So what exactly is the root cause of the D&D rules' staying power?

[aramis erak]

D&D is filled with iconic thematic elements.

Everyone gets "Fighter" or "Fighting Man".
Almost everyone gets "Cleric" once it's explained as "Combattant priest" or "Combat Shaman".
Everyone gets Magic User.
Everyone gets Thief, most get "rogue" as a more inclusive term

Those four iconic themes for characters are near universal.

The Bard, while the term itself is a sometimes mismatch, is another iconic role. The musician living by his wits, with a ready dagger and/or sword, is part of English mythology, as well as Scots and Irish. An early 19th C song (by Thos. Moore) highlights the linguistic shift in meaning of Bard from Celtic pagan priest to fighting

The minstrel boy to war has gone
In the ranks of death shall ye find him
His father's sword he hath girded on
His wild harp slung behind him
Born of ages the Warrior Bard
Tho' all the world betray him
One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard,
One faithful harp shall praise thee!

The Paladin, while again appropriating a term, is a classic of lit, too. The holy warrior. The Crusader knight.

The Ranger is a standard of lit... modeled after Aragorn from LotR, it's a recent version of an older archetype - Robin Hood and Will Handy both competent swordsmen and archer, most at home in the woods.

The Druid again rears ahistoric terminology to an iconic class: The nature priest. (Druids historic were priests, period.) And they occur in myth, legend, and fiction alike.

The rules for D&D also force Campbell's "Hero's Journey," a story motif that is at least as old as the written tale.

Add to that the inertia of having been first, both in the market and in most player's experiences...

... it is easy to find groups for because of its popularity. It's popularity is fueled by the combination of mythic archetypes in a time where popular entertainment is going to the anti-heroes and avoiding Campbell's monomyth, and it's own institutional inertia, as well as being "Good enough" for most players to enjoy, even if it's not their favorite.

 

[Aldarc]

Well, magic systems in computer games are fairly diverse, but there are still some that use quasi-Vancian systems for the same sorts of reasons Vancian works.

I don't know. This argument seems to require buying into an overly broad and diluted sense for what constitutes a Vancian magic system.

Blizzard in particular has evolved to a sort of Vancian spell slot system for most of its games, differing only in that it has faster cool downs for your chosen spells - seconds rather than 'a game day'.

I'm not sure if I would call that Vancian though. Since you cite Blizzard games, and here I assume that you are primarily referencing World of Warcraft, the game is indeed attempting to create "enforced diversity," but that is primarily for the sake of dynamic combat rotations and "enforced complexity." Vancian magic is less about creating dynamic play via combat rotations and more about power tiers.

Go ahead and try to run a game like Burning Wheel or FATE with 12 players and you'll see what I mean. (It's amazing how many indy games implicitly assume you have only 2-3 players ever, and code that assumption into the rules without realizing it.)

I think you're shooting a bit low on your typical estimation, but that is also true for D&D. Most systems, I would estimate, generally assume 4-5 players plus a GM as opposed to 12 players. But this is likely because this is indeed more typical than 10+ player groups.

D&D's biggest advantage over most systems is that it evolved rather than was designed. The result was a kludgy mess in a lot of ways but by being evolved it did serve the gameplay it was designed to serve. The 1e AD&D DMG runs like it reads, and provides tons of examples of play that prove that. (Compare with the FATE book which doesn't run like it reads and provides tons of examples of play that prove that.)

(And to me watching a game like FATE being run is so entirely cringy because it is so obviously not creating the game it was intended to create.)

Woah. Holy hell do I disagree with these assertions about Fate. Fate has indeed evolved as a game, and it did evolve out of Fudge. There are four editions of Fate, and it has now also evolved to include Fate Acclerated. And, IME, Fate does indeed run as it reads. This is the reverse experience I had with Fate, so step the hell back and consider that your opinion is neither truth nor universally shared.

Things I'm looking for in a system:
a) Players can make propositions with some expectation of the difficulty of the proposition and the likely consequences of failure.
b) Player have a linear experience of play, meaning that causes happen before consequences and decisions are made linearly in the same way you experience life or story.
c) DMs can enter into a just contract with the players where they are promising a fair game with fair rewards and deserved penalties. Good play isn't merely entertaining, wheedling, or conjoling the GM to be given breaks or rewards.
d) Players can become as immersed in the game as they like and the play encouraged by the game is natural "make believe". That is, as much as possible, good propositions in the play are the same as good propositions in a child's game of pretend and are phrased as much as possible exactly like that. Once the rules are understood, they should become invisible or at least transparent.
e) There is a certain amount of cinematic play where the dice create description, but not necessarily so much detail in resolution that the game slows down to a crawl.
f) As a player, the rules allow you to invest in a character with very meaningful connections between what you invested in and what you can do.
g) As a player, that there is a real risk of failure, but also the possibility of heroic success.

And my players and I regularly get out all of this with Fate.

 

[Celebrim]

[MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION]: Lol. So now the shoe is on the other foot and someone has hung a kick me sign on your preferred system. It's OK. If FATE is right for you, go for it. But I do wish you could see my problems with it.

I don't know. This argument seems to require buying into an overly broad and diluted sense for what constitutes a Vancian magic system.

I suppose, but it's certainly not a mana point system (compare Diablo I with Diablo III).

...the game is indeed attempting to create "enforced diversity," but that is primarily for the sake of dynamic combat rotations and "enforced complexity." Vancian magic is less about creating dynamic play via combat rotations and more about power tiers.

No, stop that. Vancian magic may in your mind be primarily about power tiers, but that's not even a particularly important part of Vancian as far as I'm concerned. The most important aspects of Vancian is that it enforces diversity by making you commit to spells or else forgo them (you have more slots to fill than you have spells), and that it compartmentalizes magic into very predictable narrative packets. That is to say, Vancian is not a free form system where you have as a player a lot of ability to create and shape the effect that you want, but consequently you also have a reliable understanding of what is going to happen.

I think you're shooting a bit low on your typical estimation, but that is also true for D&D. Most systems, I would estimate, generally assume 4-5 players plus a GM as opposed to 12 players. But this is likely because this is indeed more typical than 10+ player groups.

I think most groups probably are 4-5 players, though I prefer D&D at 6 players personally. One of the least discussed aspects of table top gaming is how the number of players at the table limits the sorts of play you can support. Indy games frequently prioritize narratives about the internal mental exploration of character (the character's character, as it were), but that sort of play is really only fun when there are at most 3 players and is honestly probably best with just one player and one GM. You can't do that when you have 12 players competing for spot light because the players who don't have the spot light on them get bored, or worse try to steal spotlight.

Woah. Holy hell do I disagree with these assertions about Fate. Fate has indeed evolved as a game, and it did evolve out of Fudge. There are four editions of Fate, and it has now also evolved to include Fate Acclerated. And, IME, Fate does indeed run as it reads. This is the reverse experience I had with Fate, so step the hell back and consider that your opinion is neither truth nor universally shared.

I totally agree it's not universally shared, but to really address this in depth I'd have to have the FATE book in front of me and be able to quote it extensively. I've several times been in discussion on EnWorld with FATE proponents who defended FATE as being one thing, when the rulebook itself repeatedly reinforces that it is about the opposite.

And my players and I regularly get out all of this with Fate.

No, you don't. Or if you do, you aren't playing FATE. In particular, FATE cannot provide players with a contract about reality of the world you are in. It's literally designed not to do that and discusses how bad such a contract would be for the game. The contract that FATE tries to make with the player is that they can be involved in the creation of the narrative. Nor can the results of success or failure be predicted. FATE does not even try to offer that as part of its social contract. Instead, FATE offers a contract that revolves around Rule of Cool, that whatever happens should not be predictable but that it should be fun. The GM, and indeed the players, are given wide leeway to interpret what failure and success mean, and it's done on purpose. That's not bad, but it doesn't fulfill my aesthetic of play. For me, that sounds about as fun as a root canal.

Consider a game like "Star Wars: Edge of the Empire"

Almost nothing about that game is part of my preferred aesthetic of play. When someone says of a game, "In practice, this system offers tremendous flexibility to allow the players to participate in the storytelling process, rather than just waiting for the GM to respond after a die roll. The players talk together about how to interpret a roll of the dice, and shape the results to make the most exciting story.", whether I'm thinking of that from my perspective as a player or my perspective as a GM, that sounds about as fun as rolling around in a bed of tacks. I see what it is going for, but the last thing I want as a player is "talking together about how to interpret the roll of the dice" or as a GM being asked to "shape the results to make the most exciting story". If that is what the game prioritizes, that it doesn't meet the above list - and in most cases the rules of the game will say that they don't.

 

[innerdude]

I don't have any experience to compare how Fate runs versus how it "reads," but it does bring up an interesting point---does D&D's popularity remain strong because on the whole, it generally DOES deliver on what it promises between the pages? (i.e., combat action, dungeon-y exploration and mysteries, puzzle solving).

I would probably agree that on the whole, D&D generally does deliver what it promises with one massive caveat---you have to restrict your view of the game to levels 1 through 9. Once you get to level 10+, all bets are off.

One of my primary disillusionments with D&D, particularly 3.x, is that it doesn't really support intrigue-driven, characters-with-personal-stakes-resolving-those-stakes in actual play. It's nigh impossible to really play a "Game of Thrones" type of campaign with D&D, mostly because everyone---PCs and NPCs alike---have too much "plot protection" through massive hit point numbers, magic items, and spells. One of the things I truly love about Savage Worlds is that it significantly reduces plot protection, for both the PCs and NPCs. No one is safe in Savage Worlds. As a result, combat has consistently higher levels of tension in Savage Worlds than it did in D&D.

I also have come to genuinely dislike Vancian magic, and the general omnipresence of magic at large in the kinds of worlds D&D envisions. To me this leads into one of my other major dislikes of D&D, particularly high-level D&D, which is the idea that by level 10 you're "planehopping" to other dimensions because the cares of the prime material plane are now somehow beneath you. I think this is a natural outgrowth of magic's omnipresence, because by level 10, the only way to prevent PCs from pretty much being invincible is to have the enemies possess the same kinds of magic that can negate omnipresent magical plot protection.

I actually do own a copy of Legends of Anglerre (which I think is generally considered "Fate 3.0," whereas Fate Core is considered "Fate 4.0", though I might be wrong), but I've never actually played it. I watched some of Wil Wheaton's Geek and Sundry / Tabletop playthroughs of Fate Core, and it generally seemed to play out like I expected it would, with the tagging/aspects coming into play and their use.

However, one of things I noticed---and this was also true with my direct play experiences with Dungeon World---was that much of the core conceits of Fate as a rules set could be added to other rules systems through general GM-ing principles. In the 4-5 sessions of Dungeon World I GM'd, I kept feeling like all of the pointers, tips, and ideas in the DW/PbtA rules were more to get the GM thinking a certain way about the game, and if the players happened to enjoy it, that was just a bonus.

In watching the Fate playthroughs, I felt much the same way---"These are really great ideas, I love the compel/tag aspects, and the concept of the mutability of the fiction . . . but man, the skill tree and task resolution stuff in Fate really isn't to taste."

So here's the question---how does a system bridge the gap between "how it reads" and "how it plays"? Or is this simply too nebulous? For example, I've seen in some forums where some defenders of Savage Worlds try to convince people to play it by saying "it plays much better than it reads." This totally blew my mind, because to me Savage Worlds pretty much played EXACTLY the way I expected when I read it---it was one of the reasons I was willing to give it a shot in the first place.

 

[Aldarc]

[MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION]: Lol. So now the shoe is on the other foot and someone has hung a kick me sign on your preferred system. It's OK. If FATE is right for you, go for it. But I do wish you could see my problems with it.

There is no shoe on the other footing here really, as I don't think anyone is really putting a "kick me" sign on your preferred system. There has not even been much D&D kicking in this thread. It's not about kicking D&D, but, rather, it's about being able to appreciate and enjoy games other than D&D. I still play and enjoy D&D as D&D. But I do periodically grow tired of it, especially since I enjoy playing other games, including Fate. Monopoly has extraordinary staying power, but playing Monopoly forever would be tiresome. D&D is not a omni-system and its not good for all tabletop roleplaying games, despite some people pretending that it is. It can't do everything, and it does grate on some of my players' nerves. My fiancé, for example, loathes the ubiquity of magical healing spells (and potions) in D&D because they feel that it devalues/invalidates their own medical skills as an operations nurse. So they will generally favor systems that similarly place a higher value on characters possessing medical knowledge over cast-and-cure systems.

I suppose, but it's certainly not a mana point system (compare Diablo I with Diablo III).

Diablo III uses a blend of resource management systems for abilities that vary from class to class, including cooldowns and mana points. Its cooldown system (and many other features) primarily for secondary skills were also heavily criticized by fans of the Diablo franchise. Regardless, the system is, in some respects, more akin to 4E than Vancian magic and is meant to support intense, fast pace high-action play with a starkly different tone of play that D&D.

That is to say, Vancian is not a free form system where you have as a player a lot of ability to create and shape the effect that you want, but consequently you also have a reliable understanding of what is going to happen.

But the compartmentalization of reliable magical effects is not a spell or magic structure that is unique to Vancian magic, as this is nigh ubiquitious apart from free-forming magic systems. From what I recall, Savage Worlds's magic system is non-Vancian but also uses compartmentalized spells.

I think most groups probably are 4-5 players, though I prefer D&D at 6 players personally. One of the least discussed aspects of table top gaming is how the number of players at the table limits the sorts of play you can support. Indy games frequently prioritize narratives about the internal mental exploration of character (the character's character, as it were), but that sort of play is really only fun when there are at most 3 players and is honestly probably best with just one player and one GM. You can't do that when you have 12 players competing for spot light because the players who don't have the spot light on them get bored, or worse try to steal spotlight.

My games have never exceeded 6 players, because most groups prefer keeping to a smaller close knit of players, typically 4-5. I don't think that I would ever consider playing any tabletop RP game that was 7+ players regardless of system precisely for this problem, so the ability of a system to support that level of play is off my radar.

I totally agree it's not universally shared, but to really address this in depth I'd have to have the FATE book in front of me and be able to quote it extensively. I've several times been in discussion on EnWorld with FATE proponents who defended FATE as being one thing, when the rulebook itself repeatedly reinforces that it is about the opposite.

Perhaps in your interpretation of the reading, but my reading of the book clearly differs from you in this regard. And given how the people have picked up the Fate rulebook and come out with a similar style of play supported by those rules, then it appears that the book is doing something correct in providing players with clear expectations of play.

No, you don't. Or if you do, you aren't playing FATE. In particular, FATE cannot provide players with a contract about reality of the world you are in. It's literally designed not to do that and discusses how bad such a contract would be for the game. The contract that FATE tries to make with the player is that they can be involved in the creation of the narrative. Nor can the results of success or failure be predicted. FATE does not even try to offer that as part of its social contract. Instead, FATE offers a contract that revolves around Rule of Cool, that whatever happens should not be predictable but that it should be fun. The GM, and indeed the players, are given wide leeway to interpret what failure and success mean, and it's done on purpose. That's not bad, but it doesn't fulfill my aesthetic of play. For me, that sounds about as fun as a root canal.

It sounds then as if I am probably misunderstanding your use of terms, particularly of the hypothetical contract in question. I would say, for example, that Fate does "provide players with a contract about the reality of the world." However, players also have a cooperative say in that reality, though the degree of say is ultimately adjudicated by the GM (who does have the power to reject player input). In fact, Fate's session 0 of phase play is often meant to serve as a social contract about that reality. However, the reality of the world detailed within that contract is not meant to cater to simultationism. I do understand why Fate is not necessarily the game for you, if not especially you given your vocalness regarding 3.X serving as your preferred gaming system. But I don't think that Fate is meant to be played for all games nor would I advocate such. If I did, then I would just be propagating a similar problem that I have with D&D.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Is it simply the matter of being first?

Marketing 101: the strongest predictor of whether any product succeeds in the market is being first to the market. Quality is- as I recall- second.

D&D delivered a pretty good initial product, and they did it first. By doing so, they set expectations for everyone that followed as a consumer or competitor. They earned brand recognition.

And instead of resting on their laurels, they continued to tweak their product.

That’s a recipe for becoming, being, and remaining the 800lb gorilla.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't have any experience to compare how Fate runs versus how it "reads," but it does bring up an interesting point---does D&D's popularity remain strong because on the whole, it generally DOES deliver on what it promises between the pages? (i.e., combat action, dungeon-y exploration and mysteries, puzzle solving).

I think that that is part of it. But I think that the other part of it is that almost no game system has invested more in creating examples of play as D&D. One of my observations about RPGs that I think is most important is that the rules of the game have no more influence (and maybe less) on how the game plays than how the players of the game think about the game and how the GM prepares to play it. D&D's 'modules' which have always been its most salient aspect in my opinion, set a standard for how to prepare for a game and how you should be approaching the game in a way that I don't think any other system has ever equaled.

I would probably agree that on the whole, D&D generally does deliver what it promises with one massive caveat---you have to restrict your view of the game to levels 1 through 9. Once you get to level 10+, all bets are off.

In a sense yes. The big problem is that the sort of play it typically provides examples for eventually is deprecated in practice UNLESS the players continue to think about the game in the same way and don't try to subvert the example play. The game gives the DM very little advice on what to do then, though a great many DMs over the years have invented some sort of playstyle to accommodate higher level play.

For example, my play style is to avoid it by slowing advancement down. I'm going on seven years into a campaign, maybe 150 4 hour gaming sessions, and the party just hit 10th level.

One of my primary disillusionments with D&D, particularly 3.x, is that it doesn't really support intrigue-driven, characters-with-personal-stakes-resolving-those-stakes in actual play. It's nigh impossible to really play a "Game of Thrones" type of campaign with D&D, mostly because everyone---PCs and NPCs alike---have too much "plot protection" through massive hit point numbers, magic items, and spells.

No, I've absolutely been in that campaign back in college. You totally can do it. It just requires that you change the way you prepare to play and the way you think about the game. And one GMs excessive plot protection is another GMs assurance of character continuity throughout the narrative.

One thing I will say is that this style of intrigue based play works better with smaller parties. The campaign frequently involved deciding which plot thread to advance based on who was there, with the result that there were a lot of one on one sessions or other small groups, as well as big events involving multiple PC's working together. If you examine the narrative of "Game of Thrones" you'll find it works the same way. Characters are usually off on their own scheming and dealing with their own particular problems. It doesn't really have the sort of large ensemble cast encouraged by having a party of 4 or 6 protagonists working jointly.

One of the things I truly love about Savage Worlds is that it significantly reduces plot protection, for both the PCs and NPCs. No one is safe in Savage Worlds. As a result, combat has consistently higher levels of tension in Savage Worlds than it did in D&D.

So you say, but how much threat a D&D PC is under is something that can be totally dialed however you like it. You just change the way you prepare to play. What I think I'm hearing from you is more, "The rules of Savage Worlds caused me to think very differently about how I prepare for and play the game.", rather than "The rules of Savage Worlds support a game that D&D doesn't."

I also have come to genuinely dislike Vancian magic, and the general omnipresence of magic at large in the kinds of worlds D&D envisions.

Two entirely different levers. You have have pervasive magic without Vancian (Avatar the Last Airbender, Mistborn, Wheel of Time) and Vancian without pervasive magic.

To me this leads into one of my other major dislikes of D&D, particularly high-level D&D, which is the idea that by level 10 you're "planehopping" to other dimensions because the cares of the prime material plane are now somehow beneath you. I think this is a natural outgrowth of magic's omnipresence, because by level 10, the only way to prevent PCs from pretty much being invincible is to have the enemies possess the same kinds of magic that can negate omnipresent magical plot protection.

Again, you aren't actually talking about Vancian. You are talking about how you think about the game and how you prepare to play it. I've never actually done a planehopping campaign in 30 years of gaming. Not that I don't want to, it's just I've never yet had a game go so long that I've exhausted the material plane as a story resource, nor have I ever deliberately started a game with planehopping in mind (the may my brainstorming for the Qaybar project explicitly did).

I watched some of Wil Wheaton's Geek and Sundry / Tabletop playthroughs of Fate Core, and it generally seemed to play out like I expected it would, with the tagging/aspects coming into play and their use.

Whereas, I watched the same broadcasts and it played like I feared it would.

However, one of things I noticed---and this was also true with my direct play experiences with Dungeon World---was that much of the core conceits of Fate as a rules set could be added to other rules systems through general GM-ing principles.

Ahh... Yes. Exactly. How you think about playing is as important or more important than the rules. Two groups with the same rules system aren't necessarily playing the same game, even if they play by the RAW.

In the 4-5 sessions of Dungeon World I GM'd, I kept feeling like all of the pointers, tips, and ideas in the DW/PbtA rules were more to get the GM thinking a certain way about the game, and if the players happened to enjoy it, that was just a bonus.

Yep.

In watching the Fate playthroughs, I felt much the same way---"These are really great ideas, I love the compel/tag aspects, and the concept of the mutability of the fiction . . . but man, the skill tree and task resolution stuff in Fate really isn't to taste."

There is more to it than that. Task resolution in FATE is explicitly open ended. You can succeed on a roll and the GM can literally improvise this as you being cast into Hell because he thinks it is cool.

So here's the question---how does a system bridge the gap between "how it reads" and "how it plays"? Or is this simply too nebulous? For example, I've seen in some forums where some defenders of Savage Worlds try to convince people to play it by saying "it plays much better than it reads." This totally blew my mind, because to me Savage Worlds pretty much played EXACTLY the way I expected when I read it---it was one of the reasons I was willing to give it a shot in the first place.

I would only trust people to make this assessment if they really deeply understood games. Many people don't understand what they read or how to assess how it will play from how it reads. When I say "Mouseguard reads better than [I think it will] play", I don't mean just that I think the rules are working cross purpose to the authors intention - although in some cases I do, because I don't think the author and I agree over what it means to enjoy a story nor do I think the author has analyzed what it means to enjoy a story well. I mean also that it's a powerfully and well written book, describing a game that won't succeed as well as the high conception that inspired it. I bought the game hoping for a rules light bridge for my daughters, but I got a game that wasn't really good at anything. Too finicky to be rules light, but at the same not offering any real crunch as a game (lots of illusion of mechanical depth, without actual depth).

 

[innerdude]

So you say, but how much threat a D&D PC is under is something that can be totally dialed however you like it. You just change the way you prepare to play. What I think I'm hearing from you is more, "The rules of Savage Worlds caused me to think very differently about how I prepare for and play the game.", rather than "The rules of Savage Worlds support a game that D&D doesn't."

While I think there's a lot of truth and good ideas in your post, I do have to call this particular point out. Yes, Savage Worlds very much caused me to think differently about how I prepare for and play out my RPG sessions. But to say Savage Worlds doesn't support a different game style than D&D 3.x is patently untrue. I know, because I've played both extensively.

Is it so very different as to be unrecognizable? Of course not. Savage Worlds is very much a "traditional" RPG, in the sense of its discrete action / process sim resolution basis. But even something as simple as the fact that Savage Worlds has a discrete "degree of success" mechanic hardwired into the rules makes it different in play. Granted, it's only a single degree of success, so it's not terribly granular, but it's there. And true, D&D does have degree of success in combat (critical hits), but it doesn't for regular skill checks.

This makes a difference. It makes a difference in how players perceive the action, it colors the perception of how action resolution transpires.

Of course, perhaps what you're really saying is, "Savage Worlds and D&D 3.x both fundamentally support the same type of game, it's really just a question of how hard you have to work as a GM to get to the type of game you're looking for."

If this is the point being made, at risk of being obtuse . . . well, yeah! If the point is to say, "D&D can be molded and houseruled into just about anything imaginable," well of course it can. But why do I care if I genuinely want something different? Are you saying that D&D as a core chassis is so fundamentally sound that any attempt to deviate from its core assumptions is really just a fruitless exercise in reinventing the wheel, and that no matter what other system you use, you're basically just choosing a lesser option?

 

[Celebrim]

Is it so very different as to be unrecognizable? Of course not. Savage Worlds is very much a "traditional" RPG, in the sense of its discrete action / process sim resolution basis. But even something as simple as the fact that Savage Worlds has a discrete "degree of success" mechanic hardwired into the rules makes it different in play. Granted, it's only a single degree of success, so it's not terribly granular, but it's there. And true, D&D does have degree of success in combat (critical hits), but it doesn't for regular skill checks.

Actually, it does. It just doesn't - and this a statement that is true of D&D generally - use a single mechanic pervasively throughout all its skill checks. If you go read the 3e skill descriptions, you'll find all sorts of different varieties of degee of success. For example, look at how it is implemented in 'sleight of hand':

"If you try to take something from another creature, you must make a DC 20 Sleight of Hand check to obtain it. The opponent makes a Spot check to detect the attempt, opposed by the same Sleight of Hand check result you achieved when you tried to grab the item. An opponent who succeeds on this check notices the attempt, regardless of whether you got the item. "

So you can succeed completely, succeed with consequences, fail, and fail with consequences. That's degree of success.

It's implemented in a completely different way in the "Use magical device" skill:

"If you fail by 10 or more, you suffer a mishap. A mishap means that magical energy gets released but it doesn’t do what you wanted it to do. The default mishaps are that the item affects the wrong target or that uncontrolled magical energy is released, dealing 2d6 points of damage to you. This mishap is in addition to the chance for a mishap that you normally run when you cast a spell from a scroll that you could not otherwise cast yourself."

Again, success, failure, and failure with consequences.

What about the jump skill? Not only is it not merely "pass/fail", it's actually analog - the exact amount of your success depends on the exact amount of your result. That's degree of success implemented in yet another way completely.

This makes a difference. It makes a difference in how players perceive the action, it colors the perception of how action resolution transpires.

Perceive? Perception? Aren't those verbs that actually mean, "How you think about the game?" I don't mean to trivialize or belittle that. I consider it so important. But when you tell me that it colors perception of the game, you aren't actually arguing against me. I agree that perception creates a completely different game, but not that that perception is primarily an artifact of the rules (as exemplified by the fact you made an assertion about D&D skill checks that isn't true).

Are you saying that D&D as a core chassis is so fundamentally sound that any attempt to deviate from its core assumptions is really just a fruitless exercise in reinventing the wheel, and that no matter what other system you use, you're basically just choosing a lesser option?

No, I'm not saying that. There are certainly settings and tropes I would prefer to emulate with a different rules engine more tailored to the specifics of that setting or trope. What I am primarily saying is that D&D has succeeded for more reasons than just being the first and most familiar. I have a lot of associated thoughts to go with that, like the fact that while there are different styles of play that other games provide for that D&D just doesn't really bless, I'm not convinced that those styles are as popular or functional with a typical group of friends as the core game D&D does support. So it hardly surprises me that there are groups that enjoy FATE, My Life with Master, or Fiasco more than D&D, it also doesn't surprise me that those games aren't really 'the next big thing'. I think that Indy games have done wonderful things to expand the language and scope of what we know how to do with the rules. I'm just also not surprised this new technology hasn't obsoleted the old technology.

 

[redrick]

The D&D brand is synonymous with role-playing for newcomers. It's not, "I want to try a table-top RPG," it's, "I want to try D&D." We host D&D and Powered-by-the-Apocalypse games at a comic book store in my neighborhood, and the owner will sometimes advertise the PbtA games by telling people, "it's a great introduction to D&D."

And, as Dannyalcatraz said, it's not just that D&D was the first. It's also owned by a major company that continues to put tremendous resources into reinventing the game to keep up with trends and developments in RPGs as a whole. That's different than Chaosium introducing a new version of Call of Cthulhu that slightly tweaks the BRP system. The owners of D&D have stripped the game all the way down and rebuilt it on 5 different occasions. (I'm counting 1e, Basic, WotC D20, 4e and 5e.) 5e was play-tested extensively to make sure it appealed to the broadest possible base of consumers.

That said, we have a model at our neighborhood store that is working really well. Every other game we host is D&D, and a lot of the folks who come in for D&D come back for the indie games with less brand recognition. So hopefully people can find a game that appeals more directly to them.