's a limit to how far they'll stretch. It is important, for both design and play) to recognize what the limits are - meaning what they actually are, not just what you're used to thinking they are.