Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Don't see how that matters, or why people can't ignore what they don't want. The problem as I see it is people insisting that everything has to be accounted for in every game.
Make It Yourself
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
I think it is less that and more games pulling players in with possibilities and the promise of support to build a customer base and make money but not providing it.
That's nice. Not relevant, but nice for you, I guess.
It did. The breadth of playstyles supported in the 80s wasn't particularly large yet.
How it matters: basic economics.
Remember, the company is spending money to make those products, and those products have to sell. If people ignore them and don't buy them, the profit margin on the work drops. Keeping your product offerings focused on what sells maximizes return on the work to produce the product.
As I remember it, there were two: deadly exploration (wilderness or dungeon), and storytelling.
With the note that the concept of "storytelling" was limited, and not actually supported by the game designs.
Sure, but it was still a playstyle. ThT lack of support would give rise to various late 80s and early 90s attempts at storytelling games,of course. But we should remember that storytelling was a playstyle goal from very early on in the hobby.
aramis erak
Legend
There were several others... even in D&D... there was a lot of that deadly exploration.
There were a handful of social-focused adventures for D&D (vs AD&D).
There were the sneak-n-peek type play mode folks, for whom combat was a "we failed to sneak"... All thief parties were not unheard of.
When we look outside D&D:
Traveller had social focused, combat focused, trade focused, and mystery focused adventures. So did Space Opera and Other Suns. (1977, 1980, and 1983, respectively)
Dallas (1980) had nothing but social focus - and essentially scene/major-problem resolution. It didn't sell well, but that probably has a lot to do with what most gamers felt was being "incomplete" - lacking rules for any kind of physical harm - as much as being a licensed game for a primetime weekly soap opera...
James Bond 007, MSPE, Top Secret, and Danger International all had that mixed focus of the superspy genre... Bond was '83, MSPE 83, TS 1980, and DI 1985.
The 80's were not lacking diverse intended playstyles, it was merely lacking good explanation and, often, decent support for anything other than combat, and in Sci-Fi, merchantile trade.
Many games failed to adequately describe the intent, too.
And many failed to look for anything past press-your-luck dungeon penetration wargaming... Half the time, that was my desired playstyle in the 80's. Easy and Accessible.
Thomas Shey
Legend
There was still a much wider one than you can get out of a single game system.
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