A New "anti-D&D" Era

[Micah Sweet]

First - RPGs are a category of game that you need to teach people to play. Candyland exists for kids to teach them how to play boardgames - very few people step into a board game of even moderate difficulty without having played at least one easy board game before it. Why would you expect RPGs to be different?

Second - there's an audience for whom the rules of an RPG get in the way of their fun rather than enhance it. If it turns out that that group is larger than the reverse then a simpler game is going to pick up a bigger audience than a more complex one. That's just numbers - and it does seem that that is in fact what has been going on with D&D's uptake over the last decade.

WotC hasn't even tried their hand at something not focused on simplicity in years.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I know it's naive, but I'm so tired of "sells like gangbusters" being everyone's primary metric.

Especially considering that Gangbusters only sold OK.

 

[Gubber Bittencourt]

I'm old enough that I was there too, but I'm not the one declaring categorically what other peoples motivations were as if I'd conducted a poll at the time.

Yes but you didn't say "only a minority of people played Vampire because they had problems with D&D." You declared how things were.

... Kay

I said only pathfinder 1e is the only system that came from backlash to dnd.

Vampire was not created or made possible by anti-dnd feelings.

if you disagree prove that vampire was made possible by this.

 

[Reynard]

I said only pathfinder 1e is the only system that came from backlash to dnd.

Vampire was not created or made possible by anti-dnd feelings.

I think we are using different definitions of "anti-D&D" motivating innovation. It doesn't mean that they wanted a different fantasy game. It means that they were tired of D&D's dominance and design ethos.

 

[bloodtide]

First - RPGs are a category of game that you need to teach people to play. Candyland exists for kids to teach them how to play boardgames - very few people step into a board game of even moderate difficulty without having played at least one easy board game before it. Why would you expect RPGs to be different?

That is not true. And Candyland is the gateway board game? Ok, I guess for some. I'll give you that there is a large group of people that need someone to hold their hand and teach them boardgames.

Second - there's an audience for whom the rules of an RPG get in the way of their fun rather than enhance it. If it turns out that that group is larger than the reverse then a simpler game is going to pick up a bigger audience than a more complex one. That's just numbers - and it does seem that that is in fact what has been going on with D&D's uptake over the last decade.

Sure, there are always players that don't want to worry about rules, they just want to win the game and move on. This is the mindset of the typical station cartridge video gamer. They buy the game as soon as it comes out, play it for a couple days, win the game, then toss it away and wait for the next new game. I saw this for years with all the offical D&D adventures too: they would break up, then when the new module came out, run a 24 hour-26 hour game and "go through" the whole module.

I think it's good to see a more diverse and robust RPG landscape, period. But I also think that outside of internet discussion channels, D&D still has a massive fanbase that didn't even blink at the OGL debacle.

Too true. As a News Junkie and heavy internet user, as it is my job as well as my hobby, I stay on top of things. So I was right there day to day during the OGL fumbles. Yet, on the weekend I meet roughly fifty gamers at the Rec. And maybe two have heard of it...

The problem is the D&D omnipresence and the way people are with it. A typical non gamer has only heard of one RPG: D&D. So when you ask them if they want to play an RPG, the only thought they have is "D&D". Someone somewhere sometime mentioned to them D&D was a "good game". And they want to play that "good game". You can mention another game, but they will stay locked on "want to play D&D". Even if you can get them to play <whatever> they will mostly just sit there, say they are bored, and ask when we can all play D&D.

The vast majority of gamers have only ever played D&D. They don't want to hear about any other games. A bit worse are the other group of gamers that did "try" another game, but had some sort of bad experience. So, now they will never play another non D&D game because of that. Though, oddly, they can have endless bad D&D experiences and never want to give it up.

Does it?

First, let's define "long term". To me, long-term gaming means campaigns lasting (or intending to last) for a minimum five (real-time) years, if not for ten years or even more.

By specific and clearly-stated intention, none of the WotC editions are designed to last that long. 3e was intended to go 1-20 in two years; 4e 1-30 in a little less, and 5e - while less clearly defined - seems to be more or less back to the 1-20 in two years paradigm.

But is the point of the game to "just get to 20th level and quit?" I guess some might play D&D like that, but I never saw it as that common. There are the players all focused on rules and combat. So they only play the game to get more abilities and points for their character. They think "just one more plus" will make them finally happy...again.

The long term game is not about "just getting levels", it's about a massive role playing storytelling campaign. A group of characters in for a Long Game to do the near impossible. 3X has endlessly complex rules, enough to keep a campaign going. 5E just does not have that.

 

[MGibster]

There is a very excellent documentary about the World of Darkness that features interviews with lots of Masquerade players who state they in fact DID play because they had specific issues with D&D

My adolescent self also remembers there were a lot of people who played Vampire, girls especially, who would never have given D&D a try. I know a lot of people did get AD&D fatigue, I'm one of them though mine came around 1995-1996, but Vampire is a good example of a game that brought in a different demographic from D&D. i.e. It brought it people new to role playing not just people trying a different RPG. Like D&D, I think Vampire just happened to catch lightning in a bottle and was released at the right time. I don't mean to imply it wasn't a good game, just that the timing was fortunate.

 

[MGibster]

That is not true. And Candyland is the gateway board game? Ok, I guess for some. I'll give you that there is a large group of people that need someone to hold their hand and teach them boardgames.

The thing to remember about Candy Land (two words), is that it was specifically designed for young children with limited reading skills. Since the 1950s, for a significant number of Americans, Candy Land is one of the first board games they can remember playing. I don't know if it's really a gateway game, but for a significant chunk of Americans it's among the first board games they remember playing. But since there's no strategy and no decision making, kids outgrow it fairly quickly.

 

[MGibster]

I think we are using different definitions of "anti-D&D" motivating innovation. It doesn't mean that they wanted a different fantasy game. It means that they were tired of D&D's dominance and design ethos.

For most people, when you put anti in front of something it means you're hostile towards it. The Anti-Saloon League for example. These were just people who were tired of saloons and preferred ice cream parlours. No, these people wanted to destroy the saloons.

 

[Reynard]

For most people, when you put anti in front of something it means you're hostile towards it. The Anti-Saloon League for example. These were just people who were tired of saloons and preferred ice cream parlours. No, these people wanted to destroy the saloons.

That's not what I meant. They were hostile to it and they wanted to replace it with games that did things differently/better. The person I was quoting seemed to think I was talking about fantasy heartbreakers. I wasn't.

 

[dirtypool]

Again, though, what's their definition of long-term?

Who cares, if they call it a long term campaign - who are any of us to say that it wasn’t?

 

[dirtypool]

Vampire was not created or made possible by anti-dnd feelings.

It’s sales dominance was fueled by an undercurrent of displeasure with D&D and its market dominance

if you disagree prove that vampire was made possible by this.

I offered a bit of evidence containing interviews with both players and the creators of the World of Darkness, but you dismissed in favor of your own “expert” opinion.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

WotC hasn't even tried their hand at something not focused on simplicity in years.

But the astounding thing about that is they still don't seem to be very good at making things simple. Or at least not simple in a useful way.

I mean, I get it, it's very hard for a game designer to not introduce more complexity than is necessary. Being someone who likes game complexity is usually part of how you become a game designer, and these are games that involve an element of simulation, which just begs for complexity, nuance, exceptions, etc. I just think that if they want to make accessibility a priority, with all their resources they should be bringing in some people with a professional background in learning and accessibility, but instead it's still seems to just be them making bets based on gut impressions of designers, people who are usually unusually adept at understanding game rules, as to the average player will trip up on. It's not a recipe for simplicity that actually improves accessibility. It's a recipe for random simplifying.

 

[overgeeked]

There is a very excellent documentary about the World of Darkness that features interviews with lots of Masquerade players who state they in fact DID play because they had specific issues with D&D

As someone who lived through that time, it's absolutely true that people did not play D&D for a lot of reasons. Some of them left the hobby, some found tangentially related hobbies, and some played other RPGs instead, including Vampire.

I'm not sure about the veracity of this documentary. Isn't that the one put out by the owners talking up how awesome, mind blowing, unique, and perfect White Wolf games were? Not sure that I'd trust them with writing their own history.

 

[dirtypool]

As someone who lived through that time

What is the point of claiming that you were in the hobby at the time? The other person did it too. I also lived through that time, as did many other players. So?

I'm not sure about the veracity of this documentary. Isn't that the one put out by the owners

Neither Kevin Lee, Giles Alderson nor Henrik Johansson (the production team) owned White Wolf, CCP or Paradox. The documentary was produced in the period between the death of official WW product and the Paradox purchase - so no, not “the one put out by the owners.”

Not sure that I'd trust them with writing their own history.

As stated earlier. The doc interviews PLAYERS who state they had issues with D&D and chose to play WW games

 

[MGibster]

As someone who lived through that time, it's absolutely true that people did not play D&D for a lot of reasons. Some of them left the hobby, some found tangentially related hobbies, and some played other RPGs instead, including Vampire.

I'm not sure about the veracity of this documentary. Isn't that the one put out by the owners talking up how awesome, mind blowing, unique, and perfect White Wolf games were? Not sure that I'd trust them with writing their own history.

Yeah. The one with all the thin, cool, and beautiful players. It was more like an advertisement than a documentary.

 

[Fenris-77]

But the astounding thing about that is they still don't seem to be very good at making things simple. Or at least not simple in a useful way.

This is made way more difficult because they have a whole herd of sacred cows that can can't be killed and eaten least lest they get more wrath. See 4th Edition for more details...

 

[dirtypool]

Yeah. The one with all the thin, cool, and beautiful players. It was more like an advertisement than a documentary.

Except of course it was an independently produced documentary shot at the Grande Masquerade LARP event. Yeah a lot the photogenic people made the cut, because that’s often who makes the cut. But how does that invalidate the statements the players made?

Because if “felt” like a marketing tool to you that must mean that the other poster is correct and Pathfinder is the only game driven by blowback against D&D? Do you see how that logic train never quite made it onto the track?

 

[Lanefan]

Too true. As a News Junkie and heavy internet user, as it is my job as well as my hobby, I stay on top of things. So I was right there day to day during the OGL fumbles. Yet, on the weekend I meet roughly fifty gamers at the Rec. And maybe two have heard of it...

What was the average age of these 50 (or so) gamers? I'll be rather surprised if you say it's under 25, 'cause IME that cohort was right on top of this stuff.

But is the point of the game to "just get to 20th level and quit?" I guess some might play D&D like that, but I never saw it as that common. There are the players all focused on rules and combat. So they only play the game to get more abilities and points for their character. They think "just one more plus" will make them finally happy...again.

Perhaps. It's the difference between seeing levelling/ability gain as the main reason for play and seeing levelling/ability gain as merely a side effect of play.

The long term game is not about "just getting levels", it's about a massive role playing storytelling campaign. A group of characters in for a Long Game to do the near impossible. 3X has endlessly complex rules, enough to keep a campaign going. 5E just does not have that.

In fairness, rules complexity and potential campaign length aren't necessarily directly related. You could, for example, have a very rules-heavy system but if it's designed such that the characters reach the mechanical endpoint* after a relatively low amount of sessions then that system is still not likely to be conducive to a long-running campaign. Or conversely, you could have a very rules-light system where the characters rarely if ever advance mechanically, thus meaning you can play through years worth of story without any real threat of reaching the game's mechanical endpoint*.

* - as in, the point out to which the game mechanics have been designed to be functional, equivalent to 20th level in 3e-5e, 30th in 4e, etc.

 

[Lanefan]

It’s sales dominance was fueled by an undercurrent of displeasure with D&D and its market dominance

Different communities, different outcomes, I guess.

Around here in the 90s, while there was certainly some V:tM interest the big - and I mean near-extermination-level - killer of D&D was Magic cards with a bit of help from Pokemon; which is why it's always been a bit ironic to me that the company that nearly killed D&D is the one that, in the end, saved it.

 

[MGibster]

Except of course it was an independently produced documentary shot at the Grande Masquerade LARP event. Yeah a lot the photogenic people made the cut, because that’s often who makes the cut. But how does that invalidate the statements the players made?

The documentary was a love letter to Vampire and they were cherry picking the players they interviewed to tell a particular narrative. All that talk about attracting more women to the hobby, bragging about gaming groups made up of nearly 50% women, and no mention of the rampant sexual harrassment or even assaults? Being independently produced doesn't make it a balanced documentary.