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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8867501" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>I don't think this really flies man, and I don't mean that meanly.</p><p></p><p>I don't think it flies because Gary himself repented of this view later in his career, so he clearly eventually came to see it as a flaw or at least not something desirable. Dangerous Journeys, for all we may (and should) criticise it, absolutely sees PCs as well-developed characters, not playing pieces, and isn't anywhere near as murderous as D&D could be early on. Also it has a hideously fiddly chargen system so you'd be righteously mad if you had to keep making new DJ characters lol (I'm still mad about "Metaphysical Speed" as a substat lol just screw you man!).</p><p></p><p>The character-as-playing-piece is interesting because you can see how it bridges the gap from military simulations where maybe the people involved were "playing" specific individuals, and training-exercise-type roleplay and more Dave Arneson-esque RP where you're playing a character you actually created and invested with life.</p><p></p><p>It also helps, in my opinion, explain why players are so much more okay (in my 30+ years of experience lol) with pre-gen PCs getting killed than PCs they created getting killed.</p><p></p><p>Unless they've played them a long time (i.e. say deep into a WEG Star Wars Darkstryder campaign), people tend to see pre-gens as just "playing pieces". Yeah they'll ham it up a bit, they'll RP them, sometimes they'll even go outside their comfort zone, but it's because they don't care, not because they do care.</p><p></p><p>I think it's fair to say roleplaying games wouldn't have ever become as big as they did if we'd stuck to the Gygaxian meatgrinder/playing piece approach. In fact, they'd probably have evolved into "dungeon combat" games rather than stays as RPGs (there are tons of examples of these, WotC produced a bunch even).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 8867501, member: 18"] I don't think this really flies man, and I don't mean that meanly. I don't think it flies because Gary himself repented of this view later in his career, so he clearly eventually came to see it as a flaw or at least not something desirable. Dangerous Journeys, for all we may (and should) criticise it, absolutely sees PCs as well-developed characters, not playing pieces, and isn't anywhere near as murderous as D&D could be early on. Also it has a hideously fiddly chargen system so you'd be righteously mad if you had to keep making new DJ characters lol (I'm still mad about "Metaphysical Speed" as a substat lol just screw you man!). The character-as-playing-piece is interesting because you can see how it bridges the gap from military simulations where maybe the people involved were "playing" specific individuals, and training-exercise-type roleplay and more Dave Arneson-esque RP where you're playing a character you actually created and invested with life. It also helps, in my opinion, explain why players are so much more okay (in my 30+ years of experience lol) with pre-gen PCs getting killed than PCs they created getting killed. Unless they've played them a long time (i.e. say deep into a WEG Star Wars Darkstryder campaign), people tend to see pre-gens as just "playing pieces". Yeah they'll ham it up a bit, they'll RP them, sometimes they'll even go outside their comfort zone, but it's because they don't care, not because they do care. I think it's fair to say roleplaying games wouldn't have ever become as big as they did if we'd stuck to the Gygaxian meatgrinder/playing piece approach. In fact, they'd probably have evolved into "dungeon combat" games rather than stays as RPGs (there are tons of examples of these, WotC produced a bunch even). [/QUOTE]
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