D&D 5E D&DN going down the wrong path for everyone.

[Celebrim]

[MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]: You are the first person I've ever heard praise 1e for its layout. The 1e DMG is a masterpeice, but it's not exactly the most intuitively laid out as a rule book.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

If you are including those, I would say Bushido (1979) and the related Daredevils (1982) should be included for sure. As far as early very targetted "narrative" attempts, Theatrix (1993), for all its faults, was a serious attempt at a radical departure. I ran a fairly successful World of Darkness game using the WoD character ratings with Theatrix resolution systems as an experiment sometime around 1995. Everway (1995) should also get a mention - another not-fully-successful-but-interesting attempt.

Edit: probably should add The Morrow Project (1980) to the list, too.

Yeah, I dunno. I'm not sure I would have added Traveler or C&S to the list as I know of no non-simulationist mechanics in either game. Pendragon OTOH was clumsy, but definitely was an early attempt to 'bake-in some RP'. Oddly I played a whole bunch of Bushido back in the day, and we at least tried Daredevils, but I remember little of the actual mechanics of either game, though I do remember that Bushido was rather different in its goals and process compared with other more 'D&D-like' games. I'd forgotten Everway, but that game utterly belongs in the narrativist category, as does Theatrix (though one can argue about to what degree Theatrix is related to modern PnP RPGs). Never played The Morrow Project, though it was fairly popular in its day, and still has some following.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I've been hearing that whine from older GM's since the early '80s, and at this point, I don't believe it. Similarly, you hear whines from fans of oop, logical, functional, etc. programming paradigms about how the only reason the procedural paradigm is dominate is it got discovered first; I don't believe that any more either.

The real revelation for me was how little impact on cRPG design continuing experimentation in PnP RPG design was having, which got me to thinking why D&D tropes like hit points, classes and the whole fortune in the mechanic are so enduring.

It may not be the only way to do things, and there may be real value in doing things differently, but the reason that D&D and its heirs with similar paradigms dominate isn't merely that D&D got there first. The fact that they got there first (often by evolution) tells you more about naturally adoptable mechanics than anything else. Even if 'plot coupons' were invented first, they would I think have created an independent small niche like En Garde! or something of the sort - a separate line in RPG development.

Meh, that's all speculation one way or the other. D&D came along and set the pattern, but I could EASILY see a game with a roughly similar structure and some of the same desirable features but with plot coupons and a much more abstract narrativist approach to RP. It is as easy to say that wargamesque sim games would have been a niche. We will never know.

 

[Nagol]

[MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]: You are the first person I've ever heard praise 1e for its layout. The 1e DMG is a masterpeice, but it's not exactly the most intuitively laid out as a rule book.

I'll grant individual page layout leaves... something to be desired and there are dangly bits that can be difficult to locate, but I've only had to add like 3 entries to the cross-index, ever. The sectioning works well enough. Even without the index I can figure out where to look for advice on swamp diseases for example.

The flow is Players --> Characters (including followers) --> Equipment (including add-on characters) --> Spell Considerations --> Adventuring --> Combat --> Experience --> World design (including NPCs) --> Magical creations --> Magic items --> Treasure assignment. There could be a different flow given (like move world before adventuring), but I don't thik it would change much and it reflects moden sensibilities more than the sensibilities of the time.


The biggest area I would address is to group the NPC sections (Hireling/henchman, followers from class abilities, and NPC personae) closer together.

But for experienced users, having access to a comprehensive cross-index trumps conceptual flow.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, Celebrim, I don't know. Only the game companies that have paid for market research can probably REALLY tell you any numbers. My feeling is that the peak of PnP RPG play was in the early 80's at the peak of TSR. How many people were playing D&D then or now? No real idea, but my guess is the RPGers of today are more the hard core hobbyists and fewer casual players. I suspect a lot of them play a variety of systems. While it is pretty clear D&D is still the single most commonly played game (in one form or another) I am not at all so sure that other more modern styles of RPG are so utterly fringe as you think. I'm pretty positive I could start a group playing ALMOST any reasonable RPG (many old classics and probably a wide range of the more recent titles). Clearly various genre of fantasy, sci-fi, etc go in and out of fashion, their related games waxing and waning as well. I suspect though that those who have played for more than a few years are probably more independent of fashion, at least in their usual games.

I think the 50% concept works for me. Half the people out there playing are playing some sort of D&D. The next couple of currently popular systems might account for half the rest, but that whole 2nd half is pretty fractured.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'll grant individual page layout leaves... something to be desired and there are dangly bits that can be difficult to locate, but I've only had to add like 3 entries to the cross-index, ever. The sectioning works well enough. Even without the index I can figure out where to look for advice on swamp diseases for example.

The flow is Players --> Characters (including followers) --> Equipment (including add-on characters) --> Spell Considerations --> Adventuring --> Combat --> Experience --> World design (including NPCs) --> Magical creations --> Magic items --> Treasure assignment. There could be a different flow given (like move world before adventuring), but I don't thik it would change much and it reflects moden sensibilities more than the sensibilities of the time.


The biggest area I would address is to group the NPC sections (Hireling/henchman, followers from class abilities, and NPC personae) closer together.

But for experienced users, having access to a comprehensive cross-index trumps conceptual flow.

I dunno, I gotta agree with Celebrim on this one. I don't think there's anything particularly WRONG with the 1e book's layouts and presentation, but it is kind of cluttered in places, not always very clear, sometimes groups related things in different places, and IMHO relies too much on tables and charts. Common elements often lack common formatting (items for instance) and there is no comparison for instance between a 1e monster stat block and a 4e one. I'm not sure what makes the 1e DMG's index better than that of the 4e DMG either for instance. What I WOULD observe though is that in actual play the amount of material you have to reference in 4e is quite small, you'd normally only need one page of the DMG, page 42. You might also use page 110, parcels, and page 56? for the XP chart. Now and then you might look up some of the other stuff, traps, poisons, diseases, etc, but most of those are deliberately designed to be easy to reproduce where needed, all having standardized text blocks.

Likewise, PCs are designed so that numbers are almost all pre-calculated and it is uncommon to change them except during level-up. You will reference your powers, but again the formatting both makes them easy to quickly understand, but also easy to copy to your sheet.

 

[Bedrockgames]

We're not talking about edition warring. There is a great separation between the DESIGN of a thing, design and production principles used in its creation, and whether or not you happen to like the thing subjectively. You're fighting an edition war that I'm not fighting. The standards of layout, presentation, ergonomics of design, etc were just brought to a higher level in each successive edition of D&D, uniformly. In these respects Basic was better than OD&D, and AD&D was superior to Basic, and 2e improved on 1e, etc.

That sounds like edition warring to me (i.e. "4E is objectively better designed and laid out than previous editions").

 

[Jester David]

I dunno, I gotta agree with Celebrim on this one. I don't think there's anything particularly WRONG with the 1e book's layouts and presentation, but it is kind of cluttered in places, not always very clear, sometimes groups related things in different places, and IMHO relies too much on tables and charts. Common elements often lack common formatting (items for instance) and there is no comparison for instance between a 1e monster stat block and a 4e one. I'm not sure what makes the 1e DMG's index better than that of the 4e DMG either for instance. What I WOULD observe though is that in actual play the amount of material you have to reference in 4e is quite small, you'd normally only need one page of the DMG, page 42. You might also use page 110, parcels, and page 56? for the XP chart. Now and then you might look up some of the other stuff, traps, poisons, diseases, etc, but most of those are deliberately designed to be easy to reproduce where needed, all having standardized text blocks.

Likewise, PCs are designed so that numbers are almost all pre-calculated and it is uncommon to change them except during level-up. You will reference your powers, but again the formatting both makes them easy to quickly understand, but also easy to copy to your sheet.

Didn't Gygax basically organize it as he wrote, while adding things he missed from the earlier two books?

 

[Bedrockgames]

. There is a great separation between the DESIGN of a thing, design and production principles used in its creation, and whether or not you happen to like the thing subjectively. c.

But I dont think you have identified what that is. So far you have asserted 4E is superior design. But I dont think this is self evident and I think there is a lot of debate. I mean, if you want class parity, yes 4e is better designed than 3E, but not everyone wants that. They are different games, largely built with different design goals. But I really dont think one is objectively superior to the other. In fact, many of the things hou site as improvements in 4E, I see as design flaws. I just dont see 4E as objectively superior design.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But I dont think you have identified what that is. So far you have asserted 4E is superior design. But I dont think this is self evident and I think there is a lot of debate. I mean, if you want class parity, yes 4e is better designed than 3E, but not everyone wants that. They are different games, largely built with different design goals. But I really dont think one is objectively superior to the other. In fact, many of the things hou site as improvements in 4E, I see as design flaws. I just dont see 4E as objectively superior design.

But again, I'm not talking about things like "class parity" or anything to do with the 'feel' of the game etc when you are playing it. I'm only talking about actual organizational, layout, human factors, and some other things along those lines. Obviously NOTHING in the world except the most trivial sorts of facts can be utterly reduced to pure subjectivity, but just consider some very straightforward examples. You can in 4e calculate your attack bonus ahead of time, and it won't change in play unless you level. In 1e you have to consult charts to determine what target numbers are required to hit, and there are any number of ways that your character's strength or even level can change during play. One method avoids overhead during play and the other doesn't. Given that they both accomplish the the same thing, one is as objectively better than the other as it is possible for something in an RPG to be.

I mean its fine to talk about how some things are more or less subjective, but at some point any sort of discussion at all becomes pointless unless we can acknowledge that indeed there are actually better ways of doing some things. I realize you feel compelled to resist any notion of a favorable comparison between editions you like and ones you don't like, but don't overplay it. Its perfectly OK to like things that lack the same objective quality as other things. Plenty of us like old cars, but I would never suggest that some old Chevy from 1972 is in any functional respect on a par with a modern automobile (even a Chevy).