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<blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 8844856" data-attributes="member: 86653"><p>D&D <em>was</em> unique. For a few years at least. Other games have come along since. Including other toolkit games. The only thing unique about D&D once those other games came along was the market dominance it's maintained, essentially unchanged, ever since.</p><p></p><p>Sure. And the same can be said for a lot of games now. Most of the early games tried to ape D&D and were also toolkit games. The ones that lasted until today (like Call of Cthulhu and Traveller) have similar paths and similar vestigial DNA. What they lack is D&D's status as the 800lbs gorilla.</p><p></p><p>But it doesn't lack those prescriptive demands. It has them in spades. It's a common refrain that games are about what they reward. D&D's long history has included mainly two sources of reward: murder and gold. Sure you can house rule the game to reward other things, but the bulk of the game mechanics are focused on murdering things (i.e. creating corpses) and recovering gold from various places (mostly ruins and corpses).</p><p></p><p>Personally, I'm in the middle somewhere. If you have to have rules (you don't), I would prefer crisper, modern rules...but I also think the focus is fine, basically.</p><p></p><p>The only significant difference is the size of its fanbase.</p><p></p><p>Eh. I wouldn't say I need it either, it's just helpful. I'm very much in the emergent storytelling camp for RPGs so I want the referee "guiding" things as little as possible. But I've also played through enough sessions wasted on pre-planning things when those plans suck and fall apart instantly when put into practice. So something like BitD's flashbacks is a good middle ground. The majority of session time isn't wasted on a plan that won't work. The plan isn't wasted because the plan isn't made ahead of time. The players get to keep their agency and decide which obstacles they want to overcome via flashback and resource expenditure and what obstacles they want to overcome in the "here and now" of the session. I don't see a downside to it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="overgeeked, post: 8844856, member: 86653"] D&D [I]was[/I] unique. For a few years at least. Other games have come along since. Including other toolkit games. The only thing unique about D&D once those other games came along was the market dominance it's maintained, essentially unchanged, ever since. Sure. And the same can be said for a lot of games now. Most of the early games tried to ape D&D and were also toolkit games. The ones that lasted until today (like Call of Cthulhu and Traveller) have similar paths and similar vestigial DNA. What they lack is D&D's status as the 800lbs gorilla. But it doesn't lack those prescriptive demands. It has them in spades. It's a common refrain that games are about what they reward. D&D's long history has included mainly two sources of reward: murder and gold. Sure you can house rule the game to reward other things, but the bulk of the game mechanics are focused on murdering things (i.e. creating corpses) and recovering gold from various places (mostly ruins and corpses). Personally, I'm in the middle somewhere. If you have to have rules (you don't), I would prefer crisper, modern rules...but I also think the focus is fine, basically. The only significant difference is the size of its fanbase. Eh. I wouldn't say I need it either, it's just helpful. I'm very much in the emergent storytelling camp for RPGs so I want the referee "guiding" things as little as possible. But I've also played through enough sessions wasted on pre-planning things when those plans suck and fall apart instantly when put into practice. So something like BitD's flashbacks is a good middle ground. The majority of session time isn't wasted on a plan that won't work. The plan isn't wasted because the plan isn't made ahead of time. The players get to keep their agency and decide which obstacles they want to overcome via flashback and resource expenditure and what obstacles they want to overcome in the "here and now" of the session. I don't see a downside to it. [/QUOTE]
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