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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 8808224" data-attributes="member: 6799660">I think the issues with Wraith go beyond munchkins spoiling peoples' fun. It has issues with generally just so much stuff going on. Yes, gamers can limit it to a specific focus (each character resolving a fetter, each character fostering a passion, the group making a lasting structure or social movement inside wraith society, fighting Oblivion in some way), but they do so by carving a game out of the totality.  I don't know that it falls into the category of players interpret it far from designer intent, so much as it requires players to keep what they want out of the system the designers made. I think the answer for 1974 is adults -- specifically wargamers looking for a change of pace. Given that the realization that many-if-not-most of the people buying the several waves of sold-out printings weren't wargamers, as early as 1975 (much less by the time AD&D was finished) it would have been clear that this wasn't the exclusive audience. Exactly how much that changed Gary's design decisions, though, is probably an exercise in psycholoanalysis. He certainly has said many (sometimes contradicting) things about the game and audience, and I think his view really shifted over time. What it was in '75 -79, though, I believe, was mostly, 'whomever we can make a sale to.'Honest opinion: D&D was a dungeon-crawling treasure-hunting game with a LotR/Dying Earth/Conan/Wild West by way of a Renaissance fair paint job. Well, it would be nice, but it looks like as usual around here it has become dominated by trying to find someone to be at fault for something. Fundamentally I agree with the notion-- if you can't convey your point to your likely audience, then you failed in your mission to communicate it to them. At the same time, I would have thought it more interesting to go through a bunch of games and see where the system incentivizes behavior at odds with the communicated expected gameplay, rather than the 98,317,491st rendition of communal axe-grinding over D&D and WoD.</blockquote>

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