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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 6226832" data-attributes="member: 59082">Ha ha, thanks for caring. I like to write, so its OK if no one responds - I actually almost didn't post it as it started as a response to a different thread, then got out of hand. I like to work out ideas while writing, so the main thing is the process itself.Yeah, I can agree with that and think it is why OSR folks don't like "railroady" games.Thanks!Yup. I grew up on AD&D 1E and while I didn't think this at the time, looking back it really seems like Gary's Game, with his idiosyncrasies (for better or worse). It would be interesting to design a form of D&D that encouraged individual DMs to "Gygaxify" the rules (or "Olgarify", "Mercurify", etc). In some ways early D&D did allow and encourage that, and I never played in a game that the DM didn't house rule to some degree, but the core rules were still quite specific to the Great Gygaxian Mind.We can hope!I couldn't agree more. The holy grail of Next is still, for me at least, the basic core game with modular options. Its amazing to me how D&D has never managed to offer this.That's about 1.87% of the meaning of my post....The irony, though, is that I've never played an OSR game and haven't played AD&D since...I don't know, the mid-90s? And that was 2e. So if I think "Old school is better" than I'm a fool for playing 3e and 4e over the last 13 years!Quite frankly, Umbran, I don't think you grokked the overall "forest" of my post and got hung up on some trees. Refer to KaiiLurker's response, who better understood what I was getting at.I also take issue with your response not only as overly dismissive, but as relying upon the old "postmodern trump card," which is "everything is subjective," yada yada yada. I was an undergrad once too, Umbran, I get it <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> But what next? I mean, of course I'm talking about myself, what works best for me, and so on. But can't we say anything beyond that or are we stuck in early 90s undergrad pseudo-philosophy? When do we get to post-postmodernism?  That's just it - the imagination is what is key, is what is universal even - akin to a Platonic Form; but what inspires us, what evokes imagination and wonder within us, is individual.That said, I do think that the trend over the last few decades of what could be called "greater descriptive density" - like in the Moorcock/Jordan example I gave - has led to a generally more passive imagination. To put it somewhat crudely, if I use 100 words to describe a flower, I give your mind less space to create its own image than if I use a more impressionistic 20 words. As a general, but not absolute, rule. I think this is actually why OSR folks love their Erol Otus and Jeff Dee, even though they are technically (far) inferior to more recent artists like Todd Lockwood and Wayne Reynolds. Otus and Dee are simpler and, in a way, allow for more of the viewer's own imagination to take hold.Of course many quite technically amazing artists can inspire wonder and evoke imagination, and I personally like Reynolds (not as much Lockwood), but neither of them evoke wonderment or stimulate (my) imagination in the way that some of the iconic (but often crude) art of AD&D did. I think its worth considering why the Otus-esque art is so evocative to old schoolers, that there's something in that which is important to this discussion (as an aside, oddly enough I feel that a lot of the more recent digital paintings offer a more impressionistic, atmospheric quality that the sharper and more technically crafted oil and acrylic painters don't facilitate as well; what is "odd" to me is that the digital medium seems to encourage a more impressionist and atmospheric style).Another example, more specific to actual game play, is old school combat vs. 4e's tactical battlemat play. I actually quite enjoy 4e combat (at least until the Grind hits in), but I find that its structure - in particular the reliance on the battlemat - is inherently less imaginative, if only by virtue of the fact that the focus of attention is largely on the battlemat, rather than the "mental battlefield." Art requires limitations - it may be as simple as that. It might be somewhere in-between. D&D Is not "just another generic fantasy game" - nor are most fantasy games truly generic, except for maybe GURPS Fantasy or d6 Fantasy, Fantasy Hero, etc. But even those have their own distinct feel to them. But D&D is less specific than a true single setting game like Tribe 8 or Tekumel or Talislanta. So it is somewhere between GURPS and Tekumel, but with its own body of ideas and tropes, which make it unique and distinctive.I can only speak for myself in this regard, but even though I may appreciate the design of another game more than D&D - say Ars Magica or Savage Worlds or FATE - I always come back to D&D. It is home. It is similar to the fact that I'm a fan of the Angels baseball team. I don't particularly want to be - I'd rather be a Cardinals fan because they're much better run and with a more optimistic future, and a more interesting history, but I can't quit the Angels. They're my team. Just as if I'm going to play D&D, I don't want to use the Savage World rules set. I want my 20-sided die, goddammit!In that sense, I think a lot of long-time D&D players will always come back to D&D, even if they try out other games, and even if they like other games more in terms of aesthetic appreciation. I really, really like Savage Worlds and if I was starting gaming all over again and could choose which game I became attached to, it might be Savage Worlds (or Ars Magica, or one or two others). But I love D&D. Its in my blood.</blockquote>

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