D&D off-Ramps (from Rob Donaghue)

[Jeff Carlsen]

That's an odd approach. Whether or not something is a version of D&D is based on whether people have heard of it?

13th Age, to me, is very clearly D&D. Numenera, from what I've heard of it, is very much not.

I should have broke those into separate thoughts. I don't think that 13th Age and Numenera aren't D&D because nobody has heard of them. I think that they're derivative of D&D, and also that no one has heard of them.

Pathfinder is the only game without the D&D logo that I see as a version of D&D, because it was billed as such. It's a direct revision of the 3.5 SRD with the explicit intent to be compatible with D&D 3.5. It's a robust series of third party D&D supplements.

But that's where I draw the line, because to some degree, all RPGs are D&D derivatives. 13th Age, as on example, is simply one step too far removed. It's not a judgement of the game. My last comment is meant to say that those games aren't different enough from D&D to draw the support of people looking for something different, but are too different to ever be adopted as an alternative to D&D.

 

[Stormonu]

Pathfinder isn't an off-ramp, it's repatching the potholes and repainting the stripes. (And I greatly love Pathfinder).

Thing is, people have been finding off-ramps to D&D way before 3E was even a glimmer in the eye - Vampire/World of Darkness, Palladium, Runequest, GURPS and the like. 13th Age and Numera are just the most recent ones, and truly I think they only get mentioned because they're new. People always have and will continue to find something "deeper" than D&D, but that's just the nature of the beast. Play something to death, and you're likely to see people look elsewhere for something "new".

"Move along, there's nothing to see here."

 

[pemerton]

I'd argue that 13th Age is "D&D", too. It's no further from 3.x than 4E is.

But it's more overt about it's indie-game inspirations than 4e is. For instance, in the discussion of fail forward they actually mention Luke Crane and Ron Edwards!

I think there's this self-conscious indie-ness that permeates the whole thing (and even extends to the tone of many of their actual-play examples, which for me are reminiscent of the examples Tweet was giving 20 years ago in Over the Edge). And that is what makes it not just D&D, and hence count as an "off-ramp".

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

3.x (or "the d20 system") is old now, as suppoed games go. It doesn't feel like it, but as it say t's been actively supported and published for 13 years now. That's a long time in the game industry! Probably longer than some of its player base has been alive - it's been there all their life.

OK.

But what does age have to do with anything? Monopoly is what, 80+ years old? Chess and Go go back thousands of years. 3.X D&D is a right young whippersnapper.

 

[Morrus]

But what does age have to do with anything? Monopoly is what, 80+ years old? Chess and Go go back thousands of years. 3.X D&D is a right young whippersnapper.

And most of the people on this board have taken a Monopoly off-ramp.

 

[Imaro]

Exactly!

Reading the tone of 13th Age makes me cry for what 4e could have been, with better designer style (only Worlds & Monssters got close). And compared to BW or OtE, it fits the indie innovations into a broadly D&D framework. There are hints of the avant garde and outre flavour of OtE in various examples and side-remarks in 13th Age, but it doesn't foreground them in the way that OtE does. And BW is pretty baroque for the typical D&D player, I think.

I think you might be missing the boat here just a little by thinking it's a purely style thing when it comes to 13th Age, a least for me. I like it for it's mechanical differences to 4e just as much as for it's smattering of indie design aesthetics. Just as one point I like the fact that 13th Age doesn't go the route of every class operating along the same structure, it feels more 3.x to me in that way. Or the fact that there are no formal skill challenge rules, only a very traditional "background + attribute" roll with anything else left to individual DM's. Finally I feel that 13th Age relies much more heavily on GM judgement calls and fiat. I think if you ignore things like this and claim it's just presentation, I think you're missing a bigger picture of why some may prefer 13th Age to 4e.

But the real point is one of congratulations to Tweet and Heinsoo - they've put together an impressive package!

We don't agree often or on much, but this is definitely a sentiment I share.

 

[Imaro]

For me personally I like 13th Age and have just started a game up this past weekend with my group, but I don't necessarily see it as an off ramp... more like a pit stop. That's not to say it won't be but I think it's a little to earl to tell... since I know for a fact my group will be giving D&D a chance when it's released.

D&D is in a state of flux right now and not, at least for me and my group, stable enough to base our regular games on. We also don't particularly care for 4e. We've played 3.5/PF and we still enjoy it, but we were looking for something a little less mini-centric and simpler... that was what originally attracted me to 13th Age. Of course my group has played games outside of D&D... but D&D is always that game we eventually come back too, even 4e got numerous tries with my group. I think D&D (love or hate whatever the current edition is) works almost like a lingua franca in our hobby, you can always find people talking about it, modifying it, creating for it, etc. and thus as long as you are familiar with it, you will always be able to interact with other people in the hobby (even on a hiatus from actually gaming) as long as you are up to date on D&D, that's a powerful force to counteract.

 

[amerigoV]

I think Savage Worlds is more of an "Off Ramp" than what is likely to result from even the seemingly most popular of the three he mentions. ... I think it is further notable when one considers that Savage Worlds and Arcana Unearthed both premiere in 2003 and Iron Heroes in 2005.

FWIW, Savage Worlds was my off ramp in 2008/9. D&Ders wander in all the time over on Pinnacle's site. Its a rehab process to break them of their D&Disms . What helps SW is the designers were a part of the d20 boom (Deadlands, Weird Wars) so they overlapped with that key market for a time - they know their market segment well and take care of it. I also found a pack of Grognards over at Dragonsfoots because of SW - I think there was a period where many on that board gave a serious look to SW as a alternative to the older D&D editions. But I do not get that sense now (the SW material there is rather dated).

I suspect that we will stay Savages just due to (1) the system works for the group despite differences in play style and (2) it allows us to dip into different genres without having to learn a new system.

That being said, I also believe there are plenty of "Off-Ramps" which are not those games. ... In the past year, I've tried Dragon Age* ...

If we had not played Savage Worlds first, I suspect Dragon Age would have been my group's off ramp due to their bias towards fantasy genre games. I have the two box sets and will get the next one when it comes out, but I have never played it. A buddy of mine got to play it at GenCon, but I have yet to see it listed at Origins, That really surprises me given its name recognition. Maybe 2014 Origins will have a few games listed due to the popularity of the Tabletop episode.

My group got to play a bit of Dungeon World, but I have not tried it.

 

[TwoSix]

That's an odd approach. Whether or not something is a version of D&D is based on whether people have heard of it?

13th Age, to me, is very clearly D&D. Numenera, from what I've heard of it, is very much not.

Rob makes an interesting point in an earlier post that the most distinctive piece of tech within D&D is the spell list concept, and that the reason so many D&D style games fail is because they don't have anything with the breadth or depth to replace it. I think he's onto something there, and it's big reason why so many people don't consider 4e a "true" D&D, branding aside. While I prefer 4e and 13th Age myself, part of the reason is that it's a qualitatively different experience than earlier editions, and the change to the spell mechanics is probably the biggest reason why.

 

[Argyle King]

FWIW, Savage Worlds was my off ramp in 2008/9. D&Ders wander in all the time over on Pinnacle's site. Its a rehab process to break them of their D&Disms . What helps SW is the designers were a part of the d20 boom (Deadlands, Weird Wars) so they overlapped with that key market for a time - they know their market segment well and take care of it. I also found a pack of Grognards over at Dragonsfoots because of SW - I think there was a period where many on that board gave a serious look to SW as a alternative to the older D&D editions. But I do not get that sense now (the SW material there is rather dated).

I suspect that we will stay Savages just due to (1) the system works for the group despite differences in play style and (2) it allows us to dip into different genres without having to learn a new system.



If we had not played Savage Worlds first, I suspect Dragon Age would have been my group's off ramp due to their bias towards fantasy genre games. I have the two box sets and will get the next one when it comes out, but I have never played it. A buddy of mine got to play it at GenCon, but I have yet to see it listed at Origins, That really surprises me given its name recognition. Maybe 2014 Origins will have a few games listed due to the popularity of the Tabletop episode.

My group got to play a bit of Dungeon World, but I have not tried it.

Dragon Age has fallen into kind of an odd area for me. While I did highly enjoy the game, there was -for me personally- just something missing from the experience. I feel like (again, for me personally) it's great as a game to dabble in, but I do not believe it could become the main game I play. At this point in time, I cannot really point to one thing in particular which explains that feeling. It's just how the game came across to me. Though, I suspect the other members of the group I regularly game with felt the same way because our DA game just sort of died by unanimous decision once someone bought the Star Wars: Edge of The Empire materials. DA started out great, but we quickly lost interest. With some tweaks, I could see Edge of The Empire being able to handle a D&D style game pretty well.

At this point in time, the main two games played by the primary group are GURPS 4th Edition and Star Wars: Edge of The Empire. We've dabbled in Pathfinder and Dragon Age, but neither really stuck.

One thing that I've noticed, and it hit me as I was typing this, is that we seem to be moving away from the level and class model of D&D. We do still play some games which have classes and some games which have levels in a sense, but even those games work differently from D&D; in some cases, very differently.

edit: I've also noticed that many of the games we now play handle magic differently than D&D. While the group highly enjoys the flexibility and breadth of D&D magic, it's not often worth the problems it so easily introduces into a game of D&D. That's not meant to suggest that other games don't also have problems; they do, but -for the most part- haven't been as noticeable.