D&D Rubbish? Hmmm...

[Dannager]

I was introduced through a school club. We ran sessions during the lunch hour. Try doing that with 4e - one combat and you're done!

I've never felt like I could experience a really solid encounter in less than 30 or 40 minutes, which is the length of most school lunch periods, no matter the edition. I've had 3rd Ed encounter take hours and I've had 4e encounter take 20 minutes. It runs all kinds of gamuts, and depends more on how you manage your game than which particular edition you happen to be playing.

But there are totally groups out there who are doing exactly what you scoff at - playing D&D one encounter at a time, during one-hour breaks. Heck, such a nice bite-sized format is so well-suited to the game that WotC turned it into their flagship organized play program: D&D Encounters.

 

[Jhaelen]

I think kids that are prone to like roleplaying games of any complexity are also going to be not that enamored of relatively simple board games.

Sure! I was an avid book reader myself and 'consumed' one or more novels a day. What I didn't mention in my post is that before I discovered rpgs I had already been exposed to the 'fighting fantasy' book series which I enjoyed so much that I wrote one myself!

So, for kids like yours and the kids that you and myself were, large rulebooks are not initimidating.

My belief is, though, that even kids that don't care about reading large rule books could be prone to like roleplaying games if they weren't presented in a way that requires reading large rule books.

There was a time when computer games came with large user manuals. These times are mostly gone. Instead games use interactive tutorials to teach you how to play. And that's what a tabletop rpg should do as well:
Provide a way to learn the game step by step while playing and having fun!

 

[Beginning of the End]

Actually, he's pretty much right. Sometimes I'm astonished that D&D was ever popular.

I think D&D's early popularity can be broken down into two waves.

First, it's easy to forget just how revolutionary the idea of a roleplaying game really was. This alone was enough to entice the geeks and wargamers. The latter group, in particular, was prepared to untangle the glorious mess of OD&D. (And it's also easy to forget how popular wargames were: They were on the cusp of becoming a mainstream entertainment in the late '60s and early '70s. There was a massive, existing player base for OD&D to tap into.)

Second, I don't think it's a coincidence that D&D's broke into the mainstream after the first basic set was produced in 1977. Holmes and then, later, Moldvay, Cook, Marsh, and Mentzer were all able to clean the system up and make it ever more presentable and accessible. The most accessible editions of the game were produced from 1977 to 1991.

The importance of the dungeon crawl really can't be underestimated, either. It remains the most robust adventure structure ever designed for an RPG: It's easy for new DMs to both create and run successful dungeons.

(Successful in the sense that it's very, very difficult to create a dungeon in which you run into the "I don't know how to get the PCs to the next bit of the adventure" problem. By contrast, this is very, very easy to do if you're creating a murder mystery.)

An RPG's success relies on its ability to create Game Masters. D&D's dungeon crawl makes it ideal for creating GMs out of people who have never played an RPG before.

3e, while my favoured edition, is horribly complex. And, annoyingly, it really doesn't need to be - there's the kernel of a really elegant and simple ruleset in there. It's just a shame that, even in the core rulebooks, it's buried under a mountain of detail, modifiers, and math. Oh, the math...

You should check out Legends & Labyrinths. (With previews happening here.) It's all about finding that elegant and simple ruleset lurking under the mountains of detail.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Sorry, I didn't mean to overstep the mark and become the thng I was warning against!

Cheers

I'm sure no real offense was meant and none was taken. My last post was meant as an admission of guilt.

 

[mmadsen]

As a kid, the first RPG I owned was the classic Traveller black box. It was intriguing - "Mayday, mayday, this is Free Trader Beowulf . . . " - but I couldn't make head or tail of how it was meant to be played.

A couple of years later I was given the Moldvay Basic set. It explained clearly how to play the game - both to the player, and the GM. And it had concise and serviceable action resolution rules for the sort of action the game envisaged.

Once I started playing D&D, I was able to make sense of Traveller. But the contrast between the two rulebooks could hardly be more marked.

I couldn't imagine anyone today picking up the 4e rulebooks and learning how to play from scratch.

Heck, I remember having this problem with Runequest. We ended up (tediously) playing out mass battles, because the game world was just a bit too foreign to make sense to us (as kids).

 

[Felon]

Clearly, the videos represent someone who wants a system that's more realistic and high-stakes than D&D is. D&D rejects realism and high stakes, so that's simply a mismatch between his goals and the game's. I do think he makes a good point that the system is not particularly flexible or robust, which is something that I think it's design (or desingers) expressly reject, so perhaps that's a point worth heeding. Maybe running around behind a monster so you can stab it in the back shouldn't require a 10th-level rogue utility of somesuch. Maybe it shouldn't require the DM to completely wing the rules for doing so on the spot or flat-out say "no".

 

[mmadsen]

I do think he makes a good point that the system is not particularly flexible or robust, which is something that I think its design (or desingers) expressly reject, so perhaps that's a point worth heeding. Maybe running around behind a monster so you can stab it in the back shouldn't require a 10th-level rogue utility of somesuch. Maybe it should require the DM to completely wing the rules for doing so on the spot or flat-out say "no".

I don't think old-school D&D rejected flexibility, but while the spirit of the game embraced flexibility, the mechanics, light as they were, generally impeded it. The modern game, oddly, says that it values flexibility and DM calls, but the hyper-specific yet "disassociated" mechanics also impede flexibility, if in an entirely different way.

 

[kitsune9]

I think the closest the game has come to the 'ideal' presentation was probably the old Red Box basic set - a nice, approachable set of rules to get you started. Throw in an expansion set or two to take you to higher levels, and you're good.

I agree with this. I think most rpgs should be explained in a quick 64-96 page rule book and then supplements can come in the 128 - 256 page hardbacks, box sets, or whatever. Players want to play today, not get started in a week to two weeks time for a new game.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

That raises an interesting question. Where are the twelve year old gamers now?

Playing games online with their friends on XboxLive or PSN. Finally a few months ago a DnD game is released and its a steaming pile of stuff. Nothing at all related to the RPG.

The gateway SHOULD have been to have a game very much like playing tabletop DnD to dip toes into (and ads and word of mouth directing you to go try Encounters or pick up a PHB and play the full game). Instead its a program telling all the young kids "Dungeons and Dragons: Like Diablo only with less stuff."

DS

 

[dulac50]

I completely agree. Some of us liked the complexity. It was fun to think about the rules and design a really cool character. By the way, I was a teenager when cool was in.