Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 5656713" data-attributes="member: 32740">Yep, some good points made, some points attempted but NOT made, and some baseless criticisms.  Seems that because he found he liked Runequest's mechanics it had to mean that NOTHING about D&D made any sense or held any merit.  His criticisms of the oldest editions certainly hold the least water.  This is back when people were still figuring out what a roleplaying game - ANY roleplaying game - actually was, could be, or should be.  It wasn't perfect out of the gate and therefore it was and still is all rubbish?  The very fact that those imperfect versions of D&D MADE roleplaying games what they are (from pencil-and-paper to MMO's) and made them popular in the first place proves that though they may not be competitive in the current marketplace but they are NOT the meritless rubbish he claims them to be. As for the abstractions of D&D in Armor Class, character class and hit points, the abstraction is the point.  Those abstractions enabled gameplay to AVOID being bogged down in unnecessary mimicry of reality (even defiance of reality) when what is ostensibly desired is heroic fantasy.  And I have to agree with Jack7 that it was the increasing complexity of rules that appealed to the geeks and nerds and supported increased popularity of D&D in particular as a roleplaying game.  Even if 1E AD&D (for example) was hopelessly inefficient in presentation, needlessly and even confusingly wordy, had incomprehensible mechanics it still succeeded wildly despite any such handicaps.  D&D in any version was and still is the 800# gorilla of RPGS. The abstractions of levels, class, hit points - these are staples not just of D&D but of many - perhaps even MOST RPG's.  They continue to be used in RPG's because they work well for their desired purposes.  Levels regulate the pacing of increases in character power.  Differentiations in class promotes (perhaps even requires) cooperation among player characters.  Hit points provide a basic control and measurement of character survivability. He rails against the early editions for excessive simplicity, but then rails against later editions when they add what one would then logically assume is his desired INCREASE in complexity.  He wants all his game rules in ONE book.  Fine, but the bulk of rules of the "middle" editions were changes and additions which were widely used and desired and some included by request even though the core rules did not need them.There's certainly some truth to the criticism that the game wound up with TOO MANY rules but he's throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  Simply having too many rules doesn't mean the totality of the rules is rubbish. His complaints about 4E?  Well that's stiull an ONGOING debate, isn't it?  I would agree that there is... I'll say insufficient promotion of roleplaying as earlier edtions held it to be.  But he does indeed seem to have based his entire opinion on a poor experience that was less a fault of rules than of game mastering, or perhaps just contrasting gameplay styles/expectations.  Certainly his clear preference for a skills-based game system cannot be held as a valid indictment of a class/level based rules set without a GREAT deal of additional evidence to support an argument for one to be held over the other as objectively superior. Mostly he's just stating woefully biased opinion and presenting it as fact - which is pretty much what the internet is for.</blockquote>

Verification