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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 6184596" data-attributes="member: 75787">If you take my gaming group(s), there are probably about 20 people I play with regularly. Of those about a third have never played much D&D and a third played D&D almost exclusively for a long while -- like 5+ years.I don't think there is more than one or two people left in the group who would look for D&D as their primary game. It may even be none. They absolutely feel 3.5 / Pathfinder have an old-fashioned feel. Some prefer that to 4e ("bland and combat intensive") but I don't think anyone is excited about it.I just started a 13th Age campaign and people ARE excited about it -- the pro-4e people like the base mechanics, the pro-3.5 like the fact that each class feels very different, the AD&D fan (just one!) likes the looser structure and room for RP. It seriously feels like it's doing exactly what DDNext is supposed to be doing. I expect that most of the players who play 13th Age will off-ramp from D&D.I have told people I will get a Numenera game going, and have had a serious issue that way more people want to play than I can handle as a GM. Just a couple of hours ago I got an email from a friend 100 miles away, with whom I haven't gamed in a decade, reminding me I mentioned it and asking when it's starting.The third group I have is very interesting from an evolutionary gaming POV. We started out with a mixed group, mostly D&D focused. We played Rippers (Savage Worlds) for 2 years along with D&D, then Supernatural (Cortex system, but so badly edited it might as well be freeform ...) for three years, still while playing WotC livign campaigns (Living Force, Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms). Our enthusiasm for the latter has defintiely been eclipsed by the other systems and when we finished up the Supernatural campaign, we switched to a variety of Indie games, now culminating in a FATE CORE mini-campaign. Several of our group still play 4e and Pathfinder. But it increasingly feels like it's being played because nothing better was being offered, or because we're playing with infrequent gamers to whom 4e is new!For me, I think I have pretty much headed off the ramp. 3.5/Pathfinder lost their allure when 4e came out, as I have always liked D&D for tactical fantasy combat, and 4e does that better than 3.5. But now, like the article says, I prefer simpler game systems that have interesting mechanics that are easy to use and do not require systems mastery to play with. Numenera and 13th Age fill that need. The campaigns I remember with most fondness are Rolemaster ones from 20+ years ago. But that level of complexity seems no longer necessary. When I run 4e nowadays, I find myself wondering if I rewrote the monsters in the same simple style as Numenera (this is a level 3 creature that acts as level 5 when using trickery and has the special attack X) where a level determines attack, defenses and hit points, would anyone notice the difference? And if not, then why the heck do we need all this complexity? And why aren't I playing something simpler?</blockquote>

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