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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9259829" data-attributes="member: 4937">I mean, they already have.  About 20 years ago RPGs went through a period of modernization based on lessons learned over the first 30 years or so of gaming, and spurred I think by the enormous success of 3e D&D and the D20 OGL - which was D&D's modernization.  Even the OSR games are just modernized versions of the originals.  But as soon as I hear someone say something silly like "Pandemic is better than Clue", I kind of tune out of the discussion.  Clue is a phenomenal game and while it could use a little modernization, it's fundamentals are very solid and it's a lot of fun to play to this day.  Whether you enjoy Pandemic more or Clue more is a matter of taste and preferred aesthetics.  You can't declare one better than the other.I don't think you can draw the same lessons from a board game, which usually endeavors to be a sort of puzzle to solve, as you can from an RPG which doesn't necessarily limit itself to that aesthetic and indeed in many cases isn't what the game is trying to do.  So an open-ended board game that might never get solved is sort of boring, but an open-ended RPG is very much exactly the point in most cases.  Even if you finish an episode or story or adventure, the simulated "life" goes on - or at least can go on if you are interested in pursuing that.  RPGs definitely do not need some fixed end or rigid structure in the general case, or at the least we can't say that it would be objectively better if they did.  It might be better for something things - Fiasco and Dread go that way - but it wouldn't be better for every goal of play.Most of the things you talk about in my opinion would make the game worse.  What I'd like to see in the next 5 years:a) Less system churn.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again, we don't really need any new systems.  We could use to refine carefully some existing systems - I think BRP is the gold standard here of not throwing out the baby with the bathwater and slowly improving the game - but we should stop seeing making a new system as the real purpose of design.  Open frameworks to build games with should become the norm, with either free licenses or minimal cost licensing.  It's better to tweak an existing system than design a new one.b) More system breath.  I've said before that I consider an RPG to be a collection of minigames utilized to achieve some aesthetic - traditionally "playing at the world".  When I look at my favorite games, what I mostly see missing is good secondary minigames around things like chases, mass combat, crafting, vehicle rules, evasion, overland travel, dynastic play, and so forth.  Some systems do a decent job of this (Pendragon is a good example) but I can't think of any system that really does this well.  Pathfinder 1e made a real stab at being comprehensive and there are some examples of really good or at least close to good minigames in Paizo's body of work, but unfortunately a lot of their work was just mailed in and didn't play well IME.  Rather than rebooting your system every 5 years, people ought to be focused on expanding the possibilities of play within that system.  I suspect some of this is going to happen as an accidental consequence of 'a' where people starting noticing that you can take the rules from multiple games and mix and match to create something greater than the whole.c) Better examples of play.  The standards in RPG writing are actually pretty darn lousy.  So many books are basically content free.  I get so sick and tired of adventures that are the thinnest possible setting guides where the writer seems to think he's doing you a favor by leaving you to make up all the interesting stuff that goes into a having a plot.  I get tired of adventure books that are thinly stereotyped characters with no examples of conversation, no history of actions leading up to this point, and no future actions they are undertaking, and X-Files like "the truth is out there" but not included in the book.  I get tired of just how few really well-designed adventures there are with good breadcrumb trails, well designed encounters, decent variety of play, and nice twists and payoffs.  Like if you are going to do this for a living, please step up the game.  Dragon Lance shouldn't be the height of our ambition in 2024.  I6 Ravenloft shouldn't have the best dungeon map ever made in 2024.  We shouldn't be looking back to the 1970s and 1980s and going, "Wow, they could really design back then."  We need more like the Two Headed Serpent campaign for Call of Cthulhu, which is probably the best long campaign for the game ever written and is so so much better written than "Masks" on so many levels.</blockquote>

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