Do we want one dominant game, and why?

[Starfox]

However, if I'm reading correctly, the basic view is that a kid interested in becoming an F1 driver shouldn't progress through go-karting or trying out rally driving.

If this is your reading, I don't think you are reading it correctly.

We're drifting off topic, but I think you're trying to read me trying to read you... Between the lines. Might be best to just drop the argument.

 

[Beginning of the End]

It's the same way with RPGs. Who cares if you found your perfect RPG, if you can't find anyone to play it with you?

I base this on absolutely nothing, but I'm not really convinced that "find a gaming group" is actually the predominant method by which people play D&D. And, if it is, I'm fairly certain that it's not a good thing that it is.

I mean, there's organized play for Monopoly, Scrabble, and poker (and that's good). But the popularity of those games isn't defined by an accessible "social network" of players: It's about people pulling out the Monopoly board and playing with their friends or family.

How do I find people to play D&D with? The same way I find people to play Arkham Horror with; or go to a baseball game with; or watch a movie with. I go to my existing friends and say, "Hey, you wanna play?"

One of the reasons I've really enjoyed our recent OD&D campaigns isn't really the ruleset: It's the megadungeon format that allows for every session to be a pick-up game while still being tied into a larger sense of continuity. Every time I meet somebody creative or geeky or just fun to be around, inviting them to the next OD&D game becomes an easy option.

Over the past year we've introduced about 16 people to D&D. And 6-8 of those people have stuck around and become regular or semi-regular players.

So I'll add that quality to the list of things a break-out game would need: A structure that makes it easy for new players to participate without instantly asking a huge, long-term time commitment from them. And I'll definitely be looking to develop similarly flexible formats in other RPG systems. I think Shadowrun has a lot of potential.

In my dreamworld, there would only be one unifying core system that everybody used. Such a system would need to be flexible enough to consolidate all forms of tabletop gaming, and yet strong enough to maintain a very high level of support in order to prevent gamers from scattering to the nine winds.

I hate to sound dismissive, but that's destined to remain a dream world. Because even if everyone ends up using the same game system, the flexibility you're talking about will still fracture the player base so that it's no longer a useful, unified social network.

This is another advantage D&D has: If I say "let's play D&D", you'll get a pretty firm idea of what type of game I'm asking you to play in. We will almost to the point of certainty be playing a small band of wandering heroes who fight monsters on a regular basis as part of our "doing good portfolio".

This is useful in three ways: First, it provides a clear set of expectations between GMs and players without any need for further communication. Second, it again answers the question "what am I supposed to be doing?" in a concrete fashion. Third, it allows for focused supplementary material which will be potentially useful to the vast majority of people playing the game.

There's already abundant evidence of what happens when this focus of purpose isn't present: Lots of games which have "the game is the game world" have found that supplementary material (the stuff you want to base your entire economic model on) is much more difficult to market. And you're talking about taking that basic problem and expanding it across multiple genres.

Furthermore, even if we conclude that we need a large social network for RPG players to plug into, let me point out that this doesn't necessitate a single, all-encompassing system. For example, FPS and RTS games both require strong social networks in order to support online play. But dozens of each type of game thrive at any given time.

 

[Beginning of the End]

The other quality an introductory game should have is a default scenario structure that, similarly, guides the players and GM in obvious ways. The D&D dungeon crawl is ideal for this: The PCs are in a room. They can either do something in that room or they can take one of (several) obvious exits and go to the next room.

For the players, the dungeon crawl never leaves them wondering, "What should I do next?" And the structure of the dungeon crawl makes it very difficult for a player-proposed action to leave the DM wondering, "What should my response be?" (You look at the map and describe the next room.)

IMO, you have already left 90% of the potential market behind by tying the idea of a role-playing game to a tactical game.

You might want to check your reading glasses. I didn't say anything about being a tactical game.

Let me elaborate on this:

Laying aside the RPG industry for a moment, let's look at every other successful game in history: Every single one of them always provides a concrete answer to the question, "What are we supposed to be doing now?" at every single point in the game.

Chess: Somebody is supposed to be moving a piece.
Poker: Make a bet or drawing cards.
Monopoly: Roll the dice, and then a whole subsidiary selection of actions based on the outcome of that dice roll.

And so forth. This is not a quality which limits the market of RPGs. On the contrary, it is the lack of this quality which limits the market of so many RPGs. Neophytes get their hands on a typical RPG and they literally have no idea what they're supposed to do with it.

The Catch-22 here, of course, is that the unique strength of a tabletop RPG is its flexibility: The ability for individual players to surpass the limitations of the rule system. If you get rid of that, then you're just left with Descent -- which is a decent enough board game, but which I find virtually pointless compared to the essentially identical experiences I can get with less hassle, more bling, and a wider flexibility in play options (solo, local, and international) with CRPGs. (And even more pointless when I compare it to the identical-yet-so-much-more experiences I get with any dungeon-crawling RPG you'd care to name.)

But if you fully embrace the "do whatever you want" nature of RPGs, then I'm afraid you're creating a product is impenetrable to a group of entirely new players.

 

[nedjer]

If this is your reading, I don't think you are reading it correctly.

We're drifting off topic, but I think you're trying to read me trying to read you... Between the lines. Might be best to just drop the argument.

It was much earlier in the day and I hadn't woken up I can be a little too 'robust' at times

Cheers

 

[JohnRTroy]

My own take is a little complex.

Do I think that there should be one or more major players in the hobby and industry, yes. Without a large player, you can't get the games into mass market stores, and we need at least one or more archetypical games to get the young people exposed to the hobby and/or maintain a loyal audience. TSR (then WotC), and other large players helped enable this for all of us. So much so that I feel if Wizards failed as a company, it would be pretty detrimental to the hobby itself.

Do I think there should be one dominant game system? No, absolutely not. I wouldn't mind, for lack of a better term, an oligopoly where you had 3-6 big ones and dozens of little ones, and that's kind of how the game market was in the 1980s and 1990s.

I believe a good market has alternatives. I'm glad we have Pepsi as an alternative to Coke, I am glad for instance we have OSX and Ubuntu to be alternatives to Windows, and I'm glad we have Android and Blackberry to be alternatives to the iPhone. Market domination can then lead to stagnation--it took years for Web technology to improve once Microsoft dominated the market after Netscape retrenched.

One of what I consider the detrimental side effects of the OGL was the fact that it replaced some of what I'd call the "big players" with those who went after the D&D market. While a lot of people claim there was more "innovation" and that it "inspired creativity", I see that coming at a sacrifice of the different systems and made the market even more dependent on the D&D teat. Somebody mentioned how games like Deadlands, 7th Sea, etc, all jumped onto the d20 bandwagon. Then, all WotC had to do was "sneeze", and we get 4e which is completely different, and the d20 market is not good--we have maybe a few major players. It's like the Irish Potato famine--the country became so dependent on one crop when the health of that crop was threated, it caused a crisis and starvation.

 

[Lanefan]

It may be true for players who are being introduced to the game as part of an experienced group. But if you're talking about a game that's being sold to entirely new players, then the ideal quality for an introductory game is one which can always provide a solid answer to the question, "What am I supposed to be doing?" And it should be able to answer that question for both the GM and the player.

And for that to be true, you need lots of detailed crunch. New players want the rules to tell them a 20-foot jump is a DC 20 check.

I'm not at all sure about this. To follow your analogy, the rules need to tell them what a DC 20 check (or a Dex. check) *is* but not that it takes one to make a 20-foot jump. This should be discovered during play.

Remember, in 0e-1e design many of the "rules" were only known to the DM (and sometimes even she wasn't sure). The players just said what they wanted to do and the DM took it from there, often by consulting a table and rolling some dice.

The other quality an introductory game should have is a default scenario structure that, similarly, guides the players and GM in obvious ways. The D&D dungeon crawl is ideal for this: The PCs are in a room. They can either do something in that room or they can take one of (several) obvious exits and go to the next room.

For the players, the dungeon crawl never leaves them wondering, "What should I do next?" And the structure of the dungeon crawl makes it very difficult for a player-proposed action to leave the DM wondering, "What should my response be?" (You look at the map and describe the next room.)

And if this default scenario structure is also extraordinarily easy for the newbie GM to homebrew new scenarios for, then you've definitely got a winner.

And, finally, the game also needs to be flexible enough to expand beyond that starting point. And broad enough in its appeal to support the interests of many different types of players interested in pursuing many different playing strategies (and I'm not just talking combat strategy here).

In short, I think D&D's success wasn't a fluke. I think it was extraordinarily well-designed to appeal to new players (despite the opaque quality of the original manuals).

With all of this, however, I completely agree.

About the only other thing needed is a default setting, to give an example of what a setting consists of.

Lan-"drop the puck and roll the dice"-efan

 

[Beginning of the End]

I'm not at all sure about this. To follow your analogy, the rules need to tell them what a DC 20 check (or a Dex. check) *is* but not that it takes one to make a 20-foot jump. This should be discovered during play.

To clarify, I'm including the GM as a player here.

About the only other thing needed is a default setting, to give an example of what a setting consists of.

I'm not going to necessarily disagree, but I think a ready-to-play sample scenario is more important than a setting. In fact, I think there's something to be said for the setting arising entirely from the scenario structure itself.

I mean, I enjoy reading, studying, and even using created worlds. But over the years I've become increasingly convinced that if it isn't immediately, palpably gameable then it shouldn't be in the (core) rulebooks. And I've become increasingly aware that the earliest RPGs I played (and, perhaps more importantly, understood how to play) all shared that trait.

I also think the BECMI Basic Set got something really, really, really right by including a solo scenario on basically page 1 of the rulebook.

 

[Hussar]

Remember, in 0e-1e design many of the "rules" were only known to the DM (and sometimes even she wasn't sure). The players just said what they wanted to do and the DM took it from there, often by consulting a table and rolling some dice.

But, also remember, that other than a very brief boom and bust, 0e and 1e didn't manage to keep the audience. How many people were turned off of gaming for precisely what you are talking about and how many kept playing despite it, not because of it and how many actually thought that "Mother May I" was a good design policy?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Hussar, it is arguable that there are as many people playing 1e today as there are playing 4e or 3e. It is also arguable that there are not.

Frankly, whether or not 0e and 1e managed to keep the audience is entirely conjecture.


RC

 

[Ariosto]

What do we mean by "one dominant game"?

What I have seen in shops over the past decade is a lot of D&D, Vampire and Rifts, and secondarily "d20 System" products.

Do we mean a wall of product even more homogeneous than that?

To my eye, Traveller is better off in its Mongoose incarnation than it was as "T20". I suspect that one reason Mutants and Masterminds has apparently been the cream of the superhero crop is the degree to which it went its own way.

I don't know, but maybe WotC's moving of its D&D brand off the OGL has got people in the business broadening their horizons. "We might have to ride our own coat-tails!"

Turning Rifts and Vampire into WotC-D&D clones (or D&D and Rifts into Vampire clones, or what have you) is not my idea of improvement.

It was nifty in the 1970s that TSR published five games (D&D, EPT, MA, GW, AD&D) that were all more or less variations on a theme. It was nifty in the 1980s that Chaosium and Hero had their more systematically similar lines -- of, especially in Chaosium's case, quite distinctly different games on balance.

It was really, really nifty, though, that this and more was happening all at once.